Permanent nodes

ArchivedUser

I was wondering about nodes, mainly unless they're destroyed by a boss or other players, do they last forever.
(If they don't last forever even if untouched then ignore the rest of this post.)

So as we know nodes create content, quests, inns, vendors etc.
Won't it be in the players best interest to keep all nodes alive and not destroy them?
What if a server of 10k, decides to keep most nodes alive because their use is greater than the fun of destroying them?
What are your thoughts?

ArchivedUser

No, nodes do not last forever. There are a few static areas on the map. The 5 pvp castles, the 5 starting areas, various poi's and some narrative terrain features that are not affected by nodes levelling up and down. Please understand, world bosses may affect nodes, and world bosses and monster coin events may affect node services, but those mechanics do not "destroy" or delevel the node. As nodes advance they lock out surrounding nodes from leveling higher than them. The idea that after a couple years of play that the world would just be a mass of level 5 nodes is fundamentally wrong from the mechanics described so far. If nodes are not "fed" a constant and increasing stream of exp generating actions and resources, they begin to atrophy. How long this process takes to occur has not be tested yet and the timelines for it will most likely be tweaked and refined over the next year of testing. But there are no "static" nodes.

ArchivedUser

UnknownSystemError said:

No, nodes do not last forever. There are a few static areas on the map. The 5 pvp castles, the 5 starting areas, various poi's and some narrative terrain features that are not affected by nodes levelling up and down. Please understand, world bosses may affect nodes, and world bosses and monster coin events may affect node services, but those mechanics do not "destroy" or delevel the node. As nodes advance they lock out surrounding nodes from leveling higher than them. The idea that after a couple years of play that the world would just be a mass of level 5 nodes is fundamentally wrong from the mechanics described so far. If nodes are not "fed" a constant and increasing stream of exp generating actions and resources, they begin to atrophy. How long this process takes to occur has not be tested yet and the timelines for it will most likely be tweaked and refined over the next year of testing. But there are no "static" nodes.

Nice thanks.

ArchivedUser

UnknownSystemError said:

 If nodes are not "fed" a constant and increasing stream of exp generating actions and resources, they begin to atrophy.

That is one of the more interesting aspects of the node leveling system.

I'm actually hoping for a relatively high level of atrophy. It  would put a damper on my plan to single-handedly found my own village somewhere in the wilderness, but it will make for a much more dynamic Verra.

It might even make actual sieges (as in declaring war and hemming the opposing players in their city) a viable way to de-level a rival node.

ArchivedUser

@Nefelia They have kind of addressed the starvation mechanic of trying to block people from getting outside. The act of you being in their node and actively pvping vs the nodes inhabitants would "feed" the node. You don't have to be a citizen or member of the node to add to its advancing or maintaining. 

ArchivedUser

@UnknownSystemError

I guess the effectiveness of such a tactic would depend on how the XP generated by PvP compares to the XP lost from the lack of activity from PvE players.

At the very least, it should lead to some pretty good PvP battles when the much needed caravans try to break through the blockade.

ArchivedUser

Well, we do have earlier statements that absolutely everything will counted as activity. Crafting, pvp, pve, exploration exp, all of it. So while the concept is sound, having people try to "inactively" siege while not actually in a siege declaration period would be problematic at best and most likely not popular. Woe be to the guild leader that says "K, your job is to sit here for the next two hours and make sure nobody accesses this flower patch. Don't harvest yourself, and don't kill anything, try your best to only kill citizens from node X to block their advancement!" Don't think many players, and definitely not enough to do it on a node wide scale would stick to it long. People want to get their click on.

ArchivedUser

I wonder about exploration mechanics in a dynamic environment.  Can I go exploring to see a waterfall and get exploration achievements/experience for finding it, then come back later in a couple of weeks and get experience from discovering the mine that has been built under it that wasn’t there the last time I visited?

I hope that’s the case; it’d be great if the game encourages people to experience the world as it changes and we don’t just get rewarded for seeing the permanent points of interest.

ArchivedUser

Don't know how they are going to handle the randomly generated terrain part of poi's. We know that there will be static ones that are part of the main quest narrative. The info that was let out was that the main narrative will take you all over the map. Now if that map had those quest points constantly shifting and moving for the entire playerbase, it would be a programming nightmare and a customer service mess. The backlog of tickets with "I went to find the waterfall, but it wasn't there!!" would override all other legitimate tickets for things like people asking how to access their inventory (jk). We will just have to wait and see what they come up with.

ArchivedUser

I would say that nodes last forever.
A specific node progression won't necessarily last forever.

The reason to de-level a node is to try to level up a different node or to re-level the same node differently...especially with a different racial influence.

ArchivedUser

True, and we also have confirmation that node types are set and do not change. A religious node will always be a religious node even if taken back down to 0 and leveled up again. While we don't know the mechanics for changing mayoral decisions about node services, the only way to remove a particular architectural aesthetic will be through nodes going up or down in level. To remove stables and replace them with more apartments may be as simple as destroying one in an interface and then paying the time/resource sink to build the other. Would be strange if those decisions made were locked at that particular node level.

ArchivedUser

I keep referencing Star Wars Galaxies, but I guess that’s okay because that game was an influence on AoC.

SWG had randomly-generated quests.  They were very crude, you went to a “mission terminal” which spawned a random lair somewhere in the wilderness, which held either animals or bandits (appropriate to the planet you were on).  Your job was to go to the lair, defeat all the enemies, and destroy the lair.

It was crude because every mission was the same.  Go to a place, kill everything, come back for the reward.  Extremely repetitive.  But that was 15 years ago.  Surely AoC could come up with something much more dynamic.

ArchivedUser

Yep, they have promised more than standard Kill X amount and fetch and carry quests. The thing with the SWG mission terminals is that they were limited by the technology of the time. Think back to the number of times you would take the mission, turn on the wp, hop on your speeder, and get there to find that it was under a house. They fixed it later so that as you go closer to the original wp it would "pop" again a few hundred meters away, but that was no guarantee it still wasn't borked. While Ashes is going to be influenced by SWG, it is primarily their crafting and resource generation that they are looking at. The idea is to take what was the best from the various mmos people remember fondly and use as inspiration for the systems updated with todays tech.

ArchivedUser

Grimseethe said:

I was wondering about nodes, mainly unless they're destroyed by a boss or other players, do they last forever.
(If they don't last forever even if untouched then ignore the rest of this post.)

So as we know nodes create content, quests, inns, vendors etc.
Won't it be in the players best interest to keep all nodes alive and not destroy them?
What if a server of 10k, decides to keep most nodes alive because their use is greater than the fun of destroying them?
What are your thoughts?

The bold point is the important point....

If the players decide to do something, they get to decide to do that.  That's the end of the story.    

ArchivedUser

I think most people focus on nodes as cities and metropolises and disregard all of the nodes that will be Stage 1 on servers with 5 metropolises.