by Magisticus » Sun Jun 26, 2011 1:07 pm
The problem is not the number of accessible resources, it is that those resources are claimed very early on by players who are around at the start of the world making it very difficult for new players to join. A few things could be done to improve this..
1. Make it harder to set up alt claims, possible ways include claim degredation, increasing the cost of making a claim and resticting areas claims can be made (having some resources in free for all areas that can not be interferred with)
2. Making less resources static. At the moment for instance you can get reasonable quality stone eventually by mining deep and wood by growing and improving trees but water, soil and clay are totally static and require to be found and foraged. I would suggest that at high levels and with the certain skills you should be able to improve some of these resources well beyond the levels that they can be found in the wilderness. Ie soil quality improved by rotating crops or using compost/fertilisers etc, water imroved by filtration, clay perhaps more interchangeable with metal for kilns/smelters etc.
Of course at the same time trade is an important aspect of the game and all this would have to be implimented in such a way as to not diminish trade.. possibly by making improving resources very difficult and time consuming like creating steel is at the moment.
As far as map size goes I think it is just about right as it is, it is nice to live in a large world that is difficult for one faction to entirely dominate and yet we have seen factions stretch their influence right across it (Pandamonium's raid on Tarr) and I can certify myself that it is more than possible to travel from one side to the other without teleportation although it takes some time...
Removing teleportation would just make so many aspects of the game too annoying and make gameplay soooo slow. I don't see it as using magic, as far as I am concerned when I have teleported from one location to another my Hearthling has walked that distance, I just didn't have to watch him! I would be interested to see how/if this is going to be different in Salem.