Node & Gear loss attrition

First let me start my first post by saying hello to my new victims and casualties of war. To anyone who I may know from past lives already present on these forums I salute you.

Moving on to my topic and I apologize in advance if this has been addressed or discussed i've searched the forums and wiki and have not seen specifics on this yet, though I admit possible human error on my part and due to my limited time being aware of the game, I would welcome being pointed in the correct direction should a link be available.

Node destruction and gear loss - let me start by saying Thank you to the developers for these aspects of game play. I find it utterly insulting how many companies cave to the possibility of a lost dollar if the game simply does not appeal to the masses.
With that said my concern sits on the shoulders of the developers to balance the loss of a node on what I can only imagine is a fine line between too easy and complete abandon by individuals and groups who invest the time and effort into them.

My point derives from one of the primary factors that ended the MMO Shadowbane , while not the games only significant failure by the developers of it, maybe one that simply broke it's back.

In Shadowbane the city building and upkeep turned into such a substantial grind that upon a siege loss the defeated city owners and players quit the game in droves. The amount of time invested into something that could be lost in a few hours is a tough burden to bear.

My question(s) are directly related to this. What measures are being put in place to try and limit loss of player base due to the attrition from building and maintaining cities over long periods of time.

Time and resource loss however is only one aspect of the defeat felt by a defeated city. In addition to this they face the new uncertainty of having their habits broken. As humans many of us are creatures of habit and this creates a unique difficulty for players that then become dispersed and/or uprooted by the loss of their familiar habits be that spawning in their own home, city or area of the world map for example. These players likely developed a comfort level from any of these possible scenarios and having to learn and adjust to something else could create turmoil that they simple do not want to deal with or try and learn. Maybe this forces players to enter NPC or free cities that have no pvp, or have only pvp which could also then alienate groups of people who specifically like just one or the other.

To a less extent gear loss would work the same way, if the grind and difficulty to get any items of quality are difficult to replicate or the time investment to re-gear characters is too great.

I look forward to this discussion if anyone has feedback to provide.

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Jamation

I'm not entirely sure that I followed what you were saying or asking 100% so I apologize in advance if what I have to say isn't relevant.

Basically what I got was how risk vs reward be balanced in terms of node build-up vs destruction, as well as on a different line gear collection vs loss.

In regards to nodes from what I've seen, the build up seems reasonable enough for a well coordinated guild. As guilds will most likely be the ones controlling the bigger nodes through group voting for a mayor, they'd also be the ones gaining the benefits of choosing production sites, collecting taxes, and providing a home base for their members. A well coordinated guild could easily split up tasks based on the need of the node, whether that is collecting of resources, PvP preparation, or navigation/trade.

Now on the other hand the risk of losing control over a node also takes quite a bit of work, including a quest line that requires high ranking specialists, group coordination for a war, and overall power. However, the attackers aren't going to wander into the city and just smash everything up, they're going to be fighting against a fortified city with defenses and an army actively defending it and the resources they've worked towards. If in the end the node is lost to the attackers than the victors clearly had more manpower, better luck, or the right alliances that rewarded them with the ability to win the siege.

From what I could gather both sides of the equation require good communication and coordination, but it seems totally feasible for either side to remain victorious and reap the rewards. Now whether the reward is worth the risk? I think it's more a personal question at that point.

Tyrantor wrote: »

In addition to this they face the new uncertainty of having their habits broken. As humans many of us are creatures of habit and this creates a unique difficulty for players that then become dispersed and/or uprooted by the loss of their familiar habits be that spawning in their own home, city or area of the world map for example. These players likely developed a comfort level from any of these possible scenarios and having to learn and adjust to something else could create turmoil that they simple do not want to deal with or try and learn.

This however is something I don't think I agree with if I'm understanding it properly. If a group of people aren't happy that they lost their comfortable lifestyle and haven't learned the game enough to figure out how to regroup and readjust their play style in order to either conquer new lands or retake their homeland, that's on them. If a person grows complacent and comfortable that is actually the perfect moment for the enemy to strike. Any player that enters this game should be well aware of how the game works. If they don't want the risk of losing things, or don't want to try and learn than they simply shouldn't be paying a subscription as that's a core feature of the game.

I won't speak on the gear aspect as I'm fairly neutral on it having played a lot of different types of repair/loss styles and never cared one way or another. I usually just adjusted my play-style accordingly.

Tyrantor

You understood my point well enough. Are you able to elaborate on anything you've seen to explain your personal opinion of reasonable? Do you know what is required on any scale to level the nodes up, in both time and resources?

This essentially is my concern while not understanding any specifics I think it should be elaberated in great detail by the developers prior to release and I reason it has and is being. I understand that large, well organized and motivated guilds can accomplish things however without understanding the scope of requirements through end game node development it's hard to put any real opinion to this without first hand experience.

