Node Wars - What do you want to see?

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?

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Comments

Blrrgh

I think a node war which is decided based on 1 instanced pvp siege encounter of limited and fixed duration is not a war at all. Wars should be open ended until a victor emerges or terms are reached.

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.

Tyrantor

Personally I think node wars would be more interesting if they required the attacking party be a resident of another node and that both nodes became vulnerable at the same time. Some real risk reward.

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.

TheAccursedRat

Nothing too fancy is coming to mind other than functional arrow-loops

The Erudite Trader

a massacre caused by a long casting ritual forbidden spell by a group of archmage

Xyls

Blrrgh wrote: »

I think a node war which is decided based on 1 instanced pvp siege encounter of limited and fixed duration is not a war at all. Wars should be open ended until a victor emerges or terms are reached.

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 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.

Xyls

Tyrantor wrote: »

Personally I think node wars would be more interesting if they required the attacking party be a resident of another node and that both nodes became vulnerable at the same time. Some real risk reward.

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.

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.

maouw

Most of the suggestions for inter-node war motivation have been Direct Advantages of going to war.
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.

daveywavey

maouw wrote: »

Most of the suggestions for inter-node war motivation have been Direct Advantages of going to war.
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.

Shootersa

I want to see blood and the heads of my enemies

daveywavey

LXIX wrote: »

I want to see blood and the heads of my enemies

Remember that I'm on your team....

Shootersa

daveywavey wrote: »

LXIX wrote: »

I want to see blood and the heads of my enemies

Remember that I'm on your team....

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS9o7V_od0kiuttsQ2rsKJ-KSfak4prVDayQg&usqp=CAU&ec=45761791

Kaban

1. Limiting zerging. It can be done in a few ways however speaking from my L2 experience the actual problem was having third parties getting involved in combat. There are few solutions to the problem.

a. Limiting access to the area by forcefully teleporting non-participants out of the zone whenever they enter it.

Pros: Does not allow 3rd party to join the conflict thus limiting the zerg.
Cons: Can lock out some players if the conflict area surrounds their hunting spot.

b. Higher death penalties (like losing equipment on death, increased damage taken, lower damage dealt to fighting factions) for getting involved as a 3rd party.

Pros:
High risk of losing progress might keep zergers at bay.
Players are not locked out from the hunting zones/activities.
Cons:
Accidental involvement in combat may cost players dearly.
Still allows for zerging

c. Instanced battlegrounds.
Pros:
Players involved are instanced so their actions does not affect 3rd parties, neither 3rd parties can get involved in the fight.
More complex mechanics can be introduced into the combat as they would be rendered in an instance instead of open world.
Cons:
Takes away human interaction from the event.
To keep bystanders entertained it'd require spectator mode which can be used to gain unfair advantage if implemented poorly.

2. Adding depth to the node wars to avoid fighting just for the sake of control. If there are certain goals which rewards both parties it incentivise more people to take part in it. And here I'm going to with the example I had in my mind for a long time for a project of my own it's going to be difficult to take it 1:1 into AoC but I hope you'll get the idea. So the combat is ongoing players complete the goals and are awarded currency. However if they die they drop some of it. The currency then can be used with special node Vendors to upgrade items as well as increase tier of lower tiered items. I believe it all happened to us when we got a piece of equipment which really fitted our play style but it simply lacked power in the end game and we had to turn to just another same +x to y piece only to be strong enough to compete. With this, gear progression would get some additional layer while at the same time we'd avoid scaling bs.

3. Expanding on L2's manor system. Once the faction is in control they could for example ban certain goods from being produced in an area. We're yet to see crafting system in detail, but lets say you control the node and you can chose which materials can be gathered or affect the yield of them in the area. So you'd mine more gold or quartz at the cost of iron this way you make the area more attractive to tinkerers or jewel crafters while making it more difficult for blacksmiths to get their resources. That way you can for example stack iron one week in your area and after switching to different materials you can make extra money by inflating the price of smithing services while you keep caravans taking different routes. Then this again creates opportunities for more PvP interaction outside of node wars like mugging the caravans which in turn again creates mercenary services more valuable in certain areas.

4. Mercenary system.
Unaffiliated players would be able to sign up as mercenaries and the party with less members registered for node war could be able to pay mercs via mercenary system to have them registered for combat with additional bonuses being paid to them upon completing certain objectives. Lets say the total cost of hiring a merc is 10k. Regardless of the outcome the merc is getting 30% of that, that is if they participated until the end. The remaining 70% is within the bonuses for objectives. If the main objective is completed and the merc side emerges victorious the merc gets 100%. Every side objective (as well as victory) provides mercs with mercenary currency which can be used at merc's vendor to grab some extra consumables, or pieces of equipment.

5. Instanced access to node dungeons.
The party controlling the node would have access to instanced versions of dungeons within their territory on a cooldown. Bosses would have reduced drop rates for items but they would be able to add modifiers to dungeons which in turn would provide different level of challenge and completing these challenges on a weekly basis would provide guilds access to additional rewards. This way we're giving PvP a meaning in PvE.

theploughman

maouw wrote: »

Most of the suggestions for inter-node war motivation have been Direct Advantages of going to war.
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.

I think this was called The Phantom Menace...

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