Greetings, glorious adventurers! If you're joining in our Alpha One spot testing, please follow the steps here to see all the latest test info on our forums and Discord!
Options
I think we should change the vassalization structure after a metro falls.
Voxtrium
Member
A2 has an incredible number of systems to test. However one of the long term gameplay systems in the game remains the nodes and their development/fall. The game will likely have significant upheaval during node progression during server start however determining the psychology of players and predicting how they interact with nodes months after finishing nodes development is nearly impossible to predict but extremely important. The way players siege is likely to change from month 3 of the server when every ZOI can become a metro to month 9 when every ZOI is already vassalized and likely to change again months later when the novelty of sieging is less prevalent and primarily driven through in game rewards and politics. It is entirely possible for sieges to be completely gamed once a server has finished its node vassalization, additionally even if its not gamed it may not happen nearly as often as would be healthy for the player economy. So below is my idea to change it and prevent that from ever being an issue in the first place.
I bring this up because with relic shards being earnable in a node war, node superpowers being realized with a single metro and the value of a metro to its players being so high, its very possible that sieges become a rarity after the server has a finished vassal structure and has been finished for months.
Edit:
This idea is based around node wars and only occurs after a successful siege of a METRO, no other successful siege would use this.
My idea to change the ZOI vassalization structure as it stands. Remove every single nodes lockout ZOI after a successful siege of a metro. Then allow each previously vassalized node to gain ZOI territory through node wars, expanding territory would then create a series of mat and exp sinks for the players of the node that successfully won that territory. I would suggest creating some sort of npc caravan line that would run between the acquired territory and the node that took it with the predicate for players to defend those caravans or risk losing that territory. As that territory expands nodes inside that territory are vassalized and any territories they had taken in their attempt to become the next metro added to the winners territory pool further adding npc caravan supply lines.
IMPORTANT -> A node can forfeit its right to territory expansions through a common vote by its citizens. Doing so would automatically place it in a vassalized state again to a nearby node that was intending to fight to expand its territory to become a metro.
this structure gives any node level 3 and higher that was previously vassalized by the metro a fighting chance to become the next metro. In the case by some miracle a level 3 node won the territories and took over the ZOI of the metro it would follow the standard vassal structure. Basically instead of there being a level 6 node at the top of that vassalization structure for awhile it would be a level 3 node. Of course it would be allowed to progress unlike the vassalized nodes around it and so overtime it would go from 3->6
Feedback, thoughts, ideas?
This idea uses already implemented systems - the NPC caravans already run for castles and their taxes, and the node territory wars are already being implemented as well.
I bring this up because with relic shards being earnable in a node war, node superpowers being realized with a single metro and the value of a metro to its players being so high, its very possible that sieges become a rarity after the server has a finished vassal structure and has been finished for months.
Edit:
This idea is based around node wars and only occurs after a successful siege of a METRO, no other successful siege would use this.
My idea to change the ZOI vassalization structure as it stands. Remove every single nodes lockout ZOI after a successful siege of a metro. Then allow each previously vassalized node to gain ZOI territory through node wars, expanding territory would then create a series of mat and exp sinks for the players of the node that successfully won that territory. I would suggest creating some sort of npc caravan line that would run between the acquired territory and the node that took it with the predicate for players to defend those caravans or risk losing that territory. As that territory expands nodes inside that territory are vassalized and any territories they had taken in their attempt to become the next metro added to the winners territory pool further adding npc caravan supply lines.
IMPORTANT -> A node can forfeit its right to territory expansions through a common vote by its citizens. Doing so would automatically place it in a vassalized state again to a nearby node that was intending to fight to expand its territory to become a metro.
this structure gives any node level 3 and higher that was previously vassalized by the metro a fighting chance to become the next metro. In the case by some miracle a level 3 node won the territories and took over the ZOI of the metro it would follow the standard vassal structure. Basically instead of there being a level 6 node at the top of that vassalization structure for awhile it would be a level 3 node. Of course it would be allowed to progress unlike the vassalized nodes around it and so overtime it would go from 3->6
Feedback, thoughts, ideas?
