Greetings, glorious testers!
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
[Feedback Request] Alpha Two Node Wars Preview Shown in May Livestream
Hello glorious community,
We’d like your feedback on the Node Wars Preview shown during the May 2024 Development Update Livestream.
To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters you can choose from:
We’ll be compiling a report for the design team on Friday, June 14, 2024, so please try to get your feedback into this thread by then!
Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading all the feedback you have to share!
Edit:
Here are even more prompts that you can choose from when providing feedback. Feel free to use any or all of these when providing your feedback for the team!
⚔️ Check out an early preview of our glorious Node Wars in action on our YouTube channel!
https://youtu.be/DJZVi3F513s
We’d like your feedback on the Node Wars Preview shown during the May 2024 Development Update Livestream.
To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters you can choose from:
- How do you feel about the Node Wars Preview?
- What excites you about playing and interacting with the Node Wars system?
- Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Node Wars Preview? (UI, VFX, and performance are things we know need love, and not what we want feedback on currently)
- Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
- How did you feel about Mass PvP?
We’ll be compiling a report for the design team on Friday, June 14, 2024, so please try to get your feedback into this thread by then!
Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading all the feedback you have to share!
Edit:
Here are even more prompts that you can choose from when providing feedback. Feel free to use any or all of these when providing your feedback for the team!
- What do you believe the perfect balance to be between PvE and PvP objectives?
- What are your ideal expectations when it comes to mass-player battles, and objectives oriented or best fit for small teams?
- What would be the ideal frequency for events like Node Wars in your opinion? What kind of impact do you want events like these to have on a larger war?
- What event rewards do you think would be cool?
⚔️ Check out an early preview of our glorious Node Wars in action on our YouTube channel!
https://youtu.be/DJZVi3F513s 
7
Comments
Excited:
* Multiple types of wars
* Both PvP and PvE elements in wars
* Healthbar of your target gets a golden border, making it easier to see who youre targetting
* Being able to siphon node XP or gold from other ZoI's
* Map showed ZoI boundaries of the nodes (more info on map = better imo)
Concerns:
* Are these portions of the map only useful for war activities? If not, what happens to players not associated with the war wanting to do activities in these regions?
* How long are these wars supposed to last? Are they intended to last a week, or be done within a day? To me, war means a lengthy, drawn-out venture, and I would expect that these types of events would happen over the period of a week.
* If a territory war is declared against a node far away, and the battleground is in their ZoI, that a bit of a problem imo, and since it seems like you cant war against people in your own vassal network, it seems like you would always being warring with people somewhat far away from you.
Feedback:
* I think it would be cool if wars were basically a "Best of 7" series of events, with 1 event per day, and the first side to win 4 events wins the war.
* Im on the side that you should be able to rebel against a parent node in some shape or form, although it should be an uphill battle with severe consequences, and require almost unanimous support within the node.
Should be a fun mechanic for group coordination and flow of zergs. More of that! Hopefully every archetype will have something defining for group combat.
Constructive feedback:
I guess the idea here was to have a stark contrast to the background environment and thus making things easier to identify? I think intrepid overshot here.
I started typing during the showcase. Later on Steven mentioned intrepid has already an eye on that, thats why burried the paragraph behind a spoiler.
Ultimately you can implement as many combat mechanics as you want, but if none can identify anything going on, none can engange with the mechanics and depth of the combat systems.
Abilities are currently build as a visual spectacle rather than beeing a vehicle for information.
Steven put it rather well, its currently "visual soup". (Not sure why it is acknowledged now and intrepid developed the last 2 years the combat around visual soup).
Especially when it comes to the vfx it feels like the assets are just not build to communicate any dimensions of what is happening.
It´s mostly hard to identify...
...how big is the ability hitbox/range?
...what is the trajectory?
...will the ability hit me?
...who casted the ability?
...what the hell is going on and what are the implications for me as a player?
Overall i think combat has a few fundamental issues.
Adjustments to the vfx will hopefully help to some extent.
Question prompts:
I wanna mention chivalry 2 here.
That game does a really good job at building phases with transitions and clear goals and objectives in each of them. (Though it´s a bit too straight forward and linear, due the round based nature of that game).
I think wars and also sieges could benefit from connecting the more open and sandboxy fights, with more linear and on-rail elements inbetween them. This could help giving players clear goals and directions.
