Siege balance, Node growth, and Zergs will make or break this game.
One of the best parts of Ashes of Creation that drew me in while watching Peon's video was the notion that players are actually being encouraged to invest their time and effort into a pseudo-permanent community Node. This has great potential for replayability and looks like an encouraging way to keep max-level players from getting bored quickly.
However, the Node system could ultimately be the downfall of the game if Sieges are not well balanced (or if Node growth is left unchecked). Specifically, Intrepid will want to make Nodes proportionally easier to build than destroy. If it takes a long time and a lot of effort from some players to build a Node, it ought to take a ton of effort and resources to destroy that same Node. Otherwise, Zergs/mega guilds will take over most servers in time.
Here's what the start of the game will look like without restriction on Node growth and Sieging:
Initially, it is highly likely that players will first invest their time and effort into their individual characters rather than a Node. This makes the most sense as a solo player, but even players in guilds will most likely prefer to put their time into permanent power gains.
Once players start to approach the limits of what they can do on their own, we will see Node development begin in earnest, with the first Metropolis being constructed by either a hardcore guild or a Zerg. Often, they are one and the same. The next part will vary, but it will look something like this: a superpower Zerg Node will emerge and either conquer or feudally enslave the surrounding Nodes. It may start as a regional power, but if Sieges are too easy to accomplish, it will rapidly engulf the region, the continent, and ultimately the entire world. To the point that the Zerg starts playing whack-a-mole with new Nodes built by any would-be rivals.
To some of us, conquering the entire world sounds awesome, and it probably is if you are on the winning side. But if a Zerg proliferates, you will more than likely not be on the winning side. In fact, if there is room for 5 metropolises on the game's map, you will more than likely be part of the 80% that lose. This is the nature of open-world survival games like Rust and MMO/survival hybrids like the very recent (and already underpopulated) Last Oasis. I understand that one of the core tenets underlying the philosophy of the game is that of #1 "Risk vs. Reward" and #2 "Not everyone can be a winner." And I respect both of those tenets, but just because not everyone can be a winner, does not mean that there should only ever be one winner. After all, once a Zerg takes control, they won't have to take on much risk at all in order to reap rewards.
Here's how player attrition will accelerate once a Zerg takes control of an entire server:
First, imagine that you've been part of a node for the last month and you've finally progressed to Metropolis level. You spent a couple days each week doing Node-related farming so that your average-sized guild can unlock Metropolis and get into your Node's unique raid. The Zerg on the other continent takes notice, and while you and your guild were trying to progress your characters further, and spent roughly a month of playtime focused on PVE, the Zerg built up Siege weaponry and initiates a Siege against your Node. Pause for a second - none of this is a problem so far. As we've all heard, Ashes of Creation is fundamentally a PvX MMO where there are reasons for PVEers and PVPers to intermingle. The problem happens after the Zerg successfully outnumbers and conquers the PVE guild - repeatedly. Maybe during the conflict, words were exchanged and things get personal. Now, the PVE guild decides to settle with a smaller Node in a secluded area further away from their destroyed Node. As soon as the Zerg gets wind of it, they descend on the PVEers' new Node in its fledgling state and send them back to the stone age a second time. The PVE guild breaks up due to internal squabbles brought on by their repeated defeat and a handful of players quit the game entirely because they spent time and effort investing in both Nodes just to see everything get reduced... to Ashes...
This process repeats for every guild the Zerg hates or views as a threat, and with every repeat obliteration, players leave. Worse yet, players on the server who weren't destroyed yet see that every time a Node reaches Metropolis, the Zerg annihilates them with a pre-emptive strike. Now the rest of the server population don't even want to grow their Node lest all of their progress be wiped out. Cowering in fear is not an emotion that should ever be cultivated. Now that a single dominant Zerg has emerged, the rest of the server is disincentivized to cultivate their Nodes, or they feel compelled to join the Zerg either directly or as a vassal state, thereby perpetuating the vicious feedback loop. If you think this is bad, think of the Classic WoW servers that lost their entire Alliance population due to being outnumbered and ganked by the Horde. Now imagine the Horde could actually destroy Ironforge and force the Alliance to rebuild. Repeatedly. They would quit the game in droves, faster than they already have.
This process is inevitable unless game systems exist to actively curb the growth potential of a Zerg and also the potential effectiveness of a Zerg's Sieges.
Recommendations for Intrepid regarding Node development and mitigating Zergs
1. Ensure that individual player progression is so closely tied to Node progression that even while players are doing individual tasks, almost everything they do is contributing to their Node in some way. I am under the impression that this is already the case, to some degree, but I want to emphasize that it should apply to almost EVERYTHING. This way, players do not have to go too far out of their way to work toward a collective goal that is just going to be wiped out regardless by a Zerg.
