250v250/500v500/Castle/Node Siege Gameplay Concepts.

Feel Free to make and share your own concept ideas!

These thought were brought to fruition because of a post by @Nerror

I made this bit based on the most recent dev update with the 1300 test models. This minis arent to scale but there are 250 on each side

I like a relatively simple objective based gameplay style.

-1 Spawn point for Defenders in the throne room, and 2 Spawn points for the attackers shown in the bottom corners of the image. I feel the attackers having 2 Spawns allows the prevention of being spawn camped if it gets a bit one sided, where defenders only need 1 spawn point at the winning objective because at that point the game is basically finished and they are where they need to be to defend anyway.

- The 3 siege rally points are spots needed to allow siege to move unhindered.it could be fun to have a defending NPC mini boss of sorts at each of these points that range focus siege in their respective zones of influence. Basically siege deterrents that arent require to be taken down, but it is strongly advised to do so, allowing siege players to move without worry of being targeted by that NPC. Once killed, these points can be captured and used to create siege closer and provide a closer spawn point for the attackers. Whether or not it can be recaptured is up in the air, could be fun, could be lame.
-these points of interest can also be the focus point for 8-class siege ability channeling, or for the
resources needed before channeling them elsewhere.

- The next/simultaneous objective is taking down the gates. 1 or all 3 of the outer gates, and maybe an inner gate to the keep, and a gate to the throne room. Repairs may or may not be a good idea for defenders, that all depends on how durable the structures should be. I personally find the whole "THAT GROUP IS THE REPAIR GROUP!" to be a not fun game mechanic so I would opt for just difficult to destroy structures.

-Defenders should have objectives as well. Obviously "hold the gate" is the main one, but perhaps retaking Siege rally points would allow for resources to repair gates or launch counter mechanics such as reinstating an anti siege NPC, or allowing for a playing to take that role themselves at that location. Making it a constant struggle to keep these under control. Otherwise Everyone is always in the same spot.

-Should the winning objective be a capture point? Something to kill/destroy? A channel? I have no idea honestly, I think these should all be tested.

-Other ideas not shown on the map could include points on the map or on the castle that allow for subterfuge or limited use back entrances (although these would be camped eventually unless their location becomes random/only discoverable by certain classes) allowing for stealth objectives which are very difficult but can speed up the attackers progress if successful.

This is a very basic concept but I hope you all expand on it further so we can give intrepid plenty of ideas to consider.

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Comments

Dolyem

Also here is a blank template of the castle drawing I made if you would like to use it

CROW3

It would be cool to have a ‘break a siege’ scenario. For instance, helping a caravan of supplies move from the lower right corner to reach inside the walls with some % remaining.

Dolyem

CROW3 wrote: »

It would be cool to have a ‘break a siege’ scenario. For instance, helping a caravan of supplies move from the lower right corner to reach inside the walls with some % remaining.

oooo like a much higher stakes Dolyak escort in GW2 eh?

CROW3

Exactly.

Assassinating the mayor or ransoming the mayor would also be an interesting scenario.

Nerror

@Dolyem I made a quick'n dirty map of the A1 siege area purely from memory. So, the scale and exact locations and such are off. The control points were points that you captured by channeling at them for a while, and they provided teleport points for the attackers from their base camp. They also gave buffs to which-ever side controlled them.

Now, the dragons need to go completely for any siege. I don't want them ruining a good siege experience. We get two hours to have fun PvPing, not kill some big lizards. We can do that outside the siege.

The control points are ok conceptually, as a way to have points to fight over outside the castle. I'd like to see the system fleshed out more than A1 though.

Instead of focusing on the surrounding area, I think we should focus on how we fit 1000 players with collision detection inside the castle in a meaningful way, where it isn't just most of those 1000 players trying to capture a single point. Even if it was an empty field with the capture point in the middle, the amount of cluster-fuck near the objective will be massive and honestly not super fun.

I think we need a big-ass castle with several levels and multiple objectives that have to be captured simultaneously or within short order of each other, forcing people to spread out and forcing people to communicate and coordinate attack and defence efforts.

