Node drops

akabear

Consider exclusive node quests and resources that are only visible to citizens of specific nodes, both locally and in distant territories in grading value.

These resources could be valuable and obtained through PvE drops or gathering or even pvp missions.

Perhaps less plentiful and valuable in close proximity and more valuable at gradually increasing distances.
High risk for pvp at the futherst reaches to both pvp so far from home and to traverse adversity to get there.
Similar to returning with resources.

This might encourage cross-node interaction and increase the likelihood of PvP encounters or quite thrilling pve ninja runs, promoting a risk vs reward dynamic.

What do you think?

unknownsystemerror

Q: Since travel times are important, what is there to discover that will distract you from going straight to your initial destination? What makes traveling adventurous in Verra?
A: Aside from threat and opportunity, which are probably the two biggest distractions that you can encounter while traveling through Verra- those come in different forms: Threat. in the form of monsters and events. Opportunities, in the forms of resources and POIs. There's also achievements that are based around exploration. There's treasure maps that can be found. There's a lot of different things that intersect with travel: The movement of resources. The storage of those resources. In which locations, what are available to be sold and purchased at different locations. They might make you detour for. All of those things contribute to why I would go somewhere and instead change my direction.[77] – Steven Sharif

That content is planned to be very specified to a server players choices on what nodes to promote and where, there is already a plethora of content that will individualized to specific nodes. No need to add yet another class of stuff only "visible to those node citizens." Part of what will be "endgame" is figuring out and exploiting what is cheap one place and expensive another, and the risk v reward of moving it from A to B.

Fantmx

Node quests for citizens sounds fun. That could include resource gathering. But I would not restrict any resource to just citizens of the node.

Kilion

Definitely a good idea, I'd love to see that when a Node reaches tier 3 to have quests inside the Nodes or small interactions with nearby freeholds.


Examples

There is a bunch of children painting walls of houses, where you have to chase them down and then either hand them over to the guards, the parents or (if established) a local temple to impart judgement on them.

Other light hearted story archs (e.g. on the Nodes anniversary or on the day of worship for a deity) could be around the organisation of a village fair or so, where we have to bring 3 sorts of drinks, meats, vegetables and so on, as well as some artisan quests to errect stalls, maybe hire Bards and showmen. Depending on the amount of requests fulilled in the preparation, the event will offer more activities (buff food + recipies for them; minigames with small prizes for house decorations, maybe some big prices like mount or gear cosmetics) and a general participation buff to players that slightly boosts social stats for a few days past the event itself (e.g. a small boosts in reputation gain amongst allies of the Node)

Or if there is a freehold nearby with a tavern on it, an NPC spawns in that Node and requests something to be delivered to him or from him to the Node.

Or as part of the policies a mayor can introduce, reinforcing the townguards for example leads to a bunch of gathering and artisan quests from the Nodes armorer, based on the Node with the lowest reputation with this Node. Eg our node is enemies with a Node that has lots of artisans and has sieged another Node in the past, so the armorer will requests stones to reinforce the walls; if the Nodes has tons of assassin citizens the armorer will requests steel and health potions, if they had slayn a fire dragon recently the armorer fears powerful fire magic and will ask for fire resistance potions and so on.

What I would REALLY like to see would be spying / reconnaissance as well as sabotage quests, triggered by detioration of relations with another Node. On spying missions you will have to go around, visit different places in the enemies ZOI to assess their defenses, economy and funding allocation. Some of these will send you directly into the Node which is at this point neutral. Spies will be marked as "suspicious", players of the surveiled Node can investigate the player and if they find evidence for espionage on them the reputation between the Nodes will deteriorate further and both players will be flagged for PvP, if the spy survives he can continue his way back to his Node and deliver the information which will grant the mayor "clues". With these clues the mayor can unlock information on the other Node like tax income, allocation, number of citizens, what policies they are enacting and so on. These information will be kept up to date for a week and then be frozen until they are refreshed for more clues (but less than unlocking the data initially). For sabotages, players could be asked to raid caravans, eliminate enemy townguards, border guards or patrols on the roads, overcollect resources in enemy territory or goad nearby mobs to attack the Node and freehold (leading to monster coin events)


Conclusion
I think there is a lot possible with the system that Intrepid has created and I am thrilled to see what they can do with the story arch system.