The Major Kypiq Design Problem
Before Reading
Hi all. I would like to start by telling you that this is not a hate post, and the goal is to give a constructive review of the current state the Kypiqs are in since I plan on playing a Kypiq. From a gamer, engineer and ex video-game programmer perspective, I see several major problems with the current Kypiq design pattern that might not be visible at first sight. My goal today is to highlight those problems, the different components of the game they will affect and provide (partial) solutions that will keep the tribe's flavour. I do not want the Kypiqs to be overpowered nor I want them to be underpowered, I want them to be in a state where they are viable with or against other tribes. Finally, excuse my poor grammar or orthography as my main language is French.
My Vision of the Kypiq
Before providing solutions or highlighting flaws that the Kypiqs have, we first need to agree on the vision the community and SBS currently have of the Kypiq. I could be wrong, but this is how I see this tribe:
Extremely Defensive: I see the Kypiqs as being extremely strong in their homeland. Using the advantage of the Ironwood trees to navigate around and hide, Kypiqs ferociously defend their land from invaders to keep them away from their Ironwood secrets.
Poor Expansionist: Even though their homeland can be strongly guarded, they do not favour pitched battle and can be weak when it comes to defending open and remote lands. For these reasons and the fact that they are not initially aggressive people, they do not favour expansionism and will instead try to support their Neran neighbours when it comes to larger warfare.
Curious Explorers: The Kypiqs will always try to explore all corners of their homelands and neighbouring lands to feed their unending curiosity, whether it would be a Neran city or a Hrothi cavern. Finding new resources to create new inventions would probably be one of their main goal for exploring.
Wild Inventors: Extremely inventive, the Kypiqs will always try to make the best out of every resource. They would rather try a thousand time and reinvent an apparatus over reading about it and find a solution in their books.
Diplomacy First: Instead of going head first into unending wars, the Kypiqs will find a peaceful solution to their problems with other tribes. Knowing that it might cost them their longlasting homeland, they will stay at peace and keep their own part of the world secured, especially since they are not focused on expansion.
Nature's Friend: Following the Faedin religion, the Kypiq believe that there is a soul in each and every living being, whether it would be an animal or a plant. They live as one with nature and will always try and keep the cycle of life going forward, as most of their need is filled by the forest.
Problem 1: Woodcutting and Nature's bond
Description
Has highlighted in the latest point (Nature's friend), the Kypiqs believe that there is a soul in each and every living being. This means that even though players might be able to cut down trees when playing as a Kypiq, NPC will regard this has as evil. This point is probably the most impactful of all of the cons the Kypiqs have since they affect every aspect of their gameplay. I will highlight all the problems this creates but also several solutions (that does not include the eradication of all the trees).
Problem 1.1: Food Production
One of the small problem occasioned by the impossibility of cutting down wood and killing animals, is the extremely small food production the Kypiqs have access to. First of all, they can't hunt down animals, which makes their food supplies extremely low knowing that they live in a forest. Second of all, they can't have large fields since they are in the middle of the forest, which forces them to only live off picking small fruits. No major civilisations ever properly lived off for long period of times out of picking fruits.
Solution 1.1: Ironfruit and Metabolism
After centuries of living in the ironwood trees, the Kypiqs successfully developed an immune system capable of eating the initially poisonous Ironfruits, fruits given by the Ironwood trees usually found once they fell off the tree. Furthermore, the Kypiqs do not need to eat as often as other races due to their special metabolism, and eating off the fruits is usually enough.
Problem 1.2: Ineffective Construction
Roads have been the success and the downfall of empires for centuries. Once again, since we can’t cut down trees, roads and walls will need to navigate around the trees. Some will say that zip lines make the roads useless, but taking into account that ziplines might only be available to Kypiq and that it might be impossible to transport a large number of products on those zip lines, this is a very big deal. Furthermore, if we decide to build on the ground due to unknown reasons, building properly around the trees and such will become also extremely complex.
Solution 1.2: None
With all the pros given by the Ironwood trees, I believe that this is a problem that compensates well.
Problem 1.3: Poor Substitutes
Even though we might have substitutes for Kypiq constructions, we need to count on SBS to always find reliable substitutes for all new constructions and inventions. For example, let’s say that SBS decides to release several new inventions focused on invasions such as sieges artillery, then they also need to add alternative inventions which are built using substitutes to wood, which might be logically impossible, or at least extremely improbable. In a game such as CoE with a single server, roleplayers are mixed with hardcore PvPers. This means that when every advantage can make the difference between the victory or getting wiped, having inventions with absolutely no substitutes for wood might be the end of the Kypiqs when we factor in mass production from the NPCs.
Solution 1.3: Local Tree Ratio
By cutting old or dead trees, Kypiq can allow the circle of life in the forest to continue. Cutting sappling can still be seen as a terrible act, but there needs to be a way for Kypiqs to cut down mature to dead trees in order to allow them to still be viable in terms of warfare. Furthermore, if they invade an area where their substitutes are not found and where you can only build proper structures out of wood, they can’t thrive or even have a chance to hold their ground. How can you win a war if you can’t even hold enemy positions? Yes, you can count on Neran for those jobs, but it means that Kypiqs are extremely dependant on their relations with other tribes and are at the diplomatic mercy of their allies. A good way of balancing this would be to have major maluses locally if lands owned by Kypiqs doesn't have enough wood. Thus, even though there would be a large amount of woods, it would allow the players to user the trees but forces them to replant early if they don't want to suffer personnal maluses.
