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Open World PvP (sieges, caravans castlesieges, battlegrounds, and corruption zone.)
consultant
Member
Now the purpose of this thread is to discuss certain aspects of Open world pvp.
First I want to ask the incentive to so sieges is to protect your node that you built. and player housing
Could you not just become part of a level 6 node. Is there some game mechanics that will keep you loyal to a node.
Is there a game mechanic that only allows you to be a citizen of a node at lets say level three or below. If not well why not just become part of a Level 6 node that you did not build.
Instead of trying to unlock content in your node why not just join a level six node.
Has this issue already been addressed?
Another thing would like to mention is there could be over 100 nodes. Looks like a divided community to me?
First I want to ask the incentive to so sieges is to protect your node that you built. and player housing
Could you not just become part of a level 6 node. Is there some game mechanics that will keep you loyal to a node.
Is there a game mechanic that only allows you to be a citizen of a node at lets say level three or below. If not well why not just become part of a Level 6 node that you did not build.
Instead of trying to unlock content in your node why not just join a level six node.
Has this issue already been addressed?
Another thing would like to mention is there could be over 100 nodes. Looks like a divided community to me?
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As mentioned above, you can only be a citizen, if you have a homestead (apt, cottage, freehold, etc). And higher the node, chances are, higher taxes and rent.
Reformulate your query. And perhaps we can answer.
We do not know what kind of restrictions are on apartments. It may or may not be inconvenient to lose temporarily. Also, if you have a freehold you will have to move it as well. That may be a real problem as at least some freeholds are dependent on location and we don't know how available land will be once a server has been running for a while.
Additionally, different nodes will not be universal in design or superpowers. You may want the options at your current node.
A while back I read a post from player on the forums saying that there is no cap on node citizenship; however, the cost of living there increases as the number of citizens increases. Presumably the cost of citizenship can become prohibitive. I have not been able to find a source on that statement though.
While there may be over 100 nodes, there will only be a maximum of 5 tier 6 nodes. Each tier 6 node has influence over 20% of the world. This appears to mean that nodes will be basically brought together as one group under a tier 6 node. However, such nodes can still have conflict. Exactly how all this will play out has not been given much detail.
One other thing, unless you are completely antisocial your friends or other groups that you work with are probably at your current node that you are considering leaving. Deciding to switch nodes so that you don't have to defend your current one is going to have social ramifications.
Sure just wanted to get some feed back first the post right above me said something about friends and groups, And looks like protecting your player housing will be the main reason to defend and loot main reason to attack. Was hoping there was some other reason but looks like that is it.
lets look at groups (not neccessarily freinds) Biggest faction in this game is guilds and possible in game factions like Holy Order of Knights and not sure how big they will be . Poeople from the same zone can attack each other especially when competing for resources or just because. The the social apsect of the game that has social ramifications is a guild not a node. Other people in node will be looked as your competators not your team mates. We do have the any one can attack any one game mechanic with few exceptions
Nodes are not built through team work like players getting together and doing resource runs to build node. (Unlikely to happen in this game cause toons are suppose to attack each other for resources ideally) Although they are going to be mayorial caravans that benifit the node but those are for defenses.
Nodes come from experience you get from zone of infuence. Which is geat if you only plan to play in your zone of influence. But that is not the point I ma trying to make. Which is.......
There will be enough people that will want to attack you rest of the server. As in you have 99 other nodes and out of those nodes or 20 or if they wnat to regionalize it .or 19 other nodes that are looking or maybe looking to attack you but simply put a there is a greater pool of people that want to attack you , . than you have to defend. Yes some people will want to defend
Now you may be thinking well people have something to lose their free hold. Risk vs Reward. Not quite sure what type of reward there is for defending: ( that is a question) So defenderis taking most of the risk. Kind of feels like forced pvp. Same thing with caravans you have risk vs reward but the guy attacking per say is not taking much risk right.
