So people are really arguing against diversity in nodes and choice later in the game? I guess it's more about defending intrepids initial concept.
I mean there is one claim "statistics will make one - two race styles dominant", the problem is that this is boring. And it's also possible that people like to play humans, but like a different building style more and don't have access to it.
Your point is " but people made a choice by choosing their race and they can still work together to get a node of their race!"
The question here is: why should it be like this? It doesn't has to be a choice set in stone and as previous posts mentioned it doesn't make sense to leave another node we're you have your stuff etc. Just to try to build a node of your race. That might be some RP project for some, but that's not something that realistically happens all the time, especially when there are also alot of other people leveling up the same node.
So people are really arguing against diversity in nodes and choice later in the game? I guess it's more about defending intrepids initial concept.
I think people are more arguing that Intrepid should spend time on things that matter - not on things that don't.
Don't think that I some buttons or a craftable blueprint take so many resources.
It's anyways at this point just about concepts, so why not having a good one to start with?
so in every game, cities have a fixed appearance and no one complains. in this game, cities can take different appearances and people complain because thy will not be equally represented xDDDDD
so in every game, cities have a fixed appearance and no one complains. in this game, cities can take different appearances and people complain because thy will not be equally represented xDDDDD
In other games the key feature are not the cities. In ashes it is.
so in every game, cities have a fixed appearance and no one complains. in this game, cities can take different appearances and people complain because thy will not be equally represented xDDDDD
In other games the key feature are not the cities. In ashes it is.
a skin isn't a key feature T_T people will ignore them anyway.
what things you can do in the cities and which buildings are available is more important.
so in every game, cities have a fixed appearance and no one complains. in this game, cities can take different appearances and people complain because thy will not be equally represented xDDDDD
In other games the key feature are not the cities. In ashes it is.
a skin isn't a key feature T_T people will ignore them anyway.
what things you can do in the cities and which buildings are available is more important.
They can just take into account of race population lets say a server consists of 100 elfs, 200 humans for example every time a human harvesting a node produces 1 point for the node where and elf harvesting anode produces 2 points since there half asmany
Another option could be the more nodes that are X race aesthetics the less that race contributes points for future node asthetic contribution so if there 20% more human node types than elf the the humans future contributions on other nodes would be reduced by 20% in determining asthertics of the node so the more nodes of one type there are the harder it is to make other nodes that race aswell. so you should get more diversity there.
They can also make biome multipliers too so nodes in riverlands get +20% contribution bonus in determing asthertics where nodes in tabletop mountains get 20% bonus for dwarfs for example so nodes will lean slightly towards a certain race but doesnt stop other races from using there own asthertics this would be ideal for racial home biomes for example and makes a bit more sense since that race should influence those area more due to the time before the evacuation
Why should intrepid invest so much time into racial designs for nodes?
<snipped out all the runaround>
They are designing racial style because those racial styles are going to appear. Demographics are never evenly dispersed, and based purely on the polls for this niche group on the forums, there's gonna be decent variety throughout the world.
I find it extremely unlikely that there would be any case that 90% of nodes would share an architectural style.
Sure, but the cost/benefit ratio will be bad, and intrepid is a quite small studio when talking about MMO implementation projects.
Unlikely? Perhaps, perhaps not. If not, realms will be dominated from few races all over, and all of it is just bound to a design decision which some, like you, are now defeding - for whatever reason. And thats the race selection during character creation. Thousands of players will even not know about this everlasting decision.
There is no pain (if yes, which?) if there would be an additional possibility to change node appearance based on player choice. Who is telling you, that after 1 year of looking to 80% human nodes the (human race) players by themselves would like to change the design, because it's boring (and waste of availablilty of all other cultural designs) always to see the same nodes?
Right, I get that this is your argument, but I still haven't seen an notion as to why this is an issue.
You yourself state that Intrepid can't balance races by using racial traits, because there aren't any. Since there is no bonus, it doesn't matter to people which race they pick outside of aesthetics.
How is this situation with nodes any different? It doesn't matter which racial influence the node has, because there are no benefits. As such, there is no need to balance it out, just as there is no need to balance out races.
Because playing an Orc (just as example - I love Orcs!) is a very individual choice, but playing in a human node isn't. There is no real choice for all players that select non-dominant races, because even if they want, by all means, try to contribute as much as possible, they still always will be overwhelmed from dominating races.
And, sure, my clear assumption (!) without having facts (from the future) is: Yes, there will be dominant races and thus the "big picture" of a realm will show this result within a lot of nodes.
