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Castle Siege Idea
NiKr
Member
This idea exists mainly to counter a "limited siege members exploit" that I explained here.
The idea is this:
What do yall think about this idea?
It makes sieges a pvx encounter (kinda like the A1 sieges with their bosses). It makes it harder for megaguilds to exploit the registering mechanics of the game (they'd need 15 40-man guilds that can all clear a raid; obviously not out of the realm of possibility but still quite hard to achieve). And it puts higher pressure on the defending guild, so holding a castle for too long would become very difficult.
The idea is this:
- when a guild registers as an attacker for a castle siege they get a choice of 3 instanced raids
- these raids require a full 40-man group to clear
- if cleared, the guild can speak to an npc at any node under the rule of the castle and add their members to the attack
- only 2 full parties of members can be chosen
- during the siege, the boss that this guild chose to fight will attack the castle alongside them
- the strength of the boss will depend on the defensive values of the castle (increased by leveling up castle nodes) and then multiplied by the number of months that the castle was held
- the boss is not controlled by any player, so even if the 2 parties decide not to fight - the boss will still attack the castle
- the boss respawns after a set time, if killed
What do yall think about this idea?
It makes sieges a pvx encounter (kinda like the A1 sieges with their bosses). It makes it harder for megaguilds to exploit the registering mechanics of the game (they'd need 15 40-man guilds that can all clear a raid; obviously not out of the realm of possibility but still quite hard to achieve). And it puts higher pressure on the defending guild, so holding a castle for too long would become very difficult.
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And the bosses would even serve as a helping tool here, because players will be able to play off of bosses' actions rather than trying to win purely on their own.
you just send some members from your mega guild to an alt guild outside the alliance and still exploit.
since you cant prevent anyone from participating the siege, as steven explained, I assume the final 250 people on each side will be chosen somewhat randomly. so you could end up with 200 players and 50 boycotters vs 70 players and 180 boycotters. i wonder if intrepid will do something to prevent siege boycotting.
And if the defending guild keeps winning sieges because of this - the bosses will be stronger, which makes the whole scheme that more annoying to the defending guild.
Defenders get to pick their side, so no boycotters there.
But this sheer premise is exactly why I consider the exploit an issue. Limited-members sieges are a sureway to lead to super stale content. And when castle sieges are meant to be the top lvl pvp content in the game - you really don't want it to be super stale.
ok so the boss and 40 ppl will attack vs 250. great help xd
it will only be helpful if the side with 250 also has 200 boycotters
Like I said, if the defending side wants to take up all the slots - they'd need to have 15 40-member guilds who can clear a raid. That's obviously possible, but still somewhat difficult, and definitely waaaay more difficult than the current system.
And even if they do get to that point - the bosses would be pushing the castles by themselves. Hell, ideally I'd love if bosses could take back the castle, if the defenders fail against them, but that might be going a bit too far and all the hardcore pro fearless pvpers would riot in the streets if that was implemented
I’d rather solve the problem with data than over complicate a relatively straight-forward pvp event.
I feel like that could lead to a much bigger degree of unneeded drama, while having a system that addresses potential exploits of this nature would just lead to a better overall pvx design (well, better imo).
…and once that’s done, turn it over to us for us to break in A2.
That’s the most fun part of testing anything. 🤣
Sounds like a good name for a guild.
PvX = PvE when there is also PvP, but also = just PvP by itself.
If you are going to argue that sieges should be the ultimate guild PvP content and so shouldn't involve PvE in a PvX game, you have no place ever arguing against anyone wanting the ultimate guild PvE content that doesn't involve PvP.
Either PvX means both together always, or it means both together sometimes, and both seperated sometimes.
I like the general idea, but there are a few things I would do different if it were me.
First, I would make it so that each castle siege has a lead guild. How this is determined should be determined is not something I am concerned with just yet, though is very important for a number of reasons. This lead guild then takes in expressions of interest to be a part of the siege from other guilds, and accepts up to a total of 10 expressions - presumably including expressions from their own guild.
These expressions of interest could be from 10 different guilds, or could all be from a single guild.
Each accepted expression of interest entitles the guild in question to gain access to a raid as you suggested above, but rather than just 3, there should be at least 15 different encounters these guild can take on. Each guild gains 25 spots in the castle siege per successfully completed raid after an accepted expression of interest.
During the siege, the encounters are still present as per the OP, but each has a very different effect on the siege. Some may attack walls, some may go after players, some may be more support than offense - and it is up to players to decide which encounters they want to bring, based on what they want assistance with during the siege. If the plan is a direct frontal attack, the plan may be for as many guilds as possible to go for encouters that will destroy walls faster, for example.
The defending guild should be made aware of what mobs have been killed.
The other thing I would do - that I can see you not agreeing with - is that I would make these encounters drop exclusive components for a specific tier of items. Probably only one per kill though.
The idea there being a means to assist these guilds in taking on a rival that is in a much better position than they themselves are. I could see an argument for these items only having a 30 day life - much like the royal mount from owning a castle - but I do think it is an important aspect.
if it is the guild that takes the inner flag for example, this means that every guild will go there, and side objectives will be neglected.
