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What do you expect from the City Building Feature?
kingdane
Member Posts: 11
I thought this might make a good discussion for the Devs over at Icarus to tap into.
What do you want out of the city building experience?
Should the city exist and you just move in and improve or should we be forced to start from scratch and build a city from the ground up? Should geographic location play a role in the development? For example if you build on a hill top, will it be easier to defend (holding the high ground and all) or say you build near a cave of mean little creatures, should these creatures launch raids on your little village for disturbing their home? What about water systems? Like rivers or lakes? Should we be able to set up trade routes on river ways? And of course there are always buildings and defenses. Should we there be multiple styles of buildings each with their own role (Star Wars Galaxies) or should we be able to just build a building designed from scratch and do with it what we please (Ultiman Online)
What are you opinions?Feel free to post any answers or completely new ideas. I certainly haven't even touched on the possibilities. 
Comments
My 2 Cents:
Cities/Towns/Outposts/Whatever: Ready made places that players can take control over and move into gaining profits from trades that are made from its stores, ie: ala Dark Ages of Camelot with player owned buildings with their own personal stores. These would be located on trade routes, near water sources - an Oasis? and out in the middle of no where. These places should have a small area around em that are unresticted PvP areas and allow players to combat whatever whomever. Players would be able to take control of each place by capturing the control area - ala Face of Mankinds Control terminals. Once a player has captured it, you they either get a Flag stating their faction and/or clan. From there on, its up to then to protect it and make it safe for people to buy and trade and to ensure it remains there own territory. But maybe players could hardcore NPC guards stationed throughout the place to ensure better protection, that way they dont have you spend all their time there and a player cant really stay online 24/7 anyways.
Building Options: Players are able to build their own outposts to use as their home base for their own personal use or for their clan. They can use this to store looted items, smith items, research lost tech, do anything else I forgot to mention and even use it as a set off point to trade in other colonies. This area should be PvP active but should not be alowed to be taken over. Players could always camp the area killing the owner(s) when they return, but they cant capture it and they cant loot storage items and shit.
Premade settlements: My idea would allow people to gain profit with the risk of losing it. Players can also steal loot from these places within reason. This will give players something to do when there arent any player events going on or there just really isnt anything to do. It would also give people the opportuniy to raid for some loot from the shop owners and such making the Sherrif or enforcer role relevent to a bit more excitement. This pretty much causes the shopowner to hire people to protect the area or even make alliances with people giving a political role as well. This would also relieve the PvP problem in regards to haters/lovers as you could simply make ceratin BIG settlement non player controlled and non PvP so you wouldnt have to worry about getting ganked. Those places would be places tied in with whatever storyline is involved.
Buildable: This is pretty much geared to those people who like having a home/apartment/house or more for those people that want their own clan base.
As far as defence is concerned in regards to turrets and shit, I would have to say that all depends in the current tech level and what we can exactly do. I would have to say the ability to either hire guards would be better to start with. One could even be allocated a small but elite number of guards upon taking over an area or building your own.
Well, thats my 2 cents...
Good topic. This is long, if anything skip to the bottom for costs of public buildings. But its all a good read
I'll second Delgado's view on static locations that need to be captured and held. I see this as a good style for places like LARGE Oil Refineries, Drilling Platforms, and factories. Basicly places which generate large amounts of resources constantly (Drilling platforms and Mines should be continuous, Refineries and Factories whenever they have resources input). Additionally, Forts may be fun to take over, but whats the Point of taking them over? Do they sit at a strategic crossroads and generate Toll Taxes from passing Caravans? I like that, but perhaps then you are also responsible for protecting a large part of the caravan route. Hmm.... lots of interesting ideas there.
In short, static locations that are capturable need to generate some type of resource. They must be valuable, not just Fun to shoot at.
Constructing your own home/settlement/city:
Ok, I find a nice piece of fertile ground that I can plant my crops on, has access to water (well/creek/river), and maybe even has some oil or mineral deposits on it. If I want to just build my home there, be a farmer/miner, and enjoy the world, I shouldnt have to worry too much about being ganked by the local band of PvPers. At most I should be concerned with occaional bandits/raiders that want me to pay Protection in the form of food/fuel. IN GAME MECHANICS, when a player builds a home, a raider spawn location should be generated in close proximity to Player House. Spawn rate should be determined based upon location. Higher rates for more productive land, but Lower rates based upon proximity to civilization, higher rates again for proximity to Wastelands.
