Goblin Squad Member
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First off this post isn't just a proposal of ideas. It's an actually suggestion, that if you support, I would like you to hit the + in the top right of the post to show your support for it. I will break each possible way of implementing mining into a different post so it is clear what you are showing your support for. Showing support doesn't mean you want these ideas on release. It just means you want GW to set up the map and mining system in a way that their future release is possible and to prioritise them after release.
These series of posts are going to lay out three possible ways to implement mining in Pathfinder Online, each one progressively more complicated and harder to implement. However all of these ideas have been thought through on ways to make them possible being overly complicated, and I believe that the ability these systems will have to enhance the game are worth the cost in time, effort, and server resources.
The three systems I will outline are:
1. The Node System
2. The Pre-Planned Mine System
3. The Player-Planned Mine System
I personally hope to see the third but I think it is important that all three be outlined so people can consider the ease of implementation vs benefits the first two have to offer.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The Node System-
This is a very basic system. It is most similar to the conventional mining system in other games, however it takes into account that this mining system is built with the usage of camps outlined in the blog as opposed to players gathering all the materials themselves.
In this system there are various mining nodes established throughout Pathfinder Online. Perhaps a rock with veins in it. Perhaps the entrance to a mine. Perhaps even an entire mine. Whatever the case you build a camp and set your miners to work. They mine away at the node until all resources are consumed, if they are ever fully consumed. Little to no changes happen to the node other than perhaps a slight graphical change after it's consumption.
The advantage to this system is that it is simple to implement, and an idea most gamers will be familiar with.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The Pre Planned Mine System-
Like in the node system there are nodes scattered throughout the map where you can establish a mining camp. Unlike the node system, as you mine these nodes there are drastic changes made to the node. As you mine your miners actually create an instance to which the node is the portal. This instance is a mine that grows as you extract more resources from it. Everything about this mine is pre-laid out by the developers but you still get to watch your efforts impact the world. It may start as face of rock, then turn into a mine entrance that acts as a portal into the interior which is a single shaft. As you mine further the shaft grows. Side shafts may emerge. The mine will go deeper underground granting access to rarer and more valuable ores such as mithril, or granting you access to underground chambers where structures and even forts or settlements may be build (If you are a dwarf and you didn't just hit + to support this idea you need to re-think your race choice.) Depending on the node the pre-planned mine may only give you the ability to make a small mine. Or somewhere in a large mountain you may have the ability to make a mine to rival Moria.
The advantages of this system is that they are a good compromise between the Player Planned system and the Node System. This would be far more simple to implement than the Player Planned system, but offer some of its chief benefits over the Node System. Primarily, the feel you are really impacting the world, the ability to uncover areas for players (especially dwarves) to build underground structures, and the fact that rare ore deposits like mithril will be something it takes time to uncover rather than being rare nodes scattered around on the surface.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The Player Planned Mine System-
The inspiration for this system is the mining system of Wurm Online. Essentially this is a more detailed and well implemented version of that system, with the side advantage of being less resource intensive on the computer of everyone who walks past a mine.
Like the pre-planned mine system there are nodes throughout PFO but essentially what these nodes are is entrances into a mine area. A mine area is an instance that is solid rock, with ore veins, underground chambers, and perhaps even hostile NPC dwellings or things like underground streams scattered throughout. There may even be multiple entrances to some of the larger mine areas (Which could lead to underground wars over mining areas. Can I get another shout from all the dwarves out there?)
Unlike the pre-planned mine system your mine doesn't grow into this node in a set pattern. You lay out a plan that your miners will follow until they run into a complication (Such as running into a chamber, stream, or hostile NPC spawn where they are supposed to be continuing a shaft.) or they finish the plans you have given them.
The advantage to this system, is it is true terraforming, implemented in a way that is not as resource intensive, or quite as intrusive on the game experience as making the surface of the game fully terraformable. It gives an element of challenge and excitement to discovering ore veins, or a giant chamber where an underground settlement can be built. It creates natural and interesting road blocks and encourages player interaction (You are probably going to need some buddies to clear out that Balor you found in the depths of your mine.)
