Node Siege Incentiviation

On the Discord, we discussed regular node siege incentives for both attackers and defenders. The intent of node sieges is to unlock new content. Plenty of time is given to a node's citizens that a siege will take place, so there are no such things as "surprise sieges".

My question is, how does the game go about incentivizing attacking a node?

Attacker Incentives and advantages:
- fun
- materials gained on successful siege
- changing the status quo
- possibly more organized

Attacker disadvantages:
- siege cost
- potential for failure (assuming sieges have an overall cost)
- offensive posture
- lock out period after a failed siege

Defender Incentives and advantages:
- fun
- defending their home/materials
- maintaining the status quo
- defensive posture
- lock out period after a siege

Defender disadvantages:
- less organized (possibly)
- higher tax rate on frequently sieged nodes

The obvious ideal is that both defense and offense are equally incentivized, or possibly offense is slightly more incentivized since it's slightly more player driven. This obviously does not go into guild politics, as I think those situations will be external to built in mechanics like economy and dungeons. Currently it seems like defense is both more advantageous in the siege and in purpose, so I'm hoping to get more information about what would drive a group of people to siege a node.

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tugowar

People will attack for competition

People will attack for scarcity of resources

If I need a certain node level or building type, but I can’t get it because my nose is locked out by yours, I’ll attack. I may be misunderstanding node dynamics there too

I do wonder if people will attack to stop taxation as well. A small revolt

Songcaller

tugowar wrote: »

If I need a certain node level or building type, but I can’t get it because my nose is locked out by yours, I’ll attack. I may be misunderstanding node dynamics there too

I wonder if people will cut off their nose to spite their face lol

Xrael

As long as the amount of materials you can obtain/lose from a siege is significant enough, both sides will have incentives to attack/defend. If attackers gain a significant amount of materials more than the amount they invest, then they will want to attack. If defenders are going to lose a significant amount of their materials, then they will want to defend.

phdmonster

Well, Nodes being one of the core systems in the game have plenty of incentives for players to participate on both sides of the conflict.
1. You gain or keep wealth.
2. You literally destroy the Node
3. New possibilities open up from other nodes to advance
4. Goods shift sides
5. It's a resource/gold sink for the game
6. It's hella fun
7. etc. etc.

What kind of Incentives in addition to those we already know would you like to see?

Hymnosi

tugowar wrote: »

People will attack for competition

People will attack for scarcity of resources

If I need a certain node level or building type, but I can’t get it because my nose is locked out by yours, I’ll attack. I may be misunderstanding node dynamics there too

I do wonder if people will attack to stop taxation as well. A small revolt

The first one is more of a politics thing, people doing things "just because", and that's fine. I'm sure it will happen, but again it comes down to incentivization. You need more people to want to do things "just because" than the people want to do things that save their materials/homes.

Scarcity of resources... this one is a bit wonky. Unless nodes provide benefits specific to the citizens, and you want to wipe the citizens, I don't see how this really works out. It would be interesting if there is a "limited number of resources allows concurrently in the world" and you have to destroy nodes to "release" those resources, but it would have to be communicated well, and again it sorta benefits both defense and offense at that point.

In terms of node buildings, possibly? I would imagine people would be willing to travel for a metro of a specific type versus spending a ton of money sieging a local metro.

Hymnosi

phdmonster wrote: »

Well, Nodes being one of the core systems in the game have plenty of incentives for players to participate on both sides of the conflict.
1. You gain or keep wealth.
2. You literally destroy the Node
3. New possibilities open up from other nodes to advance
4. Goods shift sides
5. It's a resource/gold sink for the game
6. It's hella fun
7. etc. etc.

What kind of Incentives in addition to those we already know would you like to see?

I'm honestly unsure, which is why I wanted to get opinions and hopefully get a staff member or Steven to comment a bit more on it. Unfortunately it's mostly theory, since we won't see this at scale for a long time.

phdmonster

Hymnosi wrote: »

phdmonster wrote: »

Well, Nodes being one of the core systems in the game have plenty of incentives for players to participate on both sides of the conflict.
1. You gain or keep wealth.
2. You literally destroy the Node
3. New possibilities open up from other nodes to advance
4. Goods shift sides
5. It's a resource/gold sink for the game
6. It's hella fun
7. etc. etc.

What kind of Incentives in addition to those we already know would you like to see?

I'm honestly unsure, which is why I wanted to get opinions and hopefully get a staff member or Steven to comment a bit more on it. Unfortunately it's mostly theory, since we won't see this at scale for a long time.

Well, for example, we know that we will be able to loot resources on a successful siege. Why not being able to loot the gold treasury and split it between the attackers or something. It's not that big when you have 250 people attacking but it is still something more.

Other than that, i think the rewards for attacking or defending a Node should come from the other systems in the game.

Hymnosi

phdmonster wrote: »

Hymnosi wrote: »

phdmonster wrote: »

Well, Nodes being one of the core systems in the game have plenty of incentives for players to participate on both sides of the conflict.
1. You gain or keep wealth.
2. You literally destroy the Node
3. New possibilities open up from other nodes to advance
4. Goods shift sides
5. It's a resource/gold sink for the game
6. It's hella fun
7. etc. etc.

What kind of Incentives in addition to those we already know would you like to see?

I'm honestly unsure, which is why I wanted to get opinions and hopefully get a staff member or Steven to comment a bit more on it. Unfortunately it's mostly theory, since we won't see this at scale for a long time.

Well, for example, we know that we will be able to loot resources on a successful siege. Why not being able to loot the gold treasury and split it between the attackers or something. It's not that big when you have 250 people attacking but it is still something more.

