Interesting mechanics. I will have more of an opinion on it when I see how skill advancement and training works and how much an effect holding towers will have on it.
Good blog.
Goblin Squad Member
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The more Towers a Settlement indirectly controls the more training the Settlement can offer its members. So control of Towers dictates how powerful characters can become and loss of Towers can reduce the power level of characters.
I have a few questions about this:
When you say more training do you mean more characters can train at once in the same skill or will higher levels of the same skill open up for training.
When a settlement loses a tower how does that reduce the power of a character? Will skills have tier levels that are only available if the settlement holds enough towers to unlock them? How does this effect characters that already have learned the skill will they lose the ability until towers are recaptured?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Doesn't make any esthetic sense for me.I can't figure out if you're trolling or lack esthetic sense. It's absolutely sandbox because you are building your settlement's ability to support your character.
When you build something, you 1) get some sand 2) put this sand into shape 3) water it or make it keep shape somehow. Hitting others with a spade can be part of the activity, but it never helps you build your own castle.
here we get a "sandbox" full of premade sandcakes (all got the same form and properties, never need any building activities) and told "now fight for these sandcakes, and whoever grabs the most, gets an automatically built best sandcastle of their choice. This process doesn't have much with "building" as basic human resource-related activity, it's a mechanics of rewarding materially spade-hitters.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Tork, where are you from? I heard a lot of the same phonological features in your speech that I hear from James MacAvoy, so I'm guessing your Scottish? What region did you grow up in as an early speaker, and is there a name for the way you talk (e.g. Received Pronunciation, Geordie, etc.)?
"Ok Dungeon Master. My spell of light blinds the monster."
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Goblin Squad Member
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The 6 towers next to various land rush 2 sites are not black. Is there meaning to that, or just a color error? The towers around land rush 1 sites are black.
This collection of towers continues the theme that every land rush site has 6 neighbor sites that it is assumed to be able to own. However those hexes are not always easily accessible. The worst of those is -08.06 which is "next" to site T, but is actually nine steps to get there, including 3 hexes neighboring W (Golgotha). There are others examples, but this is the most extreme. If that site is in play, it belongs to W.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Towers have a PvP window. When the window is open, the Hex the Tower is in does not inflict Reputation penalties for PvP. While the window is open there is a capture area near the tower, probably outlined by a wall or similar structure. Standing in that area gives your company points towards controlling the tower; the first company to cross a certain threshold gains control of the tower. If you are defending a tower you control, you lower everyone elses points for each person in the control area.
Will multiple companies from the same settlement be competing against each other? It seems like support from the sponsoring settlement could well end up being counter-productive to the settlement's interests as a whole if this is the case.
I would like to see control be established based on cumulative settlement effort, with company control awarded based on the percentage of support a given company put in towards the effort of the settlement as a whole.
Can a company control more than one tower?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Doesn't make any esthetic sense for me.I can't figure out if you're trolling or lack esthetic sense. It's absolutely sandbox because you are building your settlement's ability to support your character.When you build something, you 1) get some sand 2) put this sand into shape 3) water it or make it keep shape somehow. Hitting others with a spade can be part of the activity, but it never helps you build your own castle.
here we get a "sandbox" full of premade sandcakes (all got the same form and properties, never need any building activities) and told "now fight for these sandcakes, and whoever grabs the most, gets an automatically built best sandcastle of their choice. This process doesn't have much with "building" as basic human resource-related activity, it's a mechanics of rewarding materially spade-hitters.
EE gets some pre-made sandcakes to help keep us busy while the world is being built. There are all kinds of undeveloped hexes that can hold other settlements later. The "pre-made" settlements are simply to provide some activity while the world is being fleshed out for open enrollment.
You're probably best to ignore it for another year and a half and then see whether you want to play or not when it goes open.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For those that want to PvP, this is a good setup. For those settlements that want to get some people trained up in PvP with low cost/impact, this might encourage some to dip their toes into that pool of gameplay.
There may be some sides to this that don't involve PvP. If you want to be an explorer, you might be set - just be aware of the PvP windows for different hexes and be somewhere else. Same if you want to focus on PvE or harvesting. And when your settlement's window is closed, they might actually just encourage people to be free each to go do their thing.
@Bringslight - except those chokepoints *aren't* included as rep-free PvP areas.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Laik
@Marlagram
This is not a final system, this is just a stop gap to give people half ass settlements that they are getting from the land rush anyways and something to fight over. If anything this will keep the diehard pvp people away from everyone else who is gathering, exploring, adventuring, etc...
