Then it even makes more sense to have a choice when the cast is completed: you take the castle for your guild or for the one which initiated the siege. The treason can happen by design this way.
Once again, in the current design there is no "guild that initiates the siege". Every guild must cast their own scroll to join the siege. This is not node sieges.
Having that choice could be an interesting way to create more social interactions during the siege, and I wouldn't be opposed to it.
Yes, I said twice that the siege ends when the seal cast completes. That is how I understood it reading the wiki.
If each guild has to cast to join then the cost cannot be as high as the part from the collected taxes which go to the guild owning the castle. Must be affordable. Might even be free. There is no sense from game design point of view to put a price on them because I see them as an alternative siege for siege loving players, to spare nodes from frequent sieges for no reason.
But I seen yesterday when Azherae sent me to read the alpha 1 pvx mechanic (thanks for that by the way!):
Multiple guilds may register to attack and the first to complete the scroll and lay down the declaration may begin to have their members register to attack (there will be a cap).[42]
So the game wants to prevent guilds which are not in an alliance to participate.
The first one will start introducing the participants.
The others which failed to cast the scroll were probably from a different alliance / metro nation.
Yeah, this whole system is an incentives nightmare, but that will be kept in check precisely because of the high guild loyalty and collusion options.
So, if anything, we need the collusion to be a thing, quite a bit. The 'autosort' of players into their 'nations' has already happened years ago, and the chances of any foot soldiers ever having enough power to create real drama is quite low.
So the game wants to prevent guilds which are not in an alliance to participate.
The first one will start introducing the participants.
The others which failed to cast the scroll were probably from a different alliance / metro nation.
That line was the beginning of me thinking that the system is broken With a cap on siege members, the defending allies can just fill out those slots and no one would even siege. And if the cost is miniscule - it's even easier to do that abuse.
The casting of the scroll is also dependent on the quality of the scroll (which implies a difference in costs). And that quality defines how far from the castle you gotta be to start casting. Which means that the defending allies can just get the cheapest scroll and go cast it right next to the castle, which makes it EVEN EASIER to abuse the system.
The entire fucking thing is abusable because there's a limit
I never said only castle owners can led a siege... Idk how you get that when i said castle owners should not be able to pocket money / resources....
I'll just chuck this up to me being bad with words again.
Your name was in that comment PURELY in the context of you repeating the line "war between kingdoms". THAT'S IT. Nothing else, in any way, related to anything else you've said here or anywhere else.
So the game wants to prevent guilds which are not in an alliance to participate.
The first one will start introducing the participants.
The others which failed to cast the scroll were probably from a different alliance / metro nation.
That line was the beginning of me thinking that the system is broken With a cap on siege members, the defending allies can just fill out those slots and no one would even siege. And if the cost is miniscule - it's even easier to do that abuse.
The casting of the scroll is also dependent on the quality of the scroll (which implies a difference in costs). And that quality defines how far from the castle you gotta be to start casting. Which means that the defending allies can just get the cheapest scroll and go cast it right next to the castle, which makes it EVEN EASIER to abuse the system.
The entire fucking thing is abusable because there's a limit
No, it's abusable for a different, more complex reason, deep in the design.
It's abusable because the incentive to hold the castle is stronger than the incentive to prevent others from wanting to siege the castle, plus the fact that the benefit of holding the castle is fiat.
It's a core incentive problem for a persistent world game. But it's also easy to understand. Balancing the two of those things is hard.
I'm also tired of their argument their allies are going to be in the war and throw the castle as a reason to make a argument against caps and remove any competitive element out of the siege.
There is no reason if you are leading you are going to be putting random people in the siege unless you are out of guild alliances to pull from.
Its a big what if with multiple hoops. When you can just create restrictions regardless that prevent that kind of thing.
So the game wants to prevent guilds which are not in an alliance to participate.
The first one will start introducing the participants.
The others which failed to cast the scroll were probably from a different alliance / metro nation.
