Light vs Darkness / encouraging development of civilization

[Potjeh]

A big problem with the game is that it discourages peaceful coexistence. Having newbies settle in your neighbourhood is a bad thing. They forage your herbs and hunt your game, and if there's a lot of them they interfere with respawning of these things. The only rational response is to exterminate your neighbours before they get too established. People often bring up trade as a potential benefit to keeping them, but thanks to Boston you can simply trade with people who don't live close to you and still keep your area just for yourself.

What I think should be done is making neighbours a boon rather than a nuisance. And the most natural existing mechanic to use for that would be the darkness. There should be a fairly large radius around Boston with an overcast afternoon level of light, which should be about the same as the current light areas (no humour drain). Player activity should push up the local levels as well as push back the border of the real darkness if it's within like a 10 minute walk. The idea is to ensure there's enough space for hermits with modest humours to settle. Player activity should be some kind of a compound measure of buildings present and players playing (consuming stuff, crafting stuff, planting fields etc).

Anyway, the more densely populated an area is, the brighter it gets, but it also becomes worse for hunting and foraging due to competition - even if the current spawns on map load are replaced. Of course, to balance it out, the light should have it's benefits. For example, crop growth speed may be influence by the level light.

What I'd really like to see, though, is having a certain light prerequisites for construction of high end buildings (which should either decay or cease to function if the light drops too low). So you might need to have some fields going before you can build a farm house if you're a hermit. If you want a windmill, you'd need a cluster of 2-3 developed farms. Getting a town bell should take like half a dozen clustered homesteads, so it would no longer be possible to drop a town claim on a hermit to take over his place. Town flags should also take a certain level of light, of course. Higher population densities would unlock fancy stuff like those multi-story brick buildings. The idea is to have the boondocks look like the boondocks, and the cities look like cities.

One of the points of getting the light really high would be getting access to "wonders", ie top end buildings that give a certain boost in a radius. A cathedral could boost the Faith & Wisdom yield of all inspirationals studied in it's area. A statue of a great general could boost the nearby defenders' damage in combat. There should be tiers of these buildings, so smaller towns can get something too.

Additionally, there should be tiered production facilities. A smithy would require a hamlet, gunsmith would take a small town, and the biggest cities would have cannon foundries and shipyards. There could also be shop tiers, with more slots and better security in bigger settlements. I think that with this we could have a nice natural development of settlements. I recently watched Deadwood and I loved how over the series the town went from tents to stone buildings.

Finally, the size of the settlement should determine the availability of defences. Stone fences and braziers for hermits, palisades and towers for towns, and city walls and cannon towers for cities.

The overall idea is to encourage the top tier players to compete to attract settlers. This would foremost mean maintaining law and order in their city, so newbies could have a relatively safe place to get started. Of course, there's always the drawback to living in a city - scarcity of forage and game. So when they get on their feet, they'll either strike out into the frontier where there's more resources, or start a business in the city to make the silver for buying those resources from the frontiersmen. Access to higher tier infrastructure should give the civilization the manufacturing boost needed to keep the market balanced. So yeah, people would have a choice between safety of the civilization and the dangers and opportunities of the wilderness. The formation of the cities would also lead to a lot more player interaction, which would do wonders for player retention.

[JeffGV]

Seems quite a nice idea. What about witchcraft, though?

[Dallane]

Freaking awesome post!

I would much rather have a nice big settlement then making a fortress of lies. The decrease in forage stuff would be offset by the farming and industry, because once you get that rolling in you never need to forage.

I love the idea of growing like dead wood.

We would see a large increase in hunting lodges i think for people out hunting to trade. It would make a better profession for people to earn silver.

[Sevenless]

Been thinking along these lines for a while now. I'm still of the school that foraging mechanics need a rework to deal with larger populations though. The reason we have this issue is a mechanical problem (ie how it's programmed), not necessarily a desire to keep them that way. Although I know damn well we're not getting anything other than crucial new content between now and "release", it's still something I'd like see addressed.

A lot could be added to foraging complexity if map refreshes weren't required. Say a loaded map gets new forageables every 10 minutes. The server overhead wouldn't be impossible if you made the reload based on a universal timer that started a cascade update to the currently active maps. This could allow higher light areas to A) maintain some level of forage despite population and B) Have new forageables exclusive to high light areas to pair with the neato ones for darkness only.

That being said I'm not sure Jorbtar agree with me. *shrugs*

Edit: I also agree we really need to incentivize community developement. Both for the gameplay aspects AND for the continuation of Salem as a whole. Higher pop density = more player fueled emergent gameplay = theoretically higher retention. Warriors would also have an incentive to not just kill everyone, which would slow the player loss due to raging.

[loftar]

We already have things quite similar to what you describe planned. They're rather far from identical in their actual concrete specifics, but should have very much the same effects. As usual, I don't really want to describe them, because then you'll all think we'll make it just like that, while in reality we'll probably change our minds two or three times before getting around to them. :)

One point you made that I hadn't thought of was to make the "default" civilization outside of Boston but within the natural borders of darkness less than full. That's an interesting idea that I'll keep in mind.

[jorb]

There are themes in this that I like -- perhaps chiefly that of light being a distinct, real and tangible advantage, rather than a default option -- and that mesh with my and our thinking on the subject. I am however skeptical about... the concretization of civilizational abstracts, if you will. Saying that a gunsmithy requires 16 citizens is fine in an abstract strategy game, but in Salem those are actual players, and any attempt to make them into more abstract citizens means toying with bad incentives. I do belive that the desired effect that you have in mind, however, is well worth thinking about.

Anyhoo, it was an interesting read, and I thank you for putting it together.

[MagicManICT]

I like several of the ideas posted here and have a few reservations about some others, but one I flat object against: hermits should be able to put up the exact same thing everyone else does if they have a mind to do so. Group game play should never be forced upon a player by game mechanics. The nature of the game is enough to strongly encourage it.

edit: Anything else that gives more encouragement to making tons of alts needs to be very seriously considered before being added. There needs to be less incentive for alts than the current game, not more.

[Sevenless]

I like several of the ideas posted here and have a few reservations about some others, but one I flat object against: hermits should be able to put up the exact same thing everyone else does if they have a mind to do so. Group game play should never be forced upon a player by game mechanics. The nature of the game is enough to strongly encourage it.

edit: Anything else that gives more encouragement to making tons of alts needs to be very seriously considered before being added. There needs to be less incentive for alts than the current game, not more.

If we're doing measurement of players, bodies wouldn't apply so much as activity. Much in the way that authority was based off learning points accumulated in a village, I'm sure there's some form of metric we could put in place to estimate player population that isn't entirely alt based.

[darnokpl]

If we're doing measurement of players, bodies wouldn't apply so much as activity. Much in the way that authority was based off learning points accumulated in a village, I'm sure there's some form of metric we could put in place to estimate player population that isn't entirely alt based.

Like time spend online or distances they travel on foot?:)
But if we are going to make larger towns we need town auth drain to be lowered or some bonuses if people are active in town.
Right now having town auth ~3000 drains huge amounts of silver per day :/

[Darwoth]

I like several of the ideas posted here and have a few reservations about some others, but one I flat object against: hermits should be able to put up the exact same thing everyone else does if they have a mind to do so. Group game play should never be forced upon a player by game mechanics. .

indeed