Dev Blog: Zone-wide Buffs
Dear Settlers,
A Dev Blog provides a glimpse behind the curtain. It's written by our Game design team and not translated to avoid information loss or unintentionally changed facts. This time, BB_Alex provides background information and explains certain development decisions about the new Zone-wide Buff feature.
Zone-wide Buff - insights & prospect
Greetings Settlers! Pleased to meet you. Let me introduce myself. My Name is BB_Alex and I am part of the Game design team for The Settlers Online. First of all, thank you for your feedback, ideas and suggestions. Your contribution inspires us to new ideas and lets us rethink certain decisions and approaches.
I want to take the chance and provide some insights on one of those ideas and decisions.
What are Zone-wide Buffs?
Zone-wide Buffs are effects connected to your zone or island. It's a system providing global effects in addition to local effect like production buffs, which are connected to a building. Those Zone-wide Buff include effects exchanging wildlife or applying a filter on the whole island.
Why changing the system?
Until now those Zone-wide Buffs were connected to a building, the tavern. This leads to a limited amount of active Zone-wide Buffs at the same time, since only one buff can be connected to a building. Besides that, there was no proper display of information for active Zone-wide Buffs. The amount of Zone-wide Buff is growing and the newest one can exchange your wildlife with reindeer. Of course we won't stop there, so we needed a global system to handle several different buffs at the same time and provide a nice overview with detailed information of all active Zone-wide Buffs.
I get it, but why the effort for just some small graphical gimmicks?
Each buff comes with a certain effect and once the foundation is established new effects can be created. Our goal was to give you a stable and informative foundation, which we can use to create new unique and interesting effects, which might go beyond being just a graphical change.
Can you give us some examples?
Sure, the first thing appearing in my mind, when I think about other possible effects, are production effects. Zone-wide Buffs boosting all production buildings of a certain type or whole production chains. What about a Zone-wide Buff shortening the travel time of all generals or the time your explorers need to find treasures? Those effects can be even more unique, like a Zone-wide Buff increasing the hit chance of all ranged units. It does get more interesting, when I start to think about so called debuffs and the combination with other functions and features of The Settlers Online. Certain effects being active on adventures. Just imagine you can start an adventure with additional challenges and when you arrive there, you'll see a fog which isn't only a graphical change but also decreases the hit chance of your ranged units, while providing a bigger reward if you complete it.
Those effects are just ideas, but establishing a foundation will allow us to bring more diversion into other parts of The Settlers Online in the future. So feel free to go crazy on ideas and let us know, if you have a cool one for Zone-wide Buffs.
Thank you for your attention and feedback.
BB_Alex
