Goblin Squad Member
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As the subject suggests why are the devs so tied to saying we can't support every class in one city. I understand being unable to train everything and needing to interact with other cities to get all the training you need. I am fine with having to build something to support classes that you can't train but this notion that it should be impossible to have very class living in your city no matter how much effort you put in seems counter intuitive and unsustainable. Eventual we are going to have a multitude of arch types in the game. Cities will get burnt down or you may dislike some of the people you are playing with to the point where you have to leave your city. Why should years of training become worthless if you can't find a new home right away. This also completely discourages individuals from founding new cities. Why would I take my level 20 cleric out of his really nice city to go found a new outpost for my empire when eventually I will loose all of my skills?
I know some of you will respond with meaningful choices!!!! But there are so many other ways to put in meaningful choice. What you chose to train in your city will define your friends. That's a great meaningful choice. Loosing access to your top tier skills a month after you loose a war is not a "meaningful choice"
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Goblin Squad Member
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My guess is that the whole game is supposed to be more than a murder simulator at the settlement level as well as the individual character.
If a settlement must depend on at least one other settlement then no solo settlement will be likely to attack others indiscriminately.
I don't think it is true except in outlier cases that a settlement cannot support all 'classes'. Can you point to where you got that?
Most likely there will be a span of time after your settlement is in ruins before your skills degrade. I say this without a cite because I know of none. It is simply reasonable to my mind that it would be the case.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I kinda sorta agree. While I'd like to see this whole grand plan in action before I fully dissent, it does seem pretty limiting when you have to agree on classes AND alignments in order to play for the same team as your friends. I think the alignment/faction thing is more important to the game design and needs to stay.
I'm willing to try it and I'm willing to vote against it during crowdforging if it really doesn't seem to be working.
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It prevents Settlements from being self-sufficient juggernauts, a lot of there mechanics are aimed at this endeavor. Getting training is relatively easy, but maintaining it is a long running endeavor.
I believe it was stated that it takes a month for your support to finally 'expire' after leaving or losing a settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why would I take my level 20 cleric out of his really nice city to go found a new outpost for my empire when eventually I will loose all of my skills?
This is the part that worries me too. It seems to be a catch 22 where it will be hard to convince a group of established characters to go build up DI for a new settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So maybe that means that the frontier is mostly settled by newer players who are more willing to make that tradeoff. I think I'm OK with that.
Maybe an established company with a lot of coin and a large saved-up cache of bulk goods would be able to quickly upgrade a new settlement to full capabilities. I'm probably OK with that too.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So maybe that means that the frontier is mostly settled by newer players who are more willing to make that tradeoff. I think I'm OK with that.
Maybe an established company with a lot of coin and a large saved-up cache of bulk goods would be able to quickly upgrade a new settlement to full capabilities. I'm probably OK with that too.
That's why I have to see it in action. There are tons of mechanics proposed by GW that are going to work or not work depending on the granularity and since we get to help set the granularity during crowdforging, I'm taking a wait and see on pretty much every game design.
In this example, a newbie settlement that doesn't have enough higher level characters won't survive, while at the same time you don't want the entry level economics of forming a settlement to put it out of reach for true startup groups.
All in all there does seem to be too many variables to making a settlement already in for this class support segregation to be viable. We'll see.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why would I take my level 20 cleric out of his really nice city to go found a new outpost for my empire when eventually I will loose all of my skills?This is the part that worries me too. It seems to be a catch 22 where it will be hard to convince a group of established characters to go build up DI for a new settlement.
I'm not sure you have to join a new Settlement in order to "work" there.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure you have to join a new Settlement in order to "work" there.Why would I take my level 20 cleric out of his really nice city to go found a new outpost for my empire when eventually I will loose all of my skills?This is the part that worries me too. It seems to be a catch 22 where it will be hard to convince a group of established characters to go build up DI for a new settlement.
This creates the overly entangled situation where settlers have to keep their old citizenship until a watershed moment where the new one supports them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually two things..
1 - A settlement can support EVERY SINGLE ROLE, you just have to forgo having any training or very little training yourself.
2 - You have 30 days to get your new founded settlement up to snuff, before you lose your level 20 abilities.
