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Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Events are not for single players as such any consequences should affect the people in the area and not a single player. As an example if players fail to stop some bad thing it should be something like NPC shops shut down for time or slower respawn of nearby ores. What I would hate to see is something like hurting a homestead. Events should make players want to do things as a group to do some kind of goal for example if a homestead was in danger and the player is 2 hours deep in a planed 5 hour guild activity they shouldn't have to tell the group sorry guys my homestead is in danger and I have to go defend it.
These dungeons, according to lore, appear naturally and randomly and have to be discovered by exploring. They are procedurally generated and biome based. They have an initial number of floors that expand over time and may be accelerated by player deaths within the dungeon. Each consecutive floor of the dungeon is more difficult than the last, and each floor has a floor boss (this can also be a procedurally generated mob but with higher stats). The dropped loot is the same loot the mobs drop outside of the dungeon with the exception of the floor boss having a higher tier item drop%.
A dungeon will continue to grow until it is cleared meaning the number of floors will increase and the difficulty will as well. This difficulty can be mob stats, number of mobs that appear at one time, or types of mobs. This can mean a dungeon has the potential to grow into an end-game challenge that even veteran players have trouble with.
A dungeon is cleared by defeating the final floor boss. Doing so should have a guaranteed chance of dropping a very rare or powerful item (scaled by the number of floors the dungeon had). Once a dungeon is cleared, it will disappear from the map.
Until a dungeon is cleared, mobs may spawn in greater numbers and attack nodes. Not only will this indicate that there is a dungeon nearby, but it can tie into some of the other events that are already planned. These spawns may be reduced if the dungeon is visited regularly.
I think these would be a great idea for several reasons:
1. It creates a whole new "profession" for those who want to be dedicated to clearing dungeons. Perhaps even add a tracker for dungeons cleared for clout purposes.
2. Because these dungeons are procedurally generated, it does not require constant manual updating. Once they are spawned, they run their course.
3. Dungeons will most likely require groups to complete based on the difficulty scaling. The most difficult dungeons require raids (which still might not be enough depending on the level of the dungeon). Maybe specific gear is needed to combat these challenges?
4. It will be exciting for the community whenever a high level dungeon is discovered. Maybe there could even be dungeon specific items.
Please let me know what you think. I really love the idea of a hoard of monsters attacking the surrounding area to indicate a dungeon, then after it is located, a group of players can try to defeat it, or die trying. Eventually a dungeon can become a staple for a node if it becomes large enough.
According to wiki
These events could be small and frequent or larger and more powerful.
The mayor could have some strategic control and shift between these patterns by triggering certain type of daily quests.
The purpose would be to try to ensure that the larger events will happen in weekend when more players are online.
That means that these larger events should, without mayor action slide away from weekends and the consequence would be that there are not enough players available to defend the city or whatever points are being attacked by NPCs.
Certain quests would delay the large invasions, other quests would hasten them.
Finding the right succession for these quests can be made more or less challenging by adding player perturbations:
Assuming that the node has enemies (declared or not), the mayor could trigger some incursions into enemy area. These quests could be for
- spying (suitable for solo thief or player-mentor team). The quest would be to locate a cloaked/invisible guard tower and steal a map from it and the crystal which generate the invisibility. The crystal should be delivered into own tower to activate an invisibility cloak. Both nodes' mayors would be notified when the event succeeds.
- attack/defend guard towers holding crystals like the one mentioned above (suitable for a party)
These events should give enhanced invisibility against high level players, to favor that specific level range.
Veterans could also have alts locked at this specific level range to participate for fun or with purpose, if there are some rewards involved.
- Townhalls? Would be nice for citizens to have more opportunities to let the mayor know what they need.
- Good old traditional mob hunting / resource gathering events, especially if upgrading / constructing node buildings require resources in addition to tax money (not sure if this will be the case)
- "Rebuilding" events, if a previous failed event has caused damage to the node. Although these would still likely be PvE / resource events under the cover
- Bounty hunt events. If some odd high-level rare mob spawns or corrupted players are terrorizing the local areas, the mayor can run events to encourage local players to deal with them.
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!
- dead / severely injured key/quest NPCs that will be gone for a while (hours? days?)
