Terraforming restrictions

After being in the game a few weeks now i have come to notice one thing .... Terraforming needs to have some kind of restrictions set in place or the world will be ruined by someone bored or just wanting to ruin the game for everyone , Yes i understand that its really one of the only things to do right now but when more people get in the game and start doing it at once the face of the world will change for ever ....

With this said imagine some bored kid making a huge hole or wall every place you go (just random , not for any given reason) . To combat this i suggest looking into some kind of skill up that allows u to only terraform so much at low lvls , kinda like maybe only able to terraform X amount of land in X amount of time ( example at level 1-25 you can only terraform 2 feet high and up to 3 feet long in one day ...dont freak out this is just a example).

feel free to add on the ide or even tell me why its a bad idea :)


just think there needs to be some kind of limitations , or better way to put it " skill requirements "

Only Tribal zones of control will be terraformable once the game is released. And that area is based on the tribe size.

10 members = 100 meter diameter circle
Each additional member adds 5 meters to the diameter, or extends the border by 2.5 meters.

It would take a tribe of 190 members to have a 1 km wide zone of control.

I believe tribes will have a interest in their settlements and will not create monstrosities like we are seeing now. I think tribes will have permission tools to allow for regulation of who can terraform and terraforming will become a minor aspect of the game.

well that works even bette then my suggestion :)

thanks bro

you mean "thanks sis" :D

indeed i do good sir :P

mam j/k

Scrap piles shold not be terraformable because once changed they dissapear forever right?

http://www.xsyon.com/images/fbfiles/...erra_scrap.jpg

I'm curious as to what happens when 1 tribes zone runs into another tribes radius, do they overlap in a contested border where the stronger tribe owns the land, or do they share the land?

I think this topic has been aired a few times and maybe a sticky from the devs would be useful to explain how zoning and totems will work.

The Shinra have already designed and built (4 times now) our settlement based on a 20/30 member startup (150mtr diameter). What is still unclear is how terraforming outside that zone will work.

We are assumming that no one can terraform anywhere unless the land is 'claimed'... 'claimed' meaning a tribe of at least 10 members has placd a totem.

I hope we have it right :laugh:

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We are assumming that no one can terraform anywhere unless the land is 'claimed'... 'claimed' meaning a tribe of at least 10 members has placed a totem.

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Yes, you have it right. :)

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I'm curious as to what happens when 1 tribes zone runs into another tribes radius, do they overlap in a contested border where the stronger tribe owns the land, or do they share the land?

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There is a limit so that you can't place two tribe totems so close together.

Xsyon wrote:

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I'm curious as to what happens when 1 tribes zone runs into another tribes radius, do they overlap in a contested border where the stronger tribe owns the land, or do they share the land?

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There is a limit so that you can't place two tribe totems so close together.

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But what happens when a tribe gains members and their area grows ? In this way 2 tribe zones may overlap...

There is a maximum tribe radius. New totems can't be placed within this radius of an existing tribe.

If a tribe grows beyond the maximum radius, the tribe will be able to place expansion totems to create new colonies.

Haha... no one mentioned 'extension totems before... this is a new development.

what is the max?

Does an extension totem have to be placed with the zone range of an existing one?

This changes things

Well... extension totems have actually been planned for a long time, but I was going to keep them as a surprise as the Prelude develops. :)

They plan is that they have to be within a range of the main totem, but not within the main totem's actual town zone. The current range is 5 times the totem's town radius.

Something like this?

http://www.xsyon-shinra.co.uk/images/totems.gif

Draw a 500 m radius from the town totem's center and that's where the expansion totems can go. :)

I'm also considering allowing expansion totems to be placed within the same radius of another expansion totem.

Will totems be permanant? If a tribe wanted to move after building up and area, head for "greener pastures", can it ?

What happens if a tribe population gets below 10 ? Is it disbanded?

In that case we wont have to worry about losing scrap piles.

What happens when you recruit a terraformer to the tribe, and he turns out to be a trolling alt, paving roads over all the grass and scrap piles in your territory, effectively deleting the resources in a 500m radius.

Sounds like a cool option for enemy tribes; Scorched Earth tactics (thanks CoH :]).

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What happens when you recruit a terraformer to the tribe, and he turns out to be a trolling alt, paving roads over all the grass and scrap piles in your territory, effectively deleting the resources in a 500m radius.

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My understanding is that terraforming will be limited to designated people by the tribe leader.... once he sees a would be 'earh scorcher' he removes his rights and has him executed

Bossman wrote:

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What happens when you recruit a terraformer to the tribe, and he turns out to be a trolling alt, paving roads over all the grass and scrap piles in your territory, effectively deleting the resources in a 500m radius.

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My understanding is that terraforming will be limited to designated people by the tribe leader.... once he sees a would be 'earh scorcher' he removes his rights and has him executed

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This has only be a request by the players, but no actual word from jooky, unless i missed something

GDWhite wrote:

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What happens when you recruit a terraformer to the tribe, and he turns out to be a trolling alt, paving roads over all the grass and scrap piles in your territory, effectively deleting the resources in a 500m radius.

Sounds like a cool option for enemy tribes; Scorched Earth tactics (thanks CoH :]).

