The way i see the implementation of PVP in Bannerlord Online

[Yukmouth]

PVP in Bannerlord Online

3 types of players
-Passive players
-Bandit players
-Faction players

1- Passive players
By default a new player is part of this category. These are the players that didnt join a faction yet (or never plan to join one).
Nobody can engage a passive player into PVP, but the passive players CAN engage bandit players and faction players. If they engage Faction Player they become a Bandit Player. If they engage a Bandit Player, nothing happens.

2- Bandit players
These are the lone rangers that want to be allowed to free-PK people and target people freely without any diplomacy needed. They cannot target Passive Players. They can engage other bandits and faction players.
In order to lose the Bandit player “tag” the player must join a Kingdom. In order to do so, a member of the said faction must spend 100 influence points in order to welcome you in the faction.

3- Faction players
At some point, Passive Players gets to choose the faction they wish to join. Once they do so, they are now part of the Faction PVP scene and the ennemies of their kingdom automatically becomes their ennemies. If a player wishes to change faction, a player from the other faction must welcome them by paying 100 influence points.

How to factions declare war to each others
We use the Influence system from native Bannerlord with some tweaking. We have 20 influences points by default. When we open the Kingdom tab, anybody can choose to propose 3 types of polls.

-Declare war on a faction of his choosing
-Declare peace with a faction
-Another faction wants to declare peace with us

There cant be more than 3 polls at the same time (these 3 only)

How does the diplomacy polls work
The duration of the vote is 3 day (real life time). During this time, players get to spend as much influence points as they want to cast their votes. Players can vote multiple times during these 3 days (for example, you farmed some influence points in the meantime so you want to spend them). By the end of the 3 days timer, the option that gets the majority of the influence points (50%+1) wins.

-War vote : if the voters choose to declare war, war it is.
-Peace vote : in order to declare peace, both factions need to vote in favor of the peace terms.

Note
It would be interesting that at some point, not anyone can start the votes, only players of a certain ranking and nobility within the kingdom (this would mitigate troll polls).

Influence points
Anything we do for the kingdom gives us influence points. The best way to farm it would be, of course, to fight other players. Fighting looters and bandits would give influence points. Farming and Arenas could give some too (but not too much).

 

[DP Lemur]

Something I wrote in discord #ideas-and-wishes a few days ago:

"depending on how player controlled settlements/kingdoms may be implemented, maybe make it so that "the three empires" (western/southern/northern) are considered safe areas with pvp always off with maybe different types/sizes of AI bandit parties - western empire is currently starting location anyway, so it could only have looters and not too many of them, southern could be slightly harder with bigger bandit parties and maybe some forest bandits (but lower tier) and northern could be the most difficult with biggest parties of only forest bandits of higher tier, and outside of the empires have full size bandit parties of different types

for pvp system, I think that players should be aware if other players have hostile intentions, so maybe a togglable "bandit mode", but to turn it on the player needs to set up camp for maybe at least 15 seconds (maybe all your units need some time to cover up their faces etc), so that its not possible to toggle it on next to unready player, and when turning it off it should also take some time, maybe camped for 30 seconds, so that they can't escape retaliation from other players

I don't think it makes sense for pvp to be toggled in settlements because you can't see who's in the settlement on the world map, so imagine that you are riding a caravan and right at the gates a player "jumps out" of the city in bandit mode and attacks you before you have time to react

on that note, assuming a system like that is implemented at all of course, I think players in "bandit mode" should not be allowed to enter cities at all"

generally, compared to your points about:

1) Passive players - NO, instead I suggest a "safe zone" in the "three empires", each with varying difficulty of bandits, where new players could develop their character without the risk of being attacked by other players, and this area settlements would not be subject to occupation by players (areas beyond these empires could be occupied/captured by player factions/kindoms)

