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You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Node policies and defense against eco-warfare
Nerror
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Steven briefly mentioned node policies regarding land management in the dev stream:
Here is my take/suggestions. Feel free to poke holes and improve.
Scope
Policies only affect minerals, plants and non-aggro mobs in the node's ZOI. Including the aggro-mobs would just make it weird. Any area not within the ZOI of a lvl 3 node or higher is always a free-for-all.
Premise
Humans cannot control themselves when it comes to resource management without strong incentive systems. History has proven Tragedy of the Commons to be very real, and Ultima Online has shown that players will destroy a carefully balanced ecosystem to a point where the devs simply removed the code again entirely.
Also, you cannot defend your local resources if there are heavy penalties like corruption when you do.
Suggestion
Mayors should be able to set policies that makes it illegal to either:
The above is not meant to be an exhaustive list. It's just to set a few possible examples. Come up with better ones below!
Illegal doesn't mean it's impossible. It means it comes with risk. Anyone breaking the law will automatically be flagged as enemy of the node to all node citizens. EDIT: For 5 minutes or whatever the standard timer is. In other words, they will appear as enemies/combatants to all citizens of the node, but not to anyone who isn't a citizen. This removes corruption from the table if a citizen decides to attack. Citizens will appear as non-combatants to the poacher until they attack. The poacher/illegal logger will only be free to defend without fear of corruption if first attacked, and only against those attacking. To a neutral bystander it would look like two or more non-combatants fighting. Exactly like a node or guild war really.
In order to prevent mayors from just making it illegal for anyone other than citizens to gather anything as the default, it needs to come with a cost. For example, any illegal logging and poaching should provide no XP towards the node, where it normally would provide XP if any player in the area felled a tree. In other words, node upkeep and development would be directly hampered by those policies.
It has to be VERY obvious if gathering is considered legal or not in the area. I suggest copying the checkbox system we have for attacking other players:
With the box checked, it should still be very obvious. I suggest making the little white dot we saw on the gatherable a different color like bright red or orange, as well as coloring the progress circle we see before and during the harvesting. And a clearly visible icon on the nameplates of the non-aggro mobs would be needed to show you'll flag up if you kill them.
Something like this for illegal harvesting, but better
There is a whole parent/vassal node aspect to this as well. I haven't fully thought it through, but please come with thoughts about that as well.
Edit: I left the ZOI part a little vague on purpose, because I am not sure how I would design around the node's original and immediate ZOI, with overlapping ZOIs of parent nodes.
We could let nodes only set policies for their immediate original ZOI as if they were level 0-2 in size, which would simplify things. Or we can let parent nodes set policies for their entire ZOI, but allow vassal nodes to always override those policies for their own ZOI as they please.
Policies could potentially be enacted that might protect certain actions within resources.
Here is my take/suggestions. Feel free to poke holes and improve.
Scope
Policies only affect minerals, plants and non-aggro mobs in the node's ZOI. Including the aggro-mobs would just make it weird. Any area not within the ZOI of a lvl 3 node or higher is always a free-for-all.
Premise
Humans cannot control themselves when it comes to resource management without strong incentive systems. History has proven Tragedy of the Commons to be very real, and Ultima Online has shown that players will destroy a carefully balanced ecosystem to a point where the devs simply removed the code again entirely.
Also, you cannot defend your local resources if there are heavy penalties like corruption when you do.
Suggestion
Mayors should be able to set policies that makes it illegal to either:
- Harvest a rock or specific plant or animal species at all. For anyone. Period.
- Harvest a rock or specific plant or animal species at all unless you are a citizen of the node. Optionally also allow citizens of parent and vassal nodes to harvest freely.
- Harvest any tree or plant that hasn't reached full maturity yet. It sounds like a high gathering skill would allow for that, but also that it would negatively affect the land management score.
The above is not meant to be an exhaustive list. It's just to set a few possible examples. Come up with better ones below!
Illegal doesn't mean it's impossible. It means it comes with risk. Anyone breaking the law will automatically be flagged as enemy of the node to all node citizens. EDIT: For 5 minutes or whatever the standard timer is. In other words, they will appear as enemies/combatants to all citizens of the node, but not to anyone who isn't a citizen. This removes corruption from the table if a citizen decides to attack. Citizens will appear as non-combatants to the poacher until they attack. The poacher/illegal logger will only be free to defend without fear of corruption if first attacked, and only against those attacking. To a neutral bystander it would look like two or more non-combatants fighting. Exactly like a node or guild war really.
