Your war system ideas

Razmael

Hey folks,

We're currently sitting down to design the new war system, and want to see what you, the players, would like to see come from it. So feel free to post your thoughts here. We can't promise to include everything (or anything!) suggested here, but we will be reading through all posts.

Disclaimer: This does not mean the war system is anywhere near close to being released. We are only in initial idea planning stage, and we are not committing to any sort of release schedule just yet.

Aishia

For me it's something that shunts the majors conflict times into specific points of instead of encouraging people to stay up all night to win on a forced march. Maybe something that takes away a bit from "War going on, if I'm in the Militia I can't ever leave the city without protection." thing too. Not that there isn't a need for much more detail and specific ideas, but those are two things that leap to mind.

Aldric

Echoing off of what Aishia said, a "down time" option of sorts would be pretty important IMO. Before when you'd be put on the active roster, but wanted to RP for a little bit, or go bashing, it wasn't entirely an option unless you'd seclude yourself in a city/haven.

I think treating active roster (if it'd be utilized again) somewhat like the ylem aura that fades relatively quickly would be pretty nice, even if the aura would last for an hour. The ability to take a break from war is a pretty big deal since this is, after all, a game.

Moirean

- punctuated conflict over smaller chunks of territory. Instead of this lock in for a week to finally defeat a city have smaller skirmishes over a single territory - not only would this help avoid burn out it would let us be in longer term states of war which would help enhance the conflict and tension between cities.

- autonomy in determining the engagement timeframe. Let lifers be able to plan a strike to start on a time of day when they are strongest instead of random times like majors or lessers. This would let one side set up a strong assault and fortifications- but then have the capturing take 24 to 48 hours so everyone would have a chance to be part of it. Allow people to set defences or have the overall win be determined by activity within the entire window of time. 2 hour captures let people push through during down times and made them unable to achieve anything during busy times. With this have capturing able to be done in blocks instead of a single room at a time. The higher level view would basically be: city plans and initiates an attack. Its a big deal that we can prepare for and execute. Others have a day or two to stop us. The attacker should have the upper hand here to avoid things being stagnant and entrenched. You could include things like costs or cooldowns to avoid one city just chaining capture after capture in a row.

- allow ways for people to assist outside if the war e.g. recruiting soldiers from villages via quests or exploring. 

- include an element that crafting can enhance like clothing or supplies crafters can make to improve outcomes.

- a few more tactics. E.g. terrain bottlenecking where divisions have to split apart to cross a river or go through a mountain pass suddenly introduces cool opportunities for ambushes or tactical fortifications.

- some sort of vanguard option for marchers. Don't make them absolutely impervious to attack but let them be more shielded by troops at some cost so people can't just dogpile them and need to be more tactical.

- make marching slower so people have a larger window to react and bring their own troops.

- more elements that encourage participation and recruitment of all types. E.g. if troops marched faster in smaller units it would encourage us to get lots of citizens trained in marching to help rush before we merge together.

- remove the eq cost for ordering and instead make it based on delays e.g. troops execute x order after x seconds so hinderspam can't stop a marcher dead and marchers can keep themselves safe and aware better.

- include tangible goals and rewards as well as tangible loss. Owning a village should be valuable and a city without any territory should feel the bite.

- make campaigns require preparation and have that preparation be dynamic . E.g. you might recruit soldiers via questing but barracked armies require a maintainable  resource (not just gold but rather something you can earn) for upkeep. This would mean cities can't just stockpile indefinitely with the richer cities able to stomp others. That was a specific example but there are plenty of ways you can do it. Basically the concept of resource decay needs to be involved so the rich don't get richer and more powerful.

Ishin

Razmael said:

Hey folks,

We're currently sitting down to design the new war system, and want to see what you, the players, would like to see come from it. So feel free to post your thoughts here. We can't promise to include everything (or anything!) suggested here, but we will be reading through all posts.

Disclaimer: This does not mean the war system is anywhere near close to being released. We are only in initial idea planning stage, and we are not committing to any sort of release schedule just yet.

The only real downside that I can remember from the war system, Raz, is the sheer amount of time it took out of your everyday playing. Like, IRL war is a thing so intense it -has- to take up all of your time, you know? But when I get home from work, I don't wanna have to sit here all night long and have to babysit troops, yanno? I'm not entirely sure how to address that, but out of all the complaints I've ever heard, that's the biggest one.

Having to go through an entire zone and cap all the rooms was a bit of a pain, too, but much less than having to dedicate days and days of play time to camping troops. Maybe you guys could set up a thing where if you restrict all entrances to x area with your troops/have captured all entrances to an area, after x amount of time the whole area comes under your control?

