Design Concept: Land Ownership and Terraforming.

[DeyjaVou]

Anyways on the topic of the thread... I am against land ownership. Technically we are just hired to come in terraform and cleanse wildlife for major companies who already own the claim to the planet we are working on. So I do not see how we can fight for territory when we all work for the same employers. Maybe for glory, maybe for more money from said employer, but not over the territory the employer already owns. They could just end our contract and put us on a hit list for trying to steal their property.

You, or your guild, wouldn't own the territory, but rather you would be assigned there to perform a task, either terraforming, scouting, or gathering.

Exactly. You would lease plots of land from the ownership, and terraform it to standard. It could even be the major quest/mission system. Government wants mostly lush earth-like worlds, private corporations want different types of planets. Omnidyne might want a planet made out of sand so they can turn it into glass and look at themselves in the galaxy's biggest mirror.

Doesn't necessarily have to be ownership if it's a thematic confliction, could be the above. If it's a mechanical conflict of interest though, I don't know what to say. It might turn out to be impossible given the scale of the game, or maybe a mechanic so far into the future it'd be almost pointless to discuss it for another couple of years.

It all comes down to the preferred scale of player impact. Do we want terraforming to be a global event, with players pitching in resources and the world evolving over time? Do we want it to be a pocketed thing, or something with several major points of influence where player companies can influence large regions of a globe? Larger scale operations are more emotionally detached, while smaller scale operations might seem hopeless. The key may be to find the happy middle ground, with 5-8 major points of influence on a planet, similar to large maps. where players can have an impact. The effects would bleed over into others (since you are influencing the climate and environment of an entire planet), so focusing on one point would help or hurt the adjacent depending on what's being done.

 

[Krhys]

I think at this stage clan/army 'real estate' dynamics should be put far on the back-burner and the focus needs to be on ideas revolving around small, medium, large and mahoosive zone events, incorporating small squads of players (retaking watchtowers in FF, for example) to zone type of events (FF has consistantly delivered cr@p and bugged zone events with zero consequence to motivate groups of solo players to band together, except for a quick boost to XP) all the way to finally terraforming an entire planet, which I am presuming is the aim of reaper crews in Ember.

By consequences, I mean, for example, when the Chosen in FF took over thump dump, did the thumpers stop falling? No, they didn't so no-one cared. Hey, just wait for 3 hours (I think it was, we are going back a while) and as if by magic thump dump is available again. Now look at FF today: Skydock in New Eden, bugged to hell, OCT, boring as **** and done because there's nothing much else to do and rescuing the bods in Devil's Tusk doing the 6 same encounters over and over again, just to have the last bit bug out on you.... well, you get the point.

Large scale events need to turn the course of things on the planet, as terraforming progresses. Sure, it will take some serious imagination and coding but that's why we have skilled devs!!! I'm sure there is then a way to implement some army/territory mechanics in there somewhere too.

 

[TankHunter678]

Whats the point of leasing the plots of land to the players when you are doing what the company is already paying you for?

The way I see it there would be regional centers that the players deliver resources to for the large scale expansion of the habital zones, terraforming would be done in accordance to what the company (aka the dev team making the content) want.

Our major concern as reapers would be the mining effort and protecting the habitation zones from creature assault. We are more or less fighting a war against a planet trying to stop us from exploiting it.

I guess I think the question should be less "how much player impact on the terraforming should be" as the terraforming bit needs the devs to alter the map. I would much rather not have the devs need to scrap content because we were terraforming a zone one direction only to change our minds or a unit decided to troll everyone and dump enough resources into the system to force terraform the zone into something completely different.

We have small dev team, so we should focus less on how fluid the terraforming should be... and more on how fluid the habitation field should be.

The habitation field is pretty much going to help decide just how hostile the environment is going to be. As there will be plenty of creatures that wont be able to survive in whats safe atmosphere for us, while others that can adapt and would try to destroy the field generators just for them being there.

There can be cases of community established bases getting converted into monster nests because a environment generator was destroyed and a part of the habitation bubble collapsed. That is something I think we should focus a bit more on. As that is something that can be VERY fluid for players to play with and stay entertained while the devs work on the terraforming changes to the map to update over time.

