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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.
Idea: Race specific building in a Metropolis
Warth
Member, Alpha Two
I'd personally like to a little bit more depth to the racial influence on the Nodes. Don't get me wrong, changing the Astethics is a very nice already, as it might give rise to more interesting cities, despite being the the same Node on different server they were built on.
However, I can't help but feel, that there is some wasted potential here to to provide each racial influence with the unique flavors of the race who has predominatly built it. That's why I'd would like to suggest 1 additional building slot for Metropolis, where a building of the predominant race can be erect.
Each race would be given 3 building options. One of which can be built if the Metro has the influence of said race.
The 3 options would correspond with the values attributed to each race. For example a Vaelune (Trade, Law, Hardship) Metro would be given the build one of the following three:
Depending on which building the city decided to erect everybody (not just citizens) within the Zone of Influence (1/5 of the Map) of the Vaelune Metro would get certain benefits or perks depending on which building is erect.
Goals:
Just a couple of ideas what perks these buildings could give.
For example:
Trade has been the fundament for the prosperity of the Vaelune empire. Its Caravanserai supplies the Territory with materials to strengthen its Caravans and Trade Routes. All caravans started within the ZOI of the Metro can receive a special upgrade, through a payment of gold, increasing its Travel Speed, Hitpoints and/or Cargo Size.
Vaelune value law and order within its territory. The Tribunal ensures, that no Outlaw will go unpunished. City and Caravan Guards and defending Mercenaries become significantly more dangerous. (Alternatively, Corrupted players could either suffer harsher consequences upon death or need longer to work off their corruption).
Vaelune have suffered many hardships in their history. That's why they erected the first Hospitals, which leads them get through the hardships Verra is throwing at them. The access to Hospitals and medical care far beyond its time allows Adventurers to recover faster from the critical injuries, reducing the amount of EXP Debt they collect upon death.
Ideas, criticism and feedback would be greatly appreciated. I think something along these lines would greatly help to make the racial influences on metropoli feel more meaningful, while tieing into the lore, the flavour and the immersion of its race. Without creating the necessity to meta-game the system.
However, I can't help but feel, that there is some wasted potential here to to provide each racial influence with the unique flavors of the race who has predominatly built it. That's why I'd would like to suggest 1 additional building slot for Metropolis, where a building of the predominant race can be erect.
Each race would be given 3 building options. One of which can be built if the Metro has the influence of said race.
The 3 options would correspond with the values attributed to each race. For example a Vaelune (Trade, Law, Hardship) Metro would be given the build one of the following three:
- Caravanserai (signifiying their virtue of Trade)
- Tribunal (signifiying their virtue of Law)
- Hospital (signifiying their virtue of Hardship)
Depending on which building the city decided to erect everybody (not just citizens) within the Zone of Influence (1/5 of the Map) of the Vaelune Metro would get certain benefits or perks depending on which building is erect.
Goals:
- These perks shouldn't be inherently far better than others, just touch different aspects of the game.
- The perks given by these should be influential enough, that it gives People, who are interested in different aspects of the game a reason to push for the Siege of the Metropolis and creation of a Metropolis of their prefered racial influence.
- Create a bit more depth leading up the decision "What race should i play". Moving away or at least diminishing the notion, that you have to pick a race that is the best for the class you want to play.
Just a couple of ideas what perks these buildings could give.
For example:
Trade has been the fundament for the prosperity of the Vaelune empire. Its Caravanserai supplies the Territory with materials to strengthen its Caravans and Trade Routes. All caravans started within the ZOI of the Metro can receive a special upgrade, through a payment of gold, increasing its Travel Speed, Hitpoints and/or Cargo Size.
Vaelune value law and order within its territory. The Tribunal ensures, that no Outlaw will go unpunished. City and Caravan Guards and defending Mercenaries become significantly more dangerous. (Alternatively, Corrupted players could either suffer harsher consequences upon death or need longer to work off their corruption).
