[Suggestion] Relationships done right

[helldiver]

Steal it from The Sims 3.

Yes I said it. You won't get sued, it's not blatant, and it'll be under the hood.

Quite simply no one seems to bother using the very simple system that the Sims uses. In reality it is very simple. Mount & Blade more or less uses a system similar but I think Runeforge should take it further.

Quite simply all NPCs have a relationship meter from -100 to 0 to +100. At each interval different social options open up. It's as simple as that. In order to progress to the next catagory within the social meter you have to do prerequisite options.

Here's a quick example:
You start at 0 with an NPC
-your only option is to "chat with them". By chatting with them you gain relationship or faction. Eventually once you're at say +30, new options open up. Lets say "gossip" or "tell story" or "tell joke". So now you have four options. Doing these raises your faction even more. Eventually once you get to +70 you get branching options (you get the prior options but you get two new ones). "Compliment Appearance" appears if a member of the opposite sex, and "Friendly handshake" if a member of the same sex. If a member of the opposite sex, using "Compliment Appearance" flags the NPC as a potential love interest. If you continue to use social options and get to +85 you get new options "ask to court", "take out on date", and so on. Otherwise if a member of the same sex options such as "friendly hug", "reminisce", show up.

Essentially it is a mini-game all on its own.

Conversely the same could go in the reverse. "Insult" could start you down the negative path and so on.

In the Guild series it never was exactly clear how to raise or lower faction. I mean you could always bribe and it sort of worked but the system just wasn't fluid. I think having a fluid relationship system with clear goals, rewards, and effects can really help out. Some of the options didn't make sense in terms of how the character was treated either. Why was my character slapped for giving a friend a cake? Why was he slapped when using the Compliment option?

That just didn't make sense. Instead you should have a clear path to building faction with an NPC with new social options that open up the higher (or lower) our relationship is with that person.

Additionally, things we do in game should affect that score. For example; opening up a competing business should hurt that score negatively. But openning up a business that relies on their products or fills a niche they require, should help the score possitively.

In the Sims 3 relationship scores may synergize with family members. So for every 10 points we have with one NPC we may get 1 point with a relative of theirs (up to a certain cap).

By having a solid relationship system you also help create a large aspect of gameplay. Deciding what businesses to open could be based on what relationships you have. In the Guild 2 relationships with families never really helped much. Sure it helped during a trial or two but it never quite made sense. Why were families getting mad at me when I'd open a business that didn't directly compete with them yet increased the overall economic situation of a town? If anything noble families and families in power would be happy to have more money in circulation, more jobs to commoners which in turn means more income for them (through sale of middle-class commodities and tax revenue).

I believe what The Guild 2 was trying to simulate were the families becoming upset at you gaining wealth? That's understandable to a certain degree. Keep in mind that if you open a business in the local town that provides component products (such as wheat) if anything the local baker would be happy. He pays local prices for the wheat instead of import taxed prices. Now if you increase your prices to beyond import cost or beyond the mean local average (accounting for labor wages), then he should be mad at you. But because you are local he has recourse. Which again gives credit to openning locally as opposed to importing. Yet in The Guild 2 openning a business that produced staples (such as the Croft) often times caused families to go into Feud with you. That just didn't make sense to me especially if they didn't even have that business line.

That being said it also didn't make sense when a family would declare feud on you simply for opening a niche business. Meaning a business that isn't covered by any of the other families. If anything their overall satisfaction with you should increase for several reasons:
-You're creating jobs which in turn mean commoners can buy other products.
-Where there's jobs there's immigration. As new workers arrive additional services are needed (more bread, more medicine, more schools, etc.).
-You're creating taxable profits.

In the Guild 2 the opposite occured. Families would get upset with you. Perhaps that may have been true in the early dark ages when kings and vassals were very greedy with who had and who didn't have power. But by the renaissance (and especially by the time Kontor is set at) they saw the benefit of taxation.

To conclude
I think the relationship system should be more in depth. Also don't put the relationship options on a timer. In The Sims 3 there is no timer on them, quite simply they take as long as the animation takes. Putting a timer on them adds unnecessary micro-management. Please remember that aside from doing the relationship thing, we're also managing our business and such. So you have to maintain UI overhead to a minimum.

[Kinabalu]

Steal it from The Sims 3.

Yes I said it. You won't get sued, it's not blatant, and it'll be under the hood.

