Topic: Crypto Kingdom Game Design - page 4. (Read 9449 times)

I would guess that if space is not a concern, there will be a default 3D rendering, situated on the land with some simple logic.

If the space is very cramped, it might not be allowed to build so much by the Modulator, or at least in the rendering phase it will need to be custom handwork to fit the lot.

I don't believe the game attempts to charge for this but if manual rendering is involved, someone uses his precious time to enter the coordinates, which comes at the owner's expense.

This is great. 

When we move to 3d rendering, will we be able to renovate modular stone buildings? And if so, do you think there will be any cost associated with the renovation (I'm talking of a voxel for voxel renovation for aesthetic reasons)?

Building in the Coming Incarnation

This module will be implemented right after the current DB logic rewrite, EXP/Tutorial, and Health Challenge (2 weeks). As for Stone buildings, building will be enabled as soon as I manage the datatype ready, in a few days.

Basics

Building master will be moved to Ultima from its current residence in google sheets. After this move, google sheets will not contain any of the master data.

All buildings will utilize a uniform datatype for their game effects.

Buildings will be able to be built on lots on your ownership only. Rental to other PC will not be enabled. This decision is taken to add "ownership" to the game from the first day.

Buildings come in 3 classes of importance: wooden, stone-modular and stone-custom buildings. These differ in the real effort to build them. Wooden buildings are completely scripted with predefined parameters. Modular stone buildings generate their effects from the script but require raw materials etc. to build. Heritage buildings are similar to our current buildings requiring complete voxelcounts for stone and at least the information how to implement the building in the future 3D.

1. Wooden Buildings

Wooden buildings can be built to a lot in a loosely predetermined order (some require another building to be built before them). They give bonus to the owner of the lot if the lot is designated to be his primary residence. Owning several lots with wooden buildings in them does not have any further effect. Only one of each type may be built.

The current and near-final list of the wooden buildings (list will perhaps be expanded for buildings/effects that suit Noble residence purposes, but let's not care about that now). Many of the proposed effects were reduced to simplify the gameplay and cut short the dev implementation time.

The residence brings major bonuses to the game. If fully built, it will require a 390 sqm lot, have 260 built-sqm in 3 floors, cost 33.7 mil, require complete renovation after (no less than) 20 years, and produce the following bonuses:

2 Major and 2 Minor Health Bonuses (easier health challenge)
3 Skills Bonuses (effect accumulates until Skills are implemented)
REL bonus
8*CUL, 8*IC, 1*SCI
800,000 m income
200*VEG and reduces spoilage
100*MEAD
60*MEAT
100*CAN
Fits 2 horses

(If you wonder about CAN, it is a new consumable in the series of CAN, CIG, MUS, AYA in increasing potency, towards Wisdom and Understanding. Health effects are unproven at present.)

1.1. Conversion/grading of existing stone residences

Current residences will be graded for the Wood Building bonuses, and receive the ones that are fair, for free. It is somewhat unclear if it is possible to allow the actual building of new wood buildings to a lot already containing stone buildings, because the footprint of the stone buildings is undetermined.

Large residential buildings and Non-residential buildings will be graded for their pool shares in a system similar as before. They will not be customizable after the grading, until some further update to the whole system.

Here it is important to mention that stone buildings have a near-constant yield, so it does not matter how many or few you own. The wood buildings have overall (much) higher yield, and have the tendency of decreasing yield the more you build (some are better than the others). This is to make the game speed higher in the early commoner stage, and the total yield capped to a good sustenance level nevertheless.

2. Modular Stone

Stone building differs from wood building in a few major respects:
- 2-5 times more expensive per sqm to build
- Depreciate much slower
- Building requires amassing resources
- Can be used for other purposes than basic residence
- Can contain luxuries and facades.

Modular stone buildings are built using a calculator that ignores the actual looks and floor arrangement of the building, and lets the builder customize according to resource usage or intended effects. The calculator may be in an external source (or a 3rd party developed module) but its resulting building can be built using command BUILD and giving the parameters that the calculator produced.

3. Custom Stone

This is similar to the way building was in the early stages of the game, when yields/effects were negotiated with the gamemaster. We will have the need for custom benefits in the future as well, so this is important to keep. Another reason to build custom buildings is aesthetics, you can build whatever pleases your eye. In ingame cost terms, custom is no more expensive than modular, but in real-world costs, custom requires a lot of time to think about, BI cost, and a possible architect cost as well.

4. Designer's Notes

I am quite satisfied with the intricacies of the Health Challenge and its hoped-for effect in increasing the player identification to the character.

Now after quite some thoughtwork which was not even fun always (the constraints were many, and uncertain, at the same time, and this module has already caused huge unnecessary work due to difficulty of matching the effects, the data and the datatype), I believe the new Buildings will kill many flies at one time, and make the game an even stronger contender in the segment of Farmville players as well, and at the same time not burdening the rich players who get the upon conversion or can buy them with money (either a fully developed lot, or build by mouse-click).

Buying the house is a challenge. While prebuilt houses will likely be offered by nobles to get new players to their Tribe, it remains the situation that land in the town is never free. Even the smallest lot costs 2-5 mil (about which can be gained from the tutorial gift windfalls, once per character). So unlike some other games that constantly build you new buildings for free without regard to anything, we put the difficulty level up at the very beginning - at least the new character needs to figure out how to get the land and start building. (Options are to save but that takes a few weeks, exp-grind through the tutorial and sell all valuable freebies, wait for town or other land giveaway, enlist to some tribe incl. church that offers housing to members, or deposit, or why not gamble as well - selling pseudo-ingame services is usually feasible in the stage where the character already owns the house).

After securing the land and building the Chamber, which is the first room, there is already a range of options. Some outside buildings are a must-go, others require much land which typically is not available. This instantly causes the need to prioritize, and later causes the need to trade to a bigger lot, probably already developed. The costs and benefits, while adjustable both now and on the go, are carefully tailored to fit the increasing affluence of a commoner, even up to Master level, during which a natural move to stone buildings with better health, culture etc. benefits, occurs.

