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.

[Dubanka]

memory failed me, fact check, server was vindication, not corruption...not that it matters.

[Malivius]

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.

This system is the one that's always worked best. The same system has been used for two decades almost and it's still the best. I still play a text-based MUD (that I've played since 1995) that has three types of areas...LPK (Lawful - Safe), NPK (Neutral - PK, but no loot), and CPK (Chaotic - FFA PVP w/ Full Loot). The best resources are always in the CPK areas! It works!

[goodayve]

I thought about this some, and at first I was thinking I would feel pretty bad if someone took over the place i had spent many hours building. And I guess I would feel bad if they just took it over and destroyed everything, but that would be their choice. If it was made well you could hope they might keep it how it is with just a few changes.

What it would do would give you a chance to go and build something in a new place, maybe far from your old place.

If totems were contested I think it would be good maybe that if one was taken over, the new owners should not be able to destory anything maybe for a whole week. Giving the previous owner a chance to retake it without it being destroyed.

[Dubanka]

I thought about this some, and at first I was thinking I would feel pretty bad if someone took over the place i had spent many hours building. And I guess I would feel bad if they just took it over and destroyed everything, but that would be their choice. If it was made well you could hope they might keep it how it is with just a few changes.

What it would do would give you a chance to go and build something in a new place, maybe far from your old place.

If totems were contested I think it would be good maybe that if one was taken over, the new owners should not be able to destory anything maybe for a whole week. Giving the previous owner a chance to retake it without it being destroyed.

a remodel timer on a captured totem :)

of course, that would jsut mean if i was going out to destroy your stuff i just wouldnt actually capture yhour totem until i'd leveled your city ...but taht would give you more time try to to stop me....since that should take a long time.

[Hanover]

memory failed me, fact check, server was vindication, not corruption...not that it matters.

Vindication was an abortion (Loreplay) ;)

[goodayve]

a remodel timer on a captured totem :)

of course, that would jsut mean if i was going out to destroy your stuff i just wouldnt actually capture yhour totem until i'd leveled your city ...but taht would give you more time try to to stop me....since that should take a long time.

Yea, but they wouldnt be able to teraform anything during the time. I dont know how everything is planned to work, I guess you will probably be able to destory peoples walls and buildings.

[NorCalGooey]

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.

Take a look at what you said and realize that will never come to fruition.

So since Hopi is 3x bigger than our tribe what if they turned out to be evil and could take over our totem and 100s of hours of work we put into our lands?

Get real, only expansion totems will be the only totems able to be conquered.

Otherwise they will have no player base. If you don't get that you don't get anything.


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.

Again you are wrong. You are creating a game that has mega tribes and nothing else. So if I the tribe is not online and attackers get on at 4am and capture 100s of hours of work...you honestly believe that this tribe is going to all go pick a new location and spend 100s more hours only to have the same thing happen again. you need to think logically. Hell, even those hardcore homesteaders might not restart.

Sorry but this isn't how the game will end up working. Expansion totems and all land that comes with said expansion totems will be capture able but not the first totem ever placed by the tribe.

get a grip you obviously have no clue how to develop a game and hold a player base. good luck getting even 100s of players to play this game with all totems capture able.

[Hanover]

get a grip you obviously have no clue how to develop a game and hold a player base. good luck getting even 100s of players to play this game with all totems capture able.

So why not go play the SIMS? Good luck getting a 100 people to play now!

[dezgard]

Try and keep it constructive guys.

Thank you
Dezgard

[NorCalGooey]

I meant if the game was fully working everything implemented kick ass combat system...but everything capture able, there still wouldn't be a chance of anyone playing. Unless it was tribe of 500 players vs tribe of 500 players but in a system like that it's inevitable that mega tribes own the game but no one wants to be forced into a huge tribe or to go live on hermit hill...some people like the middle ground

Why play the SIMS? If i want to design a house I'll use CAD software.

And back to the totem thing, I shouldn't have to make this game my whole life just so I can keep my invested hours from going down the drain...(aka play round the clock and have a large tribe just to protect the totem from losing everyone in the tribes invested time)

that is turning the game from play to work

[Hanover]

I meant if the game was fully working everything implemented kick ass combat system...but everything capture able, there still wouldn't be a chance of anyone playing

I don't remember electing you to speak on our (my) behalf. Some of us would like nothing more, that's why we're here.

[Jadzia]

I meant if the game was fully working everything implemented kick ass combat system...but everything capture able, there still wouldn't be a chance of anyone playing. Unless it was tribe of 500 players vs tribe of 500 players but in a system like that it's inevitable that mega tribes own the game but no one wants to be forced into a huge tribe or to go live on hermit hill...some people like the middle ground

Why play the SIMS? If i want to design a house I'll use CAD software.

And back to the totem thing, I shouldn't have to make this game my whole life just so I can keep my invested hours from going down the drain...(aka play round the clock and have a large tribe just to protect the totem from losing everyone in the tribes invested time.

Absolutely agree. Force a wargame on people and you will get empty server. But Jordi already said he won't force us into it, so why these worries...

[NorCalGooey]

hardly anyone would want that.

you're dreaming if you think they're will be an unlimited number of captureable totems for one tribe.

okay. so i guess you are someone. sorry for hurtings your feelings.

there wouldn't be a chance of very many people playing, which in itself kills the fun. if there as 10,000 players running around xsyon even in it's current state everyone would be a lot damn happier about the unimplemented features and broken gameplay

[Hanover]

Absolutely agree. Force a wargame on people and you will get empty server. But Jordi already said he won't force us into it, so why these worries...

Funny how things change... Isn't the server empty now?

[Jadzia]

Funny how things change... Isn't the server empty now?

Its not. Right now I'm chatting with 6 other people in hearing range.

[NorCalGooey]

Absolutely agree. Force a wargame on people and you will get empty server. But Jordi already said he won't force us into it, so why these worries...

Just some people talking about fully capturable land. I say 1 safe totem from land capture (the most invested hours into the land will more than likely be the original totem) and the rest are fair game. Maybe it would cost a lot of materials to build expansion totems but have a large number of expansion totems allowed per tribe. Maybe dependent on member count as to how many exp. totems a tribe can have.

But perhaps the main totem can be captured and for an hour or so the opposing tribe gets full looting privaleges...as much as they can carry, however they still must be able to fight off the defenders while looting during the 1 hour period.

[mrcalhou]

Just some people talking about fully capturable land. I say 1 safe totem from land capture (the most invested hours into the land will more than likely be the original totem) and the rest are fair game. Maybe it would cost a lot of materials to build expansion totems but have a large number of expansion totems allowed per tribe. Maybe dependent on member count as to how many exp. totems a tribe can have.

But perhaps the main totem can be captured and for an hour or so the opposing tribe gets full looting privaleges...as much as they can carry, however they still must be able to fight off the defenders while looting during the 1 hour period.

I agree with the basis of this statement, except that I would propose that the only limitation to the number of expansion totems would be the tribes ability to maintain them via some sort of upkeep, and the ability of the tribe to defend them. Personally I'd rather them do away completely with the concept of an expansion totem and allow players to build structures wherever in the counquerable lands.

The game is already divided up into zones, what I think they should do is having the areas we have now be like they are. Tribes can set up totems wherever, but they cannot be sieged, then the land around this area should be a buffer zone where buildings cannot be placed, not can tribes lay down a totem. And finally, the land on the outside should be free game for anyone, anywhere with little to no restrictions on terraforming or building, except if there are dungeons/cave systems in which case there should be ability to build right on top of it (to prevent anyone from entering it).

[Hanover]

Its not. Right now I'm chatting with 6 other people in hearing range.

Thanks for proving my point! Anyway, you may find things need to change to make this game viable.

[Jadzia]

Anyway, you may find things need to change to make this game viable.
With that I totally agree. Just not with things which would make it worse. But I hope they will find a proper solution.

[NorCalGooey]

Yup and adding warfare and conquerable land is one of those changes. But not all land conquerable. I still don't see much of a point to that though if the combat system (twitch and spam) isn't any fun.

[mrcalhou]

With that I totally agree. Just not with things which would make it worse. But I hope they will find a proper solution.


I'm sorry Jadzia, but the way you want this game will surely kill. You know why there's only 6 people in your area? Becuase there is no point to anything. The game isn't balanced at all. What people like myself are suggesting are ways to balance the game and have it cater to many different playing styles.

I'll agree with you that having the entire game world conquerable would be a bad idea; but this game has NO CONTENT. Nothing to do that has any challenge.

[Haphazard]

Obviously, there needs to be mechanics put in place which will allow a well-organized defender to defend his totem against long odds. It should be difficult and expensive to conquer a totem, and cheap and fairly easy to defend. There needs to be anti-zerg mechanics in place which limit the advantage of numbers.

In Shadowbane (sorry to keep bringing it up) there was kind of a minimum number of folks needed to successfully defend and/or attack a city. Once you had about 20 folks, you could pretty much run the defense against just about twice your numbers fairly easily. Less than 20, and it could get a little dicey.

Without a solid group combat system in place, its hard to say how that might be accomplished.

Having surveyed the various defensive systems in place by folks, I can say that having walls and a gate system is going to protect most cities from attack. Right now there is no mechanic for breaching a gate or wall, but its pretty easy to put stuff in place and play with those stats to make it proper.

The timing of sieges is another issue which will need to be dealt with carefully. No one likes 4 AM sieges and ninja captures.

I am excited that this discussion can finally be had so that we can actually get some "Play" in this game.

[NorCalGooey]

Calhou we all agree with tribe warfare and conquerable land just not the original totem being conquerable. We need the ability to conquer and a fun PvP system or the rest was just for show.

[mrcalhou]

Calhou we all agree with tribe warfare and conquerable land just not the original totem being conquerable. We need the ability to conquer and a fun PvP system or the rest was just for show.

I don't think the original totem should be conquerable either. I also don't think a tribe should be allowed to place their original totem anywhere in the game world either. I would advocate a more Eve-like balance rather than a Darkfall balance. But I'm just surprised it hasn't occured to the developer that allowing people to place safezones wherever they want wouldn't have an abusable consequence. It baffels me.

Edit: What I mean by Eve-like balance is a progressive system of increased danger, increased rewards, increased ability of players to own territory, and decreased pvp penalties. Rather than Darkfall-like, which is homogenously dangerous but all resources can be found everywhere.

[Hanover]

I still don't see much of a point to that though if the combat system (twitch and spam) isn't any fun.

I'd settle for the current system to work. :( (sync/warp)

[Jadzia]

I'm sorry Jadzia, but the way you want this game will surely kill. You know why there's only 6 people in your area? Becuase there is no point to anything. The game isn't balanced at all. What people like myself are suggesting are ways to balance the game and have it cater to many different playing styles.

I'll agree with you that having the entire game world conquerable would be a bad idea; but this game has NO CONTENT. Nothing to do that has any challenge.
Do you know how I'd like the game work ? Probably you don't :) Funny thing is that my ideal game is very close to yours. I prefer the Eve style system just like you, but less restrictions for the safe areas, more of a fair game for everyone. Add some rare resources to the PvP areas, rare recipes to be found only there, double the result of gathering there and there you go.

[mrcalhou]

Do you know how I'd like the game work ? Probably you don't :) Funny thing is that my ideal game is very close to yours. I prefer the Eve style system just like you, but less restrictions for the safe areas, more of a fair game for everyone. Add some rare resources to the PvP areas, rare recipes to be found only there, double the result of gathering there and there you go.

In which case I made a mistake in my interpretation of your posts.

[MrDDT]

I meant if the game was fully working everything implemented kick ass combat system...but everything capture able, there still wouldn't be a chance of anyone playing. Unless it was tribe of 500 players vs tribe of 500 players but in a system like that it's inevitable that mega tribes own the game but no one wants to be forced into a huge tribe or to go live on hermit hill...some people like the middle ground

Why play the SIMS? If i want to design a house I'll use CAD software.

And back to the totem thing, I shouldn't have to make this game my whole life just so I can keep my invested hours from going down the drain...(aka play round the clock and have a large tribe just to protect the totem from losing everyone in the tribes invested time)

that is turning the game from play to work


A tribe of 500 wouldnt pick on a homestead unless that homestead was in a vital location or had a rare resource. In which case they would have to move yes.
It happens in other games I dont know why you think it wouldnt happen here.
Darkfall, Wurm, EVE, Shadowbane.

If a small homestead is going to pick a spot that is highly contested, then they need to make friends, or play very well.
I dont know why you think it would take a tribe of 500 to fend off an attacking tribe of 500. If it takes 10x longer take out a city than it does to build it why would you need to have even numbers?

No one said for you to make this your whole life. Where are you getting that from? If you have a tribe that vest time in the game then you wouldnt need to be on round the clock. You are not making much sense.


Absolutely agree. Force a wargame on people and you will get empty server. But Jordi already said he won't force us into it, so why these worries...

Mind getting me that link? I cant seem to find it.

Last I checked they were removing safe areas after prelude. Has this changed?

[orious13]

Last I checked they were removing safe areas after prelude. Has this changed?

With the whole server thing at launch, words got a little jumbled. The post she's referring to is probably the one on the first page of this thread that she quoted.

The only way for that to work well to me is if there is an EvE-like system....I guess it's fine to call it that.

[ocoma]

Xsyon is not a pure pvp game and is indeed trying to be attractive to both the avid pvper as well as the pure crafter and "carebear" types. I agree that Eve's system of "mostly" safe but limited zones progressing to no security highly valuable zones is probably the best way to work that.

There is a very important point most if not all of you seem to be missing.

There are over 1600 zones and we only have access to about 110 atm. If all the lands we can build in right now end up being the equivalent of Eve's high security "safe zones" that comes out to less then 7% of the total landmass. Even then all the land not totem protected is still FFA and full loot(btw pouches and bins need to not have magical locks on them). Catering to both the pvper and carebear is a very hard balancing act.

You people are not thinking long term. 7% safezone is NOTHING so long as the rest of the land ends up having resources and content not found in the safe areas and highly sought after.

[Jadzia]

Mind getting me that link? I cant seem to find it.

Last I checked they were removing safe areas after prelude. Has this changed?
Yes, it has changed. Check out the Xsyon Update Archive thread, March 5 update from Jordi.

[Hanover]

Yes, it has changed. Check out the Xsyon Update Archive thread, March 5 update from Jordi.

That hardly sounds definitive. "What I imagine is"

[Dubanka]

Absolutely agree. Force a wargame on people and you will get empty server. But Jordi already said he won't force us into it, so why these worries...

i'm not sure why this position is still getting repeated....as recent history has proven it false.

currently, you have most of the game you, and those multitudes you claim to represent, desire.
- You can craft a multitude of objects.
- You can build towns to a high degree of detail.
- You can forage for raw materials.
- You do not have to participate in any non-consensual pvp (due to safe zones and most of the pvprs not playing)
- What is missing for you (please correct me if im wrong): more stuff to craft, more stuff to build, more territory to explore, more features (mining, farming, taming, etc.)

I think a lot of people actually thought they bought into this model, untill they had to play it....and then they realized something. All the features in the world, no matter how brilliantlly implimented, are of absolutely no value unless there is a point to them.
- You can craft a multitude of objects - But they have no utility, so no value, so no one cares how good your items on, so whats the point in making them?
- You can build towns to a high degree of detail - Walls that don't protect or keep people out, houses that don't house, gates that dont exist - there is no point in improving your tribal lands except for the improvement itself
- You can forage for raw materials - Mundane on its best day...but since there is no scarcity, there is no value on materials. Everything you need is right outside your backdoor. No need to fight, or trade for anything because you can get it yourself.
- You do not have to participate in any non-consensual pvp (due to safe zones and most of the pvprs not playing) - many have posted that they were looking forward to the thrill of the unanticipated spat. FUBAR mechanics notwithstanding, the complete lack of the threat of agression has made gathering activity a yawner, where it once was something you took a very high risk in doing alone.

You have your game now, or at least most of it. Players have voted with their feet and walked. I truly hope the devs turn to a vision that incorporates the pve vision as a component of a larger concept, not as the sole core gameplay element. The players need a point, the activity itself is not enough of one. Players need risk, with an element of fear, because it creates an environment that encourages group play, and group dynamics. Players need conflict...diplomatic, resource, trade, and armed...because that is what drives a game. Conflict creates drama which creates need, which creates a point...A reason to log in and do something in support of your group or against another.

Time to rewind a bit. Vision A: net players- ~50 active. whatever vision B is, it can't do much worse.

[Malivius]

i'm not sure why this position is still getting repeated....as recent history has proven it false.

currently, you have most of the game you, and those multitudes you claim to represent, desire.
- You can craft a multitude of objects.
- You can build towns to a high degree of detail.
- You can forage for raw materials.
- You do not have to participate in any non-consensual pvp (due to safe zones and most of the pvprs not playing)
- What is missing for you (please correct me if im wrong): more stuff to craft, more stuff to build, more territory to explore, more features (mining, farming, taming, etc.)

I think a lot of people actually thought they bought into this model, untill they had to play it....and then they realized something. All the features in the world, no matter how brilliantlly implimented, are of absolutely no value unless there is a point to them.
- You can craft a multitude of objects - But they have no utility, so no value, so no one cares how good your items on, so whats the point in making them?
- You can build towns to a high degree of detail - Walls that don't protect or keep people out, houses that don't house, gates that dont exist - there is no point in improving your tribal lands except for the improvement itself
- You can forage for raw materials - Mundane on its best day...but since there is no scarcity, there is no value on materials. Everything you need is right outside your backdoor. No need to fight, or trade for anything because you can get it yourself.
- You do not have to participate in any non-consensual pvp (due to safe zones and most of the pvprs not playing) - many have posted that they were looking forward to the thrill of the unanticipated spat. FUBAR mechanics notwithstanding, the complete lack of the threat of agression has made gathering activity a yawner, where it once was something you took a very high risk in doing alone.

You have your game now, or at least most of it. Players have voted with their feet and walked. I truly hope the devs turn to a vision that incorporates the pve vision as a component of a larger concept, not as the sole core gameplay element. The players need a point, the activity itself is not enough of one. Players need risk, with an element of fear, because it creates an environment that encourages group play, and group dynamics. Players need conflict...diplomatic, resource, trade, and armed...because that is what drives a game. Conflict creates drama which creates need, which creates a point...A reason to log in and do something in support of your group or against another.

Time to rewind a bit. Vision A: net players- ~50 active. whatever vision B is, it can't do much worse.

Gotta agree here...I was proving a point to a friend earlier (who loves the way things are right now - no PvP, no risk, etc).

I stayed logged in today for 4.5 hours...until the server crashed. I was in plain sight, near the lake, no tribal area around... I was wearing a full bone set and had an unlocked bag of stuff. Beside me were two baskets with tools and supplies in them...both unlocked.

My character stood there for 4.5 hours while I worked, did chores, etc around the house...NO ONE ever even came close enough for me to see, much less pose a threat to me...

[Jadzia]

No, Dub, its not the game we signed for (yet). As you said, nothing has a purpose now. There are no rare recipes, rare resources. Armors and weapons have hardly any use (they could be used in PvE too if animals were working). Buildings should have a use too, they should stop item decay and give us comfort. Crafting needs purposes, but these purposes are not necessarily PvP oriented. We need reason to trade and to craft, if items and buildings have uses and item decay gets implemented then the economy will start to work.

Warfare will be a lot of fun for a lot of people. But there are a lot who don't want to participate in it. All we need it is to make it optional, so people can choose. The option they seem to choose (warring-nonwarring tribes) is not the best imo, but better than a forced wargame. An Eve style system would be WAY better. The ones who want warfare settle down in the PvP area, the ones who want peace settle down in the safe area. Everyone gets what they like and what they paid for.

[Hanover]

i'm not sure why this position is still getting repeated....as recent history has proven it false.

currently, you have most of the game you, and those multitudes you claim to represent, desire.
- You can craft a multitude of objects.
- You can build towns to a high degree of detail.
- You can forage for raw materials.
- You do not have to participate in any non-consensual pvp (due to safe zones and most of the pvprs not playing)
- What is missing for you (please correct me if im wrong): more stuff to craft, more stuff to build, more territory to explore, more features (mining, farming, taming, etc.)

I think a lot of people actually thought they bought into this model, untill they had to play it....and then they realized something. All the features in the world, no matter how brilliantlly implimented, are of absolutely no value unless there is a point to them.
- You can craft a multitude of objects - But they have no utility, so no value, so no one cares how good your items on, so whats the point in making them?
- You can build towns to a high degree of detail - Walls that don't protect or keep people out, houses that don't house, gates that dont exist - there is no point in improving your tribal lands except for the improvement itself
- You can forage for raw materials - Mundane on its best day...but since there is no scarcity, there is no value on materials. Everything you need is right outside your backdoor. No need to fight, or trade for anything because you can get it yourself.
- You do not have to participate in any non-consensual pvp (due to safe zones and most of the pvprs not playing) - many have posted that they were looking forward to the thrill of the unanticipated spat. FUBAR mechanics notwithstanding, the complete lack of the threat of agression has made gathering activity a yawner, where it once was something you took a very high risk in doing alone.

You have your game now, or at least most of it. Players have voted with their feet and walked. I truly hope the devs turn to a vision that incorporates the pve vision as a component of a larger concept, not as the sole core gameplay element. The players need a point, the activity itself is not enough of one. Players need risk, with an element of fear, because it creates an environment that encourages group play, and group dynamics. Players need conflict...diplomatic, resource, trade, and armed...because that is what drives a game. Conflict creates drama which creates need, which creates a point...A reason to log in and do something in support of your group or against another.

Time to rewind a bit. Vision A: net players- ~50 active. whatever vision B is, it can't do much worse.

/applaud :)

[Salvadore]

It is pretty obvious that "happy craft land" is a fail, simply log in and see. There were HUNDREDS of people flocking to these forums and enduring the launch when everything was open. Now, with NOTHING to do but craft, there is hardly anyone logged in to the game or the forums. A portion of those people are also the ones that are "hanging on" hoping the system will be improved pvp-wise. Craft-Land is a proven failure. Face it.

Consider allowing these changes to happen involving tribal warfare. It actually creates politics, an economy, and gives people a reason to log in NIGHTLY.

Losing all of your assets isnt necessarily a "bad" thing. You can always rebuild quite easily with tribe help. You can always re-take your land, that is rightfully yours, BACK! You can even politic to help prevent the loss, or assure the regain. Hell, you can even join another tribe if yours is unwilling to stand up for themselves. The majority of the time, it's the crybaby whiners that say "I QUIT" when they lose and /logout. They are usually the ones that are just looking for a reason to quit anyway...whereas the ones that are actively fighting are who stays constant with activity.

In regards to zerging (whoever said it):

Ive seen a plethora of times where this has happened. Thats what the "politics" forum is used for and in-game relationships are forged. In ALL of the cases (yes, ALL) that ive seen of the uber-zerg attacking the small, the majority of the server polices it. Hell, some even pride themselves on fighting only the zerg type tribes.

Case in point - Hopi (as mentioned earlier). They've already got a super negative reputation simply due to their forum banter. I highly doubt all of the pvp-centric players (whom they've constantly argued with on the forums) would allow them to show up 100v10 to conquer a small tribe. I know, for a fact, that my guys would /log in and try to help the little guy out. Simply assuming the largest guild always wins is simply false, especially if balanced combat mechanics are in game.

Id gladly take 1 elite tribe over 1 huge zerg any day. The whole tribal system seems to prefer the average -> smaller tribes anyway...Being in a huge tribe seems counterproductive.

[Hanover]

But there are a lot who don't want to participate in it..


Oh really...where are these people? I love how you people "speak for the masses".

[Salvadore]

Oh really...where are these people? I love how you people "speak for the masses".

Last I checked, a vast majority have "left" after the launch, when they crafted all they needed to, and saw no hope of improved pvp. A portion of that seems to keep saying the line "Ill check back in a few months...maybe...when pvp is addressed." Rarely do they say "Ill check back later when there is more to build."

