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Node Wars - What do you want to see?
deadmansprice
Moderator, Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
As we know, Ashes of Creation will have Node Wars as per below:
https://ashes.wiki/Nodes#Node_wars
Node wars
Node governments may declare war on another node and rally citizens to the cause.[143]
This mutually flags the citizens of the warring nodes, including their allies, as combatants.[154]
Social organizations quests will either be cooperative or adversarial based on the war status of their parent nodes.[154]
Vassal nodes cannot declare a node war on their parent node or any of their vassals.[8]
We have conditions that you can set between nodes with regards to either nodes being friendly with each other and acting trade alliances, or they can declare war on nodes similar to how guild wars may function in different games, where those citizens become hostile to each other based on the player government that's elected in the particular node. So those systems all kind of cater to allowing a conflict that's meaningful and that also provides a non-imbalanced relationship between stronger guilds and not as strong guilds.[101] – Steven Sharif
What do you want to see in Node Wars? What effects do you want to see, any consequences, before, during and after? Would you want to see different consequences for different nodes? Any effects on ZOI or the vassal/neighbouring nodes?
https://ashes.wiki/Nodes#Node_wars
Node wars
Node governments may declare war on another node and rally citizens to the cause.[143]
This mutually flags the citizens of the warring nodes, including their allies, as combatants.[154]
Social organizations quests will either be cooperative or adversarial based on the war status of their parent nodes.[154]
Vassal nodes cannot declare a node war on their parent node or any of their vassals.[8]
We have conditions that you can set between nodes with regards to either nodes being friendly with each other and acting trade alliances, or they can declare war on nodes similar to how guild wars may function in different games, where those citizens become hostile to each other based on the player government that's elected in the particular node. So those systems all kind of cater to allowing a conflict that's meaningful and that also provides a non-imbalanced relationship between stronger guilds and not as strong guilds.[101] – Steven Sharif
What do you want to see in Node Wars? What effects do you want to see, any consequences, before, during and after? Would you want to see different consequences for different nodes? Any effects on ZOI or the vassal/neighbouring nodes?
2
Comments
It's worth discussing imo
Tbh, there's a good chance you'll end up being stuck in a struggle or two, even if you manage to exit out of conflict.
That, and lots of alliances, politics, backstabbing, and drama that can develop.
Edit: I think this would also make them a more frequent target, which they would appreciate.
Node War needs a purpose.
In line with Intrepid's mantra of risk and reward, there need to a reason why people would go to node war. Either a gain of advantage over the opponent, or thwarting his progress. There should also be inherent risk or giving an opponent advantage or being thwarted, in case of losing the war.
What that advantage/disadvantage may be? Well that is easy to answer if we look into reasons for node wars.
1. Slowing down enemy experience gain in order to grow your own node to next stage faster
2. Diminishing enemy node's zone of influence and growing your own if node system allows it
Obviously in order for this to work, node wars needs to have very clear victory conditions or objectives
What node wars should NOT be:
1. LOL PvP because why not
2. Let me flag on cooldown because there is no risk to me as war initiator
Im going to drop this Henlein quote here:
"The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence."
Please make war meaningful and not just idiotic PvP flagging
If your Freehold is going to be destroyed on losing the city, you're going to want to defend it. If you successfully defend it, your node can't be sieged again for at least 20 days (depending on size of city). I'd suggest that losing your freehold for the sake of not joining in a siege defence will be more interfering to your gameplay than joining in to defend it.
We are talking node war, not node siege. Different mechanic
Ah yes. My apologies.... I should pay more attention while reading! Hahaha
Unsure how this would interfere with playing the rest of the game.
I think the current iteration is "lets flag on them because why not"
The definition or framework of competing interests between guilds and larger aggregate communities on servers will shape what war is. The scale of the prosecution and means of the conflict will depend on how organized the various parties are, and their ultimate objectives. If simply flagging up and running around chopping heads is what a war is some of us will get bored very quickly, on the other hand if war constitutes a full spectrum application of violence, political influence/pressure, and economic controls then almost every citizen of every node will be invested in advocating for or avoiding a node war.
