Hard cap for Node citizens count

There is currently soft cap, with the citizenship gold cost increasing with the development of nodes.

But i think they should put Hard cap also. For example every town get 300 citizens, city gets 500, Metropolis gets 800-1000. Will make both node wars and siege wars more equal. I even think that if the citizen count is even less than this it will be even better, since you may need alliances with other nodes to fill the missing spots in node/siege wars that you cant fill by yourself. This will make the social gameplay a lot more interesting.

Also by having hard cap - it will force players to spread to different nodes. Which will create more competition. Will force node wars to make sure your node is the 1 that gets ahead and blocks the neighboring nodes from progressing.
Instead without hard cap, most players will try to get citizenship in the node that has highest chance to advance to next stage. Removing the competition from the game.

For example - imagine there are 2 neighboring town nodes. 1 with 30% progression to city, the other with 60%. All players will choose the 1 with 60% progression, making it progress even more. But if the 1 with 60% is capped, You may be forced to go in the 1 with 30%. And then do Node war to steal some of the progression, and have the chance to get to city first.

Also This will be a way for smaller guilds/group of players to have a chance to win vs Mega guilds. Since in node level, both sides will have same amount of players.

Pros:
* more competitive environment
* more sandbox events like node wars and sieges.
* bigger incentive for players to be part of nodes and level the nodes. Instead focusing only on leveling personal character. (since if you dont focus on nodes, you may be left with all developed nodes to be already capped with citizens)
* Will allow you to give more benefits to more developed nodes, without breaking the balance.(like giving exp bonus to citizens of more developed nodes).
* Will make players more spread around the whole world. Which will make caravans more important.
* Will make alliances and social part of the game more important, to keep positive relation with neighboring nodes. Since your node wont have most of the players in the whole area.
* Will give incentive to node sieges if your node become vasal to another one, and your only chance for your node to advance would be to destroy the node that caps you.

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Comments

Azherae

I agree that this would probably be better for balance, but I also think it would lead to a lot more negative behaviour and the type of friction that isn't necessarily good for the game.

So I'm not opposed to it, I just expect it to cause things I don't like. If they find a way to avoid those, no problem to me.

Saabynator

Githal wrote: »

There is currently soft cap, with the citizenship gold cost increasing with the development of nodes.

But i think they should put Hard cap also. For example every town get 300 citizens, city gets 500, Metropolis gets 800-1000. Will make both node wars and siege wars more equal. I even think that if the citizen count is even less than this it will be even better, since you may need alliances with other nodes to fill the missing spots in node/siege wars that you cant fill by yourself. This will make the social gameplay a lot more interesting.

Also by having hard cap - it will force players to spread to different nodes. Which will create more competition. Will force node wars to make sure your node is the 1 that gets ahead and blocks the neighboring nodes from progressing.
Instead without hard cap, most players will try to get citizenship in the node that has highest chance to advance to next stage. Removing the competition from the game.

For example - imagine there are 2 neighboring town nodes. 1 with 30% progression to city, the other with 60%. All players will choose the 1 with 60% progression, making it progress even more. But if the 1 with 60% is capped, You may be forced to go in the 1 with 30%. And then do Node war to steal some of the progression, and have the chance to get to city first.

Also This will be a way for smaller guilds/group of players to have a chance to win vs Mega guilds. Since in node level, both sides will have same amount of players.

Pros:
* more competitive environment
* more sandbox events like node wars and sieges.
* bigger incentive for players to be part of nodes and level the nodes. Instead focusing only on leveling personal character. (since if you dont focus on nodes, you may be left with all developed nodes to be already capped with citizens)
* Will allow you to give more benefits to more developed nodes, without breaking the balance.(like giving exp bonus to citizens of more developed nodes).
* Will make players more spread around the whole world. Which will make caravans more important.
* Will make alliances and social part of the game more important, to keep positive relation with neighboring nodes. Since your node wont have most of the players in the whole area.
* Will give incentive to node sieges if your node become vasal to another one, and your only chance for your node to advance would be to destroy the node that caps you.

I might be wrong here, but I think there is a cap? Both on citizenship, and apartments/housing?

