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Sieges at lvl50
NiKr
Member
So we've got new info that mobs in castles will be lvl50, which means that yet another big part of the game is only reserved for late game (just as freeholds are), instead of being accessible throughout the game.
What are yalls thoughts on that? I would personally prefer if they were around 35-40, if not even slightly sooner. Having castles at lvl50 just means that all even semi-hardcore guilds are highly encouraged to only boost vertical lvls to be the first ones to get a castle, just as they are encouraged to do the same for freeholds.
In other words, even though Intrepid have been saying that they want the gameplay to matter across all levels - we now have 2 huge features locked behind max lvl. And this in turn means that the only guilds who own castles early on are max lvl guilds, which then means that any guild that's lagging even a bit behind, in terms of lvls, won't be able to siege a player-held castle, cause they're way weaker. Which means we have a yet another game-based snowball effect for strongest guilds.
I'm all for strong people being strong, but I'd prefer if they didn't have so much damn snow to make their snowballs into fucking avalanches.
Edit to add a more in-depth explanation of my perceived issue with this design:
Let's say it's 100h to lvl35 and another 125h to lvl50. Let's say hardcore guilds play 16h/d, while semi-hardcores play 8h and everyone else plays 3h.
If sieges can be started at lvl35, hardcores would be doing it on day 6. They'd spend some time farming good gear (cause you still gotta beat the mobs there and I hope those mobs are hard) and all of these hardcore guilds would also be fighting for the castles, because at this point it's a pve raid with dps checks, so the entire process might take several days for any given castle.
Let's say that in the most positive circumstances it takes a hardcore guild 4 days to get a castle. That's 64h in their time, where the only true progress they've made is got some gear at lvl35 and got the castle.
Semis would be ~2 days behind lvl35 by this point, and would've gained 8 days-worth of their time against the hardcores (64h that hardcores spent on the castle).
Now the hardcore guild with a castle need to spend a ton of their time on leveling up their castle nodes and defending their weekly tax caravans - all of which removes time from their direct vertical progress.
This means that the gap between hardcore guilds with castles (who are supposed to snowball due to the castle) and other guilds is now way more narrow.
And then lets look at a lvl50 castle siege.
It's ~14 days for hardcore guilds to get to 50 and then, say, another week to gear up properly (longer cause gear would probably be more difficult to get at this lvl). So 21 days to be ready to get the castle. It'd be difficult to measure how many hardcore guilds would be fighting for those castles at lvl50, cause some of them would instead spend money on freeholds, some might not get their hands on gear to the same extent so might not risk it, so let's say it's "on-day acquisition" of the castle.
At day 21 of the server the semi-hardcore guilds would only be at their ~170h of gameplay, which is still ~50h away from lvl50 and god-knows-how-long until they can gear up. But let's say they somehow manage to gear up in another 50h after getting lvl50. Which means ~12 days after hardcore guilds have gotten a castle.
Those 12 days mean almost 2 weeks of tax caravans and 2 castle nodes of defenses built up. So the hardcore guilds with castles would already be a few steps into their snowballing, at which point the inertia might carry them through the first siege and then the snowball is even bigger. And this is not even talking about their ability to use that initial inertia to hire mercs who'd fill up the siege slots and would prevent other guilds from joining the siege.
And I'd say this kind of layout is close to "best case scenario" for the semi-hardcore guilds. I'd expect it to be way worse if the lvl50 sieges stick around.
What are yalls thoughts on that? I would personally prefer if they were around 35-40, if not even slightly sooner. Having castles at lvl50 just means that all even semi-hardcore guilds are highly encouraged to only boost vertical lvls to be the first ones to get a castle, just as they are encouraged to do the same for freeholds.
In other words, even though Intrepid have been saying that they want the gameplay to matter across all levels - we now have 2 huge features locked behind max lvl. And this in turn means that the only guilds who own castles early on are max lvl guilds, which then means that any guild that's lagging even a bit behind, in terms of lvls, won't be able to siege a player-held castle, cause they're way weaker. Which means we have a yet another game-based snowball effect for strongest guilds.
I'm all for strong people being strong, but I'd prefer if they didn't have so much damn snow to make their snowballs into fucking avalanches.
Edit to add a more in-depth explanation of my perceived issue with this design:
Let's say it's 100h to lvl35 and another 125h to lvl50. Let's say hardcore guilds play 16h/d, while semi-hardcores play 8h and everyone else plays 3h.
If sieges can be started at lvl35, hardcores would be doing it on day 6. They'd spend some time farming good gear (cause you still gotta beat the mobs there and I hope those mobs are hard) and all of these hardcore guilds would also be fighting for the castles, because at this point it's a pve raid with dps checks, so the entire process might take several days for any given castle.