The order of building some of the rooms depends on the spatial arrangement. The house is 3-story. Most rooms give just CUL (which in turn gives IC, listed separately). This is in accordance with the prior and stone building yields. CUL is an important determinant in level promotions, IC once again increases the identification by allowing (later, possibly right after this module) to gain personal items. A rental block can be constructed for income, although it is expensive to build and possibly some other benefits are actually more valuable than the money. All the bonuses and benefits of a fully developed Wood residence amount to 5.0 mil per year, a huge sum in bonuses to a character whose salary income is about 2.1 mil.

My thought was that the older buildings would have to be built again when "building type 3" was started and that the buildings in "type 2" would be generic, but configurable to certain objectives (gain sci, gain cul, gain m, or a mix of them all) and for that all you would need is four building types (or maybe even less) that could be modified by voxel total, voxel type, and voxel location. The generic description looking like this: a three story research building that contains 2000 wall voxels, 100 window voxels, 16 door voxels  located in this tax and bonus area. It could be even more generic: voxels + building type + area = cost and yearly payout. Again, this is assuming that most, if not all buildings, will be built from the raw materials from the type 2 era when the switch to type 3 is made.

It is an option yes, but then it requires the utilized datatype be more comprehensive (, so that it allows not only commoner house and herb garden, but also RWWC factory, Grand Hotel, Gilded Goose, Mint, etc. buildings which have multifarious game objectives and aesthetic value. In any case, the historical buildings data will be kept, so that we can merge them in the next iterations of Building subgame.

I am considering. Google DB (current master for /BLDG) has 56 fields that are officially required. The Minor buildings sheet (link a few posts ago) has 5-7. There are benefits for keeping them separate, but also for merging.

Maybe give a historical building bonus, so the old builders are rewarded for their harder work and the game can move onto to use only the utilized data to the benefit of all?

It possibly will. Thing is:

- The building has until now had the required datatype and the utilized datatype. The required has included things such as facade plans, even though they have not been utilized, ie. had any affect on the game (and not even stored in the database).

- We seek to make a new, easier utilized datatype, which can be scripted completely and not rely on admin periodical updates. This means that Ancient buildings utilize even less of their data. It is up to me whether to continue to require all the same things as before or ease them.

If all the same things are required still, it is easy for builders who know the rules, difficult for new ones, and time-consuming for all.

If less things are required, the new Major (stone) buildings do not conform to old Major buildings, and neither to the new Minor buildings in their required datatype. In the utilized datatype, they of course all conform because that is the data the system actually uses.

Is building large buildings going to change at all in coming year(s)? Need to know if I should keep learning and designing in spreadsheet or not.

We shall now move to specifying of new1 building. Please help me, I am a bit short on ideas here

The situation is such that historical buildings have stone, windows, labor and luxuries as their main materials.

The building is designed to the voxel accuracy (from which the materials requirements are calculated). Building rules are complex and design takes a long time.

Certain mental scripts are in place to calculate values for intermediate products (such as "NearPark") which affects payouts. Many of these are problematic because the situation they describe is dynamic, but the data that defines it, does not exist in a form to allow scripted calculation.
=> Building DB gets corrupted over time and is expensive to maintain.

The payouts are in the form of money, CUL and SCI.


In the new system, the following design guidelines are to be followed:

1. Building everyday things should be able to happen with a simple system (not because players are stupid but because this stage does not allow more resources to be spent in a temporary system, and the final system cannot be implemented due to the game and its systems are not close to that stage yet.

2. Existing buildings need to be able to be converted at reasonable cost.

3. Buildings could be fixed use, so that one building produces only certain type of yield. The money yield comes from the pool (important balancing mechanism in the game), CUL and SCI yields can be fixed values of points. Other yields can be production yield, such as a Distillery directly producing MEAD, or functional yield (Mint building is a condition for mint operations to happen).

4. To boost character development (coming soon), certain entry-level buildings can have a higher payoff (cf. Civilization: Temples and Cathedrals may have same effect although the latter is 4x more expensive, this is to make more cities strive for the former at least - if the yield curve is flat, all business tends to consolidate because of skill and management efficiencies, and this is not desired for all business)

Ideas wanted for buildings that the commoners can click-build as part of their "regular" economic development, and their effects. To repeat, commoners should have access to these minor buildings, but only 1 of the type of building per character would give the lucrative bonus.

Also for items, which differ from buildings such that they can be traded directly.

5. Simple way to calculate how much buildings can fit in a lot, such as maximum e= ratio.

6. The heavy user buildings can perhaps retain the same datatype as before since they will be converted to 3D voxel images anyway at some point. These will in their gameplay effects be reduced to yields of money, CUL, SCI, products etc. but that is actually none of a difference to the previous situation.

This link is to the "Buildings v.2" planning sheet. Anyone can edit, please do it by adding new tabs/rows instead of changing data.

I'm guessing new3 will be similar to minecraft design, so having all the voxels represented should make every building prior compatible, correct?

What are the specifications of new2?

Clarification of design/dev roles

We talked in the Council about how to increase the development output. It was decided to be divided to the following roles:

Backend, DB, commands, API, modules, scripts, hosting, upkeep, bugfixing, permissions mgmt => Wizard

UI for core modules => Contractors

Testing => Testing coordinator

All other features => Freelance and/or profit-seeking 3rd parties (they need to monetize the modules themselves, eg. casino with house edge or GUI for Agora Marketplace with a trading fee)

Specification and project management excl testing management => Me (as Lead Designer)


Arrangement/priority of modules

Automated deposits/withdrawals

For automated deposits that are credited instantly, ETA is a few days. Automated withdrawals come later (no withdrawals are open yet due to ongoing desire to increase security level).