2)Bandit players - agree with idea, not implementation. first, in my vision there is no "passive players" so bandits can attack anyone, but only outside of "safe zone". also becoming a bandit just by attacking another player, leaves a lot of room for griefing, as I mentioned players should be aware of intentions of other players, in SP player knows that bandits are bandits and traders are traders etc., once there is both trade and pvp as in your vision, I can easily imagine "passive players" offering "super good deals" and when parties meet, he attacks instead of trading. in my implementation, bandits could still "lure" other players promising trade, but when in range the other players could see that they are bandits and they would have a chance to escape

3)Faction players - seems good, but there's a lot that would depend on implementation. for example, can a player from faction A raid villages of a player of faction B or attack that player? I think it should be possible, but this would give faction B an opportunity to declare a war. can they become bandits to attack "neutral" players? I don't think someone from inside a faction should pay influence to welcome another player into it, instead factions should be able to set their own requirements, maybe applicants need to contribute some amount of money or kill X bandits on faction lands?

going back to attacking other faction players, it should not be possible while there is "truce" after a war between factions, but should be possible while the truce has expired after somewhere between 12-48 real time hours

also, 3 REAL days for voting seems a bit too much, I'd say it should be between 3-12 hours, with possibility of ending quicker, if for example over 50% of players have already voted yes or no, or the faction leader should be able to spend his influence to skip the vote with whatever result he wishes

 

[Kinkusan]

- PvP can be turned on/off like global chat toggle. But it will have a long cooldown so people won't be able to abuse it.
- Only the ones who toggle PvP on can attack fiefs and can hold them.
- Only one scene will be used for cities, another for castles and another for villages. No matter who owns it, the scene and the soldiers are pre-placed and always be the same. So the players do not put garrison.
- If a lord turns their pvp toggle off they immediately lose their authority on the fief.
- After a fief is captured, it is unattackable for a week.
- The owner of the fief collects gold from anyone who enters their fief.

 

[NikolaTheScamr]

Heyo. I guess i'll just write my own ideas here in as close of a format as i can to the original post XD

3 types of players
-Neutral
-Bandit
-Clan/Faction

1- Neutral
Cannot engage in ANY kind of pvp except arena or simmilar (still not implemented) events.
Not allowing neutral players to do any PVP clearly tells them: "Hey this is begginer stage. Once you're ready it's time to move on to factions or banditry."
*** And would stop "neutral" players messing with faction wars etc.

2- Bandit players
Bandit players can engage ANYONE except Neutrals in PvP. There is no infuelnce costs of any kind instead if player tags himself as a bandit he is unable to join a faction for a whole irl week. And the timer for that resets every time he does any kind of a bandit act.
On top of that bandit players get extra chance to loot items from other players in pvp. (I also had an idea where factions would have special cargo only accesible to them that would be more rewarding for them to trade (also it would be rare) , and that cargo would be the prime prize for bandits as they would steal 100% of that cargo from a faction merchant)

*** I am not sure if bandits should be allowed to join faction battles for either side. But i suppose to a degree it's unavoidable.
Unless the official server rule would be against it. Dunno

*** Also i would like to see the option for bandit clans( Bandits that are teamed together, but can't control any fief (Because that requires to be a part of a faction)).

3- Clan/Faction players
So any player can be a member of a clan ( Clans that are not in faction can still have wars, but can't control fiefs). That can, but doesn't have to, be a part of a faction. So being in a faction should be rewarding ( like for example with the special faction cargo). Any clan can join a faction and simmilar to bandit cooldown there would be a cooldown of maybe 3 irl days untill a clan can join a faction, after leaving their previous one. ( Also a player would get a cooldown for switching between clans)
Also for a clan to own a town/castle they would need to be a part of a faction.

*** Also i can see how players could abuse the neutrality and right at the time of war they would join a faction, instead of being, prior to the war, in it.
-Now this could be dealt with in many different ways. And the ones that come to my mind right now don't sound like good solutions. Maybe only this one:
Faction cannot declare war for, maybe, 3 hours after a new player joins.
Faction cannot recieve any players in the first 6 hours after they declare a war.