Let's say that in the most positive circumstances it takes a hardcore guild 4 days to get a castle. That's 64h in their time, where the only true progress they've made is got some gear at lvl35 and got the castle.
Semis would be ~2 days behind lvl35 by this point, and would've gained 8 days-worth of their time against the hardcores (64h that hardcores spent on the castle).
Now the hardcore guild with a castle need to spend a ton of their time on leveling up their castle nodes and defending their weekly tax caravans - all of which removes time from their direct vertical progress.
This means that the gap between hardcore guilds with castles (who are supposed to snowball due to the castle) and other guilds is now way more narrow.
And then lets look at a lvl50 castle siege.
It's ~14 days for hardcore guilds to get to 50 and then, say, another week to gear up properly (longer cause gear would probably be more difficult to get at this lvl). So 21 days to be ready to get the castle. It'd be difficult to measure how many hardcore guilds would be fighting for those castles at lvl50, cause some of them would instead spend money on freeholds, some might not get their hands on gear to the same extent so might not risk it, so let's say it's "on-day acquisition" of the castle.
At day 21 of the server the semi-hardcore guilds would only be at their ~170h of gameplay, which is still ~50h away from lvl50 and god-knows-how-long until they can gear up. But let's say they somehow manage to gear up in another 50h after getting lvl50. Which means ~12 days after hardcore guilds have gotten a castle.
Those 12 days mean almost 2 weeks of tax caravans and 2 castle nodes of defenses built up. So the hardcore guilds with castles would already be a few steps into their snowballing, at which point the inertia might carry them through the first siege and then the snowball is even bigger. And this is not even talking about their ability to use that initial inertia to hire mercs who'd fill up the siege slots and would prevent other guilds from joining the siege.
And I'd say this kind of layout is close to "best case scenario" for the semi-hardcore guilds. I'd expect it to be way worse if the lvl50 sieges stick around.
3
Comments
So it actually helps more than anything from them getting it earlier.
While it means Players won't be able to annoy(terrorise,lol) the Nodes or "Castles" of others before a certain Time, i share Nikr's Concern that the No-lifing* Hardcore Freaks-among-the-Freaks may gain a huge Advantage.
Maybe my Concern is misplaced. Or maybe i misunderstood Nikr a bit. And in the End -> why shouldn't Hardcore-People have an Advantage over everyone not as hardcore as them ? It would also be a huge kick into the Balls for all Try-hard Players if they get nerfed only so that People way lesser committed than them can catch up to them.
Steadily moving farther away from the Kickstarter vision.
(We're not really supposed to be encouraged to race to Max Adventurer Level as quickly as possible)
If sieges can be started at lvl35, hardcores would be doing it on day 6. They'd spend some time farming good gear (cause you still gotta beat the mobs there and I hope those mobs are hard) and all of these hardcore guilds would also be fighting for the castles, because at this point it's a pve raid with dps checks, so the entire process might take several days for any given castle.
Let's say that in the most positive circumstances it takes a hardcore guild 4 days to get a castle. That's 64h in their time, where the only true progress they've made is got some gear at lvl35 and got the castle.
Semis would be ~2 days behind lvl35 by this point, and would've gained 8 days-worth of their time against the hardcores (64h that hardcores spent on the castle).
Now the hardcore guild with a castle need to spend a ton of their time on leveling up their castle nodes and defending their weekly tax caravans - all of which removes time from their direct vertical progress.
This means that the gap between hardcore guilds with castles (who are supposed to snowball due to the castle) and other guilds is now way more narrow.
And then lets look at a lvl50 castle siege.
It's ~14 days for hardcore guilds to get to 50 and then, say, another week to gear up properly (longer cause gear would probably be more difficult to get at this lvl). So 21 days to be ready to get the castle. It'd be difficult to measure how many hardcore guilds would be fighting for those castles at lvl50, cause some of them would instead spend money on freeholds, some might not get their hands on gear to the same extent so might not risk it, so let's say it's "on-day acquisition" of the castle.
At day 21 of the server the semi-hardcore guilds would only be at their ~170h of gameplay, which is still ~50h away from lvl50 and god-knows-how-long until they can gear up. But let's say they somehow manage to gear up in another 50h after getting lvl50. Which means ~12 days after hardcore guilds have gotten a castle.
Those 12 days mean almost 2 weeks of tax caravans and 2 castle nodes of defenses built up. So the hardcore guilds with castles would already be a few steps into their snowballing, at which point the inertia might carry them through the first siege and then the snowball is even bigger. And this is not even talking about their ability to use that initial inertia to hire mercs who'd fill up the siege slots and would prevent other guilds from joining the siege.
