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To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Gambling would be the most challenging thing to balance in this system due to the potential of players fixing matches and losing on purpose, so I would understand if it is excluded. However it would be loads of fun to have in the game, and I have ideas to help balance such a system.
1. In my proposed system, rewards for progressing through each tournament level would help disincentivize players from losing on purpose because they would miss out on possible rewards earned, which would be significant at the higher levels. It would also effect negatively their place on the leader-boards, which is actually a big deal for some PvPers.
2. Make the wagering system work like horse races do so that if one team is heavily favored, the payout for betting on them is greatly reduced.
3. Limit the amount of gold that each player can bet per match.
4. Only allow participants to wager on themselves or matches they are not participating in.
5. Limit outside parties from wagering to weekly tournaments and higher
6. If caught participating in fixing matches, make it a reportable and bannable offense
While I acknowledge this will not eliminate the possibility of players rigging matches for their own gain, this will help reduce it. It is important to understand the point of this system would not exist to be perfectly balanced and is more about entertainment, just like it is in the real world. Players should be responsible for understanding the risks involved and having self control. In my opinion, if a player is dumb enough to bet a large amount of their money on an arena match, they deserve to lose it.
"Consequences: What are some of the consequences of failing an event that you can imagine happening to the node you call home? Feel free to share your ideas!" Cities being besieged by NPC armies in major events, key buildings attacked or infrastructure and potentially destroyed, nodes being de-leveled based on damage done.
"Participation Rewards: Do you feel that events should require players to be online and/or onsite in order to receive rewards for participation? If so, why? If not, why not?" Why should players get a reward for being offline and not contributing anything? Rewards should only be given to those who contribute and greater rewards to those who contribute the most. I would look to Warhammer Online's Public Questing system, which was the first of its kind and so far the best I've seen. Players who participated would receive a basic reward, players who contributed MORE had greater chances of receiving green blue or gold loot bags with better rewards, and players who did not participate ENOUGH wouldn't receive anything. The amount of loot bags would scale with the amount of players participating. Players who did not pick up their rewards would receive them in their mailbox.
Not with a global ranking or stuff like that, just for the nodes community for fun.
They could range from: Collecting resources to improve the node, example: building a bridge.
PvP tournaments as I have read in some comment, also sabotage missions would be nice if you have declared war on some guild.
But above all it should be social and have to be done in a group.
What are some of the consequences of failing an event that you can imagine happening in the node you call home?
It has been mentioned that if the node is improving, the appearance of enemies will be greater, I think it would be wise that apart from the mechanics I mentioned, the same thing happens with the mayor's quests.
A bar that as you complete missions decreases, but if you fail it increases or vice versa and if you get to complete the result would be the appearance of more enemies attacking the node. As missions against the clock.
Do you think events should require players to be online and/or on site to receive rewards for participation? If so, why, if not, why not?
Is it an event that is resolved in 1 hour or an event that takes more than 1 day to resolve?
Let's be logical, the event that lasts 1 hour of course you have to be on the site to receive the reward. But the event that takes more than 1 day I would not see it fair.
Let's say you have been the weekend doing the event and on Monday the event is completed but being work you work and you can not connect or your partner tells you to listen to him and stop playing. You have helped to make a complex event that takes days YOU DESERVE THE REWARD.
The rewards as I have read, I think they can not be very significant financially speaking, so as not to unbalance the market but at the same time be rare to get.
Some kind of personal help that makes it worthwhile to help would be nice.
example: 2 boost to collect 20% faster in 15 min + 15% discount on taxes (since you have helped the node) + a trophy to hang on the wall.
PS: Sorry for my english.
1. I would like to see for each holiday a different level of funding that a node can put into holiday decorations. All nodes that pay over a certain amount in decorations can reach various benchmarks that offer more quests related to that holiday. So say >5k gold you get no new quests. 5k to 50k gold you get some holiday vendors, 51k to 100k you get holiday vendors and quests, 101k to 200k you get holiday vendors, quests, and a dungeon. Etc.
2. I would like to see bidding for festivals/faires. Where a traveling faire (think like Darkmoon faire in WoW) will go to set up shop in the node with the highest bidder for a week once every month.
