Dynamic Housing and Structures

Land Claim System:

There will be multiple sizes of claims and each will have a base tax cost to maintain which will increase based on the structures added to it. We are currently planning to have 3 levels:



Villagers Land Claim - Small:

This will be large enough for a house, maybe two with room around it for add-ons and structures such as crafting stations, statues, lampposts, etc. There will be many areas you can place these because it will be small enough to avoid many issues such as proximity to mob spawns, cities, other claims, etc.



Lord's Land Claim - Medium:

This will be large enough for a few homes so a small group of players can make their own mini "village". Taxes will be higher than the small claims as these are designed to house a few people together. It will likely be economically challenging for an individual person to maintain upkeep depending on how much they add to the land. This will be more challenging to place because it will encompass a larger plot of land and could run more easily into exception areas.



King's Land Claim - Large:

This will be a very large space, large enough to house a lot of players, houses, etc. It will be expensive to operate such a large claim but it will provide larger groups of players the ability to create and own their own village. It will even allow opportunists the ability to create spaces they can "tax" users to use. It will be difficult to place these compared to the other claims due to the sheer size they will take up and they will be quite expensive to upkeep due to how many structures can be placed within them. This would create large village spaces all contained together and create a strong community area.

How to get a claim:

Claims will be purchasable from NPCs for gold and will each have a base gold upkeep - the bigger the claim the larger the up front cost and base gold upkeep. Claims will allow users to place persistent structures dynamically such as houses and new planned structures like crafting stations. There will be a management system added to this so that the person who places a claim will be the owner and administrator of it. They will have the ability to allow users access to build on the claim and the ability to remove problem players from a community or transfer ownership.



Placing a claim/structure: We are planning to add in a standard feature in many games of a "red/green" shadow image of the structure you are placing. Basically when you have this selected to place you look around and a shadowed version of the structure will show, red highlight if invalid location and green if valid. This will be crucial to get right and we've scouted this out far ahead of time, we have a plan to get this added in but it may not make it in the initial test phases as we start rolling the feature out. Structures will have certain distances and criteria for placement. Must be x distance from other structures, must be on a valid claim for the player placing, must not be within x distance from a mob spawn, city, dungeon, tree, rocks, etc, etc, etc. There may likely be a small deadzone needed between claims to prevent overlap.



Taxes on claims:

Taxes will always be paid by the owner of a claim and they can individually set taxes on users so they can choose how much tax tenants pay. The amount a landlord can charge a tenant maximum will be a percentage based on the actual tax costs for a house/structure. This means for your clan you may cut a deal and charge them less than or equal to the actual tax for their structures. For a friend you may charge barely more than the taxes and for a pure tenant you may charge 10-20% more. The choice would be the landlord who owns the claim. Maybe you will even help a newer player by paying their taxes for a while .



Claim Administrators:

Claim owners (Landlords) will have the ability to set anyone as an administrator of a claim. Administrators can handle all aspects that an owner can except adding other administrators, managing admins or owner properties and closing/trading the claim.



Law status:

Claims will follow the law status of the tile - if lawful your claim will be lawful and if lawless it will be lawless. We are not expecting to put an ability to make it private and make people rogue for entering but we will expand on this area more if truly needed to prevent griefing. If you build in a lawless area than you can fight anyone you want anyways, if you build on a lawful than anyone causing problems will go grey and you can attack them. We think it may not be necessary but we will look at griefing situations if they arise.



Disputes and repo/holding tab:

We do not want users to lose their houses in a dispute with another player if they get kicked off someone's land. For that reason we propose that when a person gets "evicted" from a claim their structures will all go dormant and no one can use them, not even the person who placed the structures (the evicted player). The evicted player will have a time (3-7 days we are considering) to go and pack up their structures, which can be sent directly to a "holding" tab, with a small "repo/delivery" fee to withdraw the items. If they have not gotten their structures after the time limit is up they will automatically be moved into the repo/delivery tab and players must pay to remove them. We feel this to be the best option to allow people agency over their land but to prevent griefing and "theft". This would not account for certain structures that would get replaced regularly such as crafting stations and various other new useful structures, more so it would be for keeping a player's house, add-ons and collectibles.



