So now that we have had this great influx of new players, TEO has started their recruitment drive in modest. Thus, this seems like a reasonable time to raise this issue:
Will there be a mechanic that limits settlement growth rates at the start of EE?
I'm concerned that the larger settlements will simply be the go-to place for new players due to both their visibility and their ability to simply provide for their players. That puts the deck heavily stacked against smaller settlements like Blackfeather Keep (I am the only highly active BFK member, Sluce gets on when he can between classes and homework, and the owners of BFK, well, have actual *lives* to attend to).
I've re-purposed one of my graphs to offer an idea as to what such a mechanic might look like.
What this system would add to the game:
1. Settlements would have to make meaningful choices about who they let in beyond a certain settlement size.
2. Settlements might begin competing for highly valuable characters and their players.
3. Larger settlements may become reference points for applications, sending them to nearby allied settlements (e.g. Ozem's Vigil might not need another Cleric, but Tavernhold does, so OV refers the applicant to Tavernhold).
4. Settlements have to pay attention to their citizen role-composition, not just their citizen population.
5. Smaller settlements would not be *completely* left in the dust by larger settlement's recruitment clout.
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The original plan, not sure if it still holds, is for the average village to hold around 500 people and the largest to hold around 1000. But that is when the game goes live.
I think one of the things that can help a smaller settlement is to advertise what roles they train. But they have to be in the game and talking to folks in the game, not just on the boards.
Alignment, when that comes into affect, will also limit size of settlements.
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Settlements with few active members and lukewarm recruitment will quickly become non-factors, and will be quickly captured once they can be.
There's no way around that; a mechanic that encourages settlements to refuse members will hurt the players without helping other settlements,
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The original plan, not sure if it still holds, is for the average village to hold around 500 people and the largest to hold around 1000. But that is when the game goes live.
I've heard people say "hundreds" which could be as low as 200-300, maybe towards the end of War of Towers. I also remember discussions that used those numbers, 500-1000, like you say. I don't think those are hard limits, but management of increasingly large numbers of players and companies will be a challenge.
My understanding has been that PFO is a MMO - a game of companies and settlements. A good sized company of 30-40 characters can hold 2 POIs, poorly, iirc. Me, I don't like to do things poorly, so I think of 1 company = 1 POI hex. The number of companies will quickly add up, when you have POI holding companies, crafting companies, Outpost companies, PvP companies not tied to a hex, etc., etc.
I'd really prefer that we never have hard limits - if someone takes a break from the game, are we expected to kick them from the settlement? Should any settlement refuse an eager new player, with a curt "come back when you meet our gear requirements."? Settlements shouldn't be forced into remaining small for artificial reasons.
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But they have to be in the game and talking to folks in the game, not just on the boards.
Kinda hard to do when TEO or TSV can have several members in game "talking to people" all the time while a small settlement like BFK can only have one in a small fraction of the time.
Settlements with few active members and lukewarm recruitment will quickly become non-factors, and will be quickly captured once they can be.
This isn't the issue I am concerned about. A settlement that can't mange itself, has bad leadership, and/or a toxic community will fall apart and be over-taken. That is accepted.
I am more concerned about a small settlement that should succeed not even having a chance to grow because larger settlements absolutely overshadow them with no chance for a reprieve.
This issue is compounded by the WoT. Part of what a large settlement has the luxury of doing is both defending its towers at the same time it attacks other towers. The larger settlement can then also afford to offer new players a more stable and higher level training cap. In the mean time, a small settlement might barely be able to keep its 6 towers up, let alone picking up a 7th, 8th, and so on. Thus, the small settlement, despite being a healthy community with good leadership, becomes even less attractive to the new players and its survival remains terminally compromised.
IRL, this is not dis-similar to the "poverty trap," whereby once a person is in poverty, it is nigh on impossible to get out of poverty, even if that person is otherwise quite capable of thriving in a non-poverty environment.
My concern is not that small settlements will be wiped out by larger settlements. My concern is that small settlements won't even have a fighting chance, no matter how well they are run, to catch up to or at least hold their own against large settlements from a recruitment standpoint.