More chiv 2 rambling:
In each of stage attackers have different objectives, like capturing, pushing sieges vehicles, destroying gates, plundering towns, stealing stuff and so on.
Each phase the deffenders have to prevent the attackers from achieving their goals, within in a certain time frame.
The map always moves forward after a stage has been cleared, the timer resets and the spawn points are readjusted.
It is a well defined experienc. For both teams it is clear what to do, the transitions are well done, there are objects to interact with and strategic elements to counter the opposing team in each stage.
An example for the lionspire map:
https://chivalry2.fandom.com/wiki/Lionspire
An example for the siege of rudhelm in video form:
Concerns:
(Cons)
- The Hp-Bar System they introduced. I think its very unsatisfying shooting a big cd and the Hp-Bar of the Target doesn't change. diminishes the feeling of doing damage to a target.
- Machinegun Ranger is ridiculous (he goes more like magic shots instead of Arrows)
- I think that most of the classes have too many different color-schemes - that is distracting and with all the bright VFX you cant really see what you are against.
- (Talking about it because he said they reworking it atm)
(PROS)
- The PvE-farm part within the Node War was GOOD because it opened the PvP to a whole Area instead of just the Node-Town itself.
(Question)
- How does a Node war work if you want to attack a node further away ?
General Observations:
Visual and Gameplay Elements:
Event Participation for Mayors:
Red Wall Spell Visuals:
Animation and Movement:
I like that commissions will provide some buffs and that they're also not tied to purely node-based locations, and can instead be done within the whole region.
The character animation update is incredible. Characters look way more "in-world" than they did before.
Love that taking over mayorship is a potential feature of the war. And other inter-node interactions are promising as well.
Love that the goal items drop on death, cause it directly leads to more pvxness.
Mayor buffs are nice and would definitely like if other important node people had smth similar.
The catchup mechanic of elongating the channel is also nice and will also bring not only pvxness, but also split up the zerg a bit.
P. S. KEENGE WAS GAMING!
A: It's going to be such a fun element to the game that is going to continue to keep players engaged and provide such epic rewards. I'm a huge proponent of PVP so I'm excited to extensively test this out in A2!!
Q: What excites you about playing and interacting with the Node Wars system?
A: Strategy. I want to find the most strategic way to really win against opposing factions behind the scenes, zerging, sneak groups, you name it.
Q: Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Node Wars Preview?
A: Just a slight concern that I probably need a new graphics card to handle this beast of a concept LOL.
Click here to visit Snow elf's Twitch channel
If I am an unsuspecting player that wanders into a war zone, not being affiliated with either warring party and a player mistakes me for an enemy and kills me, would that player get flagged for killing me? Is there a clear identifier that shows who is clearly the enemy in the war, and innocent bystanders?
It looked... okay. Not my thing. Performance looked quite good, though, and the characters somehow feel like they look better/more fluid.
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Node Wars system?
Currently, nothing, but I don't much like Ashes' combat, and currently my opinion of the PvP is quite low.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Node Wars Preview?
I'm concerned about the lack of durability loss during war events, and the possibility of a node taking all(?) of the Node exp from a region. This is an interesting concept for a different type of game, but I think that's a terrible idea in Ashes. I might simply have misunderstood something though.
Oh, and the rewards for the winners seem unimmersive and sometimes 'annoying' for me, relative to the game. I thought, at first, that it was just a wholistic change to the game's flow, but then we definitely got some news about stuff that seems to contradict itself designwise, for me.
Probably just overthinking it, will wait for A2.
Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
Nothing that seems applicable.
Actually, I guess the most similar system is from Ashes Alpha-1 itself, which I liked better than this because of the flow of it and the difference in how the flow of tactics happened, but that could just be random variance in how wars and sieges go.
Shoutout to keenge for carrying the stream
- When we are prepping for war and need to turn in materials, to make it more immersive, I think we can have a stand with an NPC attendant who accepts those materials instead of just a box.
- When you acquire a war token, can we have an indicator near like the gold that we have a war token now?
- When we have an active war with another node it is placed on at the top left of the side panel. It would nice to have a header for the active node so it looks more organized. You can call it 'Active War'. This is located on the Node Relationships Screen
- In the 'Harness the GodSpike' task, it would be nice to see your team's progress bar next to the enemy's progress bar to kind of gauge your progress against the enemy's progress.
- The wall skill ability, is it possible to change the color of the wall based on if it was created from your team or the enemy team.
