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Any chance at all that sieges on timers will get changed?
joshisanonymous
Member
The thing that initially caught my attention with Ashes of Creation was my impression that there was going to be a major focus on open world content and, particularly, open world PvP. Taking another look now, though, it seems that I was either mistaken or, somewhere along the line, the devs starting moving more and more towards a New World-esque concept of PvP, where technically you can PvP in the open world, but there's really no reward as well as no meaningful objectives as those are all locked behind scheduled events. The only thing I see that fits the bill (for me) as good, objective-based, open world PvP are caravans since they can show up at any time and anyone can just walk up and partake.
So my question is, is there any chance at all that the devs will change course on the whole sieges-as-scheduled-events thing and make them possible at any/most times? I understand the point of the schedule is to ensure even teams and all that, but to me, that's not what's exciting about open world PvP. The exciting part for me is that open world PvP is dynamic: it can happen at any time under any number of circumstances.
On top of that, with schedules, that effectively means I would never end up being able to take part in sieges because I'm not going to schedule my life around a video game. That's what happened to me in New World: despite playing regularly for PvP from launch until about a year after, I never once got into a war because I couldn't schedule my life around the game (and therefore I also wasn't of value to the people filling the war rosters). I want to be able to just hop into the game when I have time, at whatever time of whatever day of the month, and take part in whatever happens to be going on, and if sieges are scheduled affairs, I can pretty much guarantee that players like me will literally never get to take part.
So my question is, is there any chance at all that the devs will change course on the whole sieges-as-scheduled-events thing and make them possible at any/most times? I understand the point of the schedule is to ensure even teams and all that, but to me, that's not what's exciting about open world PvP. The exciting part for me is that open world PvP is dynamic: it can happen at any time under any number of circumstances.
On top of that, with schedules, that effectively means I would never end up being able to take part in sieges because I'm not going to schedule my life around a video game. That's what happened to me in New World: despite playing regularly for PvP from launch until about a year after, I never once got into a war because I couldn't schedule my life around the game (and therefore I also wasn't of value to the people filling the war rosters). I want to be able to just hop into the game when I have time, at whatever time of whatever day of the month, and take part in whatever happens to be going on, and if sieges are scheduled affairs, I can pretty much guarantee that players like me will literally never get to take part.
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Your only way to "just pvp in the open world" is to either go and flag up against random people (though you'd probably get killed if you can't play a lot) or hope that your node gets into a node war.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Node_wars
Otherwise, the general answer to this is the usual "not everyone gets to enjoy the same stuff". If your life can't support even a single hour at the same time of day to play the game - Ashes might not be for you. Well, not for you if that's the only content you're looking forward to in the game.
Sieges are meant to be structured content, not some random low-stakes thing that might happen at 3 am on an empty server.
I feel like you both didn't read my post (since your response is basically "tough luck" rather than answering the question or taking into acocunt that I addressed the things you're mentioning) or don't have much experience with MMOs that don't have scheduled sieges. Not having a schedule doesn't entail "random low-stakes thing(s)."
The obvious example is Dark Age of Camelot. This was a game where you could log in at any time and possibly find a siege building up (or possibly not, it's dynamic because there's no schedule). You could then partake or not partake, but you didn't have to think about logging on at just the right time and being in the right guild or having the right friends to be able to play major parts of the game.
I hope there will be more frequent, including off-hour, types of on-the-fly semi-organized war-type events as well for jump-in & jump-out participation depending on play time available. Choosing a server in the most opportune time zone for your general play hours is going to very important, or even have several toons going for different servers to increase your participation.
AoC's sieges will have a shitton of meaning because node sieges literally mean destruction of people's houses (potential) and direct gameplay impact, because node's services will be shut down and you need those in your preferred node to get access to several sources of content.
Castle sieges control 1/5 of the damn world and will bring insane riches to the owner.
If you have any of those at random times, people will just register for off-hours and people will lose things when they didn't even know the loss could happen.
There will be several other sources of owpvp, but sieges are not that. And it's intended design.
Large-scale sieges still occur in games that don't have have scheduled sieges. See DAoC, WAR, ESO, hell even Gloria Victis.
Yes! Why do sieges have to be scheduled to have any stakes? That doesn't make sense even on the surface.
That's a valid concern, but there are many many options for dealing with that outside of "sieges can only happen between 5pm and 7pm and require you to be part of some specific guild that's willing to slot you for the event". Even just making it so sieges require large forces to be successful is often enough since you're pretty unlikely to have huge forces waiting until 3-5am just to run a siege, and if you do have that many people around on one side during those hours, you're probably going to have that many around on the other side, too. Again, just look at DAoC: there were certainly late night sieges, but they were far harder to pull off and far less frequent than daytime sieges, and that's with no mechanism in place to cut down on them at all. We can look at games like Gloria Victis for in between options to dissuade people from sieging very late (although sieges are too easy in that game for those mechanisms to be effective, which doesn't have to be the case in AoC).