Of course, add the ones of their tribes who they are speaking for, multiply that number by...A LOT...

I think it is pretty obvious that the "masses" need pvp/tribal warfare, weather they want to admit it or not!

[Jadzia]

Oh really...where are these people? I love how you people "speak for the masses".

Come on. None of us can prove any numbers, can we ? If you read my post again I said that warfare would be a lot of fun for a lot of people. So I speak both side of the masses.

But what is wrong with giving people choices ? Want to warfare ? Settle in the PvP area. Don't want to ? Then stay in the safe one. Everyone wins.

[Book]

I'm trying to remember, in the EvE system, do people in the safe zone get resources from the unsafe zones by trading with people from the unsafe zone?

What do people from the safe zone have to offer? Is it that the market/currency system allows the trade? Still, what do people in the safe zone have to offer up?

I guess I'm trying to figure out, if the pvp area with special resources and recipes gets implemented... what do people from the safe zone offer the unsafe zones folks for trade?

[Salvadore]

Just a LOL...

Happened to click on Alex Taldren's sig and went to the Hopi website...On the front page is a banner that says:

HOPI POLL

If tribal warfare was implemented, would you want Hopi to be involved?

71% yes
29% no

34 users voted

Even Hopi wants it...LOL

[Trenchfoot]

I always had an image of this game being like American Indian tribes. Like tiny nation states they would control vast areas without the need to occupy the whole expanse of those areas with large settlements.

Placing a totem to contest an area sounds pretty neat on the surface. But I suspect that any area worth contesting will simply be claimed by a sibling tribe using a safe zone totem. For example: Hey man I need you to quit the tribe and plant a safe zone totem over here. We'll name it 'Our Other Tribe.'.

I mean all you really have to do to claim something is to say 'This is ours.', and then proceed to back that statement up or not.

[mrcalhou]

I'm trying to remember, in the EvE system, do people in the safe zone get resources from the unsafe zones by trading with people from the unsafe zone?

What do people from the safe zone have to offer? Is it that the market/currency system allows the trade? Still, what do people in the safe zone have to offer up?

I guess I'm trying to figure out, if the pvp area with special resources and recipes gets implemented... what do people from the safe zone offer the unsafe zones folks for trade?

The resources that can be found in the safer zones are the more common ones. They are also the ones that are used in the most recipies; now those same resources are also found in the less safe areas, but in the unsafe areas there are additional resources and in the lawless areas there are even more different kinds of resources. The market system allows players to trade with anyone provided they are buying and selling within so many systems of where they are located. It's not a universal market, and storage is limited to the particular station.

The biggest thing with Eve is that the game, and the players, continually are cycling through resources because of item destruction. So while one resource might be the most common, it's also in heavy demand. There's a demand for all the resources in Eve, not just one or two.

[MrDDT]

Yes, it has changed. Check out the Xsyon Update Archive thread, March 5 update from Jordi.

Thanks for pointing that out.
I didnt see that, and pretty much is the final straw for me. Its not set in stone, but clearly you can see Jordi is caving into the pressure to make carebear areas for the people that cant understand that safe zones break sandbox games.

I can understand having starter areas that new people can learn in being safe, but having people make a tribe area anywhere they please, then stand in this special place and go "You cant hurt me nanabooboo" is very dumb and I dont even see the point of having tribes that are not like that.
I can see this system being so exploited its laughable. Clearly its not thought out and isnt in game for a reason.

Oh well, not like the game is moving along to where any time soon we can remove safe areas for tribes anyways. Good / Evil system isnt going in place anytime soon, combat is a wreck and I doubt it will be fixed this year.

He should make it just like ATITD, so then all the carebears can find a happy place to build a pointless work of art.

[Jadzia]

I'm trying to remember, in the EvE system, do people in the safe zone get resources from the unsafe zones by trading with people from the unsafe zone?

What do people from the safe zone have to offer? Is it that the market/currency system allows the trade? Still, what do people in the safe zone have to offer up?

I guess I'm trying to figure out, if the pvp area with special resources and recipes gets implemented... what do people from the safe zone offer the unsafe zones folks for trade?

Eve has a currency system so that makes the life easier there. But you are right about this, thats why those rare resources should be something that gives a plus but not required for everyday life.
If the PvP zone works well that means much more PvP there, even inside the tribe areas. So crafting wouldn't be that easy there, fishing would be risky too. Crafted items and food made in the safe area would make good barter items for the rare stuffs.

[Salvadore]

I always had an image of this game being like American Indian tribes. Like tiny nation states they would control vast areas without the need to occupy the whole expanse of those areas with large settlements.

Placing a totem to contest an area sounds pretty neat on the surface. But I suspect that any area worth contesting will simply be claimed by a sibling tribe using a safe zone totem. For example: Hey man I need you to quit the tribe and plant a safe zone totem over here. We'll name it 'Our Other Tribe.'.

I mean all you really have to do to claim something is to say 'This is ours.', and then proceed to back that statement up or not.

This is something I've been thumping since before release - Having a choice between safe/unsafe is a massively exploitable crutch mechanic that enforces no risk/all gain. Hopefully, the Devs will realize this.


Its not set in stone, but clearly you can see Jordi is caving into the pressure to make carebear areas for the people that cant understand that safe zones break sandbox games.


Nicely put. The crafting paradise that IS Xsyon currently is boring. Hopefully they change it.

[Dubanka]

Come on. None of us can prove any numbers, can we ? If you read my post again I said that warfare would be a lot of fun for a lot of people. So I speak both side of the masses.

But what is wrong with giving people choices ? Want to warfare ? Settle in the PvP area. Don't want to ? Then stay in the safe one. Everyone wins.

In theory your position is reasonable...however in practice is just doesn't work...at least not without creating a major distinction in gameplay. In a competitive environment you can not have two groups of players playing by different rules. If you wanted to be a 'safe area tribe' you would have to rely upon warring tribes to bring you goods from those zones. Safe area tribes just could not participate in the metagame of resource capture, and control (yes you can post the jordi though quote all you want...it wont work). Once you get involved in resource competition, the resource is the drive that creates the conflict. the fights around the resource nodes create drama, which creates politics which spurs people friend and to war....because they have something to lose above and beyond the resource itself.

Any type of invulnerability for tribal areas presents an exploit possibility, muling resources on chars between tribes (ie. every 'pvp' tribe will have a peace tribe storage facility) which detracts from the whole point of pvp...which is having a point.

the only concession i think could be made between a 'war' and a peace tribe would be you would not be able to destroy or capture a peace tribes totem...you could seige it, destroy assets (under a seige window) and pillage it's supplies (Again under a seige window), but those tribe members would always be able to wake up at the tribal spot. In return they would not be able to capture any other tribes or expand their territory. they could seige other tribes under the same terms as they can be seiged. Even that is somewhat exploitable, but there reallyisnt much point in doing so...so it wouldnt really matter.

If this game is going to succeed it either needs to go full blown carebear...remove all pvp, and create a massive set of pve options...zombie invasions, mutated grizzly armies, etc. etc...create pve content to drive a story line.

Alternatively, it needs to fully embrace the pvp element as one of the core components of the game (resources-crafting-pvp-territorial control) and move rapidly to create a functional, balanced system that can be used as a base to drive territorial control, which will hopefully drive resource control and crafting.

I don't see the first option working, but I am obviously bias by what i'd like to see, and by what i think the evidence has shown us so far. In either case, time is short...they need to make up their collective mind on what they want to be when they grow up and get to steppin.

[MrDDT]

Come on. None of us can prove any numbers, can we ? If you read my post again I said that warfare would be a lot of fun for a lot of people. So I speak both side of the masses.

But what is wrong with giving people choices ? Want to warfare ? Settle in the PvP area. Don't want to ? Then stay in the safe one. Everyone wins.


Anyone can see that making safe zones outside of the set starting ones can cause major problems in this game.

Take EVE online. If you had places where people could put a "safe zone" the ECON in EVE would be jacked up so bad.
Worse in Xsyon is its not even a full safe zone, its a "You cant attack members here but we can attack you here". Which means you step into the wrong spot and BAM you are going to die with ZERO chance of killing them because they are "SAFE". "Im touching base, you cant hurt me" is a flipping joke.

[Salvadore]

If this game is going to succeed it either needs to go full blown carebear...remove all pvp, and create a massive set of pve options...zombie invasions, mutated grizzly armies, etc. etc...create pve content to drive a story line.

Alternatively, it needs to fully embrace the pvp element as one of the core components of the game (resources-crafting-pvp-territorial control) and move rapidly to create a functional, balanced system that can be used as a base to drive territorial control, which will hopefully drive resource control and crafting.

I don't see the first option working, but I am obviously bias by what i'd like to see, and by what i think the evidence has shown us so far. In either case, time is short...they need to make up their collective mind on what they want to be when they grow up and get to steppin.

/Thread won by Dubanka...again!

[Trenchfoot]

All this talk about resources what about power and glory?

I would like the opportunity for the following scenario to be possible:

A conquering tribe is sweeping the map chewing up smaller tribes. So a group of neighboring tribes (formerly unfriendly to one another) band together to put them in their place.

Am I asking too much?

[Jadzia]

Anyone can see that making safe zones outside of the set starting ones can cause major problems in this game.

Take EVE online. If you had places where people could put a "safe zone" the ECON in EVE would be jacked up so bad.
Worse in Xsyon is its not even a full safe zone, its a "You cant attack members here but we can attack you here". Which means you step into the wrong spot and BAM you are going to die with ZERO chance of killing them because they are "SAFE". "Im touching base, you cant hurt me" is a flipping joke.

I was talking about 1 safe zone and 1 PvP zone, created by the devs not the players. An Eve like system, not the one we have now.

Dub, good post. We are back to the point that PvP and PvE can't live together....I don't see things that dark though. Eve could do it, so Xsyon has a chance too.

[Book]

In theory your position is reasonable...however in practice is just doesn't work...at least not without creating a major distinction in gameplay. In a competitive environment you can not have two groups of players playing by different rules. If you wanted to be a 'safe area tribe' you would have to rely upon warring tribes to bring you goods from those zones. Safe area tribes just could not participate in the metagame of resource capture, and control (yes you can post the jordi though quote all you want...it wont work). Once you get involved in resource competition, the resource is the drive that creates the conflict. the fights around the resource nodes create drama, which creates politics which spurs people friend and to war....because they have something to lose above and beyond the resource itself.

Any type of invulnerability for tribal areas presents an exploit possibility, muling resources on chars between tribes (ie. every 'pvp' tribe will have a peace tribe storage facility) which detracts from the whole point of pvp...which is having a point.



Was going to ask if it would help if the pathways into, and out of, the pvp zone were limited. So, if you were trying to smuggle goods into a mule peace tribe, you would need to make your way there through potential ambushes and/or player built fortresses choking the ways in. Same if you were trying to smuggle goods out of a mule peace tribe.

I don't know if that would help, but the map isn't really built with this type of thing in mind so... don't know if there's another way to implement the concept.


All this talk about resources what about power and glory?

I would like the opportunity for the following scenario to be possible:

A conquering tribe is sweeping the map chewing up smaller tribes. So a group of neighboring tribes (formerly unfriendly to one another) band together to put them in their place.

Am I asking too much?

Wouldn't imagine it's too much to ask... and you might even entice a few mercenary homesteaders to cross over to the dark side with rare resources as payment. I would probably make decent arrow-fodder for the right price.

[Dubanka]

Was going to ask if it would help if the pathways into, and out of, the pvp zone were limited. So, if you were trying to smuggle goods into a mule peace tribe, you would need to make your way there through potential ambushes and/or player built fortresses choking the ways in. Same if you were trying to smuggle goods out of a mule peace tribe.

I don't know if that would help, but the map isn't really built with this type of thing in mind so... don't know if there's another way to implement the concept.



Wouldn't imagine it's too much to ask... and you might even entice a few mercenary homesteaders to cross over to the dark side with rare resources as payment. I would probably make decent arrow-fodder for the right price.

no, it's not too much to ask, and precisely why everyone has to share risk. everybody needs to have a stake. We (vd) have been the server police. We've also been the server bad guy. There is rewarding gameplay in each.

Once upon a time I was very against asset destruction. Oddly...i was against it until it happened to me. Losing a couple months worth of work really really pissed me off. I reformed the group with about the half dozen of us that were left and swore to never again build anything we couldnt afford to lose. Next time someone tried to take our shit, the lost, and proceeded to get pounded into the ground (I stopped when their gl begged for us to stop...twas satisfying). There is no game until you've played for pinks. SOmetimes, you don't get it until you play with the right group....but once it takes hold, patty cake pvp is utterly pointless. unfortunately.

Everyone needs to have a dog in the hunt...even if it that stake is electing to doing nothing...



Dub, good post. We are back to the point that PvP and PvE can't live together....I don't see things that dark though. Eve could do it, so Xsyon has a chance too.

they not only can, they have to. you can't have pvp that means something without a pve element to give it meaning. as a player you can always choose a path that minimizes your exposure to such risk, but by that decision you will be excluding yourself from a vast portion of the game...but if your goal is to be the premier crafter of blades do you really care?

[Book]

Dubanka, I'm confused :) You quoted me but answered Trenchfoot... I think...

[ocoma]

I'm gonna quote myself, with some extra bolding, cause I think that some/many people may have missed this in the flurry of activity this thread is seeing...



Xsyon is not a pure pvp game and is indeed trying to be attractive to both the avid pvper as well as the pure crafter and "carebear" types. I agree that Eve's system of "mostly" safe but limited zones progressing to no security highly valuable zones is probably the best way to work that.

There is a very important point most if not all of you seem to be missing.

There are over 1600 zones and we only have access to about 110 atm. If all the lands we can build in right now end up being the equivalent of Eve's high security "safe zones" that comes out to less then 7% of the total landmass. Even then all the land not totem protected is still FFA and full loot(btw pouches and bins need to not have magical locks on them). Catering to both the pvper and carebear is a very hard balancing act.

You people are not thinking long term. 7% safezone is NOTHING so long as the rest of the land ends up having resources and content not found in the safe areas and highly sought after.


If the current lands not covered by the green mist are the only areas where safezone totems can be dropped, and if the lands currently green mist covered are developed with content that can not be found currently but is much needed/rare/sought after, and if the value of said content is increased the further away from the "safezone" you travel then you can indeed create an Eve type of layered security lands which could appease both the pvper and the carebear. This could require a reworking of current craftlines to add in resources not available atm.

I'm personally all for no safezones at all myself, and I know the rest of my tribe is as well. That said there does have to be some give and take from both sides of the fence on this issue to appeal to all gamer types. Eve has made it work and there is no reason something can't be implemented here that would work as well.

[Trenchfoot]

Simple question: Should tribes be prohibited by game mechanics from conquering another tribe by force?

Follow up question: Should one massive tribe (disregarding how unlikely this is) be prohibited by game mechanics from conquering the entire map (save starting points)?

[Dubanka]

game wont live long enough to see that, and wont have the population to support ath much land mass. The land mass we have right now is grossly underpopulated. In concept your idea works. but the current prelude world is just too large.

Added after 9 minutes:


Simple question: Should tribes be prohibited by game mechanics from conquering another tribe by force?

Follow up question: Should one massive tribe (disregarding how unlikely this is) be prohibited by game mechanics from conquering the entire map (save starting points)?

1. No.
2. No. But. one would need to look at the reasons they were conqueroring the map...as in how. I've watched the chinese overrun entire servers because they could manipulate vulnerability windows to maximize their ttime slots. so yeah...No, but.

[orious13]

Maybe to avoid alt towns that just mule up the valuable resoucres, make these most valuable resources have to be mined and used in only the non-safe area.

What I mean is:

A) You set up your tribe in the "PvP-no safe" area.
B) In order to find the unobtanium you must use a territory control totem that has the added option (instead of usually tribe/quest system) to search for whatever type of unobtanium you want/need.
C) In order to gather this so that you can use it, you must have a "stockpile" or "furnace" built in your main totem area.
D) The unobtanium is automatically transported to your main totem "stockpile".
E) This unobtanium (rock version) has a durability of 5/5. If you remove it, after 5 game hours it turns into normal granite or whatever resource..or after you pass through the green mist into "safe-PvP" area.
F) This means you basically HAVE to craft it in your no safe area.
G) The safe area players will have to discover some sort of politics that makes it possible for the no-safe people to want to trade them or allow them permission to craft in their place....set up a tax or something. Maybe make it so that more mobs are in the safer area (there is still open pvp in the wilderness). Saying more mobs doesn't mean the best ones. There could be highly difficult bosses mostly in the no-safe areas.

Edit:
Seems like implementing some of this stuff will take a bit of work, but trying to find a solution is better than...not.

[mrcalhou]

1) PvP and PvE can both be done well in the same game.
A good step towards making good PvE would be to have dynamic mob and resource spawns and have [humorous] mini-story archs that has the player doing a variety of different activities. I think it would also be pretty neat if they could develop a random dungeon generator and place dungeon/cave systems throughout the game world that would change layout and mob/boss spawn at server restart. Basically keep things changing.
A good step towards making good PvP would be to allow players to fight over resources and have those resources matter. The reason Eve does so well is because the item and ship destruction means that there is a constant need to replace ships and items, and that requires resources and rare resources, and rare resources can only be found in certain areas, areas that players are allowed to control. Risk vs. Reward

2) Alt tribes wouldn't be that big of a deal if there was a war declaration system where the aggressor would have to pay tribute or something to be able to safely attack a tribe in safe areas and the defending tribe could have the option of also paying tribute to stop them from being able to do so if they do not wish to take the chances of fighting or if their military branch doesn't wish to get involved. But still, this would also have the side benefit of flushing resources out of the game making them have more value. PvP should almost always boil down to having players choose whichever they feel is the lesser evil.

[ColonelTEE3]

Someone should just put Dubanka in charge of leading this game for the next year. That'll do the trick. Then I and ocoma would bring back the 30 or so Anvil Society that left this game a month ago, with renewed vigor.

Furthermore, Salvadore, every thread i read your post in is like an echo of my own posts, maybe not word for word but paragraph for paragraph at least. Theres a lot of people in this thread that really understand what needs to be done for this game like Dubanka, Salvadore, Hanover and MrDDT.

[ocoma]

Maybe to avoid alt towns that just mule up the valuable resoucres, make these most valuable resources have to be mined and used in only the non-safe area.

What I mean is:

A) You set up your tribe in the "PvP-no safe" area.
B) In order to find the unobtanium you must use a territory control totem that has the added option (instead of usually tribe/quest system) to search for whatever type of unobtanium you want/need.
C) In order to gather this so that you can use it, you must have a "stockpile" or "furnace" built in your main totem area.
D) The unobtanium is automatically transported to your main totem "stockpile".
E) This unobtanium (rock version) has a durability of 5/5. If you remove it, after 5 game hours it turns into normal granite or whatever resource..or after you pass through the green mist into "safe-PvP" area.
F) This means you basically HAVE to craft it in your no safe area.
G) The safe area players will have to discover some sort of politics that makes it possible for the no-safe people to want to trade them or allow them permission to craft in their place....set up a tax or something. Maybe make it so that more mobs are in the safer area (there is still open pvp in the wilderness). Saying more mobs doesn't mean the best ones. There could be highly difficult bosses mostly in the no-safe areas.

Edit:
Seems like implementing some of this stuff will take a bit of work, but trying to find a solution is better than...not.



I was thinking of something kinda along these lines myself...

When you take 1-2 steps into the green mist you get a very light green tint to everything. You can still see fine and for a good distance. Its only when you go a good number of steps into the mist that it closes in on you like a green wall.

What if when the green mist is rolled back it keeps that 2 step tint covering everything. The mists have a strange effect on the fabric of reality. Totems dropped become these contested totems and allow terrafroming to make defensive structures and work as a bind point but do NOT provide a safezone. One of effects of the mists are that respawning doesn't work like normal. If you have a contested totem you can respawn to it like we currently respawn now. However if you do not have a contested totem or wish to respawn back at your original totem you do so naked(bar the PO weapons of course). For some strange reason the mists do not allow the magical transportation of goods outta them. Instead of normal death in the green mists you drop a fully lootable tombstone. It doesn't have to be an actual tombstone but you get the idea.

This means that transporting goods outta the misted lands must be done manually. This allows the chance for others to intercept.

[Trenchfoot]

I'm tired of being sent to the smokers lounge to pvp. Even a fancy one with a snack machine and a deck of cards (EVE) is still 'that area we send those one people to do what they do (it doesn't really effect us out here)'.

[ocoma]

I'm tired of being sent to the smokers lounge to pvp. Even a fancy one with a snack machine and a deck of cards (EVE) is still 'that area we send those one people to do what they do (it doesn't really effect us out here)'.

That is exactly my point. The current lands we have access to ARE the smokers lounge.

We currently have access to about 110 of 1600 zones. Of that 110 zones, Lake Tahoe completely encompasses 14 zones and stretches over 21 total zones. You can't drop a totem on the water or on the island(confirm?). Removing only the 14 entirely covered by the lake and that drops the 110 down to 96 we can actually drop safezone totems on.

Of that 96 zones remaining, 34 of them are partially covered by the green mist. Some of them only have a tiny sliver of zone accessable atm. Lets count all those partially accessable zones as half a zone each to average them out and thats 17 more zones worth of land not able to drop safezone totems on.

New total of currently accessable landmass to drop safezone totems is now 79 zones(even less if you average out the zones only partially covered by the lake and not just the ones fully covered).

79 of 1600 zones is 4.9375% So roughly 5% of the total game world allows the creation of safezone totems.

And still that 5% of the land is FFA Full Loot when not specifically standing on the lands protected by your own tribes totem.

Under 5% of the world has the POTENTIAL to be made safe and you all are crying like its 90% or something.


Edited for math errors.

[Eduard]

Hi all,

First what I want to say here is this - I'm old gamer who is tired of PVE and NPCs (animals doesn't count here because they are resource imo).
So:
NO 1 - No dungeons pls or any PVE BS - who wants to PVE there is plenty of WOWish games around (get a healer tank and few DPS and do same over and over again to get more epic shiny pixels that will be obsolete in next patch/expansion)

I came to this game after reading something like "We will provide you with sand - do what ever you like with it"
People who want safe zones are just scared crybaby's who want to fight when they chose to fight ... but if they get ambushed then they will go on forum and cry a river - It happened before, its happening here and it will happen in future so just ignore them - they will cry, they will say that they will leave and so on - ignoring them is only cure for community.

Why ppl build walls? Why build weapons? Is this a Simcity? NO! Is it Sims? I guess not! - and I hope it will never be!
You want protection? Build walls to protect you... thats why you can build walls ffs in first place
You build weapons? Use them! (to attack or to defend)

What we need here is total rebuild of PVP... MUCH LESS RESOURCES AROUND! so we have to fight to get free cloth from junk-pile etc...
Also this is not a final game and shame on DEVs here for calling it that way - this is still beta and there is a lot of things to do - A LOT - but so far they are doing a great job! - just a bit more time imo.

Only safe zones should be very small places where you can put your items for sale with price on table or something like that - that will be used for trading (imagine pvp around them) - traders will have to go there to sell...
And second safe zone should be starting zones to prevent ganking of new players or even better all new players should be 1h protected from any harm way to them - after that time GL to them :)

Full PVP loot ofc and to conquer someone's tribe totem you need to destroy it - and that can't be easy task special if its protected by walls, barricades and players. Siege need to be implemented and construction of siege need to last at least couple of hours - that will buy ppl time to organise, call for help and defend.
Thats what makes game fun! Even when you lose you will turn off your game go to bed angry but tomorow you will start to plan how to regroup, settle somewhere far far away and one day ... one day go back and get your revenge.

This game have great potential - I hope DEVs will ignore crybaby's and focus on building one of the best games so far !

BR,
Eduard

[Foreseer]

I apologize beforehand for not reading any post beyond the first page, however,
I am personally hoping by terms of "Contested Totems" He means expansion territory.