That line was the beginning of me thinking that the system is broken With a cap on siege members, the defending allies can just fill out those slots and no one would even siege. And if the cost is miniscule - it's even easier to do that abuse.
The casting of the scroll is also dependent on the quality of the scroll (which implies a difference in costs). And that quality defines how far from the castle you gotta be to start casting. Which means that the defending allies can just get the cheapest scroll and go cast it right next to the castle, which makes it EVEN EASIER to abuse the system.
The entire fucking thing is abusable because there's a limit
Hence my suggestion was to measure the damage during attacking and defending the caravans the previous 3 weeks and sort the participants based on that. If they worked enough to prevent the 3 adjacent nodes to build defenses then they deserve to be on the attacker list.
It's a core incentive problem for a persistent world game. But it's also easy to understand. Balancing the two of those things is hard.
Well yeah, the underlying reason for any abuse of any system is that there's a benefit to doing so.
But that balancing is exactly why I made these 2 threads. I'm trying to see if there even IS a way to balance the system w/o removing currently presented incentives. And it definitely been pretty hard to accomplish so far
It's a core incentive problem for a persistent world game. But it's also easy to understand. Balancing the two of those things is hard.
Well yeah, the underlying reason for any abuse of any system is that there's a benefit to doing so.
But that balancing is exactly why I made these 2 threads. I'm trying to see if there even IS a way to balance the system w/o removing currently presented incentives. And it definitely been pretty hard to accomplish so far
Well, I'd like to be on record as saying 'no, there's no way, the incentives are wrong, or the content is fiat'. That's fine if players who the content is for, are happy with it.
Hence my suggestion was to measure the damage during attacking and defending the caravans the previous 3 weeks and sort the participants based on that. If they worked enough to prevent the 3 adjacent nodes to build defenses then they deserve to be on the attacker list.
And I presented ways of how this kind of approach can be fairly easily played for the defending alliance's benefit. It would definitely be a step into the right direction, because it puts more pressure on the defending alliance and makes them "do more stuff if they want to keep the castle", but I think that democratic vote by the royal subjects is a better form of this kind of thing.
Maybe these 2 could even be combined, where the royal subjects are presented with a list that's based on the guilds that contributed during the castle node stage.
That would remove the pure opportunistic ability to join the siege at the very last possible moment (this being the very first seconds of the declaration period), but I guess I'd be ok with that compromise if it leads to a bigger probability of less abuse of the system.
Then it even makes more sense to have a choice when the cast is completed: you take the castle for your guild or for the one which initiated the siege. The treason can happen by design this way.
Once again, in the current design there is no "guild that initiates the siege". Every guild must cast their own scroll to join the siege. This is not node sieges.
Having that choice could be an interesting way to create more social interactions during the siege, and I wouldn't be opposed to it.
Yes, I said twice that the siege ends when the seal cast completes. That is how I understood it reading the wiki.
If each guild has to cast to join then the cost cannot be as high as the part from the collected taxes which go to the guild owning the castle. Must be affordable. Might even be free. There is no sense from game design point of view to put a price on them because I see them as an alternative siege for siege loving players, to spare nodes from frequent sieges for no reason.
But I seen yesterday when Azherae sent me to read the alpha 1 pvx mechanic (thanks for that by the way!):
Multiple guilds may register to attack and the first to complete the scroll and lay down the declaration may begin to have their members register to attack (there will be a cap).[42]
So the game wants to prevent guilds which are not in an alliance to participate.
The first one will start introducing the participants.
The others which failed to cast the scroll were probably from a different alliance / metro nation.
Yeah, this whole system is an incentives nightmare, but that will be kept in check precisely because of the high guild loyalty and collusion options.
So, if anything, we need the collusion to be a thing, quite a bit. The 'autosort' of players into their 'nations' has already happened years ago, and the chances of any foot soldiers ever having enough power to create real drama is quite low.
If made well, players will like them and I think might end up being broadcasted on twitch every weekend.
