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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.
Node Mayors and wars.
Sarkgp
Member, Alpha Two
As I have read on the Wiki, the Mayors of a Node can declare war on another node, causing its citizens to automatically mark themselves as combatants. Would this work like clan war? Would it allow players to kill each other without PK system?
On the other hand, isn't that too much power for a Mayor? maybe some random guy gets to be mayor and declare war on the strongest Node where a big clan lives, making efforts to raise the node useless.
It's a very easy way, I think the siege scroll should be the only way and not a simple Mayor's decision.
What do you think?
On the other hand, isn't that too much power for a Mayor? maybe some random guy gets to be mayor and declare war on the strongest Node where a big clan lives, making efforts to raise the node useless.
It's a very easy way, I think the siege scroll should be the only way and not a simple Mayor's decision.
What do you think?
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Comments
Yeah, I hope there's a way to remove the mayor from their seat if the majority of the populous disagrees with the war.
I'm not sure what the "anyone can enter" part is supposed to mean.
For once a guilds size is limited to 300 as of now. The incentives to have 300 people in the guild however aren't as high as going for a smaller guild, because leveling your guild to have a lower member cap means each member will get more buffs/bonuses/skills from being in that guild.
Add to that the fact that about 5 Metropoli will be the maximum number of lv 6 Nodes on a server with 8000-10000 players. Only the mayor of that metropolis can declare war, but not just by clicking a button, it also takes the siege scrolls to declare war to another Node. Assuming that only citizens can participate in a Nodes mayor election, it means 300 people have to get their main character of that server to join that city - we already know that the price for a citizenship will rise the more people already have a citizenship. So a guild of 300 cannot easily be the strongest force in a mayor selection and even if the are it takes considerable effort to participate in the election and again to make the declaration of war (via the siege scroll).
The size of the guild doesn't matter here. OP was just stating that the ability of any other node to declare war on a node whose citizens comprise the strongest guild could undermine that guild's work towards improving and building up their node. All the whims of a single person.
Node siege and node war are different things. Any citizen can cast a siege scroll, but only node government can declare a war.
"This mutually flags the citizens of the warring nodes, including their allies, as combatants.[2]"
If they've managed to become Mayor, then they've put the effort in (or they're just a loser streamer with brainless zombie viewers). They're supposed to have power.
It's a PvX game. The only places a player can rest easy are in a non-sieged Freehold or in a Player Stall.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Safe_zones
Okay I'll have to explain that better, sorry. From the Wiki:
- Vassals are subject to the government, alliances, wars, taxes, and trade of their parent node, and are able to receive federal aid from them.
- Vassal nodes cannot declare war on their parent node or any of their vassals.
It seems there are limitations and seeing how a ZOI can reach considerable size, that excludes a lot of Nodes. And it stands to question why a Node in the north-eastern most part of the map would want to declare war on a node in the most south-western most part of the map, given there is no wrap around. It significantly limits the viable target for a node war in my opinion.
That is possible yes, but it is more than a "just go in and break it apart". It seems to me that the systems and game design in general ensure that this kind of change won't happen very fast or without considerable effort unless of course a specific Node is filled with people who are severely dissatisfied with their current mayor or easily bribed. The point being: It does not come free to the stronger guild and that seems to be one of the driving mechanics for a lot of thing in Ashes. Unless this small Node wasn't a vassal, a parent Node might find itself losing losing income, which could get a stronger guild to take action against that takeover.
It seems any player can start them with a scroll and by meeting other prerequisites, but these are not fully explained. But the Siege Scrolls themselves are a major investment.
To conclude, I understand the thoughts regarding this, but I don't see that as much of an issue as it is nothing a guild could pull off casually.
This is literally no different from a GL becoming a mayor because his big guild decided to live in the same node.
Yes, I should've been clearer with what I meant by "any node vs any node". I was talking about any non-linked node on the server, my bad.
