Town Government - Player Run Towns

bellanca6561n · October 2016

I just don't get this business of constantly petitioning and pleading to developers to settle all disputes in ways that apply to everyone.

Allow players to claim loyalty to one specific town only. They are then citizens of that town. They elect a mayor who puts things up for referendum:

1. Can you cast or draw weapons in town? This means opting in and out of dueling and murder too.

2. What's the town buff? Each town can have one (e.g. 100 hpr for citizens, 5% stamina or magicka buff and so on)

3. Town improvements. If enough players donate enough gold, for instance, can you get a better crafting station, Mage's Guild, add public gardens, etc.

Some towns can be role playing towns. How is that possible? Some referendum measure suggestions....

1. Is riding a mount permitted in town?

2. Is running permitted? I rarely run in towns now. It looks silly, everyone running and sprinting everywhere. Too cold! Not immersive. Imagine a town where the horses are not blasting through at full gallop and every activity is not a track meet.

3. Disable all forced emotes. That might require turning off casting. I don't like walking around town or chatting with folks and suddenly have someone who's not part of the conversation force EVERYONE to draw their weapons due to a spammed spell.

All these possible decisions have economic consequences to consider. Would an all in one crafting station attract more players to your town? Would a town's guild vendors have more traffic too?

If this scheme had significant buy-in by players, new town building could be offered for towns with deep pockets. A Battle Arena for instance. Couldn't be just dueling though. A Battle Arena would need the Cyrodiil rule set to make small team based PvP possible within the arena like the old Colosseum.

Every update can't always be stat and gear inflation after all. And this would require major development work.

Kammakazi · October 2016

Like Minecraft Towny? lololol

Acrolas · October 2016

I was an Agitator in the Fallen London Election of 1894.
I guess I can brush up on my skills again.

jkemmery · October 2016

It's an interesting idea, but, I'm not sure I'd like it all that much really. Guilds are already clique-ish enough for my taste.

Nestor · October 2016

Nice concept, but I can see a Lord of the Flies thing happening. Guess it all depends on the amount of power given to the Mayor.

Guild Halls might be a better concept than this.

Nyghthowler · October 2016

No. We deal with kind of stuff in r/l as it is. I don't want to play a game that enforces others to respond how a certain few or one decide.

Sallington · October 2016

Annnnnd now I'm nostalgic for SWG.

idk · October 2016

Seriously? No.

I don't want to deal with the misplaced egos of those who want to play politician in game. It's bad enough dealing with the current candidates in this unreal election cycle, I don't want to deal with Wanna be city mayor who still lives in his mother's basement.

bellanca6561n · October 2016

Actually it's more UO-like and SWG was also designed by Raph Koster based on the design of Privateer Online which EA cancelled. I'm a game designer from that era as well....obviously...and I worked on UO and PO.

The paradox of online communities is that they become stickier as they become more collaborative. And collaboration requires that you sublimate your moment to moment desires for the larger community.

You may think you want absolute freedom. And, in fact, everyone thinks they do. But depth in people can only be achieved by yielding to community interests. An online game can only be sticky if it offers an alternative to the achievement path - the development path, where your concern is your development within the community. This is often referred to by online game designers as the elders game.

Every tale of every hero ever told is all about their ability to serve a community in an unique way. So, first, you need a community.

And lots and lots of folks have no interest in being heroes. They simply want to be a part of something...an alternate identity known and embraced by others.

Yes, you can get this in a guild that stresses service over personal achievement. And there are such guilds in ESO. But guilds in this game are exercises in polygamy. Most are run as corporations which is why comparing the guild experience you may have had here to diverse town environments based on player controlled settings doesn't really work.

And if you didn't like the setting, there are MANY towns. Or, if you just wanted something different that night or weekend afternoon, go to the town where people walk....or where there are regular battles in the arena...or goodness knows what.

Town diversity offers choice. And you can opt in or out. It's up to you.

And please, it's neither fair nor appealing to use the politics of one country to nay say what an online game can be.

TheAngelofDeath99 · October 2016

LOL

I think it's a good idea, but why am I LOLing, you ask?

Because this thread will inevitably become a real life politic thread, and henceforth will be closed. But seriously, I like the idea.

Rohamad_Ali · October 2016

SWG use to have player towns . This game is not open world though so it would have to be instanced based . I like player made towns in other games . Some are great .

GreenSoup2HoT · October 2016

Role play towns nice, i would join in.

