Mayors

Depiction of a mayor.

Mayors have a unique ability to elicit change within the node proper, either through the destruction of certain buildings that have been constructed previously, because there's a limited number of slots that buildings can be constructed within, or the kickoff of additional projects, or the certain types of policies that can be enacted, like... the changing of a tax rate. They all have a unified source of energy requirement and the energy requirement is a mandate. – Steven Sharif

Mayors are chosen through different election methods according to the node's type.

• Only node citizens may be elected mayor.
  • Only one citizenship may be declared per account, per server.

• Previous mayors won't have any special system driven bonuses to help them get reelected.

• מלכים ומלכות can also become a mayors.

• Mayoral leadership powers are granted via the use of mandates.

• Players will be able to view a historical listing of mayors of a node.

שלטון הצומת

אלפא-1 winner of Mayoral election.

There are a number of different seats that can exist within a node, and carry different responsibilities. – Steven Sharif

Positions within a node's government are attained through seasonal titles that grant special powers and benefits within the node.

There are other node-based positions. Most of them relate to social organizational structures like the temple and the social organization building that the node might construct. Those are ladder systems of achievement that players can work through on a seasonal basis to achieve the highest level of that for the particular node; and by doing so they will then have titles bestowed upon them, which grants certain types of powers and benefits. – Steven Sharif

• Mayors.
• כהנים, bishops, or acolytes of temples.
• Social organization positions.
• Patron guild leaders.
• Chief bounty hunter.

Node elections

אלפא-1 node election user interface.

The village stage is a unique stage because that's when the government system comes online and all other stages past village there will have already been a cadence for the election system and it will follow that cadence, but after the initial village stage is completed there will be a one week period where players have an opportunity to establish citizenship at the village that also provides for the cooldown time that is- that would be present on players leaving another node to participate in in this particular node leveling up. But that after that one week period then there will be a one-week election process and then from that point moving forward will be the one month cadence that the node experiences elections on. – Steven Sharif

Once a node has reached כפר (שלב 3) there will be a one week cooldown period before node elections begin.

• This cooldown period allows players to establish citizenship at the village; which may require them to relinquish previous citizenship at another node.
• Following the initial cooldown, there will be a one week election process, then from that point on, elections will follow a monthly cadence.
• מצור על צומת may not be declared for 21 days following a node advancing to any stage.
  • This was previously stated to apply only to nodes advancing to כפר (שלב 3), not higher stages.

Node elections occur on a monthly basis.

• Election notices will be mailed to the accounts of citizens.
• Only citizens of a node may participate in its elections.
• Only node citizens may be elected mayor.
  • Only one citizenship may be declared per account, per server.
• A king or queen can also become a mayor.

Leadership powers

Leadership powers may refer to.

• Node leadership powers
• Guild leadership powers

Mayoral caravans

Quest to launch a mayoral caravan.

Mayoral caravans (also referred to as Trade caravans) are launched by Mayors to obtain needed resources from other nodes.

• Nodes answering these resource requests must have a trade agreement or alliance with the requesting node.

• Once the requesting mayor accepts a fill order from another node, a system driven caravan is spawned to transit the goods.

• Players can participate in helping to defend the caravan if they wish.

• Trade caravans can initiate world events.

Mayors who need certain resources that either they don't have enough of, or that they're prospectively investing in: they will initiate a mayor request, and any node that sees that request on the mayoral caravan drop-down menu will have an opportunity to attempt to fulfill the trade request. In order to fulfill a trade request, a node must have a certain level of relationship with that requesting node. At a minimum it has to be a trade agreement relationship; and then there's a limited number of those trade relationships that you can have; and that scales up to eventually alliance perspective. And then, once the node requesting mayor accepts a potential fill order, then a system spawned caravan is generated and the transit is completed. Players can participate in helping to defend that or not. – Steven Sharif

City hall

Winstead כפר (שלב 3) node town hall in אלפא-2.

We want the City Hall to be the place where big decisions are made for each Node. It should be where the “ruling class” comes together and decides what to do (these decisions can quickly make them the “old ruling class” too).

Town hall (also called City hall) is a default service building that comes pre-built with nodes.

• Players can interact with the node board to get a list of its citizens. Clicking on a citizen will reveal information about their guild, society, religion, and property ownership.

חלק מהמידע הבא לא אושר לאחרונה על ידי המפתחים וייתכן שלא נמצא במפת הדרכים הנובחית של הפיתוח.

• Mayors and node governments use city hall to visualize and control activities within their node. These capabilities will also be available via mobile/web interface.

• Status of the node's economy.
• Status of upcoming elections.
• Status of trade agreements.
• Status of caravans.

Taxes

אלפא-2 Node treasury work-in-progress advanced node taxes UI.

