"As a solo/casual player I will miss out on the mayor gameplay"

Feel free to park your QQing here. I know there is a tidal wave coming.

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seems like a Guild leader-type position and a lot of those can be hard to fill given the time commitments and turnover after the novelty wears off

Sengarden

Once the game is released and the mayoral system is finished and documented for people to see on Twitch and YT, I think most people will shut up about it. I know Steven was joking when he said this but when someone from stream asked if the Mayor will get a special home in the node, he replied yes, the drafting table in the town hall where they'll be slaving away day and night. Obviously, this was a bit of humor, but humor like that usually comes from a place of unexpressed truth. I think Steven really wants (as feasibly as possible for a video game) for being mayor to require a decent amount of free time and care for the development of a community. This isn't a mobile game built into AoC, it sounds like some pretty nitty gritty stuff that can (or at least should imo) have fairly significant consequences.

Who do we know in the video game community who already possess that kind of free time, ability to build and lead a large community of people, and in some cases have experience managing their own businesses or social logistics related to their communities? Content creators and guild leaders. Does this mean all of them will be brilliant mayors? Unfortunately, no, and I'm sure some people who are really passionate about those things will miss out on the opportunity because they don't have enough free time to build a community and campaign, but if you don't have that, what makes you think you'll have enough free time to be a good mayor?

Once the reality of the station is made plain to people through example, I think most will turn their nose at the thought of being mayor and will actually enjoy their time doing other things and simply getting caught up in the gossip and drama around current mayors or future candidates, just like what happens with real world politics.

Demostrathe

George_Black wrote: »

Feel free to park your QQing here. I know there is a tidal wave coming.

NGL unless your actually passionate (and smart) about it being a mayor will NOT be fun for you

George_Black

Demostrathe wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Feel free to park your QQing here. I know there is a tidal wave coming.

NGL unless your actually passionate (and smart) about it being a mayor will NOT be fun for you

Personally I have no interest in doing paperwork ingame, but due to the recent mmos people have become conditioned to ticking of journals, and due to how easy it is to complete everything these recent mmos offer as gameplay (main reason being that they are designed for solo players to interact with NPCs, while the real players are distant backgrounds -like npcs) some people will demand to experience mayorships, just like they demand flying mounts and FHs.

Being popular is the drive, it's easily understood, but who on earth would rather spend time enacting policies than playing the game is beyond me.
I would only partake in the military electrions, but not as the candidate.

Ludullu

George_Black wrote: »

Being popular is the drive, it's easily understood, but who on earth would rather spend time enacting policies than playing the game is beyond me.

I plan on doing this, if divine nodes can be even somewhat soloable through hardcore quest grind

Percimes

George_Black wrote: »

Being popular is the drive, it's easily understood, but who on earth would rather spend time enacting policies than playing the game is beyond me.

I don't expect the mayor's tasks to be very time consuming, from what we saw in the last dev update they seemed simple enough to enact. If the doing is not time consuming, all the PR leading to decide what needs to be done might be though, at least if the mayor wants to truly serve/implement the will of the citizens. That part of the job will probably grow with the stage of the node, the more people there are, the more time it will take to evaluate the general vibe and direction people want and balance the conflicting interests.

Tyrants doing only what they want will probably struggle once they can't rely only on the support of a small group of friends. Same with guilds which don't factor in the expectations of the whole citizenry, they'll stunt the growth of their node if they're too centred on their desires.

TheDarkSorcerer

I'm 200% a soloplayer. I'm fine with not being a mayor. I don't want that responsibility

Being a mayor in this game will literally be a fulltime job, except you're not getting a paycheck. SO I'M GOOD!!!

tautau

@Percimes clicking the necessary decision buttons won't be particularly time consuming as a mayor. True that.

But being a GOOD mayor will be time consuming indeed. Getting to know the citizens and listening to them, their concerns, desires, plans, problems, issues all take time. Then designing your decisions to address what the citizens need and want will take thought.

Dealing diplomatically with other nodes will take time. Dealing with the guilds who live in your node, and the ones which hunt in your node, will take time. Dealing with the node's thieves guild, religious authorities, merchants, and other social organizations will all take time.

Being a GOOD mayor will not be an easy task nor will it be a task that is fun, except for a few. Which makes me wonder if the kind of person attracted to be the mayor of a military node will tend to be worst than the others, thoughts?

Percimes

There are so many factors that will come into play that I don't think we can make any general assumptions on how easy it will be for the few masochists signing on for a mayor role.

