Should Mortal Online 2 Have "Siege Windows"?

[Hooves]

A "siege window" refers to a set period of time when a player or guild's assets are vulnerable. Outside of this vulnerability window, those houses or keeps or whatnot are unable to be sieged. It's an idea that plenty of other games have used (Darkfall, Gloria Victus, Eve, Shadowbane, etc) and has been suggested repeatedly since the dawn of Territory Control in MO1. People have suggested many different versions of this mechanic.

This poll is intended not to gauge how much people agree or disagree with these individual suggestions, but instead if you'd be interested in seeing ANY siege window mechanic in MO2. This includes hybrid siege-window ideas, where it's not impossible but simply much more difficult to siege something down during certain hours.

Examples of a Siege Window suggestion: Neftan's Siege Window

Pros:

• This can help to prevent ninja sieges, which are generally harmful if the goal of Mortal Online 2 is for players to have some semblance of fun. Henrik has stated the he wants sieging to be more difficult for attackers in MO2 with new Defensive siege weapons. Without a siege window, this seems like it will only encourage more ninja sieging in MO2 versus MO1. Why fight against players and defensive siege weapons when you could just peacefully take down the enemy's keep at 4am.
• In general, it makes sieges more about combat and less about tedious tasks like boulder-running. To quote Dalacor about GV's siege system:

  Castle sieges(SOW) are timed siege windows that allow players to prepare a defense and usually mean we get brilliant large scale fights usually more than once a week yet all you need to do to participate is rock up, no grinding for expensive kit, no running hours of boulders...

  Obviously that's more arcadey than MO intends, but there's something to be said for getting rid of a game's most tedious mechanics despite their realism.
• Even if no sieging takes place, vulnerability windows can guarantee a player-driven battle event. If your keep is vulnerable, other guilds will know exactly where your players are: preparing to defend. In other words, they'll know where they may be able to get a fight. This can lead to regular semi-organic battles in the vicinity.
• Players won't have to worry about staying up late waiting for enemies to siege them, and you can actually maybe possibly have a life outside of MO.

Cons:

• It does make the game less sandboxy. In the words of Dunk Slammington:

  If you want to have a carebear mechanic like this go play Darkfall, MO is too hardcore for you.

  . This seems to be the main piece of criticism whenever siege windows come up:

  My my my aint you a nanny nay say, so what are your bright ideas besides a Trammelesque carebear artificial timer that lets the enemy pick the window the attacker is allowed to siege during so you can get your nappy nap time knowing your pixels are safe from harm as you dream of turning MO into WoW.

• If poorly designed, it can lead to more stalemate wars - especially if warring guilds have different peak activity times.
• If poorly designed, it can be abused. This is especially true if guilds can pick their own time windows and all but force other guilds to siege at awful hours.
• Time-to-siege would have to be completely reworked. MO1 sieges took way too long for anyone to siege anything during a reasonable vulnerability window.

 

[Bernfred]

nonono very bad mechanic, you cant balance it right because everyone has a different life, some guilds are Russia only and so on. it would destryo the sandbox aspect hard. i can remember as life is feudal alpha did something similar and went from best game to worst with one big care bear patch (attracted more casual player so its just my opinion).

i would make guards much cheaper and stronger (anti siege weapon guards), walls have more hp and cost less to rebuild them fast and siege weapons require much more materials.
all you can do is to make it so cost intensive that you think twice before you call your guild for a siege and waste hours of farming.

 

[Vagrant]

Time Zone A players - 'everyone keeps ninja sieging us while we sleep/work/whatever'

Time Zone B players - 'it's our prime time, we're all awake and not at work, would you prefer we book a siege time ?'

my best uneducated guess is leave it open, it encourages valuable keep spots to be inhabited by those that can defend multiple time zones.
i don't personally like npc guards or any other afk mechanic either but that's just me

 

[Kaemik]

Anyone ever play the old Star Wars Battlefont 2? Not the super recent one but the one some of us played back on the original Xbox. It had this system where there were various "key points" on the map and as both sides fought not only did they lose troops in the actual fighting but whichever side had less control points also had troop attrition. Because of the way this worked, you could have huge battles with hundreds of units but only a small handful of them needed to be represented on the field at any given time.

