Goblin Squad Member
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I know the Company - Fort - Settlement - Kingdom mechanics are a big time work in progress. However, I wanted to get your thoughts.
About how many people do you think it will take to go through each progression? I know we really have no idea yet, even what the steps will be on the way to kingdom.
I'm trying to recruit my buddies by saying we could have a small settlement part of someone elses kingdom. How few people can make a small settlement?
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Goblin Squad Member
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From Put It in Writing:
Once the settlement charter has been created, a minimum of 10 characters must sign it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Though, to be fair, good luck with a settlement of 10.
Dario that is what I am wondering about. I have a group larger then 10. I just wasnt sure if that would ne enough to have a small little settlement if we were all committed to it.
I could see us swearing allegiance as a barony to a larger kingdom perhaps...
Any thoughts on number ofplayers needed to maintain a small settlement?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Soldack Keldonson,
I think that, for your Settlement to ever be successful, you'd need to allow other players to join. If you intend to keep it private, then it will never be very good. If you intend to keep your private group in control of it, then it will largely depend on the players you can attract to it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you want your settlement to be small, you'd better make friends with a big dog who can protect you. Other groups will want your land. They will attack you for it. If they can field two hundred and fifty people, and you've just got your ten, you're going to lose. Flat out. Defender advantage or not.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you're intent on keeping your Settlement small, you'll even have a rough time finding a Player Nation to be a part of. Player Nations will get significantly more expensive to run based on how many Settlements they have, so the good ones won't want to have a low-value Settlement clogging up the works.
If you're open to the idea of growing your Settlement to include hundreds of players, and you have a credible claim to being able to do so, then you'll almost certainly be welcome into a larger Player Nation.
If you want your settlement to be small, you'd better make friends with a big dog who can protect you. Other groups will want your land. They will attack you for it. If they can field two hundred and fifty people, and you've just got your ten, you're going to lose. Flat out. Defender advantage or not.
What Dario says is true, need to keep that in mind for sure. Being as they capped the number of members of a CC to 20 (still don't get why) I would say that 20 is the minimum to get a settlement rolling. Honestly though I would try and recruit as many others as possible to have extra hands to gather materials needed to build and maintain the settlement, as well as providing defense against hostile PC's and to keep the NPC mob population down.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Chartered Companies are not traditional MMO guilds. Nor does it seem like they are intended to be the precursors to a group founding a settlement. We need to stop thinking of them as such. They require sponsorship from an existing settlement, so are more likely to serve as a mercenary company, an elite guard unit, or a settlement sponsored trade group.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm trying to recruit my buddies...
To get back to your original intent, though; I would caution you against trying to get someone excited about this project this far out. Unless there's something specific you're trying to accomplish right away, I would recommend waiting a year or so. At that point, the details of the game will be much more concrete, and the wait to play much shorter.
Good luck, at any rate :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you're intent on keeping your Settlement small, you'll even have a rough time finding a Player Nation to be a part of. Player Nations will get significantly more expensive to run based on how many Settlements they have, so the good ones won't want to have a low-value Settlement clogging up the works.
If you're open to the idea of growing your Settlement to include hundreds of players, and you have a credible claim to being able to do so, then you'll almost certainly be welcome into a larger Player Nation.
We would be open to growing a settlement.
It sounds like what we need to do is to find a large kingdom that will allow us to set up one of their subsequent major settlements...
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Dario, I may have overstated it - I tend to get hyperbolic sometimes if I'm not careful.
However, it's safe to say Ryan generally has the same impression.
From Goblinworks Blog: Put It in Writing:
Most "Guilds" are a dozen people. They're effectively what we'd call a Chartered Company...
Probably 90% of all "Guilds" area few dozen people or less.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It sounds like what we need to do is to find a large kingdom that will allow us to set up one of their subsequent major settlements...
The Seventh Veil is very publicly committed to ensuring our affiliate organizations maintain as much of their autonomy as possible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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FYI
....There's no defined cap for Chartered Companies at this stage, we'll figure out the optimal size via Crowdforging. ....