Now, suppose my little homestead turns out to be pretty successful. I expand my home, but others also move in and become neighbors. At first, the Raider Spawn should remain at the same spawn rate, but with larger bands of attackers. Once the number of players and buildings reach city size raiders should stay away, attacks should be on the Event scale. Since settlements and towns are still constructed from individual player housing, they should not be capturable. Reasoning behind this is that the defenders of a settlement or city have a distinct advantage in combat generally speaking. However, in the game world not every player that lives there will be online. So, for balance reasons this area should have either NPC law enforcment after the settlement reaches a certain size (With public buildings being built eith by a Player council or built overnight by the Dev/GM Team.) Large settlements should be infrequent enough that placing public buildings should not present a large time debt to GMs.
If PvP is not enabled in pre generated cities, it should not be allowed in Player built cities. Once the Public buildings are placed by the GM, one (or more) of those buildings should generate a circle of PvP protection around it. Outlying buildings in the settlement or city MAY NOT be protected! Such is the penalty for living on the outskirts of civilization on the frontier. One of the public buildings built by the GM could be an arena area that was PvP open. Public buildings may be upgraded as the settlements becomes larger/wealthier.
What It Costs:
Player Housing Costs:
Player housing will require maintenance, or it will deteriorate. Since this is a post apocalyptic world paying "Cash" into a terminal ala SWG doesnt make sense. YOU are responsible for keeping your home up. As such the maintenance cost can be based on Time/Attention. Simply entering your homestead should satisfy your maintenace costs for a set time period, we'll call it a week for discussion purposes.
Ok what benefits arise from this? Well, its EASY. Its not a CHORE for the player that wants a home in game to maintain it. Its semi-Realistic, for true realism you'd have to spend alot more time at your home territory, but we're trying to balance fun too.
What problems? Deterioation while away on business/holiday in the Real World. With regular rent paying systems you can Pay your maintenance costs in advance, with the maintain it yourself approach there is no way to do that. I'd like ideas on how to resolve this. Obviously we dont want the property to *poof* as soon as you miss one maintenace period, but it should degrade. Your crops wither, your oil pump freezes up and needs parts, your need to spend X Minutes/Hours logged in at your home property to affect repairs. In this way you can miss say 4-6 weeks of maintenance time, but still have your property with equipment when you return (just need to spend a couple nights fixing it back up). Other options are that degradation will not take place until after you have logged back in, at which time you are given a Big Alert saying Go maintain your home, if you do not do so in the next 60 minutes it will degrade. This gives people with real world responsibilites peace of mind that their homesteads that they have spent 2 years building up wont dissappear when they deploy to Iraq for 8 months. But if they ignore it when they return they accrue the full penalty.
Canceled accounts and deleted character accounts should degrade at the regular rate, and the degradation should occur weekly. If an account is then renewed the property will already be degraded when they player logs in, a warning message noting that property is degrading should then be generated as normal.
Costs of Public Buildings:
Public Buildings should not cost the player community any taxes or upkeep costs. Here's why.
1) It encourages player communities to form, and you dont have to worry about collecting dues from your neighbor who never seems to be online.
2) Back to my first homestead example. If I find MY Spot. Build MY home. And then a bunch of people decide its a swell location and move in near me 6 months later, I may not want them or their public buildings near me. I may not be able to make them move, but they'll collect taxes for their public buildings from my cold dead body.
3) Since there are folks as above that may not pay for various reasons, it prevents mooching from those players that do decide to pay.
4) Public buildings should have some form of shops or donation boxes in them, this at least gives the pretext that they are self funded.
5) Public buildings should REALLY REALLY have DONATION BOXES in them! Once a settlements donations have reached XXX dolars then the public buildings should be upgraded. They should LOOK nicer. At some levels they may even recieve some (improved) functionality, ala a Hospital or Shaman Shack. Donations are applied to ALL public buildings, no upgrading the Smithy and ignoring the Library (thats just an example!) This allows players that really do care about their town help it out. Upkeep rates should remain at 0, the upgraded public buildings being nicer now pull in more virtual money for their own maintenance.
Hmm I'm sure there is more, but I really should be working
ETA: Donations should be accepted in the form of Raw Materials, Books, and various other things. Basicly not just money or whatever the trade currency is.
