Node sieges

Ashes of Creation community empowered Wiki
Revision as of 00:15, 11 August 2018 by Lex (talk | contribs) (Add section)

Jump to navigation Jump to search
Node sieges (Pre-alpha footage).[1]

As some areas in the world grow, others will fall. This is the foundation of the living, breathing world that is Ashes of Creation, where players will have the ability to make important decisions that matter in the longevity of an area becoming a city, or whether to siege a rival town. Rise above the ashes, create the world around you, and be a part of the story that unfolds because of your actions and decisions.[2] – Margaret Krohn

Node sieges enable players to destroy nodes starting at Village (stage 3).[2] This paves the way for new development and access to the locked content in surrounding nodes. Due to this dynamic, political strife and intrigue play an important role in the structure of the world.[3]

  • Sieging nodes will not be an easy task for the attackers. Cities and metropolises will have a considerable defensive advantage.[3]
  • There will be systems that mimic some of the mechanics of sieges, but there won't be practice sieges.[4]
If you own a home in a node and you don't want to see that home destroyed, you need to defend that city![6] – Steven Sharif

Declaring a node siege

Node sieges are declared directly by any player[8] who completes the prerequisites for the siege initiation.[9] During the declaration period, individuals or guilds can also register to attack.[10]

Siege declaration is very tough and will scale with the type of node being sieged:[10]

Once a siege is declared there is a period of time before the siege will commence, determined by the size of the node:[13]

The time window for a node siege is appropriate for the server location.[13]

Siege alliances

When a siege begins, temporary alliances are formed among attackers and defenders.[14]

  • For node sieges, citizens of the node or provincial nodes being attacked are automatically registered as defenders.[15]
  • There are many reasons to participate as an ally in the attack or defence of other nodes.[16]
    • Titles.
    • Items.
    • Materials.
    • Money.
    • Social bonds.

Many incentives exist that can benefit your node and yourself personally by participating in the attack or defense of cities. These range from titles, to items, to materials, to money. Additionally, aiding others may help you strengthen bonds when your assets are threatened.[16] – Steven Sharif

Ashes of Creation may have specific content that revolves around Alliances.[17]

Content that revolves around alliances specifically and progression within the development of that alliance; and the ability to share some common services between guilds that are part of that alliance. I think that additionally allowing alliances to toggle certain relationships with nodes as an interaction is beneficial. That's going to provide an interesting dynamic for players who are either members of the particular node that has the relationship established or members of the Alliance. So I think that obviously building systems is is about creating the channels by which these players can form bonds and the more layers you have around those channels of bonding between the different guilds or players, the more sustainable that relationship.[17] – Steven Sharif

Siege mechanics

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

A siege occurs over several phases.[19]

  • Certain siege mechanics may be gated for specific size groups during sieges.[20]
  • There will not be a deserter debuff for leaving a siege before it is complete.[21]
  • More will be revealed in an upcoming blog entry.[19]

Siege weapons

Trebuchet siege weapon in Alpha-1 castle sieges preview.[22]

It wouldn’t be a castle siege without siege weapons. These are massive machines of war that enable attackers to bring down the walls, and defenders to keep their keep safe. Crafters can bring their own powerful schematics to the battlefield, or you can order baseline siege weapons from your friendly neighborhood siege master NPC. The Castle’s defenders will be able to deploy their own defensive weapons and turrets based on how well they maintained and defended their own Nodes. The sky will be illuminated with fire and fury.[23]

Ballista siege weapon in Alpha-1 castle sieges preview.[24]

Siege weapons and siege vehicles are able to be utilized during sieges.[25]

Part of this endeavor of sieging a player-held location (or non-player-held location) is time to prepare; and that includes gathering and crafting these mega weapons or collecting the resources: Whether it be gold or specific quest items to purchase from NPCs.[27] – Steven Sharif
Anything that you want to bring into existence in the world is going to be built by players: Whether that is Ships, Siege engines, Weapons, Armor, etc.[29] – Jeffrey Bard

Siege PvP

Sieges don't use the PvP flagging system.[30]

Death penalties do not apply to objective-based events (such as caravans, guild wars, and node sieges).[5]

Siege NPCs

Siege NPCs, NPC guards, and mercenary NPCs serve as defense points during sieges and other events.[31][32]