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I do want to note that some groups actually help new players find a good fit, regardless of if it's with them or not. TEO and I (and others) helped a new fellow find a company this morning--he went with the UnNamed Company. I'm happy to point players at the settlement that's the best fit for their concept. Give me a good blurb on Blackfeather and I'll be sure to cover you as well!
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I think that it's far too early to declare defeat. It is certainly late enough to start aggressively recruiting through all available channels. The slow sell that worked well enough when there was two years or more to let it work.
Right now to be viable, a settlement that has only a handful of members needs to be recruiting just as aggressively as one with a hundred, because the ones that are successful in six months will have around 500 members at least.
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In my opinion, if you end the war of towers, and your Settlement has less than 120 people, there is probably a good chance that you won't be able to create all the buildings you got from the WoT. Depending on how they do it, you will probably have 30 days to rebuild before your training is grayed out (same as if you leave a settlement).
Everyone needs to be working towards 100-150, and if you don't have those numbers, you need to make a decision to merge into another settlement. I see at least a third of the settlements not lasting past the first couple months.
On point, they shouldn't have limits, limits was one of the crappier factors in Darkfall.
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...both defending its towers at the same time it attacks other towers.
Several groups have had discussions about the best way to help their smaller friends defend their towers, and those conversations leap easily to helping them take towers as well. Big groups don't always want everything for themselves; they like their friends to do well as well.
EDIT: Commentary from Ryan:
My assumption is that there will be enough towers with enough geographical dispersion (and thus issues of interior lines of communication) plus geographical choke points and other features that will make it hard for large groups to hold towers all over the map, that a dozen people could likely manage to control a tower. So during the War of Towers these really small Settlements will be able to do something more than just stand around chatting.
On the other hand I suspect that it will become really obvious really quickly that being in a Settlement with a dozen other people is a really boring and sub-optimal way to play and I think most of those people will not persist in trying to do it. But there are going to be more than 33 people who are determined to be kings and swear fealty to no other man, so I'm sure there will be a few Settlements that are run by one or two people, a bunch of alts, and a lot of ego.
I do want to note that some groups actually help new players find a good fit, regardless of if it's with them or not. TEO and I (and others) helped a new fellow find a company this morning--he went with the UnNamed Company. I'm happy to point players at the settlement that's the best fit for their concept. Give me a good blurb on Blackfeather and I'll be sure to cover you as well!
...both defending its towers at the same time it attacks other towers.Several groups have had discussions about the best way to help their smaller friends defend their towers, and those conversations leap easily to helping them take towers as well. Big groups don't always want everything for themselves; they like their friends to do well as well.
Thank you. These are both reassuring comments.
@Erian: I'm still figuring out how I would like to pitch BFK to people. Once I do, I then need to get approval from its formal owners. Once that hurdle is cleared, I (or they) will make a public comment about it.
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Sure thing. You've been an active, helpful voice in the community and I'm happy to help in turn. A vibrant, diverse population in the game is important to me, and I'd always rather find the best fit for a new player (so they are likely to stay) than try to rope them into the Keepers
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Absolutely. As long as I've got a good idea of what a group is about, it's easy to work through a few basic questions with a new person, then say "check out X, Y, and Z as they all seem to line up with what you are looking for." The fellow this morning made it easy, as he led with wanting a strong focus on PvP. From there, we went to "Good Guys vs. Bad Guys" to differentiate say TEO and their military vs. Aragon and their mercenaries. While I'm on a "Good Guy" side, I actively promote the Bad Guys as well as I want a good challenge for my merchant caravans...we need all types to make this game successful.
One general note, I usually end such a dialogue with a recommendation pointing at the GW Leaderboard posts, as that's the best central repository of groups of which I'm aware. So, having your post their up-to-date is helpful as well. While the Landrush is over, I still consider those spots as prime real estate for marketing your group.
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I think beyond War of Towers, a *soft limit* would be useful. Not a hard limit, but something that might make super huge settlements ultimately less effective, or at least more difficult to sustain, compared to more moderately populated settlements.
I think it makes sense from a realism standpoint, as huge cities require extensive logistics to feed their populace, and close populations breed disease and crime.
