COMMUNITY - FORUMS - GENERAL DISCUSSION
Issue with tribes

So at one time devs envisioned their game and how they imagine it how the see the tribes of Mann and the core part of it was that they dont wish for the game to assume some balance but more or less give the feel of the unfair real world, where bigger people smash small people and rich people exploit poor people.

And I personally love that, I love the fact that the game will be centered around politics on the top and grueling labour for those who want a multiplayer farming simulator. I especially love the fact that when fresh nonpledged players enter the game we might even see a "class struggle" dynamic with pledges with everything to loose and their gain dependent on their ability to pool players for their project and on other side the new players with nothing to loose and everything to gain. I believe that this creates a fun premise and will provide some of more exciting gameplay for everyone.

However at some point another writeup was created whch is called tribe selection guide it is found on the bottom of the page on the wiki, that is lets be honest a writeup without the complexity that the lore got which basically tells players "play x tribe if you wanna do y, dont pick x tribe if you wanna do z". Quite literaly by this exact formula at the end of a token tribe description and almost no additional info was given to the players since.

I think that is in my opinion just bad game design or/and bad communication of intent, and it is turning people away, at least to me it is an issue because of the implications of tribes designed that way, it is decreasing my trust in SBS to deliver a fun gameplay experience and thus postopning my decision to pledge some $$$ to the project.

So the issue I have with this is

  1. it is kinda half-assed writeup that provides serious info which serves to weigh on the tribe differences alot.

  2. it is unbalanced, and that would not even be an issue if the biomes would be equally distributed across kingdoms and have comparable tribe %. but what we have is lets say a kingdom where 2/3 of pop are dras and to'resk which are unfit of competitive pvp actions like skrimishing etc. according to that writeup.

  3. it implies all playstyles bear equal weight on game design which is not true. Alot of play styles are driven by players without regard for gameplay mechanics, like rp, politics, diplomacy, counseling, are playstyles driven by human interaction and are not even a tiny bit determined by what in-game tribe a player will choose and focusing tribes around them when the only variable is really players own capacity for those actions is kinda silly.

If i am good at diplo, I am good at diplo i dont need to be to'resk to have effective diplomatic comms with other groups. and presenting it as to-resk are good at diplo "game of houses" but not at combat is just bad. the player is good at it and that will not change wether he is playing brudvir or to'resk except that in first case he will have also be able to do "heavy skhirmishing".

I dont need to have a high int dras that apparently makes good counselors, when counseling means telling someone over discord what they should do. Playing dras will not make me smarter to fullfill that role. however it will limit what my effectiveness in combat is based on the biome I am in.

And on the other hand when engaging in another kind of player interaction (pvp) that pick will determine ones "stats". I will not be more stupid or click faster if I play a brudvir warrior or a dras counselor.

  1. it boxes -in gameplay choices, most of the writetup gives the impression that classes would be replaced by tribes while still implying that at some point tribes would fulfilling that role. Hrothi, good frontline, brudvir good heavy skirmish, kypiq the archer in the trees and engineer, dras with poison dot ability.

so an optimal setup will need a mix of all , each fullfiling their viable tribes determined role. And gamers love optimizing things, and that will ruin the intended immersion more than balancing tribes would. All the mmos without classes result in min-maxed viable pvp builds, getting those stats just right and gimmick funbuilds, with what the average player would make without use of guides fades away when endgame pvp appears, so if that is also boxed in by tribe selection it will create an atmosphere of people just rolling optimal tribes for a role and moving to their respective counties and duchies etc. I am not saying it will be easy to move around but once one kingdom will import their perfect army others will follow.

And some people say you can breed to determine that perfect statbox of a character you want, well that will require alot of dedication for an rng result and secondly it does not matter initialy and game needs to be commercially successfull to sustain itself and if people do not get the fun they are looking for in their first character, they will simply not play CoE and go play something else.