Rewards would be tricky, I think you should only be rewarded if you’re playing/ participating. That doesn’t mean you have to be present at a reward ceremony but you do have to participate in the event. I know I probably won’t be able to do most events but why should I be rewarded for just existing? I’d probably keep the rewards just to cosmetic’s or maybe they can borrow the mayors flying mount for a short period of time. If it’s a citizen only event, maybe the winner gets a tax break. I wouldn’t want to see any gear rewarded since that would devalue crafter’s products.
I think punishment’s should be a small fee to enter tournaments/ events. That fee should go to the node like taxes. If you lose you’re only out what you paid to enter the tournament.
Having player run events and quests are hallmarks of some of the most popular anime/fantasy/MMO fiction, and I love that Intrepid is building this into AoC. Players taking the role of quest givers away from NPCs and spawning their own spontaneous events is awesome. I would like to see mayors capable of festival style celebration events, political/node rivalry events, and gatherable project events. For celebrations I would love a combination of holidays related to the calendar cycle and predominate culture of the node as well as celebrations related to the node type. So any particular node might have a summer festival, a Py'rai tree festival, and a science fair all at once (or in succession). I think it would be cool for mayors to launch political events such as low key adding additional rewards for destroying caravans from rival nodes on a timer. Finally, I think there should be some sort of event indicator when the mayor launches projects within a town. It was a bit hard in Alpha 1 to figure out what my mayor was building towards, and that was just with the bare bones system. So I think there needs to be some larger event indication there.
Consequences: What are some of the consequences of failing an event that you can imagine happening to the node you call home? Feel free to share your ideas!
I think the consequences should be natural outcomes from the event. Fail a monster event? Node facilities shut down or node is de-leveled. Fail a seasonal/celebration event? The party is canceled, the god is angered, environment becomes more unstable. The only caveat is, I do not think failure should eliminate the possibility of content. If there's a one time event, failure should have as much content/impact for the world as success.
Participation Rewards: Do you feel that events should require players to be online and/or onsite in order to receive rewards for participation? If so, why? If not, why not?
Same as above, I think this is a natural outcome of the event. An event celebrating the entire town that takes weeks to prepare? Absolutely mail off line players their rewards based on contribution and citizenship status. A world boss attacks a city for a specific one hour window? Better luck next time, Steven has said more than once, no participation trophies (and I say this knowing full well, I'll be one of the player missing out). It is not worth actively participating in events if you know passive players get the same reward.
I think mayors should have control over, holiday events, so they can send people to get specific ingredients for decorations or food. Then they can set up tournments and entertainment for those parties. Same for celebrations for victories in battle for milestones that were acchieved by the node.
Participation Rewards: Do you feel that events should require players to be online and/or onsite in order to receive rewards for participation? If so, why? If not, why not?
Yes, players should have to participate in order to recieve rewards for participation. If they did not help in the event they should not get a free reward that do not deserve. The only acception would be the mayor run events, I mentioned earlier, because they are meant for roleplaying as opposed to progression. Assuming the person participated significantly (maybe helped with one stage of the event or had a certain amount of monsters killed) and had to get off before the event was fully completed I do think they should get a reward probably sent to their mailbox.
*All kinds of competitions: Pvp tournaments, fashion tournament, athletic/jumping puzzle trournament, etc.
*Gathering events / monster hunting, aka population control
*War declarations against other nodes or specific guilds and factions
*City faires
Consequences depend on the event type, but as far as mayors are concerned, being exiled, having your goods confiscated or rights revoked and an increase in taxes are always a pain in the ass.
If the rewards are particular to a player and not node-wide benefits, then the player should be online and in the node to receive them. There could also be a reward distribution system in the node, like a particular npc or a giant hoard in the city center.
I like the idea of seasonal events around the world or real world time frame, exp Holiday times, celebrations.
As for in world, id like to see festivals, coronations of the ZOI Monarchs, Treasure hunts ( money or mats etc), foreclosure homes can be auctioned off, helping build up city.
A champion of the city event, Mayor can pick a champion of the city (based off of in world stats or have a tournament, PVP or such as joist, combat, obstacle course). This then can allow The Champion of city to be know in sieges/wars for extra bounty and such.
Consequences: What are some of the consequences of failing an event that you can imagine happening to the node you call home? Feel free to share your ideas!
Buildings being destroyed, relic item being stole, Market place closures for "x" amount of time, Fires or some kind of damage that needs citizens to deliver mats to repair and/or a crafter to do the repairs.