Did you guys not realize they are giving away basic settlements with the Land Rush? That was kind of the whole point. I doubt the bonuses from the towers are going to make your settlement equivalent to an end game one when the real system is fully implemented.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For those that want to PvP, this is a good setup. For those settlements that want to get some people trained up in PvP with low cost/impact, this might encourage some to dip their toes into that pool of gameplay.
There may be some sides to this that don't involve PvP. If you want to be an explorer, you might be set - just be aware of the PvP windows for different hexes and be somewhere else. Same if you want to focus on PvE or harvesting. And when your settlement's window is closed, they might actually just encourage people to be free each to go do their thing.
@Bringslight - except those chokepoints *aren't* included as rep-free PvP areas.
Good point and possibly valid if a rep wipe is not in the future.
Which, by the way, I hope isn't.
Wow, this is alpha people, the game is going to go throw MANY iterations before it is complete.
They are basically setting up a mini game to keep people interested while they build out all of the other game mechanics while giving players the opportunity to test the combat mechanics.
It is all testing in alpha, even early enrollment will be a testing ground.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Besides doesn't anyone remember the wipe they are going to do? I'm sure something much better will be built by then.
That's really not something to bank on, and why it's always good to throw out thoughts on the matter rather than just sit back and hope they'll have something better.
That being said: Not sure how I feel about the system. The fact that it's basically just a numbers game makes me worry. What happens when people throw 50 free-to-play level 1 characters into a tower just to bolster their cap number? Or bum rush a tower with a few hundred of the same along with the normal forces. At that point you're no longer PvPing as much as you're just zerging as many people in as possible. Siege and capture mechanics are important.
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This is going to seriously disadvantage the smaller groups. Especially if they have to hold their surrounding towers. Some groups will be hard-pressed to put a person in each immediate hex if even a single player or two aren't online.
Those groups will be forced to grow, to pick up people, and to consolidate. That would be the game working as intended.
If they can't hold their own towers, make some friends. If you can't make friends, ask to go live with someone else. Golgothas doors are always open!
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Goblin Squad Member
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You have to basically follow the anaconda snake path to get from one end of the map to the other to ensure you don’t enter a reputation free kill zone…
PvP has always been a bit of a concern for me(and a few others id imagine), I heard enough reassurances from folks here that the rep system and other things were being introduced to curtail toxic behaviors.. Now a month or so before EE you guys decide 30% of the map should be a free for all PvP reputation free murder fest? What gives…
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is going to seriously disadvantage the smaller groups. Especially if they have to hold their surrounding towers. Some groups will be hard-pressed to put a person in each immediate hex if even a single player or two aren't online.
They said small groups were never intended to hold a settlement. They mentioned in a post mentioning hundreds. This definitely will play into that.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Doggan said:
That being said: Not sure how I feel about the system. The fact that it's basically just a numbers game makes me worry. What happens when people throw 50 free-to-play level 1 characters into a tower just to bolster their cap number? Or bum rush a tower with a few hundred of the same along with the normal forces. At that point you're no longer PvPing as much as you're just zerging as many people in as possible. Siege and capture mechanics are important.
I feel that characterslots will be scarce at the start of EE, or that there is some cost attached to using more then 1. Also, there are no FTP accounts yet, each account that can participate in EE will cost someone a hunderd dollars.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Doggan
I feel that characterslots will be scarce at the start of EE, or that there is some cost attached to using more then 1. Also, there are no FTP accounts yet, each account that can participate in EE will cost someone a hunderd dollars.
Right, I know that this system is supposed to get more complex later on. I just worry that it... won't.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is going to seriously disadvantage the smaller groups. Especially if they have to hold their surrounding towers. Some groups will be hard-pressed to put a person in each immediate hex if even a single player or two aren't online.
Since you decide when you are going to open your PVP window, it will require a great deal of coordination to make sure as many players as possible for your settlement are available when you do open it up. Yes, smaller settlements may be at a disadvantage but this may become a bigger incentive to gather up those who won't get a settlement. But then again, if you are in an area where you are a smaller settlement and a larger one is nearby and very friendly towards you, they may not try to take any towers out of your control. They may actually help you keep control of the towers you want. So who your neighbors are is, again, going to be very very important.
