This is Part 1 of a series in which I'd like to present some ideas/suggestions. I'd like to think of them as all interconnected in some shape or form as collectively I feel we will have a much more pleasing and rounded experience. So, I figured where better to start than with the dig sites and how we can squeeze a bit more out of them.
While I would like to avoid making too many comparisons to JPOG, the close similarity in systems between JPOG and JWE makes it hard to ignore. There are also some good ideas that could be imported from JPOG and tweaked as well.
General Expeditions
This is an important change familiar to JPOG players. You can speed up the excavation of fossils and increase yields by deploying more than one team to a dig site. This is my first measure to combat the difficulty in targeting a species where there are many species in a single dig site. Moreover, given the risk of fossil contamination I have associated with dig speed and extraction upgrades, this is another workaround (expedition speed is capped so you can't exploit this) to get that expedition speed back up if you don't want the risks involved.
Finally, only 3 permanent dig teams are allowed at maximum, so you can choose to use your resources to get as many different fossils as possible or you can concentrate your efforts in one dig site for optimal results.
1. Fossil Market
Seemingly not so substantial an inclusion, the fossil market actually has quite an impact on how you play at least with regards to Campaign and Challenge Mode. There is a lot of down time in JWE and it can be frustrating since you don't have a whole lot of control over what fossils you want to obtain. If there is only 1-2 dinos at a particular dig site you might be fine, but this quickly becomes quite a nuisance once you get to some of the North American dig sites especially where the lists start to get rather long. A fossil market would allow you a level of control to target fossils you are after and serve as a money sink to help prevent such massive banks from forming which just negates a lot of the challenge during a playthrough.
Naturally, the fossil market will have random fossils it will gradually populate with that you can purchase or trade for at your leisure.
Trading
Naturally, the fossil market will have random fossils it will gradually populate with that you can purchase or trade for at your leisure. Trading would be a new mechanic added to help you utilize the market if you don't want to always spend money on it. This diversifies the requirements and interactions you'll have using it. Fossils will be sold by different randomly generated sellers. There will be a cap to the number of random generations, so that after playing a while there will only be so many sellers at the Fossil Market allowing you to become a recurring customer.
Buying fossils and trading rare treasures/fossils with the same seller will help build rapport. This rapport can result in discounted offerings from that particular seller and deals. This will serve a critical function for other systems.
Amber
Amber as it currently stands is rare, high sell value, and gives you more genome than fossils. However, unless you are strapped for cash, there is literally no decision to be made but to extract amber and you even know what species it is for automatically. Making amber a mystery as to what it contains introduces a high reward potential, but high risk as well. It makes you reconsider what used to be an automatic decision. Further, combined with trading on the fossil market, your inventory management of your Fossil Center becomes more imperative.
There are a lot of rare treasures and unnecessary fossils you come across by sending out dig teams, but they are again, automatic decisions. The "Inventory Space" upgrade really has no compelling reason to exist when it is essentially just a worse version of "Extraction Speed," however, if you need more inventory space to hold onto treasures you may want to save and trade at the fossil market, this upgrade gains more value.
2. Genetic Points
This is a new currency/resource I am proposing. For a long time I have felt that both JPOG and JWE share similar strengths and weaknesses and a weakness both games share is in how simplistic the fossil acquisition process is when it could be so much more. JPOG made this so easy and intuitive that I believe we have all taken it for granted that this is how the system has to be rather than what it could be.
Genetic points is a resource you can obtain only through the redemption of fossils. Basically all my proposals are about making fossils/treasures more precious and managing how you want to use them better to contribute towards long term goals (progression). For example, say you have 100% Stegosaurus genome, by default the game automatically has you sell it for a profit. Instead of having that choice automated, now you have three options:
I see a great deal of potential here and figure its at least worth prototyping internally at Frontier.
3. Randomized Events
Another issue with the expedition teams you send out is that the result should be expected to always be the same. It becomes tedious very quickly and is only worth a look if you unlock a new island/star rating. Mixing things up a bit can also influence the kind of decision making and management choices the player is willing to make or commit to rather than taking it for granted. Introducing a few random events that can occur when an expedition is out can break up the monotony and result in unexpected good or bad fortune. Once in a while perhaps your team gets lucky and brings back a big haul of rare finds instead of fossils, or perhaps a nasty bit of weather caused your team to return empty-handed. This could also help synergize with sellers at the fossil market to reward your commitment.
Rare Treasure Finds
Occasionally your dig teams will instead return with some rare treasures. These items fetch a high price on the Fossil Market, and can range from ancient relics, fossils, or precious metals. Archaeologists, Paleontologists, Paleobotanists, Museum Curators, and Collectors are all willing to take these items off your hands. In exchange, they may trade you fossils, offer money, or for some... nothing in exchange! However, your deed will not be forgotten, the rapport you built from the generous donation will be repaid in kind later on.
Failed Expeditions
There are times you simply have no control over the situation. The weather can be treacherous, you receive bad information, or you simply have a bit of bad luck. Whatever the situation may be, your expedition teams can return empty-handed.
