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"When you become a citizen you enter in at a certain citizenship due structure; and citizens pay taxes to their node in the form of both property taxes based on what type housing as well as citizenship dues, which are necessary. And as you enter later into the stage of a node's development, you will pay a higher value on the citizenship dues or vice-versa: if you own a property later, you will be entered into a property tax that is higher based on where you enter that property ownership within the node's history. So those help to form a soft cap. Now, if payers are willing to pay more to be a citizen of a particular node, they have that option, but at some point it becomes restrictive"
- Steven Sharif 2018
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsPR_a2n5SM&t=2508s
- https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Citizenship

That's the thing though, a lot of (not all) regular mobs in Ashes have to be somewhat non-complex. But then you introduce some complexity here and there, in certain areas (open-world dungeons?), farming spots, etc. Or just certain group of mobs that have a certain kind of mechanic. Like you said, it will never match up to instanced encounters, that are simply way more complex, but you can get somewhat close in deeper levels of dungeons, probably. I'm fairly sure there was a conversation about this already.

I do understand what you're saying though, now that you have mentioned an example.

Honestly, I don't even know if such thing existed back then in Allods, maybe some particular mobs, or elites had something similar. I wouldn't remember, as I played the game 10 years ago.

So the complexity comes from combat encounters that introduce some more mechanics, that make you think, reposition, dodge, block/avoid certain abilities, rather than simple "do damage, heal if necessary" combat. Or rather, there's an actual sense of danger from even regular mobs, if you don't pay attention.
I'm guessing the "fun" part comes from being engaged while playing and killing mobs, rather than turning your brain off and just mindlessly grinding away?

In any case, I do see it as a preference, where some might prefer to just turn their brain off, put some music on, and just mindlessly kill hundreds of mobs, without putting in much effort.
Others might prefer actually being engaged in what they're doing, putting in slightly more effort.

Btw. Archeage definitely had that sort of complexity, now that I think of it. I vividly remember a mob in Auroria that would shoot a bubble ability at you, that would lift you into the air for a couple of seconds, and would do some decent damage. You need to pay attention to it, and avoid it.

Since you seem to have some gameplay questions that have already been answered, your best go to is always the wiki to find out what Intrepid developers have stated as to their plans in the past.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Faster_travel

The stream format improved before this one when a wider group of players entered testing in A2 and Devs were placed more front and center to swat questions and explain issues.

Too many prior streams with just Steven and Margaret often resembled a commercial for the game with Margaret lobbing up soft questions for Steven and lot of repetition of design principles. That was fun to a point, but even as an optimistic aficionado of all things Ashes thus far, it was wearing a bit thin. We needed to move from promises of what they could do, to what they are doing now and how are they fixing issues.

The trend needs to continue. Streamwatchers have already bought in to the possibility of what this game could be. No hard sell tactics needed. So when the Devs speak, let them dive deep and let them finish. Don't interrupt.

Githal wrote: »

Ludullu wrote: »

Soft cap is better because it would force people, who want to all be in one node, to splurge insane amounts of money just to achieve that, while the payoff is nowhere near as good as spreading out your political/economic/influential power.

This is literally risk/reward. If people think that the reward of being in a single node is worth the risk of wasting a shitton of money - let them. Everyone else who spreads out will benefit more, because they'll still have their big sacks of cash AND have more influence on the region.

Hard cap completely removes that part of gameplay.

thats if people try to get in the metropolis when it already is metropolis.
Usually from village stage you can see which of the neighboring nodes is furthest in development. And all players will join it from early stages, Since its most likely to not get locked as vasal. Which will just make this particular node progression even faster.

Atm this is not the case since node progression is capped to low levels, no vasal system. so no reason for any of this

Oh, wait, for clarity, as far as we know, Citizenship is a moving soft-cap. You need to be able to get a home in the node, and in-node housing is more limited when the Node is small. There may be things that need to be done or built to increase the cap, so we don't know at exactly what Node Stage the 'unlimited' kicks in.

A Hard Cap creates many other behavioural problems in exactly the same way, but with higher incentives for bad behaviour.

Ludullu wrote: »

GreatPhilisopher wrote: »

i'd rather do a 1000 kill and collect quests than farm mobs like a bot

So you prefer running back and forth instead of just farming mobs? Or am I misunderstanding what "1000 kill and collect quests" is?

Cause, as I see it, that's literally the same thing as "farm mobs like a bot", except you waste time on interacting with npcs and clicking through UI windows.

Different people have different likes and dislikes, and even different reasons for liking the things they like.

My reason for preferring even boring, repeatable kill quests is because they offer more variety, generally.

When playing the way you prefer, a player tends to find a spot that has mobs that their class is able to easily and efficiently defeat, they find a spot as close as they can, but that is out of range of respawn location, and then just pull mob after mob. This is monotonous gameplay that is repetative at the level of minute detail.

Doing it this way isn't a requirement, but if the mobs are respawning fact enough and if the player is restoring health and mana fast enough, this is the most efficient way to work this kind of grind (which is actually what I am doing as I type this).

On the other hand, with repeatable kill quests, you talk to an NPC and they tell you what mobs you need to kill. It may or may not be mobs that are easy and efficient for your class, but you don't (or shouldn't) have the choice. You have to locate the mobs the quest giver tells you, and then you need to kill the number of them they ask for, even if the mob in question is difficult for your class. You then need to go back to the quest giver, turn in your quest and get another, for potentially a different mob type, that you then need to locate and kill as many of as the queset giver asks for.

In a well designed game, these two activities should reward roughly the same. The reward from the quest should make up for the fact that you need to travel, and that you kill over all fewer mobs in the same amount of time.

With the above in mind, it should be VERY clear to anyone paying attention that one of these activities is more varied than the other, which is why many people prefer it.

Obviously I'm super biased due to my experience as a tech/software team lead, but this stream felt so comfortable.

If this is in any way less effort or stress on the Devs, especially those who appear on the stream, perfect.

Nice to meet Hector, I wish I had him for my own QA but if he must be somewhere other than that lol I'm super glad that he's where he is, for anyone who doesn't know (again, massive bias) that's exactly who you want in that spot to work with and support the QA team, especially one of that size. Felt just like talking to 'J'.

I'm sure there will be a separate feedback thing thread about the aspects of the stream's content, but this format continues to be great.

The monthly streams are here to update fans and supporters on the progress the studio makes. They are the 'action' of the studios stated culture of 'transparency'. I feel this months stream did this effectively and in many ways fits the current stage of development. The game is now at a place where many pieces are moving at once and it can be easy for players to lose track of just how much work is going on behind the scenes at once. Almost every topic about the games design has been explained and touched on at length. Getting a feel for a handful of the teams that are in major progress every now and then would be a great use of these streams time. In other words, variety, not depth, serves the goal of transparency best in this moment of the games development.

It may be a bit harder to wrangle people, but I think the format you had for the July 2025 stream was excellent. It felt clean, it felt like no topic lingered for too long, and most importantly it felt very in character for Intrepid. I feel like the streams benefit from hearing the many voices at Intrepid speak about how they are feeling about the progress of things and gives us the peak needed to really understand where the studio is at. It serves as a great tool. Maybe not every month, but it'd be great if you used this format more often.