Dolyem

Nerror wrote: »

@Dolyem I made a quick'n dirty map of the A1 siege area purely from memory. So, the scale and exact locations and such are off. The control points were points that you captured by channeling at them for a while, and they provided teleport points for the attackers from their base camp. They also gave buffs to which-ever side controlled them.

Now, the dragons need to go completely for any siege. I don't want them ruining a good siege experience. We get two hours to have fun PvPing, not kill some big lizards. We can do that outside the siege.

The control points are ok conceptually, as a way to have points to fight over outside the castle. I'd like to see the system fleshed out more than A1 though.

Instead of focusing on the surrounding area, I think we should focus on how we fit 1000 players with collision detection inside the castle in a meaningful way, where it isn't just most of those 1000 players trying to capture a single point. Even if it was an empty field with the capture point in the middle, the amount of cluster-fuck near the objective will be massive and honestly not super fun.

I think we need a big-ass castle with several levels and multiple objectives that have to be captured simultaneously or within short order of each other, forcing people to spread out and forcing people to communicate and coordinate attack and defence efforts.

Big castle dungeon may work, or you could make the terrain around it multilevel with choke points. making zerging inefficient. But I like what youre sayin

Kovrm

I think it'd be cool for defenders to potentially have repair duties. When it comes to Guilds vs Guild sieges, it would show the level of cohesion that your guild has/maintains. Would also potentially combat the issue of having a massive amount of people in an area as was pointed out above. Hell, if your chosen artisan skill is the crafting of siege weaponry why not have the necessity of maintaining your siege weapons during combat? Once destroyed you get no more for the duration of the siege, whether it's wall mounted (defenders) or mobile (attackers). Anyone with basic blacksmithing skills should be able to repair.

Perhaps each team is allotted or allowed to bring a finite amount of resources in order to make repairs during a siege? In that scenario, it would make you "pick your battles" so to speak, since your guild would be using resources to "fund" a fight for control over another node that might be rich in various other resources.

ETA: Would make the gathering profession and trade that much more important/impactful, imo.

ETA2: On a side note related to siege weapons; Has there been any mention of crafting different types of ammo for them? IE explosive type, or a type that's more geared towards breaching of gates/walls? Or will they all have generic ammo available? Can ammo run out, or is it infinite depending upon the life of the siege weapon?

Caww

AoC is gonna need a room full of Einsteins to make that level of battle work (fingers crossed).

Nobody mentioned flying mounts being used so I'm gonna guess the whole thing has an exclusion radius to prevent going over the walls and barriers.

ESO had the ability to breakdown keep walls which helps to reduce choke points, I hope something like that can be implemented since it can be intense to have multiple ways in or defending against it. If not, then maybe a tunneling/wall scaling mechanism (since we can climb).

This would all be designed to prevent 200 peeps from jamming the opening gambits (or whatever the key starting points are); after toons start dying and resurrecting elsewhere the load will spread out.

bloodprophet

There was talk a while back about destructible walls for the sieges as well and how they might do that.
Breaking and repairing the walls will hopefully be a thing and be away to avoid the main gate choke points as well.
Like a lot of looking at UE5 and what is possible found this tech demo. Not saying they should use this kind of thing only that it is possible with UE5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvcBBa3X4js

Nerror

I certainly hope we get breakable walls. I think they had that in APOC, and much, much older games in the past have had that as well. You don't bring trebuchets to a castle siege and not expect to reduce it to rubble. That's what they do.

UE5 can make it look prettier I am sure though.

I would actually love to see sappers digging tunnels under the walls too, which I think is something UE5 would be good at. It's scope creep, because I think they'd have to re-work a lot of stuff to allow players to actively dig in the ground, so not for release. But one can dream for the future

McShave

Would the attackers be able to attack from any direction? I dont imagine most nodes having a big obstacle on one side, so I think the fundamentals of the maps are wrong here

Okeydoke

Balance is very important with the sieges. You don't want what we saw in Alpha 1, which was very simple, break down a gate and then aoe the throne room, win. But you don't want a bunch of gimicky, convoluted or confusing mechanics either. Balance.