That provides most of the context needed to understand this idea I wrote down mainly for fun as an exercise in how I would build my own MMO given the opportunity, and I feel is 100% adaptable to games like Mortal Online that inspired me in the first place:

As a game with Open World PvP and territorial control, the ability to take territory from other players by force is essential. Unfortunately this generally leads to people building up their own areas over the course of weeks, months, or even years, then losing it all in a single 3 am surprise attack. Some games have solved this problem by making it so there is warning period after a siege is declared but the battle itself still lasts only 1-3 hours meaning that if you are too busy to be there for that battle, or that battle is happening when you are usually working or sleeping it's a matter of bending your life to work for the game or not being present.

I find this system to be crap. Territory that is built by many people putting forth considerable effort and resources over a long period of time should only be conquerable by people putting forth considerable effort and resources over a long period of time.

The problem with that is that players generally cannot hold a siege 24/7 for a long period of time. That's far too much commitment for a game to reasonably expect of its players.

For that reason sieges will be fought between NPC armies with players acting as commanders and the heros of their respective factions. When sieging major holdings the opposing force must commit troops from the standing armies of their holdings, weakening the defenses of their territory. These forces will set up siege camps at the location they are being commanded to assault. From there there there will be several hotspots that there will be almost constant conflict between NPCs of the attacker and defender. While statistically the numbers of NPCs in these conflicts will probably number in the thousands there will likely only be dozens of NPCs represented by avatars on the fields at any given time for the sake of avoiding unnecessary lag.

Players can assist their factions by going and fighting at these hotspots. Controlling each hotspots gives various advantages to your team and or disadvantages to the enemy team. The primary purposes being that faction losing will bleed soldiers from their total number of forces faster and the attacking faction will either gain or lose victory points needed to successfully capture the settlement.

These sieges will be ongoing events meant to last days or even weeks, so the most useful way to help your side is to log on and fight over hotspots as you have time. Even if there is nobody on for your side during early hours of the morning it will not allow the enemy to achieve victory if your side is usually the winning side for most of the day or if they have not committed enough resources and soldiers to defeat a settlement with the defenses and soldiers yours has.

If you did something this in-depth you'd want to add outposts throughout the world. Smaller player-owned areas that can be taken and lost multiple times a day. Controlling outposts would help guilds generate troops to defend their keeps, siege their enemies, or (with some penalty) could be tied to something like a guildhall in an NPC town and then used to build up an army a non-keep holding guild could eventually take and siege a keep with.

In terms of "siege windows" obviously, this idea is meant to play out over days or weeks. But you might not have every moment of the day hold equal value. For instance, holding every single point at 3am might have less effect than holding every single point at prime time.

The main point is you don't want people waking up after working on a settlement 3 years and being like "Crap, that got taken while I was asleep?" or "No good, that siege hour falls during work/school hours for me!" with this system, you would literally have to not log in for days to not get the chance to participate in your cities defense on some level.

I realize the criticism of this system will be "I don't want NPCs to do the fighting for me!" But players take actions to generate those soldiers. Players take actions to lead those soldiers. Players have multiple methods to prevent enemy guilds from generating their soldiers or to widdle down their troop numbers. Every point of this system is player-driven. But it's played out more like a real-time strategy game than a pure player-avatar vs. player-avatar fight. Because your troops don't ever have to sleep IRL. You do. And personally I find Players and NPCs vs. Players and NPCs much more engaging than Player vs. Work & Sleep schedules.

 

[Hooves]

my best uneducated guess is leave it open, it encourages valuable keep spots to be inhabited by those that can defend multiple time zones.
i don't personally like npc guards or any other afk mechanic either but that's just me

But how does that not punish guilds that are based out of a single timezone? Should they just never be able to have a keep without joining a nutcup alliance? IDK if that's what MO2 needs. I don't know what the best solution here is, but the Gloria Victis method gives them a chance to own their own keep.

