The value of Settlements, and the Training Support feature.

[Tyncale]

I originally made this post in a thread on the GW forums but I figured I could make a thread here so you guys can shoot holes in it. It was triggered by the unhappiness that many people have expressed over the past two years about the fact that you can lose access to Skills/feats when you loose the support of your settlement. (Temporarily). People are afraid this will be something that people may quit over.

You can also discuss it here on the GW forums in the Crowdforging forums: Can the game do without the training support feature?

Here goes:

I can see roughly 4 pillars currently on which the value of a Settlement(and thus the value for its members) is resting:

• The intrinsic value of its built-up real estate, through concerted effort over time from its members; buildings, Holdings, Outposts. A very important pillar.
  
• Derived from this effort is the ability to train, and to support this (and other)training.
  
• The settlements(more or less valuable) location in the Geographical, Economic and Political framework of the land.
  
• Derived from the first 3, a social cohesive community that has formed through this effort; the supported training is probably an important factor in maintaining the cohesion, though lots of others things will contribute to that too (friends, history, location, Economic and Political goals, playstyle)
  

When a Settlement gets razed to the ground(or gets severely crippled by razing its Holdings), members loose all 3 pillars(2nd one after a month); the 4th pillar, the community, is at a serious danger. Very cohesive groups (friends, playstyle)will probably manage to start anew, or be assimilated as a whole somewhere where they feel accepted.

I think a large part will scatter though, driven to places where they can get appropriate training support.

I am not saying this is a bad thing! I am actually pretty sure that Settlement Communities are expected to be challenged by this sort of thing. They are not meant to stick together forever as a goal per se.

However, looking at those 4 pillars, I am wondering if ditching part of the second pillar, the training-support feature, would really lead to stagnation in the Game of Thrones. I am wondering if there would still not be plenty of strife, Wars, unequality, Greed, greener pastures, scarcity and animosity, and most importantly, incentives to put effort in your settlement, if you take away the pillar of Training Support.

The big worry would be, that in the end, every member of every Settlement, will have the stuff trained that he wants, and have forever access to those skills(through Alliances, settlement-hopping). This could take away the incentive to upgrade your Settlement, at least for this reason. But there are still a lot of other things that a Settlement could work for, and upgrade. Training itself, Safety, faster Crafting queues, more buildings, better AH features, stronger Walls and so forth. In the same vein, those things set a Settlement apart, like Alignment, which Training, available buildings, quality of those buildings, More or less Safety and such.

Big Questions:

• will leaving out the Training Support feature bring the Economic and Political engines of this game to a grinding halt?
  
• Will Settlements lose Identity?
  
• Will it become too hard for settlements to keep their numbers, because players are no longer "bound" to a settlement for access to their skills?
  
• Will we get hordes of opportune drifters? Or will players stick to(and stand up for) their settlements for other reasons?

[Thod]

Great questions - will have to think about them before answering in detail but wanted to thank you to initiate the discussion here.

[Tyncale]

I will admit that a settlement offering support for my level 20 Armorsmith would be a strong incentive to stay in that particular settlement.

But the choice does seem a bit "forced" too, since I expect most people to pretty much ignore any other incentives if their Skills are at risk.

Could there be other incentives to glue people to a Settlement?

I am not sold on ditching the feature, mind you. Such a strong incentive could be necessary to get players moving. It's not that there will only be a single settlement that will offer support for a Level 20 Armorsmith.

Just wondering if it is *really* needed. We wouldn't want lots of players to quit over it either.

Also thinking about drifters that do not feel bound anymore because they will keep their skills anyway: I assume it is still in the plans that players are required to be either member of a PC or an NPC settlement?

Maybe you could still lose skill-support if you refuse to be a member of a PC settlement.

Could we think of other drawbacks when you are member of an NPC settlement, other then losing training support? How about a limited bank-inventory?

[TEO Cheatle]

To your four questions,

#1 - Without having to be attached to a settlement a group could maintain (at a slower pace) all of the crafted goods they need, removing the need for a settlement altogether(unless NPC towns won't allow higher tier gear to be made).

#2 - Maybe, I see a lot of people roaming at the company level away from settlements. I see settlements constantly being manned by a combination of vets, newbies, and people that want to play the game at the nation/warefare level.

#3 - Maybe, there will be an influx of new players to help maintain, but then if you considered VCs attached to a settlement that hold and maintain outposts...if that isn't happening they won't be keeping their training either.