JustVine

Soft caps are always superior for a game like Ashes because it is consistent with the feeling of player agency the game is built around as a foundational game design concept. Just like there is a 'soft cap' on player behavior via the corruption system rather than flagging for pvp.

Githal

JustVine wrote: »

Soft caps are always superior for a game like Ashes because it is consistent with the feeling of player agency the game is built around as a foundational game design concept. Just like there is a 'soft cap' on player behavior via the corruption system rather than flagging for pvp.

"Soft caps are always superior for a game like Ashes" is a bold statement.
It all depends on what the soft/hard cap tries to achieve. By the always pvp enabled with soft cap of corruption - the goal is to make the world more alive. Focus on the Risk vs Reward in the game where you can always be killed. Increase the player vs player interactions in the world. Spread out the population, so if 1 group is in some farming spot, they always have the option to kill another group there so they dont steal their farm if they accept the risk of corruption.

In the other hand, for Citizenship count - soft cap does the opposite of all the above.
* It incentivize players grouping in 1 node instead of spreading to different nodes
* Lowers the Risk Vs Reward, because when most players are grouped in 1 node, there is no risk that other node will vassal your node. No risk of siege wars to demolish your node, no risks of node wars to steal your resources
* It reduce player vs player interactions in node level, since you dont need allies in neighboring nodes.
* The population is in focused in 1 place instead of spreading. I would much rather prefer all nodes to have citizens, instead of having more than half of all nodes in the world being empty.

And all of this is achieved by putting hard cap.

Arya_Yeshe

let the soft cap flow

JustVine

Githal wrote: »

JustVine wrote: »

Soft caps are always superior for a game like Ashes because it is consistent with the feeling of player agency the game is built around as a foundational game design concept. Just like there is a 'soft cap' on player behavior via the corruption system rather than flagging for pvp.

"Soft caps are always superior for a game like Ashes" is a bold statement.
It all depends on what the soft/hard cap tries to achieve. By the always pvp enabled with soft cap of corruption - the goal is to make the world more alive. Focus on the Risk vs Reward in the game where you can always be killed. Increase the player vs player interactions in the world. Spread out the population, so if 1 group is in some farming spot, they always have the option to kill another group there so they dont steal their farm if they accept the risk of corruption.

In the other hand, for Citizenship count - soft cap does the opposite of all the above.
* It incentivize players grouping in 1 node instead of spreading to different nodes
* Lowers the Risk Vs Reward, because when most players are grouped in 1 node, there is no risk that other node will vassal your node. No risk of siege wars to demolish your node, no risks of node wars to steal your resources
* It reduce player vs player interactions in node level, since you dont need allies in neighboring nodes.
* The population is in focused in 1 place instead of spreading. I would much rather prefer all nodes to have citizens, instead of having more than half of all nodes in the world being empty.

And all of this is achieved by putting hard cap.

You can achieve all of that with soft caps. It isn't a vacuum. Resources require significant time, risk and travel. Scaling up resource requirements increases player agency while also presenting a 'problem' to solve that involves game play and decision making. Higher resource requirements require more committed activity that have diminishing returns of utility. Just have good econ design and this 'problem' you predict is solved. No hard cap need apply.

This fantasy of the 'most extreme' you are coming up with of 'everyone is going to pile into one node if it is soft instead of hard cap' is a strawman and irrelevant to my claim about how soft caps fit Ashes design principles better.

Githal

JustVine wrote: »

You can achieve all of that with soft caps. It isn't a vacuum. Resources require significant time, risk and travel. Scaling up resource requirements increases player agency while also presenting a 'problem' to solve that involves game play and decision making. Higher resource requirements require more committed activity that have diminishing returns of utility. Just have good econ design and this 'problem' you predict is solved. No hard cap need apply.

This fantasy of the 'most extreme' you are coming up with of 'everyone is going to pile into one node if it is soft instead of hard cap' is a strawman and irrelevant to my claim about how soft caps fit Ashes design principles better.

Is there theoretical chance that people can spread to all nodes? - yes
Is there reasons for players to spread without hard cap? - no

This "fantasy" that you talking about is actually thinking that players wont choose the most effective way to progress, min/max and ect. Give players the option to min max things, and they will do it. Its not about theoretical chance that players may actually do something. Its about the game developers taking care of things, because players wont.

