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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.
Possible concern with the node system
Veeshan
Member, Alpha Two
So i have a small concern of how we keep smaller nodes relevant aka village and town nodes.
I feel most players are gonna live out of the metropolis or city nodes due to having more access to things such as crafting benches and AH and things like that alot of people will neglect smaller nodes which we kinda saw in New world where people only realy upgraded the 2 middle towns where all the other kinda got neglected because there was nothing there for them realy. I feel ashes has the potential to go the same way.
Suggestion to consider
Suggestion 1 - Provide gathering buffs in the form of having more nodes spawn around the smaller nodes than cities (it will happen naturally since more density would hit nodes more often but i think making the resource have higher respawn rate in low nodes higher would work well wilderness node should have highest amount of resource around where metropolis should have very little natural resources. This would also get the side effect of people harvesting out there and then stockpiling to caravan it back to the main node so city or metro to sell or craft with
Suggestion 2
i- Increased refining rates in smaller nodes so village and town get a bonus to refining where city and metro has bonus in crafting, this incentives people to refine in the smaller nodes keeping them relevant and then caravan good to city to craft with aswell which also boosts that system aswell
I feel most players are gonna live out of the metropolis or city nodes due to having more access to things such as crafting benches and AH and things like that alot of people will neglect smaller nodes which we kinda saw in New world where people only realy upgraded the 2 middle towns where all the other kinda got neglected because there was nothing there for them realy. I feel ashes has the potential to go the same way.
Suggestion to consider
Suggestion 1 - Provide gathering buffs in the form of having more nodes spawn around the smaller nodes than cities (it will happen naturally since more density would hit nodes more often but i think making the resource have higher respawn rate in low nodes higher would work well wilderness node should have highest amount of resource around where metropolis should have very little natural resources. This would also get the side effect of people harvesting out there and then stockpiling to caravan it back to the main node so city or metro to sell or craft with
Suggestion 2
i- Increased refining rates in smaller nodes so village and town get a bonus to refining where city and metro has bonus in crafting, this incentives people to refine in the smaller nodes keeping them relevant and then caravan good to city to craft with aswell which also boosts that system aswell
1
Comments
Did you know that nodes have a citizenship cap? People are going to become citizens of smaller nodes if they want to be a citizen at all. Otherwise, the whole node system won't work. They need to have citizens in smaller nodes who will work to make their nodes better, and the only way to improve your node over an adjacent higher-level node is for that other node to be brought down. That will fuel the conflict between nodes. Otherwise, every player will just stay in the biggest nodes with the most benefits and the smaller nodes will be ghost towns, and the whole node system will be stagnant.
Your concern has not only been addressed, but the entire way the node system works will require your concern to not be happening in the game.
Why does anyone want to be a citizen of a node exactly, though?
Because all I see is this stuff. While I'm sure some of it is relatively important to above-average players, I don't see anything here that would cause the average or more casual player to live outside the biggest node they can find.
Which one of these do I not understand?
I dont see why i would want to be in a smaller node when it has half the building i could possible need where a high level node would probaly have most if not all building needed. If anything casual would want to be in largest node they can get so they dont have to fluff around with running to one town to smelt then running to another town to craft and so on or running to the capital of the region to use the trading post then running back again (Assuming not in commercial metropolis
If I prefer a Scientific Node and there are no Scientific Metros on the server, I'm going to try to live in a Scientific City that has the types of buildings and quests that I like, even if it's locked out from becoming a Metro.
It's not just about living in the largest Node. It's about living in the largest Node that has the Node Type, Racial dominance and buildings and services you desire.
I would never be a citizen of a Military Node - even if all 5 Metros on the server were Military Nodes.
This is my assumption as well. People who are very dedicated to RP and similar things would spread out more, especially to nodes that are not in imminent 'danger', but most players will do the thing they normally do and be 'efficient' in the Metropolis nodes once they appear.