Claims and territory control:

Claims are also going to tie into Territory Control as the clan who has a Control Tower in a tile is going to have the ability to put a tax on a tile they own. This would be a percentage based on the current taxes a claim owner pays and would go to the owning clan. There will be options for users to "pack up" their claims/buildings and move so if an oppressive overlord comes in you would be able to go to another location. There will also be a method for clans to evict problem people from their land but we will make the cost scale based on the size of the claim, amount of structures and the length of time the claim has been there. The idea is we want people to be able to have semi-permanent land ownership while not allowing people to "grief" without options to address them from either side.



Tenant Taxes:

Taxes on tenants will not be an automatic function. The owner of the land will need to collect and organize taxes from the tenants if they are taxing them. Owners and administrators will be able to evict if someone is not paying. We may consider a function for this in the future but initially there will not be an automated system for it, only for the taxes land claim owners pay which will be similar to current house tax payments.



Dormant Claims:

If a claim is unpaid long enough it will go dormant. Dormant Claims have a short time (24-48 hours we are thinking) before all items get repo'd into the repo/holding tab. During this time any administrator can take over the claim by using an equal size land claim item on the current claim. They will become the new claim owner and the original owner will be reverted to a tenant.

Claims will be purchasable from NPCs for gold and will each have a base gold upkeep - the bigger the claim the larger the up front cost and base gold upkeep. Claims will allow users to place persistent structures dynamically such as houses and new planned structures like crafting stations. There will be a management system added to this so that the person who places a claim will be the owner and administrator of it. They will have the ability to allow users access to build on the claim and the ability to remove problem players from a community or transfer ownership.We are planning to add in a standard feature in many games of a "red/green" shadow image of the structure you are placing. Basically when you have this selected to place you look around and a shadowed version of the structure will show, red highlight if invalid location and green if valid. This will be crucial to get right and we've scouted this out far ahead of time, we have a plan to get this added in but it may not make it in the initial test phases as we start rolling the feature out. Structures will have certain distances and criteria for placement. Must be x distance from other structures, must be on a valid claim for the player placing, must not be within x distance from a mob spawn, city, dungeon, tree, rocks, etc, etc, etc. There may likely be a small deadzone needed between claims to prevent overlap.Taxes will always be paid by the owner of a claim and they can individually set taxes on users so they can choose how much tax tenants pay. The amount a landlord can charge a tenant maximum will be a percentage based on the actual tax costs for a house/structure. This means for your clan you may cut a deal and charge them less than or equal to the actual tax for their structures. For a friend you may charge barely more than the taxes and for a pure tenant you may charge 10-20% more. The choice would be the landlord who owns the claim. Maybe you will even help a newer player by paying their taxes for a whileClaim owners (Landlords) will have the ability to set anyone as an administrator of a claim. Administrators can handle all aspects that an owner can except adding other administrators, managing admins or owner properties and closing/trading the claim.Claims will follow the law status of the tile - if lawful your claim will be lawful and if lawless it will be lawless. We are not expecting to put an ability to make it private and make people rogue for entering but we will expand on this area more if truly needed to prevent griefing. If you build in a lawless area than you can fight anyone you want anyways, if you build on a lawful than anyone causing problems will go grey and you can attack them. We think it may not be necessary but we will look at griefing situations if they arise.We do not want users to lose their houses in a dispute with another player if they get kicked off someone's land. For that reason we propose that when a person gets "evicted" from a claim their structures will all go dormant and no one can use them, not even the person who placed the structures (the evicted player). The evicted player will have a time (3-7 days we are considering) to go and pack up their structures, which can be sent directly to a "holding" tab, with a small "repo/delivery" fee to withdraw the items. If they have not gotten their structures after the time limit is up they will automatically be moved into the repo/delivery tab and players must pay to remove them. We feel this to be the best option to allow people agency over their land but to prevent griefing and "theft". This would not account for certain structures that would get replaced regularly such as crafting stations and various other new useful structures, more so it would be for keeping a player's house, add-ons and collectibles.Claims are also going to tie into Territory Control as the clan who has a Control Tower in a tile is going to have the ability to put a tax on a tile they own. This would be a percentage based on the current taxes a claim owner pays and would go to the owning clan. There will be options for users to "pack up" their claims/buildings and move so if an oppressive overlord comes in you would be able to go to another location. There will also be a method for clans to evict problem people from their land but we will make the cost scale based on the size of the claim, amount of structures and the length of time the claim has been there. The idea is we want people to be able to have semi-permanent land ownership while not allowing people to "grief" without options to address them from either side.Taxes on tenants will not be an automatic function. The owner of the land will need to collect and organize taxes from the tenants if they are taxing them. Owners and administrators will be able to evict if someone is not paying. We may consider a function for this in the future but initially there will not be an automated system for it, only for the taxes land claim owners pay which will be similar to current house tax payments.If a claim is unpaid long enough it will go dormant. Dormant Claims have a short time (24-48 hours we are thinking) before all items get repo'd into the repo/holding tab. During this time any administrator can take over the claim by using an equal size land claim item on the current claim. They will become the new claim owner and the original owner will be reverted to a tenant.

