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Clarification on Vassal and Parent Node conflicts?
Ulfbrinter
Member
I intend on pre-ordering Ashes of Creation soon but in the meantime, I have been reading through the Wiki for the game that I was kindly linked. However, I have come across a mutually incompatible situation in the Wiki's explanation for two separate but directly entwined situations and I was hoping maybe someone here has newer and perhaps further clarified information.
I apologize that this so long, but the length I feel is required in order to properly elucidate where I am encountering stumbling blocks and hopefully answer the three questions at the bottom.
I'm going to directly quote from the Wiki the two relevant passages and further explain my confusion below.
From the section on Guilds:
From the section on Zones of Influence:
Both of the linked citations for these passages are accurately transcribed.
Now here is the confusion:
If a Vassal cannot attack a Parent node then how precisely could the first quote occur? If a Vassal cannot attack a Parent node then there is logically no way for the "splintering" as Steven says to occur. There are roughly 100 nodes (from what I read in the Wiki) which may seem like a lot but I've played MMO's with far more landmass and I've seen how quickly real estate actually goes. If we were to take this in a realistic scenario (six months, a year, or more post-launch) where a guild splits due to internal conflict then there would not really be any unoccupied Nodes that such a group could occupy due to the Zone of Influence mechanic naturally oppressing them as a matter of course. Presuming they could find a Node that wasn't directly linked to the primary antagonist of such a group in the first place.
Example:
The group splinters and one-half of the guild decide they want to follow one guy, but to do this they must locate uncontested Nodes that are not tied to their former guildmates via the influence mechanism. They locate a node far off that isn't directly occupied (it's Tier 0) but a node right next door is Tier 3, this would by default prevent them from making any progress beyond what their neighbors direct because of the system artificially handicapping them to Tier 2 until they can rank up said neighbor via the passed on resources/experience deducted from the vassal's town after capping out. And worse, they cannot claim the land of neighboring nodes nor attack any nearby vassals because the guild that's already Tier 3 has also pushed them into their zone of influence as well. As it stands, the explanations given in theory kill the prospect of the sort of big splits leading to massive competition between guilds in the cradle and just reinforces the status quo.
What if the nomad guild just attacks the aforementioned Tier 3 node to claim it for themselves?
Not a bad idea, really, but in all likelihood, any vindictive or highly competitive (or both) guild would just back up a targeted third-party guild that the nomads were attempting to defeat and whose land they intended to occupy through the guild war system via an allegiance. Meaning any attempts to occupy new land could be thwarted due to the other half in this split being able to intervene when push came to shove. So attacking a different guild's node isn't really a solution to the problem, and this of course presumes that said target wasn't already in the zone of influence of a bigger fish, thus rendering the whole plan moot.
This isn't a make-or-break thing for me, but I'm trying to determine what is correct and hopefully answer the following three questions:
I apologize that this so long, but the length I feel is required in order to properly elucidate where I am encountering stumbling blocks and hopefully answer the three questions at the bottom.
I'm going to directly quote from the Wiki the two relevant passages and further explain my confusion below.
From the section on Guilds:
Over time you have betrayals in the mafia guild and they splinter off into two groups and join the other side or it's like weird things that can occur in that regard... – Steven Sharif
From the section on Zones of Influence:
A Vassal Node cannot declare war on their Parent Node or any of its Vassals. Citizens of Vassals are bound by the diplomatic states of the Parent Node.
Both of the linked citations for these passages are accurately transcribed.
Now here is the confusion:
If a Vassal cannot attack a Parent node then how precisely could the first quote occur? If a Vassal cannot attack a Parent node then there is logically no way for the "splintering" as Steven says to occur. There are roughly 100 nodes (from what I read in the Wiki) which may seem like a lot but I've played MMO's with far more landmass and I've seen how quickly real estate actually goes. If we were to take this in a realistic scenario (six months, a year, or more post-launch) where a guild splits due to internal conflict then there would not really be any unoccupied Nodes that such a group could occupy due to the Zone of Influence mechanic naturally oppressing them as a matter of course. Presuming they could find a Node that wasn't directly linked to the primary antagonist of such a group in the first place.
