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
During the siege itself it would also be super obvious, because the defenders would simply let one of the attacking groups through and let them cast the Seal. At that point everyone else in the siege should just look at the members of that group, look at their guild name/alliance and remember it.
Also, I forget to mention this in the initial response to this, @Noaani , but if sieges are in fact similar to L2's and the siege doesn't simply end after the first cast of the Seal - there'd only be 2 groups of players who are defending the castle.
I comp-fucking-letely forgot about this potential part. Azherae touched on this, but even then it still escaped my thought process and I didn't ask myself "and how exactly is the 16-member group supposed to defend a castle against 484 people"
The same issue would exist in the current design as well, if the siege doesn't end. And the absolute hugest issue would be present if the siege does end, because the defending side will simply let their allies through.
So now I'm curious how Intrepid will address this part of the design, and I'll try thinking of a way this could be resolved.
Obvious ways are "sides are flipped" and/or "the defenders now have all the bosses on their side". Former would most likely be hated by players, cause it leaves out any potential for backstabbing and also still doesn't prevent the exploit in question.
And the latter would most likely feel kinda illogical to most people. Why is a boss that was just working with me is now working against me. Obviously this could be addressed through lore and tied to the Seal spell, and then tied together with a mechanic of "bosses can ultimately take the castle back if no player attempts to cast the Seal in time", but I dunno what people would think about that.
I'm personally leaning towards Boss stuff, but I'll try thinking about more ways to address this.
And this would also be another question for you, Noaani. I don't think your suggestion talked about this part of the system. Were you envisioning a "one-cast" siege or a "Seal is cast, but we continue" one?
If you could make suggestions as good as Steven, he would hire you.
There's a ton of exploits and abuses of the system, as long as you have a limited amount of siege member slots. Imo that's the root of all these issues.
L2 simply told you to go fight. Non-registered people could come into the siege zone and help out either side. In other words it was a way freer system. So when you try to use a very similar design, but in an enclosed system - issues pop up.
Obviously we don't know how Intrepid solved those issues, but I kinda fear that Steven will just say "well, if they can abuse it - let them abuse it", cause he has said something similar for several situations where a big powerful force could abuse that power. And so far castles seem like one of the biggest snowball mechanics in the game (even if taxes can't be taken out by the guild).
And I wish that the game is fun for more people than just the massive guilds
Players don't need to be in the guild that owns a castle in order to sign up for the defense of the castle.[21]
The guild leader that owns the castle is able to approve guilds that have applied to defend at the castle.[21]
Following declaration, the defender has a week grace period to approve defenders, hire mercenary NPCs and set up defensible positions.[34][21]
That's why I said that I don't understand or see the problem.
The defenders even if they are a small guild they can increase the number by letting in guilds they trust as defenders.
But if your idea is not compatible with the wiki then your idea has to be completed somehow.
So a question to you then. What do you think happens when an attacking guild casts the Seal to get the castle? Does the siege end; does the siege continue and sides completely flip; or does it continue and the guild that cast the Seal becomes the only one to become a defender, while literally everyone else is the attacker now?
Because L2's design was that last one, and was my assumption for how AoC's sieges work currently.
And in that context, in my suggestion, a group of 16 players who represent a single guild would cast the Seal and become the sole defender of the castle for the remainder of the siege. And this is where the issue lies. How do you ensure that they don't simply lose the castle immediately, and most likely to the previous owners? And do you even try to ensure that?
Why exactly IS this your assumption in the first place?
In other words, it's what made sense to me given all the other pieces of the system puzzle. If I'm wrong and currently the siege does end - I will not fucking listen a single counterargument of "well, the designers wouldn't make a bad design, would they?" anymore. Cause holy fucking shit would that be atrocious.
The defenders would not only control who gets to siege, but then control who gets the castle, if their initial plan failed a bit.
edit: In other words, it's your usual "I don't believe they'd make the system this stupid"
Yes, it is my fault for not paying attention. Sorry about that.
