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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
500 v 500 ??
How many servers are you expecting Ashes to have?
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?
Unless the game is dead both sides are going to be filled. There should be some challenge in filling and getting the right people with large scale important wars.
Personally i don't think siege needs it, id rather see it with node wars if we are talking about 500. But so long as the space and the content in the area makes sense large numbers isn't a issue.
Main issue is when its like 200 vr 800 from being uncapped. (which leads to multiple other issues)
Screening will be a lot more difficult of a issue with the time needed (depending how try hard people are. I know for me in new world it took a good amount time with just 50 people) Fights could end up as 470-500 but atleast that is close enough if some people don't show up or leave mid match. You just remember their names for next time.
What exactly is the benefit of the Leading guild here? Why does a "leader" need to exist here?
Having a lead guild that is invested in the siege, and controls which other guilds are given invites to said siege should outright prevent the guild that owns the castle from being able to put their own players in as attackers for the siege.
It obviously isn't guaranteed, but it hands control of this from some automated syatem over to players.
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.
I would ensure the rewards from these mobs are less than what can be expected from owning the castle for that period.
Also, a mob that you can only kill once per month, that drops items with a 30 day duration really isn't something you can farm.
Having a lead guild that is invested in the siege, and controls which other guilds are given invites to said siege should outright prevent the guild that owns the castle from being able to put their own players in as attackers for the siege.
It obviously isn't guaranteed, but it hands control of this from some automated syatem over to players.
So yeah, I don't remember if AA has sieges, but your overall experience seems to be completely different to mine. I don't remember a single L2 siege where there weren't several guilds interested in attacking, and invested in politics/farming to ensure that they succeed.
This involved both "normal" guilds trying to attack and castle owners who made alt guilds to try and grab even more power. Which is why I just can't see how leading guilds would bring anything beneficial to the overall process.
But I can see immediate pitfalls of "the leader gets bought off, by the defenders" or "the leader is a defender ally and fucks over others", or anything else along those lines. And those pitfalls are exactly why I tried to leveling out the playing field of sieging guilds. It's still first come first serve, so the strongest candidates will still be ahead, but the potential to fill out all the slots by a single megaguild is lower, while push for guilds to socialize and work together is higher.
Also, a mob that you can only kill once per month, that drops items with a 30 day duration really isn't something you can farm.
But this literally means that you can have this item at all times, unless you make the drop rate non-100%, but then you'd be faced with the reality of "any guild that didn't drop the item doesn't get picked for the siege" which would bring us back to the randomness of siegers, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid with my suggestion.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I would hope there would be more mobs than just one.
Hopefully, with theme related drops.
Also, Seasons and Weather might affect what drops.
Also, there are Military Village Castle Sieges each week - with associated Caravans and Resources, so..
There should be drops/loot associated with that, as well.
anyways I like that equal number battles are more balanced when you can control who gets in, but what I like about no players limit is that any guild can get dethroned immediately if the whole server rallies against them ;3
anyways I like that equal number battles are more balanced when you can control who gets in, but what I like about no players limit is that any guild can get dethroned immediately if the whole server rallies against them ;3
I like the idea more so that the best players on the server group up and beat em in a fair fight. Would be much more epic imo.
anyways I like that equal number battles are more balanced when you can control who gets in, but what I like about no players limit is that any guild can get dethroned immediately if the whole server rallies against them ;3
I like the idea more so that the best players on the server group up and beat em in a fair fight. Would be much more epic imo.
yeah, of course. but sadly people rarely do either ughh. everyone wants everything right now
Having a lead guild that is invested in the siege, and controls which other guilds are given invites to said siege should outright prevent the guild that owns the castle from being able to put their own players in as attackers for the siege.
It obviously isn't guaranteed, but it hands control of this from some automated syatem over to players.
So yeah, I don't remember if AA has sieges, but your overall experience seems to be completely different to mine. I don't remember a single L2 siege where there weren't several guilds interested in attacking, and invested in politics/farming to ensure that they succeed.
This involved both "normal" guilds trying to attack and castle owners who made alt guilds to try and grab even more power. Which is why I just can't see how leading guilds would bring anything beneficial to the overall process.
