Manor Lords community is very clear about planning ahead

Manor Lords dev SlavicMagic posted a poll in the Discord Channel. This time to get a feel on planning ahead your gameplay. The community has a very clear answer.
Posted 1 month ago. Filed under News Manor Lords

What you'll read in this post:

City Builders, and truthfully, any kind of game with a progression element in building, usually don't let you build everything all at once. 

In Age of Empires, this is determined by the Age you are in. In games like Anno and SteamWorld Build, this is determined by the amount of population of a specific tier. In StarCraft, it depends on other buildings being built first.

Gamers are used to not being able to build everything from the start. Still, it does have benefits knowing which buildings will be there in the (near) future. And even if they can't be built yet, we can at least see the requirements, required resources and costs and heck, why not let us place down the blueprint so we can fit it in our villages? 

But won't it be too overwhelming? To see all those buildings in your list, knowing you can't possibly build them all yet?

Visible from the start

SlavicMagic recently posted this very question to the Discord Channel. 

"Should all buildings be visible from the start, even if they are locked?"

The developer offers three possible answers:

  1. Yes, I want to see what's there and plan
  2. No, it can be overwhelming at first
  3. Add a toggle

Now, community votes in this channel always gain lots of attention. Usually there's at least one clear loser and a clear winner, but the polls are also known to divide the players in different camps. 

Community Vote

In this case, the community is pretty much on the same page, but the votes are still divided. 

The first 25k votes are in and the second option (No) is a clear loser. Only 11% of votes have been cast to this option and will definitely be dropped. 

That leaves the 2 other options: Yes and Toggle. This is where it gets interesting. 

48% of voters chooses Yes. These are probably the 'hardcore' builders who play for best results, best layouts, best everything. 

The remaining 41%, so not too much of a difference, suggest the Toggle. These players are the more considerate ones.

Either they are experienced builders who know how they started out.

Or they're beginners or the more easy going gamers who know that other gamers maintain a different playing style. 

Result

If it were up to me, I'd go for the toggle. Even though the planning ahead choice is the winner, going the toggle route would cater to all players, whether they want the yes or the no.

So my guess is that in one of the next release notes, we'll get to see a "added a toggle to hide buildings that aren't available yet". 

Let's wait and see!