Say Tribe A: Through Hard labor and grievous pking in their "Evil" Faction earn enough points to gain an expansion totem.
They then decide to place this totem not far out of their tribal territory therefore expanding it with a small node that players can create a small keep or fortress further expanding it by issuing their "Evil" Prestigious points toward it.

Say Tribe B: Becomes aware of A's expansion and decide that they wish to vanquish evil and have enough resources and time to lay siege to A's Expansion. Being a "Good" Tribe they will therefore earn a decent sum of Prestige points and hopefully kill a few evil players to further gain their prestige toward their own "Expansion" territory.

Now with this system it creates pvp economy that everyone can enjoy, and the prestige system can be further implemented into other uses.
City Buffs, and ext.

[MrDDT]

I apologize beforehand for not reading any post beyond the first page, however,
I am personally hoping by terms of "Contested Totems" He means expansion territory.

Say Tribe A: Through Hard labor and grievous pking in their "Evil" Faction earn enough points to gain an expansion totem.
They then decide to place this totem not far out of their tribal territory therefore expanding it with a small node that players can create a small keep or fortress further expanding it by issuing their "Evil" Prestigious points toward it.

Say Tribe B: Becomes aware of A's expansion and decide that they wish to vanquish evil and have enough resources and time to lay siege to A's Expansion. Being a "Good" Tribe they will therefore earn a decent sum of Prestige points and hopefully kill a few evil players to further gain their prestige toward their own "Expansion" territory.

Now with this system it creates pvp economy that everyone can enjoy, and the prestige system can be further implemented into other uses.
City Buffs, and ext.


Sounds great until you think of how people will have "Safe" totems.
Why would I use an expansion totem when I can use a safe totem and keep all the resources and be 100% protected and kill people if they come near it?

They need to have SAFE starting areas DEV made that dont change. Players can then drop totems in these safe areas without worry of being taken over. However, the resources are very limited to basic goods (Trees, water, sand, limestone etc) this would serve as an area for people to learn to build up, also serve as areas for people that dont want to worry about losing their pixels to build and have no worries of PVP.

Anywhere outside these safe starting areas, totems are at risk. You would need to either protect them by force, using money, making allies, or choose areas where people just dont want to take it. That is the only way I can see safe areas working in a game like this. Not doing this will cause exploiting for 1 side or another. I can already think of 100 ways to exploit this safe totem system, making combat totems all but worthless or only needed for random greifing.

[Hanover]

Hi all,

First what I want to say here is this - I'm old gamer who is tired of PVE and NPCs (animals doesn't count here because they are resource imo).
So:
NO 1 - No dungeons pls or any PVE BS - who wants to PVE there is plenty of WOWish games around (get a healer tank and few DPS and do same over and over again to get more epic shiny pixels that will be obsolete in next patch/expansion)

I came to this game after reading something like "We will provide you with sand - do what ever you like with it"
People who want safe zones are just scared crybaby's who want to fight when they chose to fight ... but if they get ambushed then they will go on forum and cry a river - It happened before, its happening here and it will happen in future so just ignore them - they will cry, they will say that they will leave and so on - ignoring them is only cure for community.

Why ppl build walls? Why build weapons? Is this a Simcity? NO! Is it Sims? I guess not! - and I hope it will never be!
You want protection? Build walls to protect you... thats why you can build walls ffs in first place
You build weapons? Use them! (to attack or to defend)

What we need here is total rebuild of PVP... MUCH LESS RESOURCES AROUND! so we have to fight to get free cloth from junk-pile etc...
Also this is not a final game and shame on DEVs here for calling it that way - this is still beta and there is a lot of things to do - A LOT - but so far they are doing a great job! - just a bit more time imo.

Only safe zones should be very small places where you can put your items for sale with price on table or something like that - that will be used for trading (imagine pvp around them) - traders will have to go there to sell...
And second safe zone should be starting zones to prevent ganking of new players or even better all new players should be 1h protected from any harm way to them - after that time GL to them :)

Full PVP loot ofc and to conquer someone's tribe totem you need to destroy it - and that can't be easy task special if its protected by walls, barricades and players. Siege need to be implemented and construction of siege need to last at least couple of hours - that will buy ppl time to organise, call for help and defend.
Thats what makes game fun! Even when you lose you will turn off your game go to bed angry but tomorow you will start to plan how to regroup, settle somewhere far far away and one day ... one day go back and get your revenge.

This game have great potential - I hope DEVs will ignore crybaby's and focus on building one of the best games so far !

BR,
Eduard



I like your style and Welcome to Xsyon!!! Quote of the week: "they will cry, they will say that they will leave and so on - ignoring them is only cure for community" Thanks Eduard

[Salvadore]

Someone should just put Dubanka in charge of leading this game for the next year. That'll do the trick. Then I and ocoma would bring back the 30 or so Anvil Society that left this game a month ago, with renewed vigor.

Furthermore, Salvadore, every thread i read your post in is like an echo of my own posts, maybe not word for word but paragraph for paragraph at least. Theres a lot of people in this thread that really understand what needs to be done for this game like Dubanka, Salvadore, Hanover and MrDDT.

Personally, I wouldnt be surprised if people started flocking back to this game (as they did when "release" happened for the promise of pvp) if just a few things were tweaked/balanced. Maybe they should consider signing the ones you mentioned on as "Combat Devs" that simply provide input, playtesting, and direct feedback to the Devs (Dezgard, et all). Maybe do the same for the crafting aspects as well.

Would be pretty awesome, and I'm sure they would get some superb feedback! I mean, we ARE the player base and I'm sure between the few of us we've tried virtually every pvp-type game out there!!!

In the current state of the MMO market, sheer promise of a "tribal warfare" system monopolizes an entire market.

[MrDDT]

Personally, I wouldnt be surprised if people started flocking back to this game (as they did when "release" happened for the promise of pvp) if just a few things were tweaked/balanced. Maybe they should consider signing the ones you mentioned on as "Combat Devs" that simply provide input, playtesting, and direct feedback to the Devs (Dezgard, et all). Maybe do the same for the crafting aspects as well.

Would be pretty awesome, and I'm sure they would get some superb feedback! I mean, we ARE the player base and I'm sure between the few of us we've tried virtually every pvp-type game out there!!!

In the current state of the MMO market, sheer promise of a "tribal warfare" system monopolizes an entire market.

Ya true, but still people would have to see first that combat was working.
Fighting over pixels with a laggy combat system as it is now would do nothing to bring people back. It would have to be better with tribal warfare.

I also think that there would need to be something to take over. Taking over someone's tribe for no reason would bring some PVPers back, but better would be to have resource control items to fight for.

[ocoma]

They need to have SAFE starting areas DEV made that dont change. Players can then drop totems in these safe areas without worry of being taken over. However, the resources are very limited to basic goods (Trees, water, sand, limestone etc) this would serve as an area for people to learn to build up, also serve as areas for people that dont want to worry about losing their pixels to build and have no worries of PVP.


This is already what we have right now.

The Prelude lands are less than 7% of the game world.

We can currently drop safezone totems on less than 5% of the game world.

To look at it another way...a max 80 person tribeland is less than 1 zone in area. This means if a person is part of a 80+ person tribe they are safe in .0625% of the overall world. Do you really mean to tell me that allowing people to be safe in a maximum of less than 1% of the overall world is to much? Really!?


Only allow safezone totems on Prelude lands.
Develope the rest of the world with resources, mobs, technology, magic and other content that can not and will not ever be found on Prelude lands.
Disable the ability to suicide warp out of the "wildlands" with packs of goods so people have to actually travel to get the rare goods to their safe tribelands.
Let the carebears stay safely in their 7% of the gameworld and the pvpers and risktakers can have fun and find profit in the 93% of the world that remains.

[MrDDT]

This is already what we have right now.

The Prelude lands are less than 7% of the game world.

We can currently drop safezone totems on less than 5% of the game world.

To look at it another way...a max 80 person tribeland is less than 1 zone in area. This means if a person is part of a 80+ person tribe they are safe in .0625% of the overall world. Do you really mean to tell me that allowing people to be safe in a maximum of less than 1% of the overall world is to much? Really!?


Only allow safezone totems on Prelude lands.
Develope the rest of the world with resources, mobs, technology, magic and other content that can not and will not ever be found on Prelude lands.
Disable the ability to suicide warp out of the "wildlands" with packs of goods so people have to actually travel to get the rare goods to their safe tribelands.
Let the carebears stay safely in their 7% of the gameworld and the pvpers and risktakers can have fun and find profit in the 93% of the world that remains.



You mean if they made it to where prelude lands were the only places for safe totems, and if they expanded the world to the whole map that will come over time. Yes, I agree if that were the case now then it wouldnt be that bad, but thats NOT what the plan is and that is NOT what we have now. So I dont know how you can say thats what we have now.

My problem isnt so much safe areas, its the fact they can be anywhere anytime. Like I said leaving the safe areas to special spots the devs preset, would be great. But having them places on top of rare resources or anywhere someone feels like it, is a bad idea, which will be exploited greatly.

[mrcalhou]

This is already what we have right now.

The Prelude lands are less than 7% of the game world.

We can currently drop safezone totems on less than 5% of the game world.

To look at it another way...a max 80 person tribeland is less than 1 zone in area. This means if a person is part of a 80+ person tribe they are safe in .0625% of the overall world. Do you really mean to tell me that allowing people to be safe in a maximum of less than 1% of the overall world is to much? Really!?


Only allow safezone totems on Prelude lands.
Develope the rest of the world with resources, mobs, technology, magic and other content that can not and will not ever be found on Prelude lands.
Disable the ability to suicide warp out of the "wildlands" with packs of goods so people have to actually travel to get the rare goods to their safe tribelands.
Let the carebears stay safely in their 7% of the gameworld and the pvpers and risktakers can have fun and find profit in the 93% of the world that remains.

The fact that the size of the safezone is so small is completely irrelavent. It's the fact that the safe zones can be dropped over resource nodes and anywhere on the game map that makes them completely broken.

[Jadzia]

Let the carebears stay safely in their 7% of the gameworld and the pvpers and risktakers can have fun and find profit in the 93% of the world that remains.
Not anyone in his right mind would pay a subscription for a game where he can only have fun in the 7% of the land. Just saying.
Split the map 50%-50%, thats fair game. Not any customer is superior to the other one.

[xyberviri]

Not anyone in his right mind would pay a subscription for a game where he can only have fun in the 7% of the land. Just saying.
Split the map 50%-50%, thats fair game. Not any customer is superior to the other one.

yes because were going back to the argument that pve players have to be forced into pvp where as they still are unable to run away, join a tribe or go out with friends...

[xyberviri]

Not anyone in his right mind would pay a subscription for a game where he can only have fun in the 7% of the land. Just saying.
Split the map 50%-50%, thats fair game. Not any customer is superior to the other one.

yes because were going back to the argument that pve players have to be forced into pvp where as they still are unable to run away, join a tribe or go out with friends...

[MrDDT]

Not anyone in his right mind would pay a subscription for a game where he can only have fun in the 7% of the land. Just saying.
Split the map 50%-50%, thats fair game. Not any customer is superior to the other one.


You split it 50% 50% and you break it for all 100% of one type of player.

It should be safe areas are for new players, limited by resources. There should be no safe areas outside of new areas. Why? Because that's how the game was meant, from the start.

Some players also dont know whats best for their own type of play. If you a trader or crafter, these limited safe areas is a HUGE boon to you. While many people dont see why that would be. But it is. Just like in EVE. (I know you know EVE).

[Dubanka]

Not anyone in his right mind would pay a subscription for a game where he can only have fun in the 7% of the land. Just saying.
Split the map 50%-50%, thats fair game. Not any customer is superior to the other one.

This is not about one customer being superior to another...it is about gameplay. Your crafting/building sim is not a viable model. If you want to live in complete safety, without risk, you are in a minority. Game features without a point is not a game. This game can be a monstrous success if it quits trying to acquiesce to a minority who want sim town.

A rich and viable set of pve features are required to make this work. There is absolutly no denyng the fundemental necessity of this. However those features are components of a whole, and withou the other components that actually drive the worlds events, it is not a viable game. Hopefully the devs are coming to realize this and can adjust accordingly.

[orious13]

Either my idea sucked so much no one wants to fix it or no one saw it at all... lol.

Think of a mechanic guys and stop trying to change people's play styles.

If the current thought process of the game worked, there would be more people playing.

[Hanover]

Not anyone in his right mind would pay a subscription for a game where he can only have fun in the 7% of the land. Just saying.
Split the map 50%-50%, thats fair game. Not any customer is superior to the other one.

You want everything, while risking nothing. Why are "we" able to operate outside the bubble while you are not?

[Book]

Maybe to avoid alt towns that just mule up the valuable resoucres, make these most valuable resources have to be mined and used in only the non-safe area.

What I mean is:

A) You set up your tribe in the "PvP-no safe" area.
B) In order to find the unobtanium you must use a territory control totem that has the added option (instead of usually tribe/quest system) to search for whatever type of unobtanium you want/need.
C) In order to gather this so that you can use it, you must have a "stockpile" or "furnace" built in your main totem area.
D) The unobtanium is automatically transported to your main totem "stockpile".
E) This unobtanium (rock version) has a durability of 5/5. If you remove it, after 5 game hours it turns into normal granite or whatever resource..or after you pass through the green mist into "safe-PvP" area.
F) This means you basically HAVE to craft it in your no safe area.
G) The safe area players will have to discover some sort of politics that makes it possible for the no-safe people to want to trade them or allow them permission to craft in their place....set up a tax or something. Maybe make it so that more mobs are in the safer area (there is still open pvp in the wilderness). Saying more mobs doesn't mean the best ones. There could be highly difficult bosses mostly in the no-safe areas.

Edit:
Seems like implementing some of this stuff will take a bit of work, but trying to find a solution is better than...not.

What about having the unobtanium (like the name btw) be specifically useful to pvp?

Say smelting ore. You can use the ore to make iron arrow heads that are stronger than obsidian or flint arrow heads. Having access to this ore gives a pvp tribe in the pvp area a good advantage over a wanted resource that shreds through armor more effectively.

The attacking tribes that want to take over that resource can still use obsidian arrow heads, but they will need a higher quantity since they are not as effective.
Obsidian is more plentiful in the safe area. It's adequate for hunting and such. A pvper doesn't want to waste too much time in the safe area (even with alt) having to gather obsidian so they trade with the safezone folks for it.

Say tar is only available in the pvp area. It's useful for trebuchets and other siege weapons. It can be poured over walls to stop an incursion. Tar is something tribes want to fight over for the strategic advantage.

People in the safe area still want it though, to make torches. Easier to get leather in the safe area as hunting is a bit safer so they trade the tar for the leather.

Just examples. Kind of follows the EvE model, I think.

As Jadzia mentioned elsewhere, food production might be easier in the safe area and let's face it... tending the field is a bit carebearish so that seems appropriate. Food that is very perishable becomes a great commodity for trade.

One question though (because I'm not creative enough to think of more :) )
Why have the unobtanium automatically transported?
Would this not cut down on the chances for ambush and other pvp goodness?

I'm thinking there should be specific areas allowing trade between safe and unsafe so that pvpers have a chance to be vulnerable and exposed more often. It should require a great number of them to safely transport cartfulls of maize back to the castle, and an adequate number to mount a successful ambush.

[MrDDT]

What about having the unobtanium (like the name btw) be specifically useful to pvp?

Say smelting ore. You can use the ore to make iron arrow heads that are stronger than obsidian or flint arrow heads. Having access to this ore gives a pvp tribe in the pvp area a good advantage over a wanted resource that shreds through armor more effectively.

The attacking tribes that want to take over that resource can still use obsidian arrow heads, but they will need a higher quantity since they are not as effective.
Obsidian is more plentiful in the safe area. It's adequate for hunting and such. A pvper doesn't want to waste too much time in the safe area (even with alt) having to gather obsidian so they trade with the safezone folks for it.

Say tar is only available in the pvp area. It's useful for trebuchets and other siege weapons. It can be poured over walls to stop an incursion. Tar is something tribes want to fight over for the strategic advantage.

People in the safe area still want it though, to make torches. Easier to get leather in the safe area as hunting is a bit safer so they trade the tar for the leather.

Just examples. Kind of follows the EvE model, I think.

As Jadzia mentioned elsewhere, food production might be easier in the safe area and let's face it... tending the field is a bit carebearish so that seems appropriate. Food that is very perishable becomes a great commodity for trade.

One question though (because I'm not creative enough to think of more :) )
Why have the unobtanium automatically transported?
Would this not cut down on the chances for ambush and other pvp goodness?

I'm thinking there should be specific areas allowing trade between safe and unsafe so that pvpers have a chance to be vulnerable and exposed more often. It should require a great number of them to safely transport cartfulls of maize back to the castle, and an adequate number to mount a successful ambush.

All good ideas but dont work if you can place a totem that makes insta safe area anywhere you want.

[Book]

You want everything, while risking nothing. Why are "we" able to operate outside the bubble while you are not?

I'm not sure it's a question of ability as much as a question of choice.

I used to be on the frontlines yelling out "Yarr!!" and heading straight in fists first. I used to be in the back room making plans of how best to take out a 15 man squad with my 3 man crew. Got to the point I was nicknamed centurion because my answer was always the same... "^*($## Just gimme five minutes with the lil #$*(*&" You know? Been there, done that... burned the T-Shirt. Didn't take it off first neither.

I'm all for other people having that experience if they want it, their choice for sure.
Me? Not so much for the confict and drama anymore. Time to hang the blades and let the youngbloods handle it. I know there's other games, but I like this one, and I'm still hopeful it can be worked out. If it can't? No biggie, not trying to steal anybody's warrioring fun.


All good ideas but dont work if you can place a totem that makes insta safe area anywhere you want.

I agree MrDDT. Would only work if there's a very sizeable, fully workable, and very enjoyable area where the notion of safe is a blade under your pillow at night and that's it.

[orious13]

Yes many types of unobtanium is good...I think all or most of the building type of rare resources should be more in the safe area and the PvP or Combat resources should be in the PvP area (along with the higher end reagents)...might suck to carry all of those logs so maybe not. That or whatever can make the no-safe people want to come back to the safe area and vice versa.





One question though (because I'm not creative enough to think of more :) )
Why have the unobtanium automatically transported?
Would this not cut down on the chances for ambush and other pvp goodness?

I'm thinking there should be specific areas allowing trade between safe and unsafe so that pvpers have a chance to be vulnerable and exposed more often. It should require a great number of them to safely transport cartfulls of maize back to the castle, and an adequate number to mount a successful ambush.


Simply to stop PvP guilds to seek to exploit the safe zone areas with alts that only horde in resources. If rare resource durability degraded very fast either at all times or just in the safer area (My gold turned into stone...what is this trickery!), it'd be ok to not have it automatically accumulate in the main territory. But the reason I said for it to accumulate automatically is so that there are two siege facets to take advantage of. You have the territory control that pretty much IS the mine (1 mine per expansion totem or multiple mines that gather exponentially smaller amounts of goods) and you have the "Stockpile" where if you remove its contents or expose its contents to the world, they degrade rapidly. You could just scrap the auto portion and make it so that the only viable territory expansion is one that is very close to your main or ally totem (unless it has to be that close anyway) because one further away would mean all your gold might turn into rocks before you can stock it. I agree it would be more fun to have to carry it around.

The siege facets would be to attrit their territory expansion(s) to a "dis-functioning" state and so that the defenders eventually run out of their resources, and the ability to war them with the thought ONLY to destroy their stockpile to weaken them so that your next assault would be more effective.

[mrcalhou]

I think some of yall are trying to make it way more complicated than it needs to be.

[orious13]

I think some of yall are trying to make it way more complicated than it needs to be.

This doesn't help the matter. Give an example or an idea that is less complex. I agree my ideas are complex-ish... Starting off big and condensing is better than starting off small and trying to add things to make a circle...more round.

[Dubanka]

This doesn't help the matter. Give an example or an idea that is less complex. I agree my ideas are complex-ish... Starting off big and condensing is better than starting off small and trying to add things to make a circle...more round.

the simplest solutions are typically the best...because they are the easiest to understand and implement

the simplest solution here is that everyone needs to be accountable.

or else no one needs to be accountable.

If it is split accountability, then no one will be accountable.

Why does anyone need to be accountable for anything? Without accountability there is no point. Without a point, there is, for many of us, no game.

what this 'debate' is really, it's not pve vs pvp, it's whether this is a sim, or a game.

[temur]

splitt servers , one with safezones one with none.
Why? : because neither side is willing to share any sand. Theyre more busy leaving poo in the sand of the guy that opposes their opinion.

[Hanover]

I'm not sure it's a question of ability as much as a question of choice.



That's the thing, there is a choice. You can either risk it for glory or cower in the bubble.

[Book]

splitt servers , one with safezones one with none.
Why? : because neither side is willing to share any sand. Theyre more busy leaving poo in the sand of the guy that opposes their opinion.

I can see your point, but I like the ideas being developed surrounding trade between the warfronts and the peaceful areas... similar to EvE in some respects.

By the way, cow poo makes great fuel for fire in a pinch... just sayin'.

Added after 5 minutes:


That's the thing, there is a choice. You can either risk it for glory or cower in the bubble.

hehe, fightin' words to be sure, and were I a bit more of a lad, I'd surely would have enjoyed engaging... :). See it as you wish, I'm sure you understood what I was saying.

Any thoughts on some of the ideas put forth? Do you see any that would allow you to enjoy a more hardcore pvp aspect of a game while allowing others a different choice... without treading on your own choice since that's what I think people are trying to get at.

[Hanover]

Any thoughts on some of the ideas put forth? Do you see any that would allow you to enjoy a more hardcore pvp aspect of a game while allowing others a different choice... without treading on your own choice since that's what I think people are trying to get at.

Simple...

1. Keep limited safes zone
2. Ability to defend homesteads outside safe zones. (locking doors,gates,traps)
3. Rares far from safe zones. (be it Resources,Animals,Recipes,Books) For instance the recipes would need to be learned/read immediately

[Trenchfoot]

Some want blue, others want red. Any suggestion to mix them together by definition eliminates them both. Purple can't be blue, and red can't be purple. Added to that is the fact that blue doesn't really mind being a little purple, but red absolutely despises purple.

And to those that say 'Well EVE did it.'. No. No they didn't. I played EVE from launch for nearly 5 years. What many of you fail to realize about EVE is that the two groups you claim are happy with it are the same people. In EVE, a handful of elite long time players run the show. They are the pvp players, AND they are the non-pvp players. You can join any one of more than 8 dozen Corps (pvp or not) and you're still playing under those same people. Everyone who doesn't know this are generally naive fodder for these handful of groups. They are firmly established in both 0.0 and 1.0 and everything in between.

It's a charade. An elaborate farce is still a farce. And the reason they are able to do this is primarily because there are safe and not safe areas. You want to know a secret? Only the noobs fight over resources in EVE. And those handful of long established elite players (playing both sides of the pvp/non-pvp coin) never want for ANYTHING. Most of the fights are 'staged' by the leaders to keep people interested so they can continue taking advantage of them financially.

So to hell with EVE already.

A balancing act will make this game 'the same old thing'. I came here for something new.

[MrDDT]

splitt servers , one with safezones one with none.
Why? : because neither side is willing to share any sand. Theyre more busy leaving poo in the sand of the guy that opposes their opinion.

Sound to me like 1 group needs to leave because there were no plans for safezones in this game from the very start, they were added as a TEMP fix to get the world going.
Splitting the servers is a very very very very bad idea. (I could use other words but Im not because I dont want to get warned) Why is it a bad idea. Lets just start off with the biggest reason. LIMITED POPULATION!!!!!! Once you can tell me both servers will be filled for a fact then maybe I will list more.


Simple...

1. Keep limited safes zone
2. Ability to defend homesteads outside safe zones. (locking doors,gates,traps)
3. Rares far from safe zones. (be it Resources,Animals,Recipes,Books) For instance the recipes would need to be learned/read immediately

Boys and Girls read that quote and understand. That's it right there.


