nancygold's Journal

The Spell of Mastery Progress
I have one of these annoying game design questions, which has no answer.

The question is simple:
Should buildings be immediately constructed or require construction time?

Warcraft, X-COM, Civilization and Master of Magic have construction time.
I.e. time is an explicit resource.
I call that the autistic approach.

On the other hand we have HoMM game, where buildings are instant. Like coffee.
The construction time is abstracted under upfront resource cost and 1 turn cooldown.
I call this instant gratification approach.

Bullfrog style game design asked for player to click a lot,
leveling the mountains and then placing building cell-by-cell.
Same with Dwarf Fortress.
I call it the obsessive-compulsive approach.
Really sneaky and the worst of all in my opinion. Like communism.

Further nuances: do we need builders units to construct stuff?
I.e. in Dungeon Keeper player placed building cells instantly,
but imps had to place the foundation before hand.
And fortify walls afterwards.

Obviously, construction time requires complex game logic.
Generally it is harder to implement and a common source of bugs.
I.e. you AI can't just check if it has resources and no enemies around.
They have to predict/influence future and say guard the construction site.
It also requires additional graphics for partially complete building.

Construction time annoys the player who wants instant gratification.
That includes me. I hate planning and working hard. I want it all now.
So for me the answer is obvious: no construction time!
Just pretend is is abstracted by the preceding accumulation of resources.
I.e. one doesn't need all the stone at once to build a castle,
just enough per unit of time to make the process continuous.

I remember Warcraft II had notorious exploit, where one could teleport units,
by blocking construction site by other, temporary, construction sites.
That resulted in the game deploying emerging units to the closest empty cell.
The other option could be killing such stuck units.

So the answer is: it depends on whom you are making the game for.
But why would anyone make games for obsessive compulsive autistic shitheads?
These retards already have their ultimate game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Longing
As well as countless online grind-it-harder-or-pay-more games.
So just give the players what they want now!

Current Mood: contemplative