Building

Building will take a step back in detail, allowing an easy screen to be used by anyone to build things, which come pre-graded for their effects. At the same time this "new" building datatype will have to be forward-compatible with the "new2" building procedure when Skills come online, backward-compatible with existing "old" buildings, and compatible with the "new3" future visual voxel-based building editor (and every thing that is in any way related to buildings, almost everything comes to mind).

Help with ideas is appreciated at this very stage, after a week it's too late.

Despite the challenge, expect building to resume in 1611.

"Duty Paid" - Shop for items to be created from IC

We are seeking for a developer who could make this GUI module for IC->items conversion according to my specification. Paid work.

Health Challenge, including Eating

We hope to get this out during 1611 to give the challenge to that year and keep the game balance. It may go to 1612 however.

Character management, Skills module, TIME, labor, and customized entry (aka "Intermediate Version")

This is a large work in design side, and development as well. It will be commenced when the other listed features work fully, and should be completed and playable by the end 2015.

Economic subgames

These will be implemented one at a time to fit the structure provided in the Intermediate Version.

Liquid investments in the game

For the game to succeed as a self-sufficient entity, it helps a lot if it is possible for the people to contribute their time, but also their financial resources to it. Most everything in the game is buyable and sellable. To be able to do it in any meaningful degree, a time or money investment must be done first. The Ancients were required to commit money to purchase the "entry gold" of 1,000 CKG, which at the time cost 50-250 mil (now: 750 mil). They have also committed up to a real-year of their time. These both contributed to the fact that most Ancients are very wealthy in the game now.

If one starts now, considering that the total number of characters is 100 and active players even less, there is many orders of magnitude of growth ahead, and committing a year of time to play will alone yield great results after the period has elapsed. But if return of monetary investment is interesting as well, a deposit is a way to gain a starting balance that would take a lifetime to gain by grinding. (We must keep the grinding profitability low and difficulty level high to avoid (especially) bot-controlled character farming.)

In investing, I might classify the investments in the scale of time...money intensive. In the far end of time is character development, which mainly happens as a result of playtime and spending the Time resource wisely. Both do not cost money to the player. In the other end are investments whose value is not dependent on the player's activities, and that can be bought and sold in liquid markets. In between are mixed investments that require monetary stake but whose return is dependent on skill, and illiquid tradables, where the return is dependent on skillful placement of bids and asks, and often marketing.

For the investor-minded person, often unable to commit as much time to the game as would be needed to succeed in the mixed or illiquid investments, there are two strategies:

"Prince of OZ strategy"

Buy everything that does not spoil, when it comes to market, even indiscriminately. This accumulates you a massive portfolio of every asset, and there is no need to sell, the dividends rather ensure that everything can be had in good shape and new opportunities tapped. The character becomes very valuable, and if there comes a time to liquidate, you can start from the most overvalued asset and nimbly give more time to sell illiquid things without disturbing the market.

"Prince of Forte Spagnolo strategy"

Buy mainly the liquid assets that have a 24/7 market where more can be accumulated or dumped at pleasure. In the case of FS, he owns 10% of the game so slippage naturally occurs, but this is less of a concern for someone who starts now.

If some time is at hand, the two other princes offer options:

"Prince of Soul strategy"

If you trust crypto, monero and the game, appoint a wealth manager that you can trust and who is deep in the game, pay him well, and give him a nice stash of cash to develop the character for you according to your orders. Then just login to see how you get richer and chat occasionally. Let the wealth manager do everything else. WM's require payment by the hour, which limits your choices to mainly liquid investments, which on the other hand ensure that money comes in every turn.

"Prince of Ramsey strategy"

I love the game and have enough time and money to jump into every new thing that comes up. If something goes royally wrong, it does not matter, I just get a King's Hero medal and the other ventures have yielded tenfold in the meantime.


So, after the lengthy introduction, I was about to speak about liquid investments, the things where you can just sink money anytime, and get it out anytime, and receive the increase/decrease of the market price when you sell, and dividends in the meantime.

Our game has languished the first year at sub-$1 million marketcap, so it is no wonder we only have 2 of such investments at present:

Gold (CKG), and Consols (CON)

CKG is traded mainly as HM02B100 items, which contain 100 CKG each. At the time of writing, exactly 1,000,000 CKG exist, so one item contains 1/10000 of all gold that exists. New gold is being mined in relation to playtime and gold price, so that every hour of cumulative playtime makes $0.025 worth of new gold generated. This will result in a projected 2-5% real-yearly increase in the amount of gold.

CKG is the "stock of the game". The game is not incorporated in any outside-world jurisdiction and does not support them. Therefore the election of the decision-makers of the "game" - the Town Council, who are the highest decision maker, who appoint the Gamemaster (who arbitrates the status and leads the events), and Mayor, (who chairs the council and plays the char_id #4: The Most Ancient Corporation of the Town of CryptoTown, colloquially Town (capitalized)) happens in a 1 CKG = 1 vote basis.

The Town has also chosen to distribute dividends to the "stock" (CKG), which have ranged from 0.2% to 1.5% of the gold's price per week. The Town has many incomes and few costs, and consistently runs a surplus. Occasionally no dividend has been distributed but this just means that the money is retained in the Town coffer, to be distributed later.

At this point it is good to say that the money does not go to any outside entity since there are no connection to outside parties that the Town was responsible to pay anything to, and it is against our principles to ever enter into such. All financial agreements that the Town binds itself to are ingame only.

Town also does not have the authority to issue more gold (nor has ever had it(!)). All gold that comes into existence, comes through the Proof-of-Play mechanism above.

Enough of that. Just felt that it is important before you commit your money because the system is different than probably anything you have experienced anywhere else, and because the above are rules that were set in stone before the Town was even established, and will remain forever since there is nobody who may change them in the game, and the game rejects every outside attempt to change even those rules that can be changed. If you want to change the rules, buy gold. Who has the gold, makes the rules.