  1. It will create a very unequal distribution of serious players coming post release across tribes. There is almost no ingame reason to choose some of the tribes except aestethics and locations, with plenty of drawbacks to not choose them. I am sure alot of players will choose based on aesthetics, or the quantity of fish in that biome, I dont doubt that, but those players tend not to wake up for base defense at 5 am. Players who wanna conquer and win will, and that is the issue. Not the distribution of players overall but distribution of players with interest in PvP, because that to'resk politics RP village will get smacked in the middle of the night while the janoan village will not because of the different player styles those tribes will attract.

how would I adress those issues:

  1. I would delete any trace of that tribe selection help writeup and pretend it never happened.

  2. In line with other descriptions I would create various sections which will determine initial character stats when picking tribe and location.

biological: Mostly upper limits of physical stats, which would be fairly close between tribes and balanced, lack of one compensated with another physical stat cap not taking into account any possible skills. so that if we put the tribes together and compare their stats we can say yeah that is balanced.

also the various stats that determine limits of biome resistances if really needed. but mainly determining just upper limits of physical features.

e.g. Janoa, and Dras are biologically basicaly the same (- stripes) there is no reason for them to not be able to achieve similar physical and intelectual feats from a biological perspective. however their initial experience would be very much different because of enviroment and skills.

enviromental base stats: since people move and adapt, based on what biome character has lived in their youth determining resistances and aptitude for various natural skills and knowledge of nature.:

eg. living in the swamp gives you poision resistance. living in the sterile cold enviroment does not, but it is not determined by the tribe but by spawn point. so a brudvir born and raised in a swamp should have some poison resistance.

Cultural - the cultural aspect would determine how much of that physical limit given to you by your bio stats is initially filled and the initial aptitudes that you have for learning various skills. the culture not being determined only by the tribe but by the location buildup of tribes and professions

e.g. if you spawn in a hamlet it can be assumed that during the childhood you have worked and did physical labour hence your raw strenght will be higher. but you will not have aptitude to lets say learn skills that were not present in your hamlet.

on the other hand if you spawn in a oprhanage in a big city it can be assumed, you have picked up on the culture and skills present there have watched soldiers train etc. but the base strenght is not really increased because you most likely did not do physical labour from dusk to dawn. However your aptitude to learn is increased, reaching a decent point in various skills is easier, based on the proffesions in the spawn city. going back to a janoa dras example: You would still have martial janoa, and intellectual dras but not because of direct tribe pick but because of the culture that the npcs of that culture and the enviroment they live in facilitate. the end potential is the same tough, they will just work harder for the gameplay they were not "raised"

so what changes with this system in inital part of somones gamepleay is really nothing much, Dras live in a swamp have a intelectually oriented society. That initial Dras is very much similar to what we are given right now but but the way we get to that base tribesman is different.

So if we put a neran in a majorly dras culture in a swamp county, he will pick up those same traits and aptitudes, but his upper limit will be neran. And the other way if there is a mixed settlment, it will incorporate traits and aptitudes of both tribe cultures into a character. so one will be starting with his "biological" limits filled to the point the enviroment and the culture facilitated.

Why would this make a good game:

So a character is a statbox even if we pretend it is not it still is an amount of numbers that enable you to play the game in a certain way. we also have a limited amount of gametime, so the initial goal of the player is to build their statbox to be able to play in their desired playstyle viably within a reasonable amount of time.

This way you can get the envisioned playstyles without limiting the player choice based on tribe pick, provided they are willing to put a bit of effort into it. Since the tribe itself would directly determine only stat caps (and i mean caps close to eachother) it would give more viability to certain picks be and it would not drive players away from some choices. It would facilitate all playstyles on the tribes with their while incorporating cultural twists on those playstyles for most of the gametime.

It would also communicate that to the players in a more reliable manners without directly disencouraging them from playing various tribes which is imo just bad.

