We need an infinite floors option for Burgle Bros. Go until you get caught. Or at least until you have one of each loot card. Would also be fun to be able to have duplicate characters. Tok acrobats would be a lot of fun.
Burgle Bros Infinity
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Carrick22FR
- Posts: 4
- Joined: 19 January 2022, 18:49
Re: Burgle Bros Infinity
I'm supporting this idea, but with how the game was designed it is quite complicated to just create infinite floors. I have 2 mains suggestions on how it could function :
- The simpler approach is to simply shuffle back the tiles from the game for each trio of floors : so floor 1, 2 and 3 all have tiles from the base game pool (using them all if i'm not mistaken), then floors 4, 5, 6 will operate the same : they contain the same tiles (obviously randomly shuffled) and would keep a balance for floor difficulty (so cloning the pool's tiles for each fourth floor).
This would be the easy approach to implement this, but the main drawbacks are :
- Difficulty is only based on loot giving debuffs and guard speeding through floors. You may well find extremely tough levels then cakewalks making the challenge lucked based for those seeking to go as far as possible.
- While annoying tiles may slow down progression, the pool can not offer difficulty other than really poor placement of dangerous tiles like atriums, fingerprint room or deadbolts; with the help of bad wall placement.
So the game would get harder because of the loot and the swiftness of the guards, but will only be punishing good players for really inconvenient floor generation (which is not super likely, based on the games i've played, but can ruin even 2-floor games). Still, i'm envisionning it would be a fairly simple way of achieving this (i'm not a coder, sorry if it's too demanding for a feature like this ! Maybe experienced players/developpers could find easier ways to do the same thing.)
So i'd like to propose a more developped system, while certainly flawed, caters more to players looking for a difficulty ladder-type of infinite game.
- No need to create new tiles or rules, we can rank tiles and wall placement by "annoyance" (i.e. difficulty) somewhat arbitrarely. So secret rooms and lavatory are great ressources for desperate situations, cameras and keycard readers can be an annoyance, lasers and motion detectors can be difficult to deal with, and detectors, deadbolts and fingerprint are by far worst (arbitrary !)
- For walls, we can agree (arbitrarily again) that cul-de-sacs are far more problematic than open spaces. So heatmaps come into play : the more remote a room is, the colder it is. A colder floor is, as such, harder to navigate because of back-tracking and traps with guard movements. See page 6 of the game booklet for a link to a webpage, showing what the heatmap would look like.
Now, we can generate floors using a difficulty value, forcing the appearance of tougher tiles on higher floors. We can select the increasing as well as the starting value for the game, and people can mess with it to find balanced settings (and maybe create presets based on players/testers reviews). Would it be possible to import custom values for tiles and wall heatmaps ? That would skyrocket the possibilities, a dream for me ! (but would it be achievable to implement this ?).
The main drawbacks of this technique :
- IT IS PURELY BASED ON ARBITRARY VALUES. I know it sound repelling for a lot of players, thinking we could have unbalanced parameters. "oF cOuRsE yOu pLaY hAcKeRs aNd FiNgErPrInT iS nOt An IsSue" i hear someone say, buy then if you find the meta for how you should play for optimal chances, letting people tweak tile difficulty can make for new interesting ideas. Are atriums free squares ? Are deadbolts truly evil ? I would be important to be all agree on that. So maybe the real problem is that customisation must be available for everyone to enjoy this gamemode, which could be time-consuming to put in place.
- This generation method will completely change the face of the game, as experienced players know what to expect in the main game; and the difficulty created in higher floors will become very frustrating for chill players. It's a double-edged sword, like it or hate it, i'm sure it will not feel like the base game. Not ideal for everyone, and this fact can also make this feature less interesting for some players.
I also dicovered major holes in the way the game operated when faced with an infinite floor gameplay, to which i'm giving thoughts on and work-arounds :
- On the subject of guard speed, we could keep it maxed at 6 on higher floors but always be at 6 (still counting acceleration from alarms). It would nerf them a bit by not being affected by the safe cracking open, but it's still tough to keep up with sonic the nightguard.
- On the subject of service ducts, the game only allows for 2 of this type of tile in each game. What would happen if there were more ? 2 ideas :
> Ducts are linked in pairs. Have a color/tag reference for pairs of service ducts to know which are linked. For the first method of generation, it would mean you can't travel that far, since you'd be restricted to the tunnel of the other tile from the pool (max 2 floors away).
> Have them all linked. A player may choose which duct to come out from, no matter where he entered. This would make the game easier for reaching gold bars or computer rooms, but for the second method of generation, it's far more interesting (see the point on computer rooms).