With a 15 min delay.
Hence my suggestion was to measure the damage during attacking and defending the caravans the previous 3 weeks and sort the participants based on that. If they worked enough to prevent the 3 adjacent nodes to build defenses then they deserve to be on the attacker list.
And I presented ways of how this kind of approach can be fairly easily played for the defending alliance's benefit. It would definitely be a step into the right direction, because it puts more pressure on the defending alliance and makes them "do more stuff if they want to keep the castle", but I think that democratic vote by the royal subjects is a better form of this kind of thing.
Maybe these 2 could even be combined, where the royal subjects are presented with a list that's based on the guilds that contributed during the castle node stage.
That would remove the pure opportunistic ability to join the siege at the very last possible moment (this being the very first seconds of the declaration period), but I guess I'd be ok with that compromise if it leads to a bigger probability of less abuse of the system.
I missed the royal subject suggestion.
But is good if we have solutions.
If a pinned thread comes IS will get even more of them maybe, from players who post only on those.
I should note that if we did somehow remove caps overall, there is a solution to this within the siege itself.
You have 200 'slots', each 'slot' gets 5 Respawns.
You can actually have more than 200 players, but someone has to 'gift' respawns to the extras.
From there you can wiggle around some design based on how you want it to go. There are lots of ways to do it.
If you want to get more people into the siege itself, you have some setup where a player needs to interact with some blessing stone or whatnot, to 'take their respawns'. But they don't have to take all 5.
As long as there are still respawns 'in the stone', people can keep joining.
(this is one of those design things where I'm not bothering to address every nuance of it or the possible ways it can go).
When one side has lost all its respawns, the siege ends (or if you prefer sieges to have specific full time limits, there's another way to do it).
Inactive players' respawns can 'go back into the stone'.
This would also promote better tactics in the field, cause just rushing the castle in hopes of chipping away at it through resurrections wouldn't really work now.
Yeah, this could definitely be a good start to opening up the sieges to a broader audience of people.
If you and I are both on the attacking side, can I attack and kill you?
My assumption in Ashes is that you will be able to. It doesn't make sense that you couldn't - not in the context of the game as a whole.
While this has its own issues (especially around starting and respawn points), I would at the very least expect players/guilds to flip sides, or start up a third faction.
They are - unless the point of your game is to allow those in positions of power to oppress those not in such positions. If this is the goal of your game, castles are all but a requirement.
If you and I are both on the attacking side, can I attack and kill you?
Ok, for a damn second I thought I was going insane, because I went to triple-check if I'm remembering it correctly, and originally attackers could attack each other, as long as they weren't in an alliance with each other.
But this got changed in the update that I started playing the game on, which is why I always remembered it as "no, attackers can't damage each other".
The same situation applies to "flipping of sides". Originally sides simply flipped, but with that change it became "the first successful Seal caster becomes the enemy to everyone in the siege".
Here it says that the system got yet another change, where now attackers can't "force attack" each other, which implies that in the previous version they still could do that, while their aoes weren't automatically hitting their temporary allies.
I have spent most of my GLing days in updates that came after this one, so maybe that's why I never recalled this particular change and simply thought that "attackers are fully allied, but after a Seal cast - they're not".
I shoulda done this check from the very start of L2 mentions, so that's my bad. But my suggestion was based on this version of L2, so all the "prisoner's dilmma" stuff still stands.
Just wanted to get facts straight, mainly for myself.
Here it says that the system got yet another change, where now attackers can't "force attack" each other, which implies that in the previous version they still could do that, while their aoes weren't automatically hitting their temporary allies.
I have spent most of my GLing days in updates that came after this one, so maybe that's why I never recalled this particular change and simply thought that "attackers are fully allied, but after a Seal cast - they're not".
I shoulda done this check from the very start of L2 mentions, so that's my bad. But my suggestion was based on this version of L2, so all the "prisoner's dilmma" stuff still stands.
