haelin wrote: » Well, I was stating in the post that you should just have nodes be able to house more stations and then that can be balanced by siege wars. Because you can build more and faster as a guild cause everyone is on the same page, but owning a node comes with the repercussions of getting stuffed destroyed by other neighboring nodes too. I think this idea of nodes being guildless is the reason why the node benches are severely limited because Steven doesn't want one node to be the end-all-be-all in a certain biome. You can easily fix this by making nodes more privatized and volatile, a simple risk/reward system.
haelin wrote: » Why even care what the economy is going to be if these other things aren't in the game yet, we should be cracking down on the fundamental stuff of the game rather than expanding it.
Ludullu wrote: » haelin wrote: » Well, I was stating in the post that you should just have nodes be able to house more stations and then that can be balanced by siege wars. Because you can build more and faster as a guild cause everyone is on the same page, but owning a node comes with the repercussions of getting stuffed destroyed by other neighboring nodes too. I think this idea of nodes being guildless is the reason why the node benches are severely limited because Steven doesn't want one node to be the end-all-be-all in a certain biome. You can easily fix this by making nodes more privatized and volatile, a simple risk/reward system. Again though, this is already the case in the current Alpha. Guilds have already "taken over" nodes and have progressed them in a much better manner than other nodes with worse-coordinated guilds. The greatest example of this, imo, is Genesis. They've been at Winstead since the start of A2 and have been doing great with building it up fast (obviously subject to the player fall off). What exactly do you want in the system to change, which makes you believe that the situation will magically improve? Do you want guilds to have EVEN MORE advantages through nodes, so that they're more motivated to build up stations faster? Cause we're already waaaay too fucking deep in snowball land, where any guild bigger than a group of friends can benefit way too much from several sources. As much as I love guild-based gameplay, I don't think that throwing the design even deeper into that end will result in anything good. As for the amount of stations, I already addressed that. We're locked at lvl3 nodes, so we're locked at the amount of stations of lvl3 nodes. The higher we go - the more stations nodes will have. What's the point of increasing that amount now, when we don't know what kind of balancing Intrepid want for later? haelin wrote: » Why even care what the economy is going to be if these other things aren't in the game yet, we should be cracking down on the fundamental stuff of the game rather than expanding it. Yes, I agree that we should be testing much more basic stuff. It's simply difficult to do that when said basic stuff is not even in the game yet.
haelin wrote: » Yes, this is what I'm saying. The game is a guild game. Let's call a spade a spade and just expedite the process of nodes to ACTUALLY be guild owned. Why are we trying to pretend that they are for everyone when we can stop the masquerading and just make them officially guild-owned. This would give more purpose and ownership to nodes and will have more natural conflict of siege wars and node wars while actually want to do build orders and progress more too because you can have guilds recruit for that very purpose rather than pray that other citizens will fill the holes. And yes, I'd want guilds to have more control. Guilds with big enough capital can control a node. This is where siege wars will be more meaningful. They are already pitting the nodes against each other and locking them based on the tier and boundary. Why not just make it a guild-oriented thing?
haelin wrote: » I've heard that the higher the node goes the more stations we will have to choose, but also when we get to master, all the journeyman professions will split in half, so we will still be hard-locked and stuck with a very limited amount of benches.
Ludullu wrote: » haelin wrote: » Yes, this is what I'm saying. The game is a guild game. Let's call a spade a spade and just expedite the process of nodes to ACTUALLY be guild owned. Why are we trying to pretend that they are for everyone when we can stop the masquerading and just make them officially guild-owned. This would give more purpose and ownership to nodes and will have more natural conflict of siege wars and node wars while actually want to do build orders and progress more too because you can have guilds recruit for that very purpose rather than pray that other citizens will fill the holes. And yes, I'd want guilds to have more control. Guilds with big enough capital can control a node. This is where siege wars will be more meaningful. They are already pitting the nodes against each other and locking them based on the tier and boundary. Why not just make it a guild-oriented thing? Again, I don't understand how any of the player behaviour will change if nodes become purely guild-based.
Noaani wrote: » Essentially, what the OP is asking Intrepid to do is to not hide what their game is about.
Ludullu wrote: » Noaani wrote: » Essentially, what the OP is asking Intrepid to do is to not hide what their game is about. No, I get that. But I don't get how would that change the already established behaviour. I mean, I guess things would get worse because now guilds would have literally 0 reason to do any good in the game, but why help Intrepid do what they're already great at doing? Why not try pushing the game into a better direction?
haelin wrote: » You could easily just reduce the amount of resources also needed for testing purposes for guilds to get them all of the ground.
haelin wrote: » I promise you they would get nodes off the ground and with more organization than guild-less nodes.
Ludullu wrote: » haelin wrote: » You could easily just reduce the amount of resources also needed for testing purposes for guilds to get them all of the ground. Like I said before. You simply want the entire system to be easier to do. You simply tie it to guilds because you think they'll somehow completely change their behaviour even though literally nothing would change effectively. We already have guild-controlled nodes, because literally all nodes are controlled by guilds. Democratic voting just means "guilds win". So how would any of this change if they already control it all. And HOW exactly would the same guilds that already build up nodes magically build them up faster/better? Guildless people wouldn't just magically start joining guilds just because guilds are controlling nodes now. Barely any guildless person cares about the node part of the equation when deciding whether they want to join a guild or not. So the exact same guilds that we currently have controlling nodes would still be controlling nodes after your change. Except now all the other people would care about nodes EVEN LESS. And they would also not be able to contribute to them, if I understand your suggestion correctly. So the growth would be even slower than it is now. We'd have a worse situation, unless you reward those guilds with some insane additional benefits like gear or money or something else that would shift their goals from just grinding mobs/bosses and caravans to grinding artisanry instead. haelin wrote: » I promise you they would get nodes off the ground and with more organization than guild-less nodes. They are not guildless though I'd be all for trying this out, simply because I'm 1000% sure I'd turn out to be right and I love being right. But changing this entire system (considering it's barely even implemented still ) would prolong development even more than it already is.