There is currenltty no defined cap on chartered company size although it looks like there will be. There is a ground swell for that limit (if there is one) to be more than 20 (in other threads).
I understand that the main drivers of PvP interaction will be settlement driven, but with the significant mechanical benefits of being part of the 'right' settlement I see no reason why there should be a limit on settlement size. Settlements can compete for larger CC's. Sounds like meaningful player interaction to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Depending on the way your guild intends to operate, we would be willing to consider incorporating your Company into the Mercatorum as a member city.
Our current intent is that the ruling council of Oligarchs would expand everytime a new city is added to the fold, incorporating a representative of that city.
Although the details may change, that is likely how we will operate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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FYI
....There's no defined cap for Chartered Companies at this stage, we'll figure out the optimal size via Crowdforging. ....
There is currenltty no defined cap on chartered company size although it looks like there will be. There is a ground swell for that limit (if there is one) to be more than 20 (in other threads).
I understand that the main drivers of PvP interaction will be settlement driven, but with the significant mechanical benefits of being part of the 'right' settlement I see no reason why there should be a limit on settlement size. Settlements can compete for larger CC's. Sounds like meaningful player interaction to me.
If is clear from everyone's threads "Chartered Company... " that we were all operating under the impression that CCs are traditional MMO guilds, and not smaller raid / fleet groups.I can only repeat myself as many times as necessary. Dispelling conclusions jumped to in error is a part of my job.
RyanD
Eve does do this, but eve also allows for hundreds of members in a corporation. Here we're being limited to a small group with the single-CC of 20 or so.You need to think of a Chartered Company like a Fleet in EVE, not a Corporation. It's just a Fleet that has some element of persistence.
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.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I'm reading Dario's post correctly, Ryan Dancey seems to be of two minds on what a CC is and how large it is to be?
I have a belief that what Ryan meant to write is:
A charter company is the analog of an EVE fleet or an MMO raid group. Which would be about 20 - 24 players on average, but I have seen larger raid groups as well (ie. Rift).
A settlement is the analog of an EVE corporation, which is made up of several, potentially unaffiliated CC raid groups. What I mean by unaffiliated is that the settlement is made up of many different CCs, all not affiliated under one banner (ie. The UnNamed Company having several divisions).
The Kingdom is the analog of an EVE alliance, made up of several settlements and potentially several hundred or even thousands of players.
My guess is that we will not be identified, with any kind of a floating tag, by our chartered company, but rather by our settlement. Also, if our settlement is part of a larger kingdom, we may also have that tag as well.
This conjecture on my part is supported by Ryan Dancey's statements or at least his desire to prod us towards joining settlements.
If this is the way the system will actually work, I support it. I wouldn't mind being identified by my settlement choice, rather than my company name. It kind of works into the concept that I had for the "UnNamed" company anyway. We can always have our "guild" by virtue of meta-gaming, company forums and team speak or other voice program.
The only questions I have are related to community banking, communications, taxation and friends lists.
Will community banking be at the CC level, or the settlement level or optionally at both?
Chat windows: Local, Global, Company, Settlement, Kingdom, Custom?
Taxation: Company, Settlement, Kingdom?
Friends Lists: Company, Settlement, Kingdom, Custom?
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I'm reading Dario's post correctly, Ryan Dancey seems to be of two minds on what a CC is and how large it is to be?
I have a belief that what Ryan meant to write is:
A charter company is the analog of an EVE fleet or an MMO raid group. Which would be about 20 - 24 players on average, but I have seen larger raid groups as well (ie. Rift).
A settlement is the analog of an EVE corporation, which is made up of several, potentially unaffiliated CC raid groups. What I mean by unaffiliated is that the settlement is made up of many different CCs, all not affiliated under one banner (ie. The UnNamed Company having several divisions).
The Kingdom is the analog of an EVE alliance, made up of several settlements and potentially several hundred or even thousands of players.