So I read again carefully the wiki (the seal part) and I understand that the cast is being done by one player. The place where that has to be done for 3-5 minutes may be decided by the defenders, probably by placing something in advance in a certain location. That would help them to plan in advance and coordinate attempts to interrupt that cast.
If the casing completes successfully, the caster will have to name the guild from the alliance who will receive the ownership of the castle for the next 4 weeks. But that player can also decide that his own guild will instead get the castle. The caster can be a member of that guild, not necessarily the guild leader so it can make both guilds and the entire alliance unhappy. Steven seems to enjoy this possibility.
If the defenders manage to prevent the cast to be completed, after 120 minutes the siege ends. (It was 90 in 2018 but is two hours according to 2020 statement)
So the system isn't stupid relative to what games are capable of when they're designed to be more than just combat sim grinds.
Also, I am not sure if it was clear enough when I was saying it, but I'm not saying 'the siege scroll user's guild automatically becomes the lead guild'.
It was just 'everyone tries to beat the PvE you suggested and whoever has the most people with the credit for doing that, will be the lead guild'.
Sure, there's potential for collusion here, but it's also 'setting up an entire siege against yourself with enough work done to guarantee that you have a real interest in taking it. I'm not saying it would work, I'm very familiar with the gamer psychology that 'not losing, even if it means less real competition, is better than risking losing'.
But you're not gonna defeat that psychology with anything other than chaos, and even that only works like half the time.
As for backstabbing - yes, that's great and I fully support that. Which is exactly why my assumption was the last design option I listed.
I guess the cost of declaring could be the same as a huge part of the collected taxes over the month of owning the castle (the guild-collected that is, not the overall quantity), but then the game truly becomes "a war of kingdoms", as Mag likes to put it, where the only ones who can Lead a siege are the other castle owners.
And if castle taxes can't be withdrawn by guilds, then balancing out costs would be the biggest question.
I know you dislike that kind of design, but my bias and experience makes me prefer it. But I definitely see how it will probably simply not work in a limited members system.
I just foresee castle sieges becoming the dullest, boringnest part of the game, because it'll all be predetermined and completely controlled by the people in power. I've seen this happen even in L2, so a closed system would make it even easier.
Educated guess.
I might be wrong.
If the attacking alliance has to manage to keep safe a specific player in that specific location, it can be too hard. Would make more sense if the defenders would have the mission to keep that place safe from any caster not only from the one they recognize as the main leading guild of the alliance.
If the mechanic is that the caster gets the castle then the attackers would start fighting each-other if they notice a player which is not the desired new ruler, casting the seal.
But now that I think, that can be an good version too.
This is why I called this entire situation a prisoner's dilemma for attackers. Any given attacker guild wants others to succeed, but only to a point, because they want to get ahead at just the right time.
This is also why L2 continued the siege, because if there WAS a betrayal - other attackers still had a chance to recapture the castle onto themselves.
I think castles themselves are a bad design. I tossed them out years ago.
Anyway, note that I like the chaos, it's just that chaos backed by fiat isn't real chaos, it's usually just a bunch of tryhards playing pretend.
Which is fine, it's an MMORPG, we're here to 'play pretend'. "Owning a castle" is itself, a form of that.
As for the castle battles themselves, if they want them to be more serious, just... don't have the channeling thing at all? Why does it even exist? Just build a MOBA style siege. It's not as if MOBAs were created out of nowhere. They basically come from Warcraft 3.
We've known how to design these things for decades, people just roll back stuff because their audience of 'people playing pretend' changed.
In AoC it seems that they will have to wait one month to do that.
I forgot about the not being able to attack each-other.
Then it even makes more sense to have a choice when the cast is completed: you take the castle for your guild or for the one which initiated the siege. The treason can happen by design this way.
You know, it's that classic "sounds like a duck, looks like a duck - must be a pelican". I saw a duck, which is why I assumed it was a duck, and danced from there.
This is just yet another copied mechanic that becomes a contradictional design point, because the copied part doesn't match other parts of the design, and the changes have implications for the copied system itself.
