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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
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Make military nodes great again *DISCLAIMER*
George_Black
Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
*I just picked this title for a bit of funny clickbait action. It doesn't reflect my political views*
Military leadership can be a contest between tanks, rogues, fighters, archers, mages and summoners, wearing the strongest gear they can get their hands on.
Maybe a military node doesnt need to have a cleric leader or a bard.
Maybe the dedication you put to lv up and get equiped is a better sign of STRENGTH than how well you can play pokemon trainer with the pet fight/race ideas thrown around, or with the skill to prepare a spreadsheet, using the available stats, skills, armor, weapons for a souless, prideless player controlled, champion npc or crafting... cooking competitions.
Is this a military node or what?
Military leadership can be a contest between tanks, rogues, fighters, archers, mages and summoners, wearing the strongest gear they can get their hands on.
Maybe a military node doesnt need to have a cleric leader or a bard.
Maybe the dedication you put to lv up and get equiped is a better sign of STRENGTH than how well you can play pokemon trainer with the pet fight/race ideas thrown around, or with the skill to prepare a spreadsheet, using the available stats, skills, armor, weapons for a souless, prideless player controlled, champion npc or crafting... cooking competitions.
Is this a military node or what?
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The idea of champions is - to me - actually ridiculous. Anything that turns the game away from this and brings things to player characters fighting player characters is the way to go imo.
Military nodes should be run by the people you dont want to take on 1v1, and any imbalances in the game - or any changes in balance - should result in leadership changes.
Just an idea that crossed my mind but would you be against Archetypes getting certain bonuses towards node mayorship? If it's found that Clerics have a really hard time even coming close to being a Military Node leader one could argue it only makes sense that they'd do better than most in a Religious Node
Personally, I think that would be the coolest way to do it.
It should also not matter what class someone is. Being a military leader is not a flavor that should be limited to some classes. In many navies past and present a sailor could go from the lowest guy scrubbing the deck to the captain of a ship during their career. It just seems silly to try and restrict node leadership based on class.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
It's been a while for me too. I just remember liking the idea of having to lead an arena team to victory as proof of might and leadership.
Since the game is not balanced for 1v1 anyway, it would make more sense to me.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
The issue would be to code the verification of the mayor as a victorious team member during the competition matches, as well as a team vote system.
If they do this, they would make military nodes prestigeous
I was thinking you would have to register as a team lead competing for mayor with a team of 7 other players. This would lock those players from being in other teams for the vote. Then the leaders get voted for and the top two leaders teams fight.
Something like that. Where registering a team would be part of the process of putting your name on the ballot.
I think there are ways to do it that would not be too hard. It just depends on if intrepid wants to go with teams or stick to the dumb 1v1 route.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
This has always been my second most preferred method.
I prefer the idea of an outright FFA first and foremost. Winning means having skill in PvP, and also having allies. More importantly, it gives those "allies" a fantastic opportunity for backstabbing - and thus for creating drama.
After that, the idea of a 3v3 tournament (3v3 should be enough people that any one player of any one class can have a team built around them - but I would be fine with any number up to 8v8) is what I consider to be the next best option.
1v1 tournament is my third option, and champions are a thing I don't understand why the notion of them exists in Ashes.
The initial fight is a massive 1v1 single round elimination any odd numbers get a free pass to the second round. The second fight is a ffa where the last 80 players left standing continue. The third fight is 10 random teams of 8v8 that do a best of 3 series match. The fourth fight will return to 1v1s, but uses the double elimination brackets with a best of 3 matches being the winner. This continues until there are only 2 winners left, who will fight in a best of 5 match. Winner becomes mayor.
This attempts to test the player on multiple levels, Firstly, if they can even win a 1v1 fight or are just stupid lucky. The second fight tests their ability to survive through indiscriminate chaos. The third fight tests their luck and ability to work as a team. The final bout of fights are there to test your single combat skills against the best of the best until one is able to slaughter their way onto the peak.
Nyaaaaawwww, dammit...!
In 1v1 and 3v3 some classes will be the best. In 8v8 its the other 7 that are doing the heavy lifting so why have this for a system that rewards only one of those players?.