I would welcome anyone who's played Shadowbane especially at length and if you had any part in city building management in that game to chime in on this. In that game I led, played with and against many as you say organized guilds. Many of them regardless of organization, skill or other simply burned out in defeats due to the substantial time and resources required to run those cities.
An example for you here:
The largest guild on the server easily described as a zerg started conquering the map, they won territory, destroyed enemy cities.. Their leadership was organized, had an absurd amount of resources and controlled valuable territory. Eventually their growth created a unified alliance by nearly every other guild and city on the map which resulted in the eventual loss by the zerg guild.
Once they were defeated (the loss of their main city, even though this wasn't the winning condition to defeat them) with that stock pile of resources the vast majority of their guild especially their leadership lost interst in the game after defeat. So you can understand the magnitude of that it was like losing 40% of the server population over night. As more and more guilds lost their cities people kept leaving until the servers became shells of what they once were which then resulted in server migrations/consolidations to rejuvenate the game. Unfortunately it was a cycle that never ended and the total number of servers continued to shrink. You should also note that the example I gave you above was fairly typical on each server and the winning condition usually went as described above or simple domination by the major guild(s) on each server respectively.

Building up something that takes months and months just to watch it burn after a several hour fight, for any reason is very defeating on people. The leadership of those guilds get worn down by the daily responsibilities of cities, coordinating events and finally fighting the battles or more importantly leading the battles is very taxing on not only people's time but their mental fortitude starts to wear down. Lets just call it mental fatigue across the board.

This is essentially what i'm referring to here. If it takes a guild the size of 30-50 people only a month or two to max out a node, then yes I might agree that risk/reward is reasonable as you stated above. However on the other hand if a max level node and city takes 6+ months and could be destroyed in a two hour siege or substantially diminished I'm not certain I would agree with the assessment.

While I understand the point of the attacking force needing to spend the same general resources/time to create the attack it does not solve the problem of losing players due to the attrition of the circumstances if the cost and time to recreate the loss is steep. As a reference point so you understand, in Shadowbane the attacking force had to have their own city, in general it did not need to be of equal level however it was rare for smaller cities to attack much more fortified/funded cities as it would be more likely a counter siege would result in the loss of their own city.

While I agree the gear loss is not really worth delving into in this dicussion I just wanted to reference it as with many MMOs I played that have had gear loss it creates the same issues on a smaller/individual scale and balancing this will be important.

bloodprophet

It was stated by Steven and Jeff at various times that the effort to create the item need to siege a node would be reletive to what it took to level the node in the terms of resources. How will this be worked out remains to be seen. Perhaps in Nodes 3 which is coming soon(TM).

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Nodes#Node_destruction

Jamation

Tyrantor wrote: »

You understood my point well enough. Are you able to elaborate on anything you've seen to explain your personal opinion of reasonable? Do you know what is required on any scale to level the nodes up, in both time and resources?

I'm going based on the information from the wiki: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Nodes in regards to how long it takes a node to level up. As for resources I have no specifics other than the few times they've shown them building something like an armory or something which required like 1200 wood and stone. I can't remember the exact details but it seemed reasonable in the sense that it makes sense for the amount of players in an area/how much a building would actually cost. But it's way to early to give specifics as they are still subject to change.

Tyrantor wrote: »

This essentially is my concern while not understanding any specifics I think it should be elaberated in great detail by the developers prior to release and I reason it has and is being.

I'm sure they will once they have more concrete numbers, but release won't happen for years. Alpha 2 might not even happen this year with everything happening in the world.

Tyrantor wrote: »

Building up something that takes months and months just to watch it burn after a several hour fight, for any reason is very defeating on people. The leadership of those guilds get worn down by the daily responsibilities of cities, coordinating events and finally fighting the battles or more importantly leading the battles is very taxing on not only people's time but their mental fortitude starts to wear down. Lets just call it mental fatigue across the board.

According to our limited information the highest node level will take "many weeks" to reach that level, however due to the setup of the node system that will only apply for a handful of nodes. While I understand burnout is very real that's something a player/community has to feel for themselves. If the game loses its player base because the siege system is running them ragged then something would need to change. However, due to the requirements to even declare a siege I doubt it will happen as often as it could in other games. So I doubt very much that daily battles will be a thing. Other than taxation and building projects I'm not aware of too much other day to day upkeep that a node would require from a guild leadership stand point. It seems to me more of a guild just maintaining itself to continue to grow stronger.

Tyrantor wrote: »

This is essentially what i'm referring to here. If it takes a guild the size of 30-50 people only a month or two to max out a node, then yes I might agree that risk/reward is reasonable as you stated above. However on the other hand if a max level node and city takes 6+ months and could be destroyed in a two hour siege or substantially diminished I'm not certain I would agree with the assessment.

Nodes are not developed solely by the guilds that take residence there. A guild doesn't even necessarily have to be in control of a node (unlikely but possible) as the mayor seems to be the one calling the shots for a node. Guilds merely have the numbers to determine election results and the resources to help build up certain nodes. But like I said nodes are built up by every player that does anything within it's zone of influence from gathering plants, killing monsters, or more direct things like supplying resources or purchasing things within the node city.

Tyrantor wrote: »

While I understand the point of the attacking force needing to spend the same general resources/time to create the attack it does not solve the problem of losing players due to the attrition of the circumstances if the cost and time to recreate the loss is steep. As a reference point so you understand, in Shadowbane the attacking force had to have their own city, in general it did not need to be of equal level however it was rare for smaller cities to attack much more fortified/funded cities as it would be more likely a counter siege would result in the loss of their own city.

