A Poor Recipe: Control Points, Shardfalls, and Player Towns

Between control points, Shardfall's and Player Owned Towns there's a lot we still don't know. There's even more we may think we know and are really just assuming. This post may prove to be an example of that. But this post is meant to challenge what you think you know about these areas and how they will work together in the game to produce meaningful PVP as well as other important player interactions.

Before I begin, let me say that I own a player town, I like pvp, and I plan to allow pvp in my player town. My problem is, I don't have a compelling reason why that makes any sense. It's just something I feel like I'd like to experiment with because I generally enjoy PVP. However, the more I think about it the more I feel like it's a tremendous disadvantage in the world of SOTA.

Here are some key definitions of terms that will be important to this discussion: (as I understand them)

1. Control Points - these are areas on the in-game map that are located in choke points between mountain ranges and bridges. They're designed to constantly change "ownership" between players and NPC's. They may or may not be PVP zones, and they're important parts of the game because they will limit travel for all players.

For example, let's pretend you own a small house in New Brittany. You take on a quest that involves visiting the western coastal town of Aerie. How are you going to get there? Well you're going to have to make a choice. You can take a number of paths but eventually you'll have to go through an area that may have either hostile players, hostile NPC's, or perhaps even both. In this case, In this case, one of those areas may be Vertas Pass (a scene that was available during R10 and contained a bunch of angry Dark Elves).

2. Player Towns - these areas of the map are owned by players and be designated by the owner as Non-PVP or PVP zones. It's unclear if player towns can be used as Control Points that must be passed through to get from one area to another. Before entering a PVP zone, all players will be prompted (warned) and given an opportunity to avoid entering this area by mistake.

3. Shardfalls - these areas of the map are PVP Zones. They're kind of like PVP arenas. To entice players to visit them, they will have rare spawns and loot drops as well as resource nodes that produce spawns at a higher yield.

With the following definitions in mind, I have several questions that just don't seem to tie out in the current system of Control Points, Shardfall's, and Player Towns. There's really a lot going on here, so I'm just going to list these questions in no particular order. But rest assured that all of these questions fit together into a larger macro economic quandary that seems like a bit of a mess for anyone that wants meaningful PVP.


Q1: Why enable your player town as PVP Enabled? What benefit does that provide? Sure, this allows players to hack and slash against anything that moves, but this serves no strategic purpose. It will likely decrease trade in those towns due to the increased risk. It seems to me like a sucker's bet. You're taking on more risk and in return you're getting less reward.

Q2: Unlike developer created Shardfall's and Control Points, player towns will not have resources in Episode I to avoid possible exploitation. But because there are no resources to gather in your town, there's no way to create a town built off of economic principles. Here's the best example I can give you. Say you want to create a small fishing village? Well guess what, you're not going to have any fish in your village because fish are a resource. So good luck!

Q3: How far does the IGNORE button go? Can players ignore any other player they wish? They need only click on that player or type the player's name into the ignore box and POOF they will never see that player again via the magic of "Selective Multiplayer". While I understand and support this feature for reasons like harassment and protecting children, I find it to be far too robust for a game that has competitive elements like PVP through fighting and through economic trade.

Here's an example to ponder. Suppose you're Lum the Mad trying to recapture your youthful experiences in Ultima Online. You and a number of your friends set out to patrol a bridge. Anyone that passes over that bridge is blocked from passing and told that a tax is required for the use of the bridge. This is all roleplayed and no one is being "harassed", but the truth is this is mightily inconvenient for your herb gathering operation and everytime you attempt to cross the bridge leading to the closest place to find herbs, you're shaken down by Lum and his friends. So you put Lum and his mates on the ignore list.

Now you don't have to deal with Lum and friends and when you goto the bridge it's empty. You no longer have to pay anyone's silly tax, and you no longer need to waste time roleplaying.

Certainly there must be a better way to balance harassment in game. I would suggest the following, since you can already play the game in Single Player Online and Friends Only Mode, I don't believe the IGNORE button needs to extend to PVP areas. There's already a warning message that says "Hey you're about to go into this PVP area". So why not just add the additional line "Also, anyone you put on Ignore may be someone you will interact with in this area. The Ignore function does not work in PVP zones." This seems like the only way to avoid people using the ignore button as an "easy pass" through the toll booth of life.