Example:
The group splinters and one-half of the guild decide they want to follow one guy, but to do this they must locate uncontested Nodes that are not tied to their former guildmates via the influence mechanism. They locate a node far off that isn't directly occupied (it's Tier 0) but a node right next door is Tier 3, this would by default prevent them from making any progress beyond what their neighbors direct because of the system artificially handicapping them to Tier 2 until they can rank up said neighbor via the passed on resources/experience deducted from the vassal's town after capping out. And worse, they cannot claim the land of neighboring nodes nor attack any nearby vassals because the guild that's already Tier 3 has also pushed them into their zone of influence as well. As it stands, the explanations given in theory kill the prospect of the sort of big splits leading to massive competition between guilds in the cradle and just reinforces the status quo.
What if the nomad guild just attacks the aforementioned Tier 3 node to claim it for themselves?
Not a bad idea, really, but in all likelihood, any vindictive or highly competitive (or both) guild would just back up a targeted third-party guild that the nomads were attempting to defeat and whose land they intended to occupy through the guild war system via an allegiance. Meaning any attempts to occupy new land could be thwarted due to the other half in this split being able to intervene when push came to shove. So attacking a different guild's node isn't really a solution to the problem, and this of course presumes that said target wasn't already in the zone of influence of a bigger fish, thus rendering the whole plan moot.
This isn't a make-or-break thing for me, but I'm trying to determine what is correct and hopefully answer the following three questions:
- Can Vassals attack Parent nodes?
- Can Parent nodes attack Vassals?
- Can an Occupied Node be given its own autonomy or can an Occupied Node declare independence?
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Comments
Keep in mind, the rule of not being able to attack nodes is only in relation to sieges, not to players attacking other players. You can attack players from your own node if you like.
That first quote is saying that due to the way in-game guilds, Nodes and Castles are designed, the results will cause enough internal friction in the MegaGuilds that they will splinter to better support the interests of the subguilds.
Vassal Nodes cannot attack a Parent Node directly. They could convince rival Nodes to attack the Parent Node.
The Citizens of a Vassal Military Node who are in a sub-guild of a MegaGuild governing a Scientific City might decide that the want the Metro to governed by a Mayor with Military interests - and, therefore, try to stack the votes for Mayor to guarantee a Military-centric character rather than the MegaGuild Leader. And, that could cause enough conflict to splinter the MegaGuild, if the ploy is successful.
It could be that a leader of one of the subguilds wants to take a turn as the King of a Castle, rather than always having the MegaGuild Leader always being the King of the Castle, so, they set up a betrayal that will allow the subguild leader to be King.
You are focused on Node v Node combat, while what Steven was referring to is subguild v subguild conflict.
That quote from Steven is in response to Dungeons and World Bosses; not Nodes.
I am truncating your post so this one doesn't take up a huge amount of space, but...
Guild's don't necessarily own a node, but for practical purposes, they probably do given the cool down and people not wanting to change citizenship so frequently unless it was a coordinated OOC movement in order to displace an unliked party (or parties). The interesting thing about this is that due to the way elections work, you could theoretically constantly control a node despite having zero citizens in the node whatsoever by abusing the citizenship cooldown. This would logically lead to things like destroying everyone's freeholds just because you don't like them. Further, you could do this forever presuming you simply have a larger polity than the other dudes (and in a zerg guild scenario this would be staggeringly simple.)
And as for the comment about sieges, well... What other sort of combat is there that really matters? Sure, you can kill non-combatants, but the actual damage you want to inflict is only achievable by a displacement and reduction in your enemies; which can only be done if you destroy their node? Ask yourself this, what's more damaging? The total erasure of your guild's freeholds (everything is mailed to you, I'm aware) or killing a couple of guys who in all likelihood don't drop anything of importance?
Thanks for the response and I'd appreciate your reply to the above information as well, if you don't mind. As for your post, I understand the concept you are talking about in the broader post, I just shortened it here to be smaller. My main focus in my original post and point of contention is how precisely a guild can get out from under the thumb of tyranny of the masses (or really just people they don't like) if they can't affect change via reasonable damages (i.e. destruction of a node).