- on rare occasions, short temporary occupation of the node by mobs / hostile NPCs
- temporary destruction of residential buildings (auto repaired over time)
- permanent destruction of other functional buildings (need to be rebuilt)
- inflated NPC service prices or taxes
- goblins dancing outside the gates trolling the incompetent players who can't even defend their home.
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?
Online - No.
- Ashes is a game after all, and RL emergencies happen.
Onsite - Depends.
- Some events (e.g. node defense against mob assaults) should require players to stay onsite to receive the reward, so they can't just fight a bit and then go off to do their own PvE stuff while the node's getting raided.
- Some other events (Those which progress / contributions can be tracked/measured) might work better if they don't require players to stay onsite till the end (less restrictions -> higher participation)
-Festivals- -Fairs- -Tournaments- -Concerts- -Lotteries- -Town Meetings- -Easter Egg Hunts- -Secret Santa- -Fundraisers- -Scavenger Hunts- -Ceremonies- -Parades- -Farmers Market-
Answer: 1.Gladiator pvp and pve competition with players spectating can bet on players participating. They should have ranking as well with top 10 only. For PVP rankers can challenge other rankers(low rank to upper rank not vise vera) and for PVE there should be 100 lvls that players can challenge with lvl 1 lowest lvl boss(not that easy thou) and lvl 100 be very very tough boss. (This PvE should be very challenging) Also, this will PvE will have audiences too and they can bet on player.
As for betting, audiences will only know the lvl of the players participating. As for the participating players can bet on themselves but they can not bet on their opponent at the moment (to prevent bad plays)
This event should be atleast a week to max a month long.
2. Events based on top festivals around the world, this will be interesting. This should be a social type event of 1 day where players just come online to have fun with online friends.
3. Hunting or Gathering events. This will be great to collect resources for the nodes. And players participating can get increased npc favors, crafting speed increases at node base, maybe cool blueprints maybe with cosmetic being a compulsory reward.
4. Pokémon battle. Players who have tamed animals or beasts can participate.
Only tamed animals or beasts can fight eachother, players themselves can not participate. Again audiences can bet.
Note: All betting will go through taxes like 30% or 40% . This will be good income source for the nodes.
5. Friendly Nodes events should be a thing too. Like Mayors in each region (ex. 5 or 10 nodes maybe) can launch an event where all the nodes in a region participate. This event can have node ranking system. This event where players of respective nodes compete with eachother. For this event, audiences can bet on their node players. Winner top 1 rank node will have the amount collected from 10% of bets from player from home node and 50% of bets from player from enemy nodes(Players of winner node should get generous rewards as well)Hence, creating a sense of loyalty and competition within audiences too.
Player info of players participating will only be shown as lvl... only if the player wins and decides to unravel the name will be shown. This may come up will nodes trying to bribe players if they can find info before competition(with the help of their spy). As all info of players participating will not be known by anyone except Mayors ( maybe 2/3 high rank node officials)
This will be a start a battle of Wits to find info about enemy teams if they can.
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!
Answer: For events on regional base or global base players should definitely feel sense of responsibility to protect the "home". In events where node itself is in danger of losing 100% of common stuff, 60%rare, 30 % epic, 10% legendary (no chance of losing anything above legendary, if there will be such thing) should be there.
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?
Answer: Once a player has successfully participated in an event there should not be a need for player to do extra activity just for rewards, as doing so will greatly have negative impact for participation itself. Imagine losing a reward just coz u were offline to receive it or far way from the place. Personally, I would hate it.
Or events that can only occur under certain landscape/weather conditions (snow, heavy rain, lightning storm, etc) with a somewhat higher chance or possibly guaranteed chance of occurring since they are under the condition of needing said weather effect.
I’ll causally leave my Reddit idea here.
I think that mayors should do events related to the node or group big game events, the feeling of going with a whole town with saddlebags and torches for a creature that threatens the harvest is very cool
2 the consequences of the node failing an event mission can lose a certain plant resource because the dragon has won and burned the land, the loss of defenses due to a goblin siege, even the deterioration of trade routes between nodes or even the same node
3 the rewards for participation could be a title of: exemplary citizen of the node (name of the node). As the largest range having many more like pleasant visitor, brave tourist etc.
Maybe events like festivals that would give the node a particular look (not sure how this would be implemented exactly (maybe have locations where objects could be spawned on buildings depending on a choice, flowers, skulls, talismans, etc, etc.) and some other small mechanics like bonfire/s at night, paper lanterns, objects in a local waterway that float downstream (just borrowing on some real life stuff) some kind of masks/costumes from crafters?
