My big post full of ideas. Obviously this is not about the start up or selection of engines or anything like that. I just thought discussing things like this early on would either help motivate people or at least set a direction focus. The other point needed would be plot, and I have a post coming on a framework for one. Positive and negative critiques will be appreciated. If any of these were ideas from your threads in wish I'd like to know, but the only ones I'm using here are ones made by me or discussed with my guildmembers + RL friends and they posted, and the Undead Content thread. And I'd love to talk with the guy who made that one.

Well after thinking about several proposals that were put forward (and I stress that not all of these were my ideas, but some were of my friends and guildmates). I also warn you that many of the ideas go together and I may end up repeating myself so to help, I came up with several examples for many of the gameplay ideas.

One of the main ideas that makes them all work well together was a post by one of my giildmate's boyfriend. He had the idea for what he called "Undead Content". And this is what really makes the rest of the ideas mesh well together while addressing issues that many had with the economy in Wish (to name a few things).

The basic premise with "Undead Content" (and I really wish the guy who originally posted this was here to explain better) seems to be about balance and dynamic environments.
To explain that best would be to give examples:

One common problem in wish was having a NPC's run out of money yet have loads of similar items (eg coconuts). With the Undead Content idea, the game would automatically spawn a trader NPC which could then be used as part of a quest (I have more to go with this later when I explain my town ideas).

Another example: assume there is a horde of goblins moving around an area for a day or so (maybe a few days game time) and they are undisturbed or possibly undefeated in that time. One of those goblins could "level up" into a goblin leader or somesuch (which also opens another can of worms for ideas of monsters getting tougher). So this Goblin leader is running around for a while and still no one rises up to challenge him. Well why doesn't he start building/digging his own lair? Why stop there? If still no one is able to slay him, why not get his own minions with followers of their own, which he could then send on raids or sieges (Sound familiar?). However, all this time that has passed, the undead content would have spawned a quest/contract (I'll explain my idea about contracts later but basically a quest) in the nearby town/s to hunt down and destroy the head goblin causing panic in the local citizens.

If GMs really wanted to, they could shift this from being ordinary Undead content into being live content with just a few additions. Voila, instant addition to plot.

Ok that was a big example but I think people can start to see the the sort of point I'm trying to get across.

Following on with that was my Town Enhancements thread which quickly got buried in the old forums.

The idea behind this one was if a town could save up (or a guild if the guild owned the town), then they could buy defences for said town. The examples we gave at the time were like town walls which could be upgraded with battlements and archer towers and the like. All destroyable in a raid. This idea was expanded apon by one of my guildmates with the mention of taxes. Having taxes on sales/trades/use of town machinery would help said town pay for these defences.
Originally this idea was designed to work in wish, but now wish is gone, the idea can be expanded apon.
Assume that every NPC can be killed in the game, but also assume every building can be destroyed also. If every building can be destroyed, it also must be able to build it. In that way whole towns could be built assuming enough start up capital but more on that later.
In this way, towns could be expanded apon, guilds could apply (read bribe the mayor or council) for their own buildings to be built, crafters could petition the mayor/council for new machines. New buildings/machines would have to be prohibitively expensive in the way that only a town or a guild with a shared goal could easily afford them (with towns being a bit subsidised compared to a guild) and that would stop solo'ers from making their own masions out in the forest (considering they'd have to defend it too).

This brings us to the next point.

Running a town. Assuming a town could be built from scratch, you'd need someone directing everything. If we cant have a GM deciding everything all the time for every town, how about have the players themselves elect a political player. Small towns wouldn't need someone there all the time I'd imagine so a small town would only need one regular player to help manage it, but as the town size and population increases you could have more being elected with always an odd number (so as not to have ties in any votes between them). A good question would be: "How do I elect these people?" Well maybe a fame system could be implented, however I haven't thought too much into that just yet.

People running the town could in theory also hire more guard NPCs (up to a max set by town size/population most likely). A good way of replacing them after a raid, but I'd imagine a cooldown between hiring them would need to be in effect.