Basically, scheduled sieges are a very hamfisted solution to a problem (late night sieges) that could be addressed in numerous ways. And the result will inevitably be that most players never get to experience sieges. You can see that result in New World: there are regularly posts from long-time players who've never successfully gotten into a war despite wars occuring far more often than once a month like in AoC. And it's not just as simple as "well you just need to be able to schedule one hour for it if you want to do it," because that might literally be impossible for some players in the first place (work nights, have kids, aren't besties with the leet guilds that run the seiges, etc.) or just not be how they play video games because it makes the game feel too much like a job.
After a solid start, your posts are starting to degrade into slippery slope fallacies, @joshisanonymous.
As many of the replies have already said, sieges will be scheduled so that the vast majority of players have the ability and bandwidth to opt-in.
Of course, there will be some outliers that can’t make the scheduled time … which may include yourself. Same as in New World — there are a few players that have a bizarre enough schedule that prevents their participation in scheduled events.
That doesn’t mean a core mechanic should be changed.
It also doesn’t mean that sieges are the only PvP content that players can participate in Ashes.
It also doesn’t mean that every Ashes server will have siege content scheduled at the exact same time.
At the end of the day, however, it is not “inevitable” that most players will not get to participate in sieges.
Most players will.
u cant set aside 1-2 hours a month at night after work? you dont have to plan ur life around a video game...but you are the one with the issue, not everybody else.
Or you can do the small scale arena pvp.
Castle sieges are important to server economy and politics. They aren't an off the cuff encounter people can do at just a moments notice. They're a spectacle fight for potential access to a vast amount of resources that makes players think: "I was there when we changed the history of the server."
It's the same with node sieges. They're scheduled in advance so people know exactly when they need to defend their city because the stake is high and they may not wake up with a home the next morning.
Not everyone gets a trophy and not everyone will participate as you say. But the opportunity is there. If you decide you can't spare a couple hours you know about a week or more in advance then just hope for the best and catch the next one. If you decide (like it seems already) that you'll never be involved in them then that's fine. The content just wasn't for you.
Ashes is a dynamic game, rather than a static game.
Pretty sure that Sieges are handled differently in several different ways:
Castle Sieges, Node Sieges, Node Wars and Guild Wars do not all happen on the same schedule.
But... why would most players never be able to experience Node Sieges?
Uh. What?
The objective-based combat is scheduled between 3PM - 9PM. That's a 6 hour window - which allows people to schedule, in advance, around work nights and kids, etc.
In Ashes, a War is different than a Siege. The stakes are also different for Wars than they are for Sieges.
Guild Wars could possibly feel like a job, I suppose... if you are just following orders.
You don't have to be in a leet guild to experience a Node Siege or a Node War.
I don't understand how Node Sieges and Node Wars would feel "like a job".
Hyperbolic claims do not adequately support your concern.
Sieges happen between 3PM and 9PM. 6 hours, rather than 2 hours.
Castle Sieges require guild membership.
Node Sieges do not require guild membership.
I think DAoC did not have towns/cities that the players spent weeks and months constructing?
Even New World does not have towns that the players constructed. In New World, I never flag for PvP because I'm not going to be affected signifcantly enough if my town loses a war. Services might not be as robust as during prosperity, but I can always do the stuff I want to do. Services aren't completely shut down.
DAoC probably coined the term "alarm clock raid", as it was the only way to take a relic from an evenly matched foe. Alarm clock raids are why AoC is going to stick with an attack window, and it will be one set by the defender.
however being able to force a seige outside of typical play time allows for a power shift. If a powerful guild gets a keep and during prime time there unstopable then they tend to always win being able to seige outside of a prime time throws a spanner in the works and there for allows for a powershift in the area. (also allows players who cant play during prime time to participate too alot of people works the night shifts or later afternoon shifts that i feel should be able to participate now and then) in the larger scale stuff.
even in off peak times in darkfall they were still very much large scale still aswell, during peak darkfall days you could get 800+ players during a seige and 500 in off peak in its early days when it had like 10k players when it first came out
So i do see a valid reason to have them be done any time (there should be suffient warning however to allow for planning if they do go this route) for either castle or node seiges
Nothing wrong with that tbh it allows for a power shift if a guild cant win during peak time it allows for them to try a new stratergy of shifting the time to where it might suite them a little better.
its sometimes the only way to take thing of zerg guilds too since it harder to get all there members on at a obscure time compared to smaller guilds so it does allow for combatting numbers.
that being said there would need to be an planning time so defender can react like there a 24 hr timer or 48 hour timer for example before seige actually happend from when ever it is declared for example
why not? the sea's have been lawless longer in time than they have been lawful. the ocean being safe to a degree has only realy happened in the last century or so and before that was pretty much lawless. The seas being lawless open world pvp all the time makes more sense than them not when in context of time period, not easy to police a vast ocean when all you have is sail boats and telescopes :P
If anything, there's just gonna be less fun in the game because those 2 strong guilds will dominate their respective timeslots, due to having the node/castle benefits every time there's a siege available (especially if Intrepid makes them more frequent as you suggest).
