Re: Second Castaways 2 public beta
The big problem is indeed that players feel as though their time has been wasted. I think that you could keep the game mechanics as they are but, as imagingstuff said, make a separate server that persisted at least until you manually reset it. This server would probably be a bit more rewarding for long-term play. Instead of having a score system, you could implement other ways to compete with others such as leaderboards showing players with the top amounts of valuable resources. Mining, and thus settling new plots, would become less of an emphasis because you would not have to worry about bringing in coins to turn into points, though coins could be used to buy things from other players with on the online market. To prevent new players from being destroyed by seasoned players, create a formula for determining player power, factoring in things such as the number of defenses they have deployed. Walls would, of course, be counted for less because they do not outright destroy the aggre ssors but just turn them away. Before we can talk about revamping combat we have to keep powerful players from crushing the tomato cans before they can even get started so this is a vital first step.
The fact that, once deployed, army camps cannot be removed by opponents is really strong and gives the defender an overwhelming advantage. In fact the advantage is overwhelmingly with the defense right now since you can really only initiate a single attack per barracks, and attacks are handled independently of each other. And as you build more defenses your land becomes completely impregnible. That is exactly why I loaded up my primary plot with 30 walls and moved all my valuable resources over there, and no one managed to steal anything of consequence because of that. You might consider introducing something similar to the raid group menu in castaways 1 where you can select some number of combat units to attack an enemy base all at once. Defenders can be killed in these raids as well. The workshop can build catapults to destroy walls. This is actually important for both the endless version of the game and the weekly reset version of the game.
For the endless version, create achievements for players to work up to that will take them a long while. RPG-like levels and skill points may also work but of course you then need to add more activities to do. Something like activity branches so that players could specialize deeply into a single activity. For example, right now fishing consists of building a fishpole and net, building an optional boat if you want more, catching the fish and cooking them, then you have cooked fish. Or you can wait for olive oil and fry the fish in olive oil for extra food. You could expand this tree from its current 3 or 4 stages to 7 or 8 stages so that a player could create really specialized fish dishes. Ingredients would be player chosen, contributing a certain amount of food per ingredient. You could even introduce a poisonin g system this way. This would also allow players to sort of personalize what food they made. Same goes for things such as catching horses, if you decide to add barding, saddlemaking, etc. It's all aobut players lending their personalities to their projects like minecraftish kind of thing.
But I definitely think that making ways to destroy enemy defenses is top priority, otherwise sending raids or saboteurs is completely pointless because everyone will just build up their defenses and never worry.
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