Player Run Companies: What do we want to see?

[Amineri]

Player generated 'dungeons'

The Lore:
The leaders of the city-states recognize that adventurers work best in small-unit actions, accomplishing specific goals. Rather than drilling them with the army, the leaders grant permission to private companies to establish training grounds (i.e. dungeons) with which to train their fellow adventurers.

The Mechanics:

• A private company can purchases a license to operate a private training ground 'dungeon'. This license has a weekly / monthly fee. This fee scales with the size of the dungeon.
• The privately-owned dungeon is a separate instance.
• This instance consists of both above-ground 'forest' areas and below-ground 'rock' areas. The default instance layout can be modified by botanists and miners (I tried to think of a way for fishers to be included, but couldn't )
• Both decorative and functional crafted items can be added to the instance. Decorative in order to add ambience, etc. Functional items such as traps, levers, teleport plates, etc
• In order to add monsters, said monster must first be captured in the wild (think of the opening scene in the Ul'dah city story quest with the goobue). This would presumably be some new class, and would, for more powerful monsters, require a party. Said captured monsters would be tradeable on the open market.
• Monsters in private company dungeons give SP, but do not drop loot (in order to limit exploiting)
• A player can only run through a particular private company dungeon once per day (again, in order to limit exploiting, and to encourage competition)
• Companies can set an admission fee to enter their dungeon. This allows recompense for the effort spent creating it, and encourages companies to create popular, compelling dungeons instead of simple walkthroughs.
• Companies can set a pool of item rewards for completion of a dungeon. Each item reward has an associated fee for entering the dungeon. Each player in a party registering to enter the dungeon chooses their possible item reward separately (and so pays their fee separately).

My thoughts on the incentives to the involved parties (e.g. why some items are up there)
One goal was to include all of the classes:

• Combat classes have dungeon content, as well as monster hunting
• Crafters create and place items within the dungeons
• Gatherers modify the dungeons, as well as the usual gathering of materials for the crafters

Another goal is to give incentives to the companies to provide interesting and challenging content (as opposed to simple walk-throughs to be exploited for easy ranking up), while not making it impossibly difficult.

• By limiting each player to going through a particular dungeon once per day, the exploits of easy walk-throughs are limited (though not eliminated)
• By limiting each player to go through three dungeons per day, it creates competition amongst companies to provide the most interesting dungeon
• By allowing companies to offer a reward for completion (the reward is contingent upon completion), the company is given incentive to make it a significant challenge
• The competition amongst companies limits the dangling of items for 'impossible' content
• The entrance fee for companies provides incentive for companies to attract as many players as possible
• The recurring weekly / monthly fee eliminates 'dead' dungeons and provides further incentive for the companies to make the dungeon 'pay for itself'

Finally, the players must be given incentives to actually run through the dungeons

• Allowing the gain of SP through dungeons is one incentive
• Allowing selectable item rewards for completing the dungeon is another incentive (this kind of works like a really long, drawn out market ward, in a sense, but with the gamble that you won't receive the item if you don't complete the dungeon)
• Limiting the dungeons a player can run through per day induces the player to select only those dungeons with the 'best' content (in their eyes), thus motivating the companies to vie for the limited player interests.

[Krausus]

Hmm, I stand by my statement that instanced isn't as bad as people make it out to be. I just can't see it being i the free world. How many areas in the world are completely free of monsters on a wide enough scale to place a whole mini city there, and how many would there be per zone? So, say you get your company up and running after the 9 or so city slots are filled. What then? Do you demolish other cities? Or are you just permanently locked out of receiving one?

If you're worried about there being loads of them, then just put Restrictions on forming companies. Something like:

*In Order to form a company, you must have at least 100 members to join it.

*When a player joins a company, they may only join one, and it is account wide. Alts will not count.

*If a company is formed and falls beneath 80 players, the company is suspended, and their city locked off until they can bolster their numbers. (This would prevent having loads of people join for gil, making a company, then just quitting the company.)

While such things might not end up being an issue directly to me, I'm sure it would become an issue for the server in a very short amount of time after release. I just can't see cities being so harshly limited in terms of space and quantity working on a practical level. Perhaps if you were able to set your City as public or private, it might work out. But even if you place them on the map, people won't go out of their way to flock far and wide to the cities to check on them all the time.

Well I think if you instanced the housing area from the city area space shouldnt be an issue. Could be set up as you walk into the player city on one side you have a market area, NPC that sell the normal goods as well as a market ward section for retainers (just like the ones in the city hubs) on the other side you have crafting facilities, these can just be stalls where you could obtain guild buffs, and buy the normal crafter items you can in the main cities. Past these two areas you could have a Keep or Hall, somewhere where folks can meet up, these can be set up like adventure guilds (company based leve counter, a pub area, retainer NPC, and tables for folks to sit at, hell they could even have gambling games at the tables).

Behind the market area could be chocobo stables, behind crafter area could be airship docks, behind the keep/hall could be a zone in for player housing.

I personally would like housing to be different then mog housing, once you zone in you have paths with houses on each side that way you can decorate your house inside and out so that others could admire them.

With as big as the zones are, and we are currently talking about 5 zones I think you could limit it to 10 - 15 player made city hubs per zone, thats 50 to 75 player made cities per server. With some restrictions like you have mentioned I think that is plenty per server.

restricting housing into instancing would essentially make player cities smaller then most hamlet cities on the map.