- Acquiring the Godspike felt a bit light, even Steven couldn't tell it was completed. Would love to get a notice on that being completed that is visually loud.
Outside of these, I loved the presentation and cannot wait to see how everything improves.
#1: I did not hear anything regarding the scenario where a very large node declares war on a smaller node. Node wars also seem to have a much lower initiation cost compared with node sieges, so I would be concerned that they are easy wins and easy rewards for big nodes preying on smaller ones.
Example: If I am running a metro on one side of the world and see a village's relic I envy, it seems very unfair that I can both declare and set isolating conditions for a node war against a much smaller community. If I can easily field 150 players to a war objective area through sheer population advantage but a village can only field 50 players on a good day, then the node war becomes a very low risk exercise for me. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they surrendered without a fight due to the hopelessness of their position. This is especially true in the case of relic stealing, since the reward does not become diluted due to my node's population size. This is a case of low risk but big reward.
As a solution, I propose either outright denying a large node the ability to declare war on nodes of a much smaller size or alternatively, you could allow the small node's vassal allies to help as a penalty towards the larger node attacking a smaller one.
If a village can potentially defend itself against a larger force in a Node Siege by convincing allies to help, then it should also be able to do so when defending against any large node war attacker.
#2: In the same scenario of a metro warring against a village, the village population needs to die more times per player to fill up the victory score points of a phase. This further exacerbates the village node's suffering, especially during the non-peak hours. If 50 village players need to die on average 20 times each to get to 1000 victory points for the phase to end, for the individual village player that is a much worse position to be in than the 500 metro citizens who need to die, on average, 2 times each for the phase to end. I would recommend Intrepid keeps the impact of this numbers disparity on the individual player's experience in mind as well when designing the victory point system.
#3: A Steal Relic Node War seems like a particularly severe type of loss. Node experience can be regained, mayorship reasserted, treasury refilled, but losing a relic could be a very long-lasting penalty until that relic is either stolen or destroyed by another party. It could take months or even years if held by a dominant group. I would simply urge Intrepid to keep this in consideration when designing the node war system, since the other types of penalties seem much less severe. Perhaps Steal Relic should be a potential bonus objective in a Node Siege instead.
#4: A minor complaint with regard to the Tank... the Aegis visual effect appears to now look like a small dome coming from a few feet over the Tank's head. It looked much better in the January 2023 Tank preview, where Aegis was emanating from the front of the tank towards the rear. This ability now has the same issue that the Mage's Lightning Ball spell had previously: it looks like a toy in the middle of the battlefield. It stands out in a bad way. The visual effect was much better looking previously when it was centered at the front facing of the Tank and emanating from the shield. See below images for the comparison:
#5: The Prismatic Beam skill didn't look nearly as good as it did in A1. It seems very lackluster now, and the free-aiming effect is a bit odd looking. Maybe there should be a turn/aim speed limit on that spell so it's less twitchy looking.
Overall, I think the development progress is looking good and can't wait for Alpha Two! Thanks for reading!
Steven mentioned "adjustments and touch ups" planned in the next few months but just like combat before, I think they need to address it being an entire overhaul: it's the medium for player to game interaction and it's so important that it's as solid as possible as soon as possible.
a balanced combat, and I don't say this because of the characters' abilities, but because the combat reflects order and balance.
I am very happy that the combat in AoC is growing in this coherent way, a HEALTHY GROWTH OF THE COMBAT DEVELOPMENT.
Longbow vs Short bow
A lot of PI testers after Node Wars said they were using short bow and longbow felt weak in comparasion. I myself am really into this longbow fantasy. Therefore I want to discuss this matter here.
1. I feel like short bow has too much range, on showcase there was often a moment where short bow could stand on some high ground and shoot to everyone, it's longbow's job, not short bow. I would go as far as to say that short bow should be semi-melee weapon, idk.. 20 meters range, maybe even less, i dont have a feel for distances in ashes.
2. After some discussions we established that good option would be to do skill scaling with weapons, so with short bow skills like snipe would deal less damage, but have less cooldown, and with longbow all those spells would hit like a truck but with longer range and longer cooldown, so you can really hit like a truck from a mile away. And in that scenario longbow would have insane single target burst, but overall DPS would be higher for short bow, with a balancing factor being that short bow range is very low and you have to come really close to the enemy.
