We've included the whole design to see the end game. Initially we'll start with the power system, towers, caches and clan nodes. Also the marketplace was actually extremely challenging because we had to interface the wallet into so many different legacy systems. TCS will be built piece by piece, starting with the basics and expanding. While this will become the big feature focus we'll be putting smaller updates in while the TCS and dynamic housing get worked on. --- Post updated --- Clans could ultimately take over the world pretty much if they had enough strength though it would be very unlikely due to the difficulty. Initially you can build 4 tiles away from your capital but you can keep building amplifiers to expand indefinitely. These would become strategic targets as it could cut power to an area. You can siege without having your territory built up to an enemy but it would be more difficult logistically and you wouldn't have the offensive advantages of surrounding their city. --- Post updated --- Yes we will add a political layer to show current ownership and we're thinking to show when territories are expanding or upgrading to encourage rivalries over borders. --- Post updated --- Unsure on how much agency we'll feasibly be able to give here but we will look to the custom icon with approval option. There would be a limited amount of them so it is feasible.
Besides the resources, whats the benefits here? This system should entice every player to actively want to attack and defend the map itself, I hope I'm misreading the explanation on why this system is going to cause that mindset. Vets don't need more gear or gold, we need reasons to fight. We need epeen additions like PvP titles given for kill counts in certain conditions (IE: Attacks in enemy tiles) or mount skins for sieging X amount of times, some type of leader boards or ranking system for clans and territories, and some type of 'soft' reset aka win conditions so we can do it all over again and not quit the game when we feel 'done' yet soft enough so it doesn't feel like a penalty for winning. This is the chance to go big. I feel this is the last patch to really capture the player retention gap that's one of the last missing pieces on RoA, don't screw it up.
So my largest concern with this type of system is how you will be able to destroy it I feel this is a good opportunity to look at the history of nakeds running around with battle spikes terrorizing Clans we want people to build this stuff which means it needs to be arduous to destroy it I feel this would be a great opportunity to emphasize the usefulness of War Hulks and cannons these constructs should be impervious to Siege hammers and battle spikes everything else looks amazing and I can't wait
Feel like there shouldn't be separate mechanics for these, the system is complex enough already. Just put everything in the crates, if the people that capture it don't have a clan then the clan currency gets destroyed on crate opening.
Expanding off the defensive benefits of Control Towers extending the go-live time of sieges (up to 96 hours)... I'd be interested to give defending clans the ability to force an earlier siege-go live. For example, attackers drop a siege on a holding with a max 96 hour siege timer. Defenders have a 24 hour window to "force" the city to go-live a day or two earlier than planned. Think Rome: Total War sieges. Attackers siege a city, but defenders can force the battle. This would help players better schedule IRL shit, and avoid clans being dropped in advance on holidays/server up sieges, etc. Obviously the idea would need some fleshing out (resource requirements to force the timer, exact timer impacts, etc.) but the idea would be an interesting benefit to defenders.
Keep these kind of ideas coming, as we want to make this new system as fun and rewarding as possible. We opened this thread not only to lay out our design plans but to also get you guys involved in the discussion.
Hamlet sieges should be like shard sieges from DFO launch. If Hamlet is connected to a control tower, the tower must first be destroyed before it can be sieged. The shard is a transferrable item, visible like a trade route backpack is visible. If the player carrying dies, it drops on the ground and can be picked up again (same for disconnects). Following a siege drop there is a 2hour window whereby attackers must keep control of their shard, whilst staying within a certain distance of the sieged hamlet (to limit the run and hide tactics of DFO shard sieges). Potentially the attackers could also be required to perform tasks within the hamlet's region during this 2hour period to promote activity around the siege rather than just tedious waiting. IE. Dynamically spawning guard posts that attackers must sally out and destroy, or else face debuffs to those in range of their shard. After that initial 2 hour window the attackers have 1-2hours to destroy the clanstone and win the siege, whilst still protecting their clan shard from being taken by the defending clan. Further - If a hamlet is linked to a capital city via control towers, then all hamlets and control towers linked to the capital must be captured before the capital city can be sieged. Possibly a delay on the capital city going vulnerable after they lose their last linked hamlet. Yes this will cause AM sieges, but the point is also to make hamlet sieges a more frequent event. They should be more akin to VCP captures. For neighboring cities they could be a point of daily back and forth mini sieges. Hamlets should server more as an outpost for cities, not as a holding unto itself.
