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Borderlands PVP- More consentual than open?
siresper
Member Posts: 317
I have heard many times the dangers of the borderlands being touted. The raw, brutal area of the world devoid of any kind of law - aside from those the players make themselves. This is the arena where guilds battle over a limited number of strongholds to control. As you know, the rest of the game consists of consentual pvp (bar brawls, etc) and pve, but it was the borderlands that promised a kill or be killed kind of attitude.
Then I noticed a recent post by Aelfinn (one of the Acolytes) that said that guilds holding a place in the borderlands can actually choose what time of day they can and cannot be attacked. Here is the quote:
Guilds will be able to set a specific time period during which their PvP cities will be open to attack. So, assuming said time period is 2 hours long, Guild A might set it to 4 PM through 6 PM GMT-5, and be responsible to ensure that an adequate defensive force is online and ready for that period. This kind of system has its ups and downs, personally I prefer the kind of challenge and acceptance system found in Shadowbane which is more flexible, but this does help keep the midnight shenanagins down. If completely destroying a city requires your siege equipment having unobstructed access to the buildings for a bit over an hour... yes it would be quite difficult to accomplish.
While I can see why this might have been used to protect a guild during off hours, it sure seems like that area of constant danger and lawlessness suddenly only became so for a few hours a day. If a guild can choose when and when they aren't attacked... this sounds more like a planned arena match. No surprises. Sorry but to attack us, you must first make an appointment.
I don't remember Conan checking his watch before lopping off extremities.
Comments
Have you ever played Shadowbane or any other type of siege game before, and what elements were present?
Just curious, because when you actually think about it, games that had the "lets roll, go, go, go attack now" in a seige type of environment failed. Shadowbane lost a hell of alot of guilds and a large chunk of its playerbase, because when your battlekeep got wiped out you pretty much lost everything you worked for.
The BattleKeeps / Towers in the Borderlands from what I understand are provisioned by how well your PvE City does. Stock up on supplies at the PvE City and your BattleKeep will be in good shape for repairs if needed.
One thing that you have to take into consideration is that this game will be played from people all over the world and quite possibly in all sorts of timezones.
Would you like to build you PvE City up, Caravan you provisions over to the BattleKeep you recently aquired in an epic battle, fix it up and next day you wake up and its gone, everything you had is lost, all the crafting elements you put into repairing has gone, All because you were asleep? That kinda sounds unfair to me, just ask any Shadowbane player.
This is partly speculative though, due to too things.
1. We don't know for sure if servers allowed people from all over to connect. (Multi-Timezone Guilds)
2. There also might be different Server rule sets in the Borderlands - again we don't know.
I will say about Conan though, especially in the Age of Conan series of books, before a seige was laid upon a settlement, there was time to make your force good enough to go in before commiting. Its kinda the same thing in the game except it works for both sides, The attacking guild/team/co-op already has plans and a force to attack your Battlekeep, you and your Guild have a set period of time to respond to the challenge otherwise it will happen regardless. There isn't much point if your going to put an epic battle on if you have only 5 guild mates online at say 6 am, and there isn't much point if NPC's are going to fit with you to boost you numbers, or much point if your 5 guildies get a stat boost too make it fair.
Im guessing that you read that one particular comment in another forum here and decided to post to get a better answer. The truth is - the ins and outs haven't totally been put to the public yet.
But thinking about it, what system would you prefer? how would you feel to wake up without a Battlekeep because to oppositions guild was 5 hrs ahead in a different timezone?
As an example what happens in warhammer if there aren't enough people, NPC's help out? That is just another excuse for loosing straightaway and the AoC community hinted (from what I've read) they would prefer it be based on total player vs player, not with a stat boost or some A.I. Fighting by your side. How else are you going to accomplish that without causing arguments?
As is everything with beta, things are always changing, and alot of what has said is speculation to a point.
You can still wander into the Borderlands and get your head chopped off that hasn't changed. Its a freaking dangerous place!
There are also all sorts of goodies to be found there too, hence why Battlekeeps are prized pieces of land.