From how node development works I doubt there will be a lot of seiges for the sake of sieges, but more about the specific servers player-base's politics and preferences. If a guild wants to claim a higher level node all they'd need to do is muster up more votes than another guild because remember: "Guilds do not control nodes.[95][96] Guild leaders (kings and queens) can become mayors of nodes.[67]"

Higher level nodes will attract a wide range of people who will make it their home as the higher a node the more resources and utilities it'll have to offer players. A siege will most likely never be defended by the "guild in charge" but rather any player that calls that node home at the risk of losing their resources, housing, and time investment. This is why I think sieges won't happen super super frequently as it would require the force of an extraordinarily powerful and large guild or an alliance of many guilds/players and that kind of coordination takes time and effort.

Merle

There is at least one mechanic in place trying to prevent what you fear: when you loose your freehold because its parent node was destroyed, then you will get the blueprints of your freehold mailed to you so that you can rebuild it somewhere else. This prevents a complete loss of your freehold (at least, it prevents a loss of the time you needed to furnish it as you like).

Another thought: content (like dungeons, etc.) will be tied (in part) to nodes and their level. So if a node gets destroyed, then this opens up the possibility to level another node up to metropolis size and therefore open up new content. So even if you loose something by getting your favourite node destroyed, you (also all other players) gain something new instead.

And maybe / probably there will be more such mechanics in place in the final game.

Noaani

merle wrote: »

And maybe / probably there will be more such mechanics in place in the final game.

Indeed.

The blueprints are one. The fact that nodes and city construction are not guild content is another major one.

The fact that there is a 5 day notice period on metropolis sieges - allowing players plenty of time to move resources out of potential harms way - is another.

The fact that there is a 50 day period after a failed siege of a metropolis before another siege can be declared (and then the 5 day notice from above kicks in) is another - this means no node mayor will ever face a siege twice in one election cycle.

Guilds that are heavily focused around a metropolis will probably find they would rather spend their time on becoming/maintaining patron guild status rather than being node mayor - it is probably more useful for the guild - and each metropolis can only have 3 patron guilds, according to current info.

In order for any one guild to have any rel influence at a metropolis node level, that guild would need to put all progression in to increased guild size, rather than in to skills. This means you will have 300 members (max), but each of those members will be less effective than members of a smaller guild that put guild progression in to skills rather than size.

Even with that influence, the only time it is guaranteed to be effective is if you are in a scientific node where there are elections for leadership. If you are in a military node, it is also of use in the last man standing arena that determins the mayor.

However, in religious and economic nodes, the number of guild members you have that are citizens of a given node has absolutely no effect on leadership. In a religious node, a player without a guild could - theoretically - spend the entire month just doing quests that reward faith/dedication. If they have more time to dedicate to this than a guild leader, then they are probably able to take over the leadership from that guild leader.

With economic nodes, the position of mayor is literally bought with gold.

The point is, a guild should never assume they are in control of a node. Due to this, a guild should never focus all of their assets/power on one node. This means that there should never be a situation where a single siege can ruin a guild - and since everyone has a 5 day warning of a siege for a metropolis level node, there really is no excuse for a guild to lose everything.

Plateau

ZephronRedblade

Attrition and gear loss does not apply if the Node is already well established, AFAIK. How can one person be two people at the same time? It's like taking your Daystrider to visit your Daystrider. The analogy is the same. Irrevocably degrading weapons cannot overturn if there is no repair mechanism. As well as Node construction/deconstruction.

In economics, depreciation is not when you do not like something.

Tyrantor

Thank you for all of the feedback i've been able to research the game further based on these points and would like the address the following items.

Jamation wrote: »

From how node development works I doubt there will be a lot of seiges for the sake of sieges, but more about the specific servers player-base's politics and preferences. If a guild wants to claim a higher level node all they'd need to do is muster up more votes than another guild because remember: "Guilds do not control nodes.[95][96] Guild leaders (kings and queens) can become mayors of nodes.[67]"

Higher level nodes will attract a wide range of people who will make it their home as the higher a node the more resources and utilities it'll have to offer players. A siege will most likely never be defended by the "guild in charge" but rather any player that calls that node home at the risk of losing their resources, housing, and time investment. This is why I think sieges won't happen super super frequently as it would require the force of an extraordinarily powerful and large guild or an alliance of many guilds/players and that kind of coordination takes time and effort.

I'd agree in theory up to a point. Early/mid game likely would not see many sieges for the sake of it, however as the game progresses and the political systems evolve I imagine that the siege system will be a regular occurrence. In fact- the easier the cities are to build will only add fuel to the fire. Which from my perspective is a good thing, it also seems that if the larger node gets destroyed in a general ZOI then some of the smaller nodes would have a chance to advance as such becoming the parent node. Moreover it seems like the smaller nodes under parent node ZOI would be more likely to ally with larger nodes in neighboring ZOI to remove their parent so that they could then gain the parent role in their ZOI.

noaani wrote: »

The point is, a guild should never assume they are in control of a node. Due to this, a guild should never focus all of their assets/power on one node. This means that there should never be a situation where a single siege can ruin a guild - and since everyone has a 5 day warning of a siege for a metropolis level node, there really is no excuse for a guild to lose everything.

