Goblin Squad Member
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Depending upon the size of a Settlement, should there be a limit of how many people can 'set' the Settlement as their home? IE, much like WoW allows players to set their 'Hearthstone' to a tavern?
The Population Limit shouldn't affect people coming in to trade, repair or train, but rather it sets a limit on how many people can call a Settlement 'home'.
If so, buildings such as the Barracks, Inns and 'Houses' could expand this limit, allowing more players to 'set' that particular Settlement as their home or base-of-operations.
Now I'm also working on the assumption that most Settlements will also possess a Shrine of some kind, which was mentioned way way back as what your spirit is drawn to when you die, and then run back to your body to fully resurrect.
Possession of the Shrine allows the Settlement to become a vital trading point for Adventurer and Merchant types, who will exchange loot from the Wilds for equipment from more civilized areas, enriching the Settlement and the Controlling Factions and allowing the Settlement to grow and expand.
Thus, 'border' Settlements will want lots of Barracks and Inns to attract Adventurer-type PCs to their settlement, which allows them to offer adventurers a secure resting site, and control of the Shrine also allows them to dictate who can and cannot 'bind' themselves to that particular shrine, setting the tone of the local PCs.
Evil Settlements are obviously going to want Evil PCs, or Neutral at worst, while Lawful Settlements will of course want Lawful PCs to be in the surrounding Hexes.
But if a Settlement has a limited amount of people it can support, and the Shrine's ability to accept 'binds' from the Players is limited to the amount of 'player slots' in a Settlement, then that means resources that could be turned to production and processing of raw goods into finished products will have to be turned towards player 'housing' to increase the amount of 'bind' slots available in the Shrine.
A 'Wild' Shrine may not have a player-limit, but a time-limit, meaning you can only be 'bound' to that Shrine for a number of real-time hours, necessitating continuous trips back to the Wild Shrine to ensure your spirit doesn't leave the world for good if you die.
'Wild' Shrines would therefore become the sits of vicious World PvP as a natural resource that any developing Settlement will want, as it means they don't have to spend resources on building their own, and existing, powerful Player-Factions or developing Player-Factions, or even Bandit-Clans of PCs, will fight to dominate the Hex in which a Wild Shrine can be found.
In the latter case, the Bandits who possess a Wild Shrine would be wise to have their Hideout nearby, so that upon logging in, they can quickly reach the Shrine, 'bind' themselves again and then go out hunting for resources or other Players without concern. They may even set up patrols, traps or even place Charmed Mobs around the Shrine to keep exploring PCs away from the Shrine, knowing full well that the relic will draw whole armies of ambitious Players to their Hex.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A 'Wild' Shrine may not have a player-limit, but a time-limit, meaning you can only be 'bound' to that Shrine for a number of real-time hours, necessitating continuous trips back to the Wild Shrine to ensure your spirit doesn't leave the world for good if you die.
A better solution for that would be to send the character to the Shrine bound to before the Wild Shrine. A player losing his char, because a RL timer ran out over the night and he got ganked shortly after logging in, is not going to be a feature. That much I feel pretty sure about.
But I am intrigued by the concept of having to expand the Settlement to accommodate more citizens. If anything it would severely hamper the defensive capability of any "placeholder Settlements" *. The Settlement would become more expensive for the owners if they want many of their players bound to it as a defensive location. I.E. either invest in it or have it taken over much more easily.
* Settlements set up to lay claim to a border (or further away) Hex. I do not know if this is in any way a viable tactic to begin with, but the thought just struck me.
Having certain Wild Shrines doesn't sound too bad an idea. They should be very limited in number though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Limits are already being set up around training and craft station space. Do we really also need a population limit? Seems the sort of thing that adds logistics that won't be very fun. This mechanic would especially punish casuals when deciding who gets to stay and who gets the boot to make room.
"Sorry buddy, you can't live around where I do because we are full up. You'll have to walk across the map whenever you want to play with us."
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would like to see an effective limit, like Companies have, beyond which additional Settlement Members don't contribute as much (or anything) to the Settlement via Achievements and such. However, I very much hope there is no point at which additional Members actually begins to degrade the efficiency of a Settlement unless that limit is something on the order of 2 times the maximally efficient number of Members.
For example, if 1,000 Members results in optimal efficiency, there is no reason to begin excluding players from that community. If there is either a hard limit of 2,000 Members, or if exceeding that population begins to apply debuffs to the Settlement, then that's acceptable because there's a sufficient population effectively immediately found a new, efficient Settlement.
My primary concern in this line of thinking is that the game shouldn't encourage exclusivity via game mechanics. Ideally, Settlements (or the meta-game social organizations that manage them) will always want to be attracting new Members.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Lifedragn and Nihimon make excellent points. Much like the design philosophy that we've been exposed to now, in regards to the 'food' debate, Goblin Works seems to be aiming for 'bonuses' to the characters, rather than a flat negative/positive outlook.
