Section 2 is going to cover Guild owned castles, keeps, and towers.
These buildings will be in the PVE world also. There are many reasons for this, and all will be explained.
Hopefully.
The castles, keeps, and towers will be spread about the PVE world and available for capture and control by player Guilds. The towers will be the smallest structure, then keeps, and the castles will be the biggest.
The initial acquisition of these structures will be a two fold process. The money a guild earns from the Coliseum battles will go into a guild account. This money cannot be given to members of the guild to use as regular currency, and can only be used for guild related functions. Guild leaders will be able to set up rules allowing guild members of different ranks to have access at different levels to these funds. This will be independant from the Triumph points a guild builds up through Coliseum play, as those points are used towards guild rank, titles, and purchasing special decorations and emblems with their guild logo.
For initial acquisition, the guild must have the appropriate number of active players (not including alts) and the appropriate amount of guild funds saved up. The towers will only require 15 active guild members and the smallest sum of cash, the keeps 25 guild members and more cash then the towers take, and the castles will require 50 active members and the most gold. Then, the first guild to travel to the structure that meets the requirements will pay the fine and acquire the structure. The structure will display the Guild's banner and NPCs will even dress in the controlling guild's colors.
Now, why is this in the PVE world? The reason is that these Guild owned structures will be placed throughout the PVE map in locations that offer convenient access to popular locations such as dungeons, crawl dungeons, PVE siege locations, and other hot spots. (More to come on all of these in the PVE content post to come at some point in the future.)
The reason is that other players will be able to travel to the Guilds structure as a means to get close to the locations they are going. It'll be like visiting a NPC town in the game, complete with vendors and crafting stations and travel points. More on all of these later :) I hate having to keep saying "more on this later" but as I've said multiple times, it's all connected to the big picture, the game as a whole.
A portion of the money spent by players to travel to the Guild structure and purchases from vendors there will go towards the Guild fund account. Of course, Guild crafters will be able to display and sell their wares, and a portion of funds from those sales will go to the crafter, and a portion to the guild (as controlled by guild leadership/those with access to guild fund control.)
The Guild fund account can then be used to pay for repairs and defenses, as well as hire player mercenaries. Yes, I know the hiring of mercs is directly ripped off from Age of Conan, but only because it is an amazingly good idea.
So how do sieges work?
A rival guild places a challenge to the Guild in control of the tower/keep/castle. As with the Coliseum challenges, a time and date must be agreed upon by both parties. The different structures will have a different "max" number of players that can participate in the siege on either side. This way guilds can hire mercs to help attack/defend without things becoming terribly unbalanced. For arguements sake, let's say the siege player maximum for a tower is 25, a keep 40, and a castle 70.
So what keeps a Guild from rejecting all challenges and keeping the structure forever? After a certain period of time after a guild claims ownership of the structure, let's say a week or so... the challenges become "open" challenges. The defending Guild can no longer reject the offers after this time, so the time of the battle is entirely up to the challenger. This is done so that defending guilds need to make a choice as to when they want to make their stand, otherwise, it's all down to luck. If you have the players online for the defense or not. If they agree on a challenge time and date, they can plan and prepare accordingly. Of course, the guild will have a few days time or so that they cannot be challenged once they acquire the structure, in order to have some time to be gauranteed to raise funds for their Guild Account.
Challenging guilds can use their funds to purchase siege weapons, hire player mercs, and hire NPC mercs to help in their assault. Defending guilds can purchase defensive structures, and hire both NPC and player mercs.
At the time and date of the agreed upon siege, the immediate area surrounding the structure becomes instanced for the fight. Players not involved can still travel to the site in the open world, outside the instanced fight, so that they can still travel and speak with NPCs and such. All money made from these transactions while a siege is going on in an instanced version of the area will be split evenly between the defending guild and attacking guild's fund account.