Which means, the real politicking and nail-biting is going to happen in weeks 11 and 12 as people scramble to hold on to the settlement hex they want or that they want to take and pray a bigger meaner settlement group doesn't take the settlement hex next to them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Now a month or so before EE you guys decide 30% of the map should be a free for all PvP reputation free murder fest? What gives…
Do not forget the PvP windows. So it is more like 10-50% of 30%, which is a lot less. However, if there is no way to know if a Hex is FFA(window open) or not, then yeah, you better avoid all of them. :)
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Will the settlement templates allow for balanced or multirole development, or will each settlement have to specialize in just one character role?
Can players change their settlement's template, or is that a permanent one -time choice?
Will the settlement template model have any lasting effects post-Great Cataclysm, or do we start from scratch at that point?
1) The settlements will train at least 2 of the 4 (alpha base) classes, but will support all of them. This means that Settlement A may train Wizard and Cleric but it can have fully supported members who are Fighters, except that they will have to visit another settlement to train new skills.
2) Nopey - in order to get settlements out in some form we have had to simplify them significantly. The only management will be of PvP windows (a more detailed answer on that is imminent!)
3) Not really... The impact of this system on settlements post-cataclysm is still being tweaked. The JIST of it is that holding towers will earn your settlement's some sort of credit (basically a bonus to starting DI). I dont want to say too much about that because we are really still working out how that will feed back into the system.
To be brutally honest when I was designing the settlement/DI systems I did not anticipate us doing the War of the Towers first (no-one did!) so I am working out the best way to feed it back into the long term system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Doggan
If it doesn't get fleshed out by OE then GW was lying and has no intention or ability to deliver the proposed settlement system.
That seems a little ludicrous when said out loud. If by chance they do end up doing that, this particular plan has no bearing as they obviously could not have been trusted at all in the first place. Either trust them or don't, that's fine, but this is not something that should dissuade any trust.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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This is going to seriously disadvantage the smaller groups. Especially if they have to hold their surrounding towers. Some groups will be hard-pressed to put a person in each immediate hex if even a single player or two aren't online.
One important thing to remember - I'm not sure I got this across strongly enough in the video - towers are held by Companies and then allied to settlements. Settlements themselves cannot be attacked. So defense of the towers falls to EACH COMPANY that owns them with the support of the settlement to which they are pledged.
Make the right alliances and size will be much less important.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Right, I know that this system is supposed to get more complex later on. I just worry that it... won't.
The Tower game is very clearly an interim measure to put some kind of territorial dynamic into play in EE while we're waiting for the real system to get built. Neither the players nor the developers would be satisfied with this as the long term solution.
If the game never get past War of the Towers, it'll be because the game never made it to release status. Regardless, you don't need to worry about Towers being any part of the OE experience.
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Right, I know that this system is supposed to get more complex later on. I just worry that it... won't.Valid concern, but I don't think its warranted yet.
Over the years I've come to a point where I have zero faith in game developers. I find it easier to be pessimistic beforehand instead of disappointed after.
...Neither the players nor the developers would be satisfied with this as the long term solution.
If the game never get past War of the Towers, it'll be because the game never made it to release status. Regardless, you don't need to worry about Towers being any part of the OE experience.
See above. Your faith is commendable. But mine left a long time ago.
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Goblin Squad Member
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3) Not really... The impact of this system on settlements post-cataclysm is still being tweaked. The JIST of it is that holding towers will earn your settlement's some sort of credit (basically a bonus to starting DI). I don't want to say too much about that because we are really still working out how that will feed back into the system.
Shiny!
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Someone had a question about PvP windows but I cant find it, so here is the answer without a quote!
PvP windows will most likely be a single contiguous block. We have some scope for making them a bit more complex (as described in the question I cant find) but the simplest system will likely be implemented first. That is : a settlement can determine the start time of its PvP window.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You have to basically follow the anaconda snake path to get from one end of the map to the other to ensure you don’t enter a reputation free kill zone…
PvP has always been a bit of a concern for me(and a few others id imagine), I heard enough reassurances from folks here that the rep system and other things were being introduced to curtail toxic behaviors.. Now a month or so before EE you guys decide 30% of the map should be a free for all PvP reputation free murder fest? What gives…
Yes, and even worse: this 30% free murder zone actually rewards the otherwise "low-reputation" behaviour, granting long-term bonuses (currently of unknown value). And after such game mechanics enters the field, killerfolks will surely know, that they can urge GW to remove "hindering" reputation and probably alignment mechanics, if the say they are "bored", thus effectively robbing the game content from people who are NOT bored when they do not PvP. It happens at start? It sure can happen at any time.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Tork, where are you from? I heard a lot of the same phonological features in your speech that I hear from James MacAvoy, so I'm guessing your Scottish? What region did you grow up in as an early speaker, and is there a name for the way you talk (e.g. Received Pronunciation, Geordie, etc.)?