I'm not sure if limiting joining upon a war being declared on a faction would be wise. Dunno

+ War declaration shouldn't be instant. So for example if a faction leader decides to start a war- he declares it and then a, let's say, 15 min or so countdown begins. After that those 2 factions can pvp.


How do factions declare war on one another
And YET again i'd ditch the influence and leave the diplomacy organic, purely player dependant.
There would need to be mechanics that would limit the possibility to spam wars and also declaring then canceling instantly. (Truce sounds nice. And also canceling instantly i suppose could be ok if both sides need to agree to it (Unlike the way it worked in persistent world in warband if one side declared but other didn't))

Diplomacy pools that work on influence seem like a shitty grind to me. In other words if a troll player that farms influence can change resuts of a vote of the faction leader thats a problem. Instead faction leader of the faction should have the full control.
There is no limit (i presume) to how many factions there can be. So if some player doesn't want the specific leader to control his faction - that player can leave the faction and make his own.

- No voting.


Influence points
Pvp depending on pve grind would be kinda lame imo.

I guess i have a very different outlook on how things should be. Thats all i got.
- India Trading Company CEO

 

[Valtiel]

Heyo. I guess i'll just write my own ideas here in as close of a format as i can to the original post XD

3 types of players
-Neutral
-Bandit
-Clan/Faction

1- Neutral
Cannot engage in ANY kind of pvp except arena or simmilar (still not implemented) events.
Not allowing neutral players to do any PVP clearly tells them: "Hey this is begginer stage. Once you're ready it's time to move on to factions or banditry."
*** And would stop "neutral" players messing with faction wars etc.

2- Bandit players
Bandit players can engage ANYONE except Neutrals in PvP. There is no infuelnce costs of any kind instead if player tags himself as a bandit he is unable to join a faction for a whole irl week. And the timer for that resets every time he does any kind of a bandit act.
On top of that bandit players get extra chance to loot items from other players in pvp. (I also had an idea where factions would have special cargo only accesible to them that would be more rewarding for them to trade (also it would be rare) , and that cargo would be the prime prize for bandits as they would steal 100% of that cargo from a faction merchant)

*** I am not sure if bandits should be allowed to join faction battles for either side. But i suppose to a degree it's unavoidable.
Unless the official server rule would be against it. Dunno

*** Also i would like to see the option for bandit clans( Bandits that are teamed together, but can't control any fief (Because that requires to be a part of a faction)).

3- Clan/Faction players
So any player can be a member of a clan ( Clans that are not in faction can still have wars, but can't control fiefs). That can, but doesn't have to, be a part of a faction. So being in a faction should be rewarding ( like for example with the special faction cargo). Any clan can join a faction and simmilar to bandit cooldown there would be a cooldown of maybe 3 irl days untill a clan can join a faction, after leaving their previous one. ( Also a player would get a cooldown for switching between clans)
Also for a clan to own a town/castle they would need to be a part of a faction.

*** Also i can see how players could abuse the neutrality and right at the time of war they would join a faction, instead of being, prior to the war, in it.
-Now this could be dealt with in many different ways. And the ones that come to my mind right now don't sound like good solutions. Maybe only this one:
Faction cannot declare war for, maybe, 3 hours after a new player joins.
Faction cannot recieve any players in the first 6 hours after they declare a war.

I'm not sure if limiting joining upon a war being declared on a faction would be wise. Dunno

+ War declaration shouldn't be instant. So for example if a faction leader decides to start a war- he declares it and then a, let's say, 15 min or so countdown begins. After that those 2 factions can pvp.