This is somewhat accurate, except that CCs are entirely orthogonal to settlements/kingdoms. The only relation between the two are that CCs are sponsored by settlements. You don't need a CC to form a settlement, the settlement is an entity in and of itself, formed by those individuals signing its charter. CCs never "join" settlements, only their members do. A CC's members can join different settlements as suits their individual needs.
This is all from the Put it in Writing blog thread which I just finished reading, myself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Bluddwolf, if you haven't already, you might want to read Money Changes Everything. It's the only real info we have so far that relates to banking.
You might also check out Put It in Writing. It's our best source of information so far for Taxation.
Ryan also responded to a question from me in Goblinworks Blog: Put It in Writing that makes me believe it's likely Player Nations will also be able to set Tax levels. (Note, I've corrected the quote tags):
Ryan, would you mind offering a few examples of the kinds of things that Player Nations will actually be voting on?They'll vote on basically the same things. A certain building might be a Player Nation building, not controlled by any one Settlement. Or an Player Nation account might require a disbursement vote, etc.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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I think a big part of this conversation has to be about what your Settlement does.
I think a lot of people are thinking "my Settlement will be about crafting" or "my Settlement will be about robbing others", etc.
You need to think about your Settlement in broader terms. To be successful, you'll need groups within your Settlement that are harvesters, crafters, explorers, adventurers, soldiers and teamsters. You may have a certain goal for what you or a small group of characters that work with you will do, but Settlements require you to be extremely cross-functional.
There will be more people who want a Settlement than there are places to build them. So there will be a constant tension between those who have one and those who want one. That implies a state of near constant territorial conflict. To win, you'll need to be using all the various tools in the toolbox - both as defender and attacker.
If you want to opt-out of this struggle, you'll have to find ways to live and work out of NPC controlled Settlements which are immune from the territorial control battles. The downside is that those Settlements will be a long way from "wilderness" areas (and thus highest-value harvestable materials) and Settlement buildings will not support the full range of character development options. You may find that you're limited as to how specialized you can become while you remain a member of an NPC Settlement. And there will only be a few of them, and your alignment and reputation will further restrict which NPC Settlements will have you.
Even though we'll continue to add more territory as the game ages its inevitable that if we're growing on plan the number of Settlers will outpace the number of Settlements. You'll want to be thinking about how to form large, complex organizations and how to approach existing Settlements to get them to accept you (and your friends) into their own organizational structures.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've been tasked with thinking some first thoughts on our Chartered Company. We are Northern Lights, a name that reflected the real-life geographical location of most of our founding group when we started a Kinship in LOTRO. To make a transition for the CC in PFO, I've been working on the premise that we will be a trading group (company, collective, whatever).
Hopefully we will be able to stake a place in the north as our "trading outpost" to center a settlement around. If not, our initial location will probably be "the regional trade hub for the Northern Lights Trading Company" or something like that.
By going with the trading company model, I can justify different races and classes (or... okay, not classes in PFO... but maybe "professional focuses"?) having membership in the group. It also allows some flexibility in size of physical presence in various areas, a single location, or multiple ones.
As for protection, I'm hoping enough of our members will be militaristic enough to provide defense and guard functions.
I think a big part of this conversation has to be about what your Settlement does.
I think a lot of people are thinking "my Settlement will be about crafting" or "my Settlement will be about robbing others", etc.
You need to think about your Settlement in broader terms. To be successful, you'll need groups within your Settlement that are harvesters, crafters, explorers, adventurers, soldiers and teamsters. You may have a certain goal for what you or a small group of characters that work with you will do, but Settlements require you to be extremely cross-functional.
There will be more people who want a Settlement than there are places to build them. So there will be a constant tension between those who have one and those who want one. That implies a state of near constant territorial conflict. To win, you'll need to be using all the various tools in the toolbox - both as defender and attacker.