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We will have only 1 character per account, so if someone wants to have an alt he has to pay another subscription...so I hope we won't meet with trolling alts, or at least very few of them.

Bam, problem semi-solved.

I still want to go pillage another tribe's resources.

FIRESTARTING YESSSSSSSS

GDWhite wrote:

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What happens when you recruit a terraformer to the tribe, and he turns out to be a trolling alt, paving roads over all the grass and scrap piles in your territory, effectively deleting the resources in a 500m radius.

Sounds like a cool option for enemy tribes; Scorched Earth tactics (thanks CoH :]).

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There will be several protections in game with tribe permission controls on terraforming.

There is also the fact once the game goes live, you will have only one character per account. The three character thing is only for the beta testing phase.

:silly: Peer Gynt, we need you here! :silly:

Hi there after spending some time in game and getting to know the features connected with terraforming i got some conclusions:

If you make the terraforming a hard skill to train and a make the terraforming action last long enough there will be no need to limit terraforming to tribe area only , and you will get a lot more freedom the sandbox game needs to spread its wings .

I have played Wurm for like 2 years now , most of the time on non-pvp server , but i have playd on Wild , the pvp server too , and the game has no griefing and destroying the world at all. Why you ask ? because terraforming on low skill is hard as hell and takes long time to do and to train it .So nobody even care to grief the world , destroy some pavements , roads and stuff.I even saw some people on this forums being afraid that players will dig out whole dirt and make a waterworld from it.Such a thing is not going to happend if :

-You gain skill pretty slow in terraforming , and you gain it even slower when you advance in it

-the amount of digged dirt and the time you need to dig it out depends on your tools and your skill( highter skill less time for one dig action and more ground digged out , better equipment = faster you dig but less likley you will get a new skill gain )

- changing the way ground is terraformed: Its impossible to make a 6 meters wall of dirt with a very hight slope using only dirt in real life right?the dirt will always drop down from the top of the wall destroying ita bit and making it more flat , if you want to make a wall of dirt very tall you will need to mix it with rock or other materials and than pave the slopes to strenghten it so the composition wont drop after some time from corrosion

The next thing about terraforming is that the texture of the tile that is on hight slope is very strained , and it looks unnatural , especially with grass and dirt , the size of the texture on that tile should be the same as on a normal tile but repeated as much as is needed to fill the gap made by such a large slope

Brief summary of the main concept:
People wont grief the terrian , because they re too lazy to do it if it requires a lot of work and see it meaningless - thats how things are in wurm - the map isnt the biggest one but everybody terraforms only the things that re needed by them , like a place for a village , some roads , some farms and thats practiaclly it

so :Theres is no need to restrain terraforming to tribes only
but : dont allow people from other tribes or people with no tribe to terraform on tribe territory

benefits : a true -type sandbox game will emerge , where players have complete freedom over the world ( and again blocking waterfall terraforming must be done properly or making waterfalls fixed )even when they re not in a tribe or want to play solo

thats all for all thanks for reading my thoughts :)

good points, i agree that things should take a lot more time when prelude starts. Progressing from year zero should not be easy. I also agree that the whole griefing thing will not be as bad as people think.

This is all tweaking/polishing really, the core terraforming feature is complete and polished right now, as well as terrain rendering. I will use terraforming for it's logistical uses mostly, road systems, supply ditches, artwork, decoration, etc.

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If you make the terraforming a hard skill to train

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The problem with this is that Jooky does not want a game where you have to grind for days on end to get even 1 skill point. However, I do understand what you mean. However, There might not be a happy medium either that would limit abilities to the point where total defacing of the world would not be possible.

As you said with Wurm, it takes a long time to do it. However, Wurm is not your standard MMO. Wurm is mainly about building and developing the world and people understand that skills take forever to increase. In Xsyon This is not the case, people don't want to have to grind to go fight bears etc.

EDIT: I agree that currently skills raise very quickly, this might be for testing/pre-release fun purposes and will be reduced later (just a guess)

On that note, my short experience with wurm has let me run into some griefing on the free server. I have had people tear up pavement and start putting dirt down everywhere, and start tearing up slopes meant for roads. I have even had some team cut down all the trees and sand over the grass.

Diocletian wrote:

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On that note, my short experience with wurm has let me run into some griefing on the free server. I have had people tear up pavement and start putting dirt down everywhere, and start tearing up slopes meant for roads. I have even had some team cut down all the trees and sand over the grass.

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Golden valley , the free server , is not Wurm , its a different world with different laws , its like a limited demo of what wurm has to offer , and griefing is something normal there as you have free accounts all over the place , everyone can make alts without paying for them , so even if they ban someone for griefing - thats pointless because he can make another char and grief again .At normal server with over 2 years of playing i was griefed only once , and only because some of villagers from my settlement took stuff from a decayed building( which we had a 100% right to do ) , whos owner showed up after that and was pretty angry :D , but either way we fixed the grief ourselves in a matter of hours


anyway not straying from the topic from what Virtus said i like what Jooky tinks about this matter of terraforming really , if the game is designed to not bombard us with the need to pointless grind for skill thats fine with me . Sad grinding isnt my favourite thing to do