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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Sieges
Voxtrium
Member, Alpha Two
To help include all levels of players and activity types (Super casuals) the Mayor should be able to order rental armor built for sieges. Mid tier, mid quality, perfectly average, something like steel plate, give a boost to low level players, artisans and the super casuals. The armor could be rental armor made by npc smiths using node resources, IE it can be picked up on the day the declaration is made and must be returned after the defense.
Also gives another resource for collection in the days before a siege to help prepare, or you could just make the armor sets automatically appear as if they were part of the guardhouse armory reserves.
Also gives another resource for collection in the days before a siege to help prepare, or you could just make the armor sets automatically appear as if they were part of the guardhouse armory reserves.
5
Comments
This pretty much sounds like Foxhole's production cycle, except tied to a single event rather than a permanent one and on rental basis rather than "you have it as long as you don't die".
Agreed, the more things that incentivize caravans teamplay and a risk/reward the better, and it helps everyone participate.
I would assume it would be a full combat kit with heavy, medium and light options available and a weapon of choice.
I don't want my tax money to go towards boomerdad69 who only plays 2 hours a day, when I can just have sweatygamer420 on my team taking care of the enemies for free.
boomerdad69 will play the game for 10 years, sweatygamer420 is going to get kicked out of his mom's basement after he jumps on the next FotM.
don't wanna pay taxes for 10 years to boomerdad69, when sweatygamer421 can join the game after sweatygamer420 gets kicked out of his moms basement
yeah leveling will be hard, but this mechanic is providing an incentive for people to stay low level. why level up and farm when you can use someone else's money to be equalized in a siege?
node and castle defense, as well as an attack, succeeds or fails depending on the players. if you have people who play a lot, max level, decent gear, good, coordinate, etc, they should succeed and beat a node with only level 5-10 who play 30 mins a day. i don't see why this doesn't make any sense?
grab 250 max level vs 250 level 10. the level 10 shouldn't win.
It is literally a maximum of 7 day rental of a mediocre armor and weapony? How is that incentive to stay low level? In castle sieges sure you want to recruit the best of the best. In node sieges there is currently no player limit. IE your entire citizenry can show up. players who just started the game, players who play an hour a week etc. Those players. they make up nearly the entire playerbase.
ok, they can rent the gear, but they can do it with their own money (:
also, I thought you meant top or near top gear..whats the point of renting mediocre gear then?
In my post I clearly state that it is mediocre gear.
The entire point is that it is a node project as part of the preparation before a siege to provide players who are brand new, newish, artisans and pure casuals a way to have mid tier armor and be more relevant within the siege, while also functioning as an additional grouping incentive and resource sink.
But the doctrine is completely player run, if the mayor is smart he should talk to his citizens and introduce the concept of doctrine so the bulk of the force have some synergy. This is important for massive and long fights.
This rental armor idea is fun!
Too bad Intrepid has no addons, no nothing, no community participation in the development, otherwise the players themselves could create systems like this and offer to Intrepid, then a digital contract would be signed and Intrepid could pay for the system/addons and incorporate them as official content.
This sounds super cool, having the node armory would be the bomb! A node armory just makes sense!!
It is pretty much like in real life, when the department of defence buys a stockpile of weapons for the state.
I can confirm that!
In EVE, each group of players will have certain doctrines: armor or shield, artileries or lasers or blasters or missiles or rockets, small or medium or large... etc
Usually the player who will be fleet commander of the day will call for a certain doctrine and people have to bring their own ships following the doctrine. If you die, then the fleet commander will check your loss and reimburse you if you are flying within the doctrine.
When a group is rich and large enough, somtimes the fleet commander will simply handle the ships to everybody, then when the fight is over people loot everything and give back the ships/loot back to the fleet commander.
Doctrines are important even for small groups, not just for big fights!
I am getting older, maybe I will become a super casual before AoC is launched
hopefully that is because of the sub cost and not the gameplay design loop. Casuals will make or break this game long term.
I mean, super casual gamers play games that cost more than Ashes will cost.
to most casual gamers, time is far more important than money.
Imagine you have two hours to play a game. Are you likely to play a game that will see what ever progress you make in that two hours be safe, or a game where you may spend that two hours progressing and then have it taken from you?
