Goblin Squad Member
|
Matthew,
My comment about too invested wasn't for fear of time constraints - I tend to have time. I'm just the single game type and don't want to create too much in another game to leave while waiting for PFO. I'll content myself with other projects until EE comes around.
Well that makes at least a few of us that feel that way. I wonder if that is typical for the forum groups for all MMOs that are "in development"...or just the ones that seem so promising?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I find I have no taste for theme-parks anymore, and I don't want to get too invested in any other current or upcoming sandbox besides PFO.
This
Been wasting my time with SWTOR lately and I really want to beat myself in the head with a bat.
Playing with a couple friends. One loves sandbox games and is joining us, the other guy was actually stupid enough to tell me that the graphics for PFO look bad so he wont play...
And of course since he is one of those sore loser types that wines and cries when playing a warzone in star wars... I chalk it up to that, he may actually lose something. Seriously if you cannot handle Themepark PVP then stop playing games.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
It will take time for PFO to build steam, but once it does it will be amazing.
Settlements alone will bring and build large nations. The Devs may very well find themselves expanding their territory control on the map. Which will be a good thing.
I expect nations to control many settlements in the long run of the game.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I find I have no taste for theme-parks anymore, and I don't want to get too invested in any other current or upcoming sandbox besides PFO.This
Yes, indeed. This.
I'm already more committed to PFO than any other game I've ever played, and I'm positive I have many more hours invested in it than I ever did in most of those other games.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
It seems like the always training design of PFO will compliment playing practically any other game in tandem very nicely. I expect I'll be losing a lot of time between this and EQ Next, but I so very much want to see both games do well.
Oh are you involved in EQ Next? What can you share with us?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm guessing if EQN is using the same engine as PS2 then you'll see some fast-paced combat, lots of players on screen, big seamless worlds with impressive graphics and some sandbox leanings such as player choices in making factions, using storybricks quest building content and choosing how and where to pvp via different rule sets.
Technically I think it will be impressive. Themeparks have proven to be too finite is their problem. The more finite the more ephemeral the community also which seems very anti-mmo. Even though the actual games play well, it's when you come to end-game or the grind-curve either take you out of the experience of a virtual world full of possibilities.
I hope PFO gives a sense of having time, with distances between locations meaningful and building up associates over time rewarding etc.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There are really only 2 factors that make a video game of any interest to me: Character Customization and Game World Immersion. I'll play PFO till the end of my gaming days, to the exclusion of all others, if the Character Customization matches or surpasses Eve Online and if the game world becomes everything I know Ryan wants it to be.
I see, understand and empathize completely with his vision. I know my lofty expectations will not be fullfilled on EE, or even at OE. But by the end of the first year or two I will have been a starting participant in what I believe will be the greatest MMO for many years.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Call me a bit strange, but I'm one of those players far more interested in making a craftsman or gatherer than an actual battle-hardened character. That side of things always fascinated me. What concerns me a little is this portion I read from the blog:
"A portion of this minimum fee proportional to the character's contribution is paid for any PC involvement in construction, even if construction is cancelled before completion. The minimum payment is modified by the percentage of construction time a player was involved in production, so players who join the project later will receive a reduced minimum payment, and are notified of this. It is always beneficial to get onto a project as early as possible."
My main question here would be something along the lines of "shouldn't a character's relevant skill level also contribute to the payout they receive from a job?" After all, a more skilled craftsman is contributing to the job being completed more quickly. If they really aren't receiving more reimbursement for doing so, what is the incentive there really? I assume more skilled fighters would be getting more lucrative rewards from being more skilled in that particular fields, so should the same not be true for craftsmen?
Perhaps I am chomping a little at the bit since information on how crafting and gathering in this game is rather sparse, but I want to make sure that some of these concerns are at least voiced. Otherwise, it is possible it may fall to the wayside.
A portion of this minimum fee proportional to the character's contribution is paid for any PC involvement in construction, even if construction is cancelled before completion. The minimum payment is modified by the percentage of construction time a player was involved in production... It is always beneficial to get onto a project as early as possible.
From the bolded text, I see no reason not to believe that the minimum fee (when buildings are cancelled mid-way thru) is ALSO scaled based on each character's skill, just like the normal payment is. Skill = Speed at building = You 'contribute' more in a given time period. Of course, time on the job also is a factor, and the blog calls that out because that is something that a given character at a given point in time CAN control, while they can't arbitrarily increase their construction skill.