As for reasoning - it can be anything, from just "we want content and we're all out, but we don't want to upset our local politics" to "a guild that's competing with us on a boss asked us for a trade. We help them destroy a node through war and a siege and they'll let us farm the boss uncontested".
there is next election although some node have different election processes
I dont think it an issue tbh,
scientific/normal nodes will follow election process so it basicly be a streamer if there guild call that home unless so many people end up hating his chopices but not likely,
military well that probaly be controled by somone in a pvp guild so expect them to have a war more warlord approach either chaotic and good aka guild that will wardec neighbours or one that goes heavy into bounty hunting
Religion will be t he opposite of military and have heavy pve players as mayors so that be peaceful/passive players
economy will be people who run the market/economy
Scientific will be get together and vote them out if you dont like them or wardec to destroy node
military will be overthrow them by neighbouring nodes seiging them if they go to far with there attacks
religion well guess this is to have a no lifer out no life the no lifers :P or war dec them
economy pool money together to out bid them
i dont realy see an issue when it gets down to thing u can either a)destroy the node via seige, b)abandon the node and move elsewhere it decay with lack of taxes or get destroyed they can be king of the empty city iof they want or c) Win the election process or team up wo out bid/vote on them this will work with 98% or so of every nodes since all but 5 will fall under a vote system.
ur only likely gonna see military node war decing neighbours tbh or a node with a huge pvp player influence in where they can win the vote by pooling votes together, but seeing as maybe 10% of the players tend to be pvp orinated there wont be alot of these nodes although have fun if your neighbouring them since ur option is to abandon ship or fight back to destroy there node, or politic with them and either buy them out for leaving u alone in some kind of deal or ally other neighbouring nodes in a defensive pact
Just like in real life.
Let players create dictatorships and see them falling apart rather than demanding game rules to protect the lethargic.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
- Plato
I'd imagine that a lot of players would not even participate in voting cause they won't care too much about how the node is controlled, as long as it's not hurting their gameplay. Those who don't care could potentially be bribed with items or money, because they could only benefit from that kind of trade (at least until the node goes to shit). This would compromise a scientific node.
Military node would probably require people to sign up to the mayoral fights. I doubt there'd be a ton of people willing to even become a mayor, so the pool of candidates will already be small. If a guild wanted to have complete control of a military node, they'd just need to register their members and collude in the arena (no matter what type of process the elections will use).
Religious nodes will most likely be controlled by guilds that accshare a single character or just have a super hardcore player among them. There's also a chance that those quests might require help of a guild, which would lead to the strongest guild in the node easily taking the mayoral position through force.
Economic nodes would be bought up by the same strong guilds if they see benefit in it. The amount of people willing to become mayors will be small and the amount of rich players among those who do want to be mayors would be even smaller, while a guild can easily just tell their members to pool money and outbid anyone else.
So all node elections can be abused relatively easily. But my main point is that a casual player just living in the preferred node and enjoying its services would get quite upset about a sudden war or a sudden siege against their node. And moving all their stuff (some of which might've been raided after a failed siege) after several days of dying in pvp (or not playing because of that war) would definitely push away quite a few people.
Now it could be said that this is all just the intended gameplay and that those casual players should just pay attention to the elections and try doing their best to oppose shitty mayors. But I'm not sure how many people would be willing to spend that much time doing all of that but still fail, cause it's impossible to overcome abuse of the system as a single player, and it's reaaaally difficult to rally several hundred people to do the same thing.
In other words, I'm just a bit worried about the consequences of abusability of the system. But I'm also not sure if it can be resolved somehow and I would personally prefer if the system didn't change completely or go away. I just think that this is yet another system that'll make Ashes a niche within a niche within a niche of a game.
(This would make the node super vulnerable to sieges) I like that aspect.
1- if people dont care then there happy how the node is, if it bother them enough they would be bothered to vote so not an issue, bribery? not an issue either happens all the time in politics in every country here in RL alot of RL bribery is in the form of we will do X for u and then just flat out dont do it and never intended to. eventualy u either move to new node, try and counteract it via same tactics or just flat out rebel and fight back So not an issue
2- Military node will be a small pool of people who think they can fight well if peopel dont think they have a shot at winning they wouldnt try anyway which is fine, military node will run much like a dictator ship from wht i can see which add diversity since they dont have to buy a vote or win popularity contest and so on, so they can kinda do what they want till somone overthows them or neightbouring node go fk this and blow ur city up. Again its fine
3- pretty sure account sharing is agaist term and service so will be banned eventually if that is the case, if thats not the case whats then stopping all the other guilds doing the same thing
4- and what u do is get 2 majopr guild throwing money at it until one cant afford it and it swaps hands and meanwhile this is happening a 3rd/4th guild will be saving up for when the top 2 guild dont have the money for it anymopre cause they been fighting over it for awhile so they can only throw a month of guild income on it each month where some clans save up for 4-6 months of income and go fk you to the big 2 guilds there.
