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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.
Comments
But pirates will not bring new content. They will be a danger to traders who decide to travel across the ocean, and that's about it. They will not disrupt stability, unless they were to get very well organized I suppose, they are simply a constant danger that exists in the ocean.
It's not so much that I am asking for constant PvP, I mean I am in a way... but that's not the core of what I'm asking for here. I'm asking for the world to constantly change, and for that to happen, the nodes need to constantly change. And for that to happen, all nodes, not just the weaker lower level ones that are easy targets, all nodes need to be sieged at a fairly regular rate.
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes.
I don't see "vassals can't siege masters" being even in the same category as these. Claiming it as "as important" with the information we have is quite the stretch.
The whole point of that example was to show how something that seemed absolute was changed.
If vassals being able to siege a master was added, afterwards we would be saying that it was changed "for a good reason" (while you might obviously disagree).
You can question the soundness of Nikr's conclusion, but he is 100% logical here.
Also, I'm curious: Can you think of a change IS has done that you disagree with? Do you think the change you disagree with was done for a good reasons or was it a bad idea?
Yes, and I consider node loyalty a part of those core features.
No one said that you "have to" attack anyone. We're just asking for the ability to do so, were it seen as a viable thing to do.
The loyalty part of the argument mainly comes as a counter to the "just move nodes" point. How exactly am I showing loyalty to my node if I'm leaving it.
I feel like yall's fear of "chaos and endless pvp" is even higher than some people's fear of the PKing feature.
If the parent node is doing everything right and is seen as the greater good by all the vassals - what exactly would be the reason for any of those citizens to rise up?
"Making" an entire vassal node see my point of "let's fucking kill them all and become the next metro" will be insanely difficult, if the parent node is good to their vassals. It's gonna be even harder to do if I'm trying to be sneaky about it, so that the parent node doesn't retaliate against me or my node (cause again, my "illogical" logic here is that I want MY node to succeed, so destruction of my node as retribution by the parent would not be a good thing).
But those kinds of actions are exactly the kind of political scheming that I want to see in the game. It has barely anything to do with the pvx results of my actions. Nodes will still go to war/sieges with any given node, so the argument that "players who avoid pvp don't want this change" is pointless, cause they wouldn't be able to escape pvp either way.
And the pve side of things would also be influenced by outside forces, because they would've already farmed their own stuff, maybe would've gotten some of the current stuff in your kingdom and would then want to see more content w/o changing their own setup.
And in either/both of those contexts, simply renouncing your citizenship to join the attackers is neither interesting nor complex, nor in any real way a "political" decision. "Wanting more pvp" is not inherently a political decision. "Wanting different pve" is not one either.
Wanting your node to be the one that prevails against an already preestablished political landscape - that is a political goal, based directly on the loyalty to your node.
My illogical logic is based on pretty much the entire damn history of humanity. Yall's logic is based on what Steven said in a blog once. Btw, I went to doublecheck this reference and it literally says "parent node enslaves and owns its vassals". So in other words, my position is that I DON'T FUCKING WANT TO BE A SLAVE
It will be by design you won't look at allied nodes as places to war with once people start playing the game.
On the comment about wanting things more chaotic, everyone has preferences for games that is fine. It is clear that AoC is not going a full chaotic route, else there would be less consequences for pvp with loot drops, the amount of materials that can be loss in siege, etc.
If people have an option to pvp it will be the first go to, again i feel people have not played a game with wars and such in awhile so they don't realize.
People aren't going based on your logic they will attack if there is a reason, they will attack just to do it and destroy things. Why would i do any kind of politics when i can just raze a bunch of nodes that is easy. Which would make the game a worse experience for everyone else.
If you think people won't pvp for lack of a reason to destroy a node, I'd say you might have been missing from mmorpgs for many years at this point. As fun as PvP is, without any constraints it can get out of hand and why people often worry about it in pvp type games. Cause you have people like me that will camp someone at multiple areas relentlessly.
The scroll will still have to be made, the registration requirements will still have to be met by the attackers, the backend politics of rallying said attacks will still have to take place. Literally none of that is removed or circumvented.
Hell, I'd even be ok if those registration requirements were harder for the vassal citizens, which is also why I agreed with Nepoke's suggestion of intricate policies. I'm all for making this system properly complex and political. Right now it's simply "you're a slave, so behave like a slave", which is neither fun nor political.
You aren't a slave you are part of a kingdom. If you don't like the node or kingdom group move to another one.
The only thing it should be is you need to be part of a non allied node to be able to declare war. no weird policies that you are now effectively giving them a means to control people suddenly to fit your narrative where they had no control like that before.
You are trying to change the intent of policies which are positive buffs to suddenly parent node can have a person to dictate what players do.
But like I said 10 times already, I want a more interesting system. Slave-master systems are not interesting
You have not said anything about a more interesting system you just said you want to attack whoever even if the game is clearly not being designed like that from a node basis.
