Roguelike Mode

[Waterd]

I was listening to Jan Interviews and I fear that there is no plan for making the game more roguelike mode, or have a roguelike mode.
I really think having something like that is at least my personal difference between playing the game for 1000 more hours, and recommending it to all my friends and uninstalling and forgetting about it forever.

I know there are many people like me, so I would like to at least pitch the idea.

For many people the “Sandbox” experience in unappealing, we enjoy “strategy games”, that is game with a definitive start and finish, a goal. A game about testing our decisions skills in a game to see if we fail or success in the process. Learning from the feedback and experience, and then starting again.
For a more comprehensive article about how many people see strategy games, I refer to this article about arcs in strategy games http://keithburgun.net/arcs-in-strategy-games/. Tough not necessary to understand my point.

When I started playing battle brothers I got really exciting with battle brothers, it’s tactical and apparent strategic elements are amazing, and it feels a very engaging experience. But soon it starts to fall prey to the sandbox experience. It’s goal is undefined. Based on dev blogs, the goal is to finish a lategame crisis. What is this exactly? When will it appear?. Those questions were mostly answered to me in a googling process, but not by the game. Worst, as my play progressed, the answers I got seemed to get invalid. Suddenly I felt lost and just roaming around without a clear goal and the whole experience suffered from it.

The other part of the huge problem with battle brothers to me, is how different the early game is to the lategame. Early game when you are not managing more than around 8 brothers in fight, and 2 reserve with a few perks and limited items, the game feels fast enough, dynamic, and great. This is very different to the “late game crisis experience” where you have 20 brothers, a full stash of items and huge battles with allies sometimes.

What was a clean, small and dynamic experience did become a sluggish arduous process. From what I`ve read and talked around, this is a common feeling for many players.

So as I said in other thread, I wish there is a Roguelike mode.
What follows are suggestions on how to create and design this mode.

1) The most important of this mode is that there needs to be a CLEAR end game goal.
A few examples.

– Destroy an orc fortress, before day 100.
– End undead invasion before day 120.
– Get 50k worth of equipment+gold, before Day 80.

It’s important to have an clear end goal, to have a clear strategic element, where your decisions should be aimed and tuned on achieving this goal

2)The other important part of the mode is that it can’t be excessively long.
Failing, has to be an option, and thus replayability. Replaying a 20 hour game is reasonable, every decision resonantes in a long arc of 20 hours, and the disconnection is not that huge. Replaying an 80 hour game however is too much for most normal humans. having to wait 80 hours to see the feedback from a decision, is a little too huge of a disconnect.

***

So there are two ways that currently Battle Brothers can implement this right now, with out a lot of resources

Method 1:
Have a Check box for “rogue like mode”.
In this mode, everything happens 3 times as fast (ro some number between 2x and 3x). Experience, Gold, renown, Reputation. In this mode instead of having 12 field brothers, and 8 reserve, you have 8 Brothers and 4 Reserve. Instead of a stash of 90 items, you have a stash of 50 items.
In this mode the lategame crisis starts in a specific, KNOWN day. Or in a very well known range at random, regardless of what the team is doing.
Finally , I don’t know right now the exact lenght or conditions of the lategame crisis, but it sould be highly reduced.

Method 2:
Have different Rougelike campaigns/scenarios to choose from.
In this campaigns everything is exactly like it is right now. But the game has a specific Start and finish. They would be similar to scenarios other old school games tend to have like Sim city 2000.

Examples:

Early game campaign: This Campaign you start exactly like now. Your goal is to get professional renown in 30 days.
Nobel house campaign: This campaign starts you at professional, with a lot of gold and several brothers. Your goal is is to reach to 2000 renown in 40 days.
Undead Invasion campaign: This campaign starts you at very high renown, and you know that the undead invasion starts in two weeks. Need to Finish the invasion in 50 days.
The Skirmishers campaign: This campaign Starts you a professional with 8 brothers and lots of gold. However you can’t ever have more than 8 brothers combat. Need to reach 3000 renown in 50 days.

I think this method is less interesting than the previous one, but is a lot easier to implement, because it’s a lot easier to balance.
It allows for more customization (For example if someone only enjoy Certain parts of the game, they can focus on that) Rebalancing the modes is a lot easier, because there is more feedback connection from start to finish, since the runs are shorter, and tweaking a few numbers is enough.

I think it’s even possible to create only the STRUCTURE of the system (setting initial conditions, Goal, Any limitation), and create a campaign editor. (so players can create, and re-balance the campaigns, saving a lot of works for the designers)

I think the value of something like this is very high, compared to the effort it takes. But yes, it can be a DLC.

Honestly I’m not playing BB anymore, after my first campaign, but I definitely would be interested in this, and would be what is needed for me to happily recommend this game to other strategy gamers like me.

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