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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
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.
Comments
Oh, I missed that Azherae wanted to be Emperian. I'm not sure whether it's Steven's intent or I'm projecting, but the system makes sense as it stands, especially taking @Azherae's want into account. If a node's progression is advanced by mainly Emperians -it would reflect their cultural influence. For better or worse this is art reflecting reality. There is a sad, but inevitable poetry in Azherae's scenario not being met. A Vek node that is advanced by a mainly Emperian population will become Emperian.
But again... nothing substantive is gained or lost here. Or am I wrong?
Honestly I think its good to keep it as is, simply because it adds weight to your choice of character. Otherwise everyone will automatically pick the most meta race for whatever class they plan on being based on racial traits (if there are any) and still have no consequence as far as how it affects the world. If people want to see other races dominating a node, then they have to play as said race, promoting more playthroughs on different characters, and a larger variety of races being played
So it is. I have learned in life that there is no real way to directly get others to understand or accept what one finds important.
I can only hope that Steven, having been in the same sort of position relative to MMOs as a whole, can sympathize in a way that you (maybe?) can't, regarding the value of experiences, and add something if it isn't too difficult.
I don't know how they intend to handle Tulnar, but if they don't get influence on surface nodes, the code would already be there mostly.
I think I can sympathize... correct me if I'm wrong here, but your scenario is kind of a Dances with Wolves story. A member of a colonizing force lives with the Vek, a culture being colonized, and wishes the Vek to remain as Vek as long as possible. Is that approximately right?
This could go in a different direction than having the system compensate for the ven percentages. What if this actually starts cultural wars around certain nodes that want to stay a particular culture? It's not just organizing Veks on a server to advance a node, it's also organizing them to fight off players from other cultures that may impact the look and feel of the node. Hm... that would be an interesting node race considering the vassal system.
Yeah... I'm curious now whether this is one of the types of player v. player conflicts Steven actually wants to occur in Verra?
Which is precisely the worst part. It may make for 'good RP', but 'having the Vek hate the outsider' even when the outsider in question doesn't even want to have that effect, just wants to live among them, is... not great.
That sort of conflict is interesting, but not to me, the person who 'wants to take the Vek side without having to be one'. It does sorta solve the problem though. Nothing specifically 'prevents me from driving off other Empyreans'.
There's only one problem left there.
Village of equal numbers Empyrean and Vek. The Vek all like their culture. The Empyreans all like the Vek culture. The Empyreans... have to fight amongst themselves, vote someone out, etc, until there are 'too few of them for the Vek to be supplanted'? Ok... but...
I wanted to help.
The Village could maybe reach Town if they could all work together, but they 'can't', in that case.
It's an unlikely situation, given the number of players it takes to raise a Node, probably, but I can say that it basically 'forces me to detach from either the Node style I like, or from participating in the Node progression system in the way I would enjoy', and that seems to be an actual gameplay loss, from my side. I suppose it isn't strictly speaking 'a loss that is different from any other playstyle that the Node system doesn't support', it just... doesn't seem necessary to prevent it from supporting that one.
My first thought would be relatively populist, allow the mayor to conduct a vote that could conditionally override the cultural designation of the node for when it advances. This would give conscious agency to players (instead of passive agency just by being of a certain culture). Of course, there's flaws - especially if you have a despotic mayor... but it's not like I've thought deeply on this.
I don't really have an answer beyond the one I offered either, and I don't think there's any flawless ones. The issue with the vote is moreso logistics, it depends on who is able to log in, to vote, and I think that 'contribution' doesn't require 'citizenship', so this might go against the overall spirit of the node system.
I don't actually want to 'definitively solve this', I'd be fine with 'being the equivalent of a Tulnar's influence type' (again, assuming that they don't really have too much of one when it comes to surface nodes) and letting things go however they go. That would also keep the other type of potential effect you're talking about, with the conflicts, possible betrayals, and all that.
Because part of playing a MMO is to scour Discord and the forums to find groups of people that can help you overcome the game's design flaw? What happened to just playing the game. You know that the vast majority of players don't interact with forums and outside community building tools, right? Especially not before they get in game. Your solution is so abstract and so far removed from what the experience is supposed to be like and what the experience is actually like for the vast majority of players.
I’ll bring the beer!
Lots of people will do so based on twitch communities and discord communities and YouTube communities and other social media communities.
Vast majority doesn't necessarily matter. You just need enough to be able to form an alliance large enough to get a Metro on one server.
We will be able to filter Ashes character by race to find other characters of the same race and we will likely be able to determine the population spread by server to help determine which server has the best chance to gain the numbers we desire.
I dunno what you mean by "what the experience is supposed to be like".
This the kind of stuff that gamer guilds and streamer communities and discord communities and other social media communities do.
People already have their racial rivalries. Some based on other games.
We have Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Humans and Tulnar. And we have 5 Metros per server.
So... this whole concept of least popular race never being able to get a Metro on any server isn't really a thing.
There's all kinds of ways for players to band together to raid one server enough to get a Metro - even for the game-wide lowest pop race.
If we add this now it would be a lot harder to take away than I feel it would be to just add sometime down the line if it really becomes an issue.
What if it turns out your assumptions on race population is wrong? We won’t know until all the races are in and the games been going for a little bit, and we don’t know if this actually will turn into a problem. Def could, but we don’t know.
I feel like a more natural solution to this would be to lock/give more weight to the architectural influence from a lower stage instead of tallying it all together between each stage. So if a group of a Nikua got a node to the village stage they’re progress isn’t totally wiped out when it changes to a town just because a bunch of empyreans showed up.
This is a quote from the wiki so they are definitely aware this could become an issue, but I like that they are trying to do it in a more fluid way than just a vote/toggle. I’m sure once they have all the races in they will be able to gather more concrete data to see what issues might arise and what is the least intrusive way to solve them:
“There is an attrition and that attrition on experience and influence is heightened based on the performance of the race in the world. So if all these nodes are Orc nodes then their attrition rate is very high to compete with the cultural establishment of new nodes because they have more influence in the world and a popular opinion is against them in their outlying regions that they do not have influence in.”[60] – Steven Sharif
@Dygz - just FYI, I didn’t write that. 😉
And... it didn't seem like something you would write.
I for one am excited to play in a world that is constantly changing. Just because there isn't a dwarven node (let's say) now, doesn't mean there can't be one in the future. You could even take it upon yourself to start a big guild of only dwarves and all settle in the same undeveloped/recently destroyed node, so that you can build it up yourselves.