If you want to opt-out of this struggle, you'll have to find ways to live and work out of NPC controlled Settlements which are immune from the territorial control battles. The downside is that those Settlements will be a long way from "wilderness" areas (and thus highest-value harvestable materials) and Settlement buildings will not support the full range of character development options. You may find that you're limited as to how specialized you can become while you remain a member of an NPC Settlement. And there will only be a few of them, and your alignment and reputation will further restrict which NPC Settlements will have you.
Even though we'll continue to add more territory as the game ages its inevitable that if we're growing on plan the number of Settlers will outpace the number of Settlements. You'll want to be thinking about how to form large, complex organizations and how to approach existing Settlements to get them to accept you (and your friends) into their own organizational structures.
Ryan, can we get a ballpark number (subject to change) of how many people a settlement can accommodate? I'm curious as to the max number of residents in a settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan, can we get a ballpark number (subject to change) of how many people a settlement can accommodate? I'm curious as to the max number of residents in a settlement.
This is an important question considering that there may be a limited number of instructor slots for skill training in theses settlements.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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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.
Ryan, can we get a ballpark number (subject to change) of how many people a settlement can accommodate? I'm curious as to the max number of residents in a settlement.This is an important question considering that there may be a limited number of instructor slots for skill training in theses settlements.
I was also considering that if CCs total membership exceeds the number of residents in a settlement, some sort of solution, either another settlement, or maybe they could add annexes within the same hex? Not sure how that could be worked out really. But knowing, even a guess, of the max population for a settlement would help.
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.
A excellent. Even at half that figure, 500, we won't have to worry about splitting into two settlements.
It'll take some work to gather, and maintain the resources for a settlement. I see some logistics coming into play to organize all the threads that will be in motion running a settlement. I can't wait! :p
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan, since you are following this thread, I have a suggestion for settlement interaction:
You may be familiar with Pirates of the Burning Sea, and in that MMO players had the abilities to smuggle goods into the port towns that would either stabilize or destabilize the town's population. The morale of the NPC population was a major factor in the town's ability to prevail or fail when under siege.
I would like to see this type of a system in PFO. This would allow us to have true smuggling and allow for a non combat means to interact with the war mechanics of the settlements. As I stated above, the actual mechanic would be either a buff or a rebuff vs. the morale of the settlement being interacted with. This system should also be included in the player to player contract system, where we could accept contracts from settlements to either support them or disrupt their enemy.
Smuggling could have a number of skills, including both those that help a smuggler and those that detect one. These skills could be broken down into Chaotic (Smuggling) and Lawful (Detect Contraband). I can envision those using "Champion Flags" having a similar ability to the Stand And Deliver mechanic, to search for illegal contraband, and to confiscate it. Smugglers on the other hand would have specialized skills to help conceal their contraband from the searches of these customs agents.
I can envision those using "Champion Flags" having a similar ability to the Stand And Deliver mechanic, to search for illegal contraband, and to confiscate it.
That sounds pretty LE to me. Like the "stop and search" thing the Gestapo, err the cops are using in some cities.
I like the smuggling idea. It would be excellent to add that to the different things possible during war.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Smuggling would be awesome too, imagine the CE getting LG smuggled into their territories, and visa versa. Now there is some fun for settlements and nations to keep an eye on internal happenings.
@Ryan, seeing you definitely following this thread, I hate to have to rehash my questions over and over. Have you got any thoughts, ideas, suggestions for how the druids can be formed together, in a council "settlement" that spans all wilderness of the world? A druid CC could be seen as a simple regional faction group within the larger council.
A character can or not be part of a CC, can or not be part of a settlement, can or not be part of a kingdom. That is a character could be a member of a kingdom, yet not be a member of a settlement, or CC. I presume a character being part of a settlement, and that settlement is part of a kingdom, then character would be a member of kingdom. A character could be a member of a CC, but not necessary part of a settlement, or be member of another settlement, than the settlement the CC is member of.