I am not quite clear on the paradigm of this minimum fee... Is the average minimum fee (modified by relative skill and relative time spent working) the same whether or not the building project was 10% completed or 90% completed (when cancelled)? I can see the dynamic this creates with max # of workers and the smaller pool of high-skilled workers necessary (or desired) for some projects leading to higher minimum fees (upon cancellation) for high skill workers, but I don't quite get the basic assumption of the minimum fee... It seems simpler to just say the workers are paid the same rate as for normal completion, but proportionate to the time they spent (before it is cancelled). Or potentially if a settlement can get away with it, say that if they cancel (obviously because they need the funds/DI) they will pay 80% of normal wage (or some other chosen figure). If they are cancelling because of DI, the same workers should probably be able to work on the new building (if it uses the same construction skills).
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Can we have a permanent way of seeing who ordered the construction, who contributed the most to the construction process and other such info?
It could be fun to walk around in a settlement 10 years from now and see a plaque next to the cathedral saying "Taskmaster Lisa ordered the construction of this cathedral anno 254, the workforce lead by Bob the Builder completed the work in 256."
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Can we have a permanent way of seeing who ordered the construction, who contributed the most to the construction process and other such info?
It could be fun to walk around in a settlement 10 years from now and see a plaque next to the cathedral saying "Taskmaster Lisa ordered the construction of this cathedral anno 254, the workforce lead by Bob the Builder completed the work in 256."
This.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
|
Can we have a permanent way of seeing who ordered the construction, who contributed the most to the construction process and other such info?
It could be fun to walk around in a settlement 10 years from now and see a plaque next to the cathedral saying "Taskmaster Lisa ordered the construction of this cathedral anno 254, the workforce lead by Bob the Builder completed the work in 256."
For some reason this made me think about the engravings of Dwarf Fortress.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Can we have a permanent way of seeing who ordered the construction, who contributed the most to the construction process and other such info?
It could be fun to walk around in a settlement 10 years from now and see a plaque next to the cathedral saying "Taskmaster Lisa ordered the construction of this cathedral anno 254, the workforce lead by Bob the Builder completed the work in 256."
This assumes they are not demolished by trebuchet fire in some inter-settlment war in the mean time :D
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
It seems like the always training design of PFO will compliment playing practically any other game in tandem very nicely. I expect I'll be losing a lot of time between this and EQ Next, but I so very much want to see both games do well.Oh are you involved in EQ Next? What can you share with us?
Sadly, I'm not. Just a long time fan of the original, before it started trying to be things it's not. It sounds like it's meant to be a reboot of the series, with a big emphasis on the emergent gameplay that PFO also holds in such high regard.
My comment was directed more towards the nature of PFO in that it seems like you can be successful even when playing part time. Unlike most other games where success is almost directly proportional to the amount of time spent in game.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
EQ was marvelous for its day. It was one way I could still interact with my kids, especially my son, after my separation and subsequent relocation across the continent. It would be good to see it resurgent in this 'new' incarnation but I fear for the changes we will see. If only they would largely keep the original but with up-to-date graphics, sounds, UI and other furniture...and get rid of all those teleports! Give taxi services back to Wizards and Druids!
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Such are the hazards of making things more accessible to the masses. It's a nice little lesson in economics and politics though. If you place wizards and druids in the role of taxi unions and PoK as a phone hailing service like Über.
EQ also made me permanently leery of content nerfs. Remember how hard a few of those epic quests were? Oh, but now Faydedar is summonable at will, it's cool guys.
I sincerely hope that the dev mindset of PFO does not involve dumbing down the game to the mean skillset, but rather encouraging those skillsets to grow and overcome the challenges they are faced with. Especially those that are proven not to be insurmountable, as I feel that's where the most meaning comes from in a game, your accomplishments.
Very few stories to be had in retelling that time we steamrolled that "epic boss" after a nerf. Memories to last a lifetime when you're involved in something you have to struggle for, win or lose.
Question:
For the construction system, you are supposed to 'sign up' or 'hire on' but not need to spend actual playing time near the facility, since that is abstracted to time when you are not logged in. Given the accelerated several in-game days per each real day time scale means you are supposed to be working on the in-game 'days' you are not logged in and playing other content. I am concerned at the violation of locality in time and space that introduces, which otherwise seems to be a priority of the game design.
