Vassalage

[Yolan]

Just some thoughts about fostering emergent complexity.

The situation in the current world is that there are a few people far at the top, and the rest are at their mercy. It seems like barely a few days go by without some settlement somewhere getting wiped out.

My position on this is that nobody has a right to be safe just because they want to quietly farm somewhere. And I say this as somebody who put a lot of effort into trying to get a town started that was, in the end, destroyed. It sucks that it happened, but Brodgar wasn't somehow entitled to being left alone. Farmers/builders who say that PvPers ought to go play somewhere else can have the same thing thrown right back at them.


Here's how I see it. The devs want emergent complexity. And the thing is, might ultimately makes right. Those with the power to kick ass should not be artificially held back from doing so. You might disagree, but I am certain the devs will never, _ever_ get in the way of a bloodthirsty lolwhut and his prey.

HOWEVER, I reckon there are generally two types of strong players. Those who are simply interested in raiding and killing, and those who are interested in projecting power and amassing wealth. Of course, there is going to be some overlap between the two.

I think the problem we have right now in the world is that the killer has the advantage over the power player. We have a massive world, heaps and heaps of disparate groups, and little to none in the way of coded political organisation. It is a wet dream for the raider, and a nightmare for everybody else.

The solution to this problem is not to somehow impose false restrictions on the killer crowd, nor to provide mr spud farmer with magic watchtowers or amazing walls. The solution is to enable the power player to actually start to hammer together realms. What we need, _desperately_, is some kind of vassalage. You can always say x grid is under our protection, etc., however this is rudimentary. We need a way of actually linking up claims/villages to established factions, and in-game warnings when members of that faction are attacked/killed/stolen from.

The targets of raiders and thieves should be the weak, the isolated, and the plucky do-it-alone types camping on a hidden resource. Yet we need another layer, a faction/political layer. Your average joe farmer _should_ have the option of obtaining some level of security, not by artificial means, but by belonging to a big ass group. The power of the few super players can be used to bring about some modicum of balance in this way. When it gets even more interesting is when these big groups start to squabble.

[Onionfighter]

This is precisely what I want, and what I hope will come with the next village update.

There is a lot more to be gained by expanding your kingdom than by raiding.

[Haba]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6401

[Pansy]

No offense, but I can't imagine it being worth my while to accept Delamore or anyone else as my overlord. The idea of continuing to play under those circumstances is kinda laughable.

Especially given that no faction in this game has ever successfully prevented a raid that I know of. C'mon, if you are going to ask for vassalage you'd better make guarantees that you are making it 100% safe for me. If I paid taxes to you and I got killed or robbed I would, of course feel that I had been robbed by YOU. Being hit by a raid would be a lot less annoying than paying taxes and not getting the services those taxes represented.

Also, it is very likely your vasselage system would require players to contribute militarily. But of course if I am a combat oriented player, chances are I am very happy taking my chances since I feel that fighting is fun. Whereas if I am trying to avoid all combat, then vasselage might begin to be a more tenable idea, since I know I will never have to face a raider. There might be a conflict of interest between the peons and the lords here.

Vasselage would also most likely require a commitment on the part of the vassel as opposed to a one time payment. So if I want your protection I am locked in to paying so many taxes per week? Or putting in some many hours on your walls/roads? Chances are it is an unwillingness or unability to commit that seriously to the game that has made me vulnerable in the first place.

Speaking of commitment, what is my guarantee that you won't quit or get killed? It's one thing in real life where I know that your options are to get up in the morning and get to work, or to die, but this is a game and players come and go. You might decide to get up in the morning and actually leave the house and get some fresh air one day, instead of logging on. So far the three enduring factions in the game are the Goons, Wayneville and Bottleneck. But none of these has so far demonstrated enough invulnerability that I think their fighting force would survive a skermish as defenders. If I sign up to be a vassal what are the chances there will be enough fighters left after the first wave of attacks to defend me from the second?

It's also worth mentioning, unfortunately, that there are a lot of good players who are frankly total jerks when it comes to social skills. Your overlord is very possibly going to be someone with the kind of personality flaws that makes interacting with them as attractive as a date with Jeffrey Dahmer. Yeah, I know you can't get through boot camp if you can't take the hazing, but in this case logging in to find my fields sown with salt, my timber house burned, my cattle slaughtered and myself in the character creation room is easily the more pleasing experience.

[Jackard]

No offense, but I can't imagine it being worth my while to accept Delamore or anyone else as my overlord. The idea of continuing to play under those circumstances is kinda laughable.

As far as I can tell that is NOT the purpose of this thread. It is simply another kingdoms/alliances/colonies/factions/guild thread where you can link several villages/claims/players to the same group. And how can you say no to that?