Participation Rewards: Do you feel that events should require players to be online and/or onsite in order to receive rewards for participation? If so, why? If not, why not?
Yes you should be online and have participated in the event to gain rewards. Only thing id say is if some disconnects for lag or something like that and event finishes, if they come back they should get a reward. Participation should be based on the type of event and also build up rewards appropriately for time/mats given by anyone person.
When citizens respond to their home node the rewards should be the same for everyone and then have "extra" or "better" rewards for most DPS, most heals/revives, Most Dmg tanked etc. Think that would be cool.
The Wolves of Verra
are recruiting: https://discord.gg/4bFySwxS
In my humble opinion, there could be two types of events: Public Events and City Goals
City Goals - everything that referred to node development
- Resource gathering
- Building/Farming
- Monster Hunt (to make some buildings available or change/adjust mob types, or their population)
Public Events - events like festivals, tournaments, etc
- PvP tournaments
- FFA battle festival in the city (Just kill all other players (without corruption and loot drop, just some ranked system))
- Some food festivals, where you can craft/trade some specific food
- Probably some speed run or PvE competitions, but I have no idea how to implement them without instances
- Some funny events (for example, the divine chicken festival. All players will get a chicken hat and should show a chicken dance to at least 10 different players. If at least 40% of citizens complete this quest, they will get a chicken blessing after the end of the event (+10% movement speed for 24h), otherwise some chicken curse, like a noisy effect or a chance to fall over outside of battle)
Consequences: What are some of the consequences of failing an event that you can imagine happening to the node you call home? Feel free to share your ideas!
For City goals, there could be different temporary penalties based on the goal and city level.
- Lower respawn rates of monsters/resources
- Some extra tax
- Restriction to create some types of buildings
BTW, it would be nice to bound some progression, like specific buildings with city goals. For example, to open the possibility to create farms, you should keep a population of wolves in the node less than 40% for the next 4 hours.
For public events, there should be from minimum to zero penalties, because there is usually no city-wide goal and no usual way to fail.
Any bigger consequences, like the fall of the city, the destruction of buildings, or any node level or resource losses it's more seem more likely for world events or other players' aggression rather than for mayor-run events.
Participation Rewards: Do you feel that events should require players to be online and/or onsite in order to receive rewards for participation? If so, why? If not, why not?
Rewards should be available depending on the player's contribution, not availability at a specific time. Two reasons:
1) It's not fair to ignore all player progress if he or she can't participate in the final
2) Game shouldn't tell players when they should play, except for cases when there is no other choice.
There is no way to make siege of the city at different times for all players, but if we have some resource-gathering event - there is no point to keep players online all the time.
If a node has a 1 in 9 potential to be affected visually by a race and a 1 in 4 by specific type, that makes 36 unique node appearances. But, if the buildings and banners and roadwork were allowed to have different aesthetics between one node and another, it would have the potential to be completely unique every time across all servers in the entire game.
There is not much consequence or reward to this idea. It is just something fun and it encourages participation by citizens to vote in general.
No there should be a witch goblin called a Ghrul that causes the building to sweat and mold, and beautiful things to grow ugly and old, and colorful things to become grey and depressing..... plants becoming swollen with mucous, fruits rotting and full of spiders. .. and it keeps trying to move into people's houses and spawn little Goblin Welps and Witches.
Might turn into a dungeon level area; burrowing through the rotten floor boards and digging into sneeze dirt to form burrows and perhaps link up if multiple houses are taken over, setting up traps and hanging up bone trinkets and banner corpses.
Goblin Grubs would be the larva stage. . . egg sacks in the low corners. . . evolving after consuming rotting things which there are plenty of.
lol
1. Resource gathering. The mayors should be integral to the growth of the node. Mayors should be able to initiate quests and events for gathering resources and items needed for building and upgrading the node. This doesn't just have to be for crafters/gatherers, the areas that contain these items/resources should be filled with strong mobs that need to be cleared and/or fended off.
2. PvP incursions. Mayors should be able to initiate events/quests that task the players to strike at neighboring, hostile nodes. This could be during war or during peace. If it's during war they could use events as a tool to direct and encourage assaults on the enemy. Events are a golden opportunity for mayors/guild leaders to direct the war effort. They could have options like attack caravans or destroy naval convoys.
