loftar wrote:I'm curious -- why do you feel that personal claims are so much worse than villages? When we added villages back in June, the main reason was to let people share common ground in a flexible way, since personal claims could only be shared with all or none of one's kin. Those limitations are gone now. Not that I cannot see any reasons, of course, but I cannot help but feel that personal claims are undervalued.
Well, although as you see, I have been here in game awile despite my lack of paying any attention to the forum. So I don't know all the personal info but I have to ask, how old are you? I assume you have played many rpg mmos? I'm a bit lost at the question but will try to elaborate (as all those in my group are in the over 30 crowd and been gamers since civilization was a 5 floppy disk game on a commadore 64 played between a 12.5 phone modem LAN connection
) but Guilds, towns, villages, clans, households (So many names in so many mmos for what is called a "village" here) have always been an intregal part of mmos.They always range from quiet small carebear guilds to massive forum hog machismo guilds but whatever and whereever yours falls in the specturm, it is vital for most mmo gamers to have a sense of social community punctuated by a visable monument of pride, belonging and achievement (Avatars, signatures, symbols, idols, statues ect, whatever is used in a particular game to signify or identify a gamer's place in the world) to the rest of the community. Personal claims are just that, a stake in the ground in front of a cabin. They have no name, they have no fire, they signify no community, they are alone. Of course it goes without saying that some group of individuals can ban together and tract a few houses and co-op their claims into some collection and perhaps even define borders and do design work. But in the end, to me, it is just that, some houses on the road in a wilderness..together but alone. The "thrill" is not there.
I have heard, experienced and am fully aware of the greifer problem suffered in the 2nd world, the quite unattractive and (Professionally) embarassing group of gamers this game attracted back then, to them the thrill and pride experienced by professional gamers is not there. This accounts for the unfortunate clash suffered by this game. I understand the foray into creating a game can be overwhelming, especially if a game surprises people and begins to find itself attracting more than a close circle of developer friends and actually begins to attract professional, hardcore and high expectational gamers. Personal claims just do not create the same feel that is expected by social gamers. Myself included. Had this new update forced me (I do not think it will kill us, we are trying to maintain and find a way to adjust) to be relagated to just a personal claim/s with my kinsmen OR be a slave to another village who's dictates, leadership, atmosphere and overall cultural gameplay are unknown to me, I would have drown my character (to resist any temptation to return) and moved on back to my Clan in Eve which I stopped playing when I was told about/shown this game if I determined I was no longer welcome as a casual player and only left with the above options. Which shows you for example how important the social pride and visable achievement such things are to me, and all those I know who play.
So I think to answer your question I would have to just say, it is a hardcore sandbox gamer thing, personal claims may indeed hold some of the same attributes such as crime scents (a system I find interesting aside from the murder which takes it too far and is 99.9% without penalty or recourse for most players) but a personal claim holds no pride as such that most mmo players would need to feel any acomplishment. "this land is owned by someone" does not hold any prideful signifigance to me or anyone I know who plays this or any other game. It is just not the same, and I'm not really sure there is any way to make it hold any more.
Hope I didn't come across in a bad way, just tried to explain as best I could,
Thanks
