Let's talk about Guild Wars in AoC...

Xyls

You can find information about Guild Wars on the AoC Wiki: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Guild_wars Please check it out as this post will be based on the information found there.

Because this feature is still in the design stage, we don’t have a ton of information. What we do have is Intrepid’s overall goal of it being objective-based with great risk for each side. I hope that this discussion will provide them with some good player feedback on the topic.

What I like with the feature:
>>Risk vs reward: It’s good to have something to fight for.
>>War declaration period: Gives guilds a chance to plan and prepare. Also adds a bit of excitement as the timer counts down to the start of the war.
>>Primetime only for objectives: Completing objectives should not be possible at 4am when the majority of people are sleeping.
>>War with multiple guilds/alliances: If a guild wants to be involved in multiple wars that is their choice. Also promotes guilds to not be toxic in the community. Toxic guilds will likely face far more guild war declarations against.
>>Guild Wars operate outside the PvP flagging system: Pretty self-explanatory.

My concerns with the feature:
>>Risk vs reward: These must be balanced in a way that doesn’t discourage guilds from declaring war.
>>War declaration period: Needs to be short. Guild Wars should be a tool to use when fighting over farm spots and world bosses.
>>War with multiple guilds/alliances: Need to find a way so that guilds can’t be spammed with too many wars at once, while also preventing a guild from being “immune” to guild wars.
>>Objective-based only could result in larger guilds always winning: Objectives tend to be dominated by the side with the most players. This could greatly discourage smaller guilds from challenging larger guilds.
>>Alliance vs Alliance war: I think guild vs guild provides a robust system by itself. It also adds risk to the guild who declares war. If they declare war on a guild who is part of an alliance, the other guilds of the alliance may declare war on the original declaration guild. Not to mention it would be really awesome to see a war between 2 guilds blossom into many involved guilds based on alliances.

My Idea:
I believe a combination of Kills, Deaths, and objective-based scoring would result in a great system while still maintaining the vision of Guild Wars laid out by Steven.
>>Guild War declaration: Guild leaders can declare war on any other guild at any time. In order to declare war, the guild leader will have to wager an amount of gold (1 gold minimum, no maximum). This gold will be held as a deposit until the end of the war. Both guilds will know the wager before the war starts.
>>Declaration period: After a guild war is declared there will be a preparation and planning period (Some amount of time between 5 minutes or 15 minutes). This period will also allow players to escape a larger force to prevent one side from gaining an early advantage.
>>Kills and Deaths: Kills and deaths will be tallied 24 hours a day for the duration of the guild war. Killing an enemy helps your guild (+3 points). Dying to an enemy costs your guild (-2 points). A player gets 0 points for kills, is worth 0 points to the enemy, and cannot cause your guild to lose points for 5 minutes after dying (to prevent kill trading). The reason for guilds losing points for deaths is to make it so guilds are only as good as their weakest players.
>>Objectives: Objectives will be presented as timed quests that become available during server prime time hours only and are started at an npc either in a certain node or guild halls/fortresses. Once a guild starts an objective, both guilds are notified and the timer starts counting down (Guilds may have 30 minutes to pass the objective). Objectives will be represented on the world map to both guilds. If a guild passes the objective, they get +5 points. If a guild fails an objective, the other guild gets +3 points. Guilds can only have one objective running at a time (each guild can have one at the same time).

Example objectives:
>>Bounty hunt: A current online player of the enemy guild will be flagged on the map. The guild must kill that player before time runs out. The flagged player will be buffed (+25% damage done, -25% damage against) vs the enemy guild. If the flagged player dies for any reason or logs out during the objective time period, the hunting guild automatically passes the objective.
>>Capture the relic: A relic will appear (either in guild hall/fortress or determined node). The guild must go to the objective, pick it up, and return it to their own guild hall/fortress or determined node.
>>Capture the point: A point will appear out in the world (near the enemy guild hall/fortress or determined node). The guild must hold the node for 60 seconds. If the node becomes contested, the timer stops counting.
>>Guild fortress siege: Guild fortresses become siege-able (Only available if the defending guild owns a guild fortress). A guild must destroy a door or wall to enter the fortress courtyard and kill an elite level npc.