3. Discovery events. Mayors could initiate quests to open up new content. Since dungeons and quests will be open or hidden depending on how the nodes develop, allow the mayors to choose some of these pathways via the event system. The end result doesn't have to be known (until the internet posts them at least), they could have a vague description of 4 or 5 events that they could initiate and the end of a successful event would be a new area or dungeon. This could also lock out some of the other choices so there would be consequences to the choice.
4. Cosmetic events. It would be great for a node to run events that give armor/weapon/mount/housing type skins. It's not the world changer that pvp events would be but lots of people collect skins (myself included) and something non-earth shattering from time to time is a nice, casual distraction to change up the pace.
Consequences: What are some of the consequences of failing an event that you can imagine happening to the node you call home?
1. Services should be locked out. If we do not adequately deal with an event then services or areas associated with it should be out of bounds until we clean up the mess. If goblins raid the town and no one cares, all shopping stalls should be burned down and inaccessible until we fix them and drive off the goblins. If a popular gathering area is overrun and we don't deal with it, the resources there should be inaccessible. The trees and plants are corrupted etc.
2. Creatures and biomes should be altered. For example, using goblins again, if a wilderness zone becomes overrun certain animals will no longer spawn until it dealt with. If the area is swarming with goblins then simple creatures like dear, rabbits, bears, wolves and such will probably leave until the danger passes. We may need those creatures for crafting, taming etc so we would be motivated to deal with the goblins. In short consequences should be centered less around punishment and more around motivating the players to participate in the system.
Participation Rewards: Do you feel that events should require players to be online and/or onsite in order to receive rewards for participation? If so, why? If not, why not?
For me this one is easy. For direct rewards, such as items or valuables, players gain rewards they earned by participating in the event or helping with the aftermath. If you were not there or did not participate you should not receive anything. I suppose node wide buffs or new town features could be called a reward that people could receive even without being there but that sort of thing works itself out socially.
- Mayors can initiate tournaments for their node citizens that represent the first tier of the grand tournament. The winner of that node tournament will be crowned that node's champion and be granted the right to move on to the second tier of the grand tournament.
- All nodes are part of a monarchy area of influence. The second tier of the tournament will crown the champions of those monarchy area of influences. So if there's 4 or 5 of these aoi's, there will be 4 or 5 champions moving on to the finals. Nodes within that monarchy area of influence who built arenas will bid on having the honor to host that tournament using node currency. Nodes who host these tournaments will bring in travelers and merchants from around the world to make money off the sales tax of goods, providing a great incentive to win that bid. All (4 or 5) second tier tournaments will be held on the same day, so you have to choose which one to attend.
- Any city or metropolis node within Vera that built high tier arenas will be able to bid to host the Finals. What an event that would be! Think of all the caravan traffic pouring into that node prior to the event. The finals would be a special player driven event where you could buy almost anything all in one place.
- Crash goes the server LOL.
And please do seasonal events like Christmas and Halloween with a Vera twist. Items and quests and special bosses - Loved WOW's snowballs.
Of automatic early elections should be triggered if those are not canceled every few days. This would cover also sudden player inactivity.
The ancient greek city-states used to have tons of festivals celebrating different gods that were supposed to give some blessing to the city’s people. A mayor could trigger an event for a particular boon that would benefit the citizens of that node. For example, a festival for the god of X requires X building; the citizens must commit to this project for the festival to start. (There could be a restriction on other projects once started.) Quality of blessing could depend on the node level, material contribution, or/and quest contribution during the festival. I’d like to see the boon be valuable enough for the citizenry to be eager to contribute their time to it.
Other events could be quests to raise happiness or other material resources for buildings. An interesting one could be emergency events to raise funds or improve city defenses. An emergency event could request stone blocks, boss material, or basic resources. Generally, I’d expect all events to be around strategic resources or city management. Events should contribute to the building of infrastructure or beautification.
Consequences: What are some of the consequences of failing an event that you can imagine happening to the node you call home? Feel free to share your ideas!
If you failed a festival event, you’d get a curse instead of a boon. Other events could increase prices of goods, lock functions, weaken defenses, or increase time to gather/craft. Besides that, just generic reasons why nations collapse could be a consequence. Famine, rebellion, natural disasters, and fiscal mismanagement could result from an event or many events that fail. I don’t know how you’d implement fiscal mismanagement, but empires in decline always overspend on the military, leaving no money for other vital services.
