Hard cap for Node citizens count

There is currently soft cap, with the citizenship gold cost increasing with the development of nodes.

But i think they should put Hard cap also. For example every town get 300 citizens, city gets 500, Metropolis gets 800-1000. Will make both node wars and siege wars more equal. I even think that if the citizen count is even less than this it will be even better, since you may need alliances with other nodes to fill the missing spots in node/siege wars that you cant fill by yourself. This will make the social gameplay a lot more interesting.

Also by having hard cap - it will force players to spread to different nodes. Which will create more competition. Will force node wars to make sure your node is the 1 that gets ahead and blocks the neighboring nodes from progressing.
Instead without hard cap, most players will try to get citizenship in the node that has highest chance to advance to next stage. Removing the competition from the game.

For example - imagine there are 2 neighboring town nodes. 1 with 30% progression to city, the other with 60%. All players will choose the 1 with 60% progression, making it progress even more. But if the 1 with 60% is capped, You may be forced to go in the 1 with 30%. And then do Node war to steal some of the progression, and have the chance to get to city first.

Also This will be a way for smaller guilds/group of players to have a chance to win vs Mega guilds. Since in node level, both sides will have same amount of players.

Pros:
* more competitive environment
* more sandbox events like node wars and sieges.
* bigger incentive for players to be part of nodes and level the nodes. Instead focusing only on leveling personal character. (since if you dont focus on nodes, you may be left with all developed nodes to be already capped with citizens)
* Will allow you to give more benefits to more developed nodes, without breaking the balance.(like giving exp bonus to citizens of more developed nodes).
* Will make players more spread around the whole world. Which will make caravans more important.
* Will make alliances and social part of the game more important, to keep positive relation with neighboring nodes. Since your node wont have most of the players in the whole area.
* Will give incentive to node sieges if your node become vasal to another one, and your only chance for your node to advance would be to destroy the node that caps you.

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Comments

JustVine

.double input due to catching hands from the spam filter

Ludullu

I knew I shoulda just linked wiki from the start.

That is exactly why I think soft cap will be more than enough and will be amazing for the game, because it'll slow down the progress of any dumbass who decides to spend more money just to be in the same node as their mates.

Githal

JustVine wrote: »

"When you become a citizen you enter in at a certain citizenship due structure; and citizens pay taxes to their node in the form of both property taxes based on what type housing as well as citizenship dues, which are necessary. And as you enter later into the stage of a node's development, you will pay a higher value on the citizenship dues or vice-versa: if you own a property later, you will be entered into a property tax that is higher based on where you enter that property ownership within the node's history. So those help to form a soft cap. Now, if payers are willing to pay more to be a citizen of a particular node, they have that option, but at some point it becomes restrictive"
- Steven Sharif 2018
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsPR_a2n5SM&t=2508s
- https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Citizenship

After couple of months, when you see that i was right, come back and write that hard cap is indeed needed

Azherae

Githal wrote: »

JustVine wrote: »

"When you become a citizen you enter in at a certain citizenship due structure; and citizens pay taxes to their node in the form of both property taxes based on what type housing as well as citizenship dues, which are necessary. And as you enter later into the stage of a node's development, you will pay a higher value on the citizenship dues or vice-versa: if you own a property later, you will be entered into a property tax that is higher based on where you enter that property ownership within the node's history. So those help to form a soft cap. Now, if payers are willing to pay more to be a citizen of a particular node, they have that option, but at some point it becomes restrictive"
- Steven Sharif 2018
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsPR_a2n5SM&t=2508s
- https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Citizenship

After couple of months, when you see that i was right, come back and write that hard cap is indeed needed

Truly, an argument so powerful it ends the discussion.

Anyways, hard cap will be worse than soft cap and I think that maybe you're not interpreting the quote from Intrepid correctly or just don't understand incentives, so probably not much anyone can do or say. For the usual lurkers:

"A one-time entry fee style of enforcing a soft-cap would, in fact, probably not work great. A recurrent one related to tax brackets, particularly one that doesn't try to take into account 'Other citizens leaving' as the primary means of lowering that tax bracket, is stronger than a hard cap. There is a situation in which 'a different early citizen leaving to open up a slot' can lead to problematic manipulations of a soft-cap."