Or the smaller guilds can form a collomagate and pool money together to out right beat the other guilds and you might see them run by 5 guilds working together? seems fine to me too
All nodes have ways to get ahead and then there counter to those ways aswell so if u dont like how something works instead of being a PvE player and run to the forums to cry about it till itgets nerfed or changed (it how that player group always does things for almost every hurdle they come across) take a page out of pvp players book and find solutions to your issue and overcome it. there always politic involved in these games with player control cities/territories and it realy annoys me when the the so called largest player base would just rather cry about it until it change or ally up to solvbe the issue and in this case you can always zerg down a pvp nation by shear numbers if you wanted to in every game but that takes to much effort i guess than mass crying on the forums to fix it for you
You have some misconception. A guild is not a node and a guild cannot own a node.
In addition, a military node chooses its mayor through a battle royale, where there is a lot of RNG. Maybe there's too much work going on to get a military node up and it gets destroyed by a random Mayor's declaration of war.
Also, if this system marks citizens as combatants and you are a PVE player, just being a citizen will take you out of the karma system. so... another person decides for you to mark you as a combatant even if you are a single PVE player.
I think the siege scroll should be the only way to siege both castles and nodes.
Well you would want to defend your node if u get war dec cause they want players to invest in a node so you would want to fight back but if u dont want to well the pve player who doesnt want pvp can just move to another node for a bit till the heat dies off as an option too general conflict from war dec wont go far from the 2 nodes since paticipating players will be around those 2 spots
i think it fine as is or atleast fine enough to weait till alpha 2 to even bother suggestions in regards to the system.
Wars are a politic thing there ways to stop them from even happening and mayors worth will be weight on there political prowess more than anything, if you node has alot of pve orinated players then u would want to do what u can to keep them happy so would be negotiating to stop a war or prevent it from happening in first place, diplomacy seems to get neglected alot when it comes to pve player side of thing but thats not there fault since the games they generaly play dont need it so they dont realy think of this side of the game when it comes to AoC they generaly have the largest player base so they politicaly can run the show if they realy wanted to in any of these games with pvp aspect with city building/territory.
Somone threates ur node since there more pvp focused then there a good chance the other nodes around them are feeling the same thing where u can probaly form an alliance to get the scary bad guys away from ur home.
and if there a pacifist they can go on a little adventure to another node for a bit till things blow over :P
The problem is not this.
The problem is that as a PVE player, if you are a citizen of a warring node you are outside of the PK system. Any player can kill you, penalizing you excessively even if you don't even want to participate in the siege.
and most players that would run into would be around ur node or the attackiong node so you can go a little bit over for a bit and do stuff around the neighbouring node away from attackers node and be left alone pretty much since majority of action will be inbetween the 2 waring nodes.
every citizen has influence on how the node goes aswell u choose mayors and mayors choose war decs or failed to politic the way out of a war dec so find a better mayor next election that can bring peace :P
You need to lose all idea of being a PvE player or a PvP player. In Ashes Of Creation, you'll likely need to do both. Maybe not in equal measures, but it's clearly labelled as a PvX game.
or become a citizen of a different node???
Different people like different systems.
Some are religious in rl. I don't understand them but if they go to divine nodes is fine for me.
I'll go to a scientific one. Unless I am rich or the best fighter on the server
The system seems fine for me. Not sure how the election rules in a divine node are but those seem to depend on a single player. So players who are afraid that guilds have too much influence can win the election in such nodes through their own effort only.
Those who want democratic elections, will go to scientific nodes.
The other nodes allow money to influence the result. Which means if the majority wants to be sure a certain candidate wins, they have to donate money to help him win. And so the game has a good currency sink too.