Ludullu wrote: » Ok, so I am correct and you simply want the entire system to be waaaay easier than it is now. Well, that's an opinion you're free to have. And I said that THE ONLY WAY guilds would care more about nodes would be if they got insane benefits for doing that. And I am against giving them EVEN MORE BENEFITS. We already have too much snowballing in this damn game. We need less, not more.
haelin wrote: » but they are also going to get to get the repercussions of owning a node too, like getting shit sieged and destroyed constantly.
haelin wrote: » They wouldn't be benefitting that much from this anyways. They get taxes for people using their benches but they have to upkeep it all from their own guild money. Could even make storage have a guild tab for guild storage (bam, easily implemented). Could easily put a guild recruitment sign near commission board (bam, easy guild recruitment) just like player stalls. You can still have guildless nodes maybe 1 per biome to see how it fairs against guild ones.
haelin wrote: » Also don't say WAAAAY easier. It will be easier but don't be hyperbolic. Steven's vision is a mega corporation guild game, let them cook.
Ludullu wrote: » haelin wrote: » but they are also going to get to get the repercussions of owning a node too, like getting shit sieged and destroyed constantly. Once again, this would literally not change from the current design. Nodes are still seen as guild's property, so if another guild wants to fuck them over - they can siege the node. We simply don't have node sieges in the Alpha (at least ones with proper full destruction). I keep telling you that your suggestion would change nothing in the player behaviour. haelin wrote: » They wouldn't be benefitting that much from this anyways. They get taxes for people using their benches but they have to upkeep it all from their own guild money. Could even make storage have a guild tab for guild storage (bam, easily implemented). Could easily put a guild recruitment sign near commission board (bam, easy guild recruitment) just like player stalls. You can still have guildless nodes maybe 1 per biome to see how it fairs against guild ones. You're describing a completely different system to the one we have right now. Way smaller scale, way easier progress, way less push for other people to interact with the world, way more benefits for already too-beneficiallly-gifted guilds. haelin wrote: » Also don't say WAAAAY easier. It will be easier but don't be hyperbolic. Steven's vision is a mega corporation guild game, let them cook. But that's exactly what it would be. Not every guild is some 100+++-member entity. Which means that literally only the guild can contribute to the node and use those contributions to build it up - the requirements for all that stuff would have to be decreased drastically, otherwise nothing will be built up. And if you DO keep requirements high, then we come back to the huge rewards, I mentioned being against, because otherwise guilds would simply not care enough about nodes. And majority of guilds don't want easy onboarding of some randos from the street. Especially not the hardcore guilds, which would be the ones most interested in controlling nodes. And those same hardcore guilds would also limit themselves to 40 members, because that'll give them the most passives-based power. Which goes back to node building requirements having to be insanely low, or nothing gets built up. And having a singular guildless node would simply make it the most profitable one, because there's always way more guildless people than guilded ones. And if that node is the cheapest one (which it would be) - everyone will be using it for their business. And under your own logic these nodes would also be attacked the least, because guilds are preoccupied with fucking each other over. This would in turn mean that all the guildless people would be safer in these guildless nodes. Except the reality of it all will be that guilds will only attack the guildless nodes for the exact reason I explained above, because that's what they do. They prey on the weak, not on the strong. And this would simply become a yet another reason for casual/solo/guildless players to leave the game, as if they hadn't enough reasons to do that already. So, again, whichever side of your suggestion I look at - it's just making the design worse, making the game even more niche than what it already will be and pushes people away from the game even more than the game already does.
Ludullu wrote: » Why not try pushing the game into a better direction?
Noaani wrote: » Ludullu wrote: » Why not try pushing the game into a better direction? Because the direction it is going is what this game is about, as I have said many times - the few ruling over the many. Problem is, that is no way to market a game, so we have the situation we are in.
haelin wrote: » They want the few ruling over the many because they want some complex political hierarchy system with some form of checks and balances. But this is a video game and it will just be abused farther down a pipeline.
Noaani wrote: » haelin wrote: » They want the few ruling over the many because they want some complex political hierarchy system with some form of checks and balances. But this is a video game and it will just be abused farther down a pipeline. You could argue this. However, my assumption as to why Ashes is this way is much more simple. Ashes is the way it is because Steven plays MMORPG's as essentially a megalomaniac. He has his guild of people that he instructs as if they have no option other than to do as he says. Since this is how he plays, it means that this is what MMORPG's are to him. He is not shy about stating that Ashes is the game he wants to play, so the game being built around a few megalomaniacs per server each being followed by a number of submissive/subservient players doing their bidding is the only way Ashes was ever going to be, without a lead designer to reign him in some. Edit; I've been pointing this out on these forums essentially since Jeff left several years ago. That is when the notable switch happened from Ashes being presented as a game based on the content (run the content, fight over the content) stopped, and it started to be presented as a game about controlling other players - even if that presentation is only in subtle ways. The content is now little more than a backdrop that frames the systems of controling and blocking other players. If you are someone that believes the content is the core of an MMORPG, then you have to look at Ashes as being a game that isn't actually even focused on the game itself.
