Citizenship

Node citizenship.

Citizenship is, aside from nodes existing, one of the most important parts. So you as a player will get to become a citizen of these nodes: you're going to need to acquire some form of housing to be able to do that within that node's jurisdiction, it's zone of influence. – Chris Justo

Player housing grants the ability to claim citizenship of a Village (stage 3) node or higher. Gaining citizenship through player housing is not automatic. It must be claimed.

• Players interact with Town Hall Administrator NPCs to apply for citizenship at that node.^{[ citation needed ]}

• There is not a hard cap to node citizenship, but there is a soft cap. Citizens pay dues and property taxes based on the stage of the node when the player became a citizen.

When you become a citizen you enter in at a certain citizenship due structure; and citizens pay taxes to their node in the form of both property taxes based on what type housing as well as citizenship dues, which are necessary. And as you enter later into the stage of a node's development, you will pay a higher value on the citizenship dues or vice-versa: if you own a property later, you will be entered into a property tax that is higher based on where you enter that property ownership within the node's history. So those help to form a soft cap. Now, if payers are willing to pay more to be a citizen of a particular node, they have that option, but at some point it becomes restrictive.

• 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 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 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 realm.

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

• Players lose their node citizenship after their node is destroyed in a node siege without entering into a cooldown period.
  • Apart from node destruction, there is no player driven system that can strip another player of their node citizenship.

• Node citizenship is not tied to membership of a guild. Guilds don't "own" nodes.

There's a reason why mayorship, citizenship, and guilds are intended to be separate. Guilds I view as very much a territorial "I own this thing. My guild is the the owner of these things." Nodes are really not intended to be that space. Nodes are intended to be content hubs that any player has access to, whether that content is narrative arcs that send you out into the world and the POIs around you, whether that be housing that you have access to, or artisanship services, or vendor tables. These are things that, should players choose to be a citizen, they have access to. – Steven Sharif

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• 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 tickets may also grant citizenship to certain node stages. This mechanic will be decided based on testing.

Citizenship benefits

Node citizenship grants a number of benefits.

• Reduced fees for node services.

• Reduced tax rates.

• Access to the node's reliquary.

• Access to exclusive unique vendors based on the node's type.

• Access to merchants that offer specific types of enhancement stones or stat migrations.

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

• Access to limited functions and service buildings within the node.

• Significantly reduced fees (close to zero cost) to access crafting stations as well as access to unique enhancements, such as those granted by relics present at that node.
  • Previously this was stated to simply be access to upper-tier crafting benches.

• 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.

Non-citizens must pay a premium to gain access to node services.

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.

• Players renounce their citizenship at their node's town hall.
• Players that renounce their citizenship during a node siege declaration period may incur penalties.
• Players lose their node citizenship after their node is destroyed in a node siege will gain a refugee status.
  • Refugees have no cooldown for joining a new node and may get reductions in citizenship dues and other node costs.
• Player housing ownership is not affected by citizenship changes.

Taxation

Alpha-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

Alpha-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.

Affiliations

An affiliation tree determines how entities are flagged against other entities within its hierarchy.

• Corrupted players can be attacked (or killed) 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

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

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 leadership
• Taxation