Other than that, i think the rewards for attacking or defending a Node should come from the other systems in the game.

The reward has to significantly outweigh the cost and time spent on preparation. Economically, no matter how you look at it, sieging is a gamble, so the gamble has to be enticing enough that people will participate. Worse still, the onus is entirely on the attackers to initiate the siege, meaning more work has to be done by the attackers than the defenders.

It's not that I don't trust the external systems to incentivize it, I don't trust players to universally understand the external systems enough to organize a siege. Obviously you will have power users who will organize non-power users, but again they are working at a significant disadvantage to the defended node as they have a built in incentive to not lose their house/materials.

Wiplasher

Hymnosi wrote: »

The reward has to significantly outweigh the cost and time spent on preparation. Economically, no matter how you look at it, sieging is a gamble, so the gamble has to be enticing enough that people will participate. Worse still, the onus is entirely on the attackers to initiate the siege, meaning more work has to be done by the attackers than the defenders.

I disagree with you on this one. I think even if the reward didn't outweigh the cost people would still do it because the content. Two games that show this are puzzle pirates and eve online. I will admit though that it doesn't always work that way and sometimes people just don't do that part of the game.

However, I think in AoC we will not have any problems with the reward not being worth the risk. In fact I think we will see lots of sieges as people are going to want to level up there nodes for one reason or the other. Groups of players I don't think will take that long to get the funding for a siege, and because there is no gear loss there is no reason to just "YOLO" it and siege a city. If you lose you lose the funding and the time that went into get the siege started. But if you win the defenders lose way more.

phdmonster

I disagree as well, the reward shouldn't be bigger than the cost and in the case of sieges most of the rewards are very subjective and you can't really measure them properly if at all.

Xrael

phdmonster wrote: »

I disagree as well, the reward shouldn't be bigger than the cost and in the case of sieges most of the rewards are very subjective and you can't really measure them properly if at all.

I disagree. I think the reward for the attackers must be higher than the cost of attacking as otherwise why attack? Change should be a constant thing in AoC, so it only makes sense to give attackers an incentive other than unlocking new content, that incentive being a resource gain.

Also, defenders should be given more incentive as well. They won't bother to defend at all if all they're going to lose is a small amount of resources in exchange for new content.

So Intrepid needs to find a happy balance in the amount of resources that is being shifted between attackers and defenders.

phdmonster

I guess we disagree then. At the end of the day it will get tested and if both devs and players are happy it will not be changed.

Songcaller

Some people are assuming it will take the same resources to initiate a siege as one would obtain from a siege. You could have to amass enough resources to build siege machines but you might gain rare materials for crafting in a successful raid. It depends on what the Node has in its reserves. It might not take Gold to initiate a Siege but you could obtain Gold from a Siege.

If the game just gives you the same resources back as it takes to siege, there would be no point to siege...

Aardvark

Neurath wrote: »

Some people are assuming it will take the same resources to initiate a siege as one would obtain from a siege. You could have to amass enough resources to build siege machines but you might gain rare materials for crafting in a successful raid. It depends on what the Node has in its reserves. It might not take Gold to initiate a Siege but you could obtain Gold from a Siege.

If the game just gives you the same resources back as it takes to siege, there would be no point to siege...

One of the main resons to seige should be to change which node controls that 20% of the world...to change the metro to a different node. This will be important even if you don't get anything else for taking it out

Xrael

Neurath wrote: »

Some people are assuming it will take the same resources to initiate a siege as one would obtain from a siege. You could have to amass enough resources to build siege machines but you might gain rare materials for crafting in a successful raid. It depends on what the Node has in its reserves. It might not take Gold to initiate a Siege but you could obtain Gold from a Siege.

If the game just gives you the same resources back as it takes to siege, there would be no point to siege...

Yea, thats what i intended to say. Amount/quality of resources should be significant enough to give an incentive to attackers/defenders to attack/defend. Unlocking new content shouldn't be the only incentive.

Songcaller

Yeah, I agree Aardvark, but if you're talking 20% I think you mean Castles, not that Nodes and which Nodes are metropolis level won't matter but the Metropolis will have vassal Nodes which comprise the 20% for Metros, and I don't think a vassal node can siege a Metro, the siege would have to come from outside the Metro Influence. In such a circumstance you could see Guilds de-levelling Metros to weaken the Castle...but I think most Guilds would go direct to the Castle.

Wiplasher

Neurath wrote: »

Yeah, I agree Aardvark, but if you're talking 20% I think you mean Castles, not that Nodes and which Nodes are metropolis level won't matter but the Metropolis will have vassal Nodes which comprise the 20% for Metros, and I don't think a vassal node can siege a Metro, the siege would have to come from outside the Metro Influence. In such a circumstance you could see Guilds de-levelling Metros to weaken the Castle...but I think most Guilds would go direct to the Castle.

A node shouldn't be able to siege another node. However a player from a node at stage 3 should be able to participate in a siege of the zone 4 node holding him down. That's what incentives sieges for the most part.

Songcaller

wiplasher4 wrote: »

A node shouldn't be able to siege another node. However a player from a node at stage 3 should be able to participate in a siege of the zone 4 node holding him down. That's what incentives sieges for the most part.

Okay thank you, I read a long thread on the subject which went to and fro. I believed you could siege a Node from within the Node Influence, you'd just need someone to initiate it. All well and all good.

palabana

Hymnosi

palabana wrote: »

Do you know if relics benefit the node they grow on, as well as transfered?

If it's just the attackers, I could see that tipping the scales significantly, but I read the wiki as best I could and I couldn't find any specific thing about it.

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