  • Only combat NPCs are killable during a siege. Non-combat NPCs, such as merchants, will despawn and will respawn if the siege is unsuccessful.[31][33]
  • Mercenary NPCs can be hired in advance.[31] They are intended to be a significant presence but not the main line of defense in a siege.[34]

Dragons

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Dragons are flying mounts with strong battle abilities, such as AoE breath attacks, swooping flyby attacks, and others.[35][36]

The dragon will have a lot of capability in PvP. It's primarily its purpose, because as it relates to Castles and the sieges they're in, or Nodes and the sieges they're in. We want dragons to have large scale ramifications against player raids.[36] – Steven Sharif

Siege objectives

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Each node has a number of districts, depending on its stage.[19]

  • Districts are taken by defeating a "raid boss" guard NPC in that district.[19]
  • If attackers take over a district, they gain that district as a respawn location.[19]
  • Attackers can kill the quartermasters to increase the respawn times of the defenders while reducing their own respawn times.[37][19]

Defenders can assault the outposts of the attackers to hinder them.[19]

  • Destroying the headquarters of the attacking army is a victory condition for the defenders.[37][38]

Attackers may not be capable of deleveling a node. Instead they may carry out precision attacks to disable specific service-oriented buildings within the node. These buildings can be targeted with siege weapons and bombs.[39]

As the attackers are sieging a city they have obviously a win condition- a win objective- but additionally there can be casualties from a structural standpoint during that process. So let's say if the... attackers were to not succeed in completely destroying the node they could still affect damage across multiple types of buildings that are present within the node, which disables services for that those citizens and also will require some type of reconstruction effort on behalf of the citizens.[40] – Steven Sharif

Completing a siege

A node siege will last for up to two hours.[19] Defenders will be required to hold a central point in the node. Attackers will need to remove the defender's flag and raise their own.[38] If the node survives, there will be a cooldown before the node can be sieged again:[19]

Node deleveling

A successful siege will delevel the node by one stage.[32] There will be spoils from successfully sieging a node.[41]

Siege aftermath

Rubble will be visible for an undefined period of time following a successful node siege.[42]

Impact on freeholds

Template:Freehold siege

Node redevelopment

A node that was successfully destroyed by a node siege may develop differently due to the following influences:[43][44]

Siege abilities

War Beast 3D render. 3D model by Jessica Jennings.[45]

Group summons are activated by a party leader with that ability in their class kit along with additive components from other classes that are part of the group.[46]

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Up to eight players of the same primary archetype can band together to create monumental effects during a siege.[47]

These are the types of systems that we want to put in place where groups of a single primary archetype can come together to summon these types of effects that play off of what the identity of that archetype is.[47] – Steven Sharif

Summoner

Summoners can collaborate together during sieges to summon larger creatures, such as Golems.[48][49][50]

We do have the concept of siege summons being a thing with multiple summoners being required in order to create that siege summon. In those situations your character becomes the summon. So you don't have an AI that takes over your previous character but instead the recipient of those additional spell effects becomes the actual summon itself.[48] – Steven Sharif
  • The target of the group summon becomes the summon itself.[48][50]
    • Previously it was stated that the party-leader becomes the summon.[49]
info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.
  • A siege summon will have an incremental size based on the number of summoners participating in that summon activity, with a maximum of eight.[51]
  • The number of summoners participating in the summon will determine its overall size.[51]
  • All summoners must be in the same party and the party leader must be a summoner.[49]
    • The party leader initiates the summon and then takes control of it.[49]
    • Once summoned, the party leader cannot be changed.[49]
    • If the party disbands, the summon ends. There will be a grace period to handle disconnects.[49]
    • The party may also contain non-Summoners.[49]

Tank

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.
Pre-alpha castle siege combat featuring a Tank siege ability.[52]
If eight Tank archetypes each use one of their summon wall abilities it might construct a larger wall that can divide two raids in a moment; and would require damage and block skills and abilities for a momentary lapse of battle between those two raids.[47] – Steven Sharif

Node atrophy

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Nodes accumulate an experience deficit each day based on the node's level, called node atrophy. The deficit is subtracted from any experience earned that day. If any deficit remains, then this is subtracted from the node’s experience pool.[2]

  • An atrophy system may be implemented, where accumulated atrophy points will progressively disable services within a node. The node may be destroyed if a significant points threshold is reached.[53]
  • A previous design concept was that nodes could delevel based on accumulated atrophy.[53][2]
There are intrinsic problems with reducing a nodes level as opposed to removing the node and it may be possible I'm just gonna say now that we don't actually atrophy nodes to delevel but rather accrue atrophy points that must be replenished over time; and if not it begins to disable services and further compound the atrophy problem; at which point when it reaches a certain atrophy point then the node would just disappear.[53] – Steven Sharif