Problem 2: Architecture and the Building System
Problem 2.1: Complex system for the few
This problem is extremely straightforward. It's not necessarly a problem that can be easily solved, but a problem that the devs and players need to keep in mind. The Kypiqs have the only building system that includes 3D positioning. This means that SBS needs to build an entirely new building system for a single tribe and a small subset of the player base. So while they will be creating the game, they will need to build two systems that serve the same purposes, but one for seven different tribes and one for a single tribe. Furthermore, the Kypiq system might be even more complex due to its requirements. It will be extremely hard to build a system which is not extremely lacklustre and generic.
Solution 2.1: Lot of work and love
There’s no true solution other than a lot of work. I think the simplest way to tackle this tree construction system would probably be to have a slotted mechanics using premade blueprints for all giant ironwood. Having such a blueprint system while trying to give flexibility for design (such as rope with flags and lanterns) with the possibility to expand your home's tier by expanding it horizontally would be more than enough from my perspective.
Problem 2.2: Region Dependent System
If the Kypiq expands their territories for some reasons, their field of expertise forces them to build in trees and those trees will not be available outside of their forest. All other tribes that build their structure on the ground will be used to expanding and importing their architecture, whereas the Kypiq won't be able to. Even if they find substitutes to build their building in a foreign environment, they won't find trees to build in.
Problem 2.2: Vertical Construction
Even though this would extremely limit the flexibility of the tree construction system, allowing to instead places platforms on the trees and then build on those platforms would allow a 2D building systems (similar to the other races) but based on 3D slot-based platform system. This would mean that the actual buildings could be either placed on the ground or on platforms, which augments the flexibility and removed the tree-dependant building system.
Problem 3: Combat and viability
Problem 3.1: Open World PvP Unviable
The combat is pretty much where the Kypiqs are the weakest at the moment. Not only they don’t have the initial strength or stamina, but they are extremely limited on their reach. If you add above that the malus that SBS gave them the glass jaw problem, which reduces, even more, their viability in combat. In most open world PvP games, the encounters will generally be open world 1v1, and the Kypiq will get beaten most (if not all) the time if we have two opponents of similar skills. In this current state, the Kypiq are absolutely worthless in combat, and if other tribes can easily get access to the treehouses, there is no possible scenario where they can thrive for long.
Solution 3.1: Glass jaw removal, Stamina reduction removal & Fleeing bonuses
With all the current combat malus they already have (strength, stamina, reach), they don’t need glass-jaw on top of that. Also, I don’t see any reason why they would have reduced the stamina the Kypiqs have. With their training in trees and being used to jump around, I think they should have at least the normal. They already have a low amount of life, why reducing it even more. Moreover, giving them the ability to climb trees faster then any other race could furthermore help them escape unfavourable encounters and reinforce this homeland superiority.
Problem 3.2: Limited Equipment
Kypiqs are apparently quite limited in the range of equipment and mount they can use. So that doesn’t only mean that they can’t fight, but chances are they can’t flee properly and don’t even have access to all the weapons, which means they might miss on a few of the best weapons.
Solution 3.2: Added Specific Equipment
They have everything removed, but nothing added. Adding new weapons that only them can use can balance this lack of tools a bit. For example, small (for kypiq size) ironwood bow which would be extremely light, fire fast but with a low to medium damage could further reinforce their homeland defensive capabilities while ensuring that it is not overpowered.
Summary (TL:DR)
If it was too long for you to read and go through, I will enumerate all the points that I wish to see added and removed.
- Add Ironfruit as a source of food;
- Reduce food requirement to stay fed;
- Allow for trees to be cuts but implement a local tree ratio that would inflict maluses if too many trees would be cut in Kypiq owned areas (maybe city based);
- 2D vertical constructions on 3D slot-based platforms to allow placement of the kypiqs building on the ground;
- Remove the glass jaw malus;
- Remove the stamina reduction;
- Allow for faster tree climbing due to the fact that they live in trees;
- Add smaller specific weapons to compensate for the larger weapons they can’t use.
Even with these additions, I still feel that their inherent melee weakness will see people avoid the Kypiqs, and for good reasons. If we would be to take the tribes without any maluses or bonuses, their lack of range would still see them getting destroyed. This is why I feel the Kypiqs don’t need even more maluses and maybe need more bonuses when it comes to combat. Maybe adding some ranged weapons or long-range melee weapons mastery such as spears could help them be more viable when it comes to open world encounters.
Conclusion
To conclude, I don’t want the Kypiq to be overpowered, but I also don’t want to be wiped by an unskilled player because I can’t reach him if he has two meters over me. At the current moment, SBS doesn’t make them powerful enough for justifying them living on the continent for a long time without having been wiped already. I don’t want them to be gods, I want them to be powerful in their region, weak (but viable) outside of it and fun to play. I really hope SBS can make the Kypiqs relevant in one versus one combat and make their construction system interesting. If you agree or disagree, make sure to drop a comment and let me know how I can improve this and tell me why I’m right/wrong.
Take care!
Krieg
[EDIT 1] Redacted the small mount addition since it's already in the dev cycle apparently. Ridding Canis Rabbits sounds absolutely amazing.
