Closing Islands ?

[Revan]

Here's a thought. Instead of instantenously closing a continent, why not just prevent any further emigration or new character creation in one of the game worlds? Make it a case of 'Well, Kepler continent has had a good run. We don't want to bring it to a sudden artificial end though. So although the trade ships can no longer make it to Kepler continent due to choppier waters, you can fight it out to the bitter end and give Kepler continent the send-off she deserves!'

Doing it like that makes for a more staggered, natural reduction of nobles over time. You could even bring in these ideas of reducing regions from a decent roleplay perspective. 'Due to being cut off from the known world and the increasing anarchy, as the nobility die out, regions merge and become larger as you desperately try to hold your realm together.' You could do it in increments as the nobility reduced and realms fell. No doubt you would eventually be left with a hardcore of nobles and players who would never give up on the continent under any circumstances. But although the continent would have much bigger regions, perhaps fewer realms, they would still have their continent and that's the important thing.

Maybe if the player base does increase in the future, you can re-open the continent to emigration and new character creation. And if things really look up you could even reverse the changes to region sizes. But if things don't, at least it's still there in some way for the people who really care about it.

[Zakilevo]

Pretty sure Tom said no new island until he gets 500 players.

Also, closing an island down always makes people leave. There are people who have been playing for years because they became attached to history they made for their characters. Once that disappears, why should they stay?

[Lavigna]

Also, closing an island down always makes people leave. There are people who have been playing for years because they became attached to history they made for their characters. Once that disappears, why should they stay?

So true.

[Tom]

My rather hacked paint job.....

And you completely ignored the entire history of the game. Let's see, the EAST island is called that because? Anyone got an idea?

[Tom]

Pretty sure Tom said no new island until he gets 500 players.

I also learn from history. Even if there were a sudden run on the game, I would wait until I'm sure those additional players are there for the long run before adding a new island.

And 500 is a low number. The game right now could easily take 500 new players with no need for expanding the game world.

[Wolfang]

If it's a run on the game you are looking for, then closing an island is not really going to increase activity, but rather promotion outside of this game & forums is necessary. Recruiting people outside of the game itself is done only by few people.

[Poliorketes]

Really, this is insulting. It's like telling a pro tennis player to hit the ball more often.

So please, if you want to be constructive, stop riding dead horses.

Ok!... It's like a pro tennis player asking the public how he must play, and then get insulted when they tell him nothing he didn't know.

OF COURSE all we said has been thought before... I was thinking this was to find a 'acceptable way' to close some island FOR THE PLAYERS, but obviously this is impossible without some coding... and obviously too, all ways had been thought before open this treat...

So what are we talking about?


The questions in my mind are:

    Would the player community be open to a step like this AT ALL ?
    Can we, together, find ways to make it bearable?

Ok.
The community is not an homogeneous being, some people will accept it, some will left the game... who many? impossible to know.
Ways to make it bearable? without heavy coding? (merge, invasions, spawn, inundations, new islands, etc) IMMO: impossible.


This is like when someone had high blood pressure, they cut him and let him blood... yes the pressure drop, but the patient was a lot more weak after the treatment.

Ok. We close two islands: some people will leave the game in anger; some, thinking this is the begin of the end of BM... the rest will take his one or two characters and send them to other islands.

So all we gain is some new characters (NOT players) in the surviving islands... and for this we destroy two islands? It's not more easy and less traumatic to give these two characters to the people?

Give four or five noble characters to ALL PLAYERS! This is only a temporal solution while BM changes to be more enjoyable!... so why not?

Of course this had been thought before now... so probably we are beating a dead horse again... Is hard not to beat dead horses!

[Tom]

Ok!... It's like a pro tennis player asking the public how he must play, and then get insulted when they tell him nothing he didn't know.

You are getting ridiculous. I listed three things that were out of the question and explained why. I got upset because people continued to push them, disbelieving the explanations.

Now stop derailing this discussion. I am still looking for comments on which approaches would be more acceptable and which ones less, and there are many valuable comments so far.

[vonGenf]

Second, redrawing maps. This is just a crazy amount of work.

Tom,

Would you consider a blight-like mechanism (rationalized away as a sea level rise or as an asteroid crash) to be as difficult as redrawing a map, or is it sufficiently simpler to be considered?

[Tom]

Would you consider a blight-like mechanism (rationalized away as a sea level rise or as an asteroid crash) to be as difficult as redrawing a map, or is it sufficiently simpler to be considered?

Drawing dark clouds over an island is fairly easy. Removing parts of an island and turning it into sea is a ton of work and I wouldn't want to do it again.

[Jaden]

Would something like blighting 50% of Island A and 50% of Island B then linking them together through sea routes (so that it is not ridiculously small) be considered?

[Vellos]

I like the idea of starving a continent of new characters: maybe say no new characters on some continent. Just drop it from the whole character creation process. The characters there would slowly dwindle until it was a Mad Max-esque wasteland of lost hopes and dead realms. And the RPs that could be done about the end of society, etc... monster/undead problems would grow and grow....