I've experienced pretty much this exact situation in L2 with its fortress feature. Best fortresses on the server would flipflop between couples of guilds that played on opposing timeslots. Those guilds got super strong due to the fortress benefits, which lead to a swamp-like social interaction.
But this was not true for the castle sieges, because they were planned and always during primetime. The guilds from off-time would band together with the weaker prime-time guilds and would try to push the strong primetime guilds out of castles (or not let them get one). And those fights had some difficulty for both sides, instead of them just being a one-sided slaughter, because one side had just way more players during that timeslot.
As was already stated before, if your real life doesn't allow you to play during primetime on your local server - just play on a server whose primetime matches your free hours.
I'm sorry but if you can't play during prime time then there isn't much that can be done. The alternative is to have sieges at 3am which is a horrible oversight.
I think a lot of people need to come to the realization that this game will have aspects that you can't partake in. I work a 9-5 job, have a wife, need to do adult things, and can't dedicate every hour past 5 to gaming. I won't have a freehold, probably won't have the best gear, and will miss out on a lot of content. And that's fine! Because there will be plenty that I can participate in. The biggest selling point for me is that they are building a social world. We've had trash for almost 2 decades because all developers did was cater to people that only had an hour to play a day...
It is hard to say since we don't have the game yet but in addition to caravans, there should be high-value areas in the world to find fights. Killing someone gives you some of their resources, so in those areas, you will probably find more competitive players who are more willing to fight.
The sea is also a pvp zone now so you might be able to jump on a boat and find fights while raiding caravans.
I think it's a valid concern to talk about here as well. How do we ensure that other players who want to compete can do so? There will always be strong guilds but making sure they can't have their elite group be the only ones at every attack and defense. I see a few things in Ashes that might help with this.
For one in New World the attack/defense lists are chosen to some extent by the attacking/defending guilds so they choose their buddies. Here from what I understand that will be opened up a bit more, at least for node siege defenses. Plus this game will have a ton more nodes thus more potential sieges than the handful of towns you can siege in New World. Also I'd say the amount of effort involved to a)progress one character to the point that they're siege ready, and b)declare a node siege to begin with, will also limit some of the issues New World has.
Maybe there are other things that can open up this aspect to more players?
Absolutely … I mentioned it in my post above.
Find the Ashes server with the prime time schedule that works best for you.
That server could be halfway across the globe.
You will suffer a little with a slightly higher ping rate.
But, you will still get to participate in your favorite Ashes content (without changing a core game mechanic).
Also, most of you are assuming that only one allied group of players will play at 3am if sieges aren't scheduled, but I see no reason why an opposing group that often plays at those hours wouldn't develop also. Again, you can see this in other games as far back as DAoC. Even if some Aussie group decided to play on an NA server assuming that they could more easily control the map, why wouldn't there also be a second Aussie group that does the same thing and opposes them? Hell, there could even be official mechanisms in place that entice players from specific regions to join servers where they might offset an imbalance like this if it does occur.
Again, I get the concern with late night sieges, but there are many, many ways that can be addressed other than the rather blunt solution of schedules since schedules bring their own issues to the table.
Sieges that happen at any time is probably some other game.
What makes Ashes Sieges different from a WoW battlegrounds is that Castles can be occupied for a month and Towns/Cities/Metro can be destroyed to make room for new ones.
WoW battlegrounds are boring because there are no significant consequences.
Except sieges are big-time events … that happen at a minimum of a few times per month (could be longer if the node has been stable for awhile).
Which means it needs to be scheduled.
You want to water down the content by calling it “less dynamic”, increasing the frequency, and making in not instanced. There’s other Ashes content you can play that’s better suited for that criteria.
Players haven’t participated in a full siege test yet … so we can’t form an opinion on how “dynamic” it is.
I think you are missing a few things.
As far as PvP goes there is Open World, Caravans(Player run and Siege events) Node Sieges, Castle Sieges, Guild Wars, Arenas, Military Node Battle Royal, Open Sea, Bounty Hunting, Monster Coin.
I genuinely KNOW they are not going the route of New World at all. The Open World PVP in AoC will play much differant and yes, you not only wont be rewarded but heavily penalized unless the other player consents essentially. The Open World PVP is there for the random PVP and to add Risk or Danger in exploration, its not meant to be consistent PVP Content. As you can see though there are plenty of options if you want to PVP, join a PVP guild and start a fight is my plan, there will be rewards for this. Mix that with Caravan, Random OW PVP and hell between the Node and Castle Sieges theres a chance you can get in on those.
Nikr isnt wrong either though. When it comes to Castle Sieges its a set limit of players so it will be harder to get in. Thats enough players to warrant a few stragglers though, if it gets that high. However I think the idea that they are BIG events and are maybe once a month it might be easier to schedule here and there. If they reach 250vs250 and a guild cap of 300 I am going to assume multiple guilds(alliance) will be involved. So just make sure you are a part of one of them.
The Sieges are big events and are by far the main PVP content its more like the cherry on top, a really awesome cherry that has cocaine but still a cherry. The Main course will be up to you.