Castle Siege Idea

This idea exists mainly to counter a "limited siege members exploit" that I explained here.

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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Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

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').

You also mention lead guilds.

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'.

Liniker

Noaani wrote: »

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 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

Azherae

In general I separate players of competitive games into two groups when it comes to their reactions to certain game mechanics. It's an oversimplification but it helps me do certain design things.

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.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

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.

To me not having a "lead" is a group 2 thing though. Because backstabbing and heelturns during the siege is way more interesting than "oh, well, we all agreed that this will be the only guild that's supposed to get the castle way beforehand". To me that kind of design is the "that's stupid" approach.

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.

Liniker wrote: »

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

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.

Ludullu

It never stops being funny when both sides of the pvx spectrum all want to tug the cover to their side, while Steven is in the middle trying to make a game that's truly pvx (and just failing from time to time)

Azherae

It's still the same, you can honestly just ignore the explanation if it feels the reverse to you.

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.

KingDDD

Id like to see instancing used to separate objectives from the main siege itself. Things like an NPC guard barracks being destroyable causing guards to be weaker or not even spawn.

Azherae

For Intrepid, since I know I can talk in circles sometimes, here's a clarification:

"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."

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

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.

I've seen (and a few times done) sieges that switched owners at the very last second of the siege, either by fighting their way through to to the throne room and valiantly defending their caster or by sneaking in at just the right time when the defenders were slacking.

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".

Azherae

I've mentioned before that Castle Sieges themselves are overly simplistic content as they are now, right?

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)

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

I've mentioned before that Castle Sieges themselves are overly simplistic content as they are now, right?

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.

Totally valid point, considering the golems and a shitton of capture points and whateverelse TL has. I do hope we get more from Ashes sieges. And it seems that, at least in the past, the plan was somewhat extensive. Those mini-bosses, the instances for smaller groups, different siege tech (I don't remember if TL has it), etc.

Obviously A1 was barebones as hell and we've also barely even heard anything concrete about future plans for sieges, so there's a tooon of room to grow, if they choose to do so.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I've mentioned before that Castle Sieges themselves are overly simplistic content as they are now, right?

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.

Totally valid point, considering the golems and a shitton of capture points and whateverelse TL has. I do hope we get more from Ashes sieges. And it seems that, at least in the past, the plan was somewhat extensive. Those mini-bosses, the instances for smaller groups, different siege tech (I don't remember if TL has it), etc.

Obviously A1 was barebones as hell and we've also barely even heard anything concrete about future plans for sieges, so there's a tooon of room to grow, if they choose to do so.

If Ashes Siege content progresses in any of the four ways I consider reasonable (not that I like, that I consider reasonable, I don't like ANY of the reasonable directions very much), then I would then say that I would expect a lead guild.

This is not because 'I want there to be less chaos and I only consider Group 2 designs reasonable'. Three of the four ways I imagine are Group 1 designs because I expect Ashes to be a 'Group 1' game. So, in my mind, even if you keep the chaos and main exploit options open, the content itself would still benefit from a 'lead guild' that then gets undermined or has their benefits siphoned off, rather than a free-for-all.

I'm sure there is room to come up with a Group 1 design that has no Lead Guild, options for backstabbing, and still somehow cares about the limited member exploits. I'll look forward to seeing it if that's the direction they take, but based on what I know of myself, I will just watch YouTube vids of it.

Githal

NiKr wrote: »

ust 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 till be able to just work around them in different ways.

If they remove the siege limit - this will be the worst thing that can happen to this game ever.
It will be just zerg guilds, no skill will be required, the small objectives present in sieges will just turn out to be zerg vs zerg. You will just experience the ultimate lag where you spam your keys coz you cant see where you are from lag. And let the biggest spammer wins (or with better internet connection)

Ludullu

Githal wrote: »

If they remove the siege limit - this will be the worst thing that can happen to this game ever.
It will be just zerg guilds, no skill will be required, the small objectives present in sieges will just turn out to be zerg vs zerg. You will just experience the ultimate lag where you spam your keys coz you cant see where you are from lag. And let the biggest spammer wins (or with better internet connection)

We're no longer in L2 days. TL has had huge sieges with a shitton of people, and while there was obviously some lag there - it wasn't anywhere near what L2 had back in the day.

