If you cant lose your Totem....what's the Endgame?

[Yuyito]

People were sick of the technical limitations of Shadowbane, if SB ran lag free without sb.exe errors during large scale fights and they had fixed item/gold duping, the game would have remained pretty active as the combat and seige systems themselves worked well and were mostly importantly, pretty balanced. Though WoW didn't have the asset destruction and whatnot, it was and remains a very polished game, the antithesis of SB.

I think the reason that many of us SBers are vocal about this is that we know the SB system was balanced, we know that it could work in this type of community. For those that didn't play SB, they hear about seiging and whatnot and probably imagine that there was just rampant fighting and it was totally uncontrolled and cities were falling hourly but that wasn't the case. It was generally pretty difficult for the offensive side to win banes, even if heavily outnumbering the defense, which is how it ought to be. None of us SBers at least want 24/7 reckless pvp with seiges every night if the week, shit most of us are too old for that sort of commitment anymore, and we also don't want the battles to be so easy that they become stagnant. I think most of us would probably even be ok with just an inventory loot system liek SB was.

We're not trying to change this game, we're just trying to let the community know that you can have a great pvp and seige system in place even though it may not be the focus of the game. Just because it isn't the focus doesn't mean that it should have crappy mechanics, ya know?

QFT!

(Old vet of SB War server)

[Dubanka]

People were sick of the technical limitations of Shadowbane, if SB ran lag free without sb.exe errors during large scale fights and they had fixed item/gold duping, the game would have remained pretty active as the combat and seige systems themselves worked well and were mostly importantly, pretty balanced. Though WoW didn't have the asset destruction and whatnot, it was and remains a very polished game, the antithesis of SB.

I think the reason that many of us SBers are vocal about this is that we know the SB system was balanced, we know that it could work in this type of community. For those that didn't play SB, they hear about seiging and whatnot and probably imagine that there was just rampant fighting and it was totally uncontrolled and cities were falling hourly but that wasn't the case. It was generally pretty difficult for the offensive side to win banes, even if heavily outnumbering the defense, which is how it ought to be. None of us SBers at least want 24/7 reckless pvp with seiges every night if the week, shit most of us are too old for that sort of commitment anymore, and we also don't want the battles to be so easy that they become stagnant. I think most of us would probably even be ok with just an inventory loot system liek SB was.

We're not trying to change this game, we're just trying to let the community know that you can have a great pvp and seige system in place even though it may not be the focus of the game. Just because it isn't the focus doesn't mean that it should have crappy mechanics, ya know?

Preach it proto.

and for the non-sb players...seiging <> losing the seige. Defenders should have the advantage of defensive positions, lay of the land, and logistics. attackers need to bring the party, stretch a logistics train, and thus should have a much more difficult time prosecuting a war. A competent guild in sb. could realistically hope to defend against 1.5:1 odds. 2:1 was possible with a little luck. and there were not too infrequent cases of guilds prevailing defensively against odds greater than 3:1. It should be difficult to take a well built city.

[Dubanka]

My reply to you depends upon what you mean by 'getting any attention.'

If by that you mean that PvP needs more substance and structure and reason for being, I'd probably agree. If you mean a more robust and dynamic combat mechanism, I'd probably agree.

But if you mean, 'the developers aren't changing their concept to fit what we want Xsyon to be versus what they want it to be' then I, for one, hope you never get any attention. That's confrontational and probably not what some folks want to hear, but there it is.

Again, read the features list. Read Jooky's interview where he states, pretty unambiguously, that PvP exists to serve the over-arching concept of rebuilding society after Armeggedon. That is; Xsyon is primarily about crafting and politics and invention and progress and all the scorned in some circles 'carebear' stuff. Not the other way around. Now to be perfectly clear; you need PvP to make all that carebear stuff ultimately have an edge and a risk. It's symbiotic. In a true sandbox game like Xsyon, either one without the other is ultimately empty. The question is; which drives the other? Which comes first?

Again - I'm pretty confident that Jooky's comments regarding his vision for the game make the answer clear.

Now there's nothing at all in any of that to say that PvP in Xsyon can't be wonderful and fulfilling and full of all sorts of genuinely marvelous opportunities to 'risk your reputation', if that's what you truly want to do. Just look at the previous posts where folks are discussing epic siege warfare and convoluted political intrigue driven maneuvering and so forth and so on. It's only to say that if the attention you're demanding is that the devs turn this into 'I can knock down shit where-ever I want, when-ever I feel like it', I think ... I hope... you're in for a long, disappointing wait.

By attention, it's being vocal about the importance of a quality pvp / territorial warfar experience to a large percentage of the audience.

The pve crowd is pretty vocal, and has had it 'their' way for a long time (being the folks that put in the time and effort to get the game to where it is today...thanks for that, truly testing a product can be a pita). However with the influx of new blood, some new(er?) ideas of whats important have come to fore. We see the game as a very capable venue for delivering what we want in a sandbox...we just want to help it flesh out that side of the puzzle.

