I feel it will take people a while to fully grasp that CoE is not like any other game they have played before. Most will look at this game like they have from all their past games, a progression that eventually hits a goal.. ie Level, gear money what have you. Once we come around and look at this game as more of a interactive story that you are part of, then perhaps they will see more clearly what the game will be like.

Posted By Gothix at 02:19 AM - Sat Apr 01 2017

Outsiders (normal players) will have no chance to go for a king directly, and if a King has an option to keep his title because it's in his family than yes, that's pretty OP.

I personally don't want to be a king, and if I, for whatever reason, was one, I would not enjoy it. On the other hand, I feel like some people make great kings and they do enjoy it. And to be honest, if I really like the king, I'd like for him to stay in power generation after generation. When power keeps shifting from one person to another, that creates unstable kingdoms, and I would not want to be a part of such kingdom.

Well Said Caspian!

Posted By Caspian at 12:20 PM - Wed Apr 05 2017

I answer the question of is CoE P2W with questions of my own...

• In our world, are people born before you "winning" at life more than you?
• In our world, are people who make more money than you "winning" at life more than you?
• In our world, are politicians such as senators, governors, or presidents "winning" at life more than you?
• In most MMORPGs, are the NPC trainers, merchants, and crafters "winning" more than you?
• In Minecraft, are you winning when you play in creative mode?
• In a tower defense game like Dungeon Defenders, are you winning during the building phase?
• If one person decides to play a kingdom sim like Civilization, and another decides to play an RPG, is the first person winning more than the second?

The "benefits" offered by our pledge packages amount to the following:

• Access to Exposition - a building phase of the game for fleshing out story and settlements
• Opportunity to become the first crafters, merchants, and trainers in the world, breathing life into a world which would otherwise consist of just NPCs at launch
• A different play experience - functioning like a kingdom management / settlement simulation rather than a pure MMORPG
• Responsibility for the success of your domain's player base
• Wealth and Power to use toward the success of your domain and its player base

Most people latch on to the last one, while ignoring the one before it. While being an aristocrat or nobility does provide more resources and opportunities, it does so with more responsibility - and it can always be lost.

And again, "winning" in CoE because you have wealth or title, is a lot like answering "yes", to any of the first three questions I asked above. Which in general, most people would flatly state the answers are no.

First off: it means a lot to see a dev reaching out to the community with a post like this.

Second: it took me a minute to realize that "in our world" was not referring to Elyria!

Third: I again see my flaw in using the word winning instead of advantage.

Fourth: I understand that is a matter of perspective on what or who is winning. If it wasn't for the ownership of land or taxes, I wouldn't question starting ranks or positions at all. I also recognize that even with those taxes, the nobility will have to pay many players for infrastructure and support.

Fifth: I am glad that there is no system that you can use to make your character stats better or obtain equipment that is unavailable to the general population or ridiculously hard to get without paying for it (looking at you again, Archage)

Again, thank you for the response. I'm certainly not dogging the game or your development decisions. I'm greatly anticipating the game.

Posted By KipFoE at 11:17 AM - Wed Apr 05 2017

Posted By Caspian at 12:20 PM - Wed Apr 05 2017

I answer the question of is CoE P2W with questions of my own...

• In our world, are people born before you "winning" at life more than you?
• In our world, are people who make more money than you "winning" at life more than you?
• In our world, are politicians such as senators, governors, or presidents "winning" at life more than you?
• In most MMORPGs, are the NPC trainers, merchants, and crafters "winning" more than you?
• In Minecraft, are you winning when you play in creative mode?
• In a tower defense game like Dungeon Defenders, are you winning during the building phase?
• If one person decides to play a kingdom sim like Civilization, and another decides to play an RPG, is the first person winning more than the second?

The "benefits" offered by our pledge packages amount to the following:

• Access to Exposition - a building phase of the game for fleshing out story and settlements
• Opportunity to become the first crafters, merchants, and trainers in the world, breathing life into a world which would otherwise consist of just NPCs at launch
• A different play experience - functioning like a kingdom management / settlement simulation rather than a pure MMORPG
• Responsibility for the success of your domain's player base
• Wealth and Power to use toward the success of your domain and its player base

Most people latch on to the last one, while ignoring the one before it. While being an aristocrat or nobility does provide more resources and opportunities, it does so with more responsibility - and it can always be lost.

And again, "winning" in CoE because you have wealth or title, is a lot like answering "yes", to any of the first three questions I asked above. Which in general, most people would flatly state the answers are no.

First off: it means a lot to see a dev reaching out to the community with a post like this.

Second: it took me a minute to realize that "in our world" was not referring to Elyria!

Third: I again see my flaw in using the word winning instead of advantage.

Fourth: I understand that is a matter of perspective on what or who is winning. If it wasn't for the ownership of land or taxes, I wouldn't question starting ranks or positions at all. I also recognize that even with those taxes, the nobility will have to pay many players for infrastructure and support.

Fifth: I am glad that there is no system that you can use to make your character stats better or obtain equipment that is unavailable to the general population or ridiculously hard to get without paying for it (looking at you again, Archage)

Again, thank you for the response. I'm certainly not dogging the game or your development decisions. I'm greatly anticipating the game.

It sounds like from what you're talking about, wanting to bring a group to the game to engage in pvp combat and the like, that the best option might be for your group to pool a few resources and have someone back at the Baron level. Then pledge yourself to a duke who will fund your keep. The baron's job is to hire, train, and equip soldiers using funds provided by his noble lord. This should give you exactly the standing you need to have the chance to succeed or fail on your own merits/skills. Of course it could be done without one of you pledging at that level and instead pledge your group to an existing baron, just another level of management to deal with.

