a13o
December 3, 2018, 4:10pm
19
I want to bring back up an old argument I made when prestige calculations were being looked at. I think it’s still relevant today. Especially the bit about players and devs having a different understanding of what settlements should do. I edited it a bit to match the current convo.
The disconnect between what devs and players think settlements/capitals are is a problem.
I’m going to suggest a way forward. My goal will be to preserve the devs’ desire for settlements to be an emergent property of game actions (zero administration super-structures), but address the heart of the prestige complaints players have (PvP disrupting personal expression).
Proposal: Settlements no longer have names, wardens. The game can designate a settlement by observing a clumping of player plots like it already does; but there’s no way to name it. The compass still shows the name of the beacon, but after that it now just says Hamlet, or Town, or Great City, or whatever.
Proposal: Make beacon names more prominent as prestige grows. If I walk into someone’s beacon and they built a 200,000 prestige castle masterpiece, I want to see the name of it displayed prominently on my screen as well as the artist’s name. Since it’s their beacon, they will always retain naming rights of their build. It would be annoying to see this popping up every time you enter another beacon, which is why the prominence should scale with prestige.
Proposal: Update the UI upon entering a settlement to act as a guide. When I walk into a settlement the game should still tell me. Since there’s no longer a settlement name to show me, it should show me the names of the top 3 beacons (and owners) instead. I should get marks on my compass pointing those top 3 out to me, until I leave the settlement. If I pull up the settlement screen I should see any participating beacon over 10k prestige, and I should be able to click it to set my waypoint to it. Prestige fuels the guide, and the guide brings players to the good builds, and the good builds generate foot fall. What a nice feedback loop!
With all those in place we have stopped the zero-sum elements of settlement PVP so the players are happy. There is still a reason for players to compete for more prestige than their neighbors so the devs are happy.