Participation Rewards: Do you feel that events should require players to be online and/or onsite in order to receive rewards for participation? If so, why? If not, why not?
Generally, yes, but I’m sure there are events where this isn’t important. I think family-related rewards could be more forgiving. For family, it’s not essential who participated, only that they are within the family.
This would enable you to be proactive about getting the citizens prepped for combat scenarios. These events should allow you to host things like training events that
1. incentivizes people to come together in one place at one time
2. makes it easy to communicate complex ideas about different battle strategies/tactics (like positioning, formations, group compositions, etc.), different roles in battle, and different kinds of political/economic/bahavioral protocols for different potential situations.
3. Maybe also having the ability to run simulations and create practice combat scenerios to test plans.
Another event idea to add-
I know "factions" aren't really planned as far as I know, but it would be cool if there were kind of smaller NPC run areas similar to nodes, where you/your node/a combo of both, has a relationship with that npc race or specific area that you can manage with different elements of risk/reward based on how you interact with them- which these relationships could be affected by mayor run events as well. This would add more political aspects to the choices you and your node makes, with potential conflict of interest and tough choices- while also intertwining that pve element of npc-run nodes, with the pvp elements of player-run nodes.
EDIT: revising my feedback as a series of leading questions
NON-PROGRESSION EVENTS
Is there any reason to host a mayoral event that does not contribute to node progression?
Is it possible to create supporting facilities for common MMO competitions (mount-offs, fashion etc.)?
Can players earn something that gives them bragging rights from these events? (custom titles?)
Can mayors send limited invitations to non-citizens, say when hosting an internodal competition?
RACECOURSE
How does a player create a custom racecourse? What rules could they apply to the race (camels only?)? How would competitors join the race and how would it start?
COMMISSION WORK
When the mayor designates plans for a new node-building, how much involvment will the crafting system have? Do you want citizens to submit fully-built chairs? Paintings? Rose clippings? Tapestries?
Would the mayor throw a celebration when the building is complete?
Could citizens be involved in "node research" efforts to uncover more technologies to increase a mayor's development options? Perhaps discover unique NPC's? How would you recruit them to your node? Would they require minimum living standards?
JUDICIARY
Is a mayor responsible to resolve disputes between citizens? Could they nominate someone to do it on their behalf? If guilty, would a mayor be able to issue fines?
MILITARY
Can a mayor plan offensive military projects? Would these projects be sensitive information? Would there be a system of espionage around hiding/uncovering this info? Are there certain classes of citizens who would be privy to this info? Patron Guild Masters? Would that also make defensive projects sensitive information too?
Does a political assassination force a re-election?
NPZ PROJECTS
Are there Non-player citizen (NPZ henceforth) projects that a mayor can enact that shape the passive economy of the node, simulating NPZ workforce? e.g. could we send NPZ's to help in the mines? Or to work in the fields?
Can node buildings be upgraded? Can we build redundant/backup facilities in case of failure? How many backups could a metropolis build?
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Consequences:
DEPENDENCIES
Are node facilities dependent on each other in some form of hierarchy? What happens to the blacksmith if the well runs dry?
CHOICE
Do we get a choice for how to cope with a bad consequence? e.g. if the well runs dry, could we decide how to ration the water? Please put the responsibility of decision on the mayor - this is where the real test of a mayor's character will be! Perhaps the mayor would invest in backup facilities? Could these consequences also create opportunities for new quests focused on relieving the penalty?
SYSTEMIC BUFFER DESIGN
What triggered the event in the first place? Did failing to defend our node from a raid appease the anger of _______ ? As a consequence, will there be less frequent raids from these enemies? If an event is failed - it could indicate that a node is in decline - but rather than being punished by a one-off failure, wouldn't it make more sense if multiple failures apply aggregate strain on a node before the node sees serious consequence? Would the compounding of strain need an explicit consequence? (e.g. if the well broke, then the town hall caught fire, then the town wall was destroyed - the collective consequences of these events needs no further provoking).
DIFFICULTY
Does failure of an event indicate the difficulty was too high? At what point would the difficulty be lowered? Would rewards decline too?
RISK
Players expect that valuable rewards are only available at great risk - BUT there are two ways to have great risk: high failure chance OR high consequence - usually related to the frequency of the risk. How frequently would mayoral events occur? Who should bear the risk of failure? The mayor or the citizens? Please don't create risks that have both a high failure chance AND a high consequence - these should be reserved for foolish decisions only. (then again, would you like to give mayors the option to be foolish? maybe greedy?)