The way they used to term enslave does not mean the node is a "slave". The node has its own freedom and ruling to do what it wants with some elements being some form of tax and the wars the kingdom goes to being brought upon it. You could swap the word out enslave with any other word this isn't really a Slave-master systems all nodes have too much freedom for that.
And the Parent Node's government, and their alliances, and their trade..
And whatever this might mean lol
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes.
CAN PEOPLE - call it already a "successfull kind" /small Empire, when an Area of that Size, for Example like the "whole" of the Riverlands -> is united together and managed and governed well ??
Ready to try and conquer even more Area's of the World ?
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
Sure there will be cases between those two periods, maybe two rival level 4s instead of continuing the early server race to level 5, one sieges the other first, sure, I could agree that is conquering as they'd likely eventually fall under the new ZOI eventually.
But once their area has a Metro and 12 nodes under it, there is no more conquering, only raiding foreign nodes for their loot, or being raided and getting lucky that your node gets to level up cus some random foreign army raided your Parent Node.
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes.
Still reaching to try to make thin air be more than it is. It is pretty obvious about if the parent node goes to war the other parts of their kingdom also go to war, same with alliances.
And the point of the game to raid other kingdoms not destroy every other node, that is not what they are trying to aim for. It is being designed for different kingdoms fighting.
i get you are not caring what I'm saying cause you just want what you want. Clearly the devs are going to care about the heath of the game and not allow for mass destruction of all nodes since its important to the game. And why there is limits on them being destroyed between grace periods, and the fact kingdoms can't destroy each other from within.
Every node is its separate thing and not a part of some "kingdom" as you like to call them. That is precisely why all of them have their own timers, instead of "the vassal system can't be sieged after a siege of one of its parts". So no, every single node can in fact be destroyed, because that is exactly how Intrepid have designed them.
Looking at it as a spectrum is apt.
However, allowing vassals to siege their parent sets that spectrum far to one side.
As I have said,Intrepid have the tools on hand to ensure people will be sieging nodes to change the games landscape. They are well aware this is required for the game to function.
This is why the contradiction of loyalty to your node vs needing to be willing to go to a new node needs to fall on the side of the latter of the two - nodes NEED to fall, and Intrepid know this.
So, Intrepid know a thing to be true, and have the tools in place to make sure the thing is true once the game goes live. Seems to me they have this covered.
You literarily are now, if anything you are showing you are missing some fundamentals on it. Which i don't blame you there is a lot of things said on the game.
Yes they can be sieged separately which im sure will ill be intended design for weakening various parent nodes. You trying to reference they all aren't on a shared timer doesn't really mean anything against the poitns ive been saying.
So are just so convinced in what you want you are stretching things to fit a puzzle you are making pretty much. Again as it stands you can't siege the parent nodes as a vassal citizen. Your own intent does not match IS for AoC.
Goalpost?
Notice how none of the neighboring vassal networks absorb any of these nodes that were within the original City's ZOI. Eventually one of those leftover nodes will just become the new City in place of the old one, with the "kingdom" borders not changed at all.
One of the two lvl 3 Village nodes got to retain it's vassal nodes and even start with more exp than the other, so it's obvious who will become the next Parent Node of this ZOI later on.
So I have a question for you all, if you were a citizen of the northern lvl 3 Village in those two pics, would you participate in a siege of the southern Village before it got the chance to level up and vassalize you? Those people who were once your allies, citizens under the same "kingdom" as you, now about to make you a vassal again right as you gained your independence.
If you would, then I'd like to ask what your incentives were for saying you would. Was it the possible loot to be gained, or was it to become the new Parent Node? All I'm trying to get at is that for foreign invaders the one and only true incentive you can count on is profit from the loot, seeing as how none of those nodes were absorbed by whoever sieged down the City. Those leftover nodes will just combine under a single ZOI that has the exact same borders as before.
But do you know what is different? Who gets to be the new Parent Node of that ZOI. This is an incentive that is not tied to what attackers can loot from a destroyed node. An incentive that would lead you to pay a cost higher than whatever you might gain from the loot alone.
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes.
Asking what you mean.
I'm not answering the actual question you posed because there are too many nuances involved to be able to give an answer - but I can say that the above isn't true.
While profit is indeed one reason to want to siege another metropolis, it is by no means the only.
Content is indeed another reason. In the same way we don't have exact details on what profits are to be made sieging a node, we also don't have the exact details on what changes to content sieging a node will bring. What we do know though, is that it will bring changes, and that Intrepid want those changes to be an incentive to siege nodes.
Thus, in the same way we know that profit is a reason Intrepid want us to siege nodes and so we much assume it will be the case, changes to content are another reason Intrepid want us sieging nodes and so we must assume that will be the case.
A third reason to either be the only metropolis of your type, or one of multiple metropolis' of your type on your server. If a religious node has an economic vassal at city stage, another economic node may decide they want to siege that religious node and encounrage the economic node to become a metropolis. By doing this, that original economic node expands the reach of it's own market, and gains access to the market of that newly leveled economic metropolis.
Same can be said of scientific nodes - they may want to work to get a second of that type on the server, as that expands their transport network.