Are you supposed to be able to 'sign up'/'hire on' and your character will be considered working at the full rate until the building is completed, without any further character interaction? It seems that space/time locality could be retained if you were required to "clock in" every time period that you want to be paid for working. That means that construction workers would need to be able to get to the vicinity of the construction site each time they do this... Otherwise you could end up with an entirely non-local workforce for whom getting to the site would be a hassle if they needed to be locally present, but they can totally ignore locality factors as long as they can initially 'sign up'/'hire on' at one point in time.
I can't recall what the exact ratio of in-game to real time was, but saying it is 4 in-game days to 1 real day, it seems reasonable to have 6 hour "shifts" that you need to "clock in" to in order to benefit from working the subsequent 6 hours. If a character clocks in every 6 hours, they can benefit from multiple shifts of work, if they don't another character will take the work. If you 'clocked in' for the last shift, your spot could be held for you until a certain time window is passed (rules could also enforce a maximum number of sequential shifts/ a minimum 'off time' period to avoid bots, etc.) The specific length of the time period isn't the most important thing, but it seems ridiculous if you were counted as continuously working full time on a project that takes 3 weeks to complete, when during this time you are actually on the opposite of the map with dangerous factions in-between which should impede routine traffic.
A similar sort of regime seems appropriate for other 'jobs' such as operating harvesting PoI or other settlement features which require 'management'... If those are indefinite/never ending tasks, it seems MORE important. Again, I don't see a specific time period as important as simply having one at all. I believe that something like that was indicated at some point for 'managed' settlement buildings, but would something similar be implemented for all of these 'background job' scenarios?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
For the construction system, you are supposed to 'sign up' or 'hire on' but not need to spend actual playing time near the facility, since that is abstracted to time when you are not logged in. Given the accelerated several in-game days per each real day time scale means you are supposed to be working on the in-game 'days' you are not logged in and playing other content. I am concerned at the violation of locality in time and space that introduces, which otherwise seems to be a priority of the game design.
I completely agree, and think a much better approach would be to have the PCs actually be in-game working on that construction project (or some other project(s)) while the player is not logged in. This would require you to be in the right place with the right materials, rather than having the game simply hand-wave around those logistical concerns.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I'm not sure about having the characters loiter in the game space for hours or days while their players are offline.
I'd think the easiest compromise is requiring characters to be logged off within that settlement's boundaries. Maybe at the construction site or the same tile. If you're working at a nearby gather site when logged on, you can still make your way back to the village to pull your labor shifts.
But making us spend gaming time walking back and forth between our village to the gather site each time we log in and log out would grow old. If the time might be significant, just deduct that time from possible labor hours as part of the log-out/log-in processes.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I would really love to see offline characters remain in game.
This is something I recently discovered Age of Wushu does. You actually kidnap players that have logged out for the day, which is all rather meaningless since afaik it doesn't do anything to the player being kidnapped... I could be wrong, I only saw a brief bit while a friend was playing.
In practice, players staying in game as NPCs could have jobs in their settlements, part time at the smithy, guard duty, etc.. Players camping out in the wilderness could set up campfires that others could potentially stop and rest at; having slightly more safety (assuming compatible alignments, etc..) would be attractive to many I would think.
Sadly, this would be mostly a cosmetic thing without tremendous effort. Sure the campfire example offers a tangible benefit, but for the most part GW would actually have to decide to clutter the game with offline PCs in NPC guise (which it seems like they've stated they want to keep server loads to a minimum where possible). It would do wonders for making cities appear more alive and bustling, it would help the feel of the game immensely IMO, but would otherwise add little value (again, without tremendous effort).
With some good NPC AI it could actually go somewhere, but that's a lot of investment for an otherwise aesthetic mechanic.
Still, I would love to see it happen. It wouldn't hurt my feelings just to see familiar faces make up the bulk of any misc NPCs that are going to populate a town if nothing else.
Yeah, I think there is a broader range of issues impacting specific implementations like that, but the broader point is important, retaining the relevance of locality in space and time, as applies to other game areas. Without ANY such relevance, it pretty much pushes things towards the construction labor market is 100% efficient across the entire game world, essentially totally commodotized with geographic considerations having zero or absolutely minimal effect. That just doesn't feel in the spirit of PFO. Even if a job is open to the general market, characters already based in the settlement or adjacent ones should have some sort of advantage, or at least lack of 'opportunity cost' in 'commuting' to and from the site to "clock in".
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
It sounds like maybe characters working on the building could stop contributing if they leave the hex?
I think they very much want everyone to be able to contribute to the construction projects without having to worry about where they log out, etc. I understand that desire, and largely agree with it. I think this is a case where half-measures would actually be detrimental. Unless they're going to embrace the concept fully, there's a compelling reason to make it easy to go out and adventure and not have to worry about spending up to 30 minutes to get back to your Settlement when you might only have 30 minutes to play.