In order to prevent mayors from just making it illegal for anyone other than citizens to gather anything as the default, it needs to come with a cost. For example, any illegal logging and poaching should provide no XP towards the node, where it normally would provide XP if any player in the area felled a tree. In other words, node upkeep and development would be directly hampered by those policies.
It has to be VERY obvious if gathering is considered legal or not in the area. I suggest copying the checkbox system we have for attacking other players:
Without the Poaching/Illegal Gathering box checked, you simply wouldn't get the option to gather or hit non-aggro mobs in a ZOI where it's illegal.Players will be able to opt-in (via a checkbox) to allow their beneficial spells, or non-beneficial AoEs to hit flagged players. If this is checked then AoE heals or damage will affect flagged players. If it is not checked then the AoE will not damage or heal any flagged players, and as such will not cause the caster to be flagged themselves (if they are not already).
With the box checked, it should still be very obvious. I suggest making the little white dot we saw on the gatherable a different color like bright red or orange, as well as coloring the progress circle we see before and during the harvesting. And a clearly visible icon on the nameplates of the non-aggro mobs would be needed to show you'll flag up if you kill them.
Something like this for illegal harvesting, but better
There is a whole parent/vassal node aspect to this as well. I haven't fully thought it through, but please come with thoughts about that as well.
Edit: I left the ZOI part a little vague on purpose, because I am not sure how I would design around the node's original and immediate ZOI, with overlapping ZOIs of parent nodes.
We could let nodes only set policies for their immediate original ZOI as if they were level 0-2 in size, which would simplify things. Or we can let parent nodes set policies for their entire ZOI, but allow vassal nodes to always override those policies for their own ZOI as they please.
11
Comments
ZoI cannot be used because that overlaps. And the ZoI of a metro is 20% of the map.
It may be that there is no such thing as land outside of any ZoI.
I think flagging for PvP somebody who just want to be a smuggler is too harsh.
I would rather prefer a reputation system where if this smuggler does this activity consistently for a long time, it loses gradually the protection the corruption system provides.
That kind of activity can be interesting too, a bit riskier but more rewarding.
Each player could chose how far to go with such things and maybe the master smugglers while being flagged all the time, could have some benefits too, like stealth if they have no resources in their inventory. But also reduced inventory capacity.
I believe there to be at least 20 nodes at any given point not within a parent ZOI, as per the recent node changes.
More to the point, I left the ZOI part a little vague on purpose, because I am not sure how I would design around the node's original and immediate ZOI, with overlapping ZOIs of parent nodes.
We could only let nodes set policies for their immediate original ZOI as if they were level 0-2 in size, which would simplify things. Or we can let parent nodes set policies for their entire ZOI, but allow vassal nodes to always override those policies for their own ZOI as they please.
Yes, I think resources should belong to the nearest node. Maybe to take into account some other policies or events too and let nodes shift the area a little bit, to add drama and friction between nodes.
I would add some defense towers at the borders to help increase the controlled area too, towers which could be small PvP objectives.
The 20 nodes which are not part of the vassal-parent hierarchy occur because the number of nodes in the structure is limited.
I described my opinion in this post
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/374448/#Comment_374448
But I think @NiKr doesn't agree. We need more info. For sure IS has an updated node simulation...
In one of the streams Margareth said if we do not like the mayor, we should vote him out at the next opportunity.
But voting doesn't happen in all nodes the same way. In 3 nodes types, there is no election but a competition. That means the mayors can even be very new citizens, relocated with the purpose to weaken the node.
Politics can be a pain in the ass.
IMO there definitely need to be some systems in place for regulating gathering. I'm honestly surprised there haven't been more plans to institute a form of law enforcement in the game's player societies. We have the bounty hunter system in military nodes to hunt down corrupted players, but corruption is only applied via killing non-combatants. Why isn't the bounty hunter system available to every node type, and corruption applied to some degree whenever a player commits a crime in a given node network? If it's applied to the murderer of a non-combatant without any witnesses, why can't it be applied in the case of other unwitnessed crimes?