This system will draw sandbox enthusiasts to PFO like flies if implemented. It would make PFO the truest sandbox on the market not made by a basement company. Plus can I get a "Hell yeah!" from everyone here planning to or considering playing a dwarf?
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Goblin Squad Member
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You have really like dwarfs. (may i remind you that in pathfinder that have done a quest to seek the sky!)
Anyways, I think that you have choose mining because of sword and armor.
What could be interresting in that is you could tumble on a dungeon while mining. Or while chopping wood, you discover old elven ruin..
Il think that farm and forestry should be also available on day one for food and gear.
The question it how will it be implant.
In the three options, I think that first, it will be the first option. Then, it will go step by step to option three.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If it were up to me, I'd try to find a combination between 1 and 3. randomly respawning nodes across the surface could yield small amounts of iron and copper. Not enough to get rich on, but worth diverting from a road if you see one nearby.
As a future dwarf though, I'm really hoping for something more impressive. To get Mythril, Adamantine, Gold, and Jewels, there should be some sort of large scale mining. I'm all for player built mine shafts that spawn monsters and occasionally bump into buried ruins or crypts. This sounds pretty complex though and probably won't be a priority near launch.
For something simpler to hold us over, they could create massive "ore vein" nodes. After finding one, you'd need to get some friends and gather materials to build a quarry (essentially the same as any small player built structure) once it's up, the vein starts trickling out larger quantities of materials for an unknown number of days (no way to tell how much is left)
The miners then attempt to defend the quarry against any other interested parties, who will doubtless be looking to claim the site for their own.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it will be at least a year after release before anyone should be able to wield mithril equipment. At least, I meant that isn't even halfway to capstone, and I at least think mithril is pretty "endgame" stuff. I wouldn't even object to it taking two years to reach it.
So I think what they could do in the meantime is have nodes that are mine entrances that you tell your miners to work on. Your miners mine at the mine entrance and bring back a random assortment of iron, coal, gems, and small amounts of silver and gold. Then by the 1 year or two years into the game that people are ready to start using legendary metals, they open up one of the planned systems. Mithril should be contained somewhere in the lowest depths of the largest mining areas. It should be surrounded by spawns of balors, drow, and other horribly nasty beasts. The quote Gandalf says about the dwarves of Moria comes to mind where he says "They delved too deeply, and too greedily." Mining in the depths should have really awesome rewards, and really nasty consequences. I would imagine that if you did delve too deeply a balor might really turn your glorious underground capitol into a dark corner of the world if you couldn't muster the might to throw it and it's hordes back.
That would seriously promote both risk vs. reward making mithril as rare and legendary as it should be. And encourage player interaction. I would imagine the deepest mines wouldn't be 1 guy with a mining camp, but an entire company or even kingdom working on building an underground settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mithril in pathfinder isn't so rare. Adamentium is. (Look at the price!!!)
Also, mining isn't a supermarket. It should be a lot more restrictive. Maybe the mineral will vary with location. Then again, your system would work perfectly with forestry because in a forest, you will have different tree species. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mithril in pathfinder isn't so rare. Adamentium is. (Look at the price!!!)
Also, mining isn't a supermarket. It should be a lot more restrictive. Maybe the mineral will vary with location. Then again, your system would work perfectly with forestry because in a forest, you will have different tree species. :)
Whatever the case I think the principle can hold true where, the deeper you go, the higher chances you have of finding rare ores, and they probably have at least a year before we need worry about any rare ores at all.
I do agree that what you find should vary by location, but how much so depends on how plentiful mining areas are. Given they are plentiful enough you could easily have one mine contain more gold while another contains more iron and another contains no gold or iron but salt and zinc etc.
My vision is a high amount of smaller areas as might be mined by 1-3 people. A plentiful but slightly more rare amount of medium mines as might be mined by a company of 4-10 people. Perhaps 1 large mining area per hex that can be mined by a settlement of 20-40 people. And in a few places throughout the world truly massive mining areas that might be owned by a kingdom of 100+ people or fought over by multiple settlements/kingdoms. Basically the mining areas with the potential to become the Morias of PFO.
Small would produce everything you need to make the lowest grade metal and jewelry up to high grade steel and small-moderate amounts of precious metals.
