Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Looking at the guild index it appears the vast majority of settlements have unsustainably low player counts.
I realize the genie is out of the bottle, and it’s too late to impose caps on the number of guild members (for Alpha/Early Enrollment).
My question, should there be any consideration to help low pop settlements with their defense and resource collection? [a buff]
Otherwise great lengths have been gone to designing the land rush for settlements that won’t survive the night.
With a total sandbox comes the potential that this degrades into a fantasy-medieval version of “Rust”.
There has to be some artificial incentive in not making the obvious choice and having all players join one or two massive guilds.
Goblin Squad Member
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Settlements won't be immediately available at all. The land rush will run for another two months and then it will be several more months before the settlements are actually created... and then even more time before settlement combat becomes possible. Thus, these settlements will likely have somewhere in the neighborhood of a year to get up to fighting strength.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is already something called the vulnerability window for settlements, which is the time when NPCs don't help defend it, which can be kept quite small and only when you have the most players online if you wish.
No need for an official buff for being outnumbered. That's just a part of the strategy and incentive to recruit well and maintain strong coalitions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A lot may depend on how people are assigned to settlements. If they are completely random, based on compatibility, and require a conscious effort to change, most settlements may be fine.
If it's more organic, some of us may be in big trouble if we can't differentiate ourselves from everybody else in some way.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A lot may depend on how people are assigned to settlements. If they are completely random, based on compatibility, and require a conscious effort to change, most settlements may be fine.
What do you mean by "how people are assigned to settlements"?
The system won't ever "assign" a Character to a PC Settlement. But I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A lot may depend on how people are assigned to settlements. If they are completely random, based on compatibility, and require a conscious effort to change, most settlements may be fine.
If it's more organic, some of us may be in big trouble if we can't differentiate ourselves from everybody else in some way.
Perhaps I read what you said incorrectly. Every new character will choose an NPC settlement to start in (initially only Thornkeep) and then they will have to seek out and join PC settlements whenever they decide to move away from the NPC settlement. The process is not automatic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We are also going to see a lot of those lesser groups band together in order to be part of the land rush. Those numbers can cascade quickly. Having a proto-settlement before regular settlements can be claimed and built gives everyone in the land rush an edge for recruiting. Defending a settlement looks to be by default, easier than assaulting one, which does favor everyone in the land rush, large and small alike.
That being said - settlements are ultimately viewed as either "A very large guild" or "a collection of small and medium-sized guilds in collaboration". They are established on the game social hierarchy as something needing many players to run well.
I do understand the concerns you hold, though I think you misinterpret the intentions of the Land Rush. Groups that win are not being promised a settlement they can keep. They are being promised a competitive edge and head start in recruitment efforts and infrastructure leading to actual settlement claim mechanics being instituted.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is already something called the vulnerability window for settlements, which is the time when NPCs don't help defend it, which can be kept quite small and only when you have the most players online if you wish.
No need for an official buff for being outnumbered. That's just a part of the strategy and incentive to recruit well and maintain strong coalitions.
I did forget about this mechanic as well! A small group is probably unlikely to be able to maximize settlement offerings, and will likely be able to keep a very narrow PvP window and grow it slowly as they are able to increase their numbers.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I agree settlements should be hubs of commerce, points of intrigue, familiar places with which we become invested, and crank out the best gear. However overly massive ones will have no real incentive to remain humble, decent or even reasonable to players with no mechanism to ever disrupt or depose them. Power + Human Nature + Anonymity - Consequence = Infinitely bad for everyone else.
“Please stop crafting. The company already has 87 Tier-3 smiths—you’re just wasting ingots”.
“Ewh, you picked that [insert arbitrary race/class/deity/alignment]? Sorry, bub. Beat it.”
“You don’t like our rules? Would you like a big, fat bounty on your head instead?”
Project this 2-3 years out. A new player logging in for the first time will be getting hopelessly shafted by the established fat cats. The sandbox is now the litter box, with no ‘fair’ way to resolve glaring inequities.
If not extend a meaningful perk to new/small player settlements, stats like cumulative wealth, hexes, membership, etc. should be monitored regularly; disproportionately large settlements should be subject to AI calamity events…NPC uprisings, nearby nodes drying up for weeks on end, a Tarrasque leveling a controlled area, etc..
I like where we’re going. Just think there’s a planning opportunity here we ought to address sooner than later.
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In the crazy future tense I could "shake down" new players being a successful Farmer.
I'll be all like "Stick em up" with my pitchfork.
They'll have no recourse except deal with it. At this point I victimize him and loot his worthless husk for no reason whatsoever.
I don't plan on playing like that.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I agree settlements should be hubs of commerce, points of intrigue, familiar places with which we become invested, and crank out the best gear. However overly massive ones will have no real incentive to remain humble, decent or even reasonable to players with no mechanism to ever disrupt or depose them. Power + Human Nature + Anonymity - Consequence = Infinitely bad for everyone else.
“Please stop crafting. The company already has 87 Tier-3 smiths—you’re just wasting ingots”.
“Ewh, you picked that [insert arbitrary race/class/deity/alignment]? Sorry, bub. Beat it.”
“You don’t like our rules? Would you like a big, fat bounty on your head instead?”Project this 2-3 years out. A new player logging in for the first time will be getting hopelessly shafted by the established fat cats. The sandbox is now the litter box, with no ‘fair’ way to resolve glaring inequities.