My county needs warfighters... Hit me up.

Posted By JadeDrakken at 4:30 PM - Wed Apr 05 2017

So, as an observer, there are a few things that people are assuming to be true and speculating. What we have in this game is the ability to pay for content that others will -likely- never get to experience.

There is the potential for big amounts of the worst traits in humans to show through this model. It is not wrong to suspect those things will show through with the ruling class. It certainly has all the way through most of real world history. Only now we have gamers setting themselves up to rule.

There are two sides to any coin and I suspect, like all things, that there will be a fluctuating scale of bad rulers and good rulers.

This business model in CoE has the potential for huge pay off for huge risk. I personally have less faith in the good of humanity. Especially through the internet where there are less consequences for being a terrible king.

Caveat Emptor.

Losing $10,000 is a pretty good deterrant to being a terrible king I think. Most of them are putting in quite an effort to build a good community well before the game even starts.

With the born and money = winning points that's debatable. Someone with Mark Cuban money can do anything I could ever want to for my life's win condition but generally easier and faster. Of course there is some niches and unbuyable win's as I'm about to touch on below but generally money can help.

I don't think it's fair to compare a game life's win conditions to our world where moral, social and political influences play so much more heavily into what we might find as "winning" where as in a game things are generally more objectified into categories of winning as I stated before. Life inherently has more things that aren't buy-able due to things like the 3 listed above. While your game stresses those a bit more it will imho never live up to a fraction of the pull of it's IRL counterparts.

It's also not fair to take real life jobs and compare them to game jobs when your own predictions show that most political jobs won't take more than an hour of time a day. If that. If the president as you stated only had to work > 1 hour on political events and made that much money for it then I would consider him winning. He get's enough money to literally buy my entire family for > 1 hour of work which lives him 15 (8 hours of sleep) to focus on himself or making even more money. Not only that but he can assert that much power and influence over such a short time period. I also think that the time period, mixed with the revealed game mechanics and unseen power of our deviant player base may counter act the above but that is even more reason why the 2 aren't comparable. They have completely different stipulations and % chance to lose what they have.

While I haven't played dungeon defenders, if it is a tower defense game I can assume that if you could during the building phase acquire such an advantage that your were unlikely to ever lose it than you would indeed be winning and I don't think it is predictable to say "they won't" without using something like a story arc or a weather effect like a tornado to shake up their defenses.

I don't know if your genre comparison is fair either because that implies the game isn't connected and nothing matters to the other. It doesn't matter if I am winning in Civ VI to an RPG player because I don't affect him. Now if I could play Civ VI for an hour and use what I got in Civ VI to outmatch that RPG player in his own element in almost every way than yes, that is kinda winning using a civilization game.

NOTE: I don't think that it is full on P2W but it can be if you play your cards right which is why I referred to it as "Conditional P2W". Also, while I think that some of the games revealed mechanics naturally combat P2W such as deviant being a 15% goal of the playerbase (aka ~1/10 people may try to take your "win" away and stick you with the "pay" part) but I don't think some of those points were necessarily relatable to the situation.

Sorry but I have to put my 2 cents worth in here now.

I have to say that this game is totally P2W, no two ways about it.

my reason is this: I wanted to play a game where I play as a leader of a settlement and build up a town into a city through encouraging people to come and live in my town.

So my win criteria is to own a town I can build, I purchased the baron/mayor package therefore I have already won. which means I just paid to win.

everyone else has lost :P

Precisely. And from where I'm sitting, the whole P2W debate has become so generic; it's now just a term of (semi) abuse people throw at any game that sells anything! Usually without examining any of the intricacies of the system in question, or even asking the simple question, "What is winning?" Caspian's posts go a long way to addressing that.

Posted By Wildscarr at 10:04 AM - Thu Apr 06 2017

Sorry but I have to put my 2 cents worth in here now.

I have to say that this game is totally P2W, no two ways about it.

my reason is this: I wanted to play a game where I play as a leader of a settlement and build up a town into a city through encouraging people to come and live in my town.

So my win criteria is to own a town I can build, I purchased the baron/mayor package therefore I have already won. which means I just paid to win.

everyone else has lost :P

When your population decides you are not worthy of being the boss of your town and they perform a Cassus belli, and all those gov't buildings (villa, etc.) you placed are no longer under your control, will you still consider yourself a winner?

Posted By Flashman at 1:03 PM - Thu Apr 06 2017

Precisely. And from where I'm sitting, the whole P2W debate has become so generic; it's now just a term of (semi) abuse people throw at any game that sells anything! Usually without examining any of the intricacies of the system in question, or even asking the simple question, "What is winning?" Caspian's posts go a long way to addressing that.

My understanding of P2W is that something can be purchased for real $$$ which gives a person a distinct advantage over another and that item cannot be found in-game - gems that tier a weapon higher than what can be done in-game come to mind.

People purchasing packs which allow them to prepare a town prior to release by placing buildings and other assets are assisting in the world development. It seems many people think that once they purchase those buildings they own them indefinitely. It has been made clear previously that if you lose your titled position you lose the benefits that go with it, including your villa/mansion, etc. The person who knocks you off your perch then gains access to them, and so the circle goes. Even land and buildings purchased for private use can be taken via adverse possession down the track.

If anything, those coming into the game at release should be thanking those who put in real $$$, since they have the opportunity to take away their assets as much as the next person for no additional outlay of their own.