Medium would have everything small does but as you went deeper precious metals would be more plentiful and you would even start to find a bit of the lower tiers of rare metals.
Large would have almost everything. Small-Medium at the upper parts and as you got down there would be larger amounts of lower tier rare metals, and trace amounts of the absolute most rare metals.
Huge would have everything. At it's deepest levels you would find plentiful quantities of high tier rares, and maybe even trace quantities of things found nowhere else. Controlling a huge mine would give you access to insane wealth found in the deepest depths, but not only would that insane wealth be subject to the envy of other players, but it would require a powerful army simply to deal with the NPC's you would encounter at those depths. I would imagine opening up a Balor pit would require at least 100 players, with many powerful veterans and demon slayers among them to deal with it. And if you didn't deal with it you would have demons start spawning all over your mine until they eventually laid siege to any structures you owned, and took over your mine entirely.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I would kind of expect each mine to only reach one type of viable ore, which might produce more than one metal (galena, for example). I don't know how closely Galorian geology mimics Earth geology, but it seems thematically appropriate for higher-value mines to be located in mountainous areas, and lower-value mines to be located in other areas.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would kind of expect each mine to only reach one type of viable ore, which might produce more than one metal (galena, for example). I don't know how closely Galorian geology mimics Earth geology, but it seems thematically appropriate for higher-value mines to be located in mountainous areas, and lower-value mines to be located in other areas.
That is kind of what I pictured too. The only problem I can see with that is I don't think The Crusader Road boats any large mountains nearby. But I at least figured the larger the mine, the more likely it was to be attached to some kind of mountain or at least rocky hill.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Imagine you have a million players. (this is what you imagine and not what you expect, just to be clear but MMOs DIE due to the lack of imagination on scale).
Multiply whatever percentage of the players you think CAN do something and WILL do something. Those numbers had better at least be in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players.
Now design that system.
In an MMO, you don't build ANYTHING that a small number of people do infrequently. That's a horrible use of resources and a terrible allocation of support for your paying customers.
What you want to do is make a system that as many people as possible CAN do, and that a very big number WILL do.
That would be the value of the first "M" in MMO.
Being a unique snowflake is what you achieve by deeds and reputation, not because you got access to something of limited availability or opportunity.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being a unique snowflake is what you achieve by deeds and reputation, not because you got access to something of limited availability or opportunity.
+1
I also hope to the best extent possible you are able to permit the largest degree of customization possible when it comes to things like that. Personally I would say things like custom build able weapons (made by selecting components from a list, not so much free form customization that leads to spore's hundreds of creatures that look like particular body parts)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Let si how the three systems would work with a million of players.
1. The node system should be easy to implant. Harvest, transport and craft. I add a little idea of mine. A mine could be used more than one time.
Exemple: Andius have a mining camp. The iron run out. The camp disband. Months later, Andius had improved his skill in mining. He return in the mine to see if he can mine other minerals he would have missed by lack of experience. Oh no! Monsters have overrun the place!!!! His compagny clear the mine and now he can reestablish a mining camp. I can imagine one million of players doing that with variation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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2. The pre planned mine would not be fun if it was repeted one million of times. It will be a sort of litte theme park in each camp.
3. In few year, most of the potential morias will be moria. Even if it is conduct by players. It will have a feel of a editor level for donjons that need players to work. But it don't create player "interaction".
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Goblin Squad Member
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Imagine you have a million players. (this is what you imagine and not what you expect, just to be clear but MMOs DIE due to the lack of imagination on scale).
Multiply whatever percentage of the players you think CAN do something and WILL do something. Those numbers had better at least be in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players.
Now design that system.
In an MMO, you don't build ANYTHING that a small number of people do infrequently. That's a horrible use of resources and a terrible allocation of support for your paying customers.
What you want to do is make a system that as many people as possible CAN do, and that a very big number WILL do.
That would be the value of the first "M" in MMO.
Being a unique snowflake is what you achieve by deeds and reputation, not because you got access to something of limited availability or opportunity.
I would compare this to player created structures. What percentage of the game do you think will be architects? How many do you think will use player built structures?
So true. Only miners are going to be building these mines. But if this is purely an ore extraction tool than the node system is clearly the best option.
