Author Topic: Noble density per realm - Dwilight  (Read 81328 times)

Zakilevo

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #165: November 24, 2014, 10:01:41 AM »
Isn't the war island free for all island at the moment?

It would be nice if there was an island bigger than SI while making it FFA. No tangling alliances hehe

Eldargard

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #166: November 24, 2014, 11:07:44 AM »
So please stop dragging it on, Scarborn.

Sure.

Eldargard

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #167: November 24, 2014, 11:18:12 AM »
I would rather not be at war with all other nations at all times. Not sure how it would make the game better either.

I am also like the idea of making long range attacks more doable and think that bringing the islands "closer together" would be awesome. I am not sure if either of these would help the player density problem though - though they might.

The density problem is really a very tough one. Given the resources available to the devs there is not a whole lot that can be done that will give quick results. I really think that focusing on making the game as fun as possible with focus on ease of use, player empowerment and beginner friendliness is the best thing to do. Not that this is some groundbreaking insight - everyone knows all this already. It just helps me to remember that this is a volunteer driven project with very limited resources and that patience is essential.

Chenier

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #168: November 24, 2014, 12:52:26 PM »
I'll bring up the map I had  done again. As you can see, with only minor adjustments, most continents tend to fit into each other quite well.

That's just a quick paint job, though, details could be improved.

Continents would be separated by small sea zones, though physically merging some, in some areas, would probably be a good idea as well.
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Eldargard

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #169: November 24, 2014, 01:32:15 PM »
That looks like a lot of fun. Unlikely to ever happen but very cool. I was just thinking of leaving the islands as they are and just adding inter-island communication, religions, guilds, realms and the like. Just as unlikely to happen.

Eldargard

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #170: November 24, 2014, 01:35:01 PM »
That looks like a lot of fun. Unlikely to ever happen but very cool. I was just thinking of leaving the islands as they are and just adding inter-island communication, religions, guilds, realms and the like. Just as unlikely to happen.

I just realized just how very negative this sounds. Not my intent!

Constantine

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #171: November 24, 2014, 01:48:48 PM »
Isn't the war island free for all island at the moment?
It is. But I was talking solely about map design not about gameplay philosophy.
I mean, I am currently planning to start playing on BT and just looking at it I can say that it has some very unfortunate design flaws. Like I can't see myself joining Riombara because it was by design destined to geopolitical boredom, although I am sure it has lots of great players there. Northern part is designed well though and I can see most intrigue happening there.
Dwilight "sausage" shape could use a massive tweak as well.
I would rather not be at war with all other nations at all times. Not sure how it would make the game better either.
I agree. But I would like not being at war with most other nations being achieved by diplomacy and intrigue, not just by being situated out of everyone's reach or behind a bottleneck.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2014, 01:51:40 PM by Constantine »

Eldargard

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #172: November 24, 2014, 02:40:25 PM »
It is. But I was talking solely about map design not about gameplay philosophy.
I mean, I am currently planning to start playing on BT and just looking at it I can say that it has some very unfortunate design flaws. Like I can't see myself joining Riombara because it was by design destined to geopolitical boredom, although I am sure it has lots of great players there. Northern part is designed well though and I can see most intrigue happening there.
Dwilight "sausage" shape could use a massive tweak as well.I agree. But I would like not being at war with most other nations being achieved by diplomacy and intrigue, not just by being situated out of everyone's reach or behind a bottleneck.

Perhaps I  misunderstand what you are saying here, but none of this, aside from the the shape of Dwilight is "designed"...  I think that it is well within the power of us players to change these things (again, aside from the shape of Dwilight).

Chenier

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #173: November 24, 2014, 02:47:03 PM »
Many of the continents' geographies are detrimental to gameplay. They are too linear, which minimizes the number of neighbors each realm has and their proximity to other realms. BT's main geographic problem is Riombara, which has a ton of very wealthy cities packed together, forever away from anyone else.

