Hi all,

I'm back at it again with some feedback/food for thought.
As always, i try make suggestions which would fit into the current mechanics and shouldn't be to much development effort.
A significant portion of this post is all base around getting players moving throughout the world and encouraging them to interacting with other players, something I think is sorely missing.


This post aims to provide a small amount of feedback for the current Resource Outpost System, and to suggest some new ideas, including;


2) A Potential Land Administration System, and some

3) Potential Coin Faucets and Sinks.








1. Feedback: Resource Outpost System

I am only going to talk about outposts as if their was only one server, and wont be talking about the exploitation of the system on Epiland. I will talk about;



a) The Capture Process

b) The Destruction Process



So firstly,

The Capture process


Firstly, players should not be able to horse jump into a outpost area, outside of JH, and then log in during JH and claim the outpost instantly at 1 minute till JH ends. Im not sure if this is a bug or not.

Regardless of the time of the week, a player should be teleported off a outpost claim when they log in if they do not have access to the claim.


Furthermore, for outposts to act as true players hotspots , online defenders should be prompted when someone is attempting to capture our of their outposts. Sniping Outposts

Personally, i think the IB time could be integrated to alert defenders and make it a little bit more challenging/fun to capture a outpost. It should pop up at the top of any online defenders screen.



Not sure how you would handle 13 different outposts being captured at one time under this system, maybe just have a it push down or have a toggle system switching between the timers. Just an Idea.





The Destruction Process

I personally think that a outpost should become immune to damage for at least 1 or 2 weeks.

I.e. cannot take siege damage and the "Destroy" button should be disabled. This would give the original owners a chance to recapture a outpost.

The point of implementing outposts were to encourage hotspots of PvP activity.

The current system of ninja capture and delete is counterproductive to the original concept.









2) A Potential Land Administration System

I think there is a real opportunity to use the outpost mechanic to control land in a way that the guild claims cannot.

The kingdom and vassal system is great for permissions and rights, but its not very good when it comes to land administration and control. And I think implementing a land administration system could really create a lot more endgame.


So, whats the idea?






Introduce Military Fort (Outpost)


And what would a Military Fort be?

It could be a pre-made fort structure or it could just be a blank claim, smaller than a regular town claim but slightly bigger than a outpost claim that guilds can built fortifications on. I don't think castle walls should be allowed, maybe a castle tower or two.

Every Judgement hour these Military Fort could be assaulted and captured by holding them for 30 minutes.








And what kind of area would these military forts cover?


The area of "influence" would be much larger than a T4 guild, and cover many guilds, ranging from T4 to T1.
These land zones would only be visible through a toogle option in the Map. (they would hopefully be displayed a bit better than my paint skills..)

Something along the lines of;

a) a radius of 750 tiles, or



On second throughts, 1000 radius with 750 between would allow for minimum gaps.

b) nine outposts per server, or



c) one outpost per server.



They need to be large so to cover many guilds. My personal favourite is either 750-1000 Radius or 1 per server. I think 9 is too many and 1 is too few. needs to be 2-5 per server in my opinion.





And what would they do?


They would generate a land income depending on the number of guilds and the tiers of guilds inside the area of "influence". Tier 4 guilds would generate more land income than T1 guilds.

**THIS LAND INCOME WOULD COME FROM THE CROWN AS A NEW COIN INPUT, NOT FROM PLAYERS**

This income could be something like 25-100% of the total claim maintenance. This depends on other coin Faucets and Sinks which I will discuss later.

The guild who controlled the military fort would be able to set;

a) Land tax rates - what percentage of land income taxed from the guild (effectively how much coin is returned to each individual guilds).
b) Commission of trade sales, and
c) Resource Outpost Production tax.



The Land Income would vary between Forts as the total income would depend on the number and tiers of the guilds inside the influence zone. Some fort might govern many guilds and have a total land income of 20 gold coins per day while another might only govern a few and have an land income of 1 gold coin per day.

Land Income would need to be balanced by the developers to insure than inflation does not run away. You would have to change how the current coin faucets and sinks operate. But ultimately, you would want to reduce the coin slightly gained from "Sell to the crown", "Arena Victory" or "Native Loot" so that the coin gained from land administration was Significant and worth fighting for.





And what would this mean?


For the current Kingdom/Vassal setup, not much.

Loyal vassals would have very low land taxes, trade commission and resource outpost taxes. Well you would expect that.



But say you want an advantage over a long term enemy, you could attempt to capture the military fort that covers their guild or guilds. If you succeed, you could impose harsh sanctions, 100% of the land income for enemy guilds, 20% commission on all trade and 50% of their Regional Outpost Production.







Scenario

Two Small Kingdoms. Red vs Blue.



Blue decides to invade the Red territory and captures one of the Red Military Forts.



The Blue team could impose harsh taxes on all guilds and outposts.

OR

They could single out your enemy, only imposing harsh restrictions on them and try to win over there neighbours by giving them better terms than their original liege-lord.