Q4: Why flag yourself as Open PVP? What possible good can come from that? What possible benefit does that provide a player? In a game where getting the first hit is important, why would someone want to be standing around in the middle of a peaceful town, only to let some random passerby jump out of the bushes at them the moment they go AFK and stab them in the back?

I understand that there are players that want to feel the threat of open pvp all the time. But again it seems like this is taking on all of the risk without any of the reward. It's a sucker's bet.

Q5: Can my player town be a choke point that people have to go through if they want to get through that part of the map? At first glance this seems like a no brainer to allow. It would be great for players to have this option, and most players would love it because it would increase town traffic if you wanted a robust economy, and it would increase fighting if you had pvp enabled. But of course, there are only so many choke points on a map and the developers should not be picking winners and losers by giving one town special locations that give a player or a group of players an advantage over other players.

Q6: Will there be trade routes? The reason I ask this is because it's going to be very important to understand where trade routes are, how they function and how they impact your player town. Players that own towns will need to know this before they pick a location, especially since they don't get resources inside their town.

For those players that wish to attack other players and disrupt trade routes, it's going to be important for them to position themselves in an area that makes it easy to raid players, trade routes, and pvp enabled towns. For those players that only care about the economy, it's going to be very important to know where trade routes exist so they can begin devising plans to effectively navigate those areas (min/maxing risk verses control points and bandits).

Q7: How do you hold people accountable that run back to Non-PVP towns? This seems like one of the biggest problems with UO. I remember listening to the Shadowbane developers talk about how they were giving people the ability to hunt down those who had wronged them. Where as in UO (they said that) players could avoid accountability because they could use the pvp free zones as shelters. So how do you get vengeance in this game if your enemies can play hit and run with the mechanics?

There's about 1000 ideas I could think of that would change this, but the only ideas I care about as this point are the ones the developers have the guts to implement. So far, I don't see any real concern about this. The developers appear to assume that PVP will be performed in the designated Shardfall areas, and that players outside of those areas will have no need to be held accountable by other players.

I'd really like to see SOMETHING that allows people to impact players where they live so that people can't just dance around the mechanics annoying people and taking cheap shots.

Q8: Why aren't we talking about the ransom system being more dynamic based on risk? I like the ransom system, but it seems to me like it's disproportionately adverse to risk regardless of what you're doing. I'm not suggesting that we implement full loot. But I am suggesting that if you're going in areas where there's a good chance you're going to fight other players (like a Shardfall), perhaps you should be risking more than a single random item.

This may also be a good incentive for people that set themselves to Open PVP. While in this mode you get more than one item to ransom because you're taking on more risk (i.e. the constant possibility that someone will stab you in the neck while you're performing mundane tasks like sitting down to have breakfast).

Q9: Will players see other players on the overland map? Can those players be attacked on the overland map? Can players stealth themselves on the overland map? These would be important questions to have answered as it seems like the overland map could be exploited in a number of ways that would impact PVP in a negative way.

As players travel between control points, shardfalls, and player owned towns via the overland map, I'd like to have a better feel for players abilities to ambush or block these movements.

Q10: What happens when two player towns have a disagreement about trade or they just don't like each other? Shouldn't they have the ability to declare war on one another? Likewise, shouldn't there be ways to increase positive relations with other towns? It seems like there are key pieces of player town interaction that are currently missing from our community discussion.

I know that not everything has to have a mechanic to support it. But there are a lot of inherent issues with selective multiplayer, the ignore button, and non-pvp zones that make these player interactions seem unfeasible. For example, what if you have two player towns that are both using a near by resource to the point of exhaustion? If one town is non-pvp, then I guess the other town just has to live with it?

Or the reverse of that might be that both towns are PVP-enabled and they fight all the time, but what's the point if you can't do some kind of "moderately" impactful damage to your opponent like take their city over or destroy their trade routes?

