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Safe Zones
RaptorStorm
Member Posts: 312
I have had the same complaint sense the first day I started playing Shadowbane... the ToL you are bound to should be a safe zone for you. I played for quite a while on Mourning and ran the Nation 'Knights of the Old Republic'; it was like five or six cities. I ended up having to stop playing Shadowbane because it became insanely frustrating to feel safe anywhere. Granted it is a PvP game but one should feel safe in there own city. Guards don't do squat unless you have legions of them, which the cost for that is insane, so one guy can camp at a ToL and as soon as you move, he can kill you off in a blink. I do have to state that when I had to stop playing was there was a huge imbalance of channeler mass nuking and I know they balanced that in later patches.
My suggestion is why wouldn't... or why shouldn't the area that flattens out for your ToL be a safe zone for anyone bound to that nation? When you Bane someone's ToL and when bane goes active then the safety is removed and war can begin. People that played were so unwilling to bane anyone's tree because it really didn't serve any purpose when you could grab 4-6 people and ToL camp them all day and pretty much screw them over the entire day. If the ToL area were a safe zone then in order to try to repress you they would have to wait outside your walls or 'zone' like bandits, which makes the attacker need a little bit more skill and strategy to be effective. Also if a group gets ambushed by others they may be able to retreat to there town for safety if they survive the run. This also pulls in the safety of buildings, no way should one person with a hammer ever be able to go in to a town while during a low time (like work or school) and take out a building that the ToL can't protect, that's just BS. Again, give the Bane circles more of a purpose and make people have to use them, allow for anything built in the ToL zone by a member of that ToL to be protected. So buildings can't be attacked until a bane circle goes active, people that belong to that ToL are safe in there city till the bane circle goes active. It is easier and more cost efficient to just go in to a town ToL camp them and take out unprotected buildings, then it is to set up a bane and wait for it to go active then buy siege weapons and have a big fight... but you still do tons of costly damage to the town. The banes need more of a purpose in the world, you can do tons of damage with out one so people don't need to use them... the game was made for war like fighting not high level characters ToL camping. I know I didn't program the game, but it seems to me that a lot of the problems could be solved with simply making the area that goes flat from the ToL become a safe zone for anything under that crest and would give even greater value to nations allowing more safe zones to be at.
Well, let me hear what you think.
-Raptor
Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface.
-Raptor
Comments
I think you were a carebear and probably not meant to enjoy shadowbane if you require GMs to grant you the sense of security your nation is supposed to fight to maintain.
*Recovering Evercrack Addict*
-Currently on Shadowbane's Vengence Server-
Valarian- Aelfborn Archer Warriorr5
WARNING: Spelling and grammatical errors intentionally left in document to test for Anal Retentive Trolls.
"The key to wasting time is distraction. Without distractions it's too obvious to your brain that you're not doing anything with it, and you start to feel uncomfortable." - Paul Graham http://paulgraham.com/hs.html
i really respect how harsh Shadowbane was. I hated how childish players were at times, but that is what happens when you play a game as open as this. you will end up with all kinds of people.
I think one great strength of SB is the fact it is so hard core PVP. It is a GVG/PVP game. The game is not about being safe. Its about building a nation strong enough that you cant be attacked in it. If anyone marched into my town and attacked me they would never make it out alive. So in a way i had a safe zone. And so did the rest of my Guild.
Retribution was my favorite in game word.
I remember once when i was sitting at my ToL talking to many people from many guilds who had come to our great city to shop. Well, some noob punk came in and tried to take me out. He failed and I marched a small army to the gates of a smaller town/guild he was from to level it. That town was spared as they got rid of him and also became a close ally. He was hunted like a dog for the rest of the servers life. Retribution is the the only real law in SB.
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Rickard the Frog
www.houseofthefrog.com
I agree the game needed to be harsh to remain realistic within the storyline premises set by wolfpack, that was a big part of how it was so enjoyable. I just wish there hadn't been so many stability issues, those are what really hurt SB the most. I'm worried that Dark'n'Light will come to the same fate: awesome concepts but poor construction/implementation.
WARNING: Spelling and grammatical errors intentionally left in document to test for Anal Retentive Trolls.
"The key to wasting time is distraction. Without distractions it's too obvious to your brain that you're not doing anything with it, and you start to feel uncomfortable." - Paul Graham http://paulgraham.com/hs.html
As far as screwing people over for a day by camping their tol, I don't think that is quite accurate. I've had times when my tol was camped by overwhelming numbers. My guildies and I just went to do something else. Due to the guards in town, and the /guild channel spam when they die, you can get a pretty good idea of when the campers leave. Alternatively, everyone get on your pvp characters and realize that you'll die when you get out of safe mode. Get together in a group and return to remove the campers, after waiting out rez sickness and travelling back.
