Moved from a wartime thread where it didn't belong:
Epidemic wrote:
Those of us who are true war gamers consider Illyriad as retirement and want to explore the social, lore and mystery part of the game. |
So here's the thing. Illyriad is fundamentally a PvP sandbox. It's an empire game that is part city builder, part trade, and half military. It's got some bolt-on modules for hunting, gathering and crafting as well, but those are minor. The main gist is building troops--all your main city buildings either produce units, reduce the cost of units, or produce items to build units. You can use sovereignty to boost the speed of producing units, or boost the speed of producing items required for building units. There is some nuance in the variety of military and diplomatic units and their interplay with defenses and terrain, but basically this game is about units.
Tournaments provide a temporary release for the pressure that builds in many alliances. End game players have tons of units, and basically nothing challenging to do with those units. It isn't a PvE system. Blasting NPCs is super simple and unrewarding after the first few tries. So players dump their units into tournaments, but let's be honest, the single-square King of the Mountain format is pretty boring. The only real dimension of skill is in tuning your cities for extra unit production--apart from that tournaments are just a bulk battle without any subtlety or strategy.
The warfare aspect of Illyriad is, however, fairly developed. It is simple to learn but provides lots of room for strategy. I believe that all the units laying around are basically dry tinder. The tournaments are an attempt at a controlled burn, but they don't always work. Sooner or later, the huge stockpiles of items and units will intersect with a clash of personalities (including ego, revenge, boredom, gaming approach, or whatever), sparks are thrown onto the dry tinder, and wars will erupt. I think it's the natural cycle in a sandbox game where ultimately there is really nothing else meaningful to do but construct units for battle.
Maybe factions will change that by providing robust PvE for individuals and alliances. Maybe not. Some people will probably still crave the challenge and excitement of PvP. Broken Lands will have the Care Bear Forest for non-PvP players, but ultimately, I don't think you can turn a game of empires into a 100% PvE system. If nothing else, that would require constant releases of fresh story content, which implies a significant ongoing development budget. Slow as Illyriad might be, I find it curious that many influential players hold a fervent belief that everyone else on the server is going to adopt PvE and tournament PvP as the only methods of entertainment in an otherwise fairly militarized game.
Added:I should be clear, I'm not taking a pro-war or anti-war stance. I'm just saying that I think it's inevitable given the sandbox setup. I don't believe there's a permanent equilibrium point where everyone just lives in peace. The variety of quests is highly limited, and there is no player authoring in the sandbox, so once tournaments fail to satisfy the interest of endgame players, conflict (in its various forms) is pretty much all they've got left for entertainment.