3. And lastly I think ranger skills should scale their range with ranged weapon range, it feels awkward as ranger to have different skill range and basic attack range, and also range difference on short bow and longbow wont be that relevant if both can snipe from 50m away.
Hope you take my feedback into consideration
- Great showcase! Love to see how fantastic the PvP were looking with the limited classes in place! You could feel the push forward slowly, and the defensive stances in key position. Looked great!
- Well done with the different levels as well! Gave a lot of dynamic and various places for rangeres to create nice combat!
- Was slightly difficult to see how the individual side were performing. And difficult to see what part of of objectivs were being target by the enemie.
- Implementation of the mount and its abilities were great!
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Node Wars system?
- I love the part to collect resources toward the war, and preparing.
- I didnt understand who would be selected for the Node wars when a siege is to take place.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Node Wars Preview?
- Clarity of abilities, and the lack of usage of mounts during the battle.
- I'd like more smaller key areas to conquere, and not only have 1 channel place.
How did you feel about Mass PvP?
- Looked good, I'd expect to see tanks standing more front line soaking up beef, but overall looked badass!
Overall the war system as presented with multiple types and conflicts look really engaging, great work!
The actual showcase was good fps, especially Keenan's PoV, was really good and combat looked fluid for the most part.
I don't know if this was answered but if a parent node declares war on another vassal structure are all vassal nodes forced into the war or is only the parent node vs the node they declared on.
One concern is that it looks like for the node war we saw, the victory condition was 1000 points with 1 point per player killed. Players will optimize the fun out of that and just go on killing sprees inside or surrounding the enemy node, killing lowbies, if that is in any way faster than doing the events.
It's fine to have a node war type that focuses on killing players and being able to win only doing that, but for event based node war types, the players should have to win a majority of the events as well, no matter how many enemy players they manage to kill.
There should probably also be a system where a lvl 50 killing a lvl 20 from an enemy node doesn't give points, unless the lvl 20 is in a node war event area.
The Golden Path/Tree
How will you teach a player how to use the mayorial systems (other systems too)? There are a lot of systems already in place and that can feel overwelming for new players. Not to mention aditional featurecreep in the future. Textdumps are suboptimal. I am concerned a new player, coming to the game at launch or five years after release, will feel like having to learn too much before they can have a fun experience. This could create quit-moments, wich are not good for the long therm groth of a game. How can one ensure not to overwelm new players? Im sure there are studies to attention spans that you can utilize in crafting a better flow between learning phases and phases of implementation of learned knowledge. Then again, you have to strike a balance not to hold their hand too much, or the mayor will feel like he has no agency in running the place.
Steven had to be instructed on how to start the war. He even ran into the problem of thinking he already started it, even though he still had to confirm the declaration of war in another tab. I know its work in progress, but those are exactly the bumps in the road of learning a system that you need to watch out for in my opinion.
Amazing.
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Node Wars system?
Never-ending war. As ever hungry PvPer I think wars will pop up constantly which I like.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Node Wars Preview? (UI, VFX, and performance are things we know need love, and not what we want feedback on currently)
Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
How did you feel about Mass PvP?
So far every MMORPG played with massive pvp either turned into a zerg or a lag fest. Ofc I am talking about WoW Ashran and GW2 guild wars.
People either dont care about the objectives and just straight up beat each other up on one side of the map until someone loses.
The fact that almost everything PvP related in set in open world might remedy that because of the simple fact that someone might barge in and hit you from behind. You need to constantly move in your game from what I noticed and that makes me happy.
Most of my negative feedback is related to saturated colors of some skills, so I will keep that for myself since you said you don't need any feedback about that.
Exciting:
- No/reduced death penalties is a great incentive for PVP.
- War Events are a good way to focus/gather participants
- catch up mechanics are a nice touch in the War events
- Large-scale battles are exciting!
Needs work:
- War event objectives/progress could be more clear to the user. It just seems kind of lost in the chaos of the mass pvp
- For "high-value targets" like officials, mayors, etc.- there could be a clear indicator to help identify them (other than the flying mount, there is no way to make that distinction). this would add a bit of strategic gameplay.
- Having a variety of war events would be great. You could have them slightly scattered to allow for a more diverse experience overall.
- Would be cool if there were mini-bosses that provided extra objective/war points or other bonuses.
- Environments could play a bigger role in types of events, so it isn’t just kill and loot type objectives.