Settlements are obviously going to want dedicated individuals, rather than us 'Filthy Casuals', but at the same point, a warm body is a warm body, and it's better to have them working for you rather than getting pissed off at your 'elitist' attitude and going to ally with your rivals.
Maybe a 'Population Limit' should apply to badges and the like, ie it's a goal to reach, rather than a barrier you can't get over. Having X-amount of accounts (regardless of how many actual PCs are involved) forming some sort of long-term connection to a Settlement will unlock building opportunities and trade possibilities that a less-populous Settlement cannot reach?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Having X-amount of accounts (regardless of how many actual PCs are involved) forming some sort of long-term connection to a Settlement will unlock building opportunities and trade possibilities that a less-populous Settlement cannot reach?
I largely agree with everything you wrote, but wanted to make a point about this. My apologies if it sounds like I'm beating a dead horse.
I think it's generally a bad thing to tie game mechanics to the number of Accounts rather than the number of Characters that are associated with a Settlement.
I would always prefer that User Accounts be seen as absolutely nothing but a convenience for the User, and that virtually all game systems treat each Character exactly as it would if that Character were on its very own Account. I only see two exceptions to this: 1) Destiny's Twin should always be seen as very closely and strongly related to the attached Main; and 2) when a Ban is necessary, there are almost certainly cases in which that Ban should apply to the entire Account rather than individual Characters.
I think I would like to see Settlement and Company bonuses based on: 1) number of Active Characters (those currently receiving training time); 2) total XP of all Member Characters; 3) and total XP gained during Membership. I think that would cover all the bases.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe a 'Population Limit' should apply to badges and the like, ie it's a goal to reach, rather than a barrier you can't get over. Having X-amount of accounts (regardless of how many actual PCs are involved) forming some sort of long-term connection to a Settlement will unlock building opportunities and trade possibilities that a less-populous Settlement cannot reach?
It's already been hinted that some buildings or features will need a player-nation to be unlocked.
Is a player nation any two+ settlements? Or does at least one of the settlements have to be above a certain size? Requiring at least one to be above some size might be a reasonable hurdle - and one that makes use of some of your ideas. (I agree with Nihimon - count PCs, not accounts. But perhaps only training (paying) PCs).
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Why should there be bonuses for being bigger? Having a large player base to draw on is bonus enough in itself. Why do you wish to give larger organizations even more advantage over smaller ones?
Overcrowding a settlement is not of any benefit to the characters within it. The mechanically bounded settlement area provides a fixed amount of resources and pve opportunities, likewise a settlement only has a certain amount of training slots.
All you do by overcrowding a settlement is divide the pie up among a larger number. Want to accomodate more players the only sensible thing to do is to take that overspill and use them for another settlement.
Players have responsibilities to settlements, however settlements also have a responsibility to their players and that is ensuring there is sufficient training and resources. If you try and cram extra players in you are doing your players a disservice and you will lose them. The ones you lose though won't be the casual players it will be those that are pulling more than their own weight
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Goblin Squad Member
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Overpopulation, insufficient housing, and squalor in general are real issues and could be used as a motivating force to drive expansion and development. A debuff for having more residents than your settlement can handle could drive a settlement to push for more housing, or even to go to war and take a settlement to provide more space for their players to live. The kind of housing a settlement has could even be a meaningful choice as you could always build slums for larger population caps cheaply, but it would probably come at the cost of corruption.
Just some thoughts, basically population control is something that can be used to drive the game forward.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Overpopulation, insufficient housing, and squalor in general are real issues and could be used as a motivating force to drive expansion and development. A debuff for having more residents than your settlement can handle could drive a settlement to push for more housing, or even to go to war and take a settlement to provide more space for their players to live. The kind of housing a settlement has could even be a meaningful choice as you could always build slums for larger population caps cheaply, but it would probably come at the cost of corruption.
Just some thoughts, basically population control is something that can be used to drive the game forward.
That's brilliant. Population not in line with infra-structure = costs (ie Index costs).
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Goblin Squad Member
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The debuff of having more residents than the settlement can handle might be as simple as limited training slots or caps of training.
Each segment of the settlement DI (Security, Morale, and Civilization) will have some buildings associated with training certain class skills. Having an excessively large population, compared to the amount of buildings constructed, might have the players demanding more and advanced training facilities being built.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why should there be bonuses for being bigger? Having a large player base to draw on is bonus enough in itself. Why do you wish to give larger organizations even more advantage over smaller ones?
I want to give Settlements incentives to recruit new players so that those players will feel involved and keep playing.
What I want to avoid is any situation in which a Social Organization is faced with a decision along the lines of "if we want to recruit awesome player A we need to kick out less productive player B".