This idea uses already implemented systems - the NPC caravans already run for castles and their taxes, and the node territory wars are already being implemented as well.
3
Comments
Players function differently in a beta setting (let alone alpha) than in a real setting. For many people, they don't have their guilds with them - or at least not their full guild. Most players don't get as invested in a testing environment as they would in a live game.
To me, it seems like these aspects are kind of key to what it is you want to test.
My suggestion personally - I would like to see the ZOI after a metro falls be removed and a series of node wars be implemented across the previously vassalized nodes. The intent of the system would be to allow a node that was level 3 to potentially make metro through a series of herculean efforts of course. The node wars would need some sort of unique structure of course. Some mix of exp progression requirements, material requirements, node war between the surrounding nodes and node territory ZOI expansion through the node wars. The gist of it being players expand their nodes ZOI through node wars and thus have a chance to vassalize their surrounding nodes regardless of level. The lower level your node the harder it would need to be of course but this system allows for a t3 node to have value and create a coming up story. Yes this could mean a T3 node vassalizes a T5 node, in this case it would simply lock the T5 node at T5 again and let the T3 node go from 3->6 naturally like any other node previously had.
As it stands now, a year might pass and a level 3 node may never have any real chance of progressing to a metro because a year ago the neighboring nodes where simply more active. "Don't be a citizen of a level 3 node then" Yeah sure that is all well and good to say until 70 of the 85 nodes have a population of 20.
If who the Parent Node is decided through a war or siege or some diplomatic agreement between the node governments.... anything beyond just, "That node got to lvl 4 faster," so now I'm forced to be their ally, can't siege them, can't war them... oh yeah but they can siege my node down if they want to...
Let us decide who our allies and rivals are.
What do you mean the node we've been racing against for the past couple weeks is now our ally? What do you mean the very same people I PvP grind spots against are my superiors? Those nerds who keep scorching our land of it's natural resources are allowed to siege my node, but I can't participate in a siege against theirs??? Oh I'm not automatically signed up as a defender of their node now too in any siege against them?
Let us settle our beefs with our neighbors, many will be handled diplomatically with trade agreements and defense pacts and all kinds of stuff... That's just simply bound to happen in a game like this. Let us be the ones who decide those alliances though.
I agree with your desire to make the replacement Metro more of an actual competition between the node citizens. I'd personally prefer the entire system to be more like that to begin with though.
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes.
- military citizens would need to rake up pvp kills
- divine citizens would need to do quests inside the ruins
- commercial boys would need to bring caravans in and out of the ruins (in with collected money/glint and out with certain resources)
- scientific bois would need to hold a vote that decides a type of item they gotta find in the ruins and then find it there
All of those activities would give the respective node points (point gain balanced through testing) and the node with the most points by the end of the ruins wins the right to level up to Metro, but they obviously will still gotta work hard for that, and imo should be siegeable/warrable during that period.And only the ex-vassal citizens can earn points. They're free to hire mercs or get help, but they'll still need to do their own tasks (which also means that military citizens gotta be the ones doing the lethal blows).
Lvl5 nodes would still be the most likely ones to get the rights, cause they simply have more people, but a well-connected lvl3 node could get enough helpers to power through.
Imo this keep the idea of "all vassals have a chance to rise up after the metro falls", while at least somewhat lessening the ability of a lvl5 node to simply overpower all the other nodes in a direct territory war as you suggest.
While I hope that majority of Ashes players are pvxers, I know for sure that this will not be the case, so throwing all the citizens of the more peaceful vassals into a territory war, where the military (or simply pvper) nodes would obviously win, seems to go against the entire point of having different types of nodes.
Honestly - I am not sure I am a fan of your purposed system - it would require a lot of work from IS to implement balance and im not sure it would actually be "fun". The system I came up with uses what they already intend to develop which is important on 2 fronts. Development time and by their own expectation it should be "fun"
All of the things I suggested are in as well. If anything, we currently don't know if Nodes can have multi-wars, so an idea of a single Node attacking muuultiple territories might require more coding than mine does.