I strongly disagree with this assessment I think it's just short sighted likely due to lack of experience on the subject, no fault of your own. On simple mathematics over total server population across the number of available nodes I believe strongly that guilds will not only assume they can but will control nearly all of them. In addition to that think of it this way. Who do you think will be in position to elevate their nodes to level 3+ status first to create the parent node scenarios? Guilds should in logic control not only most nodes but all parent nodes on the world map.

From here they could create sub-guilds/alliances within their leadership to occupy the lower level nodes under their control while at the same time benefiting from the guild perks within each node as you pointed out.

The three primary nodes that will be most easily controlled by zerg guild(s).
1) Scientific (populous vote)
2) Economic (pooling resources)
3) Castle (I imagine any guild controlling a castle would benefit more from the numbers to defend it than perks to lower numbers). *Could be opposite as I do not understand the mechanics of the castle nodes however preventing the breach of attackers over the 2h attack window would seem more likely if you could simply occupy their time prior to them gaining access to the castle walls.

Guilds willing to dedicate a shared "mayor" account among their leadership for both the religious and arena nodes would be a simple way of getting around brutal questing, gearing etc for a single person. The fact that a guild could share one account that gets grouped in all questing required for the religious nodes would be a sure way to secure the position if they could run that 24/7 among their members.
The Arena node seems even easier as it may simply require a 2nd account shared by the leadership and then give access to their best pvp player - especially under the circumstances of the "champion character" instead of having to play their own during the combat.

Keep in mind the average node size would hover around 80 citizens if there were no restrictions on population for lower level nodes across the entire map. *this is based on the current node total divided by the estimated server population (high population range +/- 10,000).* While I understand most of the lower level nodes won't house that many and the larger nodes will likely house more. This number at the very least should show you that it's very reasonable to assume the mid size and large guild sizes will easily control nodes.

leonerdo wrote: »

(BIG IF) there are enough other long-term goals in the game besides conquest.

It sounds like Shadowbane fell because conquest was the only thing to work towards in the end-game. (That's not necessarily a bad thing. It sounds like it was fun while it lasted.) However, in Ashes of Creation, I think the large PvP empires will only be one of several top-end activities in the game. Ostensibly, there will also be massive PvE challenges (raids and world bosses, with difficulty and scale deserving of the title). Beyond that I can only hope, but it's possible for there also to be world-scale co-operative challenges (as opposed to competitive ones, like conquest), and lots of stories and mysteries to explore as well. And with all those additional ways to play the game long-term, I don't think people will be as distraught when they lose the wars of conquest.

If everything is war and winner takes all, it's easy to get discouraged by a loss. Especially if the only winning move is to join the zerg/empire. (Kinda boring IMO). But AoC will have more to it than that. When players lose their homes, and they have to rebuild, they aren't doing so just for the purpose of continuing to fight (and lose) in more wars.

Anyways, I hope that made sense. This is a massive topic, involving the culmination of every game system and social system that the game has to offer. So it's not easy to dive in and make a single point, especially not with any degree of confidence or certainty. The game just started alpha testing, after all. But I'm hopeful that it will be deep enough, and well-rounded enough, that it won't devolve into constant wars where the bigger team always wins.

I honestly believe you hit this on the head with the (BIG IF). Yes shadowbane in it's early - mid life span suffered from simple conquest as a winning condition/end game. Eventually it built resource control as an expanded mode of conquest that reduced the burn out from city destruction. Think of it as each guild/city could claim mines that produced valuable resources. Then on daily basis guilds would then need to defend their resources (during specific windows each day). This helped create PVP conflict and allowed guilds to "fight" it sounds very similar to the caravan system this game has in place - so that is good. It helped create an exterior political system that the guild leaders could fight over instead of burning eachothers cities.

In shadowbane there were very few world events or dungeon style raiding which would in a post WoW expectation of MMOs reduce a games playerbase drastically, as it seems to be a major draw for many in the PVE realm. Hence your big if scenario once most of the players and cities have been maxed out.

Ultimately from what i'm reading it doesn't sound like the day to day node running will require tons of attention. In Shadowbane the inner council of leadership needed to handle resources, produce equipment, deal with the political aspects in addition to sieges and resource control. Ultimately the game was a bit of a burden on players in control of cities (leadership roles). It turned city ownership and upkeep into daily maintenance. They did this for a reason because it created the "divide" from within as the burden to run the city was meant to create the need to divide the work among many inner council members creating the trust/corruption aspect in the game.

Secondary Topic:

Node exp requirement, it may impact this game as well to some extent once character development slows down at later levels. Also once nodes are maxed out what are the taxes going to benefit?

It should be worth consideration to make excess taxes in all node levels but specifically at max node level where players/citizens are given incentive financially to complete node EXP requirements on a % of their contribution to the city node. For example if the node collects $1,000,000 during a single tax cycle and one player contributes 10% of the node EXP requirement they would then benefit from that in the form of $100,000.

OR

Adding more of an AI controlled EXP gain for the cities - think of an RTS game where you build peons/SCVs (WC/SC players) to collect resources or in this case EXP for the nodes. If the mayors can control city defenses why not let them control minions that farm node EXP this would benefit the citizens of the each node at later levels (or earlier levels) to focus on tasks that may become mundane.

Thoughts?