During the siege, the objective is to break through any outer defenses, with castles having the most "layers" and towers the fewest, and once through you'll assault the throne room of the structure. The throne room is where defeated defending players will respawn on death. As the attackers move through the defenses towards the Throne room, the respawn time for defending players will become shorter. Once the attackers reach the Throne room, all dead defenders will instantly respawn in the Throne Room to make their final stand. They will not respawn when killed while there are still attackers in the Throne Room. If the Throne room defends succesfully, the dead defenders will respawn again. Attackers killed in the Throne Room will respawn slower then normal. Attackers will respawn at a "camp" outside of the structure.
The siege will be on a time limit. With varying times for each type of structure. For arguements sake, let's say 20 minutes for a tower, 40 for a keep, and an hour for a castle. If the defenders can hold off the attack for that period of time, the siege fails and the defenders remain in control of the structure. If the attackers are able to defeat the defending guild in the Throne Room and take control, the siege is successful and the structure transfers ownership to the new guild. At this point, all the banners of the previous guild burn and the NPCs run around screaming like mad, flailing their arms in the air. The attackers can then slaughter all the NPCs, or just wait for a timer, say 5 minutes to expire and the NPCs will be replaced by NPCs clothed in the new Guilds colors, and of course the new banners will appear too.
As with all PVP, you gain experience for all of your kills, and experience for any NPC defenders/attackers killed. You also gain skills during combat like normal.
At the end of the siege, all players receive a experience bonus and gold bonus, with more going to whoever wins, the attackers or defenders. The Guilds involved also receive a bonus to their guild fund account, and Guild Triumph points. Again, the guild who wins the siege gets a lot more then the losing guild.
This way, the Guild controlled structures all about PVP, but it's semi consensual with systems in place to encourage the defenders to seek a fair fight. That's why there are rules on player limits and such. Also, each structure type will have a maximum "allowance" for guild funds that can be used to purchase siege weapons, defenders, player merc etc. That way the better funded guild isn't always the victor.
With the locations of these structures in the PVE world, players will be traveling and conducting business at these locations throughout their adventures.
But it sounds like all the advantages are given to the defenders? Yes and no. The defenders will be forced to choose a time and date to defend from attacking guilds, or they'll enter the "open challenge" phase and not really know when it's coming. Also, attackers will have powerful tools such as catapults and balistas and door-rams, while defenders will not have as many options.
What do ya'll think? I know, two parts in one day, please make sure to check out the previous post on the Coliseum PVP !!! Thanks for reading!
User Comments
I think you messed up your logistics a little.
"So what keeps a Guild from rejecting all challenges and keeping the structure forever? After a certain period of time after a guild claims ownership of the structure, let's say a week or so... the challenges become "open" challenges."
This states that even if a guild is never once challenged and hasn't had the opportunity to accept a challenge they will enter open challenge mode, and after the first week it will be open challenge mode no matter what. But then you go on to say:
"This is done so that defending guilds need to make a choice as to when they want to make their stand, otherwise, it's all down to luck."
You're stating two different options. Either open challenge mode is a direct result of too many rejections, or is a permanent fixture after a set amount of time. Or maybe it's the middle ground where you have to uphold a ratio of accepted and rejected challenges before it's auto-accept. Just a little clarification is all we need.
Otherwise, it sounds like a good concept for organized PvP. I have never participated in either, but you should see what ideas CoV / CoH and Ragnarok Online's "War of Emperium" went by if you haven't already done so.
Otherwise, you realize you will have to enforce structure elimination order to prevent zerging. Think of Unreal Tournaments Assault mode. It forces you to achieve objectives in a pre-determined order as fast as possible, that way the enemies can't zerg to the end like WoW's AV boils down to.
But ya, nice nice.
true, it's meant to be that after a certain period of time it enters "open challenge" phase. that way, Guilds can't just reject everything, well, they could, but then they have absolutely no control over when the siege happens.
also yes, there will be forced structure elimination, you have to get through the defences to get to the Throne Room.. can't just zerg in.
I enjoy reading your well thought out ideas and your the reason I created an account on MMORPG.com.
awesome, the best pvp idea i ever see
awww thanks Tamuren
oh I just re-read what you said Myndonos, and the answer to your question is that if NO guild challenges for control of the structure, it will stay in the control of the Guild who owns it. It will only go into "open challenge mode" if there ARE challenges, but the defending guild rejects all of them.
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