Input Wanted: Civilization

[Laremere]

Which reminds me, moonshield, you have a claim in within Pinevalley walls, but just outside of our village influence.

I'm agreeing more with the dislike of being able to destroy claims, as I agree with it causing problems with thieves just destroying them then bringing in others to loot the place. Possibly they could take environmental damage, with more health the more area it controls, and make them very easy to repair, such as with sticks or bones.

[moonshield]

Which reminds me, moonshield, you have a claim in within Pinevalley walls, but just outside of our village influence.

Hahaha, forgot about that one. You want me to remove it?

[Laremere]

I wouldn't mind, though it's not like we need the space or that we're even playing (got hit by grievers hard and decided to wait for map reset instead of having to rebuild our gates for new keys) you'll probably like the lp refund. There are plenty of holes in the wall to get entrance to the place...

[Erik_the_Blue]

Did the 'claim destruction' idea migrate from the 'PvP Factions' thread?

How about letting claims only take environmental damage but allowing anyone on the kin list to repair the claim (assuming kin can access the claim)? If neighbors can provide upkeep, it'd be possible for the claim holder to take breaks from the game yet it'd be fair for claims at full health to decay into nothingness quickly (say, two rWeeks or so). Of course, you'd need neighbors willing to do the work, so this doesn't help hermits.

Edits: Hermits could use an alternative claim. It'd have to be very distant from all other claims, but it'd decay much slower.

[Machenoid]

Production, with the introduction of quality

[edit - please tell me that this isn't a linear 1-100 system, but is instead along the lines of the GLORIOUS slider bar beliefs system; but set more for crafting analogies (sharp/dull, smooth/rough, soft/hard, etc) that each has their own use, so it's difficult to create a "Wow, this is real vendor trash" items.]

We are a bit undecided on which mechanic should bring this about -- I'm in favor of a direct civilization modifier on item quality, loftar favors a more indirect method of increased object/item decay in Mordor, calling my suggestion arbitrary in terms of realism -- but are we on the right track to begin with? Would this work? Why? Why not?

Are you on the right track? I don't know if there even is a track to be right with, or even to be on top of.

Currently "Civilization" is determined by an implied level of human activity; static and special buildings that can only be built by players... But there's a serious problem with this method of determining civilization, and that is the simple fact that it is simply implied human activity, and not based on actual human activity. If 100 people all discovered H&H simultaniously and logged in for the first time (and the server didn't die in a horrible CPU fire) and marched to that dark-red lower left corner, how much would civ change? Not one bit.
If you want civ rating to be based on human activity, like it sounds you want it to be, then actually make it based on human activity in an area, not a glorified sign post! Yes, the sign post can still be there and act as an amplifier for whoever is logged on/sleeping at the moment, but it should never generate any civ by itself... a unique case is hearth fires, which could simply increase/decrease civ based on how much time the player spends logged on, relative to his distance to his hearth fire; so if he's working nearby, his civ will be larger then if he was on the other side of the map, and as long as he logs on and does some activity somewhat recently, his hearth fire will generate civ.

Linking crafting quality or decay to this or the current civ level model are then easilly shown to be flawed; a player could just log on a few alts and boost the civ rating by simply standing there, or by creating hearth fires -- and stand around a building to prevent it from decaying faster then it would.

On crafting:
The more time the player spends, the greater the long term reward for his time. Yes, crafting out in the middle of nowhere should be a bad idea and result in vendor-trash items... As long as the place you built them in was just as bad. Having a crappy metal weapon be created because you were inside a nice cabin and feeling happy, and in the middle of nowhere?
Which things should take priority for effecting item quality, here? The fact you're in the middle of nowhere, or the fact you have an awsome workshop? Or the fact that a # of people are standing around you?
IE: An anvil sitting in a field... Or an anvil sitting in a well lit cabin, that is sitting on pavement.

On decay:
Having an object decay faster or slower simply because they are in the presence of a players' character is insane for the reason stated above (just create alts and camp nearby the building) It shouldn't matter how many players are logged in around a cabin; the simple reason why buildings do or don't decay into nothingness is because of the players. Faster decay under the players' choice to not repair could be aided along by having certain events tied to weather, or animals. Possibly also multiple decay timers for certain parts of the building, that could tick down in certain ways.
IE: Cabins get a timer for the roof, the walls, and the base, each one ticking down at their own rate in a specific way; the roof will time out before the walls and base do, and will speed up their decay when it does time out; A player could also come along and reset the roof timer but ignore the walls/base. Meanwhile simple things like fences, pallisades, brick walls would take damage fairly consistently because of their simple construction.

END, WALL OF TEXT

[Yolan]

If you want civ rating to be based on human activity, like it sounds you want it to be, then actually make it based on human activity in an area, not a glorified sign post! Yes, the sign post can still be there and act as an amplifier for whoever is logged on/sleeping at the moment, but it should never generate any civ by itself... a unique case is hearth fires, which could simply increase/decrease civ based on how much time the player spends logged on, relative to his distance to his hearth fire; so if he's working nearby, his civ will be larger then if he was on the other side of the map, and as long as he logs on and does some activity somewhat recently, his hearth fire will generate civ.

I like this idea.

[Jackard]

*snip*

Are you a proponent of tying civ to repair levels, then?


What values would you give constructions in a repair-civ system? Seems it'd have to be balanced carefully if walls counted. 1-2 civ points for a segment in good repair?

[Onionfighter]

Having experienced this new system (civilization levels), I can say there is definitely an improvement.

[ShadowAtlan]

I've gotta say, I'm still a fan of what was mentioned much earlier, tying Civ to the repair level of the buildings around it, and having abandoned towns turn into fox infested messes, etc. This might be a bad idea, but I was thinking of the plants growing up on the house, vines and such, giving the wild feeling, could influence if the house decays or not. IE: The actual decay for the house wouldn't go down unless the upkeep went down as well, such as having say, every week or so vines would start to grow up onto a house, if they weren't trimmed and were allowed to grow untouched, they would eventually start the decay factor, because as it is having indestructible houses that never go away just seems.... odd given the scope of everything else.
Also just to point out to people in the new world, To not have the same deforestation problems we had in the previous world, we need "Johnny Appleseeds", People who just randomly go around planting trees. There could be some kind of play or LP benefit to it, like animals not aggro'ing you because you're a proponent of nature, but I'd rather not see in the new world what happened in the previous one.

[sabinati]

there's already an LP benefit to planting trees...