Mayoral Corruption

Can node buildings be deconstructed/sold?

What if hypothetically a mayor was bribed to remove siege defenses to better allow the opposition to succeed?

Are there safeguards to stop this from happening or is this level of politics by design?

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HazardNumberSeven

I think that kind of internal conflict would be by design and remedy itself through emergent gameplay.
Likely it won't be possible to just grief the town into oblivion, but I expect there to be some way for people to abuse their power or things would get boring pretty quick.

JustVine

Materials contributed toward building a node building are lost if the mayor decides to scrap the project.[60]

The government decides how to specialize their node. Once they choose certain things they won't be able to choose other things.[56]

This is my reasoning for thinking 'kind of'. We have no hard data on government appointed demolition of existing structures that is on the wiki at least (feel free to correct if I am wrong, I only skimmed.) But cancellation of projects due to a bribe and picking certain projects due to a bribe certainly is going to happen due to node utility progression having competing interests among tradesmen.

Without mitigating mechanics I think your hypothetical situation could cause too many situations where many communities get a bunch of their stuff destroyed for.... Basically no reason. I don't know how bad that would be for player retention. It'd require a little more thought on the pillage node destruction and lossmechanics than I feel is currently available to the public.

On the 'positive' side it'd intensify the political system and make for interesting drama. This type of drama intensification is one of the few instance I personally am in support of it.

I like the idea of deconstructing buildings for other projects. I am less sure about 'for government funds'. But either way there are several ways to make demolition fair and less exploitable (though obviously not entirely but still.) I am therefore in favor of stone of these limitations betting implemented whole still allowing for a little room for corruption.

Limitation examples: requiring another project be proposed to issue the order, cooldown timers, putting it to a citizen referendum, limitations on the amount of structures you can deconstruct at once, time it takes to deconstruct (and providing the bonus until it is complete,) and probably a hault on construction/deconstructing on the lead up to siege.

Lots of options. A node isn't built in a day. Lots of steps along the way and therefore deconstructing isn't done in a day either.

I still think the balance of mayoral and community power needs refinement as a whole (or more public information on the current progress in design.) The mayor has a lot of power and this is potentially one of them.

Sidenote this is a great question for the next Q&A

Nerror

Specifically for defensive buildings and structures, I think we need a system where the mayor cannot remove or demolish any. It also shouldn't be a system where you have to choose between them IMO. Only the order in which they are built. The mayor can refuse to build them in peace time of course, but I think as soon as a siege is declared on a node, the defenses should auto-appear and be able to be built by the citizens without any mayoral actions.

JustVine

Nerror wrote: »

Specifically for defensive buildings and structures, I think we need a system where the mayor cannot remove or demolish any. It also shouldn't be a system where you have to choose between them IMO. Only the order in which they are built. They mayor can refuse to build them in peace time of course, but I think as soon as a siege is declared on a node, the defenses should auto-appear and be able to be built by the citizens without any mayoral actions.

I agree with all of these personally, but there are many ways to slice this that I think would also be acceptable. I am pretty pro citizen autonomy so things like 'citizens can build defenses without mayoral authorization' is a feature I would love to see.

Dygz

Is it even possible for Mayors to remove defenses?
How much would it cost to bribe a Mayor to let their Node be destroyed? They would not be Mayor anymore.
Seems likely that is something the devs would notice and lay down the ban hammer for.

How much citizen autonomy there is probably depends on the Node Type.

JustVine

1. We don't know at this time, thats, sort of why we are discussing it.
2. Depends on the wealth of the node, limitations in place, and the strategic value in question. Given how short lived a Mayoral run can be, they could see the political or demographic writing on the figurative (or literal? Grafiti would be cool) or see the, inevitability of the nodes destruction and look to get something for themselves. That's why we call it corruption.
3. Banning players for what, amounts to in game political actions (you know the alleged core story driver of the game?) Is such a dumb idea given the pitched idea of the game. Build in game limitations if you don't want them exploited. I proposed several.

