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Author Topic: Loyalty Value: How to make historical figures playable without breaking the game  (Read 2229 times)

IndigoFenix

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This is a suggestion to add loyalty values to the game; each unit has a relationship value with other units that determine how loyal they are to that unit.  This is affected by personality and the events the units have been through together, and determine how likely it is for the unit to take orders from the other.

The real game changer, though, is that if you (as an adventurer) gains 100% loyalty of any other unit (meaning that they would do whatever you said without question), that unit becomes selectable as an adventurer.

This would allow you to, in theory, take control of any historical figure in the game, while making it in practice very difficult to break the game by doing so.  (i.e. you can't defeat an enemy siege by taking control of the general and making them jump off a cliff - unless you somehow gained enough of their admiration that they'd do it if you asked them to).  It would be extremely difficult to gain the perfect loyalty of a king, but it could be theoretically possible.

GoblinCookie

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This is not a very efficient way of dealing with the basic problem, which is the ability of Armok to simply help himself to any powerful person and mess up the game world with no ability of the game to counter this.  It is a better system for dealing with general political rebellion/unrest mechanics.

I would prefer we actually have a point based system by which adventurers accumulate points from their achievements in the game, which are stored in their file.  When we offload our character (as a living being) we add that number of points to our 'account' as it were (the world save file).  We can only play as characters whose total number of points is equal to or less than our score and we deposit the points in the character we play as.

If the character we play as dies in a non-natural fashion we lose all the points we have deposited in that character.  Historical characters other than adventurers have a total points value that factors in various factors, mostly their achievements/status but really powerful creatures (like the giants in my mod) should have a points cost simply to play as a non-historical individual.  If a character ends up maimed rather than dead, we should lose some of our deposited points also.
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IndigoFenix

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This is not a very efficient way of dealing with the basic problem, which is the ability of Armok to simply help himself to any powerful person and mess up the game world with no ability of the game to counter this.

I'm not sure you understood the concept...

You can't play as any powerful person unless you gain their complete loyalty.  Gaining the complete loyalty of a powerful person (i.e. that they would follow your orders without question) is virtually impossible unless you are both equal or more powerful than they are, and are their ally.  So you can't use this to mess up the game world.

Mostly it would be used to play as your adventuring companions after travelling with them for long enough.

FantasticDorf

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Loyalty is also a civilization value so i am not sure how this will particularly play out in a civilised society which holds loyalty to be very low (like goblins) either being completely un-convertable or somehow dropping out of favour and removing themselves from your loyalty pool faster.

Though other ways of acquiring quick loyalty points' could be to be respected by the inhabitants of the towns you take over (defend the settlement, kill monsters harrassing it, etc.) and members of your immediate family post-retirement or during adventuremode play so that you can carry on as your descendants.

Somehow marry yourself into the ruling dynasty, and voila, the entire dwarven empire (most of it anyway) should be loyal and playable to you.

To be honest i think the system should be re-named to stop confusing it with actual loyalties.
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GoblinCookie

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I'm not sure you understood the concept...

You can't play as any powerful person unless you gain their complete loyalty.  Gaining the complete loyalty of a powerful person (i.e. that they would follow your orders without question) is virtually impossible unless you are both equal or more powerful than they are, and are their ally.  So you can't use this to mess up the game world.

Mostly it would be used to play as your adventuring companions after travelling with them for long enough.

So we are actually giving them orders, well no it is our character that has a relationship with them not ourselves as the possessing entity.  We are not taking them over, plus as FantasticDorf has pointed out loyalty is a funny word to use when we are talking about a more powerful individual to our starting character.
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Killitwithfire

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The biggest obstacle I can see with this is that each and every unit would then have to have a value describing their relationship with each and every OTHER unit, which would get very big and very clunky very easily, especially since there's no easy way to chunk it up like is done with the world proper. Maybe instead giving each unit a FAME value for themselves, and a threshold at which they would actually look up to a famous person? Then you have the justification of the unit on the receiving end not just doing as their idol would do, but actually trying to become like that unit and thus opening themselves up to Armok's influence.

