Shrines and shrine building
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 7:24 pm
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The ability to build and / or replace shrines on the various maps is a very useful ability, but the lack of transparency of the whole feature has caused me some anxiety. Gems are a precious resource, and most players will try to avoid wasting them frivolously. Yet, the game does not help the player with that goal by giving a thorough explanation of how the shrine system works, before the player actually has to commit to spending any gems.
It starts off by making you build a shrine, and not letting you proceed with the map until you do so. This is fine as far as tutorial mechanics go, since the game gives you the five gems needed, but unfortunately this does not mean that the decision has no lasting consequences. Each shrine of the same type you build appears to make it more expensive to build more of the same type, globally, across all maps, so being forced still seems problematic. What if you don't want any additional shrine on that map at all and prefer to keep the cost down? What if you build a shrine to satisfy the tutorial, then later realize it would be better to have the same shrine in a different spot?
There is also the issue of how the price scaling works. The game does not bother you tell you beforehand that building more shrines becomes more expensive, and that it does not matter what map the shrines are on. Also, what about the pre-built shrines that are already on the map? If you build a different shrine on top of one of those, does it become cheaper to build that type of shrine elsewhere? I have no answer to these questions, because I am not so flush with gems that I felt I could afford to experiment and play around with it.
I have also looked for a way to tear a shrine down, but did not find it. I think it might be a good idea to add this possibility. You could give the player all the gems back, or some, or none. Giving back all gems would add a lot of flexibility, as well as some potential for abuse, though it seems to me like it would be very tedious to revisit maps to remove shrines and get the gems back, what with all the loading times involved. You could also make shrines impossible to remove once the map has started, so as to prevent players from swapping them out each wave... though doing so would still take time, so it may not be necessary, either... Giving back no gems would make it more of an investment type thing, but still give players the ability to remove shrines to make it cheaper to build them elsewhere.
Either way, the mechanics of building and replacing shrines probably deserve a chapter in the encyclopedia in the Town Hall. I'm the type of player who feels more comfortable knowing how everything works before committing my valuable gems, and I bet many other players would feel the same, especially since some of the decisions you can take seem like they might permanently make things worse, depending on how the mechanics actually work.
In addition to commenting on the above, can someone please clarify these issues for me:
- If I replace a shrine I built with a different one, the price of the removed shrine goes down again, correct?
- What happens if I replace a shrine that was already built on the map when I got there?
