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So I think I won that argument.
Nobody really wins an argument on the Internet. ;D
CEO, Goblinworks
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So let's be clear about what the MVP feature is and what the planned iterations for the feature is.
The MVP feature is:
You can only be a member of one company. Companies can only be members of one Settlement.
You have a max ranks of training in a Feat based on the number of Towers controlled by your Settlement. As that number changes, the max rank number changes. If you change the Settlement you are affiliated with the Ranks of the Feats you can access change ASAP.
This is how the game works today and will work when Early Enrollment begins.
Likely Iterations:
In no particular order; these are just written as I remember them from the design document.
- If you are not a member of a Company allied with a Settlement you will not be able to access that Settlement's trainers, until a future iteration where Settlements have members directly exclusive of Company participation.
- There will be a cooldown period after your Settlement loses access to training (or is destroyed) or after you separate from a Settlement. During the cooldown period you will retain access to the ranks of the Feats you've trained regardless of your current Settlement's training cap.
- Settlements will have the ability to choose to construct "support" facilities that will enable characters who earned Ranks of Feats at other Settlements to continue to use them even though the Settlement itself cannot train those ranks (or those Feats at all). The tradeoff is that the Settlement will give up the ability to build some other kind of structure by doing this.
- You will be able to join more than one Company
- Settlements will be able to make Alliances which enable affiliated characters to access each others' Trainers.
The Worst Case Scenario:
The design anticipates that some characters will suffer the worst case scenario.
They will lose access to a Settlement that has support for Ranks of Feats they have trained, the cooldown will expire, and they will not be able to find a new Settlement to accept them that will have support for those Ranks. They will cease having access to those Ranks (and possibly the Feat entirely) until such time as they're able to find a Settlement who can support those Ranks and Feats again.
On purpose we are designing the game in such a way that some characters, based on their actions, will find that the only Settlements they can be members of have only low Ranks of limited Feats available for training and support. Those characters will be substantially less powerful than they would be if they had proper support for their training. This is an intentional penalty.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Settlements will have the ability to choose to construct "support" facilities that will enable characters who earned Ranks of Feats at other Settlements to continue to use them even though the Settlement itself cannot train those ranks (or those Feats at all). The tradeoff is that the Settlement will give up the ability to build some other kind of structure by doing this.
That mean that settlement have limited spaces keyed to specific buildings and that if you build something in a location you block a different building that was keyed to that location, or that there is a limited number of building in a settlement?
Or you are simply speaking of an opportunity cost, where using the resources for one building mean that you aren't using them for another building?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Bluddwolf's statement was "no parallels with EVE". I then listed 8 parallels. None of which he thinks aren't parallels except training in realtime, because we have gates and EVE doesn't. The reader can decide for themselves if that's a parallel feature or not.
So I think I won that argument.
Actually I conceded on only one parallel, the rest are either too far from the freedom that the players have in EvE or are considered industry standards (ie player storage, banking, markets, "meaningful travel"??, etc.). Those do not make a game any more of a sandbox than all of the MMOs and other PC games that also have those features.
My argument is based on "sandbox" features not being parallel, certainly not parallel enough to claim pedigree with (of) EvE.
Of the systems you are pulling from EvE, the mega alliance vs mega alliance is the least interesting to me. But that is still not a parallel because in EvE, participation in that kind of game play is completely voluntary. In PFO it is virtually required.
I played EvE for the better part of 7 years straight, and on and off for another 2 years beyond that. In all of that time I only had contact with mega alliances (BoB, Northen Alliance, Goonswarm, Pandemic Legion, etc) back in 04-05. Whether I was in a small corporation or an allied alliance, during that time period or since then, I have never felt compelled to play in any way that was not my choosing.
If a player in PFO is not really happy with the gaming direction of his or her settlement, does the system not punish them for choosing to leave?
How could that possibly be supported by any common definition of a "sandbox MMO"?
- Settlements will have the ability to choose to construct "support" facilities that will enable characters who earned Ranks of Feats at other Settlements to continue to use them even though the Settlement itself cannot train those ranks (or those Feats at all). The tradeoff is that the Settlement will give up the ability to build some other kind of structure by doing this.
- Settlements will be able to make Alliances which enable affiliated characters to access each others' Trainers.
