Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Second of all, yes, if a guild can beat an instanced boss but are complete shit at sieging/pvp - I'd still want them to be able to participate. Especially if they were the first ones to beat said boss.
Defending allies get the lead and then either appoint other defending allies or the literal weakest contestants from the list. This has been a part of my problem from the start - the defending guild preventing others from joining the siege.
I meant that some guilds might not participate in any preparatory actions, but still want to participate in the siege. Like I said, opportunistic people, who did nothing but still want the chance at everything.
That opens the door to those who would try to sabotage the fight by signing up the other side and refusing to fight. For cases where exceptions should happen, like need to introduce into the siege a group with special skills, the solution is having one of those guilds which qualify for the battle to accept being replaced with another one. The replacement
- should not happen by force
- the guild being introduced should be approved by the top guilds
I am not sure how in this case espionage and intrigue can play a role.
But when a castle is contested by 3 parties (metro nations) it can happen that two of them which are on the attacking side will not be equal. The weaker one might realize that if they are not able to get the castle then they are better with the current owners than the other attacking faction.
Maybe they make a deal right before the siege and will sabotage the attack.
If the defending megaguild is willing to have 15 40-man sub-guilds that are all raid-qualified and are all ready to register for the castle the moment the declaration period starts - imo they deserve the castle.
This kind of setup would also help all those "zerg yellers", who keep being afraid about 300 members being the max number. If it's optimal to split your megaguild into tiny pieces - it's gonna be easier to fight them on all the other battlefields.
But any kind of player-picked attacking side, to me, just has too many easy abuses of the system.
And with your leaderboard idea, what kind of parameters would be needed to qualify for getting picked? Would it be enemies killed? Dmg to the node done? Caravan attacks participated in? Would those attacks NEED to be successful to count?
And would any of those values play the role in picking the Leading guild, or would it just be an automated system that picks top participants? Cause all of those values are easily controlled by a group of people that's playing the same side, except in this case the defending sub-guilds wouldn't necessarily need to be really strong, because the main defending force simply fights everyone else, while the attacking sub-guilds rake up the score values across the board.
In other words, I'm looking at the system from the worst possible POV - the horrible human nature. Why give the horrible people system-based tools that make their life even easier?
It would be espionage and intrigue when you are not directly involved, just hearing things on the grape vine. Then once the siege is done a random guild holds it. Espionage later informs you the guild holding the castle is the best fighter amalgamation from a specific alliance. Turns out said Alliance now has two castles.
As I said, the number of destroyed caravans in the previous 3 weekends would promote guilds up on the attacker list. Also the game should measure the contribution of each player to caravan destruction. Sending healers or people who just take screenshots while random players, citizens not necessarily part of a guild destroy caravans, should not promote that guild in any way.
But maybe even if caravans barely survive, contribution should still count.
That would be the case where the castle is already in good hands and is being defended well.
So just for fun, attackers can have their siege attempt even though chances are they will not succeed.
Would it be unfair to have 2 or even 5 castles?
It will be possible, but very difficult for a single guild to fully develop these nodes. They will likely need assistance from the broader community.[34]
The community would be on their side and would even pay the taxes to keep them there.
Create a waitlist with 500 spots and divide it by the number of coalitions. For example, if 15 coalitions were formed, each coalition would have a maximum of 33 players on the battlefield (500 / 15 = 33). When a player from a coalition dies, he returns to the waitlist, and someone from their coalition on the waitlist fills his spot and so on, keep rotating the players.
If a coalition has only 20 players who showed up, the extra spots would be allocated to other coalitions. These 20 players would not have a waitlist among themselves, they can die and respawn.
Having only two sides is detrimental, people will surely cheese the system and Intrepid will have to be always making new rules, balancing and updates on this.
In Castle Sieges, the castle should be open for all to vie for, allowing participants to make a run for control. Form coalitions beforehand, and then, 5 minutes before the siege begins, let them decide their course of action. Outsiders should't know the affiliation of coalitions and what they plan to do, making it a mystery whether they're interested in defending or attacking and even how many people they have. Only the coallitin leader should know these details. Their side should only be revealed 5 minutes before the siege commences and how many people they have.
Fuck, man, we know so damn little about any of these systems, and I doubt that we'll learn much more until waaay later into A2
Imo there are no "good hands", because there's always ambitious people who want to take things from others for themselves. But that's a whole different discussion
So it could work once if they know they will lose the castle anyway at the next siege, because they might already be from enemy nations and they got the castle because the former rulers had no support.
So it can happen that some metro nations will be more powerful than others. Maybe those will constantly siege and destroy the weaker metropolises. And will also take turn on holding the castles outside of their ZoI.
If the citizens help defend the caravans and they survive and build up their adjacent nodes, then it means those citizens consider those leaders good enough to give them the tax and work for protecting their caravans. Just like some of us gave our money to IS and work for them as testers in A2. It's like p2w.