Vaelune have suffered many hardships in their history. That's why they erected the first Hospitals, which leads them get through the hardships Verra is throwing at them. The access to Hospitals and medical care far beyond its time allows Adventurers to recover faster from the critical injuries, reducing the amount of EXP Debt they collect upon death.
Ideas, criticism and feedback would be greatly appreciated. I think something along these lines would greatly help to make the racial influences on metropoli feel more meaningful, while tieing into the lore, the flavour and the immersion of its race. Without creating the necessity to meta-game the system.
4
Comments
What kind of buildings did you have in mind for the other races?
Here are some concerns I have with it. Obviously the goal is to not create a meta where one race is more popular than others purely based on the type of buildings they can build. This in itself will be a difficult balancing task. That leaves us (as you mentioned yourself) with buildings that aren’t too powerful which means that mayors/kings might not even build them because there are other better and more important buildings to spend resources on.
It’s a great idea. However, you would need to find a balance so that the buildings are important enough to be built, but not so important that people are more drawn to any specific race.
If the additional slot is purely for the "racial building", then it would mean the mayor wouldn't have had to choose it over something else.
You’re right. If they add one additional slot that part wouldn’t be an issue. They would still have to balance each races power.
I personally don't think that balancing can or should be a major concern in this regard. After all, how do you really compare the value of stronger dwarven walls, that helps you with sieges against the perk to get less EXP Debt upon death, the possibility to do more secure caravan runs, ships enhancements for Niküa or more progression within your religion through the Vek.
Goal would be, that they touch completely different aspects of the game, making them better for some or worse for others. Stronger caravans is great for people trading a lot, its horrible for people who'd like to rob. Less EXP debt on death at the same time means that your opponents/rivals profit from the same. People that tend to die less than their opposition might just not want this at all, as it makes their ability to die less than others less meaningful. The "nature" aspect of the Pyrai could produce a building, that increases to possibility for "lucky crits" upon gathering to get rare materials and generally increase the amount of materials through gathering. Which would be great for gatherers, but significantly less useful for crafters and processors.
People that like to do fishing trips, treasure diving and intercontinental trade would probably dislike a Building, that provides a Perk to Warships, which helps pirates steal from them, why they'd love a perk that helps civilian ship types.
TL/DR. The question shouldn't be "whats best", but "what's best for your playstyle". Which should provide another incentive to tear down or defend certain race-flavoured nodes, the same way node types and split-up content already does. The fact, that these bonuses would affect all players, whatever race or citizenship they belong to are meant to prevent players from feeling like "i have to play pyrai to get the gathering bonus", as everybody gets the gathering bonus.
I'll update the list with the others i had in mind tomorrow. Takes a while to write all that up. I'll ping you once i did.
Two examples of failure in other MMO:
ESO, wanting to create a Shadowscale (an assassin lizardman with a rich specific lore) just to hit max level and discover lizards are only viable for healing.
WoW Classic. Terrible racial balancing. The Forsaken (undead) , wich were in lore a minority, made for almost all of the horde, and in most cases, allmost all of the server due to PvP imbalances, wich wiped the rest of the races.
I have plenty more examples of people in MMOs calling me noob for picking a sub-obtimal combo.
Please, let races be part of the freedom intead of a restriction.
honestly that is just the meta shaming you. You can't take that stuff seriously it does not actually matter that much.
i think you should read the post instead of just the headline.
Nobody is asking for races to define who/what races you can play.
Also, if IS wants to follow your logic, then they'd have to remove racial stat seeds, racial augments, about 2-3 School of Augments per secondary archetype and the fact that you can have magical secondary archetypes with martial primaries or the other way around. Otherwise you won't find anything even resembling a good balance within the game.
in WoW Classic and ESO (especially ESO) it certainly does. The impact there is huge.
Nobody is asking for that within this post though. Sov probably didn't even read the post from what he has wrote. Its not about giving racial passives at all. Its about creating more distinct nodetypes.