2. Do not create significant, direct rewards for players that destroy Nodes. I know that some items players store in their apartment/storage will be trapped in the Node once a siege is declared and part of that loot will be accessible to the attackers if they are victorious. It's cool that you can plunder a Node and all, but I implore the team to make this a paltry sum in comparison to the amount required to prepare and execute a Siege. Initiating and succeeding with a Siege should ultimately yield a negative return on investment in the short term. Sieging should never be able to fund more Sieging.
3. Make it slow to build and expensive to maintain a war machine. By this, I mean that it should take an attacking Node a lot of effort and time to initiate a Siege in the first place, regardless of the size of the Node they are attacking. Here's one simple way to do this: whether or not you've succeeded or failed in a Siege, all of those materials invested in the Siege equipment should be lost afterward. You won't be able to initiate a siege on another Node for a long time simply because of how expensive it is to do so. This would be on top of the existing cooldown protecting a Node from being Sieged over and over again, but it would also protect neighboring Nodes from being Sieged immediately afterward. This should be done to prevent a warmongering guild/Node from destroying every Node on the server and keeping the rest of the server in the stone age. If you've ever played Rust or other survival games, you've seen how Zergs that grow large enough will inevitably wipe out their neighbors followed soon after by the entire map (some of you may have recently seen this play out in Last Oasis, a very new MMO/survival game that has already seen tremendous player attrition due to the unrestricted power of Zergs).
4. Following that last point, put a soft cap on Node populations. I don't think there's much of a point in hard capping Node population because it's impossible to stop Zergs from forming and swallowing up smaller guilds into their empire, even if they aren't strictly part of the same Node. But there is still value in a soft cap. It should be increasingly costly for a mega Node to accept a new citizen once they reach a certain size, and from that point on citizenship should grant diminishing returns for all players in that Node and diminishing returns for the Node itself. This could be manifested with a "crowding" debuff or something of the sort where for every X players you have over that Node's soft cap, taxes increase by Y percent, and the Node's leadership must use that extra tax revenue to pay for a solution to the crowding debuff. If you've ever seen those pictures of overpopulated metropolitan US cities at the turn of the 19th century, you probably noticed that there is horse shit everywhere, all over the streets. I think that would be hilarious if the player's mounts started pooping while in an overcrowded metropolis, but the point is ultimately that solo players who aren't really loyal to the Node should be disincentivized from staying in that Node once it reaches a certain size. These measures would limit Zergs from consolidating power behind a single Node, but it doesn't yet address the problem of vassal states. If a Zerg builds a metropolis, they could threaten the rest of the continent's nodes to send them money and soldiers or get conquered. If those vassal states had to pay extra money to the Zerg metropolis, they would effectively have a higher tax rate or develop more slowly, which is why the first soft cap requirement is necessary to prevent their solo players from simply joining the Zerg metropolis.
5. Soft caps on population does something to address the monetary issue, but to solve the issue of zergs demanding more players to join the zerg in PVP, that's where hard caps on Sieges are essential. I know that Intrepid plans on 250v250 Sieges, which is already insane, and they're planning to go for 500v500. I implore the team to stick with 250v250 so that zergs can't simply overwhelm the defense with more players. If you can do 500v500, that's an awesome technical accomplishment and it should mean that 250v250 works well and is stable. By keeping the Siege numbers down, you prevent the Zerg from doing what Zergs do best, as their namesake suggests.
6. The Corruption system has an oversight regarding Zerg gankers. If a Zerg has already completely conquered the server, which they would be able to do without more restrictions as described above, they could essentially protect their Corrupted players simply by 1) grouping up with massive roving raid groups that are practically unstoppable, that's - why they're called a Zerg, after all - and 2) forbid anyone on the server from touching their Corrupted players lest those players get added to a kill list by the Zerg who goes after their Node next. Admittedly, I don't have a good solution for how to stop this. But a runaway Zerg might cause population crises even before they get to Sieging. Imagine if you couldn't leave your Node's gates without getting murdered 100 yards down the road by a Zerg Rogue waiting to gank every target he can. That will happen and he will get away with it if he can just slink back to his home turf and work it off knowing that his Zerg is protecting him from would-be bounty hunters (who would be mercilessly camped themselves if they stepped foot on the Zerg's Node).
7. Do not allow server transfers for any reason except that the server is dead and being merged. This is going to be a hard pill to swallow for many players, but if Intrepid caves and allows transfers (free or paid) people will flock to any server that doesn't have as much of a Zerg problem, thereby further exacerbating the problem for the players who remain. This is something that Kevin Jordan, former WoW dev for the golden early years of WoW, recommended in his reaction to Peon's video as well.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. These are the reasons why people call this the most ambitious MMO ever attempted, but I believe it can be done. It will require an immense amount of finesse and foresight from Intrepid into how players abuse so many interwoven systems, but it can be done!
TL;DR please don't let Gengis Khan conquer Ashes of Creation
Reddit crosspost link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AshesofCreation/comments/hyn6ig/zergs_will_destroy_the_game_if_left_unchecked/