Each coalition may have multiple guilds, who performs better will win.
Also, let any guild take any side in this, even the guild who is holding the castle today should be able to be an attacker.
If you ask me, one side should destroy the other side and then the coallitions in the winning side will have a free-for-all among themselves and decide who sits on the throne.
That's an interesting suggestion. Would you expect the castle to have mobs again in this case, or would it just be pvp between people? Cause if it's just pvp, then how is it any different from the "defenders vs attackers" design?
I thought the Castle Siege would always have some PvE in the capture points, correct?
There could be even some beasts/prisioners to be set free and aid your side and so on, i am pretty sure people won't run out of ideas in regard of pve in this.
In my view, the fewer rules Intrepid enforces, the better it will be for players. With freedom, players will do their thing and attempt to exploit the system, but the other side will also counter your exploitations. That's why even the guild holding the castle should be able to switch sides for a counter-tactic against whatever cheesy tactice the other side would come up with.
The system should let total freedom of association and keep it a mystery, and then in the day of the siege the system should clamp the balanced limits people can work with, give the extra spots of the coallitions who didnt show up to those guys in the waitlist.
In the end, maybe the winning side should have a thunderdome and only one coallition will leave alive, or maybe just one guild in the end.
We also don't know how exactly the pvp rules will work for either side. Can attackers attack others on their side? Can defenders attack other defenders? Supposedly both sides have an alliance and we can't attack our allies in other parts of the game, so I personally don't expect sides to be able to attack themselves.
This is why I said that the attacker situation is akin to prisoner's dilemma. You want to get the castle, so you want to push forward. You need help from others because you can't do it alone (well, at least in my suggestion). But helping others also means that they can get the castle as well. So you gotta find a way to progress forward, but in a way where you're still ahead of other attackers (who you yourself can't stop), while also repelling attacks from the defenders.
This is my assumption not only because that's how it was in L2, but also because if attackers can attack each other during the siege - not a single fucking castle will ever move hands after the first siege. Like, not a damn one. Either defending side (on both sides of the siege) manages to keep killing the Seal Casters of the attackers, or other attackers kill each other like crabs in bucket.
Others want to solve this by having a lead guild, with some wanting this guild to be the only one who CAN get the castle. I personally think that would go against basic human nature of greed and ambitions, and would create an even bigger power pyramid, where the only ones who can get castles are those who're at the very very top already. And usually that's guilds with castles, who simply used a sub-guild to get another castle. And to me that sounds like a shitty setup for the design of the, supposed, top content of the game.
This also applies to your suggestion of just everyone fighting everyone. It is a possibility to find "the most worthy contestant", but it also usually leads to stale server politics in my experience.
I would go even further, I would spawn all coallitions far from the castle, sprinkle some heavy PvE stuff around the castle and inside the castle, and the first coallition who can get inside should start repairing the gates, setting traps, clear all the bosses inside, manning stations, etc and start a defense on the fly and become the defender against everybody else!
If they can clear and fix the castle and shut it close to outsiders, kill all other invaders (people would play hide and seek for a while), then they would be victorious.
The objective would be to clear the castle, make it operational, seal it against attackers, and maintain control for a period of time. The coallition who wins could agree on splitting the ownership or do a thunderdome.
That would be fire!
One of the attacking guilds would cast the Seal, if they managed to break through to it (same as Ashes) and then for the remainder of the siege - they're the only defender of the castle. They need to fight EVERYONE, previous defender alliance included. And if someone else manages to cast the Seal again - they become the sole defenders.
I wasn't sure if this could work in Ashes before (and posted about it here), but now that I think about it, the amount of people in the siege instanced itself doesn't change, so this is still completely doable.
So now I'm pretty much expecting that to be the design.
The building up part could be pre-included in the preparation stage, where each guild that's gonna be a part of the attacker side will need to allocate some money/resources towards castle defenses in case they are the ones to get it.
Its not a problem at all for one guild or alliance to have more than one castle. In fact, there is no reason to fight at all in ashes. The problem is, not everyone will see eye to eye so there will be fighting. You wouldn't want a rival or a main aggressor to have more than you on any score. So too, does that stand with castles. Its not so bad if you own 1 castle and they own 2 but if they own 2 and you own none then the stakes will be raised even higher.
That's how node sieges start
That is the basic paramater of nodes - built them up, and if you can't defend them you get that penalty of losing it all. Saying this should apply everywhere other than attacking sieges just seems weird to me.
Having the basic entry requirement to being lead guild in a castle siege, with perhaps a reward of some kind if your siege is successful (sure, why not), and a penalty if it is monumentally unsuccessful seems to fit perfectly in line with Ashes. Cool, and my minor adjustments to your suggestion allow you to ensure they are if you are the lead on the siege.
