Are contested totems the best way for land control

[mrcalhou]

I'll start this off by saying that I have no idea what-so-ever a contested totem will entail being; however, with the way totems are currently set-up, I'm going to extrapolate that contested totems will be a way for limiting player involvement with the game world.

What I mean by this is that currently we are only allowed to build and terraform on land that is under influence from a totem that is owned by us or our tribe. As far as I'm concerned, that's fine with the way things are currently set-up (though I'm not a fan of them being able to be placed over non-floral resource nodes), but I do not think that "contested totems" should act like this. I think that in places where land and resources are openly contested, then terraforming and building should likewise be open.

Instead of saying "no," the developers should make it so that buildings and terraforming can be undone, but also be protected from being undone. This could be something as simple as increasing the amount of time and resources it takes to terraform to giving buildings enough hitpoints that it'd take a single person, or a few people, quite a bit of time to take a building down. Likewise we should be able to build defensive structures, such as archery towers, to defend our buildings.

[NorCalGooey]

I saw contested totems take up double the space of your original totem per member. With that being said, people will know going into it that the work they do on the contested area may very well be for nothing if it is indeed stolen in the end.

However, original totems must not ever be able to be taken over.

There should be a system for warfare within the main tribal zone and positive/negative consequences for winning/losing the battle, but the original tribe should never lose their hard work capital city. That's just asking for people to quit.

I love the idea of spawning back at the original totem as to not encourage tribes to put expansion totems too far away. So yeah, I say let the tribe area just be a bit bigger for expansion totems.

[ColonelTEE3]

I saw contested totems take up double the space of your original totem per member. With that being said, people will know going into it that the work they do on the contested area may very well be for nothing if it is indeed stolen in the end.

However, original totems must not ever be able to be taken over.

There should be a system for warfare within the main tribal zone and positive/negative consequences for winning/losing the battle, but the original tribe should never lose their hard work capital city. That's just asking for people to quit.

I love the idea of spawning back at the original totem as to not encourage tribes to put expansion totems too far away. So yeah, I say let the tribe area just be a bit bigger for expansion totems.

What a worthless warfare system that would be.

The whole point of a Conquest feature is that... you know... things get conquered. People will lose their land if they dont fight for it. Get used to that idea. I can attest to its success in Darkfall and others can attest to it's success in other mmos. I personally was involved in the manual building of a huge city in Darkfall, at launch of EU server, called kvitstein. The first two or three weeks all any of the 30 of my guild did was build that city. Eventually we just gave it up, and i had to accept the fact that something i wrought with my hands and time was taken from me. Its happened over and over. The only people in that game that cry about losing their land are the ones who deserve to lose it.

This system is counter balanced by the community itself. In darkfall, when a small guild with a small plot of land got sieged by a large clan with a zerg of members, the server knew about it, and many, many times, the server would respond in defense of the small guild against the zerg. There is a big public relations penalty for zerging down small clans with their own little properties in darkfall and id bet it would happen here too.

Nothing would be a greater disappointment than a conquest system where nothing is conquered.

[ColonelTEE3]

edit: response to OP

I very much support a system where things can be built outside of tribe territory, have a large number of hitpoints and require a significant time investment from players to burn it down or raze it to the ground. Asset destruction is a good way of provoking conflict and adding some color to the game. I feel like it would be a more immersive game if we could do things like build towers outside our land as outposts, at the risk of it being destroyed if we lost control over it.

[MrDDT]

I saw contested totems take up double the space of your original totem per member. With that being said, people will know going into it that the work they do on the contested area may very well be for nothing if it is indeed stolen in the end.

However, original totems must not ever be able to be taken over.

There should be a system for warfare within the main tribal zone and positive/negative consequences for winning/losing the battle, but the original tribe should never lose their hard work capital city. That's just asking for people to quit.

I love the idea of spawning back at the original totem as to not encourage tribes to put expansion totems too far away. So yeah, I say let the tribe area just be a bit bigger for expansion totems.

What the heck are you talking about, why would anyone want that system? Areas that shouldnt be taken over are only the starting areas, the rest should be free game.

People quit for a lot of reasons, I tell you right now if they were to change it to the way you were talking tons of people wouldnt even start. You need to protect the lands you built.
Back on topic to the OP.

Yes the whole point of totems is to prevent people from messing up your lands, and giving tribes a place to work without being "greifed". What Im talking about is where, one night someone comes in and covers over your whole junk pile, or cuts all your trees down, or digs holes all over your land.

All totems will be contestable. If you want to keep it, then make friends, or have a good defense. Another option is to build it where people wont want it or find you.
I expect (hope and pray) that taking a totem will be long and hard, not something that a few people can do in a few hours. Because it takes many people many hours of hard work to put them up. It should take 10x or more effort to take down a totem area fully than it does to fully put one up IMO.
But if the resources/location/want is great enough people will do it. People shouldnt be attacking other totems often just for the thrill of it. It should be a planned hard choice.

[orious13]

I would assume expansion totems would not have the "safety" portion of the original totems in that they can be conquered at all times without much notice, but have a higher amount of hit points so that you aren't going to have to sit around 24 hours to protect it, but the attackers must initiate the "capture" sequence that will turn it into "holding the territory" until the time limit is down if they wanted to steal it. <--obviously some of this is just my idea haha.