Also I have no idea on how druid structures would have some protection considering the druid structures would be spread far apart through out the wilderness. Most of the time they would have no one around, at times a 1 to 5 would be at one of the structures, and the once a year maybe a huge gathering taking place at one of the structures.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You'll have to address questions like that to the game designers if you want to have some discussion about long term development. In the short term the answer is characters pursuing Druid roles are just like any other character and will be a part of a Settlement, either NPC or PC.
How do we appropriately address questions like these to the designers other than posting here on the forums?
Moderation between the four extremes is a legitimate position. It is where constructive synthesis can progress, yet so far in the design it is a desolate, undeveloped wasteland. Balance between the four extreme elements should find expression in a moderate fifth element, yet that potential has so far been unprovided for.
Just as a third power makes the balance between two more dynamic, so too should a fifth power bloc make a quadratic struggle more dynamic.
High reputation Neutrals should be empowered to form a Neutral settlement.
Further my recommendation is to locate the best Neutral training facilities not in Lawful Neutral settlements but in True Neutral settlements.
It appears currently as if there is a design bias prevalent that excludes Moderation. My guess is that moderation is being presumed antithetical to 'meaningful' player interaction, but I wish to urge that meaningful player interaction is not only annihilist, but also constructivist, and there should be an alternative power center that can inspire allegience in the four other Neutral alignments (CN, NG, Ln, and NE) and provide elite training facilities for Neutral skills.
It would add significant depth to the politics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I find myself in full agreement with Being. Though the design of the game clearly has meaningful conflict and competition with persistent results at its heart, to neglect the Neutral alignments seems to promote such conflict at the expense of possible moderation. Though such conflict and competition will no doubt add to the realism of the game, in excess, it can tear that same game apart until only one overpowering faction remains. I see a great need in this game for players who desire to walk a middle path.
Too often, I think Neutral is viewed by those at the extremes as playing it safe, lacking conviction, etc. Instead, those playing neutral could add at least two dynamic roles to world balance. First, a Neutral character or settlement could be the opportunistic middleman, trading information, goods, and services between groups that cannot directly trade. For the benefit of the more political and alignment extremes, these Neutral parties could be the Switzerland of PFO. The second role is that of active moderator - offering their unbiased services to parties in conflict. This might be especially important once kingdoms have grown to the size that even like-aligned neighbors begin to encroach upon one another's territory and resources. As an unguilded community networker, this second role falls into part of the niche I hope to fill when the game goes live.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A third function should be that of arbitor/diplomat. Where there is a growing power among the good two evil powers may have dispute, yet warring in front of a Good threat would be foolhardy: there may be a place for such a dispute to be settled by a disinterested yet reasonably reliable third party. Where the settlements in dispute are lawful of course the natural arbitor wouldbe Lawful Neutral, but where the settlements are chaotic the Lawful Neutral would be unavailable and True Neutral would be the next most reliable arbitor.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Moderation between the four extremes is a legitimate position. It is where constructive synthesis can progress, yet so far in the design it is a desolate, undeveloped wasteland. Balance between the four extreme elements should find expression in a moderate fifth element, yet that potential has so far been unprovided for.
Just as a third power makes the balance between two more dynamic, so too should a fifth power bloc make a quadratic struggle more dynamic.
High reputation Neutrals should be empowered to form a Neutral settlement.
Further my recommendation is to locate the best Neutral training facilities not in Lawful Neutral settlements but in True Neutral settlements.
It appears currently as if there is a design bias prevalent that excludes Moderation. My guess is that moderation is being presumed antithetical to 'meaningful' player interaction, but I wish to urge that meaningful player interaction is not only annihilist, but also constructivist, and there should be an alternative power center that can inspire allegience in the four other Neutral alignments (CN, NG, Ln, and NE) and provide elite training facilities for Neutral skills.
It would add significant depth to the politics.
The current design with regard to Neutral seems to be predominantly based in the reality of the MMO experience. Given a chance to not have to make meaningful decisions, the overwhelming majority of MMO players will not make meaningful decisions, which leads to a vanilla environment. There are a rare few that can RP true neutral but that is rare.
