City: Focus Proposal
[FOCUS](/blog/city/focusProposal)
Written: 2016-07-11
Table of Contents
- [1. Things that the focus system has done well:](#sec-1)
- [2. Good Metaphors](#sec-2)
- [3. Problems with the current system](#sec-3)
- [4. Thoughts](#sec-4)
- [5. Sub-proposal - UI change for goals](#sec-5)
- [6. Sub-proposal - subconscious for resources](#sec-6)
- [7. Sub-proposal - Fatigue Entity](#sec-7)
- [8. Sub-proposal - Workers from traits](#sec-8)
- [9. Proposal - Kill the focus system:](#sec-9)
- [10. Proposal - UI Change + subconscious + existing worker solution:](#sec-10)
- [11. Found issues:](#sec-11)
- [12. Sub-proposal - Make traits into Starcraft creep](#sec-12)
- [13. Sub-proposal - Focus as a menu](#sec-13)
1 Things that the focus system has done well
- Low focus generating will
- High focus consuming will
- Keeping the towers near the traits
- Giving the player a reward for leveling up a trait
- Penalties from trying to run everything at once:
- Will cost when it was just a number.
- Reduced efficiency with workers </li>
- The trait leveling giving you more focus had the reasonable metaphor of getting better at something letting you do the same task with less focus </div> </div>
- subconscious being more active when focus used is low
- Needing to keep the focus high to prevent emotions from being as strong.
- This means that people should not be able to decide how much they are going to focus on a thing </li>
- Goals only generating desire if focused on.
- Generating workers represented dividing focus very well
- Needing y workers but only having x and so everything runs at x/y efficiency was quite good </li>
- Workers as a whole are a good metaphor
- Visually nice
- Supports the feeling of the mind being a lot of little people </li>
- Being able to vary the amount of focus that you spend on something for variable efficiency is actually strong
- There are actions for which you can do this in the real world
- There are also actions where you cannot
- There is a range in the real world </li>
- I would like this entire system to be a little less under the control of the player
- I don't have full control on what I'm focusing on. </li> </div> </div>
- It is a pain to manually set focus
- The two step process of activate tower and set focus is a pain. </li>
- Possibly too similar to the currency system
- No reason not to max focus all the time.
- Different actions should require different amounts of focus </div> </div>
- How do multiple towers work?
- Making them cost a linear multiple of the focus is a solution </li> </div> </div>
- Reduce the effort of setting focus through a UI change
- Put all of the towers and the traits involved in running a goal in the goal menu and turn things on from there. </li>
- Variations:
- Should still put the towers and traits in even if you can't turn them on yourself so as to emphasize the chain </li>
- Pieces solved:
- Reduces the issue of effort </li> </div> </div>
- Make the subconscious
- Make the subconscious feed the resources
- This is tricky when the pipeline depends on the resources </li>
- Make the subconscious run the emotion sources
- Make the subconscious feed the goals </li>
- Make the focus and subconscious come from the player to emphasize their zero-sum nature
- Make the subconscious choose its destination randomly
- Question:
- How much control do you have over the split? </li>
- Results:
- The traits will then cluster around it. </li>
- Things solved:
- subconscious metaphor
- Low focus generating will
- Incentivizes the player not to just be at full focus all the time
- Keeping the focus high to reduce the rate of generation of emotions </li> </div> </div>
- Make the player get tired when they have spent focus for too long
- Make an entity that generates focus
- Make it take will, but less will than is normally generated at low focus
- Make it take more will than is generated when at high focus </li>
- Requires:
- Will gets stored
- I like this anyway, and I should do it
- Maybe reset it at the end of the day </li> </li>
- Variations:
- Can coalesce this and the awake goal
- Can then use this as a metaphor for waking up in the morning </li> </li>
- Results:
- This naturally makes construction interfere with the amount that you are doing, which works well.
- This metaphor may be a little suspect however. </li> </li>
- Things solved:
- Low focus generating will
- High focus consuming will </li> </div> </div>
- Workers are generated from the traits by sending them focus
- Variations:
- The traits generate a number of workers based off their level and the amount of focus set to it.
- Multiple workers can go to a single tower, and efficiency is increased if they do. </li>
- The workers generated by the trait can be more efficient based off the level, but you make one per focus
- The major advantage of this is that we can then take away the manual steps by doing this. </li> </li>
- Things solved:
- Generates workers, which are a nice visual metaphor
- Keeps towers close to the traits
- Rewards players for leveling traits
- Good at showing division of focus </li> </div> </div>
- Remove the focus system entirely
- Listed issues:
- Many metaphors are lost
- Keeping similar towers together
- Need to examine the traits and their growth.
- Everything will always be running, which makes for a weaker base metaphor and fewer decisions </li> </div> </div>
- Listed issues:
- Doesn't hit the metaphor of high focus consuming will
- Need to check how onerous the book-keeping is.
- May still be too similar to the currency system
- May still be too much control for the player </li> </div> </div>
- Requiring the subconscious changes the flow of working on the goals
- It also means that we have to store currencies, although we can reset them at the end of the day. </li>
- It feels like there are just a lot of things moving around
- The complexity seems high </li>
- It feels too similar to existing currencies, and threatens to overshadow them
- It is really hard to see why a tower is not working and what to do about it.
- The number of demands on the subconscious grows quickly.
- This becomes a problem when you're waiting on certain mines </li>
- Taking out the two step part of focus made this system play a lot better
- Making you focus on work until you run out of will/energy to run a tower because your mines aren't running is a good metaphor </div> </div>
- You can only build a building of a trait on the creep of that trait
- Things solved
- Solves the issue of keeping like buildings together
- Much lower complexity than workers in that solution </li>
- Reduces the issue of rewarding players for leveling traits by reducing the importance of the traits
- Should visually separate the mind nicely.
- The base metaphor feels stronger
- Focus going through the traits to go to the towers feels weak to me.
- Having a trait grow and so getting more space to build on that trait feels stronger </li> </li>
- Issues:
- May end up allowing players to build too many towers in too small a space </li> </div> </div>
- Make it a menu again instead of having the workers on the map
- Things solved:
- Low focus generating will
- Lets you make the subconscious be more active when focus is low and so lets you focus on things to avoid emotions
- Lets you set a global state for the subconscious, so all mines operate at the same efficiency constantly, solving the issue of increasing demands
- Also, gets the metaphor of working until you run out of energy </li>
- Much lower complexity burden, much easier to communicate
- This allows us to make consequences to high focus
- Also solves issue of player effort </li> </li>
- Issues:
- Lower overlap with other features. </li> </div> </div>
13 Sub-proposal - Focus as a menu
- Solves the issue of keeping like buildings together
12 Sub-proposal - Make traits into Starcraft creep
11 Found issues
10 Proposal - UI Change + subconscious + existing worker solution
9 Proposal - Kill the focus system
- The traits generate a number of workers based off their level and the amount of focus set to it.
8 Sub-proposal - Workers from traits
- This naturally makes construction interfere with the amount that you are doing, which works well.
- Can coalesce this and the awake goal
- Will gets stored
7 Sub-proposal - Fatigue Entity
- Make the subconscious feed the resources
6 Sub-proposal - subconscious for resources
5 Sub-proposal - UI change for goals
4 Thoughts
3 Problems with the current system
2 Good Metaphors