Player City claims

Player City Holdings (not hamlets) will automatically come with a claim that encompasses the area around it. We're looking at a sphere based ownership around the holding. This will essentially be the same as a regular claim except the owning clan owns the claim and loses it to the winner of a siege. The other difference we are considering is holding claims will have either lower or no tax cost based on the houses/items on their land. We think that it will create a natural "urban sprawl" to holdings which will become player house hotspots and open up clans creating regions. This will be one of two upkeeps for clan holdings, the other being a new power structure that will produce the power required to operate new territory structures and some holding bonuses/structures.



Not paying player city claim taxes will result in many useful structures and benefits being disabled. We haven't decided how far we'll go exactly but towers, city buffs and potentially crafting stations are all on the table to get disabled.

Housing





Current villages system and how this will affect it: Players will have the option to pack up their houses into deeds/add-ons and move them into the new claims system. The legacy system will remain intact for now but not for long as the static village system will be removed during the implementation of TCS in favour of dynamic claims / player made villages. The current VCPs will be converted into a "Power Obelisk/Station" type structure and it will maintain it's current system of going "live" for players to fight over them with some tweaks planned.



Loot and fighting over Power Obelisks: The current VCPs will be changed to include them in the TCS as a source of income as well as a direct power production for clan's with holdings and TCS structures/upkeeps. Conquering a power obelisk will give you bonus power depending on the yield of it which will be changed to a 3 grade system. The current loot table will be rewritten as the current loot table was a stop-gap solution to keep VCPs valuable to contest, it is likely many of the current rare resources received plentifully now will not be so plentiful or possibly including in the new loot table. The new system will make them very attractive for both holding/territory owners and PvPers. Clan's with territory will get the biggest benefit via the power generation but the loot table will include chances at getting a new "coal" resource that will be used in a new Power Generator structure to power TCS structures and various current holding benefits/functions. The power generator and coal resource specifics will be outlined more in a TCS thread which we'll aim to get out in the next day or two.



Grading of Obelisks: Obelisks(Formerly VCPs) will be graded into low, medium and high yields. lawful areas will include low and medium yields, lawless will contain medium and high yields. The Obelisk system will now ensure that some low, some medium and a single high yield obelisk will go vulnerable simultaneously the same way several villages randomly go vulnerable together right now. Players will still be able to use the billboards to access the Obelisks however we're looking at adjusting costs to make it more attractive for newer/casual users to go to the lower obelisks and higher for the more top tier/power players to go to the high-yield Obelisk. Risk averse should go to low yield, medium risk to the medium and high yield to the top tier to prove themselves as "bangers" .