CKG is the most liquid investment in the game, and it has represented about 40-70% of the total value of all assets in the game during its history. Gold trading and price history are available for the entire game period (1416-). Investment wise, the following properties should be considered:

- Gold owners decide the councillors, who decide the town income. Town may freely decide to tax players excessively, but doing so would stifle the game. Historically, a modest tax rate has been applied, with the bulk of Town incomes coming from one-time sales of items, land, and buildings. My vision (as the largest gold owner) is to if possible reduce the tax burden even more, to allow the game to grow, and continue to get the cut from one-time sales of land etc. These would allow nice dividends for gold owners as well, which generally would be reinvested to the game. Having principles and continuity is important in taxation.

- Gold's yield scales up roughly with the function (number of players * revenue per player). Reaching a million players would make the number of players go up by 4 orders of magnitude, but concurrently it is likely that the revenue per player would go down 1-2 orders of magnitude. This would still mean 100-1,000 times increase, making CK gold an excellent vehicle for a diversified personal portfolio consisting of long shots.

- Gold is priced in XMR, but the revenue per player scales more with national currencies, such as USD. If CK takes off in a serious way (or even if it doesn't), it is more than likely that XMR/USD rate will react greatly. Therefore, the XMR-denominated gains of CKG are ultimately capped to the fact that a bounded quantity of XMR exist (about 20 million in a few years, at the same time when CKG is probably between 1-2 million). Unless your personal portfolio is denominated in XMR (I don't know of any who claim such), this of course does not matter. I mention it just because there is also the option to buy XMR and invest it in Consols:

CONsol is a 18th century British invention to increase the liquidity of government bonds, and make borrowing cheaper as a result. The bookkeeping is simple, because the bond only pays interest, and is never paid back. This allows new issuance to be fungible with previous ones.

CK item CON is a Town obligation. Whereas the councillors may decide if and how much dividend CKG gets, with CON there is no liberty. As long as the Town exists, every week, each CON receives 0.1 XMR interest.

CKG and CON have important differences - CKG is a gauge of the future success of the game, its price being dependent on the expectations and reality how many players we get and how eager they are to deposit money to the game, as well as just play ("just playing" actually drains money from the game, albeit little per player); CON is a gauge of the likelihood of folding of the game, combined with the risk-free interest rate of a cryptocurrency. I will explain soon, but what follows in practice is that if you believe the game has a high probability of being a major success, then you should buy gold (in a diversified portfolio), if you instead believe that the probability of success is less than the market is pricing gold, but the probability of failure in the sense of the game going bust is reasonably low, then you should buy consols.

CON is a pure play on yield, and the price is the reverse of yield. At the current price, 10.0 mil, a CON pays 1.0% per week (compounded: 68% APR). The yield follows the formula: (risk-free yield on cryptocurrency + risk premium that CK goes down).

Since cryptocurrency (or anything) does not in fact have a risk-free yield, the first component is about zero. There exists plenty of cryptocurrency earning no interest, and no cryptocurrency anywhere is earning a risk-free positive interest (or even risky interest for that matter). Therefore the efficient CON pricing consists about entirely on the risk that CK goes down. Apart from yield, this can also be expressed as a break-even point (theoretically being the half-life of Crypto Kingdom, the 50% probability point that it is still alive I know this is not exactly correct but if you know in which way it isn't, you should be buying CON already). At present, 100 interest payments and as many weeks earn back your investment, at which point you still have left what you did in the beginning - perpetual right to receive 0.1 XMR per week.

CON started relatively recently, but the intention is to increase the stock to keep them liquid. Town hedges the CON payments with other incomes such as extra land taxes that have been perpetually levied to some chapelries at a fixed rate. Even now, the CON payments are only 200 XMR per week, cf. typical CKG dividends 2,000-9,000 XMR. It is inconceivable that CON would drag the Town to difficulties when there is 1 to 2 orders of magnitude buffer in dividends that are subordinate. CON emissions bring cash to the Town that nicely allows the game development, but their real purpose is to provide economic information. For the last 10 months, the Town has had a positive balance in the development fund (ingame stash of current money, free of encumbrances).

- CKG/USD is not bounded from the upside but CKG/XMR is. CON/XMR is really about the trust that CK exists, and if the trust goes to level of that of any company, a 5-10% APR yield is possible. This would correspond to CON price of 50-100, a 5-10x gain. The British government issued consols for 150 years, and the rate declined in that time from 4% to 2.5%. Then they defaulted them. I do my best to make CK Town more trustworthy than the earthly governments - if they could be trusted, I would not have started this.

- Note well: consols magnify XMR price appreciation, since there is no negative feedback loop as in CKG (in CKG, Coinshop has a sell ladder that absorbs all XMR before price reaches 100 times the current price, denominated in XMR). Because consol yield is denominated in XMR, any success in XMR most probably translates to a success of CK as well, decreasing the risk of failure, and increasing the CON price. So, in USD terms, CON and CKG both have practically unlimited upside, in XMR terms the upside of both is in the 10-100x range.

- If XMR fails, it is conceivable that CK would just change currency and steam on. After all, in technical terms, it already has M and UB1 items, which are both depository shares representing cryptocurrencies (XMR and BTC). The only and all-powerful difference is that one of them is designated "money" and the other is not. In the scenario of XMR going bust, CKG still exists and is traded according to its own merits, but CON will turn worthless.


Practical liquidity

Gold has been traded since ever, and its marketcap is much bigger (750 bil vs. 20 bil). In practice, the liquidity of both is enough for small investors, and insufficient for a large one.