And i dont mean like you will have 100% of players in 1 continent, in 1 zone in 1 node.
But what you will get is like 1 metropolis in each Biome. And 95% of all players in this biome will be citizens in this 1 metropolis node, And the remaining 5% will be saving gold so they can become citizens there also in time.

The other alternative is that Intrepid makes citizenship worthless, and no matter if you are citizen in city or metropolis there is no difference. In which case it would not matter, and players may spread.
But in this case siege wars, node wars, and citizenships will be worthless anyway and all can be removed from the game

JustVine

Your entire argument rests on the answer to the second question being no. It's just flatly incorrect. The reasons are economic in nature and have nothing to do with a hard cap. More resources scaling up per person requires greater time and access to resources. Resources in AoC are limited in any given area and respawn timers on said resources cost both time and risk getting murked. Lower time commitments to become a citizen (which has HUGE benefits to your economic efficiency in this game) will, in a very real 'invisible hand fashion' incentivize players to move to different nodes. It's just basic economics and it is in line with AoC's stated design goals and philosophies.

Githal

JustVine wrote: »

Your entire argument rests on the answer to the second question being no. It's just flatly incorrect. The reasons are economic in nature and have nothing to do with a hard cap. More resources scaling up per person requires greater time and access to resources. Resources in AoC are limited in any given area and respawn timers on said resources cost both time and risk getting murked. Lower time commitments to become a citizen (which has HUGE benefits to your economic efficiency in this game) will, in a very real 'invisible hand fashion' incentivize players to move to different nodes. It's just basic economics and it is in line with AoC's stated design goals and philosophies.

You dont need to be citizen of a node, to collect resources in its area. And the argument that it will require less time to gather the resources if you are citizen in the small node wont save you time at all, since after you gather them, you still will need to go to the Large node, to sell them or to craft items with them.
So as a whole, citizenship has nothing to do with this.

Aszkalon

Githal wrote: »

You dont need to be citizen of a node, to collect resources in its area.

But you get a few nice Articles/Items/etc. You can ONLY. GET. when You are a Citizen of the Node in which's Area you do Stuff ... ... ... ...

Githal

Aszkalon wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

You dont need to be citizen of a node, to collect resources in its area.

But you get a few nice Articles/Items/etc. You can ONLY. GET. when You are a Citizen of the Node in which's Area you do Stuff ... ... ... ...

And those things are better and more if the node you do stuff in is more developed. Or at least thats their idea in the wik.
Again: if the benefits for being citizen in city or metropolis are small or non existing - then people will spread.

But the better alternative is to make the hard cap. and give BIG ADVATAGES to citizenship in metropolis over city. and city over town and ect. Will give all their systems reason to exist. like caravans / node wars / sieges / vasal systems and ect.

When you look the bigger picture - the game needs conflicts, it needs scarcity of the most valuable things so people can compete for them. Else it will just become Dull grind game, with no reasons to do any pvp.
Why would you spend so much time preparing for a siege, destroying enemy node, so you can make your node that was vassal, to prosper to metropolis, if This node development wont bring any benefits?

and if there are enough benefits for this - then you can just get citizenship in the current metropolis, which is much easier and safer. So with no hard cap you wont see sieges, or node wars

Ludullu

Soft cap is better because it would force people, who want to all be in one node, to splurge insane amounts of money just to achieve that, while the payoff is nowhere near as good as spreading out your political/economic/influential power.

This is literally risk/reward. If people think that the reward of being in a single node is worth the risk of wasting a shitton of money - let them. Everyone else who spreads out will benefit more, because they'll still have their big sacks of cash AND have more influence on the region.

Hard cap completely removes that part of gameplay.

Githal

Ludullu wrote: »

Soft cap is better because it would force people, who want to all be in one node, to splurge insane amounts of money just to achieve that, while the payoff is nowhere near as good as spreading out your political/economic/influential power.