But I can see immediate pitfalls of "the leader gets bought off, by the defenders" or "the leader is a defender ally and fucks over others", or anything else along those lines. And those pitfalls are exactly why I tried to leveling out the playing field of sieging guilds. It's still first come first serve, so the strongest candidates will still be ahead, but the potential to fill out all the slots by a single megaguild is lower, while push for guilds to socialize and work together is higher.
Assuming the lead guild has some kind of buy in to the siege, I consider this a feature, not a bug.
All that is needed is for there to be a simple check to make sure the siege attempt was successfully organized (200 people or more present for the siege should do), and a guild failing at this is unable to be a leaf guild for 6 months, and with what is above, you have a solid system where sometimes the castle owner may be able to bribe a guild to prevent a siege (as they should be able to do), but it is highly unlikely that they could do that every time.
It also means lead guilds wanting a real attempt have to rely on other guilds to do as they say they will - both in terms of them being honest about what they intend to do, and also being capable of doing it. If a guild says they will kill a specific raid encounter as a part of their expression of interest and fail to do so, it means 25 spots for the siege are unable to be filled. If enough guilds do this, it means there won't be enough people with invites to meet the 200 player minimum - so the lead guild is placing some trust in every guild they accept an expression of interest from.
This means they need to be selective, which is how they should be able to prevent the castle owning guild from having spots on the attacking side of the siege.
The amount of politicking that would be based around a system like this is massive, and when that politicking all goes according to plan, the attacking side should have a real shot at winning the siege.
Also, a mob that you can only kill once per month, that drops items with a 30 day duration really isn't something you can farm.
But this literally means that you can have this item at all times, unless you make the drop rate non-100%, but then you'd be faced with the reality of "any guild that didn't drop the item doesn't get picked for the siege" which would bring us back to the randomness of siegers, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid with my suggestion.
It isn't "farming" if all you are doing is maintaining the status quo while everyone else is getting ahead.
If you are going up against a guild that is gaining massive power/influence via a castle (which is the point of them), you realistically need access to some form of power that they do not have access to in order to be able to stand up to them.
As I said earlier, it shouldn't be as strong as the power gained from owning a castle - not even close - but it should be something.
It also means lead guilds wanting a real attempt have to rely on other guilds to do as they say they will - both in terms of them being honest about what they intend to do, and also being capable of doing it. If a guild says they will kill a specific raid encounter as a part of their expression of interest and fail to do so, it means 25 spots for the siege are unable to be filled. If enough guilds do this, it means there won't be enough people with invites to meet the 200 player minimum - so the lead guild is placing some trust in every guild they accept an expression of interest from.
This means they need to be selective, which is how they should be able to prevent the castle owning guild from having spots on the attacking side of the siege.
The amount of politicking that would be based around a system like this is massive, and when that politicking all goes according to plan, the attacking side should have a real shot at winning the siege.
I just feel like "potential personal gain" is a much bigger motivator for people than "potential subservience to another guild".
And having a lead guild who's the only one who can get the castle would probably just mean "which one of the defender and attacker guilds can pay more to the potential other attackers", and I'd imagine that a guild with a castle will have more money at their disposal (potentially even if Mag's suggestion of "no money goes to the guild" is implemented).
And while that is definitely a valid tool to use in politicking, I feel like having equal-chance multi-attacker sieges would lead to a much bigger % of real sieges where people weren't simply bought to participate or simply fill a slot to prevent someone else from participating.
In other words, I'm suggesting a form of the prisoner's dilemma, while you're suggesting this
Where monkeys are the smaller guilds, while dudes with the money are the leading guilds. Except, you didn't talk about it, but if some weaker guild get the leading position - they wouldn't even be able to rally people behind them and would then get punished for this by getting a 6-month ban on leading (which might as well mean being in a siege itself, if they're not considered powerful enough to get chosen by a new lead guild).
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Having a lead guild that is invested in the siege, and controls which other guilds are given invites to said siege should outright prevent the guild that owns the castle from being able to put their own players in as attackers for the siege.
It obviously isn't guaranteed, but it hands control of this from some automated syatem over to players.
So yeah, I don't remember if AA has sieges, but your overall experience seems to be completely different to mine. I don't remember a single L2 siege where there weren't several guilds interested in attacking, and invested in politics/farming to ensure that they succeed.