They have stated a few times in the Gobbocasts and in a few dev posts that you may be able to support every class but its not going to be top tier skills. They seem to want to avoid having cities where you can find a level 20 of every class and I am not sure why they want that to happen.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure you have to join a new Settlement in order to "work" there.Why would I take my level 20 cleric out of his really nice city to go found a new outpost for my empire when eventually I will loose all of my skills?This is the part that worries me too. It seems to be a catch 22 where it will be hard to convince a group of established characters to go build up DI for a new settlement.
I believe you're right. If I remember correctly a construction project will be open to anyone to join in on. The commissioner of the building project can set salaries, builders sign up to take part in the work but can go do other stuff while the construction is underway, same principle as crafting items.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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They have stated a few times in the Gobbocasts and in a few dev posts that you may be able to support every class but its not going to be top tier skills. They seem to want to avoid having cities where you can find a level 20 of every class and I am not sure why they want that to happen.
Because they don't want powerhouse nations/settlements composed of mega guilds that become unstopabble since none of the smaller companies can support getting every role up to max level. At least that is my understandinf of the limiting mechanics. This is all aside from the meaningful interaction aspect.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm looking forward to this, it has the potential to make every settlement unique.
Not being able to use all abilities you've purchased would certainly be frustrating in a way but also a challenge and a reason to mix things up and try new stuff. To me, if I played a wizard and suddenly was exiled away from my settlement, causing my powers to somewhat fade, had to take refuge amongst thieves in another settlement I'd see that as an awesome organic adventure and find a way to make whatever wizard abilities I could still use go well together with rogue stuff.
Fun and challenging story line that is tailored just for me. I couldn't get that in any theme park game that I know of.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Really, my issue comes down to, if you make it to restrictive for me to play with my friends in a reasonable fashion. We will not continue playing.
I can get behind, RP type restrictions that have some leeway and ways to atone for the occasional straying. I DO NOT support the idea that a large settlement can't support all 'class' types. If you have the proposed 500 people working on a settlement. Exactly what to do expect to accomplish telling them, haha you can't have fighters.
Really its going to come down to the details.
But I can't tell you right now, if the end game of our settlement supporting 100-500+ people, is join the kabal if you want to be a wizard who is NG, but otherwise go somewhere else because the game mechanics say so.
We will pack up and leave.
But the devil is in the details as they say, and we are more than ready to give it the good old college try, and then some.
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Goblin Squad Member
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They have stated a few times in the Gobbocasts and in a few dev posts that you may be able to support every class but its not going to be top tier skills. They seem to want to avoid having cities where you can find a level 20 of every class and I am not sure why they want that to happen.Because they don't want powerhouse nations/settlements composed of mega guilds that become unstopabble since none of the smaller companies can support getting every role up to max level. At least that is my understandinf of the limiting mechanics. This is all aside from the meaningful interaction aspect.
There are so many other ways to limit "mega guilds". Diminishing returns on land, the more settlements in a kingdom the more DI you have to spend to maintain the kingdom. Saying you have to be this alignment, this reputation and this class to live in a city is a poor way of going about it.
@wurner So you would be perfectly ok in loosing access to skills that you paid real money to train? This mechanic is also a way that you can snowball a settlemnt into failing.
You loose the first important battle of a war. The enemy overruns a few of your POIs you now lack the DI to support all o you training and the fighting is to contested to rebuild them. A month from now you engage in an additional large scale battle but this time all of your fighters cant use their best formation abilities because you don't "support" them any more.
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We already have 33 settlements on the map, assuming none of them totally disappear there are around 10-12 roles in the foreseeable future? If you can easily cover around 3 it only takes 3-4 settlements to support them all (less if some dedicate to just training and supporting roles instead of refining, markets, resource production, etc...), you only need 4 allies or friends out of the starting 33 settlements.
This game is not supposed to be about you and your buddies making an uber settlement that stands as a lone bastion, it's about a lot of inter-connectivity. While yes easing such restrictions would make it easier on personal groups of players it would create negative aspects for the community and the game environment as a whole.
And just because you and your buddies might not belong to the same settlement doesn't mean you can't play together. Nothing but your settlement's own rules can prevent you from doing almost everything together anyways. The only prohibition would be on some direct settlement interactions, but nothing stops you from indirectly supporting each other's settlement efforts.