Just wanted to get facts straight, mainly for myself.
Appreciated. Now that I've learned a lot about it, I have even more opinions.
I'm always thankful to get legacy game data from people who played games seriously. The internet is a misleading place.
I'm always thankful to get legacy game data from people who played games seriously. The internet is a misleading place.
Yeah, I tried looking for videos from sieges where I'd see attackers hitting each other, but there were just too few siege videos (even though I know for sure that there were quite a lot in the past). Search algorithms are fucked and on top of that some videos might've gotten blocked by YT because they used some song that are too copyright strict.
But I'd imagine these 2 changes happened, at least in part, because of the exploits I mentioned related to those 2 first designs.
Though to only really know we'd need to ask someone who played official servers from as early as possible. @JamesSunderland what do you remember about sieges and alliances during them? Did people on the attacking side attack each other to prevent others from casting the Seal?
p.s. for Azherae, in-between that last update and the previous one there was also a change about castle gates. Before that last 3rd update the defenders could destroy their own gates during the siege, but in the update just before that 3rd link this got changed.
All of these changes kinda tell me "defenders simply let their allies on the attacking side through and let them get the castle". And NCsoft then tried to prevent this exploit from happening through several ways.
My assumption in Ashes is that you will be able to. It doesn't make sense that you couldn't - not in the context of the game as a whole.
To me this wouldn't make sense in the context of Ashes simply because we can't flag on our allies outside of sieges. And unless Intrepid implement a special case where you can attack those allies, but not flag on them - I expect us to not be able to attack them at all.
This wasn't even the case in L2, so this kinda implies to me that Steven went for some preventive action for a potential abuse or smth (there's a tiny chance that we can't even attack our Red allies, but I think that's a stretch).
Obviously the attackers might not be seen as allies, just as it was in earlier version of L2, but I feel like that's just a bit too "hardcore" for what Steven has been going for so far. We'll see though.
While this has its own issues (especially around starting and respawn points), I would at the very least expect players/guilds to flip sides, or start up a third faction.
So you expect the siege to continue after the Seal is cast?
Or was this not an answer to the question from the start of the previous page of the thread?
A siege lasts for two hours. If an attacking clan leader successfully engraves his/her name on the holy artifact with the Seal of Ruler skill, the artifact recognizes the new controlling clan. This takes time, however, and the clan leader may not be interrupted while engraving the artifact. Only the clan leader may interact with the holy artifact. Clan leaders that are allied with the defense side may not interact with the holy artifact.
The changing of the holy artifact's owner before the end of the siege is termed 'mid-victory'. When the attacking side achieves a mid-victory, the attackers and defenders change sides. All matters of the clan that had previously owned the castle, including the restart point, are transferred to the new defending clan.
The Headquarters of a clan that has newly occupied the castle disappears. When mid-victory occurs, all players, excluding the new castle defense clan's allies, are sent to their restart points.
This is very gamey, but less fiat. Ashes mirrors this setup well enough.
So that last line matters the most.
Side switch = full teleporty reset. Except it might not be 'full', because obviously, the new defense clan would benefit from having their allies in the throne room or similar, even if they aren't.
This is reasonable, the power of the castle is its defensible physical location, I don't think we need to convince most people of this. And this interacts well with the Control Points, as long as they don't switch. Basically, if you 'only brought down one lane' and there was a full swap, the original defenders still control the 'lane' that didn't fall and can use the Control Point's teleport.
So, for whatever it matters, my opinion is still basically the same. Intrepid's design as I understand it now is fine, it has multiple 'Group 1 player' type options, it doesn't introduce a lot of unnecessary fiat, even if they do the side switch. But it is still 'throne room chaos' without a lead guild, and it becomes gamey fiat to me because of Steven's... particular tastes.