As for funness, like I said, node types will gather different kinds of people. Your idea ultimately comes down to pvp blobs winning against smaller pvp blobs, even if territory wars have some pve in them (the stream definitely showed this). While I'm trying to appeal to all the non-pvpers as well.
Commercial players might wanna buy out their node to metro, so they hire defense for their caravans and run them to get points. Divine citizens might be more inclined to have stealthy tactics or play in the off-hours, so they have their advantage. The items that scientific nodes would vote on could range in acquisition difficulty, so a group of citizens might be sure in their pvp ability and go for rare/deep items because they can defend themselves from the military bois, while another science vassal might go for cheaper stuff, but overwhelm the other contestants with numbers (because I'd imagine science nodes to be the most populous ones).
All of those players would continue playing in their own preferred style, while achieving the same goal of your suggestion.
While your idea is more overall friendly to a broader base, we are specifically talking about the aftermath of a node siege - a PVP event. Additionally the npc run caravans are still supplied by the nodes gatherers in addition to the exp requirement I also mentioned. In terms of additional development time, each node territory war would simply happen 1 at a time during server prime time at different times/locations. Takes the 12 vassal nodes, to make it simple have each node have 3 other nodes ZOI touching its ZOI border. As a result each node would have 3 node wars, each on a different day during server prime time. Additionally any node that chose to forfeit would become neutral and result in players fighting over that ZOI once their territory border was adjacent.
All I was really trying to say is that since we are talking node sieges as the catalyst for this event having it be PvP centric makes sense. In addition to the fact that the node wars still require both gathering and exp gain from PvE players, so its not excluding them either.
To design a different method for each metro superpower and implement it would be astronomically difficult to balance unless they made the entire system extremely dry.
Moving a Divine Metropolis might make sense if it opens up a new mega dungeon with different loot, but destroying an economic one would destroy worldwide auction houses. Scientific allows fast travel which is useful to a lower extent as well.
yeah this is basically the premise for the change in the system. Right now the value of destroying a node is politics - a new dungeon - a new world boss. However the only real value is the politics since the boss and dungeon are merely new, they are not adding another they are just changing it out for a different one.
Ashes has several motivations for Sieges - including Racial progression and Artisan progression... possibly the availability/scarcity of Housing... etc.
I dunno what "moving" a Divine Metro is intended to mean.
Could be that one server doesn't want a Divine Metro, so they are always destroyed.
Could be that one server wants two Divine Metros - so they Siege whatever Nodes ensure there are always two Divine Metros.
Could be that for one server Divine Metros and Scientific Metros and Military Metros are are more desirable than a global Auction House.
Could be that for one server a Tulnar Metro is more important than a Economic or Divine Metro.
What racial and artisan progression are you talking about? Once you have a metro you will have access to the highest tier crafting, highest tier processing takes place at a freehold, maybe a resource spawn would unlock from the change of a metro but I don't se how your race can benefit from a different metro outside of the aesthetic. In terms of scarcity of housing IS said themselves groups of players will use housing and they expect 1,000 to 1,200 freeholds per server. That means roughly 10,000 players will have access to freeholds through those groups. Yeah it will be the most active 10,000 accounts on the server but that makes sense, who knows how many total active accounts will end up on a server, but we do know they intend for there to be 10,000 concurrent players. Which should encompass the majority of the players who play regularly.
I understand that It'll be some conflict at first, but once the server has the metros it wants, what would be the benefit of a metro siege? They cant build new metros without destroying the old ones, so unless the server changes it's mind on what it wants (or disagrees), I think metro sieges will be rare and successful ones will be even rarer.
Also, as for the pvpness of the activity itself. The entire thing will already be pvp as hell. There'd probably be a war before the siege, in order to soften up the metro - that's majorly pvp. Then the siege itself is majorly pvp. And the ruins themselves are a damn ffa pvp zone. All of that is already pvp as hell. So I think that adding slightly more variety into a supposedly pvx game would be nice.
