Global technology progress

[ven]

Since we're simulating technological progress to some extent (from hunter-gatherers to agricultural, hide to silk and steel, tribal to feudal etc), and since the worlds are supposed to last forever, the game should support really long-term community projects.

My suggestion is that we have the option to unlock "technologies" as the world goes on, which in haven terms would be translated as new recipes, mechanisms, structures or available skills. I think it would be best if this depended on mutual cooperation, for example:

. By implementing a pool of global experience: players could sacrifice their XP, in chunks of 10k, to contribute to the global pool. When a certain number is reached (say, 1 million), the respective recipes would be made available to every player from then on, without restriction. Maybe there could be a scoreboard naming the kingdoms whose players contributed most to the pool too.

Reason: to give us something to look forward to once the worlds start becoming more permanent. Related: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=50986&p=674585

[Fratari]

There are things I like and dislike about this sort of idea.

I like the fact that it slows down progress a bit. Getting out of early game, and therefore starting the quality grind, within the first week of a world is a problem in my opinion. This mechanic could delay things like hard metal, steel, and jewelry for a bit to prolong the harsh and often bloody struggles in which a lot of the game's fun can be found.

On the otherhand (lets forget that bots exist for a minute) this sort of mechanic doesn't allow factions to ever have and exploit a technological advantage through their efforts, because everyone gets the recipes. It also will end up with a lot of people benefiting from the disproportionate efforts of a few.

Instead of a global tree, perhaps a village or realm based one. The realm buffs are already kind of a step in this direction. I don't mind locking some techs away from hermits (and I'm a hermit). It doesn't really make sense that a dude alone int he forest can mine, smelt, make steel, produce and weave silk, etc, all on his or her own. Locking techs offers incentives for joining a village and socializing. If that's the route that's taken, it might also be worth locking out some techs from people in villages, so that hermits don't feel too left out and to encourage interaction between the two.

[ven]

Allowing individual progress would only make the LP gap between botters and casuals worse though.

I don't see this as slowing progress down. Nothing currently available would be covered by these technologies. I mean future additions like house boats, high stone walls and heavier siege machines, crenelated walls with arrow slits, jeweled swords, more rings etc.

The whole point is that the entire playerbase periodically experiences new content at the same time during long worlds, also giving them a sense of progress to counter late world staleness.

[Fratari]

I said let's ignore bots for a reason. If this isn't to slow down progress in the game, then what is the difference between having this mechanic, and having periodic updates. The only difference is the resource sink, and there's no reason not to include techs that are already in the game. They slowed things down with the change to tar kilns.

[jorb]

We have discussed similar mechanics on the dev team, at least. It's somewhat intriguing, but also a bit of a project, and, well. Idk. Big discussion.

[ven]

If this isn't to slow down progress in the game, then what is the difference between having this mechanic, and having periodic updates. The only difference is the resource sink, and there's no reason not to include techs that are already in the game.

The difference is the simulation of mild technological progress as the world grows older, because progress milestones are important in game psychology. As it is, a player can access the entire game's content in 2-3 weeks. Quite frankly, slowing down progress in techs we already have would never be accepted by the community, which is one reason I suggested that only certain future additions be covered.
Besides, adding all recipes at once would be redundant since some could be improvements on others. For example: why build a brickwall when you already have the recipe for a sturdier high stone wall? Why craft round shields when you can already craft metal or tower shields? If this happened, content would negate itself. The point is that players feel a continuous movement forward instead of having everything available at once.

And the devs already said they intent to spend less time working in haven, so it's safe to assume that, as in the past, long worlds won't have regular updates. Even if they did, there's a limit to what the devs can add to the game too. I mean, how many more animals, recipes, resources and craftables can they add before the game becomes confusing and unplayable? I think long-term progress (as well as time limiters like seasons) are a good way to allow large amounts of content without overwhelming the players.

[Kearn]

some kind of modification to the eu4 method of having technology slowly spread globally while still giving a time advantage to the first to develop it would probably work fine, perhaps if one realm/village/whatever got to be 2-3 tiers ahead of the global baseline then the global baseline would rise by one to keep things vaguely competitive

[iamahh]

Increasing the grinding will eventually hit a wall anyways.

The progression was not the problem, it was the good part.

The combat pvp is what makes the server live on. If its good incentive, fun pvp, then people will keep playing and server will age well.

Slowing down progress is a desperate measure, maybe its time to drop permadeath, see what Guild Wars 1 did, what LoL does. Thats pvp that keeps people playing a long time.

[beardhat]

IMO a global event that is triggered by different things happening in different locations (Like the world 8 ending event) would be great for triggering an unlock of new skills globally

Make it something like an uber troll as the final encounter, or a puzzle to be solved in some ancient underground ruin to unlock new combat moves or secrets of metallurgy, anything that brings players together without artificially forcing them together is good imo.

[Attas]

A global technology tree has been mentioned by jorb twice in the last days, so I assume it's something they're planning on implement but don't know how to do yet.

In my opinion a technology tree wouldn't require necessarily a huge amount of content to be added, but rather easened or hardened according to the global progress on said technology. For instance, if in day 1 no-one has discovered farming yet, the technology will cost 10 times more of its base cost - however, once people start buying it, its cost gets smaller, to the point of being a fraction of its base cost in some weeks. It would make it easy for new players to catch up on more advanced ones, since in late game there's usually a huge gap between new players and advanced ones, to the point of players giving up on beggining playing because they'd be too far behind on the race.

The downside of a system like this would be the formulas used to determine the factor by which the skills will be multiplied for it to be balanced. It would also create the need for next technologies, especially in late game.

The upside would be delaying technological progress to the point of having several phases of the world. Joining the game at any point would be interesting.