As someone who used to spend a -lot- of time with the war system, those were two of the biggest concerns I had about the renewal of the war system, Raz. That being said, I really, really miss it too. Landmarks as well. I'll explain why, and maybe you guys can take that into consideration too?

--- WAR SYSTEM ---

The war system itself was really investment-heavy, and because of that, people actually -cared- if they won or lost. To me, that's a -really good thing-, especially with how things are these days. Maybe it's just rose-colored glasses, or nostalgia, or whatever, but I have to be frank: The foci conflict sucks in a way. Someone did some math and Spinesreach alone could go like 130 RL days without a single drop of ylem and still be cool. Imagine how long Bloodloch's would last, and they get most of the lessers, and have gotten both of the recent majors iirc.

Not that the system itself is bad, but there's no palpable reward, and no real feeling of loss. It's that loss, imo, that motivates people to try harder. Right now, it's just kinda like, oh it's another lesser. Eff it. Let the darkies have it, we'll farm minors and be okay. That's bad, imo, but hitting the line between motivating people to participate and forcing people to participate is hard

--- LANDMARKS ---

I know a lot of people really hated landmarks, but honestly, I sorta enjoyed'em. It was like, what, 3 days or a week long? Hardcore PK and questing/bashing-butchering, or whatever? Then they went on cooldown. Or was it 2 days a week or every other week? I don't remember. Anyway, the stuff you did there mattered. I know one of them changed how long night/day lasted by like a good 15-20 minutes. One made it so that you had an increased passive regen on essence/devotion. There were a -lot- of little things, and the thing was...it was really hard for one side or the other to cap all of the landmarks at once, so even if you lost most of them, you still could get -some- of them. It was a -super bad- landmarking season when you lost -all- of them, lol.

The thing I liked about landmarks was it was like, LANDMARKLANDMARKLANDMARK for the time they were off-cd and could be influenced, and then when they locked into place, I was always like, 'whew, no more landmarking till whenever'. It was neat, because while it was on/off like that, it was always a regular thing, so people could login and do shit, and even the off-hour people could participate

The bad thing about them was that like, people were always so LANDMARKS ARE UP COME ON EVERYONE TIME TO PUT YOUR PK PANTS ON AND PK. So people often got made to do it. Back then I wasn't into PK at all, so I was noob-monking it around(I think, I classhopped like whoa back then), but I still did it. And, while it didn't help -me- out, it helped my buddies at the time out, which mattered to me.

Riluo

Yeah introducing quest aspects would be nice insofar as recruiting villagers, having npc and players building fortification's in villages etc to slow down enemy villagers/players from entering a village to ransack it. For example:

• Allow players to convince npc villagers to hold their territory for you. This would require players (crafters) to supply timber/stone etc to aid in maintaining the village from raids. This would be due to the towns being damage in each successful raid.
  
• These would include: Trenches, barricades, defensive towers for archers etc (all built by non-pker IE crafters) Meaning that pkers could defend them as they build in make shift camps (explain camps in next section).
  
• Allow cities to train engineers
  
• Long term affects, with conquered villages being damaged and it being visible in room descriptions, banners etc.
  

Introduce siege items for the attacking groups to smash barricades etc and engineers. For example:

• Trebuchets: Line of sight (requires person to fire and two to load)
  
• Battering rams: in room (requires four players all entering the command RAM BARRICADE
  
• Ballista: two room range (requires two players to use it and also needs crafters to create the arrows (this means non-pkers can help)
  
• Camps would be a room that springs up in each village after a quest, in which players could crafter the siege items, with a set limit on the amount that can be made each howling. Perhaps one of each type. In addition siege items could be taken back to this room for repairs.
  
• Trenches would slow siege item from traversing a room. These could be "filled in" or constructed by npc engineers, who can be killed by defending/attacking troops
  
• Barricades could be used to block an entrance
  
• Archer towers would be used to defend villages from other cities troops as they enter a set range (3 room radius)
  

Moirean

I like a lot of your ideas riluo but I would also advise that admin aim to make the system simple and intuitive as well. Its really easy to get complex with this sort of thing. Avalon revamped their war system a few years ago and made it far more complex and it alienated a ton of players from the system. End of the day war system should be about engaging people, creati g conflict, prompting rp abd giving people a way to help out their orgs and compete with others. Super intense tactical stuff raises the barrier for entry too high for the system to draw in everyone 

Setne

As been stated by Moi and Riluo, ways for non-pk stuff to help out. Like maybe doing a quest to convince maybe a bandit group to sabotage an enemy something or even a quest to directly sabotage it yourself. While I try to dabble in some pk when I can, in the end, it's not my main draw. Though really, I want spying and stuff.