Agobi · October 2016

Sallington wrote: »

Annnnnd now I'm nostalgic for SWG.

Well put...damn I miss that game

Off to cry in a corner for a bit......

e1team · October 2016

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Wow · October 2016

You should go play Darkfall

bellanca6561n · October 2016

Hmmmm....never played Darkfall.

Seriously....honestly....I began this topic NEVER expecting any buy-in at all. Thus I'm not disappointed.

And, again seriously, I think the commanders of this digital vessel are doing an ever-better job developing THIS game for THIS audience.

After all, for years and years and years, one of the chief inefficiencies of leveling games has been the increased accumulation of useless space due to zones being tied to levels. I think the solution imposed in Update 12 was brilliant. Plus it was a great cost of revenue move because you need fewer servers in the cluster to make it work.

Digital world games, with the world itself, influenced by the players, focused on emergent game play, has NEVER been a mass market form of entertainment.

I didn't want to believe that. Nope. But when Microsoft Corporation recruited me to be on their launch team for XBox live - why, exactly, I have no idea - they also showed me the research data. Microsoft Research is among a few groups at MS that really has their crap together. And I couldn't argue with the data.

The whole MMO thing was wholly unappealing to console gamers at the time....meaning, stop foisting MMO studios on us, and not broadly appealing to gamers overall. And, by MMO - what a Rorschach test that acronym became - they meant open world, player governed games of which Eve Online remains the best current example.

More appealing is a multiplayer game SYSTEM of smaller groups operating within an illusion of a large shared world.

This also happened to suit the architecture of the XBox Live data center, which, among many other things, was designed to set up peer to peer game sessions. One Xbox in the session hosted it. That was long ago of course.

ESO cracked that barrier and made far more money in its first weeks of release onto console than it had in well over a year on the PC.

Short version: we old-school online gamers get a gorgeous game world to play in at the cost of giving up many of our favorite features. And that makes real sense.

Cazzy · October 2016

Doesn't the Queen/King/Jarl handle those affairs?

bellanca6561n · October 2016

Cazzy wrote: »

Doesn't the Queen/King/Jarl handle those affairs?

Or Treethane....wouldn't want to give players titles too fancy, such as king or queen...could go to their heads....and other body parts

Mandragora · October 2016

I cannot imagine how it would work, but it is definitely something interesting to think about. I never played those MMOs like Ultima Online or Star Wars Galaxies, but I do like creative people bringing something new, something fresh. I'm so bored of all the games copying each other and I have this feeling, that there can be so much more in MMOs, but because of this old models where I'm only told what to do, it never really reach even near to that. My idea was somehow close to what some new alternative MMOs are trying to build up, but I'm afraid, that they will end up in RPG oldschool extreme.
So yes, an MMO, that could use players innovations and creativity, but for me also with NPCs having high AI, is something what I keep dreaming about.

bellanca6561n · October 2016

Mandragora wrote: »

I cannot imagine how it would work, but it is definitely something interesting to think about. I never played those MMOs like Ultima Online or Star Wars Galaxies, but I do like creative people bringing something new, something fresh. I'm so bored of all the games copying each other and I have this feeling, that there can be so much more in MMOs, but because of this old models where I'm only told what to do, it never really reach even near to that. My idea was somehow close to what some new alternative MMOs are trying to build up, but I'm afraid, that they will end up in RPG oldschool extreme.
So yes, an MMO, that could use players innovations and creativity, but for me also with NPCs having high AI, is something what I keep dreaming about.

There was a time when all sorts of online games were in development and different sorts of online games existed.

For the former the simple fact is 85% or more of them are never released.

Just at MS, not a company known for entertainment, there were two being developed for the PC while the Xbox Live platform was being developed: Mythica, and Ashron's Call II.

The former was purely in house but was cancelled just before alpha, and the latter was being developed with Turbine (the folks who did the original Ashron's Call and Lord of the Rings Online). But that collaboration was a poor one and AC2 was pretty much DOA.

All manner of online games were also in development by dozens of studios too.

Then World of Warcraft hit. Creativity in online game design subsequently died - not because WoW was a bad game (it was an excellent game) but because you couldn't get funding for anything that wasn't exactly like it.

Big budget online games are simply too risky for the price.

I can go into stories of very early online games that I continue to believe were better designs than anything now but who cares? If you can't play it you can't appreciate it.

Then again, I always found earlier personal aircraft designs more fun to fly than modern ones.