Yes guess there will be an incentive to defend but to people that are not into that mode it will be more of an interuption to pve. So the chances( even though it will be anounced) of the node comming together because of demogaphics will be lower because there are just more attackers than defenders. With out getting to long winded I will just say that in Faction based mostly pvp games like 80 percent pvp 20 percent pve sometimes people do not show up to pvp events. So you take a huge server divided in half red team vs blue team and sometimes in these games not enough people show up to defend.
But we do not have red team vs blue team we have a server possiblely divided into lets say more than 50 nodes possibly up to 100. Plus In those games well it is mainly an open world pvp game with some pve. Not so with this MMO there will be people the are just not into this type of game play. Its raid night and guessing from Ashes of Creation point of veiw Raid night will post poned to protect node. Said 50 to 100 cause not every node will be developed and defended.
So we have 20 day cool down pretty clear what the intention is. However if your node gets deleveled and geussing free hold destroyed cause just not enough people to defend would it not just be better to go and rebuild in a Level 6 Node or Level 5 that already good at defending because they have enough people that like doing that type of content.
Now lets talk about skill there will be top guilds in pvp and pve and there will be guilds that are open world pvp guilds guilds that like the open world pvp system and not so much other content. Unfortunely those guilds will not evenly distributed through out the nodes. So it will be a hand full nodes that will be competing for the level 6 node. Matter a fact pvp hang out spot is gladitorial node already made athread on that. huge design mistake in my opinion. Top guilds that do Sieges wil be looking for other top players to do Sieges so the people that are the best at this will be in a few guilds.
In Short as for as the open world pvp game the way they divided up the community it is a demographic night mare. Just to be perfectly clear this well they have something to lose so they will defend idea is not going to work. Some times it does not work in games that are true open world pvp games vs Ashes of Creation that has Open World PvP Events over a PvE world. It may work the first time second time but after novelty wears off people maynot be inclined to participate, people actually have to like this type of content.
to do it.
Now you may say well if they do not like this type of content maybe this game is not for them. That is actaully me next point but will stopright her for now.
Now when it comes to the open world pvp from what I now you are only making part (events) of an open world pvp game. Maybe it is not your intention to do that (make an openworld pvp game that is) , but for players that like open world pvp they might be better off playing a different game that offers the full set of features of an open world pvp game instead of events.
First of let me talk about WoW. Now When this game came out as far as the devs were concerned they made the right decision to make factions because Invading the capital cities namely Stormwind and Ogrimmar was a thing happened all the time. Thing company apparently did not know why. When the game come out both factions would travel to dungeoun and run into each other and there would be ganking and greifing that did not sit to well on eitther side. So it was a pve point that brought both factions together that caused a deep rooted rivalry between factions. Now sieges for capital cities is not a mode that is supported by WoW but because of rivalry factions would attack each other all the time. Now at the center of all this is THE GANK I mean you are on your way to pvp in a group of five then all the sudden you get ganked really annoying some people might even call it greifing, being farmed but this is the reason Open world pvp worked on pvp servers in WoW.
Obviously WoW was completely in the dark about this cause they introduced summoning stones near dungeouns (fast travel) so toons less likely to run into each other so less ganking less rivalry less open world pvp as in invading capital cities. But in this game looks like you are replacing rivalry with loot not a good trade in my opinion.
But you do not have the Gank Instead you have a corruption system and bounty hunter.
So while the individual events look great the incentive to do them is greatly reduced. Maybe there is some other way to instill rivalry and not have the gank. Really the gank is an the most important part of an open world pvp game.
Have not heard anything about instanced PvP at 100v100 brackets or above. Reason this is relevant PvP community likes to log in and PvP not wait or plan. So are there going to be instanced based seiges?
This game has all the down sides of a 2 faction pvp game, uneven play, every one flagged for pvp, very few safe zones. With out any of the benefits. One benefit of having two sides is there are going to be in general good players on red team and blue team and bad players on both sides so skill is not congregated all on one side makes a little more even. Maybe factions could be made geographical lets say five of them one per region. Actually could take census every so often and make factions by populaiton.
