Goblin Squad Member
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Some people like what we just got in the latest blog, others are unhappy with it all. Some of those that are happy with the Tower Wars concept don't think that a simple “Stand here and get ticker points” is the best way to handle tower capture.
So, why don't we make suggestions on how we would rather see it handled? I honestly can't really think of better mechanics for it, but I am dosed all the hell out on cough medicine. How do you think GoblinWorks should handle tower capture?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would like to see Capturing a Tower work more like Capturing a Hall.
For the people just clicking through, I imagine Nihimon means this part;
Capture will be a single, time-consuming action, such as planting a flag directly outside the hall, and will take about 1 minute. This can be interrupted by defenders, resetting the timer. This action must be executed by a single, unstealthed player who will be unable to take other actions while planting the flag and so will rely on his allies for defense. For attackers it therefore becomes extremely meaningful to reduce the required duration of this operation, increase spawn time for defending PCs, and increase spawn time for NPC guards (or any of these things in combination) in order to increase the chances of successfully defending the flag for the necessary duration.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I always enjoyed the tower capture mechanic in Alterac Valley in WoW, back when it took hours to play the BG rather than 6 minutes.
On my phone or I'd elaborate, maybe I'll come back by in a bit when I'm on my PC.
It is actually why I don't like it.
It makes me think too much of classic themepark battlegrounds.
I don't have any specific argument, I just don't like this system. The perspective of going PvP each evenings in the same places in a tower capture game isn't very appealing to me. It makes me think about Taren's mill in 2004. :(
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Goblin Squad Member
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Each tower requires a set number of capture points to be captured. Lets call it 50 for now. There are number of capture locations around the tower. Lets call it 10 for now. An unstealthed character has to interact with the capture location an action that takes a certain amount of time, interruptible time. Lets call it 1 minute. The ability to use a certain capture location is on a cool down for a certain amount of time after it is used. Lets call it 2 minutes.
In this scenario even with 10 different people able to capture the locations without being interrupted it would take 15 minutes. For one person if they were not interrupted it would take 50 minutes and he would have to rotate around to different capture locations.
Obviously the numbers are up for tweaking, but it rewards lots of people trying to capture while it doesn't make it impossible to slow them down by interrupting them.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Put an item in the keep, and damage done to that item ticks your score up; whoever gets to the score threshold first takes control.
Defenders can interact with the same item to reduce everybody's score.
Basically the same as time-in-zone, except that there's an interesting choice to be made regarding the tactical vs. strategic requirements; do you fight the defenders, the competition, or the keep?
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Goblin Squad Member
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So, my own thoughts on the matter (I went and took a bath, the haze has lifted!) I'm going to go point by point, and suggest a few things. These won't be MVP type stuff, more how I would like to see it shape up.
First, I like sieges that have multiple stages of combat. Preferably a beginning, a middle and an end. Like a good story!
For example; The siege begins with the defenders holed up in the tower. There is a large, reinforced door on the front, and balconies overlooking it. The attackers have to smash down the front door (by hitting it), while the defenders have to man the battlements and throw everything they have to slow them down. There is always a risk of another group coming along and going after the attackers from behind, so they are constantly under a time pressure to get into the tower and secure their backline.
Once the attackers have broken into the tower, they have to fight their way up the cramped staircase to the very top. Line of sight, body blocking and general confusion slows down the attackers. Maybe the defenders can attack through a few murder holes.
As the attackers make it to the very top they have to interact with the flag point that sits there. One person, unstealthed and vulnerable, interacts with the flag, which pulls down the current defenders. Once their flag is down, he has to raise his own. Interrupting the flag raiser pauses the action, rather than resetting it. If an ally of the attacker interacts with the flag point, it continues to go up. If someone else interacts with the flag point, it begins to lower. Whoever can get their flag up to the top of the flag pole (or, in the case of the defenders, make sure that no other flag is at the top at the end of the PvP window) wins.