Maybe a location in the node city that will change for a while like a gladiator arena to have sponsored pvp fights with betting mechanics. (Roman coliseum) Maybe allow some way to have NPC monsters in there.
Consequences for an events, I guess depends on events but my thoughts are less consequences for failing and more of not dealing with it. If you have a goblin infestation it shouldn't magically end and there is a penalty after but more of the event should not end and the penalty is applied during the event.
The only things I can think of that actually sounds kinda awesome in my head anyways for long term "failure" consequences is maybe if there is necromancy in the world (as a concept) a necromancer/s summoning an army causing large scale plagues on failure, this can cause debuffs to everyone in the node, everything from combat to harvesting etc for an extended time period like weeks. This army then moves and attacks a nearby node, not the one that spawned it, this would lead to maybe some inter node cooperation.
I guess tho I'm thinking more monster related but there are also nature themed problems, floods, infestations of plants/fungus/insects, drought, earthquakes, typhoons. Although most of these are long term problems as well either by being a constant concern or causing damage that needs to be repaired.
Rewards in my mind should mainly be the alleviation of the problem with maybe some semi unique resource drops that are not normally local to the region or some other small thing.
The problem with assigning anything of a valuable reward is that you will have to end the events even if they were not resolved to prevent players from just farming the event.
Tying mayors again, you can provide tools to a mayor to give payouts to players for helping with events (rather than forcing them to individually trade with everyone and being online 24/7 for the event.
Edit: just new thoughts, volcanoes for instance can be a disaster but afterwords create rich soil which isn't necessarily a reward for success or failure but as a byproduct and some events could have just byproducts good or bad regardless of anything else.
Edit: while we are on the topic of events, things that happen in certain regions just regularly a like once a season or even for a shorter period of time like say certain regions trees blooming being a particular sight to see, or a particular big waterfall only active during certain times (moon tide, or mountain snowmelt related???)
The idea is semi events to give certain regions/nodes a certain flair of their own.
I think any of these activities below could be tied somehow to the achievement system and various rewards for completing but may have direct rewards also. Another potential is that overall you get reputation towards your node which could unlock rare gear to either be rewarded or NPC's to buy gear from or other items that unlock using a system like this.
Certain events can only be done at a specific node stage.
Social Events: (could all be tied to a percentage going to node fundraising for currency or materials)
. -Tavern drinking contests (bottoms up)
. -Music (if instruments are in game)
. -Parties or citizen recognitions of some kind (birthdays, marriages, etc)
. -Sprinting or Mounted races (if you got em, race em!)
. -Mount offs
. -Dance offs
. -Transmog competitions
. -Various mini games
. -In game card game system with various game modes (I find this super fun in FF14 and sometimes logged in just to play that)
. -Treasure hunts
Consequences: Lose in game currency, lose prestige amongst other players, lose time,
Rewards: Maybe simply just standing out amongst other players, maybe bets could be placed to earn in game currency, likely other rewards I can't think of at the moment.
Seasonal Events:
. -Events that allow for node decoration unlocks
. -Construction of large seasonal assets. Like gathering for a large Christmas tree in center of town/city, or kill creatures to get a mask of that creature type for Halloween, etc.)
. -Events that allow for unique skins, mounts or pets.
. -Snowball fights
. -Costume contests
. -etc
Consequences: You have to wait till next year to get the thing you were going for if you don't finish.
Rewards: Seasonal rewards could be fun things like toys, fireworks etc. Also though things like special seasonal costume skins, mounts, pets etc. I think this part of gameplay should be meant for mostly fun. Not really give out end game gear or anything like that.
Profession Events:
. -Gathering competition, like maybe a fishing expedition who brings in the largest or rarest fish or something like that.
. -Best item crafted (for stats/quality/durability something along these lines)
. -Most gathered, processed or crafted item contest
Consequences: Lost materials, effort and time or no xp gain, no buffs
Rewards: Keep materials, win rare materials, xp gain, temporary profession buffs or potion buffs
PVP Events:
. -Bounty hunter event (to clear out our corrupted players)
. -Duels/championships
. -Group battles (within the node itself, maybe like 5v5 or 10v10)
Consequences: Loss of currency, loss of prestige
Rewards: node race PVP gear, Payment for bounties, payment from dueling bets,
PVE Events: (I hope all quests are voice acted, even those outside of mayor events)
. -Event type quests that play out real time in game
. -Combat quests to clear out mobs that are beginning to overpopulate an area.