I mean, if I know you only have two hours to play between 7 and 9pm, you had better believe I'll be attacking you at 8:55 if I come across you - because I know you won't be able to retaliate.
Essentially, Ashes will mostly appeal to people that don't have a fixed amount of time they can play. It will appeal to people that are in a position to be able to stay online for an extra hour or two when something unexpected happens. This is about as casual unfriendly as a game can be.
As a general idea, I do kind of like this.
I'm not sure I would do it quite how you are describing though.
What I'd rather see is a node having a specific storage area that kind of functions like a marketplace, but is only made available leading up to a siege. Items in this chest are put up for rent for the duration of the siege. An item placed in to this chest needs to have a rental price added to it, and this rental fee is left in the storage area, only available to the person that deposited the item that was rented.
All items and rental fees placed in this storage are made available to the person that placed in the storage area after the siege, including items that were rented - in the event that the defenders win. If the defenders lose, all items left in the chest (ie, not rented), and all rental fees are available to be looted, and all items that were rented and in use for the siege are destroyed.
From there, give nodes an option to subsidize some gear, or potentially even pay the full rental price of some gear (checks need to be in place to prevent abuse of this system).
With this, you can essentially have a privately funded system, publicly funded system, or a mix of both. It can be used to gear masses of players with basic equipment for a siege, or to give some well funded but poorly geared players access to better gear for the duration of a siege.
There is no reason at all why this couldn't be available to attackers as well as defenders, and I could see it being viable (to a lesser degree) in guild and node wars.
It also adds a new dimension to sieges. It gives people in a node a means to make use of some higher quality gear they may have lying around, or they could craft some gear specifically for this. Players could well make an in game living going around sieges and picking which side they want to rent gear to.
Regardless, the notion of setting up a system where gear can be leased for the duration of a siege is great.
There is no way for your to know when someone needs to hop off unless you guys are specifically playing with eachother.
Also 90% of activity in AOC gives the player permanent gains. For example leveling alone takes 240 hours. There is no way to lose your level in AOC. Sure owning apts/houses/freeholds will be impossible, but most people won't own these things, most people will be in a guild that shares these things. As a result a super casual in a casual guild can still participate and enjoy all of the things to some level or another that other more diehard players can enjoy. (Basically the assumption is that a 300 person casual guild has the teamwork to put together a guild freehold or in node house) That assumption imo is pretty consistent with what we see in nearly every other mmo. Even MO2 has super casuals.
Yup, I would 100% support this and would absolutely love to see this kind of design implemented. I rarely voice my ideas as a "This is exactly how it should be done" but instead a stepping idea for better more developed ones that a group of brains can put together rather than just mine alone.
Wouldn't we still run into the problem that being killed too many times accrues experience debt even if any levels you have obtained are permanent?
I could definitely see some casuals that just can't hit level 40 because they get ganked too often to actually find the time to earn the exp back.
I've known people who had this issue in PvE-only games with exp debt.
Based on Stephens position on corruption if this is the case then Stephen will have failed his own goals. I 100% expect that ganking people will be extraordinarily rare. Stephen can be quoted many times, all of his quotes regarding corruption is that he will take a harsh stance on it.
You don't need to know many peoples schedule, just those that are going to be near you often - say by having land near your own.
In Archeage I knew the usual time many of my neighbors were online, I know when they were never online, I knew when they had guild activities.
If I stole their logs or water just before they were due for guild activities to commence, I would expect to have their whole guild come after me for the remainder of the evening.
On the other hand, if I took their logs or water just before they were due to log off, I knew there was a very small likelihood of any form of retaliation. The most likely thing was for them to wave and log off for the night (I attempted to maintain friendly relations with neighbors, but within the context of a PvP game where I was my own faction).
If you are in a metropolis with 1k+ citizens running around, where your "neighbors" are living in instanced housing and so are innumerable, then yeah, you can't do this.
On the other hand, if you are in a smaller node with a few dozen up to maybe a hundred citizens, or if you own a freehold and have only two or three neighbors nearby, then it really is quite easy - if it is what you want to do.
However, the point of my post was that casual gamers wouldn't play a game like Ashes because of the gameplay loop, not because of the cost.