- MOBAs , provided camps of “jungle “mobs and a big boss that provided a large boost to the team that took it out. Dota has Rohan. LoL has dragon and Baron.
- I loved honorable kills and dishonorable kill stats in classic vanilla wow. Make this a thing in our paper doll stat sheet, please. It's a nice lifetime stat many people like to show off and are proud of.
Second some concerns: First how will red/corrupted players fare in a node war? Will they be subject to the normal PVP death penalties imposed on red players during an event/war? I don't think the game will work with this as a mechanic, red players should be the same as any other participant.
What is stopping another node from imposing their will on a war? If A and B are at war and C is a competitor of B, what's stopping them from also declaring war in the same period? What's stopping them from showing up at the A vs B events and focusing on stopping B giving A an unfair advantage?
Lastly I want to say it looks really solid, GMs were super tanky I assume for demonstration purposes but the overall pacing of combat seemed good with healers being important but not causing people to be immortal while simultaneously having folks not get 1 shot. Good job there and watch this closely as the meta develops and more and more people figure out their proper bursts.
Terrain Usage
Showcase really highlighted this for me, compared to earlier.
Just wanted to say that it was wonderful to see that you could use jumping, climbing to get a strategic advantage and traverse the landscape, as opposed to have to walk around small walls, hedges and objects.
It looked great seeing rangers/mages climb just about anything to get a height advantage of the fights.
UI/Visual
Even though it was mentioned as an area being working on, and not to comment on it, but I wanted to put in a suggestion even though it might be the wrong place, but I felt the large scale potential of node wars warranted it, since its on topic for the system we're given feedback on.
Raid UI can be dense to interpret quickly, and to keep track of, especially if a raid leader make changes during content, or you have people leaving and joining during.
It would be immensely helpful, for an option to highlight your current group on the UI, which could also highlight the groups members in the game.
It could be anything from a small icon above their head or just a different color dot on minimap/map, to visually keep track of your immediate group members, even when in a much larger scale activity.
Over all it was a great system introduction and can't wait to see more of it and eventually the siege one too.
Did its job well, showed off the functionality of the war.
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Node Wars system?
Rewards/Consequences in terms of War systems, but Combat is king.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Node Wars Preview? (UI, VFX, and performance are things we know need love, and not what we want feedback on currently)
As far as the PvP itself goes, the combat itself is burst oriented, there is not enough dots/hots/pressure and the TTK was all over the place.
The biggest concern I have is TTK relative to the amount of skills on the hot-bars, if you’re only using 3-4 main skills and have 16 supporting skills, I am not entirely a fan of that design.
As of right now, mass PvP is just mage/ranger fest; I didn’t see any effectiveness with Tanks holding the line or Fighters pushing enemy backlines.
That comes back to the TTK and the bursty meta A2 is going into, which is kind of boring. Burst metas are boring and a drag.
Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
Nah no ones got Intrepid on the territory control design atm. It’s shaping up nicely.
How did you feel about Mass PvP?
I love mass PvP. I do not like mage/ranger based mass PVP. I like formations, strategy, tactics. We didn’t see much use of melee in mass PvP.
Also, healing absorption and reduction mechanics absolutely need to be present in the game, Clerics have no real counterplay at the moment.
What do you believe the perfect balance to be between PvE and PvP objectives?
I think you found a good balance so far. But I’d like to see more crafting in preparation later on in Alpha 2 in terms of Siege vehicles, Warmachines, Mount preparation, etc.
What are your ideal expectations when it comes to mass-player battles, and objectives
Something for everyone – logistics, mini bosses, siege equipment, cavalry, etc.
What would be the ideal frequency for events like Node Wars in your opinion? What kind of impact do you want events like these to have on a larger war?
Gotta feel it out.
What event rewards do you think would be cool?
The answer is always permanent titles, rank, cosmetics such as tattoos, weapon and armor stamps, etc.
To me I do not feel there is currently enough variation the abilities. There are not enough hots/dots, there are not enough pressure abilities like Tornado/Windfury which has a high DPS rate but low burst.
With that said, I think Summoner can clean a lot of that up in its design. So if Fighter is more burst oriented, then Summoner can be more damage sustain/dps oriented through things like bleeds, windfury/tornadoes, higher attack speed, death by a thousand cuts type of abilities, ramping damage abilities.
If Mage is mostly burst oriented, Summoner can pick up the other end the same way given the example I just made with fighter.