. -Kill rare spawns in the area
. -Kill X amount of X creature
Consequences: Triggers attacks on the node if mobs or rare spawns are not dealt with, loss of normal item durability etc, caravans cannot be launched, NPC's can die, locked out of features, loss of home or materials etc.
Rewards: I believe rewards could be payment from the node, node race PVE gear, xp gain, use of node buildings/resources,
General Node Progression Events:
. -Construction events
. -Fortifications for PVE or PVP trigged events
. -Gathering events
. -Unique quests to make your node stand out somehow differently than other nodes of the same stage (like a statue or crazy fountain etc. Maybe this is more end game stage nodes and only one node can have this at a time)
Consequences: Node does not advance, locked out of certain game features, defenseless against attack
Rewards: Node advances, features available, defendable, xp gains, material rewards, etc.
Mayor event ideas:
*Have events either for citizens only (reward your citizens), or open to all (help recruit).
*In game town bulletin boards to promote stuff across the world? The forums could do that, but not everyone wants to read the forums. If a town on the other side of the world is always doing cool stuff, I'd like to know so I can leave my boring town, or get ideas.
*Bracket tool with signups/entry fees/reward structures. The competition can be anything and be player driven/monitored, or some built in default events. 1v1 duels, group fights, relay races, gather the most X in Y minutes, scavenger hunts (find the stealthed rogue!).
*Betting on the brackets? Assuming betting is fine in game. Something to make spectating more fun.
*Town wide drives. Rewards for top contributors. We need more X to do Y, get the most stuff in 1 week.
*Mayor upon creation of event can lock/set a reward in place for the winner(s) (gold, items). I am leaning towards not having the reward automatically be distributed, but have it built on trust/doing an in game trade. The mayor could screw over the winner (and gain enemies, not get re-elected). But maybe the winner is known to have cheated, and so they don't want the prize locked/guaranteed.
This is a tough one, and I can see myself changing my mind often here.
Assumption: Events give you rewards if you participate and succeed in them, and the feedback question is about what happens if you fail.
In general I don't want a system where it feels like we're constantly doing things not to make progress on something, but to avoid being punished. That turns events from something exciting, to something annoying. But, yeah there should be consequences for not completing SOME events. It just shouldn't be a daily stress inducer.
Consequences should be different based on the 'level' of the event. I don't know if there are small, medium, large events, but let's say there are. Small events are things that happen daily. Medium might be a once a week, large maybe once a month. The larger the event, the bigger the rewards/consequences, and more time/effort needed for each.
Small events,
* Should be quicker, give small but impactful rewards.
* Immediate consequence of failure: None.
* Delayed consequence of success/failure: Modify the difficulty/rewards of later larger events. Or change the potential future events to be the more rewarding/punishing ones.
Large event:
* A week or multi-day heads up on what the event is so players can more reasonably be able to participate.
* Should have a node-wide punishment or reward. - Players can plan/predict future behavior based on success or failure. If they get a gathering buff, bandits and gatherers get ready to move there. If they fail and get a gathering debuff - expect an increase in caravans both in and out.
* Potential consequences: Gathering debuffs, being more vulnerable to player siege, a node XP debt. Things that delay the growth of the node, set it back, or make it more vulnerable.
* General sense: Nodes that consistently do better in events, get the edge in ranking up their node/defending/attacking. And opposite if they always fail.
* Nothing that destroys individual player gold/xp/materials.
Medium event:
Somewhere in between the small/large event structure.
Rewards/penalties should scale based on performance, it's not a binary pass/fail:
* Pass/fail should still be binary, but scale how good/bad the reward/consequence is based on how badly you failed or how well you succeeded. Barely succeeding should be a lot different than barely failing, not a 1% diff.
* If it's clear you will fail, everyone shouldn't just stop and abandon. Do as much as you can, every bit matters.
* Enemy nodes can dampen your success, even if it's clear you will succeed. Instead of a 100% rating, they interfere and you only get a 70%.