 

[DeyjaVou]

Whats the point of leasing the plots of land to the players when you are doing what the company is already paying you for?

The way I see it there would be regional centers that the players deliver resources to for the large scale expansion of the habital zones, terraforming would be done in accordance to what the company (aka the dev team making the content) want.

Our major concern as reapers would be the mining effort and protecting the habitation zones from creature assault. We are more or less fighting a war against a planet trying to stop us from exploiting it.

I guess I think the question should be less "how much player impact on the terraforming should be" as the terraforming bit needs the devs to alter the map. I would much rather not have the devs need to scrap content because we were terraforming a zone one direction only to change our minds or a unit decided to troll everyone and dump enough resources into the system to force terraform the zone into something completely different.

We have small dev team, so we should focus less on how fluid the terraforming should be... and more on how fluid the habitation field should be.

The habitation field is pretty much going to help decide just how hostile the environment is going to be. As there will be plenty of creatures that wont be able to survive in whats safe atmosphere for us, while others that can adapt and would try to destroy the field generators just for them being there.

There can be cases of community established bases getting converted into monster nests because a environment generator was destroyed and a part of the habitation bubble collapsed. That is something I think we should focus a bit more on. As that is something that can be VERY fluid for players to play with and stay entertained while the devs work on the terraforming changes to the map to update over time.

From what I've read here, our ideas of scale are completely different. When I hit [M] I expect to be able to scroll out to a solar system map, and then further to a star chart. I'm not concerned about individual planets being ruined by extreme investments by troll companies, because there would be hundreds to thousands of active frontier and core planets to play on, assuming random terrain generation is a thing we have.
From what you've said, I take it you're thinking small local bubbles of habitat, with a frontier-ish open world hazard zone outside of it. Colonies live in biodomes, and mercenaries leave the domes to thump resources. Once your employed mercenARES have enough resources terraforming begins and eventually the domes can be unsealed.

Wait, why would those be separate systems? That sounds like it could be a working system. It would also facilitate invasion mechanics, and domes could be threatened. Hot damn!

 

[TankHunter678]

From what we do know Mark has decided on procedural generation for sections of the planet, not that we would be constantly hopping from world to world terraforming entire star systems or galaxies. The focus of the game being more on the ground side then the space side. As terraforming is not the fastest of processes to do.

So right now I am thinking along the lines of we are going to be stuck with a singular planet for a long time, and thus should be focused on systems that focus on a singular planet more so then systems that expect planets to be throw aways, at least until/if the games scope switches to be more towards that much much father in its life time.

Cause if we got people just hopping from planet to planet then we will run into an issue of every world being mostly empty and the community so fragmented people would leave because the game feels dead even if its population says otherwise.

So you expect to hit M and scroll out to a solar map, I expect to hit M and scroll out to a view of the planet. Like we had in Firefall.

 

[DeyjaVou]

From what we do know Mark has decided on procedural generation for sections of the planet, not that we would be constantly hopping from world to world terraforming entire star systems or galaxies. The focus of the game being more on the ground side then the space side. As terraforming is not the fastest of processes to do.

So right now I am thinking along the lines of we are going to be stuck with a singular planet for a long time, and thus should be focused on systems that focus on a singular planet more so then systems that expect planets to be throw aways, at least until/if the games scope switches to be more towards that much much father in its life time.

Cause if we got people just hopping from planet to planet then we will run into an issue of every world being mostly empty and the community so fragmented people would leave because the game feels dead even if its population says otherwise.

So you expect to hit M and scroll out to a solar map, I expect to hit M and scroll out to a view of the planet. Like we had in Firefall.

Got it, sounds like a season based thing, and I think I prefer it that way for now. And for the record I pictured the Firefall map exactly too, just that you could keep scrolling out even more.

For now I think a biodome with surrounding badlands would be a good starting point, and as the game progresses we could add more biodomes over the surface of the planet, slowly terraforming the entire thing. Player companies could sponsor the construction of them, etc, but for the most part biodomes would serve as resource aggregation points, and can be invaded and lost (if and only if the online player count is high enough to have a chance of repelling it, don't need a repeat of off-hours Amazon Warfront).