On the other hand, both of the above nodes may find themselves in a situation where they want to be the only node of their type on the server, and so may put some real effort in to sieging any others of the same type.
A third reason is that people may simply want space. Perhaps I am in a vassal of a metropolis I am not happy with. Perhaps also I can find a few hundred people equally unhappy with this metropolis. From there, perhaps we all decide to siege a different metropolis in order to create somewhere new for us to thrive.
Then there is just the PvP element. It takes only a few minutes looking over these forums to realize that there are plenty of people that will organize a metropolis siege for no reason other than to siege a metropolis.
Even with all of the above, sieging a metropolis for profit is still one hell of a reason - it just so happens that there are plenty of other reasons as well.
You are close to seeing our side here.
If Intrepid have the tools to control the frequency of sieges, they can use those tools to offset any negatives from the proposal.
Example:
Intrepid wants there to be one node siege every two weeks. Let's say allowing vassals to siege parents causes a siege to happen every week instead. Interepid can tweak the siege cooldowns/scroll costs/quest frequency until sieges again happen at the rate they wanted.
Since Intrepid has the tools to make change happen at the pace they want, they should first focus on making the system the best they can on a conceptual basis, and then tweak the numbers until the game is balanced on the chaos-stability spectrum.
I firmly believe vassal rebellion just makes the experience richer and the only cost for Intrepid is number tweaking they will have to do anyway.
I'm sure we could come up with a similar list of reasons why citizens under two separate Metro vassal networks would choose to cooperate rather than siege each other. Maybe they get the bright idea to setup some sort of grand informal trade agreement, to exchange the rare mats and goods between them. Maybe they'd even setup some neat unified army to protect the trade routes they use too.
I'd expect arrangements similar to that to happen, even with all of those reasons you just gave for why one might siege the other instead.
This is exactly the same way I feel about a Vassal and it's Parent Node. Sure there are a list of reasons why vassal citizens would want to siege down the Parent Node, but there is similarly a list of reason why cooperation would also be chosen.
Like my favorite example to give is that the Metro sets up Grand Master Weapon and Armor crafting stations for it's 2 GM lvl crafting station spots a Metro gets, and makes a deal with one of it's City vassals to have them setup a GM Leather-working crafting bench for it's 1 available crafting station slot. Now anyone crafting armor at the Metro would have access to high quality leather straps or whatever for their armor.
That is a situation where those vassal citizens would very likely not consider sieging their Parent Node, and even have a built-in reason as to why they should defend their Parent Node during sieges. They don't want to lose their largest buyer of leather, or lose their source of high quality armor and weps, do they?
This line of thinking is why I don't think allowing vassal citizens to siege the Parent Node would result in the level of chaos you might think it would. Whatever reasons 2 Metros might decide to not siege each other, similar reasons could be applied to a Parent Node and it's vassal.
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes.
I weighed each up, and came to the conclusion that the best thing to do is not allow vassals to siege (or declare node wars) on parent nodes.
Right, but now the only people with a valid reason to siege are those in vassal nodes.
If they make it so sieging is less appealing to the general population (which is what your example here does), that means any parent node that is making their vassal nodes content is basically never going to be sieged.
If you have a whole list of reasons to siege a node (as I listed in my previous post), but then you have a portion of the potential sieging population having an additional reason to siege the node that only applies to them (vassals wanting to expand their own node), then the balance has to only take in to account this group with the additional reason, as they are going to be the group that opts to siege first (they have all the same reasons, plus an additional reason).
Thus, as I said above, if those people are content, the barrier to siege has now been increased to the point where it is conceivable that no one would want to siege, and at the very least sieges will be less common.
This would then basically require that metropolis nodes not have a way to appease vassals in order for the game to maintain node turnover.
This would make for a completely shit game. It would be servers full of five groups of players too busy fighting among themselves to ever fight each other.
This is why the best option by a mile (looking at the game as a whole rather than what an indiviual player may want to do) is to only allow the larger population to siege, and set the balance based on them. This means vassals can't siege nodes, but means node will be sieged by outsiders.
Since my assumption is that only 10% of metropolis sieges will be successful, that means 3 per year will be.
Given my former posts in this thread it should be clear that I meant
"Being loyal to your node does not mean you have be able to siege parent nodes"
Steven instructed information from the node simulation to be hidden so that players to be unable to guess the rules based on which a node advances and causes the other to become vassal.
He wants to be very sure that the dynamic happens in a certain way and is not under player's control.
Just like you are against the corruption system you are against the this restriction imposed by Steven.
As you say, you want PvP "content".
For you he made the deep ocean and the castle sieges and the caravans too.
He will not change these rules. They are important for the game-play as he intends to happen.
Good or bad in this context is based on how these rules contribute toward achieving that game-play.
My points are explained + backed up with information on the game that we know of and direction. You guys don't base what you want on the design of the game and intent. You just say its better because its what you want. You aren't actually logically backing any of your points based on the design of the game.
My points would only be better to you if i agree with you and don't counter out your own points.