But let me ask a question there is 100 nodes(actually 118 but lets just say 100). So that limits the citizen population to 100k per server. Guessing most people will want to be a citizen even if they are logged out so this kind puts the server population at 100k
Server populations that are about 100k are small servers right? Mainly cause they are not logged in all at the same time. I a mean servers with Player population with 50 k are good candidates for being merged right?
I am going to do some research but let me say that in RuneScape had at one point 186,00 active accounts and has over 100 servers and on lots of servers number of people logged in is zero over 50%. When you log in into Runscape you see how many people are currently logged in per server. So with 100k citizens 1000 per node lots of those nodes would have zero players logged in right?????? You can research that one yourslef.
You are going to have guessing 25 gladitorial nodes. So that puts the limit of 25k Pvpers that can be in Gladiattorial nodes per Server Population. So what happens if 50k people on a server are pvpers. Guessing going to have to go to another server. Same thing goes for every other node 25k limit per server population. Generally speaking there are going to be more PvPers than lets say people that are interested in an econimics node. In WoW there were PvP servers and PVE servers but no Econimic servers cause not enough player base to warrant that type of thing so. Just because of demagraphics Gladiatorial nods will will mostly be full given them a huge advantage. Right??????
So im also guessing that Ashes of Creation does not plan to have server populations greater than 100k cause only 100k citizens are allowed. And also guessing that Ashes of Creation and Devs at at IS think that a server population of 100k is a huge server. Think number of people that are actuall logged for a 100k server has been greatly overestimated. Plus you have to take that and divide by 100.
When I played WoW it was common to get groups of 40 to about 100 toons to go invade Ogrimmar. So lets say you double that number cause 2 factions lets say 200 toons. And lets say you triple that number to 600 cause in Ashes we are going to have larger servers plus planned event and incentive to defend and attack.
Now all you have to do is divide that number by 100 for the 100 nodes you have and you get 6 people for each node. Even if you got 1000 people that would only be 20 people per node. Log in into a high population WoW classic server see how many people you can get to to invade or retail WoW.
Next point being ther is a lack of over all strategy, for example defeating a node does not have a strategic value just a loot value and fun factor but I will stop here for right now.
The actual individual events look great but as far as game mechanics go in the open world pvp part of the game all I see Problems ans still have more to say.................
Can you summarise using small words and small sentences, and we can formulate some kind of answer for you.
The first answer for you is that this is not a PvE game. Defend your node or lose it.
If you want to play WoW, go and play WoW.
Wow, I said WoW a lot of times, there. WOW!
I'd highly recommend reading into the wiki if you didn't even know that. Those are the basics of the basics. There you'd probably get an answer to most of your questions.
Sure in a nutshell citizen cap is 100k or less which means it also caps server population(not number of people logged in) to 100k. 100k player population not enough to sustain pvp player base for lets say 100, 250, 500 brackets. Or you can go to any MMO not neccesarily WoW and as expected all of them are not Ashes of Creation so saying this is not WoW is kind of redundant cause 100k servers are small population servers regardless of game or type of game.
Yes I know less nodes developed means even more problems cause smaller players used 100k example to show that it will not work even under the ideal circumstances. Not quite sure how having less nodes solves the not having enough people for sieges.
Really what you guys should be saying is something about alliances but that will not either cause well guess what? The PvP nodes will be packed just cause of higher player base.
Usually do not take time to respond to most post cause well really do not have time to waste sure develpoers know this is not WoW. Think waht they do not know is a 100k server population server is a small incapable of doing 250 vs 250 and 500 vs 500. Those types of events more suted for server vs server or region vs region not 1000 population nodes.
Just ot be clear you have node of 1000 people. Chances of 250 people logged in is very low chances of all of them defending very low. Most likely about 50 people logged in per node.if they are all evenly distributed.
Another thing I would like to mention I am talking about full nodes average node population should be in the middle so 500 people per node.
Plus have not even mentioned things like Does the company really expect the player populations to fall in perfect harmony of 25 percent Econimic and 25% percent pvp nodes 25% Sceintific and 25% Divine.