Because of this nature and the lay of the land, where terrain comes into effect, there is still the element of suprise. Its not like "oh hey lets have a fight on friday" if today is monday. -
Its more like today is monday my guild wants your piece of land - YOUR Battlekeep NOW.
So you have a few hours to prepare, you might not not specifically know when the attack is coming, definately not down to a specific minute, just that it will be sometime soon.
Enough time for you to send scouts out, enough time to get your formation Calvary into position, enough time to send the Rangers to the walls, enough time to send you Flanking Group of Barbarians to the forest line, enough time to send you Trebuchets into a tactically efficient position based on the fact you might have a mountain to your side... etc etc you get the idea. No one is running away.
In other games with PvP especially a specific mapped one, say like Guild Wars Alliance Battles you form you party for the fight, click go, and if your lucky you appear not too soon, when the computer has picked 2 other teams into your starting area. If there are no other teams or the opposition is lacking in number you could be waiting up 45 minutes for a simple map. Same goes for GvG battles, it is Guild Wars after all, you could have your party together and click search for an opponent in GW and be waiting over an hour. Having a set timeframe in AoC of a few hours lets you prepare for both sides. Although in Conan you have everything to loose and everything to gain, its because of this nature you do have to take these things into consideration. So the Borderlands are still Kill or be Killed no matter how you look at it.
Release of more server info would settle specualtion though. I guess in 22 days we will know more hopefully.
Sorry for the length.
Lengthy indeed!
I agree entirely with the concern over a guild losing everything after one night. And as I said in the original post, I can see why this would be put into place (i would never argue it was a meaningless feature).
I think its the artificial restriction that bothers me. I am not an FFA pvper by any means. I do like to choose when I pvp and when I don't (and AoC has room for that playstyle). But I guess its because its like an imaginary restriction, that is put in for gameplay purposes, but isn't really tangible beyond that.
As for how I would do it, so glad you asked.
I believe the same effect could have been obtained in a way that is less artificial and more realistic, by forcing sieges to last longer than a few hours. Now I don't mean that people have to sit at their computer literally fighting for days. Just that it would play out something like this:
A rival guild approaches an enemy stronghold and issues the intent to attack by setting up camp(or some other way of declaring a siege). He can do this at any time, however, no matter what, the stronghold will not be taken in a few hours. The defender guild will be notified. The attacking camp would take some time to set up, so it wouldn't be instant surprise attack. But, the siege will last several real life days, during which time smaller goals must be continually met - the attacker must meet goals to continue the siege, and the defender must meet goals to resist it. For example, attacker may need to break through key defense points, destroy key buildings, cause a certain amount of damage, etc. While the defender might be repairing damage, sending a counterattack on the enemy camp, laying traps, etc.
Each goal met by both offense and defense would contribute to that sides battle 'score'' or some such, indicating the progress of the siege. Too many points on the offense side and the keep falls. Too many points on the defense side and the siege is repelled. They don't have to be points.. could be like a progress bar that teeters back and forth. Or a progress-indicating icon of two guys arm wrestling, whatever heh. Kills can contribute to progress, destruction could contribute. There are details to be fleshed out but that is the idea.
The flaw to that idea I guess is that you could potentially have sieges where two guilds in different timezones never actually met up in person, since they fought to make progress at different times. However if two guilds were in different timezones with the current system, they wouldn't be able to attack at all (because they wouldn't be allowed to). This would open it up to allow every guild to fight anyone regardless of timezones. It would still give that feeling of war preparation and progress, more epic, prevent the overnight keep takeover, allow guild members who might have different hours than other guild members to actively help the siege during those other hours.
Avery, I know your guild is pretty large - probably not everyone plays at the same time. Are some of your guild to be left out of sieges because they don't happen to play at the right hours? Everyone should be able to contribute to a siege that wants to, some in different ways but still contribute. The current system, at least how that other post described it, seems like it wouldn't help that.
Not that it matters - if they don't have something like this now, it wouldn't happen at this point in development. But thats how I would have done it. Sorry for the length of that one.