And eventually, when it got too small, we could close it. Alternatively, if we get a player bump, we could re-open it. This allows us time to consider what to do. ALSO, it makes that island unique for its last time in the game: and I could see that island being VERY popular if it was re-opened. i.e. like early Dwilight and Beluaterra after invasions, the colonization craze would kick in if we ever re-opened it.

Note: I have not read the whole thread, so if this was proposed and rejected, I apologize.

[Anaris]

That would be even more work, only for different people. Creating an AI for a complex game like BM is no easy task, even if it is a limited AI that is guided by a player.

I firmly disagree.

First of all, I would bet you that I could bash out a halfway decent AI for monsters & undead in a week or two working at the pace I generally do on BM code (not counting testing, maybe).

Second of all, I would enjoy it a LOT. I really like AI.

Third of all, it would be pretty much an upfront investment, that could then be used whenever and for however long we wanted.

If you don't want AI, then say you don't want AI, but don't try to make it out to be more work than it is. It really wouldn't be that hard to add some simple goal-seeking to the currently totally random rogue patterns.

• An "attack region" goal, which causes the units it's assigned to to path to a specific region (using the existing routefinder code) and start smashing it up.
• A "devastate area" goal, which causes them to stay within a specific area and wreak havoc, continuing to move randomly but only within that area.
• An "expand from here" goal, which causes them to move to a region as per (1), take it over, then begin taking over surrounding regions in a breadth-first pattern.
• If we want there to be some kind of "point farming" that the actual units themselves have to do, it shouldn't be that hard to provide an option to support that, too (though I would think it would be pretty similar to #2).

Even just #1 there would make for a tremendous increase in the amount of AI the monsters & undead have, and it would be really quite simple to code, IMO.

[Geronus]

Here's a thought. Instead of instantenously closing a continent, why not just prevent any further emigration or new character creation in one of the game worlds? Make it a case of 'Well, Kepler continent has had a good run. We don't want to bring it to a sudden artificial end though. So although the trade ships can no longer make it to Kepler continent due to choppier waters, you can fight it out to the bitter end and give Kepler continent the send-off she deserves!'

Doing it like that makes for a more staggered, natural reduction of nobles over time. You could even bring in these ideas of reducing regions from a decent roleplay perspective. 'Due to being cut off from the known world and the increasing anarchy, as the nobility die out, regions merge and become larger as you desperately try to hold your realm together.' You could do it in increments as the nobility reduced and realms fell. No doubt you would eventually be left with a hardcore of nobles and players who would never give up on the continent under any circumstances. But although the continent would have much bigger regions, perhaps fewer realms, they would still have their continent and that's the important thing.

Maybe if the player base does increase in the future, you can re-open the continent to emigration and new character creation. And if things really look up you could even reverse the changes to region sizes. But if things don't, at least it's still there in some way for the people who really care about it.

The problem with any sort of cutting off regions or blighting them is exactly the same problem you run into when asking yourself which island to close. Those regions are going to belong to a realm, and that realm will be full of players, players who will be pissed off that their realm but not others is on the chopping block. Some of those players will probably leave. The benefit of the Invasion idea is that it takes a lot of the arbitrariness out of the decisions about what gets taken away (Sorry Tom, have to point it out...). It's still arbitrary to an extent, but there's at least an IC rationale for what's happening, and an opportunity for players to combat it.

[Revan]

With regard to AI, if there are no longer going to be any GM-led invasions on Beluaterra and invasions are a no-no for this island closure thing, what would be the point of doing it? Even if invasions were on the table, it seems a shame to spend time on something meant to reduce and destroy an area of the game. It'd be nicer to see development time spent on more positive changes to the game.

The problem with any sort of cutting off regions or blighting them is exactly the same problem you run into when asking yourself which island to close. Those regions are going to belong to a realm, and that realm will be full of players, players who will be pissed off that their realm but not others is on the chopping block. Some of those players will probably leave. The benefit of the Invasion idea is that it takes a lot of the arbitrariness out of the decisions about what gets taken away (Sorry Tom, have to point it out...). It's still arbitrary to an extent, but there's at least an IC rationale for what's happening, and an opportunity for players to combat it.

I didn't mean blight, cut off or remove regions. Just start merging some of them if and when noble density gets too low on a closed off island. The island remains the same size even if the region divisions are larger. Sort of a bit like how the East Island and Far East are essentially identical except the Far East has bigger regions. Ideally though whichever island gets closed of remains intact as it is now for a good long while. I would guess that the noble count would decline only slowly but if any realm should collapse or fall, at least the players are doing it themselves. To my mind that is far better than having a GM or AI push you into the sea with massive hordes.

Edit: Just regarding arbitrariness of merging regions specifically, surely if it's something that took place on a continent wide basis no-one could have too much to complain about? As long as it's balanced it should be fine. And if past history is anything to go by, it's probably something the players would get consulted on. When Tom was adjusting the regions on the Colonies there was a forum thread about it and the proposals got refined with player input.