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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.
Once all ZOI's have 17 Nodes, Why Fight Eachother?
Tyranthraxus
Member, Alpha Two
So, each of the 5 Metropolises will be the capital of 5 Zones of Influence (ZOI's) "Node-kingdoms" as 85 / 5 = 17.
We've heard of Node Relics: items that Node-cities can store in their central reliquary, that grant special bonuses, to their Nodes/lord-cities/vassal Nodes. However....
What reasons will the 5 ZOI/kingdoms fight, beyond this? Have been scratching my brain for the last while, trying to figure out WHY - if the ZOI's can only claim a max of 20% of the world - we'd be fighting, once each ZOI reaches it's max size.
Have we heard yet of other things that will incentivize kingdom v kingdom wars and struggles?
We've heard of Node Relics: items that Node-cities can store in their central reliquary, that grant special bonuses, to their Nodes/lord-cities/vassal Nodes. However....
What reasons will the 5 ZOI/kingdoms fight, beyond this? Have been scratching my brain for the last while, trying to figure out WHY - if the ZOI's can only claim a max of 20% of the world - we'd be fighting, once each ZOI reaches it's max size.
Have we heard yet of other things that will incentivize kingdom v kingdom wars and struggles?
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Comments
Not all node types might reach metro stage so people might want to change that, for whatever benefit that provides.
Guild wars that could leverage the node wars to their own benefit, in whichever way possible.
Just for fun, because there's nothing else to do when you reach max everything on your guild's progression.
Probably a few other reasons that I forget rn.
Quests may differ based on the stages of nearby nodes, seasonal influences, and events such as world bosses.[135]
Quests involving citizens from multiple nodes are unlocked based on the alliances and other relationships between the nodes and their progression.[136]
Portions of the spawn tables (for mobs and resources) are static and other portions are dynamic and adapt to node development.[72]
There are 5 Metros each with Racial dominance - but there are 9 Player Races.
If you want to complete your Racial progression, the server will have to have a Metro where your Race is dominant.
Could be that there is a server with many players who hate that the Tulnar were able to construct a Metro.
There are 4 Node Types. If you have a server with 2 Scientific Metros, 2 Economic Metros and 1 Military Metro, there may be many players on the server striving to have a Divine Metro.
There may be a server with many players striving to ensure there is never a Scientific Metro because they don't want any Fast Travel to be possible.
Could be that there is no current Metro that provides the Services you want nor supports the Social Orgs and Religions you want.
Not to mention the already specified ingame reasons for doing so such as unlocking other type of content, or wanting to change node type.
I see that there will always be at least one nation without a relic
The four Ancient artifacts of Verra were originally discovered by King Atrax in his pursuit of the power of The Essence.[15][16]
But will these relics go to the metropolis or can be owned by level 5 nodes too?
Can a metro end up owning all important relics?
Anyway, even with only 4 relics I think the reason of war will come from players. Maybe because resources will not be enough for everyone?
One reason I can think of off the top of my head other than EGO between a few different PvP clans would be to PvP without being corrupted, iirc you can kill people you are at war with at no penalty.
politics really
I'm hoping we'll have enough realistic experience during testing to see if the reward for fighting nodes is worth it. Because I feel like it's currently going to be a more IRL reasons people would fight each other over nodes rather than the in game benefits.
And just like that, Someone ALREADY dropped a very brilliant Answer to a very good Question.
" Vassal Nodes " ... ... ... and plotting to overthrow their "Masters" (Occupants?).
Sounds cool. Sounds like i would imagine something out of the Game of Thrones Universe for a bit. Something that feels realistic and could set the Stage for nice Plots and possible Battles and Conflicts to come.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
People will want access to FHs no matter what.
I hope stuff like that is enough to spur people to join arms cause I'm looking forward to node wars and the perpetual power shifts. But I feel like it's going to be hard to unify enough people behind the purpose of declaring and succeeding in a node war for free holds.