- You could have a settlement of veterans abandon their settlement once they have enough training in a system like this.

#4 - I think yes, there are a lot of people that want their independence from settlements, so ya I think your first question here will indeed happen.

I have two solutions that might help the situation, both of them function at the company level:

Forts:
If your settlement is destroyed, or your company leaves a settlement, and you have 30 days to find another settlement or lose your training you could place a Fort. You find a back up location, allocate influence for your company to create a Fort (for lack of a better term). It would act as a mini settlement with defensible walls that slowly costs more and more to maintain, but allows you to retain all of your companies training. After you can not pay the costs anymore it is despawned, you lose the holding, and that particular holding goes on a 30 day cool down.

This would allow groups more time to re-establish themselves, retake the location, so on and so forth. If rebuilding they can even focus on certain groups for the first 30 days, move those people into the settlement, and the rest use Forts until their builds are repaired.

Hamlet:
This option is for EXTREMELY focused and specialized groups. This is a holding that establishes a small Hamlet where a holding goes. This Hamlet can be tailored to a specific role or perhaps even two closely associate roles. It would provide several key buildings for training and potentially crafting. It would start out at Tier 1 training, and require more allocation over time for the training it would provide, which is up to Level 13. To make it more balanced this could also cost upkeep akin to settlement costs for this much training.

This would allow decent sizes companies, not wanting to be associated with settlements, to have their own smaller settlement that doesn't require quite as many resources as a full settlement.

You might could just have it where you get 3 medium builds and 3 small buildings worth of training. You could choose a Fighter Collage, Thieves Guild, Skirmisher, Bowyer, Weaponsmith, Armorsmith. It would be extremely niche and costly, but could create a very interesting subculture.

[randomwalker]

Tyncale wrote:

Big Questions:

will leaving out the Training Support feature bring the Economic and Political engines of this game to a grinding halt?

Leaving out the support mechanic but keeping the training mechanic:

during war of towers:
-provides the same incentive for settlements for capturing more towers to provide higher levels of training, but slightly less incentive to defend/reclaim attacked towers (losing one or losing all is not so different for veteran players).
-would allow settlements to benefit from cycling tower ownership or using temporary membership.

after war of towers:
-would take away one of the balancing acts for settlements: specialized training vs broad support
-might lead to more diverse settlements with highly specialized training (for a fee) and less generalist settlements.
-would make 'homeless' veteran charaters much more powerful than new characters.
-less mechanical incentive to stick with your settlement when you've reached the max training they will offer, but basically same incentive to stick with it until you reach that point.
-would give veteran characters an advantage in building new settlements, ie: favour 'daughter settlements' over new groups.

my (clouded) gut feeling is: the difference won't be huge, and for WoT it might be ok-ish, after that I'm less certain. Removing it to later bring it back will create the most drama.

[Savage Grace]

only skimmed the replies, but in response to the O.P. One key part of settlements is the bank, especially if/when people can be locked out of foreign banks.

[randomwalker]

Savage Grace wrote:

only skimmed the replies, but in response to the O.P. One key part of settlements is the bank, especially if/when people can be locked out of foreign banks.

Absolutely, but I wouldn't expect banking to be by default limited to settlement/kingdom members. If settlements are allowed a choice between NBSI/NRDS-type banking policies it will matter more who you make friends with, but if banking rights are a main reason for staying in a settlement something is wrong.

During the war of towers, banking is not a reason to join/leave/expand settlements, though. So while it's certainly a big part of a settlement's value it is peripherical to the 'big question' in the OP: what would happen to settlements if we scrapped the training support mechanic.

[Mistwalker]

Savage Grace wrote:

only skimmed the replies, but in response to the O.P. One key part of settlements is the bank, especially if/when people can be locked out of foreign banks.

I think that people not being able to use banks in some settlements will cause all kinds of trouble with game mechanics and likely be counter to part of the game design philosophy.

Merchants who list items in the Auction Houses (AH) have those items returned to their local bank vault if no one buys them - what happens if they are locked out? This will discourage travelling merchants.

What happens to the items in a bank vault if a settlement suddenly removes your banking permission?

What happens with caravans and large quantities? Or even someone travelling, buying and selling in settlements as they explore the river kingdoms? Or even coming down to help with an escalation (like what happened last weekend with Riverbank and the Ogg escalation) - if you can't keep more than what you can carry you won't get a lot of offers for help.

Abadar, the God of civilization, is also the God of Banks - in game, I cannot see that god putting up with that kind of thing