So does this mean that the only way a Fighter can maintain advanced fighter levels at a Crafting town is if the Crafting town chooses to build support structures for it? Its not enough for the Crafting town to have enough resources to support more advanced fighter levels (i.e. Towers at this point in time), but the settlement would also have to dedicate space to fighters- lest the fighter winds up stuck at level 5 or 7 or whatever the base level will be?
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CEO, Goblinworks
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My definition of "sandbox MMO" is:
A game where the emergent behavior of people engaged in meaningful human interaction produces persistent and signifigant effects on the game world, and where the primary driver of value are those people's interactions and those persistent effects, not developer choices or storylines.
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@Ryan Dancey, CEO of Goblinworks, Inc & Bluddwolf, CEO of Disagreeing with the CEO of Goblinworks, Inc: How about you both drop by the event on Wednesday Thursday the 3rd of December in Brighthaven, we'll all hook you two up with some clubs and armor or some such, then you can go to town beating each other over the head with them. Whoever wins calls dibs on defining "Sandbox MMO" for all internet time and space.
Deal? Great. Everybody! Place your bets with the pointy-eared Elf, Nihimon! He's the one wearing the dressrobes all the time.
(On a more serious note, Ryan's definition is exactly the definition that comes to mind when I think of "Sandbox MMO"- people building together largely outside the dictates of the developer.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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So does this mean that the only way a Fighter can maintain advanced fighter levels at a Crafting town is if the Crafting town chooses to build support structures for it? Its not enough for the Crafting town to have enough resources to support more advanced fighter levels (i.e. Towers at this point in time), but the settlement would also have to dedicate space to fighters- lest the fighter winds up stuck at level 5 or 7 or whatever the base level will be?
- Settlements will have the ability to choose to construct "support" facilities that will enable characters who earned Ranks of Feats at other Settlements to continue to use them even though the Settlement itself cannot train those ranks (or those Feats at all). The tradeoff is that the Settlement will give up the ability to build some other kind of structure by doing this.
- Settlements will be able to make Alliances which enable affiliated characters to access each others' Trainers.
As far as I know, support buildings will arrive after the War of Towers, when our settlements won't be forced into pre-determined categories like Crafting and Cleric/Fighter. At that time, we'll have a limited number of land parcels of each size, but none of them will be pre-assigned to buildings that we didn't choose to build. We'll be able to choose what our facilities will train, what they'll only support, and what will be untrainable and unsupported in each settlement.
During the War of Towers, the number of Towers a settlement controls is the only limit on training and using abilities.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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That mean that settlement have limited spaces keyed to specific buildings and that if you build something in a location you block a different building that was keyed to that location, or that there is a limited number of building in a settlement?
This is the preliminary design very much subject to Crowdforging:
Settlements have a fixed number of building spaces. Those spaces are divided into Small, Medium and Large spaces.
The Settlement will have the ability to decide what kinds of structures it wants to build on those spaces. It will have the ability to tear a structure down and build something else in its place.
Structures can be improved. A Settlement can choose to allocate various resources to long-term improvement of a structure or not.
The more advanced the structures are in a Settlement the more resources the Settlement will consume. Failure to sustain the consumption of the Settlement will result in structures degrading to a less advanced state.
We envision the "support" structure being a Small class facility. We might require more than one "support" structure to cover all possible Feats. So if you elect to build "Support" into your Settlement, you'd be forgoing other Small class facilities that you might otherwise have put in that space.
I can't give you a list of what those other Small class structures might be, but I can tell you that the Large structures are planned to be the facilities for training Role related Feats.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Where personal holdings fall in that situation? They will eat the space normally allocated to productive building or they are in a separate category?
There is some interesting mechanic in the current situation: Keeper pass (crafting town) need to ally with Phaeros (wizard/rogue) and with a cleric/fighter town to get its defender, or it need to conquer those cities and have some of its citizens resettle there.
The problem is that with the current immediate loss of access to the higher ranks capturing one of the allied cities immediately reduce the fighting power of all the alliance.
It is a situation where you need to defend all your settlement at the same time while the attacker can concentrate on one location at a time.
During war of the towers the different windows of opportunity for the attacks can mitigate that.
There are good reasons to limit the number of controlled towers, at least until we need them for further training.