If the person who completed the siege quest or the guild associated with this person is the one who takes control of the castle after the siege, they will need to put the biggest penalties if they fail the attack to exactly this guild as well (big risk big reward). So maybe all preparations with siege engines/bosses (per the OP comment) / resources, should be provided by the guild that will take control of the castle after.
and they should be able to organize who to participate together with them during the attack
There's an opportunity for any guild leader in the attacking alliance to capture the castle for themselves, despite what may have been agreed upon prior to the siege.[59]
Attackers will have to decide what and how to do and at any moment any amount of backstabbing can occur.
Though, unless I've missed it, we don't know what exactly happens when a Seal is cast by one of the attackers. Iirc in L2 the defending alliance would switch to the attacking side to join all the other initial attackers, and the siege would continue on with new sides of the conflict.
I'd expect Ashes to be the same, but this does bring up an interesting question. If it is the same - what happens if the defending guild had 250 members? Do they completely replace all the other attackers? Is there some randomized shuffle on who gets to be the attackers now?
And if the siege does end after a successful cast of the Seal - how would Intrepid address the obvious changing of the monarch, where one of the attackers get easily let through into the castle and cast the Seal for free, while all the other attackers get rejected, and the siege ends in less than 5 minutes.
I'm honestly not quite sure what exactly you're talking about here.
What exactly is the benefit of the Leading guild here? Why does a "leader" need to exist here? My suggestion explicitly addresses the cases where such a leader could onboard a ton of people who will refuse to attack, which would then mean that the castle remains under the same ruler for another month. To me - that's a problematic design.
Yeah, I should've added this part to the OP. I had a choice of different bosses because they'd have different features/mechanics. The number of bosses is not relevant to me and it'd be up to Intrepid to decide how much time they wanna spend on designing all of that.
I'd probably be ok with some kind of siege-related utility item, but definitely not something that can be taken out of the siege. I realize that this is a bit hypocritical, cause the owners get to use taxes and a flying mount, but winners gotta be winners after all.
If registering guilds could just farm the bosses for the siege and then use those items for their own benefit - why would they even care about the castle itself.
That can be 'doing a specific type of PvE to clear a path to bring your siege weapons' (but this feels like it should be PvX with a potential for high PvP, at least in that case, though, you can make it so the initiator must actually succeed and there can be some competition), it can be done with the bosses mentioned, it can be done 'sorta like' FFXI where you have to go get Astral Mirrors or something that will then be used for mana control/signaling/whatever in the siege.
If someone thinks the holding guild is going to send a subguild to 'kill all the bosses/take all the mirrors', go stop them. If they have enough manpower and skill to do so consistently, maybe they deserve to keep holding their castle?
If you want to be strict about it, have boss kills/mirrors/whatever imbue the players with a 'buff' that can't stack and 'makes any further PvE to deny the buff to others and take it yourself' ridiculously harder (so each participating group needs to carefully manage how many people they send).
Lead of the siege goes to 'whoever has the most unique mirror/boss buffs within their guild/alliance at the end of registration'. (so, if you can kill the boss with 8, those 8 now have 'one' buff, but can't contribute as much to other attempts due to having it, if you need 16 to kill the boss/get the mirror, then those 16 can't contribute but you still only have one 'buff').
The amount of social engineering that happens in this sort of 'ok everyone go collect/achieve stuff and the group with the most gets to lead the thing' situation is quite high, in my experience (I only have two experiences of doing this, and only one with over 400 players of the game in question).
The 'false attacker' problem is basically unsolvable, but this makes for a better paper trail, and honestly, I don't really care if that happens sometimes. 'Battle exercises' are fine if they have all their associated costs, for me. The key here is that once a siege is declared, there's always that risk that someone else is going to rush the bosses/mirrors when you 'think it is safe', and whenever anyone else does it, the defending guild's 'false attacker' guild is forced to respond by racing to do that too.
Lead guild gets to choose who (among those with the 'buff') gets to join at siege time, so they can exclude all false attackers if they want, or, false attackers can exclude all real attackers if they want to and have enough false attackers with the buff. Not that it would make any difference anyway because 120 false attackers + 130 real attackers ain't taking anything.
Obviously I'm missing something here, cause L2 didn't have this leading shit. It might've been social-based, where a big guild would gather other guilds to their side, but nothing was game-based.
So what kind of games had "leading guilds" in siege-like situations that everyone now wants them in Ashes?
It's 'lead' in the sense that at the end of it, someone must get the castle if they win, that's all.
I don't know what other people mean, but for me, 'lead guild' is the one who 'will get the castle' and also 'can make all the decisions'. I find the 'whoever happens to do the channel at the last moment' to be a more ridiculous form of fiat drama than having it determined beforehand.
I understand that others might prefer it to be the other way, but it feels too 'gamey' for me personally. If I'm bothering to play a game that is simulating sieges and war, I want it to commit, and not 'remind me that I'm actually just playing an abstraction layer where some random fiat will provide a month of magical protection to the goals of the first person to stand in a circle for long enough'.