* Try to give individual rewards as well, but no individual punishments. - If an event sounds boring to me, or I'm on vacation, I don't want to be punished for not doing it. But those that lead to it succeeding should get something.
* Or maybe not? A player might contribute in ways that aren't directly to the event. We need to gather 1000 dandelions, and I'm not a gatherer, but I'm making potions of gathering, or protecting the gatherers.
* individually don't punish people more for trying and failing as opposed to doing nothing.
Mayor could organise a GvG arena event which would last for about a week where players from other guilds could come and spectate the fight from the stands. Of course one fight wouldn't last for a week, it would be like a one week tournament. Entry fee would be set by a mayor, which would then be distributed as a prize amongst the Guilds that reached 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. A winning Guild would recieve bragging rights, with that Guilds name or Guild logo being on display somewhere within a node for every bypasser to see in all its glory.
PS: Sorry for my broken english xD Not my native language.
Drinking refreshing snowflakes tears
1. combat prowess tests- which could help weed out the best candidates to recruit for combat related content
2. Decision making/Strategic and tactile management tests- which could help weed out the best candidates to recruit for combat and organizational leadership/planning roles
3. persuasion/social influence/communication/negotiation tests- which could help weed out the best candidates to recruit for political campaign/recruitment based roles
4. Artisanship mastery tests- which could help weed out the best candidates to recruit for artisanship related needs
5. Navigational competency tests- which could help weed out the best candidates to recruit for naval/land guides/adventurers
6. Investigative thinking tests- which could help weed out the best candidates to recruit for treasure finders/mystery solvers
7. Siege/ship weapon proficiency tests- which could help weed out the best candidates to recruit for weapon users for naval ships and during sieges.
8. Economic/financial competency tests- which could help weed out the best candidates to recruit roles related to analyzing/managing markets, funding business endeavors
9. Etc.
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-twitter-users-dont-political-elites.html
I would say the ultimate mayor ran event would be a festival, with a daily buff to those who participate, lowering the entry cost to gambling in the node, and with cosmetic prizes to the winners of a competition. Mayor's could choose to run a monthly festival if they have a large excess of gold in their coffers, with it being either a feast for the city deity or maybe even in honor of some players. The festival could have a bunch of contests from cosmetic to mini-games to arena PvP, and lower the price of purchasing a free hold in that nodes ZoI while the event is happening. I'd consider that a goal to be achieved after Ashes has been fully released.
Consequences for failing a monster event would I imagine some node buildings being damaged, or maybe debuffs to farming in the node ZoI
I think there should be participation rewards for those engaged in the event, but it shouldn't just be a login check.
I would say they should be able to host:
- Node upgrade events
- Large building (town hall, university etc.) upgrades events
- Parade events (boost morale and maybe other node bonus for a duration).
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!
-Node upgrade events..... fight off the monster coin. If failed then some buildings are destroyed.
-Large building event upgrade ...... Have a critical resource spawn for that building a crystal rock monster. That crystal rock monster drops a crystal needed to power the build. If failed to defeat then the building fails to upgrade.
-Parade event....... Have a parade go around the city with a few key NPCs. Then have assassians trying to kill those NPCS if succefully defended city morale is boosted. If failed to defend key NPCs and gets assassinated opposite effect of morale is decreased and maybe the gathering speed is down or whatever.
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?
Depending on the event. If it node related. Then anyone in the Node should get the bonus or reward. But those who participated should get an additional reward for helping and participating.
I'd like mayors to be able to start events that allow players to contribute materials in exchange for some kind of collective benefit. And if individuals who contribute large amounts were given special recognition, that would be nice.
I have updated the feedback linked above
This place should be in the path of players, so even if they have other plans, to still stop and watch. And eventually participate.
The event should drop really good or powerful rewards however they should only happen a handful of time a year
Eg if your a player that needs to do a pacific event for a reward maybe but the only node that's doing the event is on the other side of vera how would you know. world newspaper?
or if server hopping is a thing what if the event is on the other server so you want to hop over to do the event then hop back. (server hopping is not the question i don't care if or if not it happens) my question is still how would a player know what's going on and where its going on?
Military: Tournaments- each player pays to participate, and podium prizes take the cash. due to inherent balancing issues of 1v1s, these tournaments could be interfaced with the same 'minion' used in the mayoral election battle royal minigame. Or the tournament could be a minigame in its own right. e.g. jousting. Besides gold and cosmetic rewards, the winning player (or the guild he/she represents) could attain a champion status within the node providing some bonus in the city.