Thanks, I've watched three of these videos since you posted this and it more or less conforms with my understanding and original post. Consequently, my questions remain open. I should also mention that he actually wonders about one of my questions (he just doesn't pose it as his own question), and that his maps in the third video in that playlist are not going to be accurate.
But...the best way is to try to become the Mayor. If it's a Scientific Node, vote the despot Mayor out.
I don't understand how anyone could constantly control a Node with zero citizens since only citizens can vote for Mayor. Seems more likely that Node would be in constant decay.
The only way to destroy another person's Freehold is to destroy that Node. Once the Node is destroyed, there is a 2-hour window where it's possible to try to destroy the Freeholds there.
Mostly, I'm trying to reconcile your concept of Nodes with the actual design.
Nodes are way too dynamic for me to care as much as you do about a "permanent" location for my Freehold.
Sure, the ideal is for my Freehold to be in the same location forever, but... if my Guild is all Vek and the Vek village where I placed it changes to a Pyrian town and remains a Pyrian city, I might want to move the guild hall over to a Vek city - even if the Mayor of the Pyrian city is not a tyrant.
Could be that I want to move the guild hall closer to a Node that has built the services I prefer because the Node where we started chose different services.
Probably many reasons why I might want to move the guild hall because the game is dynamic rather than static.
But, basically, if you don't like the governing body of your Node, you have three options:
Replace the Mayor via whatever rules choose the Mayor.
Convince allies from a rival Node to destroy the Node and hope for better government.
Move to a new Node.
That's true whether the undesirable Mayor is an individual or if, somehow, a Megaguild has found a way to monopolize the Mayorship a Node.
Not only is it going to be much harder to do than you are assuming, but there is no advantage to a guild "owning" a node. There is no way to turn tax revenue from a node in to personal or guild wealth.
As I said in my earlier post, a guild wouldn't be interested in one node, but in a node cluster (a high level node of each of the four types in close proximity to each other). Since it is a node cluster that a competent guild will be after, "owning" one of these nodes is pointless.
Maintaining a node cluster like this is likely going to need 2.5-3k players. Unless a guild has that many members, "owning" a node cluster simply means the guild will need to run that node cluster to suit that population as opposed to doing what "they" want to do.
Moving in Ashes will be fairly easy, and if the leadership of a rival node cluster realizes that your node cluster is full of unhappy people, it likely won't be that much of an effort for that rival to build additional housing to allow people to move.
Keep in mind, the game is fostering the notion that housing in Ashes is temporary, and that you WILL lose it. As such, people opting to move is much less of an issue than it is in a game like Archeage, where housing is essentially permanent.
Oh, it's really quite simple.
The cooldown on changing homes is 2 weeks, and the election for Mayor happens once a month. Assuming a 28 day month, you can vote for two different mayors each month. Due to needing a home, this may seem prohibitive on the surface since the cost should be a deterrent, but it isn't. All of it circles back to the Mayor. Let me set up a scenario for you that literally anyone can do. You don't even need an abundance of people either.
Example
A Node is currently Tier 3. It has an average number of citizens, but not all of them are in the same guild. The people are split between instanced apartments and static freeholds. The Node is primarily controlled by a single guild in the Node who have a plurality even if they do not have 50% of the votes. Keep in mind that this idea of "votes" is just a stand-in word. In the case of an economic node, the plurality maintains control by giving all of their money to the person they want to be the mayor temporarily. In the case of a scientific node, they just have more votes than the other candidates. In the case of the military node then they have more resources to put into the gladiator arena warrior they build (or if the devs go with a player on player system, then the best fighters just defeat the other fighters and then throw the match for the person they want to be the mayor), and if it's the diety system then they have more people to help streamline the pious acts that need to be done (i.e If they need to donate items to something (an altar)or someone then just give them items to use to donate.) The point is, pluralities exist IRL and they will exist here, along with very obvious methods to game them. This leads to how you control a Node with zero votes...