This could be accomplished through mechanisms like requiring a certain amount of raw material resources from the surrounding hexes in order to keep the large city fed, etc. I think this might already be in the design doc.
Cities that are under-supported for the population size could have a malus to training effectiveness or crafting ability, etc.
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I believe the end result is that people would naturally spread out to maximize their own personal training/crafting through self-interest, and regional skirmishes/wars would be more balanced - as opposed to a bunch of small fries having to defend against one super mega city.
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GW has noted that there will be diminishing returns as size grows beyond a certain limit for Charterd Companies. It's certainly possible the same could apply to settlements. There will also, I'd guess, be resource limitations for how much a settlement can viably sustain on it's own, encouraging both trade as as well as "seeding" new settlements as the frontier expands. My gues is, like above, that this won't kick in until settlements are nearing that 1k mark.
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I do want to note that some groups actually help new players find a good fit, regardless of if it's with them or not. TEO and I (and others) helped a new fellow find a company this morning--he went with the UnNamed Company. I'm happy to point players at the settlement that's the best fit for their concept. Give me a good blurb on Blackfeather and I'll be sure to cover you as well!
I appreciate the guidance, and he dies seem to be best suited for the UNC. I would do the same if I knew someone who wants to play a Paladin type character. I recognize that the life of banditry, assassinations and in general mercenary work is not everyone's cup of tea.
There are many companies I would recommend, and not just the big three or five.
@Spitfire,
If any one company / settlement became so large that it's influence become oppressive, I would imagine others would enjoy joining in on the fun of tearing it down.
As for the War of Towers as it is based on what I've seen: because of this Roseblood treaty business, and a disparate size in some of the groups, I'm starting to become concerned that the map will ultimately degrade into a two-sided war, much like EVE Online's current mega-alliance stalemate.
If one guild/company/alliance is significantly larger than all the others, and that is the way it seems to be shaping up, it almost forces everybody else to band together to counter them for survival.
To some, that may seem like interesting Meta, for me personally I think a 5-6 sided war is more interesting than a 2-sided war.
Though to be honest, I'm not entirely sure that kind of situation wouldn't always be the natural end result in these kinds of games.
I think it takes a lot to curb that, doc, because it probably is the natural state.
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Note that the Roseblood Accord is focused entirely on Good Gaming--I'm a vocal advocate of the Accord, but also that it is entirely a meta-game agreement. In-game, you'd be looking to things like the Alliance (us folks down south), the "Eeeevil" Empire in the middle, those Pathfinder Society folks also in the middle, the barely-contained chaos of the bandits and barbarians that are in an alliance of mutual smacking down, the mercantile coalition, the Highland collective, etc. There is, I think, greater diversity than some folks see. And while we in the south are certainly the largest, it's not quite accurate to think of needing to defend yourselves from our onslaught--we're all fairly much dedicated to having our own little piece of the pie and letting others live as they may (the competition for land will come when the map expands south). There may of course be a power shift if leadership changes, but then we'd also be fighting interanlly amongst ourselves, plus fighting those beyond our nation borders. Beyond that, I further think that the "Good Guys" while numerically superior to the "Bad Guys" are also made up of a much larger percentage of casual gamers, PvE only players, etc. such that in an actual conflict we may be more evenly matched than the numbers imply.
I think doc is referring to what he believes will be the eventual power balance established, not the current one.
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This isn't the issue I am concerned about. A settlement that can't mange itself, has bad leadership, and/or a toxic community will fall apart and be over-taken. That is accepted.
I am more concerned about a small settlement that should succeed not even having a chance to grow because larger settlements absolutely overshadow them with no chance for a reprieve.
IRL, this is not dis-similar to the "poverty trap," whereby once a person is in poverty, it is nigh on impossible to get out of poverty, even if that person is otherwise quite capable of thriving in a non-poverty environment.
My concern is not that small settlements will be wiped out by larger settlements. My concern is that small settlements won't even have a fighting chance, no matter how well they are run, to catch up to or at least hold their own against large settlements from a recruitment standpoint.
I think your "poverty trap" analogy is flawed. People are poor because they have leanred how to live as a poor person, and their compass always points towards being poor. Even if you gave them a million dollars they would be poor again in short order. On the other hand, rich people know how to become rich, and even if they risk it all and go broke, they can become rich again in short order. It is a mindset, not a trap.