- On the subject of computer rooms, it would sound ludicrous to spam them in the game to allow players to continue, because it is viewed as a really useful asset, making the lifes of players much easier (except the hacker main, I see you). So 2 ideas come to my mind to still have them as an accessible liability, but taking in consideration the difficulty increment :
> Computer rooms spawn continuously but get rarer with height/progression. So players may need a bit of bracktracking at first but soon will be forced to play on without hacks to progress (too much backtraking), making the game harder.
> Computer rooms spawn once for each type, but access is made easier : service ducts are all inter-connected and players can travel long distances to go back to the first floors to hack again. Of course, service ducts gradually get less abundant.
NB : Computer rooms of the same type would all be linked, and each type (laser, fingerprint, motion) can only be hacked for a maximum reserve of 6 tokens, with no impact on what room was used (tokens on lower floors are kept and usable at all times, of course).
- On the subject of scoring, players would be awarded one point for each floor they conquer; a floor is considered completed if two requirements are met :
> The safe must be opened and the loot must be ceased. (For Fort Knox, all safes must be opened. Players may not recieve an indication on forgotten safes on lower floors and must reveal all tiles to be sure, while not necessary).
> All players must have set foot on the next floor. It doesn't matter if they have loot on them, and they may go one at a time as long has they have all climbed the stairs once (no need to have all players on the next floor at the same time).
- On the subject of loot type, my idea is to implement a new loot called simply "cash" or "files". The idea is that only one copy of each loot of the base game will appear, but players may find "cash" that simply do not add debuffs to the player/team, and can be collected forever. It can't be sneaked passed detectors, and players can have as many "cash/files" on them as wished. Maybe even not having the loot stack, but simply hold one copy for the whole group (is another player opens the safe and find cash, it can be regrouped in one bundle with trading or when players meet).
- On the subject of tools, players may recieve copies of the same tool which they can hold (like 3 smoke bombs in the inventory one the same player). So the distribution is completely random, and laboratories appear less with time (safes still give tools).
- On the subject of Fort Knox, the generator may place only one set of stairs per floor but can have 1 or 2 safes, in which case all of them must be cracked to obtain the point (maybe have players choose the general amount of safes, like always 2 or upwards of 3 ?). I believe this special configuration can adopt both generation methods.
I tried to fill in the main gaps for infinite generation, but maybe better ideas can be shared in this thread. I would be very happy to see this idea come to fruition, but it comes down to what you all think of my ideas. I'm very happy to discuss flaws/ambiguities in this post, to improve the base concept. Thank you very much for your patience to read all of this !
I must say thank you again BGA and programmers for providing free access to this game online !
- The simpler approach is to simply shuffle back the tiles from the game for each trio of floors : so floor 1, 2 and 3 all have tiles from the base game pool (using them all if i'm not mistaken), then floors 4, 5, 6 will operate the same : they contain the same tiles (obviously randomly shuffled) and would keep a balance for floor difficulty (so cloning the pool's tiles for each fourth floor).
This would be the easy approach to implement this, but the main drawbacks are :
- Difficulty is only based on loot giving debuffs and guard speeding through floors. You may well find extremely tough levels then cakewalks making the challenge lucked based for those seeking to go as far as possible.
- While annoying tiles may slow down progression, the pool can not offer difficulty other than really poor placement of dangerous tiles like atriums, fingerprint room or deadbolts; with the help of bad wall placement.
So the game would get harder because of the loot and the swiftness of the guards, but will only be punishing good players for really inconvenient floor generation (which is not super likely, based on the games i've played, but can ruin even 2-floor games). Still, i'm envisionning it would be a fairly simple way of achieving this (i'm not a coder, sorry if it's too demanding for a feature like this ! Maybe experienced players/developpers could find easier ways to do the same thing.)
So i'd like to propose a more developped system, while certainly flawed, caters more to players looking for a difficulty ladder-type of infinite game.
- No need to create new tiles or rules, we can rank tiles and wall placement by "annoyance" (i.e. difficulty) somewhat arbitrarely. So secret rooms and lavatory are great ressources for desperate situations, cameras and keycard readers can be an annoyance, lasers and motion detectors can be difficult to deal with, and detectors, deadbolts and fingerprint are by far worst (arbitrary !)
- For walls, we can agree (arbitrarily again) that cul-de-sacs are far more problematic than open spaces. So heatmaps come into play : the more remote a room is, the colder it is. A colder floor is, as such, harder to navigate because of back-tracking and traps with guard movements. See page 6 of the game booklet for a link to a webpage, showing what the heatmap would look like.