A guild from another node (it can literally be any node anywhere on the map) wants to control this node. The reason why they want to is completely irrelevant, they just want to control the node. With this goal in mind, the guild sends over as many people as there is housing available and even offers to buy some of the occupied apartments (asking people to leave theirs in exchange for money) and occupied homes (buying them at above market value). They also bribe those who do not wish to leave with money to "vote" or simply abstain from participating regardless of which Node type it is. This voting faction, due to being larger and having more resources (and time by dint of having more people), now has the plurality and the votes that the other guild could count on to maintain power no longer (bribes) or cannot vote in their way (sold their homes and moved to a different node).
Once this plurality has been achieved and the figurehead Mayor has been installed, there is virtually nothing they cannot do. In fact, due to the way the Tier system works anything the previous mayor may have done in terms of town layout is actually minimized. The people who voted the mayor into power that do not need to stay in the town now leave the town once more and go back to wherever they were before or to a different node to start the process again. The mayor now deletes all apartments, depriving the renters who had citizenry of said citizenry (you need a hope to be citizen), which reduces the voting bloc and prevents new people from buying a certificate. The only citizens remaining are those who already had houses in the first place. Of which several will be occupied (in theory) by the guild that installed the new mayor. Further, those members of the previous guild that occupied homes will have to deal with their friends and guildmates being deprived of all standing and potentially being urged to sell their homes so they can look elsewhere for a new community to center around. Some might even just leave the guild altogether given what's just occurred and sell their home or at least sell their vote, if not join the other guild outright. This is what I mean by having a mayor with no citizens voting him into power. The people who voted him simply leave afterward since he doesn't need their vote again until next month.
Now that the mayor is free to do as he wishes, he takes orders from the more senior individuals who installed him and is given a great deal of freedom in any other way beyond the initial goal of control/fulfilling whatever needs the guild had. Consequently, he has zero-to-none of a reason to fracture from the guild as he's now a feudal lord for all intents and purposes. The guild can then have the vassal nodes simply supply the occupied node with XP to prevent it from decaying, or if needed, simply build some apartments and inject a bunch of artificial citizens as needed to stabilize the node/advance the node if need be. Should the old guild refuse to leave, then it doesn't matter because they have no new homes to move into in order to regain citizenry and since the new guild will just build an apartment to create a supermajority then eventually they will leave.
The problem with all this is that it's a massive displacement of individuals and you can see what that does IRL already, to a lesser extent that displacement will be echoed here, and worse, it means that there's now one less node in the world for people who do not want to join a massive guild to become a citizen of. Eventually, this is how swarms are made, through slow attrition and forcing people to join by limiting their actual gameplay options until they either quit the server or get with the program. It's been done in many, many, many MMO's and there are zero reasons to think it won't happen here when I just outlined a very simple process by which you can do it with enough people.
Sure, I get that, but my post was originally about the way to actually fight back against other nodes you do not directly like "just move" isn't really a solution either because as time goes on the polities in the server will start to cement and the larger groups will just become larger. Trying to convince that guild who might be sympathetic to your cause and has 300 players is not likely to happen when the guild in question has 3,000 players separated between 10 guilds. What I'm trying to really get across here is asking if there's any way you can take direct action rather than having to rely on individuals who won't lift a finger. From the sound of it? No. And worse, the game does really come off as actually favoring (by design) larger guilds versus smaller ones. I know, I read that quote from Steven about smaller guilds being able to do things that larger ones cannot, but a larger guild can always create a smaller guild. A smaller guild cannot readily create a larger guild without losing its identity in the process.
This is all very unfortunate.
The advantage is autonomy, community, and having a stake in things. These are clear advantages that people IRL enjoy and take pride in. Micronations exist IRL, why can't they exist here or at least have people that aspire towards wanting their own borders and to continue existing? The game clearly was made with having a few hundred or so of them altogether.
No offense intended, but I think there is a clear difference between moving every six months because of a siege gone wrong versus moving every week because a massive group wants your land and will bully you into quitting or joining. But either way, this isn't really about my initial questions and I apologize for leading this into an off-topic discussion since I really just want to know if we can create (directly) our own autonomy from larger neighbors.
No offense intended, but you need to look in to the game more.
I am not talking about people moving every week, I am talking about people making an informed decision to move to a node cluster that has a history of being better run to suit their needs than they are likely to see where they are.