Quite simply no one seems to bother using the very simple system that the Sims uses. In reality it is very simple. Mount & Blade more or less uses a system similar but I think Runeforge should take it further.

Quite simply all NPCs have a relationship meter from -100 to 0 to +100. At each interval different social options open up. It's as simple as that. In order to progress to the next catagory within the social meter you have to do prerequisite options.

Here's a quick example:
You start at 0 with an NPC
-your only option is to "chat with them". By chatting with them you gain relationship or faction. Eventually once you're at say +30, new options open up. Lets say "gossip" or "tell story" or "tell joke". So now you have four options. Doing these raises your faction even more. Eventually once you get to +70 you get branching options (you get the prior options but you get two new ones). "Compliment Appearance" appears if a member of the opposite sex, and "Friendly handshake" if a member of the same sex. If a member of the opposite sex, using "Compliment Appearance" flags the NPC as a potential love interest. If you continue to use social options and get to +85 you get new options "ask to court", "take out on date", and so on. Otherwise if a member of the same sex options such as "friendly hug", "reminisce", show up.

Essentially it is a mini-game all on its own.

Conversely the same could go in the reverse. "Insult" could start you down the negative path and so on.

In the Guild series it never was exactly clear how to raise or lower faction. I mean you could always bribe and it sort of worked but the system just wasn't fluid. I think having a fluid relationship system with clear goals, rewards, and effects can really help out. Some of the options didn't make sense in terms of how the character was treated either. Why was my character slapped for giving a friend a cake? Why was he slapped when using the Compliment option?

That just didn't make sense. Instead you should have a clear path to building faction with an NPC with new social options that open up the higher (or lower) our relationship is with that person.

Additionally, things we do in game should affect that score. For example; opening up a competing business should hurt that score negatively. But openning up a business that relies on their products or fills a niche they require, should help the score possitively.

In the Sims 3 relationship scores may synergize with family members. So for every 10 points we have with one NPC we may get 1 point with a relative of theirs (up to a certain cap).

By having a solid relationship system you also help create a large aspect of gameplay. Deciding what businesses to open could be based on what relationships you have. In the Guild 2 relationships with families never really helped much. Sure it helped during a trial or two but it never quite made sense. Why were families getting mad at me when I'd open a business that didn't directly compete with them yet increased the overall economic situation of a town? If anything noble families and families in power would be happy to have more money in circulation, more jobs to commoners which in turn means more income for them (through sale of middle-class commodities and tax revenue).

I believe what The Guild 2 was trying to simulate were the families becoming upset at you gaining wealth? That's understandable to a certain degree. Keep in mind that if you open a business in the local town that provides component products (such as wheat) if anything the local baker would be happy. He pays local prices for the wheat instead of import taxed prices. Now if you increase your prices to beyond import cost or beyond the mean local average (accounting for labor wages), then he should be mad at you. But because you are local he has recourse. Which again gives credit to openning locally as opposed to importing. Yet in The Guild 2 openning a business that produced staples (such as the Croft) often times caused families to go into Feud with you. That just didn't make sense to me especially if they didn't even have that business line.

That being said it also didn't make sense when a family would declare feud on you simply for opening a niche business. Meaning a business that isn't covered by any of the other families. If anything their overall satisfaction with you should increase for several reasons:
-You're creating jobs which in turn mean commoners can buy other products.
-Where there's jobs there's immigration. As new workers arrive additional services are needed (more bread, more medicine, more schools, etc.).
-You're creating taxable profits.

In the Guild 2 the opposite occured. Families would get upset with you. Perhaps that may have been true in the early dark ages when kings and vassals were very greedy with who had and who didn't have power. But by the renaissance (and especially by the time Kontor is set at) they saw the benefit of taxation.

To conclude
I think the relationship system should be more in depth. Also don't put the relationship options on a timer. In The Sims 3 there is no timer on them, quite simply they take as long as the animation takes. Putting a timer on them adds unnecessary micro-management. Please remember that aside from doing the relationship thing, we're also managing our business and such. So you have to maintain UI overhead to a minimum.