I really would like more involvement with melee in mass PvP fights. Mages/Rangers/Clerics pretty much have free reign in large scale at the moment and that’s actually kind of boring.
I am very much looking forward to Siege Weaponry and Cavalry becoming a component in Ashes and hope that crafting such as Alchemy and Arcane Engineering play working role in conflict, war, and crisis management of the Growth and Destroy AoC cycle.
As far as the technical side of the stream, well bloody done.
8/10 stream, can’t be 10/10 do to the absence of Tulnar.
Edit:
Some examples of DOT/Condi/Pressure implementations in games that I think would fit Ashes.
From Predecessor: The Fey and Aurora
From WoW: Feral Druid, Old Enhance Shaman
From ESO: the DW skill line
From GW2: Any of the condi builds
Hopefully we can get some really good pressure classes, maybe make that the shtick of Rogue and Summoner.
Edit 2:
Longbow/Shortbow
-Concerns from playerbase that the bows will only have one distinct correct choice and the other will be left to the wayside.
-Longbow should add ability range and shortbow should shorten the ability range of the Ranger toolkit.
-Longbows should be slower and burstier, but overall lower DPS. To make it a proper snipers weapon.
-Shortbow should be faster and lower dps, but the coefficients made so that its a higher DPS weapon with more risk, making it a skirmishers weapon.
I think this is a good example of what a low level node war could look like (minus the dragons). Although, it felt more like a quest or a dynamic event from Guild Wars 2 than an actual war objective. I hope there will be many variations of these to keep them from becoming stale with more emphasis on PvP and PvP focused objectives. Some examples are taking control points, defending/attacking fortifications, killing enemies, and gathering resources related to war efforts. That's what a war between players should be after all.
Seeing the warcamp reminded me so much of Warhammer Online as they always had those next to their PvP zones. It seems like this is the direction being taken already, so that's great. What I would suggest is you take a close look at the game's overall RvR system, RvR Lakes (PvP Zones) and how those zones are captured by opposing factions. That should give you plenty of inspiration on how to design wars in ways that are meaningful and have a lasting impact on the regions. Basically what I would like to see is a conquest style war system that can either progress/regress into each nodes territory (Zone of Influence) gradually over time, depending on who is winning. This could also bring the node's presence to the zone including guard patrols, guard posts, watch towers, things of that nature. Warhammer had Keeps and Fortresses that had to be conquered to capture a zone and move closer towards a Capital City so a siege could take place. They were full of NPC guards and had a keep lord at the center which was a sort of boss. Keeps could also be claimed by guilds and upgraded in various ways. In Ashes, these could be preexisting in the world and need to be conquered and rebuilt like the guild castles, or constructed within specific locations in a controlled ZOI and serve as a node war objective. These could easily be incorporated into the current design of node networks, or as standalone structures that serve as additional fortifications within a ZOI and require additional resources to construct/repair. It is also important from an attacker's perspective that these structures and walls are destructible by various means, bombs, siege weapons, even some of those large mounts that the mayors get. There should be an option to take it for their node as well.
-I like how wars have prerequisites for them to be initiated, this was the right decision from a design standpoint which will prevent abuse of the system.
-I liked the concept of ZOIs under control contributing more XP to your node. It's important to reward players adequately for their involvement whether it's contributing resources, killing enemy players or participating in the objectives. One of the best ways of doing this would be xp and currency. Another reward could be easier access to hunting grounds, rare resources and dungeons within the ZOI.
-I liked the concept of each side having a single powerful mount with it's own abilities and would like to see that taken even further. I'd like to see the dragons have basic attacks with their claws and a breath fire ability. This doesn't have to be excluded to flying mounts either. You can also have things like a T-Rex, Triceratops, or Hydras. What about a War Elephant like in LOTR? I think that would be unique and exciting to have in these large fights specially objectives.
Health Bars
Lastly, I strongly dislike the quarterly health bars for enemies. I think this does nothing of value from a gameplay standpoint and is actually counterproductive when you have finishers/executes in the game. You're withholding crucial information from players that's necessary in combat. The fact that it's only a thing for PvP and not PvE is a testament to how contradictory and worthless this mechanic is..not to mention anticlimactic. It's normally exciting to see health bars go up or down, see people on the verge of death and using that info to go all in on a target or redirect your groups focus if they're more tanky. This just makes combat feel sluggish and attacks feel way less impactful as a result.