Alternatively, kicking out campers these days isn't too tough if you've got ranked up guards in ranked barracks. For example, I was on my scout a couple days ago screwing around in a nearby trainer town owned by some folks I don't care for (they didn't have guards or walls). Eventually they got a scout (plus the 4 or so other people already there) so I figured it was time to leave. My city was close by, so 4 of them decided to come pay a visit. That was a mistake, as I was able to put them into the waiting arms of the guards repeatedly (grounding flight, defense debuff, snare, etc) where they died quick deaths. One of 'em came back, to my surprise, but waited a short distance outside of town. I went out and paid him a visit, granting him quick and merciful trip home. Not that this makes me leet or anything, far from it, just demonstrating a point of how useful guards can be in keeping a city reasonably safe.
As to the legions of guards, I'm not sure how many you mean by that. If you control a mine for a day or two, that should cover your weekly bills with room to spare, provided that your town isn't too excessive and that mass quantities of gear aren't being created then given away free. I myself owned a roller city with one other fellow. I'd log on my druid, he would log on his high str. minotaur looter, and we'd pay for the city in about an hour or two of farming, including all equipment rolled and ranking new vendors put in. This also covered my petty cash needs for the week (repairs and such). Sometimes I'd just dualbox it, if he wasn't available, and end up with the same result. Judging from this (and the 8 i think guard barracks limit) I'm guessing that a small guild of 5-10 people could maintain a city with plenty of barracks by just putting forth an hour or so per week each, and rolling up a farming character. There really is no excuse for not having enough guards to repel a couple of unwanted visitors.
Personally, I'm fairly happy with the current state of safe zones. I'm glad that they exist, as it makes trading with people from opposing guilds possible. I certainly would NOT want to see someone I want to kill in such a common place as in a player run city be completely safe from me. The open pvp environment makes people deal with the consequences of their actions, including the knowledge that at any time people can come to your doorstep and attack you or camp your tree (situation dependant on guards, player skill and classes, city layout, number of people attacking, etc). It's part of what makes the game interesting.
Glad your happy with the current state of affairs
.
This posts parent was created in 2003 heh, I can't remember exactly how much my city was paying out at that time but I can tell you that our guildbank was well into the millions and that much gold isn't easy to get from people junking loot. At one point I remember computing that we were going to have to keep around 45active levelers above r3 using our city to cover development/maintenance costs. My city wasn't in the top10 for size either. Also I remember higher rank tanks pummeling guardsmen by the barracks full. And then there were the channelers who could almost one-shot anything if properly specc'd
It was truely a different game, too bad it took them so long to fix the memory leak. I don't see SB regaining the ground it lost as far as playerbase is concerned (although that would be nice!).
I think it's been 8months since I logged in.
WARNING: Spelling and grammatical errors intentionally left in document to test for Anal Retentive Trolls.
"The key to wasting time is distraction. Without distractions it's too obvious to your brain that you're not doing anything with it, and you start to feel uncomfortable." - Paul Graham http://paulgraham.com/hs.html
If you get into your town and ppl are camping the ToL and you fail to kill them when you built the city there is only one reason for that....you suck. If this is a problem for you then you should get spires to aid your in town combat.
Example: First get a spire that lowers resist to magic spells. Get guards that do magic damage and be sure that you yourself have a magic damage caster. If you log in and there is someone at your tree And you have a magic resist debuff spire there is no way in hell that person should be able to take a wizzy one v one
I'm not a fan of safe zones but yea it sucks getting ganked when you log on.
All safe zones should be removed from the game. Even on newbie island.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
That would be lame.. area effect kill all the noobs? Not my style. Although, you are right shadowbane has one of the worst communities I've ever seen. Yea, I hang with people with back bones but the game design allows for so many tiolet bowel drinkers, it's pretty annoying. They wouldn't know a real battle if it hit them.. and most of the time when we do, they ran. Freaking didn't even show up for the bane, how lame is that. Waste of my time, this server reset is taking too long... pfft. Anyway, no keep the kids zone away from the real zones, I don't want to see them.
That would be lame.. area effect kill all the noobs? Not my style. Although, you are right shadowbane has one of the worst communities I've ever seen. Yea, I hang with people with back bones but the game design allows for so many tiolet bowel drinkers, it's pretty annoying. They wouldn't know a real battle if it hit them.. and most of the time when we do, they ran. Freaking didn't even show up for the bane, how lame is that. Waste of my time, this server reset is taking too long... pfft. Anyway, no keep the kids zone away from the real zones, I don't want to see them.
When is the server reset anyway?
Ive given up playing until it happens so it would be nice to hear some news on that.