A big balancing act keeping all that in equilibrium. Both for the players and GW.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mostly missing from the "support buildings" discussion is POIs.
I've been under the impression POIs will be one of the things that may support training, such that a crafting settlement might have a Logging Camp that produces bulk wood and provides support (but not training) for fighters.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It is a situation where you need to defend all your settlement at the same time while the attacker can concentrate on one location at a time.
By the same token, you could be attacking their settlement when they hit one of yours.
Difficult decisions to be made? Good, Goblinworks made it right.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Where personal holdings fall in that situation? They will eat the space normally allocated to productive building or they are in a separate category?
The Smallholdings will not count against this system of Small, Medium and Large Settlement structures. There's a separate pool of available Smallholding plots that is built into the Settlement geometry.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There will be a cooldown period after your Settlement loses access to training (or is destroyed) or after you separate from a Settlement. During the cooldown period you will retain access to the ranks of the Feats you've trained regardless of your current Settlement's training cap.
It will be important to make sure Character's simply retain their previous limit for the duration of the Cooldown, rather than having no limit, or there will be a strong incentive to leave the Settlement for almost the entire Cooldown period.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To the best of my knowledge, SWG wasn't losing money before the CU. From what I've read, it was roughly following EVE's slow but steady growth curve. Sony, however, wasn't content with slow growth. Considering the massive and enduring popularity of Star Wars, they expected to see a WoW growth curve. Unfortunately, they discovered that totally revamping an MMO a couple of years after release is much worse than slow growth.
Sadly, SWG was dying off before CU because they allowed the game to be swarmed by macro bots. By the end of the first year after release, there was roughly a 75% - 80% chance that any character you might come across was a macro bot. It was disgusting. All of the wonderful interaction and community that had existed before evaporated.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The problem is that with the current immediate loss of access to the higher ranks capturing one of the allied cities immediately reduce the fighting power of all the alliance.
This is not a problem since it is impossible to attack or capture settlements at this time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To the best of my knowledge, SWG wasn't losing money before the CU. From what I've read, it was roughly following EVE's slow but steady growth curve. Sony, however, wasn't content with slow growth. Considering the massive and enduring popularity of Star Wars, they expected to see a WoW growth curve. Unfortunately, they discovered that totally revamping an MMO a couple of years after release is much worse than slow growth.Sadly, SWG was dying off before CU because they allowed the game to be swarmed by macro bots. By the end of the first year after release, there was roughly a 75% - 80% chance that any character you might come across was a macro bot. It was disgusting. All of the wonderful interaction and community that had existed before evaporated.
I hadn't run into that many bots, except for the macro BuffBot Master Doctors.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It is a situation where you need to defend all your settlement at the same time while the attacker can concentrate on one location at a time.
By the same token, you could be attacking their settlement when they hit one of yours.
Difficult decisions to be made? Good, Goblinworks made it right.
I doubt that attacking their settlement while they are attacking yours will work. They can choose the window of opportunity for theirs attack, possibly attacking when their towers aren't vulnerable and yours are.
Even if that is not possible if you don't know in advance about the attack. Having a force marching against their holdings while they are marching against yours require a lot of organization. It is not a thing that you can do on the spur of the moment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The problem is that with the current immediate loss of access to the higher ranks capturing one of the allied cities immediately reduce the fighting power of all the alliance.This is not a problem since it is impossible to attack or capture settlements at this time.
But it should be possible during war of the towers, or I am mistaken?
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Goblin Squad Member
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So let's be clear about what the MVP feature is and what the planned iterations for the feature is.
The MVP feature is:
You can only be a member of one company. Companies can only be members of one Settlement.
You have a max ranks of training in a Feat based on the number of Towers controlled by your Settlement. As that number changes, the max rank number changes. If you change the Settlement you are affiliated with the Ranks of the Feats you can access change ASAP.
This is how the game works today and will work when Early Enrollment begins.
Just another though about this: how ASAP is ASP?
I mean, my settlement control X towers, we are attached, we lose 1 tower, suddenly all of our defender rank cap change?The server can manage having teens/hundreds of logged people change their maximum rank in all skills and the functioning ranks while a battle is raging?
Or the resetting of the settlement limits is done at downtime?
I had a vision of the server suddenly crashing when that happen, so had to ask.