Agreed on NPC guards and afk mechanics - hate it.

i would make guards much cheaper and stronger (anti siege weapon guards), walls have more hp and cost less to rebuild them fast and siege weapons require much more materials.
all you can do is to make it so cost intensive that you think twice before you call your guild for a siege and waste hours of farming.

Can't tell you how much I hate that idea. It's a sandbox, why do we want more AI to crutch on?

MO1 for a long time had one of the most tedious sieging systems ever, but that still didn't prevent ninja sieges. If anything it encouraged ninja sieges, since it's easier to fight an NPC guard rather than an NPC guard AND a player foe. I don't see how making sieges more tedious will do anything except make ninja sieging more common...and make players hate the whole siege system.

 

[Grisù]

Help me to remember, even LiF had something alike an it didn't ended up well or am I wrong?

For Clans, imho is a feature to avoid.
Members and time (intended even as timezones) are precious "resources", a good guild should be aware of it and manage them in the most efficient way in order to survive.

But honestly I think would be nice to have something that prevents a solo player becoming homeless every time he logs out.
Said so, I don't think it has to be an hard-coded game feature to guarantee that.

Very stupid suggestion following (just to avoid being the guy who only criticize without proposing):

Maybe leave to "solo"/non-guilded players the possibility to organize themselves in tiny villages or something alike, without any software bonds (just placing houses tight and some additional flagging rules), that should be a fine way to reduce a bit the homeless counter.
Plus if multiple guild members engages a village, the whole guild eventually gets globally flagged as criminal, giving the villagers the possibility to being supported by random players or some other guild just for that "defend the tower" battle.

That should work as a neighborhood patrol, obviously if there are different timezones villagers.
If not the whole thing become pointless like a village full of miners without any farmer, they'll gonna have some hard times by eating iron ores and shitting nails.

Than if someone still wants to be that special guy who places his house right next to a rare resource, pretending to be left untouched because he's not a guild, he has to face the reality: he's playing a full pvp hardcore sandbox mmo not some sort of animal crossing.

 

[Vagrant]

I haven't heard 'nutcup alliance' in years haha

It's true that most guilds have historically been single time zone guilds in MO anyway, it is kind of shitty to have it such that your efforts can be destroyed without so much as a 'right of reply', in reality everyone asleep in their homes would be woken by the attack, so it's not really based in realism anyway.

Could it just be the case that a war dec is just the first stage and there has to be a grace period ( of days not minutes/hours ) before any siege can occur so there's at least notice enough to allow for alliances to be formed ?
then perhaps allianced guilds are flagged as friendly and the attacking guild is a common enemy, before siege can occur there's a period leading up to the actual siege where there's a chance to limit the attackers ability to accumulate weapons and resources.
This would mean any siege attempt needs to be pretty well organised and serious rather than just random bored guilds taking down assets by ninja.

Also will keep door keys be back ?
it'll be fun since there wont be an extra slot for that 'keep key guy' but also not having multiple accounts to log in to keeps with so easily

 

[Rorry]

After TC walls were given the ability to open to guild members or with a password so the keep key didn't matter much, the keep would be buried in layers of walls.

 

[Rorry]

i would make guards much cheaper and stronger (anti siege weapon guards), walls have more hp and cost less to rebuild them fast and siege weapons require much more materials.
all you can do is to make it so cost intensive that you think twice before you call your guild for a siege and waste hours of farming.

No, we already had this and it was awful. It would cause even more ninja sieges, one of the big reasons that post TC MO1 bit the dust.

 

[Bernfred]

No, we already had this and it was awful. It would cause even more ninja sieges, one of the big reasons that post TC MO1 bit the dust.

right but i can see too much pain when you can deplete one castle over night. what if you dont need to destroy the core just hold something over a longer period of time?