Why should there be bonuses for being bigger? Having a large player base to draw on is bonus enough in itself. Why do you wish to give larger organizations even more advantage over smaller ones?I want to give Settlements incentives to recruit new players so that those players will feel involved and keep playing.
What I want to avoid is any situation in which a Social Organization is faced with a decision along the lines of "if we want to recruit awesome player A we need to kick out less productive player B".
And I already gave you the answer to that one go for a second settlement linked by nation/kingdom. Sure that second settlement will need back up from the original while it is getting on its feet but that shouldn't be an issue.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well if im not mistaken didnt ryan say settlements would be 500-1000 players?
The thing is that overpopulation shouldnt be given bonuses. When you are at the point where you cannot provide your members the expected resources, which by and large WILL be the ability to train abilities, then you need to expand so that you can provide those resources.
There is already a mechanic to support this style of gameplay, kingdoms. As a organization grows and needs to expand they will take over new settlements. Then in order to gain greater benefits they will join those settlements together in a kingdom, or if those benefits arnt good enough they will metagame the kingdom and leave them separate mechanically.
So if a settlement wants to have 5000 people, let it but dont provide them bonuses for stuffing 5 times the amount of people into one.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hark makes an excellent point.
Perhaps the Population Limit is that 'sweet spot' where there's a sufficient amount of 'resources' for the amount of 'Player Characters' in the settlement.
If it goes over that limit, then the Controlling Faction needs to build more Houses, more Farms and up their intake of resources.
Now, theoretically, the additional players will help with that, but that may not be the case.
Being under or over the Population Limit should not affect people directly, but rather the Development Indexes of the Settlement.
Too many empty houses may affect morale, increase the % of sentient monster attacks, or other problems that a 'diminishing' population may attract.
Too many people might cause increases in crime, shortages of necessities and an increased chance of diseases or vermin population explosions within the Settlement.
Hark makes an excellent point.
Perhaps the Population Limit is that 'sweet spot' where there's a sufficient amount of 'resources' for the amount of 'Player Characters' in the settlement.
If it goes over that limit, then the Controlling Faction needs to build more Houses, more Farms and up their intake of resources.
Now, theoretically, the additional players will help with that, but that may not be the case.
Being under or over the Population Limit should not affect people directly, but rather the Development Indexes of the Settlement.
Too many empty houses may affect morale, increase the % of sentient monster attacks, or other problems that a 'diminishing' population may attract.
Too many people might cause increases in crime, shortages of necessities and an increased chance of diseases or vermin population explosions within the Settlement.
If you check the blog you will find the building slots in a settlement are finite you cannot merely add more buildings
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Goblin Squad Member
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Overpopulation, insufficient housing, and squalor in general are real issues and could be used as a motivating force to drive expansion and development. A debuff for having more residents than your settlement can handle could drive a settlement to push for more housing, or even to go to war and take a settlement to provide more space for their players to live. The kind of housing a settlement has could even be a meaningful choice as you could always build slums for larger population caps cheaply, but it would probably come at the cost of corruption.
Just some thoughts, basically population control is something that can be used to drive the game forward.
Absolutely, though I think the better method is through the diminishing returns system similar to companies that Nihimon has pointed out. We do not need to mirror real life too closely, yet at the same time, there comes a point where if you have enough members in a settlement, you could do more by expanding and becoming a nation. A settlement only has so much space to build, and thus only so much use for DI allocations to buildings, regardless of population. And the higher your population, the more likely you are to benefit by grabbing a second settlement and increasing your training variety with new buildings there.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes Steelwing, but as the Settlement is being built and upgraded, more buildings can be added till the 'cap'.
So that adds another layer of complexity to the Settlement. Do you add lots of 'Houses' to attract players, or do you build more Training Halls instead to offer a higher quality of training?
Two Settlements might work together, one being mostly housing and infrastructure, the other being mostly Training Halls and Mage Towers, with a dedicated team of players using Wagons and/or renting mounts and/or spells to ferry people back and forth at a cost, which is shared evenly between the two Settlements.
Yes Steelwing, but as the Settlement is being built and upgraded, more buildings can be added till the 'cap'.
So that adds another layer of complexity to the Settlement. Do you add lots of 'Houses' to attract players, or do you build more Training Halls instead to offer a higher quality of training?
Two Settlements might work together, one being mostly housing and infrastructure, the other being mostly Training Halls and Mage Towers, with a dedicated team of players using Wagons and/or renting mounts and/or spells to ferry people back and forth at a cost, which is shared evenly between the two Settlements.
But we are discussing adding players over and above what a settlement can cope with. IE those plots are already filled. I assumed that was understood. We are not talking about adding players to a half built settlement
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I also prefer to see a "Constant total resources, divided among all players", such as training time model.