Note I made a lot of edits to my last post because there were some details I missed. If someone quoted it before I saved the changes, it was probably missed.
Posted by Athelan, 04:38, September 29th 2006, in Hyborian Adventures
A guild cant refuse. They merely have the option to choose when the fight will take place up to a maximum from the time war was declared. Lets just use some arbitrary numbers as examples. You have 72 hours maximum, I declare a siege on your keep. You can ignore it in which case 72 hours from the time I declared we go to war whether you like it or not, or you can adjust the time window to anything at least 24 hours from the declaration up to the 72 hour mark. The reasons for the 24 hour window at the beginning is because we would like the war to be greater than the siege itself, and at least if you are going to burn my house down im not going to want to just wait for you to come knocking.
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I searched bymitra.com for 'Battlekeep window', the link below shows dev responses on that subject.
bymitra.com/search/12319
Siresper: Our guild is a big one yes and growing like mad, we are fast approaching 400 members. Whats unique is we aren't race specific, but anyways, we are about 50/50 split from the main continents N. America and Europe. The guild is set up in a way that "Officers" for a better word are evenly split, for just an occasion and also for the uncertainty still. We are aiming for a presence 24/7 and look pretty much online for that.
Going back to your ideas something like does sound quite inviting
As with the servers Im pretty sure that if they go international on their servers, unlike say LotRO, where its just EU and N.American, Im sure that because of the already "proposed" different types of server, we are also basing a schedule around that. But until release we won't know for sure (in Acolyte Guild specifics) But when you sit down and actually think about it, there most likely will be different rules sets for the type of server your on along with (if implemented international servers) different rule sets for the server location too.
So when Athelan quoted above tosses around the idea of 72 - (thats Arbitrary (not forsure) btw and wrote nearly a year ago) that was just a maximum number of time past from the declaration of a siege declared to the time its going to happen anyway, but he does say that its scalable so it fits both parties needs.
Considering that this concept of seiges in the Borderlands was tooted in the initial design of the game, I wouldn't be suprised that they know what they are doing! Considering with that single Athelan quote brought up over a year ago, and 3 months before the original release date of the game it kinda sounds like they have the gist and idea sorted out, its just the "making it the best they can - before showing it off" parts is whats been worked on now. Say if you play on an international server but its based in Europe, I would say that there would be rulesets in place not only for the type of server but for the location to stop say a US based guild attacking when your asleep. There is bound to be set times that fit in with all timezones in which you can have your battle and lay siege. I would say all within a 24hr time period too. But it does look like the system will be pretty scable. Thats just speculation though so I don't know for sure, but it would seem most logical when you think about it. To combat this issue, which is still unresolved the guild im in has been created from the ground up to cover any aspect or uncertanties like this. I always used to teach new staff members in my job the 6 P's - Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance
We just don't have any concrete facts to it now which is understandable. But it is fun to speculate though! I kinda like it in 2nd world war when Britain said " if you invade (cant remember name of country) then we are at war with you" and it took the Allies quite a while to get a force up and running. I know its a PC game we are talking about here, but there does need to be some flexibility for both the aggressor and the defender and thats something Im sure the devs have taken into consideration alot. When you have one Funcom office in the US and one in Norway, they must have figured something out for us all to enjoy by now!
I just can't wait to be stood in my guild formation line at the front of the Battlekeep awaiting the enemy to come over some hill rise or too burst through a forest line. Saying that we don't even know all the seige weapons yet, just seen a trebuchet in action in a PvE City, so just think there could be more tactical elements invovled there!!
I probably missed a few points but im sure Aelfinn or someone can add more. Soon we will know forsure all about it, its definately an exciting prospect having an an area capable of all this!
This has been one of the better discussions of this subject that I've seen in awhile, and it's been open and honest, with very little flaming. Just wanted to say that first, and let you guys know that from a readers point of view (mine at least) it's a pleasure to read this.
First thing....
The declaration of siege system (i.e. Siege Tent) was ditched.