Running a successful settlement will be much the same. Run your settlement as a success, recruit good players, strategize effectively, allocate resources and perform your logistics correctly and you will have an effective settlement. Do these things poorly and you will fail no matter how many members you have.
A previous forum comment from Ryan in the thread from the "Screaming for Vengeance" blog post linked here Screaming for Vengeance.
"Realistically what is going to happen is that people who are good at organizing, good at communicating and good at social networking are going to have the most successful Settlements. Those people are not going to be the ones who are out seeking random "for the lulz" PvP. There will likely be a sizeable number of such Settlements, because the best of those organizers like to be "king". But they'll also have the social tools to network between each other and forge alliances that allow them to come to one another's aid rapidly when needed. Many of these Settlements will be "Good" aligned because the people who lead them and their immediate circles of friends like to think of themselves in that way, and the actions they engage in don't conflict with that self-view."
There's a lot more in that forum post, but well run settlements will do what needs to be done to be successful. Poorly run settlements will eventually fail even with a large population.
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I think your "poverty trap" analogy is flawed. People are poor because they have leanred how to live as a poor person, and their compass always points towards being poor. Even if you gave them a million dollars they would be poor again in short order. On the other hand, rich people know how to become rich, and even if they risk it all and go broke, they can become rich again in short order. It is a mindset, not a trap.
I will keep this very simple since this is a social issue, not a game issue: I have a Masters degree in Public Policy, during the acquisition of which we studied poverty traps, why they exist, and why it is particularly hard to break them. To sum it up, your example only proves my point. If you would like to discuss this issue further, you are welcome to PM me. However, it is not appropriate for a PFO thread and Chris would likely lock the thread if it continued.
GW has noted that there will be diminishing returns as size grows beyond a certain limit for Charterd Companies. It's certainly possible the same could apply to settlements. There will also, I'd guess, be resource limitations for how much a settlement can viably sustain on it's own, encouraging both trade as as well as "seeding" new settlements as the frontier expands. My gues is, like above, that this won't kick in until settlements are nearing that 1k mark.
Diminishing returns to population growth is basically what I am asking for (see my graph in the original post). It is also true to life since village size has always been limited by all of the things that someone mentioned above but I can find right now. Basically, I am asking for a soft-limit, not a hard limit. It might even help with preventing the two-sided dynamic discussed above, but I doubt it.
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On that whole 2-sided dynamic, let my pull out a story from my Bachelors in Ecology days. Predator-prey cycles are quite complex in the real world, but always dynamically stable. That means that while they go up and down a lot, they consistently maintain that cycle through time so long as no outside forces perturb one or the other species.
By contrast, efforts to model these predator-prey cycles in a lab environment have always failed. With a bare minimum of complexity, the predator quickly wins. So the researchers add more complexity and try to create "pools" or sanctuaries for the prey to hide out in. The cycles persist longer; but the end result is always the same: the predator wins as the prey population irrecoverably crashes. Then the predator goes extinct, too.
The Moral: An immense amount of complexity goes into making the real world turn, and human efforts to model that complexity are often doomed to fail. So trying to model real world events (like the tensions between multiple different settlements competing for limited resources like materials and players) are likewise doomed to fail- at least, not without some careful intervention on the part the modelers (the devs, in this case).
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Lock-inducing analogies aside, I think I'd like to see a multi-polar power balance, with five or six Great Powers, a dozen or so allied Lesser Powers, and 20 - 30 struggling independents, mostly out at the edges of the expanding map. (The promise of map expansion is probably the best hope that any would-be King or exiled Minor Power could ask for. Lost your settlement to one of the Big Guys? Regroup at the edge of the map and try it again.)
Cold War-style two Power systems tend to get locked into stalemates, which are boring. Single Power empires are even more boring (until they collapse). A handful of Great Powers, with room for shifting alliances and double-crosses, is more stable than total anarchy, but a lot more interesting than a Cold War or a Pax Romana.
Ecology and Political Science cross paths more often than most people probably realize, sspitfire1.
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...I am asking for a soft-limit, not a hard limit.
