What is Evensfell? What will be in the game?

[Ciderhelm]

The following is a discussion of our plans for development in the Evensfell engine as of May 4th, 2010. This game is still in development and absolutely anything on here may be changed before testing.


The Estate
In Evensfell you lead a family as it attempts to survive and establish itself in the Twilight Isles. Every aspect of gameplay is given from the perspective of your role as the leader of your estate.

Your estate takes on the form of your choosing. Will you explore the world, make a pilgrimage to a new land, or establish yourself as part of a larger community of estates? Will you prepare for war, build trade networks, or create contracts for other estates? Will you adventure into ancient caverns or set sail for distant shores?

We want a game where players feel they are truly free to explore their own goals, and where players achieving goals they want to achieve has a real impact on the world.


Estates as they relate to Cities, Guilds, and Alliances
Players may advance their estate however they choose. However, it is most effective to advance an estate in an individual direction. For instance, a player who really enjoys the nautical game may advance their shipyards, docks and dry-docks, dredges, warehouses, and lumber yards. He would become far more effective in his nautical goals than if he had spent the same amount of time developing shops, butcheries, farms, and other unrelated structures.

This is where city building comes in. Individual estates can never effectively develop all of the necessary functions of a powerful city-state. Instead, many estates in the same location must come together to establish these cities. When a player has collected enough signatories they are granted governorship of the newly-formed city. Note that it is possible for multiple cities to exist in a single location.

Kingdoms are established through a similar structure, when the governors of multiple powerful cities in multiple locations pledge fealty to a king.

Guilds are a separate player-organization that is not tied to a location but still chooses a single player as the leader. Multiple estates in a single location can form a guild, or estates from around the world can create a formal guild. The primary benefits for guilds are easier communication and the ability to take group contracts. For example, a crafting guild may take on a large contract for ship parts; that guild would then be able to fulfill the order from any number of the members, provided everyone crafting could have their materials delivered to the location in time for the contract. A guild could take on a very different role, choosing to be a Fighter's guild with chapters around the world; if they were sufficiently well known in the player community, cities may choose to contract those guilds for their defense in times of war. Guilds may also choose to remain private, known only to the members of that guild, for purposes of spying or simply keeping private discussions between friends.

Player guilds and clans from other games may find Cities are a more suitable player structure than Guilds depending on their size and their goals. This is entirely up to the group in question. Cities, Kingdoms, and Guilds will all have membership and rank mechanisms that allow their leaders to decide exactly who they want to bring in and what privileges they will have; players are welcome to restrict their organization to friends or open them to the world.

Players are not restricted from being members or leaders of both a city and a guild.


Adventuring & Combat
Estates will be able to send their soldiers into the world, not just against other players but also against the monsters, beasts, and people of the world. Cities and kingdoms will need a certain number of active adventuring estates to identify new resources, establish safe trade and travel routes, and fend off attacks.

Our current implementation of this system is very similar to a classic RPG adventuring system. We intend for this to be a core component of the game but it is further away from heavy development than our city system, so I don't want to disclose too much.


Robust Trade & Shops System
We are going to be developing an advanced shop system that will be used for everything from player-created quests, work orders, and contracts, to auctions, travel and trade routes, and shops. Cities and guilds will be able to set rules on their shops for who they choose to sell to and their trade relationships with others.


Time-Based Systems
Evensfell is primarily being built around time-based systems through the use of regenerating Time Units as well as real-time actions. Here's the basics:

• Four Weeks = One Year, with each week corresponding to a different season during the year;
• Time Units will be used for many systems, allowing players to spend all accrued units at one time or use them more slowly over time. Time Units will have a cap and will regenerate over the course of a day;
• Real-Time will be used for some systems. For instance, some player-built structures may take several hours in real time to complete.

Generally speaking, we want players to be able to enjoy the game whether they can devote a lot of time at once or a smaller chunks of time throughout the day.


PVP
PVP comes in the form of city-vs-city and guild-vs-guild wars and will be a major part of our eventual nautical system. Cities and guilds of a certain development are automatically flagged for warfare, though smaller cities and guilds can choose to flag themselves as well. Once flagged, cities and guilds can never unflag.

There are no current plans for individual estate-vs-estate combat. This could very well be added during the development process; we just haven't gotten to this point.



Browser-Based Game - What This Means for Evensfell
Evensfell is a browser-based game built with a mix of Silverlight and AJAX-driven PHP. There are many examples of successful browser-based games on the market today, most notably titles such as Farmville, Mafia Wars and Fallen Sword.