How do factions declare war on one another
And YET again i'd ditch the influence and leave the diplomacy organic, purely player dependant.
There would need to be mechanics that would limit the possibility to spam wars and also declaring then canceling instantly. (Truce sounds nice. And also canceling instantly i suppose could be ok if both sides need to agree to it (Unlike the way it worked in persistent world in warband if one side declared but other didn't))

Diplomacy pools that work on influence seem like a shitty grind to me. In other words if a troll player that farms influence can change resuts of a vote of the faction leader thats a problem. Instead faction leader of the faction should have the full control.
There is no limit (i presume) to how many factions there can be. So if some player doesn't want the specific leader to control his faction - that player can leave the faction and make his own.

- No voting.


Influence points
Pvp depending on pve grind would be kinda lame imo.

I guess i have a very different outlook on how things should be. Thats all i got.
- India Trading Company CEO

I like this idea, but I think bandits should be able to control castles, would be interesting to have bandit clans lmao.

 

[NikolaTheScamr]

Yeah, maybe castles. Or maybe there could be some "hideouts" that can be controled, same as bandits in SP.
Would be nice.
Though i worry how much gangbanging those bandits would recieve

 

[Yukmouth]

Heyo. I guess i'll just write my own ideas here in as close of a format as i can to the original post XD

3 types of players
-Neutral
-Bandit
-Clan/Faction

1- Neutral
Cannot engage in ANY kind of pvp except arena or simmilar (still not implemented) events.
Not allowing neutral players to do any PVP clearly tells them: "Hey this is begginer stage. Once you're ready it's time to move on to factions or banditry."
*** And would stop "neutral" players messing with faction wars etc.

2- Bandit players
Bandit players can engage ANYONE except Neutrals in PvP. There is no infuelnce costs of any kind instead if player tags himself as a bandit he is unable to join a faction for a whole irl week. And the timer for that resets every time he does any kind of a bandit act.
On top of that bandit players get extra chance to loot items from other players in pvp. (I also had an idea where factions would have special cargo only accesible to them that would be more rewarding for them to trade (also it would be rare) , and that cargo would be the prime prize for bandits as they would steal 100% of that cargo from a faction merchant)

*** I am not sure if bandits should be allowed to join faction battles for either side. But i suppose to a degree it's unavoidable.
Unless the official server rule would be against it. Dunno

*** Also i would like to see the option for bandit clans( Bandits that are teamed together, but can't control any fief (Because that requires to be a part of a faction)).

3- Clan/Faction players
So any player can be a member of a clan ( Clans that are not in faction can still have wars, but can't control fiefs). That can, but doesn't have to, be a part of a faction. So being in a faction should be rewarding ( like for example with the special faction cargo). Any clan can join a faction and simmilar to bandit cooldown there would be a cooldown of maybe 3 irl days untill a clan can join a faction, after leaving their previous one. ( Also a player would get a cooldown for switching between clans)
Also for a clan to own a town/castle they would need to be a part of a faction.

*** Also i can see how players could abuse the neutrality and right at the time of war they would join a faction, instead of being, prior to the war, in it.
-Now this could be dealt with in many different ways. And the ones that come to my mind right now don't sound like good solutions. Maybe only this one:
Faction cannot declare war for, maybe, 3 hours after a new player joins.
Faction cannot recieve any players in the first 6 hours after they declare a war.

I'm not sure if limiting joining upon a war being declared on a faction would be wise. Dunno

+ War declaration shouldn't be instant. So for example if a faction leader decides to start a war- he declares it and then a, let's say, 15 min or so countdown begins. After that those 2 factions can pvp.


How do factions declare war on one another
And YET again i'd ditch the influence and leave the diplomacy organic, purely player dependant.
There would need to be mechanics that would limit the possibility to spam wars and also declaring then canceling instantly. (Truce sounds nice. And also canceling instantly i suppose could be ok if both sides need to agree to it (Unlike the way it worked in persistent world in warband if one side declared but other didn't))

Diplomacy pools that work on influence seem like a shitty grind to me. In other words if a troll player that farms influence can change resuts of a vote of the faction leader thats a problem. Instead faction leader of the faction should have the full control.
There is no limit (i presume) to how many factions there can be. So if some player doesn't want the specific leader to control his faction - that player can leave the faction and make his own.