I'm not saying a competent guild shouldn't be able to participate, I am saying a guild that says "we are going to organize the next siege on this castle", and then can't even get 200 players organized should be barred from being allowed to be in that position again.
If you aren't sure you can organize a siege that meets that basic requirement, don't put your hand up saying you can. Cool, so let's imagine a guild owning a castle does this.
They put in a large amount of time to be able to be the lead guild (I did say from the start that there needs to be a cost-effective time or resources to this), and they select the weakest guilds.
Straight away there is a risk that those guilds won't kill the encounters required of them, even if they try.
However, since it will be obvious to everyone involved that this is just the castle owners trying to prevent a siege, those guilds could then also refuse to kill the mobs, or kill the mobs and not show up for the siege.
In either of these situations, that guild is now prevented from being lead guild for the next 6 sieges. This is literally the point of the exclusion - a guild could maybe do this once or twice in rhat time - but it isn't reasonable to think that any guild capable of having this on lockdown would be able to be beaten in a siege anyway.
Tax.
Literally the point.
If the tax is too high, you can obviously move - however, forcing others to move is also oppression.
but what if the tax is high in % but as a flat number ends up being so low it might as well not even exist, is that still oppressive?
also, idk if taxes are oppressive...maybe they r irl or unfair
The monarch sets the tax rate, and can use those proceeds to upgrade defenses, maintain the castle's direct nodes, or provide buffs and benefits to the citizens of that region.[8]
In addition to taxes, Castles also influence crop yields, resources and events within its region.[10]
Castles have the ability to allocate taxes collected from nodes under them toward certain benefits that go back to the node. Or they can be more selfishly governed that treasury more towards the guild that owns it and that obviously is going to have some political implications, because it could- if you're not using it for the benefit of the people in the region they might rise up and help take you out from that that position of owning that castle.[6] – Steven Sharif
If a castle buffs 1/5 of the region and another doesn't, the one which refuses to help the region will have to face the players in that area. Most likely caravans will be defended by players outside the ZoI of that castle, who want to keep those nodes weak.
The point of a castle is to take earned gold from other players.
Then you have the notion that if you are the leader of a guild with a castle, access to some events and buildings is at your discression.
I mean, even the wiki specifically lists
as one of the benefits of owning a castle.
You really have no argument that oppressing others isn't the point of castles. The only question is the level to which that oppression happens.
We also have heard nothing about penalties for those who initiate node sieges and then lose them.
Siege's risk/reward equation is frontloaded. You put in money/resources, which are you "risk", and then you either get or don't get the reward. If you don't get the reward - you lost shit. That's your penalty for losing.
That's the point though. The "organize the siege" only exists in yall's "leading guild" mechanic. AoC's castle sieges are not organized. They simply happen and people choose whether they want to join them.
Castle sieges are not node sieges. And I personally want to keep it that way. Which is why I want any guild on the server to have their own equal chance of getting into the siege. They simply have to be ready to outpace others during the pve race at the start of the declaration period.
I went through your full suggestion once again and, unless I missed it, you didn't mention if this penalty is for all members of the guild or just the guild entity itself. I'll assume it's all members.
So depending on what the cost of become lead is - the defending side simply cycles through their members to make new guilds, buy them into the Lead role and fail every siege.
And, unless I missed this as well, I don't think you mentioned what happens if no one beats the bosses. Does the lead guild then change? Who's picked next and on what requirements? And if the Lead doesn't change then does the siege simply happens with 0 attackers?
edit: what would be the timeframe on checking whether the guilds have beat the bosses? A few hours? A day? Several days?
There is a decision to make (by Intrepid, not us); either castle sieges are ffa and the owner of the castle is free to take up as many spots in the attack as they can, or castle sieges are not ffa.
There is no third option where people can randomly come along to a siege that is going on, but where the owners of the castle can't very easily take up spots on the attacker side.
Actually - that is the point.
You are taking details that I have intentially left blank and imagining the system where those details are filled in via thee literal worst possible means. Rather than doing that, imagine they are filled in by competent game developers.
For example, your line of questioning about what happens if no one kills any of the raid encounters and will the siege still continue with no one present - obviously if no one kills the encounters (and thus no one gets an invitation to the siege), the siege fails before it even starts. Then the whole thing starts again from picking another lead. Since the process from the start of picking a lead until the siege proper would be a month, that process can begin again immediately.
Your question of how long to guilds have to kill the encounters; that is subject to testing, obviously.
Asking if the penalty is for all members or just the guild; the point of the penalty is the function of preventing them from being able to be lead for 6 months, how that happens is unimportant, just assume it happens for now.
By all means, if you think you have a suggestion for how to prevent the owner of a castle from simply stacking the attacking side with their own people in a ffa siege, I'm here for it. If not, the only option is to expect the attacker to do this, or to alter castle siege attacks to be organized.