Except COE won’t involve spawning. It will involve a persistent world with persistent and individual NPCs. PCs persist as OPC when offline.

We can have high security zones, is we build them (a cost) and staff them (a continuing cost). Historically many great fortresses fell because they could not be adequately manned. That should happen here, too. Secure places will have to be built and defended efficiently. Secure places will also have relatively high taxation — but the economic security and concentration should still make them preferable to unsecure places for crafting and economic activities.

Finally, given the game dynamics described so far, an efficiently defended space should be able to hold out long enough for a king to send a relief force (just as happened historically), and that is a new dynamic that should work. (It is also a good reason to work with, rather than against, the king and nobles, unless they are tyrannical.). Even hordes should rampage through less defended areas and against more disorganized kingdoms.

The bigger the kingdom, the more maintenance and greedy folks within. I hope that the more you grow, the harder it gets as this will prevent a steamroll.

I’m confident there will be enough greedy players who will always want more than what they have. Causing internal strife and friction. You see it now with conflicts of interest arising between duchys, counts, double duchies and triple counts who plan to CB a neighbouring NPC. Only to find others have the same interest. What they have isn’t enough. A common theme throughout history.

Vornair and Demalion will be the first to see a civil war.

Posted By KipFoE at

Our guild started playing Atlas when it released about a month and a half ago. Atlas is an open world survival type game with only a few regional servers (similar to CoE). Each server is supposed to support 40,000 players.

We have been having fun and doing well in our little wars. We built up a solid base with a lot of defenses on our island. We had a few ally guilds on some of the nearby island. Then last night a mega alliance came at us with a bend the knee or get wiped message. We agreed to discuss it among our members and let them know today. I went to bed in a large base and woke up to a Discord message that we had nothing left on our island. It's one thing to die in a pvp fight, it's another to loose everything to a group that has around the clock coverage and vastly greater numbers.

I know that in survival games you have to expect that you may get taken out. Even with that knowledge, we are still going to loose most of our active players after this. The mega alliance already controls over half the map and will likely own it all before long. They are essentially killing the game as such a large maps needs a lot of players or it will start feeling like a figurative ghost town.

How would a mega alliance fit into CoE? They have enough people (they claim 1500 active in Atlas) that their siege weapons can continue to move non stop and logistics wont be a problem. CoE has a ten year story planned, but if a mega comes and runs off half the player base...

CoE is already setup for a system of paying taxes up the chain, so there will be a different expectation, but a lot of players arent going to be thrilled at the idea of bending the knee to an opposing force and would rather quit than support the conquering group through taxes.

If player retention is a main priority; how does this play out in CoE?

Simple, a group like that may be good at conquering, but conquerors often make terrible rulers in peacetime.
Even if they manage to conquer the whole continent, they won’t keep it stable for very long. And if they can somehow do both, they deserve it, not very many people can pull that off. Hell, if they can pull that off they might be the best candidate for president of the world.

Posted By odd fella at 03:21 AM - Tue Feb 12 2019

The bigger the kingdom, the more maintenance and greedy folks within. I hope that the more you grow, the harder it gets as this will prevent a steamroll.

I’m confident there will be enough greedy players who will always want more than what they have. Causing internal strife and friction. You see it now with conflicts of interest arising between duchys, counts, double duchies and triple counts who plan to CB a neighbouring NPC. Only to find others have the same interest. What they have isn’t enough. A common theme throughout history.

Vornair and Demalion will be the first to see a civil war.

If players have the same human nature as people do in RL, I am also confident that powerful kingdoms will fall because of their own internal conflicts.

Posted By zimmah at 6:43 PM - Tue Feb 12 2019

Simple, a group like that may be good at conquering, but conquerors often make terrible rulers in peacetime.
Even if they manage to conquer the whole continent, they won’t keep it stable for very long. And if they can somehow do both, they deserve it, not very many people can pull that off. Hell, if they can pull that off they might be the best candidate for president of the world.

Yes, except that this isn't about player groups who would play the game for years. These are like the locusts, think about the mongols for example, just destroying and moving on to the next shiny game.

And it isn't even they we should care at all, but the players made to quit by these. Or more exactly measures in place to not get discouraged by these "events", ways to keep them enthusiastic even after "losing everything". That's the unknown for now.

NPCs are finite resources. Its more about contracts

Posted By odd fella at 2/12/2019 11:21:19 AM

The bigger the kingdom, the more maintenance and greedy folks within. I hope that the more you grow, the harder it gets as this will prevent a steamroll.

I’m confident there will be enough greedy players who will always want more than what they have. Causing internal strife and friction. You see it now with conflicts of interest arising between duchys, counts, double duchies and triple counts who plan to CB a neighbouring NPC. Only to find others have the same interest. What they have isn’t enough. A common theme throughout history.

Vornair and Demalion will be the first to see a civil war.

Having kept tabs on multiple NA-E kingdoms, Vornair isn't especially unstable. There are at least 2 that are worse off, though I would rather not turn this into a kingdom-bashing thread.

Will be interesting to see how management will turn out in double kingdoms, however. On one hand they're a jucier target for the ambitious and short-sighted (who tend to destroy everything they seek to gain), on the other they don't have to rely on imports from other kingdoms as much, so it could be smooth sailing if ambition is kept in check.

I do not think this will be easy to happen in COE. First of all in Atlas there is no pre established order. In COE there is. Every player will be in a kingdom, when the game starts. And the king of this realm will protect you. If he or she neglects this duty, he or she will be replaced. The game has systems for that to happen. So there will always be someone active in charge with the power to at least defend or compensate you. Of course nothing is said about everything that is going to be outside of these kingdoms, in the wilderness or offshore. But that will be your risk to take and your rewards to claim. Please don't tell us you would stop playing because someone raided your base in the middle of nowhere after you made the informed and conscious decision to go there.

Posted By Thecutepig at 11:46 PM - Sat Feb 16 2019

NPCs are finite resources. Its more about contracts

NPCs are no more finite than anything else. Like trees, crops and players. Clearly not as finite as iron or stone, as NPCs can reproduce themselves.

Ah, Atlas, the garbage Ark re-skin.

Posted By Eonian at 10:02 AM - Fri Feb 15 2019

Posted By zimmah at 6:43 PM - Tue Feb 12 2019

Simple, a group like that may be good at conquering, but conquerors often make terrible rulers in peacetime.
Even if they manage to conquer the whole continent, they won’t keep it stable for very long. And if they can somehow do both, they deserve it, not very many people can pull that off. Hell, if they can pull that off they might be the best candidate for president of the world.

Yes, except that this isn't about player groups who would play the game for years. These are like the locusts, think about the mongols for example, just destroying and moving on to the next shiny game.

And it isn't even they we should care at all, but the players made to quit by these. Or more exactly measures in place to not get discouraged by these "events", ways to keep them enthusiastic even after "losing everything". That's the unknown for now.

I haven’t had a chance to read through all responses. This one though seems to catch my main point: player retention. My post was intended to address the players who got steam rolled and not the group driving the truck.

Posted By Gromschlog at 4:47 PM - Sun Feb 17 2019

Posted By Thecutepig at 11:46 PM - Sat Feb 16 2019

NPCs are finite resources. Its more about contracts

NPCs are no more finite than anything else. Like trees, crops and players. Clearly not as finite as iron or stone, as NPCs can reproduce themselves.

Trees and plants can reproduce. Iron can be recycled. They are all finate resources