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Scaling Difficulty for defending Guild of Castle Seiges
Big Chantz
Member
I was re-watching a streamer's reaction and input on a castle siege video and they made a good point regarding a potential snowballing effect when it comes to the idea of increasing rewards the longer a castle is defended. I thought it may be a good idea, to combat this, if there would be a way for the monsters originally inhabiting the castle (for instance) attack along side sieging guilds as a way to stack the difficulty of the defending guild. Basically, would adding a scaling difficulty to defense of a castle be a good idea to limit the potential of one or two large guilds dominating a server? Just a thought I had in the moment and wanted to share. Looking forward to the alpha and more! So exciting 
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The system as it is now increases the rewards for successfully sieging a castle. This means that the longer a castle is held, the more people/guilds will be willing to work together to take it out.
This adds a scaling difficulty to castle defense, as each month the defenders can expect more attackers.
Why is this something we want to combat?
I do want to note I have since listened to more of the node system discussion...and using an example I believe will help to limit this that you have already implemented is the raiding of tax wagons to thwart funding of a castle. I am only suggesting more may be needed other than just players to knock them off (like a stacking debuff on defenders or something to that effect...I am no game dev lol I leave that brainstorming if its's even needed to more capable hands
That said, this game is not going to have issues with streamers controlling servers. Streamer fanbois are not exactly known for hanging around when things get tough or monotonous, and streamers are not exactly known for hanging around in games that get monotonous.
The process for a castle siege is that the defender levels up a node up to level 3 in a week, then that node is sieged on a saturday. They do this three times in a row, then on the fourth week they work on the castle defenses, and the castle proper is sieged on the last weekend.
After the siege, the guild needs to start working on those nodes again the following week.
This is not exactly thrilling content for a streamer, and since most streamers (especially ones popular enough to get 1200+ players in a subscription game) are streaming for an actual living, their content is king - not the game they are playing.
Very few people would want to watch the same people running the same caravans full of materials to the same nodes month after month. Any streamer that attempts to pass this off to their audience will soon find themself without that audience.
I am only assuming this but if a different castle is going to be sieged each weekend, unless they have a huge 4 guild alliance, they will only get good defence content every 4 weeks. They'd get more views attacking a different castle every weekend. That would cost them so many resources and so much fan work behind the scenes that I highly doubt it will be sustainable either way.
While Noaani is right to say the game shouldn't be designed around streamers, they do pose a zerg threat on the server they are based. That can not be ignored by the developers.
Attacking a castle is a four weekend process.
In order to have any real chance of success, you need to siege and win (or at least meet some of the objectives of) each smaller node attached to the castle.
As far as we know, these all happen on a Saturday evening, as well.
This means that any one guild only really has one chance every four weeks of successfully sieging a castle.
This game is more going to suit YouTubers with an audience, not streamers.
I mean are all 5 castles going to be going through sieges on the same weekend? I personally doubt it
Thank you for breaking down the process as it is understood as of now...helps to see the time investment etc needed. I do agree with you...I hate when games cater toward only a few percent of a server's players for some trivial reason or another. I don't even think that the problem I posted will have the risk of happening for a while after release. I do, however, think it will happen at some point. Meta gaming is such a popular thing to do that the top 1 percent that has time to play all the time will rise to the top and will have the potential of sitting on a castle "forever" provided the only "scaling" difficulty month to month is the potential of more people/guilds sieging at once. It may not be streamers alone...what about a big meta guild that has backing from sponsors/endorsements etc(such as complexity limit as an example)...in their current MMO, they will literally spend thousands of real life currency (yes I know this wont be an option specifically in AoC thank goodness!) on each raid tier to obtain the best gear to get an advantage on the race....they will always have the time to do these monotonous tasks from nodes month to month, the funding and financial backing to have a near endless supply of players to do these task, and will likely never have much of a downward fluctuation in active guild members. Therefore, they would hold their castle "forever" and since rewards get better the longer you hold...well the rich will get richer.
Again...I think this potential would be a long way off from occurring, but I thought it warranted a bit of discussion nonetheless.
I would agree with you on this. However, how many streamers do the same pvp arenas, or daily quests, or mount farming etc day in and day out already and still retain their audience? TOO MANY...lol...my point is the streamer's entertainment value will always win over what they are doing in game, so I do not believe this would be a solid argument to say my proposed problem will likely not happen. I also heavily agree with the zerging point. To think a server wont be heavily swayed in many areas due to the "zerg" mentality surrounding content creators is already insane. Give them all these new "toys" to do that with as well...woof lol. Again, I think an issue like this (if it ever happens) is a long way off. I just see how detailed the devs already are on dotting Is and crossing Ts...thought I would put this here as food for thought.