These are my questions. They all relate to each other and work together on a larger level, so please think about all of them before focusing on just one of them.

Please comment your thoughts below...

 

So much text . Anyway, good questions Baron.

Ill take this question, for now. We don't know exactly the localization of player towns. We do know, at an extent, that there will be not fast travel and long distance, overland, travel will be a pain if you only want to sell the resources you gathered with effort, even there is possibility of random encounters. That said, i think that localizated resources near player towns could do the trick to get the cities more alive and with rich commerce. Your small fishing village could exist if there is nearby a tuna fishing spot.

One question, there is any detail about control points blocking pass to players so they would be obligated to take alternative routes?

 

I'm more worried that you are going to have towns right beside each other and it's going to make the map look ridiculous.

 

Interesting concerns indeed. Maybe it's about time to have a Hangout about social mechanics and player interaction?

As much as i enjoy developing mechanics to fill niches/fix issues, this is HUGE. And it's hard to address because we have no clue of how these things will unfold in the bigger picture. I could start rambling about what i'd like and what i don't... but i'd appreciate some sort of guidance from the Devs so we can have in mind what they're trying to achieve.

One way or another, i expect PVP to be HIGHLY related with virtues. Also, I'm worried overall about how Chaos will trigger the Order's wrath. In UO PK's you just needed to massacre some miners or to go to brit's bridge and say hi, but since PVP here is consensual, there will be no innocents for Chaos to feast upon.

 

Indeed. Could be an unfinished recipe called a Poor recipe?. I am not a master on game cooking so who knows.

 

My biggest issue with Shardfalls is, that the rare loot is hardly justified. Sure there will be risk of PvP, but will it be there for everyone? Big group of PvPers will move there in relative safety, I am afraid it will be mostly about numbers. And if they are attacked by another big group they can move into another location...If there was more than PvP, e.g. some sort of environmental hazard (e.g. radiation) that will damage your armour, spoil your reagents and slowly decrease your max health until you are properly healed elsewhere, it would make these spots free of big groups of PKs waiting for victims lured by promise of rewards... these spots should not be risk free for anyone.

 

I like the idea of radioactivity on shardfalls .

 

Q5: Can my player town be a choke point that people have to go through if they want to get through that part of the map? At first glance this seems like a no brainer to allow. It would be great for players to have this option, and most players would love it because it would increase town traffic if you wanted a robust economy, and it would increase fighting if you had pvp enabled. But of course, there are only so many choke points on a map and the developers should not be picking winners and losers by giving one town special locations that give a player or a group of players an advantage over other players.

This is a question that I ponder a lot. I don't think that a POT should be a choke point but there should be areas that are difficult to travel through. I envision that if a player wants to leave where they live and travel across the world it would be difficult. In order to travel from one side of the map to the other, there should be PvP & PvE situations. It would help divide up the kingdom and create home town pride. If PvP is not your bag, you could run a maze like Owls Nest. This would open up alliances and resource trade across The Realm. Im definetely in favor of choke points but not POT choke points. You could place your town on either side of it if you wish.

Q6: Will there be trade routes? The reason I ask this is because it's going to be very important to understand where trade routes are, how they function and how they impact your player town. Players that own towns will need to know this before they pick a location, especially since they don't get resources inside their town.

This is a very important topic for game play. I think trade routes will be set up by the players in an organic way but it goes back to the question above of choke points. I hope, and do believe, that Portalarium has hashed this out. They are basically designing 3 different games, run of the mill story line, strategy(POT's), and social. Lets see if they can pull it off.

 

Staying on the fishing village, the work around has probably also been to have resources out in generic hexes so that no single group of players could exploit the resources any more than another player could. But I think where that model falls short is when you're trying to build a community of "fisherman" that have no fish in their community. It's like trying to build a thieves guild when you know there's no stealing in the game.

I'm not sure that low resource node drops (they can be the lowest in the game) shouldn't be put into player towns. Just one type of resource to give the town some identity (upon request of the owner) is probably a fair solution and it keeps roleplaying immerssion on par with the rest of the game. So if you have an area of the game that's rich in "cotton", just try to make sure that most of the other resources are sparse in that area, this will force players to travel and trade with other players.