But the point is that what is uncovered will be content that will draw in all kinds of players. Miners are the gateway to a world of underground challenges, building locations, etc. that is available to everyone.
That's why I was saying things like large mines would be for 20-40 people. I don't mean 20-40 miners. I mean an entire settlement of varied classes from crafters, to fighters, to craftsman. A smith might use the lava found underground to power a special forge. Fighters will of course be needed to deal with the threats that arise. Masons will be needed to carve out underground structures. If underground cities are built they would probably be a popular place for crafting and trade, especially for professions like weaponsmiths, armorsmiths, jewelry makers etc. but really for anyone because underground cities will likely be easier to defend because tunnels make excellent choke points. Sure the farmers and the woodcutters won't get in on the action (Unless the dwarves developed a method of farming underground which wouldn't surprise me.) but I could see a lot of major kingdoms enjoying having underground settlements to trade food and lumber for rare ores, or to go adventuring in sometimes. And I could see a lot of less major companies enjoying going down into their buddy's small or medium mines to fight the goblin camp they discovered or maybe to build a few houses and crafting stations.
Bare minimum it's going to cause some players not to clutter the surface of the world with their structures which I see as a pretty major positive.
I think that is at least worth the effort of the pre-planned system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Quick Q: Are Mines/Mineral acquisition going to double-up with Dungeons atst? It sorta would make sense, so that adventuring leads to gathering of minerals when you find a new dungeon to "pop"?
Or is this more along the lines of worksites being set up that attract mobs/monsters depending on the type of activity?
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's no reason an experienced smith couldn't begin to specialize in a more specific style. "Dwarven Smithing" gives extra bonuses to hammers and axes, while "Elven Smithing" allows for more powerful enchantments. Even individual npc settlements and kingdoms could offer a few unique recipes "Ah, I see your spear is forged in the Arcadian style. Very Nice."
Straight up designing your own weapon sounds cool but I would imagine it'd take allot of work from the developers and if it does happen, it wont be for a while. Racial or regional styles would be simpler to begin with.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah to start with I would say just make sure we get a good variety of weapons and armor. Later on you could do a Lord of the Rings Online style thing where there are human, dwarven, and elven variants of essentially the same armor and weapons.
At a much later date you could take all those variants, add a few more, and turn it into some kind of a customization system. But it shouldn't be a high priority.
That said, coloring SHOULD be a high priority. Just watch a video of a battle in Darkfall if you need to know why. In this game it isn't alliance vs. horde. You may sometimes end up fighting enemies who aren't flagged as such. Uniforms would help make sense of that kind of chaos.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are performance and engineering reasons why we won't likely have personalized weapons. Every graphic asset that needs to be displayed on the client takes up space in the video card's RAM. When the card runs out of space performance degrades. So having fewer "unique" visuals means we can have more characters in the same visual space before that happens. We are optimizing the game for having lots of players share an experience over individual characters looking extremely distinct.
On the engineering side we would need to build an engine capable of assembling a "sword" from a number of base elements and make it look correct in inventory, while sheathed, drawn, waved about, used in attacks, etc. This is a lot of work for a fairly low return (certainly early on) and that's the kind of trade off we'll decide against as a part of making an MMO in a fraction of the time and a sliver of the budget of a traditional MMO.
It's not at all a bad idea, and it would be cool. It just is not going to be something we're likely to implement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We are optimizing the game for having lots of players share an experience over individual characters looking extremely distinct.
I'm very pleased to hear that.
Is it feasible to have a relatively limited number of graphic assets that need to be rendered in 3-d, while having a much larger number of 2-d assets that are only displayed, for example, on an item's stat sheet?
I've often thought of doing something similar with characters - where there's a reasonably accurate, but much less detailed character model that gets rendered in 3-d, and a drastically more detailed 2-d (or even 3-d but not displayed in the world) model that shows up on your character sheet and when people /inspect you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just a quick clarification, when we're talking about rare materials, that's from a lore standpoint right? As in, Mithril is more rare than copper. Because once the game launches, it seems like you'd have all sorts of "mundane" items that may increase or decrease in value depending on who all can gather/craft them. If there are dozens of recipes that need copper and only a few that need mithril, it may occasionally fetch more at auction. Or is it expected that crafting and trading will be aligned to reinforce the common standard about what is and isn't rare?
