Pre-Announcement: Siege Changes

[Enjoyment]

It's not that linear.

Make some friends, you don't have to join a faction. Every faction has an enemy faction, some of them have multiple factions as enemies. Plead your case in the moot and if you're entertaining enough and not a dick you would probably find some support. If you make it worth their while. Nothings free.

Let me guess - you're a member of big faction? Have you ever tried to live as a hermit more than 2 days? You should try - I've lost 3 of my Foragers since last month -they we're killed by some bandits, that live about of hour boat-travelling from me. Without. Any. Word. I ddin't piss them, wasn't in some hq-materials area - they just saw my character and killed them. Why? Cause they can. And could my fellow-neighbours help me with that? I doubt that.
So you should just face the fact that game is populated with fair amount of griefers and they will destroy small bases just for their distorted fun. And sadly, they do cooperate and become a BSF, and help of my fellow neighbours will be useless, unless we become a BSF for ourselves.

[NOOBY93]

Fundamentally: I want war and armies to be features of the game.

If you want war, and not just combat, you need to add all the features that makes wars into wars.

That means the economic cost of sustained aggression, since wars are expensive. Wars shouldn't be easy, or trivial.

In-game system for treaties and bonds, which can be broken at will, but which should exist in-game and not just on forum PMs.

A vassalage system, since complete destruction of your enemies is a counterproductive move: people who aren't killled can pay taxes, tributes, fight for you, and with their industry intact they produce better goods.

In-game reputation system for large villages/kingdoms to support talks of diplomacy, trade, and deal-making between them and other players. That includes keeping a history of wars declared, wars lost, treaties broken, number of vassals etc. If you want to treat this as a war you have to include the political aspect of it as well. You can't leave that to the forum because you know that doesn't work.

Option of choosing between a limited list of village/kingdom laws that grant certain bonuses and penalties to all members, acting to differentiate between groups and make lone players gravitate toward one or another, according to what they want with the game. Some large groups focus on trading, others on production, others on large scale pvp, and others on small opportunity raids, and large groups should be able to have a distinct personalities and translate that into bonuses and penalties.

Or you can say you just want a free for all noobslaughter gankfest and convince yourselves that's "war".

Making ingame systems for treaties and bonds makes absolutely no sense. The only treaties and alliances that actually matter are the skype and trust based ones. I was a part of like 3 villages in w7, and guess which village claim of those 3 I was oathed to? None. My own vault. Direct in-game systems for politics never work, what you need is to make a game that encourages out-of-the-game politics, as it is now.
The vassalage system idea is so stupid, it can never work, that's just not how people think.
In-game reputation system? "Wars declared"? "Wars lost"? Are you serious? I don't think most PvPers want to roleplay so much that they will actually use these functions. Putting too many functions into a game just destroys the game imho, and there's obviously no need for them since the forum already keeps track of trading reputations and wars.
And making wars expensive adds realism, sure, but punishing an actual war is a ridiculous idea. If anything should be punished (and nothing should be, IMO), it should be randomly killing noobs who boat around rivers.

I think you don't have enough experience in these aspects of the game to have good ideas on them, but to summarize:

the goal is to create a political "canvas" for the players so they can do what they want, maybe slightly encouraging some things (like scents do), it's not to force people into a certain way of playing and thinking as your suggestions would.

[Kaios]

Politics is by definition a social event, and hermits are by some definition anti-social in their outlook. If you are a hermit you do not engage in politics, and if you engage in politics you are not a hermit. I'm not sure what you imagine the alternative to be.

I also do not think it is that linear or simple. I suspect that there are degrees of involvement.

I don't agree with that definition of hermit or perhaps I'm using the term wrong but I'm just speaking of smaller groups ranging from 1-10 players. I know lots of people playing on their own or in a small group that would like to take part in more social events whether that event happens to be in a negative or positive sense, but don't because that's not how this game works.

[ven]

Politics is by definition a social event, and hermits are by some definition anti-social in their outlook. If you are a hermit you do not engage in politics, and if you engage in politics you are not a hermit. I'm not sure what you imagine the alternative to be.

If I have a network of people, each living alone in their own places, with their own private industries, but each also interacting with one another and often with outsiders, can I call them hermits? They're not village mates and they live alone. Some even go out raiding on their own. In this scenario hermits do contribute to the world, I'd say.