I love castle-based gameplay. I love trophies. I like rewarding risk a lot; and for me it's very difficult to imagine a MMO that I would want to play where there is not competition of strategic prowess that determines the outcome of these types of events and there is not a meaningful reward both mechanically and from just a bragging rights perspective that players can aim for and try to achieve. I think that it brings a lot to the game when it comes to motivations, to excel, to level, to gain power, to engage those different progression loops when there is an ultimate goal or trophy that is not static and doesn't exist forever once you achieve it, but that you must constantly perform in order to maintain; and that's really the purpose of these castles.
I don't disagree with these things. I don't think most people disagree with these things exactly. But at the end of the day, I, at least, am wary of this design type in a persistent world based on many years of player behaviour info. We've obtained an additional 5+ years of data since most of this was conceptualized. Entire games have come and gone.
So, taking the Sandal Lord's words to heart, the question is not 'should there be an incentive', nor 'should it require tactics and skill', but the form those take.
If we look at Steven's past and then read that quote, we might assume that since he seems to be 'Group 1', his concepts of 'strategic prowess' and 'reward' might not match some stuff that would be needed for 'better balance'. Or we could just assume that they will do whatever has the least problematic design outcome while still fitting those definitions.
As for my experience...
"It isn't so bad to change the target audience of a competitive activity to better suit the goals of your game if your game has broad appeal."
If we look at Steven's past and then read that quote, we might assume that since he seems to be 'Group 1', his concepts of 'strategic prowess' and 'reward' might not match some stuff that would be needed for 'better balance'. Or we could just assume that they will do whatever has the least problematic design outcome while still fitting those definitions.
As for my experience...
"It isn't so bad to change the target audience of a competitive activity to better suit the goals of your game if your game has broad appeal."
When time will come to give some feedback, for nodes I will suggest sieges to be somewhat differently balanced from each-other, depending on node type. I tried to introduce that here too into the castle sieges.
Though to only really know we'd need to ask someone who played official servers from as early as possible. @JamesSunderland what do you remember about sieges and alliances during them? Did people on the attacking side attack each other to prevent others from casting the Seal?
Yes but mostly not directly, some attacking clans would indeed stop each other from casting the seal, they usually did that through alt clans(or clanless alts) registered as defenders/mercenaries or through non-orthodox methods like Zariche/Akamanah.
But on first server siege when there is no owner, its a free for all between the attacking clans.
My assumption in Ashes is that you will be able to. It doesn't make sense that you couldn't - not in the context of the game as a whole.
To me this wouldn't make sense in the context of Ashes simply because we can't flag on our allies outside of sieges.
Is this something we know, or something you are assuming?
A quote from Steven;
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.
So, this is why it seems to me to be perfectly in line with the rest of the game.
But they would be in a war against each other, while during the siege the attackers might be in an alliance (as they were in later versions of L2).
The "alliance" in a siege is not the same thing as a guild alliance.
The point I am making is that the game already has the expectation that guild members - let alone alliance members - will find themselves fighting each other at times - thus it is perfectly in line for this to also be the case in a siege.
But they would be in a war against each other, while during the siege the attackers might be in an alliance (as they were in later versions of L2).
The "alliance" in a siege is not the same thing as a guild alliance.
The point I am making is that the game already has the expectation that guild members - let alone alliance members - will find themselves fighting each other at times - thus it is perfectly in line for this to also be the case in a siege.
Sieges are meant for guilds to be fighting is not node wars. If you are allied to a guild that is attack / defending there is 0 reason u should be able to join int hat event to oppose them.
But they would be in a war against each other, while during the siege the attackers might be in an alliance (as they were in later versions of L2).
The "alliance" in a siege is not the same thing as a guild alliance.
The point I am making is that the game already has the expectation that guild members - let alone alliance members - will find themselves fighting each other at times - thus it is perfectly in line for this to also be the case in a siege.
Sieges are meant for guilds to be fighting is not node wars. If you are allied to a guild that is attack / defending there is 0 reason u should be able to join int hat event to oppose them.
This isn't even a question.