SUNK INVESTMENT
Events where players have been investing time and resources to initiate have an in-built consequence on failure (loss of investment) - do they need further punishment? How would a player who took the initiative respond to further punishment?
LIST OF POTENTIAL CONSEQUENCES
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES - How much influence will players have over the local certificate market? If the economy is largely player controlled, there will be natural fluctuations in the market - HOWEVER, if the local economy is system controlled then you could design an artificial economy to simulate the consequences of event failure/success.
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Regarding George_Black's comment about events having no rewards and ONLY being threats - is this gameplay loop fun long-term? (it reminds me of the thread where someone suggested cleaning the town as a game mechanic).
E.g. Tower Defense games are all about defending from waves of enemies but the fun is in being rewarded for efficient clearing that you spend in upgrades. Point is, a threats-only game loop is oppressive without a feedback system that rewards you for greater performance - encourage players to display skill. What kind of rewards? Should events generate materials that enter the economy? I think they should.
Either way, this is worth play testing - perhaps defence is fun even without rewards, given that nodes are advanceable. I think it's possible if you design the event with space for player expression (choice) and the system acknowledging a player's choice (change in how the event plays out).
Regarding consequences for failing an attack on a caravan - do you intend to have any?
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Participation Rewards:
Do players need to be present?
Depends on the event, I reckon.
The relocation could be a quest for players to execute / support.
I like the idea of 'nonprogression' based 'quests' and 'competitions'. These events fit really well as an extension of happiness based investment quests. The event system is the sort of system that let's node communities host their own festivities and create their own sense of 'life' outside of the humdrum of siege, caravan, raids and guild wars. While I still think this type of thing should be largely 'global' and created by IS, giving tools for 'local' level events for nodes to effectively make their own holidays or host their own user generated 'quests'/'content' is probably a good tool to put in the belt.
I feel like games that have used this system in the past have fallen flat more so because they fail to produce global/publisher driven events themselves leaving it entirely to the players rather than the concept of user directed content with an established set of guidelines, costs, rewards, and purpose in other systems in the game. As an RPG it's useful for the game to give these tools directly rather than relying wholly on player activity as moderation both moderate the level of impact such events can have on the over all game play.
After all, we don't want unimmersive events, useless events, or events that have disproportionate impacts to the area compared to others. IS is still largely responsible for keeping up general activity levels in their game and games that rely too heavily on user generated content tend to flop in the long run. Yet it still has great potential if it's actually integrated into systems in a way that if not performed doesn't cause a total collapse of player activity or give guilds 'yet another tool for exploiting the game through sheer numbers'. So in a sense codifying such things and integrating them into the various systems in game can create a sort of hybrid user/producer published content that I think that more games could use. Elite Dangerous really pushes on some game play boundaries I'm surprised isn't more common given how effective they are.
The mayor events could follow a pattern such that they can only be initiated once or twice a week on a set time of the week so we all know in-advance if we want to participate or there should be an announcement period of several days for people to plan time to participate, either way allows more people to get in on the event and not feel they missed out due to logging in a day or two later. Spontaneous events should be smaller in scale and reward to help reduce FOMO anxiety and abuse.
No disagreements here. Events can definitely become unbalanced without some form of cost or timer.
Do you think the limitation of "running out of money in the treasury" is enough on its own?
Depends on the rewards and how effective opposition to the event type in question by foreign actors is doesn't it?
I would figure artificial limitations like cool down timers and the like would make sense when the 'positive reward' is also 'easy to achieve'. But you don't HAVE to make events 'be easy to achieve'. I think 'number of slots you have available for mayoral initiated quests' (which is almost as much of a direct cap as a cool down timer) as well as the 'mandatory timer for how long a quest is open' is probably the better thing to use as a limiter for things that would have a direct positive outcome for the node in question.
That's sort of why I was thinking that it would be useful to have a category that both costs resources to initiate but produces a positive result and another that costs basically nothing but has a 'reduction of a negative result'. For sake of clarity my definition for 'negative result' is "something that would reduce or destroy current value or the ability to create value harder" and positive "creating value from nothing or making it easier to create value".