Items HM02B100 and CON have a "perpetual and all-encompassing ladder market making" system in place by the King's Coinshop. This means that there is a range of price points from zero to practical infinity, and the Coinshop is always willing to both buy and sell any quantity up to the total issuance of the item (in buy side) or the total amount of money in the world (sell side). Naturally, such backing needs to have a very high price elasticity (and huge reserves - Coinshop owns 20% of the CKG and 20% of the CON in the game, all paid for).

The ladder uses exponential steps, meaning that a certain injection of money raises the price, and thus marketcap, of the item, always the same absolute amount. Therefore it is possible to calculate the wealth effect (how much marketcap rises as a result of new purchase):

- For CKG, it is 40:1. This is in practice meaningful only in extreme market conditions, because it is a known fact that every Ancient player owns gold, and quite many of them are willing to sell into strength, and add support as well. Apart from the initial spike in the first week, CKG has never declined to a lower level than -28% from the all time high (while rising by 10x in the same period of less than a year).

- For CON, it is 2.88:1. It is very difficult to value CK (CKG valuation dilemma), but it is much easier to estimate the probability of its failure since it is bounded between [0, 1]. Therefore it is possible to have a much stiffer market making and increase the liquidity of this much smaller market cap item. It is not that likely to have many other market participants, since the speculation in CON price without massive leverage equals watching paint dry in fun factor (and leverage is not offered yet).

At the current price, investing 1,000 XMR to CKG would result in the price rise of 5.3%. The same into CON would cause a 14.4% rise in price. This is not the same thing as slippage, however, because the Coinshop also adds the bids up to the new market price, so you can sell the items back by suffering only the spread, which is 4% in CKG and 3% in CON. Also other market participants provide liquidity.


DEP An honorary mention goes to The Hypothecary Bank in CryptoTown, who sell demand deposits at 1.00 mil and buy them back at 0.99 mil so that the principal stays constant, and pay interest in the meantime. This 1% guaranteed spread is the lowest in the market. Downsides:

- Bank is not the Town, it is just one institution in the game, solvent but unguaranteed.

- They may decide the interest, which has been 0.8% per week so far.

- The system allows Bank to place a bid only as large as they have cash at hand. Since it is obviously pointless to take deposits just to have them sitting in the vault, larger withdrawals than the quota in the Agora marketplace, need to be negotiated.

Aye, I understand and agree,
that due to the tightly-knit nature of CryptoKingdom and Monero itself, there is (and should be) inevitably an advantage for those who will be able to and willing to pay real hard Monero for the game. I'm just thinking that I would like to think, that there's still a theoretical possibility that even a free2play-player could advance to at least "midgame", and have lots of interesting things to do. But this would of course require considerable time and skill effort, which would be comparable I guess to spending Monero in the first place.

But like it was already pointed out, these two different player archetypes may have different aims altogether in the game, so it sounds good enough to me


As a side note - is this thread going to be more of a blog where you're laying out plans for the future, or are you also encouraging us to pitch in design ideas and such?

Got that, and my point is that it does not alter the "balance" of the game whether or not you can buy skills and character traits, because if not, you can buy something else that gives you an advantage. I just believe that being able to start with a boosted character is a welcome addition, and money is a natural way to pay for it. The character traits are not even very relevant for those who have money.

I think we all realize advantages must be given to those who pay otherwise nobody would pay and the game would be a commercial failure.

His point was probably just to request that you limit the maximum advantage that pay for play can obtain so that the free players can still enjoy the game and develop very strong players if they are willing to put in lots of time and sweat equity instead of XMR payments for gold.

Thanks for good points!


Our world is such that "pay to win" in the general sense cannot be avoided (resembles RL here). On the other hand, the ones who pay for getting an easier difficulty level, sponsor the game for everyone else and make possible that a person who deposited nothing, is able to get real money out, especially if he (the latter) played well. Character customization revenue goes to the game economy, raising wages for all

Some levels are clearly easier to get with money, but others require real-world skills or good gameplay. I am happy by the new Viscount "vice-promotion" which allows an Earl to show that this guy is worthy of running a county. When new counties become available, he can be promoted (after all what I desire is that the game is managed properly). Then Duke is just the best guy among the candidates available. And getting to the "management board" (Archduke) is of course based on personal merit.

Therefore the road to L19 Archduke goes through few steps if your gameplay is excellent, regardless of any deposit or not:

- Commoner
- Viscount (positional title, irrespective of your character level, and does not change it)
- Earl
- Duke
- Archduke L19

Getting to L9 Grand Wizard is also somewhat difficult, because if you have money, you tend to become promoted Baron earlier. So in this sense the promotion is available for non-depositors only.

As for your specific concern, I of course will make it such that you can have a lot of skills and attributes, but the cost is going up exponentially to make it still fun and balanced. You can upload unlimited money anyway to your character, and that is not a bug but a feature. If you want to be both tall, beautiful, smart and a few more, the price will be outlandish compared to what a commoner earns in his lifetime. So you will be buying bonuses in a game that you are not playing (commoner skills-labor game) since due to your riches you are destined to be a noble anyway sooner or later, and there your real abilities matter more than either your character traits, play style or wealth in advancing the Noble ranks.

From preliminary reading (since there's a lot had to skim over in haste and I have no experience of the game in addition to the preliminary Ultima testing), a lot of these seem like well designed points!

Out of curiosity - every great game will create something new, combine and refine good mechanics from the old in a novel way, and also borrow established but good practices from existing games - I'd be interested in hearing what inspires these development ideas. You've mentioned multiple times that now it's time to move to "Civilization"-phase; what other games or sources (board games, aspects in real life) inspire you?