And I'd say this kind of layout is close to "best case scenario" for the semi-hardcore guilds. I'd expect it to be way worse if the lvl50 sieges stick around.
I assume this is chatGPT response to a request for a "training castles" mechanic.
I might've liked this, if only this didn't mean more devtime spent on something that could be simply replaced by an already-existing mechanic that just needs to shifting of lvl requirements.
And while helping people with overall strategies for sieges would be nice, my main problem with the current design is more about "people at the top will get ever further away from weaker people" than the core gameplay loop of sieges itself.
There is an explicit point in having midgame content that players can pursue and therefore slow themselves down for, in games like this. I do see some benefit in doing it this way, simply because you can't 'zerg the castle' or 'obviously overlevel it and then break it down', but these are also core problems to the entire system that 'might as well exist'.
If snowballing is intended, it's fine. If Ashes intends to have a system with more serious depth tied to castles where they aren't directly a growth benefit but are somehow more of a social benefit, then it's also fine. I'd just really prefer people being able to take strategies for this other than 'race to max level/superboost the regular node nearest to the Castles'.
Honestly at this point I'd almost prefer no castles at all, to 'castles with level 50 enemies to clear out', but I really don't know enough to say anything beyond 'I see no reason why it's better for it to be this way, if we're supposed to still believe that getting to max level shouldn't always be top priority'.
To be clear, therefore, if you are a person who believes that Max Level is the only important one for early gameplay content, I'm not arguing against that belief, I'm fine with a Max Level rush if it's that type of game. My thought is just 'wait I thought this wasn't necessarily supposed to be that type of game?'
well, lower levels don't have to fight those mobs...they could do other things.
in this case, I'm not in favor or restricting who can join the sieges, however, id much prefer if they had to be level 50 or couldn't even register, since they could ruin things for people participating in the siege. if there was no player limit, then sure go join, but if there's a player limit, and there is, and you couldn't exclude players (you cant) imagine if you got 240 low levels when you have 200 + level 50 in your guild. now you have no chance against 250 level 50 on the other side. the fight is decided before it started, and it wasn't even about who played better..it was just random bad luck .
its the same thing.. who can do more, a player with 2 skills or the same player with 15 skills?
Having long leveling was justified by saying "all lvls matter, so it's fine if you don't rush", but now we're getting more and more reasons to rush. And the day and age of "we should only play what's most optimal" - everyone will think that rushing is the most optimal. Which kinda defeats the purpose of having long leveling.
cant tell for sure until game launches, but everything so far indicates that you cant rush to max level.
remember you have to wait for nodes to level up. imagine you are level 30 and you need 1million exp to get to 31. youplay 15 hours a day, every day, but guess what? the highest level mob in the server right now is level 15 and you only get 1 exp per mob. you've already finished every quest, so all you have left is farm level 15 mobs until nodes level up and higher level quests and mbos unlock. there's no way you will make it to 50...probably not even to 31 before people aught up and nodes leveled up.
on top of that, you need to add the time it takes to be able to declare (if castles are available to be sieged anyways. will they be available since day 1?).so how long will you need to get a declaration scroll? so according to the wiki, they happen once a month, but chances are that no one will be able to take a castle for the first 2 months(they wont be able to hit 50 before that).
then you mentioned gear...steven has said that it will take a long time to get gear...i doubt its a week. maybe you can get cheap gear in a week but will that be enough to take a castle? you cant simply just bring more people, there's a limit of 250 per team. plus, you cant exclude people from joining, what if a bunch of low levels join and your guild members cant? (un)luck of the draw I guess.
Again I feel you are missing the point. You are trying to detail all these aspects but it doesn't really matter as again nothing changes.
This is PvP we are talking about, also there is no one on you need to be lvl 50 to siege it was that mobs are lvl 50-55.
Ignoring the set level of mobs hardcore players play more and will have better gear that isn't a question. If you are fighting someone with levels on you the chance of you beating them in a 250 vr 250 fight is very low. Regardless of level entry nothing changes because you need to win with pvp. And you aren't beating those players.
People keep forgetting the progression element of a mmorpg and the general effect on combat.
Even if castles had lvl 1 mobs you could then make the argument that semi hardcore guilds could race to try to take it. Even if they managed to get one a hardcore guild would beat them in pvp so long as they had enough member that played like them and were out leveling people.
End of story doesn't matter hardcore players will out level and gear others, you aren't beating them early game. Same result happens except they get to get all the benefits earlier to influence the server.