Perhaps there should be some form of threshold we get that allows us to get away with small amounts of illegal activity. Only enough for it to be accidental, or at least inconsequential. Not murder, obviously, but say you inadvertently poach a resource without thinking. You get a quick ping somewhere on screen that you committed a crime in the region. A written warning, if you will. If you do it again within a certain time limit (say a few hours or so, whatever you want) then you become corrupted. Not by much probably, but it will weaken you somewhat, ping you for bounty hunters, allow other players to kill you without being flagged for combat, and slightly increase your resource drop rate.
These specific crimes would be instituted, I imagine, as @Nerror suggested, via node policies. I really like your suggestion of changing the resource reticle and gather icon color. Simple and effective. Perhaps when we open our map, we can toggle a panel that shows currently instated policies for each node. That way, if we're going somewhere to farm, we can know ahead of time if the node currently allows the harvesting of that resource. The node policies, if I remember correctly, are currently planned to be unlockable through events and other forms of node progress. Perhaps one simply has to earn the "Flora Restriction", "Fauna Restriction", "Lumber Restriction", "Mineral Restriction" etc separately, but once learned, can be customized upon enacting with the specific resource you're restricting the harvesting of. Perhaps they could simply be unlocked by achieving a certain number of gathers in each resource category within the node.
Overall, if our only options for maintaining a decent land management score are either to risk corruption via informal PvP at random times with little to justify those PKs besides one player's opinion that someone else is taking too much of something, or go to war with another node over the actions of a few careless gatherers, I really don't think that's gonna work out well. If Intrepid is going to allow the MMO player base at large to affect the environment and its content to this degree, they need to make sure they're also giving the more dedicated members of the player base the tools required to maintain at least some semblance of order in that environment.
Bit wary about things like the tournament option for mayor in general though, bit to easy for one guild to control to many nodes. Something to see how it goes.
Really like the no xp for node if it’s a poacher idea. I think they should be auto flagged but should not be broadcasted. You should not know it’s happening unless you catch them at it and should they auto unflag reasonably quickly. About 5min.
I also think if a neighboring node does come and scavenge the land clean this is a player concern and NOT an Intrepid concern. If your neighbor does this turn about is fair play. Trying to equate this to the real world is just bad form.
With out being able to inspect other people how would this work(flagging people)?
How do you differentiate between someone exploring the map and finding a rare resource far from home and a player taking resources from an enemy node?
Not all resource types will be available in all nodes. Gatherers WILL need to travel to other nodes to gather various things. Why should they be flagged for PvP because they picked a flower?
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Gathering
This 7 minutes video, with Lord British himself, tells how players gathered everything in their way and made areas completely dry of resources in Ultima Online.
So gatherers snatching what was forbidden can still harvest with no burdensome consequences, they just have to take care and be discreet about it since they will have the purple for a number of minutes. This is nice and engaging for both parties.
How about that?
Much better!!!!
Much better, PVE and PVP friendly, this is PVX in it's truest form.
Someone who knows Steven, please forward this to him, this is simple and fair.
I think 24 hr and cool-down would make it annoying to implement and players wouldn’t get used to it being in effect. Having poaching not provide tax to the node is detrimental enough to stop it being used all the time.
Yeah, the number of hours should be tweaked in the Beta
I made a sepparate thread about this, because I dont wan't to mess Nerror's thread and I can keep my idea clean over there:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/54345/turn-purple-the-gatheres-who-are-stealing-lumber#latest
Yes that is the same as I wrote, in a nut-shell
While I like the citizens voting for the policies, I don't think it should be time-limited like that, but perhaps it should reset every mayoral election. A cool down period would detract from the whole point of having the system in the first place.
I've read it again, definitely our ideas are not the same, your idea has a bunch of punishments I can't agree with.
I think people should be rewarded for being scoundrels, even the PVE guys should.
I think cooldown for emergency actions are important, otherwise the mayor will overrule the people's wishes.
If the citizens really want something running for a long period time then they got to vote for a policy.
Could have an ability for mayor to post quest in a rival node that encourages it. For the implementation of economic wars.
I believe we will also see some pushback via unintentionally triggered events, due to the side effects of pillaging from the local wildlife and environment.
Dig too deep, and a Baelrog equivalent monstrosity emerges.
Hunt too many wildlife and maybe those Minotaurs get upset and decide to go ham on your node. Goblins were the current example, but Minotaurs seem meaner.
i.e. pay for your coffee before you drink it.
Assume the landscore is always 0 by default. Pay the node for the landscore boost.
Then you gather/kill until the landscore is back to 0.
