Crazy Merger Idea

[De-Legro]

yeah I wholeheartedly disagree here. sinking islands is the exact type of heavy handed dev reactionism that kills games, the exact thing I cautioned against in my previous post.  from what I heard regarding the reaction to western dwilight/far east glacier, I would figure the devs would have learned a lesson from that.

what are the problems you're trying to solve by this? I'm sure there are proactive solutions rather than reactive, solutions that can be fun for players instead of taking away years of history and time building realms and relationships.

Sure there are, and so far all suggestions require significant dev time that simply is NOT available. So we are left with the options of do nothing and have the game fail from failing density, promise changes that are at best years away, or attempt being heavy handed in an effort to at least do something.

[Indirik]

Fwiw: overwhelming feedback from players after the shrink was that they would have preferred a quick sinking rather than a slight shrinking.

[Vita`]

yeah I wholeheartedly disagree here. sinking islands is the exact type of heavy handed dev reactionism that kills games, the exact thing I cautioned against in my previous post.  from what I heard regarding the reaction to western dwilight/far east glacier, I would figure the devs would have learned a lesson from that.

The devs have learned from that experience, though the lessons learned may be more individual. I speak for myself and as a dev team, we don't always agree and so not all my points are remotely close to any official consensus.

I think we erred in touching Dwilight at all. The Freeze was done in hopes of avoiding what you are concerned about now - closing islands and losing player history. At the time, in light of concerns of dev favouritism, we tried to be very impartial to where was frozen. Dwilight was basically a 'the monsters came from west, so it makes most sense they return there'. So the lessons I learned from that experience was much more lack of caring about being accused of favouritism, actually looking closer at realm densities, message activity, and battle frequency, and the fact that we probably didn't go far enough in the Freeze and we should have bucked up and closed islands then.

Frankly, the islands were opened when we had many more player to staff them. Therefore, if we don't have the players, we don't need the additional landmass. I advocate focusing upon those islands with the least wars/battles, are the most quiet, and have the lowest player densities - Atamara and Far East.

[Zakilevo]

I was really against the idea of partially freezing islands as well. I was on the side of actually closing islands down instead of freezing them. I still think it is best to reduce the number of worlds. Those who still are around will stick around at this point even if you close down some islands. We no longer have players to support so many islands. People's investment (their time and effort) are spread thin now because we just have too many islands.

Like Tim suggested, it would be better to close down most islands and rework EC - Tom's favourite island that he refuses to close - into a more workable shape - maybe we can adapt a more flexible map as well while at it instead of the current static one?

It is good that we have this long history but we just no longer have people to add more to it. Instead of dwelling on the past events, why not move forward?

[Lorgan]

Aside from all the island closing discussion which I don't feel like getting into, I don't think my interest in BM would survive a merge. I've grown quite attached to the way BM works with it's mystery code, laid back pacing and lay-out brought to us straight from medieval times, not to mention the niche community.
I don't at all mind slow code changes and think it's pretty amazing that the code is still being developed and the game is still changing, and as a matter of fact, I kind of like that it doesn't change too abruptly.

Even after all this time, there's plenty of people I still come across who bring something entirely different to the game I haven't seen in a decade of playing. This game doesn't run on code, it runs on people. (Not being depreciative of all the work our amazing coders have put into the game of course! )

[Constantine]

Fwiw: overwhelming feedback from players after the shrink was that they would have preferred a quick sinking rather than a slight shrinking.

Makes sense.
Full wipe is something every gamer has endured in the past and will grudgingly accept. Sinking only parts of landmass, while not touching other is plainly unfair and arbitrary, hence the butthurt.

To get back on topic, I would appreciate some cool M&F features incorporated in MB (unique armies, extended list of buildings, dungeons) but those hideous things mentioned should just stay in M&F (frantic pace, number of characters per player, messaging system, etc.).

[De-Legro]

Makes sense.
Full wipe is something every gamer has endured in the past and will grudgingly accept. Sinking only parts of landmass, while not touching other is plainly unfair and arbitrary, hence the butthurt.

To get back on topic, I would appreciate some cool M&F features incorporated in MB (unique armies, extended list of buildings, dungeons) but those hideous things mentioned should just stay in M&F (frantic pace, number of characters per player, messaging system, etc.).

That's not really on topic, it is not really feasible to drop features from M&F into BM. As I mentioned before the pace and character limits for M&F are completely arbitrary, there would be no need to keep them for a BM world unless Tom means to create the BM land masses on the existing M&F server.