It's no question about balance, mechanics, systems, content or whatever you are searching for, but only about variety, diversity and choice.
I think people are more arguing that Intrepid should spend time on things that matter - not on things that don't.
Like doing communication, coordination, conception, implementation and test of all racial/cultural styles for all the manual designed 85 nodes?
I mean, intrepid is talking about a lot of "features" that are on the wishlist (and/or backlog) which - depending on whom you ask - don't matter, right?
Here, it's (which is just an aspect of this forum in this early stage) quite trivial: It's defending promises and concepts. If Steven is farting, hands are clapping. In several topics the reflecting and critical view on aspects is answered with "Simon says", pardon, "Steven says". Same discussion at other places is running different - and not "discussed" from the same 5-10 intrepid and Steven defenders all the time, key-board warrior-ing in thousands of postings in hundrets of threads.
It's ok to like the game, the idea, the vision. It's something different to defend by all means everything only because it's taken as personal offense against "my loved game I'm so hyped from".
Here (within this topic) nobody will lose his face if there would be an additional option (that means it mustnt be used) is given to the players - just to enhance choices and variety. It will increase the cost/benefit ratio of the efforts to implement all cultural designs with all 85 (!) nodes.
So people are really arguing against diversity in nodes and choice later in the game? I guess it's more about defending intrepids initial concept.
I mean there is one claim "statistics will make one - two race styles dominant", the problem is that this is boring. And it's also possible that people like to play humans, but like a different building style more and don't have access to it.
Your point is " but people made a choice by choosing their race and they can still work together to get a node of their race!"
The question here is: why should it be like this? It doesn't has to be a choice set in stone and as previous posts mentioned it doesn't make sense to leave another node we're you have your stuff etc. Just to try to build a node of your race. That might be some RP project for some, but that's not something that realistically happens all the time, especially when there are also alot of other people leveling up the same node.
bro u arguing with the resident crazy's of the forum. just ignore them. ur point have been submitted this is not worth it.
1
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Will not happen if the race population is not balanced - same race will rebuild the node, because thats the entire point of domination. Its just a time sink in between, but no racial design change will happen.
Same race cannot rebuild if other Races nearby overtake that destroyed Node first.
There's also an assumption that the defeated Race will be willing to help progress a nearby City that is a different Node type - which very well may NOT be the case.
Race population alone doesn't dictate the style, contributions do. There is currently no overwhelmingly more popular race shown in polls we have access to. Obviously you can see how it's not anywhere remotely near 'unlikely' that you'll see nodes in plenty of styles.
Don't get snarky with me, First off I was not replying to you, I was replying to somone else who was making a badly misinformed speculation. Second I have never denied that players should need to congregate to get their racial architecture styles expressed and have given explicit examples of it.
What YOU deny is that their should be any mechanical boost to increese architectural diverstity and that it should be nothing but a raw plurality (even though you don't even seem to understand the difference between majority and plurality) and you back this up with nothing but an appeal to player choice.
And now you have advanced to simply making baldfaced lies about race popularity, EVERY poll has shown a consistent over popularity of Elves, as has litterally EVERY past fantasy MMO population statistics to boot, and by more then enough to create an architectural monoculture under the current Intrepid plan.
Some possible options for promoting different architecture styles indirectly.
The Caravan system utilizes commodities generated from nodes and then selling them to far away with a system of diminishing returns for selling the same commodity too much to a location.
If the commodity type that a location generates were modified by the race archetecture that was present. And if a node payed a premium for the commodities that came from different races then their would be an incentive to actually create thouse nodes.
Will not happen if the race population is not balanced - same race will rebuild the node, because thats the entire point of domination. Its just a time sink in between, but no racial design change will happen.
Same race cannot rebuild if other Races nearby overtake that destroyed Node first.
There's also an assumption that the defeated Race will be willing to help progress a nearby City that is a different Node type - which very well may NOT be the case.
Destroying and rebuilding a node is no question about races, but cooperating players, groups, especially guilds. All can be humans, for instance. Humans destroy it, humans and elves rebuild it. Humans win (again) with more contribution, because we are talking about the scenario, which highly likely will happen, that some races will dominate. Name them: Humans and Elves. Accidentially other races, maybe, sometimes, rarely.
Please interpret this as a whole, to put previous points into better context with each other.
You don't understand statistics if you think random distribution of player is going to result in diversity. Their are on average something like 700 characters per node, more then enough for the law of averages to dictate that node demographics will not differ significantly from the global average without some kind of concerted effort to make them do so.