It would create incentive for lordsies to develop their cities as "spawnboxes" to lure new people to operate in their duchies or counties. if the culture in a city rather than tribe determines the skill aptitudes of a players character they would invest in various ways to attract players that they need, and we would get an more welcoming onboarding of new players.

you want to play a to 'resk warrior there is a county with mixed pop on the border, it is a fairly militarised town, if you spawn there you will have good aptitude for getting combat to a decent level soon and access to weapons and you can viably engage in pvp the next day because there is a war raging, but you will not have the "diplo aptitude" than a to'resk from inside the kingdom would have.

on the other hand if you want a chill experience trying to learn astronomy there is a town where there is an uni, you will not start and have much aptitude for- combat stats but you will have a really good aptitude for your intellectual endeavors. even if you are a brudvir.

with this you don't box people based on their tribe you determine that initial aptitude by location and culture and allow for alot of variation within a tribe.

so like in a classic mmo we can determine various "phases" of gameplay, that initial leveling or learning of skills. then we get to the fun stuff of more advanced content and the endgame where people do meta stuff. just that here that is timelocked, you have 1 year to get what you want out of your character.

so what we can assume here is that we would get

phase 1: initial feel of the game heavily influenced by the tribe for the first few months,

phase 2: Lets do something else phase where we could see very evenly balanced characters leveling more than their starting cultural ramps going beyond their biome resistances, exploring and trying out stuff. letting them be a viable actor for that period doing whatever they want .

phase 3: planning for retirement people decide what they want to specialize in knowledge of that their time is limited. With death and aging implying a gradual decrease in characters ability this is when people specialize mostly in line with what they wanna do this is where skills for an average player should peak,

phase 4: the hardmode, when the character is aged and it starts to take a tool and gradually decrease their stats presenting it as more of a challenge to do stuff. so aptitude for getting better at skills not purely intellectual should get diminished, and the viability if you wanna play as long as you should be determined by what you did in life, with again cultural aptitudes being in effect so you get that tribe envisioned feel again.

e.g. a soldier who was constantly building his skill to be as good as he can will be a viable warrior for longer than a soldier who was just good enough with his learning. but to compensate for the loss because he is dras he will use poisons because he can more easily increase or maintain that skill with his old age dementia kicking in because the aptitude for it is still higher because of that initial aptitude boost from his cultural enviroment making that skill decrease slower.

I think this could be a way to capture tribal diversity while not boxing peoples play style during the lifespan of their character with their pick and spawn location choice,

sry for the long text and bad english, but I just had too much time and found myself thinking about it. I dont want to be the knowitall gamer, telling you what to do but I sincerely wish you would reconsider how you intend to frame and present tribe based gameplay, and communicate that in a more clear manner . At the moment I love the lore and the premise of the game, but this kind of stuff is really turning me away. Like the dev journal said it is about making a fun gameplay experience, not about sticking to a vision in parts where it is so obviously flawed..

the writeup i am reffering to damn i cannot link it


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8/25/2019 2:42:07 AM #1

You're making an assumption that combat is the primary way to "win". That is not necessarily so.

You're also making an assumption that "soft" skills like diplomacy only affect player-character interactions, or that only player-character interactions matter. I see diplomacy as affecting NPCs (and OPCs) more reliably than PCs. Given the number of NPCs and OPCs in the world at any given time, I suspect their attitudes and actions will matter very much to the progress of the game.

What's with the 5 am wake-up call to defend a base? People have a life. I hope the developers do not intend the game to require a 24/7 commitment in order to preserve "capital" assets (i.e., stuff that takes a long time and lots of resources to build up).

With respect to character attributes, you forget to take into account the biases that individual souls bring and speak only of the tribal biases. Also, there is likely to be some cultural and cross-cultural biasing going on, simply because where a character's family lives is itself partially a result of selective pressure on some of those biases. So it is entirely possible that the effects you are proposing are already present in the design, to some degree.

In general I don't think you are basing your comments on what CoE is intended to be, but on what your experiences in other online games has led you to believe is necessarily true of anything in the genre. Spend some effort reading up on CoE's systems, keep an open mind, and try to think outside of the box your experience has put you in.


