Post by JustVine on 2022-09-06 20:12:14
So let's start from the easiest question to the hardest question.
"Do you feel that events should require players to be online and/or onsite in order to receive rewards for participation? If so, why? If not, why not?"
Absolutely not. Players' life schedules should not revolve around picking up a reward for an in game event they already have completed. There should be a way to retrieve the reward from an NPC in the node. If it were required to be logged in to catch a timed reward drop, not only would it restrain players from 'being somewhere else' even though they already put in the work, it'd also possibly cause a strain on the server depending on how popular the event was. Give people a week time window to pick up their reward from the NPC if you must, but needing to be logged in for it to 'be yours to claim' causes more problems than it solves in my opinion.
What are some events that you can think of that you’d want a node’s mayor to be capable of running?
I perceive nodes have three categories of meaningful gameplay loops.
There is Security , which deals with both surrounding monster build ups, activity by corrupted actors, and actual defense in the form of structures that help in sieges.
There is Infrastructure (this can also be seen as Economic ), which deals with Node facilities, road quality, the effects of excessive demand and production, and over all things that can make or break economic activity.
And lastly there is Happiness , which largely relates to the amount of questing being performed both for NPC's, guilds in the area, and the mayors ability to enact policies in a node. This might also have an effect on recruit-able NPC's or Flying mounts.
I think a Mayor should have an active role in initiating events for all three of these categories. I percieve there are two broad categories of events a Mayor can inact: Investment and Response
Investment quests are largely about opening up requests to the community to achieve a goal in either infrastructure that effects Security, Economics, or Happiness. These have an upfront cost for initiating by the Mayor but the reward for success is a longer term positive effect on one of the three stability stats.
For Security Investment quests this can be something like requesting donations of gear for better npc guards to be available for caravans, better weapons or defenses for a siege.
For Economic/Infrastructure Investment quests this can be something like requesting materials for building a node facility beyond the current budget of the Node, helping build the roads for faster caravans and mounted travel, issuing a large order of cheap materials to have an artisan guild facility a temporary bonuses to crafting
For Happiness Investment quests this can be something like 'special social org quests designed to presuade a social org npc in the area or a nearby node to act or come to the node'. Donations for food and drink to host a festival or gladiatorial tournament. Get a bunch of blue prints and materials to help fund a node policy. Generally these should be indirectly economic and more about the Nodes political relations relative to it's vassal's or it's parent nodes and internal node policies. These can possibly also effect racial quest availability
Response quests are largely about opening up requests to the community to address a current or growing problem. There should not be a cost for opening these types of quests up front. There is a negative consequence that is about to happen to the node as a result of something outside the nodes control that needs to be responded to. There should be different approaches to solving each general category of problem depending on what the Nodes 'type' is (religious, military, scientific, or economic) and they should probably have one or two different responses depending on the communities preferred gameplay style.
Security Response quests are about a growing monster population, npc bandit populations on the rise, or the frequency of Red actors in the area.
Infrastructure Response quests are about things like repairing or PREpairing for a weather event, seasonal change causing supply difficulties for artisans, repairing from a siege, or shortages of a certain material vital to the player economy in the area.
Happiness Response quests are about things like the effects of a disease outbreak, famine, or refugees from a neighboring node that was sieged. This can also be relative to social orgs. Maybe there is some high class NPC in the thieves guild that needs appeasing or they will leave to a different node. This can probably also effect the availability of racial quests.
I feel like node type should have an effect on what type of events can happen and how they can be responded to.
For example a Religous node might care a lot more about corruption build up in an area or the effects of Reds on the surrounding population. They might therefore focus more on resolving it by killing 'evil' mobs if the Mayor thinks their player base is more PvE mob fighting oriented or requesting alchemical items that can help purify the surrounding area of corruption if the Mayor thinks their player base is more crafting oriented, or maybe they'll issue higher bounties for Reds if they think their player base is more PvP oriented.
Meanwhile an Economic node probably doesn't actually care about corruption that much but they DO care about Caravan safety a lot more. So events for dealing with Reds come up, but more so in the context of caravans or bolstering their NPC guards, or maybe even having an increased investment in the social orgs that support the kinds of players that are capable of dealing with Reds.
The core point I'm trying to get across here is Node type shouldn't determine how the Node's player base solves a problem, but it should have a strong effect on what types of problems the Node cares about. The mayor should be the one to decide this because an algorithm would be less responsive relative to what it's citizens might be more interested in terms of solving problems than an official that is intended to be rotated out based on performance.
"What are some of the consequences of failing an event that you can imagine happening to the node you call home? Feel free to share your ideas!"