I'll stress it again, it really helps to stop thinking of your settlement as a lone entity that must do everything for you and yours. Once you embrace that concept and make some arrangements it's far less of a problem while opening up a lot of game-play options for the community as a whole.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Gol Phyllain,
I don't lose the training, I lose support buildings needed to use that training. I didn't pay for the support buildings with real money.
If you can still use your abilities for one month after losing support for them, that would have to be a long war.
I hear what you and others are saying and you have very good points and valid concerns. I just feel the other way and wanted to share my thoughts on it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I understand that people don't like using eve an an example on these forums but I am going to do it anyway.
In EvE you can loose all of your space and be exiled. You loose a lot of money and quite a few sets of equipment when this happens. But you can still fly everything that you could before, this makes it possible to stage comebacks a few months and even years later. You can bide your time in an NPC town where you don;t really make the money that you use to but you can slowly build back up and take the fight to the enemy again. If this support thing is implemented as it seems to be shaping up this kind of comeback will be next to impossible. You will loose most of your equipment and quite a alot of gold any time you loose a city but to also eventualy loose your skills is just one more thing to be hit in the face with when you hit a rough patch.
It also makes it way harder to swap guilds. You have to find a group of players you enjoy playing with. That in and of itself is very difficult to do in any game. But now you also have to hope that you can find people you like that support your abilities. As the game goes on this will become harder and harder to accomplish. Much to the detriment of the game. And gods forbid there is some kind of settlement drama (cause that will never happen) that ends up with people parting on bad terms.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We already have 33 settlements on the map, assuming none of them totally disappear there are around 10-12 roles in the foreseeable future? If you can easily cover around 3 it only takes 3-4 settlements to support them all (less if some dedicate to just training and supporting roles instead of refining, markets, resource production, etc...), you only need 4 allies or friends out of the starting 33 settlements.
This game is not supposed to be about you and your buddies making an uber settlement that stands as a lone bastion, it's about a lot of inter-connectivity. While yes easing such restrictions would make it easier on personal groups of players it would create negative aspects for the community and the game environment as a whole.
And just because you and your buddies might not belong to the same settlement doesn't mean you can't play together. Nothing but your settlement's own rules can prevent you from doing almost everything together anyways. The only prohibition would be on some direct settlement interactions, but nothing stops you from indirectly supporting each other's settlement efforts.
I'll stress it again, it really helps to stop thinking of your settlement as a lone entity that must do everything for you and yours. Once you embrace that concept and make some arrangements it's far less of a problem while opening up a lot of game-play options for the community as a whole.
You seem to have completly missed most of the things I said. This isnt about training. I get the training restrictions. I think that is an amazing idea. But to use that training your city has to support that class. No city will be able to support every class to max level currently.
The problem with EVE is super self sufficient power blocks that have no reasons to tolerate or interact with anyone else, there only interaction is to throw a war when they're bored. I'm fairly confident that is one of the driving forces behind their plan to limit how much a single entity can do.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Gol Phyllain,
I don't lose the training, I lose support buildings needed to use that training. I didn't pay for the support buildings with real money.If you can still use your abilities for one month after losing support for them, that would have to be a long war.
I hear what you and others are saying and you have very good points and valid concerns. I just feel the other way and wanted to share my thoughts on it.
You loose access to it indefinitely.
War in this game isn't going to be a 15 minuet battleground soe of them will be long and drawn out affairs with multiple sieges and hopefully many large battles.
I thank you for providing you opinion it is after all what i was after in starting this post. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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The problem with EVE is super self sufficient power blocks that have no reasons to tolerate or interact with anyone else, there only interaction is to throw a war when they're bored. I'm fairly confident that is one of the driving forces behind their plan to limit how much a single entity can do.
If anyone in PFO can end up controlling as much of the map as the power blocks in eve they better be self sufficient. Space in eve right now is divided between three large power blocks mostly. If I am in an empire that can hold 11 settlements it better be able to sustain itself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Okay now I'm confused.