You can't get around the fact that some classes will just have a better chance of becoming a mayor than others.
Whether its an avatar or your character, I want a system where you go in by yourself and come out by yourself. You can add group battles in between and that would add variety between the classes that make it to the end, but the final battle should be a 1v1 fight because the reward is for a single player.
I fully disagree.
IMO, the "avatar" system is lame. It is like the dumb easy way out of PvP balance FFXIV took. Instead of balancing PvP they just gave up and equalized everything. It is pathetic game design and should be condemned. If they want to balance for 3v3 or 8v8 or any other group size that is fine. Let a leader rise to lead that sized group to victory.
There is no reason why the final fight should be 1v1. In no way is 1v1 demonstrating leadership.
It is also not a reward for a single player. It will likely be a guild/group effort to groom/gear a player capable of victory in these arenas. It should be a guild/group activity.
Anytime a game tries to scale, equalize, or make you fight as the character or loadout you do not normally use in the rest of the games content. I am against that. It is lame and game designers can do better.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
In fact, I can see there being level 3 nodes (which is where the mayors office is initiated) with a lower total population than this.
Not at the start of the game, and not when the first nodes hit metropolis stage - but only a few months after that most people are likely to realize that they don't stand any real chance of being mayor.
I can honestly see some metropolis node competitions within the first 18 months of the games life having single digit entries.
Then you can skip the culling portions entirely. Just go straight to the 4th section. The prior matches are to filter out a large amount of players, so there should be no issue changing how many stages you have to complete according to the number of players signed up.
It can't be helped for sieges and caravans but having to roll a specific class and possibly having to play during a bad part of the day just makes Military Nodes too much of an outlier IMO
I don't know if I agree w/ your sentiment here.
Standardized classes/gear means the entire weight of the fight is on your personal skill and there are times when that can make more sense mechanically rather than basing an outcome on how long you spent grinding up a single piece of gear.
There's also some games that would just outright benefit from the distinction, like WoW, where balancing for the Arena has made balancing for Raids and M+ a nightmare b/c every little QoL change to PvE utterly shatters the PvP scene.
The science node will choose guild leaders because they will stuff the node with their members, the economic node will have guilds who stuff their guild leader's bags with coin. If you add in group fights it will again be guild leaders who end up as mayors. This leaves the divine node as the only way a non-guild leader can become mayor. It seems more balanced to have two nodes were regular players can become mayors.
Not too sure about the avatar system either but I know I'd rather have normal 1v1 than group fights, imbalance and all.
If the fights were bigger than a single group then I would agree that leadership would be a better fit for the military node mayor. Otherwise I think the best fighter fits better with the theme of the military node.
I mean, they will probably just use primetime for said server and its not gonna hit you out of nowhere. Plus, who want's a mayor that can't even show up for primetime events?
It's fine if you don't agree.
To me, MMOs are not about just skill alone. Skill is important, but progression is also important. If I wanted to play a game where skill was the only factor at play. I have plenty of fighting games and mobas to choose from. I like the idea of knowing that while I am grinding, there is someone else out there grinding harder. It pushes me to grind harder. Then in the aftermath of a conflict I can reflect on if it was skill, gear, or teamwork than made win or lose. In this way even the grind is exciting.
I will add this. PvP is not essential at all in WOW. It is in fact 100% optional. With Ashes, it is a little bit of the other way around. PvE is far more optional than PvP. Considering the open world nature of the game and how many systems try to make you PvP by auto-flagging you as combatant.
To me, this means that PvP balance is more important than PvE balance. Ashes is not confirmed to have instanced raids. Ashes has no plans for M+ style dungeon. We don't even know if the instanced dungeons we get will be end-game content. The way I see it, "Some story dungeons may be instanced if needed" is about the extent of pure PvE in Ashes.
The way I see it they should be balancing the whole game around some size of group PvP. 3v3,5v5,8v8... w/e.
Again it is fine if you don't agree, but when I look at Ashes. PvE seems secondary to PvP.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
1v1 arena would practically demand 1v1 balance or have total leadership rotations occur frequently. Additionally without 1v1 balance its more likely guilds have an edge in 1v1 arena tournaments too.