I feel like failure should create even MORE content rather than less, in most cases. When things are stable and people are happy, there is probably less need for a Mayor to need to inact policies. The prosperity from expansion should open up new content and challenges that will take up more of the player base of that node's time. I percieve that if a Node is unstable or doesn't meet a certain facet of the maintenance cost of the node, that it should effect other facets. If you have failed events in Infrastructure Investment, for example, maybe it causes a Happiness Response event to become necessary to avoid some sort of possible consequence to the nodes reputation with social org or racial NPC's. Failure in managing a Security Response to stifle bandits? You should probably be worried about the ability to defend your caravans and keep up the quality of your roads sparking an Infrastructure Response quest to become issue-able by the Mayor.
Node events have an ability to be a core part of the political rivalry in game that isn't necessarily all 'direct combat' and 'war'. I would therefore like to see a failed node event result take two forms:
Form 1. Failed Investment: This type of event failure would require a refactoring of the nodes infrastructure in some way. Either due to a deterioration in a structure that is prerequisite for other facilities, or due to some lack of flexibility in funding due to the resources that were required to invest in the event in the first place. Functionally failure in an Investment type event wouldn't have a direct impact on how citizens interact with the node other than maybe a small reduction in some amenities. It is an obstacle that can be overcome with more effort from the community. This type of failure probably does not need additional events to chain after it due to the lack of negative impact other than the loss of resources invested to trigger the event in the first place.
Form 2. Mismanaged Response: This type of event failure would have a direct economic impact on sectors of the nodes economy or infrastructure in some way. In a sense there is some risk to infrastructure that could have been prevented with more community help and the nodes enemies have some ability to counter this. For example a typhoon happens. The citizens can throw down sandbags to prevent the roads from decaying, but they can be killed and these structures destroyed. The key here is that these events have a default negative that the node is experiencing but it can be completely mitigated with enough community engagement. If this failure state occurs, Mayor's should be able to create high priority quests with slightly higher rewards to fix the infrastructure issue that occurred due to the degradation of infrastructure.
These are two very broad categories of failure and consequence but they can occur as a result of a failure in Security, Infrastructure, or Happiness quests.
Over all I think structuring failure in this way is the best way to both give the local community the power to positively influence their success while still giving plenty of opportunity for political rivals to try and influence things at the cost of that persons productivity not being put to use constructively in their own node. Ideally the effect of community input would be slightly stronger than the negative impact caused by players hostile to the node to keep content from getting stale due to a lack of morale in the player base in achieving anything.
"Do you feel that events should require players to be online and/or onsite in order to receive rewards for participation? If so, why? If not, why not?"
Absolutely not. Players' life schedules should not revolve around picking up a reward for an in game event they already have completed. There should be a way to retrieve the reward from an NPC in the node. If it were required to be logged in to catch a timed reward drop, not only would it restrain players from 'being somewhere else' even though they already put in the work, it'd also possibly cause a strain on the server depending on how popular the event was. Give people a week time window to pick up their reward from the NPC if you must, but needing to be logged in for it to 'be yours to claim' causes more problems than it solves in my opinion.
What are some events that you can think of that you’d want a node’s mayor to be capable of running?
I perceive nodes have three categories of meaningful gameplay loops.
There is Security , which deals with both surrounding monster build ups, activity by corrupted actors, and actual defense in the form of structures that help in sieges.
There is Infrastructure (this can also be seen as Economic ), which deals with Node facilities, road quality, the effects of excessive demand and production, and over all things that can make or break economic activity.
And lastly there is Happiness , which largely relates to the amount of questing being performed both for NPC's, guilds in the area, and the mayors ability to enact policies in a node. This might also have an effect on recruit-able NPC's or Flying mounts.
I think a Mayor should have an active role in initiating events for all three of these categories. I percieve there are two broad categories of events a Mayor can inact: Investment and Response
Investment quests are largely about opening up requests to the community to achieve a goal in either infrastructure that effects Security, Economics, or Happiness. These have an upfront cost for initiating by the Mayor but the reward for success is a longer term positive effect on one of the three stability stats.
For Security Investment quests this can be something like requesting donations of gear for better npc guards to be available for caravans, better weapons or defenses for a siege.
For Economic/Infrastructure Investment quests this can be something like requesting materials for building a node facility beyond the current budget of the Node, helping build the roads for faster caravans and mounted travel, issuing a large order of cheap materials to have an artisan guild facility a temporary bonuses to crafting
For Happiness Investment quests this can be something like 'special social org quests designed to presuade a social org npc in the area or a nearby node to act or come to the node'. Donations for food and drink to host a festival or gladiatorial tournament. Get a bunch of blue prints and materials to help fund a node policy. Generally these should be indirectly economic and more about the Nodes political relations relative to it's vassal's or it's parent nodes and internal node policies. These can possibly also effect racial quest availability
Response quests are largely about opening up requests to the community to address a current or growing problem. There should not be a cost for opening these types of quests up front. There is a negative consequence that is about to happen to the node as a result of something outside the nodes control that needs to be responded to. There should be different approaches to solving each general category of problem depending on what the Nodes 'type' is (religious, military, scientific, or economic) and they should probably have one or two different responses depending on the communities preferred gameplay style.