Not sure what you mean here. Are you talking about the different node tasks that I suggested? Cause I'd imagine that their balancing would be roughly equal to the point acquisition balancing of all the war types and objective types Intrepid have planned already.
Also, imo "take this territory by force" is as dry as it gets, when it comes to design of an activity
There will be some racial augments, and the race that contributes the most to a node will dictate aesthetic aspects of it. The only time race will come in to play is there may be some quest lines where most races need to perform a task or run some content, but people of a specific race may get the update easier.
That is about all that race does in Ashes.
In regards to the edit to the OP - I like the general concept of a metropolis falling triggering a specific node race with it's own rules to become the next metro.
The specifics of what you have said don't quite line up with my understanding of the node system - but my understanding of it may well be wrong (we don't have a lot of info on it, I would wager most peoples understanding of it is slightly different at this point).
Since it is just my understanding of the node system that would see me question things in what you've said, and since I know my understanding could well be wrong (probably is, in at least a number of aspects), and since I also like the general concept, I'm just going to leave my comments at that.
It doesn't really matter how many PvP systems a game has, if it offers non PvP gameplay its also PvX. You could be right maybe it would be too much PvP, regardless I don't think our current intended vassal system does the job however.
Well I quite disagree, taking a territory through a node war looks fun - and the general public seems to agree based on the reaction to the stream about territory node wars.
Additionally - I am not sure I understand how they could come up with a proper questing for a divine node and balance that with a PVP requirement for military nodes, and a voting/search quest for science nodes (economic nodes seems easy enough) Do you have an example quest for the divine node that might make sense?
Also don't forgot my idea doesn't just run on PvP in a node war, it is also the management of the npc caravans running gold to and from the players node to the captured node after the fact as well.
Can’t complete Racial progression without a Metro of the corresponding Race.
There are 9 Races and only 5 Metros.
That is a paraphrase. And doesn’t adequately reflect the actual concept.
Freeholds are not the only form of Housing players will covet. Freeholds can be shared.
That doesn’t mean that players will be so content with sharing that they won’t want to destroy a Metro in order to gain Freeholds and OW Housing they can individually own.
A Siege might be declared on a new Tulnar Metro because certain people don’t want the server to have a Tulnar Metro.
But, that’s not a valid criterion for declaring a Node War.
There are at least 7 Gods active on Verra who will likely be interested in spreading their influences around the world.
Also, expect quite a few Divine Node Quests to be associated with Religious Progression.
ZOI ... ... ...
Z one
O f
I nfluence ?
Love it everytime when i see someone apparently same as hungry as me for Information regarding around Nodes. Indeed - the Game will have MANY amazing Mechanics to enjoy. Node Mechanics will forever be around Place One,
because Nodes will be what Players will influence all the Time whetever they like it or not, now will they ?
I can't wait to get more Oversight over all of this in Alpha Two, hopefully - and Yes i imagine a Metropolis falling is having a huge Influence on the Vassal Nodes beneath it.
Will one of the very Nodes One Level beneath the former Metro automatically pick up the Rule in the Node Hierarchy ? Or will the first Nodes a Level beneath the former Metro start fighting for Leadership ?
Original: Metro, 2x L5, 2x L4, 4x L3, 4x lower (13 total)
ZOI 1: L5, L4, 2x L3, 2x Lower (maxed-out 6 total)
ZOI 2: L5, L4, L3, Lower (4 total)
ZOI 3: L5, L3, Lower (3 total)
It of course doesn't have to work out perfectly like this. Potentially nodes along the border might fall out of the ZOIs entriely or even be gained because they were close to a L5 previously vassalized.
---
The way the map works out every server is going to have a handful of L5 empires that will likely want to pop Metros in order to grow their own.
Also, when a Metro gets popped a scenario like in the OP pretty much already happens. But it'll have the L5 nodes competing for PvE resources to grow into a Metro. Probably with nodes wars and sieges being declared to sabotage rivals, so I don't think a special scenario is even required.
