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Node Types Are Imbalanced Due to Mayoral Selection Processes
Breezi_467
Member
I believe there is an imbalance between the node types that will cause players to avoid participating in military or divine nodes in favor of scientific ones (and perhaps economic ones). The reason is because of how the mayoral selection process contributes to an important feature of the node: stability. If the military and divine node types are vulnerable to a persistent string of bad mayors as a result of their selection processes, then they will be poorly managed and unstable. As a result, players will avoid investing time into divine or military nodes because of their instability and the risk of losing their investments at the hands of a bad mayor.
Just to clarify, if a scientific node elects a bad mayor, they will easily course correct next election by not re-electing the same bad mayor. But if in a military node, for example, there are great pvpers who want the mayor's flying mount but don't care about actually doing the job of being mayor, then it's very difficult for the citizens to stop them from being re-elected as mayor over and over again. In general the node will not have a mechanism for controlling mayor quality and will be vulnerable to a string of such people in the mayor's office. Military nodes will also be more vulnerable to outside factions sending double agents in to become mayor for the purpose of undermining the node, because there is no social accountability associated with the mayoral selection process.
My concern is that if the mayoral selection process isn't reworked for the divine and military nodes, then these node types will be dead on arrival. The most invested players will eventually abandon them in pursuit of scientific (or perhaps economic) node citizenship.
Just to clarify, if a scientific node elects a bad mayor, they will easily course correct next election by not re-electing the same bad mayor. But if in a military node, for example, there are great pvpers who want the mayor's flying mount but don't care about actually doing the job of being mayor, then it's very difficult for the citizens to stop them from being re-elected as mayor over and over again. In general the node will not have a mechanism for controlling mayor quality and will be vulnerable to a string of such people in the mayor's office. Military nodes will also be more vulnerable to outside factions sending double agents in to become mayor for the purpose of undermining the node, because there is no social accountability associated with the mayoral selection process.
My concern is that if the mayoral selection process isn't reworked for the divine and military nodes, then these node types will be dead on arrival. The most invested players will eventually abandon them in pursuit of scientific (or perhaps economic) node citizenship.
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Divine nodes can be won by the hardcorest player from that same guild, with the help of the guild.
Military nodes can be won by the hardcorest pvpers from that same guild w/o even the help of the guild (depending on the design of the election process).
Economic nodes can be won by that same guild pooling all their money into one person.
In other words, the top guild on the server has the potential of ruling 4 metropoli out of 5, and that's if there's 2 scientific ones, because they could rule all 5 if there's a duplicate of any other type.
All nodes have the potential to be abused by players. And all the other players are the ones deciding if they want to keep living in that node or let it die and let the abusers suffer the consequences.
But if they will be bad then the node falls and they loose their position.
Also imagine them being blamed. The social pressure will be high on them to quit or listen.
The other mayors ellected by players can lead to big streamers being mayors for a long time too. Some players hate the idea.
The point is that if a mayor sucks at his/her job, it is bad for the node. Therefore, if a mayor is good at his/her job, then it is good for the node. That node will grow and prosper. This even seems similar to how the real-world governments work!
I think that it is a great part of the game design. Also, it will be partially mitigated because some people will want to go to a particular type of node to get the benefits of that type of node. But over the long run, the well-run node of that type will likely outperform the poorly governed one. This could work to counterbalance the large PvP guilds since the personal qualities needed to run a PvP guild are not a perfect overlap with the personal qualities needed to govern a node successfully.
Economic node would also have your same issue if people played that way.
I think it's important for us to see how it plays first since the node also benefits the major. If the node they live in isn't doing well, it will negatively impact them too. It's not like you get a dragon mount and you win the game.
With regard to Military nodes in particular, I feel the OP's concern stands. I agree that a guild can band together to win most mayoral contests, and this itself is a reasonable balancer, but if the top PvP player on the server is proving a poor mayor, no guild can remove them due to the 1v1 nature of the contest.
(ref: Mayors > Node elections)
Even if they allow for counter-build and counter-picking to remove the existing mayor, this makes Military node leadership excessively swingy from month to month.