Just real quick on Forts Lockmart
Players will suffer from wheather, dehydration and the likes. Forts provide an Oasis for players seeking to rest and refuel their bodies after long exploration trecks. Thats pretty much the importance I wanted to point out with such places. You end up gaining more caps or even good items for use of your facility. But they question is, do you loose loot when you die?
I sure hope you lose your inventory when you die. It just wouldnt make sense not to.
___________________________
The Golden Rule.
Risk vs. Reward
Yes that pretty much coincides with my view of the Forts sitting on important Caravan routes. Now take your ideas of usage and my ideas of protecting the route from the fort and put them together. Now, we see greater benefits to the owner of the fort based upon how many players/caravans pass through the fort. If the fort owners do not protect the caravan routes, then NPC caravan frequency will be reduced, and that results in correspondingly fewer profits/benefits for the owner.
Taken a step further, that can have world wide implications. If my fort sits on the primary caravan route between City A and Farm Community B, then if I fail to be a good steward of the fort, the number of caravans between those two locations will be reduced. The City will have a food shortage, and the Farm Community will have a surplus. This can increase the value of food in the markets of the city, making player caravans more profitable. It can also generate missions from both locations to encourage another player to come and take over the Fort from me, in the hopes that they will be a better guardian.
In game mechanics we get something along these lines:
If # of successful missions taken from fort terminal over X time period is less than Y, then Caravan Safety Rating is reduced.
If Caravan Safety Rating is reduced, then # of caravans is reduced.
If # caravans is reduced, then Fort Profit is reduced, and supplies to affected settlements is reduced.
Then the whole economic effect on the cities takes place, which then kicks off new missions to pacify the Caravan Routes. This makes taking control of a fort more of a character's life purpose as opposed to strictly an easy form of free money.
As for dropping items on death... yes I agree and covered that in the PvP thread. How did this come up in City Building
My question is how do you implement taking over a fort or any other static location? Where is the balance to prevent you from just waiting till 2 AM and sneaking in while everyone is offline? High power NPC defenders? Can the current owner invest money/resources to upgrade the defenses? Obviously this has to be a PvP enabled location. What about on the non-PvP server?
ETA: Edited because I type even worse in the mornings!
From the MMORPG.com interview:
"At present we believe this may be best handled with separate servers, and optional PvP areas and options..."
And from MMOGHell back in March of '04:
"MMOG Hell: Can you tell anything about PvP? Will Fallen Earth be a PvP+ or PvP- Game?
James: We will have PvP game play offered, but on dedicated servers in order not to bother non PvP players." Interview
So based on what little info is out there (and yes the Devs have clearly stated that they will experiment with this in Beta) it sounds like primary care-bear server with PvP zones and then a secondary PvP everywhere server like Darktide in AC1.
What they havent said is what the PvP zones on the "Normal" server will be. Is it just a small arena, static structures to seize control of, or the entire lawless badlands that may comprise 80% of the game world. All I'm saying is that the term Zone can mean many different things.
Obviously, with the PvP enabled server people with a taste for greater realism should be satisfied. As the Devs stated, some people love PvP and others hate it. When the only thing separating the two ideals is a boolean value on a server, its easy to cater to both player bases wishes.
This game didnt always have city-building. Talk about a rip off.
/sigh
This games not even done yet. Its still in development and is far from release. So how can it "didnt always have" something?
___________________________
The Golden Rule.
Risk vs. Reward
What the hell am I talking about?
Lets follow this logic. When the game was first announced...it didnt involve city-building. Time goes on, still no more city-building. Much later they announce the new feature. It doesnt need to be released to have a change in features.
See my other post as to why this rubs me the wrong way, mate.
Well FE Devs have been pretty consistent on not telling the community anything about the game until they actually have code implemented. I've reviewed your link for CO, and if there is something on there, besides forum speculation, about city building I have yet to find it. If you have a more specific link please provide it. The FAQ and features sections make no mention of construction.
Regardless, if there is enough room to have 20+ fantasy based MMORPGs with elves and fairies running around, I would hope that the world is big enough for 3 or 4 post-apoc MMORPGs. Some will be better than others, they will all have overlapping features, the question is who implements and markets the better product.
