The need for Feudalism

[TerraSleet]

superNEETs

Lol

Jokes aside I like this idea. Reminds me of some of the other games where community is important, city builders like Evony and that futuristic planet-based one. A lot of them have a system similar to this where if someone attacks your town they can force vassalage and take X% of your resources unless you attack them back or impeach them in some way. Obviously there needs to be a hard limit to the number of vassals a lord can have (governed by sqrt-Charisma/Psyche or something) or it'll get exploited by people making alts or will cause villages to snowball out of control.

I beg you wholeheartedly to not formalize them, it would totally ruin the game for me at least
Not to mention its really un-fun being a formal vassal/slave. In haven as it is, if someone tries to boss you around you are technically free to just tell them where to stick it.

Why would it ruin the game? As it currently stands, if you're a lone hermit and a pack of raiders in an organized village shows up, you are going to die and/or lose all your work because crime has little consequence when you're in a strong faction using a disposable combat alt. With this system at least you aren't going to be slaughtered on sight.

If you don't like the vassal you could break it but it would probably leave a criminal scent for the lord's village so you'll probably die for it unless the lord lets you free or their village is razed.

[Hervarth]

I beg you wholeheartedly to not formalize them, it would totally ruin the game for me at least
Not to mention its really un-fun being a formal vassal/slave. In haven as it is, if someone tries to boss you around you are technically free to just tell them where to stick it.

Why would it ruin the game? As it currently stands, if you're a lone hermit and a pack of raiders in an organized village shows up, you are going to die and/or lose all your work because crime has little consequence when you're in a strong faction using a disposable combat alt. With this system at least you aren't going to be slaughtered on sight.

If you don't like the vassal you could break it but it would probably leave a criminal scent for the lord's village so you'll probably die for it unless the lord lets you free or their village is razed.

how is that not good though? some random dude living by himself and not caring about dealing with other people should be at least somewhat at the mercy of larger, more organized groups, if he leaves his walls and is not careful. The way to solve this for the hermit is to make friends with either them or someone strong enough who doesnt like them. I dont see why it needs to be put into game mechanics in one specific way, I'd rather let it be up to the players how to organize themselves, whether that be communist/fascist/feudal/democratic/....

also lol at all these people who would (in game) rather live as (some percentage-)slaves than die for their freedom...

Moreover the specific suggestion is absurdly abuseable.

[TerraSleet]

how is that not good though? some random dude living by himself and not caring about dealing with other people should be at least somewhat at the mercy of larger, more organized groups, if he leaves his walls and is not careful. The way to solve this for the hermit is to make friends with either them or someone strong enough who doesnt like them. I dont see why it needs to be put into game mechanics in one specific way, I'd rather let it be up to the players how to organize themselves, whether that be communist/fascist/feudal/democratic/....

also lol at all these people who would (in game) rather live as (some percentage-)slaves than die for their freedom...

Moreover the specific suggestion is absurdly abuseable.

Let's say you're a hermit and you've been playing the game for a few months or so. You choose the hermit life because village life bores you.

Let's also say that after a while an aggressive village discovers you. Because of the way the game is set up the village will raid, pillage and murder you without thinking twice, because:

1. Scents aren't enough of a consequence to criminal activities because of disposable alts.
2. There is no reason to keep a player alive once you've defeated them in combat. They can't contribute anything to your village without joining it themselves, because they are characters built for solo play and they are working with lower qualities. Furthermore, killing them prevents them from taking the scents you just created by attacking them and harassing your village.

If there wasn't permadeath I would be fine with this. A little peeved but it'd be easier to rebuild. Except there is permadeath. All those months of building your character, gone in five seconds because griefers gonna grief. Many players have quit because of this exact scenario.

So you would rather die "for your freedom" and lose months of progress, than sacrifice a small percent of your future progress in exchange for you and your homestead being safer and potential new allies who are incentivized to protect and help you? This is a game remember, not real life. Also, just because one village has vassal'd you doesn't mean another village won't come over and raid the crap out of you for being their vassal. More fuel for the moot? Hell yes I say.

Also the system is only abusable if it's not implemented properly.

[Hervarth]

1. Scents aren't enough of a consequence to criminal activities because of disposable alts.
2. There is no reason to keep a player alive once you've defeated them in combat. They can't contribute anything to your village without joining it themselves, because they are characters built for solo play and they are working with lower qualities. Furthermore, killing them prevents them from taking the scents you just created by attacking them and harassing your village.

