[Suggestion/Question] What's the End-Game? What do you want?
Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 9:27 am
While I'm currently in love with Prison Architect in so many ways, I wonder if there's ever going to be something to ultimately aim for in it. I saw another thread about making the game "more interesting when not building" and it seemed to me that the underlying complaint was something larger, that there's little ultimate end to PA, and without this end, there's a sense that once you're done building, you're kind of done with the game.
Dungeon Keeper (and it's semi-ripoff/spinoff Evil Genius) is the early progenitor of the "Build a somewhat morally dark locale but with good humor" sub-genre that Prison Architect seems to mostly inhabit (obviously there's some Dwarf Fortress mixed in there too), and it didn't have this problem. In Dungeon Keeper (and Evil Genius), you had a goal to work toward - destroying all the kingdoms (in EG you committed global terror until unleashing a doomsday weapon) that presented a tangible end goal to keep moving toward amidst all of the building, expanding, and manipulating the AI of your minions. The stuff that was "more interesting when not building" in those games were these goals that you kept plugging away at (while defending from invading heroes who tried to stop you). But of course, in a way, the ends were the not only the ultimate goals of the games, they were the entire purpose behind those games existing from the very concept's origin - when you play an evil mastermind the only possible goal will always be "Take over the world", naturally. Without that, those games would have no other purpose.
Prison Architect has no such obvious end to work at. At least not yet. Perhaps there will eventually be a series of levels/scenarios like the opening tutorial "Edward" level where this exists and folks who want a sense of completeness can go, but I don't know what happened with that feature or if the devs are still working on "campaign" content or not. Does anyone have any other information on this?
Right now the game is far more sandbox and far more "Theme Hospital/Rollercoaster Tycoon, but with Convicts!" than it is Dungeon Keeper/Evil Genius. I'm not sure if there's really any possible end-game other than "Prevent Total Failure" in the current iteration of the game.
So mostly, I want to know what other people (and the devs) think on this. Does the game need an end (and thus, an "End-game")? What do you imagine that end being?
However, I do have one idea (with some related concepts) that might be a potential good "End Game scenario":
- The Inspection -
Selling your Prison sort of seems like it's supposed to be the End Game right now. Get your Prison to a high enough value, then sell it off for potentially millions of dollars and theoretically, if you sold it for enough, you'd get a screen of your Architect retiring to some island somewhere surrounded by his piles of cash and gorgeous women, sipping a drink with an Umbrella in it and winking at the camera. Except right now the only thing that could prevent a sale was if you had a death or escape in the past in-game day, and you get your money and you start over with the money you had on another new prison.
But what if it were harder to sell?
Why then, you might have a potential real end game scenario.
To that end, selling your prison could have more caveats before you could proceed.
First, it needs to be turning a pretty high DAILY Profit for it to be up for potential sale. Naturally, no one else would buy a property if they didn't expect a good return on their investment. A difficulty selection at the start will determine the required daily Profit needed to be potentially sell-able, and the amount of land space available would be another determining factor as to the amount of Daily profit required. This would likely essentially force players to take on and optimize their prison for at least some large percentage of Max-Sex prisoners and the associated management problems they bring.
Next, your recidivism rate must be on the lower side. At least 50% or less, but depending on the difficulty, the margin would be lower.
Then, once all these requirements are met - your difficulty selected and land adjusted Daily Profit threshold has been reached, and you also haven't had a death or escape in the last day - you click the big "SELL" button in the Valuation tab, and you put the player into a new mode - Inspection Mode.
In this, once you attempt to sell your Prison, an Inspector comes in early in the morning and takes a tour of the premises. In this mode you cannot control anything other than the camera and you can no longer interfere or intervene with your prison. No helping movement paths by manually opening doors, no calling in emergency services, no speeding up the timescale - just watching the Inspector inspect. It's essentially a test by the game of just how well you've automated your prison, and how under control you've managed to get your prison up to that point.