- No voting.


Influence points
Pvp depending on pve grind would be kinda lame imo.

I guess i have a very different outlook on how things should be. Thats all i got.
- India Trading Company CEO

I dont find it fair to leave it to one leader in a faction to make the decisions, with the amount of players that will be playing this mode once PVP is out, i find it odd to have 1 irl dude out of a faction of 200 members decide stuff. When it comes to trolls, it dont see what is troll about a guy farming a lot of influence in order to have more voting power.

My view was that the real most efficient way of farming Influence is to PVP. Killing looters would be super slow grind, but would be there to allow weak parties that arent abble to PVP to farm at least some influence to be abble to cast a vote. By the end of the day, the real power would go to the clan that plays as a group and siege castles, fight big armies, win multiple fights, all the members of this active clan would cast a LOOOOT of influence and there is no way "one troll" would be abble to overrule that. The game is going to be very clan oriented and if a whole clan votes for a declaration of war and cast all their influence on that, no amount of troll can overrule that.

On the contrary i find it organic like you say, except that instead of one dude deciding, its clans. I assume there will also be communication amongts the clans and they will, beforehand, take the pulse of each others before wasting too much influence. Say all the clan seem to agree that war must be declared, they will know they dont need to waste too much influence. By the end of the day, the decision will be made by the most active clans and most influent players on the PVP scene, which is organic to me. Some lonely grinder wont have the power to overrule whole clans.

 

[NikolaTheScamr]

You think there will be a faction with 200 people ?
I thought it'd be more like 50 factions with 20 people. And then those factions can ally up.
Also who gets to choose who can join a faction and who can't ?

To me influence is a SP roleplay mechanic meant to simulate some kind of, well, influence.
But in MP it seems like an unncecessary grind mechanic.
If clans are voting within a faction, why have grind included in that?
What if one clan is traders and other is PvP focused. Then you have to balance how much influence do traders get and how much pvp ones do.. Etc.

Im still strongly against influence

Also if there is a faction with let's say 10 clans of 20 people. Will the strongest clan have benefits ? Who is the "king/leader" or do we have democracy in medieval Calradia ?

 

[Yukmouth]

You think there will be a faction with 200 people ?
I thought it'd be more like 50 factions with 20 people. And then those factions can ally up.
Also who gets to choose who can join a faction and who can't ?

What i mean by factions is Sturgia, Battania, etc. With the amount of players playing the mode there is 200 members in factions for sure. Its already the case for Vlandia on Discord and the mode is in its baby state. I assume with the introduction of PVP it will become huge.

When it comes to switching faction, this is indeed a difficult topic that needs more depth. My idea is barebone and is mostly the "general" mechanics around War, PVP, declarations of war and diplomacy. When it comes to the specifics such as that, suggestions are welcome. I think there needs to be a cost for doing so to prevent people from switching faction like they switch underwear, thus my first idea about Influence. My idea was that any player can do it, but the cost is sorta big (i proposed 100 influence, but it could be a greater number), leading to someone sacrificing a big amount of influence for one new ally.

 

[NikolaTheScamr]

But my proposal is ( And i hope it's possible)
That these current factions are basically only going to be cultures that decide what you can recruit in towns or whatever.
Instead players will be able to form any faction and name it any way they want.
So You can have 7 Sturgian factions etc.

 

[Yukmouth]

But my proposal is ( And i hope it's possible)
That these current factions are basically only going to be cultures that decide what you can recruit in towns or whatever.
Instead players will be able to form any faction and name it any way they want.
So You can have 7 Sturgian factions etc.