If not extend a meaningful perk to new/small player settlements, stats like cumulative wealth, hexes, membership, etc. should be monitored regularly; disproportionately large settlements should be subject to AI calamity events…NPC uprisings, nearby nodes drying up for weeks on end, a Tarrasque leveling a controlled area, etc..
I like where we’re going. Just think there’s a planning opportunity here we ought to address sooner than later.
The way to avoid this dynamic is to allow new players to provide something of value to established groups.
Taking away the accomplishments of successful settlements by fiat will chase off the long-time players who man those settlements and discourage others from putting in the years of hard work to build them in the first place.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The way to avoid this dynamic is to allow new players to provide something of value to established groups.
Taking away the accomplishments of successful settlements by fiat will chase off the long-time players who man those settlements and discourage others from putting in the years of hard work to build them in the first place.
Perhaps a "Complacency" axis in which the longer the total time (in order to avoid the moving out and moving back in workaround) a person has been in a settlement, the less their reputation affects it.
Or a "Disorder" component that increases with membership over a certain size.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Oh gosh not more new mechanics to solve theoretical problems. Use what's already in front of us.
The Big Boys will want to be out doing exciting Important Things. An ACE spends two years developing the skill to harvest the rarest herbs that some think are only stories, do you think they want to spend all their time harvesting the day-to-day herbs needed for staple potions? Send the rookie out for the mundane flowers and buy them from him, much easier and leaves you free for Important Things.
If it takes a month to be about tabletop level 8 you can very quickly be One of Many guards for a gusher op. Who's going to man the POIs and outposts? There's plenty of necessary things to do that the Big Important people would prefer not to anymore for the new kids to find their place.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...discourage others from putting in the years of hard work to build them in the first place.
This. Anyone capable of thinking about the future would never be willing to put in one iota of effort in the first place; what could possibly be the point?
I believe Ryan's plans of opening more wilderness as the population grows, along with the increasing costs for an established Settlement to continue growing as it gets bigger, will be the throttle needed. I envision the future of two large Settlements--or Kingdoms--fighting one another to the death while many hexes away four new Settlements get founded that same day, having no care about the fate of either warrior.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Oh gosh not more new mechanics to solve theoretical problems.
You say that like it's a bad thing?
Some people take great pleasure in understanding the underlying mechanics of what makes the process work better so that they can ring up their fighter and say "I need you to go out and find a couple of fresh fighter buddies to offset how much time you've been spending complaining about your arthritis lately. And would it kill you to bring a druid a home once in a while?"
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Oh gosh not more new mechanics to solve theoretical problems. Use what's already in front of us.
It's all theoretical at this point. Why plan for the obvious??? ;)
All we have to go by are the impressions/observations of previous sandboxes, successes and miserable failures alike.
Goblinworks, I assume, wants to remain in business. If the future landscape of their sole property can be permanently tainted by the acts/behaviors of a few founding players, the game won’t survive.
Even just the looming prospect of ‘divine retribution’, natural disaster, or civil unrest, for a colony whose ambition has gone unchecked, could be a sufficient deterrent to behaving badly.
What no one wants is a hopelessly toxic game in 2-3 years where the only answer is to either wipe or greatly extend the map, quarantining new players from old. In either ‘fix’ the hard work of founding players gets devalued.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Reading between the lines here, it sounds like you want your smallish group to be able to have a successful settlement without (much) fear of it being ransacked/stolen.
I think the intention is for smaller groups to hold POIs and perhaps a hideout if you dont want to share a settlement with 5 or 6 other small groups.
I THINK GW wants settlements to be larger than even a single medium to large size company to maintain and defend by themselves.
I generally play online games with the same group of 4 to 8 guys. In most games we do our own guild thing picking up a few people here and there. But I soon realized that in this game joining somthing larger was going to make for a much more fun play experience.
I dont feel that mechanics or a small guild bonus are needed here. IMO small groups that want to run a settlement SHOULD have an uphill battle to build it and defend it.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Personally not looking forward to elaborate guild politics, establishing/maintaining alliances, or being subjected to the constant chatter of hundreds of potential alliance mates.
A nice, peaceful guild lodge in the woods was more our speed. It’d pose no strategic threat; obviously wage no war. Yet in the proposed model its existence would hinge entirely on the whims of neighboring settlements.
Would be nice if there was a second, lower impact option for land grants. A makeshift hideout, whose entrance was by invite only, which contained crafting stations, guild vaults, etc. (no siege craft) and could never be ransacked while the guild slept.
An unassailable slice of hex would present new problems of course. Just don’t think, ‘hoping for the best’ regarding large settlements is very wise.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A new player logging in for the first time will be getting hopelessly shafted by the established fat cats. The sandbox is now the litter box, with no ‘fair’ way to resolve glaring inequities.
Guurzak tink you inventin problems dat nub gonna happin.
Companies get Influence as their members earn achievements. New players earn achievements much more quickly than established ones, so there will always be incentive to recruit and retain new players.
Also, T3 crafting recipes will requires some T1 components, so novice crafters and gatherers continue to add value to the supply chain as they permit the craft masters to focus on the high tier processes.
Also, the power curve is such that 2 T2 characters should be an even or better match for a T3 character, so mass noobs is a powerful and effective tactic; we're not going to have a situation where no amount of low level players can scratch a post-cap vet.