Broken Tools
Sometimes your digs will return with some yields, but it will be less than expected. Tools wear and give out, so not every expedition will produce the same results.
Fossil Contamination
I have to give credit to Thylaco for the inspiration with contamination. I'll be using some of those suggestions and offering my own to flesh out this idea in more depth.
To begin, fossil contamination is a rare and randomly occurring event. Contaminated fossils can also be obtained in a few different ways. Whenever you equip upgrades such as "Extraction Speed" or "Dig Speed" at an Expedition or Fossil Center a small increased risk for contamination is created, this risk is clearly labeled similar to the outage risk when you upgrade a Power Plant. Haste makes waste as they say.
Think of these fossils as damaged or tainted in some way, they don't offer much in terms of genome, 1-3% at most. So, why are these worthy of their own category? Well, because they are extremely valuable better than amber. In order to unlock their potential, they will need to be treated through a purification process at the Fossil Center.
Fossil Purification
Purifying a fossil is an expensive and involved process. It will drain your coffers and incur a substantial Genetic Points fee in order to restore a contaminated fossil. Your Fossil Center will be jammed up during this process, stalling fossil extraction times. It will take a considerable amount of time until the process is complete and there is no guarantee for success. An upgrade at the Fossil Center "Gene Cloning" can be used to increase your odds of success, but there is no 100% success rate. However, it will be worth the effort to go through this process.
Purified Dino Fossil
Contaminated Dino Fossil
I tried to keep this system balanced by keeping the contaminated fossils rare, the money/genetic points sink high, and the fact you are trading off extracting many fossils by opting for the purification process.
4. Rapport & Loyalty Bonuses
Your efforts pay off in the end. Whether you traded and sold your way to the top or made a few generous donations to certain groups, if they didn't reward you immediately they will make it up to you. Once your rapport with them is high enough your friends in the Paleontological community may offer to lend a hand on a dig. Otherwise, they could offer you information about a new dig site they are excavating, or award you a fossil or two of a species you don't have.
In Part 2 of the series I will cover weather and disaster events.
While I would like to avoid making too many comparisons to JPOG, the close similarity in systems between JPOG and JWE makes it hard to ignore. There are also some good ideas that could be imported from JPOG and tweaked as well.
General Expeditions
- Multiple Team Deployment to Dig Site
This is an important change familiar to JPOG players. You can speed up the excavation of fossils and increase yields by deploying more than one team to a dig site. This is my first measure to combat the difficulty in targeting a species where there are many species in a single dig site. Moreover, given the risk of fossil contamination I have associated with dig speed and extraction upgrades, this is another workaround (expedition speed is capped so you can't exploit this) to get that expedition speed back up if you don't want the risks involved.
Finally, only 3 permanent dig teams are allowed at maximum, so you can choose to use your resources to get as many different fossils as possible or you can concentrate your efforts in one dig site for optimal results.
1. Fossil Market
Seemingly not so substantial an inclusion, the fossil market actually has quite an impact on how you play at least with regards to Campaign and Challenge Mode. There is a lot of down time in JWE and it can be frustrating since you don't have a whole lot of control over what fossils you want to obtain. If there is only 1-2 dinos at a particular dig site you might be fine, but this quickly becomes quite a nuisance once you get to some of the North American dig sites especially where the lists start to get rather long. A fossil market would allow you a level of control to target fossils you are after and serve as a money sink to help prevent such massive banks from forming which just negates a lot of the challenge during a playthrough.
Naturally, the fossil market will have random fossils it will gradually populate with that you can purchase or trade for at your leisure.
Trading
Naturally, the fossil market will have random fossils it will gradually populate with that you can purchase or trade for at your leisure. Trading would be a new mechanic added to help you utilize the market if you don't want to always spend money on it. This diversifies the requirements and interactions you'll have using it. Fossils will be sold by different randomly generated sellers. There will be a cap to the number of random generations, so that after playing a while there will only be so many sellers at the Fossil Market allowing you to become a recurring customer.
Buying fossils and trading rare treasures/fossils with the same seller will help build rapport. This rapport can result in discounted offerings from that particular seller and deals. This will serve a critical function for other systems.
Amber
Amber as it currently stands is rare, high sell value, and gives you more genome than fossils. However, unless you are strapped for cash, there is literally no decision to be made but to extract amber and you even know what species it is for automatically. Making amber a mystery as to what it contains introduces a high reward potential, but high risk as well. It makes you reconsider what used to be an automatic decision. Further, combined with trading on the fossil market, your inventory management of your Fossil Center becomes more imperative.
There are a lot of rare treasures and unnecessary fossils you come across by sending out dig teams, but they are again, automatic decisions. The "Inventory Space" upgrade really has no compelling reason to exist when it is essentially just a worse version of "Extraction Speed," however, if you need more inventory space to hold onto treasures you may want to save and trade at the fossil market, this upgrade gains more value.
2. Genetic Points
This is a new currency/resource I am proposing. For a long time I have felt that both JPOG and JWE share similar strengths and weaknesses and a weakness both games share is in how simplistic the fossil acquisition process is when it could be so much more. JPOG made this so easy and intuitive that I believe we have all taken it for granted that this is how the system has to be rather than what it could be.