My 2 Cu.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Githal

Azherae wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

JustVine wrote: »

"When you become a citizen you enter in at a certain citizenship due structure; and citizens pay taxes to their node in the form of both property taxes based on what type housing as well as citizenship dues, which are necessary. And as you enter later into the stage of a node's development, you will pay a higher value on the citizenship dues or vice-versa: if you own a property later, you will be entered into a property tax that is higher based on where you enter that property ownership within the node's history. So those help to form a soft cap. Now, if payers are willing to pay more to be a citizen of a particular node, they have that option, but at some point it becomes restrictive"
- Steven Sharif 2018
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsPR_a2n5SM&t=2508s
- https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Citizenship

After couple of months, when you see that i was right, come back and write that hard cap is indeed needed

Truly, an argument so powerful it ends the discussion.

Anyways, hard cap will be worse than soft cap and I think that maybe you're not interpreting the quote from Intrepid correctly or just don't understand incentives, so probably not much anyone can do or say. For the usual lurkers:

"A one-time entry fee style of enforcing a soft-cap would, in fact, probably not work great. A recurrent one related to tax brackets, particularly one that doesn't try to take into account 'Other citizens leaving' as the primary means of lowering that tax bracket, is stronger than a hard cap. There is a situation in which 'a different early citizen leaving to open up a slot' can lead to problematic manipulations of a soft-cap."

My 2 Cu.

As i said above. Its not that they cant make what you saying work. Its that to make this work they need to make citizenship/relics and all other benefits of being citizen in more developed node be some minimal gains that are not even worth fighting for. Which will lead to other problems where no one would need to do node wars or siege wars, Vassal system will be worthless and ect.

And in the other hand - with hard cap - they can make the benefits of being in more developed node Good.
Which will lead to constant node wars/sieges. Vassal system will have its place in the world.

And think for yourself: if the cost of being citizen in Metropolis is that high, and benefits are that bad - why would anyone be citizen of metropolis? You will have all players living in small nodes to avoid taxes. And all metropolises will be empty.

Azherae wrote: »

Truly, an argument so powerful it ends the discussion.

Thats because you dont read my comments to understand them, but to reply. So i doubt even the best argument will make you accept that i am right. So the only thing left is to experience it for yourself that i was right first handedly

Enigmatic Sage

in my opinion due to the vassal system, guilds and housing, players will probably migrate around regardless of Soft or Hard caps. There will be external factors too but no need to dive into those possibilities. Players have falling outs, different goals they want to accomplish in-game etc.

Azherae

Githal wrote: »

And think for yourself: if the cost of being citizen in Metropolis is that high, and benefits are that bad - why would anyone be citizen of metropolis? You will have all players living in small nodes to avoid taxes. And all metropolises will be empty.

It's true that sometimes I read your stuff more to reply than to understand, because I admit I'm totally biased toward thinking that you're the one who doesn't understand.

The first (let's say) 30 Citizens are in a low tax bracket. Their cost for being a citizen is low, the benefits are high.

The next 20 Citizens are in a higher tax bracket. The cost of being a citizen is medium, the benefits are high.

The next 20 Citizens are in an even higher tax bracket. The cost of being a citizen is high, the benefits are high.

Anyone after that is in a really high tax bracket. The cost of being a citizen is astronomical, the benefits are high.

At this point in my biased reasoning, the way I interpret the quote from the wiki, your words I quoted at the top of this post are the logical answer.

"For all citizens past 70 in my example, - why would anyone be citizen of metropolis? You will have all players living in small nodes to avoid taxes. And all metropolises will be empty."

I assumed that you understood all the stuff I've just said above, but still somehow didn't see a solution. That's my error. It turns out you see a solution, just didn't have the same interpretation of the Intrepid quote as I do. Whether we agree or not, I genuinely thank you for actually replying even though it probably seemed like I was just being dismissive, since this sort of thing helps me train my conversational AI modules.

