Considering Guild Wars

ArchivedUser

I think in order for guilds to wage war effectively and in an entertaining way... it should be something that forces guild members to pay attention to it. For instance if you're in a guild that is waging war, but you don't necessarily want to be caught up in it all you have to do is never engage with those people. However, what if there were intelligence networks. Perhaps in a city you could pay a fee to certain guards that are eligible to send you messages if/when they see members of the guild you're warring with. This would send a notification to all members of your guild that an enemy has been spotted. I think there are a lot of things you could do with this even adding things like counter-intelligence units etc. Perhaps only nodes which the guild has high influence in would they be able to utilize NPCs. Otherwise there could be some sort of jobs board which people get paid or receive items from your guild to report a last seen location for opposing members.

Another thing I'd like to consider is creating some sort of lockout for members. Say that you have recruited intelligence and spent your guilds hard earned money/time on assassinating an opposing member discretely. This could/should lock those opposing members out for a length of time so that it isn't meaningless to do.

ArchivedUser

Intelligence is always going to be an inherent part of both guild wars. It is already common in MMOs for players to create alt accounts to join opposing guilds so that they can feed information back their main guild. Because of that I believe this system would be under-utilized, if not abandoned by players altogether as there is a more efficient, entirely free way to gain more precise intelligence. If players did choose to follow the in-game espionage system, it would very likely lead to lists of all the spy NPCs being made and those NPCs would simply be avoided during times of conflict.

You do make a good point on the lock-out time though, as I think it would be much more satisfying if you only got 1 life (maybe 2 if you die early) in any given siege. I think that would definitely lower the level of chaos that is inherent to those types of events, as the number of players on the field would be drastically reduced, and it would make those event feel much more tactical. Although you would still run into the problem of players with alt accounts, who die with one character and simply jump on another to continue the fight. 

ArchivedUser

The lockout idea is great but I can see how some people wont like it too much since they might prefer a murder fest 'w'

ArchivedUser

I don't think we have enough information just yet on caravan raids, but I bet there won't be a quick and easy way to re-spawn and continue the fight. That said it would be a good idea for IS to cater to both audiences through the different PvP events. If node sieges are supposed to be murder-fests, let them be just that, but make sure that caravan raids or some other event type are more tactical in nature.

ArchivedUser

i was under the impression that caravans would be more of a blood bath, granted there might be a level of strategy of attack at this location and focus this part of the caravan, but other than that its straight murder. sieges while being much bigger events would have similar tactics and some diffferent ones, but maybe a wave spawning mechanism might work for sieges, although that could be abused.

but for the guild thing, the npc thing could work, if npc's could think like players. or at least an extensive system on deciding prices for npc that act like information brokers and assassins, that would need to have no set price so players cant tell if the npc as already been bought. maybe based on things like guild size and influence, level of the target, skill of the npc(a mid lvl assassin from a military node vs high lvl assassin from a religion node could cost similars prices for the same target) etc. this might promote the use of these npc as guilds bidding for the services of a npc will not know what price the other guild paid if they did at all.

ArchivedUser

In Age of Conan (RP-PvP Server) we had a Guild called Dark Desires which was a Prostitute Guild. They often did favours for people and offered information on enemies too. While i don't desire a Prostitute Guild in Ashes there will always be a possibility for covert networks between guilds. Anything which can augment these networks would be cool.

ArchivedUser

Regarding the earlier comment of using alts to infiltrate enemy guilds, the designers have an interesting twist that impacts this:  Only one character per account per server can have a freehold or house.

So a guild which consists only of landowners has some protection from admitting alts, since a same-account alt would not be able to own land.

So the obvious way around this would to have multiple accounts so a second-account character could own land and be a member of the enemy guild.  That is a bit cumbersome but I also expect that many of the grognards will have multiple paid accounts, but it still limits the opportunity to infiltrate other guilds to 1. How many accounts you can afford 2. How many accounts you realistically have time to level up and play enough to appear to be a 'main'  3. How much motivation you have to jump through all these hoops, and to keep track of things.  Large and powerful guilds will have reason to be suspicious of members with limited activity and lots of excuses.

Guild spymasters might even start keeping track of which two toons are never seen onscreen at the same time and identify them as possible dual accounts.

And this is where the devs are brilliant....here is a strong motivation to pay for multiple accounts, and the game makes more money without PtW.

ArchivedUser

On each server there will only be 5 Guild Castles and 5 Metropolises so the vast majority of Guilds won't have Guild land to my knowledge. There will be a lot of PvP and many switching of hands. I was told that PvP in these instances will have cooldowns and they dont expect massive battles. My experience in other MMOs equates to speculation that Guild Wars will be messy.

ArchivedUser

Not sure if there is a 1 guild/player rule. I know there are limitations.
As you can only be a citizen of 1 node, it would be wise to only allow node citizens in your guild.

Now player spies could have multiple accounts. But if there are 100s of guilds, are they really going to pay for 100s of accounts ?

With that in mind, I think the PvE spy network is a great idea with some fixes:
1.They may or may not know who was in their area according to hitherto unknown secondary mechanics (can know != will know).
2. They are open to two blind bids. Those who pay for silence and those who pay for info. The greater bid always wins out...with the exception of point 1 above.