While "might makes right" is a style of society, I believe that including some potential for one's guild to support them in a mayoral arena in some form would increase overall stability, while suiting the theme a bit better. Individual mighty warriors do not make stable leaders of societies. The powerful head of a mercenary guild, however, tends to fare much better.
Do take this all with a grain of salt. I am not a "military node" style person.
If someone has been mayor then no one from that guild can be elected for X amount of time. Yes there would be loopholes for removing someone from a guild prior to the election and adding them afterwards as their next candidate or something, but there's only so much you can do.
Perhaps the only way to be mayor is to be better at becoming mayor than the competition, regardless of how smooth you try and play it. But then that's what game testing is for, you just try and see if it works or breaks. So let's find out.
The node wins out because the guild would just tell the pvper what to do as a mayor, while the pvper wins out because he's now in the top guild with great gear.
If they are doing a good job, allow a Scientific node to keep electing them again and again. If they really want to work hard to keep the job, let them continue to rule the other types of nodes.
Sure, It'd be nice if all they mayors we got were nice forever, but that doesn't seem like it's likely to happen.
this.
If the major sucks in a military node, go to one where the major doesnt suck.
Then raze the node with the suck major to the ground.
Also declare the suck major enemy of the state so he cant do the same to the new node.
Thats off-course only the solution if the same bad major keeps getting into the position.
Only the majors of tier 6 nodes will get the flying mount.
That means that for quit a long time, the node prospered.
For the economic node:
all the money you spend to become the major gets taken by the node and can only be used for the node.
The money can not go back to the person.
So its only a matter of time until someone else safes enough money to out bid the current major.
Democracy will be help by the biggest guild in town due to holding most of the votes.
And by the love of god, dont limit the majors to 1 or 2 ruling periods.
Thats a double edged sword.
Sure it stops bad majors from keeping their position.
But the same happens to good majors as well.
People are right though, if there is an issue with the mayor they can always try and move. Or maybe just destroy the settlement entirely.
It's a good question, I want to clarify that the concern is that bad mayors will be a persistent problem for military (and divine) nodes that will detract participation in them and cause them to be a neglected part of the game. It would be sad if something as cool as the idea of a military or divine node was developed and then ignored.
I also want to clarify that the concern is not that there may be 1 single best pvper who sucks at being mayor. The concern is that possibly half or more of the people in the arena contending for the mayorship may just be there because it's fun and to get the flying mount and not really care about doing the job of being mayor. If that's true then addressing 1 bad mayor doesn't make the problem go away, the quality of the mayor any election cycle would come down to a coin toss. That's what I mean by instability. There's no quality control and it would be a persistent problem, whereas a scientific node is likely to elect a good mayor a high percentage of the time.
Sounds good.
The streamer issue is just funny imo lol. No clue what should be done or if it will be an issue.
Economic Node Idea
Mayors could hold onto power and, for the Economic one, Outsiders may buy out a diminishing % of people to be against the Mayor [cost to get NPCs on your side would go up and you may have to compete for NPCs/Businesses].
With enough money businesses may reject the Mayor and not serve his supporters BUT BUT it would be much cheaper to get them to Reject Individuals and Certain Guilds or even Types of Players such as based on Class, Race, Node Citizenship, Profession. . . or have that business Reject certain Materials, or buy exclusively from YOU as in a TRADE DEAL.
Necromancers tend to not be liked so it might be easy to pay a business not to serve them. Reputation would factor in basically.
With enough money the NPC Guards would be against the Mayor and whomever/whatever guild was buying out the City would become Mayor. I would expect many businesses have their own NPC Bodyguards though.
I don't think Mayor bodyguards would betray the mayor unless the whole city is against them; being a disloyal bodyguard is bad for employment opportunities afterall! Not that an Economic Node is the manifestation of Avarice but I imagine such NPC bodyguards could be bribed if the entire town is against the Mayor.
Some difference in quality is just the spice of life lol. But yeah things can be improved somehow.
Military Nodes could have unique training NPCs to help players improve their skill.
If they're near a real high-danger area of the world it makes sense to have military nodes and thus hardcore PvE players will be there that should have decent PvP skill.