That's why I think the approach I mentioned is the least hassle but allows for a basic level of locality, taking into account handwaving of what happens when you're logged out.
'Clocking' in (at the physical work site) to be able to count as working for the next shift (whether 6 realworld hours, 8 RW hours, 1 day, whatever) lets you continue playing during that time anywhere in the world, you just need to have been able to come to the site once... A reasonable requirement if we are to allow the handwaving of saying your character would come to the site and work at it while you are logged out. If that is really such a hassle for you, then taking this job just doesn't seem plausible. Anybody doing 'commuting' like this, or any other type of travel, can always take ad-hoc courier/caravan jobs while they're at it.
Heck, it's not unreasonable for your character to continue to 'auto-clock-in' whenever the time period comes up again as long as you are not logged in. But if your in-game play is so far away that it isn't feasable to commute to work at that location, it doesn't seem plausible from benefitting from at that specific location. Locality has been maintained as an important design feature, e.g. goods sold at SPECIFIC markets in specific locations, not global ones, goods must be transported taking into account their bulk, etc, not teleported wherever needed. (well, that may be a high level spell). Breaking it here doesn't seem justified.
I can't remember the exact quote, but I believe what they published about the job of settlement managers who oversee specific settlement buildings/PoI (whose skill/stats determine the efficiency of the PoI) seemed to already work like this, although the specific details weren't mentioned. Construction labor seems similar in that it's allowed to be 'background' work, but still tied to the character themself, who is supposed to the nexus of locality for that character's activities. Incidentally, it makes sense that construction labor and 'settlement management'/PoI management jobs would occupy the same 'background labor' 'SLOT', i.e. just as you can only work on one construction site at once, you could not work on both a construction site AND be managing a PoI.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I'd go with the averages on this one. If a player is logged in an average of 8 hours per IRL day (a high amount to casual players, typical amount for the more hardcore..) but offline the other 16. For every 1 day'ish plus, they're spending nearly 3 available for labor. Assuming a building even takes 24 IRL hours to finish.. that's a fair amount of in-game time spent working on the project, even averaged over the full four game days.
This really isn't any kind of stretch at all. It's the equiv of something like a 60-70 hour work week, even with the adventuring on the side and possible travel times to and from the settlement in question. Sleep on the wagon, or when you're dead. =b
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I'd go with the averages on this one.
This goes to my point about half-measures above.
While I would definitely love to see PFO go the whole 9 yards and give the players the tools to script what their characters are doing when they're not logged in, it would be a monumental feat of programming, and would really only make sense if that particular feature were an integral part of the Vision from day one.
Short of that, I think we're on a curve where any incremental movement towards that end would cause the Fun factor to lower, until that critical point was reached and the curve started bending upwards again after our characters are in-world and acting on our behalf while we're logged off.
Unless the system has all the other advantages of Persistent Characters, I don't think it's a good idea to create incentives for players to use alts for projects so that they'll get better productivity on their construction projects.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Maybe AFK players can fill a variety of roles?
Log out in a region, your 'Character' disappears and an NPC of similar, but lower power, build/gear appears and performs actions based upon your last used 'Flag'?
Bandits will keep raiding, Heinous will keep .... uhm .... doing strange things to their Succubi minions, Crusaders will actively hunt down monsters and Bandits, Crafters will produce low-grade goods ....
It also means that you can 'help' the settlement even when AFK.
Kidnapping your 'Shadow' Character means nothing, but it can provide the 'slaves' for the Slavers in the game?
Bah, I don't know, I'm in the middle of a 7-day migraine here.
But I do like the idea of people being able to provide some form of benefit, even if it is just being a meat-shield, to a settlement or hideout, or even their own business, while Offline.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
The whole training your skills and building things perpetually is a solid model in my eyes. I don't really see any downsides to what they proposed on that end. It would be nice to have your character don work attire in your absence and carry on.
I would even be fine with characters disappearing from right where they were in NPC mode to accommodate the player logging back in and expecting to be wherever they logged out.
|
CEO, Goblinworks
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Let's imagine what happens if your character stays in-game when you log out working at a crafting station. If the Settlement is developed for crafting and it attracts a lot of crafters, it will have a fairly high population density. At any given time, only about 20% of the active accounts are logged in. So if there are 20 people logged in and crafting, there will be 80 more robots standing in the same space.