A lot of these points in your example are head cannon on how you think things will go which is fair but i honestly don't think its realistic. You are bringing up about taxes and such like its going to be a big deal (when we don't know how its going to work). If you are taking inspiration from linage which you can also look at Throne and liberty and its not really taking verticals time away.
I think you guys are a bit lost on current games and what is actual time wasters, doing some content isn't going to slow anyone down for 30 min. Also your times are way off I don't see them as realistic which is throwing off your assumption of things even more so. You are using int blocks *ie 8 and 16. But that actually get broken down into random ranges on top of hardcore guilds having a higher amount of players, and more on the higher side of those ranges.
If a hardcore guild has a issue getting 250 people at a higher level and geared, you are looking at lower end guilds struggling to have anywhere near that many members in a single guild that would be competitive.
If you have issues you need to rework everything to be casual friendly and push that idea. The only element i see for that is most likely being nodes being semi gates for content that will slow down progress. Which gives plenty of time to prepare materials, etc and gets into another conversation.
As i said in another thread, what matters tax money not being set to be pocketed. There is no reason for that, high levels don't need defensives to stop lower levels they just gear check. Eventually you are going to understand these points I've been saying for ages, you have been out of the loop of mmorpgs for too long.
Castles like nodes should be a social /war element thing. Castles even more so can be a cost themselves to support their goals while not actually giving them money to maintain / hold it from any form of taxes.
True, Steven only said that "guilds will be able to sign up for the attack", but no future details on that. And I don't think we've heard anything about the very first sieges being limited in players in the same way player-held castle sieges will be.
Cause OOOH FUCKING BOI it would be even fucking worse if first siege is also an instanced event limited to 250 people. Cause THAT would require an even bigger rush for even more people, just so they can fill up the slots and not let anyone else siege.
As for rushing timers and gearing speeds - yes, we no neither, but I just assume hardcores will do both faster than non-hardcores. And I'm completely fine with that and with them getting the first castle. I just think that the resulting time sinks would slow them down somewhat. But if the sieges are at lvl50 - there's nothing to slow them down for, cause they're already done with majority of their progress at the time.
But Maybe this is their way of making the content harder? I mean from what they said, levels wont be that much affecting the strength. So it may be possible to challenge the Castle even at 35 lvl for example. Just it will be really hard, and only the strongest with insane coordination can pull this off. And if this prove to be too hard of a challenge for anyone to do, then you will have to wait to get more levels.
There's also this to consider though, yes.
There are nearly no games I'm familiar with where my group needs to be level 50 to take on level 50 mobs.
Presumably, therefore, only a superbly crafted enemy defense group of levels 50-55 is likely to require max level to do, unless we're pushing that solo vs group mob dichotomy pretty hard.
To bring up the other recent thread pretty much imo should have an effect on node wars / sieges. (Maybe even guild wars as well in a different element). Being more on the social side/ politics the same way nodes have card that can influence a node. A castle has the same element though more towards attacking / defending nodes in a area.
Making it so you have gain some advantages that can help you in a war. When i talk about cards i mean as in the policies nodes can do, since they pretty much are like cards on a board game to me.
I'm OK with it, the castles should have some of the hardest fights in the game so max level makes sense. We still don't know what kind of "in-game" throttles they will put on character advancement or some of these other systems. There could be % drops that are very rare and limit some progression paths by weeks or months. Maybe the siege tech required to take the castles is gated behind crafters that need max level gather/processing from major lvl 50 areas or something.
WOW gates content with weekly raid attempts, or weekly max honour points, etc. Maybe Ashes has some ways that they gate content as well. I'd assume they have to.
Also, big guilds aren't necessarily the fastest levellers. It's possible that many smaller guilds and other players level quickly too. Maybe a duo finds a crazy efficient grind or something. The big guilds may reach out to whoever else is max level at the time to help take down these castles.
And even if they get them early and hold onto them for a while, you never know when enough people catch up and think it would be a fun idea to take out the guild that holds the castle. The range is 250-500 people per side so even if it takes a few weeks to get people big enough that's not a huge deal. We don't know the relative cost of siege vs defence, so the whole balance behind the siege mechanics is a huge question mark.
Some of these things may just get balanced as the game plays after launch. Like if guilds grab castles and hold them effortlessly and the game starts to become stale and die because everyone else is suppressed/hopeless I'm sure there will be lots of patches around this kind of stuff.
I was still thinking that would be in the mid-levels, rather than Level 50 - 55 mobs.
I expect Max Level mobs to be Level 50-55. And would hope their tactics would be tuned for Raids.
Some group of players will be the first to take them no matter what level the mobs are.
The mechanic has to be balanced to make PvP meaningful on the land too.
People who want castles should focus on leveling rather than story and exploration. You cannot have everything at the same time.