8/25/2019 11:41:12 AM #2

PvP is the primary way to win for most people, even within the systems of CoE which is an open PvP game, and even if it would not be intended as such, it would still become the primary way very soon, because it is the most intuitive way for players to compete. Designing a tribe around their diplo not because p2p but because interaction with npcs are opc is still a bad design, if you can reach goals in another way, while still keep a tribe that is viable for pvp. What you explained is basically locking certain interactions with npcs behind appropriate tribal selection which might be interesting but it in no way pays off for the inbalance on the pvp end.

as for 24/7 coverage as far as I see it is an open pvp game with other mechanics trying to limit pvp. Sadly offline raiding is a thing in any full pvp game, there is nothing given that we would believe CoE is an exception. Maybe distance and war being on the frontline so the internal settlemeents are safe until war comes to them. But i expect there to be offlline raiding and guilds trying to get players from other end of the world to get 24/7 coverage

As for CoE systems, i would just like to point out we dont have any yet, we have ideas of systems, vision of the game. But as much as some things are refreshing, some other things appear to deviate for the sake of deviation.

Being unique does not make you usefull, and certain aspect of traditional mmos are there because they just work.

That is the thing the feeling that i getwhen reading trough material is that end of the day we are going to get something way more traditional, they are only trying to communicate it in a different way to use,

The main thing i have an issue with not really the design and lore of the tribes, but that specific writeup (bottom of tribeswiki page) which is just bad, Caspian telling people they should not play Dras if they want to engage in heavy PvP skirmishing, the tone used there is very much disencouraging. even more so when now we have maps and the tribe and biome distribution just covers whole kingdoms in some cases and there is very little variation.


8/25/2019 11:58:24 AM #3

You say that PVP is the primary way to win for most people. Normally I would agree with you, but in CoE, there's no one version of a win scenario. Due to the soul system, the motives of the player and the motives of the character may not necessarily align. If a PVP player spawns into a character whose soul desires being the best farmer, making the character practice combat maneuvers instead of farming techniques is a losing scenario. Even if the player gets what they want, the character doesn't. I don't believe there's a punishment, but there is a lack of reward (story points get awarded if a character follows their destiny or moves the world story along).

You mention that certain aspects of traditional MMO's are there because they just work and that there is no information given that would make you believe that CoE is different from any other regular full PVP game. However you are forgetting (or are uninformed) that this game is not meant to be an MMO, it's meant to be a MEOW - a Multiplayer Evolving Online World. Things are going to be story-driven, characters are going to have their own motivations, and actions are going to have consequences that may reflect years down the line.

Your right, we don't currently have any publicly-known systems, all we have right now are ideas. But you assuming that CoE is going to be just like every other PVP MMO is just like me assuming that CoE is going to live up to it's vision - currently based on nothing but air and ideas. Why are your ideas of PVP = Best CoE more valid than an entire studio's efforts to the contrary?


67CAC0

"Different denotes neither bad nor good, but it certainly means not the same."

-Just a lowly beekeeper

8/25/2019 2:42:56 PM #4

The different tribes have defferent abilities,

That means game mechanics, it is just not "fluff" from the tribes backstory.

Example, the Toresk is average the least physical of the tribes but instead the mentally strongest. They can effect NPC´s (lies, rumors, negotation, bargain, diplomacy) and the NPC may not effect them in return. We, the other tribes will have to find out for ourselves if the information we get from NPC are true or not.

I hope everyone understand how big a advantage that is in a world populated with a lot of NPC!


8/25/2019 2:48:35 PM #5

Posted By Daarco at 10:42 AM - Sun Aug 25 2019

The different tribes have defferent abilities,

That means game mechanics, it is just not "fluff" from the tribes backstory.

Example, the Toresk is average the least physical of the tribes but instead the mentally strongest. They can effect NPC´s (lies, rumors, negotation, bargain, diplomacy) and the NPC may not effect them in return. We, the other tribes will have to find out for ourselves if the information we get from NPC are true or not.

I hope everyone understand how big a advantage that is in a world populated with a lot of NPC!

interesting subject. i will now have to consider whether or not my trading missions to the to'resk are actually benefical to me and not just expertly crafted negotiations on their part since im not personally doing the trading(im too valuable to do such dangerous jobs) lmao


8/25/2019 4:05:01 PM #6

i am not saying it is fluff, that it appears to be more than just something that gives a tribe their unique gimmick is the issue.