Have you played an avatar based game where 100 characters stand in the same place? It is total chaos. If collision is enabled it becomes likely you'll be trapped in the mass and unable to move. If collision is not enabled you get a smear of characters overlapping so that you see little beyond a blob of limbs and tunics..
Rapidly, any presumed "cool factor" is lost. When you approach the area, your frame rate drops as textures are loaded into the video memory. There's a forest of character names floating around so its hard to find any one particlar avatar. Nobody is going to do anything useful in that place in a social context. You'll just drop off a character to become a robot and when you return you'll exit as fast as possible.
You're not going to "role play" in that area. You're going to curse us for making you suffer through every interaction with it.
If you played City of Heroes, imagine a rapid transit station where 80% of the characters stand around and never do anything remotely interesting except block the door to the cars. If you've played WoW, imagine standing in front of the bank while 80 "zombie" characters stand between you and the tellers....
It's an interesting idea if the world was you and your friend network. It's a bad idea if the world is hundreds of thousands of players...
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Ryan, that's why I made the point that I wouldn't ever expect it to be implemented unless it's in a game where that was an integral feature of the original game vision, resulting in a significant departure from the normal ways of doing all the things you just talked about doing. I definitely see why it's not viable in PFO, and I'm really not lobbying for you to include it.
Since we've gotten past the side-track of debating PC avatars always being displayed,
I'm still curious about the solely gameplay/gamedynamic-related question I originally posted:
Are you supposed to be able to 'sign up'/'hire on' and your character will be considered working at the full rate
until the building is completed, without any further character interaction?
Or are there limitations requiring intermittent interactions on your part?
Or limitations related to your in-game location, required interactions or not?
(And will Settlement PoI management positions be mutually exclusive with construction jobs at the same time?)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I sense a level of masochism in comments like that one and others that have littered across the threads. We already know that this is a game built around medieval industry. The successful settlements will be the ones that have most of their members in constant participation of the crafting system. Not only will we be crafting and gathering all the time, we will be doing it with difficulty levels of transportation and time consumption.
So as I've said before the game is already a crafter's wet dream. Crafters will be all-stars in this game and pretty much everybody is forced to take part in it. So why on earth do we keep getting suggestions for MORE complex interactions on the crafting system? I mean people begging for some really boring crap like "clocking in during your crafting" or "emoting for half an hour".
It's an adventure game, not Minecraft. Crafting is already front and center here in it's importance, these suggestions would make a game that revolves completely around crafting. You wouldn't even be allowed to go kill some goblins because you have to "clock in" at your virtual job!
Please, please stop the madness! These cries for uber realism get ridiculous!
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't play Sims, I plays RPGs and have done for the last 33-odd years. I enjoy realism in my role-playing games. Anyone who has used my GURPS Saduria gameworld material will know this. Please don't ram your needs into my fantasy game. :)
Not everyone enjoys the same form of gameplay, and not everyone enjoys the same level of realism. I, for example, don't particularly like the High Fantasy genre where magic is so embedded in everyday life that wizardry is as common as cookery.
I like games where it is important to keep track of your rations, where repairing armour is essential, and where the undead are truly rare and frightening rather than just stock troops for the dungeon-stocker to buy from the 'fill-your-dungeon' catalogue.
Pathfinder can be played many ways, and I have played in three different groups that have three different approaches to the level of realism. They all work, and in different ways.
What we are doing at present is suggesting ideas that we think will make PFO more enjoyable for us as paying players. Disagree by all means, but I don't think it is helpful to simply dismiss ideas as 'ridiculous' or belonging in a virtual life game because they don't fit your personal view of you want in the game.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
A'right, I'll try to keep my tone down.
Call your campaign as realistic as you want, but I will bet the first 5 coppers i make in this game that you don't tell your players to sit in a corner with a dunce hat for an entire session while they craft. Creating a magic item, scribing a scroll, building a castle all happens "off screen", between sessions. Gathering happens with a d20 roll.
I am also a fan of the low magic setting and take it that way when its available. Keeping track of rations/mapping/ammunition etc. is tons of fun, I get that and am glad we will have some of it in PFO. My point is that when implementing all these things you have to keep some sense of scope. The design of the game means that players have to be involved in the industry constantly. I really doubt your realistic PnP campaign does that. On top of that we get people wanting to be forced to "sit around" while they perform these duties which are constantly in need.
I do not think the target market for PFO is people who want to log in and actively craft for an hour before logging out. I think GW's is dead money correct in making a fantasy MMO where crafting is VERY IMPORTANT to be successful, but not something the players have to ACTIVELY DO with their gaming time. Pretty much every other MMO has this inverted.