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Iron ore veins are neither rare nor scarce. As much iron is available as there is labor to extract it, and energy to process it. The price of iron is typically set largely by the price of labor and transportation, although there are cases where supply inertia results in a price spike due to sudden demand.
What is scarce is iron ore mines, since the resource used to create them is geology and politics.
What I'd like to see in PFO is for none of the raw resources to be scarce except labor.
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Goblin Squad Member
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See this is where I'm at a loss. I've mostly just done auction houses in theme parks, so factoring in things like transport is completely foreign to me. It would be cool to see multiple markets spread across the map, each with its own area's natural resources. So you'd make more of a profit the further you transported your product. Seems like it' only be really viable on a large enough map with limited/no fast travel options.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Diamonds are scarce, available in low quantities, and high value (dare I say rare?).
Splitting hairs and getting way off subject here but diamonds are actually not as rare as you think they are. Forgive me if there are any inaccuracies in what I am saying because I haven't researched the subject of diamonds in years, but as I remember it the reasons are diamonds are so scarce is because their supply is in the hands of a very limited number of people. They stockpile most of them and then release them onto the market very slowly in very small quantities.
Because of this the supply of diamonds on the market is very low, making them quite valuable for their unique qualities, but their price would drop drastically if they released them all for sale.
Again please forgive any mistakes but that is what I remember of what I did learn about them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@waffle, thanks, I'll definitely give those posts another read. What if traveling with large quantities of raw materials slowed or even did away with fast travel? The idea of caravan guards as a profession has been tossed around allot, but if you're just guarding a single person for a five minute trip it loses allot of the fun. Plus it's essentially no different from becoming a body guard.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In my vocabulary, rare is used when describing something that is found where chance is a factor, like grabbing a blue marble out of a bag of 100 red marbles and one blue marble. Scarcity is when something can be found systematically but not often, like burying 100 red marbles and one blue marble, then digging in each location until you find the blue marble. You can reach into the bag 300 times and never get a blue marble, but after 101 holes you will have a blue marble 100% of the time.
So a diamond will be eventually found, a meteor requires a meteor strike, which to observation of someone on a medieval times, is a random event.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@waffle, thanks, I'll definitely give those posts another read. What if traveling with large quantities of raw materials slowed or even did away with fast travel? The idea of caravan guards as a profession has been tossed around allot, but if you're just guarding a single person for a five minute trip it loses allot of the fun. Plus it's essentially no different from becoming a body guard.
Well one of the big things to note, is fast travel is not quite like theme park fast travel. Most theme parks view fast travel as instant and safe, and some even to any area. Based on the descriptions of PFO, fast travel is "faster" than walking, by about 3x. Interuptable by ambushes, and from limited points.
Going from city A to city B will probably be 5-10 minutes, but of course still have dangers of ambushes etc... the good harvesting sites will probably have a 15-20 minute walk (maybe longer when slowed by bringing carts etc...) from there to the nearest city where one can enter fast travel (This is speculation of course).
GW's challange is going to be to make the travel exciting, with a high chance of danger and ambushes etc... Without making it a tedius 1 hour of walking with a 5% chance of something happening.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Onishi: I think having larger/more conspicuous groups move slower and draw more attention would work well to counteract this. The more vehicles/animals the slower and the higher chance of problems... until say a caravan of several vehicles and a dozen animals would move at walking(ish) speed and probably need to deal with 3-5 encounters in a 20 minute (not including battles) walk between cities, while a merchant riding a pack horse would likely have 0-1 encounters and take 5 minutes.
Also fully possible, I vaguely remember at one point hearing something along the lines of fast travel probably being something like 3x faster than normal travel, so fast travel could very well be based on the speed one could normally move, thus if carts/wagons etc... slow one down, it would also slow them down in fast travel. Many of the encounters themselves will likely be player ambushes, and from the descriptions of hideouts, the hideouts will very likely be able to determine with varying accuracy, how much is passing through, I would imagine players as far more likely to want to attack a huge caravan with wagonloads of goods, over a lone player with a backpack of goods. (well depending on how many are currently ready for the ambush, a team of 3, will probably prefer the lone rider over the caravan with 15 guards).