Some want blue, others want red. Any suggestion to mix them together by definition eliminates them both. Purple can't be blue, and red can't be purple. Added to that is the fact that blue doesn't really mind being a little purple, but red absolutely despises purple.

And to those that say 'Well EVE did it.'. No. No they didn't. I played EVE from launch for nearly 5 years. What many of you fail to realize about EVE is that the two groups you claim are happy with it are the same people. In EVE, a handful of elite long time players run the show. They are the pvp players, AND they are the non-pvp players. You can join any one of more than 8 dozen Corps (pvp or not) and you're still playing under those same people. Everyone who doesn't know this are generally naive fodder for these handful of groups. They are firmly established in both 0.0 and 1.0 and everything in between.

It's a charade. An elaborate farce is still a farce. And the reason they are able to do this is primarily because there are safe and not safe areas. You want to know a secret? Only the noobs fight over resources in EVE. And those handful of long established elite players (playing both sides of the pvp/non-pvp coin) never want for ANYTHING.

So to hell with EVE already.

A balancing act will make this game 'the same old thing'. I came here for something new.

No offense but that's is a bunch of bullsh!t. I even would go so far as to say you are just trying to toot your own horn thinking you are in the "know".

EVE has a great system, I know many corps that are powerful and have no ties to people that have been playing for 5+ years. You think because you live in your little world of "Ive been playing sames alpha" that the game centers around you or your 8 friend corps. It doesnt. You will learn that one day.
Im not saying that a there are not very powerful old corps that have ties all over the place. But dont act like everyone falls under these "8" corps.

Back to the topic in relation to your post. What makes EVE great about safe areas are the fact they are not 100% safe. I know people that gank others in 1.0 areas. They have good tactics and other things to get goods from these areas. Its a great working system.
One problem with Xsyon's "safe" areas are the fact they can be placed ANYWHERE, and they can be used as an offensive base to work from. Makes no sense.
If it is going to be put in the way it sounds, then I will tell you right now you have not SEEN what griefing is until it goes active. Trust me it will be a griefers haven.

[Trenchfoot]

EVE has a great system, I know many corps that are powerful and have no ties to people that have been playing for 5+ years. You think because you live in your little world of "Ive been playing sames alpha" that the game centers around you or your 8 friend corps. It doesnt. You will learn that one day.
Im not saying that a there are not very powerful old corps that have ties all over the place. But dont act like everyone falls under these "8" corps.

EVE does have a great system for what it is. My displeasure with it only relates to this game and trying to make this game more like it. The point being that an amusement park is still an amusement park.

EDIT: Not for nothin but I had a lot of fun playing EVE.

[Jadzia]

splitt servers , one with safezones one with none.
Why? : because neither side is willing to share any sand. Theyre more busy leaving poo in the sand of the guy that opposes their opinion.

I thought we can solve it without splitting the server. Now I tend to believe its not possible. One part of the playerbase seem to think that their way is the only way. Fine. Get your server and give us another one. Splitting the population is not an argument, since if there isn't a consensus (and it seems there never will be one) one side will leave anyway. If there is an optional warfare system, the ones who want a forced one will leave. If there is a forced warfare system the ones who want peace will leave. Personally I don't want anyone to leave. Let's get 2 servers then since you guys are so sure that you need 1 whole server. PvE players could live with a 50-50% splitted server, but you need the whole one, or at least 93% lol.

You have to understand one thing. No one can be forced to do things in a game which he/she doesn't like. People will just quit. Its better to start a new server then to lose half of the players, whichever half would it be.

[MrDDT]

I thought we can solve it without splitting the server. Now I tend to believe its not possible. One part of the playerbase seem to think that their way is the only way. Fine. Get your server and give us another one. Splitting the population is not an argument, since if there isn't a consensus (and it seems there never will be one) one side will leave anyway. If there is an optional warfare system, the ones who want a forced one will leave. If there is a forced warfare system the ones who want peace will leave. Personally I don't want anyone to leave. Let's get 2 servers then since you guys are so sure that you need 1 whole server. PvE players could live with a 50-50% splitted server, but you need the whole one, or at least 93% lol.

You have to understand one thing. No one can be forced to do things in a game which he/she doesn't like. People will just quit. Its better to start a new server then to lose half of the players, whichever half would it be.


You understand that its YOU thats trying to change it? Not the PVPers right?
PVEers are trying to change it to a game where they can do whatever they want without risk.
PVPers are understanding "Yes we need safezones but they should be very limited". While PVEers are saying "We want you to change the game to how we want it or we wont play, if I cant do everything PVPers can do, I dont want to play this game"

Game was stated from the get go of how PVP and building would be done. If you are a PVEer and didnt see that, you should have. Trying to change it now is just pissing off the people that know how to read off.

I didnt goto LOTR and say "Omg Im leaving if you dont put PVP in this game". The game was made and said it was going to have open world PVP, no safe areas etc. Now you want it 50% when knowing that 50% safe is like having 100% safe.

Then PVPers go down to well we just want a small part safe because we understand that people need time to build up and learn the game etc. So they are trying to understand and help you, but you wont take it and you acting like everyone in the game wants this but a select few.
Let me tell you, even people I know that dont like PVP, understand why they want this system. Because it makes the game more fun to them even when they dont PVP. They have reasons to craft, they feel needed. Its not just another sim game anymore, its active.

[Trenchfoot]

We'll be 100% safe in the 50% of the safe zone.

[temur]

@DDT +all
see where this is going?
everyone is very vocal bout how he/she's right , neglecting the views and
"demands" of the other on how things should be.

Sidenote: DDT your colour is very eyepoking, do you realy need that?

[mrcalhou]

Simple...

1. Keep limited safes zone
2. Ability to defend homesteads outside safe zones. (locking doors,gates,traps)
3. Rares far from safe zones. (be it Resources,Animals,Recipes,Books)

I approve of this message.

[Jadzia]

You understand that its YOU thats trying to change it? Not the PVPers right?
PVEers are trying to change it to a game where they can do whatever they want without risk.
PVPers are understanding "Yes we need safezones but they should be very limited". While PVEers are saying "We want you to change the game to how we want it or we wont play, if I cant do everything PVPers can do, I dont want to play this game"

Game was stated from the get go of how PVP and building would be done. If you are a PVEer and didnt see that, you should have. Trying to change it now is just pissing off the people that know how to read off.

I didnt goto LOTR and say "Omg Im leaving if you dont put PVP in this game". The game was made and said it was going to have open world PVP, no safe areas etc. Now you want it 50% when knowing that 50% safe is like having 100% safe.

Then PVPers go down to well we just want a small part safe because we understand that people need time to build up and learn the game etc. So they are trying to understand and help you, but you wont take it and you acting like everyone in the game wants this but a select few.
Let me tell you, even people I know that dont like PVP, understand why they want this system. Because it makes the game more fun to them even when they dont PVP. They have reasons to craft, they feel needed. Its not just another sim game anymore, its active.

No, its not me who want to change it. I'm fine with the system Jordi plans, the opt-out warfare. I don't want to change it, do you ?

He has always planned the game to be this way. Warfare over resources, not over the cities. Now that there are players who wants to fight over the cities too he is willing to give an option for that, but not forcing it on everybody. Ok, let's not change it.

[Book]

<snip for space>

I'm not sure why the safe area would need to be "very limited." I mean, if it gets worked out in such a way that it doesn't encroach on the pvp area's ability to have fun... what's it to anyone the size of the area? If you're having fun, what's the problem with other people having fun if a way can be found to do it so that you get to have fun and they get to have fun?

I could certainly understand why people who have a real passion for pvp wouldn't want to stick around if the pvp isn't viable. Many are saying just that.

If a way can be found to make it fun for all, it's worth a shot. If people are willing to keep batting ideas around, it's worth a shot.
We put humans on the moon, and have cool remote control toys cruising around Mars... someone thought it was worth a shot even if it wasn't easy.

If you're worried about there being no players in the safe areas because there are no players who want to play that and the unsafe areas being cramped because everyone in the world wants that, make it a dynamic system based on monthly population of said areas.

[mrcalhou]

"Limited," "very limited," etc these are all just arbitrary terms. They mean nothing. What matters is if there is enough content for both groups of players.

[MrDDT]

No, its not me who want to change it. I'm fine with the system Jordi plans, the opt-out warfare. I don't want to change it, do you ?

He has always planned the game to be this way. Warfare over resources, not over the cities. Now that there are players who wants to fight over the cities too he is willing to give an option for that, but not forcing it on everybody. Ok, let's not change it.


Its already been changed to that system you are talking about thats a problem right there. Because of how that system is going to effect things its pretty much safe areas anywhere you want. Which is exploitable is so many ways.
We are talking about the new system, you are trying to go beyond (you and others) where you have MORE, while PVPers are trying to tell you (and others) just how bad the "new" system is. If I would have known about this change I would have said something then, I didnt see the update. Now its clear to me and others just how bad of a change it will be.

[Dubanka]

I'm not sure why the safe area would need to be "very limited." I mean, if it gets worked out in such a way that it doesn't encroach on the pvp area's ability to have fun... what's it to anyone the size of the area? If you're having fun, what's the problem with other people having fun if a way can be found to do it so that you get to have fun and they get to have fun?

I could certainly understand why people who have a real passion for pvp wouldn't want to stick around if the pvp isn't viable. Many are saying just that.

If a way can be found to make it fun for all, it's worth a shot. If people are willing to keep batting ideas around, it's worth a shot.
We put humans on the moon, and have cool remote control toys cruising around Mars... someone thought it was worth a shot even if it wasn't easy.

If you're worried about there being no players in the safe areas because there are no players who want to play that and the unsafe areas being cramped because everyone in the world wants that, make it a dynamic system based on monthly population of said areas.

You're not getting it. There is no such thing as partially safe. If there is a safe zone mechanic it will be utilized by all - removing all consequence from pvp. But, I guess that is your intent correct?

[MrDDT]

I'm not sure why the safe area would need to be "very limited." I mean, if it gets worked out in such a way that it doesn't encroach on the pvp area's ability to have fun... what's it to anyone the size of the area? If you're having fun, what's the problem with other people having fun if a way can be found to do it so that you get to have fun and they get to have fun?

I could certainly understand why people who have a real passion for pvp wouldn't want to stick around if the pvp isn't viable. Many are saying just that.

If a way can be found to make it fun for all, it's worth a shot. If people are willing to keep batting ideas around, it's worth a shot.
We put humans on the moon, and have cool remote control toys cruising around Mars... someone thought it was worth a shot even if it wasn't easy.

If you're worried about there being no players in the safe areas because there are no players who want to play that and the unsafe areas being cramped because everyone in the world wants that, make it a dynamic system based on monthly population of said areas.

I dont care how much space you have, I care about the game system of it.
If safe zones have rare resources, can be placed anywhere, anytime, and have everything these PVP contested areas have. THATS the problem. You can have 1 million miles if its all barren dirt. I wouldnt care about it. But when you are able to craft weapons, armor, gather resources, and build things that can be used for war, and would then be sold and or given to these PVP lands there are issues.
Smaller space means less resources, and less area to work your crafts. Thats what we care about.

Im here typing over and over because many people are talking to me about it. If you guys want me to stop, I can but tell you right now Im not just one person wanting this, this is what most of the people I know want. I know a LOT of types of players too. Not just PVPers. This system is good for BOTH PVPers and PVEers. It makes econ work very well.

[Jadzia]

Its already been changed to that system you are talking about thats a problem right there. Because of how that system is going to effect things its pretty much safe areas anywhere you want. Which is exploitable is so many ways.
We are talking about the new system, you are trying to go beyond (you and others) where you have MORE, while PVPers are trying to tell you (and others) just how bad the "new" system is. If I would have known about this change I would have said something then, I didnt see the update. Now its clear to me and others just how bad of a change it will be.
Lol. This is what I'm trying to tell you. This is not a change. This is how Jordi has planned it from the very beginning. He has always planned to make warfare optional. Optional, as in opt-out in some way, with a warring-tribe system or with 2 servers.

[MrDDT]

Lol. This is what I'm trying to tell you. This is not a change. This is how Jordi has planned it from the very beginning. He has always planned to make warfare optional. Optional, as in opt-out in some way, with a warring-tribe system or with 2 servers.

No he didnt. Dunno where you got that idea, but Ive been here from the start. It wasnt always the plan.

[Jadzia]

No he didnt. Dunno where you got that idea, but Ive been here from the start. It wasnt always the plan.
You know that I've been here from the start too. And Jordi never announced how he planned warfare. Did you ask him what was his plan back then ? I did.

[Book]

You're not getting it. There is no such thing as partially safe. If there is a safe zone mechanic it will be utilized by all - removing all consequence from pvp. But, I guess that is your intent correct?

nono :) That's not my intent. I don't know if you've had time to read some of the other things I said.

[MrDDT]

You know that I've been here from the start too. And Jordi never announced how he planned warfare. Did you ask him what was his plan back then ? I did.

July 07 2008 [21:25] jooky@***: in the beginning we might not have destroyable towns yet
July 07 2008 [21:25] jooky@***: but when we do
July 07 2008 [21:25] jooky@***: players will be able to attack / burn / destroy buildings
July 07 2008 [21:26] jooky@***: this is something we will discuss

Please show me yours? Because I posted mine.

[Hanover]

And Jordi never announced how he planned warfare. ~~~~This is how Jordi has planned it from the very beginning.

So which is it?

Anyway, you seem to want everything without the work/risk. You want the safety of your bubble, but also unopposed access to everything else.

[NorCalGooey]

The solution is to add valuable resources to the areas where the mist recedes. All totems placed there will not be safe zones so other tribes can take the resources that are in your expansion totem.

Valuable resources always need to be in a PvP area. Keep the safe zones on the original totem but remove the part that doesn't let attackers kill people. I think it would be a good idea if they could kill but not loot inside the original totem. Unless the original totem was under siege or whatever system they want to implement, where the tribe defenders now have to stop the attackers from the siege. During the siege, all baskets and items are loot able for the besiegers.

This would still give meaning to attacking main totems but wouldn't cause the tribe to lose their land. Because no one in their right mind is going to build a sand castle for 100 hours, get it stolen by a larger tribe, and then think to themselves "Hmm no big deal, let's just go build another one only to have the same thing happen all over again."

That part of the pvp system we can do without. If you don't agree, please justify your opinion. Obviously it is more realistic to have all totems capture able but after all this is a game, a game which people invest lots of time into. If someone KNOWS an investment will go to ZERO they will surely not invest.

[Jadzia]

July 07 2008 [21:25] jooky@***: in the beginning we might not have destroyable towns yet
July 07 2008 [21:25] jooky@***: but when we do
July 07 2008 [21:25] jooky@***: players will be able to attack / burn / destroy buildings
July 07 2008 [21:26] jooky@***: this is something we will discuss

Please show me yours? Because I posted mine.
Of course. I read all of these posts back then. So I knew there would be warfare. I was wondering if it will be optional or not ?

So I decided to get to know it. But I'm a suspicious person and I didn't want to get a biased answer. Thats why I didn't ask it myself, I asked a friend to write a FAQ question. Not about if there will be safe zones or warfare...we knew there will be. He asked if the warfare will be free for all or opt-out in some ways. The answer was clear: it will be optional.

Now again, I'm a suspicious person. So I asked another friend to write another mail asking the same question...but acting like he was a guy who loved PvP and wanted a forced warfare. Guess what !! The answer was the same. It will be optional.
This was back in April-May in 2010.

Later during the summer a tribemate asked the same question. When warfare gets implemented, will it be FFA or opt-out? The answer was the same...it will be optional.

In October this question popped up again lol, when there was rumours about life-long membership. I wrote a mail and asked if warfare will be forced or opt-out...and yes, the answer was : it will be optional !

In January there was a big influx of Darkfall players, so this question became hot again. I wanted to know if there was any change so asked my friend again to write a new mail....he did. And the answer was: it will be optional !

This is how I know it. Jordi always planned it this way.
Can this change ? Of course. Everything can change. But its kind of unlikely....during all the last year every time he said the same thing, no matter who asked it and how he/she asked it. I believe he will stick to his word.

[MrDDT]

Still not seeing where he said that, got a link? Or all these priv emails that you wont show?

See it wasnt going to be an option, it was going to be turned off at first then allow people to fight once people could defend themselves. Sound familiar? Want me to link the posts again?

I think you are confused is all. Not understanding that it was going to end after Prelude. But after I seen I was gone for a while I see this post he made back in March. Clearly things have changed.

[NorCalGooey]

I also like the idea of the home totem having destructible buildings etc...that stuff is all great. Just no actual land capture of home totem.

[Trenchfoot]

Ok I'll take another stab at it in the spirit of being constructive.

- Remove safe zones
- Fix /unstuck
- Introduce gates
- Gates require a key.
- Introduce siege equipment and anti-siege equipment
- Walls/gates inside totem area of influence can only be destroyed by siege equipment.
- Walls/gates should take a long time to breach.
- Walls/gates can be repaired by any member of the tribe.
- Siege equipment can only be moved around by X number of players.
- Siege equipment takes large amounts of resources to be built.
- Anti-siege equipment can destroy siege equipment.
- Resources (where it makes sense) should be depletable and rotate. Once they dry up they can be discovered again somewhere else.

And I hesitate to say let everyone build everywhere but I would really like to see a way for tribes to build outside their area of influence without requiring a totem. Perhaps a special building type? I don't know. Maybe walls built outside your tribe AoI are vulnerable to a bunch of guys with picks instead of just siege equipment?

The point is tribes should be able to have the option to try and control large areas outside their area of influence by outposts, forts, trading posts, and tiny settlements.

[MrDDT]

Ok I'll take another stab at it in the spirit of being constructive.

- Remove safe zones
- Fix /unstuck
- Introduce gates
- Gates require a key.
- Introduce siege equipment and anti-siege equipment
- Walls/gates inside totem area of influence can only be destroyed by siege equipment.
- Walls/gates should take a long time to breach.
- Walls/gates can be repaired by any member of the tribe.
- Siege equipment can only be moved around by X number of players.
- Siege equipment takes large amounts of resources to be built.
- Anti-siege equipment can destroy siege equipment.
- Resources (where it makes sense) should be depletable and rotate. Once they dry up they can be discovered again somewhere else.

And I hesitate to say let everyone build everywhere but I would really like to see a way for tribes to build outside their area of influence without requiring a totem. Perhaps a special building type? I don't know. Maybe walls built outside your tribe AoI are vulnerable to a bunch of guys with picks instead of just siege equipment?

The point is tribes should be able to have the option to try and control large areas outside their area of influence by outposts, forts, trading posts, and tiny settlements.

I would love to see outposts that can be "claimed" and defended/attacked like Shadowbane had. I think that would be a huge boon to allowing people to fight over something other than just totems.

[Hanover]

...................

What are you afraid of? You claim to speak for the masses that clearly outnumber the nasty PvP types. .../cough...
Why could you not band together to create your own player enforced "safe zone" or pay someone to protect you? Isn't this the beauty of a sandbox?
Why the need to hide behind mechanics?

For instance my guild routinely did mercenary work in Shadowbane. We helped many small and more RP centric guilds survive and thrive.

[Trenchfoot]

I would love to see outposts that can be "claimed" and defended/attacked like Shadowbane had. I think that would be a huge boon to allowing people to fight over something other than just totems.

I agree but I would like to see your term 'claimed' be something you do, not something the game does for you. To claim something all you need to do is say it's yours then back that statement up. You don't need a cattleshute mechanism.

[Malivius]

Without a thriving player versus player conflict (along with other forms of interaction) this game will be boring and dead before it ever gets going...

There are vocal extremes to each side of this argument, but I don't think either really speaks for the bulk of the community. I don't believe anyone (except a very limited few people) would be happy with a combat-turned off building sim...what the hell would you do after the first month? (Which is where we are right now...)

At the same time, there are very few (I believe) that want a DF gankfest 24/7 with little else to do. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. I'd love to have a neutral tradepost that I had to keep protected (whether through cooperation or hiring guards)...it'd bring life into the game and bring the meta-game to life! (It would be awesome to have a thriving trade with several tribes that kept the tradepost safe in return for a discounted trade-rate, etc)

However, I would not enjoy another tribe (whether large or small) to be able to completely sack and claim my tradepost. It wouldn't be worth my time to build something if it was easy to sack. Gotta find the middle ground (as has been said by many in this thread)

[orious13]

Once they add gates there will be little to no reason to have restricted zones of safety. I still think there will be no safe zones (maybe for Guide towns?), but gates allow "for those to remain safety" if they want. Maybe alignment will protect them from some sort of war.

The vision of Jooky's game as explained through numerous outlets is not simple nor is it complete. This is why "limited safe zone...better resources outside...etc" is just a thin walled circle.

I've read countless things stating warfare (later) and pvp choice -> friendly fighting where loot isn't so fully taken and more readily available than good vs evil fighting where loot is more fully free. He's envisioned evil players being "monsters" that as the lore suggests means that their only motivation is to attack is to destroy or to cause chaos. This just relies on a few things: an alignment that once soiled is difficult to regain, but easy to soil. Evil players will be prone to destruction...good or neutral might not be. This is pretty simple, but pvp people do not want it (I'm a centrist) and it WILL be exploited by them at the least.

Everything that I have read (interviews previous updates) points to a warfare system that the main war loving people would rather change. I mean seriously type in xsyon interview in google and read the first three top choices. It seems to me that while the ability to destroy will be available to some extent, it is probably not what the destroyers are really wanting.


I agree but I would like to see your term 'claimed' be something you do, not something the game does for you. To claim something all you need to do is say it's yours then back that statement up. You don't need a cattleshute mechanism.

This is exactly what expansion totems could do.

[Jadzia]

Still not seeing where he said that, got a link? Or all these priv emails that you wont show?

See it wasnt going to be an option, it was going to be turned off at first then allow people to fight once people could defend themselves. Sound familiar? Want me to link the posts again?

I think you are confused is all. Not understanding that it was going to end after Prelude. But after I seen I was gone for a while I see this post he made back in March. Clearly things have changed.
These were FAQ answers.

I'm not confused. You are talking about safe zones, which were supposed to be replaced by player-built structures after Prelude. I'm talking about sieging, taking over other tribes' areas which has always been planned as optional.

All those link you posted were about warfare, but not the conditions of warfare. If I say that there will be jumping in a game that doesn't mean that everyone will be forced to jump. I wanted to know the conditions so I asked them. You thought that it will be mandatory, but it was only something you assumed, and you were wrong.

But check that Xsyon Update Archive thread again, now the 4th of March update. Jordi tells there that sieging isn't part of his original game design, he originally planned only contest over resources.

[Trenchfoot]

It seems to me that while the ability to destroy will be available to some extent, it is probably not what the destroyers are really wanting.

This is where this game will break ground or not. It's a matter of how much player freedom will be allowed.

The devs should provide us with tools to make the game what we want it to be, not catch-all mechanisms (chutes and ladders).

[MrDDT]

These were FAQ answers.

I'm not confused. You are talking about safe zones, which were supposed to be replaced by player-built structures after Prelude. I'm talking about sieging, taking over other tribes' areas which has always been planned as optional.

All those link you posted were about warfare, but not the conditions of warfare. If I say that there will be jumping in a game that doesn't mean that everyone will be forced to jump. I wanted to know the conditions so I asked them. You thought that it will be mandatory, but it was only something you assumed, and you were wrong.

But check that Xsyon Update Archive thread again, now the 4th of March update. Jordi tells there that sieging isn't part of his original game design, he originally planned only contest over resources.


I dont know what word play you are trying, but totem take overs were planned since day 1 and before.

[Dubanka]

I dont know what word play you are trying, but totem take overs were planned since day 1 and before.

honestly, i'm not sure what was said 2 years ago matters...at all.

whatever the plan was, well, no plan survives the first shot fired downrange...and it's time to look at what we have and adjust it in the most expedient way possible, in a manner that brings players back to the game..because it's like worth playing.