Zsadist

I like the ideas as I agree it would add alot of conflict and get both PKers and non-PKers to join in for such a large scale conflict and actually be fun. However, and this may just be me, but wouldn't that still leave the crafters (non-PKers) open to PK? I mean, if I know Aryanne or Lucie is crafting arrows for the ballista to attack a towne that is controlled by BL, I'm going to target them and kill them in order for them to be unable to supply the arrows for Enorian.

While I like the idea of getting non-PKers involved in a primarily PK conflict, I can't help but feel they would likely still be targetted by association laws and helping the PK scene.

Moirean

That seems to be kinda extreme and I expect pk laws would protect them if stuff like this was added in. We don't go around killing people who do refills for pkers.

Also I wouldn't classify it as primarily pk. Its clear there is interest for a variety of ways to participate... And the overall planning and troop work has never been pk - it made you open to pk and pk was used to help or hinder but a system like this is about more than just pk. Many non fighters really enjoyed troop work. If you're thinking about this as just a pk activity I think you're selling its potential short.

Moirean

On a side note this thread has me really excited. I love war systems and as a cityleader I really feel the need for one - war systems help provide long term goals for orgs which makes it easier for us to lead without getting burnt out from trying to provide things for the city to build up to and aim for.

I guess a system would ideally keep this element in mind. Ensure participation is something people want to do over time (compared to ylem where it stopped having a point or need), the mechanics allow for both cities and individuals to be heroes from good campaigns and tactics, and the scope is flexible enough that a city can have this as long term, intermediate and urgent goals. Eg long term goal to "defeat" another city. Intermediate goals are take village x within a year, take village y and z within a decade. Urgent goals are actively scouting, defending or attacking if war activity happens.

Zsadist

Moirean said:

That seems to be kinda extreme and I expect pk laws would protect them if stuff like this was added in. We don't go around killing people who do refills for pkers.

I don't exactly see how that would be extreme. I mean, in a sense, they are actively participating in what would be typically and likely be a PK environment. Also, it wouldn't really be violating the PK Laws because I would have RP reason to attack the Enorian suppliers, just like they'd have reason to attack BL suppliers. Also, I'd like to point out that if I was fighting somebody and I saw someone run in, give my enemy a whole bunch of vial cures, and then run out, I'm going to hunt them down too for assisting in a situation that I feel they didn't needed to get involved in. This may be a very extremist attitude, but I'm a variable outlier in the community that we have.

Also, I'd like to point out that I may very well be selling the war system short, considering I wasn't around when the war system was out before. I'm just asking questions that I would end up asking over Raiders or some other clan anyway. Might as well get my inquiries out of the way now.

Aishia

I don't know if like, territory control is the BEST mechanic, but I think the whole "every little individual room" thing is a bit grindy. If there were like FORTS or points of conflict in each area that were fought over for general control (maybe not even in every area) That might be interesting. Tho I guess we probably want an additional combat mechanic to be less "Single room" focused than lessers are. But ya stuff like fighting for control of villages and specific FEATURES and landmarks might be more interesting than trying to grind through the whole game map. A war that was like "The war to control pash" instead of "the war for everything between here and Spinesreach." might be more interesting.

Aishia

In some general sense there probably needs to be a limit on complete domination too. Some org owning every last scrap of everything in the game is a bit landslidey and too many bonuses to winning overwhelmingly buries the losing side faster. But an idea is something like, control of specific areas might give bonuses, access to special commodities or resources, maybe unique access to quests or something like that. An idea could be the farther from your city an area is and the more areas your city controls some sort of "upkeep" on maintaining them and keeping them under your control either saps a resource or makes them easier to capture over time.

Aishia

Well ya along that lines certain areas and peoples might be more inclined to specific cities ways and be easier to hold too. Some areas might provide like extra INSURGENT troops or something if they're in a negative mood and are attacked, etc.

Aishia

Cause the idea of a bunch of pissed off deer mounted dryads showing up to stage a revolution is p funny.

Mael

Limited resources, so that it's difficult / next to impossible to control everything, and make you have to choose behind going on the offensive, or the defensive, risk taking another territory by putting other ones at risk.

Rewards for the capture -only- going to the organization that captures/controls the node rather then the entire tether. So there may be instances where one organization may choose not to assist the other because they can't afford to put their territories at risk, or because they want the territory themselves. Could lead to some interesting cold war scenarios.

for the War system, I don't feel that PK should be the primary focus, it should be a byproduct of the war system, however I feel that this shouldn't be the best alternative in the majority of circumstances.