Yeah you are right, Racials do have an impact especially in wow. but i dont think you should let that determine how you play a game.
Also yes he probably didnt read it lol.
Not only once, but twice, you told me I didn't read the post.
If having racial skills have led to those situations, imagine it applicable to nodes.
At best, and with a PERFECT balancing, it will add a bit of flavour.
But, given the experiences we all had, it will probably lead to anticlimatic situations as having, for example, dwarven nodes everywhere: desert, jungle, elven forest, you name it.
Places where actually more natural, race spawn-related architecture would happen spontaneusly.
Sorry for my english and I hope you don't insult me this time. Thanks.
You’re a little naive to say that the question shouldn’t be “what’s best”. There will always be a meta and when the meta affects things on a scale as large as nodes (the core of the game) you can bet that people would flock towards the race with the strongest meta... and have fun changing that meta after people locked in their races... the uproar will be nuts.
Balance is absolutely a concern and I do not understand why you would think that it’s not.
Edit: I wish that you were right and that people could just pick the race that’s best for their play style. However, that’s unfortunately not how players behave (especially nowadays) and they will flock to one specific race. You would probably see entire guilds who only allow a certain race to join their ranks and this wouldn’t happen because of RP reasons but because of meta reasons.
you get the same perks everybody else in your Metro's ZOI gets. Your racial selection doesn't have any impact on that. Your race choice influences which you (one of thousands of players) contribute to said Metropolis.
On the other hand, your racial selection will quite certainly have an impact on the class you are playing and its efficiency.
Would people select a subpar race, so they can be one of thousands of people contributing to a node to get a perk is only subjectively better or would they rather select the race that is considered the best for its class due to aguments and stat seeds? One that impacts your personal performance rather than the entire community?
If you want to worry about racial imbalance, then you should worry about racial augments, not a minor, subjective perk in which your racial selection barely carries any impact in the first place.
If players get to choose between a race that's 2-3% more efficient for the class or being one of thousands of contributors to the flavour of the node. Then most players will gladly decide for the better Race-Class combination. Especially so, if you trade off your personal efficiency so EVERYBODY gets an advantage, even your own enemies.
More specifics for each racial building would modify the argument slightly but the current examples feel healthy to me.
@Sathrago I just don't see a guild going all-orc. Just to help making their personal node a orc-city, but sacrifice some efficiency of their healers, mages, bards, summoners and rangers due to subotimal racials.
That's why i thought it like this. If the racials were unique to race or even only for citizens, then I'd totally share Sov's opinion on that.
Some folks may also want to remember that we've previously discussed an attrition mechanic around racial influences on nodes, to curb the impact of one racial style dominating the landscape: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Races#Racial_influence_on_nodes
Ill do this in a similar fashion to Warth's example.
Celestial. Purpose. Fate.
Tower of Stars (signifying their devotion to astral knowledge)
Ziggurat (signifying the will to be closer to the gods)
Monolith (signifies fate and depicts legendary prophecies)
The Tower of Stars, a building similar in design to an observatory would be used to gaze upon the celestial bodies and invoke different bonuses to those that are within the node, cycling each day or manually changed by the mayor via donation of resources. This could be the fantasy version of horoscopes but they actually give benefits.
The Ziggurat brings those that walk its steps closer to the heavens, granting greater insight and peace to those within its scope. Players who visit the Ziggurat can pay a fee to traverse the spiritual realm, granting them a "spectator" mode that grants flight and speed for a duration. After time is up you return to the Ziggurat. This would let players scout out various areas within the node quicker than normal and help them choose where to go or just allow players to watch in on fights, etc.
The Monolith, a great slab of stone that developers can slap "prophecies" onto for lore teasing, and other silly things. It could potentially give players like a teeny tiny bonus to upgrade chance when enchanting items and other craft related stuff since its about fate and the future.