Possibly, statistics aren't my forte so ill take your word for it in this case. Its a good point, but even if its not equally distributed, the point is it is still possible to have a distribution of node aesthetics (as in, they are not all the same). And according to yourself, you can't expect people to uproot from their node just to look around, so based on that, who cares if a bunch if other nodes look the same as long as your node that you are around the most is the aesthetic that you like?
(Even though I disagree with this, because some players will explore regardless, and there are things to see and reasons to explore outside of the node aesthetic, without having to change the system for the other benefits it provides....so in either case it doesn't really matter much.)
Also it is silly to expect players to be uprooting themselves from their nodes, where all their playerhousing, connections and leveling experience has been to move to other nodes which may be undeveloped just to get to see some asthetically different architecture.
Well, not really, there are a lot of reasons to travel around the world but it might come down to a playstyle thing of whether you are mechanically incentivized to stay in the same area or whether you are mechanically incentized to travel. There was a dev discussion about this in reference to biomes (which again is the main system meant to provide aesthetic diversity, not the node architechture system), but either way there is still a chance you will run into some different node architecture types, but what should matter most is your home node architecture.
That's a classic positive externality underinvestment. Diversity of architecture is a good that everyone playing the game recives, not just thouse who did the work, but their is no incentive for the players who need to congregate to make it happen. Even if thouse Tulnar all get together and make 1 Tulnar node, the rest of the world is still a monoculture. Hell their uniqueness probably brings in non Tulnar tourists that dilute the population and then undo the very thing they came to see.
Im not sure what the term 'positive externality underinvestment' represents, but it 'probably' doesn't apply to what im am actually saying, I can assure you I am quite reasonable and good at seeing past my own biases in most cases. Yes I agree that diversity is good for everyone, but with this particular system (which is most likely fills a role relating to player choice and role-play), it might not be possible to optimize for aesthetic, which is why I talked about players needing to make compromises and prioritize different needs of the game at different times.
If their was ANY kind of mechanical advantage how ever small to having your race match the architecture then it would encourage concentration but as of now their is none.
Well yes, but role-play is most likely a core purpose of the racial aesthetic system, and role-play is something that might not necessarily require any additional mechanical benefit in order to operate as a proper incentive for those types of players, other than the architectural aesthetic that is already present. Unless they were trying to appeal to min-maxers and encourage them to get involved in influencing the aesthetic, then this would probably be unnecessary. This may or may not be a good idea, but it depends on whether you want min-maxers to engage with role-play or not. I don't really see the point in additionally incentivizing this, as there are other ways of rewarding that kind of social skill for min-maxers (like politics and other systems like that), to where you should just leave the architecture system as it is, as a role-play system, and allow players to either choose to participate in it or not.
Just go back to impactful racial augments as was originally intended instead of backgrounds and this will increase race diversity and building architecture diversity. I would even like it if same type of nodes same level but with different architecture provided different services.
Just go back to impactful racial augments as was originally intended instead of backgrounds and this will increase race diversity and building architecture diversity
No it won’t! Everyone will just play elf or human regardless there has already been a poll. Even if you put shitty racial traits which you shouldn’t on the characters people are still going to play what they like the look of more. Min-maxers are a minority in niche end game activities.
Will not happen if the race population is not balanced - same race will rebuild the node, because thats the entire point of domination. Its just a time sink in between, but no racial design change will happen.
Same race cannot rebuild if other Races nearby overtake that destroyed Node first.
There's also an assumption that the defeated Race will be willing to help progress a nearby City that is a different Node type - which very well may NOT be the case.
Other races nearby? There are no other races nearby 90% will be mixed and have the same dominant races as every other node.
Race population alone doesn't dictate the style, contributions do. There is currently no overwhelmingly more popular race shown in polls we have access to. Obviously you can see how it's not anywhere remotely near 'unlikely' that you'll see nodes in plenty of styles.
Don't get snarky with me, First off I was not replying to you, I was replying to somone else who was making a badly misinformed speculation. Second I have never denied that players should need to congregate to get their racial architecture styles expressed and have given explicit examples of it.
What YOU deny is that their should be any mechanical boost to increese architectural diverstity and that it should be nothing but a raw plurality (even though you don't even seem to understand the difference between majority and plurality) and you back this up with nothing but an appeal to player choice.
