Community Warfare – Phase 1 Reveal

PGI has broken their long silence (yay!) to put out what is, essentially, the design document for phase one of Community Warfare.

First off, this is the type of communication that has been notably absent from PGI.  They should continue to make large, informative posts like this (and then, as Bryan did, stick around and answer some of the initial questions people pose).  Bryan appears to have learned about speaking in absolutes as the DD contains a disclaimer about things changing, and even mentions that anything inside [ ] is a value practically guaranteed to change.  This is all good.  People understand that things change in game development, but, when the game developer posts in a ‘this is guaranteed’ type of style (as PGI has done in the past), people take it as it’s written – guaranteed.

Now, on to the actual DD.

At a very, very, very basic level.  Phase one is just like a guild in your typical MMO.  You group with X people, you all click the ‘sign the charter button’, and *BOOM* your guild is formed.

Fortunately, there is more to the design document then just the formation of your Mercenary Corporation (though, that’s in there too).

The overall post from Bryan Ekman is a pretty lengthy, and decent, read.  I highly suggest you read the whole thing yourself.  Here’s what I thought were the relevant highlights.

First up:  Mercenary Corporation Founding:

In order for players to found a Merc Unit, they have to meet a number of conditions.

  • A Merc Unit must be formed by exactly [12] players.
  • The players must have reached level [10] or higher (~[2] hours of playtime).

Between them, the players must have at least [12] Mercenary Review Board authorizations in their inventories

  • These are a special item that can be purchased in the store.
  • MRB authorizations cannot be sold back to the store.
  • Each authorization costs [18.88 million] C-Bills.

So, like I said, pretty typical guild formation process (with a much, much steeper price tag – especially since you can’t trade C-Bills to other players).  I’d have preferred fewer people required to start a Corp (heck, I’d even pay a REASONABLE amount of MC to be able to form a Merc Corp, and not have to coordinate the founding with 11 other people being online at the same time).

There is a name checking process (canon names are off-limits), but that’s also fairly common/expected for this type of system. Successfully completing a Corp founding, will also award the Unit with a Union Class Dropship.

There will be the ‘normal’ unit management type functionality (MOTD, Change the Unit Name, Setting Ranks, Access permissions via ranks, etc).

 

As in other games, a Merc Unit can have it’s own funds to be used for Unit expenses (presumably, things like traveling to other planets later on in Community Warfare).  Unlike some other games, there is no way for C-Bills the Unit has, to get transferred to an individual’s account.

Collecting Contributions

The Merc Unit can collect funds through two methods: donations, taxes, and revenues.

Donations

  • Any player of the Merc Unit can donate funds directly from their C-Bill balance to the Merc Unit.

Taxes

  • Leaders of the Merc Unit can set a tax rate on its members.
  • The tax is a percentage of each player’s C-Bill earnings when they play in a match.
  • These funds are automatically taken during the end of round procedures.
  • On the end of round screen, the player can see the amount of money going to the Merc Unit.

Planetary Revenue

  • More details forthcoming.

Given the current feeling that C-Bill earning rate is too low, I think any Unit that sets it’s “tax” rate to be much more than like 1%, is going to have some upset players.  Ideally, PGI will look at how World of Warcraft does it, where the money going to the guild bank is ‘extra’, and doesn’t actually come out of the player’s earnings (but is based on those earnings).

 

While this might seem basic to some people, it’s good to see some actual information coming out regarding Community Warfare.  I’d have preferred a few screenshots to see how things currently look…but, I have a sneaking suspicion that nothing has actually been coded yet, which is why we’re seeing the design document type release (which, is still good..because it’s a sign of progress).

It’ll be interesting to see how long we go before the next CW related information releases.  Hopefully, it won’t be long, and it will show some in game footage/screen shots of what’s they revealed yesterday.