I've got a major question concerning the whole kingdom building deal going on. I followed the blog posts with enthusiasm, right up until I found out that PFO is using an EVE online system for skills. I used to play EVE, and I found that more often than not I would have time wasted because I couldn't get on and update the skill training queue when all the timers finally finished counting down so that I could, in effect, keep up. That, however, is a discussion for another time (unless I happened to miss new developments concerning that). As such, I've only perused the forums/blogs every now and then, looking for something that might motivate me to actually try the game, rather than simply want to.
As for the actual reason of this topic, I really, really want to get into PFO. If the game is fun, I'll be able to suffer through potentially lost skill training time. In particular, PFO has the potential to satisfy something I've wanted to do in a game forever, MMO or Tabletop. Run my own kingdom.
Unfortunately, I extremely doubt that I'll be able to jump into the game at launch. Main reason for this is it's going to take me a while to get a better computer (I'm working off a nearly 10 year old ACER laptop that has been giving me troubles running even Facebook flash games of late).
So my query is thus: With all these 'land rushes' and guilds getting settlements, land, and so forth... What hope is there for newer kingdoms in the coming years? As all these major guilds/kingdoms expand and grow, what's to prevent the potential issue of a group starting up a new kingdom, only for some other guild to just come in and squish them like ants and take over the territory?
Yeah, I get that territory and kingdom building are pretty much the point of the game... The only thing I'm concerned about is the major, already established kingdoms making it impossible for the newer little guys to start out.
Sorry if this has been asked and posted before. I've used the search function on the board, but it didn't turn up anything worth merit. Mostly threads on current guilds and recruitment and all that jazz.
I want to get into this game, I really, really do. I love the world of Golarion, and I love the idea of a (mostly?) total open world sandbox MMO. While I would prefer something more similar to EVE's Dust 514 (accumulate SP over time to apply to skills, rather than setting specific skills to earn SP over time), which I am currently an avid player, I can likely deal with it if I can eventually achieve that kingdom-building desire. I'm sure I'm not the only one who hasn't worried about this, though I can't seem to find any potential topics about it.
Goblin Squad Member
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Experience and Skills
In PFO, one earns only XP over time, such as when logged off. Spending those XP occurs while you're in-game.
Result: no need for clock-watching.
Kingdoms
The starting map is only a tiny portion of the River Kingdoms, which is in its turn only a tiny portion of Golarion. The available map'll be expanding at a rate reflecting how many players join the game, to make sure there's always elbow-room out there for folks wanting to tame a wilderness.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It will require an ever increasing amount of influence to grow a Kingdom. Further, I don't think all of the groups here are expansionist. As the map expands, there will be room for new settlements, and thus new kingdoms. Considering that it will take a good deal of time to move troops across the map, I doubt kingdoms would want a war halfway across the world and to leave themselves vulnerable. Further, you could play the alliance game, seeking to make a new kingdom by allying yourself with an established kingdom.
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Goblin Squad Member
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First off, you accumulate experience/skill points, and you must go to trainers to train those skills. Don't worry if you can't get online to switch them over.
As it stands, these settlements will take a long time to build and expand, and furthermore they have inherent limits in needing POIs and Outposts to sustain their needs. With that being said, a level 20 character, tier 3 skills, fully decked out, can still be killed by a half dozen newbs, this isn't WOW.
Whats more, is that if a Kingdom/Settlement declares war on you, and there is a large difference in DI and other factors, it is costly for them to continue that war against you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just remember, to be the best leader for your group you will need more charisma, decision-making-ability, and leadership skills than the 100's of other people you will be leading. You will have to dedicate yourself to the task. It isn't something you should enter into lightly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Basically what has been already said.
As a kingdom expands, it becomes harder and harder to expand. I'm not entirely sure, but it could be that either:
There is a hardcap to how big a settlement can get or
A kingdom can expand infinitely, but after a certain point it is functionally no longer expanding (like, say, it's technically expanding at a rate of 1 POI in 2 years).
At that point, politics with other nations comes into play in order to strengthen your player faction.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So my query is thus: With all these 'land rushes' and guilds getting settlements, land, and so forth... What hope is there for newer kingdoms in the coming years? As all these major guilds/kingdoms expand and grow, what's to prevent the potential issue of a group starting up a new kingdom, only for some other guild to just come in and squish them like ants and take over the territory?