If a node war system is well designed then the community will decide via organic democratic process how extreme these wars will be. No fringe group will have the ability to prosecute (or resist) a truly effective concerted use of power by a community with combined interests and leadership who can guide them effectively through political, economic, or military means. This means to me that there should be a structured political system in place for larger nodes, as well as an economic system which allows for the leverage of non military power as a means to resolve, deter, or encourage conflict.
As for Node War mechanics, I would very much like to see contestable objectives that opposing factions attempt to control leading up to the prime time node war, that convey significant benefits to the controlling parties. For example, trade outposts and forward fortifications manned by NPCs could be present at the middle ground border of the warring node factions and at intervals in the zones of both warring nodes. In the days or weeks leading up to the Node War, factions will be in conflict to control those contestable outposts and fortifications. PvE quests could become available once war was declared that allow PvE oriented players to help upgrade the defenses of their own faction's fortifications, and sabotage the defenses of the opposing faction's outposts and fortifications. While they would still have to worry about PvP to some degree given the flagging system and node war mechanics we already know about, it would not need to be the focus for those players. For PvP oriented players, they can focus on defending either those PvE players in their sabotage/reinforcement quests, or defending their own outposts and fortifications and attacking and holding the outposts and fortifications of the opposing faction.
When it would come time for the node war itself, the faction with more controlled zones would have access to more powerful siege weapons and defensive measures that would help influence the result.
I'd have 2 different ideas in terms of consequences/rewards:
1. Occupation/Annexation of a part of the losers ZOI:
Pretty self explanatory:
The winner would temporarily take over a part of the loser's ZOI. Gaining its benefits in form of both the EXP gain and the Tax income of said part of the ZOI.
2. Node-specific Consequences/Rewards
Economic Nodes are trading hubs. So they'll probably have one of the largest Tax Incomes. Which is why, the win against an Economic Node should make the winner get a substantial part of said Tax Incomes for a period of time.
Scientifc Nodes could either get a substantial part of their EXP income or whatever crafting perks the Node might have provided to the Scientific Node.
Religious Nodes are a little harder, as we don't really have much information about the religious nodes and the religion system. However, for the sake of argument, let's say - that Religions Grow in Power depending on the amount of Fevor/Follower said Pantheon/Religion collects (Pretty much how it works in the Civilizations Series, which Steven is a huge fun of). -> In that case, a interesting reward would be, that all Temples and Shrines within the Losing City would contribute to the Power of the Winning Node's Primary Religion.
Military Nodes whatever perks they might get.
Also, no matter the other rewards, i think it would be interesting, if the winning node gained temporary access to the unique and mayoral buildings of the losing nodes. (Use their market place or university as if they were a citizen)
I think it would also be interesting and a nice change of pace, if the objectives for the war changed depending on the type of the defending node. That would also thematically i fit in my opinion.
Economic Nodes:
What do economic nodes care about? Their money, their caravans, their trade.
So it would make sense, that the Win-Condition for Winning a Node War against an Economic Node would be:
Robbing NPC Created war-related Caravans, which might be delivering taxes or goods. The defending Economic Node would win, if they managed to keep a certain amount of caravans safe.
Scientific Nodes:
They care about their knowledge and technological advantages. So it would make sense, if the winning conditions for the attacker would be something akin to a capture-the-flags type event, where players of the attacking node would have to steal books/scrolls from the library of the scientific node.
Military Nodes:
Could instead be an Occupation Type War, where the attacking node has to occupy a certain node/building within the Military Node (or outside of it) for a certian period of time.
...
Either way, i do believe, that wars shouldn't be on a fixed timer. They should keep going for a long time, if neither side surrenders. That makes more unpredictable and dangerous to start compared to a war that has a fixed druation of 3 hours, as you don't know whether you'll still be at war a week from now.
To go into this in slightly more detail,
Stealth groups - Hibernian all-Ranger groups were some of my favorite experiences in all my pvp history. Due to rez mechanics and time-to-kill damage to HP ratios, a small group of Rangers could hide out in stealth, time a coordinated arrow volley to snipe out healers and other stragglers, run away, and keep doing this to sabotage the zerg's ability to move freely or to get reinforcements.