There's very little "detail" but there are many instances of RG, Darkstarr, and Chris talking about this in various dev hangouts. So that's the intent of the devs as recent as the last post mortem (if my memory is correct).

 

Is that what we are aiming for? Run of the mill storyline....what does that even mean?

 

I know it's not the same, but maybe cities of certain size could be allowed to customize some of the closest hexes? this way you will have a place close where you have the resources requested (a island with plenty of fish, a field with lots of cotton, a cave with some mineral). The brainless farming could be addressed by giving the slots a very long timer respawn (a lot can be said about that) and tweaking them so they give away less uncommon/rare drops on resources. You only get the basic material, but it's damn close.

Assuming things are done right and resources are scarce in some parts of the map and abundant in others, that amount of "basic material" will generate without a doubt a trade flux between cities. As pointed in the OP... how will be handled the trade routes? Automatic or player handled? do they have a real presence in game? Would they have a PVP meaning (if you're in war with a PVP flagged town you can attack players/NPC's in trade route, thus disrupting the economy) and by that having a job from the town should require a title so they can be identified?

Can't wait to hear about a hangout about this

 

It was just an expression. Sometimes things don't come across correctly on forums. Maybe run of the mill is a poor choice of words.

I meant that it will have a story line like most other games. Quests, etc. Said run of the mill because housing, crafting, purposeful PvP, etc. I place under social gaming.

And in my opinion are more important than a story line. For the most part, if you like story lines you should be playing console games.

 

That's probably where this line of thinking should've ended.

@rune, we all know how important the story is to you (and me and others), no need to argue it in this thread. That might derail the conversation.

 

Im really not trying to offend. Its just my opinion. No need to argue. Sorry Rune.

 

Not a big deal...it was a bit of bizarre opinion...since usually the opposite is the truth...you play consoles for less of a mature story and gameplay...history is littered with rpg games for the computer that are much more story based on computers then consoles....

I think it is a first for someone to tell me to play a console if I want a story....hell look at the ultima games.

 

Q1: Why enable your player town as PVP Enabled? What benefit does that provide? Sure, this allows players to hack and slash against anything that moves, but this serves no strategic purpose. It will likely decrease trade in those towns due to the increased risk. It seems to me like a sucker's bet. You're taking on more risk and in return you're getting less reward.

Is there a strategic purpose to PVP in SOTA? There are no factions, no factional control of resources, no sides to earn scores that provide certain benefits. Is that right? If not, then PVP is always just an individual hack and slash, with no strategic purpose. In that regard, would PVP enabled player towns be any different than any other PVP zone in the game (other than resource nodes)?

 

Q3: How far does the IGNORE button go? Can players ignore any other player they wish? They need only click on that player or type the player's name into the ignore box and POOF they will never see that player again via the magic of "Selective Multiplayer". While I understand and support this feature for reasons like harassment and protecting children, I find it to be far too robust for a game that has competitive elements like PVP through fighting and through economic trade.

This is a great great question. How can the selective multiplayer mode that filters people we see not be exploited to erase people from PVP zones?

I suspect that the rule will be 'once in an instance, always in an instance,' and filtering only applies for entering instances.

 

Q4: Why flag yourself as Open PVP? What possible good can come from that? What possible benefit does that provide a player? In a game where getting the first hit is important, why would someone want to be standing around in the middle of a peaceful town, only to let some random passerby jump out of the bushes at them the moment they go AFK and stab them in the back?

Why flag yourself in open PVP if it has no tactical or strategic benefits otherwise? Simple. Machismo.

 

Q5: Can my player town be a choke point that people have to go through if they want to get through that part of the map?

I think this would be a really bad idea because it would result in the equivalent of gate/portal camping in games like EVE Online, Asheron's Call, etc.

Still, it would make for something interesting in PVP!!!!

 

open pvp wasn't part of the pitch it was added to make those that wanted to do it have it....there has been no known benefit announced for it. I was told by a lot of people when I asked why would anyone do it and people responded that it was for the thrill and that was worth it.