As I said, a guild will not be interested in a single node. Any guild that is either doesn't understand the game, or doesn't think very much of them self as a guild, or the players in that guild.
A node cluster will take multiple thousands of players to maintain.
The nodes in that cluster are not able to be managed according the the whims of a single guild.
Thus, if a guild did attempt to maintain leadership over a node in a cluster, they need to manage that node to suit the people residing there, otherwise people won't reside there. That isn't autonomy for the guild.
If guilds want autonomy, they have castles for that. If a guild actually backs them self, that is where they will attempt to exert their influence, not on nodes.
The game isn't made with having a few hundred small communities, the game was made with having 10 major ones per server. 5 metropolis level nodes and their surrounding nodes, and 5 castles.
The idea of the game (the node aspect, at least) is for people to come together to create large communities, not to break off in to their own micro-communities.
A Village is going to have apartments, freeholds and houses.
Unlikely that one guild is going to be able to monopolize the housing because no one will be able to anticipate when the Node is about to move from Stage 2 to Stage 3. And once the announcement goes out that the Node has reached Village, there will be a mad rush for houses by everyone nearby. Likely people will be rushing to place Freeholds as well.
And there is no way for one guild to ensure they have a monopoly on the real estate.
Is there a hard limit on how many apartments can be in a Village? How would the guild ensure that they have the most housing in the Node?
The Mayor does not determine who can purchase an apartment and cannot prevent anyone from purchasing an apartment AFAIK.
But, that's all assuming it's a Node that chooses Mayor by vote.
How does a guild ensure the Village does not become a Vassal Node to a Parent they don't control?
With Economic Nodes, a guild could pool it's resources and give all their gold to the guild leader, but that's just one Node type - and again, no way to ensure the Village does not become Vassal to a Parent Node the guild does not control.
You can't just assert that the guild will have most of the citizens. There's nothing to back up the assertion.
A Mayor cannot delete apartments.
A guild in a Military Node consistently putting more resources into the Gladiatorial Champion is also a baseless assertion. Rival guilds could form alliances to put more resources into a Champion they support. You claim it is easy with no evidence whatsoever that it's easy.
Trying to buy other people's apartments sounds ludicrous. Apartments are instanced. The more apartments, the higher the price. Players are super greedy - I don't think guilds will be able to keep buying up apartments every month just to monopolize citizenship.
You are just making up a lot of bs in your head.
They Node system doesn't work as you imagine it does.
And the game devs are smart enough to have thought through all of the flaws you've presented.
Even Margaret has enough experience managing MMORPG housing systems to have shored up the kinds of holes you think are possible.
2) the decay will happens if like you say, everyone leave.
To keep a node at the same rank, you have to do an amount of things enough to grab as much XP than the natural decay take off. If the node was stable with 400 people before, a guild of 200 comes, and the 400 left => the guild will use large part of its playtime, not even sure it will be enough...
People could want to have micronation yes. They can manage to do it, but for how long ?
Guilds most able to retain many people are some guilds on MMORPG that spam ginvite to any non-guild character, all those guild are bad, and only people with really casual mindset are staying in... they will need a bunch of such guy to stay with them to do a controll total. and not kind of player they can think it will be helpfull if another big guild comes to do siege... also, this guild could get some help... like part of the people that left due to the tyranny. Outnumbered, they will lose their town...
Then, lets do it again elsewhere? oh sure, but now comes a new problem : server reputation.
what they did will be known soon enough by lot of people. Now they can consider the danger, and organize themselves to confront them. or also, if it is a big guild of hardcore gamer, rival guilds (like the one that did siege their node?) could accept to help people asking for it. how they help ? not only by doing what is needed to not allow this "bad guild" to take the mayor post, but with a good guild wars. and the people that needed this help can in return help their savior by giving ressources for the "war effort"
there is a really high quantity of scenarii about this subject. really a lot. but for most (all?) there is one thinjg that will limit a lot how much guild in a server, or in all servers, can do such thing : The global strength.
If you decide to be tyranic, dicate your law with a "accept what i do or leave", you will have a growing of ennemies, and finding allies will get harder. so your global strength will be limited.