Two, I like for the defenders to have an advantage. Attacking any point should always be more difficult than defending it. One of the ways I could see facilitating that is having a bind point inside a tower (at the top) that only the defenders can use. Binding to this point uses a vast majority of your threads, so that if you die while defending, you lose the majority of your gear.
Combine this with a small armoury next to the bind point, so that defenders can rearm, and you force a small war of attrition that has a definitive end point. If the attackers can push into the tower long enough that the defenders run out of equipment, they win. If the defenders can hold off, minimise loses, and keep their towers well stocked, they have the advantage. If the defenders manage to push off an attacker long enough to recover gear, the get a reprieve and a new lease on life.
Three, I like for non-PvPers to be able to influence the action. The above point builds into this. A defenders ability to hold a tower should be dependant on their supply chain. If a company knows they can keep their armoury well stocked (because their settlement supplies them with equipment), then they will be happy to stick around. They will appreciate the work of their crafters.
Say the big reinforced front door on the tower can be repaired in real time. That gives another reason for crafters to be in Tower battles. Maybe crafters can upgrade towers with traps on the stairs leading up to the top, slowing down attackers and helping defenders in their battle. Or big boiling pots of oil above the front door to drop on attackers.
Anything that gets the crafters directly contributing.
Now, lets see how much of that actually made sense, and how much of it was cough-medicine fueled idiocy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Assign a knight/Leader to the tower, take out the leader and get control of the tower/keep.
This gives an assassin a valid target at the start of EE, it also makes bringing a bunch of alts into the area more of a hassle than a boon.
If the force holding the tower cant protect one guy they shouldn’t be able to keep the tower, also a nice starting point for those that wish to mainly manage settlements. The knight/ leader now has a place to start with some minor skills to be assigned ( perhaps even required skills to learn in order to manage actual settlement buildings).
Not sure why the number of players in an area should dictate the outcome, of an encounter, how does planting a flag somewhere give a player control of the area? Seems as though you should have to destroy the opposition or at the very least damage them in some way… taking out their leader would be a good place to start..
At least this way they are also able to build up the roles they want people to grow into as EE grows and eventually becomes OE..
All that being said, I still have reservations about the whole tower format but those thoughts really belong in another thread… but as it semi relates to my thoughts above …..If the argument is that PvP folks are going to enjoy this more than preying on people in the wilderness then forcing them to actually battle while taking the towers is essential.. in my mind anyway
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like it to work like Warhammer Online's keep capturing. The T1 and T2(bottom 50% of leveling) RVR were great, after that it was too zergy and faction balance sucked.
Each side has access to seige weapons and there are designated locations they can be placed. For the most part the seige weapons are the same, but the attackers use a battering ram, and the defenders use an burning oil cauldron to contest the gate.
Once the front gate is breached there are some "elite" type NPC guards (impossible to solo/duo) on the bottom floor. Next you have one or two choke points to get to the upper floor. On the top floor is another group of "elites" and a "boss".
The NPC's are there to prevent 'ninjaing', you have to have a decent sized group, or a very balanced small group to actually capture anything. When there are more than two dozen attackers the NPC's are more of a technicality than a threat.
The defenders (and people with the ability to bypass locks) have access to a back door.
I don't know what you guys are doing for settlement capture, but I think a similar system where there are key NPCs scattered around the settlement that must be killed/captured depending on if you are going to capture or raze the settlement. Razing would be easier as you just kill one and move on, capturing would require locking down every NPC at once, but the settlement's functionality is preserved.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like to see that in order to capture the tower you'd have to kill a number of NPC guards in the tower to actually capture it. Those guards could continue to re spawn until you plant a flag.
Once the flag is planted, new guards are re spawned that now are now loyal to the new owners.
This way smaller companies can at least rely a little bit on their NPC guards to protect their holdings until they have a chance to get there.
It also adds a bit if PvE combat to the action, rather than just standing there to capture a tower.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like to see that in order to capture the tower you'd have to kill a number of NPC guards in the tower to actually capture it. Those guards could continue to re spawn until you plant a flag.