[Kaios]

The vassalage system idea is so stupid, it can never work, that's just not how people think.
In-game reputation system? "Wars declared"? "Wars lost"? Are you serious? I don't think most PvPers want to roleplay so much that they will actually use these functions. Putting too many functions into a game just destroys the game imho, and there's obviously no need for them since the forum already keeps track of trading reputations and wars.

a lot of people really liked the Kingdoms idea actually

[iamah]

Armies could move slowly and consuming local resources in the way, risking hunger or sickness.

I imagined armies like a slow moving claim. Your soldier alt could logoff at night and when you login in the morning the armie's commander could had advanced it some distance, but your alt would still spawn inside the army claim, wherever it was.

[jorb]

If you want war, and not just combat, you need to add all the features that makes wars into wars....
Or you can say you just want a free for all noobslaughter gankfest and convince yourselves that's "war".

First of all, the clash of human wills on the grand stage of history has a lot of elements of noobslaughter gankfest, and let's not kid ourselves about that. If we attempt to simulate that process it stands to reason that some of the less savory parts will be simulated as well. The first incentives to actual wars are human cruelty, the desire to kill the offspring of competing males, the desire to steal resources, and a whole host of other ignoble ends.

Secondly, I don't think you should invest particularly high hopes in the results of us introducing various global states that attempt to regulate conflict. What those do in my experience is to devolve the game into very gamey metagames revolving around those centralized and clumsy states. You set up false villages to create false alliances, phony "wars", &c, to achieve other actual ends, &c&c&c. No abstract, digital, modeled representation we provide can even begin to hope to describe or somehow fulfill the needs of the very analog and fluid social relations that actually exist between players in conflict with each other.

[strpk0]

People are just too unwilling to give up their safe (admittedly unraidable unless you stop ramchecking and such) way of gameplay.
Is it really that huge of a compromise to let a little bit of chaos ensue, for the sake of the development of the game? Are we just that keen on holding to our material (ingame -.-) possesions, at the cost of limiting what this game can become?

To put that question in another way, would you be pissed off at the devs if the game started out being an absolute clusterfuck of ganking and killing, and you knew what to expect from the very get go? (If anything, instead you're somewhat getting to choose what kind of a clusterfuck it will become)

[jorb]

I don't agree with that definition of hermit or perhaps I'm using the term wrong but I'm just speaking of smaller groups ranging from 1-10 players. I know lots of people playing on their own or in a small group that would like to take part in more social events whether that event happens to be in a negative or positive sense, but don't because that's not how this game works.

Well, I mean, I'd love to help out with that if I can. The visitor debuff was a positive attempt in that direction, for example.

But I'm just not sure I can do much about some people playing the game very competitively, if that is your complaint. The environment is not such that a small group of friends playing casually on Sundays can somehow engage meaningfully in PvP with top factions, and I'm not sure the rules could even be bent in that kind of a direction even if I wanted to, as a lot of the competitiveness comes from fundamental things. You can join the game freely, spend as much time in it as you like, create as many characters as you like, &c. There are very few limits to how much will and energy you can direct at the game if you want to, and attempting to introduce such limits is far from trivial, and quickly becomes draconian.

I mean, I'm all ears to ideas, of course.

[Jalpha]

Let me guess - you're a member of big faction? Have you ever tried to live as a hermit more than 2 days? You should try - I've lost 3 of my Foragers since last month -they we're killed by some bandits, that live about of hour boat-travelling from me. Without. Any. Word. I din't piss them, wasn't in some hq-materials area - they just saw my character and killed them. Why? Cause they can. And could my fellow-neighbours help me with that? I doubt that.
So you should just face the fact that game is populated with fair amount of griefers and they will destroy small bases just for their distorted fun. And sadly, they do cooperate and become a BSF, and help of my fellow neighbours will be useless, unless we become a BSF for ourselves.

My gaming experience has resembled yours in previous worlds. I've lived as a hermit, I've been trolled and harassed and murdered not only by griefers but by bored pvpers I ran my mouth at. Even this world, where I am part of a town, I have lost a character to a player who talked to me first so I would linger long enough for another to arrive and gank me.

This world I chose to live in a town. It's a pretty chaotic place, and I am sure some members of the town have political connections, of which I am not fully cognizant, and which likely include multiple factions, but we are not part of any of those factions. Regardless it's maybe possible they could be called upon for circumstantial assistance in a time of need.

So I'm not part of a major faction no. As a hermit you are unlikely (but not incapable) to be able to gain assistance from a major faction and that's just the path you walk. You are also unlikely to be raided by a major faction if you play your cards right.