Jamation

Tyrantor wrote: »

Which from my perspective is a good thing, it also seems that if the larger node gets destroyed in a general ZOI then some of the smaller nodes would have a chance to advance as such becoming the parent node. Moreover it seems like the smaller nodes under parent node ZOI would be more likely to ally with larger nodes in neighboring ZOI to remove their parent so that they could then gain the parent role in their ZOI.

While this is technically true it would also depend on the political climate of the server. Vassals gain some sort of benefit for being a vassal. Whether that benefit is worth the cost of being lower level will have to be a personal question the players in that zone decide. For example, if the parent node is Military, but another metropolis within a reasonable distance is also military will the players decide to reduce that parent in order to enhance a different type of node and gain the perks/benefits from it (my personal hope, as I'd hate to see a lot of similar type nodes being the only ones to get maxed).

But I do agree that I think there would be more sieges for the sake of sieges near "end game" or between expansions depending on how long it takes players to explore all of the content they want to VS how quickly new content comes out.

Tyrantor wrote: »

Secondary Topic:
Node exp requirement, it may impact this game as well to some extent once character development slows down at later levels. Also once nodes are maxed out what are the taxes going to benefit?

It should be worth consideration to make excess taxes in all node levels but specifically at max node level where players/citizens are given incentive financially to complete node EXP requirements on a % of their contribution to the city node. For example if the node collects $1,000,000 during a single tax cycle and one player contributes 10% of the node EXP requirement they would then benefit from that in the form of $100,000.

If by maxed out you mean a Node as used all of the land to build things and everything has already been built the need for node defense will always be a matter of upkeep, whether that is PvP related or PvE. In one of the more recent livestreams we can see a hoard of dragons (bugged at the time) that were intended to be attacking the city. I'd assume at some point defensive features could be added to a node in order to assist players in defending the city and driving back monsters. Also, looking at the wiki an app was mentioned for players to access the game offline with which one of the functions was "pay taxes" so I don't know if this was meant as a player can pay their taxes to the node or if the node has some form of taxation itself like paying NPC guards and the like. My knowledge is limited, but I'd assume nodes would still have some form of upkeep and would never reach a "we did everything so now we're just collecting money to collect it" stage.

As for the payment towards players I hope that never becomes a thing. Node funds are only for node development as it stands right now, but even if it wasn't I wouldn't want a node to potentially lose funding because a player plays a lot in a certain region. There would have to be limits to that idea anyways, like top 5 contributors or something, otherwise the node would lost literally all of it's money if EXP = taxation collection%.

Tyrantor wrote: »

Adding more of an AI controlled EXP gain for the cities - think of an RTS game where you build peons/SCVs (WC/SC players) to collect resources or in this case EXP for the nodes. If the mayors can control city defenses why not let them control minions that farm node EXP this would benefit the citizens of the each node at later levels (or earlier levels) to focus on tasks that may become mundane.

I doubt this would ever happen and pray it never even crosses their minds. What's the point of player interaction if things can be automated and farmed. The point of node leveling and potential node atrophy is to create a "living" world where player interaction and gathering determines how powerful an area will be. If nodes could simply automate their own experience it seems like that'd go against the fundamental core concept of the game itself.
Also, what is considered mundane for one person will probably never be considered mundane for someone else, whether that is exp farming, gathering, crafting, etc. This will also play into supply and demand as if a node truly needs something and the supply is low due to players not wanting to do it then the demand should reflect that and pay out well to those few who have the supply.

Tyrantor

Lol well both thoughts posted are a bit outside the box here but, having played many MMOs and maxing our characters, cities, equipment etc etc. The end game does happen and when it does simply doing city upkeep/taxes type of game play will eventually become just flat out boring. My point above was for the developers to incorporate some sort of system that eventually fazes out the need for players to "farm" for example.

Shadowbane was in my opinion one of the best MMO comparisons I can think of, and those cities had tons of up-keep. If the guild running them were not zergs it took a lot of farming to keep the city from degrading similar to what is described here. Again, when the game is new and everyone is growing together this aspect of the city comes natural. When nearly everyone in that node start maxing out the general aspects of the game designed AROUND leveling and building characters start to diminish which by default create a drag on the city upkeep system and by default creates the need for farming.

From my personal experience it takes away from the core aspect of the game more than I believe it would ruin player interaction, there is nothing saying you can't continue to do what ever requirements there may be for keeping the node exp moving, however if at some point you may not need to personally or simply get bored if the mechanic for that doesn't evolve much or vary.

Noaani

Tyrantor wrote: »

I strongly disagree with this assessment I think it's just short sighted likely due to lack of experience on the subject, no fault of your own.

You should probably not call other posters on these forums inexperienced, especially ones with fairly high post counts. It's not that a post count means much, but someone with more than 500 times your post count is probably not someone you want to call inexperienced in terms of the specific topic of that specific forum.

First of all, lets look at the implications of if a guild decided to attempt to "own" a metropolis level node.

The first thing that would happen is that node would likely decline due to atrphpy. Atrophy is based on experience gained, and that experience is gained from activity within the node, and also from activity within vassel nodes.

If a guild tried to run out all non-guild members from a node, they wouldn't have the player numbers left in their node to generate enough experience to stave off atrophy, and the node will delevel without even needing to be sieged.