There's a couple other things that will tie into this which will be not only just about acquiring the resources but for clans to force contest over special resources by containing them. Regionalisation of a variety of high-end resources is planned to go in alongside this new system which is going to force faucets in specific areas and to capitalise on the resources players will have to travel or pay others to get them. The ability of clans to disable rune travel will be another reason to not only keep someone's territory down but to build up your own in an area you like to ensure your clan can access it, this concept will likely result in clan's making allies to keep routes open. In addition the PvP over all these objectives will cause a lot of daily battles and politics is the plan, groups coming together to fight a larger opponent, hiring of mercenaries and other aspects. Regionalisation is planned for top end enchanting materials and rare ores as well as 3 new groups of rare resources planned for wood, cloth and leather for new mastery level robes and leather armours. All this pieces combined will cause a better economy to form because there will be more difficult access to a variety of materials needed, resulting in inter-region trade. The big factor above all else is there will be a scoring system built into this and seasons is the plan we like for it along with MvP style trophies for a variety of statistics and top clans not just in overall score but of the 4 different scoring methods we plan. Seasons isn't something fully decided to go in and we'd like to get feedback from the community on it but overall we think it is going to be the best method to allow these territory battles to be fun but to also have an endpoint and a restart so that new groups will be able to have an entry point into the political game, as well as to keep it fresh. It's an important topic related to the whole TCS idea because how we implement it, costs and speeds/methods of building/destruction are all largely dependent on whether there is a reset mechanic such as a season end/beginning or not. The TCS document was built with seasons in mind, it mostly wouldn't change without seasons but some minor points would change if we decided to not do seasons. --- Post updated --- Many of the ideas are still up in the air, this is the direction we've decided but fine-tuning is part of the reason we've released these documents and will continue to... WE WANT FEEDBACK . In most cases we're going away from set live times on these structures because it's more sandboxy which is our preference that players will control them. Resource caches we want to be something that is a point where people may attempt deep raids into a territory and something that may encourage clans to be friendly and encourage PvE players to their tiles to help fill up their caches. This will help encourage clans to build villages and attract people to build up in their territories as an option. We're not fully decided on the timer for these caches but the idea is that they will become one of the many daily battles that people fight over. Clan nodes and factories are designed to be more "hourly" style raids and constant threats whereas the resource caches are designed as a daily mini-siege and hence why they would be more on a timer to encourage neighouring warring clans to raid in to grab someone's caches while trying to defend their own. We're also looking at adding in a mercenary system to allow clans to offer their services and set up contracts through billboards for defense, offense, deep political sabotage, etc, etc. The idea is we want this to be as player controlled as possible so we'll give a few tools but the big thing about adding in mercenary style systems we feel is the feedback system. Players would be able to leave feedback on those who issued and those who accepted contracts, kind of like an eBay style feedback. Mercenaries would be able to build up a reputation this way. That's another topic that will come up in the future . It is one of the things we designed the billboards to use. --- Post updated --- Hamlets are designed to go the way of the dodo. Right now they serve as a small starting point and we may consider allowing clans without another holding to use them but the idea of this TCS was that clans would build their OWN hamlets once we get enough structures into the mix. For this reason Hamlets would no longer really serve a purpose. For smaller clans to get into this system we're thinking of a way for clans to start in the wilderness and build up to the point of trying to take over someone's city but this is still in the air and will not be included in the initial TCS system. Hamlets will largely stay as they are initially we expect to not really change much however their purpose will be diminished heavily as stated. --- Post updated --- You are not dreaming --- Post updated --- There's another portion of this that wasn't included and that's the idea of "activity windows". This is similar to a siege window but it would be a variety of benefits instead of just siege protection, intended to encourage clans to set it up during their active playtime instead of clan's setting them up overnight to mess up their enemies sieging them during regular hours. The idea being to not only give siege protection in the out of window hours but to give material and other benefits to playing during the siege window. We'll expand more on this in a later design thread devoted more to it. --- Post updated --- This is an excellent point and one we're going to account for through activity windows and potentially other mechanics such as making regular built battle-spikes do little damage to these structures vs ones bought through new TCS specific resources being able to do the normal damage, just one idea. The activity windows will help massively which we didn't include in this doc as it was getting big enough... but basically you would diminish the midnight asset destruction by choosing a 6-8hr window during your regular playing time. With the addition of watch towers to give you advanced warnings on raiders and portal chambers to quickly assemble a repelling force it should make it a ton easier to defend your territory as well. Most of the benefits of this system were designed around giving the owner of territories the advantage but also giving a variety of options to raiders to steal/pillage as well. To give more reason for destroying and not just building we were thinking of adding in resources you gain by destroying other player's territories, thoughts? Thinking of adding in a cheaper shard that you could initiate a "pillage" against a clan, it would have a very short warning during their activity window but it would basically allow you to destroy a few structures and get some points/resources for doing it and would allow you to try to keep key structures offline in territories instead of a full siege to take the tile.
It'd be nice to see hamlets turned into something viable for solo players or small (less than 5 members) clans. Perhaps fully-built extensions of racial cities with heavy restrictions on who can bind/use the bank? It'd be better than the current chaos stones/banks.
Houses and claims will become places where players can setup their own spaces and towns, hamlets will likely be removed as their purpose isn't really necessary in the new territory control system. We'll be adding in additional crafting structures so you will be able to live out of your house and make communities where you like.
*Interesting ideas. Seems like an overly complex system as described currently. Probably best to trim it down to only the essentials, implement that, and then build on it with what the community suggests. *Servers are up 24/7 but most people only play in a 6-12 hour window each day. Please implement things that take this into consideration. Things like 4AM asset damage done by pathetic people will kill this system. *I thought there were not going to be any more portal chambers in cities? Will there be portal chambers at the towers instead, or did you guys change your mind? *I love the idea of seasons for the political system to keep it interesting. I think the best way to make that work would be with separate 3 month season servers.
im sorry to say but. there is no territory control feel.. if clans, who own a holding a yassam, can still siege an holding on niffl.. Tiles and sieges are the base line of a territory control..It should should not be possible to siege an enemy holding without being connected to your own land. This is fundamental to a territory control system
I feel like that's something you'd say to me. I know you feel like there was more coming at the end of that sentence, but that fruit's too low.
This is our thinking and internal debate as well. How much of a hard block on distant sieges should we make? We're typically more of a fan of soft barriers limiting player choice but in this case a hard barrier may be necessary to enforce the regionalisation.