Not much will change initially with houses with the new dynamic system beyond being able to place your house anywhere on legitimate flat ground. We are going to be making it easier to own/keep a house and go on vacation by the use of administrators to help pay taxes as well as if you are not the owner of a claim you can pay up front to the owner to keep your land. Worst case scenario is you come back to your stuff in the repo/holding tab and have to pay to get it out. We don't want it to be TOO punishing for military personnel and others who have work/life events that take them out of commission for sometimes months of a year before they can return. We want to ensure that the game is casual friendly and not losing all your hard work because you didn't log in in a month is part of that design.Players will have the option to pack up their houses into deeds/add-ons and move them into the new claims system. The legacy system will remain intact for now but not for long as the static village system will be removed during the implementation of TCS in favour of dynamic claims / player made villages. The current VCPs will be converted into a "Power Obelisk/Station" type structure and it will maintain it's current system of going "live" for players to fight over them with some tweaks planned.The current VCPs will be changed to include them in the TCS as a source of income as well as a direct power production for clan's with holdings and TCS structures/upkeeps. Conquering a power obelisk will give you bonus power depending on the yield of it which will be changed to a 3 grade system. The current loot table will be rewritten as the current loot table was a stop-gap solution to keep VCPs valuable to contest, it is likely many of the current rare resources received plentifully now will not be so plentiful or possibly including in the new loot table. The new system will make them very attractive for both holding/territory owners and PvPers. Clan's with territory will get the biggest benefit via the power generation but the loot table will include chances at getting a new "coal" resource that will be used in a new Power Generator structure to power TCS structures and various current holding benefits/functions. The power generator and coal resource specifics will be outlined more in a TCS thread which we'll aim to get out in the next day or two.Obelisks(Formerly VCPs) will be graded into low, medium and high yields. lawful areas will include low and medium yields, lawless will contain medium and high yields. The Obelisk system will now ensure that some low, some medium and a single high yield obelisk will go vulnerable simultaneously the same way several villages randomly go vulnerable together right now. Players will still be able to use the billboards to access the Obelisks however we're looking at adjusting costs to make it more attractive for newer/casual users to go to the lower obelisks and higher for the more top tier/power players to go to the high-yield Obelisk. Risk averse should go to low yield, medium risk to the medium and high yield to the top tier to prove themselves as "bangers"

Billboard Changes:

This has been a great new feature to allow people to access strategic points of contention for a reasonably small gold cost. It has been well received with some criticisms that we want to address:

Firstly that it places users directly on the Objective and therefore makes you quite vulnerable to people camping it. We'll look to place users outside of the village in a wider radius to prevent this from happening. Unsure if we'll be able to get party members to be placed together but we'll investigate the feasibility and desirability for this to happen.

Second that it is only a blue benefit and there's no billboards in clan or chaos cities. We'll look to add the billboard as a buildable building in clan cities and a structure in chaos cities. We'll likely make it more expensive than the blue billboards in capital cities to maintain it as a blue advantage to cheaper teleports to action.



Future of Billboards:







This topic will blend a little with the TCS due to the claims but it's part of the initial steps in territory control as well as this claim system will be used for TCS buildings as well around cities and control towers. Please leave comments below but keep it on track and constructive, if you dislike something please try to explain why and let's have a discussion.



Phew, wall of text over, let the floodgates of feedback begin! Billboards were not designed to only be used as a teleportation system, in fact this was a temporary plan we will end up keeping likely instead of separating it to a different structure. This was simply an early usage but we plan to expand on this soon on a small feature that will be squeezed in during TCS/Dynamic housing implementation. This is the start of a Bounties system for mobs. This will be a dynamic system that will create bounties that players will receive directly to their wallet for completing and others they may get a "head" or piece of the mob they return to collect the bounty. This system will change automatically to a variety of monsters and bounties will have a range based on the mobs. We will also look at bounties on entire tiles that will give rewards per kill on any mob in the tile. This would lead to example a bounty of say 300g on a vilegaunt which would either go to your wallet each kill or players will get a "skin" or component from the mob will can be turned in at bounty hunters. The value of the bounty will be related to how much score you get as well on the board.This topic will blend a little with the TCS due to the claims but it's part of the initial steps in territory control as well as this claim system will be used for TCS buildings as well around cities and control towers. Please leave comments below but keep it on track and constructive, if you dislike something please try to explain why and let's have a discussion.Phew, wall of text over, let the floodgates of feedback begin!

A dream that has been shared by many fans of this franchise over the last 10+ years is. This is a dream we are going to make a reality, sooner rather than later. Below is an outline we would like to announce so users know what is coming up and so we can get feedback/input before getting deep into implementation. Final numbers and designs will be completed during implementation but the overall goals of the system and basic foundations are what we want to discuss at this time.Legend:TCS = Territory Control SystemVCP = Village Control Point