Githal

Azherae wrote: »

The first (let's say) 30 Citizens are in a low tax bracket. Their cost for being a citizen is low, the benefits are high.

The next 20 Citizens are in a higher tax bracket. The cost of being a citizen is medium, the benefits are high.

The next 20 Citizens are in an even higher tax bracket. The cost of being a citizen is high, the benefits are high.

Anyone after that is in a really high tax bracket. The cost of being a citizen is astronomical, the benefits are high.

At this point in my biased reasoning, the way I interpret the quote from the wiki, your words I quoted at the top of this post are the logical answer.

"For all citizens past 70 in my example, - why would anyone be citizen of metropolis? You will have all players living in small nodes to avoid taxes. And all metropolises will be empty."

Well tbh this has some potential. But again they will be forced to not make relics and other metropolis benefits good (just average). So they will tie the 2 systems together making it hard to balance. If the cost or the benefits of the metropolis out weight the other, then it will break the whole system.

So for example: In a pure metropolis without any relics or other outside benefits, it is worth for 200 players to be paying taxes, and above this all other pay too high taxes so its not worth it to be citizen of it for those benefits.

Then the node gets legend relic. So now instead of the other players to do siege (which will happen with hard cap). It just becomes worth it for 150 more players to be citizens of the node for the high taxes.
Now Intrepid has to tie the balancing of the cost of siege wars to the other 2 already tied systems. to make it so sieges are not taking that much time and resources to do. So even if you fail the siege, it would still be beneficial to do them instead to become citizen with higher taxes.

So they balance everything perfectly. But then in the next patch they introduce some new benefit for the metropolis. Now everything is unbalanced and needs rebalancing

Azherae

Githal wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

The first (let's say) 30 Citizens are in a low tax bracket. Their cost for being a citizen is low, the benefits are high.

The next 20 Citizens are in a higher tax bracket. The cost of being a citizen is medium, the benefits are high.

The next 20 Citizens are in an even higher tax bracket. The cost of being a citizen is high, the benefits are high.

Anyone after that is in a really high tax bracket. The cost of being a citizen is astronomical, the benefits are high.

At this point in my biased reasoning, the way I interpret the quote from the wiki, your words I quoted at the top of this post are the logical answer.

"For all citizens past 70 in my example, - why would anyone be citizen of metropolis? You will have all players living in small nodes to avoid taxes. And all metropolises will be empty."

Well tbh this has some potential. But again they will be forced to not make relics and other metropolis benefits good (just average). So they will tie the 2 systems together making it hard to balance. If the cost or the benefits of the metropolis out weight the other, then it will break the whole system.

Can you explain why exactly this is true?

I think that the 'first citizens' will be those who were there from the start. The people who invested in the node 'before anyone knew it would be a Metro'.

In the example I gave, if I go to a node and there are already 50 Citizens, even if I think it will become a Metro I also know that I'd still be paying more to get the Metro benefits. People 'after the first 70' know from the time the Citizenship fills, not from the time the Metro forms.

So a Node reaches Village, 70 people rush to sign up. 30 more sign up too at the really high tax bracket because they believe 'this will be the City/Metro node' (for later readers, we talk about Metropolis but those are maybe being removed at the time of this post).

I'd expect that everyone after that will think:
"Even if I sign up because this Node seems most likely to become the Metro, I won't get the benefits without paying a huge cost, I should maybe consider being an early citizen of a different Node, that way if that Node does well, I can get benefits cheap."

I don't think Intrepid is required to be 'fair' about the cost-benefit ratio for every citizen, it seems like the entire point of the quote is 'we're definitely not doing that'.

So I think some people would 'go to a different node and try to raise that one first so that they can maybe reach City first and get benefits cheap.

I think this will spread out more people, so I don't understand yet why you think it will be hard to balance (but I kinda agree? I just don't think they intend to, nor need to, lmk if to go into more detail on why I don't think they need to, as an Econ-focused player).

