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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Noaani

leonerdo wrote: »

If nodes serve the whole community equally, then the decisions made by the mayor are either good for everyone or bad for everyone. I'm kinda hoping that doesn't happen. It would be more interesting to have competing policy ideals and internal political debates.

If mayoral decisions DO impact citizen unequally, then guilds would have a small incentive to dominate and control the elections, in order to guarantee better policies for their members, while ignoring the needs of other players. But it doesn't seem like many of the node systems would have such unequal impacts.

Regardless, y'all have worn me down on this topic, and I'll concede that node-guild squabbles will probably be relatively minor. The edge case possibilities aren't worth fighting over.

Oh, there will be some competing ideals within a node, this should go without saying. Even if everyone in a node wants the same basic services, the order at which they are bought on will differ.

No doubt players in scientific nodes will use this as a platform for elections, and any cooperation in other node types in regards to leadership contests will be based on this as well.

Thing is - while there will be services that some players want over others, they will all serve guilds that call that node home equally well.

If a guild is made up of a roughly similar demographic to the general population in terms of basic class, the desires of the guild will reflect the desires of the population.

This is why there is no point in a *guild* attempting to take control of these things - the things that they want are the things that the population in general would probably want, and if that is not the case, the node still has to go with what the bulk of the population wants.

A straight up example of this would be religion. There is every reason to believe that a node can only build one temple - and the mayor decides who that temple is to. Every god in the game will benefit some players, which means they will all benefit guilds.

However, if there happens to be more citizens of a node that want a temple to one of the gods, that is the one the node should probably build.

Atama

I just love the idea of there being good nodes, and bad nodes, and nodes that grow and improve, and others that atrophy and fail. The drama when a good node is mismanaged, the hope when people try to fix a bad node. It makes me feel like the game will never get stale, regardless of how much content gets added by developers.

(Yes, I may be overly optimistic, but damn there is so much potential here.)

Ventharien

Nah i agree, the potential is amazing. Especially as nodes start becoming famous, and people are straight up immigrating across Vera to be a part of that badass metros cluster of nodes.

Noaani

I'm not sure if I see all that much potential for individual nodes to be bought back after poor leadership, I would think even a month of mismanagement would see most nodes lose enough players to see atrophy become a real threat, and if you lose a level like this, you will likely end up as a vassal node of one of your previous vassals.

I do see all of this happening in regards to a node cluster though.

Tyrantor

noaani wrote: »

To add to the above

Tyrantor wrote: »

Honestly I feel like you you're a true board warrior and i'm not sure if you're responses are more detrimental to me, you or both of us as this continues. I just quoted something Steven said, I didn't make that theory up. However unlikely it is - it does at a minimum prove that you can Siege your own node via individual, guild or alliance if you choose to.

I'm in this thread to make sure there is no outright misinformation left unchallenged - that is my primary reason for posting in this specific thread.

Since I am posting in this thread, a secondary objective here is to attempt to correct you in things you are completely incorrect in, and point out things you are likely incorrect on or things you are making a massive, unfounded assumption on.

For some reason though, you spent a whole lot longer than you should have refusing to believe that you were incorrect in your initial assumptions - and that the fact that those assumptions were incorrect makes the actual question in the OP that you asked essentially obsolete.

Maybe you'll get around to that at some point, but I'm not holding my breath.

Seems like the exact definition of a board warrior so thank you for making my point. While you do have some good information you're not right about everything you've posted here even though you think you are. Hope we end up on the same server my friend.

GoaB

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.

That's like saying "Some people are uncomfortable with the castle move in chess. When they move is played, it allow the opponent to connect their rooks, creating an adverse situation. This needs to be removed from the game because feeling."

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