Frontier towns would also need the option of building watchtowers and possibly even forts within a reasonable distance of the town.

Which leads us to another point.

Contracts. Yes I mentioned it before. As well as the usual variety of quests from NPCs, I thought about having towns place contracts on getting certain jobs done. I wanted to entangle this with the Undead Content (UC) idea so that people have always got something new to do with the contracts. But also, the people running towns could put their own contracts into it (and most likely players too if the idea was combined into the auction house). Contracts could be placed by the UC to escort an NPC who's taking the towns exess stock of rusty swords across the neverending plains to the western towns (or somesuch). Payment for contract completion could then come fromthe profits of the trade or paid out of the towns tax fund. Other contract examples would be doing a scouting mission to that big goblin leaders lair and finding out just how powerful he and his armies are. Which would bring on the contracts to go kill him.
Contracts wouldn't just be about fighting though. Contracts could also be placed that harvesters and crafters could take advantage of. The town might be wanting another building. Sure it can afford it, but why not cut costs a little by placing a contract out for lumber or sheet metal or the like. Or even just the raw logs itself if necessary. Assume an army is on the march and will be within the sights of the town in a week (game time). Contracts could be placed for large seige style weapons (ballistas, trebuchets,etc) which would require a variety of harvesters and crafters (and yes this all heads back to the town enhancements stuff).

One last example would be sending a runner to a nearby town to ask for aid and paid on return with armed forces.

So far everything is just leading in a big circle...

Now onto one of the other ideas (which isn't technically part of the big mish mash of ideas up there but can be considered jointly with some parts). Assuming a guild gains control of or builds it's own town, and a few if not the majority of the guildmembers are harvesting fanatics, they could trade in building space with crop space. Each field could be designated with a particular crop and rotated at the guilds wish. Within reason of course. Say the crops have a particular life time (say on real world week) and after that, the guild must reseed the field. However, if the guild wants these crops for themselves, they'd have to guard it well or we could see some nice guild raiding going on.

Ok that's pretty much it for my ideas post. Most of these ideas have many other little offshoots, some of which I've thought about, but it'd take too long to go through every possibility. Be nice to get some feedback about it.

Bass
aka
Arwith of Windok

I like your ideas. I have a few of my own, well alot but lets focus on towns.

There should be at least one npc town for new players if not more.

Player ran towns are built from the ground up Literaly hehe. At least 4 skills are needed to create various types of structures Wood based structures would require lumberjacking for logs and carpentry, while stone structures would require mining for the proper stone and a new skill Masonry to shape and build stone structures. Building plans can be obtain from an Engineer NPC who lives in a npc town. Certain structures require X amount of skill to build. Also the higher skill of the crafter the better durabilty the structure has. Yes I would think deteriation of building would be nice and open the door to seiges. This too will help evolve actual towns. People will group together for protection.

The town leader can set certain game mechanics for the town only.

Examples - Set consentual / non consentual pvp on or off
Set guard functions
- Attack foreign races
- Attack / apprehend murderer and thieves
- Attack alignment/guild on site
Set Tax Level???

You could go regional with it as well in a Feudal type system where a Knight owns a certain amount of land (in name only) and controls simular settings and is in command of x amount of mounted npcs. For another player to take the region they would have to take the stronghold of said character.

All seiges would take place at a certain time. Rules for seiges will differ from non consentual pvp. So say there is a seige attack characters under x combat/magery skill = no attack unless they consent.

Yeah your right i think we should just think of what we have at the moment and use that, instead of thinking up other ideas.

Sounds so great, alhtough i already shiver i fear of having to implement all that :lol:

Hence the bit about building town walls and anti infantry seige weapons :P

Seiges would be awesome. I'm just afraid that, like Strangerr said, most of them will be a bit hard to implement.

However, it's a great little post to pick out ideas from and work from that :D

Yea well i sort of scan read your post heh.