I agree that the relationship system could be improved BUT theres is one problem with what you described. Coming back to the case you described: If I have 0 didsposition with an NPC, and have a choice of doing obviously positive and obviously negative things to them, why should I ruin my relationship with them? Basically, everyoen is gonna love you, because who would want to damage their relationship with anyone? Instead, I would pick a set of different options that are always the same, but that have a different impact on each character. For instance, telling jokes to one NPC might raise my disposition with him, but doing the same to another will lower my disposition. This adds realism and also requires skill to be able to effectively raise relationship. It would also give charisma an actual meaning: having higher charisma would result in you being able to tell alot easier what people are like and how to treat them.

[helldiver]

You're correct. I just explained things in a simple manner so they could understand.

In the Sims there are other factors that affect the relationship:
-Global reduction back to zero
-Likes and dislikes, perhaps certain character traits may give you benefits, but may affect you socially?
-Dimishing returns
-Atrophy between families; raise your relationship with one, it may affect another negatively and so on.

I didn't go into detail since I wanted to keep things sort of simple, hehe 

[Kinabalu]

Allright then . Another thing I thought of adding is that your disposition with each character gradually returnes to 0. So say you work your way to +20 with one character, but then do not interact with him for a long time, your disposition with him will return 0 at a certain rate, depending on how high the initial disposition was, how much charisma you have and how much other members of that characters family like you. The same should apply to negative disposition. If I lose disposition with someone in a political election, and it goes down to say -15, it should gradually increase until it has reached 0 zero again, again at a certain rate which is based on your charisma, the initial disposition and relationship to family members.

Im not sure if this is what you mean when you were saying "dimishing returns", but I just wanted to make sure we meant the same thing .

[helldiver]

That's what I meant when I said "Global reduction back to Zero"

Dimishing returns means it gets more expensive to raise faction to a point where it might not be worth it. In other words you're getting less for your investment.

So it might be easy to go from 50 to +75. But to go from +75 to +80 costs a lot more. To go from +80 to +90 might cost as much as it took from 1 to 50, and from 90 to 100 may take so much that it might not be worth it.

[FH]

Steal it from The Sims 3.

I'm really suprised that I even read the whole topic after that sentence

No, I just wanted to drop in to let you know we're reading this thread (and all the other threads, of course) carefully.

[helldiver]

 

Well what I meant was the idea as Kinabalu and I have discussed.

If you notice Mount & Blade; Warbands they have a similar system. The only problem is that it isn't fleshed out fully. The more quests you do for a particular vassal (anything from gathering cattle, to gathering certain troops, collecting taxes etc) the more faction you gain with them.

I think it should be more interactive and like Kinabalu said perhaps higher Charisma skill may open up more dialog options.

Also, going back to 0 takes a very long time. In The Sims 3 it could take up to a month in game (or about 6 hours of gameplay) for it to slowly go back to 0. Sometimes depending on the relationship (be it spouse, love interest, enemy, co-worker, sibling) it may not go up or down at all. Although I will admit that the Sims 3 is designed primarily for everyone to be friends (meaning it is easier to get to positive faction than negative).

I think for Kontor it should be neutral. It should be just as easy to go positive as it is to go negative.

The issue with implementing a system similar to The Sims 3 is that all the active NPCs in the world have to have a relationship score with the player. This score should also be affected depending on actions the player takes in regards to certain NPCs.

So the game would have to keep track of:
Family trees
Business relationships
Guild relationships
Friend networks
Social networks

Insulting the guild of Rogues for example, may insult the constituent families and a domino effect should occur. Say for example you use the Social action "Insult" on an NPC that is a member of this guild:
-You would lose -10 faction with that NPC
-You would lose -3 faction with NPCs which are directly associated with that NPC
-You would lose -1 faction with all members of the Rogue's guild
-You would gain +1 faction with members of the Purser's guild, afterall they are opposed to the Rogue's guild.

Marriage should also effect you and you should make a decision who to marry so as to gain reputation (such as you see in Mount & Blade: Warbands).
-A shotgun wedding should cause you to lose faction with her family, maybe -30 with the head of household, and -10 with all associated family members. An additional -3 or -1 with other families which are allied with that family.
-A formal approved wedding may increase your faction with the family plus raise your faction with other associated families, guilds, organizations.
-In order to get the wedding approved you may have to increase your faction to say +75 with the head of household before you can ask for their daughter's hand in marriage.

Keep in mind other factors of the game. The player is going to be busy running and maintaining his businesses. Unlike The Sims 3 where the player really doesn't do much aside from eat, sleep, work, poop... in The Guild 2 or Kontor most of our time is going to be taken up micromanaging our little business empire.

