Racial influences

אלפא-1 כפר node layout.

We have essentially sets that exist across all races; and each race that dons those armor sets is going to have their own racial influence on the presentation of those particular sets. So that's something that's unique in how each of the races get diversified. Additionally, the more that one particular race contributes to a node's development, it's going to manifest in that particular node's architectural influences. You're going to see the architectures of those races become manifest within the nodes as well: That's another way that we diversify each race and we present each race's culture in the game as through those architectures, through those props that exist, through the tailoring of the armor sets that the NPC might wear, to the different factions that exist. Factions will have their own affiliation with different races as well. Each race will also have some different nomenclature when it comes to the lore, or comes to locations in the world. They're going to have their own language influences as well: The way they speak is something that's going to be distinct between races; when you have dialogue trees with particular NPCs. So all of those things really go into setting an immersive world where the cultures have their own identity. – Steven Sharif

Cultural influences manifest in many ways, from node and gear aesthetics to NPC languages and lore.

• חזות הציוד of certain armor sets is influenced by the player's race.
• Node layout and style is influenced by the race that contributes the most to that node.
  • Benefits may apply to citizens of the dominant culture but can also apply to mechanics of the node, which can also be of benefit to members of other races.
  • There are attrition mechanics that affects experience and influence to curb a single race from dominating the entire world.

There is an attrition and that attrition on experience and influence is heightened based on the performance of the race in the world. So if all these nodes are Orc nodes then their attrition rate is very high to compete with the cultural establishment of new nodes because they have more influence in the world and a popular opinion is against them in their outlying regions that they do not have influence in. – Steven Sharif

Artistic influences

Asian influenced Ren'Kai architecture.

Character races are super important. These are the choices that we make at the onset of our adventure in an MMORPG: what race- not just mechanically aligns with our decisions, if those races have game mechanics behind them from a stat perspective, but visually and culturally and historically: What are these? What do these races represent? So it's important that visually they're distinct. And everyone's seen fantasy games do Elves, so everyone's seen them do Humans, everyone's seen them do Orcs: There's an established expectation almost behind what these traditional fantasy races represent; and there's a risk, because whenever you're creating a new IP or a new story or a new world- a new Universe; a realm in which things don't have to always be the norm, you can take a little bit of creative liberty to redefine some of the aspects of a particular race; and that can be a good thing, because it's something that is new to players. It's something that is unique to the realm that we're building- the surroundings that you have. So what we wanted to do was push a little bit more on the unique side of what the Py'rai would look like from a visual perspective. – Steven Sharif

• Aelean architecture has a French medieval influence.
• Dünir have a Nordic cultural influence.
• Empyreans have a Greco-Roman imperialistic feeling.
• The Kaelar have a European influence.
• The Niküa have a Polynesian influence.
• The Py'Rai have a Navajo Native American influence. Py'Rai architecture has a woodland inspiration.
• Pyrian architecture has a Greco-Roman influence.
• Ren'Kai architecture has an Asian influence.
• The Vaelune have a Middle Eastern influence.
• The Vek have a Mesoamerican influence.

You will see in the different races that are available from a player character standpoint a lot of different influences that reflect many cultures in the world: Not just European, not just Africa, not Mesoamerican. These cultures are going to be present in many of the races. – Steven Sharif

The idea is just to find a base component in the real world as a starting point and then to begin to fantasize. – Steven Sharif

Node layout and style

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

פיתוח צומת

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              ןשוימ תויהל יושע הז םוגרת

פעילות של שחקנים אזרחים ושחקנים לא אזרחים (משימות, איסוף, פשיטות וכו.) בתוך אזור השפעה של צמתים נוספת לפיתוח אותו הצומת (התפתחות).

איזור ההתפתחות של הצומת הוא היכן שציביליזציה תופיע כאשר צומת מתפתח. ככל שהצומת עולה שלבים, בניינים שונים, דמויות ללא שחקן (NPCs), ושירותים יהפכו לזמינים באיזור ההתפתחות. ככל שרמת הצומת גבוהה יותר, כך איזור ההתפתחות יהיה מורכב ומאוכלס יותר. אזור ההתפתחות ישתנה גם בהתאם לסוג הצומת - כלכלי, צבאי, מדעי, או שמימי; נרחיב יותר על כל אחד מהסוגים בפוסטים עתידיים בסדרה הזו. – Margaret Krohn

התפתחות של צומת חושפת את התוכן הייחודי שלו, שבאה במחיר של נעילת טבעת הולכת וגדלה של צמתים שכנים מלהתפתח לשלב הבא.

• צמתים מתפתחים לשלב הראשון במהירות. זה מאפשר שירותים של דמויות ללא שחקן כמו מכר או בנקאות של חפצים.
• ככל שצומת מתקדם כך אזור השפעה שלו גדל.
• צמתים פחות מתקדמים (מכונים צמתים צמיתים) שנמצאים בתוך איזור השפעה של צומת מתקדם יותר יכולים עדיין לצבור XP, אבל חייבים להשאר בשלב התפתחות נמוך יותר מהצומת הדומיננטי.
  • מערכת הצמיתים מתחילה כאשר צומת מגיע לשלב 3 (כפר), אבל צמתים שכנים החל משלב משלחת (שלב 1) יכולים גם לחסום את הגדילה של השכנים הקרובים שלהם.
• אלגוריתם הרחבת הטריטוריה לוקח בחשבון את החוף הקרוב ביותר, צמתים שכנים, ואת מפת החום של שחקנים באזורים הסמוכים במהלך השבועות או החודש האחרון.
  • בגלל האופן בו אלגוריתם ההתרחבות מחשב את ההתרחבות הטריטוריאלית (אזור השפעה) במהלך פיתוח צומת, קיימת אפשרות קטנה ששני צמתים באותו שלב יהיו בסופו של דבר קרובים זה לזה.