If I may, I also have few games that might provoke your curiosity (you probably have played many of them already, just mentioning); for example,
- EVE Online as an example of a player-driven, sustaining universe where the players create the world and economics; skill build in real world time
- Multiple games by Paradox Studios, such as Europa Universalis IV or Crusader Kings II, where the politics and intrinsic systems of history (both real and fictional) are combined
- Civilization, obviously, although I've always found economics rather redundant in Sid's games. The problem in Sid's games I guess is that they (Firaxis) try to cater to a very large audience, so they have to be average on every respect and can't really specialize very well in just one specific field.
- Story-telling-wise I just recently bought a good oldie called the King of Dragon Pass, where a world with its own history is created in an immersive way



My only concern here is that if moneros are transformable to skill points (character attributes i.e. looks, strength, etc), I would like to see that the there's no overwhelming pay2win-aspect. For example, an able player with very little to no investment should at least in theory be able to reach, in the long run, if not the highest levels at least respectable levels within the social hierarchy. By the sweat of their brow they shall earn their title I'd say

Kind regards,
Syksy

Tentative and updating feature specification of the Intermediate Version
(to be fully playable by the end of the current Ultima project end 2015)

1. Character

1.1. PC

1.1.1. Attributes

1.1.1.1. Definition

Character attributes are properties which increase the player bonding to the character, and/or enable customization to create a character that gets a head start towards a certain play style. A points system will be used for customization to ensure variety and fair start for non-depositing players. The price of points will rise exponentially to allow rich players to get good start but make it expensive. (This is fair because they are anyway able to spend their money to give them advantages, so the price will just be balanced with the other opportunities.)

Attributes are largely unchangeable during the lifetime of the character.

1.1.1.2. General

Age
Can be 15-50. It is somewhat difficult to balance this because older characters have realistically earned their Masters, and are therefore capable to earn much money immediately, which is a call to character farmers who spawn free characters and earn 2 XMR per week with 10 minutes' work until they die in 3 weeks, and start over. This is not desired. Perhaps allow more than 30 years age only for depositors, or make higher age a kind of slow play where the character does not have much skills, but also starts with much better health than the age peers many of whom are dead already.

Sex
I don't know what to make of it. 95% of players are and will be men. Perhaps an unrealistic choice of completely disregarding the effects of gender on everything?

1.1.1.3. Traits

Height
As a measure of physical status and wellbeing, this also affects the quota of eating and drinking (while not affecting the size of the health challenge). Taller characters can eat and drink more, resulting in better alleviation for the same money, or savings of money for the same result.

Looks
On the outset, largely a vanity item, but tends to indirectly affect everything in life

Intelligence
Higher Intelligence gives a bonus in acquiring skills, particularly Scientific ones.

Dexterity
Bonus in trades that require hand skills, smaller one in mind skills.

Agility
Very good bonus in acquiring certain physical skills such as Horseback (riding) and related to outdoor life and military, thus contributing to health as well in an indirect way as healthy activities are more interesting with the bonuses.

Health
Affects the starting health directly.

1.1.1.4 Discussion

What we need to make is a system that is easy enough to use when a Visitor turns to Stranger (this would happen after 30 minutes of wandering around, chatting, receiving gifted MEAD and reading tutorial messages). It needs to be balanced both between choices, and how the traits affect the game. The number of traits needs to be correct, I believe 5-9 is the sweet spot. Another thing is what is the resolution of them. Possibilities include:
- A trait is a 1/0 bonus, which you have or don't. No "negative values".
- 3-tier system where you can pick good ones at the cost of bad ones (with perhaps 1 good for free), others being "average"
- 4-tier system with "bonuses only" (no trait, trait, most trait, very trait), but this does not parse well with some of them
- 4-tier system without centerpoint, making it impossible to be "average"
- 5-tier system aiming to get a realistic distribution of traits among characters, with good extreme being costly and bad extreme giving bad value for the points thus saved
- slider system, which requires the effect bonuses to be in a sliding scale as well (allows traits to change during the game, unintuitive for first-timers)

1.1.2. Skills

1.1.2.1. General

Acquiring Skills can be likened to advancing in the tech tree - rewarding as such, and each skill unlocks bonuses to all fields in the game. Skills once gained cannot be lost, but since they are personal, they cannot be sold either.

It is intended that Skills system is a key feature that interests players.

Skills are implemented as a variable of 0...N skill points, where certain thresholds unlock the "Skill level 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5". Once maximum is reached, the excess is allocated automatically to another skill which is related. It is intended that reaching the level 5 should not happen without lifetime determination, and it is also rewarded with a L7-L9 promotion.

When the system takes shape, a collaborative googlesheet will be opened for the exact specification of effects and bonuses. Assuming 40 skills, this means 200 rows of data to be balanced.

1.1.2.2. Personal Skills

Do not cause promotions.

Family
Spending time with family. Annual cost for the first 20 years from Family 3: Marriage, provides culture and happiness (reduced health challenge) all the time, relative to the time spent.

Social
Spending time in chat (no AP cost!), peer awards, etc. Reduced health challenge.

Conduct
Script awards for prudent and worthy play, admin awards. Bonus in culture, will be used as a qualifier for promotions and the like, plus is a prerequisite for certain advances.

Meditation
Consuming time, cigars, green herbs and mushrooms. Reduced health challenge, bonus in acquiring the highest level of skills.

1.1.2.3. Labor Skills

Beginner(L3)-Novice(L4)-Expert(L5)-Master(L6)-Wizard(L7).

Farmer
Experience. Bonus in Farm labor.

Stonemason
Experience. Bonus in Building labor, better levels unlock more advanced labor such as dome construction. (medium learning curve)

Quarrier
Experience. Bonus in Quarry labor. (quick learning curve, easy to earn money quickly)

Butler
Experience. Bonus in service labor. Butler "tree" extends as Emissary, therefore butler levels are gained quicker and do not cause promotions as per normal schedule. (medium learning curve)

Cook
Experience. Bonus in kitchen labor. (medium learning curve)

Chef
Experience. Bonus in kitchen labor and restaurant management, better levels unlock better tasting food. (slow learning curve makes the first levels earn less and latter levels more)

Tailor
Experience. Bonus in wool craft, better levels unlock more advanced labor such as gold/silver embedding. (slow learning curve makes the first levels earn less and latter levels more)

Carpenter
Experience. Bonus in making wood items and panels, better levels unlock more advanced labor such as most elaborate. (medium learning curve)

Goldsmith
Experience. Bonus in making CKG / CKS items, better levels unlock more advanced labor such as most elaborate. (slow learning curve makes the first levels earn less and latter levels more)

Blacksmith
Experience. Bonus in making/repairing metal items, better levels unlock more advanced labor such as most elaborate. (medium learning curve)

Driver
Experience. Bonus in Driver labor. (quick learning curve, easy to earn money quickly)

Scribe
Study, experience. Bonus in clerk labor.