Ludullu

Githal wrote: »

It just becomes worth it for 150 more players to be citizens of the node for the high taxes.

Does it though?

You're doing the thing I love to do. You come up with a design in your head and then you argue against that. You've, seemingly, come up with a static relatively small increase to taxes and you think that it's not enough to dissuade people from joining a node super late.

As I see it (and hope how it will be), each subsequent citizen over the soft cap will be paying an ever-increasing cost, which will be increasing exponentially.

Even with really good node benefits - the cost for absolute majority of people will (or definitely should) simply be too high. And if a few megarich dudes manage to join the node even at that cost - great, they've wasted a shitton of money (and will keep spending more shittons of it) on a single buff.

To me, this is the same as super high overenchant lvls. Do super rich people benefit from them way more than the plebs? Of course! Does the insane cost of them equalize the overall power structure on the server? Of course! Except in the node's case it's even better, because the money cannot be redistributed to other players, while in the OE process you'd be buying out entire markets-worth of stuff.

This simply becomes a good glint sink, which is an incredible gold sink because each glint has the potential to be x10-100+++ its amount in gold.

Githal

Ludullu wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

It just becomes worth it for 150 more players to be citizens of the node for the high taxes.

Does it though?

You're doing the thing I love to do. You come up with a design in your head and then you argue against that. You've, seemingly, come up with a static relatively small increase to taxes and you think that it's not enough to dissuade people from joining a node super late.

As I see it (and hope how it will be), each subsequent citizen over the soft cap will be paying an ever-increasing cost, which will be increasing exponentially.

Even with really good node benefits - the cost for absolute majority of people will (or definitely should) simply be too high. And if a few megarich dudes manage to join the node even at that cost - great, they've wasted a shitton of money (and will keep spending more shittons of it) on a single buff.

To me, this is the same as super high overenchant lvls. Do super rich people benefit from them way more than the plebs? Of course! Does the insane cost of them equalize the overall power structure on the server? Of course! Except in the node's case it's even better, because the money cannot be redistributed to other players, while in the OE process you'd be buying out entire markets-worth of stuff.

This simply becomes a good glint sink, which is an incredible gold sink because each glint has the potential to be x10-100+++ its amount in gold.

Well if you put it this way - this is no different than a hard cap right?

its like saying a shop wants to sell no more than 100 items a day. and instead of stopping the sales after the 100th, they increase the price from 10$ to 3000$ for single item.

And yes this will work, I just dont see why you are ok with this and not with hard cap since they are the same

Also i doubt this is the intended cost increase Intrepid meant to put.

For me "Soft cap" has the meaning that after the cap, you still get benefits, just not as good as before the cap.
With what you describe - the loses are much more than the benefits. So i cant really consider it as "soft cap",

For example a lot of games has soft cap on cooldown reduce. that with more cd increase the less % you get a for single point. At the beginning you may get 10 cd reduce for 9%. after 100 for example you will still get some % cd reduce, just less. This is soft cap.

If after 100 cd reduce (which for example can be 66%). you put 10 more cd reduce, and the % becomes 65. This is no soft cap. its hard cap

Ludullu

Githal wrote: »

Well if you put it this way - this is no different than a hard cap right?

Which has been my entire point so far.

Githal wrote: »

its like saying a shop wants to sell no more than 100 items a day. and instead of stopping the sales after the 100th, they increase the price from 10$ to 3000$ for single item.

And that's exactly what a shitton of stores do. Especially the ones that sell luxury goods.

It's a way to remove money from stupid people.

Githal wrote: »

And yes this will work, I just dont see why you are ok with this and not with hard cap since they are the same

I've answered this several times already. I want the same in Ashes, except now that removal is good for the node and for the server's overall money pool.

Githal wrote: »

Also i doubt this is the intended cost increase Intrepid meant to put.

That's the point. We don't know what they want. I'm almost fucking sure THEY don't know what they want, cause it's been obvious that they're designing the game along the way rather than beforehand.