הדרך שבה האלגוריתם מרחיב שטחים לוקחת בחשבון כמה דברים: דבר ראשון היא לוקחת בחשבון את החוף לדוגמה היכן החוף הכי קרוב. דבר שני היא לוקחת בחשבון את הצמתים הסמוכים כך שהוא יוכל להשתלט עליהם ולהפוך אותם לצמיתים שלו, אבל מה שחשוב יותר זה בעצם האוכלוסייה הראשונית שנקבעת על ידי בחירת השחקנים את הגזעים שלהם. מכיוון שיש לנו תשעה גזעים שונים וארבע נקודות התחלה שונות שמתפצלות, צפיפות האוכלוסייה של כל שרת הולכת להכתיב למעשה את הצמתים הראשונים שיהיו מאוכלסים מאוד ואז הגרעין הראשוני הזה הוא זה שהולך לקבוע את מבנה כל צומת תוך כדי שהוא נע בתוך היבשה בעצם אל תוך העולם; ובהתבסס על הביצועים וההצלחות של מצורים שונים יקבע אילו צמתים שננעלו ממקודם בהתקדמות הראשונית יוכלו להיות זמינים כעת כדי להתקדם הלאה. אז אני באמת חושב שעם כל כך הרבה משתנים שנמצאים במשוואה של איך צמתים מתקדמים ונשארים קיימים ככל שיש לך יותר משתנים, ככה תהיה הסבירות שתהיה התפצלות משמעותית בהתקדמות עולם גבוהה יותר . – Steven Sharif

בדרך כלל האלגוריתם שפועל על הרחבת הטריטוריה של צמתים ימנע מצמתים משמעותיים להיות קרובים זה לזה ... יכולה להיות סערה מושלמת בה כל הרחבה של אלגוריתם הטריטוריה תגרום לכך שצמתים יתקרבו זה לזה מאוד מכיוון שקיימות דרישות מסוימות שצריכות להתקיים בכדי לספק את האפשרות של השתלטות על צמתים צמיתים; וייתכן ששני צמתים לעולם לא יהפכו אחד את השני לצמית ובסופו של דבר יהיו צמודים זה לזה וימשיכו להרחיב את הטריטוריה שלהם בכיוונים מנוגדים: בערך כמו בספר "בין שתי ערים". – Steven Sharif

• צומת לא מקבל XP מהצמתים האחרים שתחת אזור ההשפעה שלו עד שאותם הצמתים מתפתחים לרמה הכי גבוהה שהם יכולים.
• שחקנים יועברו למקום בטוח אם הם נמצאים במקום של נכסים חדשים שצריכים להווצר במהלך התרחבות של צומת.
• אזרחים של צומת אחד יכולים לתרום להתקדמות של צמתים אחרים

ההזדמנויות להשיג ניסיון עבור צומת יהיו שוות עבור כל ארבעת סוגי הצמתים

• האחוז המדויק של התקדמות מהשגת חפצים או מהריגה של מפלצות לא יהיה ידוע במפורש כדי להימנע מ"לשחק" את המערכת.

לאנשים שונים יש משאבים שונים שהושקעו בהתקדמות של צמתים וזה יהיה קצת "משחקי" (gamey) אם היית יכול לדעת בדיוק מה נחוץ באותה נקודה מכיוון שזה יבלום את התמריץ של אנשים להשתתף. – Steven Sharif

Storyline quests

Story arc quests (Storyline quests/Narrative quests) contain objectives for each chapter of a story arc.

• Players can progress each chapter by completing story arc quests within the timeframe that each chapter is active.
  • Phase timers are shown (in the quest UI) to indicate how much real-world time is available to complete the quests in each phase.
  • If the player completes all quests in a particular chapter, they will need to wait until the next chapter to obtain further quests.

• Story arcs can branch into different stories with multiple possible endings depending on the quest objectives that players complete during each chapter.

You can't really farm the quests in any meaningful way, because once you've done the quests in a chapter, that's it until the next chapter. Whether 1000 people participate or 10, the chapters will stay active for the same length of time, and as long as you participate in the clearly-marked time frame in your quest journal, you're good. The only thing that a concentrated effort can help with is influencing the narrative paths through the arcs. – Skott B

• These quests stages can be failed. The ability to retry a failed quest depends on Node progression.

There will be many different quests that actually have stages of the storyline; and these stages can actually be failed. You can actually fail a storyline; which sucks when you think about it, but at the same time that risk makes your investment that much more important. – Steven Sharif

• Quests may differ based on the stages of nearby nodes, seasonal influences, and events such as world bosses.
• Quests involving citizens from multiple nodes are unlocked based on the alliances and other relationships between the nodes and their progression.

See also

• Node progression
• גזעים