Now, we can generate floors using a difficulty value, forcing the appearance of tougher tiles on higher floors. We can select the increasing as well as the starting value for the game, and people can mess with it to find balanced settings (and maybe create presets based on players/testers reviews). Would it be possible to import custom values for tiles and wall heatmaps ? That would skyrocket the possibilities, a dream for me ! (but would it be achievable to implement this ?).
The main drawbacks of this technique :
- IT IS PURELY BASED ON ARBITRARY VALUES. I know it sound repelling for a lot of players, thinking we could have unbalanced parameters. "oF cOuRsE yOu pLaY hAcKeRs aNd FiNgErPrInT iS nOt An IsSue" i hear someone say, buy then if you find the meta for how you should play for optimal chances, letting people tweak tile difficulty can make for new interesting ideas. Are atriums free squares ? Are deadbolts truly evil ? I would be important to be all agree on that. So maybe the real problem is that customisation must be available for everyone to enjoy this gamemode, which could be time-consuming to put in place.
- This generation method will completely change the face of the game, as experienced players know what to expect in the main game; and the difficulty created in higher floors will become very frustrating for chill players. It's a double-edged sword, like it or hate it, i'm sure it will not feel like the base game. Not ideal for everyone, and this fact can also make this feature less interesting for some players.
I also dicovered major holes in the way the game operated when faced with an infinite floor gameplay, to which i'm giving thoughts on and work-arounds :
- On the subject of guard speed, we could keep it maxed at 6 on higher floors but always be at 6 (still counting acceleration from alarms). It would nerf them a bit by not being affected by the safe cracking open, but it's still tough to keep up with sonic the nightguard.
- On the subject of service ducts, the game only allows for 2 of this type of tile in each game. What would happen if there were more ? 2 ideas :
> Ducts are linked in pairs. Have a color/tag reference for pairs of service ducts to know which are linked. For the first method of generation, it would mean you can't travel that far, since you'd be restricted to the tunnel of the other tile from the pool (max 2 floors away).
> Have them all linked. A player may choose which duct to come out from, no matter where he entered. This would make the game easier for reaching gold bars or computer rooms, but for the second method of generation, it's far more interesting (see the point on computer rooms).
- On the subject of computer rooms, it would sound ludicrous to spam them in the game to allow players to continue, because it is viewed as a really useful asset, making the lifes of players much easier (except the hacker main, I see you). So 2 ideas come to my mind to still have them as an accessible liability, but taking in consideration the difficulty increment :
> Computer rooms spawn continuously but get rarer with height/progression. So players may need a bit of bracktracking at first but soon will be forced to play on without hacks to progress (too much backtraking), making the game harder.
> Computer rooms spawn once for each type, but access is made easier : service ducts are all inter-connected and players can travel long distances to go back to the first floors to hack again. Of course, service ducts gradually get less abundant.
NB : Computer rooms of the same type would all be linked, and each type (laser, fingerprint, motion) can only be hacked for a maximum reserve of 6 tokens, with no impact on what room was used (tokens on lower floors are kept and usable at all times, of course).
- On the subject of scoring, players would be awarded one point for each floor they conquer; a floor is considered completed if two requirements are met :
> The safe must be opened and the loot must be ceased. (For Fort Knox, all safes must be opened. Players may not recieve an indication on forgotten safes on lower floors and must reveal all tiles to be sure, while not necessary).
> All players must have set foot on the next floor. It doesn't matter if they have loot on them, and they may go one at a time as long has they have all climbed the stairs once (no need to have all players on the next floor at the same time).
- On the subject of loot type, my idea is to implement a new loot called simply "cash" or "files". The idea is that only one copy of each loot of the base game will appear, but players may find "cash" that simply do not add debuffs to the player/team, and can be collected forever. It can't be sneaked passed detectors, and players can have as many "cash/files" on them as wished. Maybe even not having the loot stack, but simply hold one copy for the whole group (is another player opens the safe and find cash, it can be regrouped in one bundle with trading or when players meet).
- On the subject of tools, players may recieve copies of the same tool which they can hold (like 3 smoke bombs in the inventory one the same player). So the distribution is completely random, and laboratories appear less with time (safes still give tools).
- On the subject of Fort Knox, the generator may place only one set of stairs per floor but can have 1 or 2 safes, in which case all of them must be cracked to obtain the point (maybe have players choose the general amount of safes, like always 2 or upwards of 3 ?). I believe this special configuration can adopt both generation methods.
I tried to fill in the main gaps for infinite generation, but maybe better ideas can be shared in this thread. I would be very happy to see this idea come to fruition, but it comes down to what you all think of my ideas. I'm very happy to discuss flaws/ambiguities in this post, to improve the base concept. Thank you very much for your patience to read all of this !
I must say thank you again BGA and programmers for providing free access to this game online !