Also, there will be alpha 2, and then beta 1/2 to see such thing being tried, even in small scale.
if people find way to be untouchable, people will speak about here, on forum, and because it is not a thing Intrepid wants to be (i think) some solution to solve it will be found. One test after the other.
I understand your fear, but for now, i am quite about it
Please provide evidence. Not every node cluster is going to have a Metropolis, you know this, I know this, the Devs know this. There is no way a node cluster that's just one Tier 3 and some Tier 2's will need thousands of people. The devs also have mentioned that they know people in much larger guilds will just create secondary guilds for the overflow. This isn't new and it's endemic of literally every MMO or MMO style game where there's a hard cap on the number of players allowed in one guild.
Can you explain why? The method I just explained in that post allows for a node cluster to stay stabilized at an artificially low level simply by removing all the citizens from the parent node. You aren't explaining why you can't just keep a node capped at three or four this way. The Node explanation article says that they will not level until all the other nodes have leveled, and the other nodes prevent the node from degrading because they'll be capped at a low level. And further, as I said before, if necessary you stabilize the node artificially by surging with dudes who farm for gains as long as needed and then have them lead. I've seen this before in other MMOs, I am not pulling these ideas whole cloth from speculation.
That's not going to work. I read what Steve said about there being five metropolises per map, but this isn't necessarily true and they cannot force it to happen. You could very easily create a dead server by locking down key nodes and being a large enough guild to bully people around. I also don't anticipate the average server to have anywhere near the number of players you think it will. Look at the number of servers there are currently. There's what? Eight? There will assuredly be many, many more than that just to handle initial launch overflow, but you can't exactly spin those servers down once the numbers adjust to a more reasonable level. So there will be servers where there aren't any metropolises at all. Dead servers (relative to the more prosperous ones), even in healthy MMO's, are pretty common.
A node is a micro-community. You cannot be a citizen in that node without owning a home, right? That's a micro-community in the exact same way a gated community is even if it resides in a larger area such as a county or state or country. The major difference is that for whatever reason there's no stated method to allow said community (one with clearly defined borders) from saying they don't want to be part of the larger community. This, unless clarified, flies in the face of the hands-off approach the devs have stated they want to take with the internal politics of node on node warfare.
Yes, I said that in my post you are replying to. This doesn't matter since you can control the election by controlling who can participate. Which can be done by either limiting who can join (destroying apartments and create no new freeholds) or add to who can join (creating apartments and freeholds). Then once you have secured the election, you simply destroy the apartment again or never sell the owned freehold to anyone outside of your guild.
Imagine that there is a Node with only five Freeholds and 1 apartment complex and that apartment complex has a total of ten apartments in it. If you destroy that apartment complex then you just need 3 of the five freeholds to vote your way and you can never lose. The majority of the voting power (please understanding that "voting power" does not necessarily mean casting a vote, I explained this in my previous post but will restate it here in the below-quoted section) is thus in the apartments just by definition since more people in the Node will live in the apartment complex.
Consequently, all you need to do is get more people to participate in your direction by having people from your guild in the node for the short term (scientific node? buy up all the extra apartments, convince people to move out of ones they live in, buy up freeholds not owned or from people willing to sell so you have more votes than the other guy. economic? just give the one guy you want to be mayor all of the gold from all your accounts and only he needs to be a citizen. etc.) and then afterwards you restrict the total number of citizens by destroying the apartments if you have enough people who own freeholds that ensure no one will ever be able to challenge your election.
I looked into this and there actually is. Yes, going from one tier to another increases the amount of real-estate, however, the Mayor can also set zones as real-estate within the node. Further, you can simply deprive the node of its ability to gain much rep by keeping the other nodes surrounding it depressed. Use my Tier 3 scenario. If all of a suddenly 90% of the XP that was being directly contributed was now gone because next to no one is a citizen anymore as a matter of destroying apartments, buying up freeholds but never playing in the node, etc. then the only way it can level is from the XP being contributed in neighboring, smaller nodes. Can they level it up? Sure, but there's a limit to that as you could have your guildmates from a non-adjacent node come in and siege the smaller nodes for you, presuming that you cannot have the people in the main node do it directly.
They can by destroying the apartments. Mayors are allowed to do this.