And now you have advanced to simply making baldfaced lies about race popularity, EVERY poll has shown a consistent over popularity of Elves, as has litterally EVERY past fantasy MMO population statistics to boot, and by more then enough to create an architectural monoculture under the current Intrepid plan.
Polls of 400 people of the die hard ashes Fans. In EVERY MMO there are dominant races by far. Every single one. And that is more a proof than your tiny forum polls
What I'm really curious to see is whether any significant or noticeable population of players for each race also wants/chooses to settle in a biome that's stereotypically associated with that race (e.g. Py'rai in a forest biome) and how that impacts the distribution of racial architecture across nodes, if at all.
Just go back to impactful racial augments as was originally intended instead of backgrounds and this will increase race diversity and building architecture diversity
No it won’t! Everyone will just play elf or human regardless there has already been a poll. Even if you put shitty racial traits which you shouldn’t on the characters people are still going to play what they like the look of more. Min-maxers are a minority in niche end game activities.
'Everyone' is 46% now? Coincidentally 'human' and 'elf' covers 45% of all racial options (4 out of 9), so that's very much a normal and expected population spread from that poll.
There's no evidence of a wildly overwhelming slant toward any particular race based on the few polls we've got.
There's already backend adjustments slated to be present, but you're not going to get guarantees that there will be one of every racial style. They're not going to divorce the only choice that comes from race selection. There's already aesthetic differences independent of racial styles that get applied, and further differences based on choices made by the mayor. You're not gonna be lacking for variety in nodes, especially not if you actually put in some effort to get one particular style via your guild.
'Everyone' is 46% now? Coincidentally 'human' and 'elf' covers 45% of all racial options (4 out of 9), so that's very much a normal and expected population spread from that poll.
There's no evidence of a wildly overwhelming slant toward any particular race based on the few polls we've got.
There's already backend adjustments slated to be present, but you're not going to get guarantees that there will be one of every racial style. They're not going to divorce the only choice that comes from race selection. There's already aesthetic differences independent of racial styles that get applied, and further differences based on choices made by the mayor. You're not gonna be lacking for variety in nodes, especially not if you actually put in some effort to get one particular style via your guild.
I think you got mixed up I was saying no to racial perks as in ones that effect combat based on race, and of which I’ve already discussed in the other thread about and why they’re bad.
Personally I don’t care about the racial appearance of nodes or if they all look the same seems really petty to worry about. I don’t think every node will look the same there’s bound to be one or two different styles.
Also I don’t care if there are majority races let people play what they want to play and if that race contributes the most they get the style of node they want simple. If you don’t like it go make an all particular race guild or something nobody is stopping anyone.
'Everyone' is 46% now? Coincidentally 'human' and 'elf' covers 45% of all racial options (4 out of 9), so that's very much a normal and expected population spread from that poll.
There's no evidence of a wildly overwhelming slant toward any particular race based on the few polls we've got.
There's already backend adjustments slated to be present, but you're not going to get guarantees that there will be one of every racial style. They're not going to divorce the only choice that comes from race selection. There's already aesthetic differences independent of racial styles that get applied, and further differences based on choices made by the mayor. You're not gonna be lacking for variety in nodes, especially not if you actually put in some effort to get one particular style via your guild.
I think you got mixed up I was saying no to racial perks as in ones that effect combat based on race, and of which I’ve already discussed in the other thread about and why they’re bad.
Personally I don’t care about the racial appearance of nodes or if they all look the same seems really petty to worry about. I don’t think every node will look the same there’s bound to be one or two different styles.
Also I don’t care if there are majority races let people play what they want to play and if that race contributes the most they get the style of node they want simple. If you don’t like it go make an all particular race guild or something nobody is stopping anyone.
Racial perks add to the world building and roleplay part of an MMORPG, so they would have been welcome. (Also a huge letdown that the pitched Tulnar tensions based on animal traits will end up scrapped too). Sadly the ship has sailed in opposition to that fantasy genre standard, so meaningless race choices is what we're getting.
But regardless, I agree on this particular topic. There's already all the systems needed to handle architectural variation, and if against all odds players end up making 90% of nodes in same style, well, then players did it to themselves on that server by not choosing variation from the get-go and not putting in the effort to go against the grain and get themselves a node in the style they want.
Racial perks add to the world building and roleplay part of an MMORPG, so they would have been welcome. (Also a huge letdown that the pitched Tulnar tensions based on animal traits will end up scrapped too). Sadly the ship has sailed in opposition to that fantasy genre standard, so meaningless race choices is what we're getting.