I think this is actually part of the intended design, I would expect Intrepid to 'solve' this by making smaller nodes 'better for roleplaying' in some way, not 'giving them benefits to crafting' since that might lead to a situation where someone who isn't a crafter but likes the RP aspect of a small node might be 'pushed out' by someone who 'feels they deserve it more because they can use more of the facilities'.
I think once Intrepid identifies what type of player gravitates to which situation, they can just tweak the 'bonuses' of that situation or node, to match that general player type, without just using 'equalizing' bonuses meant to draw in more people. Maybe 'small node' people won't want much conflict, etc.
Looking at that list, anyone that isn't a citizen is probably gimped. Understanding the psychology of the average player, who often will go to great lengths for minor upgrades, I expect it's going to be rare for a player to decide to ignore citizenship. It looks like it will lock you out from advancing crafting at the high levels, from being able to fully enhance your gear, or increase your stats. It's not just about titles and cosmetic fluff. You are not going to be as strong as a citizen. I expect that citizenship is going to be a given as an advancement path for all but the most casual of players.
Steven has been very explicit that he considers node citizenship to be the most important kind of allegiance that a player can have in the game, even more important than guild membership. Their systems are designed with that philosophy in mind. If Ashes is to be successful, they're going to need to make citizenship attractive. The node-vs-node conflict is the engine of change in this game, and they're going to need people to care about nodes for that to matter. If citizenship is just something that a minority of players care about, then nodes will probably stagnate.
Well, seems we have similar thoughts on 'what may happen one way or the other', but widely differing expectations on what it will do and how important it will actually be.
I don't expect it to be possible for more than 70% of players to be Citizens of nodes, and therefore I also don't expect 'not being a Citizen' to have a very large effect on a player's ability to participate in content that isn't based around core Node stuff.
Intrepid could make it so that 'there are significant downsides in general play for not being a Citizen', but then would face the 'discomfort' of all the players who can't achieve Citizenship because of how Nodes are built.
And that is when we get siege's.
I think having access to housing and storage will be a driving factor towards citizenship as well.
Some players will not want to be part of a large city same as in the real world. Maybe some will want to place a freehold into a specific environment type or at/near an important crossroads.
Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
I agree somewhat, but even so, that's adding even more 'irritation' of a specific type, to the game.
If the benefits to being a Citizen are large enough that a bunch of non-citizens try to convince their Node to go to war so that it can get bigger to house them, but then the enemy node is destroyed, instantly making all of those players 'Homeless', i.e. not Citizens...
Then you have a large set of players who went from 'having access to important buffs and so on' to, not only 'not having them', but 'scrambling to find a new place to become a Citizen of in order to regain them.
I feel like the psychology part of this would be a negative, when compared to simply 'not making Citizenship overly required for progression outside of Node progression'.
Ashes wants discomfort. Conflict is baked in. They don't want everyone to be able to do everything. Citizenship fits perfectly into that philosophy. The game expects there to be the haves and have-nots. Citizens of successful nodes will have an advantage over those of less successful nodes. Citizens will have advantages over non-citizens. If you want to be a citizen of a node, and it's full, use your social skills to get someone in power to make room for you.
I can see that but have a different view point. I don't see it as a negative but a force to keep the world changing and from becoming stale.
This for me is one of the big reasons I am here. Having a static world gets boring to me after a short time. Most people don't like change and run from anything that looks like a challenge (look at all the Elden Rings is to hard videos).
While I am less likely to have a solid home like some players want as I tend to be more of a murderhobo type player. I am ok with other play styles. But I think placing this kind of friction into the game will be a good thing. Could be a great thing as long as people learn to let go and embrace change.
I'd expect it to be unpleasant because of how much relatively easier it would be for a larger node to raze a smaller node to the ground before the smaller node could manage anything, but I believe we've come to some clarity on where we diverge in perspective, so @Veeshan would have to tell us whether or not the potential dynamism and conflict you're suggesting would count as a solution to their concern from the OP.
You would not have full access to any of those buildings if you are not a citizen and would probably get more from being a citizen of a smaller node.