That is just absurd. Well not every node is going to be devloped......thing is Ashes of Creation will have full servers so in theory ..............
Meduim player population servers are better than full servers
I could swear I saw on the wiki or heard in an interview that there wouldn't be a cap on citizens of a node either.
Server population is 50,000 way more then enough for 500v500.
"Another thing I would like to mention I am talking about full nodes average node population should be in the middle so 500 people per node."
Why would the population spread out evenly in this way? People tend to congregate look how the real world is laid out. Big cities all over the place. With smaller ones here and there.
"Next point being ther is a lack of over all strategy, for example defeating a node does not have a strategic value just a loot value and fun factor but I will stop here for right now."
What?
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Nodes
If the server decides to burn a level 6 Scientific node to the ground to build up a Militaristic node is that not strategic?
Sometimes the fun value is all that is needed. First time we raided Storm Wind wish we could have burned it to the ground. Now that I think about it same for every time after that as well.
Not really sure what your after here.
That people are not going to defend lesser nodes?
That there will not be enough people to sustain pvp?
Or what?
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Citizenship
There's no hard cap on a node's citizens, but you need to have housing in a node to be able to claim citizenship, and housing's limited. High level nodes provide various benefits & convenience that I believe housing & citizenship there will be highly sought after, i.e. expensive housing (and may be tax).
And those who cannot afford the living cost of a metropolis will be forced to live in lower level nodes.
And having citizenship & housing in a node, means you have stakes in that node, coz you've paid for the housing, and you probably have loads of materials stored in your housing. You can bet that the citizens have incentive to login & defend when their node's under siege. If a node's citizens are so inactive that they didn't bother to defend, the node deserves to be destroyed, and allow other near by, more active nodes to develop instead.
And along that line a smart mayor would be careful when he's planning which buildings to construct - more utility buildings attract more "players" to your node (they may use your node but not necessarily motivated to defend it), more apartments / housings mean more "citizens" (players who are incentivized to defend your node), but too many apartments & too little utilities make your node less attractive.
And that's strategy.
So .... what's the fuzz about?
I'm sure that if you send in your evidence for this, along with the list of top-flight MMOs that you've worked on, that they'll give your concerns some thought. There's a LOT of MMO experience in the IS team.
You have to declare a node war in advance, right? That gives people two or three days to make sure they're online and ready to defend it. If there's even a chance of my freehold being wiped out, you can bet that I'm going to be online and fighting.
Node sieges are declared days in advance and have the potential to destroy your freehold following the siege.
The specifics of node wars haven't been shown yet.
Node attack and defense is not limited to the citizens of the node or the close group (node, guild, or whatever) of the attacker.
"Citizens of the node or provincial nodes being attacked are automatically registered as defenders.[16]
Players do not need to be citizens of the node in order to register as defenders, but they cannot be citizens of a node that is at war with the node they wish to defend.[17]
Citizens of allied nodes cannot register to attack.[18]"
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Node_sieges
Once the full 5 metropolisis are built and the max server pop of 50k is achieved on full servers, then the 1/5th of the world under the local metropolis consists of about 10k players that are impacted by the results of a node destruction. Exact number of players will vary by server pop but the potential pool of players is quite high. You should also consider the fact that node sieges will only occur during local primetime for the server after having a number of days worth of advance notice.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Server_population
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Metropolis
Noticed I said logged in. Not max server population. That is 50k people logged in to make nodes work.
Not sure what the player base of OSRC is right now but last year it hit 1.1 million active accounts so if it is still about that number then it takes a player base of 1 million to have about 100k logged in or ten percent of
entire player population.
So for 50k player population on average 5,000 people would be logged in and spread out over let say 100 hundred nodes and it will be one hundred because you cannot control which node they are going to be logged into
Which comes out to 50 people logged in per node. And well out of 50 people only a small number of them will be actually in their node most likely out adventuring for most people. so at any given point in time there will be an average of less 25 people in a node. Right? Or 25 people in a Metropolis. So now we have ghosts towns. If you say Metropolis will have more then 25 people obviously well they are going to have to come from other nodes so other nodes will be basically Empty.