It's funny, that with all this conflicting talk about the developer's xsyon vision, and with the infighting about who really has claim to the mantle of that vision (PVE! no PVP!) that the dev himself has just sat on the sidelines and not settled the issue.
IF there is a sign that the plan is in flux, and that the original design vision was really just a might could design framework, this is it...otherwise, why not just post a nice definitive post
re:My vision of the game, pvp, territorial control and asset capture and destruction....
no more supersecret private emails, or obtuse irc posts, just a nice brief q and a would settle the whole damned thing.

THere needs to be some element of player safety...maybe thats a couple gm run starting towns at some of the log in points. nice common safe area to craft, trade, with a no conflict zone that extended a certain radius out from it, where players could plant homestead only size tribal areas. Rare resources could only be carried on person in the safe areas and could not be dropped, only traded. all other mechanisms would be on. It's your xsyon bunny slope. sim mud hut. craft, terraform, figure out whats going on, break camp then head out into the real world to play the rest of the game...or dont and be a boon to the new player, a crafter for higher, or work as an escort for trade convoys going to and from the safe zone. Everything else goes wide open.

[MrDDT]

THere needs to be some element of player safety...maybe thats a couple gm run starting towns at some of the log in points. nice common safe area to craft, trade, with a no conflict zone that extended a certain radius out from it, where players could plant homestead only size tribal areas. Rare resources could only be carried on person in the safe areas and could not be dropped, only traded. all other mechanisms would be on. It's your xsyon bunny slope. sim mud hut. craft, terraform, figure out whats going on, break camp then head out into the real world to play the rest of the game...or dont and be a boon to the new player, a crafter for higher, or work as an escort for trade convoys going to and from the safe zone. Everything else goes wide open.


I agree with this, and Ive said as much.
Again but the current plan from the dev (Xsyon) is to allow these safe totems to be anywhere in the world placed how they choose. That is game breaking for me, and I dont see why you would as a dev want to do that. Its exploitable big time, and would make all the other PVP totems worthless.

[Book]

honestly, i'm not sure what was said 2 years ago matters...at all.

whatever the plan was, well, no plan survives the first shot fired downrange...and it's time to look at what we have and adjust it in the most expedient way possible, in a manner that brings players back to the game..because it's like worth playing.

It's funny, that with all this conflicting talk about the developer's xsyon vision, and with the infighting about who really has claim to the mantle of that vision (PVE! no PVP!) that the dev himself has just sat on the sidelines and not settled the issue.
IF there is a sign that the plan is in flux, and that the original design vision was really just a might could design framework, this is it...otherwise, why not just post a nice definitive post
re:My vision of the game, pvp, territorial control and asset capture and destruction....
no more supersecret private emails, or obtuse irc posts, just a nice brief q and a would settle the whole damned thing.

THere needs to be some element of player safety...maybe thats a couple gm run starting towns at some of the log in points. nice common safe area to craft, trade, with a no conflict zone that extended a certain radius out from it, where players could plant homestead only size tribal areas. Rare resources could only be carried on person in the safe areas and could not be dropped, only traded. all other mechanisms would be on. It's your xsyon bunny slope. sim mud hut. craft, terraform, figure out whats going on, break camp then head out into the real world to play the rest of the game...or dont and be a boon to the new player, a crafter for higher, or work as an escort for trade convoys going to and from the safe zone. Everything else goes wide open.

You're putting the pve element in what Trenchfoot dubbed the "smoker's lounge." Though he was talking about pvp... which doesn't belong in the smoker's lounge either obviously.

Other ideas have been put forth that wouldn't call for a smoker's lounge at all.

The only win here is a compromise in good faith, not one that ridicules with notions of mud huts and bunny slopes.

@MrDDT: again, there have been ideas put forth that wouldn't involve what you're suggesting.

[Dubanka]

You're putting the pve element in what Trenchfoot dubbed the "smoker's lounge." Though he was talking about pvp... which doesn't belong in the smoker's lounge either obviously.

Other ideas have been put forth that wouldn't call for a smoker's lounge at all.

The only win here is a compromise in good faith, not one that ridicules with notions of mud huts and bunny slopes.

@MrDDT: again, there have been ideas put forth that wouldn't involve what you're suggesting.

I am absolutely not. the PVE element is of huge importance throughout the gameworld. It is incorporated at every level of tribal development. What is in the smoking lounge, is the no risk pve world.

and to be clear: There is no such thing as a compromise. Either pvp, crafting, resources and territorial control (PCR&T) are integral components of a game system or they aren't.
My position, and i think i represent a majority here, is that the PCR&T is a cycle that needs to be left in tact. Players can determine how much they want to be involved in any single part of the system. Tribes can determine how much they want to be involved in the system. Only one thing makes the system completely not work...the ability for a group to opt out of it. The exploit avenues are just too large, the gameplay issues too many, a split system is not a system.

SO yes. I support a safety net for new guilds, or for guilds to have as a fall back point if they come up on the losing side of a asset spat one too many times. This safety net should be small. It should be designed to introduce gameplay mechanics to new players, and provide a neutral area for guilds to trade and negotiate. It should also be designed to usher players into the larger world, to compete for the larger rewards...this is why it's the bunny slope...bunny slopes introduce new skiers to skiing...it wouldnt be kinda or safe to shove a novice off a black diamond run...MOST WOULD NEVER SKI AGAIN. so you start them on the bunny where they learn to turn and most importantly stop, in a controlled and mostly risk free environment. So, in xsyon we want to let them figure out what to do, explore the wide world from a nice safe spot, then when they feel they're ready they can embark on a larger game...OR they can opt not to and refine whatever skills they want from within the safet of the starting area...they just would not be able to play with all the toys (ie rare stuff) from within that locale.

Sorry, but that is really the only way 'safe' works.

[JCatano]

No, its not me who want to change it. I'm fine with the system Jordi plans, the opt-out warfare. I don't want to change it, do you ?

He has always planned the game to be this way. Warfare over resources, not over the cities. Now that there are players who wants to fight over the cities too he is willing to give an option for that, but not forcing it on everybody. Ok, let's not change it.

Can architecture structures be damaged by other players at any time?

As the game evolves yes. This won't be in for a while as towns are planned as safe zones in the Prelude, though I am considered tribes to allow to choose if they want to be warring tribes during the Prelude. Warring tribes will be able to attack each other.

---

After prelude- will tribes be able to conquer other tribe lands by destroying their totem?

Yes. How this will work is not fully decided yet. Since we first started working on Xsyon, many games have come out with some good ideas for this type of warfare. We're going to spend some time checking these out before we implement what we think is the best solution.

---

Always? Do I need to date those answers for you? He changed it once. It's time to change it back to the original idea.

[Book]

I am absolutely not. the PVE element is of huge importance throughout the gameworld. It is incorporated at every level of tribal development. What is in the smoking lounge, is the no risk pve world.

and to be clear: There is no such thing as a compromise. Either pvp, crafting, resources and territorial control (PCR&T) are integral components of a game system or they aren't.
My position, and i think i represent a majority here, is that the PCR&T is a cycle that needs to be left in tact. Players can determine how much they want to be involved in any single part of the system. Tribes can determine how much they want to be involved in the system. Only one thing makes the system completely not work...the ability for a group to opt out of it. The exploit avenues are just too large, the gameplay issues too many, a split system is not a system.

SO yes. I support a safety net for new guilds, or for guilds to have as a fall back point if they come up on the losing side of a asset spat one too many times. This safety net should be small. It should be designed to introduce gameplay mechanics to new players, and provide a neutral area for guilds to trade and negotiate. It should also be designed to usher players into the larger world, to compete for the larger rewards...this is why it's the bunny slope...bunny slopes introduce new skiers to skiing...it wouldnt be kinda or safe to shove a novice off a black diamond run...MOST WOULD NEVER SKI AGAIN. so you start them on the bunny where they learn to turn and most importantly stop, in a controlled and mostly risk free environment. So, in xsyon we want to let them figure out what to do, explore the wide world from a nice safe spot, then when they feel they're ready they can embark on a larger game...OR they can opt not to and refine whatever skills they want from within the safet of the starting area...they just would not be able to play with all the toys (ie rare stuff) from within that locale.

Sorry, but that is really the only way 'safe' works.

Okay, thanks. I really appreciate you clearing that up for me. I think we're actually kind of saying the same thing, I was just envisioning a larger safe area with maybe the safe area contributing to the non-safe area a bit more.

Might be a deal-breaker for what you're envisioning though... I'm not married to it, more like dating the idea.

[Salvadore]

I dunno about you all...but I logged in last night for the first time in 2 weeks.

My tribe city has already been built to the max. My skills are where I want them to be. I decided I shall make a personal quest AND FIND SOMEONE ELSE IN GAME.

I found my guild mate. That was easy. He was the only other one of our 27ish members at the moment. We coordinated this, so it really isnt a "successful quest" due to that fact. I then proceeded to "quest" to find another person logged into this game...

THREE HOURS AND FORTY-EIGHT MINUTES LATER

I find myself bored and log out. I almost circled the lake entirely, stopping at EVERY totem looking for signs of life. Occasionally I asked in general chat "Is anyone there?" getting absolutely no answers what so ever. I didnt find a single player even sitting in their safezones anymore grinding.

FACE IT, CRAFT WORLD IS A FAIL. PEOPLE GET BORED OF IT QUICK. THERE IS NO REASON TO LOG IN.

Crafting currently works (almost) perfectly...and yet...NOBODY IS IN THIS GAME! WAKE UP!

CRAFT WORLD has already proven itself as a failure. Catering to anyone favoring that playstyle, at this point, is ensuring this sandboxes failure. It's time to start addressing combat/tribal warfare/balancing of equipment involving it. Else, go ahead and pull the plug and save everyone wasted time.

FACE IT.

[NorCalGooey]

Can architecture structures be damaged by other players at any time?

As the game evolves yes. This won't be in for a while as towns are planned as safe zones in the Prelude, though I am considered tribes to allow to choose if they want to be warring tribes during the Prelude. Warring tribes will be able to attack each other.

---

After prelude- will tribes be able to conquer other tribe lands by destroying their totem?

Yes. How this will work is not fully decided yet. Since we first started working on Xsyon, many games have come out with some good ideas for this type of warfare. We're going to spend some time checking these out before we implement what we think is the best solution.

---

Always? Do I need to date those answers for you? He changed it once. It's time to change it back to the original idea.

Regardless of how you interpret that statement, if they do implement starting totems able to be captured (not damaging the buildings inside, that is completely fine) then this game has no chance. That is an indisputable fact. However, being able to steal items out of baskets and destroy buildings etc will keep players into the game, not cause them to quit.

Having to repair damages and replace stolen goods is fine. Losing EVERY THING just causes players to quit. As is the case at least 90% of the time when a player's MMO account is hacked. This is essentially the same thing because for tribes (and especially larger ones), their account IS the tribe area...at least for a lot of people who put more work into the tribe than their own character). I could have 300 skill points to spend by now but I don't because I put more work into the tribe lands than into my character.

Apart from that one issue, the more options and destruction the better.

The options are realism from all land being able to be captured AND a lot more turnover as far as player population

OR

Damageable and loot able goods from main tribe totem (where exp. totem tribes will keep their most valuable goods anyways) will cause players to play MORE because they want to repair the buildings in their land (but at the cost of realism..in real life any thing can be conquered). But if they lose all of the land what do they have left? Nothing. It's like re rolling a new toon a year after the game came out.

[MrDDT]

I dunno about you all...but I logged in last night for the first time in 2 weeks.

My tribe city has already been built to the max. My skills are where I want them to be. I decided I shall make a personal quest AND FIND SOMEONE ELSE IN GAME.

I found my guild mate. That was easy. He was the only other one of our 27ish members at the moment. We coordinated this, so it really isnt a "successful quest" due to that fact. I then proceeded to "quest" to find another person logged into this game...

THREE HOURS AND FORTY-EIGHT MINUTES LATER

I find myself bored and log out. I almost circled the lake entirely, stopping at EVERY totem looking for signs of life. Occasionally I asked in general chat "Is anyone there?" getting absolutely no answers what so ever. I didnt find a single player even sitting in their safezones anymore grinding.

FACE IT, CRAFT WORLD IS A FAIL. PEOPLE GET BORED OF IT QUICK. THERE IS NO REASON TO LOG IN.

Crafting currently works (almost) perfectly...and yet...NOBODY IS IN THIS GAME! WAKE UP!

CRAFT WORLD has already proven itself as a failure. Catering to anyone favoring that playstyle, at this point, is ensuring this sandboxes failure. It's time to start addressing combat/tribal warfare/balancing of equipment involving it. Else, go ahead and pull the plug and save everyone wasted time.

FACE IT.

I may agree with you about the craft world being fail, however, dont use this state of the game as the data to support that. Right now the game has many issues even crafters are unhappy with.



Regardless of how you interpret that statement, if they do implement starting totems able to be captured (not damaging the buildings inside, that is completely fine) then this game has no chance. That is an indisputable fact. However, being able to steal items out of baskets and destroy buildings etc will keep players into the game, not cause them to quit.

Having to repair damages and replace stolen goods is fine. Losing EVERY THING just causes players to quit. As is the case at least 90% of the time when a player's MMO account is hacked. This is essentially the same thing because for tribes (and especially larger ones), their account IS the tribe area. I could have 300 skill points to spend by now but I don't because I put more work into the tribe lands than into my character.

Apart from that one tiny issue, the more options and destruction the better.

The options are realism from all land being able to be captured AND a lot more turnover as far as player population

OR

Damageable and loot able goods from main tribe totem (where exp. totem tribes will keep their most valuable goods anyways) will cause players to play MORE because they want to repair the buildings in their land. But if they lose all of the land what do they have left? Nothing. It's like rerolling a new toon a year after the game came out.


Do you understand that putting a totem down near a rare resource thats "Safe" area that cant be taken will cause MAJOR problems for a game like this?

[NorCalGooey]

That's why the solution is simple. Receed the green mist and have all rare resources and ONLY capturable expansion totems in the green mist. These exp totems will act as free land to all players in the sense that they will be able to extract the resources from another tribes expansion zone.

If a resource is really valuable the tribe MAY build heavy defenses and keep a lot of players defending the expansion totem. This is where fun comes in. Then perhaps they could have extremely rare resources in an area of the map which for one reason or another cannot have any totems placed on it. I'd recommend this area to be very small as to encourage open field warring over resources. To even get the resource tribes would have to organize combat chars to protect the crafters who are gathering these resources.


also, i never said any safe zones should be placed next to valuable resources.... i don't know why anyone should think that is allowed.

Safe zone int he sense that ONLY the tribe that placed the totem could terraform and build there. However, not safe in the sense that any player can walk into tribe zone and loot as well as gather the resources in that tribe zone

[Jadzia]

Crafting currently works (almost) perfectly...and yet...NOBODY IS IN THIS GAME! WAKE UP!

CRAFT WORLD has already proven itself as a failure. Catering to anyone favoring that playstyle, at this point, is ensuring this sandboxes failure. It's time to start addressing combat/tribal warfare/balancing of equipment involving it. Else, go ahead and pull the plug and save everyone wasted time.

FACE IT.
This is the joke of the week lol. Crafting works almost perfectly ? I know you are a PvP player but still...have you never seen a working economy ?

In Xsyon you can craft items which has no use at all. Thats not how a crafting system should work. If they give us comfort, if your character dies when sleeping out in the wood during the winter, if he dies from cold without a warm armor, if I won't be able to kill a bear naked and with a knife only, when tools breaks and items decay, when there is item loss implemented then we can start to talk about the crafting system. Till then even if you had your PvP system it still would be just as pointless as crafting.

[Dubanka]

Regardless of how you interpret that statement, if they do implement starting totems able to be captured (not damaging the buildings inside, that is completely fine) then this game has no chance. That is an indisputable fact. However, being able to steal items out of baskets and destroy buildings etc will keep players into the game, not cause them to quit.

Having to repair damages and replace stolen goods is fine. Losing EVERY THING just causes players to quit. As is the case at least 90% of the time when a player's MMO account is hacked. This is essentially the same thing because for tribes (and especially larger ones), their account IS the tribe area...at least for a lot of people who put more work into the tribe than their own character). I could have 300 skill points to spend by now but I don't because I put more work into the tribe lands than into my character.

Apart from that one issue, the more options and destruction the better.

The options are realism from all land being able to be captured AND a lot more turnover as far as player population

OR

Damageable and loot able goods from main tribe totem (where exp. totem tribes will keep their most valuable goods anyways) will cause players to play MORE because they want to repair the buildings in their land (but at the cost of realism..in real life any thing can be conquered). But if they lose all of the land what do they have left? Nothing. It's like re rolling a new toon a year after the game came out.

Dude, they are only pixels.

as i stated earlier in here someplace, we need to redux the cost of architectural improvements for warring tribes...signficantly, i said 50%, but it may be 75% for fortifications. Losing a town shouldnt be like losing a friend.

I would also like to see terraforming do more at higher skill...currently i have it at 100, and havent noticed it being materially different from 1. maybe i level larger areas of land, or leveling works better :p But yeah, everybody will lose eventually...and while the loss should hurt, it shouldnt be viewed as some set back that you can't recover from.

[Hanover]

when there is item loss implemented then we can start to talk about the crafting system.

PvP seems like the most direct route to item loss. No?

[NorCalGooey]

Dude, they are only pixels.

as i stated earlier in here someplace, we need to redux the cost of architectural improvements for warring tribes...signficantly, i said 50%, but it may be 75% for fortifications. Losing a town shouldnt be like losing a friend.

I would also like to see terraforming do more at higher skill...currently i have it at 100, and havent noticed it being materially different from 1. maybe i level larger areas of land, or leveling works better :p But yeah, everybody will lose eventually...and while the loss should hurt, it shouldnt be viewed as some set back that you can't recover from.

You obviously don't get it. It has nothing to do with pixels and everything to do with time invested for nothing. Obviously playing all games is time that is invested for nothing as it relates to real life...apart from maybe the fun of playing the game itself. But part of that fun is logging in and seeing all the INVESTED TIME has not been wasted.

Being able to capture ALL lands a tribe owns is just an invitation to having the majority of the tribe members quit or join a new tribe. Because they sure as hell don't want to re terraform and rebuild EVERYTHING (50k+ limestone bricks, anyone?)

and that's exactly my point. the loss shouldn't be a set back you can't recover from. a setback such as destroyed limestone walls or stolen fish isn't the end of the tribe, but losing EVERYTHING inside the capital tribe grounds is.


PvP seems like the most direct route to item loss. No?

Not the most direct route. It requires someone to actually kill and loot you which isn't a guarantee. Coding the game to have item decay would be a guarantee to lose items after a certain amount of time, regardless of how great your character is.

But in a highly populated server full of PvPers, it's a pretty direct route to item loss.

Then again the item actually doesn't disappear from the game world, it just trades hands.

[orious13]

PvP seems like the most direct route to item loss. No?

PvP most/many of the items are "traded" without consent (lol). What is need is decay or any way they are removed from the world completely. PvP might remedy the problem a little on one side (50% win 50% lose...), but having things break is much more impacting for both sides, the victor (zomzom/bear or player looting you) and the loser...either pve/pvp/justdoingstuff doesn't matter.

I only say this because man..I just have too many items. You probably might also. You might open up my corpse and say..."eh...got too many axes already."

[Dubanka]

You obviously don't get it. It has nothing to do with pixels and everything to do with time invested for nothing. Obviously playing all games is time that is invested for nothing as it relates to real life...apart from maybe the fun of playing the game itself. But part of that fun is logging in and seeing all the INVESTED TIME has not been wasted.

Being able to capture ALL lands a tribe owns is just an invitation to having the majority of the tribe members quit or join a new tribe. Because they sure as hell don't want to re terraform and rebuild EVERYTHING (50k+ limestone bricks, anyone?)

and that's exactly my point. the loss shouldn't be a set back you can't recover from. a setback such as destroyed limestone walls or stolen fish isn't the end of the tribe, but losing EVERYTHING inside the capital tribe grounds is.

you've obviously never played a game that featured asset destruction.
they are only pixels. It is only free time. And you invest your free time in a game. part of the game is asset destruction/capture.
That's why you play. you win some, you lose some. when you lose, you put on your big boy pants, rebuild and go look to get some pay back.
never build anything you cant afford to lose.
If you want to build a giant monument to your greatness? OUtstanding...just understand that someone may take it as a challenge. I've got city builders who spend inordinate amounts of time working tod design 'the perfect fortress'. is it necessary? not really. Is it gratifying to have something you create withstand attack after attack after attack? absolutely.
when you lose one does it suck. alot? definitely.
but it's jsut a game. and they are only pixels.

[Hanover]

blah

So ideally... You people want to sit in your bubble crafting, only to have said item rot and decay so you can craft them again? This would give you a sense of accomplishment???
Sounds like "Whac-A-Mole" requiring the same skill set.

[Koll]

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.

You are missing the point that some folks here dont want to partake in the wars. They got to find a balance to keep the competitive -pvp hungry guys like you and the "Sandcastle" builders. It is a sandbox, but I dont think they will force people to go to war if they dont want too. They have been trying to find a balance since they proposed a peace and war server (which didnt go throught anyway).

[mrcalhou]

Asset destruction is a must if they want to promote the economy; I fear wear over time decay won't be enough--it isn't in Darkfall.

I don't believe that PvP should be allowed anywhere, anytime unless players can also build structures for protection like archery towers and hire/outfit NPC guards (you know, the kind that doesn't need to log-off for work or sleep). I also think that some of the game world should be set aside as completely safe, with the most common mobs and resources so new players can get their feet wet without fearing being ganked, and so players can play, while advancing their characters, in safety without being able to completely flood the economy with all sorts of items; just the most basic of equipment, or resources that are needed in extremely high quantities anyway for other recipes.

I think they should get rid of the concept of an "expansion totem" and just allow players to build structures and terraform at their leisure in those areas; while allowing claimable land, like it is in the game now, in areas that don't have rare resources and the resources that are near-by are also needed in significant amounts for most recipes that they are used in.

Alignment should be tribe and person dependent; not "good" or "evil." Either, I personally like a tribe or person or I don't. I don't want the game telling me that I don't like them. I want to be able to set that for myself. This way defensive structures can be set to attack anyone on my dislike list on sight.

[NorCalGooey]

you've obviously never played a game that featured asset destruction.
they are only pixels. It is only free time. And you invest your free time in a game. part of the game is asset destruction/capture.
That's why you play. you win some, you lose some. when you lose, you put on your big boy pants, rebuild and go look to get some pay back.
never build anything you cant afford to lose.
If you want to build a giant monument to your greatness? OUtstanding...just understand that someone may take it as a challenge. I've got city builders who spend inordinate amounts of time working tod design 'the perfect fortress'. is it necessary? not really. Is it gratifying to have something you create withstand attack after attack after attack? absolutely.
when you lose one does it suck. alot? definitely.
but it's jsut a game. and they are only pixels.

And you still don't get it.

Destruction of everything for MULTIPLE PLAYERS (all the tribe members) equals those players never playing again. I am fine with siege damage to walls and all that.

They are only pixels but it is my time invested. Here's a VERY simple way to get an awesome city without an work involved whatsoever. Get a bunch of PvPers to join a tribe together, they have a totem down but nothing built in it. Then they decide to go steal someone elses heavily terraformed tribe lands that looks really awesome and has 500+ limestone walls and tents everywhere

I GUARANTEE YOU THIS WILL NOT BE THE SYSTEM. GUARANTEE IT

That's why they have expansion totems, how do you not get that? The expansion totems are the capture able land...how you can be calling for original totems to be fully capture able and converted to another tribes control is completely ludicrous and it is NOT happening.

Like I said, please justify why this would be a good idea. I've spent over 200 hours on my tribe land and just like the rest of the population, if there was a roll back to mid March, we would quit

Getting EVERYTHING taken is the same as a rollback. That is why people complain about rollbacks. It is playing for no reason and that is what original totem capture involves. People know going into it that an expansion totem may be captured so it may not be the most wise to put a lot of effort into that area if you care to see it gone.

this is just extra land, everyone deserves one HOME area.