(Disclaimer: I know very little on how Tower war work)
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Goblin Squad Member
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And another thing ... I just created my own company as suggested and applied for membership in a settlement.
Now I cant access anything in Rathgalen, I can left click on trainers to get their name, but right clicking do not open the training message 8I did it just before the company creation and then it worked).
Crafting do not work either...
Anyone else seen the same?
And I get logged out when I switch windows, such as for writing this, but only after a little while, if I just switch back and forth nothing strange happens. but staying at the other window for a couple of minutes or so, I get the log in window.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ryan Dancey, CEO of Goblinworks, Inc & Bluddwolf, CEO of Disagreeing with the CEO of Goblinworks, Inc: How about you both drop by the event on
WednesdayThursday the 3rd of December in Brighthaven, we'll all hook you two up with some clubs and armor or some such, then you can go to town beating each other over the head with them. Whoever wins calls dibs on defining "Sandbox MMO" for all internet time and space.Deal? Great. Everybody! Place your bets with the pointy-eared Elf, Nihimon! He's the one wearing the
dressrobes all the time.(On a more serious note, Ryan's definition is exactly the definition that comes to mind when I think of "Sandbox MMO"- people building together largely outside the dictates of the developer.)
Except for their social structures, these will be dictated by the developer, your choice not to live by that means that you are set up to lose.
As I have said, I have a company and I have a settlement. I also have backups if either of those fail. I can only imagine the the hold settlement leaders will have over their citizens, "follow or be stripped of all of the skills (tier 2+) that you have paid time and money for."
Now, Ryan's list of possible iterations does pose some solutions, but it also raises some questions. I'm at work so I'll get to those later.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Cal's Hints(tm) #146: When one of your members starts talking about abandoning the game, do your best to ensure that if that individual is in charge of one of the companies coughFancy Lads of Stoneroot Gladecough that controls 21 of your Towers, you make arrangements with that person to transfer leadership of the company before they sell it to one of the leaders of another settlement.
;-P
This thread needs to be stickied, as any players looking to become involved need to know what they are getting into as far as limitations go. I think it's pretty punitive to the player as an individual and also very harsh against groups who are out-numbered, and won't succeed in the long run, but go the way you want to go, it's your game. It also means that a person that wants to say, be a crafter mainly, isn't very viable at all, where as in other games it was perfectly valid.
People need to know that long term this game is designed for guilds, and players individual goals are going to end up taking a back seat to supporting the guild directly through spending time gathering resources on one half, or fighting battles on the other.
I don't think the hive mentality will work with people the way you think it will.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This thread needs to be stickied, as any players looking to become involved need to know what they are getting into as far as limitations go. I think it's pretty punitive to the player as an individual and also very harsh against groups who are out-numbered, and won't succeed in the long run, but go the way you want to go, it's your game. It also means that a person that wants to say, be a crafter mainly, isn't very viable at all, where as in other games it was perfectly valid.
People need to know that long term this game is designed for guilds, and players individual goals are going to end up taking a back seat to supporting the guild directly through spending time gathering resources on one half, or fighting battles on the other.
I don't think the hive mentality will work with people the way you think it will.
I'm not too sure I agree with this, but that disagreement might be more specific to PFO than to other MMOs.
My own group has been playing Life is Feudal (alpha), and that "hive mentality" has really been the focus for our activity and entertainment. What is unique in LiF is that even a small group of 10 people can take on monumental public works projects (ie building a castle / walled in settlement). Gathering, Harvesting, Refining, Crafting and Terraforming are multilayered and require coordination and dedication. To seek out PvP, solo, is equally doable, but you're likely not to be very successful at it.
Raiding is by far the most fun of all of the activities, and certainly something that requires that "hive mentality", but no where's near the level that your typical MMO Theme Park dungeon raid requires.
I don't see much difference when comparing MMOs on your point. PFO just starts that hive mentality earlier than most MMOs. Most MMOs include the hive mentality as part of their "end game" content.
It just seems like this is the same as perma-death, without actually killing an account. If a player cannot gain back what he's lost, he may as well BE dead. What's the purpose of that? I would much rather see an actual perma-death than this back handed version. It would be more honest. And if the only part of this game is going to be supplying your guild with resources, I just don't see the draw.
