Monsters and Undead - more or less? Vote

[pcw27]

100% Agree I think that is a great idea make coastal regions dangerous as such

The Deep Ones cometh.

[Tiridia]

As everyone who hasn't been living under a rock knows, I am no longer a friend of invasions. However, I do like the idea of not simply raising spawn rates, but change them in waves. So instead of rogues being a constant, low-level nuisance the way they are today, there would be times of increased and times of lowered spawn rates, much like the weather.

Definitely a step forward.

Ooh, yes. This is the thing. Rogue spawn could be much rarer, but when they hit, they should definitely require your attention. The analogy to weather is good. It is not constant and predictable, even if it has its trends - and it does not hit every place with equal severity. At times there are horrible storms with equally horrible consequences, but they are rare.

[Gustav Kuriga]

NO. The "food game" is NO FUN when there is massive drought. Why don't you come to D'Hara, and help me (the banker) deal with the fact that the ENTIRE REALM is going to STARVE in the next week? How much fun do you think that is going to be for the players? And there's NOTHING we can do about it.

This is the reason I paused my Dwilight character. IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR. The stress of trying to feed a city as big as Golden Farrow is insane.

[vonGenf]

Define that in PHP and SQL before you continue the thought. We have had a thousand ideas all based around these soft factors that are really, really hard to code. TMP was one failed attempt at doing so.

This could happen when RC centers overflow. If you recruit regularly, you don't have troubles. If the centers are filled and not getting recruited, eventually they set out on their own as bandits.

[BarticaBoat]

This could happen when RC centers overflow. If you recruit regularly, you don't have troubles. If the centers are filled and not getting recruited, eventually they set out on their own as bandits.

love this idea

[Tom]

This could happen when RC centers overflow. If you recruit regularly, you don't have troubles. If the centers are filled and not getting recruited, eventually they set out on their own as bandits.

Players will drop soldiers and recruit from the RCs just enough to prevent this, then. You have to think about people intentionally trying to counter your mechanic, because they will.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Players will drop soldiers and recruit from the RCs just enough to prevent this, then. You have to think about people intentionally trying to counter your mechanic, because they will.

People will try to counter just about any mechanic. It's part of human nature.

[vonGenf]

Players will drop soldiers and recruit from the RCs just enough to prevent this, then. You have to think about people intentionally trying to counter your mechanic, because they will.

If you recruit just enough to prevent the appearance of rogues, then you are building up a large, strong army, which is the point: force people to spend their gold on military so that they will easily go to war, instead of weakening them so that they won't want to.

if they then drop their troops.... I don't know how you could prevent that. A realm which will go to such extremes will never wage war, whatever we do.

Another example would be a realm that would rather close their RCs rather than recruit from them. It sounds crazy, but probably it would happen.

[Chenier]

NO. The "food game" is NO FUN when there is massive drought. Why don't you come to D'Hara, and help me (the banker) deal with the fact that the ENTIRE REALM is going to STARVE in the next week? How much fun do you think that is going to be for the players? And there's NOTHING we can do about it.

I really hate how the economy rebalance is lagging so much.

We finally get a war with Luria Nova, and we'll just starve to death again, Long Winter #2.

If continents can't be brought to have viable levels of food production, then food should be made much less of a "have or die" resource. It takes YEARS to rebuild regions that starved for just a week or so. And these regions revolt incredibly quickly.

Let's think about history here... there were much starvation in the middle ages. Did it cause so much widespread anarchy? I don't think so... Perhaps food should be made just less important. Instead of starvation killing a region off in a few days, it could just slowly depopulate it over months. That way, whenever a drought comes, it doesn't put an end to all player conflicts...

[Anaris]

I really hate how the economy rebalance is lagging so much.

So do I, but when one of the two main people working on it moves across the country and gets a new job, it's not going to go forward as quickly as we hoped. Especially when the other main person working on it has 3,001 other things to work on in BattleMaster alone.

If continents can't be brought to have viable levels of food production, then food should be made much less of a "have or die" resource. It takes YEARS to rebuild regions that starved for just a week or so. And these regions revolt incredibly quickly.

I've got some stuff planned for that, too. But I can't program everything at once.

[LilWolf]

I choose the missing option: leave monster and undead spawn rates the way they are.

[Eduardo Almighty]

We will play more and more against the game instead of against fellows players. I cannot roleplay with monsters. I can just go there and kill them. I cannot dispute with them. Just kill them. And even killing them, the credit to kill a code is nothing like fight against a human player. While we can improve the situation of monsters/undead to something more dynamic, I don't like the idea of Invasions in every continent.

What we will say after win and survive against a horde? That we won against Tom!? While this game is not about win the game, wars are about it...  and with more monsters, we will keep more and more people in defensive armies, fighting less and less against another realms.

[pcw27]

As has been pointing out Dwilight once had incredibly large monster hordes and we still managed to have plenty of wars. The key is to simply tailor the feature so that it will most likely threaten one or two regions. That's enough to weaken a realm a little but not so much that people will turtle up and shun war with any other realms. Plus if a couple regions go rogue the neighboring region might just decide that the realm which lost them doesn't deserve to have them back.

[Sacha]

Well, in Dwilight it was mostly the rogue regions that spawned the nastiest hordes, so borders were generally dangerous grounds. Perhaps we could start by cranking up spawn rates in rogue lands on other islands?

[Tiridia]

How about this:

When a city falls from realm control whilst there are rogue troops present, have a possibility that it will turn into a citadel of the undead. It will be harder to regain it, as the undead would even use the walls of the city (but would not repair them). The city would also then become a hotspot for spawning. Though perhaps the undead from the city would generally not wander all that far from their home. Maybe the same for the towns.

The point? Making it more challenging to regain lost cities. Because PvE can be fun and a source of RP history too, especially in the absence of PvP wars.

* * *

As for the idea of tying spawn rates to war activity: it could be something that does not have a certain definite threshold. It would not be an "on/off" switch. Instead having your realm involved in PvP battles would reduce the likelihood of a spawn hotspot forming inside your realm. So, some would game the system and make mock wars. So what? They might always escalate, and beat the stuffing out of just waiting for something to happen. And you would never get a message indicating the effect of your battles on the spawn chance.

Yes, it could then happen that in the middle of a really exciting war with lots of battles there might still be a hotspot forming inside your realm that would totally ruin the war for you. Or, despite a long time of peace, there might not be any hotspots in your realm at all. It could happen, but it beats it being totally random.