Also, there are only so many houses within a node. People that don't get one might want to try to get one in a smaller node and build their node up instead.
Right now, the plan is to make it so you need housing in order to be a citizen of a node. However, Intrepid have stated outright that if this isn't enough for people, they will add in a system whereby you do not need property in order to be a citizen.
Needless to say, the design will be that everyone is able to be a citizen of a node - it may not be their first choice of node, but there will always be a node you can be a citizen of if you want citizenship.
server cap at like 10k or thats what they said they want 8000-10000 per server at least thats what ive seen/heard
That is the maximum number of players allowed on one server, not necessarily an eventuality or a cap they want to reach. The current plan is only ~10k can be on a server at a time, so any server that is approaching that cap, will probably have long queues, encouraging players to go to other servers.
the wiki has this
"Population limits will be enforced on each server.
Around 8-10k concurrent users per server is projected.
Initially there will be a limited number of registered accounts (approximately 15,000) per server to help mitigate login queues.
This limit will increase over time to around 50,000 registered accounts per server."
I could see it somewhat as the following:
Small node ----> Metropolis
RP ----> Min/Max
-Resource allocation on map could drive diversity of node citizenship preference. If they design it so each node group has the same resources and has to trade with other nodes far away for what they don't have direct access to I could see a preference for traders (caravan shippers) to want to be a citizen on a perimeter node to make their transport route shorter.
-PVP raiding may be a driving force as well. Which nodes in the group layout are most positioned to be attacked and see hostile parties be murder hobo's on your border? I would think perimeter nodes. It's not very clear to me yet how viable it will be to be have intra-node group hostility. Or will most of the pvp be with rival node groups? You can't declare war vs a patron node I believe but I'm curious if how far a subordinate node can behave to destabilize a region to grow towards their own node size aspirations. It's not very clear to me at least if they're hard stuck or if they can become hostile neighbors. I think they can but I'm not 100% certain. I'm wiki rusty.
My understanding I'd that it's a soft cap lock not a hard cap though I could be wrong. A hard cap by Intrepid would be a poor system and drive a lot of players to re-roll on fresh servers just to get access to a Metropolis. It could be interesting to let governors of a node have some control on their citizenship/immigration size. That could be a fun dynamic and drive political drama.
I dont recall if Metro node benefits are passed down to all subordinate nodes or retained only to citizens of the Metro node itself.
There may be benefit to producing things in smaller nodes if there is potential for reduced fees and taxes, but what protection can smaller nodes provide to protect your assets you place there?
I think there will be a large pull to be in close proximity to the metro node especially for trading purposes. Ashes will need to figure out how trading can thrive in a dispursed way that doesn't socially force players to want to consolidate all of our goods and holdings to the Metro node or largest node in our cluster.
On every server in New World Windsward and Everfall became the default economic hubs and housing hubs. The devs apparently did not expect this (I don't know how as it was clearly evident from participating in the Beta what was going to happen). Even with WW and EV gouging players with extremely high taxes players chose those nodes to be their hubs due to limited storage and trading access.
I haven't put sufficient thought into what will differ with Ashes to prevent players from all flocking to their nearest Economic metro node for 'global/regional' (I forget which) auction house accessibility for ease of trade. This last part will be interesting to test as it was so informally chosen as the overriding deciding factor on every New World server. Trade above all other considerations.
8-12k is the max we have seen in games due to server/game limitations, with some exceptions. Not saying it couldn't be changed but that's what they are projecting and they haven't expressed any desire to increase it.
I'm not sure what you are implying by posting what's on the wiki.
Yes, they are capping servers at launch to prevent people from dog-piling on a server and creating massive queues. They will lax the cap to allow new players to flow in as others quit but queues will still be there working as a natural deterrent. The higher the active population, the longer the queues.
50k accounts implies 50k rotating players with many that will want to focus on a node as part of their presence, the wiki snippet was to cross-check both my misunderstanding and my assertion there will eventually be plenty of players to keep node play relevant.
