Goblin Squad Member
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To be clear, I don't think that you guys made a "horrible mistake" or anything like that. I simply think Andius's plan has a greater potential for success than TEO/T7Vs plan. Again, that has quite a few variables that can be manipulated. You guys certainly aren't doomed from the start, but some things are going to have to break in your favor[b]. If they don't I feel [b]you will be set back compared to other settlements not relying on those breaks. Eventually, that could lead to your demise.
I'm not trying to be critical...
Really? Because it sounds like you're just piling on to an opportunity to try to turn people away from our guilds and make it more difficult to recruit members and allies to join us where we're settled. I mean, that's great and all, but don't pretend you're not being "critical".
I guess I can be glad it's taking place in this thread instead of ours. I am an optimist after all...
Well to each his own. Take it that way if you like, but after expressing myself to both Avari and Lhan, they don't seem to think so.
There is a difference between examining the merits and flaws of both assessments and being critical for no other reason that being critical.
As I told Avari, I expressed myself to Lifedragn before the choices were even made that I agreed with Andius's assessmemt.
Why should that change now? It shouldn't.
Why is there an issue with me agreeing with him? There certainly was an issue when I disagreed with him when you two were pals, but now because your relationship has changed, I'm the bad guy for pointing out the merit in his assessment.
Why does that have to be characterized as me being opportunistic instead of me simply being honest and expressing my opinion? I've done nothing but applaud you guys for your decision, its bold, brave, and praise worthy... but it wasn't the smartest move given my interpretation of TEO/T7V intentions. That takes NOTHING away from you.
I completely disagreed with Andius airing dirty laundry in public. I completely agree with his opinion on where you guys should have gone but give you all the credit in world for making that choice and making the game that much more interesting.
I'm not going to get pulled into yet another back and forth about anything besides the topic in the OP. Good day to you sir.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Dammit Andius. It's too early in the morning to be dealing with you trickery.
Don't fall for it people!
The tyrant Andius is trying to cast spells on you!
How dare you be so vile and wretched as to use "Common Sense" and "Logical Thinking" on these people!
Riddle me this Batman...
If the logic is so sound why did you put your great Capital of everything Lawful dead center on top of Chaos City? There was a perfectly nice Lawful starter city to the south.
In my view, Chaotic Neutral aligned characters would have no problem with a Lawful Neutral neighbor, so long as the Lawful Neutral neighbor does not try to thrust their laws upon the Chaotic Neutrals.
Chaotic Neutrals are not Hell bent on eradicating laws, they just choose not to follow them, unless they feel like it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I, actually kind of wanted to know the answers to what I asked. Thread related and all.
If there are less / no starter towns in other areas that drastically increases the value of holding the North-West. Also the fact it is unlikely to expand further to the west or north means that your borders are secure to the north and the west and you can focus 100% of your efforts to the south and east. Where if your start SE and expand SE you are going to have a lot more border to defend based on the rate the map is supposed to be expanding.
Conclusion: the North-West is a super high value area.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well, that is simplifying things a bit. You are talking as if the world is already divided up in a few Mega Powers, that are ready to push their enemies off the map in a sweeping frontline.
It only needs a single unoccupied settlement hex in the area and a well organized Corp from Eve(or other) porting over to PFO, to cause serious trouble in *any* area, is my prediction.
You know, the sort of Corps that wake up their kids at 03.00 to man the battlestations. :p
Now if you can rally all your allies in the region against this new threat, that would indeed be great. The fact that you are in a corner of the map does not really protect you much imo.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I, actually kind of wanted to know the answers to what I asked. Thread related and all.If there are less / no starter towns in other areas that drastically increases the value of holding the North-West. Also the fact it is unlikely to expand further to the west or north means that your borders are secure to the north and the west and you can focus 100% of your efforts to the south and east. Where if your start SE and expand SE you are going to have a lot more border to defend based on the rate the map is supposed to be expanding.
Conclusion: the North-West is a super high value area.
There is a road that runs along the river, so your west border is completely open. I believe one of the laws of the river kingdoms forbids blocking roads. I agree that there will probably be no expansion west, as the river marks the border of the River Kingdoms.
There is no reason to believe that there won't be expansion north, look at the map of the river kingdoms from the 2nd blog, lots of Echo Wood to the north.
Conclusion: The North-West is an area.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree that there will probably be no expansion west, as the river marks the border of the River Kingdoms.
I don't play Pathfinder so correct me if I'm wrong...but there's still something across the river right? Why does there seem to be this assumption that an expansion can't be across the river? It's a river, not the ocean, correct?
The release setting being the "River Kingdoms" doesn't mean that they can't expand beyond that down the road, does it?
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Ustalav is across the River, a Kingdom of Vampires, Werewolves, and Undead.
Past the Echo woods to the north, is Numeria, a Kingdom of Mages and Barbarians, as well as giant robots, with lasers.
Far east, and Far south is the rest of the River Kingdoms.
As such I would assume that future expansion is going to go E/S before it goes anywhere else.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Soundtracks set the mood: Exodus - Bob Marley
I don't play Pathfinder so correct me if I'm wrong...but there's still something across the river right? Why does there seem to be this assumption that an expansion can't be across the river? It's a river, not the ocean, correct?
The release setting being the "River Kingdoms" doesn't mean that they can't expand beyond that down the road, does it?
Not until we get water transport which would be years away. Unless GW decide they need some sort of High-Sec across the river (could always keep that development no matter how remote in mind). The river is 4 hexes across looking at A More Detailed Map. I'd guess the river is too wide for a bridge!
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Goblin Squad Member
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The most reasonable way for Goblinworks to expand the available hexes would be to add to the perimeter, thus expanding in all directions at once, favoring no one area.