That's my assumption. Don't think we've seen any confirmation either way.
Once again, in the current design there is no "guild that initiates the siege". Every guild must cast their own scroll to join the siege. This is not node sieges.
Having that choice could be an interesting way to create more social interactions during the siege, and I wouldn't be opposed to it.
It's fine to start by 'just copy from somewhere really quickly'.
Alpha-1 sieges could have been converted trivially to multiple designs, so if the channeling thing works out against the goals of the game, it'll probably get changed.
Based on your initial point though, I'd bet that most of the people who will be involved in this content won't see any need to change it to make it 'more fair' or 'less collusion options' or anything like that. The 'chaos' is the fun, for them, right?
Even if the game doesn't have a real demographic shift, the 'likely to participate in sieges' demographic probably never really needed it to be very 'fair'.
I can't speak for others, but to me it's hella unfair if someone can directly prevent me from participating in a siege. I'm totally fine if that prevention came from them beating me to the punch on a mechanic (be it bosses or "in the moment prep" or whatever).
And as for the chaos part - it can only exist when people are willing to go against the powers that be. If defenders controlling the siege is a well-known abuse of the system, that's never addressed by the devs - why would people even try and fight against that? It's gonna be already super difficult to push people towards rising up against the stronger forces, so why create designs that make that EVEN HARDER.
Of course it's all Steven's vision and everything, so if he believes that people will be fine with that (or if he does change his opinion later due to feedback) - cool. It's not like I'd ever be in a position to participate in a siege in the first place. I'm just a plain citizen that wants to "look up" and see people having some good fun. If the current system does achieve that - great, I'll be totally wrong, but super happy
Yes, I said twice that the siege ends when the seal cast completes. That is how I understood it reading the wiki.
If each guild has to cast to join then the cost cannot be as high as the part from the collected taxes which go to the guild owning the castle. Must be affordable. Might even be free. There is no sense from game design point of view to put a price on them because I see them as an alternative siege for siege loving players, to spare nodes from frequent sieges for no reason.
But I seen yesterday when Azherae sent me to read the alpha 1 pvx mechanic (thanks for that by the way!):
Multiple guilds may register to attack and the first to complete the scroll and lay down the declaration may begin to have their members register to attack (there will be a cap).[42]
So the game wants to prevent guilds which are not in an alliance to participate.
The first one will start introducing the participants.
The others which failed to cast the scroll were probably from a different alliance / metro nation.
I will also mention my improved idea based on Noaani's improved idea. And I will not give any credit
The target audiences of MMOs changed with it.
There are certain things that people do in MMOs now that are functionally only possible because the playerbases of these games are older. A college student who plays an MMO to chill and be social because they are far from home or whatever is playing to make friends, to build those alliances and feelings and have those experiences.
A guild that has been together since 2007 and has 1200 members doesn't have the same goals. Competitive MMORPGs are in a somewhat sad place because they keep absolutely refusing to adapt to this and recreate the same content types with the exact same incentives.
Content types? Good. A game is a game, it comes down to if you enjoy it or not.
Incentives? Long dead. But we must watch devs shuffle along trying to figure out what they can keep for nostalgia while not having their games break under the weight of 1200 player guilds that quite possibly have more loyalty to each other than nearly anything.
Or they can just say 'screw it, let the MMORPG armies out there be happy dominating'.
If anything, since TL is jumping through hoops to fix this issue somewhat, it might be better for the genre as a whole if Ashes is the game that doesn't do that. Clean playerbase split.
I never said only castle owners can led a siege... Idk how you get that when i said castle owners should not be able to pocket money / resources....
The whole point is they need to make their own income and not rely on taxes to snowball. As you aren't going to be able to balance that. And with them making their onw money spending it is going to effect them, be it building up their castle, or using whatever other benefits from owning it (like I suggested with the card effects akin to nodes).
I will never understand a desire to be able to pocket the money or if a developer gives people the power to do so.