Here's Tork's quote:
A quick note on this... The level of support offered by the 'kit' settlements is still a little in flux. It is very possible that in fact support will be to the full level of the trained classes in each settlement. In fact I think it is likely. As Lee mentioned he was still spit-balling a bit about exactly how that would work and we're still hammering out the deets. I've been drawing up the sample settlements and it seems likely we will end up with full support for non-trained classes.
Bold mine for emphasis.
So are we back to settlements not offering full support? Or is Tork only talking about the beginning of the game (referencing kit settlements) and once the game is fully implemented support restrictions will be in place?
You seem to have completly missed most of the things I said. This isnt about training. I get the training restrictions. I think that is an amazing idea. But to use that training your city has to support that class. No city will be able to support every class to max level currently.
I was entirely talking about support, please reread my post. Training is cheap in terms of commitment, you do it once for each feat and you're done forever. I can probably get access to every trainer I will ever need without too much hassle. That is barely a factor in anything, it's at most a slight inconvenience.
Supporting however requires me to have a long term home, and if my friends want different roles they might need a different long term home, but since we want to play together we end up forming a bond between our two homes. This creates a diverse environment because in the long term you need to support each other to continue.
When it comes to just training there is no long term. Once you have what you need there is no reason for you to maintain anything with the training entity.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Okay now I'm confused.
Here's Tork's quote:A quick note on this... The level of support offered by the 'kit' settlements is still a little in flux. It is very possible that in fact support will be to the full level of the trained classes in each settlement. In fact I think it is likely. As Lee mentioned he was still spit-balling a bit about exactly how that would work and we're still hammering out the deets. I've been drawing up the sample settlements and it seems likely we will end up with full support for non-trained classes.Bold mine for emphasis.
So are we back to settlements not offering full support? Or is Tork only talking about the beginning of the game (referencing kit settlements) and once the game is fully implemented support restrictions will be in place?
He is referring to the Tower War. I am not sure about after, but it seems it will be more restrictive then.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with the OP, I have never liked using class/role support as a way to force a "meaningful choice." Meaningful choices should come from other areas.
Forcing people to choose between playing with their friends, and playing the class of their choice*, is not a choice I am interested in making or in forcing someone else to make.
*outside of alignment restrictions
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ than
There is definitely a long term commitment to training. A two year long commitment. Yes you could buy one fighter ability and then never bother going back and training that again but if you want to cap that class out you need to maintain good relationships from tier two skills all the way into tier three.
There is definitely a long term commitment to training. A two year long commitment. Yes you could buy one fighter ability and then never bother going back and training that again but if you want to cap that class out you need to maintain good relationships from tier two skills all the way into tier three.
Nothing says I have to get my training from the same place, yes it takes 2 years to max out, but in that two years I can train from a different settlement every single month without any repercussions from doing so. Why is that a long term commitment between 2 settlements?
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Goblin Squad Member
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How many cities are just going to let some random dude take up a high tier training spot?
I think that depends on whether that spot is a limited resource or a regenerating slot that is limited (available time wise) and salable.
Ozem's Vigil plans to have the highest possible training in several niche roles. We certainly hope that the training is not limited in the way that I think you are suggesting.
It doesn't matter how I get access to that spot, I could join them, I could buy access, I could make a temporary alliance I throw out when I'm done, hell I might be able to disguise myself and sneak in. The point is it only matters for the single moment it takes me to press the button to train. After that it doesn't matter what happens as far as training is concerned. Not saying some of those options won't have repercussions, but it does not affect my ability to train.
That's part of the problem I'm trying to point out, you're assuming everyone is going to be very closed off and yet still remain super successful. That should not be an option for success. Being 'closed' should inhibit your growth both settlement and character wise with the trade off of security. Being open should increase your growth and character development options while being less secure. If you want to remain very narrowly focused, closed can work, but if you want to be broad reaching you're going to need to be open and work with other open entities.
Isolationism should not be the road to a breadth of success at any juncture. Two to three settlements cross training with each other and locking their doors otherwise should not be the path to success.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Look at all that interaction you had to do to get training. Seems like any of those things would take effort to set up.