After 4 years the VoodooFusion team is still in the hiring process to get developers. There is a request on the frontpage asking for volunteers to help in game design and implementation. I appreciate that this is a group of folks that want to make a game in their SPARE TIME. But as they themselves state, they have "Real Jobs" that take priority, plus family commitments, and THEN they take what time is left over to develop a game. Thats fine, but FE coming from a dedicated game company will be delivered first, and I trust them to provide better monthly support as they will not have the distractions of "Real Jobs".
Wastelands came first.
Then there was Fallout.
There are no new or original ideas, just the same old stuff in prettier wrappings.
Go Troll the Twilight War forums some, I'm sure folks there are bored at work just like me
I feel for these guys. They make a project, someone with more money comes along looks at the feature list, then bases their work off of it.
I know if I were them, Id be pissed. Im sensing some fanboi-ism here.
Defend your new favorite game till youre blue in the face. Just remember that the entire feature set as a group was put up by someone before FE. Not just bits and pieces, and not around the same time, but years before with the same city-building, the same vehicles use, the same economic model, the same [insert feature here].
BTW: Im actually IN the industry so I suppose this issue hits home with me. Im far from a troll. I post about all sorts of stuff. This just hit home since Ive been watching and pulling for these guys for years now.
Of course things look logical after they're on paper. The lightbulb seems like a no-brainer once some thinks of it and tells someone.
Its the combination of features together. The sum of the parts.
I not going to argue with fanbois. Ive set the record straight. I'll leave it at that for now.
So... Shall we move back on topic now or what? What was the topic about again??
City Building, duh
I do like what you've all been talking about, it sounds very good and if the Devs even take half of what you say this will be a good game. One thing I would like to see is modular buldings. If you have a nice little one room house and you want to expand it you should have multiple choices for additions, you should be able to expand upwards and outwards with the additions.
You were talking about "maintaining" a house by just entering it every so often. One thing I was wondering about was that if you have a larger building, would you need to go to every room or perhaps stay in the building longer?
Waiting For: something good
Games Tried: SWTOR, Star Trek Online, EQ, EQ2, Earth and Beyond, Planetside, Lineage 2, Eve Online, WoW, City of Heroes, City of Villians, Auto Assault, Fallen Earth
Star Wars: Galaxies - Ibra Olasi (Valcyn Server) [Dead, screw you SOE]
Having to maintain a house... Umm... Nope... I wan't to be able to do what I need to do without having to worry about going back to my house to maintain it.
Upgrades, would be cool. Then I can make my own brother. I LIKE!!! I LIKE!!!
I would like to be able to rent space in a pre-established city (either player made where the mayour/city council sets the rents) or the larger npc cities. Rent either living quarters or bazaar booths, or factory time, etc.
I would also like to have some power if I am in control of a city. paved roads, (help commerce) lighting (reduce banditry) police (reduce crime) etc.
Most importantly I want cities to feel "alive" I don't want to come upon a huge player city and find it a ghost town because no-one in the cities guild is online at that time. At the same time ;arge cities should be VERY rare. most "cities" should be small outpost with but a few amenities. Any large settlement should be mostly NPC. That way they can each have a unique feel, and focus. I really do not want to have half a dozen player made cities that are laid out exactly the same with the exact same prestige structures, and is empty 98% of the time simply because a Guild is rich enough to have it.
I fear too many players have illusions of granduer and everyone imagines their town will become a giant hub of the game, when there should really be only a few such large cities.
...rambling
Yeah, simple and small and alive. important things for me.
I hate the play citys in star wars, just row after row of the same shaped house. booooring.
The buildings should not be so generic, from pictures and video we've seen of outposts already, theys hould be like that.
Maybe different styles, cyberpunk outpost, shanti town, etc.
but i hold high hopes for this feature of the game and its soemthing im really looking forward to
Well I've seen several games (not MMOs) that allow heavy customization of homes. You could do it easily, just put an idiots version of a building creator in the game and use it as a way to build houses. Charge money for the amount of space used or something like the Sims and Sims 2.
It could be done, and I'm sure the people at Icarus are smart enough to do it.
Waiting For: something good
Games Tried: SWTOR, Star Trek Online, EQ, EQ2, Earth and Beyond, Planetside, Lineage 2, Eve Online, WoW, City of Heroes, City of Villians, Auto Assault, Fallen Earth
Star Wars: Galaxies - Ibra Olasi (Valcyn Server) [Dead, screw you SOE]