It's not that I think the 'reducing a negative result' missions should cost 'nothing'. After all that would be inflationary in a deceptive way (dm me if you want to discuss that but I am so not going into that much detail in a dev discussion lol). It's more so that the resource sink itself is what you would technically use to 'pay out to participants' since again the intention is to reduce a negative effect/situation, not generate a positive one. They are protecting their stuff, improving their roads, etc.They'll get paid for the effort in a round about way through the mats they just 'farmed' by the node but the larger 'payment' is lowering the risk of loosing their larger investments.
For the purely positive missions on the other hand, having an upfront cost from the node's coffers makes a lot more sense. The node needs some skin in the game in this case where as when you are trying to reduce the negative effect, your skin is already in said game. Of course this means that the opposition can have a more direct impact on your node degrading/losing opportunities which means it's more attractive for an opposing node to start running interference. That makes it a little more difficult to calculate how much risk and how many limitations like the ones I described at the beginning are necessary.
It's better and a little easier from a game design perspective, to balance cost of resources to reward generated than it is 'likelihood of failure due to opposition or lack of player engagement.'
I think balancing 'how effectively an event can get squashed by foreign actors' vs 'the reward' is pretty difficult to achieve since it's a factor that would depend on server culture, population density, etc. You would kind of have to tune things by 'cost to initiate' and leave in an 'average' margin for ease of interference in completion of targets by how the missions themselves can be completed. It's easier to drop off mats than it is to rack up red kills for example since you still keep mats on death.
tl;dr: Yes the coffers of a node are an effective instrument for mitigating frequency of events and how much rewards can be reaped, but their are other tools for managing this without directly capping them if the devs think it's necessary given their planned event design. I think it's better to indirectly limit them via the structure of said quests and the parameters for them. Overall both types of mayoral missions would offer ample opportunity for politically driven PvP and PvE but that means you are already working with a risk vs reward structure via the corruption system on the player level, so your question is a difficult one to answer without more data on what events and rewards they have in mind for the event system...
Just having NPCs act like living creatures/ people out in the wild is a huge priority, as I see it. Intelligence. Behavior. AI creates emergent gameplay; AI can organize and prompt 'events' to 'progress' one way or another. AI as I see it is key.
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Some FREE magazine with industry pros talking about AI
Yeah gotcha - more levers for devs to pull incase they need to isolate particular events from being over-used.
Also I'm a big fan of being limited by "slots" - it doesn't feel as artificial, plus it can be a perk that nodes can invest in to get more slots.
I'm not as much a fan as it has a similar drag effect coffers does. Why limit something directly when you can limit it via the cost or parameters of the actions in question.
Amount in coffers are more related to mayoral decisions and community support and there are real limits on the latter that can be overcome by good community campaigning, offering a better node experience, etc. I think we will often see influx of player activity on occasion that can't really be accounted for by the node system itself and keeping coffer based and parameter based limitations as the primary design for limiting event impact and frequency allows for a type of flexibility that can handle that overflow im a way hard slots cannot.
On the other hand it would keep the number of node quests/events less overwhelming and not detracting from global events/node events. So there are definitely benefits to that approach. I am a big fan of mayors needing to make actual choices and possibly curry favor with since constituents over others. This type of limitation definitely achieves that at least. I still think coffer based limitations offer that same feature as well though.
Which ever limitations achieves the most community agency with minimal clutter or meta gaming is good in my book.
The results of the referendum could have an impact on longer term and the next mayors to be bound to follow and fulfill the result of the referendum. This could be about projects which take a longer time to accomplish and once started, aborting them is costly. Or could be about alliances and strategical decisions.
Consequences: What are some of the consequences of failing an event that you can imagine happening to the node you call home? Feel free to share your ideas!
Participation Rewards: Do you feel that events should require players to be online and/or onsite in order to receive rewards for participation? If so, why? If not, why not?
- - onsite requirement? - not outright. If you participated at all you should not have to be present or onsite at the end to receive your reward.
- - offline - similar to onsite, if you participated in some capacity I feel players should still be awarded even if offline. If it can be argued that things players do contribute to the event even happening in the first place I think that would justify some amount of fully offsite/offline reward.
tiered rewards to me are the best for promoting contribution and participation, specially if events are scalable or long term. tiered rewards would also make it easier to justify both offsite and offline rewards. Outside of some specific event type exceptions i would expect most events to allow partial or tiered rewards based on levels of participation and success.