Genetic points is a resource you can obtain only through the redemption of fossils. Basically all my proposals are about making fossils/treasures more precious and managing how you want to use them better to contribute towards long term goals (progression). For example, say you have 100% Stegosaurus genome, by default the game automatically has you sell it for a profit. Instead of having that choice automated, now you have three options:
- Sell it
- Trade it
- Redeem Genetic Points.
I see a great deal of potential here and figure its at least worth prototyping internally at Frontier.
3. Randomized Events
Another issue with the expedition teams you send out is that the result should be expected to always be the same. It becomes tedious very quickly and is only worth a look if you unlock a new island/star rating. Mixing things up a bit can also influence the kind of decision making and management choices the player is willing to make or commit to rather than taking it for granted. Introducing a few random events that can occur when an expedition is out can break up the monotony and result in unexpected good or bad fortune. Once in a while perhaps your team gets lucky and brings back a big haul of rare finds instead of fossils, or perhaps a nasty bit of weather caused your team to return empty-handed. This could also help synergize with sellers at the fossil market to reward your commitment.
- Rare Treasure Finds
- Failed Expedition (weather/bad luck/misinformation)
- Broken Tools (marginal returns)
- Fossil Contamination (expedition/extraction)
Rare Treasure Finds
Occasionally your dig teams will instead return with some rare treasures. These items fetch a high price on the Fossil Market, and can range from ancient relics, fossils, or precious metals. Archaeologists, Paleontologists, Paleobotanists, Museum Curators, and Collectors are all willing to take these items off your hands. In exchange, they may trade you fossils, offer money, or for some... nothing in exchange! However, your deed will not be forgotten, the rapport you built from the generous donation will be repaid in kind later on.
Failed Expeditions
There are times you simply have no control over the situation. The weather can be treacherous, you receive bad information, or you simply have a bit of bad luck. Whatever the situation may be, your expedition teams can return empty-handed.
Broken Tools
Sometimes your digs will return with some yields, but it will be less than expected. Tools wear and give out, so not every expedition will produce the same results.
Fossil Contamination
I have to give credit to Thylaco for the inspiration with contamination. I'll be using some of those suggestions and offering my own to flesh out this idea in more depth.
To begin, fossil contamination is a rare and randomly occurring event. Contaminated fossils can also be obtained in a few different ways. Whenever you equip upgrades such as "Extraction Speed" or "Dig Speed" at an Expedition or Fossil Center a small increased risk for contamination is created, this risk is clearly labeled similar to the outage risk when you upgrade a Power Plant. Haste makes waste as they say.
Think of these fossils as damaged or tainted in some way, they don't offer much in terms of genome, 1-3% at most. So, why are these worthy of their own category? Well, because they are extremely valuable better than amber. In order to unlock their potential, they will need to be treated through a purification process at the Fossil Center.
Fossil Purification
Purifying a fossil is an expensive and involved process. It will drain your coffers and incur a substantial Genetic Points fee in order to restore a contaminated fossil. Your Fossil Center will be jammed up during this process, stalling fossil extraction times. It will take a considerable amount of time until the process is complete and there is no guarantee for success. An upgrade at the Fossil Center "Gene Cloning" can be used to increase your odds of success, but there is no 100% success rate. However, it will be worth the effort to go through this process.
Purified Dino Fossil
- 20-30% genome
- Higher base stats
- Improved Immunity
Contaminated Dino Fossil
- 1-3% genome
- Lower base stats
- Greater Disease Susceptibility
Clarifications
You have choices as a player, you can accept the consequences of contamination, you can try to purify the fossils, or you can ignore contaminated fossils altogether and breed base level dinosaurs. I also wish to emphasize, that if you complete a genome with a mix of purified and contaminated fossils, then that species will always have contamination stats/susceptibility. The only way to get the purified fossil stats/immunity are if you only use regular or purified fossils 100% the genome.
I tried to keep this system balanced by keeping the contaminated fossils rare, the money/genetic points sink high, and the fact you are trading off extracting many fossils by opting for the purification process.
4. Rapport & Loyalty Bonuses
Your efforts pay off in the end. Whether you traded and sold your way to the top or made a few generous donations to certain groups, if they didn't reward you immediately they will make it up to you. Once your rapport with them is high enough your friends in the Paleontological community may offer to lend a hand on a dig. Otherwise, they could offer you information about a new dig site they are excavating, or award you a fossil or two of a species you don't have.
- Bonus dig team (1 time only)
- New dig site unlocked (permanent)
- New fossil access (new species / genetic points)
Conclusions
There don't have to be many events, but introducing even just a couple potential events could help spice things up. It would certainly need a bit of tuning since you don't want them to be too rare, the same event triggering consecutively, losing you money or by interrupting your digs too much. These small changes just feel like it breathes more life into the game, makes it more dynamic and interesting to engage in.
In Part 2 of the series I will cover weather and disaster events.
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