There, my poor lil attempt at this. Don't be too harsh!
Importantly, and perhaps the main reason I don't like it: it is not going to be something the individual player really has control over. I can't control which races are played in what numbers and where they decide to make their home, it feels almost incidental (outside of the racial gateways) which race will be the most populous in any given node. You are thinking about this from a higher level than an individual player so it sounds fun if you were playing a top-down game like Civ but I don't think it holds well in an MMO.
I think we are already given a lot of choices to consider in which node we make our home, the local population adds another variable that doesn't actually add much game benefits. All of the buffs/buildings you would consider with a racial theme could also be implemented through the node types without losing anything imo, or am I missing something? In the examples you gave for instance, the trade one could be economic, the law and order one could be military and the hardship one could either be military or divine.
Make it so that only citizens of the node that are also of that race are able to determine exactly what building they make, and also only those people are able to contribute to it.
To me, the main benefit of this is to break up the architectural monotomy of a singualr racial style in a metropolis (what city in the world only uses one style of architecture?), but I could see it fitting in to the game in a similar manner to what the OP is suggesting here.
Hehe, good job! I like the "Tower Of Stars" one the best. Maybe it could randomly cycle through all other building-bonuses from all the other races! So, you'd never know which one you'd be getting next, but it'd give you a bonus for something.
Elven King statue (signifying their virtue of Imperial)
Elven Soldier statue (signifying their virtue of Pride)
Elven Scholar statue (signifiying their virtue of Culture)
Empyrean politics allow for a highly structured organisational formation. The Elven King statue gives a Party a X% Health Boost if there are three or more Empyrean characters in the group.
The Empyrean race is renowned for their elite military forces. The Elven Soldier statue provides Players with a X% damage reduction from non-Elven foes.
The Empyrean knowledge of art and science is second to none. The Elven Scholar statue allows for a small boost to the unique building of that node's Metropolis.
Just my opinion on this, but i believe that "node types" don't have to be unique. Each and every node should be Unique. Node Mayoral Buildings already blur the line between the node types. All node types can build marketplaces, even though they are inherently economic in design. All nodes types can build armories, which (while we don't have the details on that one yet), will probably be effects that would primarily fit a Military type, the same way Temples can be put into every nodetype, while they are primarily divine. The common citizen doesn't have much impact on these buildings either, as the decision on which one to build lies primarily with the Mayor/Government. This suggestion does nothing else, it just builds upon the principle already within the game: The Ability for the node to be customized to make them truely unique, as it is intended by design.
I do however agree what @Noaani has mentioned. The choice of buildings doesn'T necessairly have to be based around the Racial Influences within the Node. You could simply open up all buildings of every single race, disregarding which race has the primary influence. Make it so, that each building can be built by the members of that race, with the first race to completing theirs being the one which is finished. If you and your friends wanted to have a Vaelune Building, you'd give the resources to your Vaelune buddy to contribute to the Vaelune building. I do however believe, that this would encourage meta gaming by quiet a lot. Which I'm not sure is a good thing. I believe there to be certain Pros and Cons to that idea, but that's more of a technicality on how to implement something rather than if implementing something could be interesting.
More importantly, I'd say, that adding depth to a MMORPG isn't a bad thing. Especially not for something that aspires to be like AoC. It's the gradual reduction in Depth and Width of the system, that made a lot of people turn their backs on WoW. I'm one of them, who is convinced, that adding depth to the game is something online games should aspire to do, the same way PoE, EvE or even LoL building upon the foundation they already have.
One more thing is, that i believe in the concept of "implement something properly, or don't waste your time on it at all". Right now the races as a primarly cosmetiic choice feel to be very shallow and lackluster. To the point where I'm saying: Why even bother spending 1000s of hours on armor adjustments, animation adjustments... to create races that inherently have barely any impact on the world of verra. You might as well just loosen the constraints of the character creator and save yourself hours upon hours of creating cosmetics that tie into the game in a very shallow way at best.