Impact of monsters and world bosses

Monster coin events (Bosses) cannot destroy or delevel nodes.[54] They can disable certain buildings, services and NPCs within a node.[55][56] Node sieges are the chief mechanic for destroying nodes.[54]

For example, if the service building that got disabled was a blacksmith's building that housed a workbench, which was the only workbench in the region capable of crafting a t5 (or tier 5), or high-tier quality equipment, then of course that would have ramifications economically, as those pieces of equipment that are already readily available would raise in prices; and because there would be a issue within the supply chain of those items being introduced into the economy, you would potentially have some supply and demand changes economically and that could span regions: that could be global even.[59] – Steven Sharif

Impact on player stalls

Players are not able to be attacked or robbed while occupying a player stall.[60]

Player stalls may not be renewed during a siege declaration.[60]

Zergs

For every play, there should be a counterplay. We often see Castle Sieges turn into zerg-fests, which really doesn’t capture the epic, back-and-forth battles we wish to see in Ashes of Creation. One of our key pillars is that Choice Matters[61], and that applies to tactics and strategy as well. A well-formulated battle plan should win out over stat sheets and bodies. Zergs will generally be difficult to pull off, and will be eminently counterable through siege weapons, traps, and other battlefield tricks.[23]

Zergs are empowered by fast-travel. Meaningful travel times are intended to prevent zerg play from being so much of an influence.[62]

Encounters are designed to have meaning in terms of how boss skills and abilities relate to group compositions, tactics and strategies. Zerging is not experiencing content.[63] There are different ways to make a fight more difficult for larger sized groups without relying solely on stat buffs or making the boss a "damage sponge".[64]

  • Raid and dungeon bosses have specific mechanics and abilities that players need to learn and react to.[64] Zergs that are not aware of these mechanics or react to them appropriately will be wiped.[63]
  • There may be environmental hazards and AoE effects that cause more damage based on the number of players present.[64]
  • There is a give-and-take for guilds that want to see a larger number of members as opposed to a more focused group that may be a part of an alliance.[65]

We're very cognizant of the fact that we don't want to see zerging be a mechanic that's utilized by guilds to accomplish content or just to steamroll over sieges... There are specific mechanics that we are working on that will be seen through the testing phases that relate to a degree of understanding of certain systems that can't just be overrun with numbers.[65] – Steven Sharif

Mechanics that encourage political intrigue will play a role in destabilizing zergs.[66]

The best way that I found in games I played previously to take down a zerg is to cause drama from within... It's that conflict inside of the politicking that happens in that big organization. If we provide opportunities for division to occur then it also provides stability to keep a server healthy away from that zerg mentality also... If we approach the castle siege and we've destroyed the walls and we're in the throne room and we're about to cast on the penultimate thing and I at this time am just so excited from what's happening that I'm like "screw it I'm gonna go for it". It's gonna be mine. I'm gonna take the taxes for the next month. I'm gonna take all the gear from the castle. I'm gonna take everything... We want that political intrigue to be present in the game.[66] – Steven Sharif

Objective-based game play helps to balance the zerg mentality.[67]

I always feel that if you balance based on groups that in your balance focus is to incorporate features that play well from a player versus player perspective as well as a player versus environment perspective: Having support classes, having DPS and tanks that can obstruct movement and/or create bottlenecks on the field and stuff like that. I think a well-rounded raid it will perform better against a non well-rounded raid, however then you incorporate the second aspect of numbers; and that's where again mobility, organization, leadership tactics. Having objectives in gameplay that make those important helps to balance the zerg mentality that a lot of guilds can tend to have.[67] – Steven Sharif

Instancing doesn't play a major role in limiting zergs, due to 80% of content in Ashes of Creation being open-world.[7]

  • There may be instanced locations within castle and node sieges where specific groups can participate in certain objective-based waypoints.[7]

Zerging is always a problem in a lot of these MMORPGs where you really can't control the number of participants in certain open-world systems; and in that sense instancing is a great tool that designers can sometimes use to curate a particular number of participants that you want. But the predominant amount of content within Ashes of Creation, over 80% of which is is open-world content, so instancing is very limited.[7] – Steven Sharif