This involved both "normal" guilds trying to attack and castle owners who made alt guilds to try and grab even more power. Which is why I just can't see how leading guilds would bring anything beneficial to the overall process.
But I can see immediate pitfalls of "the leader gets bought off, by the defenders" or "the leader is a defender ally and fucks over others", or anything else along those lines. And those pitfalls are exactly why I tried to leveling out the playing field of sieging guilds. It's still first come first serve, so the strongest candidates will still be ahead, but the potential to fill out all the slots by a single megaguild is lower, while push for guilds to socialize and work together is higher.
Also, a mob that you can only kill once per month, that drops items with a 30 day duration really isn't something you can farm.
But this literally means that you can have this item at all times, unless you make the drop rate non-100%, but then you'd be faced with the reality of "any guild that didn't drop the item doesn't get picked for the siege" which would bring us back to the randomness of siegers, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid with my suggestion.
The previous 3 weekends when players have to attack or defend the caravans going with taxes toward the castles should show who is interested to keep the current regime and who is against it.
Those who defend them should not be able to participate in the attack.
The count of destroyed caravans can be shown as a leader-board which can be used to select participants to the final siege.
And having a lead guild who's the only one who can get the castle
This was never a part of my suggestion.
And yeah, if a guild without the clout gets itself in to a position where it is the lead guild in a siege and can't nake it happen, they absolutely should be punished imo.
If sieges are limited in occurance, if they force people in to having to defend, then if you can't mount a proper attempt at a siege, you should be punished.
The idea is; don't try unless you have a real shot.
With the small alterations to the suggestion I've made, you have a state where either a guild is so dominant that no one is able to mount a siege (if a guild is that dominant, that should be the case), or where every siege is earnestly attempted by guilds with a genuine interest and ability to take over the castle.
The previous 3 weekends when players have to attack or defend the caravans going with taxes toward the castles should show who is interested to keep the current regime and who is against it.
Those who defend them should not be able to participate in the attack.
The count of destroyed caravans can be shown as a leader-board which can be used to select participants to the final siege.
But if guilds are only chosen on that criteria then this excludes any guild outside of that general region that might still have the ambition (and ability) to siege the castle.
Obviously some people will say "well, they shouldn't be able to do that because they didn't help with weakening the defenders", but to me this is just yet another part of the server-wide politics. Opportunistic people changing plans of prepared ones, etc etc.
And yeah, if a guild without the clout gets itself in to a position where it is the lead guild in a siege and can't nake it happen, they absolutely should be punished imo.
If sieges are limited in occurance, if they force people in to having to defend, then if you can't mount a proper attempt at a siege, you should be punished.
Those are just points we'll disagree on, so I can't say much here.
With the small alterations to the suggestion I've made, you have a state where either a guild is so dominant that no one is able to mount a siege (if a guild is that dominant, that should be the case), or where every siege is earnestly attempted by guilds with a genuine interest and ability to take over the castle.
Well, you still haven't presented how exactly you foresee these Lead guilds to be chosen, so it's difficult to evaluate how well either of those scenarios can go down.
If you just say "Intrepid should figure that out" - cool, but then that'll just be where this particular discussion ends.
Those are just points we'll disagree on, so I can't say much here.
You are of the opinion that guilds totally incapable of mounting anything even close to a successful siege should be able to do so month after month with no penalty?
Well, you still haven't presented how exactly you foresee these Lead guilds to be chosen, so it's difficult to evaluate how well either of those scenarios can go down.
The method of how a guild becomes the lead guild is less important (as in - totally unimportant) as the methods by which a guild can be excluded from being this lead guild.
The only point that matters is that the lead guild needs to have invested time or resources in to attain this position.
The only role the lead guild plays in a siege is in accepting expressions of interest from other guilds. It is something of a gatekeeper in some regards, but in a way where it needs to let through that gate the most capable, reliable players in order to make the siege have a chance.
Realistically, being lead is a burden more than anything else - something you perhaps overlooked due to assuming the lead guild was the one that took the castle with a successful siege.
The previous 3 weekends when players have to attack or defend the caravans going with taxes toward the castles should show who is interested to keep the current regime and who is against it.