Smart AI so as you can set regiments to take territory, who will hold the territory until ordered elsewhere, both for offense/defense.

Mael

If you can have guys on the defensive, you can introduce mini-raiding which would yield a few options to the defenders. For example, lets say organization A controlled Mournhold, and organization B desided that they would attack it as players, as there wasn't much defense there. When they attack/are spotted, the defenders alert the organization, which can yield a couple of responses, like getting a bunch of people to assist/raid defense, sending more troops to defend, or having some troops of reserve to automatically go defend if your areas are attacked. Troops would have a delay to get to where they need to.

Moirean

I do personally want some aspect of the rts preserved. I liked that there was a complete separate sort of conflict. Pk played a part but as a general I mostly directed people where and who to fight and focused on tactical capture routes abd troop square offs. A lot of the suggestions seem to be dropping that and focus on more group fights.

Rina

Maybe a mix of both? Have a contested area between two at-war orgs "open" twice or thrice a day, for short periods, like an hour or so, where the focus is on troop order (npc movement) instead of PK. When one side finally does take the area, through repeated progress made over multiple sessions, it opens up an adjacent area for contestation and so on and so forth? The time limit might be tweaked to make it harder for one side to win an area in a single session. Cooldowns for declaring areas to be contested could impose downtime in between victories/defeats.

Or if you want to let wars drag out longer, you could make the things open much more infrequently so that you could have orgs constantly at war but not constantly burning out each other with PK and the sort? The lengthy time period for a full campaign will also allow pendulum swings of activity back and forth to result in pendulum swings of territory gain back and forth. Then you could build on this skeleton of a war system by making quests that non-combatants (like me) can do while the actual troop movment is on cooldown to give temporary bonuses or one-use effects (that expire after a while, so we have something to do all the time) that militia members can use during the actual fight etc.

That way the city leaders get to use contesting areas as a kind of big chess game on the game world, and then on-the-ground people able to do their troop movement/PK when the thing happens.

Moirean

The second part of your post is basically what I said in my first post.

I'm mostly focusing on concepts and elements I like about war systems. I suspect admin will draw our ideas together into something so I figure it's more helpful to share what makes stuff fun instead of trying to dream up a system for them.

Ishin

One other thing I liked about the war system, was like, you went in with troops, and it was like PROTECTTROOPSPROTECTTROOPSPROTECTTROOPS until they forted up, if enemies were around. It was really intense because full companies of troops were flippin' expensive, man -and- they took a few days to actually merge into a full company. So like...losing a company of troops was a big deal, you know?

Stuff like that, for me, was always one of the biggest things that motivated me to always be 100% on top of my PK game. I look at stuff now and I'm kinda like '...eh.' Why bother? All I'm going to do is we're gonna get our 15 core people together, Duiranorian is going to get their 4 core people together, and they'll try, we'll wreck, and then we'll shake our heads and give them silent kudos for bothering to try(not always how it happens, but seems to be the majority of the time to me).

I remember @Haven once called me 'a terror on the battlefield'. Lol, not anymore. Don't care enough to be. Not trying to be negative nancy about foci, it's just that for me as an individual it's not motivating enough to want to win like I used to.

Moirean

To be fair, their four know how to navigate Fengard, so there's that...

Ishin

Moirean said:

To be fair, their four know how to navigate Fengard, so there's that...

Map awareness is a dying concept

Moirean

Ishin said:

Moirean said:

To be fair, their four know how to navigate Fengard, so there's that...

Map awareness is a dying concept

Which brings us back to the topic - troop movements rewarded explorer-types, as awareness of terrain, geography and routes was a valued thing. As someone who spends a lot of time learning the lay of the land, I was able to do stuff like a secret secondary capture chain through Duiran's territory (I sent them thank you flowers) to surprise BL in the Mhojave - using what you know in creative ways like that is really FUN and creates memories/stories you retain for a long time.

Serrice

Ishin said:

Moirean said:

To be fair, their four know how to navigate Fengard, so there's that...

Map awareness is a dying concept

I remember I was so proud that I could navigate areas in Lusternia by memory, before there was a fancy map that showed up on screen and everything was from experience and reading the maps online that Caffrey (bless his cartographic soul) made.

Ilyon

Hmm, let's see.