Economic: Thieves vs. Traders- the mayor allows the thieves' guild and trader's company to vie for control of the node. Each gained a respective fence or merchant to hand goods to. the first society to reach a specific goal/or have the most after a specific amount takes root in the city. In true ruthless economic nature, the real winner here is the mayor who now has a bunch more resources for the city, but whichever society wins will gain bonuses to their interactions with the city (e.g. caravan/fencing bonuses or maybe a guy you can pay to remove low levels of corruption), and direct participants gain gold/cosmetics dependant on their efforts.
Divine: Religious Conversion- since we know there will be multiple religions and divine nodes will likely integrate with religion, I think a cool concept would be for a divine node to have a religion and the mayor can activate the religious takeover event to allow different religions to try and convert the node. this event could be PVP cantered, where players play king of the hill at the nodes' church, or the event could be PVE centric, with players hunting for the most relics/scrolls/McGuffins from dangerous mobs in order to convert the city. Players who have a matching religion to the node would gain some bonuses, and players partaking in the event could gain gold/cosmetics based on performance.
Scientific: Pandora's Box- for mayor-activated events in scientific nodes, we run into a problem. Their mayors are voted in democratically which means if the event is antagonistic in nature between the inhabitants of the node, the mayor would simply only activate the event when he/she has all their buddies ready to go. I think this means an event activated by the mayor in a scientific node must attract attention from outside the node (either players or mobs). conceptually I think this can be justified through Pandora's box. the head scientists messed with powers they didn't understand in order to gain knowledge. In doing so they spawned dangerous mobs and valuable materials in the surrounding environment. This can create PVE content with powerful world bosses and PVP content with other nodes trying to steal these resources from their neighbour. Players can turn in these exotic materials to their respective node for exotic rewards and the player/guild that hands in the node could receive a champion status within the node
Events in general
I personally have more of an RPG background, and from this perspective, there is a spectrum with two extremes I put events into:
1. Oooo what's this: nothing makes a world feel more alive than hearing a shout in the distance and stumbling into some mess of an event and saying cool, i'll join in. These events are spontaneous and short detours on a player's merry journey. Any stick-based incentive would be annoying so small carrots seem appropriate
2. We got X time, lets GO GO GO: the pressure is on and you have limited time, it could come down to the wire but the rewards could be legendary. High impact High Reward and High Risk. Merry trips fill the world but these make memories that last a lifetime
MOST IMPORTANT: As events become more impactful to a player's progression, they either must have more forewarning or more time (If I could insert a graph here I would.)
Thanks for reading if anyone at intrepid made it through my rambles
Perhaps seeking-type of events could be a nice addition for mayors to run; players might need to find a certain amount of hidden items within the Node's area of influence. Citizens may need to team up to participate (depending on the type of seeking-event). This not only could encourage for players to explore the area more (especially for those shy players who'd want an opportunity to explore together with others and learn more about teamwork), it could also include possible PvP; take for example two teams who stumble upon the same object hidden by the mayor, the teams might battle each other to obtain this object. Finally, it also gives citizens an opportunity to get to know and learn more about other citizens within the same Node.
A possible reason to hold an event could be perhaps for celebrating a Node's "National" Day. Say, a Node which has been existing for 1 month, or 1 year, could celebrate this by holding an event which grants the winner a free citizenship ticket, or perhaps a stack of some useful material, or a nice "package of items" which include some useful tools for gathering, or a trophy which can be placed in a player's house, or a nice badge to be displayed on a player's non in-game profile, or a title to display in-game, and/or a monetary price.
Since this event is between citizens, either there is no real loss (to encourage citizens to participate), either they have to pay an entrance fee for participating, eg. 20 gold, and will lose this money as a penalty (which the mayor then could use for either prize money, or for improving the Node). Players who win will get their entrance fee refunded, together with the event's prize.
This event requires participating players to be online, since it is a social, collaborative event within the community. However, if a winner has been decided and a participant of the winning team happens to disconnect or have some server issue, they should still be able to receive the price.
Now that you mention this, I realize one important trap this thread and the game prepares us: daily and weekly quests. But the frequency and content is being placed into the mayor's responsibility in order to blame him instead of the game if we don't like what we get.