[GundamMerc]

yeah I wholeheartedly disagree here. sinking islands is the exact type of heavy handed dev reactionism that kills games, the exact thing I cautioned against in my previous post.  from what I heard regarding the reaction to western dwilight/far east glacier, I would figure the devs would have learned a lesson from that.

what are the problems you're trying to solve by this? I'm sure there are proactive solutions rather than reactive, solutions that can be fun for players instead of taking away years of history and time building realms and relationships.

You realize that as one of those people who were critical of the devs, I was not upset that they had decided to reduce the playing area. I was upset that they had not taken into account activity, player population growth, player population density, etc.

I was all for sinking islands. Most people here agreed that something needed to be done. That specific something was what was disagreed upon, with half wanting to decrease the playing area of a continent, while the other half wanted to sink specific islands that were stuck in a gridlock of alliances and federations.

[Chenier]

It would be possible to have a dynamic map like M&F, yet AoW esthetics as BM has.

I re-did BT that way, and shared the results a couple of times on these forums, I believe. It looked a LOT like the current map, except that I could switch a region type in the blink of an eye.

Except for mountains. And hills. But a mountain is a mountain, and no human intervention will take that away, so that's kind of moot, it just means that the mountains need to be drawn placed beforehand. Cities could be on an overlay, a .png file that shows on top of the map as the flags currently do.

This would allow to overcome a lot of the limitations imposed by the poor geography of most game worlds. Maps could look the same, while being able to cut down a forest, replant one, or settle a city just about anywhere.

It's possible. But I also know it's a lot of work. And I'm skeptical it would allow to save the game and halt the decay. Might not be worth it, but it is possible, and I'm sure it would at least help, because I do attribute a lot of BM's ills to its poor and fixed geography. I believe some blame is also to be held in some the tendency to proclaim what might just be the worst continents as being sacred. AT et EC has the most history. They also have the worst.

[De-Legro]

It would be possible to have a dynamic map like M&F, yet AoW esthetics as BM has.

I re-did BT that way, and shared the results a couple of times on these forums, I believe. It looked a LOT like the current map, except that I could switch a region type in the blink of an eye.

Except for mountains. And hills. But a mountain is a mountain, and no human intervention will take that away, so that's kind of moot, it just means that the mountains need to be drawn placed beforehand. Cities could be on an overlay, a .png file that shows on top of the map as the flags currently do.

This would allow to overcome a lot of the limitations imposed by the poor geography of most game worlds. Maps could look the same, while being able to cut down a forest, replant one, or settle a city just about anywhere.

It's possible. But I also know it's a lot of work. And I'm skeptical it would allow to save the game and halt the decay. Might not be worth it, but it is possible, and I'm sure it would at least help, because I do attribute a lot of BM's ills to its poor and fixed geography. I believe some blame is also to be held in some the tendency to proclaim what might just be the worst continents as being sacred. AT et EC has the most history. They also have the worst.

Changing the graphic is the least of the problems. Cities produce little food as it stands now, setting up a rural to be a city requires logic to replicate, removing food, adding gold. How do we decide by how much for each region for each possible state (base, town, stronghold city). Will we end up with realms founding and destroying cities to try and find those the the best stats in the best position (min/max issues)

[Chenier]

Changing the graphic is the least of the problems. Cities produce little food as it stands now, setting up a rural to be a city requires logic to replicate, removing food, adding gold. How do we decide by how much for each region for each possible state (base, town, stronghold city). Will we end up with realms founding and destroying cities to try and find those the the best stats in the best position (min/max issues)

The idea would be to start off with a few base region types, for example: Hills, Mountains, Plains, Badlands, and Wastelands. To which you can tack on a subtype, like forested or urban (could even add farmed). Then, the base stats would be determined by base region type, plus a subtype modifier. It could either be proportional to the region size, or, since they are mostly rather similar in size, all regions could simply be made equal. "Improvements", like strongholds or cities, can tack onto urban regions. To keep things simple, no need to make them produce less food, just make them consume more. After all, the city doesn't encompass the whole region.

Cities are destroyed and rebuilt regularly the time as it is, the only difference is that they don't change locations. As long as "moving" a city is costly and timely, I don't think we should obsess over min-maxing. Heck, along the same line, I'd also scrap the "no strategic capital move" rule, since it's poor intent-based rule and the only ones who get punished for it are those stupid enough to publicly admit they are acting out of strategic interest, plenty of other people having moved a capital along the border with no ill consequence. Just replace it with a scaled mechanic that gives greater unrest to a region when distance from the realm's capital is at least 25% greater than its distance to the centroid. Or if there's no code available to calculate the centroid, when the distance to the capital is greater than 2 standard deviations. Let people move around their cities and capitals as they like, just make it harmful to go full gamey.