I am sure they can figure it out. There are reasonable ways, to implement this without too many sandcastles being kicked over. Especially if you implement Nerror's idea of citizen built defenses

Azherae

"Dygz wrote: »

How much would it cost to bribe a Mayor to let their Node be destroyed? They would not be Mayor anymore.

About a 25% margin of return on whatever they paid to become Mayor, if the Node is Economic.

This is one of the main ways that Economic Powerhouse guilds/groups could shape the world. Send someone to become a citizen of a node you don't like, give them a ton of money to buy Mayorship and tear down all the defenses, then Siege the Node.

"Tearing down the Defenses of the Node" is their job. They don't care about being Mayor..

Ael

It would be great if any lvl 3+ node would have a kind of register showing who were the mayors of the town, and what they actually did with their powers.

Such as building / canceling structures, tax rates, cravans sent, diplomatic achievments and so on.

Especially in scientific nodes, so that people shall be able to at least get some infos in order to decide if the previous mayor has been a good one or not.
Since the other node types are not democratic ones, even if the mayor is corrupted the only way to get him out is to challenge him through the specificity of the note mayor designation system.

That being said I definitely agree with the idea of limiting the "structural damaging power" the mayor has over his town.

CROW3

This would be intriguing in the race to become the dominant node, instead of a vassal node.

If I want to win that race can I bribe the mayor of the opposing node to ‘take a fall’ and become a vassal node?

Jeebee

There's a fine line to what are acceptable levels of community drama, and as thrilling as this particular hypothetical political drama would be, the loss of player retention would likely be catastrophic.

One of the main selling points of the game is to be an MMO with "Risk versus Reward", but where is either when you have this scenario happen in a militaristic node where the person in charge is there because they won a mini game.

I'm a player who has more patience than sense and would take the time after the destruction of my town, my home, and all of my assets to climb back from refugee status and do everything in my power to assist in the destruction of that original opposing Town, however a lot of players aren't as petty as I am and that would likely be the end of their journey in Ashes.

I agree that the simplest solution is to just not allow mayors to be able to deconstruct/downgrade defenses as is likely the case.

Dygz

Azherae wrote: »

"Dygz wrote: »

How much would it cost to bribe a Mayor to let their Node be destroyed? They would not be Mayor anymore.

About a 25% margin of return on whatever they paid to become Mayor, if the Node is Economic.

This is one of the main ways that Economic Powerhouse guilds/groups could shape the world. Send someone to become a citizen of a node you don't like, give them a ton of money to buy Mayorship and tear down all the defenses, then Siege the Node.

"Tearing down the Defenses of the Node" is their job. They don't care about being Mayor..

Ha! Talk about Risk v Reward!
The Node is destroyed and then what fills that gap? No guarantee that benefits the bribers.

Sending someone to become a citizen and betray an Economic Node is different than bribing a Mayor, though.

Dygz

Jeebee wrote: »

I'm a player who has more patience than sense and would take the time after the destruction of my town, my home, and all of my assets to climb back from refugee status and do everything in my power to assist in the destruction of that original opposing Town, however a lot of players aren't as petty as I am and that would likely be the end of their journey in Ashes.

(It's not a loss of all your assets, though. It's a portion of your resources and processed materials.)

Jeebee

Dygz wrote: »

Jeebee wrote: »

I'm a player who has more patience than sense and would take the time after the destruction of my town, my home, and all of my assets to climb back from refugee status and do everything in my power to assist in the destruction of that original opposing Town, however a lot of players aren't as petty as I am and that would likely be the end of their journey in Ashes.

(It's not a loss of all your assets, though. It's a portion of your resources and processed materials.)

If you had an in node business it would be lost too(asset).

Dygz

What's an in-Node business?
Freehold depends on where it is placed and how well you were able to defend after the Siege was lost.
But... that's still not all of your assets.

Jeebee

My mistake I was under the impression that you could get businesses in-node, just checked and it looks to be freehold only.

Also I was obviously exaggerating for effect. 🙃

JustVine

Jeebee wrote: »

There's a fine line to what are acceptable levels of community drama, and as thrilling as this particular hypothetical political drama would be, the loss of player retention would likely be catastrophic.

