Land management: 4x game mechanic, not for MMOs

I only backed this game about a year and a half ago.

And before doing so, I absorbed every bit of information I could possibly find.

I actually DO agree that I probably made a mistake, in my arrogance, by supporting it already. I looked at a design base and thought 'well obviously it will be proceeding from those principles to this outcome, and that outcome sounds great!'

The main reason I would say not, is something that the wiki doesn't really impart to you from reading it.

Steven believed that a LOT of the stuff he wants to implement was INNOVATIVE in specific ways. I supported the game thinking that he knew those things had already been done and implemented in other games and due to the 'let's combine the best of all those games!' mentality.

But on the other hand, so far, only three things have disappointed me in the direction, so it probably works out.

As for what you are signing up for, consider it this way. There are always wanderers, there are always those who just want to play an MMO world.

But you need the other side. The ones who BUILD it. If you don't attract THOSE sorts of players, you get one of those content-desert sandbox games.

The game needs both sides. The 'I just want to play a game and travel around and do cool things' people, and the 'I want to build a whole Metropolis and run it' so that those people have somewhere to travel TO. In that sense, the Land Management system, the politics, they might not BE for 'you'. They're for 'me'. And it is 'my job' to make it so that you 'have the cool Coastal Node Town with a sort-of-identity and history' to visit in the first place.

That is what I perceive to be 'the point of a Node system'.

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I'm trying to say that the land management system is an integral ENOUGH part of the Node system functioning at a level where it is actually interesting, is a requirement.

Otherwise it is just 'who did the biggest numbers today?'

The Elite Dangerous Background Simulation got MORE complex over time, not less, because the simplistic models got gamed, zerged, and twisted.

Nodes don't WORK without a 'Land Management System'. And then the whole game falls apart. The reason they don't work is because it's too easy to just get the server to manipulate situations with numbers without any of the emergent things that Steven seems to want.

I'll put it another way.

It's Steven that is romanticizing this, I'm just supporting it. I think I can fairly claim at this point that this isn't about me, and you're basically giving Steven feedback on the vision. All I'm doing here is explaining to you 'why the vision works', and some experiences that imply that it is necessary. Your responses mostly lean moreso to 'Oh I don't think I want to play a game with that vision'.

In a way, that's 'between you and Steven'.

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Divine nodes will be quest based (maybe even including group-based ones). Guilds will have the ability to pick one of their members and boost their quest amount w/o any real problems (potentially even through acc-sharing).

Military nodes will have some sort of avatar fighting. We don't have any clue how you gonna build up your avatar, but if it's in any way related to resource requirements - guilds will do it better than solos. And if it's pure skill after all - guilds will most likely have the best pvpers in their ranks, or at the very least can "buy" the best pvper.

Economic - guilds pooling money.

Scientific - guild having the majority vote within the node.

So pretty much all nodes can be "gamed" by a proper hardcore guild. And such guilds usually have "grand visions" and will use any means necessary to do that. So I'm betting on most nodes being built up with a vision in mind and some majority of citizens following that vision. There's even a potential of PKing those who don't follow the vision, but I hope that kind of conflict gets resolved with diplomacy.

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Yeah, I just wanted to see what experience your opinion was coming from.