A large productive conversation took place today in discord and I am summarizing the ideas discussed because they are VERY good ideas and will create a huge incentive to play on all levels of the game. Will give idea credit where it is due at the end.
Characters: Characters need a level stat, similar to the plot upgrades. And a stamina stat. Raising this level will give your character certain “equipment” that give advantages and production boosts as well as more stamina. The speed at which a character levels will work the same as CLNY production on plots. A character gains level progress automatically but it will costs resources and clny to do the level upgrade fully. For example, A brand new character has a level bar of 100 to level 2. A brand new character earns level progress at a rate of .1% a day (just an example). Doing quests, will give you A small level chunk, as well as certain resources based on the quest (always with a chance of gaining a rare resource). This allows even a cheap level 0 character to earn levels even without spending any money, this will be a slow progression but will make the game more accessible to players with less money. As you level, the amount of resources, stamina, and the chance of getting rarer resources will increase, giving players with more to invest an incentive to “rent” plots. Level 2 to 3 is a bar of 200, 3-4 is 400, etc. Once a character has filled their level bar they are not automatically leveled up, instead you will need to spend a certain amount of resources and currency to do the level upgrade. So in this scenario, a level 0 character can have a fully maxed level bar, but will need to earn the resources and currency to upgrade completely. They will not earn progress or bonuses from the next level up until they complete the upgrade, even with a fully maxed level bar. “Quests” can be done at a rate or 1 stamina per quest and you will have many options for quests to get different needed resources. A level 0 character for example has a stamina bar of 1, once you do a quest you have to wait 24 hours for the stamina bar to fill back up and you can quest again. A level 1 character would have s 2 stamina bar, they can go on 2 quests and it takes 24 hours for their bar to fill back up, etc. there would need to be a max level to stamina so that this doesn’t get out of hand.
Rent/plot rental:
Plot owners can “rent” out their plots. Rental would be done in timed chunks that would allow different levels of players to choose their own path. maybe something like 1day/7 days/30 days Renting a plot as a non-land owner will give you a boost to the speed at which you level your character and also give you resources. A small portion of those resources will go to the land owner, and CLNY. The upgrade level of the plot will determine how many “renters” can be on the plot at once, and also the percentage of resources/CLNY that go to the land owner. Whatever portion of CLNY does not go to the land owner will be burned. This system will benefit lower level plots more than higher level plots, so that lower level plots can be upgraded more quickly and puts “whales” and those with few plots on a an even playing field. The benefit of fully upgraded land will be more renters allowed on the plot at once. Once a plot is fully upgraded you do not earn less CLNY from rent, and more resources. Lower level plots will earn progressively less currency as you upgrade your plots, but you will be gaining more resources and renter space. As with “quests” you have a chance of earning rarer resources from renters. Having higher level plots, will give you a higher chance of earning rarer resources, rare resources are needed for breeding. What is more important here is that lower level plots are cheaper to rent, but give a higher percentage of CLNY to the land owner. This assures that the lower level plots will still get renters from people with less to spend, but that the lower level plots can get upgraded to max more quickly, balancing the idea that “whales” will get upgraded faster and earn even more dominance in the game". Higher level plots can hold more renters at once.
Once a spot on a plot has been rented, for the time it is rented, no one else can rent that spot so it is essentially taken off the market. If people flock to higher level land for the speed boost, there will be less for rent pushing rentals of lower level land so there will always be renters for every level of plot. This can be scaled to accommodate the player count.
Plot owners, that also own characters would automatically get their characters boosted based on their land upgrades, and having BOTH land AND characters will give you a small boost to your chance of gaining rare resources. Something like a “luck” stat. Again, an incentive to own both land and characters, but not an overly huge chance as to make it completely unfair
There would also of course be a breeding mechanic here to breed new characters. You will need 2 characters to breed and a certain amount of resources, rarer resources or items and CLNY. the CLNY of course will be burned. New characters can be kept or sold on the market. They will need rarity for this system to work. Resources will have a market as well, so you can choose to keep resources if you are still leveling, or sell them on the market if you are maxed on your characters. Breeding would not be limited to male/female, we will allow any two characters to breed and should allow for any gender character, even non-binary to be inclusive.
Yes there will be a gen0, of course, but I think maybe we make the only differences cosmetic, in that they look different or cooler. All future generations should start at level 0 and not have any clear stat advantages to others. This means that the market will not be inflated and dominated by the whales. You can of course sell your fully leveled or higher leveled characters for more, this is just like plots and keeps things balanced.
These are the basic mechanics we thought up and can definitely be adjusted or tweaked
Those that contributed to these ideas: TriTDX, trash_city, !?, AkaSparkyy, abdultherussian, Lil portfolio, 一番歌舞伎町のホスト
