Welcome back to the Feedback Loop series. Today’s topic is Robber Camps, which were discussed in the Discord community over the past weeks. The Kingdoms team has started working with various concepts, and we wanted to gather a final round of feedback from the players before diving into development.
Please continue reading to learn about Game Center’s views on the main issues around Robber Camps and get a response to the most burning feedback. Robber Camps should be a fun feature and not a cause for conflict due to extra organization and monitoring.
- Topics from the community are written in bold
- Response from the Game Center starts with a 👑 icon
In the app, it is not possible to view how many attacks have already started to clear the waves. Attacks are sent “blindly,” and too many attacks hit the same camp.
👑 A valid point and one of the concerns we wish to tackle. App development now has more hours dedicated to bringing the browser and mobile experience closer together. Our team is currently making the game more “on the go,” making the mobile experience a good alternative wherever you are.
Attacking a camp should only be possible if at least one slot is free. For example, if 5/5 attacks are scheduled, a 6th player shouldn’t be able to send a new attack.
👑 Limiting the Attacks to the number of open waves would prevent the dreaded Ninja-looting/sniping, but it is still a very restrictive approach. We are exploring new ways to defeat Robber Camps that do not exclude players from participating as heavily as the wave system currently does. We try to find a way that every Kingdom member can comfortably participate in the fight against the Robbers without blocking others.
What if the King could set rules for their Kingdom? A tick box as we have with Secret Society: only attacks or only raids; only with hero; max. distance; max. number of camps per player.
👑 Our goal is to minimize the effort of the Kingdom’s leadership with the Robber Camps, as they already have a lot of work running a successful Kingdom. The new concept should include way less organization, like working with tick-boxes.
Can you limit how many times each player could attack a camp? Set a limit within a time window before new attacks can be sent. As an example, until day 30: 2 camps, until day 70: 3 camps, etc. The camps could be color-coded to show when it’s time to go again.
👑 We are still analyzing the pros and cons of different approaches. Limiting participation can take the fun out of the future Robber Camp feature.
It would be helpful to see who has attacked a Robber Camp even after a camp has disappeared. Maybe a new category in the Kingdom’s report or a notice board to tell who attacked, when, and runtimes.
👑 We want to eliminate the need to coordinate on a notice board. This idea, while it helps organize the current camps, just might become unnecessary.
What if we had fixed spawn times for Robber Camps so it didn’t depend on when the last camp was defeated? Alternatively, a countdown to when the camps appear so players can prepare?
👑 We aim to make the Robber Camps comfortable to engage with for everyone and a bit easier to anticipate so that players can prepare better for the spawn times – all while keeping the element of surprise. Good to see we’re on the same page here.
In Night Truce game worlds, can you make the camps appear outside of truce times?
👑 This is a topic we can return to once the new concept is complete.
What often happens is some camps are cleared right away while others might be left untouched. Can you let Kingdoms decide where the camps spawn so the distance for waves doesn’t differ as much?
👑 Robbers, by default, do not follow rules. Giving players the power to control robbers and their camps is not the direction we wish to take. But, the untouched camps are something we will include in our design process.
Currently, players reserve free fields for camps to appear, yet the space is limited. Are there other fields where the camps could spawn, such as wilderness? Or what if the camps always had a permanent location on the map?
👑 A dedicated spot on the Map for Robber Camps is an interesting concept but might cause some inequality in terms of travel distance among Kingdom members. We are investigating alternative Spawn points so that Robbers no longer block valuable Map space.
There could be one Robber camp for the whole Kingdom with a fixed number of troops everyone needs to defeat. After a time window, the resources/stolen goods are distributed equally between attackers.
👑 This is one of many options we’ve been discussing under the theme of adding variety. Nice to see the players joining the brainstorming!
Defensive players do not get as many opportunities to attack camps. What if we had a ‘provoke’ feature that sends robbers to the player’s village?
👑 It’s an interesting idea. We cannot say yet what all the different ways to interact with camps will look like, but let’s keep this as something to consider. Now, we’re focusing on introducing more variety in the way players can interact with the Robber Camps to appeal to different playstyles.
For equality, the amount of treasures and resources could be fixed so it doesn’t depend on the Kingdom’s size. Now, the biggest Kingdoms also have the highest passive generation of treasures. They also do not need to be as active to gain Victory Points as smaller Kingdoms.
👑 We want to align the Robber Camps more to global factors rather than the power level & size of the Kingdoms (in terms of difficulty and rewards) to support fair competition.
Thank you for the valuable feedback and suggestions on Discord’s Feedback Loop channels. Some of the feedback offered solutions for the current Robber Camp feature, while we also see new ideas to include in the design process. Camps will be reinvented, and we can’t wait to share the new concept later this year!