Roads and Such

[Jackard]

would decay things way too quickly, roads shouldnt vanish in the space of a few months. not even dirt ones

But an incomplete Roman-style road would deteriorate very quickly. Think of the intermediate levels as incomplete versions of the primary levels.

no, i wont. what reasoning are you using other than "i want them to"?

roads don't fall apart that quickly in real life, and it'd be a terrible chore to constantly repair them in game. do you actually enjoy tedium

[Potjeh]

I think that the idea where roads decay if they're unused is the best one presented here. It'd be really tedious to have to fix roads regularly.

[Erik_the_Blue]

no, i wont. what reasoning are you using other than "i want them to"?

Reality. Why else would real-world road crews work to build roads up from nothing sections at a time instead of laying down the road bed for a long stretch, letting people use that before they get around to putting on the next layer? Simple: Incomplete roads rapidly deteriorate (by incomplete, I mean lower strata being fully exposed, not a section of road that doesn't yet reach its destination).

roads don't fall apart that quickly in real life, and it'd be a terrible chore to constantly repair them in game. do you actually enjoy tedium

Give primary levels a 0% chance of decay; problem solved. I don't enjoy tedium, but it's ridiculous to let an individual build a complete highway out of whole cloth.

I think that the idea where roads decay if they're unused is the best one presented here. It'd be really tedious to have to fix roads regularly.

Bringing the usage of the road into play would be nice, but brings up technical difficulties already discussed if you want anything other than a power relation. Unless loftar indicates otherwise, I'm working under the assumption that Yolan's idea is the most reasonable one to implement, provided we want roads to decay.

As indicated earlier, roads don't have to decay, they just need to be harder to build the more sophisticated they are, and if the difference between types of roads isn't a matter of decay or speed bonus, what else is there to differentiate them?

[Jackard]

Reality. Why else would real-world road crews work to build roads up from nothing sections at a time instead of laying down the road bed for a long stretch, letting people use that before they get around to putting on the next layer? Simple: Incomplete roads rapidly deteriorate (by incomplete, I mean lower strata being fully exposed, not a section of road that doesn't yet reach its destination).

I can only assume that you've never lived in a rural setting, with dirt roads and trails.

[Erik_the_Blue]

Dirt roads are not the same as stone roads are not the same as brick roads and so on and so forth. Putting asphalt on an extant gravel road is not going to have the same long-term effect as putting it on a properly designed modern road way.

[sonerohi]

I'm pretty sure none of us are fucking road technicians or anything, and ultimately it would be up to J&L.

[Jackard]

Reality.

I'll be frank with you. "Realism" isn't a solid enough argument to stand on its own - most anything can be explained away using it, even respawn after death. (I didn't actually die, I was knocked out!) I can claim roads decaying slowly is realistic just as easily as you can do the opposite. And of course, being "realistic" doesn't automatically make for good game design. You need something more than that to support gameplay changes.

Don't bother with "is this realistic" when brainstorming for a game. You are wasting your time. Instead, what you should be asking yourself is:

Is this fun?
Is this interesting?
Is this useful?
Is this challenging or exciting?
Is this balanced?
How can this be exploited? How could it go wrong?
And most importantly for RPGs, does this help make a good story?

So, what would make for a better story...

A setting where decay is so aggressive that it's counterproductive to maintain anything other than major highways, so you don't see many roads at all?
A setting where roads and settlements decay slowly but surely, so that repairs aren't overwhelming for live players and ruins look properly overgrown?

You say one person should not be able to make a highway, but let's not belittle the tremendous effort that would require.

[Erik_the_Blue]

Is this fun?
Is this interesting?
Is this useful?
Is this challenging or exciting?
Is this balanced?
How can this be exploited? How could it go wrong?
And most importantly for RPGs, does this help make a good story?

Talking about my primary/intermediary stages idea:

I don't find the act of building anything in this game fun, but I am entertained by what I can do with things once they're built.
Yes, it prevents highway spam and makes the frontier more frontier-like.
Yes, lower stages of road will be useful since everyone won't be pushing for the higher stages of road.
Yes, road builders are challenged to overcome decay to reach the next primary stage.
This is more of a PvE thing so balance isn't as relevant, but a group of players that puts in more net effort would have better roads than a group that puts in less, but I'd argue that's a proper effort-reward system.
An individual could bring individual tiles to the final stage from nothing, resulting in some people extending advanced roads very slowly anywhere they want.
I've seen no indication that the devs want to put a traditional story in this game, thus the players are responsible for the story. The more sophisticated the tools at our disposal, the more sophisticated a story we can create.

A setting where decay is so aggressive that it's counterproductive to maintain anything other than major highways, so you don't see many roads at all?

This sounds like the inverse relationship I already argued against.

A setting where roads and settlements decay slowly but surely, so that repairs aren't overwhelming for live players and ruins look properly overgrown?

I believe this would be the result of the primary/intermediary stages idea.

You say one person should not be able to make a highway, but let's not belittle the tremendous effort that would require.

I don't think I'm belittling anything. If an individual is serious about creating a highway, they could do so, it'd just require them to put in all the effort all at once. This is no different from how an individual could make a "village" but they're liable to run into trouble if they don't make the effort to build a large claim and long wall right at the beginning.

[Jackard]

amazing

I've seen no indication that the devs want to put a traditional story in this game, thus the players are responsible for the story. The more sophisticated the tools at our disposal, the more sophisticated a story we can create.

thats exactly what I was saying

are you doing this on purpose or what

[Erik_the_Blue]

I don't recall anyone discussing how the ideas in this thread help or hinder the story-telling ability of the players before you asked your question. Nevertheless, I said something that you were saying? Shouldn't it be a good thing that we found a point we can agree on? Is there even any real point of contention here, or are we just misunderstanding each other repeatedly?