This suggestion shouldn't be primarily about nodes and their uniqueness, as there is already many systems in place combating every military node being the same. It's mostly about adding more depth, more flavour, more impact to the systems of races within AoC. The relation to nodes just comes from the perspective, that everybody profiting from it would reduce the need to meta-game and the fact, that in Ashes pretty much everything ties into the node in one way or another.
Regarding the buildings for other races:
I really liked the suggestion of @Sathrago regarding the Vek. All 3 of them sound quite interesting and unique.
Pyrai (Nature, Balance, Fury):
Natural Reserve: Pyrai have always lived from Nature. Through their great knowledge in gathering, hunting, herbalism and wood cutting, they were able to build a sustainable Civilization, that lives in Harmony with nature. Their sustainable way of utilizing these Ressources allows extra harvests as well as a higher chance of lucky crits when following these professions in the ZOI of the Metropolis.
Natural Habitat (Balance): Py'rai in their essence understand, that living in Balance with Nature is a key to ensure a flourishing civilization. Not every monster needs to die. Neither does every monsters need to be tamed and trained. Knowing when to utilize the carrot and when to resort to the stick has been one of their most important skills in the past. The natural habitat allows them to decide, which monster have to be culled and which monster should be tamed. Based on a populr vote once a day, the players within this Zone may choose (for the next 24 Hours)
Spike Forest (Fury): Don't let their love for nature fool you, the Py'rai rarely take prisoners. Nothing signifies that as well as their Spike Forest. Many customs have changed, since they left Verra thousands of years ago. One certainly didn't: Impaling the heads of foes upon spikes, setting them up for display in what they lovingly call the Spike Forest. Delivering the Head of an enemy to the spike forest builds renown in the Py'rainian culture. This building allows players within the ZOI of the Metropolis, to harvest the head from the corpses of their enemies. Delivering the heads of their enemies to the Spike Forest provides a chunk of EXP and additional points in the correlating leaderboard (scales with the strength/renown of their enemy).
You are not adding uniqueness though, you are taking it away is my point. It's just like the primary and secondary archetype system for picking your class (except in this case, you have no control over the secondary archetype being chosen if it's based on the population of the races). If you pick a wizard, it will be different from a cleric. But if you allow the wizard to choose cleric as its secondary class and a cleric to choose the wizard as his secondary class they don't become more unique, you start to encroach on the other's roles/identity. Instead of having these building options be decided by the most populous race, you should then be a proponent of making buildings exclusive to the node types, with choices that will allow nodes of the same type to diverge as you hint at in your post. If you think the node types should be more unique, I'm fully on board, I just don't think giving them identity in a new way rather than bettering the identity they already have should be the way forward in that case.
Again, the biggest issue I have here is that you don't have control over this, it's not a choice, it's incidental. So it's really a stretch to call it added depth. You can't engage with this, you can't master it or get better at it because it is completely dependent on the decision of many players for many different reasons. It's complexity for the sake of complexity, or at least that's what it looks like to me.
A quick visit to the wiki will show you that race does matter from racial augments to exclusive quest lines and hopefully more to be revealed. I do however agree with you that I'd like to see racial choice matter a lot and would not at all mind exclusive content for races. I also really love the idea of codified racism in game. Give me tension, especially if it's a non-faction based game. Make the majority population have some baseline discount at vendors while other races (and perhaps a chosen hated race based on lore) not get the discount. Give me different dialogues with more/less racist NPCs towards other races. Or conversely make minority races gain faster reputation among factions (e.g. thief's guild etc) since they stand out more and aren't one of the many vaelune in the node. This should naturally build some racial envy.
Node A has orc special building 1
Node B has orc special building 2
Node C has orc special building 3
Each place now has a specific special building that players would want to travel to in order to gain the benefits of using that special building and this is not even considering the node type and the other races as well.