That would take the entire populattion of five nodes that are currently logged in to get 250 people to defend.
The 50k cap on player base per server actually makes problem worse.So now we got an averge of 500 citizens per node instead of 1000. I wrote the previos post under premise it was 100k
As far as any one in the immediate area can help you defend that is good and all but people are going to really spread out so may still be not enought people to defend.
So now we have 50k server population divided by 100 and some how this is a good idea.
I know Ashes of creation is not Old School Runescape do not see how that has anything to do with the average number of people logged in per 1 million player base. Still a demograpics nightmare.
That gives 423 players per node.
BUT...
And you missed this bit...
The word "server" has 6 letters, so we have to multiply that value by 6. So we actually get a figure of (423 * 6) = 2,538.
Now, the difference between "war" and "peace" is 2 letters (that's actually kinda deep, that...), so we halve that to get (2,538 / 2) = 1,269.
There are 9 playable races in Verra, so we multiply by 9 to make (1,269 * 9) = 11,421.
Now, choose a number from 1 to 6. Ok, you chose 3. So, we divide by 3 to get (11,421 / 3) = 3,807.
There are 10 letters in your account name, so take off 10, and then take away the number you thought of before, which was 3, and we're left with (3,807 - 10 - 3) = 3,794.
And, 3,794 players per node siege is plenty to do all sorts of PvP activities.
See? I can do it, too!
you seem to know very little about the core principles of the game. Visiting the wiki could alleviate a lot of the worries you might have. Just a sneakpeak:
Not all nodes can be developed at the same time. We might just have 50 developed nodes at any given time that support citizenship.
The amount of citizens a node can sustain is also limited and increases with size. The basic amount of citizens a Stage 3 (Vilage) Node can have for example was given as 48. Stage 0-2 can't have any citizens.
High tier nodes will have large populations, as they support it. Lower tier nodes will have lower populations. That's by design.
you seem to know very little about the core principles of the game. Visiting the wiki could alleviate a lot of the worries you might have. Just a sneakpeak:
Not all nodes can be developed at the same time. We might just have 50 developed nodes at any given time that support citizenship.
The amount of citizens a node can sustain is also limited and increases with size. The basic amount of citizens a Stage 3 (Vilage) Node can have for example was given as 48. Stage 0-2 can't have any citizens.
High tier nodes will have large populations, as they support it. Lower tier nodes will have lower populations. That's by design.[/quote]
Ok I will put it real simple
You cannot populate to the appropriate levels 100 or 50 or 20 towns wiht 50k player base. Or to put in wow terms you cannot populate 100 Stormwinds. or 50 or even 20. Less nodes means less people right?.
Less nodes or less of a player population does not make things better at most node will have 1000 citizens. A really small population for a town.
Ok lets you have have one node and that node is a metropolis and you have 1000 citizen with only ten percent of popualtion logged in at any given town that is a ghost town. or 100 people.
Does not matter if you have 2 nodes or 3 nodes or one million nodes. sure you will have more people with one million nodes but you will only have at most 1000 people to populate a one node. Not enought to do 250 and 500 events only possible if you pput 5 nodes together.
So Number of Nodes Does not even matter.
Hier tiier nodes will have greater poulations???????? CVapped at 1k period. Unles they decide to raise it.
One wow server that was full that had to be shut down was Nostalirus. Classic WoW free server. And the amount of Active Accounts for that one server was |150k. So Ashes of Creation if making bigger servers than that and has player population per server capped at 50k. And potentially plans to populate 100 stromwinds.
same
Why is there only 10% of the node's population logged in at peak primetime?
I think you're right that most people will just join a big developed node.
It also depends on how densely packed the nodes are, and how difficult it is to upgrade/maintain a node.
At least the latter is tweakable
But that's another thing that's just so exciting about AoC - this is a mechanic unique to this game with profound impacts on the world
I also don't think they will be all that common. So when one does happen a lot of people will travel along way to be apart of it.