Assistant
Experience. Bonus in clerk labor and management labor.

Gardening
Experience. Bonus in growing your own, in garden labor, in farm labor.

1.1.2.4. Scientific Skills

Basics(L3)-Bachelor(L5)-Master(L6)-Doctor(L8)-Wizard(L9).

Engineer
Study, experience. Bonus in engineering labor and in science output.

Mathematics
Study. Unlocks higher levels in other sciences and provides bonuses.

Architect
Study, experience (admin awarded for merit). Bonus in culture and science output.

Al/chemist
Practice. Bonus in science output.

Astronomer
Study. Bonus in science output.

Mystic
Practice. Gives random bonuses towards skills.

Geologist
Study, experience. Bonus in geologist labor and in science.

Archaeologist
Study, quests. Bonus in science and in quests.

Theology
Tbd with the Church.

Development
Study, experience (admin awarded for merit). Bonus in culture and science output.

1.1.2.5. Cultural Skills

Music
Practice, study, experience. Bonus in musical work, increases culture output.

Arts
Practice, study, experience. Bonus in all high level crafts.

1.1.2.6. Management Skills

Farm management
Experience and study. Bonus in Estate management and Farm management.

Foremanship
Experience and other advances. Bonus in foreman positions (lower-middle management of labor-intensive businesses)

Management
Study and experience. Bonus in management positions (high-middle management of corps and businesses)

Emissary
Experience and training. Bonus in several kinds of work where a senior spotless guy is needed, culture bonus.

Businessman
Script-generated based on business activity. Will be used eg. when distribution of some items is needed.

1.1.2.7. Military Skills

Military Science
Study in Dept of MilSci. Bonus in officer qualities.

Field Combat
Battle or jousting experience, training. Bonus in battle value and officer qualities.

Archery
Training. Bonus in battle value.

Swordsmanship
Training. Bonus in battle value.

Endurance
Several outdoor activities. Bonus in battle value and quests.

1.1.2.8. Victory Skills

Wisdom
Acquiring skills, consuming CAN/CIG/MUS/AYA. Victory skill.

Culture
Many items and buildings. Victory skill.

1.1.3. Levels

1.1.3.1. List of levels

Royal
20 King
19 Archduke

Dukes
18 Grand Duke
17 Duke

Landed nobles
16 Prince
15 Marquess
14 Earl

Lesser nobles
13 Baron
12 Baronet
11 Knight
10 Jungherr

Commoners
9 Grand Wizard
8 Doctor
7 Wizard
6 Master
5 Expert
4 Novice
3 Beginner
2 Stranger

Uncreated characters
1 Visitor

1.1.3.2. Explanations

With a rapid expansion of the game ahead of us, the levels system needs updating. The new system retains the hierarchy but in practice the categories overlap somewhat (as previously).

- Commoner levels will be promoted upon reaching certain level of mastery in a labor or artisan trade. If the trade is not in the system (eg. speculator), other criteria will be used as well.

- Previous Wizard level is split into 3, where
* Wizard is now reachable for characters in every trade in the end of their career, providing much bonuses for the most intricate work and therefore increasing income greatly at the time when health challenges also become more pressing, prolonging the lifespan
* Doctor requires academic concentration but is attainable by 30 if upkeep is not an issue
* Grand Wizard will be given to the most skilled commoners regardless of field.

- Jungherr and Knight are separated, now
* Jungherr is strictly every noble who is minor (14-20), upon age 21 they are promoted to the earned level
* Knight will be promoted from commoners based on special merit

- A new rank, Baronet, is added. Like its historical equivalent, it is strictly a purchased rank, so can be had by sweetening the King's coffers.

- Baron remains the main level to which industrious commoners in Master and higher are promoted.

- Earl, Marquess and Prince belong to the same category, by having counties but not duchies. Culture ("victory points") is the key criterion in promotion inside the category, though gameplay affects as well. To become an Earl, you need to show keen interest to the game and nurturing of other players, because that is needed as Earl. This can be shown the easiest by enlisting to an existing Earl to be a Viscount (practically managing the county for your master - many Earls are busy, and/or have several counties).

- Duke is an administrative position with work consisting of interaction with other humans (the Earls in your duchy). They have considerable income as a reward from this. A way to contemplate the scope of work is to think of what I have been doing the first year in the game. They will be promoted based on need, and leap-promotions will be seen unlike before. A Marquess or even an Earl may become Duke now if it seems the right thing. Grand Duke is the primus inter pares of the Dukes.

- The mess in the previous L14 level is cleared with the nomination of 1 or more Archdukes, who are designated Royal and concentrate on the strategic management of the game, and of the Royal House with its vast possessions, and participate in the succession of the throne as well.

1.1.4. Decorations

1.1.4.1. Definition

Decorations are signs of achievement, and can be added to your full title. They often include the token as well, which is separate from the decoration. The decoration may not be transferred and dies with the character (though some are hereditary and passed in practice with the player, and others can be recreated when the previous holder dies.

1.1.4.2. Badges

Badges are signs of achievements, and range from easy (which will be awarded to everyone in their first year) to very hard (of which only a few exist in the Kingdom). They are always accompanied with copper tokens with badge type, minting year and no other parameters, so will become an interesting thing to collect (both the decorations, and the tokens) because of cheap price and large selection.