This singular idea makes it so that there are 4 possible node types each with 9 possible prominent race architectures each with 3 possible special buildings. I have no clue how to do the math on how many different possibilities this creates but its got to be up there in differences.
Sure its a small change and a small variable but if these special buildings are unique enough like some of the already suggested buildings, then they will create an even more unique world than was already promised via the node system.
Yeah but that sounds, and obviously this is not a personal attack, awful. Because either A ) the buffs will be strong enough to warrant wanting to go somewhere in the world for a particular buff and the special building of a node would be a major driving force in what part of the world I want to be in or B ) not be super important and therefore again, incidental to my travels.
Number of combinations does not equate uniqueness my friend. If the class system also added a tertiary archetype selection, you would have a boatload of "classes" but how different would they really be? And apply your logic to node types... instead of each of the 9 races having 3 different building types (9*3 = 27) why not just have each node type have 7 different building types (4*7 = 28)? Do you see what I mean? We already have node types to give your node identity, we don't really need another mechanic to give it even more identity, we can just expand the node type options.
Bear in mind you also can't determine the node type, but at least with node types you can hunt down the node type of interest (25% chance) and then engage with the politics of the node to build the things you want. However in the suggested system, let's say you do want to find Node A with orcs, you will be looking at 1/7 (~14%) of nodes in the world meet your criterion IF there is equal % of each race-dominant node, unlikely if. Also remember that the node dominant race changes every time the node levels up to match the highest contributing race. If the node type matters on top that, you are looking at tiny tiny numbers of the nodes that meet your requirement (~4%) after which you need to engage in the politics to get the right building if it is not already selected and cross your fingers if the node levels up the dominant race doesn't change. It does not at all sound fun for me to hunt down the right node to be a citizen of or engage in some activity in. I want my geographic location to be determined by the ever evolving world content, preferred environmental aesthetic, guild war events etc, not which node happens to have more of some race.
The special buildings bring a flair of uniqueness as well as the combinations. You have to zoom out to see how this would affect an entire server. No two servers would be the same and this would further expand on that. This also gives more incentive for players to actually attempt to destroy other nodes and create a new one with a primary race in mind. Artificial nodes are going to happen when a large enough alliance sets its mind to it and I think thats good for the game.
I understand what you mean here but ultimately that's a preference and not something I see as a flaw of this suggested addition to nodes. The percentages can easily change with player agency.
Yeah but then you are creating a meta based on geography of the server which feels strange and does not fit the interdependency focus of the game. Not to mention it would be a balancing nightmare (it would almost need to be balanced on a server basis). As I already mentioned though, I really hate the idea of feeling like I need to find a crafting-optimal node nearby, transport my resources there with some caravan and all that jazz just to be optimal. I mean honestly I simply wouldn't engage with this aspect of the game if it was implemented. I think the game already provides so many cool reasons to explore and to travel around the world, having some buffs making certain things/events optimal based on highest population sounds really bad to me. To be clear: I love lots of the ideas put forth here, I just don't think they should be tied to which population has the highest representation in a node.
We have plenty of incentive to destroy nodes plus the servers should already be plenty different enough. I do agree that zooming might be the issue here, but in the sense that when you zoom in that far out you have the impression that this is something "the server decides" or can "easily change with player agency" but it isn't actually a decision. People will choose their race and go around the world for the many many other reasons the game already provides, where the chips fall is incidental and outside of the "servers control" and most definitely outside of the control of any individual player. It actually sounds incredibly hard to change the highest contributing population of a node, even Wrath recognized this in his post and said so (quote below). Imagine trying to organize a group of players who play the same race to rebuild a node, like what?
In any case I feel like I've expressed why I disagree with the idea but as I said earlier I like the building and perk ideas, I just don't agree on how they should/may be added/implemented into the game. If you do discuss this stuff further, my positive contribution would be the codified racism (it's in one of my earlier comments in this thread, just ctrl+find racism haha).
Cheers.