Merging the continents is the only method of increasing opportunity. In the example I provided, Riombara would become just a sea zone away from D'Hara, Fissoa, and Cagilan Empire. Keeping a part of the land mass north of CE's river would also allow for a diminished Talerium there. Even Luria and Stromban would become about as close to Rio as Melhed currently is, which is currently the minimum distance Rio has to travel to do anything. Astrum would gain Thalmarkin, AA, and Melhed as neighbors. Swordfell would gain Obsidian Islands (and though I had removed it in that map, I think Perdan should remain as well). Morek would gain Obsidian Islands, Whetham, Lukon, and Oritolon. Aran and Minas Thalion would gain Nivemus. Coralynth would gain Caligus and Sirion, Ohnar West would gain Caligus as well. South-west FEI would gain access to South-East Atamara. And so on.

Note that I did that map long ago. With hindsight, I'd remove less landmass than I thought of back then, namely to reduce the large inner seas and avoid completely removing realms for no reason (such as Cathay).
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Indirik

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #174: November 24, 2014, 02:55:05 PM »
On a somewhat related note, have the devs ever considered redesigning the continents?
Yes. It's a ridiculously huge amount of work. Dwilight only happened because it was a community effort. The map design, region naming, initial stats, and a few other things were all community-driven efforts. But even after all that, there was still a very large amount of work that had to be done to get the entire thing ready for play.

Anaris had some ideas for a more dynamic map that would be adaptable to dynamic changes. Unfortunately, his work load with the game is already too high. Pretty much every other volunteer coder contributes for a short while, and then fades away.

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And not just cutting off slices, but actually forming a more "free-for-all" multiplayer map style landmass?
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean some kind of symmetrical war island, designed for X number of predefined teams? Kind of like the war island we have now, but more than 3 realms?


I would rather not be at war with all other nations at all times. Not sure how it would make the game better either.
It's a refreshing change from the constant politics-drive, all-for-me attitude that has infected a large portion of the game. BattleMaster works best as a team-style game. Too much of the game has lost that team feeling.

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I am also like the idea of making long range attacks more doable and think that bringing the islands "closer together" would be awesome. I am not sure if either of these would help the player density problem though - though they might.
As others have said, too much long-range warfare gets really boring. Marching for 10 days to make one or two attacks, or loot one region, then march 10-12 days back home, refit, and do it again... that about one big battle a month. And by the time you get back, your enemy has mostly fixed all the damage you did. That style warfare doesn't really hold your attention all that long.
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Chenier

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #175: November 24, 2014, 03:02:43 PM »
Yes. It's a ridiculously huge amount of work. Dwilight only happened because it was a community effort. The map design, region naming, initial stats, and a few other things were all community-driven efforts. But even after all that, there was still a very large amount of work that had to be done to get the entire thing ready for play.

But we already have most of that. All regions have their ID, they all have their stats, they all have their name, they are all drawn out in vector format for the dynamic maps, and so on.

It would certainly require a lot of work, still, but not all of the work that was required for Dwilight would be required to do this. Namely, no new land would really need to be drawn out, because we'd just be taking what's already done.

And if we set that as a goal, why couldn't merging the continents be a community effort as well?
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Anaris

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #176: November 24, 2014, 03:47:09 PM »
Merging all the continents would create a different set of problems. Just off the top of my head, how would you handle characters with the same name? And how would you implement character limits? Right now, you can significantly limit the amount of influence one player can have by preventing them from having more than 1 or 2 chars per island. If all the islands were one, how would you handle that?

I do have plans to improve island geography; however, I don't think people would be very happy in general if I just swooped in and completely rewrote their islands, any more than they were about the Ice Age.
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Chenier

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #177: November 24, 2014, 04:29:14 PM »
Merging all the continents would create a different set of problems. Just off the top of my head, how would you handle characters with the same name? And how would you implement character limits? Right now, you can significantly limit the amount of influence one player can have by preventing them from having more than 1 or 2 chars per island. If all the islands were one, how would you handle that?

I do have plans to improve island geography; however, I don't think people would be very happy in general if I just swooped in and completely rewrote their islands, any more than they were about the Ice Age.

Things that do involve some thought and discussion.

The name issue has already started coming up, as it is problematic when one wants to emigrate to a continent where the name is already used. A few suggestions have been proposed, such as allowing patronyms or middle names. Personally, I don't really see identical names as being a problem, as everyone has a unique family name, which is shown everywhere. And identical names are a RL reality which people manage. Plus we have a ton of titles to help. If we have a Katherine Johnson, queen of Johnyland, and Katherine Bobson, marquess of Smallgrad in Bobbyland, one can say "Marquess Katherine", "Queen Katherine", "Katherine Johnson", "Katherine Bobson", "Katherine of Johnyland", and so on, without every creating any confusion. And people already mostly use titles when naming someone.