Maybe even one day down the track, and if the terms are lowered, some or all of these guilds might fight for there new liege-lord.

No kingdom will ever be able to hold control for very long if they do not provide the guilds inside their lands with fair terms.





The Capture process

Again, I think there should be a IB timer for capturing a Military Fort. The current administrators of the Military Fort should be prompted.

By default, you should have to assault, and hold for 30 minutes.



I know this is a long time, but it leads into another concept of daily. "Skirmishes".


Skirmishes



To encourage more sandbox PvP, you could implement skirmish mechanics. By this, i mean create incentives for players to conduct skirmishes into enemy lands.

Successful skirmishes would reduce the time taken to capture a Military Fort during the weekend Judgement Hours.

The first incentive: Every time you kill an enemy in their lands, you take 10 seconds off the capture time up to a maximum of 5 minutes. Down to 25 minutes to capture.



Obviously, every time an enemy kills you or someone else from your guild, 10 seconds is added back onto the capture time required. Thus, you would need to have killed more enemies than they have killed you in order to reduce the capture time.

The second incentive: Add daily "mini" judgement hours.

During these mini judgement hours, you would be able to assault and "capture/damage" military forts. It would take 5 minutes to "damage" the fort. Each time you damage a fort, you take 2 minutes off the capture time up to a maximum of 10 minutes (Monday-Friday). Mini-Judgement Hours would only apply to military outposts, all other types of claims would remain unaffected.

By utilising both forms of skirmishes, you could reduce the capture time to half, at 15 minutes. 15 minutes is a lot easier to hold than 30 minutes.



These are just some ideas i just quickly thought up but you could include other things like;
- Poaching - Killing wild animals in enemy lands.
- Stealing/Plundering - Acquiring enemy horse-carts/horses?
- Burning - off claim crops maybe?




The Destruction Process


Like resource outposts, I personally think Forts should not be able to be deleted instantly after capture. I don't think there would be any reason to just delete a fort if you can gain significant coin from the taxes of the land.

You should be able to delete/move the location of the fort to somewhere you may think is better (i.e. a hilltop or off the coast). Or maybe you want to move it slightly to cover a guild that is 2 tiles outside of the influence area for tax reasons.

But depending on who it is setup, pre-made fort vs player made forts out of fortifications/terraforming, players should be able to re-fortify or change the defences to what they think might work better.

Likely the same rules should apply which apply to the resource outposts suggested above. I.e. you can delete/move the Fort CLAIM (just the monument sword itself) for 2-4 weeks for continuous ownership can you delete and quickly erect a in a new location. With the exception that you can remove/destroy the fortifications/terraforming before this time.





Benefits from Land Administration


I thought another incentive to controlling land could be titles.

Guild Leaders of guilds who controlled forts would have the title of Liege Lord or Liege Lady.

The top five guilds that controlled the most forts, would have the title of King or Queen for there guild leader.

The guild who controls the most forts would have the title of High King or High Queen.

You could even go as to provide small benefits to the lands of the top five guilds. Such as;
- Increased produce of Resource Outposts say 10%
- Increased action times such as faster farming actions, faster digging/mining, faster road building, faster Terraforming. Etc etc. slightly faster actions.
- You could even have things to boost trade in their region like slightly faster horse-cart speed (say 125-150%) for friendly guilds in the lands they control.

High King could have the same but just higher percentages.

Although it would not want the buffs to be too much, which could result in a snowball effect where the rich get richer and eventually it would be impossible to dethrone. But TBH, i dont think this would happen in LiF as manpower/skill/knowledge is often more valuable than gold.

There are many possible slight benefits you could come up with to make Land Administration a core part of the game.






Summary


Why bother?

When a lot of people look at the map, they see all the claims, but overall it doesn't really mean anything. No one guild seems to have complete control of one area. Sure, some areas have lots of guilds with blue heraldry and some area have more yellow heraldry.

With the land management system above, you would be able to see visually the current extent of all kingdoms.

Plus it creates more sandbox politics. Vassals would actually function more like vassals. If they don't provide men for battle when asked, you increase there taxes. If you think your Liege-lord is not offering you fair terms, side with some who promises better terms.

You would not have to completely destroy peoples bases to have some control/influence over the guild. The fort/skirmish system could really open up the world for more small scale sandbox PvP.

Instead of Red v Blue, it could be many guilds fighting for the one of the five Crowns.









3) Potential Coin Faucets and Sinks.


If you implemented the above system, where you are effectively flooding the economy with coin equivalent to the only major coin sink we have currently; monument maintenance. This would cause hyperinflation.

You might as well add a few more coin sinks while your at it and ill mention some possible ideas later on.





Potential Coin Faucets

Including:
- Land Administration
- Skirmish Winnings
- Arena Winnings
- Sale to the Crown
- Native Loot

We know about Sale to the crown and Arena Winnings, but what could the others be?