"Ok Dungeon Master. My spell of light blinds the monster."
"Is there a name for the way you talk?"
Properly? ;)
I am indeed Scottish. I come from the Western Isles (the middle of nowhere - the Isle of Seil, specifically) but I spend about 10 years between Glasgow and Edinburgh and then about 8 years in London. So my accent is pretty neutral now. Scots think I am English, the English think I'm Scottish.
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Over the years I've come to a point where I have zero faith in game developers. I find it easier to be pessimistic beforehand instead of disappointed after.
That's fine if it keeps you emotionally balanced, but projecting onto other people and devs via the forum is not a good way to express that. Would you like it if I walked around behind you all day implying you're a liar or a failure in everything you do? That's kinda what the forums are like to Devs. Criticizing is fine, but offer up an alternative or extrapolate on why and what. Implying that they are copping out and will never follow through doesn't really accomplish anything.
Sorry if this is a little targeted, I've been frustrated a bit by the amount of people who combat every idea by just saying 'No' or 'That will never work you idiots' around here.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Right, I know that this system is supposed to get more complex later on. I just worry that it... won't.@Doggan
I feel that characterslots will be scarce at the start of EE, or that there is some cost attached to using more then 1. Also, there are no FTP accounts yet, each account that can participate in EE will cost someone a hunderd dollars.
Oh heavens I hope it does. I've been working for 12 months on a kookoobananas complex settlement warfare system. I'd be very put out if it doenst make it in ;)
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... this 30% free murder zone actually rewards the otherwise "low-reputation" behaviour...
I'm as sympathetic to people who are concerned about "Open World PvP" as anyone on these forums, but this is a terrible way to look at it. You're basically saying it's the PvP that qualifies as "low-reputation behavior". The truth is it's the random, meaningless player killing that leads to a Low Reputation.
The War of Towers gives folks who are really into PvP something meaningful to do so they're not tempted to run around in gank squads ruining people's fun just for the lulz because they're bored.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Yes, and even worse: this 30% free murder zone actually rewards the otherwise "low-reputation" behaviour, granting long-term bonuses (currently of unknown value). And after such game mechanics enters the field, killerfolks will surely know, that they can urge GW to remove "hindering" reputation and probably alignment mechanics, if the say they are "bored", thus effectively robbing the game content from people who are NOT bored when they do not PvP. It happens at start? It sure can happen at any time.You have to basically follow the anaconda snake path to get from one end of the map to the other to ensure you don’t enter a reputation free kill zone…
PvP has always been a bit of a concern for me(and a few others id imagine), I heard enough reassurances from folks here that the rep system and other things were being introduced to curtail toxic behaviors.. Now a month or so before EE you guys decide 30% of the map should be a free for all PvP reputation free murder fest? What gives…
I'm not sure I'm following you here... Can you restate the issue?
Only PvP during the window is rewarded - sanctioned PvP. Sanctioned PvP is NEVER low-reputation behavior - its the core of PFO (feuds, warfare, sieges, faction combat, etc).|
Goblin Squad Member
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So pvp windows are opened when a settlement wants..., already I have been reading about groups saying they have enough folks to be on for an entire day. No limit to the number of characters a person can make means they can park as many bots into these towers as they want at all hours of the day.
Most groups interested in these towers probably will do just that(because they will have some good rewards for having it open and can take em back in force if they lose them, or just grab unoccupied ones..)
Not sure how settlement warfare will work in EE, wasn’t aware there would be any.. so why not just leave them open all the time, you might lose a tower but how can they lose the settlement..
Entire thing seems like a way to kill the rep system, and not even worry about a feud system..
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is going to seriously disadvantage the smaller groups. Especially if they have to hold their surrounding towers. Some groups will be hard-pressed to put a person in each immediate hex if even a single player or two aren't online.They said small groups were never intended to hold a settlement. They mentioned in a post mentioning hundreds. This definitely will play into that.
As I said elsewhere, they also said we'd have months to get to that number. Now we don't. If we don't have dozens of members on day one of EE, we will not be able to hold any towers, thus shutting down our settlement's ability to support training on day one of EE.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Tuffon
Last I heard XP gain is limited to one character at a time unless you have Destinies Twin which probably won't exist at the start of EE. So spamming alts everywhere won't really accomplish much.
It will if the number of bodies in the tower determine if you are in control of a tower... and if you are then the area is a reputation free for murder zone..