So straight away, we can say without any hesitation that even if guilds did attempt to maintain control of a node, they still need other players to live and perform various tasks in that node. This means that even if a guild did have perpetual leadership of a given node, they still need to run it in a way where these non-guild members want to stay in that node, as there is literally nothing at all from stopping them packing up any moving to any one of the other nodes on the server, either a vassel node of the one they are in - or even a completely different metropolis. These people don't even stand to lose all that much by moving, basically just potentially higher taxes in the node they move to. What this means is that a node being run by one guild would likely need to actively provide incentives for people to stay - whether building the improvements the people want even if it isn't what the guild wants, or offering low tax rates to make it financially viable to live there.

So what we have is a situation where a guild may be able to assume they can maintain perpetual leadership of a node, but if they do, they still need to run it in a manner where non-guild members want to remain in that node if the guild wants to keep the node at the metropolis level.

Now we need to find an incentive to do this, which is where your incorrect understanding of this system completely falls apart - as there is no incentive.

Sure, mayors can raise taxes - but there is no system for that money to make it to the hands of players. It goes in to a treasury that can only be used to improve the node. There are actually no systems at all in the game that give a guild an advantage if they are in control of a node. They have control of what improvements the node makes and the level of taxes, but that is about it. Nodes can declare war on other nodes, but in a game where guilds can declare war on other guilds, being able to be in control of a node that can declare war on another node is not really much of an advantage to the guild.

So really, there is no reason at all for a guild to focus on node leadership.

Now let's talk about populations of nodes.

You say 80 per node, which is obviously basic math. You also identified the issue with that - more players will live in larger nodes than in smaller nodes. However, with the increase in housing numbers with each node level, it is safe to say there will be between 500 and 1000 citizens of a metropolis. While some housing is optional, a node will want as many citizens as possible to generate experience and stave off atrophy. This means that a single guild likely wouldn't be able to maintain the population to continually vote in a specific leader, even if the guild size was maxed out (300 players), and every guild member was a citizen of that node.

To that last point, as of current testing, players need housing in a node before they can become a citizen. Housing is added to a node at the point it levels up, but the point it levels up is obfuscated. This means players will never actually know when a node is about to level up, and so never actually know when housing is about to become available.

As such, there is no guarantee that members of the guild that are attempting "ownership" of the node will be able to get housing, and without housing they can't get citizenship (as per current testing).

Now, the mayor may opt to build additional housing on top of what is automatically added at each level, and players will be able to see exactly when this housing is being built. However, that has the opposite effect in that everyone will see it being build, and so everyone will be ready to try and get the housing when it is available. Also, with each additional housing the node builds, there are more total citizens in the node, meaning the guild makes up a smaller population of the total node population, meaning less control.

Now, the last thing to point out is that the type of content you think regular nodes will offer guilds - the content that I am telling you is not the case - is offered up in Ashes in the form of castles.

Castles are guild content in Ashes. You siege them, you own them, you defend them, all as a part of a guild.

While castles offer guild gameplay, nodes offer gameplay outside of guilds and the guild system. Guilds may want to all live in one node for convenience, and may all contribute to it's infrustructure, defense and even leadership. However, none of that content is inherently guild based game play, and doesn't offer the guild any direct benefit to be involved on a guild level.

So, if a guild wants to project some influence over the game world, they do it via castles - as per game design.

You may then ask what is stopping a guild that has a castle from also attempting to control a regular node - to which I would give you the simplest of answers - time.

First of all, owning a castle is a gameplay mechanic unto itself. Your guild will be essentially dedicated to building up the three nodes associated with the castle - a task which the developers have said will be very difficult for one guild to do by themselves.

So if you are leveling up and maintaining your castles nodes, you probably don't have time to also maintain that metropolis level node that your guild is also trying to control.

The reality of the situation here is that you simply won't have the time to maintain both a metropolis level node and a castle at the same time. While you may be able to maintan a town sized node, the question then has to be asked - why would you do that when you would be better off if your whole guild just moved in to the nearest metropolis, or an adjacent city? Your guild gains nothing by "owning" that node as we discussed above, so what value is there in it?

Then, of course, you have the biggest issue of trying to maintain control of a castle and a metropolis; all I need to do to essentially break that is declare a siege on both at the same time. I don't need to actually put much in the way of resources to both sieges (just the resources required to declare the siege) - all I need to do is see whether you put your resources in to defending your castle or your node, and then put my resources in to the other. You are now in a situaion where you need to defend two places, and I only need to attack one.

One last point to make in regards to your idea on maintaining leadership of a religious node. While we don't have the EULA/ToS for the game itself yet, it is likely safe to assume that there will be restrictions on sharing accounts.

Since this is very easy for developers to spot, and developers are within their rights to take action on the account shared as well as any other accounts run on the client PC that also ran the shared account, I can't see how this would be a good idea. Assuming such a clause does make it in to the EULA/ToS, it is safe to say that anyone gaining leadership of a religious node will likely be subjected to at least a preliminary evaluation with this in mind. This is very easy for Intrepid to do, and very hard for players to block (there are several dozen methods that can be used to check this).