Yeah, I get that territory and kingdom building are pretty much the point of the game... The only thing I'm concerned about is the major, already established kingdoms making it impossible for the newer little guys to start out.
Other info new to this thread:
1.) Only a fraction of the settlement hexes even in the starter area are being awarded in the land rush, when the remaining settlements (little houses icon in this older map) activate for development there will be chances for new groups even before the starting map expands. After that, CEO Ryan Dancey has said the devs goal is to keep a frontier at the edges for new groups to start and displaced groups to resettle.
2.) As for not being instantly crushed, settlements have a "vulnerability window" that can be kept very small (at the cost of smaller potential development until the window is opened more) and during a time best for you, while the rest of the day NPCs will help protect the settlement. It's not a full-on guarantee of safety from big established Eviltown but all you have to do is be more trouble than you're worth.
3.) Only about 30% of people in the world produce lactase, the enzyme that dissolves the milk sugar lactose, past the age of 6 or 7. If you can enjoy ice cream without horrible digestive pains YOU ARE A MUTANT.
I didn't promise all the new information would be related to the OP, but it was educational and that makes the Derailment Dingo happy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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3.) Only about 30% of people in the world produce lactase, the enzyme that dissolves the milk sugar lactose, past the age of 6 or 7. If you can enjoy ice cream without horrible digestive pains YOU ARE A MUTANT.
I would assume most of the others come from areas where digesting animal milk is atypical? Or are the populations relatively intermixed?
I mean, people who aren't lactose adverse/intolerant in the US are the large majority, as far as I can tell.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From Wikipedia:
Most mammals normally cease to produce lactase, becoming lactose intolerant, after weaning, but some human populations have developed lactase persistence, in which lactase production continues into adulthood. It is estimated that 75% of adults worldwide show some decrease in lactase activity during adulthood. The frequency of lactose intolerance ranges from 5% in Northern European countries (England, Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Iceland) to 71% in Italy (Sicily) to more than 90% in most African and Asian countries. This distribution is now thought to have been caused by recent natural selection favoring lactase-persistent individuals in cultures in which dairy products are available as a food source. While it was first thought that this would mean that populations in Europe, India, Arabia, and Africa had high frequencies of lactase persistence because of a particular mutation, it was later shown that lactase persistence is caused by several independently occurring mutations.
I've removed the footnotes from the original, but you'll find them, for reference, by following the link above.
EDIT: By the way, this is one of the most-spectacular thread-derailments in recent board-history. Congratulations, Proxima!
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Artemis Moonstar: Running a
Chartered Company = eg run a Point of Interest = 10-50+ chars?
Settlement = Many CC's = 100's eg 500-1,000 players?
Kingdom = >2 Settlements = 000's-10,000's of players
The map will increase with the player population.
But there will always be competition by players over settlement territory and a complex web of relationships.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sorry if this has been asked and posted before. I've used the search function on the board, but it didn't turn up anything worth merit.
No need to apologize. It's often difficult to find the right keywords to search for.
I'll say that most of the information above is correct (not sure about that whole lactase thing...), but here are some links you might find helpful.
Are You Experienced? goes into detail about how Characters earn and spend XP.
Ryan Dancey (Contiguous Map or Map as Islands) is a post where Ryan Dancey discusses how new groups will always be going to the frontier to try to make their mark. There are several other posts from Ryan in that thread that you might find interesting as well.
I think one of the key design principles of PFO is that newcomers are never at a permanent disadvantage to old-timers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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3.) Only about 30% of people in the world produce lactase, the enzyme that dissolves the milk sugar lactose, past the age of 6 or 7. If you can enjoy ice cream without horrible digestive pains YOU ARE A MUTANT.I would assume most of the others come from areas where digesting animal milk is atypical? Or are the populations relatively intermixed?
I mean, people who aren't lactose adverse/intolerant in the US are the large majority, as far as I can tell.
Not digesting animal milk is the normal. For all mammals, the ability to digest milk (which is food for infants) is lost around toddler stage of growth. For some reason around 7,000 years ago human groups in Northern Europe mutated to be able to consume milk their entire lives; you find milk drinkers proportionally where those groups have spread. Sub-populations of adults drinking milk is biologically very new and very weird.