That being said, I'm not entirely sure what we'll see, but I'm definitely in favor of having some sort of lock-out until the battle is fought. With guilds in both Europe and N.A., heck even different time zones in N.A., I'd hate to see keeps taken at 3am, just because one guild was not online able to defend. If it's 24 hours, that'd be pretty reasonable.
I think we've got to remember that the Border Kingdoms are going to be FFA PvP anyhow, and the keeps and towers are just a part of that, granted they are the biggest, and most attractive part, but there will still be other PvP going on, and without knowledge of it, I have to wonder how much PvP will be going on once the siege is declared and the actual siege begins. Will the attackers need to hold some resource points, or meet certain objectives ahead of time? Plenty of ways that this can go.
Now, is this an artificial restriction? Absolutely, but I feel it's a restriction that is actually beneficial, and that it encourages people to participate in PvP. This is something that can actually make the sieges even more enjoyable.
To critique Siresper, and please dont take it that I'm critiquing you, while I like the idea, I also agree with your comment that in some cases, guilds would rarely meet. While a real siege might last months, and you could translate that to days in a game, that part really isnt all that much fun. What I think is fun, and let's face it, fun is what a game should be about, is the actual combat between the 2 different guilds. That's what I think people look forward to, as part of this.
From my point of view, and again, we dont have facts to really demonstrate what it will be like, and we wont until the middle of the month. However, I like the declaration of siege, from that point, the attacker has some goals to complete in the Border Kingdoms, and at this point, it's really open warfare between the attacker and defender, although the Keep is not at stake. If the attacker were to accomplish their goals, say they would get an overall buff, or be allowed some benefit, and the defender has similar goals, and accomplishing them gives a similar benefit. Doing this encourages both sides into the BK during the siege period, which insures some fun PvP, and a reason to be doing it tying into the keep. Then you dive into the siege.
Something like that, to me, would feel like the restrictions were couched into a reason for me to still be involved in the Border Kingdoms. I wonder if something like that would make you feel less uncomfortable with the artificial restriction as well?
In any case, like everyone, I'm anxiously awaiting LGC and some concrete information on the siege system. I think what it all comes down to, is how you can make the Border Kingdoms as fun as possible for as many people, and to me, that means doing things, or even making sacrifices in some realism, in order to get as many people together for the actual siege battle as possible, and making that part of the game accessible.
Just my 2 cents.....
i Like the Lineage 2 System, Clans declare war, siege is set to a specific time, in L2 the time was during weekends which is great imo, so after getting/defending a castle your guild would keep control of the castle for at least 2 weeks and set the siege time for the specific siege day, for all i care it can be every 1 week, for the sake of a more competitive game i hope funcom doesnt make it so ppl have to be on at stupid times to defend keeps and it ends up like shadowbane.
If anything, the planned or thought out siege should give each side time to gather enough people to make the whole endeavor interesting enough to be worth it.
There's no joy in looking forward to a big battle only to have a couple of handfuls of attackers show up, or vise versa showing up with a few groups and no one being home.
"It is my nature", said the Scorpion to the Frog
That's a great idea. Then both sides can amass their armies and have a grand ol time. Excellent forward thinking by the devs imho.
I don't have time to read a novel so I only read 2 replies. However, my take on it is thus: Unless an MMORPG has open PvP on every Server and at every location except Dev created cities, it is not true open PvP. Open PvP is UO Pre-Trammel.
As far as seiges requiring a set schedule, of course this is necessary. What fun is attacking a player city when only 3 guys are online. What good is having a player city when you can be attacked at 4am with no warning and no defense.
Lastly, I loved the fact that losing a Siege battle in Shadowbane meant losing everything. I also admit it led to players giving up and the low population led to the game's downfall. However, with a WoW like population, that kind of loss is ideal. I first played Shadowbane at the very start and I remember how amazing the PvP and City vs City system made the game world.
I know we still don't know the details about city raids... but for the sake of discussion and getting those wheels turning some more:
If sieges are to last only a few hours, and time is determined by the defender, what is to stop the defender from intentionally choosing a time that they know the attacker would not be able to meet? or to not meet with considerable numbers?