This is literally risk/reward. If people think that the reward of being in a single node is worth the risk of wasting a shitton of money - let them. Everyone else who spreads out will benefit more, because they'll still have their big sacks of cash AND have more influence on the region.

Hard cap completely removes that part of gameplay.

thats if people try to get in the metropolis when it already is metropolis.
Usually from village stage you can see which of the neighboring nodes is furthest in development. And all players will join it from early stages, Since its most likely to not get locked as vasal. Which will just make this particular node progression even faster.

Atm this is not the case since node progression is capped to low levels, no vasal system. so no reason for any of this

Azherae

Githal wrote: »

Ludullu wrote: »

Soft cap is better because it would force people, who want to all be in one node, to splurge insane amounts of money just to achieve that, while the payoff is nowhere near as good as spreading out your political/economic/influential power.

This is literally risk/reward. If people think that the reward of being in a single node is worth the risk of wasting a shitton of money - let them. Everyone else who spreads out will benefit more, because they'll still have their big sacks of cash AND have more influence on the region.

Hard cap completely removes that part of gameplay.

thats if people try to get in the metropolis when it already is metropolis.
Usually from village stage you can see which of the neighboring nodes is furthest in development. And all players will join it from early stages, Since its most likely to not get locked as vasal. Which will just make this particular node progression even faster.

Atm this is not the case since node progression is capped to low levels, no vasal system. so no reason for any of this

Oh, wait, for clarity, as far as we know, Citizenship is a moving soft-cap. You need to be able to get a home in the node, and in-node housing is more limited when the Node is small. There may be things that need to be done or built to increase the cap, so we don't know at exactly what Node Stage the 'unlimited' kicks in.

A Hard Cap creates many other behavioural problems in exactly the same way, but with higher incentives for bad behaviour.

Noaani

Githal wrote: »

JustVine wrote: »

You can achieve all of that with soft caps. It isn't a vacuum. Resources require significant time, risk and travel. Scaling up resource requirements increases player agency while also presenting a 'problem' to solve that involves game play and decision making. Higher resource requirements require more committed activity that have diminishing returns of utility. Just have good econ design and this 'problem' you predict is solved. No hard cap need apply.

This fantasy of the 'most extreme' you are coming up with of 'everyone is going to pile into one node if it is soft instead of hard cap' is a strawman and irrelevant to my claim about how soft caps fit Ashes design principles better.

Is there theoretical chance that people can spread to all nodes? - yes
Is there reasons for players to spread without hard cap? - no

Is there a reason to force players to spread to all nodes? - no.

Ludullu

Githal wrote: »

thats if people try to get in the metropolis when it already is metropolis.
Usually from village stage you can see which of the neighboring nodes is furthest in development. And all players will join it from early stages, Since its most likely to not get locked as vasal. Which will just make this particular node progression even faster.

Atm this is not the case since node progression is capped to low levels, no vasal system. so no reason for any of this

I feel like we have a different view on what "soft cap" even IS in this context.

I see it as "say, lvl3 node has 100 citizens as a soft cap. If you want to be the 101st - you're paying x10 the initial cost and your taxes are at least x5 of the normal ones". And that shit grows exponentially from there.

No reasonable person would go for that kind of payout just to be in the same node as their guild or friends. Because they'd now be a burden to their guild/friends. You can't afford better gear as easily, you can't afford to run your own caravans/crates as easily. You can't repair gear as often. You'd be literally crippling yourself with these expenditures.

And yes, I'm sure there'll be some massive guilds that will still try getting their members into the same node, even if the costs ARE that high. And I see that as the best thing ever, because it's literally a direct snowball limiter. Because now, instead spending the guilds resources on growing the snowball - they're just in one fucking node

Good for them.

Hard cap on citizenships will simply let those massive guilds snowball in their regular ways. And that's shit.

Githal

Ludullu wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

thats if people try to get in the metropolis when it already is metropolis.
Usually from village stage you can see which of the neighboring nodes is furthest in development. And all players will join it from early stages, Since its most likely to not get locked as vasal. Which will just make this particular node progression even faster.

Atm this is not the case since node progression is capped to low levels, no vasal system. so no reason for any of this

I feel like we have a different view on what "soft cap" even IS in this context.