Now if random NPC encounters could also be factors those could absolutely be based on size etc...
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are performance and engineering reasons why we won't likely have personalized weapons. Every graphic asset that needs to be displayed on the client takes up space in the video card's RAM. When the card runs out of space performance degrades. So having fewer "unique" visuals means we can have more characters in the same visual space before that happens. We are optimizing the game for having lots of players share an experience over individual characters looking extremely distinct.
So it's essentially the same concept with character creation, you can't go balls to the walls on the customization angle because you have to consider the hardware assets that would be required to render it all specially if you have large groups of players in one area and within draw distance of each other.
But you have to juggle that card a bit because everyone wants that unique feel about their characters in a mmorpg.
I like the portrait concept someone mentioned earlier, being able to craft a realistic view of our characters for the portrait, screened and allowed, then uploaded. It would give the artists around here something interesting to do and create a whole another little thing to the experience (specially immersion in a way).
The system could also tie into the forum avatar system, similar to how square enix handles FFXIV forum avatars, your in game representation is your forum avatar.
Regardless I'm going to be interested to see how it's handled, I'd assume different materials = different textures at least in the final created item (initially or eventually).
It must be tough though, wanting that uniqueness accessible but not being able to give it to the players
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mithril is more rare than copper.It will be more scarce than copper.
Ryan, would you mind telling us what you see as the important distinction between "rare" and "scarce"?
I looked them up in Dictionary.com, but I don't feel satisfied that I was able to divine the distinction you're trying to point out to us.
rare: occurring far apart in time; unusual; uncommon.
scarce: insufficient to satisfy the need or demand; not abundant.
These are the two definitions that I expect are most applicable.
Are you saying that mithril might be found about as often as copper, but when mithril is found there won't be as much of it?
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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A scarce resource is one for which demand outstrips supply. Resources which currently lack scarcity include atmospheric oxygen and seawater. Potable water is scarce even in developed countries, but just barely. In most cases, the supply of scarce resources increases in response to higher prices. there is always a clearing price for a scarce resource.
A rare resource is one where supply does not expand as prices rise. Cut diamonds are (artificially) rare, while meteoric iron is absolutely rare.
I suspect that it will never be the case that mithril is being mined at the maximum total rate possible at the time. There will always be a way for additional people to contribute to the mining of mithril, even if that means scouting out new deposits. If that us the case, mithril will never be rare.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"Rare" implies something so uncommon as to be exceptional when seen. A chunk of Martian meteor is rare.
"Scarce" implies a thing is available, but that demand outstrips supply. Good quality diamonds, in our world, for example.
Seeing gear crafted with mithril (or other exotic materials) will not be uncommon. But those materials will be scarce. I've never seen a woman with jewelry made from Martian rock, but I've seen a lot of diamond jewelry.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of the suggestions I made in the thread on food is that mounts/beasts of burden actualy consume "food" (e.g. grain) as a sort of "fuel" in order to allow them to fast travel. If fast travel really takes no more then 15 minutes to get across the map, that (IMO) is a pretty negligable time investment...thus I don't imagine distance will really impose much of a price differantial on local access to goods due to labor costs, which (IMO) would be unfortunate because I think it would negate many of the more interesting strategic aspects of play.
Introducing the "grain as fuel concept" would introduce a more concrete cost to hauling large quantity of goods over distance without imposing much effect on the lone adventurers play. The guy on foot wouldn't be paying any fee here (no mount = no grain needed), the guy just riding his own horse would have some, but likely not a huge imposition. However the merchant who needed large numbers of animals to haul significant quantities of goods would see a concrete distance to cost ratio in terms og hauling bulk goods. The longer the distance you needed to carry goods the more it would cost you directly in terms of grain you had to buy for your mounts. I would hope this would introduce greater market varience in goods sold there. I think that's a desirable result because it preserves the idea that choosing a hex for settlement/exploitation with good access to local resources as well good access to trade routes is a meaningfull game-play choice...and players will have (hopefully) to make interesting decisions between geographic locations that they find desirable and access to/distance to desirable resources that they want. YMMV/