But regardless, I agree on this particular topic. There's already all the systems needed to handle architectural variation, and if against all odds players end up making 90% of nodes in same style, well, then players did it to themselves on that server by not choosing variation from the get-go and not putting in the effort to go against the grain and get themselves a node in the style they want.
Racial perks create an imbalance in PvP forcing people to feel the need to choose a race or class combo based on perks to be competitive. Having racial perks actually takes away from your freedom and choice by setting pre-defined limits on the character based on your racial choice.
I also would consider AOC more of an MMO than an MMORPG since the emphasis is on the massive multiplayer online gaming side of things. Players are the ones who dictate how the world is via their contribution to the world or node system shaping the game. One of the core mechanics will be PvP/PvX which requires some freedom of choice in players decisions. Especially for a PvP/PvX game if you swing too far towards the RPG story driven narrative element it won’t make sense as an open world PvP game but it’s good to have some lore or other elements.
I think the people who want racial perks are those where familiarity breeds contempt, and just because one game did it that doesn’t mean all games should. Again I don’t like how WOW did it I think it’s a broken plus outdated system.
Racial augments that change the way a skill looks based on race is fine as long as it balanced in combat regarding the hit box. I also think there’s bigger things to think about than the aesthetic side like how the game plays, gameplay mechanics, animations, the way the game feels, balancing combat, making combat feel fluid and reactive all those elements are way more important. I also don’t think they’ll change the whole node aesthetic design based on what the minority of races want they’ll go with the majority.
Character benefits in Ashes of Creation are tied to that character's background rather than their race.[1][2]
We want players to have the freedom to choose the race they want to play because they're excited about it, and avoid situations where players feel forced to play a specific race because of gameplay benefits.[3]
Races are not gender or class locked.[4][5]
Race likely won't affect the artisan system.[2][6]
Race does not affect a character's base stats.[7]
Other races nearby? There are no other races nearby 90% will be mixed and have the same dominant races as every other node.
Um. No. Again... I dunno what you think that means...
Once the Metro is destroyed all the associated NPCs are gone.
Dominance is based on player contribution, so that Py'Rai Metro might have started as a Dünir Village, Town and City and then changed to Py'Rai Metro because the Py'Rai contributed 51% at that point. The player population in the area will still be mixed. Likely mixed with the original Dünir. And those Dünir will be trying to rally other Dünir from nearby Nodes to help them establish a Dünir Metro.
Also, the Niküa could be a minority in that Realm, but have enough to be a majority contribution compared to the Py'Rai citizens and Dünir citizens of that destroyed Node. And the Niküa might decide to abandon all the other Nodes in the Realm in order to create a Niküa Metro.
Other races nearby? There are no other races nearby 90% will be mixed and have the same dominant races as every other node.
Um. No. Again... I dunno what you think that means...
Once the Metro is destroyed all the associated NPCs are gone.
Dominance is based on player contribution, so that Py'Rai Metro might have started as a Dünir Village, Town and City and then changed to Py'Rai Metro because the Py'Rai contributed 51% at that point. The player population in the area will still be mixed. Likely mixed with the original Dünir. And those Dünir will be trying to rally other Dünir from nearby Nodes to help them establish a Dünir Metro.
Also, the Niküa could be a minority in that Realm, but have enough to be a majority contribution compared to the Py'Rai citizens and Dünir citizens of that destroyed Node. And the Niküa might decide to abandon all the other Nodes in the Realm in order to create a Niküa Metro.
That's suuuper unrealistic. Everyone will contribute to the node who wants to contribute. It's not like the dwarfs are gathering their people to build up their node style again. Especially no one, except specialiced guilds, will abandon mixed nodes just to have their racial style applied to another node.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Again... I don't know what you think that means...
It's based on how many people are playing in that region.
Everything players do in the region contributes to Node progression.
So, yes, if Py'Rai end up doing more stuff in the ZOI of the Dünir City and cause it to become a Py'Rai Metro, you can expect the Dünir to attempt to Siege and destroy that Py'Rai Metro and rally enough Dünir from other Nodes to ensure that destroyed Py'Rai Metro will be replaced with a Dünir Metro.
Racial progression relies on having a Metro of your Race on the Realm, so there is incentive for each Race to do whatever they need to do to ensure there is a Metro where their Race is dominant at some point.
You think that dominant Race of a Node only affects architectural style?
I should point out that the current system dosn't even give citizens of a Node (the ones who presumably LIVE their and actually MADE all the structures) any priority in determining the architecture over any random traveler who is mob grinding in the node ZOI.
