Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Ideas for less boring Guild Cities
GiveMePvP
Member Posts: 240
I found this good post by Verner on official EU forums forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php
The guild city is a huge unhospitable fort with way too much open space. I propose that it should be made smaller, cosier and more lively. It should be more of a village with paved streets (not too wide mind you) with lots of small buildings that are there just for the looks as fillers, with signs of activity like horse ****, cats & dogs, villagers, laundry hanging out to dry from balconies and so on.
Some trees and gardens and a small square outside the town hall, which should have some sort of balcony from which the guild leader can address the masses.
There's plenty of this stuff in other settlements in the game, Tortage City for example has a great feel to it.
The guild city could be so much more than what it is today!
I have always found the Guild City to be one of the worst elements of Age of Conan. The place just feels dead. It's a bad place to do RP and there really is no point in going there. Also the building process is one of the worst midless resource grinds I've ever seen.
What Verner suggests here sounds very good and it's strange that Funcom didn't follow a similar path.
Any other ideas on how they could improve Guild Cities?
Comments
I agree with you, guild cities are weird, just enormous fields with huge buildings so far apart you spend most of your time running to get from one to another! I second this motion!
Guild Citys should once again be attacked from NPC
They should make Housing avaible....like 40 slots for Guildhouses, Wich you can enter with a key, as an instance..where you have your dewille, wich can be filled with stuff.
Overdesign soom Buildings. a Kasern where every Guild member can take a seat and a woman NPC wich gives alcohol. It should also be possible to let others in your Guildcity as well as in your dewille, if the have grantet acces from you.
About Recourcess, they should be picked up faster...that you may earn 3 piece of wood at once
Well that could be very good but I dont see that happening because funcom dont have any more time on their hands.
What you mean? They going bankrupt or what?
What you mean? They going bankrupt or what?
Not really what I meant they are working on 1.5 and to dont make it break all the class balance they are going work on it for some time but my point is that using this idea would take funcom seriously alot of time and as I see it after TSW will be in final stages of develepoment AoC will be put on same life support like AO is now.
What you mean? They going bankrupt or what?
Not really what I meant they are working on 1.5 and to dont make it break all the class balance they are going work on it for some time but my point is that using this idea would take funcom seriously alot of time and as I see it after TSW will be in final stages of develepoment AoC will be put on same life support like AO is now.
Yeah the problem with Funcom is that everytime they patch 1 thing, they brake 10 other things. Too much of employees time goes into fixing stuff and that's why we get things like DX10 one YEAR too late.
Would be awesome if guild cities had been made more alive, they could easy have left the battlekeeps as they are today, but guild cities could have been added more buildings and npc's for each tier you increase it. this way it would feel a bit as if the city was growing
Playing: Battlefield - Bad company (Xbox360) Arma2, DFO (PC)
On my radar: TSW, MO
MMO's played: SWG (pre cu/cu), WoW, AoC, WAR, DFO, Planetside
MMO's that I have tested: Lotro, L2, Aion, Ryzom
More NPC's populating a guild city would be nice give a more lived in feel. Perhaps the number of NPC's can be determined by the tier of the guild city. Hostile NPC attacks would be great too, but that is way in the future.
I agree, they should be more alive. I don't think there is a designer on the team who wouldn't agree more because it's adding detail to their creations. You can't have enough detail when it comes to zone design imho.
So why is it not there? Well short answer, not enough time to really spice it up as much as we wanted to before launch. Does that mean we wont in the future? Nope not at all. I can't say I've heard anything from the content team on adding more life to those playfields but I'm sure someone has thought about it too. I will pass on the suggestion and see where it goes.
As for player housing, I think that would be complicated to just add tomorrow. Not to mention that players join and leave guilds so much that there might end up being a lot of empty houses or player issues in-game. I think a dedicated spot for player housing would be ideal if we ever reached that point in doing them for sure. Then keep guild cities for just the guild itself.
Glen ''Famine'' Swan
Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
Player housing could be done as in EQ2 where each player had his own instance so to speak. there is many doors on houses in OT and other places that could be used for this purpose so the possibility to add it is absolutely there. There is a few things I would like to see with player housing tho if it appears
1) Dolls you can equip armor on, that way you can make a showroom for the gear you have but not using.
2) Storage chest
3) some furniture that you can buy to make the house more "your style"
Then again player housing isn't really important imo, I would much rather see the guild city be redesigned and each tier of it would add more houses and civilians living in the guild city. It makes sense that a guild that has a bigger city also would attract more NPC's to live there. It would of course remove some of the freedom of movement we have today, but at the same time guild cities would feel a lot more alive and I can only imagine for roleplayers they would be a great asset.
Playing: Battlefield - Bad company (Xbox360) Arma2, DFO (PC)
On my radar: TSW, MO
MMO's played: SWG (pre cu/cu), WoW, AoC, WAR, DFO, Planetside
MMO's that I have tested: Lotro, L2, Aion, Ryzom
In regards to Player Housing:
Make it in a zone that has a valuable PvP purpose.
Using housing for PvP in SWG was epic fun on both sides.
Everytime I think back to SWG I do miss that PRE CU era. Lots of fun I had in that game
Playing: Battlefield - Bad company (Xbox360) Arma2, DFO (PC)
On my radar: TSW, MO
MMO's played: SWG (pre cu/cu), WoW, AoC, WAR, DFO, Planetside
MMO's that I have tested: Lotro, L2, Aion, Ryzom
Everytime I think back to SWG I do miss that PRE CU era. Lots of fun I had in that game
There have been a lot of MMO between Star Wars Galaxies release and now but none have captured the fun of player housing and cities as well imho.
Bounty Hunting vs. players in and around their house and city was a blast too.
Conan doesn't have a seamless world like SWG but even with modest instancing player housing could become a lot of fun.
They need to focus on making the player house something useful and a vaulable point of interest for players.
At it stands now guild cities are pretty irrevelant and battlekeeps are really only there for the invuls and the weekly siege fight.
It is more of a challenge to make cities and housing impactful when the game has a lot of instancing but it is still possible.
Bounties and PvP objectives as well as rewarding PvE daily quests located in zones with player housing are all features that would work nicely.
I think the main thing that got me hooked on SWG was the fact it was sandbox, you could do anything you could mix skills and get a interesting character. LGuild cities, personal houses and cantinas and all that. BH was a fun profession
Playing: Battlefield - Bad company (Xbox360) Arma2, DFO (PC)
On my radar: TSW, MO
MMO's played: SWG (pre cu/cu), WoW, AoC, WAR, DFO, Planetside
MMO's that I have tested: Lotro, L2, Aion, Ryzom
My guess is that the guild cities are so big because Gaute Godager really thought 200vs200 sieges was possible withing AoC.
Thats the only plausible theory!