Those who defend them should not be able to participate in the attack.
The count of destroyed caravans can be shown as a leader-board which can be used to select participants to the final siege.
But if guilds are only chosen on that criteria then this excludes any guild outside of that general region that might still have the ambition (and ability) to siege the castle.
Obviously some people will say "well, they shouldn't be able to do that because they didn't help with weakening the defenders", but to me this is just yet another part of the server-wide politics. Opportunistic people changing plans of prepared ones, etc etc.
Why would exclude them? Travel on the map is relatively fast on mounts. Players can also relocate during weekend to the other continent using family summons.
I expect guilds from a metro nation to go and destroy the caravans of any other metro nations every weekend. If the local population is unhappy with their castle owners then it will be a joint effort. Else some nations will protect their own caravans and just try to get the castles further away.
Also if a metropolis will rise close to the borders between 2-3 castle ZoI, that metro nation can have nodes in all 3 castle ZoI.
Can also happen two metropolises to be inside the same castle ZoI and instead of fighting each other to control the castle, to ally themselves to gain control of other castles on the map.
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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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
How many servers are you expecting Ashes to have?
42
Unless the game is dead both sides are going to be filled. There should be some challenge in filling and getting the right people with large scale important wars.
Personally i don't think siege needs it, id rather see it with node wars if we are talking about 500. But so long as the space and the content in the area makes sense large numbers isn't a issue.
Main issue is when its like 200 vr 800 from being uncapped. (which leads to multiple other issues)
Screening will be a lot more difficult of a issue with the time needed (depending how try hard people are. I know for me in new world it took a good amount time with just 50 people) Fights could end up as 470-500 but atleast that is close enough if some people don't show up or leave mid match. You just remember their names for next time.
It obviously isn't guaranteed, but it hands control of this from some automated syatem over to players. I would ensure the rewards from these mobs are less than what can be expected from owning the castle for that period.
Also, a mob that you can only kill once per month, that drops items with a 30 day duration really isn't something you can farm.
This involved both "normal" guilds trying to attack and castle owners who made alt guilds to try and grab even more power. Which is why I just can't see how leading guilds would bring anything beneficial to the overall process.
But I can see immediate pitfalls of "the leader gets bought off, by the defenders" or "the leader is a defender ally and fucks over others", or anything else along those lines. And those pitfalls are exactly why I tried to leveling out the playing field of sieging guilds. It's still first come first serve, so the strongest candidates will still be ahead, but the potential to fill out all the slots by a single megaguild is lower, while push for guilds to socialize and work together is higher.
But this literally means that you can have this item at all times, unless you make the drop rate non-100%, but then you'd be faced with the reality of "any guild that didn't drop the item doesn't get picked for the siege" which would bring us back to the randomness of siegers, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid with my suggestion.
Hopefully, with theme related drops.
Also, Seasons and Weather might affect what drops.
Also, there are Military Village Castle Sieges each week - with associated Caravans and Resources, so..
There should be drops/loot associated with that, as well.
" Over Nineth~OOOOUUUUS~AAAANNNND !!!!! "
Kidding. But i would go with 100 Servers first. Or would that be to many or to few ? o_O
50 servers to start sounds about right. 4-5 per timezone.
Based on their expectations, that is. For Alpha-2, half that I guess?
They can always have separate Siege Test servers that are just 'copy over whatever X other server is and boost characters to the required levels'.
anyways I like that equal number battles are more balanced when you can control who gets in, but what I like about no players limit is that any guild can get dethroned immediately if the whole server rallies against them ;3
I like the idea more so that the best players on the server group up and beat em in a fair fight. Would be much more epic imo.
yeah, of course. but sadly people rarely do either ughh. everyone wants everything right now
All that is needed is for there to be a simple check to make sure the siege attempt was successfully organized (200 people or more present for the siege should do), and a guild failing at this is unable to be a leaf guild for 6 months, and with what is above, you have a solid system where sometimes the castle owner may be able to bribe a guild to prevent a siege (as they should be able to do), but it is highly unlikely that they could do that every time.