For example, I work weekdays 8 to 4. Weekends are more or less free. But I have many non-work obligations as well which takes up my time. This game is aimed at older gamers (though we've all heard and participated in the argument about whether ot noy this will be true. If it is, it means there may be a lot of other players that have work schedules as well. And for the younger side, college.
So, whats to stop a defender from choosing an abnormal time of day that I can't meet, or that other working adults can't meet? Whats to stop a guild from examining the playtimes of their enemy guilds, and choosing the time most of them don't play? I know that, if I was initiating a raid, all they would have to do is choose a time when I can't make it, and the raid is stopped. You may argue that I don't belong in raids if I don't have the time. But that wouldn't be true - I have the time, just not the time that was chosen.
It seems like giving people a chance to set times has potential for abuse in this way. But perhaps the time choice by the defender is not as specific (2 hours in a day) and restrictive as the earlier quote had led me to believe, since we haven't got all the details.
To answer an earlier question, I never played Shadowbane. The only siege game I remember playing was DaoC. Which had the problem with midnight keep takeovers, but due to the freedom of time, I was able to partipate in many sieges. Perhaps those other games addressed this concern somehow, but I wouldn't be able to cite it.
IMO it's better to let the defende choose or you'd have guilds doing attacks exclusively when the enemy is not online
I would like to point out a particular word in my statement above, one I deliberately kept the same when transcribing the information from a particular dev conversation. The word is CITIES.
You see, while a guild city and its buildings would be open for attack only during a specific period, the same cannot be said for the city's inhabitants. The time restrictions are there in place to ensure that guild property isn't destroyed while all or almost all of them are asleep, but the guild members themselves are open game all of the time in the borderlands. From my time in Shadowbane, I can assure you that will be open and chaotic enough.
I would also note that when I said the guilds would be setting the times, I meant on a semi pernament basis. In other words, no appointments are necessary, the guild city is open to attack from anyone during that same time period every single day.
Note: the source of this information is from a recent IRC discussion with a pair of developers, it would indeed replace/update the year old quote up above.
This was also answered. Each and every server will have an 8 hour time period during which no siege times can be set. There would of course be various options to choose from in this regard, but in general guilds would hypothetically choose to play on a server where no sieges would occur during their weakest population hours.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
IMO it's better to let the defende choose or you'd have guilds doing attacks exclusively when the enemy is not online
Well thats a problem I tried to solve in my earlier suggestion (though admittedly in a long post most probably don't have the time to sift through). If a siege lasts 24 hours, everyone in the guild, on both sides, regardless of playtime has the ability to contribute. A lot of people with different schedules would suddenly be able to partipate in a siege, whereas before they couldn't.
And getting more people partipating in the pvp sounds like it would be a great thing for the Conan world, and especially fit the idea behind the borderlands.
A siege lasting 24 hours would solve a lot of potential problems for a large guild like the Acolytes. But, smaller guilds would quickly be annihilated by such a mechanic, simply because they cannot maintain an adequate defensive force for the entire length of the siege.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
Oh man
This is really getting me sad. This so called preset "Clock" siege is rather bias in my viewpoint. After reading all these post in this topic, I can understand that some guild have over 400+ member (Zerg guild). Now I just wonder how a minor and not so powerfull guild would have any chance at all in Age of Conan´?. Its seem that it only favour these already have a strong guild there enable to make siege strike.
Lets say a major Zerg guild only have to protect there castle for like 2-4 hours they are enable to defend with lot of there core unit and even strike back with other forces. Take a look on some of us minor guild there only got 20+ guildmember (mostly made of reallife mate and friends). We would never have any chance to attack at all. They only would be if we was allowed to attack that keep 24/7 where there maybe was a small window seige where there is only skeleton crew online to defend it.
So do have minor guild have a chance, or should they quit siege pvp at all....
window = terms of time where there is slight way trough
Spoils of War - The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
There is no Zerging in our guild, we are just having a 24/7 presence because of the intended server we hope will be there.
