oceans / islands / continents
But I hope that I've fleshed out this proposal thoroughly enough that I can talk about this without rehashing the same things mentioned in other threads. The ideas and thoughts written below reflect my own personal experiences playing this game since W4. My complaints aren't necessarily factual or true, and my suggestions are obviously not the only way for the game to move forward. There are probably deep flaws with the ideas I've come up with, and I encourage you guys to rip them to shreds.
Regardless, I believe I have a handful of ideas that can fix the three biggest issues I see with the current state of the game (in my own opinion):
1. The world map is homogeneous to a fault. Local biomes are diverse and interesting, but there is no organization above the biome-level that is interesting. Players will strategically place their bases on certain biomes and at certain distances from rivers, but above else, the map looks identical everywhere you look. Pull out any 20x20-minimap-sized chunk of the world and it will look like any other 20x20-minimap-sized chunk. Apart from your distance to the center of the world map, the location you call 'home' is no different than anywhere else.
2. There is no meaningful incentive for controlling territories with realms. Realms establish a larger area of control in order to include more villages and enjoy their bonuses in more places, but their expansion and the places they control do not form an interesting story. Disputes over territory control are effectively meaningless, as the vast majority of the existing world remains unclaimed by any realm. Being the 'largest realm' is worth bragging rights, larger area bonuses, and not much more.
3. Trade in the game is booming more than ever before, thanks to the Devs' hard work fleshing out visitor debuffs, merchant stands, and currency creation. But trade really only happens in a market-context between mid-to-high level players looking to exchange high-value goods for other high-value goods. The game does not apply any sort of comparative advantages to certain villages/realms/regions that would incentivize people to trade everyday materials in high volumes using the Knarr.
In order to address these problems, I believe that the best way to move forward would be to rework the world map generation, add another level of inter-village organization called 'sovereignty', and change the way that trade works across the map.
Map Generation
I propose that instead of the current system of spreading out land between networks of lakes and rivers, bounded by an impenetrable invisible wall, the world is instead a single large, main continent, circled by a coastal beach and ocean, with an in-land area looking similar to the current way that the map is generated. Along with the main continent are 10-20 medium-sized islands situated around it. The continents and islands are surrounded with shallow water similar to the lakes on the current map, followed by deep water, followed by another depth of water known as 'troubled waters' which deals rapid decay damage to rowboats and rafts. Knarrs and other sea-worthy vessels will take decay at a far smaller rate, necessitating maintenance but allowing travel. I envision 15-30 minutes of troubled water between the continent and its isles.
The general concept here is that players spawning without a charter stone / wilderness beacon will appear somewhere on the main continent. They will form villages, interact, trade, and behave as normal, but the only way to expand to one of the islands will be to settle along the coast, or otherwise construct a sea-worthy vessel on the coast and set out to explore. Because of the high cost of a Knarr in the current version of the game, it might be a good idea to add a smaller sea-worthy vessel called a sloop that requires the same types of materials, but in smaller volume, sacrificing the majority of inventory space. This change to the map generation will spur an early 'age of exploration' in the history of the world, where people will set out to chart the first off-coast territories. Because of the decay damage associated with travel over troubled waters, it will not be possible to bot and scope out land.
Along with this change, I propose that each body of land carries its own respective comparative advantages and disadvantages. One island may have shitty water but excellent soil, another might have vast supplies of hidden mineral wealth, yet crop blight. These advantages and disadvantages will not be made apparent to players and will have to be discovered through inhabiting that region, just as you would in real life. The main continent, however, will serve as a 'baseline' that operates the same way the game currently does, as to not punish early players.
Sovereignty
I propose that for each body of land (continent, island, etc), the realm that:
1. Holds the most land area of any realm
2. Holds at least 5% of the total land area
3. Holds more than double the land of the next biggest realm
Is able to exert 'sovereignty' over the continent or island that they rule. The incentives for holding sovereignty are as follows:
1. The ruling realm is able to literally name the land. When someone enters the island or continent, the land's sovereign title shows up like a village's name would.
2. The ruling realm's village earns a substantial sovereignty bonus proportional to the size of the conquered body of land, plus some random factor unique to each island/continent. The realm controlling the continent obviously wins the largest bonus available to any player-controlled realm.
3. Hearthlings inhabiting (owning a hearthfire within) the sovereignty are 'Denizens' of the land they live on. This is a national identity for each player that is viewable to everyone, regardless of whether they share kin. Scots live in Scotland. Denizens of Dis live in Dis.
4. Any hearthling inhabiting the sovereignty can construct the sovereignty's official flag (chosen by the realm) and use it on their tabards, Knarrs, etc, as they would a village logo. This way nationalism is something that all people in the region can easily take part in, regardless of their specific village affiliation. As a result, traveling to a region owned by another sovereign would look completely different.
However, holding sovereignty over a body of land will come with distinct challenges, including:
1. If a competing realm manages to exert control over a land area greater than half of the ruling realm's, the land is now warring.
2. When the land is warring, the ruling realm receives a 'war torn' debuff that counteracts a very substantial portion of their earned sovereignty bonus. They will have to fight off the contesting realm or expand such that their competitor holds less than half their land area.
3. In contrast, the realm warring against the ruling realm receives a 'rebellion' buff that gives them an initial incentive to keep up the fight and win control.
What this village structure will do, ideally, is give players incentives to create interesting large player cultures, while finally giving realms an incentive to engage in all-out war against each other. I feel that the stories told in the game between player factions seeking control over islands and continents could be extremely interesting and compelling.
Trading
My last suggestion, which is much more succinct than the past two, is to prevent travel via charter stone / portico between islands and continents. What this means is that, along with the comparative isolation and security provided by living on an island, you will be forced to make up for your island's disadvantage by specializing in what your island is good at and trading it to the mainland. To do this, villages and realms will have to construct coastal trading towns that will load up knarrs with barrels and boxes of commodities, brave the troubled waters and threats of other players, and sail to a friendly mainland port where they can moor their vessel and trade their goods. This actually gives an incentive for players to trade things other than the most valuable commodities, and it encourages purposeful travel over long distances. Trade will be something that players will prepare for and accomplish as groups, and they'll do it in interesting ways that do not just involve grabbing river pearls and teleporting to Sevilla.
As a result of this, it might be interesting to add some sort of ship-to-ship combat system, but that's not my area of expertise and I don't have any specific suggestions for how that would work.
With that in mind...
I would like to hear what you guys think of this. On one hand, I kind of understand that these ideas represent a major departure from the direction the game is going, and Jorb and Loftar probably aren't going to divert all of their development plans to change the game this way, but I think it's absolutely interesting to talk about possible futures for this strange, interesting adventure that all of us participate in. Even if none of this actually happens.
With that said, tell me your thoughts. This has been the product of like two weeks of daydreaming for me.