In Inspection Mode, the inspector enters every available room and passes a general judgement. They have 12 hours and in order for the prison to be sold they must be able to get into the vast majority of the prison, something like 85-95% of it. If there are too many delays along the path, the prison can't be sold. Likewise, they're judging each room on cleanliness and value of all of the rooms, and these must also receive high marks. They judge on safety, and there can be no easy escape routes, and no obvious fire hazards. But most importantly, they judge based on how under control the prisoners are.
If there's too much available contraband - they won't authorize the sale. If there are too many prisoners liable to go off at a moment's notice because they're not suppressed enough or not happy enough - then they won't authorize the sale. If they see too many minor "incidents" during their inspection or if a major incident - a Riot, Escape Attempt (or success) or a Death - occurs while they're on site they not only won't authorize the sale, but you'll actually receive that incident's financial penalty ($50,000 is how much they're valued at currently in the valuation screen) once they leave. Worst of all, if the Inspector somehow dies during their inspection, then you immediately get the Criminal Negligence Failure condition and it's GAME OVER for you.
If the Inspector comes and goes, and nothing goes wrong and the prison is ultimately under so much of a complete control that it literally manages itself without human interference AND it's profitable to run - the Prison Architect Inc. CEO calls and congratulates you on designing such a superb establishment, and the company buys the prison (and its design) from you; they plan on mass producing this prison throughout the country! Then you get a screen of your Architect retiring with some variance depending on the amount of money made during the sale ( a few hundred thousand - a decent retirement at a modest home, a million dollars - a swanky retirement in a nice place, multiple millions of dollars - lavish private island), and a final judgement screen based off of your Prison Grading screen which denotes your ultimate legacy as a kind benefactor who rehabilitated millions of convicts with his lovely Care-Bear hug motel, a ruthless autocrat who caused every prison in the world to become a micro police state that scared the crime rate down, or (if you have a mixed rating between authoritarian and rehabilitation poles and/or a particularly high daily profit intake) a smart businessman who was known as creating the most economical prisons ever known.
You then get a final score based on the total value, and the inspector's report, some credits, and the score gets put on a leaderboard with your username.
That seems like it's something, although I'll admit it's just a fancy expansion of what's pretty much already in the game. But it's something more definite at least.
What all does everyone else want to see/expect?
Dungeon Keeper (and it's semi-ripoff/spinoff Evil Genius) is the early progenitor of the "Build a somewhat morally dark locale but with good humor" sub-genre that Prison Architect seems to mostly inhabit (obviously there's some Dwarf Fortress mixed in there too), and it didn't have this problem. In Dungeon Keeper (and Evil Genius), you had a goal to work toward - destroying all the kingdoms (in EG you committed global terror until unleashing a doomsday weapon) that presented a tangible end goal to keep moving toward amidst all of the building, expanding, and manipulating the AI of your minions. The stuff that was "more interesting when not building" in those games were these goals that you kept plugging away at (while defending from invading heroes who tried to stop you). But of course, in a way, the ends were the not only the ultimate goals of the games, they were the entire purpose behind those games existing from the very concept's origin - when you play an evil mastermind the only possible goal will always be "Take over the world", naturally. Without that, those games would have no other purpose.
Prison Architect has no such obvious end to work at. At least not yet. Perhaps there will eventually be a series of levels/scenarios like the opening tutorial "Edward" level where this exists and folks who want a sense of completeness can go, but I don't know what happened with that feature or if the devs are still working on "campaign" content or not. Does anyone have any other information on this?
Right now the game is far more sandbox and far more "Theme Hospital/Rollercoaster Tycoon, but with Convicts!" than it is Dungeon Keeper/Evil Genius. I'm not sure if there's really any possible end-game other than "Prevent Total Failure" in the current iteration of the game.
So mostly, I want to know what other people (and the devs) think on this. Does the game need an end (and thus, an "End-game")? What do you imagine that end being?