If they could create roles/flags/etc that provide for meaningful true neutral decisons that would be good. Something that make people who are typically neutral make some real choices.
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Goblin Squad Member
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First I would differentiate between the merely wishy-washy from those who are actively for the game-world as a whole.
The active, or True, Neutral should not be ambivalent but instead activists promoting neutral skills like inter-settlement trade, would be characteristically pro-diplomacy, anti-escalatory, pro-environment.
A neutral with high reputation is clearly different from a new and unknown character.
A neutral who destroys an untended resource harvester (which I propose would be destructive to the environment, yet yielding higher immediate gain while exhausting the resource quickly) might acquire a 'vandal' flag which opens him or her to attack (defense of property) without alignment loss, but increasing local reputation.
I have a question whther the 'reality' of the MMO experience is simply the consequence of perceptions. The struggle between good and evil, and to a lesser degree between order and chaos, does have neutral activities that only have not been recognized in themselves. Neutral activities such as exploring, crafting, and trade have been treated as auxiliary activities that fill time against the backdrop of the overarching plotlines between good/evil and chaos/order drama.
In fact these activities are something in themselves, and not just a few players focus on them. Myopia, even if traditional, is no less myopic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Elorebaen,
If by MMO experience you refer to the games of the last decade, that might be true. However, very few true sandbox games fall into that time period and I would hope that we aren't using these more recent games as the meter by which we measure how PFO should be designed.
What you're suggesting almost sounds like you believe that for the good of the game (to avoid vanilla), the game designers should force us to play more polarizing alignments. Again, this is supposed to be a sandbox game, which I take as meaning a game where the players have more freedom to play the character they wish to play. I am suspect of any game that claims to be a sandbox, but with nearly every new blog or dev post seems to keep describing game mechanics that limit choice or penalize particular play styles. I hope this trend does not continue.
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First I would differentiate between the merely wishy-washy from those who are actively for the game-world as a whole.
The active, or True, Neutral should not be ambivalent but instead activists promoting neutral skills like inter-settlement trade, would be characteristically pro-diplomacy, anti-escalatory, pro-environment.
IMO, the above statement describes the difference between Neutral and True Neutral. Where neutral is apathetic to good/evil, law/chaos, and mainly self absorbed, or at least predominately concerned with its self. True Neutral on the other hand is very involved in the struggle of law/chaos, good/evil. It must be in order to maintain a balance and prevent one extreme from rising above the other.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You'll have to address questions like that to the game designers if you want to have some discussion about long term development. In the short term the answer is characters pursuing Druid roles are just like any other character and will be a part of a Settlement, either NPC or PC.
Ryan, can you nudge the game designers this way please.
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Goblin Squad Member
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IMO, the above statement describes the difference between Neutral and True Neutral. Where neutral is apathetic to good/evil, law/chaos, and mainly self absorbed, or at least predominately concerned with its self. True Neutral on the other hand is very involved in the struggle of law/chaos, good/evil. It must be in order to maintain a balance and prevent one extreme from rising above the other.First I would differentiate between the merely wishy-washy from those who are actively for the game-world as a whole.
The active, or True, Neutral should not be ambivalent but instead activists promoting neutral skills like inter-settlement trade, would be characteristically pro-diplomacy, anti-escalatory, pro-environment.
Well said Valandur.
I would like to create a meta-game feature, that of having a druid council for which all druids belong too, and can take part in, to work together and as individuals protecting the wilderness and maintaining natural balance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was thinking maybe a teamspeak server called 'Teh Grapevine' or The Green Man' we could all tab into when it was convenient, maybe have hidden gatherings in the wild or keep each other aware of approaching dangers.
Something that allows us to stay in touch outside of normal guild-centric channels, a loose confederation of like-minded reasonably independent players.
That does not fill the desolate region in the center of the alignment system. It does not provide training facilities for the druidic skills and feats. It does not provide diplomacy training or woodcraft. There are enough rightly neutral alignment skills to warrant True Neutral as the Fifth Element of Power.