The comment you quoted was to be taken as a part of the thread as a whole, it is not talking about the siege mechanics as we understand them in the game - and so saying that this isn't how sieges are understood to work right now makes no sense.
But they would be in a war against each other, while during the siege the attackers might be in an alliance (as they were in later versions of L2).
The "alliance" in a siege is not the same thing as a guild alliance.
The point I am making is that the game already has the expectation that guild members - let alone alliance members - will find themselves fighting each other at times - thus it is perfectly in line for this to also be the case in a siege.
Sieges are meant for guilds to be fighting is not node wars. If you are allied to a guild that is attack / defending there is 0 reason u should be able to join int hat event to oppose them.
This isn't even a question.
The comment you quoted was to be taken as a part of the thread as a whole, it is not talking about the siege mechanics as we understand them in the game - and so saying that this isn't how sieges are understood to work right now makes no sense.
Point stands even if you are talking about a fantasy situation with different mechanics. If you are in a allied guild you should not be able to join to oppose them. You are literally trying to create the exact scenario Nikr is talking about with being able to join and grief a side.
And if we are talking about context with actual guilds, I'm not going to have my own guild members attack my own guild. That makes 0 sense they would be working together for the same goal.
Comments
Yeah, this whole system is an incentives nightmare, but that will be kept in check precisely because of the high guild loyalty and collusion options.
So, if anything, we need the collusion to be a thing, quite a bit. The 'autosort' of players into their 'nations' has already happened years ago, and the chances of any foot soldiers ever having enough power to create real drama is quite low.
The casting of the scroll is also dependent on the quality of the scroll (which implies a difference in costs). And that quality defines how far from the castle you gotta be to start casting. Which means that the defending allies can just get the cheapest scroll and go cast it right next to the castle, which makes it EVEN EASIER to abuse the system.
The entire fucking thing is abusable because there's a limit
Your name was in that comment PURELY in the context of you repeating the line "war between kingdoms". THAT'S IT. Nothing else, in any way, related to anything else you've said here or anywhere else.
No, it's abusable for a different, more complex reason, deep in the design.
It's abusable because the incentive to hold the castle is stronger than the incentive to prevent others from wanting to siege the castle, plus the fact that the benefit of holding the castle is fiat.
It's a core incentive problem for a persistent world game. But it's also easy to understand. Balancing the two of those things is hard.
There is no reason if you are leading you are going to be putting random people in the siege unless you are out of guild alliances to pull from.
Its a big what if with multiple hoops. When you can just create restrictions regardless that prevent that kind of thing.
Hence my suggestion was to measure the damage during attacking and defending the caravans the previous 3 weeks and sort the participants based on that. If they worked enough to prevent the 3 adjacent nodes to build defenses then they deserve to be on the attacker list.
But that balancing is exactly why I made these 2 threads. I'm trying to see if there even IS a way to balance the system w/o removing currently presented incentives. And it definitely been pretty hard to accomplish so far
Well, I'd like to be on record as saying 'no, there's no way, the incentives are wrong, or the content is fiat'. That's fine if players who the content is for, are happy with it.
Good luck with your quest, though.
Maybe these 2 could even be combined, where the royal subjects are presented with a list that's based on the guilds that contributed during the castle node stage.
That would remove the pure opportunistic ability to join the siege at the very last possible moment (this being the very first seconds of the declaration period), but I guess I'd be ok with that compromise if it leads to a bigger probability of less abuse of the system.
If made well, players will like them and I think might end up being broadcasted on twitch every weekend.
With a 15 min delay.
I missed the royal subject suggestion.
But is good if we have solutions.
If a pinned thread comes IS will get even more of them maybe, from players who post only on those.
You have 200 'slots', each 'slot' gets 5 Respawns.
You can actually have more than 200 players, but someone has to 'gift' respawns to the extras.
From there you can wiggle around some design based on how you want it to go. There are lots of ways to do it.
If you want to get more people into the siege itself, you have some setup where a player needs to interact with some blessing stone or whatnot, to 'take their respawns'. But they don't have to take all 5.
