Suggestions for Territory Development
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Personally I find the city mechanics very enjoyable and I am excited to see where the devs take it. However I feel that territory acquisition should be made a little easier for smaller groups. Congregating 20 players to obtain a hamlet and then begin building your territory can be difficult, especially if a guild is not that large or is struggling to attract non-guilded players.
My suggestion is to make the ability to start a Hamlet require less players, however, they will be gated behind their territory population and the availability of advanced technologies. For example, a Hamlet that begins with a player count of 20 and continues exceeds a certain threshold of players will be able to advance towards a city, however a Hamlet that begins with say, 10 players, can only progress towards a village or town, etc. In order for them to progress further, they will need more citizens.
I feel this will give smaller and medium sized groups a better opportunity to have some sort of independence and make their own decisions, as well as, provide some more diversity on the continent for trade opportunities and diplomatic relations.
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@LordGorgeous This is actually not too bad an idea. If you set the smallest Territory to like 5 players (Tribal Camp) and require they grow to 10 players before an upgrade is possible beyond Tier 1 Tech, then smaller guilds and individuals would band together. As they get more members, they can upgrade, pay the upgrade cost and show they have the minimum new member requirement and can go to Hamlet (10 Players, Tier 2), and they now need a total of 20 to upgrade again. Build to 20 Players, expand outward from the center, pay the upgrade cost, and go from Hamlet to Town (20 Players, Tier 3) and for the final upgrade, you need to build your town to 50 Players, pay your upgrade fee, then you go from Town to City (50 Players, no Tech Limit)
Establishing a Tribal Camp takes 'buying' the Camp Stone, and having 5 members. Around the Camp Stone, there are a few unclaimed plots for houses, and there are certain mandatory buildings that must be built to upgrade to the next level. When you upgrade, your border moves outward, you get a few more plots available to you, and your new tech arm opens up.
Very good, scalable system. Now, they need to smooth out what they have now before they go trying to implement this, however, but eventually, there should be room for such in Fractured...just realize that smaller towns can be raided just as big ones can.
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They had this in one of the previous tests and did not work out well as a base line of 10 people with standard scheduling issues can easily fall apart from lack of critical mass. Note that in this test even Blue Army was saying that the city was being kept up and built by only 6 people while the rest were out adventuring. I can attest that our city was also built, and now maintained, by a small fraction of the number that signed up to allow us to claim the spot.
At the moment a group of even 4 players could easily access the tech of 4 different cities and, in effect, gain all the tech avalible in the game.
One of the purpouses of the siege system is to allow a group of 20 players to gather to raid a low activity city and conquer that city. Again the target number of 20 was chosen by the devs such that they see it as the minimum number of 'registerd' if not 'active' players to keep a city alive and active instead of just a dead blight.
This is further frusterated by the low turnout this alpha due to competing games and the timing (begining of school systems in USA) such that high numbers is unlikely.