Those who would benefit the most from this, I believe, would be the smallest realms with eccentric capitals. If allowing them to put their capital on the border helps them get involved and start wars, instead of being hidden far behind out of fear, then good for them.

I do think it'd be simpler to implement on a fresh continent, though.

[De-Legro]

The idea would be to start off with a few base region types, for example: Hills, Mountains, Plains, Badlands, and Wastelands. To which you can tack on a subtype, like forested or urban (could even add farmed). Then, the base stats would be determined by base region type, plus a subtype modifier. It could either be proportional to the region size, or, since they are mostly rather similar in size, all regions could simply be made equal. "Improvements", like strongholds or cities, can tack onto urban regions. To keep things simple, no need to make them produce less food, just make them consume more. After all, the city doesn't encompass the whole region.

Cities are destroyed and rebuilt regularly the time as it is, the only difference is that they don't change locations. As long as "moving" a city is costly and timely, I don't think we should obsess over min-maxing. Heck, along the same line, I'd also scrap the "no strategic capital move" rule, since it's poor intent-based rule and the only ones who get punished for it are those stupid enough to publicly admit they are acting out of strategic interest, plenty of other people having moved a capital along the border with no ill consequence. Just replace it with a scaled mechanic that gives greater unrest to a region when distance from the realm's capital is at least 25% greater than its distance to the centroid. Or if there's no code available to calculate the centroid, when the distance to the capital is greater than 2 standard deviations. Let people move around their cities and capitals as they like, just make it harmful to go full gamey.

Those who would benefit the most from this, I believe, would be the smallest realms with eccentric capitals. If allowing them to put their capital on the border helps them get involved and start wars, instead of being hidden far behind out of fear, then good for them.

I do think it'd be simpler to implement on a fresh continent, though.

Well if we are talking about rewriting THAT much of the code base, well of course Dynamic Maps are possible. Almost everything is possible given time and resources, the issue being if we have those to dedicate.

[Anaris]

If I were going to dedicate the amount of effort that sort of dynamic map would require, I doubt that's what I would do.

If I were to implement a dynamic map, it certainly wouldn't have a "Build City Here" button or anything like that. It would rely on quasi-realistic population dynamics to determine where a city would generate naturally, with some noble (i.e., player) actions influencing that.

But anyone who wants to just declare a spot a city? They can have a flag and a nice big town hall in the middle of the woods if they really want.

Cities aren't created by having a bunch of buildings. They're created by having a lot of people.

[Antonine]

I actually tried M&F and played for a few months.
Among the things that made me quit:

- M&F is more realtime. Which is not a bad thing, just does not sit well with my personal playstyle. BM pretty much lets you log in twice a day for 5 minutes at set times to be 100% effective, while M&F requires much more attention and maintenance which I can not always afford.

- Messaging system in M&F is honestly a disaster. BM is much more convenient and allows for easier interaction.

- As a free player you are pretty much irrelevant, while paid account just forces you to play a host of characters 90% of which are drones that add to your mechanical power but not to roleplay. The realm I played in had dozens of nobles but really had like four people behind them and needless to say roleplay was non-existant. Then we got steamrolled by a single veteran player leading hordes of high level soldiers. No fun.

I really appreciated personalization of soldiers and economy model was kind of fun, but aforementioned issues just ruined it for me (especially the out of proportion multicharacter thing).
All in all, M&F is not a bad game, but it is not my cup of tea and BM definitely is. So I just can't see myself switching over to M&F as it is now.

This. 100% this.

I've tried to play M&F several times but it eats up too much time due to it's realtime aspect, the messaging system is a massive pain and most realms have lots of characters but only a tiny number of active players.

If M&F became much more turn based, the messaging system was improved and if you had very strict and low character limits (or at least only two per continent or something) then that would probably make a copy over work. Otherwise I'd just stop playing.

[Antonine]

I'd also say that personally speaking, I don't have any attachment to East Continent. I've hardly ever played there and for me BM is bound up with other continents. Plus the geography of East Continent sucks. So a complete reset to one new continent designed properly (with a goal of moving to a dynamic map over time) would work best for me - but since that's probably not practical I'd rather see all continents closed (except EC and the Colonies and maybe War Island) and a strict two characters per continent cap enforced. The increased population density would make things more interesting for the time being - especially with the influx of refugees - and that could buy the game time while a new map for East Continent, which included some sort of frontier and ideally the ability to be made dynamic, was worked on.

I certainly think that the best mechanic of M&F is the dynamic map and if that alone could be incorporated into BM somehow (with AOW graphics) then that would be awesome but I doubt it'd be technically feasible.