Once the flag is planted, new guards are re spawned that now are now loyal to the new owners.
This way smaller companies can at least rely a little bit on their NPC guards to protect their holdings until they have a chance to get there.
It also adds a bit if PvE combat to the action, rather than just standing there to capture a tower.
Agree with this statement (and others of similar ilk), though for the flag planting, I would love to see a specialised character skill required to perform the role. A sapper/engineer type of skill. Maybe even a branch of the skills used to build things in your home settlement. Turn those crafters/builders into an offensive class.
I keep thinking back to the engineer from Dune2000 if anyone played that. They enter a structure after the grunts clear out the opposition, then the structure starts a countdown timer (planting the flag) after which it flips to your team.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the towers are a very good opportunity to show ‚meaningful‘ game mechanics and to add some depth to the economic system of Pathfinder online. Take a step back from the whole capture process and think about the following:
Historically towers where build to keep a close watch to the surrounding land, and to be the last place of retreat for the people who couldn’t reach the castle. They were also a part of the communication system with flags and bonfires. The entrence to a tower wasn’t on the ground, but in a height only reachable through a ladder (which could be moved into the tower, in case of an assault).
The „man of the tower“ (sorry, i dont know the englisch word for the german word „Turmherr“, maybe „towercommander“) had not much to do the most time of his job. This is where the meaningful pathfinder ingame mechanic kicks in: the towercommander is a NPC sended and supported from a settlement. There could be different NPCs available for this position. For example a NPC guard could generate ‚advanced shield skills‘, a NPC Mage could generate ‚fireball spell‘, and so on. After the NPC has learned this, he could be escorted back to settlement and be a teacher there.
In the „learning process“ the NPC may request different ressources to speed up this process or to get better results. This would create some sort of PvE Content as well. The PvP Part would be to escort the untrained NPC to the tower, escort the trained NPC to the settlement and stop the players from delivering ressources that the NPC requests.
There is plenty space to advance this idea, for example: extend the towerbuilding to a magetower, which is required for the advanced mage NPC, maybe during the PvE quest phase, what would change the towers appearence, or the NPC doesn’t learn something, but produces a kind of ‚blueprint‘. This blueprint could be stolen, or the NPC could be kidnaped (and sold as Slave) during the escorting periods.
There would be no need to assault the tower itself.
I'd like to see that in order to capture the tower you'd have to kill a number of NPC guards in the tower to actually capture it. Those guards could continue to re spawn until you plant a flag.
Once the flag is planted, new guards are re spawned that now are now loyal to the new owners.
This way smaller companies can at least rely a little bit on their NPC guards to protect their holdings until they have a chance to get there.
It also adds a bit if PvE combat to the action, rather than just standing there to capture a tower.
This is good. It would even allow a tower that has been with the same company for a long time to have a little advantage on its defense (a little bit stronger NPCs for instance).
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are some really great ideas in thie thread! I'm getting exicted for this tower war!
Assign a knight/Leader to the tower, take out the leader and get control of the tower/keep.
I like this. I don't think assasinating the leader should make the tower fall, but perhaps this individual affects the spawning speed of defenders (assuming defenders can bind to the tower) and or NPC guards. In this way, the assasin can have a role to play to weaken the defenders.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is starting to look a lot like the frontier keep mechanic in DAoC.
That's not at all a bad thing. DAoC had arguably the best PVP design of any MMO to date other than Eve (if you like Eve =)
Realistically, landed companies should not have to, and are not going to, deploy live defensive troops to their holding to just sit there guarding for the full duration of the PVP window. People want to play the game, not sit around idle. What that means is that the holding needs to have sufficient defenses to resist capture for several minutes while the defenders scramble to stop what they're doing (nearby, of course!) and go join the fight.