Switching a system where only citizen experience in the node sets the style (while still allowing total exp to level the node) would be a clear improvement because it would put the power in the hands of the locals and allow their congregation in one area to have a greater impact by not diluting it with that of travelers and questers.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Yep, but it's not about the power of the locals - which is why it's possible for Py'Rai to contribute so much to a Dünir City that they could turn it into a Py'Rai Metro.
I should point out that the current system dosn't even give citizens of a Node (the ones who presumably LIVE their and actually MADE all the structures) any priority in determining the architecture over any random traveler who is mob grinding in the node ZOI.
Switching a system where only citizen experience in the node sets the style (while still allowing total exp to level the node) would be a clear improvement because it would put the power in the hands of the locals and allow their congregation in one area to have a greater impact by not diluting it with that of travelers and questers.
Citizenship is one per account. So you wanna make your doomsaying predictions more likely to happen?
Comments
I mean there is one claim "statistics will make one - two race styles dominant", the problem is that this is boring. And it's also possible that people like to play humans, but like a different building style more and don't have access to it.
Your point is " but people made a choice by choosing their race and they can still work together to get a node of their race!"
The question here is: why should it be like this? It doesn't has to be a choice set in stone and as previous posts mentioned it doesn't make sense to leave another node we're you have your stuff etc. Just to try to build a node of your race. That might be some RP project for some, but that's not something that realistically happens all the time, especially when there are also alot of other people leveling up the same node.
I think people are more arguing that Intrepid should spend time on things that matter - not on things that don't.
Don't think that I some buttons or a craftable blueprint take so many resources.
It's anyways at this point just about concepts, so why not having a good one to start with?
In other games the key feature are not the cities. In ashes it is.
a skin isn't a key feature T_T people will ignore them anyway.
what things you can do in the cities and which buildings are available is more important.
Tell what the downside would be?
Another option could be the more nodes that are X race aesthetics the less that race contributes points for future node asthetic contribution so if there 20% more human node types than elf the the humans future contributions on other nodes would be reduced by 20% in determining asthertics of the node so the more nodes of one type there are the harder it is to make other nodes that race aswell. so you should get more diversity there.
They can also make biome multipliers too so nodes in riverlands get +20% contribution bonus in determing asthertics where nodes in tabletop mountains get 20% bonus for dwarfs for example so nodes will lean slightly towards a certain race but doesnt stop other races from using there own asthertics this would be ideal for racial home biomes for example and makes a bit more sense since that race should influence those area more due to the time before the evacuation
Unlikely? Perhaps, perhaps not. If not, realms will be dominated from few races all over, and all of it is just bound to a design decision which some, like you, are now defeding - for whatever reason. And thats the race selection during character creation. Thousands of players will even not know about this everlasting decision.
There is no pain (if yes, which?) if there would be an additional possibility to change node appearance based on player choice. Who is telling you, that after 1 year of looking to 80% human nodes the (human race) players by themselves would like to change the design, because it's boring (and waste of availablilty of all other cultural designs) always to see the same nodes?
Because playing an Orc (just as example - I love Orcs!) is a very individual choice, but playing in a human node isn't. There is no real choice for all players that select non-dominant races, because even if they want, by all means, try to contribute as much as possible, they still always will be overwhelmed from dominating races.
And, sure, my clear assumption (!) without having facts (from the future) is: Yes, there will be dominant races and thus the "big picture" of a realm will show this result within a lot of nodes.
It's no question about balance, mechanics, systems, content or whatever you are searching for, but only about variety, diversity and choice.
Like doing communication, coordination, conception, implementation and test of all racial/cultural styles for all the manual designed 85 nodes?
I mean, intrepid is talking about a lot of "features" that are on the wishlist (and/or backlog) which - depending on whom you ask - don't matter, right?
Here, it's (which is just an aspect of this forum in this early stage) quite trivial: It's defending promises and concepts. If Steven is farting, hands are clapping. In several topics the reflecting and critical view on aspects is answered with "Simon says", pardon, "Steven says". Same discussion at other places is running different - and not "discussed" from the same 5-10 intrepid and Steven defenders all the time, key-board warrior-ing in thousands of postings in hundrets of threads.
It's ok to like the game, the idea, the vision. It's something different to defend by all means everything only because it's taken as personal offense against "my loved game I'm so hyped from".