It doesn't matter if a few players want this, nowhere near enough want it to fill the game world of Xsyon.

Added after 5 minutes:


So ideally... You people want to sit in your bubble crafting, only to have said item rot and decay so you can craft them again? This would give you a sense of accomplishment???
Sounds like "Whac-A-Mole" requiring the same skill set.

What bubble?

Main totem lands should be fully loot able and players inside them should be attack able as well as buildings damaged and destroyed.

What I don't want is all my tribe mates land taken over by a massive tribe of griefers in which we are out numbered and have no chance against them.

We lose EVERYTHING (as you are suggesting is a good system) and we have to all move to a new location and start ALL OVER AGAIN like it was FINAL WIPE DAY.



It's just NOT happening and nothing anyone has said has pointed toward it happening.


Doesn't this game have a hard enough time KEEPING players into the game (not getting them into it, that's the easy part...keeping them into this game is hard...aka resubbing)???

[Eduard]

Ok I'll take another stab at it in the spirit of being constructive.

- Remove safe zones
- Fix /unstuck
- Introduce gates
- Gates require a key.
- Introduce siege equipment and anti-siege equipment
- Walls/gates inside totem area of influence can only be destroyed by siege equipment.
- Walls/gates should take a long time to breach.
- Walls/gates can be repaired by any member of the tribe.
- Siege equipment can only be moved around by X number of players.
- Siege equipment takes large amounts of resources to be built.
- Anti-siege equipment can destroy siege equipment.
- Resources (where it makes sense) should be depletable and rotate. Once they dry up they can be discovered again somewhere else.

And I hesitate to say let everyone build everywhere but I would really like to see a way for tribes to build outside their area of influence without requiring a totem. Perhaps a special building type? I don't know. Maybe walls built outside your tribe AoI are vulnerable to a bunch of guys with picks instead of just siege equipment?

The point is tribes should be able to have the option to try and control large areas outside their area of influence by outposts, forts, trading posts, and tiny settlements.

YES! ^this

Guys if this game goes all carebear then I have few questions:
1. Why do we have walls - if you have safe zone then walls are kinda for look - something like flowers - lets make more flowers then - DEVs delete all walls and defending structures pls (/sarcasm)
2. Why do we have armor sets? - delete them also
3. Weapons - ...
4. fun? - lets make this single player game and rename it to sim city 2010

Srsly ppl get real and stop talking about safe zones and PVE part and all that BS - Its really simple - I see this game as free game... free to do anything you like (someone will pvp , someone will build all day, someone will destroy, someone will farm, someone will trade, then politic between tribes and everything else that I didnt mention here).
If you take that freedom and make safe zones permanent then we lost that freedom - there will be NO to very low PVP... players will build less because - why building walls when you have safe zones etc ... its all connected.
Safe zones and battlegrounds/minigames and alike are ruining games... pls don't make same mistake here.

Its sandbox for love of the God ... don't make is prisonbox!

Added after 6 minutes:


And you still don't get it.

Destruction of everything for MULTIPLE PLAYERS (all the tribe members) equals those players never playing again. I am fine with siege damage to walls and all that.


You don't get it mate ... Why attacking if you can't destroy?
Why defending if you can't be destroyed?
Why war between tribes if its pointless?
Why playing game that is pointless?

If you leave game after someone destroy all that you have build then you are not for sandbox games - its simple as that.

If you want to build all day and be sure it will not be destroyed then go Sims and Sim City but be sure to turn off natural catastrophes because they will dmg your town.

[Salvadore]

This is the joke of the week lol. Crafting works almost perfectly ? I know you are a PvP player but still...have you never seen a working economy ?

MMkay sweety. Crafting is the BEST THING about this game currently, and yes, it works pretty much the best out of anything else in the game. You WILL NOT have an economy without pvp/warfare. Nobody is losing any gear to decay, use, or any other reason currently. They wont lose it even if decay was put in at a ridiculous speed. Same with assets having no destruction - people will just do the cheaper assets with easier maintenance due to fact that there is NO PURPOSE behind them besides aesthetics. Adding rare resources will still NOT create an economy due to the fact that they have no real purpose or benefit. There will be no sign of any type of economy until it (pvp/warfare) is addressed.

LOL have I ever seen a working economy??? Im usually the guy that dictates how it works on the entire server - consider me a venture capitalist to the ruthless degree.


In Xsyon you can craft items which has no use at all. Thats not how a crafting system should work. If they give us comfort, if your character dies when sleeping out in the wood during the winter, if he dies from cold without a warm armor, if I won't be able to kill a bear naked and with a knife only, when tools breaks and items decay, when there is item loss implemented then we can start to talk about the crafting system. Till then even if you had your PvP system it still would be just as pointless as crafting.

/facepalm

It really is no wonder you have over 1800 posts. Fix pvp - supplements the crafting system better than perfecting the crafting system itself. Fixing pvp makes use of EVERY thing you just described.

I cant really figure out if you just like to blindly argue in a delusional fashion or really have no idea what keeps people logging into an MMO.

[Jadzia]

PvP seems like the most direct route to item loss. No?
No. There is no item loss in PvP. There is only ownership change.

@Salvador: this has been proven wrong so many times. PvP is not needed for a good economy, if PvP was working properly now in Xsyon it wouldn't help even a tiny bit. Say you can kill someone and loot....oo happy,now you have the 65th useless armor ! How nice. Drop into one of the 120 bins at home and forget it.
Even if you could take over other tribes' area now...so what ? You fight them, take over the city. Yay, now you have 20 more absolutely useless tents !! Hurray. And you have one more land which has the exact same resources as your own one. You have 1 more sandcastle which is useless as well. If you really don't see how we need a working economy first then its really hopeless to explain it to you.

PvP doesn't create a good economy. Economy is needed first so that there is a reason to fight for things. And for the economy we need purpose for items....stats and quality for armors and weapons, comfort and decay to make use of buildings, rare resources, rare recipes, etc.

[Eduard]

No. There is no item loss in PvP. There is only ownership change.

@Salvador: this has been proven wrong so many times. PvP is not needed for a good economy, if PvP was working properly now in Xsyon it wouldn't help even a tiny bit. Say you can kill someone and loot....oo happy,now you have the 65th useless armor ! How nice. Drop into one of the 120 bins at home and forget it.
Even if you could take over other tribes' area now...so what ? You fight them, take over the city. Yay, now you have 20 more absolutely useless tents !! Hurray. And you have one more land which has the exact same resources as your own one. You have 1 more sandcastle which is useless as well. If you really don't see how we need a working economy first then its really hopeless to explain it to you.

PvP doesn't create a good economy. Economy is needed first so that there is a reason to fight for things. And for the economy we need purpose for items....stats and quality for armors and weapons, comfort and decay to make use of buildings, rare resources, rare recipes, etc.

Imo both is needed - decay and PVP (decay of items need to be highly increased in PVP which is kinda logical) - and when we have both ... there is economy born from ashes of decay and conflict. (same as in RL unfortunately)

[Salvadore]

No. There is no item loss in PvP. There is only ownership change.

@Salvador: this has been proven wrong so many times. PvP is not needed for a good economy, if PvP was working properly now in Xsyon it wouldn't help even a tiny bit. Say you can kill someone and loot....oo happy,now you have the 65th useless armor ! How nice. Drop into one of the 120 bins at home and forget it.
Even if you could take over other tribes' area now...so what ? You fight them, take over the city. Yay, now you have 20 more absolutely useless tents !! Hurray. And you have one more land which has the exact same resources as your own one. You have 1 more sandcastle which is useless as well. If you really don't see how we need a working economy first then its really hopeless to explain it to you.

PvP doesn't create a good economy. Economy is needed first so that there is a reason to fight for things. And for the economy we need purpose for items....stats and quality for armors and weapons, comfort and decay to make use of buildings, rare resources, rare recipes, etc.

Just add "that I destroy" after every item you mentioned.

100% item loss in pvp due to my action. Even if i still decided to hoard it, the OTHER PERSON still has to re-aquire it. Same with another's tribal area. For all you know, ive exhausted all needed resources at mine, and am going to take yours. After I do, I will have mine, but not until I TAKE IT. You, then, have to aquire it again.

Thats an economy - everyone is always in progression to get something else due to risk/loss (the risk/loss is what you still fail to grasp).

Currently, there is no economy due to the fact that EVERYONE has ANYTHING they desire, safely, protected, without fear. No risk, no need to trade, no need to interact with anyone besides their fellow guildies who are gophering whatever resource atm.

It really sounds like you fear a pvp system, thus why you are constantly trying to put it last in every endeavor you post about.

[Jadzia]

Just add "that I destroy" after every item you mentioned.

100% item loss in pvp due to my action. Even if i still decided to hoard it, the OTHER PERSON still has to re-aquire it. Same with another's tribal area. For all you know, ive exhausted all needed resources at mine, and am going to take yours. After I do, I will have mine, but not until I TAKE IT. You, then, have to aquire it again.

Thats an economy - everyone is always in progression to get something else due to risk/loss (the risk/loss is what you still fail to grasp).

Currently, there is no economy due to the fact that EVERYONE has ANYTHING they desire, safely, protected, without fear. No risk, no need to trade, no need to interact with anyone besides their fellow guildies who are gophering whatever resource atm.

It really sounds like you fear a pvp system, thus why you are constantly trying to put it last in every endeavor you post about.
I wonder if you really don't understand it, or you just like to argue. Economy is not driven by risk/loss...its driven by demand. And there is no demand for anything in the game now. NOTHING. Since nothing has any purpose. You can gather thousands of armors by PvP...but why ? To sit, stare at them and be proud ? Because they have no other use right now.

The problem with the economy is not that people have secured resources. The problem is that there are no rare resources. I have a homestead which has no junkpile, no water, no wood. I live beside a huge junkpile though. I gather without safety but still that doesn't boost the economy, does it ? We have so many junkpiles, so many resources, why would anyone fight over a land if there is a better one 5 minutes away ? Thats why there is no tradeing. I can craft everything by myself, I can gather everything by myself, why would I trade ?
Why would I fear the PvP system ? There is nothing to lose. NOTHING. And nothing to gain either. Whatever you loot from me I have dozen of it at home, and probably you have dozens of it at home too. PvP is totally pointless if items have no use. Owning an item is pointless if that item is pointless itself. We need an economy first to give purpose for crafting and PvP. Till then none of them has any use.

[Hanover]

I cant really figure out if you just like to blindly argue in a delusional fashion or really have no idea what keeps people logging into an MMO.

I honestly believe its just trolling at this point.

[Azhul_NS]

I am in favour of capturable expansion totems, but NOT destructible buildings. The cost in time and resources to build things makes them not worth building if they can be gone in an hour. Capture the totem - capture the surrounding buildings, but they can't be destroyed for a week - to give a chance to win them back.

Added after 6 minutes:


I wonder if you really don't understand it, or you just like to argue. Economy is not driven by risk/loss...its driven by demand. And there is no demand for anything in the game now. NOTHING. Since nothing has any purpose. You can gather thousands of armors by PvP...but why ? To sit, stare at them and be proud ? Because they have no other use right now.

The problem with the economy is not that people have secured resources. The problem is that there are no rare resources. I have a homestead which has no junkpile, no water, no wood. I live beside a huge junkpile though. I gather without safety but still that doesn't boost the economy, does it ? We have so many junkpiles, so many resources, why would anyone fight over a land if there is a better one 5 minutes away ? Thats why there is no tradeing. I can craft everything by myself, I can gather everything by myself, why would I trade ?
Why would I fear the PvP system ? There is nothing to lose. NOTHING. And nothing to gain either. Whatever you loot from me I have dozen of it at home, and probably you have dozens of it at home too. PvP is totally pointless if items have no use. Owning an item is pointless if that item is pointless itself. We need an economy first to give purpose for crafting and PvP. Till then none of them has any use.

I think meaningful (costly) PvP would be worse than pointless PvP. It takes too much to build up things in Xsyon, to risk losing them. Face it, this game is pretty brutal WITHOUT PvP. Losing a house that took me a week to build would be a considerable incentive to quit.

I have no objection to losing some items on death, but not my needed tools. It's enough that we are fighting the GAME for survival.

[Hanover]

I am in favour of capturable expansion totems, but NOT destructible buildings. The cost in time and resources to build things makes them not worth building if they can be gone in an hour. Capture the totem - capture the surrounding buildings, but they can't be destroyed for a week - to give a chance to win them back.

Added after 6 minutes:



I think meaningful (costly) PvP would be worse than pointless PvP. It takes too much to build up things in Xsyon, to risk losing them. Face it, this game is pretty brutal WITHOUT PvP. Losing a house that took me a week to build would be a considerable incentive to quit.

I have no objection to losing some items on death, but not my needed tools. It's enough that we are fighting the GAME for survival.



Not sure what youre talking about! Things are far too easy to get and build in Xsyon... You've been playing what 2-3 days and youre going on about how costly things are? (time/resources)

In what way is the game brutal? (other than boring) You want for nothing, have no real opposition and are 100% safe in your bubble

To your comment about PvP... Ummm Wow??? Btw, Have you even experienced PvP yet?

[Dubanka]

I wonder if you really don't understand it, or you just like to argue. Economy is not driven by risk/loss...its driven by demand. And there is no demand for anything in the game now. NOTHING. Since nothing has any purpose. You can gather thousands of armors by PvP...but why ? To sit, stare at them and be proud ? Because they have no other use right now.

The problem with the economy is not that people have secured resources. The problem is that there are no rare resources. I have a homestead which has no junkpile, no water, no wood. I live beside a huge junkpile though. I gather without safety but still that doesn't boost the economy, does it ? We have so many junkpiles, so many resources, why would anyone fight over a land if there is a better one 5 minutes away ? Thats why there is no tradeing. I can craft everything by myself, I can gather everything by myself, why would I trade ?
Why would I fear the PvP system ? There is nothing to lose. NOTHING. And nothing to gain either. Whatever you loot from me I have dozen of it at home, and probably you have dozens of it at home too. PvP is totally pointless if items have no use. Owning an item is pointless if that item is pointless itself. We need an economy first to give purpose for crafting and PvP. Till then none of them has any use.

you're partially right, but your dot connecting is off.

an economy is driven by demand, which is in turn driven by need, which is driven by scarcity and necessity.

Players have to need something. THen there has to be an inability for them to obtain that which they need.

PVP is an integral component in creating need.
Need for armor
Need for weapons

Territorial warfare is integral to creating a need for tribal area improvements
Need for walls
Need for gates

crafting is a means to produce goods that fill a need. crafting itself is not a need.
raw materials --> crafted goods --> goods get destroyed through use --> need for new goods

Currently there is no need for goods, since they have no real utility.

SO to bring this back on point:
Without pvp, a large portion of the crafteable items are merely for vanity.
Without territorial conflict, a large portion of the crafteable structures and terraformed improvements are merely playing house...they have no purpose.

Create the utility, you create the need, you create the economy.

[orious13]

I am in favour of capturable expansion totems, but NOT destructible buildings. The cost in time and resources to build things makes them not worth building if they can be gone in an hour. Capture the totem - capture the surrounding buildings, but they can't be destroyed for a week - to give a chance to win them back.

Added after 6 minutes:



I think meaningful (costly) PvP would be worse than pointless PvP. It takes too much to build up things in Xsyon, to risk losing them. Face it, this game is pretty brutal WITHOUT PvP. Losing a house that took me a week to build would be a considerable incentive to quit.

I have no objection to losing some items on death, but not my needed tools. It's enough that we are fighting the GAME for survival.

Are you a solo player?
If you are, this is why it's not a happy time to build houses and things. Tents are fairly easy, but there is a lot of architectural stuff in the game that can make a solo player's eyes bleed. I was going to load my place up with spiked walls, but those take 10 logs per wall (if I remember?). It would look cooler, but I decided to just use the 3 long log walls. For a solo player, if it looks like a huge challenge, it's probably meant for a larger amount of commitment. Work smarter and not harder... ask a friend to help :)...trade for mats :). This will be much better for the game if it is possible to do this. By possible, I mean encouraged to the point that it's almost needed.

But I don't have the luxury of having any architecture houses/tents...:(. Yet.

[Azhul_NS]

It is the construction, crafting, and survival that makes Xsyon special.

There are plenty of PvP games out there.

PvP done wrong will drive away the builders and crafters.

[Hanover]

PvP done wrong will drive away the builders and crafters.


and?

Btw, Most avid PvPers are also the crafters and builders and often have much more invested in their games.

[Azhul_NS]

Are you a solo player?
If you are, this is why it's not a happy time to build houses and things. Tents are fairly easy, but there is a lot of architectural stuff in the game that can make a solo player's eyes bleed. I was going to load my place up with spiked walls, but those take 10 logs per wall (if I remember?). It would look cooler, but I decided to just use the 3 long log walls. For a solo player, if it looks like a huge challenge, it's probably meant for a larger amount of commitment. Work smarter and not harder... ask a friend to help :)...trade for mats :). This will be much better for the game if it is possible to do this. By possible, I mean encouraged to the point that it's almost needed.

But I don't have the luxury of having any architecture houses/tents...:(. Yet.

Currently solo, yes. Certainly willing to join a small tribe.

LOL. Indeed. I built ONE spiked wall. 10 logs (all the SAME type, BTW), and 20 nails. NOT CHEAP at all. Switched to masonry for building, but the nearest sand is a ten minute run away.

I would prefer more interaction between players, for sure. In addition to PvP, I mean. It appears Xsyon made the same mistake Fallen Earth did in letting everyone craft everything. Human society is based on specialization. People trade with each other because they have different skills. Nations trade with each other because they have different resources.

[Dubanka]

Currently solo, yes. Certainly willing to join a small tribe.

LOL. Indeed. I built ONE spiked wall. 10 logs (all the SAME type, BTW), and 20 nails. NOT CHEAP at all. Switched to masonry for building, but the nearest sand is a ten minute run away.

I would prefer more interaction between players, for sure. In addition to PvP, I mean. It appears Xsyon made the same mistake Fallen Earth did in letting everyone craft everything. Human society is based on specialization. People trade with each other because they have different skills. Nations trade with each other because they have different resources.

If the systems were working correctly it wouldnt be an issue, as skills are supposed to degrade if not used...so while everyone may be able to craft everything, unless you're actually doing it regularly you shouldnt be horribly proficient at it. Skill degradation and/ or a soft cap is necessary.

[Jadzia]

you're partially right, but your dot connecting is off.

an economy is driven by demand, which is in turn driven by need, which is driven by scarcity and necessity.

Players have to need something. THen there has to be an inability for them to obtain that which they need.

PVP is an integral component in creating need.
Need for armor
Need for weapons

Territorial warfare is integral to creating a need for tribal area improvements
Need for walls
Need for gates

crafting is a means to produce goods that fill a need. crafting itself is not a need.
raw materials --> crafted goods --> goods get destroyed through use --> need for new goods

Currently there is no need for goods, since they have no real utility.

SO to bring this back on point:
Without pvp, a large portion of the crafteable items are merely for vanity.
Without territorial conflict, a large portion of the crafteable structures and terraformed improvements are merely playing house...they have no purpose.

Create the utility, you create the need, you create the economy.
The problem is that PvP can't create a need if th items themselves are useless. Why would you need an armor ? They do nothing. Why would you need a weapon? Your PO weapon is better than anything. You took over a land ? How nice. Why did you do that though ? To gain more absolutely pointless and useless buildings ? They are only for vanity even with PvP.
This is what I'm saying. With the current system (as in items have no use) PvP wouldn't have any use either, just as crafting has no use. Why would you fight over useless things ? Just because ?

[orious13]

Why would you fight over useless things ? Just because ?

A lot of people will pvp just for fun.

A lot of people will craft and build just for fun. (If you are having fun crafting etc., yet saying that it's semi-pointless as well. The right foot also has a right shoe to run with [that's probably the craziest thing I've ever said...even if that doesn't make sense just run with it lol...err no pun intended].)

These people may not necessarily play the game forever as the people who do it for a "reason" might, but a lot of people that want pvp might actually be partially if not entirely satisfied with just pvping for fun. I wouldn't feel out of place saying the majority of gamers in the world (not just here) just want to go out and kill shtuff. That's why themeparks appeal to a lot of people.

[Azhul_NS]

Well, I am pretty sure more people are in Xsyon for the crafting and building than for the PvP. It would be great to have both, but there are lots of other MMOs with PvP. Likely far better PvP than Xsyon will EVER provide.

The devs should focus on what makes Xsyon special.

[Hanover]

Well, I am pretty sure more people are in Xsyon for the crafting and building than for the PvP. It would be great to have both, but there are lots of other MMOs with PvP. Likely far better PvP than Xsyon will EVER provide.



That clearly shows what little you know. That must be why they are overhauling Combat, adding farms and expansion Totems. :rolleyes:

[mrcalhou]

The problem is that PvP can't create a need if th items themselves are useless. Why would you need an armor ? They do nothing. Why would you need a weapon? Your PO weapon is better than anything. You took over a land ? How nice. Why did you do that though ? To gain more absolutely pointless and useless buildings ? They are only for vanity even with PvP.
This is what I'm saying. With the current system (as in items have no use) PvP wouldn't have any use either, just as crafting has no use. Why would you fight over useless things ? Just because ?

Now let us assume the devs actually bother to fix items, which they should if they want to keep people playing and paying a sub, then Dubanka's post is perfectly correct.


That clearly shows what little you know.

But, Hanover, he's right! The 10 or so people that are logged-in at anyone time probably breaks down like this: 2 people are devs, 1 is a pvper, and 7 are crafters.

[Hanover]

But, Hanover, he's right! The 10 or so people that are logged-in at anyone time probably breaks down like this: 2 people are devs, 1 is a pvper, and 7 are crafters.

HarHar... There are at least 3 PvPer in game atm. :) Im rolling up some "Green Jeans" as we speak

[orious13]

Well, I am pretty sure more people are in Xsyon for the crafting and building than for the PvP. It would be great to have both, but are lots of other MMOs with PvP. Likely far better PvP than Xsyon will EVER provide.

I need to stop referring to PvP as a combat only thing, but anyway. That's fine for me and probably a lot of people out there that don't want another combat sandbox. As I said before I'm in the center. The new dev posted that building the world will be more of a point to the game at least at the moment... that's also stated a lot of other places. If this game gets great at crafting and building and the struggle to survive be it by npc or player monsters, that alone might be what the industry needs right now. Rift/WoW/Themeparks in general. All of those are more about killing stuff (themeparks are really without much meaning). DF...I guess MO...killing stuff, but with a little more meaning. As much as all of that is needed for a well rounded game killing stuff is what brings in a lot of money, but it's also the most widely available play choice. I loved playing SB, L2, SWG (I RARELY PvPed...but it was available a lot of the time in the open world). I have to say the game I played the longest was L2...don't judge me. I was never "great" in that because greatness was so limited to very few.

The point being... if crafting, building is > in development task priority than combat-pvp systems. That might not actually be a terrible thing. The reason why sandboxes are dying is because of the current combat-pvp systems just as much as because of the lack of available sand. No, I'm not saying that combat should be fail. I'm just saying that the amount of combat pvp in DF and MO (Note it's been like a year or 2 since I played them) kind of breaks immersion for me instead of adding to it. SB was fine. L2 was fine (not a themepark...not a sandbox...was a themebox). I just hope they tone this mindset down at least a couple notches or five, but still allow for fun pvp.

It doesn't need to own the world. It just needs to occupy it.

That's how I think anyway. Flame on Human Torches...Flame on.

[xyberviri]

the problem is there is always people that say Combat = PvP which it doesn't.
The other thing is that some gamers are getting tired of the theme park mmo's out there and Sandboxes are the natural progression of those play choices. how ever you do need a combat system because with out being able to kill stuff you basically have ATITD.

[Hanover]

the problem is there is always people that say Combat = PvP which it doesn't.
The other thing is that some gamers are getting tired of the theme park mmo's out there and Sandboxes are the natural progression of those play choices. how ever you do need a combat system because with out being able to kill stuff you basically have ATITD.