I still have a problem even tying a class like Paladin (or any class/role such as ranger/druid) to being a part of a town. At what point is playing a role part of being part of a community? Why is the game design forcing commitments? Your ability to fix weapons isn't based on where you live, it's based on how well you can fix weapons. And that has to do with your access to the TOOLS of your trade, not where you set up shop. I just can't wrap my head around that, except that it seems designed to force consolidation of power into a group, similar to the BORG.
Who would pay money to end up being level locked? And of course we assume guild leaders can punt people out, so these people have a lot of power over other people paying to play a game. For some reason I don't understand that. This is what needs to be clearly stated right up front. This game is not for people who aren't mentally set to accept structured play right from the start, who aren't willing to accept that some third party player could essentially cut out their legs on a whim.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Who would pay money to end up being level locked? And of course we assume guild leaders can punt people out, so these people have a lot of power over other people paying to play a game. For some reason I don't understand that. This is what needs to be clearly stated right up front. This game is not for people who aren't mentally set to accept structured play right from the start, who aren't willing to accept that some third party player could essentially cut out their legs on a whim.
The existing state is sub MvP. The plan is that 10+ people must sign a charter for how the group will operate. Most of those groups will not be under the thumb of an individual, some of them will be complete mob rule.
There are 30+ settlements, with room for dozens more, even before the board gets bigger near OE. The devs are not going to let a tiny number of those settlements control the whole board. It is anathema to their purpose. To be "level locked" you'd have to unable to get along with any of leadership of the large settlements. For that to happen, I think you'd have to be exactly the kind of person that GW wants "level locked."
For people that are truly worried that they won't be able to find any group that lets them play as they want, perhaps PFO is not the place for them to play.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You are forgetting that the real numbers are lower, especially for some people. In a game that pivot so much around operating in a group simply being from a different time zone is a huge handicap.
My current group is made of US people. I am Italian. I see them on line for 1-2 hours, generally when it is 1 AM for me and 6 PM for them. It is hard to trade in that situation and almost impossible doing something more.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We don't, yet, know anything about how real numbers will be when the game is live. There won't be any need to train at a higher level than NPC settlements for several weeks. By then we'll have a better picture of the state of the economy. Some of the smaller groups may be forced to make difficult decisions.
People in the odd times zones may become some of the most sought-after in the game, since they will be able to get stuff done, instead of spending all their time defending towers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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People in the odd times zones may become some of the most sought-after in the game, since they will be able to get stuff done, instead of spending all their time defending towers.
Yes, these off-peak hour slaves members are highly sought after because settlement leadership has limited social commitment to them.
Yeah, I know that is not what you meant, but some can and will look at it that way.
What all of this talk makes it seem like is that PFO is not very casual friendly, and most sandbox MMOs are at least that.
There is a sharp difference between communal interdependency and being the Borg.
This subject again. My favorite!
It is an issue whether people foresee it or not; I think it's game breaking (as said before.) It is not sand boxy, to me, because I believe there is a third variable: the neutral.
The game seems to place a lot on trying to limit griefing or punish people for being bad, but there is also a player base that does that. Not that people should police the world, but everyone knows. If the top settlement is 'bad', then people can reluctantly fight them. Even if it's just fight them to make their life inconvenient.
Now, the top settlement can potentially consume the map. If you are in a settlement and they want to kick you, they can really damage you. But why?
The *idea* of settlements is good. Company v company, but to force people into that is where the issue is, and I am surprised nobody sees how this could potentially end the game very prematurely. That is, after the first war.
OR, there would be no wars and the large companies would just scratch each other's back and dominate the smaller ones. Maybe realistic in terms of corporate America, but not really something you're bringing players in to sub.
Players want to know they can make a difference to start. I am sure a lot of people come into the game with big dreams. The way things are set up, you'd have to play good for x amount of time before you did anything to fight against the larger groups and by that point, you may have lost all of your support or will to fight.
We shall see what happens. I could be wrong. If there was a PFO betting line on whether what I said would happen or whether it would work out swimmingly and cause everyone to group up, working side by side, and fight epic wars... I would bet on my side, of course.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Even in EVE, the ANZAC TZ has a reputation for being able to get stuff done while all the meddling Americans are asleep and the bothersome Euros are at work. :D
Yeah,the area around my my 0.3 and 0.2 losec PI planets is so quiet in AUS hours that mid week I often leave the Viator at home and just take an Epithal.
