Game Design: CLUBS

[lepidocter]

Again a post that no one will read about how to [re]design something.

Many voices rised about (and against) Club, Club Champions and such stuff, and I said (by my unheard voice) that the Club should have a strong refactor time.

To me, is not a matter of math. Many of you are great at stats the way I'll never be, but I've identified that probably the issue of Clubs is not a math to patch out. You cannot patch the wrong tissue.

I'll try to elaborate with you and maybe one day some KK dude or geekette will read and second these words.

...WHAT WAS RIGHT AND THEN WRONG...

Reading back the game development, Club started with just the donation pools and the chat. That was very correct. Players of different level and strenght, but mostly the same language and interests, could meet. They can share an effort to get a collective bonus.

That's correct. Shared effort, collective bonus. Perfect logic of a group activity.

Then Champions came in. And Champions only seems to share the 'group activity' logic, but they hide a conceptual bug. As Champions are tied to the combat system, they introduced in the Clubs a number of scales and tiers that killed the freeform nature of Clubs. The one that fight the most, with better scores, get more from the Club.

While it look logic in a context where scores are the deal since the start, like a League, such math clashed with the intent of Clubs.

That injected in the Club what appeared more partaining to a Guild, as ones of many MMORPG. Nothing intrinsicly bad on his own, but flawed by the nature of HH: such Guilds and games have a way more active management of battles, contributes and loot. The metagame of Guilds is left to players, while such passive loot of Club Champions create more issues than it solve.

I'll try to solve the thing once and for all in my imaginary version.

CHAMPION RAIDS

The first change to the Club section of the game will be to entirely strip out Champions from the Club context, and create instead Raids. Everyon in the game can join any Raid, is not a Club thing anymore.

By clicking on the Raid page, a long list of ongoing Raids appear for you to join. You can also click on "Start a Raid", select a Champion and create yours.

Each Raid host up to five places plus the Host.

The Host (creator of Raid) Level is used to determine the Champion Tier. You can join a Raid (and only one Raid) as long you pay the required entry Tickets and your Level fall in the Tier (not above, not below).

After the setup time, the Raid begin. You pay 1 Ticket for battle, up to 20 battles in a 48h timeframe. Raiders obtain a reward for depleting half the Ego of the Champion, a more consistent reward if they succeed on totally depletion.

This is the default idea. I'll leave you figure out the uncanny number of advantages it does offer compared to the actual system.

CLUB FEATURES?

Now that the Champion is gone from the Club, the Club itself look a bit 'empty'. Adding features is risky for some reasons:

• You don't want to add any more extra active stuff to players, that are already burdened by event, raids, missions...
• You don't want to touch math anymore, it's already on a stiff balance
• You don'ìt want to add extra math, variables or "design dirt". In a word, you must work with what you already own.
• Nothing hard to understand, you should catch it on the fly.
• Collective activities that doesn't call for combat stats, or the original issue will be back again.

So, these are some of activities that can be implemented, compliant the above requirements. As you can see, most of times game design is not about numbers, is about removing numbers and introduce 'methods'. That's the big difference between any coder and a designer - the coder is skilled into numbers, the designer into 'methods'. Sometime the thing can be fixed by numbers, sometime it require different methods.

Anyway, what could be added?

💙 CLUB TRADING

There will be 8 slots, one by Element. You can deposit any X gems, and pick up an equivalent amount of any gem. The more I think, the more it look "safe" to me. No one can spoil such feature (the change rate is 1:1).

💙 CLUB SHOW

When I think about Clubs in this game, I think about a 'gentleman club', but sometime also a Strip Club or a private room in an adult chat :D. That hinted me a cute feature.

The Club Shows section show a list of active Showgirls and their gauges. KK can add more at will. The girl start at Rank 1.

Any Club member can feed up the gauge with ymens. When the gauge is full, the Rank is complete and the relative girl strip out a layer (or whatever, get gangbanged by the Club, to be kinky; this game actually lack such group stuff!).

If Ymen are considere too cheap, probably GIFTS could work the same.

CLUB BONUS REFURBISHING

To me, the actual Club Bonuses work fine conceptually, so if I was called to work within the game I will probably leave them as they are. But if I had to rewrite them from scratch I had to think better as they own a big mistake. They are static finished pools.

Once all pools are done, the 'donation' system is practically ended and everyone can benefit without joining the collective activity. The sense of 'activity' and 'collective' is practically done. I suppose KK team was on an hurry that moment and didn't a long term project.

So, there what I'll do.

Bonuses should be floating scores. If you don't donate again in time, the scoore decrease. That force the Club to donate continually. Before killing me, think of an entirely different math, where you don't have to donate 5000 kobans, but just 50.

You should be able to reach the cap of bonuses way more easily than actually is, balanced by the fact the donation is continual (let say a weekly timeframe).

Anyway, I'll refurbish them even a bit more. Instead of different pools for Scores, now that the combat work differently, I'll just add a Combat Club Bonus, that work on both three.

This method will serve well to balance contributions and prize a collective of more active players. A Leader can easily determine who's contributing to the overall ecosystem and not just parasiting it.

Of course, a smaller refactor of bonuses should be done, to have last ranks be alluring enough to justify the continual expense (that's an example of something a designer should debate with the math guy on the team XD). 

EXTRA: CLUB RENOWN

This is a strange feature that introduce some extra math, but being passive is not something on the player shoulders. I'll jot down just for curiosity.

The Club Renown is an extra Combat Bonus, that sum up the donation one (again, think a different math before crying), and depend on the Members perfomance elsewhere.

Renown last one month and collect points from the previous, triggering a collective bonus for members. The Renown collect points from individual members League perfomances, events, Raids and other sources, ignoring the rank of such sources - so Level isn't again something that matter. Do well in your events, and your Club will gain Renown.

The collective points are then averaged to the number of members to define the Renown Rank for the next month.

Renown so far is, by my idea, just an extra bonus, but could be easily implemented in other features, like Club Challenges and sortings that could be done in the future.

Again, this way you can keep the Club activity itself pure from non partaining items. Conceptually, it should help people feel a sense of ownership and community around his group of pals, and be awarded proper recognition for results. Actually, no one care if I'll beat a League.

 

And that's all...

Thank you for reading this example of conceptualization and design. You can have fun to spot bugs, long terms issues and conceive better solutions, minding again that the thing is not about "numbers" or your compulsions as player ("wanna more gals!"), but 'methods'.

 

Edited February 11, 2022 by lepidocter