However, I do have one idea (with some related concepts) that might be a potential good "End Game scenario":
- The Inspection -
Selling your Prison sort of seems like it's supposed to be the End Game right now. Get your Prison to a high enough value, then sell it off for potentially millions of dollars and theoretically, if you sold it for enough, you'd get a screen of your Architect retiring to some island somewhere surrounded by his piles of cash and gorgeous women, sipping a drink with an Umbrella in it and winking at the camera. Except right now the only thing that could prevent a sale was if you had a death or escape in the past in-game day, and you get your money and you start over with the money you had on another new prison.
But what if it were harder to sell?
Why then, you might have a potential real end game scenario.
To that end, selling your prison could have more caveats before you could proceed.
First, it needs to be turning a pretty high DAILY Profit for it to be up for potential sale. Naturally, no one else would buy a property if they didn't expect a good return on their investment. A difficulty selection at the start will determine the required daily Profit needed to be potentially sell-able, and the amount of land space available would be another determining factor as to the amount of Daily profit required. This would likely essentially force players to take on and optimize their prison for at least some large percentage of Max-Sex prisoners and the associated management problems they bring.
Next, your recidivism rate must be on the lower side. At least 50% or less, but depending on the difficulty, the margin would be lower.
Then, once all these requirements are met - your difficulty selected and land adjusted Daily Profit threshold has been reached, and you also haven't had a death or escape in the last day - you click the big "SELL" button in the Valuation tab, and you put the player into a new mode - Inspection Mode.
In this, once you attempt to sell your Prison, an Inspector comes in early in the morning and takes a tour of the premises. In this mode you cannot control anything other than the camera and you can no longer interfere or intervene with your prison. No helping movement paths by manually opening doors, no calling in emergency services, no speeding up the timescale - just watching the Inspector inspect. It's essentially a test by the game of just how well you've automated your prison, and how under control you've managed to get your prison up to that point.
In Inspection Mode, the inspector enters every available room and passes a general judgement. They have 12 hours and in order for the prison to be sold they must be able to get into the vast majority of the prison, something like 85-95% of it. If there are too many delays along the path, the prison can't be sold. Likewise, they're judging each room on cleanliness and value of all of the rooms, and these must also receive high marks. They judge on safety, and there can be no easy escape routes, and no obvious fire hazards. But most importantly, they judge based on how under control the prisoners are.
If there's too much available contraband - they won't authorize the sale. If there are too many prisoners liable to go off at a moment's notice because they're not suppressed enough or not happy enough - then they won't authorize the sale. If they see too many minor "incidents" during their inspection or if a major incident - a Riot, Escape Attempt (or success) or a Death - occurs while they're on site they not only won't authorize the sale, but you'll actually receive that incident's financial penalty ($50,000 is how much they're valued at currently in the valuation screen) once they leave. Worst of all, if the Inspector somehow dies during their inspection, then you immediately get the Criminal Negligence Failure condition and it's GAME OVER for you.
If the Inspector comes and goes, and nothing goes wrong and the prison is ultimately under so much of a complete control that it literally manages itself without human interference AND it's profitable to run - the Prison Architect Inc. CEO calls and congratulates you on designing such a superb establishment, and the company buys the prison (and its design) from you; they plan on mass producing this prison throughout the country! Then you get a screen of your Architect retiring with some variance depending on the amount of money made during the sale ( a few hundred thousand - a decent retirement at a modest home, a million dollars - a swanky retirement in a nice place, multiple millions of dollars - lavish private island), and a final judgement screen based off of your Prison Grading screen which denotes your ultimate legacy as a kind benefactor who rehabilitated millions of convicts with his lovely Care-Bear hug motel, a ruthless autocrat who caused every prison in the world to become a micro police state that scared the crime rate down, or (if you have a mixed rating between authoritarian and rehabilitation poles and/or a particularly high daily profit intake) a smart businessman who was known as creating the most economical prisons ever known.
You then get a final score based on the total value, and the inspector's report, some credits, and the score gets put on a leaderboard with your username.
That seems like it's something, although I'll admit it's just a fancy expansion of what's pretty much already in the game. But it's something more definite at least.
What all does everyone else want to see/expect?