I'm with you on this and to add to that, let's not forget that a player can only have one citizenship per account per server, meaning all extra characters won't be able to gain citizenship. For that reason alone, not being a citizen can't be game breaking.
This also then means u would want to caravan them back after you get a stockpile which then feeds into that system aswell
which when then also feed into PvP with bandits and mercenaries
This also promotes less travel nodes getting level up aswell since there be more peopel farming there for resources and things keeping it relevant instead of a deserted area of the map
I don't think this is necessary? If you think about it directly, as long as Metropolis nodes don't spawn too much EXTRA gathering points within their special dungeons or whatever, then just 'being a Metropolis and having more people around' would achieve most of this goal, depending on respawn timers.
Making it so that big nodes have to import from their Vassal villages simply because that's where things are, and then adding basically any incentive to actually live in the Vassals for a certain type of player, would handle it.
In the end, a Metropolis node still technically only has a certain amount of space near it. Players may hang around for convenience, but honestly, this one basically solves itself by population alone.
If it does fantastic however if it doesnt it be a good idea to do something like this for example we dont want nodes to far away from metropolises being neglected it hard to tell how it all gonna work when a game comes out without being in the game so we can only go though hypothesis senarios and come up with solutions to these issues if they are an issue if there not well no harm no foul.
I like to see this period as trying to see what could go wrong and have suggestion for it if does if works then no issue it not needed however in alpha one for early release and we see it become an issue then devs can come back to these kinda posts and be like ohh thats a good idea lets try that for a solution to problems
Im not saying the system is broken atm however we all know players in these games like to find way to break the game so i tend to try and find a solution incase the situation does arise.
Another possible solution would be to add node events that can be triggered in nodes ever x amount of time (Shorter cooldown for lower level nodes) that could boost resources around the node (New world had a bit of this with there town buff where you got like 10% more resources from logging for 2-3 days when the governor chose it in AoC though you could have forest nodes get a boost to logging, mountain nodes get a boost on mining and so on that occurs every so often more often on lower level nodes this will be a little bit of a hotspot for player to go to when it does occur to see a boost of players in a portion of the map if they lived nearby
I agree with you and I have similar concerns, I like the second solution more than the first, but I already play a game that has 'Nodes' like this and certain changes like this, and in that game, whenever one of these 'Events' triggers, all the players who rely on the game to direct their activities and behaviour, move to it at the same time. The designers of that game just decided to use that instead of trying to change the system. Maybe Ashes will do that too.
The availability of resources being based on a Node specifically 'being wilderness' changes player behaviour in stranger ways.
For example, a Town Node that is relatively close to a Village, close enough for the travel between them to be short, would then have a very strange incentive to destroy the Village Node so that they could gather more resources in the Wilderness.
Mitigating player psychology will be one of the biggest challenges that Intrepid faces in the design of Ashes, and we don't know which things they will want to happen, because some things that you or I might feel 'this is a negative experience, why would you want that?' sounds like really great gameplay to others.
Other posters in this thread, for example, have already made this very valid point:
:"Do we even consider this to be a problem?"
on your city and village scenario, destroying the village would also make it so you loose a bank so you then have to run to the old village spot harvest for a bit then run all the way back, now if it a village still you can harvest alot of thing and bank them there then caravan it back saving time from individual runs. Im also not against the destorying village part too to access wilderness nodes which have slightly more resources than how it was a village cause it add conflict and diplomacy between the 2 node which isnt inheritably a bad thing imo atleast. Perhaps the village come up with a deal with the city and provide them with x amoutn of resources each month for them not to attack or to protect them for example.
Well, there's a perfect example. I'd never think to design a system where the whole 'Town takes protection money from Village' was a part of the diplomacy, because I would expect players to eventually make this system unpleasant.
But that's my perception of what's unpleasant. I'm surprised you're okay with 'Give us your stuff or we'll destroy you because the game mechanics give us an incentive to do that', considering what your OP was, though. Technically, I think you just argued against your own concern?
If players who are Citizens of the Town have access to the Bank in the Village, then doesn't the whole thing just fall apart?