• The system needs to be 100% opt-in, and even more importantly, the system needs to -feel- like it's 100% opt-in. This is going to be very hard, but it is crucial - every war system I've seen to date has failed because of this; people would feel pressured to participate, eventually they'd burn out and stop logging in, which is a terrible outcome.
• The target objectives need to not be cities. It's perfectly possible to make city assaults fun for the attackers, but next to impossible to do the same for the defending side (especially the non-participating members). Villages are fine, so are forts, areas, random holes in the ground, whatever, just not cities.
• The system needs to prevent the "snowballing" effect - that is, it needs to be essentially impossible to either take all the war objectives, or to hold them for any extended amount of time.
• PK needs to matter. Troops and whatnot are all nice and good, but when we have all these PK-oriented skills and artifacts, we want to be actually using them. This was the aspect of the old system that I personally rather disliked - you could win every PvP encounter ever, yet still lose solely because of NPC troop numbers.
• Generally, people will only run attacks when they have a significant advantage (unless bored, I guess). This is realistic, but not very interesting/fun. This behavior needs to be somehow discouraged. Unfortunately this somewhat clashes with the previous point.
• The times of engagement need to not be prohibitively long - some players may be willing to stay logged in for 20 hours, but this should not be the decisive factor, nor a requirement for winning.
• If you do end up incorporating troops or a similar concept, it needs to be strategic enough to be possible to win even against superior numbers - otherwise you just turn the system into some variation of "who starts recruiting first", which is not interesting.
• Strategic aspects - terrain modifiers sound interesting, but I am rather skeptical about their practicality, as the areas have never been built with such use in mind, and they mostly aren't diverse enough to allow such functionality to emerge organically. So if you do add a factor like this (and if you do troops, then you should), I'd prefer for these factors to be in player control. For example, instead of relying on terrains, we could build one of X different structure types in each room, each granting a different type of functionality, bonus, or the like.

Yeah, it's a big list, sorry :frowning:

Irruel

There are all different kinds of fights in muds. 1 vs 1, small team vs small team, large v large, attackers vs entrenched defenders. Chaotic brawls where large teams end up spread out across the area (these are generally pretty funny). The list could go on and on.

Try to include as many types into the war system as possible. How can you design situations that will require/encourage different types of fighting?

• Introducing chaos to the environment will introduce chaos to the skirmish. This might be a moving objective, aggressive mobs, unstable environments making player coordination more difficult, etc.
  
• Small teams can be encouraged when there are multiple goals to be achieved simultaneously.
  
• Players with less pk ability can still participate in the pvp environment if it is not normal pvp. If two people try to fight in the arbothia mansion, for example, and one is a chronic basher while the other is top tier pvper - who will win? I remember using Zsarachnor to help me kill someone I was never able to kill in a duel. Also that room in the Dun fortress that causes huge amounts of damage - I once noose-trapped it, ran into the room and incinerated a few seconds after the trap was sprung.
  

Aishia

Ah @Moirean you can pull my candelabra any day.

Jensen

I really like the strategic point capture in the company of heroes series. You could divy up areas by size type and give each a set of point capture rooms. IE a small territory might have 1 point that is randomly placed when war is declared, but a large territory might have 4-5 that are randomly placed when a war is declared. You would then need to scout the region for the strategic points and then capture them to take the territory.

Haven

Cosmetic and story-driven or go home!

I'd like to see a permanent 5th city installed alongside the War system to serve as the wild card to engage players and break up the status quo from time to time. It would be NPC-run, the Dreikathi come to mind as occupants, so that war may always be an option. There were times where war was back to back to back or where one side clearly did not want to engage the other. I think a 5th "target" for players to challenge would help alleviate some of the "grief" aspect the war system may bring.

I'd also like for cities to gain the ability to set up outposts in an area that allows them to influence the region in some way.

Alongside the war-system, I'd like to see a "peace" system in place to occupy cities during the off-time. Clear long-term benefits to having peace but make it game-line. An example of what I mean would be like...a morale or an influence bar or something per region. Constant war would cause instability in some places and unrest, risking uprisings or revolts or something. Likewise, during peace time there should be options to enhance what you've got somehow. For example, let's say each city got a mechanic to construct something symbolic to their theme. Like Bloodloch gained the ability to set up Blood banks(let's pretend they do something), during wartime the quality of such and the benefits it may be lower than peace time. Regardless of what the mechanic is, it should allow cities to try and figure out a proper balance between war and peace.

Not only that but I disagree with those that say 'total domination' shouldn't be possible. It should exist but it should be considerably difficult to maintain for prolong periods of time. If a city should achieve a feat, during 'peace' time they should have a lot on their hands to handle considering the 'vast' different cultures that would be under their flag and banner. Make peace just as exciting and engaging as war. There's a whole untapped potential to the city ministries too in my opinion. The "peace" system could help enhance the Ambassador seat, the Development and trade seats, etc. It could leave room for quests and what have you for city officials to engage in with the NPCs of the world depending on position. So it's not all between players.

My two cents anyway.