One of the main selling points of the game is to be an MMO with "Risk versus Reward", but where is either when you have this scenario happen in a militaristic node where the person in charge is there because they won a mini game.

I'm a player who has more patience than sense and would take the time after the destruction of my town, my home, and all of my assets to climb back from refugee status and do everything in my power to assist in the destruction of that original opposing Town, however a lot of players aren't as petty as I am and that would likely be the end of their journey in Ashes.

I agree that the simplest solution is to just not allow mayors to be able to deconstruct/downgrade defenses as is likely the case.

Yeah, you were definitely the sort of person I had in mind when I said

JustVine wrote: »

Without mitigating mechanics I think your hypothetical situation could cause too many situations where many communities get a bunch of their stuff destroyed for.... Basically no reason. I don't know how bad that would be for player retention. It'd require a little more thought on the pillage node destruction and loss mechanics than I feel is currently available to the public.

It is definitely something they would have to be careful with. However this is not the only place where such things will come up. I have some fairly strong reservations about their possible plan to show freehold looting for example.

But the fix is the same in all such situations. Give people tools and situations to feel like they can have agency or respond in the situation. Enough to regroup and not focus on the loss in isolation. That's why Nerror's citizen made defenses are a good mechanic in my opinion. Yes the mayor can take down a utility in the node, but citizen led action and rallying can make up for or exceed the loss. If you keep limits on the action by the mayor irt defenses, this is an effective balancer. It isn't automatic, it requires player input, but it can 'fight back'. The infiltrator mayors job is to dissuade, demoralize, and give the enemy more opportunity to disrupt the citizen built defense progress. But that too can offer agency actions,on the citizens part through coalition building and secretive operations.

Jeebee

We want consequences to matter and if that person got elected then you need to work within the means of the mechanics to get them unelected.[65] – Steven Sharif

Sounds like there might be a framework for this kind of agency in place already.

akabear

Jeebee wrote: »

Can node buildings be deconstructed/sold?

What if hypothetically a mayor was bribed to remove siege defenses to better allow the opposition to succeed?

Are there safeguards to stop this from happening or is this level of politics by design?

If a mayor were to remove siege defences, then that will be a problem for the mayor, no doubt, later on.. The community will deal with it. Be that ostracised, banished, pk`ed on site or any number of things within the mechanics of the game. No need to be so concerned.

L2 had clans within the defence and/or attacking teams change strategy against pre-siege agreements with other clans. Take the possession, not defend, all kinds of things. It was the politics that made the game what is was, far more than the simple mechanics. Owning a castle brought great wealth to the clan.

Which raises another point, my understanding is the wealth generated by a mayor is not withdrawable .. I think there should be wealth generating capability to provide incentive, not just ownership and a more altruistic approach.

Sathrago

Jeebee wrote: »

Can node buildings be deconstructed/sold?

What if hypothetically a mayor was bribed to remove siege defenses to better allow the opposition to succeed?

Are there safeguards to stop this from happening or is this level of politics by design?

I hope there will be tools along these lines, not because I want to do it, because It helps build up lesser guilds and alliances against the "Tyrants" that own the node, creating churn that the game will desperately need.

I got this sort of feeling in the New world beta when Yellow took the first town on the server and maxed out all the tax rates. No one liked them, and that caused purple and green to explode in population against them, quickly punishing such behavior. Of course afterwards things just kind of died off as purple started taking over everything but that's an issue for limited faction pvp and not going to be a thing in ashes.

akabear

There needs to be a very high threshold on the taxes so that individual management / regulation has impact.

If the maximum tax is say 10%, then there will be little differentiation between towns, but if the max was 100%, and/or the mayor regulating the taxes is not consistent, then perhaps players will migrate to where works best for them and management of a node and working towards your town`s people will matter.

Similarly, having limited capacity to build certain buildings from the overall available types is important and will be equally important to have the destructibility capability to change a town to perceived market needs.

Providing there is no meta, this hopefully provides greater purpose and strategy to what is build and what is monitored for current \ future needs.

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