The new town "Sieges" are not really sieges, sorry they are just another encounter.

These are the results of being under seiged, so in order to do that, we would need to have a siege camp first. So baby step, one thing at a time

 

Yes, I agree.

Portalarium has quite a small team for this kind of game and we are often forgetting this.

 

And some of their backers will agree and forgive and be happy about everything and anything they do, no matter what.

I fully agree with the OP. The description given out about the sieges was super disappointing. It isnt a siege, like the OP mentioned. It has no effect on the town whatsoever, other than not letting you in without jumping through hurdles.

Its just another encounter with some siege-like set dressing to run through on your way to the crafting stations. Do you think we will be able to fire any catapults?

For me, this is also throwing into doubt the excitement of the Castle siege scenarios... who knows what they are going to turn out to be.

 

I guess this is sort of what I meant by changing states. Like simply writing a script that adds a bunch of art assets and spawns the invaders to turn siege state on. I agree, they wouldn't need separate instances, so it shouldn't monkey up dynamic housing. My understanding is that dynamic housing only gets in the way if you want to have different states for different players.

 

Lol... Not exactly sure what you are trying to say there

 

I'm not sure, myself.

Joke aside, I'm not naive to the point of accepting everything. But it's true : Portalarium has to make the game growing slowly because they don't have unlimited staff and cash. By the way, they didn't say sieged town will only be those encounter zones. That's just what they can propose now, and we can hope something else in the future.

 

I've edited the title of the thread to clean it up. Please be concise when posting thread titles.

For the name, it doesn't matter what the word is used elsewhere, it is what we design it to be. Focus on debating and arguing within the design, not attaching it to something completely different.

 

Of course, some people will be happy and agree with everything the devs do. There will also be some people who will be unhappy with everything the devs do. There will also be some other who like here and hate there.

I'm just not emotionally tied to this particular feature. To me it's just another thing to do in game. I'm sorry if you guys feel very emotionally distressed after seeing the first iteration of the feature. I hope that they will implement the stuff that @Hornpipe mentioned as well to add more depths into it.

 

It is also possible that quest-related NPCs could vanish (or even be captured!) during a siege event. Both of these things were done (to a limited extent) in FFXI, which is very much the same "shared world state" sort of game as SotA. And it's an encouragement to end the siege and rescue captured NPCs. The important difference with regard to changing world state is that a siege appears to everyone at once, and is not the result of an action by a single player that should only affect that player.

If there is anything that makes such things harder to implement in SotA, it is the way that cities are instanced to handle large player population. This means that potentially there can be multiple instances of a city with only synchronized deco placement/removal. Putting the siege in an intermediate scene reduces the number of people staying around if they really wanted to be in town, and in cases of large battles, some synchronization (keeping track of defeated leaders, etc.) could be done.

 

Maybe that is the problem - sounds like the warcamps are instanced with different states and not a big event for everyone in town in the same instance. It would have to be that way if they are run in SPO and FPO and not force MPO.

Would you really want to treat NPC like deco and sync them across instances? Your big bad poofs before you get a chance because another instance killed it? Even though I am a SPO player events like this I would be OK with forced MPO to give it the town saved by the town feeling, and it is a workaround of for changing state across instances. Obviously sync state works because that is how decorations work. Though maybe MPO mode would have to be limited to townsfolk, if the entire server tries to farm these predictable events, that would crash the instance.

 

Here are my two cents on this: They can use the bandit/skel/wolf encounters we have now as a warning to that City/Town etc. to let you know an attack on that town is imminent (within 24 hours). Increase the number or change the color of those bandit/skel/wolf to red and make it look like they are the obsidian scouting party scoping out the locale to be sieged. This gives us players time to coordinate the defense system. Start simple and eventually adjust it to include siege engines for both defense and offense. Let POT/PRT purchase high level NPC defenders including siege engine/ballistae/archers to augment defensive effort. Would love to se them begin the process with cannon fire upon the coastal cities as a preview of coming attractions. R/Boris

 

i really miss DAoC castle sieges, after reading this thread. both siegeing them and defending them.

a NPC town with player housing under siege sounds like an even cooler version than that, and its what i was envisioning. nevertheless, im sure this is just the first phase in many features involved in creatures attacking NPC story related areas. perhaps there will come town raids or pillagings, to follow the town sieges. a point was made: its not really a siege anymore once theyre inside the gates.

 

Yes, the battles in Trinsic against the lich Jou'nar and at least one of the Zog Cabal [later renamed Followers of Armaggedon] members that lasted until the server went down, with a few shards trying very hard to change the ultimate and likely predefined outcome. This would be a nice benchmark for an epic scenario from their past storied multiplayer game design. I do know they did have player seers or volunteers putting in some time to control the main baddies or at least some of the spawned creatures (one told me in-game much later). I'm hoping some of these siege encounters are a good first iteration given their current budget & staffing, especially since they are introducing one of the Cabalist (hey another Cabal) members shortly.

 

They plan a warning, read the post they are tying the events to the skies. You need to discover what that means. using an astrolabe. And of course if you do not somebody will wiki it for those that prefer to shortcut the warning process.

 

Thank you for the information Yarnevk. I was suggesting a simple system where somebody traveling on the novian map could see the cabalist scouting party/offensive build up and alert others without the Astrolabe. The more defensive preparation time, the easier to try to defend a siege. R/Boris

 

Wishful thinking is not going to fix their database that cannot handle multiple states across instances so that your town can be raided in FPO, so that is why it is a gate blocker event instead.. This is a restriction caused be their non phased MMO database design due to player housing. So what if they workaround that issue by making it a synchronized MPO event across instances, such that the entire town groups together to save their town, rise up or fall down everybody is in it together, avoids the instances in different states issue.

 

Wishful thinking yes, and knowing that when developers have months to let large scale problems marinate in their subconscious, solutions tend to manifest much like a background process.

If players demand a feature like this, and it makes sense for the game world and lore (and it does), it will happen, eventually.

 

It could be done now with variable states if players are willing to compromised on instanced housing and yards just like their basement , sectioned cities and nested towns already are. That is the root of the problem as the game already supports phased instances, just not ones with player housing. Nobody would loose their high traffic merchant spot as those could be made static other than changing the name on the sign.

Or do it with sync states and every instance sees the bad guy fall even if they did not do it. Or limit a single instance to townsfolk only in MPO only.

Your ideas of town raids are not new, they have had years not months to solve the problems caused by dynamic housing in story towns ever since the Kickstarter video where Richard Garriot said town raids was a feature. That is why I called it wishful thinking, so instead lets figure out how to solve it with the systems we already have in place.

 

I don't think you should bother @Weins201 . Berek is just going to moderate you into submission then threaten you with a ban. Just play and leave it to them.I think you might be #2 on his hit list.