The problem with that theory is that we are already in the North West corner of the river kingdoms. If we expand much, we run into various other countries and the like. If GW decides to add Numeria etc, then we could keep expanding. But otherwise, the map will largely expand to the SE to include an ever larger portion of the River Kingdoms.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I honestly don't believe the borders are that absolute. I see them as way more fluid than that. It's not like there's a line of vampires, arm-in-arm, at the border to Ustalav, nor an army of Numerian robots to the north.
In the end, it's not really a lore decision, I would think, but rather a game balance decision. As has been shown several times already in development, the lore bends to the needs of game balance and design (magical turbulence, for example).
Having said that, I fully admit that you might be right. But I would hope game balance would trump the other arguments.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually, there are in fact armies of vampires that kill anyone in those lands, and there are roaming Robots that kill people to the North. The Current leader of Numeria would send a hoard if settlements were to spring up on their boarder that they fought so hard to maintain.
The lore bending to the needs, I agree somewhat, but not when were obliterating it.
I think it is more likely to end up being large PvE/PvP areas, minus settlements/POIs
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Goblin Squad Member
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If it is a given that the map will grow southward and toward the east, what is the North-West will become more and more marginalized and, probably, insular. The new blood will expand with the map, making the South-East central, integral to trade between the new lands and the established older settlements. Northwest makes sense from a conservative and defensive orientation, but not from a progressive, forward-looking perspective.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Actually, there are in fact armies of vampires that kill anyone in those lands, and there are roaming Robots that kill people to the North. The Current leader of Numeria would send a hoard if settlements were to spring up on their boarder that they fought so hard to maintain.
The lore bending to the needs, I agree somewhat, but not when were obliterating it.
This exactlly, lore bending to account for the translation between a physical and digital medium is appropriate. However, the area of the map where it still makes sense to have Kingdoms poping up and falling does not make sense at all from a lore perspective for Ustalav or Numeria. They both have very solid leadership, armies and borders. It would be the same as if we went far east and expanded into Brevoy. That would just be a mess.
I still say the majority of expansion would be to the east and south to a lesser extent (since going south too far and you would run into Razmiran and I am pretty sure after already splitting from the River Kingdoms they wouldn't want people coming in there trying to settle.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being, that was one of the thoughts we had, if you look Here then you can see where they focused on. There is a map or two worth of room to grow to the North-North West area, and 8 times that to the East, and even more to the South East.
Personally, I think they will use the rivers as a border, and the map will end up being about 15x the size it is now.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And if you look at the two official maps put out by GW. You will notice that the EE area almost centered on the OE area. The larger map is what GW hopes to expand to if enough people come to the game. The expansion outside of that will only happen if the game becomes massive... Good luck with that plan.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes, all of this is after OE, the SE on the OE map is still quite relevant. Plenty of room to move to the South. I some what disagree, I think they will only end up supporting about 25-30k per Map, on average that is 3k people playing online.
If by the end of their 3 year plan, they are at 120k people, I believe the map will be 3-4 times larger than it currently is.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The expansion outside of that will only happen if the game becomes massive... Good luck with that plan.
With as big as the existing Pathfinder fan base already is I don't think this will be a problem. It might take a year or two to grow to the sizes where they would need to expand but I definitely think it will happen.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nightdrifter made a very rough calculation at which subscriber number the area(the larger area of the map, not the EE area) had to be expanded to make room for more settlements.
The calculation was based on a number that I grabbed from thin air, namely 300 players per settlement on average. This could be way too much, or too little, I don't know. This probably also depends if there is some cap to the DI and if it follows a linear or hyperbolic curve, meaning that at some point more members does not add much to the DI.
There are about 230 settlements on the map that we have now (the larger area), which means that at around 70.000 subscribers the settlements run out(at 300 average).
Considering that Eve has 500.000 subs, the play-area could still expand by quit a bit if PFO ever becomes as sucessful as Eve in sub-numbers.
I have *no* idea how to calculate Alts in this equation. If every player has an average of 2 Alts that he pays for (XP), but only plays one at a time, then settlementnumbers may become much higher before a settlement grows too big. There are many other variables: maybe some settlement hexes are very unpopular and never get settled; maybe huge amounts of players stay forever in the NPC cities. GW may decide to create more room between settlement hexes espcially when player-mounts become available and personal travel becomes faster.
Anyway, pretty useless numbers I guess, but I think there is room for growth. I think the current playarea is way too small if the game becomes as succesful as Eve. Will take a long time though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If they have 120k people in 3 years, the map size will still be at EE.
Of the 120k people, maybe 10% will be online at any one time. That will be enough people to make the current EE map slightly busy in certain areas and completely dead in the rest.
Seriously guys, think about how large the hexes are and how many are on the current EE map.
There are 812 hexes at what 1.44sqkm... almost 1200sqkm for the EE map. 120k people is just getting started.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being, that was one of the thoughts we had, if you look Here then you can see where they focused on. There is a map or two worth of room to grow to the North-North West area, and 8 times that to the East, and even more to the South East.
From the point where the Sellen river curves away to the west (just a few hexes north of the current map) the NW border of the River Kingdoms basically follows the treeline of the Echo Woods. That yields maybe one additional 'map' of space due north, but more to the north-east.
Bastardhall (aka Arudora Manor), an infamous haunted ruin, being just across the river from the initial map could conceivably (pretty please) lead to a mega-dungeon being added for that in PFO... that would be epic. Otherwise, I don't think we'll see anything in Ustalav. Similarly, if the map expanded north it might make sense to include Castle Urion, a bigger version of Fort Riverwatch with Iomedaen griffin riders, despite it being just over the border in Numeria. Everything else is probably going to be River Kingdoms and thus mostly south and east. The map would have to be HUGE before we'd hit any other sites of interest on the borders.