It also means lead guilds wanting a real attempt have to rely on other guilds to do as they say they will - both in terms of them being honest about what they intend to do, and also being capable of doing it. If a guild says they will kill a specific raid encounter as a part of their expression of interest and fail to do so, it means 25 spots for the siege are unable to be filled. If enough guilds do this, it means there won't be enough people with invites to meet the 200 player minimum - so the lead guild is placing some trust in every guild they accept an expression of interest from.
This means they need to be selective, which is how they should be able to prevent the castle owning guild from having spots on the attacking side of the siege.
The amount of politicking that would be based around a system like this is massive, and when that politicking all goes according to plan, the attacking side should have a real shot at winning the siege.
It isn't "farming" if all you are doing is maintaining the status quo while everyone else is getting ahead.
If you are going up against a guild that is gaining massive power/influence via a castle (which is the point of them), you realistically need access to some form of power that they do not have access to in order to be able to stand up to them.
As I said earlier, it shouldn't be as strong as the power gained from owning a castle - not even close - but it should be something.
And having a lead guild who's the only one who can get the castle would probably just mean "which one of the defender and attacker guilds can pay more to the potential other attackers", and I'd imagine that a guild with a castle will have more money at their disposal (potentially even if Mag's suggestion of "no money goes to the guild" is implemented).
And while that is definitely a valid tool to use in politicking, I feel like having equal-chance multi-attacker sieges would lead to a much bigger % of real sieges where people weren't simply bought to participate or simply fill a slot to prevent someone else from participating.
In other words, I'm suggesting a form of the prisoner's dilemma, while you're suggesting this
Where monkeys are the smaller guilds, while dudes with the money are the leading guilds. Except, you didn't talk about it, but if some weaker guild get the leading position - they wouldn't even be able to rally people behind them and would then get punished for this by getting a 6-month ban on leading (which might as well mean being in a siege itself, if they're not considered powerful enough to get chosen by a new lead guild).
The previous 3 weekends when players have to attack or defend the caravans going with taxes toward the castles should show who is interested to keep the current regime and who is against it.
Those who defend them should not be able to participate in the attack.
The count of destroyed caravans can be shown as a leader-board which can be used to select participants to the final siege.
And yeah, if a guild without the clout gets itself in to a position where it is the lead guild in a siege and can't nake it happen, they absolutely should be punished imo.
If sieges are limited in occurance, if they force people in to having to defend, then if you can't mount a proper attempt at a siege, you should be punished.
The idea is; don't try unless you have a real shot.
With the small alterations to the suggestion I've made, you have a state where either a guild is so dominant that no one is able to mount a siege (if a guild is that dominant, that should be the case), or where every siege is earnestly attempted by guilds with a genuine interest and ability to take over the castle.
Obviously some people will say "well, they shouldn't be able to do that because they didn't help with weakening the defenders", but to me this is just yet another part of the server-wide politics. Opportunistic people changing plans of prepared ones, etc etc.
Ah, my bad.
Those are just points we'll disagree on, so I can't say much here.
Well, you still haven't presented how exactly you foresee these Lead guilds to be chosen, so it's difficult to evaluate how well either of those scenarios can go down.
If you just say "Intrepid should figure that out" - cool, but then that'll just be where this particular discussion ends.
The only point that matters is that the lead guild needs to have invested time or resources in to attain this position.
The only role the lead guild plays in a siege is in accepting expressions of interest from other guilds. It is something of a gatekeeper in some regards, but in a way where it needs to let through that gate the most capable, reliable players in order to make the siege have a chance.
Realistically, being lead is a burden more than anything else - something you perhaps overlooked due to assuming the lead guild was the one that took the castle with a successful siege.
Why would exclude them? Travel on the map is relatively fast on mounts. Players can also relocate during weekend to the other continent using family summons.
I expect guilds from a metro nation to go and destroy the caravans of any other metro nations every weekend. If the local population is unhappy with their castle owners then it will be a joint effort. Else some nations will protect their own caravans and just try to get the castles further away.
Also if a metropolis will rise close to the borders between 2-3 castle ZoI, that metro nation can have nodes in all 3 castle ZoI.
Can also happen two metropolises to be inside the same castle ZoI and instead of fighting each other to control the castle, to ally themselves to gain control of other castles on the map.