[Yolan]

No offense, but I can't imagine it being worth my while to accept Delamore or anyone else as my overlord. The idea of continuing to play under those circumstances is kinda laughable.... Yeah, I know you can't get through boot camp if you can't take the hazing, but in this case logging in to find my fields sown with salt, my timber house burned, my cattle slaughtered and myself in the character creation room is easily the more pleasing experience.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Yet many people would prefer the former.

Imagine you are wandering around, and you find a claim. In bumping it, rather than saying 'This claim belongs to X', it says 'This claim belongs to X of faction Y'. Now, imagine that you know that if you transgress this claim, a bunch of people from that faction might go after you. Sure, there are no guarantees. Lets stick with 'might'. Given this situation, I think we would see a big drop in raiding and griefing, and more players switching from killers to power players.

How a tribute system might work, I don't know. That's up to the devs to figure out. Maybe you guys have some good ideas.

If a faction is any freaking good, again, I don't know. But I think that by putting in such a system you will help foster the emergence of more than a few clusters of uber players.

The very top guys might well be able to take on whole factions at a time, but I think this is an LP/combat system balance issue, one that needs resolution, but does not make vassalage any less important.

In any case, this much is plain to me:

1. The world is not a very hospitable place right now.
2. Implementing punishments on killers, or hand holding for farmers/builders is a backwards arsed approached that would only 'solve' the problem to the proportion that it makes the game boring.
3. Enabling players to actually play politics in game is an approach that might make life easier for the average player/most interesting for the uber players, while dovetailing with the devs stated desire to foster a game in which complexity emerges from player actions, rather than being forced from above.

[Onionfighter]

A rejection based upon wild assumptions that bear little relation to the original post

Please actually read a post before commenting on it.

Anyhow, I would hope that future village systems are flexible enough to allow for a wide variety of differently structured governments by players. I don't think there should be any kind of structure of taxes, tithes or whatever. Players should enforce that themselves. I think it would be better to allow different players to have power over other players to allow enforcement of such things. A good example of the kinds of powers I am talking about are already in game. Chieftans are able to exert control over land covered by village authority because they can revoke claims and swear in and banish players from the town. Villagers, on the other hand, have the option of leaving the village.

[Prism]

I don't know how much any level of communication or whatever will do since no village has ever been able to directly protect their people from a raid, regardless of skill or numbers. If you could stop a raid by a group of "killer" characters directly instead of some weird game of raid -> retaliate raid forever that would be cool but while combat balance is skill borked you're going to get killed anyway, the only thing living in a village will change is that now you are going to get killed for something you didn't do.

[Potjeh]

Where did this silly notion of taxes come from?

If Bottleneck were to have vassals, it'd be offered to strategically important trade partners. The idea is that some raiders would be discouraged by our flag, because they'd knew that revenge would come. On the other hand, our flag might attract some other raiders who have an axe to grind with us, so it'd be up to individual villages to decide if flying our flag is worth it.

The taxes don't come into the play at any point. We'd offer protection to select settlements because having reliable and trustworthy trade partners in our area is a great boon. For example, they got us 7k bricks in just 3 days. And since they're more likely to trade with us than anyone else, most of our region's cave bulbs are syphoned to us.

[Yolan]

I don't know how much any level of communication or whatever will do since no village has ever been able to directly protect their people from a raid, regardless of skill or numbers. If you could stop a raid by a group of "killer" characters directly instead of some weird game of raid -> retaliate raid forever that would be cool but while combat balance is skill borked you're going to get killed anyway, the only thing living in a village will change is that now you are going to get killed for something you didn't do.

Yes, combat does need balancing. But the idea here is about capitalizing on the already existing scent system. It's not ultimately about who is stronger, but who is more organized. There is no power on hearth that is going to prevent a little hamlet from being destroyed. However, a person might think twice about destroying said hamlet if they knew it belonged to a group who had the capability of harvesting and tracking the scents down to whatever hole they typically hide in.

Your average raider probably bets on the following when they find some random farm:

1.1 Killing this guy will leave scents, but once he is dead he won't be tracking me down. He also probably doesn't have any buddies who will.
1.2 Robbing this guy will leave scents, but he probably doesn't have the skill or guts to come looking for me, and he probably doesn't have any buddies who will.
2. Even if somebody _does_ come looking for me, I live far away, and behind a few brick walls. This random farm boy and or pals won't be able to break in while I am offline.

Just having clearly stated affiliations, and having those affiliations _mean_ something (i.e., have people who actually do chase down scents), would really change the whole name of the game.