If you look how a traditional mmo does this we can see they have classes which cater to different playstyles, and then there is availability of those classes in one variation or another to ALL factions in the game. This gives you a system where you can balance things to make the game experience ideally fun for everyone across the entire gametime.

you can further section this into classes haveing a dodge, a disengage, some cc and deeps, heals you deconstruct them and then make them in a manner that works and present that to the playerbase,

here we dont have classes, which is perfectly fine but what experiance show is that when you dont have classes you still get classes sooner or later because the players in the endgame will create a meta, and you will have your optimal build catering to your playstyle, with some more variation, but what is expected of a person trying to be competitive after lets say a year after release is to adopt one of the preffered meta builds because that is the optimal way, and if we assume similar skill level on that point the way to be competitive. which is fine imo.

But once you accept that players will minmax you have an issue with CoE design exactly because of that gameplay difference between tribes, as it is presented (i hope that was just a bad writeup that will have no bearing on what we actually get). Which means if i prefer tanky gameplay, and i wish to engage in endgame pvp in a viable manner i have to pick a tribe that will facilitate that.

so the Tribes esentially are what will define what in other games we call classes or metabuilds. And that is not good design imo. especially if you with to encourage diverse gameplay.

and argument that some soft skill adgvantages will be so huge they pay for the combat disatvantage is just kinda silly. if you are unviable for parts of the game that part is locked away from you, you will not participate in a serious manner, just like a wow guild will not let someone who is undergeared go on a difficult raid, an army with limited amount of peeps for a battle , will prefer to use those tribes that are stronger.

And there needs to be a way to overcome that, i am not saying change everything up and redesign, but create tribe charater in with a goal "that a new player who is unfamiliar with the lore will have access (and be viable) to all main areas and forms of gameplay, (he will wish to access) during the lifespan of his first character"

Okay so lets look at Nirath for example on selene server. we have 3 duchies with very high Waerd population 3 border duchies with very much predominant to'resk population and 3 duchies with dras population. and 3 duchies with a about equal neran/waerd mix to them.

So when someone asked Snipe on discord how would a waerd recapture a settlement considering they have limited offensive capabilities the answer was "well, waerd would utilize assasinations and stuff wear it down and then cap it when they can overpower with numbers." (quote is from memory i will find the real quote later).

So that kind of gameplay characterization implies that for capability of offensive war waerd will HAVE to use sneaky tactics in order to overpower a similary sized foe. and when you take into account that you have 3 duchies mostly waerd and 3 half waerd you kinda realized you have 1/3 of your population be assassins as their most usefull cobat proffesion. then you have 3 to'resk duchies on the border which is again what useless in combat but great diplomats, so if you wanna wage some war you need to account for 1/4 of your kindom being basically students of social sciences.

now lets say you have war with arkadia on that toresk border, okay so arkadia also has 4 social sciences border duchies, but backed up by 6 janoa duchies, janoa being apparently the offensive pvp meta class.


8/25/2019 4:24:13 PM #7

Are you trying to apply ordinary classes and levels to CoE?

And you only speak about combat as if that i a huge deal?

Lets say you want to become the best farmer and produce the best seeds to sell for a huge profit in another biome.

Those are the questions people ask about CoE, not how to play a "tanky" character.

You need to eat, sleep, drink and always keep an eye on the weather. It does not matter what you are if your character dies of a heat stroke because you wear a full armour in the desert!


8/25/2019 4:28:21 PM #8

You do realize that combat characters will have to rely on scores of non-combatants to function effectively right? Those non-combatants will also be competing with the other skills.

As to the super abbreviated summary descriptions, I don't see the issue with them. Caspian is explaining what the culture and physiology of each tribe is best suited for doing. Being a Brudvir spy would be more difficult to than it would be for a Waerd just from a physique perspective. However nothing is stopping you from doing that, it'll just be more difficult. That's a valid thing to point out. These aren't blanket restrictions, just a cliff notes version of advantages and disadvantages


8/25/2019 5:01:20 PM #9

like we can pretend it will be something entirely new, and that it will be a completely revolutionary game, but at the end if we face games in the past you can see even if you envision this medieval sim it will sooner or later boil down to pvp. because people dont just want to be in a mmo or a MEOW or whatever they want to compete they want to win. New players will want to get titles and lands, Dukes will want to become counts and counts will want to expand become kings and so on and so on.