A mechanic like DAoC's where an attacker has to spend 10+ minutes battering a gate or two and defeating some NPC guards and a tower lord in order to capture the keep, and where the holding's owners are notified as soon as aggressive contact is made, means that property capture is likely to involve pitched battles and "meaningful human interaction". In contrast, a mechanic where a keep can be captured silently and quickly with no combat mechanic would minimize human interaction and lead either to a dynamic where people sit around bored not having fun to defend their towers, or give that up as a chump's game and just go tag into each other's holdings without ever reliably finding a fight.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Do you think that the company that currently has control of a tower should get a system message when that tower comes under attack?
"All the Towers indirectly controlled by a Settlement share the same PvP window. Each Tower hex must be attacked and defended individually but they all open and close their PvP windows at the same time."
If you are helping defend a different tower that belongs to your settlement it would be good to know that you need to hustle over to your company's tower instead. Although maybe that will be part of the risk involved, you need to leave someone to guard each tower since you won't know if it is being attacked... hmmmm.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am no longer nearly as ill as I was yesterday! Hurrah! Which means it is time for me to go into more detail on one of my points in particular; The involvement of non-PvP focused players in the Tower Warfare system. Right now, it sounds like the crafters will mostly be logistical, sitting off to the side and keeping the soldiers armed. That is all well and good, but it doesn't really promote a vibrant economy.
I gave a few suggestions above on what might help with that. Expensive, resource hungry upgrades that can be applied to each tower individually. Each upgrade would help in the defence of that tower, and would be a permanent (semi-permanent) addition. A few examples of what I am thinking;
A bind point at the top of the tower. Give the defenders the ability to create an extremely high thread count bind point that they can attach themselves to. Not all of your threads, but close enough to it that it is very clearly not usable for world jumping. Maybe only let the Twice-Marked create them. Then the crafters and gatherers can upgrade it to allow more people to bind to it.
An armoury to go along with the bind point. If the defenders are using the majority of their threads to bind to the tower, it means that they won't be keeping the majority of their gear when they die in its defence. They will need replacement equipment when they come back. Let the crafters and gatherers build a small bank at the top of the tower that they can keep well stocked. Let them upgrade it to allow more stuff to be kept inside. This will have the side effect of creating a war of attrition when attackers are pushing against a tower; can they keep the siege up long enough for the defenders to run out of equipment? Can the defenders sally out and gather up enough equipment during a lull to resupply themselves? Can a secondary force break through and get more equipment past the siege lines? Lots of meaningful interaction.
A hidden passage round the back. One of the difficulties as a defender is getting into the tower once the siege has begun. They control the front door, they control the general area, and if you aren't in the tower when the siege begins you have to break though the attackers line. This encourages defenders to sit in their towers as soon as the PvP window opens, and not leave until the window is over. Boring! So let the crafters and gatherers construct a hidden entry somewhere in the hex that only defenders can use. Its a stealthed, inconspicuous object (like a rock) that when right clicked teleports the player into the tower. Maybe only have it usable if there aren't any enemies within a certain radius. This allows the defenders to get into the tower once the siege has begun, but also lets the attackers stop them if they can find the passage. Then they have to decide if they are willing to split their forces, with some keeping the passage blockaded, while others bash down the front door.
A few reusable traps/defensive tools. Boiling pots of oil on the balconies overlooking the front door. Buckets of slippery stuff at the top of stair cases that seriously slow down everyone trying to climb them. Blockades that can be quickly flipped up that block anyone getting through them (unless they smash their way in). Upgrades to the main door out front, increasing its health/armour values. Let crafters and gatherers man the defences in real time, keeping the weapons of war running by pushing resources into them as they are used.
Things that, at least from the fairly cursory glance, don't seem like they would take a massive amount of development time. Things that, should they be developed, could be moved into the other parts of the game when they are needed. Most of those examples could be used in the future for Points of Interest/Settlements. They aren't too graphically intensive, they wouldn't need heavy animation work, and they are largely coding issues. And I don't mean that in a “Well its just code, this would be easy!” but rather that I know animation and modelling is expensive.