So the designer has to keep that in mind when he puts together the social system and not make it too difficult to do the social activities.

In the Guild 2 a system like I suggest would have been a nightmare because we were so busy maintaining our business. Infact I rarely had enough time to do politics because I was too busy micromanaging my business

[Kinabalu]

What is important when talking about a "social system" in a econ. simulation is that you want to keep it short and straight forward. As helldiver says, most of the games focus is on the economy, and not social interaction between characters. So instead of having to constantly talk to someone to raise your disposition with them effectively (like you have to do in Guild 2 when courting), small but decisive actions should be possible. To balance this out, you could adjust the rate at which the disposition drops back to 0.

[FH]

How about giving some economic decisions more importance? For example if I'm trading with the same goods as some other dynasty AND I'm not working with them my reputation will drop, but if I work against some enemy of another dynasty they will like me more.
So that there is a lot of invisible relationship-based action in the background without much micromanagement.

[helldiver]

Relationship Tree example for Kontor

Example global associations:
-Siblings
-Estates (competing families, AI opponents)
-Guild (business associations)
-Town
-Country
In that order.

Gaining or losing reputation with siblings only effects siblings.
Gaining or losing reputation with an Estate effects any guild or town that Estate is associated with.
Gaining or losing reputation with a Guild effects any guild it is associated with, any estates, as well as the Town
Gaining or losing reputation with the Town effects any guild, estate, and the country the town is associated with.

A typical scale would be: if you gain or lose 10 points of reputation, any associations would gain or lose 5, then 3, and 1 respectively.

For example; if you do an action that causes you to lose 10 points of reputation with an Estate, you would lose 5 points with a guild positively associated with that estate, and lose 3 points with the town if the town is positive with the estate. Any estate which has a negative association with the estate you insulted you’d gain 3 points with that estate. The same goes for any town (in which case you’d gain 1 point with the town).

If you are negative with the estate and the associated organizations, you wouldn’t gain any faction with the associated estates, guilds, town, etc.

Why I say organization, I mean the heads of those organizations (the head of an estate, guild, town government, leader of a country).

Synergy continues within that organization. For example, if you gain or lose reputation with an estate, you would also gain or lose reputation with the members of that estate (the wife, sons, daughters, etc). You’d gain or lose reputation using the same sliding scale of 10, 5, 3, and 1.

The reputation scale goes from -100 to 0 to +100. You start the game at 0, +10 with your guild depending on your class, and +10 with your religion.

Example positive social actions at 0 or negative reputation with an NPC:
-Greet +1
-Introduce yourself +2 (available only once per NPC)
-Chat +1

At +25 reputation with an NPC the following social options open up in addition to the previous ones:
-Discuss Business +2
-Discuss Religion +1 (or +2 if the same religion)
-Discuss Politics +1 (or +2 if members of the same political affiliation?)
-Discuss Family +1
-Gossip about someone +2

At +40 reputation:
-Give Gift +2
-Invite to ball +2 if successful. Requires ballroom. If the ball is an outstanding success you would gain +3 with all attendees instead of the normal +2.

At +50 reputation with an NPC the following social options open up in addition to the previous ones:
-Tell story +2
-Discuss Guild +2 (+3 if in the same guild as the NPC)
-Discuss specific Estate +2 (+3 if it is an estate which is Negative to the NPC)
-Talk about specific person +2 (+3 if it is an NPC which a negative association)
-Ask astrological sign +1 (+2 if the same sign)
-Inquire on social standing +0 (lets you know who they hate or like the most)
-Donate funds (bribe) +1, +3, or +5 depending on the amount.
-Ask to do favor +2

At +75 reputation with an NPC the following social options open up in addition to previous ones:
-Sing song +1
-If opposite gender: Ask for a stroll through the park +2 if successful, -10 if failure.
-If opposite gender: Discuss likes and dislikes +2 if successful, -10 if failure.
-If opposite gender: Try for a roll in the hay +2 if successful, -25 if failure.
-If opposite gender: Elope +5 if successful, -45 if failure with target NPC. -60 with Estate regardless of success or failure (see negative reputation).
-Friendly Hug +2
-Ask for loan -5, -10, or -20 depending on amount.
-Negotiate trade treaty +3 if successful. May require certain house upgrades.