I couldnt care less about this nonsense PvX discussion you guys are obsessed about for years, they once mentioned divine nodes metros might have catacombs as a unique feature, if those are an ultimate PvE only content I'd be perfectly fine and happy with
I just dont want scope creed and people asking for more and more features because they feel their definition of PvX matters and the game needs to provide whatever they feel will make it fair
When something gets exploited in the game system, like training mobs, or a specific way of cheesing a quest or clearing a boss, people have roughly one of two reactions:
1. Wow, that's funny!
2. Wow, that's stupid.
I find that these two player types don't mix well, they have entirely separate goals and ideas of what games are about. The more complex your game, the worse this is. Knowing which camp you're in relative to the game's general ethos can help you to avoid unpleasant experiences.
It's been implied that Steven used to be (and probably still is) in group 1. I'm in group 2. I don't generally play 'group 1' games, they allow too much freedom and silliness without going all the way (2b2t, which I love). 2b2t isn't even really a group 1 game, because group 1 requires that there be rules that the 'average player' can't break, but then someone does, and that is 'funny' because of the whole humor subverting expectations thing.
It is less funny when you aren't surprised. I'm not often surprised, so even if I could find it funny, or 'entertaining because of the drama', I don't, since so many things are predictable to me. So, I think of 'lead guilds' as a group 2 game thing. I accept that 'chaos outcome' is still valid for group 1 gamers, and therefore if Ashes is roughly a 'group 1' game, then no lead guild is required.
I know that me thinking that is purely an L2 bias, because we had neither limits on siegers nor "leading guilds", so the only one who could get the castle was the one who managed to protect their GL during the 5-minute cast and then defend the castle for the remainder of the siege against EVERYONE ELSE.
But we currently don't know if the siege will end or not after the Seal, so it's still hard to tell what Steven is going for. I think this will be my next dev stream question.
A quote from 2018 https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Castle_sieges
Legendary NPCs will be present as commanders that act like mini raid bosses within the defending and attacking armies. Killing these provides added benefits, such as certain types of drops that grant battlefield benefits to either side.[21]
If anything, removing these was a step back from the original design.
My only point is, I don't care if there's a lead guild or not.
I just don't really understand why anyone cares about making Sieges more 'fair' or less exploitable if they can also be 'well, some random rogue stole it at the end'. If it works like L2 and the siege just continues, fine. Still lets people do weird stuff during time limits.
If fiat chaos is fun for y'all and that's what Steven is hoping for, he should go for that. But since he's already going for that, I personally would think your entire original idea was also irrelevant.
If a 'random' attacker that managed to get into the siege can 'sneak the win' and then their tiny guild 'get the castle' and then the defenders crush them and 'just channel it back', and throne room chaos is what's supposed to go down, I don't see the reason to care about any prior functions or restrictions.
Basically, if you don't care about lead guilds and think the whole 'whoever gets in should have a chance based on combat in the throne room' then I'll side with the people who expressed not caring about the 'exploits'. I like either '2b2t', or 'proper sim'. Inbetween measures just annoy me.
"If Sieges do not end when the first successful person completes the channeling and takes control of the castle, I see no reason to care about limited member exploits or collusion. I do not like this model, but I stop seeing the merit in the thread's original suggestion if it is the chosen model."
But again, this "random lil guild can do this" only works if this random guild can even get into the siege. Ashes shit is LIMITED. That's my concern with the exploits. There's a myriad of ways to exploit the system to a point where no one random is even in the siege, let alone has the ability to cast the Seal.
It this shit might work in the opposite way as well. Owners have 250 people in their guild. They have an ally on the attacking side. During the first seconds of the siege the attacking ally runs towards the castle, either gets let in or breaks in or climbs the wall or anything of the sort, and then casts the Seal in absolute peace. The siege flips, but now the defending side removed everyone else from the attackers, because, in theory, the defenders are supposed to have the benefit of defending the castle, right?
And now the siege just doesn't continue, cause there's no one to attack the castle properly.
ALL of this shit stems from limited members. If Steven came out tomorrow and said "fuck it, we ball, we'll remove the limit" - I'll have 0 problems with any potential exploits, because players will be able to just work around them in different ways.
Mag will cry about it until hell freezes over, but I'd bet that huge guilds like Liniker's would be more than glad to be able to use their entire zerg power to gain power, so Mags of these world would not be listened to.
But I somehow doubt Steven would go for that, which is why I'm bringing up the potential exploits issues.
Ultimately I want castle sieges to be the "advertisement" for the game. All the drama, the political movements and consequences, and obviously the fighting itself - all of these things should be promoted to all hell, so that people who are not playing the game would hear about that shit and think to themselves "damn, they're having a ton of fun out there, I'm feeling fomo, so why not try the game out".
My group would go to TL for that. There's no way that what we've seen so far would get me to choose Ashes Sieges over TL ones, mechanically. I'm happy for L2 players, but we have no interest in fiat chaos. We'll go plunder a Stonegard Castle storehouse.
(this is just more feedback, not meant to be an argument for or against anything in particular)