Githal wrote: »

For me "Soft cap" has the meaning that after the cap, you still get benefits, just not as good as before the cap.
With what you describe - the loses are much more than the benefits. So i cant really consider it as "soft cap",

If after 100 cd reduce (which for example can be 66%). you put 10 more cd reduce, and the % becomes 65. This is no soft cap. its hard cap

The point is that it's a cap.

The point is that you're still wasting skill point on this skill cause you're dumb. It's a literal bait for stupid people, and I want that shit in the game so that stupid people waste their resources on needless things.

Githal

Ludullu wrote: »

The point is that you're still wasting skill point on this skill cause you're dumb. It's a literal bait for stupid people, and I want that shit in the game so that stupid people waste their resources on needless things.

Well i wouldnt say its for "stupid people", and more for "Uninformed people". Since there will be enough guides for the game, that even someone stupid will know not to do something that is not worth it.

And i dont find it as that good idea to punish uninformed players either. Since this is the way you make them quit the game.

Ludullu

Githal wrote: »

Well i wouldnt say its for "stupid people", and more for "Uninformed people". Since there will be enough guides for the game, that even someone stupid will know not to do something that is not worth it.

And i dont find it as that good idea to punish uninformed players either. Since this is the way you make them quit the game.

Do you truly believe that an uninformed person would have enough money to purchase and sustain a citizenship that's way over softcap? Cause I don't.

Also, I would definitely expect Intrepid to put a HUGE pop-up during the citizenship acquisition process post-softcap of "YOU WILL BE PAYING THIS TIMES AS MUCH AS THE NORMAL CITIZEN, BECAUSE YOU'RE JOINING THE NODE TOO LATE!!! ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?! ARE YOU FUCKING DEFINITELY SURE?!?!"

Players become "Informed" when the game informs them. If there's literally zero in-game text telling you that you're about to do something really stupid - Intrepid have failed to inform their players. And yes - that would be a bad thing.

Githal

Ludullu wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

Well i wouldnt say its for "stupid people", and more for "Uninformed people". Since there will be enough guides for the game, that even someone stupid will know not to do something that is not worth it.

And i dont find it as that good idea to punish uninformed players either. Since this is the way you make them quit the game.

Do you truly believe that an uninformed person would have enough money to purchase and sustain a citizenship that's way over softcap? Cause I don't.

Also, I would definitely expect Intrepid to put a HUGE pop-up during the citizenship acquisition process post-softcap of "YOU WILL BE PAYING THIS TIMES AS MUCH AS THE NORMAL CITIZEN, BECAUSE YOU'RE JOINING THE NODE TOO LATE!!! ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?! ARE YOU FUCKING DEFINITELY SURE?!?!"

Players become "Informed" when the game informs them. If there's literally zero in-game text telling you that you're about to do something really stupid - Intrepid have failed to inform their players. And yes - that would be a bad thing.

How many games have you played where you start the game with some currency, or you get the currency in much faster rate in the beginning of the game as a catch up mechanic, and you spend it on something you think you need at the moment, but later you realize that you have made mistake and should have spent it on something else?

In the context of AOC it would be more like: a player who gets a lucky drop of some super rare material with low drop rate. And he sells for huge amount of gold, but he doesnt know what to do with the gold.

Ludullu

Githal wrote: »

How many games have you played where you start the game with some currency, or you get the currency in much faster rate in the beginning of the game as a catch up mechanic, and you spend it on something you think you need at the moment, but later you realize that you have made mistake and should have spent it on something else?

In the context of AOC it would be more like: a player who gets a lucky drop of some super rare material with low drop rate. And he sells for huge amount of gold, but he doesnt know what to do with the gold.

Again, I do not think that post-softcap prices should be anywhere near what a lvl10-20 player can get from a lucky drop.

And if there is in fact the pop-up I mentioned - it'll be on that person to learn from their own mistakes. If someone touches an electric fence that has a sign "don't fucking touch this, stupid" - I won't feel bad for them.

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