Conquest should allow for all totems to be taken, but that won't happen until after prelude.

[ColonelTEE3]

edit to add to the discussion:

@Orious: I know none of this will happen until after prelude and i agree that whatever system gets implemented, it should (and probably most likely will) require at least a full day to take a totem away from a tribe. This would give the tribe enough notification to spread the word, prepare for defenses, contact allies, alert the server etc. All of this has been seen by many players from previous games. No one likes 2 AM ninja sieges.

[Jadzia]

I saw contested totems take up double the space of your original totem per member. With that being said, people will know going into it that the work they do on the contested area may very well be for nothing if it is indeed stolen in the end.

However, original totems must not ever be able to be taken over.

There should be a system for warfare within the main tribal zone and positive/negative consequences for winning/losing the battle, but the original tribe should never lose their hard work capital city. That's just asking for people to quit.

I love the idea of spawning back at the original totem as to not encourage tribes to put expansion totems too far away. So yeah, I say let the tribe area just be a bit bigger for expansion totems.

The system they plan sounds similar.

- Tribes choosing to become warring on non-warring, not as an on / off switch but as a permanent or difficult to reverse decision, likely based on tribal actions.
- Warring tribes would be able to conquer and raid others, but they will also become susceptible to war. Non warring tribes would keep their area safe, but don’t gain the ability to raid or conquer other tribes.
- Both warring and non-warring tribes could claim resources that would be up for contest by both types of tribes.
- Some expansion zones being open to more conquest without safe zones, while in others tribes would retain the choice to war or not.

[Dubanka]

if a warring/non warring setting is put in place, there should be obvious and major advantages and disadavantages to each.

because of the abuseable nature of any 'safe' setting, the non warring tribes should be very limited in where they can build on the map

one of the major pitfalls of shadowbane, in its early couple years, was the amount of time/gold/energy it took to build a city (weeks, 10-20+ million, lots) relative to the amount to rip one down (1-6 hours, 1-5 million, a bit). the crushing loss of pixel investment was enough to send people packingw hen they lost their city.
- warring tribes: architecture costs -50%

there need to be resources that are only claimable by warring tribes. Why? Another shadowbane example: The corruption server had stagnated as a large portion of it had moved off to other games/servers. Upon OCC's (vd) return all of the expansion mines (the ones that produce the rare materials required for making high end weapons) had been claimed and ranked (ranking made them produce more, and much harder to take down) by the dominant guild on the server (at that time). We began a process to attrit their forces, by deranking their mines and by constant banes (asset destruction battles). Despite this guild fielding double our numbers, through the near constant press we were able to break their hold on the server. It was the press against both their claimed assets and their owned assets that allowed this to happen. If we were not able to attack their cities, we would likely never have been able to take down their mines. Broken of the stagnation, the server rebounded and was very active from a population and pvp standpoint. POINT: asset invulnerability is a bad thing. In a competetive environment their needs to be escalatable recourse to an event. 'HAHA you cant do anything to me because is zerged the hell out of this resource LOL' is bad for gameplay.

and i don't believe they have a plan. They have some ideas. Really hope in creating a plan they listen to the people who are adept at, and enjoy, the territorial control/asset war aspect of the game, and not so heavily to those who would do everything in their 'power' to diminish and dilute it.

[mrcalhou]

if a warring/non warring setting is put in place, there should be obvious and major advantages and disadavantages to each.

because of the abuseable nature of any 'safe' setting, the non warring tribes should be very limited in where they can build on the map

one of the major pitfalls of shadowbane, in its early couple years, was the amount of time/gold/energy it took to build a city (weeks, 10-20+ million, lots) relative to the amount to rip one down (1-6 hours, 1-5 million, a bit). the crushing loss of pixel investment was enough to send people packingw hen they lost their city.
- warring tribes: architecture costs -50%

there need to be resources that are only claimable by warring tribes. Why? Another shadowbane example: The corruption server had stagnated as a large portion of it had moved off to other games/servers. Upon OCC's (vd) return all of the expansion mines (the ones that produce the rare materials required for making high end weapons) had been claimed and ranked (ranking made them produce more, and much harder to take down) by the dominant guild on the server (at that time). We began a process to attrit their forces, by deranking their mines and by constant banes (asset destruction battles). Despite this guild fielding double our numbers, through the near constant press we were able to break their hold on the server. It was the press against both their claimed assets and their owned assets that allowed this to happen. If we were not able to attack their cities, we would likely never have been able to take down their mines. Broken of the stagnation, the server rebounded and was very active from a population and pvp standpoint. POINT: asset invulnerability is a bad thing. In a competetive environment their needs to be escalatable recourse to an event. 'HAHA you cant do anything to me because is zerged the hell out of this resource LOL' is bad for gameplay.

and i don't believe they have a plan. They have some ideas. Really hope in creating a plan they listen to the people who are adept at, and enjoy, the territorial control/asset war aspect of the game, and not so heavily to those who would do everything in their 'power' to diminish and dilute it.

I think this is an excellent post. I'm not against players being safe, but there has to be some consequence to it. One of the reasons Eve is doing so well is because those developers knew that making some of the universe safe would encourage more people to play it. At the same time, those players are very limited in where they can build and the resources they can acquire. And those safe players can always choose to move into the unsafe areas whenever they want to and vice-versa. It greatly increases a player's choice of activities.