This subject again. My favorite!
OR, there would be no wars and the large companies would just scratch each other's back and dominate the smaller ones. Maybe realistic in terms of corporate America, but not really something you're bringing players in to sub.
There is also a banana republic thing happening where some settlements already appear to be intending to rely on support from more active "bigger" friends once EE comes.
Of course many settlements hold open internal elections, but one issue I have is that the game mechanics seem setup to entrench and reinforce the power of anyone that got into management of a settlement that did well in the Landrush. Mismanagement and bad relations are irrelevant, power comes from size alone.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We don't, yet, know anything about how real numbers will be when the game is live. There won't be any need to train at a higher level than NPC settlements for several weeks. By then we'll have a better picture of the state of the economy. Some of the smaller groups may be forced to make difficult decisions.
People in the odd times zones may become some of the most sought-after in the game, since they will be able to get stuff done, instead of spending all their time defending towers.
Stuff done like "I gathered this stuff bankbot, give me something"?
Rewarding ...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Diego, I'm in a bit of the same situation, I think I need to head south to Brighthaven as it is said there is more EU players there.
Perhaps we have to concede to the coercion of the gametime restraint and choose settlement after that rather any other parameter. At least until there is a larger population...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Diego, I'm in a bit of the same situation, I think I need to head south to Brighthaven as it is said there is more EU players there.
Perhaps we have to concede to the coercion of the gametime restraint and choose settlement after that rather any other parameter. At least until there is a larger population...
I know, I suspect I will have to do that, even if I find distasteful as my current group has made its projects counting on my presence. But it clearly prove the point that I was trying to explain to Caldeathe Baequiannia: the "freedom" to change settlements to find the right one for you is limited for some player.
If, to make an example, there are only 3 European groups, and 2 are heavily in raids against weaker groups and the third is made by people that consider the presence during the Sunday afternoon mandatory (when I play pen and paper Pathfinder) I would be the odd wheel in every one of them.
The only Italian group that I know of is waiting for EE and want to play as mercenaries.
It is not something that interest me and it don't seem so viable under the current rules.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that one solution, to address some of the concerns here, is that all PC proto settlements (pre cataclysm) are open to training all roles. Once the cataclysm has ended, the only structures left standing are those common to all and those that the management had chosen during the land rush.
Ive also not read anywhere that settlement management may not decide to tear down one structure and replace it with another, thus changing that focus for the settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ive also not read anywhere that settlement management may not decide to tear down one structure and replace it with another, thus changing that focus for the settlement.
I actually think that it has indeed been stated that tearing town buildings is something that a settlement can (and should do). For example, when the settlement has reached a stable, stagnated phase, where majority of citizens are in T3 skills, it's a natural transition from training facilities to support buildings (or something different).
On the topic of reduced skill proficiencies, a percentual reduction might be more tolerable than straight out flattening the player. Easier to market one self to new settlements if you don't have to start with: I am very good at various things, provided you are willing to build X building first.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm wondering about the whole discussion - is this a buyer or a seller market?
As far as I can say as a settlement leader:
During the landrush I fought hard for every member to join
During alpha I still reach out for people I like to join (unsuccessful as they seem to be already with other settlements)
I haven't turned down anyone who wanted to join us yet
I'm only aware of a single incidence (Freevale) when people got booted from a settlement after the landrush when political issues escalated
I'm not saying I will always accept every single player. If you behave toxic here then I will say 'Thank you' and you might have to go elsewhere.
As such I believe someone wanting a new settlement will find one - unless he missbehaves and a bad reputation is preceding him/her. But I have to admit I don't mind if players behaving badly have a disadvantage.
The only issue I see are players who don't want to sign up for a settlement. The current game is not catering for them once they reach higher levels - and this is a design choice.
The other issue is what can the settlement offer beyond training. This depends on time zones. Emerald Lodge is primarily EU (UK) based so far but I hope to build up a big enough US group as well.
Going the opposite direction will be more difficult - but in this case players need to be pro-active and join as a group. More will follow you.
It is a buyer market as far as I can say.