Capture the flag has an easier barrier to entry, and can be designed to make balance less of an issue. Additionally you just need supporters rather than super high level/high skilled people. A shrewd upstart with good leadership ability but no large guild could still make it.
And I'll repeat another suggestion I said somewhere else. Why not both and link it to a communities racial bias. Its an opportunity for race to have a cultural leaning expressed in game mechanic beyond buildings. Capture the flag for some races, 1v1 for races with 'honor' traditions, 3v3 for others. Compromises all around.
I agree w/ you on all of these points, but when it comes to leadership of a Military Node I think that's one of those areas where pure skill should be prioritized over a grind. If you wanted to grind yourself to leadership then move to a Religious Node.
It's a different grind.
Grinding Arena combat is fitting for a Military Node. Whether it's player character combat or Champion combat.
We will just have to see how the devs get around the challenge of arena combat with rock/paper/scissors archetypes.
I am just thinking it will be like lineage 2. I remember my guild all working together to fuel some good S-grade for our guy doing Olympiad. It was a guild effort to grind his gear up, and it felt nice to see the guys name on the statue. Something we all did our part in.
It was not that he was carried by the gear. It was that everyone competing had the best gear too. Like, race cars kind of... everyone has to have the best, but the driver makes the difference. The team does everything for the driver behind the scenes while the driver focuses on being good and winning.
The way I imagine it. It would be a team of drivers with a team of cars competing together from one guild or alliance. Which to me sounds like a promising guild activity to work on that is also great for the local economy. Everyone chips in mats to the guild bank to make the best gear for the arena team. The gear might not even be something the guild lets the competitors keep. Some guilds might just loan the gear for the arena fight. I don't think many race car drivers own their cars.
I mean, I just expect anyone competing to be on the very edge of what is possible with gear already. I don't think it will be one guy out there grinding by himself 24 hours a day. So that he has the best possible gear, then goes in and lets his gear do the work.
To be clear, I am advocating for competing massive group efforts not competing solo grinders.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I can feed the moves into my other monitor and make you play against got tier AI.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
While I agree with you that this doesn't necessarily mean the person that will always come out on top in a 1v1 encounter, it does mean the person that convince other brutal people to put that brutishness to use for them, rather than everyone being their own self-employed brute.
History bares this out quite well, and it also points to the fact that most leaders have a strategist behind the scenes (as is the case in politics today), rather than the head-brute themselves being the strategist.
Your suggestion would be better suited to finding that strategist to assist the brute, not for finding that brute.
I suppose though it'd be more prudent to ask you what your definition of a 'brutal society' is before I go making assumptions. My understanding of a Military Node is that it does two main things: Bounty Hunting and Reduced Corruption timer. These are two 'competing' benefits.
The main example of what I think you could mean by 'brutal society' is Pirates. I can totally see a pirate like 'society' giving both those benefits. I also assume a 'pirate' model is what you mean by brutal societies given you brought up the brute vs strategist division commonly found in the captain vs quartermaster dynamic. However there are many many cases even in pirates where it was not so cut and dry and it was usually a much more cooperative effort in terms of strategy. I won't pigeonhole you into 'just pirates' obviously, civilizations are more complex than that, but they still contain a good model and historical examples.
Dont ever post on my topics again......
The bounty hunter system is looking like it will be made available to military node, vassals of military nodes, and any node with a diplomatic alliance with a military node. Thus, bounty hunters are potentially available in any node.
The corruption thing has been completely pulled from the game. They had plans to have a quest to reduce corruption and were tossing up for a while between putting it in a military or religious node, and decided on military.
Then they realized that it would be a bad idea to have a quest that reduces corruption offered in a node, where guards attack players that have corruption.
So instead, they shifted the corruption reduction mechanic from anything related to nodes at all, over to the current plan of gaining experience removes corruption.
Also, pirates were not a particularly brutal society. They democratically voted on all major issues, including who was to be captain. The Nation State navies of the world back in the age of sail were far more brutal than pirate life.
If you want a real world analogy, look more at things like organized crime. That is the best analogy to the notion of a military node in Ashes - in terms of deciding who is in charge.