Security Response quests are about a growing monster population, npc bandit populations on the rise, or the frequency of Red actors in the area.
Infrastructure Response quests are about things like repairing or PREpairing for a weather event, seasonal change causing supply difficulties for artisans, repairing from a siege, or shortages of a certain material vital to the player economy in the area.
Happiness Response quests are about things like the effects of a disease outbreak, famine, or refugees from a neighboring node that was sieged. This can also be relative to social orgs. Maybe there is some high class NPC in the thieves guild that needs appeasing or they will leave to a different node. This can probably also effect the availability of racial quests.
I feel like node type should have an effect on what type of events can happen and how they can be responded to.
For example a Religous node might care a lot more about corruption build up in an area or the effects of Reds on the surrounding population. They might therefore focus more on resolving it by killing 'evil' mobs if the Mayor thinks their player base is more PvE mob fighting oriented or requesting alchemical items that can help purify the surrounding area of corruption if the Mayor thinks their player base is more crafting oriented, or maybe they'll issue higher bounties for Reds if they think their player base is more PvP oriented.
Meanwhile an Economic node probably doesn't actually care about corruption that much but they DO care about Caravan safety a lot more. So events for dealing with Reds come up, but more so in the context of caravans or bolstering their NPC guards, or maybe even having an increased investment in the social orgs that support the kinds of players that are capable of dealing with Reds.
The core point I'm trying to get across here is Node type shouldn't determine how the Node's player base solves a problem, but it should have a strong effect on what types of problems the Node cares about. The mayor should be the one to decide this because an algorithm would be less responsive relative to what it's citizens might be more interested in terms of solving problems than an official that is intended to be rotated out based on performance.
"What are some of the consequences of failing an event that you can imagine happening to the node you call home? Feel free to share your ideas!"
I feel like failure should create even MORE content rather than less, in most cases. When things are stable and people are happy, there is probably less need for a Mayor to need to inact policies. The prosperity from expansion should open up new content and challenges that will take up more of the player base of that node's time. I percieve that if a Node is unstable or doesn't meet a certain facet of the maintenance cost of the node, that it should effect other facets. If you have failed events in Infrastructure Investment, for example, maybe it causes a Happiness Response event to become necessary to avoid some sort of possible consequence to the nodes reputation with social org or racial NPC's. Failure in managing a Security Response to stifle bandits? You should probably be worried about the ability to defend your caravans and keep up the quality of your roads sparking an Infrastructure Response quest to become issue-able by the Mayor.
Node events have an ability to be a core part of the political rivalry in game that isn't necessarily all 'direct combat' and 'war'. I would therefore like to see a failed node event result take two forms:
Form 1. Failed Investment: This type of event failure would require a refactoring of the nodes infrastructure in some way. Either due to a deterioration in a structure that is prerequisite for other facilities, or due to some lack of flexibility in funding due to the resources that were required to invest in the event in the first place. Functionally failure in an Investment type event wouldn't have a direct impact on how citizens interact with the node other than maybe a small reduction in some amenities. It is an obstacle that can be overcome with more effort from the community. This type of failure probably does not need additional events to chain after it due to the lack of negative impact other than the loss of resources invested to trigger the event in the first place.
Form 2. Mismanaged Response: This type of event failure would have a direct economic impact on sectors of the nodes economy or infrastructure in some way. In a sense there is some risk to infrastructure that could have been prevented with more community help and the nodes enemies have some ability to counter this. For example a typhoon happens. The citizens can throw down sandbags to prevent the roads from decaying, but they can be killed and these structures destroyed. The key here is that these events have a default negative that the node is experiencing but it can be completely mitigated with enough community engagement. If this failure state occurs, Mayor's should be able to create high priority quests with slightly higher rewards to fix the infrastructure issue that occurred due to the degradation of infrastructure.
These are two very broad categories of failure and consequence but they can occur as a result of a failure in Security, Infrastructure, or Happiness quests.
Over all I think structuring failure in this way is the best way to both give the local community the power to positively influence their success while still giving plenty of opportunity for political rivals to try and influence things at the cost of that persons productivity not being put to use constructively in their own node. Ideally the effect of community input would be slightly stronger than the negative impact caused by players hostile to the node to keep content from getting stale due to a lack of morale in the player base in achieving anything.