//edit: Anyways, the player that does want to log in, craft till they are blue and log out, CAN. Managing 4, 5, 6 queues at a time in constant production should be enough to keep anyone busy and would be more productive than watching hammer animations all day.
|
CEO, Goblinworks
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Are you supposed to be able to 'sign up'/'hire on' and your character will be considered working at the full rate
until the building is completed, without any further character interaction?
The Common Folk, the "sims" of Pathfinder Online, do the work. You tell them what to do, how to do it, and provide the raw materials. They give you a price, and a delivery date.
Or are there limitations requiring intermittent interactions on your part?
It is possible that at some later date after a lot of implementation and iteration that some jobs may require you to assist by providing unexpected components mid-project on demand by the Common Folk, but that is unlikely to be a feature until after Open Enrollment has been underway for some time.
(And will Settlement PoI management positions be mutually exclusive with construction jobs at the same time?)
The design currently anticipates the idea that some members of a Settlement will influence the efficiency, options, or requirements for various features of the Setlement by holding certain titles in the Settlement organizational chart. So the value of your Settlement's Blacksmithery may be improved if you have a high-skilled character assigned to the title of Master Blacksmith. These jobs are likely to be mutually exclusive. Point if Interest management will be a part of this system, so you'll have to decide where your various craftsmasters will be assigned. This is a job assignment, jot a physical or temporal assignment. They're free to go about their business and aren't shackled to one location or one activity.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Curious to learn more how the construction skills work. Same as any other skill-training? In that event, these particular skills given they speed up construction of settlements and skill-training buildings, seem highly critical for a player-group to possess to achieve sooner and bigger economic advantage?
The successful settlements will be the ones that have most of their members in constant participation of the crafting system. Not only will we be crafting and gathering all the time, we will be doing it with difficulty levels of transportation and time consumption. So as I've said before the game is already a crafter's wet dream. Crafters will be all-stars in this game and pretty much everybody is forced to take part in it. So why on earth do we keep getting suggestions for MORE complex interactions on the crafting system?
Because this question does NOT have to do with the on-screen, character-directed crafting system?
The topic is SETTLEMENT BUILDING MANAGEMENT and CONSTRUCTION LABOR, both of which are not part of the crafting system.Both have so far been presented as 'background work' which doesn't take up 'on screen' time.
In the case of construction labor, that is a stream of income that just happens with practically no interaction.
My question is not why this discrete system is not MORE "complicated" (or rather, locality-specific)
than the crafting system, but why it is so radically LESS locality-specific.
Because this economic activity doesn't 'compete' for in-game time with any other economic activity,
basically everybody would want to be doing this (unlike every other in-game economic activity), since it's giving up free money otherwise,
and with a radically efficient labor market, that will only push the lowest end (skill) construction labor to practically zero pay,
which NORMALLY would mean practically zero workers would be interested, but because this doesn't compete with other activities in time/space,
people will still sign up anyways as long as they can make ANY amount of money, or even train towards being higher skill where they can demand more money. Even in a fully localized system, the lowest end skilled tasks will be low paid, but the construction system as described should just reduce low end construction labor to zero or near it. At that point, the system is actually creating more complication and hassle, if only to sign up for jobs that have minimal economic benefit.
I'm ALL FOR the mechanism behind this being the least hassle possible, that's my why question is agnostic about specific implementation, but I don't see any reason why construction labor should be exempt from locality effects which rule everything else? Why is that even desired? I'm sure any economic distortion from this 'exceptional' sub-system could be discretely compensated for by GW, but why create that situation in the first place?
What is the problem with 'clocking in' to get paid for a day? All that does is establish the same level of time/space locality as normal crafting or other economic activity, if that is such a pain, it is really going to pain for everything else. Also having it apply to this realm just mean this realm is more integrated into the exact same structural mechanisms affecting other economic activity, and thus competes on an equivalent plane, people will not spend more time doing dumb stuff, they will just choose how to allocate their in-game time, and the market will adjust pricing.
Or if for some reason it's desired to have this system be totally hands-off, locality can still be maintained as relevant by scaling a construction worker's contribution according to their average distance from the site during their logged in time.
I had actually been thinking a more time-limited version of Settlement Management was going to be implemented, such that a Settlement would likely have several 'backup' players to fill in for their 'top skill' member when they aren't playing all the time, possibly with a 'shift' system assigning them each different days, etc.