It is fair to asume that PvP interactions will make up the majority of what the game will be about for most people. Since as long as you have 1 guy that wants to pvp in an open pvp world that interaction will be forced on those around him.

This is what open world pvp means, and yes there should be balance around it since whether you like that or not in any game that allows for PvP, and has a way of expanding your influence trough PvP, the PvP will be the primary endgame gamemode.

it is not a question of is there anything stopping me because the stop is not the one of permission but the one of viabilty.


8/25/2019 5:05:01 PM #10

a good test would be when they create tribes to launch a alpha test for a few weeks with a small round mab made up of equal parts and, increase gather rates and resources, and have factions of same size that consist of 1 tribe per faction only fight eachother, and at the end see which one has captured the most territory.


8/25/2019 5:08:09 PM #11

Again, you only talk about combat. There is more then combat. There is nothing called endgame in CoE. Not everyone is interested in titles and land,

If you have a title, you loose more playtime with every death. And some players will do anything to stay out of that, including myself. I do not want anything to do with politict, land or titles.

I have a game to play instead ;)


8/25/2019 5:12:29 PM #12

I see a couple problems with the assumptions made in coming to the conclusions in this post.

  • The assumption that PvP is the central gameplay mechanic of Elyria
  • The intentional ignoring of NPCs role in the game
  • The misunderstanding of scale, in that PC players are a minority not majority of the existant characters
  • The belief that only a single meta can develop, ignoring the metas that will develop around profession
  • A Misrepresentation of PvP mechanics.

8/25/2019 6:15:40 PM #13

if there is pvp in a game it will become a central gameplay mechanic, we can pretend its is not gonna be that way, but people and groups will flock to the game to show who is"king" Because that option is there.

pretending that is not gonna happen and that everyone will be merry explorers, (not really likely since acclimation debufs for most tribes) is at best a folly.

If you ever played any open pvp survival games, you do know that on a public server people come for one thing and one thing only War, everything else is in service of that, and I see no reason this will be any different,

I am not ignoring npcs, but what I do see in this communtiy is that people assign too much value to them, most players and MMO enthusiasts dont play online games to interact with NPCs but to interact with other players, be that in either pvp coop or anything else really. Neither does saying npcs will have super AI automatically make it so.

And you can say, well then it is not the game for such players, which is another folly. since most of them see no issue of ignoring what is the intended vision by the devs and will find a way to go around that.

And not only that, even if we take the best possible npc scenario it only magnifies the problem of non combat tribes, since npcs in those regions will still not have human intuition to compensate for the drawbacks or utilize complex tactics to go around their shortcomings.

And even the minority/majority question is of no importance because of concentration again, since there is no way that player pop will be distributed equally across the map, you will have player hubs, you will have frontline and player centres where most of the game will happen for people playing the game, if you look at pop amounts on the map you can see that cities are not really massive with thousands of npcs, a group playing in an area or a hub will easily have player over npc majority.

there is never a single meta but there is always a meta, present when you come to endgame, based on what compositions work.

And I am not misrepresenting pvp, maybe i am misrepresenting the political aspect and other fluff, but it always boils down to player hit player, and then how do i hit player with most effect.


8/25/2019 6:23:06 PM #14

Now you did again: "political aspect and other fluff". There will be combat and pvp, But only for those who can aford it.

You do know the character stays in the world when you logoff?

If you want you can just kill anyone then. If they do not have "political aspect and other fluff" protecting then at that time ;)

And again, characters to not magicaly teleport from one fight to another. They need to gert resourses and logistict to make the journey to anoter fight. And players and NPC´s will see them and tell everyone about it.


8/25/2019 6:27:16 PM #15

as for the assertions that there is no endgame, maybe not for lords and ladies who already bought everything they want, for everyone else there is, most likely one replacing them at some point. And if you look at any other gameworld with undefined goals, players create an endgame for themselves and that if there is territory control is territory and pvp, or they just leave if they feel there is nothing meaningfull they can do.


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