The Forging Paradox, and the Mess Hall

[tacticsfan999]

Is forging meant for pure offline play or for play with access to online?

It's meant for offline play of course. If you can visit castles then what's the point of the arena? The existence of the arena shows that you weren't meant to simply go around visiting castles and filling bags full of ore.

It's meant for online play of course. At the beginning of the game you experience a massive RNG event: you only get one ore source. The whole point is that everyone visits each others castles to the ore each needs. Otherwise you have to trade 5 to 1 to get the ore type you want!

Chaotic factors: Lottery, random pickups

 

What about the mess hall? Of course you are supposed to visit other castles for food since you are only given one food type. In that case, though, what's the point of the lottery giving random food? What's the point of random pickups for food? Surely those are meant to help you obtain scarce food items for your journey.

 

I've thought about this a lot. What set of rules would help to standardize My Castle? My thought was that game impact with high variance should be minimized, but game-play should be unaltered as much as possible from how it was meant to be.

I did come up with a set of rules but I was unsatisfied. Ultimately offline play might actually be more standardized than it sounds. After looking at all the random effects involved, they should actually cancel out a fair amount. It's unlikely that you'll have a great food source, ore source, lottery, and random pickups. All the randomness largely cancels out capricious game-play impacts. This is the kind of thing that rogue-likes embrace, and very effectively!

 

Anyway here is my suggestion for a standardized approach, as best as I could manage it. Some choices might seem odd but there's a reason for everything, including that all the rules combined together are supposed to create an experience a little harder than offline unrestricted but with game-play impact variance. I also didn't want the collection of rules to make the game easier than pure offline would be. Overall I don't think there's any really satisfactory way to do this, so this is just one take.

My Castle Talking = Banned

Assistant: No Jakob/Felicia. Immediately change to generic assistant.

Forging: Unlimited

Mess Hall: Banned

Lottery = Banned

Arena = Irrelevant

Private Quarters = One support-increasing invite per chapter, you may refresh it online/offline. Invites that don't increase supports are unlimited. Invading an EZ castle is an easy way to refresh the private quarters.

Prison - One persuade per chapter (starting with when they were caught, and then one more after each subsequently completed chapter). Bribing is not allowed.

Online features other than those mentioned to be allowed here are banned.

DV Points: One gained for each chapter completed (and you start with one after chapter 6).

Lilith's Temple - One food can be fed to her per chapter completed after chapter 5. You can feed her any food from online.

 

After saying all that, I've actually grown to like pure offline no rules better. There are also a lot of challenge run rules that gladly alter the game-play from the ordinary way the game would be played. These are good but I wasn't trying to come up with a good challenge run but rather just rules that would work well for general play without fully unlimited options. The idea of unlimited forging is that, while it makes the game easier than pure offline forging, the mess hall is banned. So the player gets one really good thing, but another thing gets banned.  I'm pretty sure that offline forge + mess hall makes the game easier than unlimited ore  + no mess hall. Overall I don't think the mess hall alters game-play that much. It just makes the game a little easier. Unfortunately the rules might be a tad strict compared to pure offline, but hopefully not too strict. 

 

How do you handle My Castle? Pure offline but no rules? Online allowed but some rules? No rules at all? Lots of rules that make the game harder?

Edited September 12, 2020 by tacticsfan999

[Dark Holy Elf]

I feel like the systems were designed such that they're entirely playable just offline, but online gives you an advantage and above all, makes it easier to navigate. You don't have to worry about ore swaps, you just get what you need. It lets players customize their playing style while not totally gating the systems off from people who can't or don't wish to go online.

Personally I prefer playing offline for what I feel is a more "pure" experience (in this and most other games), but to be clear that's purely a personal preference. I still find forging an extremely viable option, since the combination of ore swap and arena gives you steadily more access to resources as the game goes on. It is a bit RNG (the initial ore + lottery can give you a notable boost if you get a new ore type), especially if you don't reset bad arena runs (since arena itself is a bit RNG), but I view that as similar to the RNG on stats: they make the progression slightly different in each playthrough but it'll go roughly on the same trajectory long-term.

[tacticsfan999]

I'm really liking the idea of offline no rules too. Up close it looks like an RNG mess, but from a bird's eye point of view all the good and bad RNG are going to roughly cancel out for a balanced experience. I also like the idea that playing offline is more universal in a sense because not everyone has access to wifi.

Yeah my understanding is that as the game progresses you start to get more resources from random pickups, lotteries, ore sources, food sources, the arena, and so on. It's early on that small details would probably make a more noticeable difference. Assuming one +1 forge per main chapter post-branch, I calculated that on average the player can expect four +3 forges of "any type" ignoring lottery, arena, and random pickups. Adding in those three sources would increase forging capabilities a lot. 2.777... ore of a given type is worth 1 ore of any type on average: [1/5 * 1 + 4/5 * 1/5]^-1 = 2.777... (1/5 of the time it's the ore you want, so worth 1. 4/5 of the time it's no the ore you want, so worth 1/5. This is assuming a desire to forge each type an equal amount, but in reality players would lean on the easy type to forge so it's actually a little better.)

 

My idea for a more universal set of rules would be to minimize RNG, but at the expense of changing the nature of the game a lot.

Low RNG Offline Challenge
Online - None
Staff Shop - Allowed
Dusk Armory - Allowed
Prison - One persaude after capture + one more per chapter completed. No bribes.
Lilith's Temple - Feed her once per chapter completed after chapter 5, but she cannot be used in invasions.
Private Quarters - One invite before chapter 7, none after.
Forging - None
Mess Hall - None
Lottery - None
Arena - None
My Castle Talking - None
Assistant - Switch to generic before chapter 7
DV Points - One per chapter completed after chapter 5.
Corrin Birthdays - Banned (reset and change system clock)

So the idea here is to eliminate as much RNG as possible, even in tiny amounts, and without any online access to do so with. There's some RNG with gold discounts in the staff shop or dusk armory, but it's a pretty minimal factor. The only real RNG here is in combat and levels unless I missed something.

I'm playing offline no rules for my new run.

Edited September 12, 2020 by tacticsfan999