I know but what other way can a guild take over another guilds town? A massive guild battle outside in a field? ^^

Hence the bit about building town walls and anti infantry seige weapons :P

Seiges would be awesome. I'm just afraid that, like Strangerr said, most of them will be a bit hard to implement.

However, it's a great little post to pick out ideas from and work from that :D

As i said in IRC aswell.. Great idea, i aggree on most points :)

Also sieges could be put into the game. I really like the siege bit of lineage 2..

great post and great ideas . Most of them are a bit early to consider like player crafted buildings but overall the ideas look very nice and I hope we will get alot more of those from you , me and the rest of the Story Writer's team so that our great coder/modeler team has some view intoo the future of what they will be working with. :)

like what i read, as i said in IRC, we got some similar ideas :) , but we must think of the fact that we aint the biggest project, but i like it alot...

looking forward toward the writer meetings :D

After a quick chat in IRC I forgot about another idea. An addition to the crafting system. Under contract certain large items (namely siege weapons/buildings) items would need to be crafted with several different crafters present. Say a ballista would need a carpenter, a blacksmith and probably a weaponsmith plus the materials to create it.

Which opens up another can of worms....

Was just going to write about this but think this post covers pretty much everything,sorry if grave robbing is shunned upon!

Only other things I could think of were towns also being able to construct buildings like ports and trade bureos.

Ports not only allow the tax to extend to naval trade but also allow the addition of a shipwright to a town.The first port is a basic dock which allows light loads to be unloaded and very small sailboats to dock.Later improvements increase not only the size of the dock but also the depth of water its in thus allowing larger ships to dock.Later still docks can house structures such as storehouses,pulley systems to speed unloading(vs click and drag unloading) and maybe even markets from which the sea trade quickly enters the land trade.

Something I believe will add huge amount is no instant transport,that being everything must be transported by players or caravan routes they operate(also possibly merchant ship routes).A town that has had a poor harvest will have to send its traders to a nearby town and beg for food and return it in carts.

Thus trading will actually affect the whole world.A ship on one side of the map docking and unloading its rare goods(some rare metal maybe) which are then transported across map by land to a highly skilled smithing town results in that guild making supreme weapons and armour and conquering a nearby kingdom.However say a pirate had sunk that ship its goods would never have crossed the land and possibly the outcome of the smiths war would have been reversed!

The undead contents is a cool idea.Also the thinking creatures would really bring the game to life as opposed to simply having spawn zones of the same creature over and over again with an NPC beside it who ends up with millions of goblin chief necklaces!

The town structuring would be great to see to.By this I mean the player constructions and also the feudal system operating within it(like I touched on in my guild ideas thread).It could be cool if you found a town as an elf you would build majestic buildings with elegant structures while a dwarven founded town would have sturdy stunted buildings but also powerful defences.Thus the sieges of a dwarfen town would be much more difficult with its complicated defensive buildings while a human town could have more trade buildings and elves more magical.

If however allowing towns to simply sprawl as a player desires a construction plan could be given(Giants Citizen Kabuto anyone?).Firstly maybe allowing towns only to built in specific areas.Once a town is built a pre dev created map of the surronding area is visible in the mayors inventory,called town deed.By opening it the player could be given the look of the surrounding terrain split into boxes(like its on graph paper but stained a little for looks).Here the mayor could chose different buildings to place which take up varying amount of tiles.

The first building that has to be built is the village hall.As this is 'uggraded' more tiles become available as the town grows.When a building is placed in the map its site becomes filled ingame.Also an NPC is spawned beside it offering quests relating to the building eg collect 200 logs,add 200 blocks to building site etc.Thus something simialr to Bass' idea but easier to use as each time said building is added same NPC with same quests is loaded in also.

Once a village has 'evolved' and upgraded to a town,its zone expands and thus allows more buildings to fit in.More importantly it allows the creation of a barracks which allows a fundamental militia forces.As the town evolves it gains access to trade,military forces,large scale constructs(ships/siege equipment)and eventually diplomacy depending on what buildings are built in it.If this all seems like a major just look at Giants to get an idea of what I mean...more to follow