Existing "set of 6" badges that are currently unique items, will be converted to the new format, and the COT copper tokens that physically look like badges, as well.

1.1.4.3. Medals

Medals differ physically from badges in that they are larger (copper: 50 g as opposed to 15 g), or made of precious metals, and are often minted to commemorate a certain event and can only be gained by participating in that event. Some medals include a decoration, others don't. MG-5 is a coveted medal that has the "MG-5" or "Medal of the Game, 5th class" decoration, but physically it is 50 grams of bronze. Some other medal might be 50 gram of gold but has no meaning in the decoration sense. "King's Hero Medal" is 50 gram of gold, and a decoration awarded to only 4 characters in the whole game.

Medals will be opened so that not only they can be minted by anyone against a fee, the "decoration part" giving authority will be given to Earls and certain institutions (Church, University), to be used wisely.

1.1.4.4. Titles

No changes. Titles do not usually include a token.

1.1.4.5. Honors

No changes.

1.1.4.6. Orders

No changes. These will be rejuvenated, with not much practical meaning but they add status to whom it is due.

1.2. NPC

It is possible that the current NPC will need a reorganization once again, so that they will supply the bulk of the labor to the market during the time the PC are insufficient. The "owners" will get the money.

1.3. Corp

No changes.

2. Land

2.1. General

2.2. Urban land

2.2.1. Subdivision

No changes.

2.3. Rural land

Rural land is held as a fief from the King, so the nominal owner is the (corporation) County of county_name, which is managed by the Earl (or his subordinate, Viscount). Possibly the country map will be left uncovered, not because it is technically hard to do it, but because changing it is difficult and we do not yet have enough information how best to make it. The Counties do not exist in definite physical locations, rather their parameters are general, including distance to CryptoTown and whether road exists. Economy will be simplified at this stage, but food production will largely move there, and building in the county center is possible.

3. Buildings

3.1. Structures

We will start to have important previously vaguely implemented concepts such as rural roads. They will be mapped.

3.2. Buildings with floor area

3.2.1. Preface

3.2.2. Datatype

3.2.3. Wood buildings

3.2.4. Modular Stone Buildings

3.2.5. Custom Stone Buildings


4. Game concepts

4.1. Labor

4.1.1. General

The economy takes Labor as an indispensable input in every quite many transformation process (eg. making vegetables from a field, or hunting deer, or keeping a large palace tidy). Labor is converted from time, and sold to the market where business owners buy it, or spent in your own businesses as is the case of small farms.

There are many types of labor, and when time is converted to a certain type, all bonuses are applied. Therefore, labor units are fungible despite the infinite number of different skill sets the characters have.

4.1.2. Types of Labor

We seek to have approximately the same number of labors as there are skills, but they don't map exactly. Several skills may boost the same type of labor effectiveness, and some skills are not labor skills. Further, certain skills when practiced to perfection, enable a higher detail skill as a bonus in higher levels. The possessor of this can choose to do the high detail work if it is available, but still has the lower skill as well as a backup.

The "Intermediate version" would focus much more than previously to the character development.

The clearest differences to "Final version" are:

- Lack of realism: large areas that will be there to produce grinding opportunities, are handled with click of a button, and both money and resource handling will have sweeping generalizations (while being much more detailed than in a typical similar game)

- Lack of localization: items exist in a county, meaning that all current items exist in the same space so a whole set of things to consider drops away

- Little animals, no energy.

What will be there that currently are not:

- Time/AP and Sustenance.

- Some Factories with their economic subgames. If we consider how the money is spent (20% food, 20% drink, 20% clothes, 20% house, 20% items), having the following subgames captures much of the value:

Farm (produces food and wool) 15%
Resta (sells food and drinks) 15%
Merchant (sells drinks, clothes, luxuries and items) 25%
Tailor (makes clothes) 10%
Quarry (makes stone) 5%
Builder (builds) 10%
Drink imports 10%
Item imports 10%

These allow skills to be built around them, which can be supplemented with more specialized skills (book printer) later. Also there are professions that are not catering to commoner sustenance, for instance administration, and export jobs (currently imports are not paid with m but the special IC).

I am opening this to general discussion, because I want to find the compact and expandable way to integrate skills to the game. So far the idea is that (for ease, although not optimal for every skill) every Labor, Scientific and Personal skill (might add Cultural, Military, ..) is divided to 5 levels which each are different skills and might have unique names, but will be referred by just "Carpentry II".

The skills are Beginner-Novice-Expert-Master-Wizard (aha!) and gaining a labor skill (which are slow to acquire as a byproduct of working) would cause a promotion. In the Scientific side, the same 5-classification would be Basics-Bachelor-Master-Doctor-Wizard. They are reasonably quick to acquire, because it can be done full time (if you can afford it of course). Here the speed to learn stuff is greatly affected by items, other stuff you know, etc. A "doctor" actually gets you a Doctor level, so it happens much earlier than gaining Wizard from carving stones. Most doctors end up in nobility.

I want to make the character more personal by adding stuff to the initial customization tool. To retain the clearcut ways, the character might for instance be:

Intelligence: Stupid - Slow - Average - Smart - Genius
Height: Very Short - Short - Average - Tall - Very Tall
Looks: Ugly - Unpleasant - Average - Pleasant - Beautiful/Handsome
Strength: Very Weak - Weak - Average - Strong - Very Strong
+ certain 1st level skills might be on offer as well, and choosing an older character gets more points to allocate, to make up for the skills that the others get to acquire by starting young.

A number of points need to be allocated and since it is such a tough game before the game even starts, more points can be bought by sending XMR to the QR-code displayed and if there is excess, it will become your starting balance. The character traits chosen affect the game, intelligence gives a bonus in Scientific subjects, and Strength lets you quarry more stone and get more money as a result.