If you wanted to make it a little more complicated, keeping track of a given unit's individual history, and then using that to determine how another unit would view them, would make it slightly more realistic, as well. For example, if you get famous off of repelling so many goblin sieges, dwarves may hold you in the highest regard... while to goblins, you're horribly infamous and something of an anti-role model. (...And I'm like 90% sure this is in the game already anyway, but allowing you to control particularly friendly units would add a new wrinkle to it.)
« Last Edit: November 29, 2017, 07:28:33 pm by Killitwithfire »
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GoblinCookie

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The biggest obstacle I can see with this is that each and every unit would then have to have a value describing their relationship with each and every OTHER unit, which would get very big and very clunky very easily, especially since there's no easy way to chunk it up like is done with the world proper. Maybe instead giving each unit a FAME value for themselves, and a threshold at which they would actually look up to a famous person? Then you have the justification of the unit on the receiving end not just doing as their idol would do, but actually trying to become like that unit and thus opening themselves up to Armok's influence.

If you wanted to make it a little more complicated, keeping track of a given unit's individual history, and then using that to determine how another unit would view them, would make it slightly more realistic, as well. For example, if you get famous off of repelling so many goblin sieges, dwarves may hold you in the highest regard... while to goblins, you're horribly infamous and something of an anti-role model. (...And I'm like 90% sure this is in the game already anyway, but allowing you to control particularly friendly units would add a new wrinkle to it.)

This makes me think that instead of having all the characters in the game keep score of eachother or us keep a general score we should keep a sort of karma-meter between the player and the various civilisations in the game.  The basic idea is once again that you can only incarnate as a historical character if you have the requisite number of karma points with their civilization.  If you have negative karma you cannot incarnate at all, even as a non-historical character, since the basic cost is 0. 

You could always incarnate as an outcast though, which means if if you manage to upset everyone you can still play.
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KittyTac

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The biggest obstacle I can see with this is that each and every unit would then have to have a value describing their relationship with each and every OTHER unit, which would get very big and very clunky very easily, especially since there's no easy way to chunk it up like is done with the world proper. Maybe instead giving each unit a FAME value for themselves, and a threshold at which they would actually look up to a famous person? Then you have the justification of the unit on the receiving end not just doing as their idol would do, but actually trying to become like that unit and thus opening themselves up to Armok's influence.

If you wanted to make it a little more complicated, keeping track of a given unit's individual history, and then using that to determine how another unit would view them, would make it slightly more realistic, as well. For example, if you get famous off of repelling so many goblin sieges, dwarves may hold you in the highest regard... while to goblins, you're horribly infamous and something of an anti-role model. (...And I'm like 90% sure this is in the game already anyway, but allowing you to control particularly friendly units would add a new wrinkle to it.)

This makes me think that instead of having all the characters in the game keep score of eachother or us keep a general score we should keep a sort of karma-meter between the player and the various civilisations in the game.  The basic idea is once again that you can only incarnate as a historical character if you have the requisite number of karma points with their civilization.  If you have negative karma you cannot incarnate at all, even as a non-historical character, since the basic cost is 0. 

You could always incarnate as an outcast though, which means if if you manage to upset everyone you can still play.

What if I WANT to go on a rampage with a character with decent skills and equipment? Maybe add this as an option.
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IndigoFenix

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The biggest obstacle I can see with this is that each and every unit would then have to have a value describing their relationship with each and every OTHER unit, which would get very big and very clunky very easily, especially since there's no easy way to chunk it up like is done with the world proper. Maybe instead giving each unit a FAME value for themselves, and a threshold at which they would actually look up to a famous person? Then you have the justification of the unit on the receiving end not just doing as their idol would do, but actually trying to become like that unit and thus opening themselves up to Armok's influence.

It's not really that big of a deal - units already have objects describing their relationship with every other unit that they have interacted in some way in the past (the list you see on the relationships screen).  This is just another number to add into that existing object.  It can even use the existing worship value, which is currently just set to 0 for all mortal-mortal relationships.

Urlance Woolsbane

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I don't see Toady adding something like this. From what he's said, he plans to give the player a lot of control over how hard or gamey a given world will be, to the point of allowing one to generate a realm where one simply cannot die. I imagine that, when he tackles the matter of playing preexisting HFs (as he plans to do,) it will be a matter for world-gen parameters or the world-editor.


Personally, while I think your idea is clever, I find it too gamey for comfort. Playing one character to unlock others isn't what I'm looking for in Dwarf Fortress.
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FantasticDorf

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Personally, while I think your idea is clever, I find it too gamey for comfort. Playing one character to unlock others isn't what I'm looking for in Dwarf Fortress.

I would think that running multiple mutual adventurer save files of the same world (export, copy paste world) and a lineage system once players are unset from being asexual would achieve much the same thing, that and if there are important individuals 'under your sphere of influence' (a better name I think) you might have too many uncoded or uncodable responsibilities that aren't realised in the game yet.

