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Some thoughts about the launch

First post ever, so yeah... ehm, firstly I want to say that I love this project, I love the passion behind it, and if Intrepid keeps ramping up like this, I'm sure I will buy AoC and kindly force my friends to do so!

I want to talk about a small thing that I'm afraid of, regarding the launch of the game. This community has been growing up from the kickstarter, right? So I'm expecting a great amount of players ready to dive into the game from dayone. Now, a lot of MMO players are able to burn through the content of a game fast... I mean really fast! Players that will immediately start farming and grinding like maniacs to get that one node from scratch to a metropolis. What I'm trying to say is: should I expect to see a completely built metropolis after a week from launch? How can a world grow constantly if one node can reach his full potential in a short period of time? Yes, I know: even though there will be three metropolis completed, the world will keep changing due to sieges and calamities and whatsoever... but still... Do we have to skip all the early stages of this awesome colonization process?

Now, during the PAX Q&A session they said something about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsPR_a2n5SM
(from minute 50:16 to 51:40)
So they will be able to affect the difficulty curve in some ways, and that's glad to hear. 
I don't know anything about gaming design, but I do hope they will try to put this barrier as high as they possibly can... watching the first metropolis finally completed after months and months of hard work with the other players, it's something that I wouldn't like to miss! 
A friend of mine once said me that the gaming industry will never keep up with the amount of content that players can burn in a small period of time... and that's true, I agree with that... I just hope Intrepid won't make it too easy...

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    They have been pretty clear on their imagined timeline targets for how fast nodes "pop." This will be adjusted during testing to hopefully hit that sweet spot. Since we know that they have enough paid testers to fill at least 5 testing servers by the time beta rolls around, they will have plenty of data to work with for the tweaking process. Will there be those that try to burn through? Of course. Will there be artificial time sinks to node progression? Absolutely. Perhaps improvements/options have to be built or chosen before the node can advance. Can't proceed without relevant infrastructure. Making it so building that mandatory city hall upgrade takes 3 weeks at stage 4 for example. All sorts of things they can do. Best thing is to wait and see.
    http://www.aocwiki.net/Nodes
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    ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited April 2018
    First, and foremost: Glad to see you posting. Welcome!
    I would also point out that they have said you can only level 1 node in a region at a time. So, In order to level your node, you need to de-level the other one. (Or that’s the way I understood it. Please correct me if I am wrong)
    If that is indeed the case, it will be awfully hard to just ‘burn through’ a node progression, as others will be attempting to de-level you at the same time. 
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    All nodes in the same area can, I believe, be leveled at the same pace to the same level. However, the first one that achieves level 4 locks the ones in it's ZOI into level 3.

    Maybe it's when a node hits level 5....
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    First, and foremost: Glad to see you posting. Welcome!
    I would also point out that they have said you can only level 1 node in a region at a time. So, In order to level your node, you need to de-level the other one. (Or that’s the way I understood it. Please correct me if I am wrong)
    If that is indeed the case, it will be awfully hard to just ‘burn through’ a node progression, as others will be attempting to de-level you at the same time. 
    I highly doubt that's what they meant. 
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    They have explained as nodes having a zone of influence. As the node advances it grows impacting other nearby nodes. They have not clarified at what level will that start to occur, but from examples given it most likely would start to affect neighboring nodes around the town level (level 4). Those nodes that fall under its zoi would have their progress capped at level 3. Once those nodes reach exp cap for 3, their further experience would feed the "parent" node. The only way for them to advance is when the parent node goes to level 5, and then they could progress to level 4. Now those that don't like being under the control of the parent node could siege the parent node and try to knock it down a level. If successful, they would delevel it to level 3 (in the case of level 4) and then would race other nodes in the area to be the first to expand their zoi. Since they were already exp capped, this would be a quick process, while the original parent node has probably been reset to level 3 with no exp pool. The long awaited nodes 3 may give us further insight into their plan, but no guarantees.
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