How to satisfy the Farmers!

[Brendone]

A lot of us had a good hard laugh when we saw the blog post about farming players not crops. We looked around our fresh world at every inactive player vanishing when they were farmed, every small player becoming inactive when attacked (since protection is ridiculously short for a new person, if they haven't figured out joining a guild), every barb being cleared and conquered and then no easy to move resources to actually speed up the competitive nature of the game.

That means we were slowly conquering away barb cities and then checking in periodically to upgrade buildings on them. Somehow that feels more like farming crops then the old days where I would log in every few hours and attack players and barbs to RAID the resources they had created, and build up my one city as fast as I could, training armies and racing to scholar so that I could get the leg up on conquering PLAYERS instead of BARBS. RAIDING (I resent the term farming) barbs let me get a competitive edge on players who just built up their cities (farmers?)

I find it ironic that the players we made fun of in the old worlds, were made fun of because they conquered barbs instead of just using them for resources, and in the new, "more competitive" worlds, if you don't conquer the barbs asap, you are at a huge disadvantage.

All that being said, I think the new barbs are pretty cool, however I think there needs to be a major change in how they operate:

Option One: Unlock transferring resources directly between player owned cities from day one. Its fine to leave it 2 weeks between players, but you should be able to help yourself immediately.

Option Two: Revise the way attacking barbs works slightly. Instead of when conquering a barb, having the influence reset to 50 and slowly rise (sped up by various factors), have it remain at 100 and slowly DECLINE over time (perhaps something like 10-20 per day) and if left uninfluenced by you, revert to its native form. You would influence it by either garrisoning troops there (leaving a certain amount of support there all the time, more required the higher the city hall), or by continuing to ATTACK the city. Yes you would have to be able to attack your own barbs, but this would allow you to transport resources one way back to your lord city.

If you think about how all the Lore works, option two makes so much more sense from a game-play perspective compared to current status. We should be able to keep using the barbs or have to keep troops on hand there to enforce our will. It would also bring back farming. From a strategy perspective you'd have to trade off building up the barb for your own farming vs. building up the wall and defenses for when others attack, etc. It also brings back raiding barbs a few times a day for those who want it.

[CreatorPrime]

Maybe your world is different from mine, but I'm still being wildly successful in farming players around me. It is indeed harder to raid/farm players for resources than before, but I find that because it's harder, more players give up on it and therefore it gives me an even more competitive edge allowing me to greatly separate myself from those who have given up.

The early conquerable barbs have also allowed me to grow even faster than before, allowing me to reach the multi-scholar phase of the game much faster. Due to this I have also been able to conquer more players than before.

Lastly, PvP combat is now no longer limited to something that's scholar only (attacking each other before anyone has scholars is pretty useless). Conquering another player's barbs is much easier than conquering lord cities since scholars are not necessary. Not only that, but since players have more cities now, there are many more targets available. More targets + easier targets = more PvP action.

I do agree with you that barbs could still use some revision, and I'm sure the Quark team is working hard on that since it is still a relatively new feature. Your option one regarding resource transferring has been discussed a lot recently, and the general consensus is that we all agree with you on that front. I'm not sure what the purpose of your option two is though, if you want barbs to be more difficult to hold then yes I think that's an interesting idea, but if you just want something to farm/raid, then I think introducing a mechanic where you have to attack yourself is kind of silly.

My personal main issue with barbs is that they become easier and easier to acquire as the game progresses, and it should be the other way around. At least with scholars there is an increase in scholarships required for each subsequent scholar. Some of my ideas regarding this can be found in my other thread here: http://forum.playmesh.com/showthread.php?7767-Some-feedback

[Brendone]

My idea under option two was partly to allow a way to transfer resources back to main, and partly as a way to make things more competitive. In a sense it would be like no barb is every really yours, its just fully under your influence and doing what you say. That's why you keep raiding it to keep it under your influence, or support your troops there for the same reason. You can then basically choose to raise that barb as a defensible position where you train the armies there, build up the wall, and keep some of your own troops stationed there to keep control of the local population, or choose to raise it as a farm with no armies, no walls, and you have to keep attacking them to keep it under your control. Keeping in mind if you do this, it would be very easy for someone else to come along and take it out from under you.

[Pauld2468]

Ive been fighting for option 1 in another thread.

Im currenly in w181 atm its been 7 days and still cant transfer resourses between my own cities without going through the market.

By the 14 day mark when direct trading becomes available i think the world will be close to being finished.