So guilds need to also be right up front about what they expect from members, so players aren't blindsided either. Thankfully, this can be done outside of game, so potential players can check to see who is recruiting, and know in advance if there is the potential for negative investment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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After reading this thread, I am horribly confused. I'm affiliated with Kabal, which has a Rogue/Mage template for their settlement. Let's say it's at level 8. I'm just making up numbers, so bear with me. Let's further say I want to play a cleric.
It's my understanding that as of right now, I can have cleric skills/feats up to level 8, but I'll have to hit up another settlement to train them (i.e. one that has a cleric/fighter template).
At some point the system will be changed so I have to train them in a town that has cleric trainers AND our town will need to have a support building for cleric skills.
Is that correct? If not, what is correct?
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Goblin Squad Member
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After reading this thread, I am horribly confused. I'm affiliated with Kabal, which has a Rogue/Mage template for their settlement. Let's say it's at level 8. I'm just making up numbers, so bear with me. Let's further say I want to play a cleric.
It's my understanding that as of right now, I can have cleric skills/feats up to level 8, but I'll have to hit up another settlement to train them (i.e. one that has a cleric/fighter template).
At some point the system will be changed so I have to train them in a town that has cleric trainers AND our town will need to have a support building for cleric skills.
Is that correct? If not, what is correct?
That is correct.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Training
Now: You can use trainers in any Settlement. So whomever has the most towers that matches your training needs is where you would want to go.
Soon: You won't be able to train at a Settlement other than your own, or an NPC Settlement.
Later: Settlements will be able to make deals to open their training facilities to allies.
In all cases you'll have to meet the minimum reputation threshold to enter the Settlement and access the Trainers.
Support
Now: If you have trained a rank of a feat Feat you can use it as long as your Settlement provides support for that rank.
Soon: No Change
Later: Settlements will be able to construct buildings that enable characters to access ranks of Feats higher than what the Settlement itself can provide.
Changes to Feat Ranks As Underlying Settlement Variables Change
Now: At server downtime your Settlement affiliation determines the max rank of the Feats you have access to.
Soon: There will be some kind of cool-down period during which you can continue to use all of your training if the Settlement you are a member of cannot support it.
Later: Same as soon but probably with all sorts of variables and conditions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In the 'Soon' timeframe, if my settlement has enough towers to provide higher level training than the NPC settlements, but it doesn't have the trainers I'm looking for, will the NPC settlements be able to train me?
Example: 'Soon' timeframe. My Settlement is Wizard/Rogue. I want to train Cleric feats at a level higher than NPC settlements typically offer. My Settlement has enough towers to offer training of that level, but no cleric trainers. Can I learn the feats in an NPC Settlement, or do I need to leave my current Company and join a Company in a Cleric/Fighter Settlement?
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Goblin Squad Member
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IF the soon case applies to EE, each pro to settlement will only be able to its two roles trained to max and others will be limited to NPC levels. E.g. a crafter settlement will not be able to train up the CFRW types needed to protect the harvesters and "harvest" the PVE.
I am not sure where that leaves experts and freeholders and the skills may be picked up in the shops in non=craft town, but the role traits (armor and ???) must be learned in those new support buildings add in Alpha 14 (which I have not played.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Soon: You won't be able to train at a Settlement other than your own, or an NPC Settlement.How long will this period last? I think this might upset some folks' plans.
If Soon begins at the same time as EE, and it lasts a few months, then it will put the crafting settlements at a serious WoT disadvantage until Later arrives.
It will also result in some serious asymmetrical warfare, with each martial settlement fielding troops much better trained in two roles and weaker in the other two roles. A Wizard/Rogue town vs. a Fighter/Cleric town after six months of Soon would be an odd battle, to say the least.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Training is based on Settlement Tower control. The NPC Settlements don't control towers so the max training they can offer never changes.
"Soon" in the context of when you'll have to be a member of a Settlement to train there is a pretty fungible variable. I don't think we've even attempted yet to figure out the sequencing. I doubt it would be something that will happen in the next couple of months.
It might be that we segue directly from you can train at any Settlement to you can train at any Settlement that has an alliance with your Settlement without a stop at a more restricted point. But the benefit of the restriction point is pretty high so I would accept that as a short-term situation if a direct segue was impossible.