I have put some thought into the world plans and here is the current status. Empire, skylands, flatlands, nether and the darklands seem to be working very nicely and balanced. I have followed some discussions regarding a comeback of the kingdom and I can see a merit in a more stable environment where people can build larger things together. There are 2 dynamics behind this: Initiative & Commitment
If the initiative for a group build is not big enough, we will have, like in the old kingdom, a lot of half-built, half deserted places, started by one and ripped apart by the competition created to join this or that town.
If the commitment is not big enough, any effort will sooner or later die. It risks of working like an economy, where several small companies start and in the end all flock to the largest one and the rest is bound to lie in ruins or to remain a playground for a single person. What can change those dynamics is normally money. If something is very cheap, then a lot of people join in but do not have the commitment later. So my initial thought would be that:
When this month is over, the old “world” will be deleted – as announced to those who still have a lot in it by email. I could then create a new kingdom, with limited size and towny enabled. One would NOT be able o build or mine in the wild, and lots would be quite expensive – something like 500 or even 1000 per lot. This would be to make sure people think before they do something and plan ahead. The maintenance of the lots could be cheaper in return so stuff does not get reset so quickly.
I am happy to get ideas how to prevent to have the kingdom become a building graveyeard. I also need to check how much the settings in one world can be different to another world – so no promises on any of this at all. In the worst case, I would make darklands free for all and only have towny in the kingdom to enable the group building there. Also, if we do that, we can disable backups in the darklands but make it unlimited in size. The nether is already 1GB large, I do not want to have 5GB backups… for a world that is deleted every couple of months anyhow.
That sounds great, unc! Expensive plots with cheap upkeep is a great idea. However, I have some additional suggestions about how to keep it from becoming a graveyard. Basically, these revolve around encouraging smaller, active towns and discouraging large towns with large numbers of non-contributing residents.
Town levels:
Use the town levels more extensively. Use them for upkeep costs rather than number of plots. Have upkeep become significantly more expensive for larger (=more residents) towns, encouraging towns to remain as small as is practical. Similarly, have plot numbers be very small for the smallest level, so that you need at least a few people to build anything of significant size. This creates a balance between town size and resident numbers.
Remember, 64 towny plots = 1 empire lot. Obviously, having 15-30 residents is difficult, and having 31+ is nearly impossible, unless everyone in the town is willing to pay very high (though still attainable with constant voting) taxes. This is a good thing, IMHO.
Town warps:
I know this is against survival principles, but hear me out: Allowing teleports to town centers 1) makes it more attractive for players to join a town and build there without spending one of their homes on it 2) makes it much more practical to travel between towns to visit without an extensive rail system that someone must maintain. People want their builds to be admired, nobody is going to want to build a town that is so difficult to get to that it is never seen. And since this is not a resource world in the first place, it is not a big deal that people can travel easily, since they are not doing it to harvest resources.
Nations:
Nations don’t give plots, they simply allow members of allied towns to contribute to one another’s builds. Therefore, nations should be cheap, possibly free. Having expensive nations creates an effect where people who want to collaborate are forced to group together in one town. Having cheap nations allows towns to proliferate, since collaboration among allied towns is easy, and because having larger towns is expensive (see above).
And, just as a possible further incentive to build in towns:
Town-based contests:
Limited to 1 entry per town. The reward is announced ahead of time, rewards are -forced- to be split among all a town’s residents (whether they participated or not). This encourages 1) that people not accumulate residents who don’t contribute and 2) that people start independent towns if they want to do independent contest entries.
Well, I hope anyone still reading this essay can forgive me for being so long-winded. Good day.
I was thinking more of a high initial amount for no-10 uncs a day for upkeep
I agree with Azkedar. I think with his specific rule structure more people will be willing to join. More like minded ppl in one spot means bigger and better builds. I think the taxes will also persuade people who are not commited to stear clear of making a town , thereby keeping the graveyard effect from happening. Also an idea ( if possible and not complicated to do) is that if a town remains inactive (i.e. no one is building there ) for a certain amount of time then it could be reset and left available for other towns to purchase the lot. dunno if that is an new idea or if you already have that as a standard. I am excited at the possiblity of it coming back!