The primary benefits as far as I can tell are - The new content through quest and the world boss that shows up from a new metro being created. The ruins of the metro provide a high loot open PvP zone, freeholds can be destroyed for 2 hours following a successful siege and finally the most important player politics, since destroying a node will result in the destruction of hundreds of millions in player investments.
All of that being said - the risk being so high on both ends of this equation - I believe that once sieges are less of a novelty and players have gone through the cycle of losing their shit once or twice - they will choose to game the system to maximize their player characters. Why have an honest siege that is likely to fail when you could organize a metro to fall by working with the citizens since it can easily be in everyones best interest to change the metro that is available.
@NiKr
I guess I just don't see a way to balance a quest with PvP with economics when talking about a nodes territory expansion since those are fundamentally different gameplay loops. Even if its doable it would be rather complicated to implement and even moreso to balance.
My idea specifically allows nodes to ally between eachother - by "forfeiting" their right to a territory expansion they could just as easily be supporting a node of their choice. Take my example above of each node having 3 adjacent territories to fight for after a metro falls. If a node doesn't want to fight it can forfeit the territory war of its choice giving its territory to that node - effectively supporting its rise to power.
My idea implements politics, includes both PvE and PvP and utilizes already implemented or planned to be implemented systems.
I am not sure how it would split into 3 T5 nodes since its vassal structure was compromised of only 2? In a fully developed Verra all other T5 nodes would have already been vassalized so im unsure how 3 can enter the equation.
I do believe you might correct about the aftermath of a metro siege, my intent with the gameplay design change is because I think that the node siege mechanics will be gamed by players. Once the novelty of sieging wears off and players get their fill of sieges from the regular castle sieges, sieging nodes is going to stop happening organically imo. I believe players will work together to remove their metro on purpose to provide new content instead of being overthrown organically. The system I want to implement gives any node a chance to become a metro which is why it would encourage more sieges.
Take for example in node housing. At node level 3 it will not be worth that much but at level 6 in node housing will be worth a fortune, players on the start of the server will invest into housing everywhere to try to be the one to reap millions in profit through purchasing a level3 in node house and selling it once their node is level 6.
However once Verra has fully progressed all of its nodes, then the only nodes that have the potential to reach level 6 within any sort of timely fashion are going to be the level 5 nodes, effectively removing that originally investment potential of the in node housing. However with the system i suggested in place players would be willing to invest in level 3 in node housing regardless of the server state because they still have a chance at becoming the next metro. The system helps spread player citizenry out and allows anyone to have a chance no matter what no matter how small and that is extremely important.
As it stands now - Once the server is fully developed if you are in a level 3 node you simply have no chance of becoming a level 6 node - not within a year or so anyway.
I don't see the endgame PvP playing out the same as you. I don't think node vs node PvP or trying to grow your individual node will really be a thing (there will be efforts to unlock content, but I don't think PvPers will care as much about growing their node rather than the ZOI empire as a whole). It'll be more like one ZOI empire vs another.
Node tier housing also works different than you think. If you buy a T3 house it stays T3 even if your node hits T6. The added housing each tier gets sold off, the existing housing does not "tier up." I don't think it will be all that important either, outside of gaining citizenship. There will he people who want the nicer houses, but bear in mind the T6 housing it what gets destroyed in the siege, but lower tier housing persists and can be repaired. I think freeholds will be the bigger focus for player housing anyway.
The node is destroyed after a successful siege
"If you buy a T3 house it stays T3 even if your node hits T6."
Its not about the tier of housing its about the tier of node the housing is in, everyone will want in node housing in a metro so its innate value will be insane regardless of the node housing level, and you can always upgrade it.
Endgame will be all about player politics surrounding raids, dungeons, nodes, castles and caravans. That being said, Kingdom wars (kingdom=metro ZOI) will absolutely be a thing, however as stated by Steven, players loyalty will be to their node ABOVE their guild, for that to be the case their node has to have innate value to them and part of that value certainly comes from its potential.
Owning a house in a metro will be a symbol of pride, have intrinsic value for guilds due to being easily seen, and have intrinsic value, people are gonna fight over em for sure
Z one
O f
I nfluence
? 🤔