Smaller guilds can form up together if so wish to take on a larger one. There might be some form of mercenery guilds too, there are already a few on the official forums. Its been said foes who are guildless can join in the fight too, smaller guilds can take "Towers" in a stepping stone progression to BattleKeeps. The speculation is the server ruleset would also lt you defend what you own at a specific time where it allows people to attack it. So you don't have a skeleton crew on watch at an awkward time.
A siege lasting 24 hours would solve a lot of potential problems for a large guild like the Acolytes. But, smaller guilds would quickly be annihilated by such a mechanic, simply because they cannot maintain an adequate defensive force for the entire length of the siege.
I have a feeling even with the current system smaller guilds will be quickly annihilated by large guilds due to the mechanics. But I think that is just how pvp usually works - numbers win. 300 was a good movie, but I don't think thats how it will play out in Conan. Skill can play a factor but I don't think it will help a small guild stop a large guild from taking over.
I guess for me, if I know im going to be losing to a larger guild, I would at least like to have been able to participate. Losing and not being able to be involved at all is kind of depressing. But I think that is just the fate of smaller guilds. As AA said, the only chance is to group up with other small guilds.
Though most people are in small guilds because they like the atmosphere of small guilds, not because they don't have the opportunity to join up. Merging guilds defeats the purpose of why people go small.
Actually this brings up another thought - Can OTHER guilds come to the aid of a defender during a siege? Like an alliance of guilds? Or is it purely one guild against another guild?
Couple more quotes on the subject. Im sure ive read somewhere that other guilds can come to the aid of a defender yes. Thing to remember about the Borderlands is its very open! Middle quote is a little on the old side though.
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I of course want there to always be conflict
To this end I want Battlekeeps to never be completely safe. (No having friends or alt guilds declare war on you repeatedly so someone else couldnts)
There will be a period of time that is unavoidable where you have to defend your Keep.
There will be other non Keep objectives that will be worth fighting for and taking over in the Border Kingdoms.
I want these other objectives that are nearby a Keep to impact the amount of time or who can attack a Keep so controlling territory is important.
The two solutions I see now are either lets say 3 objectives near a keep
1 unavoidable time for being attacked
3 possible based on who controls the nearby objectives
Should the controllers of all 4 valid attackers be able to attack the keep at once? But then the defenders will be vastly outnumbered potentially and the attackers would have to fight off other attackers as well. Would this lead to chaos and poaching rather than a siege?
Should the controllers of the 4 valid attackers in essence of each their own chance at attacking whoeever the owner of the keep is.
Example, attacker 1 successfull takes the keep.
attacker 2 now attacks attacker 1 who has to defend it since they took the keep but fails
attacker 3 now attacks attacker 1 who has to defend it since they won their assault
attacker 4 is actually the original owner of the keep at the beginning of the day and is trying to oust attacker 1 and get their keep back. Attacker 4 wins and the keep remains theirs.
This "seems" better to me if not too confusing and I am concerned about each attacker having enough time without the "defender" potentially having to spend a long long time on defense.
I can't really tell you more, I know this will probably raise as many questions as it does discussions about solutions but see what you can do. If I feel I can clarify something I will but don't expect much. Also remember that you are not seeing the overall design so this is only a small part of it.
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The benefit of having a keep is diluted by the number of keeps. Destroy the other guys keep even if you have one to make your benefits better.
Though raiding an opponents Battlekeep would be fun.. What would be the point of you building one? Just for the enemy to come burn it to the ground? It doesn't sound to me like people would want to spend all of their time gathering resourses and getting money to build a Battlekeep that is only there to be destroyed.
There is plenty of info out there on the perks of controlling land in the borderlands. It is by no means a useless investment. Obviously i dont know any of the specifics but having access to hard to obtain resources and additional income, as well as bragging rights, are certainly reasons to hold one.
Land ownership in past games and in AoC is sort of a whole subgame on its own. This could be considered an evolution of that since it has perks other than asthetics.