That would be complicated IMO, i think its best to keep it simple and use the native factions. Maybe we could include a way to form an independant faction, but doing so would require to own a certain amount of fiefs (2 towns and 2 castles for example). It would be silly to have factions owning only a castle or literally owning nothing. A faction losing its fiefs would be vanquished. What would be silly is to have 40 factions in the game with the whole diplomatics, it would reduce the scale of warfare.

 

[Zandofkilldof]

Here is my take on PvP RolePlay with a Capital System :
-Wanderers.
-Outlaws.
-LawEnforcers.
-Peasants.


Wanderers : should have the abiltiy to spawn at any capital's Faction,They should complete a tutorial that introduces them to the 2 paths they can take , Peasant ( worker for the faction you have spawned at ) , LawEnforcer (Policeman for the faction you have spawned at).
Either way you can go to another faction by going to the Capital and do their path their, either Peasant or Law Enforcer.
They should be also Vurnebale to the Outlaws Attacks this will encourage the players to Work for a certain faction as a Peasant Or Law Enforcer.

Peasants : these are The plebs, Outlaws favorite Pack to hunt, they are the main Source of income for any Faction. HOW SO ?
we make use of the already Implemented Farming system that we have.
The more Peasant Players that work on the Village the More it becomes Important.
The More harvested Wheat , The more food it has that should transported As Cargo to The other Castles and towns, to Maintain the IA army's morale so they wont desert the Castle.

Law Enforcer : The main Job of The player law Enforcer is to Escort the Peasants safely into the castles to desposit Food and defend them from any Outlaws Players Or Enemy Faction.
Also To defend their Village from Being attacked.
And maintaining law and order inside a village assuming that player peasants can misbehave or attack each other with a sickle or something.

Outlaws :
Lords or Kings should be able to place a bounty on another enemy village to be looted by an oultaw party.
if they themselvs dont have the time or if its far away, and thats by marking it for the outlaws.
this icon should be only seen by Player Outlaws.
They can also Attack Wanderers on their way to a capital.



The Capital system* : evry faction should have a capital. The capital works as a respawn point for the peasants,Law Enforcers ,the lords and their king incase they die.
Evry Capital has a Chest From where the king pays his Peasants Players for their Work as wages maybe like evry 30 min or so.
this Chest Can be looted By the Faction we are at war at.
Taking over the capital of a faction will make the faction vulnerable by taking away the ability to respawn for good, making EVRY member of this faction have one life only.
At this stage when the faction has only one life.
Their should be a state of Emeregency to Choose a New Capital.
In Order to Choose a new Capital From your remaining Castles or Towns ,Evry Lord and their king should meat at this Castle or towns main Hall. This shoud automatically Trigger it .
And it will also Be an opportunity for this Faction to discuss their Current State, Using Proximity Chat.
What do you think Guys?

 

[NikolaTheScamr]

That would be complicated IMO, i think its best to keep it simple and use the native factions. Maybe we could include a way to form an independant faction, but doing so would require to own a certain amount of fiefs (2 towns and 2 castles for example). It would be silly to have factions owning only a castle or literally owning nothing. A faction losing its fiefs would be vanquished. What would be silly is to have 40 factions in the game with the whole diplomatics, it would reduce the scale of warfare.

Though reducing the scale of warfare would help with stability .
+ It's simpler to have plenty of independent factions that eventually form aliances. Than to have constant competition and forced diplomacy within a single faction

 

[Mordred]

Yeah, maybe castles. Or maybe there could be some "hideouts" that can be controled, same as bandits in SP.
Would be nice.
Though i worry how much gangbanging those bandits would recieve

Would be nice if Bandits could build hideouts with a heavy resource requirement. Maybe upgrade it to have more/ and or high level troops stationed.

 

[Crusty Johnson]

You think there will be a faction with 200 people ?
I thought it'd be more like 50 factions with 20 people. And then those factions can ally up.
Also who gets to choose who can join a faction and who can't ?