Both of these are mechanics problems that can and should be solved without encoding one particular political system into the game. As to point 2., there is plenty of stuff that hermits can produce that is useful to better players
-bricks
-bulk stone
-bulk wrought/steel
-rope
-leather
-fate curios (this is what i would demand as tribute, because i'm an unlucky bastard )

There needs to be more, but I think your way of solving the problem is bad and boring. Stronger players already have the capability of demanding tribute from weaker ones. I don't want to see that tied *directly* to the character progression system via lp, thus breaking the limits of the mentory. To me it would be better to just have a locked strongbox (not implemented yet )or something on your claim but outside your walls in which you leave tribute, that your Lord/comrade/government has access to.

(And yes, I would rather go down fighting than just roll over, because I find that fun, and dying/restarting doesn't bother me as much as it does other people, for whatever reason. I'd rather my characters had an interesting life than a long one.)

[Sevenless]

I think a key system behind something like a tribute system is the game needs to provide systems for it.

Systemless the effort to collect this kind of thing outweighs the benefits usually.

[DaniAngione]

I like the ideas of vassals, feudalism, etc...

But wouldn't it make more sense if it was somehow more akin to real feudalism? An exchange of security/loyalty for labor? I mean, not getting into the details of how false this 'security/loyalty' was, lol - but you know what I mean. The way you suggest, people COULD form communities near their lord but they could simply walk away and become an hermit that has somehow 10% of all the knowledge and experience he acquires in his life sucked into oblivion.

So, right now, we have things working in a manner that villages are mostly some weird kind of socialism. There's no real hierarchy besides that gameplay-oriented leaderships and such. There's no people eating and resting while others do all the work and barely have something to eat.

Villages ARE communities and I think that this would be the nice, soft spot to work the ideal of vassals and feudalism: Create a way that, somehow, you could submit others to work towards your village without having all the rights, liberties and access to stuff as proper villagers do.

This can be accomplished in game but it's a hell of a lot of work. You could have, for example, two layers of walls - and oly some members have access to the innermost layer - the others work the crop farms, tend animals and all that on the outer layer but can't access the places where everything is stored and such... The reason? They'd be safely behind brickwalls they can't build by themselves, for example. However, there are no game mechanics or systems that encourage or allow this kind of non equal relationship, it would all be made by players - and they'd have to accept such submission as their playstyle - so it's really rare if not impossible.

If, somehow, devs could find a way to create some sort of game mechanic that support this type of unequal relationship, this could be a thing.

I'll start by saying that some sort of 'token' like the Bond of Blood and Soil (something like "A Bond of Loyalty and Labor") would be really cool.

EDIT --

In ARK, the online dino island survival game that has been a recent hit in Steam, it is possible to 'enslave' people because there's no fast travel (or any other way to 'escape if not physically) and you can knockout/drag others. However, 99% of the people that find themselves on that stage usually suicides or stops playing with that character. So this is evidence that it's all about encouragement - giving purpose and perspective to this playstyle - and not just about giving players the tools to submit others.

What I mean is: for it to work, there should be perspective - there should be meaningful, possible accomplishments or gain that would make it worthy for someone to accept living the life of a vassal. Like what capitalism does to people, telling them that they can get a better life. But in a game system

[venatorvenator]

You're talking about feudalism, but the middle-ages also saw republics, organized tribal collectives, and empires, for example. Even feudalism had major diferences between one or another country.

Instead of feudalism, a better suggestion would be improved government mechanics - then we decide what kind of association we want to have in our groups.

I'll start by saying that some sort of 'token' like the Bond of Blood and Soil (something like "A Bond of Loyalty and Labor") would be really cool.

A "Bond of Loyalty" sounds interesting: valid for as long as both ruler and vassal have it in their studies, binding one's fate to the other's so as to create mutual responsibility, but both being able to withdraw their allegiance at any time.

Space and thus vassal limitation on the study could be circumvented by spontaneously creating hierarchies, for example, the regional lawspeakers would have bonds of their village lawspearks, then each village LS would have bonds of their chieftains, chieftains would have bonds of their villagers, and so on. This is somewhat how titles worked in feudalism, by the way.

[Bodomfreak]

Without some formalization of these systems we will never see true "kingdoms" rise and fall. I'm not fond of the original idea, but it is a step in the right direction. Some form of linking factions to each other via in game system, tracking reputation with existing factions, having "faction wide" effects buffs/debuffs.
I.E. 2-5 villages may "link" together to form a "town",
2-5 towns "link" to become a "city",
2-5 cities "link" and become a "kingdom",
Whilst all tiers would split lp cost just as when creating a village lp cost would dramatically increase along the tiers, as would the advantages. Such as buildings and crafting stations that can only be built on a (whatever tier) claim. This would encourage those further along to help those under them to further themselves along the tiers.
Help the newbs make their village so they can link it up with others and make a town, then city, so they can link it with yours and make a Kingdom.
As for who is King? I would say lawspeaker of the Village with most authority...