Devs always say crap like that.

The problem is players want mutually exclusive things, so devs tend to tell them whatever they want to hear even when it's contradictory. Like players want a massive game world, but they want instant travel everywhere. They want to advance their character easily with no limits, but good lord in heaven no one better be able to advance faster than they do.

So devs always say progress is horizontal, but at the same time actual in-game stuff gives vertical progression. They'll probably balance it similar to AO, where gear increases in ability linearly, but exponentially in cost.

So someone in 10k value T4 gear is at strength 10, and someone in 10M value T8 gear is at strength 13. In a full loot game this actually is balancing, because it means a skilled T4 group has a chance of winning big but only losing small.

My understanding is that most character advancement is based upon exploration. You don't get xp from mobs like normal games, rather you get knowledge for defeating a mob until you learn everything about it. Which unlocks abilities, and the knowledge points you get from that can be used to activate those abilities or buy talent points for further customization of your character. From what I understand, once you hit that max knowledge of a mob, killing that same mob type won't give any further knowledge point bonuses.

Discovering spots on the map also awards knowledge points. IIRC a dev stated that 1 continent has about 85k knowledge points worth of discoverable points of interest. If I'm doing the math correctly, it looks like 225k knowledge points will be needed to max out the number of talent points. Which means lots of exploring and killing of different mob types will be needed for anyone to advance far.

@Ostaff Stop it, you are stealing my ideas for my guilds' flavor text!

@Ostaff Do you have a source on guilds being race restricted?

@Ostaff Did you have a source for that? I seem to remember it being mentioned in a video that guilds were alignment restricted, but they didn't mention whether guilds were planet specific or not. Of course things change, so was wondering if maybe there was a more recent source.

@d3Sync I seem to remember in a very recent video the devs saying cities would have unique crafting buildings in them, and could set tax rates for their use. It sounds like the devs could easily move the slider for how common sieges will be by adjusting the profitability of owning a city.

@Ostaff Stop it, you are stealing my ideas for my guilds' flavor text!

IIRC, cities will be blocked for PvP. So all they'd need to add is a duel code for people to do so.

Q:
Can a guild control more than 1 city, or would a shell guild be required?

As others have said, nothing is likely for release. However I wouldn't be surprised if there was an eventual expansion for naval battles.

Have you guys tried an upright mouse? Your arm bone doesn't get twisted around, putting pressure on your nerves that way.

@Nekrage said in The decision for public vs citizens-only crafting stations should be made by Governors, not Dynamight:

it absolutely benefits players avoiding city ownership the most.

Not necessarily. I think you are only looking at the game play aspect and ignoring the economic aspect. We know a fair amount about the former but almost nothing about the latter.

For example if city taxes on crafting, AH, etc. extracts ~30% of the value of nearby resources, owning a city means the controlling guild can pimp their players out with 0 time spent. That time can then be spent raiding nearby cities for their loot... Basically, a peasant/ lord relationship. Peasants gather up local resources, land owners pillage the other lords' peasants.

This creates an incentive for a city owner to have as many people living in or near their city as possible, as it increases resource gathering and raises demand for pillaged gear looted from foreign players.

@Ostaff Thank you, this answers my question perfectly.

It did seem odd that they would restrict it by alignment due to the ease with which alignment can shift. It seems like the exact nature and purpose of travel between the worlds is still being worked out, which will likely determine how race will affect guild membership.

@Ostaff Do you have a source on guilds being race restricted?