*CLAPS VIGOROUSLY!*
As an avid gamer and Ph.D. researcher of gamer culture and behavior, the direction you have gone with this and the projected future trajectory are incredibly exciting and promising: A ‘realistic’ non-fantasy medieval setting MMORPG with equal or greater focus on production, terraforming, building, group dynamics, resource management and similar “peaceful” domains as on combat. In a game-marketplace replete with high-gloss fantasy hyperbole, such a game is both long overdue and extremely welcomed. I believe you will, as your game becomes more complete and in particular once you get your MMO going, become very popular.
That said, there are of course myriad small things that need to be adjusted in the present build, and that is to say nothing of things that have yet to be implemented. I may as time allows, come back to this original post to aggregate my “simple” suggestions for improving and balancing game play in the present build.
However, there is a larger ‘strategic’ level issue of game design which I wanted to highlight in this first post. Primarily I wanted to think out loud about matters of scale.
I was a bit skeptical that 21.5km x 21.5km size world really was going to feel “massive.” So, I’ve worked my way through some calculations to see how "massive" the MMO might feel, at least in the sense of the amount of space needed per character/player.
My understanding is that the map we presently have is 3km x 3km, and that the projected size for the MMO is 21.5km x 21.5km. Now obviously, relative to real life medieval Europe, much less a small region of it, 21.5 x 21.5km is extremely tiny. But of course, a Minecraft size world that can literally be BIGGER than planet Earth, is probably far in excess of what is needed for the game world to "feel" massive to players. Certainly the 3 x 3km world feels to me like "enough" for small person servers. However, with the resources clumped like they are and if our own server (New Ashworth) were to actually have 64 players playing regularly and divided into 3 or 4 towns, I have my suspicions that--despite what I conclude below based on calculations of settlment square areas--a 3x3km might well start to feel a bit crowded.
I presume that the 3x3 refers to the land area represented and not the total area in which that land area lies, i.e., land area and some portion of surrounding coastline. If this assumption is incorrect, and 3km x 3km actually includes some hundreds of meters of ‘ocean’ margin around the island, then the concerns I’m raising are even more aggravated.
My primary concern is that, the map scales you are working with are really not sufficient to support, in a social and gameplay sense, the sort of PVP MMO experience which your marketing information suggests you intend as a final end point. For example, you link us to your page describing the development plans for the MMO with the tagline “What something massive?”
No offense, but 21km x 21km hardly constitutes massive for a game world which—based on the current number of player servers running—may immediately have 500 to 1000 players active. Lets walk through some math about this together as one way to think about this concern.
To the best of my knowledge the smallest house which can be locked is 5x5m square, but in fact it requires an area that is 6x6m square. At present, because of how the claiming system works and the fact that there are no group memberships, each player on a server effectively must have his/her own house, otherwise risk being locked out of a house in which he has set himself as resident as a result of the timeouts following claiming, and the fact that claims must be redone every 24 hours.
These matters of course are what I would consider ‘simple’ suggestions for balancing and improving, but even if we assume that eventually the claim system will work in a way that actually allows multiple players to co-reside in a house, other factors will naturally predispose each player to want, his or her ‘own space’ as they progress in the game, own more items, etc.
So each character in the game will be needing between 12^2m (assuming 3 players coresiding in one small house) and 36^2m (assuming only one player in each small house). We might refer to the 12 measure as “Min Housing/Character” and the 36 as “Max” though obviously, if we start to include large houses and other structures that 36^2m is really not a “max” surface area which a single character might “need” to function in the game.
For the sake of ease in calculations and striking a reasonable balance, let us assume that a settlement of 10 can be self-sufficient in sustenance and self-defense, though obviously in the face of larger groups 10 may not be nearly enough to resist major aggression.
*Side note here: I suspect that as the MMO evolves, settlement populations will increase at a steep rate initially, then flattening and then (assuming the game is successful) undergoing a second period of rapid increase in population size as thresholds of organization, material wealth, and understanding are crossed.*
All this to say: working with the assumption of each character taking up 12^2m of living space is not an exceptional over-estimate either at the outset of the MMO become public or shortly thereafter.
Each settlement will also need a number of other features which occupy some space on the surface of the world: blacksmith 25^2m (including 1 tile margin surrounding building).
Most other buildings are likely going to be ‘optional’ to some degree but among the ones I would imagine any community will likely want would be Kitchen 25^2m; a well 9^2m; multiple animal coops (here the slow rate of dung production would seem to call for as many as 6 to 10 coops to have a vibrant community producing plenty of high quality crops and other products) 9^2m x 6 = 54^2m.
A palisade for which each 1m length technically takes up 3^2m by virtue of the zone of building exclusion around it. However crops can be planted immediately adjacent to walls, and the gap on the inside can match with the margin around bulidings. If palisades are built as close to interior structures as allowed, then it appears that the required margin to build it can overlap with the margin for the building, and given crops can be built adjacent to it, we are left with a nominal value of 1^m2 per linear meter of palisade, minimum. A formula for how much palisade a settlement will need could be: 4 x [SQRT(Total Space in square meters)+1], although this will tend to underestimate actual needed space given that gates and corner towers take up more. We’ll compensate for that with a fudge factor below . . .