Whats ATITD and is it curable?

[Dubanka]

The problem is that PvP can't create a need if th items themselves are useless. Why would you need an armor ? They do nothing. Why would you need a weapon? Your PO weapon is better than anything. You took over a land ? How nice. Why did you do that though ? To gain more absolutely pointless and useless buildings ? They are only for vanity even with PvP.
This is what I'm saying. With the current system (as in items have no use) PvP wouldn't have any use either, just as crafting has no use. Why would you fight over useless things ? Just because ?

I actually agree with you.
VD has argued for a long time that PO weapons need to be significantly nerfed.
We have also argued that the insignificance of gear (armor/clothing) was a major problem.

VD has argued since we first showed up on these forums that pvp needs a point. Pointless pvp is boring pvp. Sometimes you fight to pick a fight, but usually you fight over something. To extend my economic model from before:

harvest raw materials --> crafted goods --> goods get destroyed through use --> need for new goods --> locate raw materials source --> secure raw materials --> harvest raw materials

The point of contention in this model is the securing of the materials. You are either doing this by holding the land, or taking/stealing/buying it from the person who does hold the land, or taking over the land. This is your conflict point. The conflict point then drives the pvp cycle (craft gear --> pvp --> craft replacement /better gear)...there is always an arms race (assuming of course the gear is not worthless, as it is now).

Pointless pvp wont work. If pointless pvp worked, this game would be thriving...because pvp is completely and utterly pointless right now. Most people, even those that are 100% uber rabid pvp fans, enjoy having a point behind their action...it's the achiever piece of the bartles equation. PvP in a a territorial war has a couple phases.
I- rpk. random walking around opportunity killing. ie. what we have now. dude on on a trash hill not paying attention to his surroundings...guess ill kill him and take his stuff.
II- reprisal pk - dude comes back and camps your town in penalty for killing.
III- resource pvp - fighting over resource zones/nodes/mob spawns.
IV- asset wars- usually an escalation from reprisal or resource pvp. Sometimes purely expansionist.

We have players that like to pick fights...they like I & II. We have more players that like the team based focus that you get with III. All like when the skirmishing culminates in the 'real' game, which is defending your house, or trying to burn someone else's down. There isn't anything quite like fighting to defend something you've spent a large amount of time making, or fighting someone who is trying to protect their own investement. It's a completely different level of intensity as compared to I-III. It's not oftent that you find real emotion (fear, desparate, elation, even pride) in a video game...but the fights we've had bring that out.

1. Fix the Mechanics.
2. Fix the Gear.
3. Implement Resources.
4. Implement Seiging mechanics.

OK, finally. To drive home the 'need' to get some type of resource, that is where the totem expansion idea i posted comes in. There has to be a constant consumable requirement, for a consumable that does not currently exist. Everyone wants to make their tribe bigger, badder, whatever. Everyone wants a 6 story totem. Go get the unobtanium, and its cousin cantgetthisOre, and rank up your totem. oh, it takes 10 of each, per week, to maintain. Now you have a reason to get something, a reason to fight for something, so you have a reason to get gear, etc. etc. etc.

anyway. TLDR, i know. apologies.

[ColonelTEE3]

Whats ATITD and is it curable?



A Tale in the Desert is a social MMORPG which does not include combat. Instead, a variety of social activities provide for the basis of most interaction in the game. The game's main focuses are building, community, research and personal or group challenges called "Tests".

ten characters.

edit in response to Dubanka:


OK, finally. To drive home the 'need' to get some type of resource, that is where the totem expansion idea i posted comes in. There has to be a constant consumable requirement, for a consumable that does not currently exist. Everyone wants to make their tribe bigger, badder, whatever. Everyone wants a 6 story totem. Go get the unobtanium, and its cousin cantgetthisOre, and rank up your totem. oh, it takes 10 of each, per week, to maintain. Now you have a reason to get something, a reason to fight for something, so you have a reason to get gear, etc. etc. etc.

Agreed with everything you said as always in the entirety of your post. Responding to this part of your quote- thats a really brilliant idea and i think it wouldnt be that hard to implement. Theres currently only one "rare" resource, which is tar, which currently has no known use. We need something else, a tar equivalent, that makes more sense to build up and sustain totems. Obviously for smaller tribes the requirement to stay afloat would be significantly less demanding, maybe requiring only fairlyuncommon-acquirium, and then to increase size/power/what-have-you, they need more and more unobtainium per week.

In response to your quote about the "I-III" types of pkers; i would put the vast majority of the current darkfall players, right now, in one of those three. People in darkfall go out, alone or in groups, looking for nothing more than a good fight. They dont fight for greater reasons than the thrill of competition, success, and winning. The success of their kill(s) are embodied, and amplified, by the caliber of gear their opponent was wearing. People fight in that game for pride very often, and once in a while a city gets challenged and that relates more to your "5" type of pvper, but the most common fighting is 1 or 2. You would be surprised by how many people would be out and about in this game, myself included, were the pvp mechanics and the weapons/armor stats fixed.

[Hanover]

ten characters.

Thanks...sounds horrible! It appears some here are trying to turn Xsyon into that abomination

[ColonelTEE3]

Thanks...sounds horrible! It appears some here are trying to turn Xsyon into that abomination

If there is a God, this will not become that... that thing

[mrcalhou]

I actually agree with you.
VD has argued for a long time that PO weapons need to be significantly nerfed.
We have also argued that the insignificance of gear (armor/clothing) was a major problem.

VD has argued since we first showed up on these forums that pvp needs a point. Pointless pvp is boring pvp. Sometimes you fight to pick a fight, but usually you fight over something. To extend my economic model from before:

harvest raw materials --> crafted goods --> goods get destroyed through use --> need for new goods --> locate raw materials source --> secure raw materials --> harvest raw materials

The point of contention in this model is the securing of the materials. You are either doing this by holding the land, or taking/stealing/buying it from the person who does hold the land, or taking over the land. This is your conflict point. The conflict point then drives the pvp cycle (craft gear --> pvp --> craft replacement /better gear)...there is always an arms race (assuming of course the gear is not worthless, as it is now).

Pointless pvp wont work. If pointless pvp worked, this game would be thriving...because pvp is completely and utterly pointless right now. Most people, even those that are 100% uber rabid pvp fans, enjoy having a point behind their action...it's the achiever piece of the bartles equation. PvP in a a territorial war has a couple phases.
I- rpk. random walking around opportunity killing. ie. what we have now. dude on on a trash hill not paying attention to his surroundings...guess ill kill him and take his stuff.
II- reprisal pk - dude comes back and camps your town in penalty for killing.
III- resource pvp - fighting over resource zones/nodes/mob spawns.
IV- asset wars- usually an escalation from reprisal or resource pvp. Sometimes purely expansionist.

We have players that like to pick fights...they like I & II. We have more players that like the team based focus that you get with III. All like when the skirmishing culminates in the 'real' game, which is defending your house, or trying to burn someone else's down. There isn't anything quite like fighting to defend something you've spent a large amount of time making, or fighting someone who is trying to protect their own investement. It's a completely different level of intensity as compared to I-III. It's not oftent that you find real emotion (fear, desparate, elation, even pride) in a video game...but the fights we've had bring that out.

1. Fix the Mechanics.
2. Fix the Gear.
3. Implement Resources.
4. Implement Seiging mechanics.

OK, finally. To drive home the 'need' to get some type of resource, that is where the totem expansion idea i posted comes in. There has to be a constant consumable requirement, for a consumable that does not currently exist. Everyone wants to make their tribe bigger, badder, whatever. Everyone wants a 6 story totem. Go get the unobtanium, and its cousin cantgetthisOre, and rank up your totem. oh, it takes 10 of each, per week, to maintain. Now you have a reason to get something, a reason to fight for something, so you have a reason to get gear, etc. etc. etc.

anyway. TLDR, i know. apologies.

Brilliant post.

[Hanover]

If pointless pvp worked, this game would be thriving...because pvp is completely and utterly pointless right now.

I'm all for a reason to fight, but the current combat mechanics just suck. (uninspired,clunky,out of sync...) If combat worked and was remotely enjoyable things might be different.


Combat: Two elderly arthritics trying to copulate while balancing on greased bowling balls.

[MrDDT]

The problem is that PvP can't create a need if th items themselves are useless. Why would you need an armor ? They do nothing. Why would you need a weapon? Your PO weapon is better than anything. You took over a land ? How nice. Why did you do that though ? To gain more absolutely pointless and useless buildings ? They are only for vanity even with PvP.
This is what I'm saying. With the current system (as in items have no use) PvP wouldn't have any use either, just as crafting has no use. Why would you fight over useless things ? Just because ?


Armor has a HUGE effect on combat right now.

[ocoma]

I just read Danathur's "Hello Thread" I skipped it before because I thought it was just a thread from a random player who posted in the wrong forum section. :-)



As a starting point for the above explained process, to produce enough food to keep your comfort at MAXIMUM (again you can survive without intensive farming, but we are talking here about being at the top) you will have to find a suitable farming spot and start farming. To protect this spot you can drop an „expansion“ totem. But this totem will be attackle and your crops can be taken away or even only destroyed by others. This should generate conflicts and hopefully give you a first reason to struggle about. How the "siege mechanics" will work in detail, I will present in a different thread, where I will ask for your feedback on it, cause this post is already getting to long for a first "Hello" ...


This part in particular where he describes in more detail how contested totems will work is interesting. If there are a number of resources ect out in the green mist lands that can not be harvested unless a contested totem is dropped on them, then I think the contested totem system may indeed be viable.

[Dubanka]

I just read Danathur's "Hello Thread" I skipped it before because I thought it was just a thread from a random player who posted in the wrong forum section. :-)





This part in particular where he describes in more detail how contested totems will work is interesting. If there are a number of resources ect out in the green mist lands that can not be harvested unless a contested totem is dropped on them, then I think the contested totem system may indeed be viable.

yeah, hopefully when it's rolled out it's farming/mining (i'd imagine the code would be fairly similar). planting unique trees, locating mineral veins, and then extracting/harvesting.

i don't think 'food' will be enough. you have to roll out the resources, the seige mechanics and the expanded crafting lines at the same time (as well as having already fixed the general pvp mechanics issue)...it's 'easy' to see with a basic flow chart.

[Trenchfoot]

Fighting over resources, so that you can be more successful at fighting over more resources seems pointlessly circular to me. This isn't directed at any one post, but I am concerned that fighting over resources alone will become a meaningless treadmill.

If conquest is limited to resources and those resources usefulness is pigeonholed into the pvp game, then this is nothing less than a dog chasing its tail. There has to be more to it than this.

I would rather the devs create overall 'necessities' and let the players decide what to fight over. As opposed to providing custom tailored 'necessities' with the intent to create cattle-chute reasons to pvp.

Question: What feature other than tribal conquest can break this circular loop? Just to qualify this isn't intended as a backhanded question. I'm asking because I honestly can't think of anything, not to suggest that tribal conquest IS the only thing.

I do know this. One of the most essential factors in conquest is the conquest of your enemies. People should be allowed to conquer rare resources, by eliminating their competition, not simply by controlling an area. Anything else is Shakespeare in the park.

EDIT: In other words, if you can conquer resources but not the enemy you're fighting to conquer those resources. Conquest is a treadmill with little reward other than more treadmill.

[Dubanka]

Fighting over resources, so that you can be more successful at fighting over more resources seems pointlessly circular to me. This isn't directed at any one post, but I am concerned that fighting over resources alone will become a meaningless treadmill.

If conquest is limited to resources and those resources usefulness is pigeonholed into the pvp game, then this is nothing less than a dog chasing its tail. There has to be more to it than this.

I would rather the devs create overall 'necessities' and let the players decide what to fight over. As opposed to providing custom tailored 'necessities' with the intent to create cattle-chute reasons to pvp.

Question: What feature other than tribal conquest can break this circular loop? Just to qualify this isn't intended as a backhanded question. I'm asking because I honestly can't think of anything, not to suggest that tribal conquest IS the only thing.

I do know this. One of the most essential factors in conquest is the conquest of your enemies. People should be allowed to conquer rare resources, by eliminating their competition, not simply by controlling an area. Anything else is Shakespeare in the park.

I agree. The spin off of creating things of value, is you develop real trade. and real trade hubs. trade causes human interaction. Interaction causes drama. Drama creates politics, which creates more drama. Ultimately, pvp should just be a means of ensuring something is obtained, and be the final stage of 'diplomacy'. But you have to have something to start the train moving.

[Trenchfoot]

But you have to have something to start the train moving.

Right on.

I think you should be able to hold totems for ransom.

For example: X tribe keeps contesting our newly conquered resource. We form a war party and capture their totem. Then through diplomacy, we hammer out an agreement that we return their town unblemmished if they agree not to contest our rare resource.

EDIT: Qualify that, Home Totem. Or in other words, their nation state.

[Book]

I agree. The spin off of creating things of value, is you develop real trade. and real trade hubs. trade causes human interaction. Interaction causes drama. Drama creates politics, which creates more drama. Ultimately, pvp should just be a means of ensuring something is obtained, and be the final stage of 'diplomacy'. But you have to have something to start the train moving.

but if you start the diplomacy train by having war as the destination, why bother with the diplomacy at all? Wouldn't it save everyone time to just go to war? War may well be an extension of diplomacy, but done correctly, and as sanely as war can be done, that is all it is.

Also, just have to mention so it's said somewhere... interaction needn't necessarily cause drama. For people like me (presumably not the only one), drama is not incentive to interact. Quite the opposite actually.

[Trenchfoot]

but if you start the diplomacy train by having war as the destination, why bother with the diplomacy at all?

War IS the destination, which is precisely why diplomacy exists. For some it's a matter of personal honor or morality. For others its simply a way to keep from biting off more than you can chew. For others it's a personal quest for revenge through subterfuge and deception. That's why bother with diplomacy. But if you're a tribal nation that believes you have the muscle to go to war and thereby gain more than you loose, then by all means let it be so.

Let a tribe get out of line and begin sweeping the map and you'll see the entire map become a game of joining the oppressed tribes of the world to crush the evil invaders. Will you unite the tribes and be enough of a diplomat to pull them together to stop these evil conquerors? These type of things should be allowed to happen.

EDIT: Of course interaction creates drama. Unless you're all the same, with nothing to loose, ever.

[Dubanka]

Right on.

I think you should be able to hold totems for ransom.

For example: X tribe keeps contesting our newly conquered resource. We form a war party and capture their totem. Then through diplomacy, we hammer out an agreement that we return their town unblemmished if they agree not to contest our rare resource.

yeah, i agree. we would actually do that in shadowbane...capture a 'tree' and then auction it off :)

you're getting into seige mechanics...where it would be nice to be able enter into different types of seiges....the more drastic the potential outcome is, the costlier it is for the attacker...ie.
raid totem. Drop a raid seige totem. allows you to damage walls (no other structures), and prevents any bin/storage device from being locked (by the defender)...you break in, take some stuff and leave...a 'friendly' seige...and the cheapest.
Pillage totem. same as raid, except also allows you to destroy buildings. still just a 'message' tho, as you are not attacking the totem.
Capture totem. Same as pillage, except it is a fight where the attacker will capture the opponents tribal area if they win.
Destruction totem. allows total destruction of tribal area, including the defending totem. mOst expensive.

now the drama happens when tribe a drops a raid totem to send a message, then tribe b responds by dropping a destruction totem as a big fu in their lawn. then we find how much people really do love their pixels.

but then you get into things like warring drops having huge needs for architectural supplies and whatnot, since they literally wont have the time to gather. LIkewise the trade in raw materials will be huge. Oh, and you are selling to them? really? coming after you next for aiding my enemy. of course it's one thing to say you're gonna, and another to actually do.

lastly. seiging should be extremely difficult. as much as i besmirch peoples love of pixels...they do represent time invested, and a well built town should be extremely difficult to take.


but if you start the diplomacy train by having war as the destination, why bother with the diplomacy at all? Wouldn't it save everyone time to just go to war? War may well be an extension of diplomacy, but done correctly, and as sanely as war can be done, that is all it is.

Also, just have to mention so it's said somewhere... interaction needn't necessarily cause drama. For people like me (presumably not the only one), drama is not incentive to interact. Quite the opposite actually.

i've seen more than one guild bite off more than they can chew. it's one thing to be billy bad ass. it's another to be bill badass to everyone at the same time. waging war (ie going after totems) should be expensive and time consuming...it's not something you should be able to do on a whim.

[Trenchfoot]

you're getting into seige mechanics...where it would be nice to be able enter into different types of seiges....the more drastic the potential outcome is, the costlier it is for the attacker...ie.
raid totem. Drop a raid seige totem. allows you to damage walls (no other structures), and prevents any bin/storage device from being locked (by the defender)...you break in, take some stuff and leave...a 'friendly' seige...and the cheapest.
Pillage totem. same as raid, except also allows you to destroy buildings. still just a 'message' tho, as you are not attacking the totem.
Capture totem. Same as pillage, except it is a fight where the attacker will capture the opponents tribal area if they win.
Destruction totem. allows total destruction of tribal area, including the defending totem. mOst expensive.

Well I sort of agree. I agree with the premise and I admit the only problem with that I have is a semantic argument more or less. War of any kind should be a costly endeavor. I don't believe you should need totems for those actions, but for that to be true, war must be made equally costly.

I just don't like the hypothetical 'payment system'. 50 logs a day for what exactly? Not for what effect but why require logs? Why not just put a dollar amount on it? Or bottle caps? Or whatever? I think the payment in itself should relate to providing for war. What are the logs being used for? Again, semantics. I could overlook it.

Food isn't a problem because there are no marching armies.
Water isn't a problem for the same reason.
Equipment isn't a problem until you've lost 100s of troops so that wouldn't apply.

The only things I can think of is:

Siege Equip.
Feeding your horses.
Repars due to decay.

So maybe its better the way you suggest. War must be much more costly than nonchalant.

EDIT: What if a formal declaration of war was required, and when you declare war some kind of decay increases for your tribe?

[Dubanka]

Well I sort of agree. I agree with the premise and I admit the only problem with that I have is a semantic argument more or less. War of any kind should be a costly endeavor. I don't believe you should need totems for those actions, but for that to be true, war must be made equally costly.

I just don't like the hypothetical 'payment system'. 50 logs a day for what exactly? Not for what effect but why require logs? Why not just put a dollar amount on it? Or bottle caps? Or whatever? I think the payment in itself should relate to providing for war. What are the logs being used for? Again, semantics. I could overlook it.

Food isn't a problem because there are no marching armies.
Water isn't a problem for the same reason.
Equipment isn't a problem until you've lost 100s of troops so that wouldn't apply.

The only things I can think of is:

Siege Equip.
Feeding your horses.
Repars due to decay.

So maybe its better the way you suggest. War must be much more costly than nonchalant.

EDIT: What if a formal declaration of war was required, and when you declare war some kind of decay increases for your tribe?

problem is i'm not being clear in my definition of 'costly'

'raid totem' 100 wood blocks, 200 bricks, 60 mortar, 50 feathers, 50 nails, 50 cloth string. they get more expensive from there.
in additionthe attacker will need to bring in and assemble seige equipment on site...ie.
battering ram: 6 large wood logs. 500 twine. 10 med metal plate. 100 screws. 20 long wood handles.

so by costly i mean that the attacker is having to front a large amount of resources up front to wage a war...in addition to any maint costs they have on their totem.

[Trenchfoot]

problem is i'm not being clear in my definition of 'costly'

'raid totem' 100 wood blocks, 200 bricks, 60 mortar, 50 feathers, 50 nails, 50 cloth string. they get more expensive from there.
in additionthe attacker will need to bring in and assemble seige equipment on site...ie.
battering ram: 6 large wood logs. 500 twine. 10 med metal plate. 100 screws. 20 long wood handles.

so by costly i mean that the attacker is having to front a large amount of resources up front to wage a war...in addition to any maint costs they have on their totem.

As long as it isn't too impossible. My concern is that large tribes shouldn't be the only ones allowed to go to war. We won't really know how accurate your numbers on this are until some changes are made. But it's a reasonable solution.

Perhaps the costs could be based on the size of your opponent rather than your own size. Because requiring too much will exclude smaller tribes/homesteaders.

Or something that would essentially say 'Pick on someone your own size.'.

EDIT: The cost would have to be scaled in both directions to work.

[Hanover]

Sounds very much like SB siege mechanics, which would integrate nicely into Xsyon.

[Dubanka]

Sounds very much like SB siege mechanics, which would integrate nicely into Xsyon.

obviously...while trying to cover some of the holes in the sb mechanics (i always hated not having a cheap 'deranking' bane when i just wanted to make a point but didnt want to spend 10 Mil to do it).

and my numbers were just off the top of my head thngs that sounded large :p just numbers...conceptual, not a huge amount of thought behind it.

i wouldnt be against having the cost increase significantly when attacking a smaller target.

[Trenchfoot]

I think this might work.

You base the cost on your opponent size. Then you add a feature that allows homesteaders and smaller tribes to 'ally', thereby increasing the cost to attack any one of them. The more allies you have, the more it costs your attacker. On the other hand this would have to have some limit so that massive tribes can't make it impossible to go to war ever. Perhaps only small/homestead have the ability to use the ally mechnism and larger tribes woud have to arrange formal treaties on their own in game?


and my numbers were just off the top of my head thngs that sounded large just numbers...conceptual, not a huge amount of thought behind it.

Right right. I just meant that it's difficult to judge at this point but I agree the concept is sound.

[Book]

War IS the destination, which is precisely why diplomacy exists. For some it's a matter of personal honor or morality. For others its simply a way to keep from biting off more than you can chew. For others it's a personal quest for revenge through subterfuge and deception. That's why bother with diplomacy. But if you're a tribal nation that believes you have the muscle to go to war and thereby gain more than you loose, then by all means let it be so.

Let a tribe get out of line and begin sweeping the map and you'll see the entire map become a game of joining the oppressed tribes of the world to crush the evil invaders. Will you unite the tribes and be enough of a diplomat to pull them together to stop these evil conquerors? These type of things should be allowed to happen.

EDIT: Of course interaction creates drama. Unless you're all the same, with nothing to loose, ever.

You're talking about building a coalition. That requires bargaining, bribery, incentive... all facets of diplomacy in some regard but an effective diplomat's primary job is the ability to avert war altogether.
The notion that diplomacy exists to negotiate an entrance to war is backwards.

If one party is determined to go to war without a hint of an open mind or capacity for compromise, then the negotiating table is a waste of good wood.

But you are right, interaction for the dramatically inclined, I suppose, will always lead to drama. Seems unfortunate imho.

[Hanover]

Silly question... Can the game engine handle "large" groups?

[Trenchfoot]

The notion that diplomacy exists to negotiate an entrance to war is backwards.

Change 'entrance' to 'avert'.

Or are you suggesting that everyone agree to live in peace never expecting differences that lead to war to occur? If war isn't the natural course of things here (war meaning armed conflict) why aren't we all in the same tribe?

@Hanover

Good question. A better one might be.... nvm.

[ocoma]

Silly question... Can the game engine handle "large" groups?

Atm the game can't handle groups at all. :-(

[Salvadore]

problem is i'm not being clear in my definition of 'costly'

'raid totem' 100 wood blocks, 200 bricks, 60 mortar, 50 feathers, 50 nails, 50 cloth string. they get more expensive from there.
in additionthe attacker will need to bring in and assemble seige equipment on site...ie.
battering ram: 6 large wood logs. 500 twine. 10 med metal plate. 100 screws. 20 long wood handles.

so by costly i mean that the attacker is having to front a large amount of resources up front to wage a war...in addition to any maint costs they have on their totem.

Might as well factor in the attacker's total cost of ownership, not just the siege totem as well. This would account all gear for all attacking tribe, resources required to get their skills on par/specc'd the way they want, logistical factors, and anything else that contributes to the final product of a siege totem being planted. Obviously, if they were something considered "costly" to the tribe, the variance in other costs would also need to be considered.