If you read the part from my previous post I quoted above, you'll see voting isn't needed for this to work. Consolidating money, throwing fights, and farming do the job for the other node types.
Because, and this is why I made this thread. Under my understanding, unless someone can prove otherwise, the neighboring nodes in the cluster cannot challenge the problematic node directly. They have to do it indirectly. And it doesn't really matter if some far off node becomes a higher Tier and thus it falls under their sphere of influence because the mayor can just ignore them. The whole idea behind this is to deprive people of a node since the mayor and "vote" control ensures that you'll never lose it. [/quote]
Yes, a mayor can. I've watched several dev videos where they confirmed this. A mayor can delete apartments, but not freeholds. All of your stuff is mailed to you once it is deleted.
It isn't because it's far easier for a monolithic bloc of people all in the same node to mobilize assets and people than it is for a disparate alliance. You are also presuming they can even get anyone in the node because as I've outlined you can control who even can be a citizen in the first place through artificial levels of control.
They do not have to do it every month. Just one month. And then delete the apartment complex afterward.
They don't have to and I never said you would. Until obligations (friends/guild mates) forced their hand to relocate to a new node where they can stay together in one group. This is how nearly every guild operates. I mean, it's why the guild hall is going to be a thing in the first place. Yes there will be guys who just want to live in a very specific area, but most people are communal and will want to be near their buddies if for no other reason than convenience due to the lack of fast travel in the game.
Only to a certain extent because the adjacent nodes will contribute their overflow to your node, and you keep them artificially low by not contributing anything to your own node. And if you need to stabilize your own node for some reason, you can have the mayor just create apartments and have temporary citizens grind very hard for however long is necessary and then leave again.
Yes they are bad, and they are a major concern of not just myself but the devs have even talked about this. There are massive, massive gaming organizations out there who focus on a new game and then run servers into the ground with their numbers. Please look up B.o.B or Goonswarm or RUIN to see what I am alluding to. These are just a few names that are easily able to be researched. RUIN caused tens of thousands of people to quit playing WAR back when WAR was actually popular by raiding servers until no one could play on them anymore with hope of advancement. I am using the WAR example because a massive number of the PvP/RvR elements in this game very closely match that game's.
But i saw you consider a guild could try to simply by tyrannic on a small node like T4/T3
The problem is... so... it is dumb guild. and so let them do their shit in their small group of T4/T3 nodes. Because the bigger the node is, the more things helpful it will be. more specific building for example. <<
With such guild, you just go away and find greener pasture and if they begin to siege all other big node... they will soon enough have a lot of other guild to alliance against them... doing siege on their node, and doing a guild wars as 4 guild against 1...
And you consider "if they need help they will make come people" but we fall exactly in the situation i spoke about the "massive recruiting guilds". never saw any of such guild maintaining enough strength.
Most way to "take controll" is more about trying to regroup the guild around one node, and negociating with people to buy their house, convince mayor to build more appartment, etc. And consider people will just sell house "because they offer big prices" ... but no. you can come, offer me max price of my house, if i am well where i am because there is my own guild, and friends there, i will just say "no". and most people will do. if they take a territory it won't be consensual way. . .
And i know the megaguild with superiority complex that loves to dominate totally a game. But we pointed out a lot of things to limit their way to do. Before people goes away from a server, they will just move.
So or a server got 2-3 of those mega guild, each able to vaguely maintain a cluster (and not t3-t4... ) they will soon enough fight each other
Other situation : it is one guild. they won't be able to block people from playing all around the map. They will aim some "big" servers, servers that look many people want to go in, because their ego says to do it.
And also, yes, there will be the massive influx in release, maybe a second wave if the game is really good and people comes in, and then, but soon enough, it will go stagnant. BUT... this is intrepid matter about the server management. There is solution if people on low pop server complains about it... Like offering free server change, with a limit date after which the server is closed. (one example).
And about bullying : bully people, they leave, you fall alone. the less global strength you have, the less people you want to go leave your territory again.
And to finish : you can't do to restrictiv system "because some people may abuse it" because you will just lock what players (all) can do, you limit possibility of gameplay, of creation, of interaction with the world, where sandbox wants to have it as big as possible