There are a few more important downsides to being isolationist then just this support thing. A lack of bulk goods, no friends to come help you with yoru monster/invasion problems. A lack of easy training. There are already enough mechanics in game to discourage isolationism without adding one that adds yet another hurdle to simply play the role you want with the people you want to.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't like the idea of the support system if it limits the skills one can train/use/keep. With balance issues this will really put some settlements at an advantage over others. I'm not sure how training is being seen as a non-event, but if it is then I support making it more of a commodity to prevent power blocks. If anything I feel limiting support will lead to an increased chance of power blocks as a group swallows up settlements so that they can support all their players. I'm in a wait and see mode at the moment. I don't want to be limited in my skills after I obtain training or in the "level"/amplitude of that skill. I'm fine with training the skill being an ordeal.
Not being a part of the same settlement as one's friends actually does make it a bit harder to play a major portion of the game with them; settlement warfare.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just as reference, here's a quote from Tork about the intentions behind the support design:
The danger with nations is that they are already inherently VERY powerful and the best levers we have for 'control' are at the settlement level. The reason for both the division of classes/roles among settlements and the fealty systems (companies and settlements) is to to encourage friction and conflict even within alliances. Settlement level is where are best social and mechanical 'controls' come into play. Nations have the potential to seriously shift the powerbase in The River Kingdoms so we need to make sure their mechanical benefits are significant but different from the mechanics of settlements. What we dont want is for a player nation to be able to circumvent the restrictions placed on settlements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And reading that, I think I have to argue that forcing Settlement A to specialize in one subset of classes while Settlement B specializes in a different subset of classes does nothing to foster friction within a nation. A company of inquisitors is not going to feud a co-settlement company of oracles in order to get settlement leadership to reallocate DI.
In fact, this mechanism reduces friction, since it reduces the opportunity for those inquisitors to find a new home if they're dissatisfied. Instead of creating friction, the result of this design will be to see certain roles- any roles which don't fit the doctrine of the major players- minimized and unsupported.
"I'm not going to play an inquisitor because nobody supports them" leads straight into a vicious circle where "I'm not going to build inquisitor support because nobody plays them".
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Goblin Squad Member
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Don't have time to read all the posts here, so sorry If I'm repeating.
I haven't been a fan of this "character upkeep" system since it was announced.
I don't like the idea of forcing settlements to choose what classes they support, I think that every settlement should be able to house every class to the max level.
I think the focus on "character upkeep" should be entirely consumable based, like EvE. And there can be some things that don't require consumables, but they require much more effort, and are not as powerful as the consumable-based counterparts.
Your ability to play a role should not be determined by your location. That is too restrictive.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think their plan for making your Settlement count as a significant portion of your Character Sheet is quite brilliant. I think there will be a lot of friction as folks try to specialize and coordinate with other Settlements, and again as large "guilds" realize they need multiple Settlements to make everyone happy.
Remember, they're going to be pushing us constantly towards conflict because that's where the game content comes from. If we can all be happy in just one Settlement, there would be a lot less conflict.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Though I don't blame GW for wanting to create more avenues for conflict, 99% of organization-to-organization discussions are about creating friendly areas and working together without war.
I think that the silent majority isn't as friendly as people on the forums, so I'm not as concerned as GW.
You should be able to carve out your area, and be able to produce 70-80% of what you need within 4 or so settlements with 30-40 POI's. It's up to GW to make sure that no area of the map contains enough variation in hexes to allow a nation to be self sustaining.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think it's an accident that there's no area of the map with significant control over all four major terrain types (Hills, Mountains, Forests, Croplands) in an area that looks like it could be dominated by a 5-Settlement Nation. The only area that even comes close would stretch from Callambea to a future Settlement west of Talonguard, and even then Callambea's access to Mountains is fairly constrained and the 5-Settlement Nation thus constructed would be a long thin line.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the limited support thing either. I think there is enough opportunity to create conflict over an item/consumable based economy without having to artificialy restrict who can associate with whom in the same settlement.
Frankly, I also agree that with zero mechanincs to foster conflict within the game there will still be so much conflict within the game that no one will lack for it. Just give people the capability to attack one another and they will. It's just the nature of things.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just to throw out there, Skill Support also serves to keep characters tied to settlements. Otherwise it would be a trivial matter to train up enough skills and break for it on your own. Aside from effectively opting out of the core of the game (territory control), that would also provide insulation from many of the mechanics designed to prevent people from wandering around RPKing.