Game Development: Surveyor's Delight

[nachtmaerie]

• War and siege should be a collection of informal, localized states, rather than formal and global. Formal states create distinct interfaces between states that are prone to manipulations, workarounds and exploits. The game devolves to a game about those states, rather than a game about siege warfare.

What does this mean?

I took it to mean that Jorb would (or would have) rather see a multitude of groups within 1 realm, sort of like old relationships between rulers and their þegns, that have an mutually-beneficial alliance of sorts. Top dog village doesn't raid the smaller villages and even offers aid (through the realm boons?) and in return they will help the realm prosper/defend it. It should be informal and maintained through personal relationships, and not because we said on Discord that we would be in an alliance because you gave me 10 gold bars or something.

To tie it into the well-discussion in the other thread, which has been fun to read: putting Jorb's thoughts into that scenario actually seems to find a lot of resonance among the playerbase; players who say assets like these should be grief-proof would probably benefit from a gameworld where diplomacy and informal alliances and kinship is more prevalent -- as one user pointed out why did nobody help defend against the siege? Well nobody noticed, nobody cared until it was over, and there was not really any reason to do so anyway because why risk your (character's) life for a well that everyone uses. You die - and everyone continues to get ahead of you while you set yourself back for people that wouldn't do the same for you.

You don't need to griefproof things if you have a realm with a public well and a bunch of villages/people in that area that not only have a reason to defend that place (water) but also have kinship with the player that owns the resource/the realm (and have agreed to do so). Likewise players who are pro-random acts of violence would probably find the challenge they seem to desire (if my reading of the thread is correct at least) if you were not only sieging that specific palisade and instead have a siege that (as Jorb put it) looks more like a siege, has people actively defending it, and you have angered not just 1 small group of semi-afk players but also the surrounding area.

But I also think that what Jorb envisioned 10 years ago is not going to work anymore with the community the game has created and with the design of the game in place. I'd love to larp and swear fealty to some larper realm ruler that wants to keep out bandits and have a realm of order or whatever. Or maybe there's some realm that is just a bunch of bandits, that'd be fun too. But there's really no reason to and with the way the game works, I'd probably be better off worrying about the quality of my own trees rather than forming these alliances.

I think there is probably some nice middle ground between the hardcore PVP "everything must be destroyable" group and the people who want to play farmville with survival elements. I think it is probably even achievable if you just use the systems that currently exist, form alliances, take revenge for misdeeds, talk to people in game, whatever. That way Jorb's vision might even become reality. Or maybe I have it all wrong, it's been a long time since I last played, but I do think diplomacy was a bit more prevalent then. Granted it also seems to be that we are at the end of the world, so I am not sure what diplomacy there is left to do.