Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Mat110]

I was playing LiF: YO when it first came out. This game is not perfect but it drives my imagination of what could it become.

So, after playing for a good while in a green zone (like most of the new MMO players), I have noticed huge differences between those and guild lands. The first thing you will notice is that there are no roads (or very little) in lands owned by guilds. The road infrastructure is way better in protectorates. The second thing you will notice is that there is a lot of claims far apart from each other.

I was talking with a friend of mine whom I meet in-game, on how to bring those people closer to each other, how to get them to interact? How to get PvP players to benefit from PvE ones and the other way around. Why would you even want to do that? Well, PvE players mostly focus on building and crafting. Why not to, for example, get them to build roads in your guilds lands?

After a while, I thought to myself, that the economy in the middle ages was not driven by the amount of land you controlled, but by the quality of it and the quality of the economy. It was the time when towns arose, landlords were collecting taxes from villages and towns they owned. Why do guilds don't own those? Arent they proper landlords? I thought it would be great if they could. If they would have the power to create a town on their lands(PvP free zone) and charge taxes. Ask the town and village folks to build their roads, their walls (for money of course) and in exchange, they will defend them (as I imagine that those could be attacked by another guild). PvE players (like myself) don't like to lose their stuff, so they would not fully pillage the town or village and level it with a ground, but instead, win the right to tax and control the wealth of these lands.
So, the guild that owns the town or village can tell you which plots you can claim, and what you can build (I don't think it would be a good solution to build palisades around your claim in the middle of the town. They would have some kinda power to tax you if you build something that is not allowed and if you keep it up they can knock it down (not as strict with villages though, as they are not as dense). I think that the economy in this game is bad. It would be better if any player could have a cram on his claim, where he is selling his products. This way you would be incentivized to check differents crams and look for a better price. If this is not to your liking, there might be a market place in the town or village where you can rent a cram to do the same. I think there should also be a tavern where foods and drinks can be sold, with an incentive to drink or eat it there (some kinds of buff). It would make people go there and socialize maybe? As this is a PvP free zone, you still can duel somebody for a fistfight (nobody get killed but you can lose some steam) if the other player accepts!

Just imagine how much content this would create! Kings minding and protecting their lands that have something more than just empty fields. PvE players being of benefit to the guilds (they don't have to be a guild member!!!). A King paying his subjects for their goods and labor, to allow his warriors to focus on fighting skills. PvE players have different experiences under different King and in a different town (they could have more plots in different towns owned by different guilds). As a PvE player you could buy/rent more or bigger plots from the guild owning the town, but most of all, if you don't like the town, pack your belongings and move to another one with smaller taxes, more freedom or better infrastructure. (this way Guilds would actually try and keep their citizens happy). With regional resources and no trading post "magically" transferring goods and resources from one to another, traders would arise, taking the dangers of travel in order to earn big (hire King's warriors as an escort?), to allow the town and the guild to grow and build better stuff. The way the guild would tell you what and where they want you to build and for how much would be some kinda sign showing you what is to be built here and how much you will be paid for it. The guild would be able to tell what quality of resources they want (the same way it is now with regional doors for herbalist shop for example) and you would get paid even for dropping the resources not only for building it. This way you can make a coin to pay for your land and the guild gets to build what they want, where they want and with what they want. Just imagine a guild marking out roads from the castle to all their towns and villages and the PvE players building them for them and making a coin for it. Guilds marking out walls and keeps and PvE players (not guild members) building those for them! I think it is simple to implement (but not sure :-P), as you just mark the terrain and a toolbar pops out (like when you building a house or resizing your claim) asking you what you want to do here (level terrain on those and those fields to this and this lvl and it is 5 copper per lvl for example). Same with building, just place a building you want to build, then click on it and set the rules about how much per building log and so on. When all of the resources are in you can pay for somebody to build it or build it yourself. It is a win-win situation, the guild gets the stuff build and the PvE player is making a coin (if the pay is good enough).

Bounty hunting should also be introduced. If you are out and get killed by a player, put a bounty on his head. That would allow other players to hunt them down for a coin (but only if you get killed or robbed not to create a situation where wealthy landlords pay to get somebody killed, as this is assassin job :-)). If you are a criminal, it will be hard for you to enter towns and villages without being noticed, and only there you could get supplies (as trading posts don't exist anymore). There should be a bounty hunter trade, where they can send spies to track their bounty (if you ever played SWG, they used droids). If your bounty is caught and you won a fight, you can either kill them (penalty to skills, based on alignment system) or bring them to jail (still skill penalty but lesser, but you will be in jail as a slave and will not be allowed to play that char for a certain period of time). The alignment system should be changed to allow for hunters not to get penalties for their job, plus why a peaceful player (like a woodcutter) is to get penalized for being killed? Is the loss of his gear and a need to go back and do the stuff again is not enough? . If you want to play as a criminal, go ahead, but it should not be simple and easy.

The amount of content those changes would create could be great. But I am most excited about PvE and PvP players working together for a better future. Not as this is atm, playing against each other and complaining about the other side.

Those are just some ideas. Please do comment and let me know what you think?