"Reducing marginal returns" also works.
The effect of "Some players result in negative marginal change" would be that some players never get into a settlement where they can learn how to be productive, and I think that is a failure mode.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But we are discussing adding players over and above what a settlement can cope with. IE those plots are already filled. I assumed that was understood. We are not talking about adding players to a half built settlementYes Steelwing, but as the Settlement is being built and upgraded, more buildings can be added till the 'cap'.
So that adds another layer of complexity to the Settlement. Do you add lots of 'Houses' to attract players, or do you build more Training Halls instead to offer a higher quality of training?
Two Settlements might work together, one being mostly housing and infrastructure, the other being mostly Training Halls and Mage Towers, with a dedicated team of players using Wagons and/or renting mounts and/or spells to ferry people back and forth at a cost, which is shared evenly between the two Settlements.
No, we were discussing if a 'Population Limit' was a good idea to petition Goblin Works as a good mechanic to implement, or at least, that was my idea when I started the thread.
When a Settlement is being built, there's got to be some foresight and planning going in, some direction towards what the Settlement will use to attract players to it and defend it from it's rivals. If there is a 'Population Limit' that can alter the mechanics of the Settlement, something that alters the Development Indexes and is something a Settlement will attempt to build for in advance, that adds another layer of complexity that may be a benefit or a problem to players.
DeciusBrutus says 'Some players result in a negative marginal change', meaning that, and I think this is what DB is saying (I'm currently operating under the effects of some heavy duty cold-and-fly meds here, so apologies in advance if I'm being stupid and fuzzy) is that Goblin Works won't use or adapt ideas that punish players for jumping into a successful Settlement when it's already got a large community.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm wondering if company owned POIs, of any type can function as a bind point?
I'm curious, too.
Additionally, players use threads to bind to intermediary resurrection sites: you can always respawn at the nearest big statue of Pharasma (usually confined to rare, significant locations), but the world is also full of player-created or pre-placed smaller shrines to Pharasma. If you bind to one of these smaller shrines, it's likely to be much closer to the place you died.
It sounds like we'll definitely be able to place player-created shrines, but I don't recall seeing any specifics about which kinds of player-controlled structures will allow them.
Characters can be safely logged off at an inn.
I wonder if there's a link between places where a Character can safely log off and places where a shrine to Pharasma can be placed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@drakhan
exactly. Not only that but lets say an organization is feuding with someone on the other side of the map, they set up a shrine so they dont have to run all the way across the map when they die. You can help your group out if you find and take out that shrine, it can give you more breathing room.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You now, for the player created shrines. it would be nice that bind points that are not tied to PoIs or settlements can be destroyed by other players.Then the choice becomes whether you destroy it or use it yourself.
Desecrating holy shrines. Makes for some nice alignment mechanics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Desecrating holy shrines. Makes for some nice alignment mechanics.You now, for the player created shrines. it would be nice that bind points that are not tied to PoIs or settlements can be destroyed by other players.Then the choice becomes whether you destroy it or use it yourself.
Desecrating a holy shrine could possibly give a Sacrilege type PVP flag against the offender with the followers to the shrine's deity.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Am I the only one who got the mental image of the Iconic Paladin kneeling before the Shrine of an Evil God and casting a complex spell to sanctify it, and the Iconic Blackguard with the Shrine of a Good Good is just drinking lots of coffee and unzipping his fly?
My cats cannot stop looking at me funny because of my uncontrollable giggle-snorting.
SRS BSNS MODE ACTIVATED
Maybe the Players can create small shrines, but as an added twist, they can place them in Hideouts? And if there can only be one Shrine per Hex, then the race is on between people killing off the 'invaders' who are trying to find their Hideout, and the people sniffing out all the Hideouts in a Hex to locate and destroy/claim the Shrine for themselves.
Players attempting to 'squeeze' into a Hostile series of Hexes, populated by Escalation Mobs, Hostile Players or a combination of both will certainly attempt to take every step they can to hide their Shrine, which allows them to range farther from their home-Settlement with a lowered rate of dying and losing all of their unthreaded gear, and a securely stocked Hideout with a team of defenders taking every precaution to hide their tracks, remain unseen and killing anything that comes even remotely close to their 'Hideout' zone within the Hex sounds like some fun content to me.
Of course, this is also likely a hellishly expensive option, as a Shrine is dedicated to a God, and how many of Golarion's Gods are going to accept a rough wooden carving standing on a flat rock as a Shrine that allows Mortals to cheat death?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Am I the only one who got the mental image of the Iconic Paladin kneeling before the Shrine of an Evil God and casting a complex spell to sanctify it, and the Iconic Blackguard with the Shrine of a Good Good is just drinking lots of coffee and unzipping his fly?
I guess defecating is desecrating.