I saw that youtube video too. :P
I'm sure there are lots of videos but if you mean Scishow I've been a subscriber from the start.
EDIT: By the way, this is one of the most-spectacular thread-derailments in recent board-history. Congratulations, Proxima!
The SAD Seal was getting lonely lately so I decided to give him the Derailment Dingo to keep company (special guest Alliteration Otter!).
Breaking the SAD seal makes the SAD Seal sad, the Derailment Dingo reminds you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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All the above posts are valid.
I think one of the key design principles of PFO is that newcomers are never at a permanent disadvantage to old-timers.
I believe Nihimon is correct with this statement in relevence to your question about new settlements/nations.
There is a planned system called 'influence' that is accumulated and used in actions at the company and settlement level mechanics that is used almost like a currency. This 'currency' of sorts will be used as a cost component to wars, buildings, POI building, territory claiming, etc. It may also be a factor in settlement/nation upkeep, of which details have yet to be released. So, large territories (like those held by the larger alliances of EVE) may not be an economical choice. They'll be picking only needed hexes for important resources and not wasting upkeep on hexes that are unused and are not producing anything of worth. Influence will be the key factor in a settlement's growth rate (and possibly their sustainability).
The kicker is that the 'old-timers' will generate influence at a lower rate than a new player. New players will act as a potential influence income source and will be more valuable that any goods they produce or the materials they mine or gather. As influence becomes harder to accumulate from aging characters, you'll see the expansion of settlements and nations slow almost immediately without a steady influx of recruits to join the said organization.
It will be late in Early Enrollment before settlements are even fully introduced. By Open Enrollment (launch), many settlements will still be at the stage where they are still ironing out their initial infrastructure for their settlement's main functions and may have anywhere from 1-4 extra hexes claimed for outside resources. Settlements will take a great deal of time to develop and shape.
I don't think that a fledgling company/settlement/nation will not have a problem finding a place to call their own and continue to expand.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Join Together with the Band goes into detail on Influence, which is something that Companies use.
You Can Live in Grace and Comfort goes into detail on Development Indexes (DI), which is something that Settlements use.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not digesting animal milk is the normal. For all mammals, the ability to digest milk (which is food for infants) is lost around toddler stage of growth. For some reason around 7,000 years ago human groups in Northern Europe mutated to be able to consume milk their entire lives; you find milk drinkers proportionally where those groups have spread. Sub-populations of adults drinking milk is biologically very new and very weird.
I see; in my mind I was putting the cart before the horse. You're saying the reason lots of people drink milk in some areas is because their ancestors mutated and they then adapted it into the diet, not because they put it into the diet and that slowly caused an adaptation resulting in lactase.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah putting it into the diet before the mutation is lactose intolerance with all its cramping, nausea and other unpleasantness.
We can only hypothesize why that mutation did so well or only in that region. My favorite is that northern Europe is low on sun, the people are therefore lower on vitamin D. Anyone who can consume milk and its vitamin D throughout their lifetime will be healthier and have better chances of making more mutant babies. That gives a logical explanation why populations in Africa and Asia who had domesticated mammals for longer (and never a shortage of sun to make vitamin D) never had a concurrent mutation take over so completely.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We can only hypothesize why that mutation did so well or only in that region. My favorite is that northern Europe is low on sun, the people are therefore lower on vitamin D. Anyone who can consume milk and its vitamin D throughout their lifetime will be healthier and have better chances of making more mutant babies. That gives a logical explanation why populations in Africa and Asia who had domesticated mammals for longer (and never a shortage of sun to make vitamin D) never had a concurrent mutation take over so completely.
Flawed logic, unfortunately. Fortification of milk with vitamin D is quite recent, and unfortified cows milk has only small amounts naturally. (8 ounces contains 1% of your daily requirements). Even that assumes that no cream has been skimmed, which is where the vitamin D is stored. It would have taken far more than a gallon of natural, whole-fat, milk a day to have any measurable effect on vitamin D deficiency.
(edit) Yeast-rich beer often has 20-25 times as much vitamin D as milk does, which would have been far more use to northern Europeans.