Concern about Nodes

I have asked this question in YouTube comments to try and get it on the stream, time to see if anyone else has a similar concern.

After playing New World my worry for Ashes Node system will be the ability to monopolize Nodes around the server by the same guild. In New World the first guild to take over a town had a 90% chance to be the first to take over the next town just from the sheer amount of gold they acquired through the tax system. That led to one guild becoming so large that no other guild could compete and before the server truly started everyone was under the umbrella of this guild to get the perks that came with being the guild in charge of the town.
How will Ashes differ from this? Will a guild only be able to govern one node? Or can different people from the same guild control multiple? How will you balance the tax system? How difficult will it to be to overthrow a Mayor?

I also think after all this time and changed made, perhaps a refresh on the node system during a live stream?

I appreciate everyone's time and feedback regarding this question.
- AIMED

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Ludullu

I'd suggest reading (or re-reading) this https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Nodes

It's gonna be almost impossible for a single guild to control several nodes. The only way for them to do that is to have hundreds of members, who all manage to buy up the citizenships in the same nodes. But even then, as soon as the nodes grow bigger, that guild's influence will diminish, which will make it harder to control the nodes.

unknownsystemerror

I have called New World Ashes Lite for years. They either came up with several concepts towards implementation at the same time or "borrowed" them from Ashes. (see Steven's statement at the time) They then proceeded to 10% them to the point that they did not work as intended for Ashes. 1.5-2k server concurrency, around 10 or so "nodes" and a slew of other issues that they half-assed in an attempt to get a product out the door in a timely fashion after their about face on PVP to PVE focused gameplay. New World is broken and it won't ever be able to be "Ashes." While we have all previous statements from Intrepid on how they envision nodes to function, it remains to be seen if they pull off that heavy design load they have promised for years. If they do, then your concern about single group domination through pvp and "zerg" population mechanics are moot.

Raven016

Will Ashes of Creation be more like New World or
more like Mortal Online 2?
MO2 will start testing similar concepts next week.
Big guilds will definitely control easier their territory and the advantage to be part of such a guild or allied with them is that you have safer access to resources and PvE content.

Small guilds are more like thieves and robbers who try to farm gatherers. But they are better at PvP because they fight often against larger groups.

Kilion

I don't see much reason to be concerned about that as guilds can primarily become patrons of a Node through contribution, not just by having tons of ingame gold. They can raise taxes and allocate these funds in the city, that has no effect on how much that guild would contribute to another node.

If anything a trading guilds mayor might be able to first establish good trading relations with another Node, make a name for the guild, then send a proxy who benefits from the good reputation of the guild and might win the mayor election there. This would expand the influence of the guild but also stretches the forces of that guild thin. And since a mayor is not omnipotent, one has to question how much they could really influence from that position.

Now of course there are ways for them to have great impact, they could install a mayor in a Node as described above, then send lots of resources there and declare war on a Node they actually wanted to take out, basically starting a proxy war. But this level of political conspiracy would actually be admireable in my opinion and shouldn't be discouraged as no actual lives are in danger.

To conclude, I don't think Ashes has the same risk of guild power "snowballing" like you described it, there are too many limitations in the system Intrepid created and imo enough channels to oppose such an organisation.

daveywavey

Aimed wrote: »

In New World the first guild to take over a town had a 90% chance to be the first to take over the next town just from the sheer amount of gold they acquired through the tax system.

In a Node, the tax money can't be withdrawn by the mayor, it goes towards the node development.

It's the five Castles that get to withdraw the tax money, not the Nodes.

tautau

@Kilion is correct. Another thing to consider is that guilds are not guaranteed to be able to choose a mayor of a node. Of course, they can try, but may not succeed:

Scientific nodes elect mayors, and the guild may all vote together and try to bribe & influence other voters, but they have to guarantee of winning.

Divine node mayors are the player who contributes the most to the node through related quests and similar activities so any active player might win.

Military node mayors are chosen through PvP contests. Guilds are famous for trying to fix such contests, but again there is no guarantee an outsider couldn't win.

Economic mayorships are bought. While guilds might pool resources to buy these positions, they could be outbid or they could find such contributions become a serious drain on guild resources preventing other things (such as gear acquisition) from being done.

As was pointed out above, mayors have limited power and cannot access the node treasury for personal reasons.