A tribe would obviously NOT just jump into spending the cost for a war totem if their tribe was not prepared...thus simply wasting the resources!


I think this might work.

You base the cost on your opponent size. Then you add a feature that allows homesteaders and smaller tribes to 'ally', thereby increasing the cost to attack any one of them. The more allies you have, the more it costs your attacker. On the other hand this would have to have some limit so that massive tribes can't make it impossible to go to war ever. Perhaps only small/homestead have the ability to use the ally mechnism and larger tribes woud have to arrange formal treaties on their own in game?

Right right. I just meant that it's difficult to judge at this point but I agree the concept is sound.

I think Dubs's ranked totem ideas would suffice as to the cost per siege totem. If there is a crutch mechanic that will increase cost to siege someone just because of size and allies, that would cause stagnation due to zerging. Have it a fixed rate IMO regardless of it being a homesteader or Hopi's capital tribe city.

It does sound related to SB in variable ways, but honestly, that's perfectly fine. SB had THE GREATEST sieging system in an MMO to date.

[Dubanka]

I think this might work.

You base the cost on your opponent size. Then you add a feature that allows homesteaders and smaller tribes to 'ally', thereby increasing the cost to attack any one of them. The more allies you have, the more it costs your attacker. On the other hand this would have to have some limit so that massive tribes can't make it impossible to go to war ever. Perhaps only small/homestead have the ability to use the ally mechnism and larger tribes woud have to arrange formal treaties on their own in game?



Right right. I just meant that it's difficult to judge at this point but I agree the concept is sound.

and to be clear...i wouldnt go too far with the whole inverse numbers to cost relationship...it would be meant to be an 'intent' mechanic. obviously there are a ton of loop holes (ie. make your raiding guild to avoid some of the costs) and trying to make it based on allies etc. would be kinda pointless, since you just don't declare them blah blah blah. basically you set up the system with an obvious intent...abusing the intent is then punishable be server hate...leaving your tribal area in a smoking heap. But i would err on the side of i simplicity, since at the end of the day, someone is going to find a way to go around the system.

[Book]

and to be clear...i wouldnt go too far with the whole inverse numbers to cost relationship...it would be meant to be an 'intent' mechanic. obviously there are a ton of loop holes (ie. make your raiding guild to avoid some of the costs) and trying to make it based on allies etc. would be kinda pointless, since you just don't declare them blah blah blah. basically you set up the system with an obvious intent...abusing the intent is then punishable be server hate...leaving your tribal area in a smoking heap. But i would err on the side of i simplicity, since at the end of the day, someone is going to find a way to go around the system.

Sorry, just trying to follow along here... isn't he talking about a direct numbers to cost relationship? Meaning to more ppl/allies, the more costly it is... just want to make sure I have that understood otherwise trying to build on it would be kinda pointless :)

So assuming that is indeed the case...

I like the idea of homesteaders being able to band together in some way that still affords them the homesteading freedom they seek.
On the other hand, question:
How do you envision limiting the scope of the allies geographically?
What I mean is, can homesteaders ally other homesteaders from the other side of the map?
Do you limit it by zone? But then people do live on borders so that doesn't seem sound.
Do you limit it by region? Might work.

I was thinking allying with people on the other side of the map wouldn't make much sense since there is no internet/radio like communication, and they wouldn't be able to come to anyone's aid aside from aiding purely with a game mechanic.
SO
was thinking, we do have the ability to raise the ground and make fires. We can light fires to alert neighbors within sight of those fires, and they can do the same with their neighbors further than you.

It could eventually lead to a broad coalition ranging over a wide geographical expanse, while remaining somewhat realistic to what we have to work with.

DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING:
but I do have to say it because, well, it's how I am.
Building a pre-emptive coalition to make it costlier for your enemy to attack is using diplomacy to avert war :cool::p
Sorry, hehe

[Trenchfoot]

I think Dubs's ranked totem ideas would suffice as to the cost per siege totem. If there is a crutch mechanic that will increase cost to siege someone just because of size and allies, that would cause stagnation due to zerging. Have it a fixed rate IMO regardless of it being a homesteader or Hopi's capital tribe city.

Fair point. And Dub is right there are a ton of loopholes.

The difficulty would be in balancing the fixed rate. Can't be too high and it can't be too low. Frankly, I would prefer an open world where the cards fall where they may. But I'm trying, I'm trying.

@Book

Of course there would have to be all kinds of limitations on it as you pointed out with your questions. And that's the trouble with the balancing act. It's like trying to keep a squirrel out of the bird feeder and still feed the birds. Before long you have a chain of mechanism like a maze. The birds don't get fed and the squirrel just ends up solving the puzzle on youtube.

EDIT: I find it difficult making suggestions with the non-pvp element in mind without giving them more bad ideas.


Building a pre-emptive coalition to make it costlier for your enemy to attack is using diplomacy to avert war

This can be true. But it shouldn't be a way to avoid conflict by flipping a switch either.

[Dubanka]

you're talking different issues. an alliance mechanism would seem to be something that would be easily tied to the totem menu. add friends. designate their tribe as ally, friend, enemy, each having a differnet subset of 'priviliges' ie. allies could harvest resources on other allies land, /ally chat channel, petentially 'binding' to other allies totems, allies received notification when other allies were attacked, allies receive 'same' affects under war conditions as the warred tribe (yes, thats a different subject).

honestly, you can't arbitrarily limit allies...well you could, but it's just as easy to work around, so there really is no point in doing so...and a number limit would not really be effective because if it's a, for instance, '10 ally' max, there is a big difference betwen 10 homestead and 10 50 player tribes...so you just let it be open, and let the playerbase decide when someone is becoming too big.

i think geographically, alliances will sort themselves out...with the current modes of travel, you can be allied with someone on the other side of the map, but it really wont do you any good except for major events...on a day to day basis it would really be pointless.

one reason i am not real concerned about the zerg effect here...not nearly as much as i was in sb, is, at least currently, a city is not a requirement. a tribe could very well lead a nomadic existence, picking up and moving as the situation required. Do not build what you can't afford to lose. If i was going to pick a fight with the server zerg, i'd have a couple mule toons in the guild, and would basically break camp and do it mongol style. plant a totem as a forward operating base/respawn point...fight out of it until its location was discovered, break camp and do it again. You can do this in the xsyon model because crafting is character based, not building based.

[Trenchfoot]

Well I've always wanted an ally feature for the sole purpose of friending baskets/terraforming on my land.

EDIT: We wouldn't want a system that in essence places a tit for tat value on war. In other words, the cost to reward ratio should vary. Sometimes, it should more profitable than it is costly. Other times it should be more costly than it is profitable. By saying 'You'll always pay in cost equal to what you get out of conquest.', it ruins it.

[Salvadore]

No need to force extra costs as per allies/mercs/etc imo. Having the ability for anyone to show up at any time for any side is a really great political dynamic.

Some tribes have honor fights - nation vs nation and respect/egos are polished.

Some tribes intentionally war other tribes that "crash" their honor wars.

Some tribes prefer to stay very small - allow them to band with other smalls to take down a much bigger tribe for whatever reason.

Some player styles prefer to zerg it up - let them, don't limit them! Allow the politics to happen...let them zerg if they wanna zerg and others ally to fight them IF NECESSARY!

Rankable totems per maintenance and size imo, and different styles of war totems at fixed costs imo!

This all adds much needed dynamics to a true sandbox environment - everyone has a choice, just has to do it.

[Hanover]

No need to force extra costs as per allies/mercs/etc imo. Having the ability for anyone to show up at any time for any side is a really great political dynamic.

Some tribes have honor fights - nation vs nation and respect/egos are polished.

Some tribes intentionally war other tribes that "crash" their honor wars.

Some tribes prefer to stay very small - allow them to band with other smalls to take down a much bigger tribe for whatever reason.

Some player styles prefer to zerg it up - let them, don't limit them! Allow the politics to happen...let them zerg if they wanna zerg and others ally to fight them IF NECESSARY!

Rankable totems per maintenance and size imo, and different styles of war totems at fixed costs imo!

This all adds much needed dynamics to a true sandbox environment - everyone has a choice, just has to do it.

You'll find with freedom the ability for the server to self regulate and police. good times

[mrcalhou]

I don't mind totems the way they are currently set-up, if they can only be placed in this area; however, I'd prefer they ditch the idea of expansion totems for the new lands and just allow players to build structures at will. Why bother even limiting where you can build? You should only be limited by how well you can protect your assets.

[Trenchfoot]

The purpose in the cost I thought was to make war a real effort to achieve. The purpose of varying it was to give the little guy a passive way to respond to overwhelming odds.

Of course I already agree with you Sal, I would even go further and say forget payment system costs altogether and let the big dog eat.

Question: Would it be unreasonable to take the cost that Dub is proposing and apply it to siege equip? For example: Different types of siege equip all with their own high building/maintenance costs. Each type having a variation on decay/speed/movement requirements/ranges/effectiveness. The cheaper type could fall apart faster and take forever to breach a wall and be more vulnerable to certain types of anti-siege equip, while visa versa for the more expensive ones?

I mean it just sounds easier to me than a payment system and totem placements. The cost of war should be the cost of war. But I strongly agree with Dub in the fact that taking over totems shouldn't be so simple that it makes it pointless.

[MrDDT]

The purpose in the cost I thought was to make war a real effort to achieve. The purpose of varying it was to give the little guy a passive way to respond to overwhelming odds.

Of course I already agree with you Sal, I would even go further and say forget payment system costs altogether and let the big dog eat.

Question: Would it be unreasonable to take the cost that Dub is proposing and apply it to siege equip? For example: Different types of siege equip all with their own high building/maintenance costs. Each type having a variation on decay/speed/movement requirements/ranges/effectiveness. The cheaper type could fall apart faster and take forever to breach a wall and be more vulnerable to certain types of anti-siege equip, while visa versa for the more expensive ones?

I mean it just sounds easier to me than a payment system and totem placements. The cost of war should be the cost of war. But I strongly agree with Dub in the fact that taking over totems shouldn't be so simple that it makes it pointless.

100% this also.

I think siege equipment should need resources, and require skilled craftsmen to make. Why? Because it promotes trade, and requires people to work with others. You dont want "griefers" able to just build siege equipment very fast, and take things without any kinda impact on trade or crafts.
This will allow for people to only really war over major disputes, or for a real reason. Not over just trifle stuff.

[Dubanka]

100% this also.

I think siege equipment should need resources, and require skilled craftsmen to make. Why? Because it promotes trade, and requires people to work with others. You dont want "griefers" able to just build siege equipment very fast, and take things without any kinda impact on trade or crafts.
This will allow for people to only really war over major disputes, or for a real reason. Not over just trifle stuff.

100% agree.

it shoudl take skilled crafters to build the mechanisms that would tear down a city...the logistics of a battle should be as important as the battle itself.

[Trenchfoot]

@DDT

Right and on the inverse you want something like 'The first cheap catapult busted (heavily decayed through use). They burned the second one down, so we hauled in an expensive trebuchet and they pulled out 6 ballistae and shot it all to hell. Time to call this one off boys and go home and gather more resources for another try later.'.

EDIT: Agreed. Engineers FTW.

[ColonelTEE3]

I just became aware of something that i sort of hit on in another thread regarding the ability to transfer all your items across xsyon -- we currently don't leave a "corpse" full of our loot. Our lootable bodies sit there for 30 seconds to a minute and then we recover everything not taken. Combine this with the fact that, during a medium to large scale battle, no one in their right mind would sit on a dead body, and start dragging stuff into their inventory to be overburdened by while there are hostiles all around them.

Does this not cause a significant problem in the need to resupply gear that is lost during war? I feel like decay alone is not going to be fast enough. If item decay is as slow here as it is in darkfall where it only wears out from constant wear, no one will need to replace anything for at least a week.

[ColonelTEE3]

I just became aware of something that i sort of hit on in another thread regarding the ability to transfer all your items across xsyon -- we currently don't leave a "corpse" full of our loot. Our lootable bodies sit there for 30 seconds to a minute and then we recover everything not taken. Combine this with the fact that, during a medium to large scale battle, no one in their right mind would sit on a dead body, and start dragging stuff into their inventory to be overburdened by while there are hostiles all around them.

Does this not cause a significant problem in the need to resupply gear that is lost during war? I feel like decay alone is not going to be fast enough. If item decay is as slow here as it is in darkfall where it only wears out from constant wear, no one will need to replace anything for at least a week.

[MrDDT]

I just became aware of something that i sort of hit on in another thread regarding the ability to transfer all your items across xsyon -- we currently don't leave a "corpse" full of our loot. Our lootable bodies sit there for 30 seconds to a minute and then we recover everything not taken. Combine this with the fact that, during a medium to large scale battle, no one in their right mind would sit on a dead body, and start dragging stuff into their inventory to be overburdened by while there are hostiles all around them.

Does this not cause a significant problem in the need to resupply gear that is lost during war? I feel like decay alone is not going to be fast enough. If item decay is as slow here as it is in darkfall where it only wears out from constant wear, no one will need to replace anything for at least a week.


I agree, first I dont agree with "respawning" with all your items it should be like Darkfall.
Second I also believe that just on death items should decay very fast while on your body, unless looted by the owner. This will help with the decay. I also think mostly Darkfalls decay is good rate for use.

[Dubanka]

I just became aware of something that i sort of hit on in another thread regarding the ability to transfer all your items across xsyon -- we currently don't leave a "corpse" full of our loot. Our lootable bodies sit there for 30 seconds to a minute and then we recover everything not taken. Combine this with the fact that, during a medium to large scale battle, no one in their right mind would sit on a dead body, and start dragging stuff into their inventory to be overburdened by while there are hostiles all around them.

Does this not cause a significant problem in the need to resupply gear that is lost during war? I feel like decay alone is not going to be fast enough. If item decay is as slow here as it is in darkfall where it only wears out from constant wear, no one will need to replace anything for at least a week.

I don't think it will matter. I think you should be able to 'bind' to your war totem, during the seige window...as it would have been typical for a operational base to be set up prior to a seige...you could then drop your necessary consumables, etc., perhaps be able to perform limited building (ie. barricades) to protect the seige base. so you die, and you respawn as a ghost at your seige totem 9assuming you bound there)...you need to respawn as a ghost, because if they defenders took it over, yhou need ~30 seconds or so to get clear of it to avoid rez killing stupidity.

Seige equipment should only be able to be made during a seige window with a war totem placed. THis would mandate that the attacker needs to travel with supplies, establish a beach head at their war totem, then assemble their seige equipment on site. seige equipment will spontaneously combust at the end of a seige. seige equipment will sponatenously combust if attempted to be moved outside of the original seige zone (ie. if you'd tried to exploit the situation by self warring to create seige gear, then have a player die who is baound to the 'real' seige, with seige equipment in inventory in order to transport equipment risk free...it would be destroyed as you respawned). No stockpiling. Seige gear should not be autodestroyed on death, because i want to be able to use your gear against you :)

but yeah, having the basic limitations that it has to be made on site, and that it could not leave the area....should solve most of the problems. i'm less concerned about the raw materials to make the stuff, since iideally the assembly requirements for, say a battering ram, would be signficant, so not simple for one person to bring in stuff for a dozen rams. on person might be able to mule in supplies for 1, or a portion of one, but that is a person that isn't fighting, so it's kind of a whatever...not to mention the assemblage of the seige stuff should not be a 1 step process...again for the battering ram...you make ram (wood working), you make the handles (wood working), you make the shields (leather crafting), then you assemble the pieces (architecture). A treb or ballista would require more (wood boards, pulleys, wheels, metal rods, rope, wooden handles, aseembling the boom, the base, the crank, etc. etc.)

in my brain, to lay seige to a town:
- drop war totem in defensible location near target town (should be a min/max radius from tribal perimeter for this to be done)
- establish seige beachhead (3 hour vulnerability window for war totem being vulnerable to damage...if destroyed, no seige) where attacker must establish an operations base
- prep window (24-72 hours from war declaration for both sides to make seige preparation). War totem is not vulnerable to attack at this time, but there is no immunity /safe bubble, attackers are vulnerable to attack.
- seige window (48-72 hours after war declaration, at defenders choice of time)
- seige is decided by attacker achieving objective (successful raid/capture/destruction of enemy totem) or by the defender repulsing (destroying attackers war totem)
- 96 hours invuln window (can't place war totem against tribe) following a successfuul defense. 72 hours window following a successful capture. The invuln window is necessary to prevent chain baning (which is an exhausting grief process).

[Trenchfoot]

Or the siege equip itself could BE the war totem.

[xyberviri]

Its probably going to end up the way Anarchy Online did it with the notum wars where you placed your "tower" and then the attack window was a 2 hour every day that started at that time. so if i droped my tower at 12:00 it would be open to attack from 12:00 to 14:00.

[ColonelTEE3]

I think you took my reference to "gear" differently than i did. I wasn't focusing so much on siege machines, but more on the soldiers individual weapons, armor, equipment, food, etc. No one will be looting anything during any battles. Maybe one guy from the side that wins one skirmish will loot the last guy killed because everyone else will have respawned, but thats a terribly slow way to exchange equipment.

What im saying is that i dont believe item decay by itself will deplete an army of it's armor, weapons and all that. That was one of the side determining factors in sieges in Darkfall -- how many ridiculously expensive bags full of high-end gear did you have to expend? At some point, armies would be coming back for the fifth, sixth, or seventh skirmish/attack during a siege, wearing nothing but the bottom of the barrel scraps they could pull together.

Honestly, this point im bringing up is also partially based in my severe disappointment that, while this is technically a "full loot" game, no one in this game ever has the time to "fully loot" anyone because of buggy looting mechanics and the fact that no one leaves a "grave" or a "corpse" behind to be looted. I thought it was a relevant point to discuss in the context of sieges as well.

[Jadzia]

I think you took my reference to "gear" differently than i did. I wasn't focusing so much on siege machines, but more on the soldiers individual weapons, armor, equipment, food, etc. No one will be looting anything during any battles. Maybe one guy from the side that wins one skirmish will loot the last guy killed because everyone else will have respawned, but thats a terribly slow way to exchange equipment.

What im saying is that i dont believe item decay by itself will deplete an army of it's armor, weapons and all that. That was one of the side determining factors in sieges in Darkfall -- how many ridiculously expensive bags full of high-end gear did you have to expend? At some point, armies would be coming back for the fifth, sixth, or seventh skirmish/attack during a siege, wearing nothing but the bottom of the barrel scraps they could pull together.

Honestly, this point im bringing up is also partially based in my severe disappointment that, while this is technically a "full loot" game, no one in this game ever has the time to "fully loot" anyone because of buggy looting mechanics and the fact that no one leaves a "grave" or a "corpse" behind to be looted. I thought it was a relevant point to discuss in the context of sieges as well.

The loot timer is not a bug, its intentional, check the FAQ page.

[xyberviri]

yups i belive its 30 seconds if i remember correctly how ever with previous lag/sync issues that might have appeared to be a bug.

in the heat of a battle though its not going to be very easy to loot the corpses, your best bet it remove the weapon of your aggressor followed by armor

[Trenchfoot]

Well you would think if you are attacking their totem, when they respawn right next to you at their totem with all the loot you missed the first time around there you are. Not to mention successfully taking the totem would grant you all the spoils left in their camp.

I doubt anyone would be too concerned with loot while their totem is under attack. Why worry about the trim of your beard when it's your head on the chopping block?

[Trenchfoot]

Your server timeout double posted me again.

[orious13]

Death = 0.5* All Current equipment durability...pvp or not.

That would break them alot faster if the defenders were attacking the "siege totem" throughout the time before the siege began. I don't think the deciding factor of a war should be "We don't has any armor left... let's stop". I think it should focus on other things. For this game: running out of nutritional substence...having very little comfort (away from home so you have no comfort buildings or farms unless you steal the defender's foods)...stacking death penalty debuffs (if these are in)... and running out of mats to repair quickly decaying armor due to deaths...also time.

[Dubanka]

Death = 0.5* All Current equipment durability...pvp or not.

That would break them alot faster if the defenders were attacking the "siege totem" throughout the time before the siege began. I don't think the deciding factor of a war should be "We don't has any armor left... let's stop". I think it should focus on other things. For this game: running out of nutritional substence...having very little comfort (away from home so you have no comfort buildings or farms unless you steal the defender's foods)...stacking death penalty debuffs (if these are in)... and running out of mats to repair quickly decaying armor due to deaths...also time.

I agree. But running out of armor and running out of food are the same thing...They are logistics. If the attacker is unable to control the war totem, they are going to fail...since their supply base will be compromised. The attacker has to fight two battles...press the attack against their targets city, and protect their stuff from the attacker. They can't just commit 100% to the attack...or at least do so without worrying about whats going to happen to their stuff.

i also agree on the durability hit...50% may be a little high, but 25 or 30%. I say too high because the tears would just be too epic if somebodies uber knife of supreme carnage was destroyed because they were rezkilled, and so the item went poof.

[mrcalhou]

i also agree on the durability hit...50% may be a little high, but 25 or 30%. I say too high because the tears would just be too epic if somebodies uber knife of supreme carnage was destroyed because they were rezkilled, and so the item went poof.
I see where you are coming from, but after playing Eve and having countless ships destroyed, I don't find it to be that big of a deal. In Eve they tell new players, "Don't fly what you can't afford to lose." If the item destruction was so high in this game (as I feel it should be to help encourage an economy), it would be the same: "Don't wear what you can't afford to lose."

[orious13]

Hmm... you're right. I guess they are the same thing logistically.

[Dubanka]

Hmm... you're right. I guess they are the same thing logistically.

beans bullets & band aids :)

[Trenchfoot]

I don't think that decay should be tampered with. I think items should decay at the rate they decay. I do however think that items which provide an active function should suffer from 'wear'. Wear can be an additional increase in decay and that takes care of the weapon deal. It seems logical to me that if you actively 'use' something that its decay should increase. Not to mention the way weapons seem to be put together when you craft them. I mean twine? How long does anyone expect that to last? If its poorly crafted it would fall apart after a 6min melee, possibly even within the first few swings. In a world like Xsyon you would expect weapons to break (as in ruined) often.

A sword stored in a bin should last considerably longer than one deployed in the field. So in short, hit something with a tool/weapon, that item should increase in decay with each use. Possibly with a chance to break (rendered useless) based on craftsmanship. Instead of disappearing though I think you should be able to reuse them as scrap mats in some way.

EDIT: This would also put a higher value on crafters. There should be a stark contrast between 'hey check out what I made in my garage' from 'the masterwork weapon you requested is ready my liege.'. Since pvp builds will not be able to develop or at least keep their expertise in crafting, they will only ever have a couple options. A. Make mediocre weapons themselves that break all the time. Or B. Invest in a relationship with a hardcore crafter.

[ocoma]

I don't think that decay should be tampered with. I think items should decay at the rate they decay. I do however think that items which provide an active function should suffer from 'wear'. Wear can be an additional increase in decay and that takes care of the weapon deal. It seems logical to me that if you actively 'use' something that its decay should increase. Not to mention the way weapons seem to be put together when you craft them. I mean twine? How long does anyone expect that to last? If its poorly crafted it would fall apart after a 6min melee, possibly even within the first few swings. In a world like Xsyon you would expect weapons to break (as in ruined) often.

A sword stored in a bin should last considerably longer than one deployed in the field. So in short, hit something with a tool/weapon, that item should increase in decay with each use. Possibly with a chance to break (rendered useless) based on craftsmanship. Instead of disappearing though I think you should be able to reuse them as scrap mats in some way.

EDIT: This would also put a higher value on crafters. There should be a stark contrast between 'hey check out what I made in my garage' from 'the masterwork weapon you requested is ready my liege.'. Since pvp builds will not be able to develop or at least keep their expertise in crafting, they will only ever have a coupe options. A. Make mediocre weapons themselves that break all the time. Or B. Invest in a relationship with a hardcore crafter.

Agreed and I hope they have something like this planned.

[xyberviri]

--stuff--

+1



10char........