Citizenship

Alpha-1 node citizenship registration.

Player housing grants the ability to claim citizenship of a Village (stage 3) node or higher.

• Citizenship tickets may also grant citizenship to certain node stages. This mechanic will be decided based on testing.
• A player can only claim citizenship to one node at a time.

You can declare citizenship to only one node and when you declare that citizenship. Let's say for example, one guild perhaps wanting to kind of take all their members and have them all declare the same citizenship to a location. The longer a node exists the higher the prize it is to take and some systems with regards to crafting progression and/or rewards and bonuses or the reliquary that we haven't really touched on a lot, those systems are going to be so enticing that from an incentive standpoint it will compel other groups to either potentially break alliances or siege the city in order to take the goods that are potentially in it. So, from an incentive standpoint we have that at play. Additionally, we don't have a cap per-se that we've announced yet on the citizenship aspect of being in a node, but we do have soft caps. It becomes costlier the higher number of citizens each time one new person wants to join to be part of a node. So, there is sort of a soft cap on how many citizens one node can have and it might be that not all in the guild can participate in that area. So, there's kind of a natural divide: A pseudo faction, so to speak between who is a part of that node and who is not. – Steven Sharif

• Only one citizenship may be declared per account, per server.

Your account is bound to one declared citizenship per server, which means that if you have two alts and your main character on one server you may only be a citizen of one node between those three... If you have an alt on a different server, it could be a citizen of a node as well. – Steven Sharif

• Citizenship is lost if the node is destroyed. A player can then become citizen of another node.
• Node citizenship is not tied to membership of a guild. Guilds don't "own" nodes.
• Players can interact with the node board to get a list of citizens of the node. Clicking on a citizen will reveal information about their guild, society, religion, and property ownership.
• A player does not need to declare citizenship of any node. These players won't need to pay taxes but will miss out on benefits of citizenship.

Citizenship benefits

Citizenship grants a number of benefits.

• Access to limited functions and service buildings within the node.
• Access to merchants that offer specific types of enhancement stones or stat migrations.
• Access to upper-tier crafting benches.
• Access to a weekly allotment of core material that can only be accessed from the node's reliquary.
• Access to buffs from certain events.
• Access to titles.
• Access to organizations and religions.
• Participation in the node’s government (voting or running for office).
• Other stated benefits include: Reputation, Honor, Loyalty, Merit.

For example there may be merchant tables that only citizens have access to. Those merchant tables might relate to specific types of enhancement stones or specific type of stat migration abilities. You might have access to mundane crafting benches but the upper-tier crafting benches are for citizens. Citizens only have access to the reliquary and the achievements that the node has from its citizens nearby areas and content like raid bosses that they might kill. They may have a weekly allotment of what specific type of core material they can access from the reliquary and only citizens can do that... You might have access to certain types of buffs that occur during like events; and only citizens can have access to those types of buffs. There are obviously going to be title structures within organizations, within religions and stuff that relate to these events and procedures that only citizens can be part of. That title structure for that specific node. – Steven Sharif

Citizenship entitles you to a lot of benefits for that node including; Titles, reputation, honor, loyalty, merit, and probably most importantly is the nodes government. As a citizen you are granted the privilege of participating in a node’s government. From voting to running for office.

Non-citizens will have access to generic node services, mundane crafting benches, and standard rewards from node quests.

There are limited functions and services that non-citizens can gain access to as a result. Obviously you want to attract traffic. You want to attract commerce. You want to track taxation. That's possible because those are the means by which the node continues to grow; and in order for that to be attractive you must offer it to non-citizens alike... We don't want to necessarily be super lockout on content per-se, so most quest-lines are still going to be accessible from non-citizens and citizens alike, however the reward tables for those quests might be higher for citizens. You may have additional rewards that be granted based on quest completion and progression. – Steven Sharif

Changing or renouncing citizenship

Changing or renouncing node citizenship has a cooldown of two weeks.

• Node citizens that renounce their citizenship during a node siege declaration period may incur penalties.
• Player housing ownership is not affected by citizenship changes.

Taxation

Alpha-1 mayoral user interface.

Mayors are able to set tax rates for their node.

• This includes setting tax rates that apply to tavern games.

Mayors/Node governments allocate resources, taxes, and quests to help develop node defenses.

• Tax money only goes toward funding node development. This gold cannot be withdrawn by the mayor or any other player.
• Taxation rates scale based on when a player joined a node as a citizen. The goal is to exert financial pressure on node populations by making taxes increasingly expensive as nodes advance, rather than putting in place hard population caps.

Parent (Sovereign) nodes take a cut of all taxes from the housing and any services that occur within their vassal node structure.

• This tax doesn't necessarily impact the individual citizen, because citizen's tax levels are determined by their node, but the node's finances are affected by the taxation levied by its parent nodes.

Affiliations

An affiliation tree determines which entities can participate in attacks against other entities within its hierarchy.

• Corrupted players can be attacked regardless of other affiliations. This is something that will be tested during Alpha-2.
• Node citizenship.
• Alliances.
• Guilds.
• Parties.
• Raids.
• Family.
• Religion.
• Society.

There's node citizenship. There's guild. There's alliance. There's party. There's raid. There's family. All of these types of affiliations have a hierarchy. The highest of which is your node affiliation: So your citizenship is your greatest superceding relationship, which means if you were a part of a guild and the guild has multiple nodes in which its members are citizens of, if there was a war between two of those nodes, the members of those nodes would be first and foremost citizens who defend that node, even against their own guild members. – Steven Sharif

All of these things have some hierarchy; and within that hierarchy there's the ability to participate within certain systems. So for example, if you have a node that has fallen under your vassal state and you're a citizen of the parent node, then you could participate in a siege against the vassal node but if you're a citizen of the vassal node you could not participate as an attacker against the parent node; so there's a hierarchy, unless you were to renounce your citizenship. – Steven Sharif

Companion app

A companion app (mobile app/web interface) allows players who are not logged into the game to have authority over certain services and mechanics. Some functionality may come post-launch.

• Crop rotations.
• Player stalls (Kiosks).
• Mayoral duties.
• Pay taxes.
• Fishing (potentially).
• Parlor games (Tavern games).
• World event notifications.
• Node citizenship notifications.
• Player housing notifications.
• Guild leadership tools such as calendar notifications is a possible feature.

Specific dates that you can have running as reminders in your guild UI, this will also be something that I would like to be available on the mobile companion app as well. So essentially you can receive notifications via a calendar update on guild events that the leaders or the officers have the ability to pin within the game will also give you notifications on the mobile app as well. That's my intention at least. – Steven Sharif

Some of it may come post-launch... but we do want people to interact with the game on their phones when they're away from the computer; and we're going to do as much as we can to make that cool. – Jeffrey Bard

See also

• Player housing
• Node governments
• Taxation