What this means is that the chances of sharing an account in an attempt to maintain leadership over a religious node ending up in an entire ban of your guild are actually quite high, and likely not worth the risk as there are no actual benefits to your guild for it.

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So yeah, I think there is a whole lot in the above that you seem to not have been aware of. But hey, feel free to keep calling me inexperienced.

Tyrantor

noaani wrote: »

Tyrantor wrote: »

I strongly disagree with this assessment I think it's just short sighted likely due to lack of experience on the subject, no fault of your own.

You should probably not call other posters on these forums inexperienced, especially ones with fairly high post counts. It's not that a post count means much, but someone with more than 500 times your post count is probably not someone you want to call inexperienced in terms of the specific topic of that specific forum.

Lets start over. I did not mean to offend you. I appreciate your feedback and continued responses here. I simply have seen many MMOs and how guilds fill out in them and I believe my past experience on this does not match up with your views of how the game will evolve - safety guards or not by the development team to try and prevent or limit control.

Also what alternative are you suggesting in terms of who's running these nodes? I highly doubt it's going to be a bunch of non-guilded individuals that just make nice with people in their city, or put up posters in town suggesting we vote for them.

Also per your example of suggesting it will be hard to infiltrate cities by housing/citizenship how will competing guilds uproot those who have a firm grasp on nodes?

Furthermore, it sounds like you're considering nodes to be somewhat limited in what they would offer guilds (you specifically said "guilds gain nothing by owning that node") however I imagine that controlling a node and what structures to build to help progress their guild/members will be pivotal in their success. It's one reason why guilds will war other guilds to limit their advancement(s). - Blacksmith building for forging weapons to gear your members, academy for legendary crafting etc etc. Nodes will be IMPORTANT.

From what I've seen in MMOs is that some guilds will become "famous" for example in terms of "wow I see those guys everywhere", or "wow those guys defeated xyz monster", or "that guild has 10 cities" or "That guild keeps destroying other nodes" etc etc. What will happen here is it creates interest from people who will want to join this guild, while there is a limit in place of 300 currently what limits them from creating sub-guilds/alliances and having 5 guilds of 300 people? Do you not believe they could occupy more than one node/metropolis/castle?

Regarding the shared accounts, I highly expect they will put in their user agreement that it's not allowed. I'm sure they can "police" it if they choose to but as you may know that takes money and manpower to do this even if they have some AI system in place to alert them of it they would then need to investigate it and confirm it without a doubt. It's also highly unlikely they would "ban a whole guild" over several people sharing one account, in fact I believe in that scenario they would ONLY ban the shared account. Shared accounts are VERY common in MMOs and I've never seen them banned for any reason outside of cheating/duping type of activity. Not saying it's never happened but shared accounts for the simple purpose of playing the game with several people probably aren't that high on their list of concerns. Of course if a guild of 100 people share only 10 accounts total and have no individual accounts then yes maybe they ban the whole guild in that scenario, but if a 100 person guild has a single shared account that 10 people use to advance one character I find it unlikely they ban 100 accounts or even the 10 individuals accounts not associated with the shared one.

Keep in mind monthly subscription games developers want to keep the largest playerbase possible - they would not overlook cheating but they will also not punish non-participants and non-compromised accounts.

Jamation

First time posting from mobile so not sure how this’ll come out, but just wanted to make a quick correction to what I believe noa was saying about account sharing. A religious nodes “mayor” is not voted upon, but instead has a religious leader. They gain this rank through religious quests and gaining faith or something. But basically the example was to show that the leader of a religious node could be an individual that’s not even a part of a guild because it’s not based on money, numbers, or power.
So in that example of account sharing even if they only banned that one account then unless someone else in that guild also did a lot of faith missions then they’re no longer involved in the leadership role.

Same thing with economic nodes, you don’t have a vote, you have people with the most money leading, this will most likely could be guilds that come together to combine resources, but any player could make a ton of money if they play their cards right or get lucky.

And for military, again it’s not a vote for leadership but a gladiator ring with the last person standing as the leader.

So If I’m not mistaken only one type of node, a science node, would require voting or “putting up posters”.

As for determining facilities yes of course they’ll be useful for guilds, but they’re accessible by everyone. The priority will be more what gets built first and what will be sacrificed. Factors such as node type, surrounding node facilities, and the type of population that hangs around a certain area will all be factors to determine what facilities get built. And considering there could, and most likely will, be leadership changes during or between node facility development the motives for building types can easily change.

And as a guild can only “unofficially” control a node even an enemy guild can use the sight to gear their own members.

Plateau

Tyrantor

Seems like I'm the only one whose skeptical about guilds openly allowing access to all. It appears they would hold an advantage over both competition from outside guilds controlling the node and advancing their members through the use of the facilities further especially if they control a parent node.

With limited teleportation or "fast travel" access restricting access to nodes by outsiders will give guilds substantial early game advantages.

Undead Canuck

I would like to know how a guild will control a node. For example, in a Metropolis, there can be 3 patron guilds. The vague number we have been given is 300 in a large guild.
I am expecting that a Metropolis will require at least 1500 people to keep it going, so how would one guild control it? And what would those other 2 patron guilds be doing?
How do you restrict access to a node? Unless you have a ring of people always around it, you cannot restrict access.