I owned and flew for many years this example - the actual Bellanca 6561N

You can't do better than wood for an aircraft wing...if the aircraft is small.

And you can't do better than emergent game design in an online game either....but the audience for such games is small as well

jedtb16_ESO · October 2016

no.

having witnessed the attitudes of players on the forum and in game i really don't want them deciding what i can and can't do.

bellanca6561n · October 2016

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

no.

having witnessed the attitudes of players on the forum and in game i really don't want them deciding what i can and can't do.

That wasn't the proposal.

Not even close. Just some settings inside towns, not the game world.

You scanned and gut reacted I'm afraid.

Much of what you're seeing that you're reacting negatively to is a byproduct, in my view, of players having too little control over their game world. When people have no say in things they behave like fishes: they tend to devour one another.

raidentenshu_ESO · October 2016

Hell no.

After dealing with such egos coming from a mobile app game (game of wars) I do not want to return to this gameplay. I don't want some turd who I don't even know telling me what I should and should not do in certain towns. One of the main reasons why I don't pvp in Cyrodiil is that the so called Emperor/Empress and their faction receives special bonus that gives them the upper hand. I don't want anything to do with this kind of gameplay.

MasterSpatula · October 2016

Player-run towns worked great in SWG, but then, those were also player built towns.

Since I doubt we're ever going to be able to plop down a house where we wish, I don't think a player takeover of existing towns is going to work so well.

Katahdin · October 2016

No thanks
We have enough examples of dictators running guilds.
We dont need dictators now having control over areas in the game.

bellanca6561n · October 2016

Katahdin wrote: »

No thanks
We have enough examples of dictators running guilds.
We dont need dictators now having control over areas in the game.

Nice mountain by the way. Took the Roaring Brook Trail to Chimney Pond...and the Saddle Trail to the Knife Edge....well...40 years ago.

I honestly don't know where you folks got the idea that someone would be dictating terms to you from this. You live in a dictatorship now, an absolute dictatorship though I think better of game developers than that.

This wouldn't be like a guild. Players would choose a town to pledge loyalty to. They would choose a governing body or a governor, mayor, Thane, whatever, who could set certain parameters for the town only.

No, you cannot create the town. They're here. But you could, as a group of citizens, make improvements if people contributed to the effort. Who wouldn't, for example, want to have a crafting station in their town like Riften has?

Baby steps. If substantial buy-in occurs then....

And nobody can be a dictator to you without your consent. Don't like the mayor....pledge loyalty to another town.

Right now you're being told exactly what you can and cannot do. You accept this because professional game developers are setting the terms.

But there has always existed, among all online game communities, that precious one percent of players with natural leadership and moral authority.

The best games make good use of them. Perhaps the guild system of this game fails to attract them. I honestly don't know as I was never fond of the guild setup in this game. And, yeah, I just got kicked from a guild the other day for calling my guild leader an ****ole

It was an accurate statement if, perhaps, impolitic of me to say so.

brandonv516 · October 2016

Yes let's do this. And then me and a group of 200 rebels can raid your town, murder it's citizens, steal from the town bank, set fire to all the buildings, and steal your favorite horses.

Katahdin · October 2016

bellanca6561n wrote: »

Katahdin wrote: »

No thanks
We have enough examples of dictators running guilds.
We dont need dictators now having control over areas in the game.

I honestly don't know where you folks got the idea that someone would be dictating terms to you from this. You live in a dictatorship now, an absolute dictatorship though I think better of game developers than that.

We get it from the things you suggested in your first post.

bellanca6561n wrote: »

Can you cast or draw weapons in town? This means opting in and out of dueling and murder too.

Is riding a mount permitted in town?

Is running permitted?

The very way you word these suggestions (ie the word "permitted"} implies some kind of penalty if this is done or some mechanism that prevents it.

bellanca6561n wrote: »

Players would choose a town to pledge loyalty to. They would choose a governing body or a governor, mayor, Thane, whatever, who could set certain parameters for the town only.

Implies there will be "rules" you have adhere to if you want to enter that town.

bellanca6561n wrote: »

And nobody can be a dictator to you without your consent. Don't like the mayor....pledge loyalty to another town.

Again the way you word your suggestion is that ANYONE entering the town would be subject to the town rules.
Since going into the towns is a necessary part of many quests, people would be forced to obey or be subject to some penalty.
You do not say that only if you pledge loyalty to a certain town are you subject to its rules. I dont want to have to transport back to my "home" town just to use the bank or whatever. Maybe I dont want to be loyal to any town at all.