To me influence is a SP roleplay mechanic meant to simulate some kind of, well, influence.
But in MP it seems like an unncecessary grind mechanic.
If clans are voting within a faction, why have grind included in that?
What if one clan is traders and other is PvP focused. Then you have to balance how much influence do traders get and how much pvp ones do.. Etc.

Im still strongly against influence

Also if there is a faction with let's say 10 clans of 20 people. Will the strongest clan have benefits ? Who is the "king/leader" or do we have democracy in medieval Calradia ?

Honestly I think there will be huge factions if people get their way...people always want to join with the biggest team and stomp people, look at Eve...i would like a cap on how many can be In a clan and only fief owneing clans able to vote in war

 

[Yukmouth]

Honestly I think there will be huge factions if people get their way...people always want to join with the biggest team and stomp people, look at Eve...i would like a cap on how many can be In a clan and only fief owneing clans able to vote in war

Alliance between factions could be a thing

 

[Crusty Johnson]

Alliance between factions could be a thing

That's true, gonna be interesting to see what they come up with. I think they'll figure it out though

 

[Nolego]

I'm conflicted about the whole "neutral" players thing. A big part of the campaign is raiding and disrupting economies by killing farmers/raiding villages. If you can't do that at all it removes an important aspect of the game. I'm thinking farmers should continue to be paid the way they are (so that for the most part hours of grinding are never fully lost), but the products themselves can not reach the cities without being carried there physically by taking on a separate courier task. In this process of carrying products to the cities, enemy factions should be allowed to raid. Allowing enemy parties to 1. Disrupt enemy economy and 2. profit/reap the rewards. But it shouldn't be risk-free of course.

This would create an interesting honor dynamic that doesn't even need to be tracked by the game, players will remember their raider's names and report it to their clan/faction who will hunt them down and try to eliminate them since the higher level players depend on the farmed goods to maintain their armies there is always incentive to fight off raiders.

The main problem for me with neutrality is that travelling merchants could just join/stay with the neutral faction, and after getting past a certain threshold they could make risk-free money since factions can't attack them. Attacking caravans is a staple of the franchise, getting rid of that would be a loss. Allowing for caravans to be attacked would additionally create an interesting escort economy.

I conclude with my statement that in Persistent worlds the worst part about serfing was losing all your money, but the risk of being robbed by a bandit gave me a sense of thrill and immersion that can't be replaced.

"depending on how player controlled settlements/kingdoms may be implemented, maybe make it so that "the three empires" (western/southern/northern) are considered safe areas with pvp always off

I very much disagree with this. It would take away from the sandbox feel of the game, maybe one village +town combo that is always neutral, so players can start off making some money and learning the mechanics, like a free city-state or something. The three whole empires is way too much though.

My point is that in most games like WoW, the player economies becomes severely inflated because grinding is essentially risk-free. If we want servers to last longer without

 

[NikolaTheScamr]

I'm conflicted about the whole "neutral" players thing. A big part of the campaign is raiding and disrupting economies by killing farmers/raiding villages. If you can't do that at all it removes an important aspect of the game. I'm thinking farmers should continue to be paid the way they are (so that for the most part hours of grinding are never fully lost), but the products themselves can not reach the cities without being carried there physically by taking on a separate courier task. In this process of carrying products to the cities, enemy factions should be allowed to raid. Allowing enemy parties to 1. Disrupt enemy economy and 2. profit/reap the rewards. But it shouldn't be risk-free of course.

This would create an interesting honor dynamic that doesn't even need to be tracked by the game, players will remember their raider's names and report it to their clan/faction who will hunt them down and try to eliminate them since the higher level players depend on the farmed goods to maintain their armies there is always incentive to fight off raiders.

The main problem for me with neutrality is that travelling merchants could just join/stay with the neutral faction, and after getting past a certain threshold they could make risk-free money since factions can't attack them. Attacking caravans is a staple of the franchise, getting rid of that would be a loss. Allowing for caravans to be attacked would additionally create an interesting escort economy.