As a rough example, picture the Planetside 2 map, with a few more biostations, and the map reflecting the surrounding environment instead of controlling factions. Biostations as T1 collection points, Depots as T2, and Outposts as T3, with a creeping buildup to the end of the season where the planet is finally habitable on a global scale.

 

[Col. Kernel]

Exactly. You would lease plots of land from the ownership, and terraform it to standard.

We're being "paid" to be there as mercs. Us leasing territory from the Planetary Authority (PA) is counter intuitive.

What I see is that we don't get to pick a territory, we get assigned a territory. Sometimes that assignment will be short term (say 30 minutes to an hour to harvest or gather samples), others we'll be establishing a long term terraforming base.

 

[Luisedgm]

I like the idea of giving plots to players, but i think all players should start with equally poor and desolate plots, no chance of getting a rich quarry at start
Otherwise players would keep remaking characters until they get a good plot, its also more fair this way.

 

[Beerdog6]

I see two options.
one. You are a settler. you have a basic plot on whatever the frontier is and your job is to
Homestead it. Forty acres and a mule, ala The Northwest Territories(look it up).
The other option is to go to work for the Corporation (whichever you want. there can be several). Gathering resources, or defending territory. These two are not mutually exclusive. ..
To throw another monkey on the fire. Think Second Life. A fairly well established microeconomy.

 

[DeyjaVou]

When humanity first lands on a planet they first establish a few major Biodomes, T1 collection and terraforming facilities that double as colonies. From there, players move out into the Badlands/Wasteland/Wild with MEK-As to begin harvesting resources for the dual purpose of improving their own equipment and contributing to the terraforming effort. As the colonies grow, T2 collection points called Depots are constructed. These could be world events, or player/company erected structures. The construction of depots, and subsequently T3 collection Outposts enables a wider area to be efficiently mined, the idea being that while you can technically call a MEK-A anywhere, it still has to walk back to the nearest collection point.

Could be that plots never happen, and something closer to this happens instead.

 

[Vladplaya]

I don't mind clans owning land and building bases on it, but terraforming sounds like a bad idea. The land is going to looks funky weird with different clans going for random bioms. Unless there would be limitation like you can terraform Desert into rocky desert instead of just sand, or something else but still desert like, to keep continuity of the world.

Furthermore, I just don't think that owning LAND, or territory has ever worked well in mmo games. It always comes down to everything been owned by someone, which takes away the feeling of discovery and danger of the land. It suppose to be wilderness out there, not farming land waiting to be sold.

I think bases in preset locations is best way to go, they should be far enough apart from each other to not feel crowded, and they should have limit to their expansions. Also I think it would be cool if biom Around a base would change slightly as base is growing and becoming more advanced, but that should be extend of visual changes to the a territory in the world.

I also want to point out that I don't think any single clan group or organization should be able to own the whole base, it always should be combined effort of multiple groups. Like after players claim a tile where base can be built, someone can build a refinery, someone else can build customization depot, another groups can build control tower with turrets on top of it, etc, with smaller groups contributing to maybe building gates, walls, other small things that they can afford. Basically this prevents a monopoly of just couple huge groups owning and controlling everything, which seem to be pretty common outcome in a lot of mmos.

And finally with players building things, there should be enough events that tare those structures down. Like random events that overwhelm bases and if not properly defended, should be totally wiped out to zero, or sustain heavy damage. This is very important as it provides resources and ownership rotation. I can imagine that a lot of people would complain and hate something like that, because they are use to getting attached to their virtual crap and expect it always to be there, but its extremely important to build up mentality that the whole gameplay is about rotation of resources, items, gear, vehicles, and whatever else. If things will not be destroyed, it will be just like vertical progression with power, everything will be taken over and build up within few months of the game, and people will be sitting bitching about how there is nothing to do and how game became stale.

PS sorry if this is not direct response to the discussion in this topic, I wrote this in spawn of couple days, so just posting this here to give my 2c on the whole territory ownership idea

 

[mayhemmike]

Wish I had been there for this one. I was thinking what about space stations. From what I understand this is going to be a multi planet endeavor. So what if armies were to build and orbital base of operations that you could expand on to help tera form. the advantage for the army would be stuff like scanning information on resources. could also be a platform from which the mech would deploy. the closer you are to your station the fast the mech arrives and pulls the resources