Tyrantor

Why could one guild not have subguilds that establish themselves in the patron guild positions? Why could a guild not simply declare war on all neighboring guilds so that their NPC guards attack them? Why could their players not PK anyone trying to access their city? I do not think it requires a ring around the perimeter to prevent access... simply killing anyone who wonders inside to use a bank, blacksmith etc etc would be more than sufficient.

Noaani

Tyrantor wrote: »

I simply have seen many MMOs and how guilds fill out in them and I believe my past experience on this does not match up with your views of how the game will evolve

That is because your experience has been in a game where control of cities was designed as guild content, and since you see nodes as similar, you can't understand that they are not the same thing.

Guilds gain actual influence by owning castles.

As such, the top 5 guilds on each server will push for that. The next few guilds will likely push to try and challenge for those castles.

As I outlined above, a guild that has a castle won't also have the time to attempt to hold a node.

Since top guilds will go for castles first, the guilds left over to attempt to hold a node would all be second string guilds, and so wouldn't bother.

Rather, leadership of nodes will function similarly to Archeages Hero elections (Archeage happens to he a game that has heavily influenced Steven and thus the development of this game). Sure, some players from some top guilds will be in the leadership roles at times, but that is as a result of individual effort, as "the guild" they are in gains nothing from them being in those positions, and so "the guild" instead focuses guild time and resources on things that "the guild" benefits from - which in Archeage also included castle sieges, among other things.

This meant that while some players in top guilds would often be elected in Archeage, they never had a hold on things either as individuals or within the guild, and at times even unguilded players would do well in those elections.

You have experience in a game that had an outwardly similar system that was designed as guild content. You do not, it seems, have experience in the game or the system in that game that is actually influencing Ashes design.

Guilds - at least good ones - don't tend to put a massive focus of time and resources in to something if they don't actually gain something from it that they wouldn't be able to gain otherwise. In Shadowbane, guilds gained if they had co trol of cities, and so that is what they did. In Archeage, guilds didn't gain if their members were elected Heroes, and so guilds didn't dedicate guild resources to that end.

In Ashes, there will be many things guilds can do that will benefit the guild. Castles are just one such thing.

Nodes, however, offer nothing to the guild, and so guilds won't spend time or resources on them as long as there are things out there that the guild can spend those resources on instead that will actually benefit the guild.

You say that guilds will want the services of nodes, and yes, that will be important. But the reason guilds will not fight over them is because guilds will want the services from many nodes. Since each node type offers unique things to its citizens, guilds will want to ensure they have multiple citizens in each node type in order to take advantage of each unique node service in order to benefit the guild. Attempting to focus the guild on one node will actually weaken the guild, not strengthen it. Guilds may well work to ensure many nodes are leveled up, and many nodes are well defended during a siege, but they have no specific need to control the node in order to do this.

As to what a guild is able to do to take down a rival guild - well,if that rival guild is from a different metropolis, then singing the nodes they are using is an option, but so is caravan raiding - and that would be much more effective.

Or your guild could always just declare actual war on the rival guild, since that is an option that guilds can do.

Both caravan raiding and declaring g war would be more effective than attempting to siege the rival guilds node base - if the plan is to take down the rival al guild. If you attack a metropolis node cluster, you are committing massive resources in to maybe a half dozen sieges. Since taking out a metropolis simply allows a city node next to it to be leveled up, and since guilds will base themselves in a metropolis cluster rather than a single node, you would need to successfullysiege the entire cluster to take out the guild.

The resources needed to do this would likely see the attempt doing more damage to your guild than to theirs, so if it is just the guild you want to take on, you would focus on that (caravans and war).

Also, in the same way players fill out various roles in a guild (chief bounty hunter as example), guilds also have positions they fill within a guild. In order for a node to be strong, there are positions for guilds to take up that require small, medium and large guild - so by the very design of a node, a single guild can't actually run one by themselves.

leonerdo wrote: »

Regarding guilds not having the numbers/strength to control anything besides a castle: The guild cap of 300 isn't super relevant when people can make alliances in- and out-of-game. It's entirely possible for a mega-guild composed of 5+ allied guilds to reach a member count of 1000+. And that mega-guild could certainly set their sights on total domination of a multi-node "nation" if you will.

For sure this can happen, and probably will happen. However, you are talking about a group of players large enough to be a double digit percentage of the servers population at this point, which is all that is required to build up and maintain a metropolis anyway. It would be a safe assumption that an average metropolis node cluster would be home to 1500 to 1900 players under normal circumstances (which is why the notion of a single guild running them is laughable), but 1200 would likely be able to maintain such a cluster if they are organized, potentially while being able to hold the nearby castle.

I also think that kind of alliance won't stay stable for long, but that may just be me.

Tyrantor

I think you and I will just need to disagree on how this is going to unfold. I see more advantages to owning the nodes (right now) than I do the castle system - for early-mid game content and membership advancement. The castle system sounds great for end game content, gold and pvp opportunity. The limited advancement of the castle only to level 3 and lack of node (metropolis super bonus') seems less appealing. However I want to note that since the kind/queen system can also control nodes I believe the developers anticipate furthermore that guilds will covet the other 4 nodes for guild member purposes outside of pvp/siege content more.

Anyway time will tell thanks for the feedback.

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