Here (within this topic) nobody will lose his face if there would be an additional option (that means it mustnt be used) is given to the players - just to enhance choices and variety. It will increase the cost/benefit ratio of the efforts to implement all cultural designs with all 85 (!) nodes.
bro u arguing with the resident crazy's of the forum. just ignore them. ur point have been submitted this is not worth it.
There's also an assumption that the defeated Race will be willing to help progress a nearby City that is a different Node type - which very well may NOT be the case.
Don't get snarky with me, First off I was not replying to you, I was replying to somone else who was making a badly misinformed speculation. Second I have never denied that players should need to congregate to get their racial architecture styles expressed and have given explicit examples of it.
What YOU deny is that their should be any mechanical boost to increese architectural diverstity and that it should be nothing but a raw plurality (even though you don't even seem to understand the difference between majority and plurality) and you back this up with nothing but an appeal to player choice.
And now you have advanced to simply making baldfaced lies about race popularity, EVERY poll has shown a consistent over popularity of Elves, as has litterally EVERY past fantasy MMO population statistics to boot, and by more then enough to create an architectural monoculture under the current Intrepid plan.
The Caravan system utilizes commodities generated from nodes and then selling them to far away with a system of diminishing returns for selling the same commodity too much to a location.
If the commodity type that a location generates were modified by the race archetecture that was present. And if a node payed a premium for the commodities that came from different races then their would be an incentive to actually create thouse nodes.
Please interpret this as a whole, to put previous points into better context with each other.
Possibly, statistics aren't my forte so ill take your word for it in this case. Its a good point, but even if its not equally distributed, the point is it is still possible to have a distribution of node aesthetics (as in, they are not all the same). And according to yourself, you can't expect people to uproot from their node just to look around, so based on that, who cares if a bunch if other nodes look the same as long as your node that you are around the most is the aesthetic that you like?
(Even though I disagree with this, because some players will explore regardless, and there are things to see and reasons to explore outside of the node aesthetic, without having to change the system for the other benefits it provides....so in either case it doesn't really matter much.)
Well, not really, there are a lot of reasons to travel around the world but it might come down to a playstyle thing of whether you are mechanically incentivized to stay in the same area or whether you are mechanically incentized to travel. There was a dev discussion about this in reference to biomes (which again is the main system meant to provide aesthetic diversity, not the node architechture system), but either way there is still a chance you will run into some different node architecture types, but what should matter most is your home node architecture.
Im not sure what the term 'positive externality underinvestment' represents, but it 'probably' doesn't apply to what im am actually saying, I can assure you I am quite reasonable and good at seeing past my own biases in most cases. Yes I agree that diversity is good for everyone, but with this particular system (which is most likely fills a role relating to player choice and role-play), it might not be possible to optimize for aesthetic, which is why I talked about players needing to make compromises and prioritize different needs of the game at different times.
Well yes, but role-play is most likely a core purpose of the racial aesthetic system, and role-play is something that might not necessarily require any additional mechanical benefit in order to operate as a proper incentive for those types of players, other than the architectural aesthetic that is already present. Unless they were trying to appeal to min-maxers and encourage them to get involved in influencing the aesthetic, then this would probably be unnecessary. This may or may not be a good idea, but it depends on whether you want min-maxers to engage with role-play or not. I don't really see the point in additionally incentivizing this, as there are other ways of rewarding that kind of social skill for min-maxers (like politics and other systems like that), to where you should just leave the architecture system as it is, as a role-play system, and allow players to either choose to participate in it or not.
No it won’t! Everyone will just play elf or human regardless there has already been a poll. Even if you put shitty racial traits which you shouldn’t on the characters people are still going to play what they like the look of more. Min-maxers are a minority in niche end game activities.
Other races nearby? There are no other races nearby 90% will be mixed and have the same dominant races as every other node.
Polls of 400 people of the die hard ashes Fans. In EVERY MMO there are dominant races by far. Every single one. And that is more a proof than your tiny forum polls
'Everyone' is 46% now? Coincidentally 'human' and 'elf' covers 45% of all racial options (4 out of 9), so that's very much a normal and expected population spread from that poll.
There's no evidence of a wildly overwhelming slant toward any particular race based on the few polls we've got.
There's already backend adjustments slated to be present, but you're not going to get guarantees that there will be one of every racial style. They're not going to divorce the only choice that comes from race selection. There's already aesthetic differences independent of racial styles that get applied, and further differences based on choices made by the mayor. You're not gonna be lacking for variety in nodes, especially not if you actually put in some effort to get one particular style via your guild.