Lets add to that a 6x6m courtyard, and on top of the whole sum a 10% “fudge factor” to account for other things like gate houses, towers, and just room to move around.
There are probably a few other buildings that will generally prove to be ‘highly preferred’ if not ‘essential’ but for the sake of brevity we will not worrk about thosee, and tally up what we have so far:
Total required space, including: housing for 10 characters (10 houses) , 1 blacksmith, 1 kitchen, 1 well, 1 courtyard, 6 coops = 509^2m. The SQRT(509) = 22.56 rounded up gives us a minimum settlement 23 meter on each side of square settlement and adding 10% fudge factor takes us up to about 25 meter per side. So our adjusted “walled” town size is: 625^2m, now lets add the palisade . . .
25m per square side +1m per side x 4 sides = 104^2m of palisade to wrap around our 625^2m town (note that is not the circumference but the total square area occupied by the wall). Added together this brings us to 780^2m of town plus wall, minimum(ish).
We’d also need surrounding farmlands, orchards, forests, mines, hunting area, etc. Having done a good bit of farming, I think that a 50^2m / character of plowed land is likely enough to produce a modicum of products (with flax perhaps deserving that much more by itself alone). But for the sake of not underestimating, let us assume most settlements will want about 10^2m of farmland per resident character, which puts us at 100^2m of farmland.
A mine doesn’t take up much space, so I’ll just call that 6^2m.
I don’t know of crowding negatively impacts tree growth . . . assuming it does, then orchards and forests properly thinned out could occupy a great deal of land. That said, I have noticed that even space next to each other, you can still produce a lot of apples and wood products. So for the sake of wrapping this up, why don’t we just say that each citizen also requires 10^2m of trees in addition to the crops?
That puts us a total of 116^2m for trees and fields. I think this is likely to in fact be a very low underestimate, if anything I’d reckon that each town will feel more comfortable with a buffer zone equivalent to its total square footage on each side as well as the four diagonal corners (Total Square Footage for Walled Town x
, so we’ll also calculate this “high buffer zone” value as well.For a town of 10 characters, that puts us at between 896^2m for an absolute minimum of walled town (780^2m) plus fields and forests (116^2m); or at the “high buffer zone’ estimation: Total walled town size * 9 = 6,928^2m.
I have only just played the game a bit, and my math skills are not superlative. So it is quite possible that I’ve made an error either conceptual or in mathematical operations, so please do check me on this.
To convert 6,928^2m to km^2 we need to divide it by 1,000,000 (1000m x 1000m = 1^2km).
So, the estimates produced above based on a town of 10 would require 0.00693^2 km.
If we scale this up to a town of 100 character residents, and assuming that 1 blacksmith, 1 kitchen, 1 well, and 6 coops is enough for 100 characters, we get a total square footage minimum for a town of 5,961 at the low end or 44,508^2m at the “high buffer zone” level in which each town has all area around it on all sides fallow or in use as fields and forests.
If we resort to the value of 12^2m per character housing (three characters living in a small wooden house and with a claims / ownership system that is functional, instead of one character per small wooden house as I assumed in all the preceding calculations) we get values in the ballpark of 554^2m to 3948^2m for a town of 10 citizens, and 2895^2m to 16,917^2m for a town of 100 citizens.
Low Density (36^2m per character housing) model of total square meters surface area needed.
Citizens Low est High est
10 886 6928
100 5,961 44,508
High Density (12^2m per character housing) model of total square surface area needed.
Citizens Low est High est
10 554 3,948
100 2,895 16,917
These different methods yield estimates ranging from the low of 554^2m to the high of 44,508^2m needed per character in the game world. If the world is to feel “massive” then the higher value is probably advisable.
The “Life is Feudal” world is projected to be 21.5km x 21.5km (462.25^2km or 462,250,000^2m).
So . . . maybe my gut intuition that 21.5km square would feel too small was wrong?
Worst case scenario, each character needs 692^2m of space to live and operate in. A 21.5km x 21.5km area could house a total of 658,476 characters!? Keep in mind, this number is based on a town with only 10 residents, i.e., low pop density per town, and the assumption of a “high buffer zone” equal to 8 times the total size of the town, surrounding each town.
Even if we effectively magnify that “worst case scenario” by making the “high buffer zone” of fallow land around each town a zone 10 times the size of the town in every direction [Total Walled Town size x 81] = 62,353^2m for a walled town of 10 residents (each with his/her own house) which works out to be a required 6,135^2m / character. At that density, a 21.5kmx21.5km world could ‘fit’ 74,134. This is probably double what the world may ever have, though I guess given EVE Online gets up to that many characters logged on in a busy Sunday, perhaps the world will need to be expanded at some point.
Best case scenario in which each character only needs 55.4^2m and the 21.5x21.5km MMO world will be able to ‘fit’ up to 8,343,863 characters!!??
Hmmmm . . . maybe this WILL feel massive after all