Also, nodes may start with one guild having a hall in the node, but as the node grows other guilds may also build guild halls there thus complicating the node power structure.

akabear

I imagine that the way nodes function will evolve with the community and may go through leaps and hurdles as some node communities discover ways to seek advantage that perhaps were not planned within the systems

unknownsystemerror

daveywavey wrote: »

It's the five Castles that get to withdraw the tax money, not the Nodes.

And for further clarification, they can withdraw a "portion", not all. New World the guilds controlling were able to milk their "nodes" by maxing tax rates, (which was nerfed, and then nerfed again, cause if you give people a way to screw with others, they will) and refusing to spend gold on upgrading services in their settlement. Any "competitive" pvp guild worth anything will quickly realize that not spending the necessary funds to upgrade their "mini-nodes" that lead up to the main siege, and lose those bonuses for successfully defending them is not going to keep that castle beyond the month they get it. While holding a castle will be lucrative, I doubt it will be game breaking, and there are many dials that Intrepid can fiddle with to get to what they feel is the right balance.

superhero6785

First, different Node types will have different means of selecting mayors. So no, one guild can't simply vote themselves into power, or brute force their way into power, for each surrounding node.

Second, there will be 85 regular nodes. Comparing this to New Worlds 11 territories, it's not even close. There will be more than enough opportunity for many different guilds to gain a foothold across the world.

Third, the way the vassal system works, Nodes can't progress beyond their parent. This means large zerg guilds likely won't find much benefit to controlling smaller vassals, allowing those to be managed by the smaller guilds.

Large or small, you will be able to find a home in Verra.

TheHiddenDaggerInn

Raven016 wrote: »

Will Ashes of Creation be more like New World or
more like Mortal Online 2?
MO2 will start testing similar concepts next week.
Big guilds will definitely control easier their territory and the advantage to be part of such a guild or allied with them is that you have safer access to resources and PvE content.

Small guilds are more like thieves and robbers who try to farm gatherers. But they are better at PvP because they fight often against larger groups.

I hope neither,
New World was flawed from the beginning because they kept changing their identity and then didn't back it up with the proper thought or development. Stealing Idea's they thought were cool, but had no idea on how to put them in properly.

Mortal Online 2 had great potential, except for the fact that Henrik and his beard and his Dev team are not worthy of such a game, he should of sold the idea to someone who could actually put it in. When the game first came out they sold 100k copies for a game that could only hold less than 10k people, leading to up to 48 hours! of queue times. Their solution, of up instanced worlds, letting people abuse gold and kill and other mechanic to gain a unfair advantage.

Mortal Online 1 or 2 should not even be in the same breath of AoC, steam charts would tell you that.

1 Person has a passion, and Idea, and a way to articulate it his vision and hire they best people to help fulfil his dream! and that's Steven

The other person Henrik, cares more about his bad streams and nice hair and beard comments, constantly lying and or promising things that will never come to for wishing.

Depraved

Aimed wrote: »

I have asked this question in YouTube comments to try and get it on the stream, time to see if anyone else has a similar concern.

After playing New World my worry for Ashes Node system will be the ability to monopolize Nodes around the server by the same guild. In New World the first guild to take over a town had a 90% chance to be the first to take over the next town just from the sheer amount of gold they acquired through the tax system. That led to one guild becoming so large that no other guild could compete and before the server truly started everyone was under the umbrella of this guild to get the perks that came with being the guild in charge of the town.
How will Ashes differ from this? Will a guild only be able to govern one node? Or can different people from the same guild control multiple? How will you balance the tax system? How difficult will it to be to overthrow a Mayor?

I also think after all this time and changed made, perhaps a refresh on the node system during a live stream?

I appreciate everyone's time and feedback regarding this question.
- AIMED

or you know...you can just try to organize and compete instead of crying to daddy to change the system to cater to people who cant compete in PVP in a PVP game xD

It didnt matter too much in nw if one guild had territories or not, because that wouldn't prevent other players from progressing. everybody would still benefit and making money is so easy in nw that the taxes don't matter, plus u can get territory perks for tax reduction.

also, getting one territory didnt mean you could easily get the rest right away...remember that other guilds were trying to get them too...it probably only happened in the low pop servers early on, where no one got any territories for the first few days...

anyways, ashes uses a different system to give opportunity to more people to become node majors. maybe the only one where guilds will have an advantage is the economic nodes, but they might not necessarily be interested on them anyways.

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