I see it as "say, lvl3 node has 100 citizens as a soft cap. If you want to be the 101st - you're paying x10 the initial cost and your taxes are at least x5 of the normal ones". And that shit grows exponentially from there.

No reasonable person would go for that kind of payout just to be in the same node as their guild or friends. Because they'd now be a burden to their guild/friends. You can't afford better gear as easily, you can't afford to run your own caravans/crates as easily. You can't repair gear as often. You'd be literally crippling yourself with these expenditures.

And yes, I'm sure there'll be some massive guilds that will still try getting their members into the same node, even if the costs ARE that high. And I see that as the best thing ever, because it's literally a direct snowball limiter. Because now, instead spending the guilds resources on growing the snowball - they're just in one fucking node Good for them.

Hard cap on citizenships will simply let those massive guilds snowball in their regular ways. And that's shit.

isnt the soft cap from the wiki: As a node develops, the cost of joining as a citizen increases, So have nothing to do with the current number of citizens. Meaning if node is village stage, it costs 20 gold for example. then when the node progress to city, if you want to join as citizen in that stage of node progress, it costs 150. Then at metropolis it costs 500.

JustVine

'Citizenship has nothing to do with this'... We are literally talking about citizenship and collective organizations ability to hole up in a single node or not. Citizenship makes literally everything about the process easier and more sensible. The entire point of a cap on node population of any kind hard or soft is literally about the many benefits citizenship brings you as a player. If you can get citizenship for cheaper and don't belong to an organization, going to a cheaper node to get citizenship just makes economic sense. Any time spent farming for citizenship resources is time away from doing literally anything else. It is a trade off. That's how good econ fixes every issue you predict.

Githal

JustVine wrote: »

'Citizenship has nothing to do with this'... We are literally talking about citizenship and collective organizations ability to hole up in a single node or not. Citizenship makes literally everything about the process easier and more sensible. The entire point of a cap on node population of any kind hard or soft is literally about the many benefits citizenship brings you as a player. If you can get citizenship for cheaper and don't belong to an organization, going to a cheaper node to get citizenship just makes economic sense. Any time spent farming for citizenship resources is time away from doing literally anything else. It is a trade off. That's how good econ fixes every issue you predict.

You live in some ideal world i guess. Things dont work like this. They try to make citizenship benefits better - they make players go to the most developed node. They try to make the value of spreading more beneficial economy wise - you will see some spreading in the short term, then everyone will make gold, and still move to the metropolis (if the citizenship rewards are worth it).

Without hard cap you may get some momentary (delusional) fix. But give it few months/half year and the world will reach what i described in my comment.

Especially with the relic system will be even worse. If 1 metropolis get some Legendary relic, you will see how masses of players join the node to get the benefits. The ideal scenario should be to do a siege on the node and steal the relic. --- "you were supposed to fight evil, not join them"

In short - if Intrepid wants to create a peaceful world, with no conflicts, Some wars and sieges in REALLY RARE OCCASIONS when players get bored. - then soft cap is ideal

If they want to create world with constant conflict. Connect all their systems together with caravans, wars, sieges, vasal system that matters, Constant building->destroying->rebuilding of nodes, betrayals and allies - then hard cap will be needed.

Guess its obvious which of the 2 i would prefer.

Take the real world for example. All wars happen for something that is finite - oil, territory expansion and ect.
And no one fights over air for example (for now). But imagine the air pollution get so bad that there is not enough for everyone? Then you will see fights for air also. (or water).
As long as everyone can join the metropolis

JustVine

"When you become a citizen you enter in at a certain citizenship due structure; and citizens pay taxes to their node in the form of both property taxes based on what type housing as well as citizenship dues, which are necessary. And as you enter later into the stage of a node's development, you will pay a higher value on the citizenship dues or vice-versa: if you own a property later, you will be entered into a property tax that is higher based on where you enter that property ownership within the node's history. So those help to form a soft cap. Now, if payers are willing to pay more to be a citizen of a particular node, they have that option, but at some point it becomes restrictive"
- Steven Sharif 2018
-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsPR_a2n5SM&t=2508s
- https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Citizenship

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