Browser-based games take advantage of browser software such as Firefox and Internet Explorer as the primary delivery platform. Because of this, these games are often heavily data-driven, similar to old MUDs and paper games, rather than graphically-driven like standalone software titles such as as World of Warcraft.

What can you expect from Evensfell in terms of technology? We'll be using Microsoft Silverlight for our map interface, an engine similar to Flash that has recently been coming into it's own on the web, most notably with Netflix streaming services and the NBC Olympics coverage. A great example of Silverlight can be found on Hard Rock Cafe's site here.

The map interface will be our primary active interface. Instead of the mini-map you see in most games, our maps will be at the core of your gameplay experience. This system interacts with standard PHP pages to provide a rich, interactive experience.

[Magnuss]

I am not exactly sure how the PvP is supposed to work (and actually am extremely noob to browser based games as a whole). If you wish to attack another guild or estate but the member(s) you are attacking are not online (or haven't been for some time), how is this played out? Are your attacks only registered when they sign on or is it always going on and they have to do something to stop it before they are wiped out? Is there a total annihilation system for losing to an army, or is it simply more of a rebuilding process?

[Lilie]

The ambition and scope is truly commendable. Looking forward to participating in the development!

[Lore]

I am not exactly sure how the PvP is supposed to work (and actually am extremely noob to browser based games as a whole). If you wish to attack another guild or estate but the member(s) you are attacking are not online (or haven't been for some time), how is this played out? Are your attacks only registered when they sign on or is it always going on and they have to do something to stop it before they are wiped out? Is there a total annihilation system for losing to an army, or is it simply more of a rebuilding process?

Those are just a few of the many, many things we still need to figure out

[Ciderhelm]

I am not exactly sure how the PvP is supposed to work (and actually am extremely noob to browser based games as a whole). If you wish to attack another guild or estate but the member(s) you are attacking are not online (or haven't been for some time), how is this played out? Are your attacks only registered when they sign on or is it always going on and they have to do something to stop it before they are wiped out? Is there a total annihilation system for losing to an army, or is it simply more of a rebuilding process?

You're actually cutting into a core part of why we haven't developed an estate-vs-estate system at this point in time.

By leaving PVP as a major strategic battle between cities/kingdoms and guilds, and by giving the city/kingdom/guild leaders the ability to give management privileges to players of their choosing, we believe these organizations will find ways to respond in relatively real time to threats. For example, if a city must respond to an attack within one hour, we believe most governors will have figured out a combination of good members who can reliably check on city news within any hour during the day, and will have promoted these members to a position where they can manage military actions. The threshold at which a city automatically flags for PVP is going to be pretty large, so we don't think the formation of things like war councils will be unreasonable.

We have no intention of any total annhilation scenarios where individual players lose extreme amounts of resources and structures because their city has been attacked. That's not to say there won't be some major inconveniences for players who choose the wrong side -- major trade and travel disruptions are going to affect everyone. There will be other significant drawbacks for players who are members of the losing side of a battle. Being part of a powerful city or kingdom is a very beneficial thing.

Strong cities have other major incentives not to be defeated in battle. Cities that are strong enough and have lasted long enough also become player starting zones that are selectable for new accounts.

One recent idea we had was that players could also choose to be part of New Dominance, a major NPC city. This ties you to a core location that is a bit farther away from the frontier, but it will probably be a good location for crafters and tradesmen who aren't yet tied to a guild or kingdom (or can afford to ship their products and resources long distances). We may change this, of course.

Anyway, none of this is to suggest the exact combat system we're going to employ. The whole thing may very well be automated from start to finish. We just haven't nailed that down yet.


I mentioned nautical combat as well. This is a system that we haven't touched yet, only planned, and it will likely be developed as one of the first major additions to a live game. The concept of nautical combat is that estates can manage a single powerful vessel if they choose to. These are enormously expensive and can serve a variety of purposes -- war, transport, floating tradeposts and floating refineries. These investments are only for players who can are willing to risk it all, as a loss of one of these ships is a loss of all resources and time spent on them. In Evensfell there is no resurrection for characters or ships (which has a much smaller impact on adventuring since you can send new soldiers).

The assumption with nautical combat is that players who don't have their ships docked in safe harbor will actively be controlling them and will be able to respond to combat.