I am excited about these ideas after playing around with my new town in darklands. I can see a bunch of small towns, connected by a road system maintained by the town (build a gravel road out in four directions from town center and start from there) to hopefully connect and encourage travel. The portal idea is interesting, my thoughts are allow a portal if a town reaches a cap-size (15-30) for azkedar’s city idea. If we cap it then maybe there will be a wide variety of towns. Otherwise I personally think it would be fun to follow the roads and travel between towns. Thumbs up on the great ideas and I can’t wait to see if this becomes a possibility.
I’m happy that this is happening at all and if the bank runs out of money the place shouldn’t reset like the mushroom kingdom incident.
I like the idea (and suggested the idea on the Trello site), but I think it will just be another world that takes up space. I started a Darklands town with the idea of cooperation and it fizzled. This isn’t a normal lot, it’s an 80×49 lot, big enough for a decent sized build (not epic, but big). It’s 15 plots worth of land and I pay 150 uncs per day upkeep on it. I still pay that and so far have only had 1 person join.
I’m not complaining (maybe a little bragging), but I think this tiny experiment shows that most people aren’t willing to join something that they aren’t in control of. The current system doesn’t prevent people from doing what they are asking for. The problem is that they don’t want to join something they can’t have control over. I don’t see how a new world will solve that. Already the word maps are full of plots shared by several people. Eventually you have to wonder if this isn’t a behavioral problem and not a resource one.
Rev, I’m going to have to respectfully disagree. To you the problem seems to be one of space versus control, and that’s a 1-dimensional view of the situation. This isn’t just a problem to solve, this is another way to play. If you treat Kingdom as just “more space”, then yes, it won’t seem like much of an idea.
Kingdom has over darklands the fact that it is not deleted, and the fact that you can’t utilize the world unless you claim space. Both of these facts make towns much less attractive in darklands, as we have now discovered. Also, having purchasing more expensive and maintenance cheaper will discourage experiments, where you don’t really know who will be participating and what you want to build. Get your idea first, then invest up front.
Kingdom has over empire the fact that lots are as large as you need and can be irregular shapes to suit terrain, roads or other features. You can explore to find a place for your build idea, and claim it. When you are finished (or in the event the project fails), you can eventually move on to a new idea, without ever being stuck with the lot you picked. The plot system allows you to designate private owned areas for individuals to work as opposed to common areas for residents to work. You can also designate assistants to assist everywhere in your town, or designate certain areas where even allied towns can help. In other words, permissions are much more fine-grained, and there is much more fredom.
To sum up, I think the world is different enough to be given a fair chance. It might not appeal to everyone, but I am hopeful that enough people will like it to make it worthwhile.
Hmm I’m liking the idea of keeping towns small and making it very expensive to make them overly large. A town where ultimately taxes become a necessity is nice and would definitely discourage large towns. Because of that ALL members of a town would have to be active members of the server who vote regularly. Having inactive members would eventually go broke and burden the town.
Something to consider however. When a town drops to the next rank down and has more plots than it can sustain, it will no lose them. You could have towns with 2 people and 250 lots, effectively a ghost town again with a tax of only 10unc. Not sure if we want that exactly :/ but the alternative is that as soon as a town lowers rank all the plots it cant support are lost? Since a town cant control when members decide to leave that’s also a risky setup. One way I see to fix this is to have taxes based per lot along side with taxes for overall town tier size based on members.
Here is a rough example. with a tax of 10unc per lot along with az’s member based tax.
A Village with 5 members and 64 plots costs 100+64*10=650 130unc tax per person
A Settlement with 2 members and 150 plots costs 10+150*10=1510 755unc tax per person
A Town with 12 members and 256 plots costs 1000+256*10=3560 296 unc tax per pseron
Note: With a system like this, a town claiming plots should either cost very little, or cost a lot and you get some of the money back when u abandon the plot.~
Ultimately those numbers need more work to fit in with uncoverys economy and its the idea way~ ideally a more dynamic cost/tax system would be great but I’m not sure if u can add that with towny settings.
My 2 uncs~
@plutomaster That’s a good point. Unfortunately, towny doesn’t let you enforce both the plot-based upkeep and the level-based upkeep, it’s one or the other. :/ I hadn’t considered that you can easily get around the plot limit that way, but of the two problems, I think the problem of inactive residents is far more concerning. :)
Azkedar: If it’s a different enough world/experience I can see how it would be attractive. I like your ideas kid, you just may have a future in this town!
I’d love a place to do team builds. I like watching the Team FryeUK builds on youtube (I know those take a long time, are in creative mode, etc. etc., but they still inspire me to work on something with others).