[orious13]

Well.. I personally always thought a SB 2.0 would be pretty legit. I'd rather people talk about SB than DF any day. Although I often had more fun doing mine def/atks than sieging on account of my other computer.

The number one thing I think about suggestions etc is that you all should create a suggestion for sieges and throw up a thread on the suggestions area. Then you can discuss pros/cons and other fixes. Either this or search for previous mechanics that have already been suggested and build upon those. I'd say that would be much more constructive than this thread. I figure that in a few months after combat is "awesome", Xsyon himself might create a "siege mechanics" thread, thereby, everyone can put in the entire sum of their suggestions on the system. If any of you were following Dawntide, they did this some months ago (and are in open beta/alpha whatever you want to call it atm).

[Doc]

I dont know exactly what Jordi has in store, but part of the desing suggest that initial tribe towns built in prelude wont be conquerable.

Now, before you go in rant mode, consider that Xsyon has no prebuilt towns like other games. In addition to that, it was said current spawn locations will be gone and will be substituted with tribe towns. I always considered that current towns will act like NPC towns in other games. Just player ran. Iirc it was said that after prelude you will probably be able to play the game like quest grinder, visiting towns, taking (player provided) quests at totems.

Territorial conquest can be pretty much achieved by expansion totems and claiming addtional land for tribe, probably on locations with new/high/rare resources, on which you can build sand castles to be sieged and conquered. Initial towns should provide small amount of basic resources so tribe that went down can slowly recuperate and be back in action in resonable amount of time, current towns would provide that. Players do need some permanence and staying power to continue playing. You have to think of system sustainable in the long run, system that wont drive people away.

[Proto]

I don't think you'll find many of us who mind that the early months of the game are limited in asset destruction, I mean we like competitive PVP, we don't want it to be easy to waltz to a city and drop it in 10 minutes (generally speaking, there are some exceptions). That being said, what we do want for example, is to be able to at least raid a city, let those owners make it their safehold, don't just cheapen it by having a game mechanic do the rightfully tough work for you. From having built cities before, it's a good feeling to make it a strong, defensively sound city! I think the anti-pvp crowd is unfortunately not considering this aspect of the world building enough. Take pride in your cities!

[NexAnima]

I don't think you'll find many of us who mind that the early months of the game are limited in asset destruction, I mean we like competitive PVP, we don't want it to be easy to waltz to a city and drop it in 10 minutes (generally speaking, there are some exceptions). That being said, what we do want for example, is to be able to at least raid a city, let those owners make it their safehold, don't just cheapen it by having a game mechanic do the rightfully tough work for you. From having built cities before, it's a good feeling to make it a strong, defensively sound city! I think the anti-pvp crowd is unfortunately not considering this aspect of the world building enough. Take pride in your cities!

A complete circle around the boundary, 3 dirt levels high...welcome to my impenetrable fortress

[orious13]

A complete circle around the boundary, 3 dirt levels high...welcome to my impenetrable fortress

Oh snap... use large tree logs as "ramps"->siege ladders.

[Salvadore]

Addressing Shadowbane 2.0 - NO PLEASE DONT!!! Please get that out of the community right now!!! I would say the majority of the sb guys agree to that. Shadowbane had a plethora of character builds/types and multitudes of designs per build/type. The scope of this game is nowhere near that, nor does anyone want it to be. However, the sieging possibilities are amazingly similar. Still, none of us want it to be EXACTLY the same, however, possibly take the good parts? We are all here for Xsyon, even if we have different hopes for it!

Addressing Sieging - Pretty much Proto's post. However, in the latter half of sb, you didnt just walk up to a city and start sieging it. The prep for it took a couple months with everything included. The logistics, planning, resources, and strategies were more complex than most small countries do involving their own nation's military exercises! NOT kidding. Even with all of the aforementioned, it did not guarantee an automatic "win" for the aggressor. The majority were won by the defensive side. Some tribes would war for months as much as possible and NEVER EVER take a city from each other. This was due to balance...a specific thing that many (myself included) are pressing for involving the issue.

In a siege based system, the crafter or dubbed "carebear" is KING. They always have the people like me supplying them with WHATEVER they want and as much as they want. THEY decide the layout of the cities. THEY decide how to attack another city due to their experience with city building. THEY provide everything the pvp'er needs, thus is the pvp'ers number 1 dude. Who gets protected...yup, the KING crafter.

If you are a crafter and dont have a few guys like me planning to supply you...im tellin ya...YER DOING IT WRONG!!!

[Salvadore]

Oh snap... use large tree logs as "ramps"->siege ladders.

Wouldn't the guy standing on the wall of the city be able to just merely take the log?

*Of course, if they were online...

Im all about crafted siege equipment...like ladders, bullwarks, trebuchets, battering rams, siege carts, siege towers, etc. THATS depth!!!