At +80 reputation with an NPC the following social options open up in addition to previous ones:
-If opposite gender: Ask to dance +2 if successful -2 if failure.
-If opposite gender: Tell romantic poem +2 if successful -2 if failure. Chance: Become love interest.
-If opposite gender: Sing romantic song +2 if successful -2 if failure. Chance: Become love interest.
-If opposite gender: Tell romantic story +2 if successful -2 if failure. Chance: Become love interest.
-If opposite gender: Shy kiss +2 if successful, -15 if failure. Become love interest.
-Negotiate familial alliance +2. May cost money, may require certain house upgrades.
-Invite to family banquet +2. Requires banquet hall, +3 if banquet is successful.
-Ask to attack (+2 if the target is at negative reputation with the NPC, -15 or more if not)
-Ask for political favor (+2 if the favor benefits the NPC, -15 or more if not)
-Ask for discount (-5 normally, although if under a Trade Treaty, no negative loss)

At +95 reputation with an NPC the following social options open up in addition to previous ones:
-If head of an Estate; Ask for Son/Daughter’s hand in marriage. Son/Daughter must be Love Interest. +2 with head of estate and with sibling if successful
-If head of an Estate; Force hand of Son/Daughter into marriage. -15 with both head of estate and sibling regardless of success.
-Ask to become vassal. Requires certain house upgrades.
-Ask to become protectorate. Requires certain house upgrades.

Marriage and Siblings Only
-Consummate +5 with spouse only. May give a bonus to player?
-Try for child +5 with spouse only.
-Tutor +2. May require certain house upgrades.
-Provide Care +2. May require certain house upgrades.
-Play +2 with child sibling only.
-Ask to Dance +5.
-All social actions before +75 are available, with the exception of Donate Funds, Invite to Ball, Introduce Yourself, Elope, Ask for Loan, etc.
It really won’t do much aside from capping you with your siblings at +100 and letting you see the animations.

Religious (bonuses are gained with the Head Priest and any others within his organization typically +1 reputation)
-Attend Mass +1
-Confession +2
-Donate +1, +3, and +5 depending on amount.

At +50 with church:
-Ask for benediction (personal, Estate)
-Assist church +1, +3, and +5 depending on how many days.

At +75 with church:
-Join crusade +3 (+5 if successful)
-Ask to go on religious quest +3 (+5 if successful)

At +80
-Ask to sanctify (self, business, estate)
-Ask to perform wedding (requires: successful Ask for Hand in Marriage or Force Hand in Marriage target)

At +95 with church:
-Accuse of Heresy +2 (+3 if successful)
-As to sanctify other (target NPC, business, estate)
-Ask for pardon (clears things like murder, elope, etc)

The above were examples of positive ways of gaining reputation, below are example Negative social interactions.

Example negative social actions at 0 or positive reputation with an NPC:
-Rude gesture -1
-Vain Introduction -2 (available only once per NPC)
-Ridicule -1

At -25 reputation with an NPC the following social options open up in addition to the previous ones:
-Ridicule Business -2
-Ridicule Religion -2
-Ridicule Family -5
-Slander -3

At -40 reputation:
-Show off wealth and achievements -2
-Condemn social standing -2
-Condemn beliefs -2
-Condemn economic situation -2
-Fight! -5

At -50 reputation with an NPC the following social options open up in addition to the previous ones:
-Duel -5
-Accuse of Adultery -2
-Accuse of Corruption -2

At -75 reputation with an NPC the following social options open up in addition to previous ones:
-Declare enemy -2
-Condemn publicly -2. Requires certain house upgrades.
-Inquire expulsion from town -2. Requires certain house upgrades.


Ok so I think that gives examples of how the social actions/reputation system sort of pans out. I didn’t continue to go into the negative social actions since I’m assuming there’s a lot of stuff that you can do without needing to go into the social interaction. Things such as set houses on fire use political actions and such to affect an estate negatively. Those things would also gain you negative reputation with those families.

[helldiver]

How about giving some economic decisions more importance? For example if I'm trading with the same goods as some other dynasty AND I'm not working with them my reputation will drop, but if I work against some enemy of another dynasty they will like me more.
So that there is a lot of invisible relationship-based action in the background without much micromanagement.

Yes and No FH

Yes to your first part.