I conclude with my statement that in Persistent worlds the worst part about serfing was losing all your money, but the risk of being robbed by a bandit gave me a sense of thrill and immersion that can't be replaced.

If you read my post it says something that would make this kind of abuse of neutral faction for trading impossible.
There would be a big multi-day cooldown on when you can join a faction after leaving one.

Also i proposed that there be special trade goods only available for factions. And that would motivate traders to be in a faction (thus open to pvp) so that they could do more rewarding trade runs.

Being neutral is for new players that need to do the initial grind. Or for casual players that don't care about being competative.

In the end being neutral would be much less profitable than being in a faction.

Switching between faction and neutral would have such a big cooldown like 3 days (72 hours) or so that it would simply not be profitable to do so.
+ doing a faction trade run , and switching to neutral faction mid-run would ruin the run (for example it would just make all the faction cargo expire instantly).

Also on the topic of farming. City economy shouldn't depend on some buch of famers in the village. It would make some cities op and others very bad.
Farming and trading (even moving stuf between village and city, as some faction task for restocking or whatever) shouldn't depend one on the other. imo. at least.

Nobody wants to be a farmer over and over again. It should stay as an early game mechanic that doesn't have any great impact on mid-end game.

 

[Nolego]

If you read my post it says something that would make this kind of abuse of neutral faction for trading impossible.
There would be a big multi-day cooldown on when you can join a faction after leaving one.

Also i proposed that there be special trade goods only available for factions. And that would motivate traders to be in a faction (thus open to pvp) so that they could do more rewarding trade runs.

Being neutral is for new players that need to do the initial grind. Or for casual players that don't care about being competative.

In the end being neutral would be much less profitable than being in a faction.

Switching between faction and neutral would have such a big cooldown like 3 days (72 hours) or so that it would simply not be profitable to do so.
+ doing a faction trade run , and switching to neutral faction mid-run would ruin the run (for example it would just make all the faction cargo expire instantly).

Also on the topic of farming. City economy shouldn't depend on some buch of famers in the village. It would make some cities op and others very bad.
Farming and trading (even moving stuf between village and city, as some faction task for restocking or whatever) shouldn't depend one on the other. imo. at least.

Nobody wants to be a farmer over and over again. It should stay as an early game mechanic that doesn't have any great impact on mid-end game.

I think 72 hours for a cooldown is too much, and so is the 1-week bandit cooldown. We don't want to discourage banditry, it's an aspect of the game some might want to try out. I just feel based on my experience with Persistent worlds you sometimes just want to play different things, giving huge cooldowns is stopping casual and new players from doing that. I don't study game design but it feels like bad game design. Not everyone is going to go for a meta-trader min/max. If a cooldown is used for anything in the game, 24 hours should be the maximum (unless its a ban or something that affects more than 1 player). Banditry should not be discouraged, but made undesirable for risk-averse players through player-incentives, that's the whole draw of a player-driven economy. Maybe a bounty system for annoying player-bandits.

if a bounty system is implemented I don't think traders should be forced to put money up for a bounty. Perhaps a number of people voting on a bounty could automatically increase it's value or something. But there should be an option for manually setting/increasing a bounty size, if they really want someone's army crushed. Sorry for this tangent.

I think making some cities slightly more powerful than others is not that bad, it creates player incentive to capture strategic locations. I understand nobody wants to serf over and over, but I think if it is done it would work like in a foxhole and add an extra layer of immersion, where a faction might win a war due to attrition (more of the players took time out of their day to farm, preparing supplies for the wars). If it doesn't work this way, in my opinion, the game will just turn into a gold-grinding meta-game where the players that were there during a wipe have exponentially more money than those who join later, and therefore can just spam more armies. Supplies are important to this game, and supplies require farming. Of course not everyone will have to farm all the time, I think escort jobs and stuff would be a good way to keep economy management interesting for individual players.