Character and title limits would require more thought and discussion, I believe. There are many options to handle this:
  • Total deregulation: Simplest, allow players to put their allowed characters wherever the heck they want, and hold titles wherever the heck they want. Probably not the ideal solution.
  • Maintain regional limits: Even if all of the continents were to become "merged", that doesn't mean that we need to stop recognizing them as distinct. Realms would be affiliated to a continent according to where their capitals are located. All of the current restrictions could be mimicked. A few additional restrictions would need to be thought of to handle continental transfers by capital moves or secessions.
  • Generalized regulation: Further limit how continents can hog power by generalizing the restrictions to the whole game. Someone who is king on one continent could therefore not also be king on another simultaneously. This should help prevent the hogging of power by a few influential families, especially through multi-continental cliques that we've been able to see now and then, where realm X on continent A is basically a copy of realm Y on continent B.

I do have plans to improve island geography; however, I don't think people would be very happy in general if I just swooped in and completely rewrote their islands, any more than they were about the Ice Age.

No, of course not. But the continents could be merged with very minimal redrawing of the continents themselves, as they mostly fit into each other quite nicely. While I did remove some land masses on the concept map I shared, I now consider that most of the land that was erased (that wasn't already targeted by the freezing) would not need to be removed at all.


Additionally, to further increase inter-connectivity, I would surround the merged continents with portal islands, which could basically be the Lendan Stones island (a portal region and a small stronghold region, though I really think strongholds need to be allowed to have harbors, and the portal region would be non-TOable). One such island would be placed in the in the sea between Caelum and IVF (BT), on the sea between Spearhold and Thalmarkin (BT), merged with that pre-existing stronghold in Astrum (Dwi), between Colonies and EC, in the Dwi-EC-AT sea, between FEI and AT, and gapping AT and BT. 7 portals total (or up to 10). To use them, one would just need to travel to the portal region, and then from there, he could travel to any other portal region through normal mechanics, with travel time fixed to 40 hours regardless of actual distance. This would allow to compensate for the limits of normal geography, which would impose edges. With these portal regions, there would essentially no longer be edges. The northernmost realms would not have half of their realm face nothingness, southern realms could attack them through the portals. Same for West and East. All realms, regardless of their geography, would have close proximity to a much greater number of realms.
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Constantine

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #178: November 24, 2014, 04:35:58 PM »
Perhaps I  misunderstand what you are saying here, but none of this, aside from the the shape of Dwilight is "designed"
Well, yeah. That's why I noted I was talking specifically about map design.
Not sure what the misunderstanding was about.
Merging the continents is the only method of increasing opportunity.
I'm not a fan of that idea.
Apart from Anaris already mentioned, different continents currently have different rules (SMA, 1 turn/day) which I'd loathe to see abolished.
Do you mean some kind of symmetrical war island, designed for X number of predefined teams? Kind of like the war island we have now, but more than 3 realms?
Not at all. I'm only talking about eliminating obvious flaws like the aforementioned Riombara peninsula or Dwilight's unfortunate shape.
I do have plans to improve island geography; however, I don't think people would be very happy in general if I just swooped in and completely rewrote their islands, any more than they were about the Ice Age.
I think there will be a big difference here: everyone will be on the same page, so players would not feel being unfairly screwed.

Anaris

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Re: Noble density per realm - Dwilight
« Reply #179: November 24, 2014, 04:52:46 PM »
I think there will be a big difference here: everyone will be on the same page, so players would not feel being unfairly screwed.

I don't think you understand what makes people upset about this kind of thing at all.

First of all, no, everyone would not be on the same page. Just because you think it's a good idea doesn't mean everyone would, nor even that everyone would understand just what was happening.

Second of all, everyone would not be getting equal treatment, simply because that's totally impossible when restructuring maps in any way. One realm would have essentially no change, while another would suddenly have three other realms bordering theirs—which, depending on the relative sizes of the realms, could be a benefit or a serious detriment.

In short, it really is not possible to make any kind of major change to the way continents are structured—either merging or redrawing—without there being massive complaining, and probably a lot of people leaving the game.
Timothy Collett

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