Land Administration

As discussed in the previous section, land administration could be a big coin faucet into the game. 25-50% of claim maintenance would probably be an rough estimate but this should probably be balanced to counter inflation/deflation by the developers. Trade commission is not really a faucet as the money is coming from players.



Skirmish Winnings


I think it would be cool if, when undertaken in skirmishes mentioned above, that when you kill an enemy in their lands, you receive 1/100th of there weekly allocated land income (pre-tax). This would equate to a couple of silver per kill that would appear in your inventory.


This could further incentive skirmishes and sandbox PvP, which would be a great thing in my opnion.
Obviously, as this coin would be added into your inventory, if you died you would lose any coin you may have gained.



Native Loot


The developers have suggested that they want to implement the Natives soon, and that they will drop loot. Not much is known if they will drop items or coin, or whether or not you can sell the loot to the crown (coin faucet/item sink) or whether they will only be valuable to players.



Balance


You would want to make sure that you balance the coin faucets (inputs) in a way that you think would provide the most benefit/enjoyment to gameplay.

Each different type of coin faucet results from a different style of gameplay.

Players who want to PvP can do Skirmishes or the Arena.
Players who want to PvE can Sell to the Crown or kill Natives.
Players who want to play politics can attempt to make money out of it through Land Administration.
Players that want to do all of the above can.
Players that want to trade can make money by buying and selling from people that don't want to travel.
etc etc

However, this will only occur if there is balance. I cant imagine that many people enjoy making coin by Selling to the Crown. It is quite boring and time consuming (with current active playerbase)

You would want to incentive "fun" coin faucets such as;

- Land Administration = 40%
- Arena Winnings = 20%
- Native Loot = 20%
- Skirmishes = 10%
- Sell to the Crown = 10%

The developers would want to watch the numbers and see what the major faucets into the game are (say at the weekly level)




Potential Coin Sinks

Currently the main coin sink is Claim Maintenance. There are many more possible sinks that i don't think would be a detriment to the game as a whole. These could include;

- Teleportation between servers fee.
- Central City Services
- Over-forging
- Buiding Upgrades - Storage/Convenience



Teleportation between Servers

You could add a small fee such such as 1 silver - 1 gold to - 10 gold. This value could depend on inflation and be flexible.



Central City Services

You could implement services such as;

- Gambling Minigame

Self explanatory

- Guild House Rentals

I think Bobik has mentioned this in the past, could be a good coin sink.

- Blacksmith - Item quality "Increaser" Service.

Similar to effect to Baromsag except is would cost a bucket load. Maybe along the lines of 10 gold to 100 gold per 1 increase in quality of a tool, weapon or armor. This is a bit of a controversial one but since its only in-game currency which you cannot buy with real money, its not pay to win. Let me know in the comments what you think about this one.



Over-Forging

I'm not overly sure about this one, the old "every second enchant will break the item" trick....

Basically, you would have an option in professions to "over-clock" your items to be just the tiny bit better, but at the risk it will break the item. Just food for thought.



Building Upgrades


I personally think this could be a massive coin sink that player would like. I basically ripped this idea from the WoW Bank system.

You could do things like "Upgrade Large Warehouse" to have more room.
Say the first time is 5000 extra storage for 10 Gold.
The second time is 5000 extra storage for 100 Gold.
The third time is 5000 extra storage for 500 Gold.

I.e. You pay exponentially more in-game currency as you continue upgrading buildings.

You would want to cap it at a certain amount i.e. 100000 or something like that.

You could apply this upgrade system to buildings such as;

- Warehouse - Pay for more storage
- Houses - Pay for more room slots
- Barns/Stables - Pay for more food capacity
- Keep - Pay for more rally points (not sure about this one)
- Create a log storage - Pay for more log storage



IB Cost

Not overly sure about this one. IB's could also cost a small amount of coin.

To create a 50x50 IB Totem, part of the resources required to make would be 1 Gold Coin.

To create a 100x100 IB Totem, part of the resources required to make would be 2 Gold Coin.

The values are complete guesses and would need balancing.





Considerations


- Basically, you would not want to implement the above Land Administration/Skirmishes/Military Forts without first creating more coin sinks and tweaking the coin faucets.

- You would also probably need to apply the system to a new world or soft wipe the current coin/resources/animals on current worlds for any chance of this to work.

- People may not like the more feudal based system. Although, in my opinion, it does allow for land control without having to lose your base/town/city which might be preferable.

- First couple of weeks would be a clusterf$#k. Alliances will war amongst themselves for top dog. It will be bloody.

- Would likely need a different implementation on green servers but could ultimately be quite similar without upsetting anyone.

- Alliances might just cover there areas with proxy T1-T2-T3 claims for the coin. Maybe the Land Income should also be based off the guild rating (as this already existing guild rating takes many different things into consideration) A empty guild with the minimum players would generate very low income.








What do you guys think?
Let me know if you have any questions.
Let me know if you think these are good ideas or bad ideas.