Go back and top up the landscore if you want to continue.
This means treating landscore as a very temporary transient state though.
I like that thought. Steven did also say there are actions that will contribute positively to that landscore, iirc, so maybe something like that is already planned.
I would make one addition to the idea though, which is that it should cost a significant amount of resources to enable these policies, otherwise it will just become the standard to only allow node citizens to gather. That might be cool for creating tension, but at that point you might as well just make that the default behavior and not bother with policies.
If a node really wants to prioritize keeping their gatherables restricted to their own citizens, it should come at the cost of delaying the nodes development in some other way, such as what buildings it can build, because it spent so many resources on the policies that it takes longer to save them up for buildings. That way it won't be the case that every single node has the policy permanently enabled, as some nodes will prioritize their progression.
Also, if node citizens want to keep their priority access to their local gatherables, they will need to donate some portion of their materials to the city on an ongoing basis to keep the policies active, or else risk random nomads being free to strip the area without consequences.
On one hand, if land management is supposed to be a thing players actively pursue, there need to be levers to protect the land.
On the other hand, since there is an incentive to lock down harvesting in a node, big areas of land will be unavailable for homeless/out node gatherers. I'm not sure if this would lead to a fun player experience.
If Steven didn't mention policies I could see "land management" just being a passive system which stops players from farming in one place for weeks.
I agree on flagging purple the gatherer who is stealing stuff for a few minutes, this is PVE and PVP friendly.
I don't agree with any automatic systems which punish the player through xp, fines or corruption.
Here is were I draw the line based on this thread's idea and the idea from my thread, I want the players carrying their swords to the woods.
To me, it's the players who have to go to the woods targeting thieves, this opens the opportunity for player driven content, the only automatic stuff I agree is flagging as purple.
Can you imagine, you go steal some lumber and your chopping will echo through the entire area, people could come looking for you.
If you are referring to my first post here, there are no penalties placed on the illegal logger in my idea. Only that they are flagged for combat against the node citizens. XP was only mentioned as a suggestion that the *NODE* doesn't get any XP when an illegal logger chops down a tree. Normally nodes get XP when players chop down trees nearby. Node XP is needed for both upkeep of the node, and to grow it.
In other words, if a node becomes more isolationalist in their policies, there is a cost to doing that. A cost that all the citizens bear.
I like the gist of this, but I would probably prefer a system where such a policy would make constructing mayoral buildings more expensive. As in, more wood and stone and gold to construct a blacksmith for example. I don't think outright limiting which buildings can be placed is fair.
It could work with tax revenue instead of resources as well if that made more sense. The point is just that there should be some trade off, if the node wants citizen only gathering policies, that should mean they aren't able to afford something else they might want at the same time, or they might need an exorbitant tax rate.
Flagging is about readiness to fight being declared and visible.
Players may be in their mind ready for combat but unless they hit or hit back, that is hidden to other players around.
A thief (smuggler / poacher) however is not a combatant so it should also stay green until he fights back.
A thief's characteristic is disguise. Is similar to the corrupted (killer) but pretending to be innocent (green).
Killing a thief who does not fight back and tries to stay green should not make the attacker gain corruption and it would drop more than the green but less than a corrupted. It should never drop items.
The risk on the attacker side is that it might not know if he deals with a thief or with an innocent unless he sees the player effectively harvesting protected resources. Cutting trees is easier to notice than picking "apples" from bushes... The reward is that it gets more resources.
The risk on the thief side is that is not protected by the corruption system, so he cannot come back and fight a corrupt attacker.
Maybe the thieves (smugglers / poachers) could gain levels if that is their play style. They could get a 10 minute cool-down skill to know if a BH is close in the area.
Bounty hunters should then also detect the thieves easier, depending on the BH skill level, even before they reach the protected resources.
this video @Arya_Yeshe posted ( How Gamers Killed Ultima Online's Virtual Ecology ) is exactly what I though about when Steven talked about Ecosystem/Land Health System. That behavioral model is further supported and clarified by the videos linked in @Nerror 's post.
Flagging a non-citizen (turning their nameplate purple) is a great way to add risk to collecting resources from a node of which you are not a citizen.
I heard Steven talking about a Stolen Goods System system, so maybe they just add Poached resourced to that, whatever it is?
In other words, let the players...I mean let US...work it all out in game. If you don't want someone gathering around your node, flag on them.