Because people might just look at other nodes for free hold access. Otherwise if it's solo players interested in it they'd also have to surpass the hurdles of getting everything setup. Just my opinion, but I see it being started by guilds or large unified groups of people(maybe through discord or something). I could see stragglers joining in on a war for the sake of freeholds, but I don't see it being the likely cause of one.
But anything that gets us more fun mega pvp scenarios is fine by me! Those are some of the best fun for me.
People always fight at the borders, in my experience, even if there's not that much to gain from doing so.
If you mean 'what would bring down a whole nation', probably nothing. At the 'lockout' values Intrepid gave us, I wouldn't expect any of the second-gen metros to fall until year 2 end.
And would be a natural location to create conflict as different groups would be trying to reach the end.
The building loop of a node could be described as primarily PvE insofar as the resource acquisition requires no PvP at all as far as we know.
A Node-Kingdom however has the issue of locking vassal nodes and in consequence to that the content around these nodes. While that may not be an issue in the beginning, more and more players will be able to finish that specific content loop, but then things will become boring. So they might migrate to another kingdom or they could start a war with another kingdom. The result could be partial destruction of the old kingdom, which would be the intended result as that would change up content. However even that would leave the "high-end" content surrounding the Metropolis largely the same, so errosion of a Node-Kingdom is inevitable in the long term IMO.
A good thing to point out; Yours truly had overlooked the fact that there will be so few Node Relics. We don't know yet if the entire Node-kingdom will share benefits from these - or if they will perhaps only benefit the Nodes that are vassals beneath the Node they are levelled against; The wiki currently states the Node and its vassals will get benefit - and this doesn't equate to all 17 Nodes of a kingdom, necessarily.
I hope roleplay does, indeed, play some role in the conflicts-to-be; Racial-dominant Nodes can create a unique setting for Node, in its building-styles and race-based archetecture can be fun for awhile - but it would spark curiosity about how things could look, should a different race be the majority.
Still, these don't seem like majorly inherent reasons to want to shift the balances-of-power that will be established in the opening months of the game.
Given a node siege in a war between two factions which are not yours, which side will you join?
I think I will join the defenders side by default, if they fight against stronger enemies.
Not sure if I would help attackers against the bigger stronger nodes.
Why would you join if you are not allied to any of them? Go lvl up for yourself. I get it when there are reasons to be involved, but many times in other games I didn't feel the need to pick a side in every major event that my side didn't have a stake in it.
?
Nodes falling is an intended part of the game design.
That's what I thought too but during the last interview with Steven, I noticed he diverted a question toward guild wars instead.
Maybe nodes will be balanced to last long time and players encouraged to participate more in castle sieges and guild wars.
I don't think so, I generally expect really strong MMOs to be 10 years of gaming.
But in the end, we know that at the moment, there is a 60 day lockout on attacking a Metro that succeeds in defense.
I personally would expect a Metro that was established for, say, 3 months, and people living around it like it, and like where it is, to succeed at its defense 2x before anyone 'gets bored' of defending it.
So that's (in my mind) 7 months for most beloved Metropoli to stand, before things start to get to the point of 'wait maybe it would be better to not'.
It also relies on their content cycle and 'lockouts' on certain content. If you can only fight certain dungeon bosses once every 3 days or even a week, and those are related to the Metro being up... then at least part of the fight is going to be 'the people who want new content after doing it 10-20 times' vs 'the people who want to fight it without having to build up a new Metro'.
Stuff like that.
I'm used to games with long life cycles though, so maybe that's my issue.
all it takes is somone in guild A killing the wrong guild leader to start a node war tbh
And you know some people are gonna try and assasinate the mayor nodes when they see him for lol's which could start something too
there pretty much the same thing im pretty sure, Guild war allow you to kil somone of the enemy guild while node wars allow you to kill somone of enemy node. Then it expands further into castle or node seiges from my understanding atleast
These 'lockouts' feel both good and bad at the same time. Like looking at the half full or half empty glass.
Players who have freeholds will not be happy losing them. If that metro falls, the metro nation might split. Maybe only half of nodes stay in the new metro.
Could be that some metros will be very stable while one or two will be rebuilt often?