As long as there are still respawns 'in the stone', people can keep joining.
(this is one of those design things where I'm not bothering to address every nuance of it or the possible ways it can go).
When one side has lost all its respawns, the siege ends (or if you prefer sieges to have specific full time limits, there's another way to do it).
Inactive players' respawns can 'go back into the stone'.
We can call them 'Phoenix Valor' or something.
Yeah, this could definitely be a good start to opening up the sieges to a broader audience of people.
A question about L2 sieges.
If you and I are both on the attacking side, can I attack and kill you?
My assumption in Ashes is that you will be able to. It doesn't make sense that you couldn't - not in the context of the game as a whole.
While this has its own issues (especially around starting and respawn points), I would at the very least expect players/guilds to flip sides, or start up a third faction.
They are - unless the point of your game is to allow those in positions of power to oppress those not in such positions. If this is the goal of your game, castles are all but a requirement.
But this got changed in the update that I started playing the game on, which is why I always remembered it as "no, attackers can't damage each other".
The same situation applies to "flipping of sides". Originally sides simply flipped, but with that change it became "the first successful Seal caster becomes the enemy to everyone in the siege".
Here's links for more context:
Og rules
https://legacy-lineage2.com/Knowledge/castle_4.html
The change
https://legacy-lineage2.com/news/chronicle3_04.html
https://legacy-lineage2.com/news/kamael_09.html
Here it says that the system got yet another change, where now attackers can't "force attack" each other, which implies that in the previous version they still could do that, while their aoes weren't automatically hitting their temporary allies.
I have spent most of my GLing days in updates that came after this one, so maybe that's why I never recalled this particular change and simply thought that "attackers are fully allied, but after a Seal cast - they're not".
I shoulda done this check from the very start of L2 mentions, so that's my bad. But my suggestion was based on this version of L2, so all the "prisoner's dilmma" stuff still stands.
Just wanted to get facts straight, mainly for myself.
Appreciated. Now that I've learned a lot about it, I have even more opinions.
I'm always thankful to get legacy game data from people who played games seriously. The internet is a misleading place.
But I'd imagine these 2 changes happened, at least in part, because of the exploits I mentioned related to those 2 first designs.
Though to only really know we'd need to ask someone who played official servers from as early as possible. @JamesSunderland what do you remember about sieges and alliances during them? Did people on the attacking side attack each other to prevent others from casting the Seal?
p.s. for Azherae, in-between that last update and the previous one there was also a change about castle gates. Before that last 3rd update the defenders could destroy their own gates during the siege, but in the update just before that 3rd link this got changed.
All of these changes kinda tell me "defenders simply let their allies on the attacking side through and let them get the castle". And NCsoft then tried to prevent this exploit from happening through several ways.
This wasn't even the case in L2, so this kinda implies to me that Steven went for some preventive action for a potential abuse or smth (there's a tiny chance that we can't even attack our Red allies, but I think that's a stretch).
Obviously the attackers might not be seen as allies, just as it was in earlier version of L2, but I feel like that's just a bit too "hardcore" for what Steven has been going for so far. We'll see though.
So you expect the siege to continue after the Seal is cast?
Or was this not an answer to the question from the start of the previous page of the thread?
A siege lasts for two hours. If an attacking clan leader successfully engraves his/her name on the holy artifact with the Seal of Ruler skill, the artifact recognizes the new controlling clan. This takes time, however, and the clan leader may not be interrupted while engraving the artifact. Only the clan leader may interact with the holy artifact. Clan leaders that are allied with the defense side may not interact with the holy artifact.
The changing of the holy artifact's owner before the end of the siege is termed 'mid-victory'. When the attacking side achieves a mid-victory, the attackers and defenders change sides. All matters of the clan that had previously owned the castle, including the restart point, are transferred to the new defending clan.
The Headquarters of a clan that has newly occupied the castle disappears. When mid-victory occurs, all players, excluding the new castle defense clan's allies, are sent to their restart points.