Artwork

See also

Template:References

  1. ↑ Video, December 4, 2016 (0:02).
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Blog - Know Your Nodes - Advance and Destroy.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 A reactive world - Nodes.
  4. ↑ Twitch Bustin - Practice Sieges?
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Livestream, December 22, 2020 (1:13:51).
  6. ↑ Video, April 30, 2017 (5:31).
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Livestream, January 28, 2022 (17:50).
  8. ↑ siege declaration.png
  9. ↑ siege prerequisites.png
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 siege registration.png
  11. ↑ siege resources.png
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 siege equipment.png
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 siege notice.png
  14. ↑ siege alliances.png
  15. ↑ siege auto defenders.png
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Official Livestream - May 4th @ 3 PM PST - Q&A
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 Podcast, May 11, 2018 (21:07).
  18. ↑ Livestream, August 31, 2023 (2:10:23).
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 19.5 19.6 19.7 19.8 siege more info.png
  20. ↑ siege mechanics.png
  21. ↑ Livestream, May 24, 2017 (37:05).
  22. ↑ Video, May 28, 2021 (25:44).
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Blog: 10 facts about castle sieges in the MMORPG.
  24. ↑ Video, May 28, 2021 (11:55).
  25. ↑ Interview, September 10, 2023 (22:29).
  26. ↑ Interview, August 8, 2018 (20:49).
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Livestream, January 18, 2018 (37:05).
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Livestream, May 28, 2021 (1:04:29).
  29. ↑ Livestream, May 24, 2017 (17:08).
  30. ↑ Livestream, May 19, 2017 (45:14).
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 31.2 31.3 Livestream, August 31, 2023 (2:09:32).
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 siege success.png
  33. ↑ siege npcs killable.png
  34. ↑ Livestream, July 28, 2017 (36:51).
  35. ↑ dragon abilities.png
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 36.2 Livestream, 2018-04-8 (PM) (51:49).
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 Interview, July 19, 2020 (37:58).
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 Livestream, May 19, 2017 (47:07).
  39. ↑ Livestream, November 22, 2019 (17:59).
  40. ↑ Livestream, November 22, 2019 (15:48).
  41. ↑ siege spoils.png
  42. ↑ Livestream, July 9, 2018 (42:48).
  43. ↑ 43.0 43.1 43.2 43.3 Livestream, October 30, 2020 (39:17).
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 44.2 44.3 Livestream, May 24, 2017 (52:39).
  45. ↑ Livestream, November 22, 2019 (41:02).
  46. ↑ Livestream, January 27, 2023 (1:33:42).
  47. ↑ 47.0 47.1 47.2 47.3 Podcast, May 11, 2018 (49:20).
  48. ↑ 48.0 48.1 48.2 Livestream, March 31, 2023 (1:22:21).
  49. ↑ 49.0 49.1 49.2 49.3 49.4 49.5 49.6 Interview, August 17, 2018 (14:59).
  50. ↑ 50.0 50.1 Livestream, May 19, 2017 (10:06).
  51. ↑ 51.0 51.1 Livestream, 2018-04-8 (AM) (28:01).
  52. ↑ steven-a1-leak-1.png
  53. ↑ 53.0 53.1 53.2 Interview, July 8, 2020 (1:00:15).
  54. ↑ 54.0 54.1 Livestream, May 24, 2017 (22:30).
  55. ↑ monster events.png
  56. ↑ Livestream, May 3, 2017 (36:25).
  57. ↑ monster siege before.png
  58. ↑ monster sieges.png
  59. ↑ 59.0 59.1 Livestream, April 29, 2022 (1:07:20).
  60. ↑ 60.0 60.1 Livestream, October 16, 2017 (59:39).
  61. ↑ pillars-confusion.png
  62. ↑ Livestream, May 5, 2017 (23:26).
  63. ↑ 63.0 63.1 Livestream, May 19, 2017 (25:18).
  64. ↑ 64.0 64.1 64.2 Livestream, November 30, 2020 (1:16:09).
  65. ↑ 65.0 65.1 Livestream, May 22, 2017 (57:37).
  66. ↑ 66.0 66.1 Interview, May 11, 2018 (44:20).
  67. ↑ 67.0 67.1 Interview, August 8, 2018 (11:52).
Retrieved from "https://ashesofcreation.wiki/index.php?title=Node_sieges&oldid=21563"