Crafters and gatherers have to feel like they can actively contribute to the defence of land. Not just by arming their friends, but by being there day in and day out adding to the war effort.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We do know that crafting roles will have battlefield utility. Commoners will have special attacks of their own, and will have higher endurance than anyone else- you need commoners on the field to move ram parts and trebuchet ammo around efficiently. Aristocrats will be the command ships of PFO, providing combat bonuses to combat formations. Experts will be able to customize equipment for their own personal use making it more effective than anything in the marketplace.
Choosing a crafting role does not mean hiding in the closet when there are enemies at the gate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My concern isn't for the vast majority of the game, the developers have assuaged my fears of crafters and gatherers hiding in towns while the big nasties fight it out. I'm more concerned about getting them active specifically within the Tower Wars.
We won't have ram parts and trebuchets. We won't have combat formations. I would like to see very clear routes for bringing them into the territory control game, outside of them sitting about in already controlled land harvesting away. It might not be an issue once we get our real settlements up and running, but I could see it being a small one in the immediate future.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don’t like the idea of NPC guards at all (not for towers anyway).
Sounds like single companies will control the towers, and those guards would only be loyal to that company… so if I was an ally with a company ( or just a traveler..) how would those npc guards s know not to attack me?
Not sure if the system has anyway to set allies or not so how would friendly companies come to your aid if you required it?
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Goblin Squad Member
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The post-cataclysm system will have PoI's owned by chartered companies, defended by the chartering settlement's NPC guards, so this intelligence is already planned. Making the guards smart enough to recognize residents of the same settlement doesn't need a huge breakthrough in AI.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that, although ideas are flowing and that's good, we need to remember the context of why the towers are being put into the game - because we have a minimal product and the tower game is basically a simple way to keep people from devolving into random ganking. That being said, we need to keep a mind for simple mechanics when talking about the towers.
I'm all for going all-out with PoI/settlement raiding mechanics though. I hope Goblinworks go hog-wild with making those feel like pitched battles. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ok, here's a concept.
In order to take a tower, you must first gather together supplies from various areas and gather them into a supply pile at an area that's relatively safe for you and your allies.
There you can construct a makeshift "tower capturing device." For simplicity's sake, we'll call it "Battle colors." (that's a fancy name for a flag, but we'll assume it's a BIG flag)
This flag is very big and you can't carry it at your normal speed, so you're slowed. and you need someone to assist you while you carry it, up to 4 people total can hoist and plant the flag at the tower.
At the tower, you plant the flag, and wait, and after enough time, all the flags at the tower are replaced with your flag's image. Magic.
There are a few noteworthy observations here.
1. While constructing the colors you can be easily interrupted.
2. While carrying the colors you can't attack enemy colors. or players. in fact, we'll just say you're helpless.
3. This sounds pretty dramatic, but probably wouldn't end up being very dramatic.
4. The extra step of constructing the colors basically just means you have to make a short trek across the battlefield while people try to kill you and you can't fight back, and you have to rely on your teammates. Makes the decision of who to send on a flag run very important, and it means that the players who specialize in combat probably won't run the flag. Noncombatspecialists will be ecstatic to hear that they have a role on the battlefield. One that can't be fulfilled by a combatant. (Because the fastest way to eliminate a combat target would be to wait for it to pick up the flag - instant death)
What do you think?
Seems like only a tiny mod to the ideas they've already expressed, might even be more efficiently expressed.
What Shane said. These are cool ideas, but we have to make sure to keep in mind that the whole point of the towers is "the bare minimum".
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that, although ideas are flowing and that's good, we need to remember the context of why the towers are being put into the game - because we have a minimal product and the tower game is basically a simple way to keep people from devolving into random ganking. That being said, we need to keep a mind for simple mechanics when talking about the towers.
I'm all for going all-out with PoI/settlement raiding mechanics though. I hope Goblinworks go hog-wild with making those feel like pitched battles. :)
/agree
though a few of the suggested mechanics would be nice when the actual settlements and holdings(POIs) roll out