I think you got mixed up I was saying no to racial perks as in ones that effect combat based on race, and of which I’ve already discussed in the other thread about and why they’re bad.
Personally I don’t care about the racial appearance of nodes or if they all look the same seems really petty to worry about. I don’t think every node will look the same there’s bound to be one or two different styles.
Also I don’t care if there are majority races let people play what they want to play and if that race contributes the most they get the style of node they want simple. If you don’t like it go make an all particular race guild or something nobody is stopping anyone.
Racial perks add to the world building and roleplay part of an MMORPG, so they would have been welcome. (Also a huge letdown that the pitched Tulnar tensions based on animal traits will end up scrapped too). Sadly the ship has sailed in opposition to that fantasy genre standard, so meaningless race choices is what we're getting.
But regardless, I agree on this particular topic. There's already all the systems needed to handle architectural variation, and if against all odds players end up making 90% of nodes in same style, well, then players did it to themselves on that server by not choosing variation from the get-go and not putting in the effort to go against the grain and get themselves a node in the style they want.
Racial perks create an imbalance in PvP forcing people to feel the need to choose a race or class combo based on perks to be competitive. Having racial perks actually takes away from your freedom and choice by setting pre-defined limits on the character based on your racial choice.
I also would consider AOC more of an MMO than an MMORPG since the emphasis is on the massive multiplayer online gaming side of things. Players are the ones who dictate how the world is via their contribution to the world or node system shaping the game. One of the core mechanics will be PvP/PvX which requires some freedom of choice in players decisions. Especially for a PvP/PvX game if you swing too far towards the RPG story driven narrative element it won’t make sense as an open world PvP game but it’s good to have some lore or other elements.
I think the people who want racial perks are those where familiarity breeds contempt, and just because one game did it that doesn’t mean all games should. Again I don’t like how WOW did it I think it’s a broken plus outdated system.
Racial augments that change the way a skill looks based on race is fine as long as it balanced in combat regarding the hit box. I also think there’s bigger things to think about than the aesthetic side like how the game plays, gameplay mechanics, animations, the way the game feels, balancing combat, making combat feel fluid and reactive all those elements are way more important. I also don’t think they’ll change the whole node aesthetic design based on what the minority of races want they’ll go with the majority.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Racial_benefits
Character benefits in Ashes of Creation are tied to that character's background rather than their race.[1][2]
We want players to have the freedom to choose the race they want to play because they're excited about it, and avoid situations where players feel forced to play a specific race because of gameplay benefits.[3]
Races are not gender or class locked.[4][5]
Race likely won't affect the artisan system.[2][6]
Race does not affect a character's base stats.[7]
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Racial_augments
Once the Metro is destroyed all the associated NPCs are gone.
Dominance is based on player contribution, so that Py'Rai Metro might have started as a Dünir Village, Town and City and then changed to Py'Rai Metro because the Py'Rai contributed 51% at that point. The player population in the area will still be mixed. Likely mixed with the original Dünir. And those Dünir will be trying to rally other Dünir from nearby Nodes to help them establish a Dünir Metro.
Also, the Niküa could be a minority in that Realm, but have enough to be a majority contribution compared to the Py'Rai citizens and Dünir citizens of that destroyed Node. And the Niküa might decide to abandon all the other Nodes in the Realm in order to create a Niküa Metro.
That's suuuper unrealistic. Everyone will contribute to the node who wants to contribute. It's not like the dwarfs are gathering their people to build up their node style again. Especially no one, except specialiced guilds, will abandon mixed nodes just to have their racial style applied to another node.
It's based on how many people are playing in that region.
Everything players do in the region contributes to Node progression.
So, yes, if Py'Rai end up doing more stuff in the ZOI of the Dünir City and cause it to become a Py'Rai Metro, you can expect the Dünir to attempt to Siege and destroy that Py'Rai Metro and rally enough Dünir from other Nodes to ensure that destroyed Py'Rai Metro will be replaced with a Dünir Metro.
Racial progression relies on having a Metro of your Race on the Realm, so there is incentive for each Race to do whatever they need to do to ensure there is a Metro where their Race is dominant at some point.
You think that dominant Race of a Node only affects architectural style?
Switching a system where only citizen experience in the node sets the style (while still allowing total exp to level the node) would be a clear improvement because it would put the power in the hands of the locals and allow their congregation in one area to have a greater impact by not diluting it with that of travelers and questers.
Citizenship is one per account. So you wanna make your doomsaying predictions more likely to happen?