As the node levels up, you're gonna get access to deeper controls on the taxes, so that you as a Mayor can incentivize players to come to your node to do certain things. If you're a node that loves smithing, you're probably going to want to lower your taxes on artisanship to incentivize players to be here. But then you might want to drive up taxes on other avenues that players aren't necessarily coming to your node for, but are using out of convenience. – Chris Justo

אלפא-2 Citizenship dues and node taxes work-in-progress UI.

Mayors are able to set a generalized node tax rate as well as overrides for different activities within their node. Mayors gain additional taxation controls as their node advances.

• Amenities tax override.
• Artisanship tax override.
• Commerce tax override.
  • This may include taxes that apply to tavern games.
• Property tax override.
  • Freehold property taxes scale according to the number of freehold building permits issued for that freehold.
• Citizenship dues and property taxes scale based on the stage of the node when a player became 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.
• Node tax rates will be visible on the world map by hovering over a node location.
• Tax revenue only goes toward funding node development. This cannot be withdrawn by the mayor or any other player.

Regent nodes take a cut of taxes from various activities 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.

When a node reaches stage 3 (כפר) and a player run government has formed, all player housing will pay taxes.

• A player's tax charge will be determined by the number of structures built on their plot.
• Freehold taxes are calculated based on the number of permits issued for buildings on a freehold.
  • Buildings that require permits will have additional upkeep costs.

Maintaining businesses requires licensing and payments to the node your Freehold is associated with. This permitting system allows for a certain number of buildings to be constructed on a Freehold. Permits can be obtained from the same node the Freehold was certified from, and buildings that require permits will have an additional upkeep cost.

• Housing foreclosures result from failing to pay property taxes or other fees.

Node development

Racial architecture of the same כפר (שלב 3) node on different servers. Dünir Dwarven influence (top). Kaelar Human influence (bottom). אלפא-1 ללא NDA צילום מסך.

The layout and architecture within a Node’s development area are determined by influential race. For example, a stage 3 Node with the majority of player contribution being Py'rai would have a Py'rai village with Py'rai architecture. Most NPCs would be Py'rai elves, and offer questlines within the Py'rai narrative. – Margaret Krohn

Each player’s contributed experience is flagged with their character race and other identifiers. When a Node advances, the race with the highest experience contribution determines the Node’s style and culture. This style and culture change can happen at every Node Stage. For example, if a Node advances to Level 2 - Encampment Stage and 51% of all experience was earned by Ren’Kai players, the Node will be a Level 2 Ren’Kai Node. If that same Node advances to a Level 3 - Village Stage Node, but the Py'Rai contributed 62% of all the experience earned, then the Node will be a Level 3 Py'Rai Node. – Margaret Krohn

Node layout and style is determined by several factors:

The way that the node system is built is that they can exist across a spread of 18 biomes, but at the same time have to represent the cultural influence of these cultures that are intrinsically a part of a specific biome. – Steven Sharif

• Environment (biome) and location of the node.
  • Nodes will adjust the local topography to fit the aesthetic and mechanical requirements of the node.

Currently the way that the platform system is set up, is it's capable of adjusting the topography of the node's footprint, regardless of the surrounding terrain. So the reason for that is we want to have flexibility in the presentation of the node's layout and how it is essentially both from an aesthetic standpoint as well as a mechanical standpoint with node sieges- how it's constructed and that construction should have the ability to take on a variance of different types of topography. So it shouldn't be dependent on the surrounding area. Now that's not to say that the surrounding area isn't going to have some influence over. So for example... we're experimenting a little bit with the platform tech and putting up a node up against the side of a mountain or on the edge of a cliff or something that has a beautiful vista. Those are things that we're going to test out obviously as we continue to work on the node tool and how that platform system works, but the idea is to have the node independent of the surrounding terrain. – Steven Sharif

• Node type.

Some parts are determined by the area it's in. Some parts are determined by the type it is. Some parts are determined by the race it is; and then the rest of it is determined by the mayor. – Jeffrey Bard

• Race that contributed the highest percentage to the node's advancement will alter the racial appearance of its buildings, דמויות ללא שחקן, and props.
  • Parent races do not combine their cultural influences. For example, Py'Rai and Empyrean count as different cultures. Their parent race, the Pyrian, no longer exists.
  • This style and culture change happens at every stage.
  • This applies to all nodes, including castle nodes.

All nodes, whether they're associated with a castle or associated with normal node structure, has cultural influences that replicate over to the buildings that are produced and the NPCs that are present. – Steven Sharif

• The rest is determined by the node's mayor.
  • It should be possible for a node to complete several building projects within a mayor's one month term in office.

Q: How long would you say it will take players on average to fill/build up a node completely from wilderness to metropolis?