No to the invisible relationship. Never should it be invisible. If you notice in the sims, there is a number or bar by each Sim. If you notice in Mount & Blade there is a number. We should be aware of what is raising or lowering our faction. Because the game is an economic simulator it is kind of important to know some of those things. Keep in mind that in the real world we would have things like town criers, merchant word of mouth etc, which I'm sure the game won't have. So to represent that missing awareness, we need to know either through numbers, through a chart, a menu something.

What I mean by less micromanagement is that it should be smooth

FH, I think maybe your team should focus on the business, transportation, component products acquisition, and final production smoothness of the game first. Once that is very smooth and then apply the social engine.

The problem in Guild 2 (Renaissance) was that the combination of the UI, the micromanagement of transportation networks, and the micromanagement of component products (stuff needed for production) caused the average player like me to spend most of his/her time in those menus and not a lot of time in Social or Political menus. Follow me friend?

So I think first you must make UI, transportation networks, and business management very smooth and very easy to manage without too much Micro. If you could try Locomotion or Transport Tycoon Deluxe or Rollercoaster Tycoon you will get a very good idea of how you can make business management smooth. That way the player can automate his businesses and then he will have time and motivation to do social and political activities without having to worry if his business ran out of wheat, or his ox is stuck.

The thing is FH you have to make a decision:
1) Do you want to concentrate more on Economic simulation (like Guild 2)?
2) or do you want to concentrate more on RPG/Social simulation (more like The Sims 3, Dragon Age, Oblivion, etc)?

Here is the problem:
You can’t make a large economic simulation requiring a lot of attention from the player while at the same time wanting to make a large social simulation/political simulation (like Guild 2) that also takes a lot of attention from the player.

If you want an RPG/Social simulation (like I think you guys want based on the RPG you guys designed) then you will have to:

A) Make the Economic simulation simple (like Rollercoaster Tycoon or Transport Tycoon) or…
B) You will have to make sure the UI for your economic simulation is extremely smooth, user friendly, and with as little micromanagement as possible.
C) Even if your economic portion is simple, you can still give us micromanagement tools if we wish to tailor our businesses further (tools within the game).

If you shift the focus to a Social/Political simulation (like Guild 2 or like The Sims 3) then you will have to:
A) Make sure you follow some of the steps above regarding the economic portion and
B) Make sure your social interaction has a lot of depth, see my examples, or see The Sims 3, or see other RPG games like Oblivion, Mass Effect series, KOTOR, etc
C) Include a quest system or an achievement system.
D) Make sure your political simulation is also in depth.

If you make your economical portion of the game smooth and streamline (like playing Warcraft 3) and if you create a system similar to The Sims 3 as your underlying relationship/reputation engine, then your Political simulation will naturally be there

In fact it would auto-create itself for you and you won’t have to spend much time working on it since most of our time would be spent managing our businesses, improving our reputation with people (or trying to fix it) and doing quests or activities to improve our characters a long.

Anyhow, at least those are my recommendations

[FH]

Wow, posts like this one remind me to backup the database more often.. o.O
Very good work, I don't know if such a system would be suitable, but such detailed descriptions are exactly the kind of input we need to get a picture of your ideas. And I definitely like the idea, but it gives a lot of weight to the RPG part of the game, maybe more than we want.

There are also a lot of actions described in your post that would work in Kontor without such a reputation system too.

(that was the answer to your older post, I will answer the latest post tomorrow, have to go to bed now )

[Kinabalu]

I like the way you explained the sytem very much, helldiver. But then based on what I see, gaining negative disposition would be more of a passive process (e.g if you gain disposition with someone, you lose it with that persons opponents)? Did I understand that correctly? And if so, it shoud be very clearly described how this works, if possible a tutorial should be made, as this would be a very new feature to the Guild/Kontor franchise. In addition, I agree that such complex and  complicated things such as social relationships should NOT be "invisible". It should be very clear who you gain and who you lose relationship with. Otherwise it will become extremely hard to effetively build up good relationships with other characters.

Only problem with this is that I have been hearing/reading rumors that Kontor is gonna take on a MMOish style of play. In this case, this social system would be unecessary, as a majority of your characters would be players. That is another reason why I oppose making Kontor an MMO: whilst you can improve your relationship with NPCs by doing things such those described by helldiver, you can not do it with players. Who would care that you are spending time talking and greeting their charaters? No-one would, because it has not actual effect on the game.

