Alliances

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

• Progression pathways within alliances.
• Guilds sharing common services with alliance members.
• Node alliances.

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. – Steven Sharif

Guild alliances

Guild leaders can create an alliance at a later stage in guild progression by completing a quest.

• Once created, the leader can invite up to three other guilds to this alliance, but this is subject to change.

• A guild may only be a member of one alliance.

• There is no member cap in an alliance, only a maximum of four guilds.

Will the largest guilds segment off into different chapters of their guild that are part of small guilds? Absolutely that will happen; and the way that we combat the efficacy of doing that always is through how we design our encounters and our events to incorporate the use-case of where smaller guilds and their passive abilities are necessary to overcome certain challenge ratings. Will it always be most beneficial for larger guilds to do that? No, not always. It depends on what they're encountering, but you absolutely will see some guilds leveraging that for sure. – Steven Sharif

• Guild leaders will be able to pool resources into a guild alliance bank.

You can only invite a number of guilds to the alliance before you must form a new alliance; and then those alliance can have a de facto friendship but they won't have any game component of connection. What the alliance system would allow is pooling of resources into by guild leaders into an alliance guild alliance bank. Will allow certain participation in different quest lines. It will allow common area chat for members and it will allow affiliations and gear that can be attained as well. – Steven Sharif

• There will be alliance specific quest lines.

• Alliance members will share a common chat channel.

• Alliances will have affiliations and gear that can be attained.

• Guilds may enter into trade agreements.

We have a specific system that relates to being able to invite another guild into an alliance that sets a flag on those characters with regards to being able to combat them, being able to share a chat system with them, being able to participate in specific types of quests and/or alliance warehouses and guild homes; with regards to the relationship of castle sieges and participating in node warfare and node activities. If you're not in an alliance with someone, you're in a neutral state so to speak. You can have trade agreements between different guilds and then you can also have Guild Wars which shows a state of war between you guys. I think that's the baseline of how we're going to develop interaction between guilds. – Steven Sharif

• Due to the lack of fast travel, guilds will need to plan to have people in the right place at the right time. Alliances with other guilds will help enable that.

Siege alliances

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

• For node sieges, citizens of the node or provincial nodes being attacked are automatically registered as defenders.
• There are many reasons to participate as an ally in the attack or defence of other nodes.
  • 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. – 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

Node leadership

Alpha-1 Empyrean city node information panel.

The government has a lot of say in the direction of the node's development. Directing assets, building projects, tax allocation, defensive ability etc. Players have the ability to not only create these cities, but they have the right of self-governance.

Mayoral leadership powers are granted to mayors via the use of mandates.

• Initiate buy orders using gold from the node treasury.

• Initiate mayoral commissions to aid node development.

• Adjust node taxes. This includes setting tax rates that apply to tavern games.
  • Tax money may only be used to fund node development.

• Initiate service building construction and expansions.

• Improving node defensive structures, such as stronger walls and gates, traps, and siege equipment.
  • Hiring mercenary NPCs to defend the node during sieges.

• Set a message-of-the-day for the node.

• Proposing node policies that are voted on by citizens.
  • Mayors won't have formal systems to carry out surveys/polls of node citizens, but they will be able to utilize node citizen chat or message-of-the-day services.
  • Mayors may have special color names in node chat channels.

• Entering into trade agreements with other nodes.
  • Coordinate the transfer of needed supplies with citizens operating caravans.

• Mayors don't get a free home, but they do have offices in the town hall.

• Mayors cannot denote players as enemies of the state. Previously this was a potential option.

• Declaring war on another node and rallying citizens to the cause.

• Mayors are notified when their node is named on a siege declaration scroll.
  • The mayoral title unlocks special high-effect abilities and stats during sieges or events.

  Mayors and lords of castles have spells they can use on the battlefield with high effect and long cooldowns for their teams.

• Mayors will have an emblem generation suite that allows them to create their node flag.

• Mayors gain new powers and responsibilities as their node advances.

• Some leadership powers are specific to node type, biome, or dominant race, others are universal.

There definitely are differences... Some of the things that mayors can do are more universal, but then some systems have very specific if your node has a certain dominant race, or your node is a certain type, or it's in a certain biome. So there's even differences between where it is too. – Chris Justo

• Some decisions require the mayor to be present in the ZOI of the node. Most do not.

• If a mayor does not make certain decisions within a set period of time then the system will make a decision for them.

Q: The idea behind all these nodes are awesome, but I wonder how it will actually play out in the live version. The problem is having player run or the problem with having player run towns is that people come and go in video games. So, will towns die out etc?

A: We incorporate as part of those designs certain fail-safes, certain protections, certain automated progression that takes over when some of those decisions are lacking or are not made; and those decisions can be defaulted. Now, of course, that would have a deleterious effect on the direction that a particular node might want to go, because they're going to be doing default behaviors, or default actions, as opposed to something that might be in line with the strategic objective of that particular node, or the specialization that the node has previously been attempting to do. But that is why we have a regularly recurring election period where players can take the reins of power and can elect someone else to come in and participate and and re-right the ship, so to speak. So it is absolutely a component of having player-driven mechanics that there is an opportunity for things to be less than ideal, or less than strategic when certain bad-faith actors or people leave, but there are safeguards in place. – Steven Sharif

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

• Choosing a node name from a predetermined list.

• Guilds do not control nodes.
  • Guilds hold separate roles in the direction of the node than the roles held by private citizens.
  • Only a certain number of guilds may participate in these roles.
  • Separate guild roles are reserved for small, medium and large guilds.

Node wars

Node governments 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.
  • Social organizations quests will either be cooperative or adversarial based on the war status of their parent nodes.
• Vassal nodes 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

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

See also

• Guilds
• Nodes
• Sieges