You don't want to overcomplicate the mechanics to where casual players and unorganized groups are near ineffective or useless, but you do want mechanics where being in an organized group is very advantageous, obviously. These two opposing aspects need to be balanced to a good middle ground.

In other words, the mechanics shouldn't be braindead nor should they be rocket science. They should be interesting, but not confusing. Multiple pathways to victory perhaps, but not overly complex or gimicky. Casual friendly, but not easy. Good luck haha.

I don't have any ideas at the moment. The dragons in their current form gotta go, feels like pve added in just for the sake of pve. I love the idea of a castle with multiple floors.

SPREAD PEOPLE OUT. Please don't give us another zergball aoe meta game.

OutRage87

CROW3 wrote: »

It would be cool to have a ‘break a siege’ scenario. For instance, helping a caravan of supplies move from the lower right corner to reach inside the walls with some % remaining.

Sorry if this has already been suggested, but if you imagine how the payload works on Overwatch, having a couple of "objects" moving towards the encampment could be an interesting idea, certainly objectives need to be attacked/defended.

Dolyem

McShave wrote: »

Would the attackers be able to attack from any direction? I dont imagine most nodes having a big obstacle on one side, so I think the fundamentals of the maps are wrong here

Purely based on the dev video

Happymeal2415

Caww wrote: »

AoC is gonna need a room full of Einsteins to make that level of battle work (fingers crossed).

Nobody mentioned flying mounts being used so I'm gonna guess the whole thing has an exclusion radius to prevent going over the walls and barriers.

Flying mounts will be extremely rare 5-10 per server if I remember right. I think they may have abilities but it won't be like 50 dragons flying over your wall and destroying everything

Lafi

I recall hearing that sieging is meant to be a HUGE project
you may see that a siege on a castle involves 4 sieges
3 minor sieges on say a weekend - lets grab Saturday for this example
Saturday 1 - Nearby farmland goes under siege to attack the <TARGET NODE/CASTLE>'s supply stores.
Saturday 2 - Nearby Node gets attacked to reduce or weaken NPCs on defender's side
Saturday 3 - attack a node in the mountains that may correlate to say Ballista ammo or some form of siege engine's effectiveness in the actual battle
Saturday 4 <THE SIEGE> - the big old BRAWL of death

im diving through the wiki and stuff to find sources or something on this but i definitely recall hearing similar.

Caww

Happymeal2415 wrote: »

Flying mounts will be extremely rare 5-10 per server if I remember right. /quote]

Bummer, I didn't know that there will be so few flying mounts and yet they sell the cosmetic as a monthly thing, I was really hoping to have several variations ready to go.

maouw

@Caww
On the other hand, gliding mounts are intended to be more common, so many of those skins will work on gliding mounts.

Caww

@Caww
I made a mistake, the bird in the cosmetic shop says flightless but I'm glad to hear the gliders are in for the commoners amongst us.

Boanergese

Dolyem wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

@Dolyem I made a quick'n dirty map of the A1 siege area purely from memory. So, the scale and exact locations and such are off. The control points were points that you captured by channeling at them for a while, and they provided teleport points for the attackers from their base camp. They also gave buffs to which-ever side controlled them.

Now, the dragons need to go completely for any siege. I don't want them ruining a good siege experience. We get two hours to have fun PvPing, not kill some big lizards. We can do that outside the siege.

The control points are ok conceptually, as a way to have points to fight over outside the castle. I'd like to see the system fleshed out more than A1 though.

Instead of focusing on the surrounding area, I think we should focus on how we fit 1000 players with collision detection inside the castle in a meaningful way, where it isn't just most of those 1000 players trying to capture a single point. Even if it was an empty field with the capture point in the middle, the amount of cluster-fuck near the objective will be massive and honestly not super fun.

I think we need a big-ass castle with several levels and multiple objectives that have to be captured simultaneously or within short order of each other, forcing people to spread out and forcing people to communicate and coordinate attack and defence efforts.

Big castle dungeon may work, or you could make the terrain around it multilevel with choke points. making zerging inefficient. But I like what youre sayin

Do the attackers get Godzillla?

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