This is very gamey, but less fiat. Ashes mirrors this setup well enough.
So that last line matters the most.
Side switch = full teleporty reset. Except it might not be 'full', because obviously, the new defense clan would benefit from having their allies in the throne room or similar, even if they aren't.
This is reasonable, the power of the castle is its defensible physical location, I don't think we need to convince most people of this. And this interacts well with the Control Points, as long as they don't switch. Basically, if you 'only brought down one lane' and there was a full swap, the original defenders still control the 'lane' that didn't fall and can use the Control Point's teleport.
So, for whatever it matters, my opinion is still basically the same. Intrepid's design as I understand it now is fine, it has multiple 'Group 1 player' type options, it doesn't introduce a lot of unnecessary fiat, even if they do the side switch. But it is still 'throne room chaos' without a lead guild, and it becomes gamey fiat to me because of Steven's... particular tastes.
I love castle-based gameplay. I love trophies. I like rewarding risk a lot; and for me it's very difficult to imagine a MMO that I would want to play where there is not competition of strategic prowess that determines the outcome of these types of events and there is not a meaningful reward both mechanically and from just a bragging rights perspective that players can aim for and try to achieve. I think that it brings a lot to the game when it comes to motivations, to excel, to level, to gain power, to engage those different progression loops when there is an ultimate goal or trophy that is not static and doesn't exist forever once you achieve it, but that you must constantly perform in order to maintain; and that's really the purpose of these castles.
I don't disagree with these things. I don't think most people disagree with these things exactly. But at the end of the day, I, at least, am wary of this design type in a persistent world based on many years of player behaviour info. We've obtained an additional 5+ years of data since most of this was conceptualized. Entire games have come and gone.
So, taking the Sandal Lord's words to heart, the question is not 'should there be an incentive', nor 'should it require tactics and skill', but the form those take.
If we look at Steven's past and then read that quote, we might assume that since he seems to be 'Group 1', his concepts of 'strategic prowess' and 'reward' might not match some stuff that would be needed for 'better balance'. Or we could just assume that they will do whatever has the least problematic design outcome while still fitting those definitions.
As for my experience...
"It isn't so bad to change the target audience of a competitive activity to better suit the goals of your game if your game has broad appeal."
When time will come to give some feedback, for nodes I will suggest sieges to be somewhat differently balanced from each-other, depending on node type. I tried to introduce that here too into the castle sieges.
Yes but mostly not directly, some attacking clans would indeed stop each other from casting the seal, they usually did that through alt clans(or clanless alts) registered as defenders/mercenaries or through non-orthodox methods like Zariche/Akamanah.
But on first server siege when there is no owner, its a free for all between the attacking clans.
Aren't we all sinners?
Is this something we know, or something you are assuming?
A quote from Steven; So, this is why it seems to me to be perfectly in line with the rest of the game.
A player may not flag on members of the same party, raid, guild or alliance.[34]
But they would be in a war against each other, while during the siege the attackers might be in an alliance (as they were in later versions of L2).
The point I am making is that the game already has the expectation that guild members - let alone alliance members - will find themselves fighting each other at times - thus it is perfectly in line for this to also be the case in a siege.
Sieges are meant for guilds to be fighting is not node wars. If you are allied to a guild that is attack / defending there is 0 reason u should be able to join int hat event to oppose them.
This isn't even a question.
The comment you quoted was to be taken as a part of the thread as a whole, it is not talking about the siege mechanics as we understand them in the game - and so saying that this isn't how sieges are understood to work right now makes no sense.
Point stands even if you are talking about a fantasy situation with different mechanics. If you are in a allied guild you should not be able to join to oppose them. You are literally trying to create the exact scenario Nikr is talking about with being able to join and grief a side.
And if we are talking about context with actual guilds, I'm not going to have my own guild members attack my own guild. That makes 0 sense they would be working together for the same goal.