I don't think the type of node will change much as far as the mayor is concerned. Well, once in power that is. Node type being fixed to the location, I think once a node evolves enough to require a mayor, the people interested in the role will put up with anything that must be done to get in the leadership position. My guess is that node type will matter more in the mind of the citizens than for the people drawn to the prestigious seat in the city hall. I don't want to downplay the importance of role playing, but I'm too delusion by now to overestimate it either.

An interesting political dynamic to observe will be when a siege is successful and a node is destroyed. Will the former mayor try to run in one of the neighbouring node? Is there a difference if the destroyed node was a vassal or the dominant one? I think it might feel as if someone had shuffled the deck of card and a new round was about to begin.

Noaani

tautau wrote: »

@Percimes clicking the necessary decision buttons won't be particularly time consuming as a mayor. True that.

But being a GOOD mayor will be time consuming indeed. Getting to know the citizens and listening to them, their concerns, desires, plans, problems, issues all take time. Then designing your decisions to address what the citizens need and want will take thought.

Yeah, but you won't need to do all of that.

Decisions as a mayor in Ashes will be limited to "should we build building "A" or building "B". There won't be any scope to try and find compromise between the two like there is in real world government.

You won't be designing your decisions, you will be picking from a small list of pre-designated options.

Raven016

The last update revealed the mandates, which they say it will be
https://youtu.be/JvsXn43Gak0?t=1918

an energy system mayors get to use to enact things
they generate mandates by having citizens participate in these activities
the more citizens like what a mayor is doing the more power the're going to get to do more things and the less citizens like what they are doing the less power they are going to get to do things

Probably this is the reason why Vaknar adjusted his OP and is asking

Vaknar wrote: »

Vaknar wrote: »

---
Edit: Follow up questions!
Do you care more about certain biomes or strategic locations?

Do you plan on changing the way you play, based on your node?

Do you want the node you choose to determine how you play the game, or based on the way you play the game will you choose whatever node is best for you at the moment?

Added some follow up questions to the OP

To me it will be important to find out guild is behind the mayor and what is my guild's relationship with that guild. Or if the mayor is following the advice of a common greater inter guild decision system or not.
Because doing what a mayor wants might be like doing what another guild wants.
And what I think should be important is to cooperate with the metropolis.
Things get more complicated after a few sieges when nodes belonging to a metropolis end up in a different metropolis system.
I wouldn't want to be a mayor talking with 20 guild leaders and suddenly having to move to other discord channels and figure out who I can trust if if I should just pretend that I do that and stay with the old group.
Most likely I will end up exploring the map and not stay much in a particular node unless they make it really important for my character to have to do that.

Raven016

Percimes wrote: »

An interesting political dynamic to observe will be when a siege is successful and a node is destroyed. Will the former mayor try to run in one of the neighbouring node? Is there a difference if the destroyed node was a vassal or the dominant one? I think it might feel as if someone had shuffled the deck of card and a new round was about to begin.

Steven wants the mayor to be like a political leader. If they can become mayors without help from guilds they still end up listening to guild leaders who control their players. But maybe there will be also guilds which are permissive and tell players "do what you want". I think few guilds will be like that.
But most likely mayors need support from guilds and guilds will support players they trust.
So when a node gets a new vassal, former mayors probably will also be replaced.

But who will play in level 3 nodes doing things for the small mayor?
Defending caravans?
Collecting low tier resources? I think low level node will not have high level NPCs on it's ZoI which probably means there will be no high tier resources either.

Raven016

TheDarkSorcerer wrote: »

I'm 200% a soloplayer. I'm fine with not being a mayor. I don't want that responsibility Being a mayor in this game will literally be a fulltime job, except you're not getting a paycheck. SO I'M GOOD!!!

If the majority of players will be more solo oriented, teaming up near bulletin boards, then their opinion will actually count more than guilds.

Traditionally in MMORPGs you're going to see a larger population of casual players than you do of hardcore players; and that's just the way the cookie crumbles from a population standpoint. And because of that and the way that nodes collect experience and advance as a result of player activity, those casual players will actually have more impact on node progression than the hardcore players will: at least as I predict, because of the sheer quantity disproportionate between the two different groups of people... You may see in Ashes the smaller hardcore group of players progress further into the late-game content, right. But they don't have the numbers to influence the nodes in those locations as quickly as the more casual... larger population has near the outskirts.[2] – Steven Sharif

Will be interesting to see how guilds will try to manipulate solo players.

Ehrgeiz

I love MMOs but hate other people around especially when there is pvp. Also I want to raid alone the hardest bosses and own a Capital-Mega-City.

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