City lot sieges?

So bear with me, I'm clueless on PvP and guild matters...

But I did some number crunching last night and say a guild of 10 people were to ultimately build a "keep" or "castle" after they eventually bought their city lot. Wouldn't it be cool if they could then enter a War of the Lords type ranking system? Pretty exciting if you think about ranking systems going in...

You would at that point be eligible to attack other strongholds or have yours besieged. Thinking about the keep sieges of Warhammer Online...

Upon a successful siege, your guild would gain prestige and some gold. On losing, well, I dunno, if no one was online to defend they couldn't really lose anything. But maybe X gold from a War Fund? The balancing would be key I guess.

The War Fund would be something your guild donates to and builds stronger NPC defenders as it grows. Put in emplacements! If your War Fund is nil, you lose nothing... There's a timer that takes you out of attackable keeps for a certain period...

I dunno, just spit-balling here but it seems like the logical progression from "we have a castle and dragons now".

Again you'd have to balance it against steam-rolling.

 

great idea to get some combat into towns and penetrate their iron domes of being such safe spaces. Towns MUST become contestable to some degree, why not declare lots 'capturable' with a global points ranking system?

This needs to be worked out, leave the balancing and box mailing to others, this stuff is what we need the best programmers working on.

[X faction controls 3/4 contestable lots in this town!]

 

MUST ??
No, they do not.

 

Hmm. To my eyes Towns seem the most complicated and least appropriate places to introduce much needed PVP systems, largely due to them being open trading hubs, safe havens and owned by players who have invested a lot to obtain them.

Neutral zones or custom designed locations that can easily change hands without complications or impacting what players have heavily invested in or go to for social, trade or other reasons seems better to me. Just my take.

 

I guess in my vision, you'd still have to be flagged for PvP, so people could legit spectate. You'd also need a minimum lot size and would have to flag it as a fortress or something. Town ownership wouldn't change, you'd just get a bonus of "Prestige" and maybe some guild gold for killing the Commander NPC.

As an innocent bystander, you could trade to your heart's content while "Aw sh*t! Look at that keep getting assaulted over there! Wow!" ...

 

Yes must. Do not participate if you wish, but castles in towns must have some level of purpose. Why have armories in a town? why have castles and towers? Why have kings and queens and govenors and lords if their towns are just static safe spaces with no function as to need to consider a level of defense?

Sure keep people out of combat if they wish, but why have such an elaborate chess board called novia if the world isn't fluid and dynamic at some level?

 

LOL funny stuff indeed!

 

Off the top of my head and after reading this thread, I suggest the best places to implement Castles for siege mechanics is on the overworld map.

Firstly they would look good there. I would say that there isn't enough 'eye candy' on tbe OW map and it is a potentially great playing board. Secondly the combat could be its own instance, so not messing with town ownership mechanics.

I think craftymethod makes an interesting point, but maybe towns where owners have invested in a Castle or Keep could have the castle or keep reflected on the OW map adjacent to their town so that you have to enter the Castle siege or the town.

But my ideal would be to have one overworld visible Castle or Keep per Novia Region, so around 14 castles. Novia regions are pretty well defined, as are the towns and other locations within them, so Realm or Guild based PVP could take place in Castle instances and the winner gets to set and/or obtain a tax income from the region as a feudal lord would gather his tithe. After a period of time the castle could be open to competition again and maybe Castle defences and Npc defenders invested in by the current owners.

 

Things on the overworld map would be an interesting idea, but if getting a town to function with numbers of roaming players and liveliness, I would think splitting people into more instances may not be ideal.

Make Garriot cities great again!