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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Node mechanics and how we can make them interesting.
So I've been thinking about how nodes will develop in general and how we can make them more interesting pve and pvp-wise. Now I don't have time to sit on discord so if these have been answered or discussed ad nauseam, forgive me.
So first I can't help but think about starting zones. Now these are probably going to be the fastest growing zones simply because of sheer volume. However since these are starting zones I think they should have a node-tier limit. That way it can encourage people to go out and explore. Plus as a bonus, people that have been around since launch can see the starter human area develop from a little camp to a decent town.
So how can we encourage people to travel even farther? How about node pressure? Say two adjacent nodes of the same level can start applying a debuff. Two level-3 nodes can start putting a 10% exp nerf to slow each others development until one breaks through to the next tier or gets nocked down via warfare. This will encourage people to contribute harder, attack the other node, or just journey to another node.
How about encouraging node loyalty? How about a node exp contribution bonus while you are a citizen of it? 50% bonus for declaring yourself. Then you can have a day(s) long cooldown before being able to declare allegiance to another one. Naturally you'd have to desert it before initiating the CD.
In my ideal world, people and guilds will level/quest through the starter zones before starting their journey to their own land. To find a zone they really like and want to settle on. They will then declare their residence to a node and start leveling it. They will probably see a debuff to exp gain because other nearby nodes are the same level. This will encourage them to focus on it or attack the other node. This will give a lot of life and competition to the node system that will be there the entire game.
Anyways, let me know what you guys think about these or if you can think of any other interesting mechanics to add life to node development.
So first I can't help but think about starting zones. Now these are probably going to be the fastest growing zones simply because of sheer volume. However since these are starting zones I think they should have a node-tier limit. That way it can encourage people to go out and explore. Plus as a bonus, people that have been around since launch can see the starter human area develop from a little camp to a decent town.
So how can we encourage people to travel even farther? How about node pressure? Say two adjacent nodes of the same level can start applying a debuff. Two level-3 nodes can start putting a 10% exp nerf to slow each others development until one breaks through to the next tier or gets nocked down via warfare. This will encourage people to contribute harder, attack the other node, or just journey to another node.
How about encouraging node loyalty? How about a node exp contribution bonus while you are a citizen of it? 50% bonus for declaring yourself. Then you can have a day(s) long cooldown before being able to declare allegiance to another one. Naturally you'd have to desert it before initiating the CD.
In my ideal world, people and guilds will level/quest through the starter zones before starting their journey to their own land. To find a zone they really like and want to settle on. They will then declare their residence to a node and start leveling it. They will probably see a debuff to exp gain because other nearby nodes are the same level. This will encourage them to focus on it or attack the other node. This will give a lot of life and competition to the node system that will be there the entire game.
Anyways, let me know what you guys think about these or if you can think of any other interesting mechanics to add life to node development.
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Comments
Since you can only have 5, there should be an incentive to attack one. But this will require epic proportions... which we won't have (not in sieging castles at least). This means two things:
1. The first 5 metropolises that spawn are going to stay up for as long as possible until they delevel; eventually developers are going to implement other mechanics to either change their type, to migrate them to another node, to destroy them by special events, or simply increase the limit.
2. Considering gold sellers, needing to buy your place into ruling cities and so on, I bet the types of metropolises are going to be either economic or militaristic. Nothing else (maybe people are going to try something different at first, but will change to these two types if mechanics allow).
From the videos I could see many places where nodes could spawn. I feel they are not going to be very rare, which will lead to a total clusterfuck. People will move away from higher level nodes because of the taxes, then develop others until they have to pay for being a citizen (i.e. I predict that having to pay gold in order to remain a citizen is either going to be changed, the sum is going to be very low, or there's going to be a huge inflation throughout the whole game). Yet, this will not change the fact that metropolises, even when delevelling, are going to be economic or militaristic (GOLD & PVP). This, again, contributes to the fact that sieging a metropolis is not going to be needed.
Lastly, if raid instances or dungeons are going to be hidden behind the leveling of certain nodes, we'll be in trouble. Some content is likely not going to be accessible at all, or for a very limited time. Basically, the game will be dictated by those who play 16-20h/day every day. Everyone else is going to find something better to do than care about nodes.
You can see where this is going after the average in-game population is going to drop.
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The longer a Metropolis stands, the greater the reward for taking it down becomes. If it is up for long enough, eventually it would be worth it for every player on the server not a citizen of that node or it's dependent nodes (though maybe even them) attacking it.
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I personally see Economic and Scientific nodes being most likely to hold out at Metropolis level, and can easily see servers having one of each of the four types. Many PvE focused guilds will likely want a Scientific node at Metropolis level as a kind of base of operations, even if not all guild members are citizens.
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Many PvP'ers in guilds will opt to spend their time defending (or siegeing) a castle rather than a node. Even though they can be citizens of both they can't easily work on both. If there is a large number of people defending a Militaristic Metropolis whom are in guilds with castles, organizing a siege on both at the same time would likely be a viable tactic.
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There will be content that some servers may not see due to node status. This is by design.
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Taxes for citizenship and defense are all player set. The Mayor of each town sets them.
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It's far too early to say if the game will be dominated by players that are online that much. I could see these people dominating a Military node, but that's about it.
Do you think people will be more inclined to siege the metropolis or to simply keep it up from delevelling itself (considering that you need to pay/do something to keep it up - at least that's what I understood from the videos)?
Something will probably change in a few months/weeks after launch: the amount of people required to siege a metropolis.
It's worth pointing out that they are actually splitting their Alpha 1 phase in half and dedicating the first part of it to things like sieges - so of all systems in the game they will likely get the most time to be re-balanced pre-launch.
The cost of keeping a Metropolis at that level though is something that can't really be tested until the game is live. As such, the cost of that - as well as the cost of a siege - are likely to be ongoing in terms of balance.
I personally think any given server will average 1 of it's 5 Metropoles being taken down every 4 weeks or so once the game gets going - meaning each Metropolis would likely remain at that level for 4 - 6 months. It won't be something that changes often, but it absolutely will change.
The part that perhaps interests me the most with this system is the way nearby nodes interact with a higher level node. Many - if not most - nodes around a Metropolis will be level 5. This means when the Metropolis is bought down, these nearby nodes will be in a race to see who can level their node up the fastest to become a Metropolis.