My main concern is feeling a sense of connection to my node that I live in. My worry is leveling from level one all the way to max level and finding myself barely visting the node except for a few key events, i.e to gain citizeship, sell items at the general store to clean up my pack and storing items. My fear is that when I am at 'end game', will there be more than dungeons, raids, and open world bosses. We need a lot of social dynamic atmospheric presence to feel like citizens of the node; especially since this is more a sandpark and less themepark.
So here are three examples of ways we can feel sorta bonded to our city (node).
1. I think of ways in real lie in which I go to my house and spend time there. I spend time in my house to eat, take care of my dog, shower/bathe and rest. Now I don't want to play a survival game so the eating thing is out of the question, unless it was used for RP purposes only with some cute annimations of eating random food. The main reason is to rest, so I would suggest for ways to get players to spend time in their node would be to give them 1 hour rested XP bonus when they have visited their node for x amount of time.
2. Something New World failed in was letting players redesign thier characters after they were made. Ashes should allow either mayors to build barber/salon shops so that players can change their hair apperance or automatically have these buildings when getting to stage three or higher. Maybe even change their facial features, i.e eye color, skin color add/remove tatoos-scars, change body weight. Maybe I made my character fat and now I want abs. Maybe I made him old and now I want to be a young male. This not only help people revisit their node over and over again, but also adds an element of RP to Ashes for our RP community. HECK! even WoW let you change your hair/facial hair.
3. The last example, but there are countless others is the sense of wonder and folktale-ish atmosphere. When I walk into a city I want to see busy shop owners turning their close sign to open, as roosters will start to crow before sunrise, bustling streets, the church bells ringing (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) comes to mind, old ladies (NPCs) sweeping the streets with an old wooden bristled straw broom, your local beggar wrapped in torn brown cloth asking for coin, the religious zealot screaming from his podium about his religion and all the non-believers are going to perish in hellfire, an old man shuffling through the brick paved streets about the end is nigh, Armageddon is at hand for end the of times. Maybe a quest about a corrupt church in town and you have to join the congregation and infiltrate to learn the ominous secrets of the arch bishop and clergy.
Basically, players want memories/attractions in their node and having these things will keep citizens of nodes coming back for more each day. No one wants the node to simply be a glorified bank/chest to throw all your junk into becuase you have more space options than on your person.
Feedback appreciated