[helldiver]

I could be wrong, but I don't think they're going to go the MMO route as I think you're thinking. I think it may be a failure of communication in terms of describing how their multiplayer functions. I'll elaborate further down.

To answer your question:

But then based on what I see, gaining negative disposition would be more of a passive process (e.g if you gain disposition with someone, you lose it with that persons opponents)? Did I understand that correctly?

Yes sort of. The thing is that gaining negative faction isn't fully detailed up there because a lot of the negative gaining process occurs during actual gameplay.
-Constructing a directly competing business nets you negative reputation with the associated organizations.
-Using game tools such as pirate ships, thugs, etc nets you negative reputation with the associated organizations.
-Rigging elections, calling for executions, declaring wars, etc would net you negative reputation with the associated organizations.
-Befriending certain estates/organizations may net you negative reputation with others (as you described).

Above in my post I only listed social interactions that you can directly do by right clicking on an NPC. In reality it is much easier to gain negative reputation than positive. In other words throughout the course of gameplay you'll probably be getting negative reputation with the different organizations. To gain positive rep, you'll have to work on it either through social interactions (walking up to an NPC and right clicking) or through game mechanics (edicts, estate functions, marriages etc).

In other words to put it a bit more simply: Since during normal gameplay you have a higher likelyhood of gaining negative reputation with the competing estates there aren't as many direct negative social interactions you can do (aside from the basic ones I listed). To balance this out there are a lot of positive social interactions.

In regards to the MMO idea, Everquest had factions, Everquest 2 had factions as well. Gaining rep with one could drop with another. The more rep you gained the more stuff opened up, be it quests or the ability to purchase certain things. WoW sort of corrupted the whole thing and turned it into faction grinds or key grinds.

That being said even in a multiplayer game where each player is in charge of an estate, the rules still hold true. In fact the social system I describe perhaps may be the only direct way to interact between estates.
-Donating funds
-Perhaps add a blackmail or extort social function that nets you negative rep?
-Forming alliances
-Creating vassal-lord networks

In other words you would still have to use game mechanics in order to "team up" with a buddy of yours, or to declare someone an enemy. Therefore you don't kill off the Charisma and associated skills. If you let players interact however they want then you kill of a big portion of the game. In a multiplayer game I wouldn't have to invest in charisma skills, special diplomatic abilities, and special estate upgrades to open up diplomatic abilities. See what I mean?

In a multiplayer game I would always invest in fighting and economic dominance abilities like every other 4E game out there

But by hardcoding it so players can only interact using the social system, they still must think about investing in social and diplomatic abilities. Which to me at least was a very important part of the middle ages.

And yes you can chat freely with the other players.

[helldiver]

To elaborate a little further:

There is Estate 1 and Estate 2 (both estates can be either AI or an actual player during single player or multiplayer)

Both start at 0 faction with each other. There are only two ways that this can change (either negatively or positively).

Method A) Through normal gameplay such as: construction of buildings, competing businesses, using thugs/theives, pirate ships, political options either at the courthouse or at your estate, estate functions, and any other mechanical method during the regular course of gameplay.

Method B) Through direct social interaction: this would depend on charisma skill and any social ability. I list an example of the options available above as you guys saw.

Method A linked to Method B and vice versa: To make both methods important, they rely on each other. Some options in Method B will not be available until you do certain things in Method A (such as certain buildings, estate upgrades, etc). Some options in Method A will not be available until you do certain things in Method B (such as marriages, wars, vassals, etc).

An estate can be either player or AI, the rules don't change. The only difference is that if both estates are players, then I can chat with you. That's it. You and I still will have to use Method A or B to build a relationship with each other (either negative or positive). We would still have to be at +95 to build a vassal alliance, or to marry each other's daughters, or declare you my enemy etc.

This makes it so that we both have to (we don't have to but it would be a good idea) invest in charisma skills, abilities, etc. It also makes it so that during multiplayer, players can form alliances to play cooperatively or have feuds and such.

Now if the system were robust enough, in a three player multiplayer game, you could actually use the social interactions to attempt to break an alliance between two players. Say for example two players work up their reputation until they form an alliance, making it difficult for you to progress (either militarily, politically, or economically). So you go the social route and attempt to break their alliance by using social interactions with siblings or associated guilds and towns. Makes for some interesting gameplay not seen before in 4E games