 

[Magos]

should do it with guards IMO. Set guard posts, set time when guards go on duty, every 12 hours they go to sleep.
(all guards go to sleep at same time, they would basically be the night watch)

 

[ElPerro]

should do it with guards IMO. Set guard posts, set time when guards go on duty, every 12 hours they go to sleep.
(all guards go to sleep at same time, they would basically be the night watch)

Id rather have no guards at all, but since they are pretty much confirmed by Henrik then this sounds good. Better have them 12 hours than 24 hours lol

 

[Hooves]

should do it with guards IMO. Set guard posts, set time when guards go on duty, every 12 hours they go to sleep.

That would solve one of the issues that people have with AI guards, but I think many players dislike the idea of defenders relying on AI to fight for them.

Years ago, I used to play a Space game where you could siege other players' planets while were offline. It was balanced by allowing defenders to place turrets creatively on a planet. These forced the attackers to approach each planet like a puzzle, where they had to find the points of weakness and attack intelligently. Every planet was randomly generated, with different shapes and different bottlenecks, and you could only place a certain amount of defensive turrets on each planet, so you had to be strategic as a defender. This made sieging FUN - even if the opposition was offline. I'm not sure that MO can achieve that since defenders have so much freedom when it comes to placement of obstacles and AI guards, which takes away the chance for attackers to find a weak spot and solve any sort of 'puzzle'.

Maybe if SV set more limits on where you can place walls and guard posts (and if they had fewer long-range guards that can snipe through walls, and fewer guards with respawn capability) it could replicate this puzzle-like feature? I don't know.

 

[Magos]

That would solve one of the issues that people have with AI guards, but I think many players dislike the idea of defenders relying on AI to fight for them.

Years ago, I used to play a Space game where you could siege other players' planets while were offline. It was balanced by allowing defenders to place turrets creatively on a planet. These forced the attackers to approach each planet like a puzzle, where they had to find the points of weakness and attack intelligently. Every planet was randomly generated, with different shapes and different bottlenecks, and you could only place a certain amount of turrets on each planet, so you had to be strategic as a defender. This made sieging FUN - even if the opposition was offline. I'm not sure that MO can achieve that since defenders have so much freedom when it comes to placement of obstacles and AI guards, which takes away the chance for attackers to find a weak spot and solve any sort of 'puzzle'.

Maybe if SV set more limits on where you can place walls and guard posts, it could replicate this puzzle-like feature? I don't know.

sry I updated my idea with a key point that they all go to sleep at the same time. So ya it could work like a puzzle if you set your guard posts right.
But more or less it's just a siege window idea. The particulars of how effective/difficult it would be to siege during the guard time could be discussed.

 

[Kaemik]

I have no issues with AI doing my fighting for me as long as the AI is there because of actions taken by players. I hate putting weeks into, months, or years into the development of my guild's home only to have no impact on the fight where we lose it because it happened while my parents were visiting, or in the middle of a workday, or 3am in the morning. If putting in some effort beforehand can be the difference between my group keeping or losing my home that's a system I like.

Even if my efforts are just represented by NPCs on the battlefield because I might have to sleep and go to work. But they're AI and their job is to protect my keep.

 

[Rhias]

There should be no windows for anything.
It should be based on ingame "logic".
For sieging you need boulders.
In MO1 they got stored on boulder holder characters and logged off.
In MO2 logging off anywhere is prevented, and boulder-holding is not anymore possible. And one character should only be able "carry" a realistic amount of boulders.
So players should carry boulders with wagons and store them somewhere temporary (let's call it a boulder pile). Depending how much will be sieged people might need a lot of boulders and that boulder pile is there for a rather long time.
A active guild should be able to discover this in their area by regular patrolling (and be warned that there might be a siege soon).
The boulder pile can not simply be destroyed, but ANYONE can remove boulders from it and put them into another wagon. So the attacker should take a watch that nobody takes their boulders.
Boulders should not be deleteable. So that nobody walks there and instantly deletes all of the attacker's boulders.
This way defenders have a skill based way to detect a siege before it's happening. And also the attackers skill matters, since it's relevant to sneak while transporting the boulders and also store them in a somewhat hidden location (at least as far as you can "hide" a big pile of boulders).

