Natural Wonders (A fix?)

[jordancoles]

So an idea I've thrown around for a while now is moving natural wonders, but with this post I would like to put a bit of a twist onto that idea.

So basically after you harvest the rare resource you would have choice. You could either "destroy" it for another resource immediately, or you can keep it around to harvest it again in the same spot at a later date.

Destroying the resource would 'set it free' and it would spawn somewhere else in the wild with its usual regen timer. Keeping the resource around after harvesting it would result in double or maybe even triple its regeneration timer. If the resource is harvested again after that longer timer, the timer will become even longer than the last time.

I feel that the timer would be punishing enough that it wouldn't be worthwhile to wall in and hold down the resources anymore, and I feel that the destroy reward would be good enough (in my opinion) that most people would just destroy the resource instead.

These changes would still give the players the ability to lock down resources if they wanted to, but it would strongly discourage that behaviour.

[Aceb]

[Sevenless]

Why allow lockdown behaviour at all when almost everyone agrees this is the problem with the system?

Some people will be unhappy, but obviously so because they're the ones benefiting by being shitty to everyone else.

[jordancoles]

Why allow lockdown behaviour at all when almost everyone agrees this is the problem with the system?

Some people will be unhappy, but obviously so because they're the ones benefiting by being shitty to everyone else.

Okay, but how?

If you don't allow them to be vclaimed people will just surround them with vclaim instead or they will have an unclaimed tile in the middle of their village with the wonder in the center.

If you say they can't be walled in how would you measure that? No wall tiles 20 tiles out from the resource? 50 tiles? The number doesn't really matter since people will just expand out 1 tile further than the restriction.

Walling in and controlling the resources is lame but it's also pretty sandboxy. This suggestion would still allow that behaviour but it would also strongly discourage it. Right now the only negatives to vclaiming are increased auth drain which isn't even noticeable and the downsides to pclaiming is that you need to go back and repair the unclaimed walls once in a while. The benefits greatly outweigh the costs atm and that's why it's such a problem.

[Granger]

When I suggested resources getting a hefty authority/presence drain on claims I thought the word hefty has a meaning that is way more intense than the somewhat irrelevant amount the devs attached to it.

I could agree on completely removing soak from walls that are not covered by an active claim to remove the problem with walls around natural resources (given the continued inability to pclaim the tile the resource is located on, so it's impossible to claim the full wall). The village case could be solved by increasing authority drain by at least one order of magnitude (or whatever higher might be needed to make sure that a village out of alts can't claim a resource without being drained in a short time) and make it stacking (meaning the penalty is multiplied by the factorial of the amount of resources on village land).

This would leave as only options to wall them in with a real village (as a single-alt one as usual would be de-authorized quickly with the walls turning into the hardness of wet paper) or a village with a hole where the resource is located (which would at least be time consuming to build than simply dropping an idol).

[Aceb]

Coles idea sounds better but taking in consideration what jorbtar said on this matter, I believe it will be hard to find correct balance Granger.

[jordancoles]

After some talks on Discord one of my buddies thought this would actually incentivize walling them in more than they currently do because you'd essentially be removing the resource from the game. I have doubts about this but as an addition to prevent people from spitefully holding resources forever, the resource could move on its own after the 2nd harvest timer rolls over twice. If the person hadn't harvested the additional resource after two extra long timers pass, then the resource could respawn elsewhere. If the person does harvest after every respawn, the resource could move on after 3 total harvests (the original harvest included).

With this you could either harvest the first time and then destroy for a second resource, or you can play the long-game of harvesting once, waiting 3-4 weeks or whatever, harvesting again, waiting on the timer and then harvesting 1 more time.

Holding it down would yield 3 resources over the course of like 2 months while setting it free would be instant and yield 2

[shubla]

Destroy resources that you have not walled and keep those that you have walled.
Seems like a bad idea, as currently they are quite easy to wall!

[Sevenless]

Walling in and controlling the resources is lame but it's also pretty sandboxy. This suggestion would still allow that behaviour but it would also strongly discourage it. Right now the only negatives to vclaiming are increased auth drain which isn't even noticeable and the downsides to pclaiming is that you need to go back and repair the unclaimed walls once in a while. The benefits greatly outweigh the costs atm and that's why it's such a problem.

I'd argue control over resources in many sandbox games works better than here because those games rely typically on soft defense instead of hard. Our hard defense is a shell that once broken gives everything. Therefore the shell has to be very hard to not break all the time. Which leads to ridiculously strong resource guarding.

Because of this, and because we've never managed to change that system style in the 8 years I've played, I don't think we should try to encourage controllable resources like that sadly. Aka I want them removed as static points entirely, however the system decides to replace them.

[loleznub]

I think it would make more sense, and give more of a reason to go out foraging, to simply have the resources get removed and "teleport" to a new location that's not claimed after they get harvested. The timer for them would then be reset.

While this wouldn't stop people from creating alts on the resources they find completely, it would most certainly change the amount that get taken in this way. It could also provide increased chances for PvP if you know where a resource has spawned and show up with additional people that are also interested in harvesting said resource. Gives them more of a meaning in the sense of "Oh geez idk when I'll find another one of these, I should try to contest or steal this one".