Using Rift as an example. When I played that a lot. When ever a zone event would happen people traveled across the map to be apart of it.(Probably still do). With out fast travel people will make plans to be there or not. When a server notification goes out that node 42 will be sieged I am positive people will go there for the fun/spectacle of the event.
I personally will be there barring any RL stuff getting in the way. Even if I have to spend the entire night before getting there to log out in the area.
Population density on any given server will have some but I predict very minor effect on the number of people showing up.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Taxes
It looks like there isn't a hard cap on population per node, only how expensive it becomes to live there as population increases.
Either pvp or pve.
I like the idea but the execution left much to be desired. Some of the bonuses just didn't scale well or at all. Personally this feels like the kind of system that would fit better for the social organizations they spoke of.
As far as my understanding goes, everyone who isn't at war with a node can choose to defend it. Yes there are a lot of nodes so I understand the OPs concerns of population in each one. However each node has an area of influence that will affect what dungeons and other areas of interest have to offer.
Along with that, while a player may well be a citizen of a node (Town B ), this node may only be a level 3 or 4 node. While contributing to make their home node a higher tier you might wonder why they would defend Town A which is the other side of the world and the same type node.
A T4 science node will gain the College which offers:
Component identification for non-legendary item deconstruction.
Certification of tier 1 building schematics.
Unique and rare drop information for surrounding areas.
Concentrated essences for the creation of armor enchantment stones.
Runic power stones for weapons.
Common armor and weapon recipes (level 35 and under).
Common glyphs for the creation of accessory enhancement scrolls.
While a T6 science node can have the Academy which offers:
Components for legendary item repair.
Certification of tier 3 building schematics.
Concentrated essence for the creation of accessory enchantment stones.
Common armor and weapon recipes (level 50 and under).
Legendary glyphs for the creation of armor and weapon enhancement scrolls.
Profession mastery qualifications.
Relic and legendary crafting benches.
Legendary freehold schematic certificates.
A player who lives in Town B (T4 node) may very well still travel to and use Town A (T6 node) because they can't make what they need in the home town, or perhaps just purchase certain things from Town A that aren't in Town B. They would likely choose to defend Town A in the event it is under siege as the inconvenience of losing those abilities wouldn't be desirable.
Equally people may just like the influenced areas changes and on the flip side the community may want or need the science node to be demolished so the militaristic node can level up for different effects in the area. These effects will be desired by anyone who travels around the world and will be fought over.
I don't believe people will stick to playing in just one nodes area of influence. There will be reason to travel, be that for resources or services etc. They may choose to be citizen of a certain node for various reasons but this doesn't mean they won't travel and see the other nodes.
As there can only be 5 T6 nodes at any one time it is likely these will change quite often, but equally these will likely be defended by players all across the world due to the inconvenience of losing the access it provides for something else.
If a node is destroyed it goes down to a level 0 node. That's going to take quite some time to level back up...
Well that is what it is on average for some games. Was you can go look at Old School RuneScape and on average that game has 100k players total at any given time. You do not even have to make an acount just go to web site and click on world select https://oldschool.runescape.com/ at the writing of this post it was 126 thousand. If you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_School_RuneScape Which is Wiki for Old School Runes scape and scroll down a bit you see that in 2020 server popualtion is about 750,000 on average 100k are logged into OSR. or 13.33 percent of population.
Got the ten percent from estimating it on last years player base 1.1 million so 100k is approximitely ten percent. But just went to Old School Runescape Wiki and gound out current player base is about 750k.
Now I have gone to the Old School Runescape Website about 4 times previously and on average about 100k are logged at any given time. But at the time of this writing it was about 125k When you go to that website it tells how many people are logged in at the current moment if you click on World select Which has a gold star by it.
So about 13 percent of total server popualtion will be logged at any given time for an MMO but just answereing your question already posted enough about that subject.
Really you can go on steam and see how many people are logged for a certain game and then compare to total player count.
Why you think people won't log in?
I personally expect to see queue times with people trying to log in even after the first year or two. Especially if there is a known node siege happening that evening.