It sounds as if Ryan's already been thinking in terms of Settlements having particular population-sizes:
The design assumes many hundreds of players in a Settlement. I've mentally been assuming a baseline of 1,000. We'll have to test and see how that works in practice so that's just one guy's estimate.
Obviously the resources of the Settlement have to be flexible enough to accomodate that many players. Since many will have more than one PC, we're talking potentially thousands of characters.Settlements are the EVE-Analog of Corporations and they'll have hundreds of members (maybe thousands). Kingdoms are the EVE-Analog of Alliances and they'll have thousands of members.
Settlements are the EVE-Analog of Corporations and they'll have hundreds of members (maybe thousands). Kingdoms are the EVE-Analog of Alliances and they'll have thousands of members....I am asking for a soft-limit, not a hard limit.It sounds as if Ryan's already been thinking in terms of Settlements having particular population-sizes:
The design assumes many hundreds of players in a Settlement. I've mentally been assuming a baseline of 1,000. We'll have to test and see how that works in practice so that's just one guy's estimate.Obviously the resources of the Settlement have to be flexible enough to accomodate that many players. Since many will have more than one PC, we're talking potentially thousands of characters.
Right, but there is a difference between having particular sizes and having a mechanic that slows down settlement growth rate as it gets larger. A soft-limit would basically be a growth limiter that settlements have to keep up with and overcome in order achieve the highest levels of population size.
So let me ask this question: How does it work in EVE? Is there a growth rate limiting mechanic on corporations? Are EVE corporations like PFO settlements in that they exist, materially, in a fixed point in space, where other corporations can come to attack? Or are EVE corporations diffuse with no fixed point for opponents to concentrate on?
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I will keep this very simple since this is a social issue, not a game issue: I have a Masters degree in Public Policy, during the acquisition of which we studied poverty traps, why they exist, and why it is particularly hard to break them. To sum it up, your example only proves my point. If you would like to discuss this issue further, you are welcome to PM me. However, it is not appropriate for a PFO thread and Chris would likely lock the thread if it continued.I think your "poverty trap" analogy is flawed. People are poor because they have leanred how to live as a poor person, and their compass always points towards being poor. Even if you gave them a million dollars they would be poor again in short order. On the other hand, rich people know how to become rich, and even if they risk it all and go broke, they can become rich again in short order. It is a mindset, not a trap.
Wut? Not likely, but whatever.
Sspitfire, I mentioned something for soft limits in my post above -
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rlie?Will-there-be-Settlement-Growth-Rate-Limi ts#15
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I think some kind of efficiency malus towards training and/or crafting that steadily increased over time as settlement population exceeded a soft cap would lend to people naturally desiring to spread out on their own accord.
Since most folks would like to get maximum efficiency in their training/crafting, they would seek to spread out to underpopulated places. If you think about it, in many ways it mimics real world history.
The training malus could just be something like 10% additional xp cost to buy feats for example (adjusting higher as population continued to swell) and something similar for crafting like crafting time or chance to get a +1,2,3 item, etc.
This soft cap effect could even be controlled by GW so that as the entire gameworld population fluctuated, the soft cap adjusted accordingly to allow for even distribution of players. (this being useful in the case of a limited size map)
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When the feud system is implemented the cost of feuding a group scales based on it's size. The larger the group the cheaper to feud, the smaller the more expensive.
Right now the large groups can recruit as many players as they want with no standards of acceptance and no need to protect them. Afterall, at this point there is more park than sand to this sandpark.
Such policies mean many targets and they'll be poorly protected. A lot of PvP oriented groups either already have or will be setting their sights on TEO and TSV. Really. Think of what a huge % of the game's population you could turn into targets by feuding those two settlements. They are in a small area that they will have to spread out over to avoid exhausting the resources, meaning they have to spread their proportionally small military thin to keep it protected.
Hunting in the "safe" area of Brighthaven with TEO and TSV feuded is the surest way to enjoy plentiful consequence free kills for a low influence cost.
I wouldn't worry about it. Numbers aren't everything and war has not yet come to the River Kingdoms.
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Diminishing returns to population growth is basically what I am asking for (see my graph in the original post).