Point blank area of effect abilities - Dark Age of Camelot pbaoe spells did truly devestating amounts of damage against targets the caster was right next to. This made it a risk-reward proposition; by hiding around corners or using other tricky means, squishy groups of spellcasters could put themselves in places where they could take huge groups of people off guard, coordinate their spellcasting, and blow up entire zergs if they were unable to interrupt them. This provided opportunity for sneaky and skilled small groups to eliminate uncoordinated zergs by themselves at times.
Crowd control - CC in Dark Age of Camelot is extremely powerful. Mesmerization effects function as stuns that broke on damage; if uninterrupted, mez effects would keep players from acting for easily a full minute. These also came in aoe varieties, so zerg groups without proper defenses who grouped super close could straight up be forced to stand still and watch their group be picked off one by one.
In summary, Dark Age of Camelot had some very powerful mechanics for negating the advantage large groups offer you. This made small groups capable of meaningfully contributing to larger battlefields. That is the thing I want to see in Ashes of Creation
Flagging is a curiosity for me, but most of my concern is that participation/rewards/etc is all or nothing, where if you can't/don't want to spend 4 (arbitrary number) consecutive hours in PvP you will leave with absolutely nothing to show for it.
Node wars should be open hostilities within the territories of the participant parties and affect anyone there, as well as disrupt trade, collection of resources, and social activities. It should have real consequences for the residents of the involved nodes and not be a trivial thing. If the war system is implemented with an intensity scale, there could be anything from skirmish level hostilities and light raiding to full on sieges and captures of territories within the primary node zone of influence up to and including the node itself.
Players and guilds should have to consider the effects of a war and make decisions that have a real impact on their node and its citizens. An overly aggressive coalition should be taking risks in declaring war and likewise an overly passive faction should be prepared for uncomfortable economic sacrifices if they are unwilling to take measures to defend their turf.
I would very much like to see strong options for skillful player factions to exist and compete via diplomatic and economic system mechanics, and only be forced to resort to open war after exhausting other options.
I still can't grasp the reason behind no death penalty during node wars... the idea that players could essentially just swarm / DPS objectives for spawn points versus fighting the enemy or again bashing walls or other structures while ignoring people attacking them just to slowly burn down the health of those things to advance the fight because they have no loss on death seems like a huge oversight to me.
At the end of the day if these node wars are enjoyable people will participate in them regardless if there is a penalty. With the logic for removing the penalty would it not work the same then for high end PvE content? I mean remove the death penalty so we can wipe 50 times so more of us are interested in participating in it.
Without death penalties during node wars I see no reason not to join the attacking side of every siege that doesn't directly impact your parent node ZOI. If a death penalty is enough of a deterrent to prevent people from participating it's likely going to be a good thing more than a detriment. When 4/5ths of the server would likely have very little interest in defending a node that falls under siege they might have more interest in attacking it especially with nothing to lose.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
I agree. Sieges should be the fixed amount of time during primetime events. Wars should be something longer and greater. I'd apply this concept to guild wars as well.
We are recruiting PvPers!
You might be confusing node sieges with node wars.
"Node governments may declare war on another node and rally citizens to the cause.[1]
This mutually flags the citizens of the warring nodes, including their allies, as combatants.[2]
Social organizations quests will either be cooperative or adversarial based on the war status of their parent nodes.[2]
Vassal nodes cannot declare a node war on their parent node or any of their vassals.[3]"
Flagged as combatants tells me there are death penalties.
We are recruiting PvPers!
Can I suggest that it would be much healthier to have indirect objectives/consequences to going to war?
This means relying on other ways for nodes to interact with each other. Example: nodes placing tarriffs on each other - and a bad tarrif agreement is a great reason to go to war. Let the winner force their will on another node's relationship with them. OOFT juicy drama.
Inter-dependencies. Lots of interdependencies. juicy.
To me a war is a breakdown in relationship - so there must have been some sort of relationship (commercial or otherwise) to spawn a war. Otherwise the wars will feel artificial.
That's a pretty cool idea. Make it affect the economy a little more.
Lower prices from that war-node, but maybe it raises prices from others at the same time? So your mayor wants to send a caravan off to Node A, so he declares war on Node B in the hopes that it raises the price at Node A.
Or NPC raiders hitting the resource spawn points / quests for players to destroy resource spawn points near the enemy node?
Make it more than just Attack & Kill. You've got my vote.
Remember that I'm on your team....