Such as acquiring a obscure noble like a book-keeper, where you're not expected to ever leave your safe office counting stocks, in which case it just becomes first person fortress management mode. It'd have to be world savvy roles or atleast ones marked out as being adventurer friendly with [ADVENTURER_CONTROLLABLE] or a similar tag.

If that was the case, you wouldn't need to have a sphere of influence system at all, just enable generating a role for a adventurer when selected.

Quote from: examples
Peasant
Hero
Demigod
Trader - Noble job, pre-equipped statistics & a trading wagon with randomly generated starting supplies to peddle depending on how economy arc is structured.
Baron - Already owns a site because of landowner tags, your responsibility being mostly to manage & defend it rather than quest, or issue quests & commands to visitors & subordinates
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IndigoFenix

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I don't see Toady adding something like this. From what he's said, he plans to give the player a lot of control over how hard or gamey a given world will be, to the point of allowing one to generate a realm where one simply cannot die. I imagine that, when he tackles the matter of playing preexisting HFs (as he plans to do,) it will be a matter for world-gen parameters or the world-editor.


Personally, while I think your idea is clever, I find it too gamey for comfort. Playing one character to unlock others isn't what I'm looking for in Dwarf Fortress.

I see it more as "continuing your story", viewing DF as a "story generator".

Think of it like Lord of the Rings.  You start out as peasant nobody Frodo.  You travel along and meet up with other characters, forming a fellowship with a mission.  These other characters are now a part of "your" story, the story you are building with your adventures.  Later on, the fellowship breaks up, but since the other characters are still part of the same story and have the same ultimate mission you can now step into their shoes and continue the adventure as them, which is what the books do by following Aragorn's party, Merry & Pippin, etc.

FantasticDorf

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But that's more broadly a party system rather than permanently owning your, the system you've suggested sounds like you could control completely abstract people you have never met because they are tied in loyalty to you parallel (EI-your adventurer is the dwarf royalty) from miles & miles away almost as if you've possessed them

In which gamey way you could say, when X member of your party has gotten stuck off river or ran away from your group for whatever reason (as what happens currently in the game) you could switch to them and see their perspective while your main adventurer waits or is camped up without losing them from the group pernamently unless they are somehow unassigned.

As well as the ability to switch back and forth at will if you want companions to do specific things or use abilities.

Possession (as in either combining/stealing/put in the driving seat of another persons mind or soul) magic could be interesting, but begs the question that you're abusing & what happens to your original adventurer who has no REAL role in the game world and may end up getting themselves killed doing AI driven activities. Adventurers have been mentioned to go instantly beserk or suicidal the moment they are taken out of adventure mode because players pay such little attention to the adventurers thoughts & needs.
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IndigoFenix

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Adventurers have been mentioned to go instantly beserk or suicidal the moment they are taken out of adventure mode because players pay such little attention to the adventurers thoughts & needs.

All the more reason to pay attention to the adventurer's thoughts and needs - to play as them and guide their story.

Urlance Woolsbane

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I don't see Toady adding something like this. From what he's said, he plans to give the player a lot of control over how hard or gamey a given world will be, to the point of allowing one to generate a realm where one simply cannot die. I imagine that, when he tackles the matter of playing preexisting HFs (as he plans to do,) it will be a matter for world-gen parameters or the world-editor.


Personally, while I think your idea is clever, I find it too gamey for comfort. Playing one character to unlock others isn't what I'm looking for in Dwarf Fortress.

I see it more as "continuing your story", viewing DF as a "story generator".

Think of it like Lord of the Rings.  You start out as peasant nobody Frodo.  You travel along and meet up with other characters, forming a fellowship with a mission.  These other characters are now a part of "your" story, the story you are building with your adventures.  Later on, the fellowship breaks up, but since the other characters are still part of the same story and have the same ultimate mission you can now step into their shoes and continue the adventure as them, which is what the books do by following Aragorn's party, Merry & Pippin, etc.
I'm all for that, but I don't think loyalty points would be an effective way of achieving it. Certainly, following a divergent branch of your story is quite different from hijacking a fanboy you randomly came across in the course of your wanderings. This would be better handled by a quest structure, perhaps allowing you to assign different party members to different objectives, then letting you switch between them. Now, I see no problem with your companion being able to reject your orders, but that would be down to a combination of his personality and his opinion of you, things the game already tracks. A loyalty score, by contrast, would be quite simplistic.
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