Not exactly what you ask for, but there is certainly a point where the same population would be (economically) better off by founding (or capturing) a second settlement and having twice as many building slots.
Also, the costs of building upgrades may scale exponentially, but that may favour big settlement populations more than small ones.
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Not exactly what you ask for, but there is certainly a point where the same population would be (economically) better off by founding (or capturing) a second settlement and having twice as many building slots.
Also, the costs of building upgrades may scale exponentially, but that may favour big settlement populations more than small ones.
The difficulty of clearing a new settlement hex and founding a settlement will also favor larger groups. I imagine any material transport requirements would favor large, nearby groups.
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As mentioned, even a large but poorly run group will ultimately fail, and the smaller but well run settlements will pick up players that see success. If will be more difficult for smaller settlements to compete at the outset (all other things being equal), but quality organization and leadership will trump sheer size (to a large degree). Zergs are still effective, but even zergs need some sort of strategy (and tactics when in individual and small group combat).
Randomwalker has a point, in that sheer numbers would be very useful in founding a second settlement in order to have a wider variety of training facilities, and numbers would help there, but even then it has to be an organized effort with all the members pushing in the same direction, or even that will fail.
Of course, all of these arguments that "small but with good leadership will eventually beat the big but unorganized" don't account for big AND well organized...
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Why should all the best trainers be in the largest settlement ?
I many films and literature a Master in a skill can be found anywhere, it would be great if players could also become the trainers.
Imagine if a player could set up a training camp like a base camp where he could assign a skill he would teach to his level .
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Why should all the best trainers be in the largest settlement ?
I many films and literature a Master in a skill can be found anywhere, it would be great if players could also become the trainers.Imagine if a player could set up a training camp like a base camp where he could assign a skill he would teach to his level .
I don't think it's required that the best trainers be in the largest settlements. Any settlement could choose to upgrade a training facility to peak performance, though there could be other requirements, like town reputation and it may take nations to build the most advanced structures.
I like the idea of characters setting up schools and maybe that's possible in the future. If it made a way for settlements to get around the meaningful decisions of what they would build in their town slots, though, it might not fit.
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Why should all the best trainers be in the largest settlement ?
I many films and literature a Master in a skill can be found anywhere, it would be great if players could also become the trainers.Imagine if a player could set up a training camp like a base camp where he could assign a skill he would teach to his level .
Two reasons for this, and perhaps one solution.
First reason is the law of averages. The larger the population the higher potential to find the highest skilled living there. This is not absolutely true, but simply "on average" true.
The second reason is a mechanical one. There is a mechanical advantage to having greater numbers, especially for gathering and reaching various needed achievement gates. GW has been consistent in their statements that PFO is about forming larger social structures and cooperation.
The smaller settlements, no matter how well organized, will not be able to complete in the mid to long term, against a larger populated semi organized settlement.
The solution is "balance of power" through aggression. If too many settlements are willing to play Sim Farm, and be peaceful with all of their neighbors, PFO will fail.
If four settlements are sitting at being able to craft tier 2 gear, and one settlement is crafting tier 3 gear (an cornering the market), it's likely time for some economic warfare.
It is at that point that outpost / poi raiding, attacks on caravans, factions, feuds and wars will truly shine. Bottom line, stealing resources is a lot more efficient than harvesting them.
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You've made some interesting points,
Perhaps then having, only the highest level class trainers be external to a settlement and maybe hidden away in the middle of a monster hex and only willing to speak to those above a certain level.
That would help to give the advancement a sense of quest about it.
Its a simple idea that could work.
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You've made some interesting points,
Perhaps then having, only the highest level class trainers be external to a settlement and maybe hidden away in the middle of a monster hex and only willing to speak to those above a certain level.That would help to give the advancement a sense of quest about it.
Its a simple idea that could work.
The reason civilization exists is to give security and stability by ensuring that all the bases are covered (or as many as possible.) While the lone-master is a common device in fiction, there is little incentive for the best-of-the-best to live in the middle of nowhere, alone, where they are subject wandering zergs and can't pay some peon to empty the chamber pot and make supper while they are using their time most effectively working on that +5 holy avenger to pay the peons and pad their 401k.