A: It's one thing to get a node to a certain level: it's another thing to develop the node; and I can't really give you an on-average expectation, because there's a lot of variables at play. There's how many citizens does the node have attracted to it; what's the type of traffic that the node is attracting to it based on things like its tax rates, or the specialization that it chose to spec into, based on the building types it's chosen to build. All of those things are variables that can affect the quote-unquote "average build-out time" of a particular node. So it's difficult to give you an average when there's so many variables along those lines. But the idea is that if there is a particular project that players are interested in in developing based on the node stage, that they would have the ability to complete several of those projects as within a single term of a mayor; and a term of a mayor is one month. – Steven Sharif

Node politics

There won't be a civil war mechanic within nodes but there will be scope for internal political conflicts; such as undermining the current leadership and disrupting trade.

• The only way to remove an elected mayor prior to the end of their term is by destroying the node.

We want consequences to matter and if that person got elected then you need to work within the means of the mechanics to get them unelected. – Steven Sharif

מצור על צומת

מצור על צומת (תרום-אלפא footage).

ברגע שאיזורים בעולם מתפתחים, איזורים אחרים נופלים. זהו הבסיס של העולם החי והנושם של Ashes of Creation, בו לשחקנים תהיה היכולת לקבל החלטות משמעותיות החשובות לאריכות החיים של אזור שהופך לעיר, או האם לצור על עיר מתחרה. קום מתוך האפר, צור את העולם סביבך והיה חלק מסיפור המתעצב ממעשיך והחלטותיך. – Margaret Krohn

מצור על צומת מאפשר לשחקנים להרוס צמתים. דבר הסולל את הדרך להתפתחות וגישה חדשה לתוכן הנעול בצמתים שמסביב. התוצאה של דינמיקה כזו היא שסכסוכים ויריבויות פוליטיות משחקים תפקיד חשוב במבנה העולם.

• הטלת מצור על צמתים לא תהיה משימה קלה עבור התוקפים.יהיה לערים ו- מטרופולינים יתרון הגנתי משמעותי.

• יהיו מערכות שיחקו את הפעילות של מצורים, אבל לא יהיו מצורים לתרגול.

• עונשי מוות לא חלים על אירועים אובייקטיביים כמו מצורים על צמתים.

אם יש לך בית בצומת ואתה לא רוצה לראות את הבית שלך נהרס, אתה צריך להגן על העיר! – Steven Sharif

• רוב (80%~) התוכן בAshes of Creation מתרחש בעולם פתוח אבל יכולים להיות מופעים של מצור (Instances) בתוך מצור על טירה ומצור על צומת כך שקבוצות ספציפיות יוכלו להשתתף בקרבות קטנים, קצרים, ובעלי מטרה אובייקטיבית עבור נקודות ציון ספציפיות.

מלחמת צמתים

שלטון הצומת may declare war on another node and rally citizens to the cause.

• This mutually flags the citizens of the warring nodes, including their allies, as combatants.
  • ארגונים חברתיים quests will either be cooperative or adversarial based on the war status of their parent nodes.
• צמתים צמיתים cannot declare a node war on their parent node or any of their vassals.
• Node wars can be declared at any time, but the objectives will only spawn during server prime-time.
  • Players can kill each other at any time during the war (not only during server prime-time).
• Node wars affect reputation between the nodes.

We have conditions that you can set between nodes with regards to either nodes being friendly with each other and acting trade alliances, or they can declare war on nodes similar to how guild wars may function in different games, where those citizens become hostile to each other based on the player government that's elected in the particular node. So those systems all cater to allowing a conflict that's meaningful and that also provides a non-imbalanced relationship between stronger guilds and not as strong guilds. – Steven Sharif

דרקונים

Dragon 3D render.

Dragon depicted on Ashes of Creation MMORPG official Gamescom 2019 teaser trailer.

דרקונים (sometimes referred to as Wyrms or Wyrmlings) are able to be used as mounts, others will serve as דמויות ללא שחקן: Some will be bosses or monsters that players can fight.

• Dragon mounts are classed as royal mounts (tier 3) that are capable of true flight when utilized by Mayors of metropolis nodes or מלכים ומלכות of טירות של גילדות.
  • Royal mounts are 3 or 4 times larger than gliding mounts (tier 2 mounts).
  • Certain tier 2 mount skins can be upgraded to tier 3 skins to accommodate the size difference.

• Dragon eggs can also drop from legendary world bosses. These will be temporary mounts that exist for a limited duration.

We reserved it to very very few people per server, which is also going to make it a lot more meaningful when those flying dragons come into play for certain events. – Steven Sharif

See also

• שלטון הצומת
• יצורי רכיבה