"bellanca6561n wrote: »

"Right now you're being told exactly what you can and cannot do. You accept this because professional game developers are setting the terms.

There is a big difference. The game developers made the game, they are not random players that want to have a God complex over others.

I disagree that the developers are dictators, there seems to be alot of feedom and different ways to play this game. If you dont like the game they made, you can always not play it.
Yes there are some "rules" but by and large most of them make sense such as not being able to ride a horse inside a building.
ZoS doesnt tell us we cant run in towns or anywhere for that matter unless its an boss/event mechanic.

Sorry, I dont like this idea and I can not support it.

Yes Katahdin is a nice mountain.

Publius_Scipio · October 2016

Absolutely place my name on the ballot. I am running for mayor of Wayrest.

arkansas_ESO · October 2016

Sure, why not? Keep a few towns NPC-ran, like Rawl, Wayrest, and Mournhold, and let the players go crazy with the rest. I'd probably take away town buffs, though, as that's too similar to the way Cyrodiil buffs used to work, and those were removed entirely from PVE for a reason.

Also, how would this system handle towns that players have to go to (and often fight inside) for quests?

bellanca6561n · October 2016

Katahdin wrote: »

bellanca6561n wrote: »

Katahdin wrote: »

No thanks
We have enough examples of dictators running guilds.
We dont need dictators now having control over areas in the game.

I honestly don't know where you folks got the idea that someone would be dictating terms to you from this. You live in a dictatorship now, an absolute dictatorship though I think better of game developers than that.

We get it from the things you suggested in your first post.

bellanca6561n wrote: »

Can you cast or draw weapons in town? This means opting in and out of dueling and murder too.

Is riding a mount permitted in town?

Is running permitted?

The very way you word these suggestions (ie the word "permitted"} implies some kind of penalty if this is done or some mechanism that prevents it.

bellanca6561n wrote: »

Players would choose a town to pledge loyalty to. They would choose a governing body or a governor, mayor, Thane, whatever, who could set certain parameters for the town only.

Implies there will be "rules" you have adhere to if you want to enter that town.

bellanca6561n wrote: »

And nobody can be a dictator to you without your consent. Don't like the mayor....pledge loyalty to another town.

Again the way you word your suggestion is that ANYONE entering the town would be subject to the town rules.
Since going into the towns is a necessary part of many quests, people would be forced to obey or be subject to some penalty.
You do not say that only if you pledge loyalty to a certain town are you subject to its rules. I dont want to have to transport back to my "home" town just to use the bank or whatever. Maybe I dont want to be loyal to any town at all.

"bellanca6561n wrote: »

"Right now you're being told exactly what you can and cannot do. You accept this because professional game developers are setting the terms.

There is a big difference. The game developers made the game, they are not random players that want to have a God complex over others.

I disagree that the developers are dictators, there seems to be alot of feedom and different ways to play this game. If you dont like the game they made, you can always not play it.
Yes there are some "rules" but by and large most of them make sense such as not being able to ride a horse inside a building.
ZoS doesnt tell us we cant run in towns or anywhere for that matter unless its an boss/event mechanic.

Sorry, I dont like this idea and I can not support it.

Yes Katahdin is a nice mountain.

At least we agree on that last bit.

You're quite right about quests needing to be instanced around town rules. They're already instanced in many ways.

And, as I said, I don't view the developers of this game in any harsh light as dictators.

This has happened in online games though. I recall one notable figure in this business throwing not just a chair at a speaker at a game conference, but it was one of those chairs that has a desk attachment. I recall another who led development of a far more important game than UO kicking players from the game because they didn't play the game "as intended."

But I trust the developers of this game....we all do, on some level at least, or we wouldn't play.

In the end I agree with you. As I see the flocks of skeleton locusts camping every dungeon boss and dolman, and will be until the end of this month, and read the horror stories of demigod guild leaders, I'm not sure this is the audience for large scale cooperative endeavors.

Lots of great people playing. Lots of splendid guilds too. Plenty of full featured adult human beings having a rich, social experience. They'll take wonderful, lasting memories with them from being in those guilds and this game.

But there's not the critical mass that would make something like player run towns work.

Finally, I know of no case of such features ever being retrofitted into an existing online game. Having such features, from day one, selects for its own audience.