lorrelion

Any sort of political system needs to incorporate players while still being under the control of the devs. This is to facilitate massive wars actually happening. Massive wars have two big advantages: (1) they are fun for the players when done right, (2) they help to control the in game inflation (see: ) If a faction ability to declare war on is completely up to the players there's no guarantee that wars will be declared. No wars or few wars may still be fun for the players but the in game currency may suffer from run away inflation. Eve online is an excellent example of how devs could still encourage factions to go to war without being directly involved. If a factions ability to declare war is completely dependent to the devs there is a guarantee that wars will happen; however, players may be unmotivated to fight said wars. A trading company or guilds regular activities could be disrupted by the war which could make the guild unmotivated to get involved in the war. Perhaps it's not a bad idea to do a combination of the two. Leave faction decisions up to the devs but have them consult major guilds. This way players feel like they have impute and the devs can guarantee there will be wars. The idea of the crown consulting (though not always listening to merchants seems pretty reasonable) Even with some agency, some guilds may decide they don't want to participate in the war. There are two things the devs can do about this: (1) reward the players that fight, and/or (2) tax the guilds that don't fight. Doing both is probable for the best. Taxing the guilds help deal with inflation. You could even do something cool where the devs only are allowed so much money worth in ships of npcs to send off to war and the tax helps to pay for more npcs. The devs should be careful not to make this tax crippling or two extreme, perhaps 10% or less of the guilds income. Too keep this brief I have one last idea. I don't want the guilds who didn't want to fight to feel punished because too much punishment could alienate them from the game. It would be cool a taxed guild had several options. Should a guild refuse to pay tax they could defect to the other side, become pirates, or openly rebel against the mainland. Guilds that chose to openly rebel become a new player controlled faction that starts at war with the mainland. They should be able to control ports. Should they lose they should get re-incorporated into the main faction and heavily fined. Should they win, we get an independent player controlled faction... at least until the original faction decides it wants to declare war on them and bring them back into the fold.