I posted a page that gives an overview of some of the ideas that are being used to guide design here:
Basternae Game Design Philosophy
It’s entirely possible that I failed to address some concepts, but that’s the general idea of it. Are there any topics I failed to mention?
“safe”, “mostly safe”, “somewhat safe”, and “free for all”:
I think “safe” should be removed, and all mostly safe/somewhat safe area should fall in one or more of the following categories: lowbie areas, mediocre at best exp areas, mediocre at best eq areas. I think if you want the good exp and good eq and high level stuff you should have to brave ‘free for all’ areas. And on the flip side I don’t think any area should be completely safe, just very very dangerous for the other side to infiltrate. After all its fun when the other side brings 10+ to raid a hometown and they screw up and you get to work with the mobs to kill a vastly superior group.
I agree that hometowns should be raidable — at least some of them — but Bast3 is going to be less “PvP-required” than Bast2 or Duris.
All the best gear will be in places where you can and will get fragged, but I still want there to be places that are safe to hang out if you’re a lowbie or just want to sit and chat with your friends. There should also be areas where low-level PvP can take place without much fear of getting whacked by godlike stacked players — for instance, lvl 15 vs. lvl 15 fights like you always used to see in Bloodstone when Minotaur and Thri-Kreen of both sides started there.
On Duris if you don’t want to “play” but still want to hang out, you can sit in your locker all day and be completely safe (even though you don’t heal). Like DAoC, there will be things to do to have fun when you’re not raidable, but all the good stuff will involve being in danger of dying to other players.
Hehe I loved those level 20 BS fights, thats where I got my first taste of PvP way back in 1997, headbutting minos and thris with my troll =).
I guess its a matter of degree and scale. You can make hometowns safe enough to idle and chat in, while still making it possible for them to be raided with great risk and difficulty. Since this would only effect a minute amount of game play, I guess it doesn’t matter much either way.