Intrepid's supposed goal of 500vs500 would already bring it quite close to what majority of people would call "massive zerg vs massive zerg". And considering how huge Metropolises are supposed to be - I'm not sure how Intrepid would stop their plain existence from being "zerged" w/o insane lagging. We'll supposedly have no channels or layering or whatever, so we might see more than 1k people all in one city.

As for winning the siege itself, we already have instanced parts of the castle which will matter in some way, so adding similar mechanics which would be closer related to the winstate itself could go a long way.

Mag7spy

TL added caps to their smaller fights because it went so badly. That should be all the sign you need to know right there.

If TL hard larger servers and was more successful Siege would get changes as well. More is not better and creates dog crap chaotic gameplay that is not fun, or straight up instant loss do to numbers.

I will take large scale strategic gameplay every day. Though the SPACES of content needs to make sense, fitting 2000 people in a space meant for 200 is gross. Keeping things reasonably competitive makes everything better, as when you get into auto loss territory that kills a game.

Otr

Noaani wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

This idea exists mainly to counter a "limited siege members exploit" that I explained here.

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.

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.

I like this and I would like to build upon it.

The lead guilds should be patron guilds.
Each node type where guilds build their guild halls would unlock siege specific guild skill tree and progression:
- military nodes would allow pushing toward a more PvP confrontation and advantages
- divine nodes would allow pushing toward a more PvE confrontation and advantages
- economic nodes would be able to use money to enhance their attack in a way or another and depending how well they perform, if they manage to reach certain objectives during the battle, to recover some of the collected taxes, even if they do not take the castle.
- academic nodes would be able to gradually memorize and reverse engineer those exclusive components and be able to produce some in advance. The reverse engineering would be done after the battle, by doing specific quests.

This kind of guild progression or siege preparation would be stored in a physical form in the guild hall and would be guild war objective. So it could be temporarily disabled through guild wars or even destroyed, depending on type of progression.

Ludullu

Mag7spy wrote: »

I will take large scale strategic gameplay every day. Though the SPACES of content needs to make sense, fitting 2000 people in a space meant for 200 is gross. Keeping things reasonably competitive makes everything better, as when you get into auto loss territory that kills a game.

Btw, I don't remember if I've asked you. What is your definition of "zerg". What number does that start at? 300? 400? Higher?

Mag7spy

NiKr wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

I will take large scale strategic gameplay every day. Though the SPACES of content needs to make sense, fitting 2000 people in a space meant for 200 is gross. Keeping things reasonably competitive makes everything better, as when you get into auto loss territory that kills a game.

Btw, I don't remember if I've asked you. What is your definition of "zerg". What number does that start at? 300? 400? Higher?

Guess i should clarify,

1. Zerg for me would be mainly content where its uneven and you can bring more numbers to a fight to give you a large advantage and more than likely having you win the fight.
2. When the numbers are so large for an area that the space is not suitable for the amount of players taking place in the content.

300v300 could be viewed as zerg kind of content but for me when i say content being zerged it usually goes by 1-2. If the fight is even between 300 vr 300, 1kv1k I have no issue if it meets the 1+2.

Planetside 2 as an example you can have uneven fights in some areas but overall since the whole area is a battlefield its like people are split around the entire map. And it becomes more of a tactical advantage kind of thing. Though some elements can still feel zergy in instances.

Ludullu

Mag7spy wrote: »

300v300 could be viewed as zerg kind of content but for me when i say content being zerged it usually goes by 1-2. If the fight is even between 300 vr 300, 1kv1k I have no issue if it meets the 1+2.

So, assuming Intrepid somehow manage to get 500v500 working w/o too much lag, you'd be fine with that design, even if sometimes one side can't gather all 500 people on one side?

Cause with 500v500 being Intrepid's goal, I'd imagine castles will be built with that number in mind, so the location would accommodate 1k people if needed. But it's just that there'll probably be times when it won't be 1k people there, but, judging by your answer, one side would still get "zerged" because the other side has just way more people. Obviously the same can happen even in 250v250 sieges, but it'd just be less likely.

Or do you think that 500v500 will always be filled on both sides and it'll never be a "someone's getting zerged" situation and that is why you're ok with that design but are not ok with an uncapped design where the exact matchup can happen?

Dygz

500 v 500 ??
How many servers are you expecting Ashes to have?

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