[awnm]

Hi all - sounds very interesting. Assuming this is intended to deliver the strategic depth you guys bring to Tankspot (e.g. the encounter guides, strategy videos, etc), then Evensfell will be fantastic. The potential is enormous - a seriously strategic browser game.

Regarding the mechanic - can you elaborate on the real-time vs offline modes. How much of the game will progress when you are offline? I like the idea of 'relatively' real-time mentioned by Ciderhelm - allowing time to react when possible. It sounds like things environmental things will change when offline (new estates being formed, or land ownership being staked) - do you know how you will manage that for people who only logon say an hour/day?

And do you envision combat to be turn based, or real time? I'm not really familiar with browser games either, so not sure if there is a 'norm'.

Thanks!

[Spiritus]

Do you plan on incorporating cultural, spiritual, or magical aspects to the game?

For example, can I establish a religion that provides benefits to estates that tithe? Can I build a theatre or music based guild that brings prestige to estates that host its members?

Finally, will there be any form of magic in the game? If so, will it be "high magic," like wizard guilds full of fire-slinging mages, or "low magic" like alchemy and the odd magic weapon here and there?

[darksend]

Are there ANY concepts from the podcast that are still planned or is it 100% useless? If the first, is it like 99% useless 75% useless, etc and which are those concepts (I know I liked when you were explaining about the crafting system and having to use special forges and needing to be escorted because if you choose to be a crafter you will not be able to defend yourself) Been a while since I listened to it so I cannot remember the exact idea.

p.s. if it is 100% useless please just delete this post so people do not get confused and go listen to it.

[Lore]

I actually don't remember much of anything from the podcast. I imagine some of the core ideas are still intact but I wouldn't take anything stated there as fact.

The world of Evensfell does not have magic in the traditional high fantasy sense. That's not to say that everything is swords and arrows, however. We have our own take on non-physical combat that I believe we'll be sharing more of in the near future.

Bear in mind that we're still very early in development at this point and as such, even the plans and systems we've already mapped out are highly subject to change. We're unlikely to part with any particulars at this stage of production until we actually start putting the systems in question in place. We'll happily discuss some of the concepts behind how we want the game to play, but the details about particular features are simply not in a place for us to share at the time.

[Ciderhelm]

Are there ANY concepts from the podcast that are still planned or is it 100% useless? If the first, is it like 99% useless 75% useless, etc and which are those concepts (I know I liked when you were explaining about the crafting system and having to use special forges and needing to be escorted because if you choose to be a crafter you will not be able to defend yourself) Been a while since I listened to it so I cannot remember the exact idea.

p.s. if it is 100% useless please just delete this post so people do not get confused and go listen to it.

Concepts from that podcast are still relevant but I wouldn't get your heart set on anything yet. That podcast covered RPG-style adventuring and we're just not sure how we're going to handle that yet.

The story has been significantly overhauled since then. The concept of the world has really not changed much in years, but the events and history of that world were really heavily fleshed out within the last year.

I can tell you with certainty that the idea of protecting your crafters and merchants is still on the table. There are great forges within the mountains and you aren't going to get to use those casually.

Do you plan on incorporating cultural, spiritual, or magical aspects to the game?

For example, can I establish a religion that provides benefits to estates that tithe? Can I build a theatre or music based guild that brings prestige to estates that host its members?

Finally, will there be any form of magic in the game? If so, will it be "high magic," like wizard guilds full of fire-slinging mages, or "low magic" like alchemy and the odd magic weapon here and there?

Some formal religion does exist within Evensfell, particularly with Ardent. There are plenty of dark religions, too, particularly in the period the game takes place. To compare it to any well-known fantasy universe I would liken it to the Conan series, but this is a very rough correlation since our three primary forms of magic are pretty unique to the genre. Also keep in mind that the population of the world is very small and very fractures, so there simply isn't a framework for extensive religion.

There is magic, but it is not high fantasy magic. Though I know I'm leaving you without much information here (I'll be publishing a detailed post on this soon), the primary magic in the world is as follows:

• Weather
• Mathematical Projection
• Entropy
• Insanity
• Curses & Plagues

This is simply a different environment than I think most people will be familiar with. It's not so far off from traditional fantasy, but there are differences. As a note, Weather and Entropy are by far the most important forms of magic in both the storyline and the gameplay.

Anyway, we do not currently have plans for a religion-based framework. We may at some point. It would be possible within the framework of what we've got planned to perform the functions of a religion but currently you would need to roleplay that your guild was a religious group.