 

[Hooves]

There should be no windows for anything.
It should be based on ingame "logic".
For sieging you need boulders.
In MO1 they got stored on boulder holder characters and logged off.
In MO2 logging off anywhere is prevented, and boulder-holding is not anymore possible. And one character should only be able "carry" a realistic amount of boulders.
So players should carry boulders with wagons and store them somewhere temporary (let's call it a boulder pile). Depending how much will be sieged people might need a lot of boulders and that boulder pile is there for a rather long time.
A active guild should be able to discover this in their area by regular patrolling (and be warned that there might be a siege soon).
The boulder pile can not simply be destroyed, but ANYONE can remove boulders from it and put them into another wagon. So the attacker should take a watch that nobody takes their boulders.
Boulders should not be deleteable. So that nobody walks there and instantly deletes all of the attacker's boulders.
This way defenders have a skill based way to detect a siege before it's happening. And also the attackers skill matters, since it's relevant to sneak while transporting the boulders and also store them in a somewhat hidden location (at least as far as you can "hide" a big pile of boulders).

How would this prevent me from running boulders when my enemies log off and sieging them down that same night? Without pre-running boulders?

I've seen that done countless times in MO1. I've sieged down entire keeps during a single night without pre-running boulders.

 

[Magos]

There should be no windows for anything.
It should be based on ingame "logic".
For sieging you need boulders.
In MO1 they got stored on boulder holder characters and logged off.
In MO2 logging off anywhere is prevented, and boulder-holding is not anymore possible. And one character should only be able "carry" a realistic amount of boulders.
So players should carry boulders with wagons and store them somewhere temporary (let's call it a boulder pile). Depending how much will be sieged people might need a lot of boulders and that boulder pile is there for a rather long time.
A active guild should be able to discover this in their area by regular patrolling (and be warned that there might be a siege soon).
The boulder pile can not simply be destroyed, but ANYONE can remove boulders from it and put them into another wagon. So the attacker should take a watch that nobody takes their boulders.
Boulders should not be deleteable. So that nobody walks there and instantly deletes all of the attacker's boulders.
This way defenders have a skill based way to detect a siege before it's happening. And also the attackers skill matters, since it's relevant to sneak while transporting the boulders and also store them in a somewhat hidden location (at least as far as you can "hide" a big pile of boulders).

I like this boulder pile idea a lot but I think it could also work well with the 12 hour night watch guard idea.

 

[Rhias]

How would this prevent me from running boulders when my enemies log off and sieging them down that same night? Without pre-running boulders?

I've seen that done countless times in MO1. I've sieged down entire keeps during a single night without pre-running boulders.

Possible. But still takes hours and involves a lot of logistics. Also if people carry all boulders at once (let's assume with 50 wagons at once) they will draw a lot of attention on them (even before they reach their destination).
My idea would be a mechanic to give defenders some time to prepare before an actual siege (or call allies). To prevent Ninja-sieges, but no overnight sieges that take several hours. I wouldn't call that a Ninja-Siege anymore. IMHO a Ninja siege is a siege that is finished before anyone notices it.

But to be honest with you: I don't think any guild that doesn't have any allies or guild members a whole night should hold a whole village by themselves.
MMO's are about cooperation, and not about running an entire empire solo.
If you're a solo player that builds some kind of farming outpost you better have good politics or good payments with the local larger guilds, so that they protect you.
If you're a smaller guild owning a village that is only active during a certain time you should think about sharing it with another smaller guild that is active during another timezone.

 

[Teknique]

Make tc only keeps

Problem solved. Keep guilds generally large enough to fight each other at any hour.

Little guilds proved to not be able to handle tc and just quit so no more toys for them IMO