Large Scale PvP Variety

Austrinaut

Hey guys, first forum post, typing on mobile, let's go.

So we've heard Steven talk about massive PvP battles before, mostly the siege. We've seen Alpha 1 gameplay and pre-alpha concepts of the siege.

Today I'd like to posit a question to the community and studio: How large of a playing field is ideal for the siege event, and by proxy, what is the target density of players in a given area?

This is spawned from a Reddit thread regarding skill effects, and specifically a comment by /u/Lord_of_the_Eyes. In summary, it is always impossible to distinguish individual skills in massive pvp due to the density of players spamming abilities. In other words, the visual effects of spells has less of an effect on blocking visibility than the sheer amount of spells being cast.

Which reminds me of when I used to play paintball. There's a massive difference in paintball if you're on a field with 10 players or 1,000, and I've played both. About 15 years ago at Paintball Sam's they held "The Big Game", over a thousand players on a 1 square mile course. Trenches, forest, speedball fields, roads, structures, the works. The scope of the battlefield was incredible, the variety was incredible, the player density FASCINATING to me right now. It was broken into 3 distinct categories, zerg, ambushes, entrenched stalemates.

I want that variety in Ashes of Creation's massive pvp. I want sieges to happen in such a scale that reinforcements can arrive like the riders of Rohan. I want attrition ambushes on the outskirts of the siege camp. I want no man's land. I want an organic flow to the battle where valiant charges can affect the morale of the players, not the NPC's. I want the space to have this variety, to have mercenary clans harass players fleeing the siege and privateers blockade the harbor. Let us INNNNNN

What are y'alls thoughts?

Azherae

Most of the Alpha-1 Siege videos don't do a very good job of showing those moments except in those times where Steven set them up, but they did happen, and they were often great.

The Alpha-1 Siege Testing area was large enough and had well enough designed lines of sight that with only 100v100, it was entirely possible to lose track of entire squads of enemies until it was 'too late', particularly if you were paying attention to a fight that was already happening nearby. It was large enough for some tactics, and arranged in a way that MOBA players would probably have found such tactics normal.

The attrition Ambushes, the sneak setups, the diversionary tactics and maneuvering, were all there, particularly because the Siege tests were not just 'random sides chosen'. A guild had to be formed first, which meant that both sides had some chance of having a large Alpha-Guild helping with the testing, the types of groups that could and did coordinate some proper military tactics.

Then the smaller groups who are familiar would just take up the 'other slots' in those tactics'. In my experiences, there was at least one siege where the attacking group 'realized this was happening', and then were able to count on the diversion slots by sending one of theirs with those groups to relay information back about when the groups were moving, even without full coordination.

The rest of what your post addresses seems to be moreso about open world military tactics rather than the mechanics of Sieges, at the moment, so I can't really comment on it in the same way.