>>War length: Guild wars will last a minimum of 3 days, up to a maximum of 30 days. After 3 days, either guild can surrender. At the end of the war, there will be a 10 day cool down period in which the two involved guilds cannot war with each other.
>>Win/Lose/Tie: The burden of choosing the punishment or reward will fall on the guild leader of the guild that the war was declared on. If they won the war, He can choose to accept the wager (the deposit) OR place a debuff on all enemy guild members. This debuff will result in a 1% “tax” on all earned gold for 24 hours. The gold from the tax would be paid to the winner of the guild war. If they lose the war, they can choose to pay the wager to the enemy guild OR place the debuff on all his guild members. If debuff is chosen, the deposit is returned to the declaring guild. The guild leader has one hour to make a decision. If the guild doesn’t have enough gold to pay the wager or the one hour time limit to choose is reached, then the debuff option is automatically chosen. Ties can be disappointing but could also fuel future wars.

*All gold amounts, times, percentages, and scoring amounts are suggestions. The proper values should be determined through testing and could change.*

What are your thoughts, concerns, suggestions?

Jubilum

Xyls wrote: »

jubilum wrote: »

Mojottv wrote: »

jubilum wrote: »

I agree with a lot of the suggestions made. Particularly with the idea of some kind of objective to end the war.

I do however have some major concerns with the mechanic of guild wars. I do not want to see anything like the mess Eve online war dec system has become.

Their needs to be a limit on the number of war dec's one corp can have active at one time. I would suggest less than 3. In Eve their is no limit and there are corporations that simply declare war on every corporation they find simply for a target rich environment, I have seen these corps with hundreds of active war dec's. These corp's use war dec's simply as a way around the high security space penalties for killing someone. In AoC case it will be abused as a way around the corruption and flagging mechanics.

And as usual in my advocacy against open world/non-consensual pvp their needs to be some way for guilds to possibly opt out either thru a religious guild quest line where they can earn a one time exemption that once used will have to be earned again. This should be a difficult quest line that a large percentage of the guild must participate and would take several weeks to complete. Another idea is for guilds to have a corruption meter that is an aggregate of all members corruption level. If this meter is say less than 1% the guild is declared neutral and cannot be war dec'ed.

There also needs to be an opt out for individual guild members who do not want to participate in two guild leaders having a who has the biggest Epeen contest. A guild member can leave the guild between war dec and when the fighting starts, without any penalty or waiting period and will not be a war target. If he remains in the guild then he has consented to the pvp. No one should be forced to not log in or sit in his freehold for a week or two because his guild is at war. Which I have seen happen in Eve on numerous occasions, including myself when I was a young player and before I learned other ways to avoid unwanted corp wars.

Dont think its in game like Aoc should be guild war limit, as one big guild might piss off whole server, so everyone should be allowed to declare war.

For guild members to opt out, again kind of makes the guild war pointless, as whole idea of guild war is to kill oposing guild as much as possible, so that they either surrender, or people leave that guild.

I think guild wars should have meaning, not just be an aditional pvp activity.

I think, guild leaders should have something to thing about before declaring or accepting guild war.

There seems to be a lot of faith in humanity to do the right thing in these forums. I also wish that guild wars were declared for a legit reason, that open world pvp could be a thing without having players abuse it just for giggles and tears. But the reality is human nature will not allow this especially in an online video game. Players are going to abuse the mechanics and look for and find ways around the intended purpose, welcome to the real world of online gaming. Developers can have all the confidence in the world that their players will be the ones that play the game as they intended in development, but will realize that this won't happen as the dev's of New World recently discovered.

The more i read what you write in these forums the more I believe you are wasting your time with this game... It is pretty clearly not the game for you. This isn't a themepark game where every feature has a "correct" way to play as determined by the devs. This game is going to have a lot of sandbox elements to it where the devs create something and it is up to the players to decide how they will play it.

I'm not sure why you say this, AoC and IS is ticking alot of boxes that normal mmo players have been dreaming about for years technology is getting us closer to a true life simulation every year I have heard Steven mention a stock market, investing, a creative crafting system, an actual economy, war for a real reason and goal, why wouldn't a true mmo player be excited about this kind of advancement in an online game look at the games from 10-15 years ago they have nothing like that. You were put an a path without many options, you had to play the meta to be successful without much deviation. AoC is offering a huge change to the mmo blueprint.

With that said I'm am on the fence whether to play this game or not for one reason only and my group of 12 gaming friends that have been playing games together for 10-12 years are in the same boat. i don't want this game to fail, but because of the type of players that have started to appear in this forum, only interested in the only feature we a staunchly against. I am starting to hope that IS starts to announce that some of the big check marks that originally drew me to this game are not going to be possible, this would make jumping off the not playing side of the fence much easier.