Siege Mechanics discussion. How it worked in MO1, what didn't work and what to improve

[Anabolic Man]

Here an old trailer of how terretory controll worked in MO1.

In MO 1 there was a radius arround every keep, that was highlighted on the Map as the terretory of the guild owning the keep. This terretory could be explanded with controll towers. Keep owners could set the property taxes on their territory. If the taxes were too high, there was a peasant uprising and attempts were made to destroy the towers, so that the owners would lose control of this area.

When a tower was attacked, there was a global massage in the chat that read e.g. as follows. "The Koto controll tower in Spider Valley is under attack"! This global massage appeared when the Tower received 1 % damage !
This caused several alliances to move to this location and triggered a major battle, or at least should have triggered a major battle.

1. Now to the problems of TC in MO1 and how the system could be improved in MO2.

Why i wrote should have triggered a battle ?

Because the controll towers had too low HP in MO1 ! They got destoyed many times before the different armies arrived at the battlefield !
They could be placed at nearly unreacable places and sometimes player fake attacked the towers.

Everyone moved there, after reading the massage in global chat, but there were no opponents at the scene, because a single player smashed the tower and then fled. Just to trigger the message, and not intending to destroy the tower.

This could be avoided by having this massage appear every time the tower takes an additional % damage, so players know it's not a fake attack from someone that want to troll other palyers, and if the towers have enough HP for the palyers to reach there and defend it in time. the best would be to replace controll towers with controll outposts, that are having a gate, that have to be destoyed with a battering ram to be able to reach the NPC´s inside and kill them.

The control towers have generated points over time. This allowed you to upgrade them and increase their radius. You could build more towers and if they were all connected to a city, the guild could take control of that city.

Then that guild could spend the generated points to e.g.

1.1- to blacklist players/grifers and thieves. They were then no longer able to enter the city, because they got flagged as criminals, if they came closer then 50 meters to the city.

1.2- They could turn the guards on and off for a specific ammount of time

1.3- They got the tax from the broker, so most guilds wanted their city to flourish, for trade to take place there.

What wasn't possible, but is absolutely necessary, for the rulers of a city, is the option to spend the points on certain guilds being automatically flagged as criminals, as soon as they enter the landowner´s territory. This is important, so that they cannot give out mudercounts, if they attack a city such as Meduli !

Almost all players who took part in the big battles during the beta ended up being red ! This have to change and could be prevented with this option. It is not fun and healty for the game if everyone get red and if you are forced to do time consuming parcel runs.
That makes the game toxic. When you have so many murder counts that you can never go blue again, then new players are rarely spared since everyone is already red anyway!


2. Now to the siege mechanics, how it worked in MO1, what did not work and how it could be improved

There were some great sige battles in MO1. Sieges that took place during prime time and in which countless players took part.
Sieges that led to 12-hour non stop group pvp, like during the Koto win in Mo1.


Unfortunately that was the exception. Often it came to deadly boring "Nija Sieges" at ungodly times. Either in the middle of the night or on public holidays.
Sieges without resistance and I think we all agree on that. Sieges without resistance are time-consuming and boring and shoudl not happen in MO2 !

The defenders need enough time to be informed of the attack so that they can mobilize their forces to make sieging fun !

Now to my suggestion of solving the problem.
Let the construction of a Manganon require a specific part, which can only be commissioned from a specific NPC at the nearby Siege Camp ! The production of this specific part (e.g. hemp ropes) should take arround 24 h to construct and the defenders should get a visual indicator or a massage, that the NPC´s in the Siege camp are working on an order. For example, black smoke could rise from the chimney. This would give the defenders the time they needed to mobilize their forces.
Each keep owner should indicate whether it is a NA or EU guild. Depending on what timezone the guild is playing in, the NPC inside the Camp should not be avalible or taking request, because he is sleeping. (from 12 pm to 6 am from that specific timezone), so the siege not happen, while the guild is sleeping but in the overlapping time of NA and EU timezone.

 

[Anabolic Man]

I would also like to mention that sieges and the figh for terretories are not enough to relieve the dungeons, to make the game fun for every group of players. We need interesting mechanics for PVP, PVE, Roleplayer and Crafters.
Currently the dungeons are the only PVP hotspots. This turns off the PVE players as they can't do dungeonsm because they keep getting killed. Sieges in combination with the World Events moved most of the PVP battles to the open world. The dungeons were massively relieved. I hope SV will read this post ! We had meteor impacts, Monster invasion of towns, relics, demon stones that acted like a player triggered airdrop, sieges and battles over the control towers. This resulted in multiple huge PVP battles in the open world on a daily basis
all of which took place in the open world and not in the dungeons, which should be a place for PVE Players !

How to balance a game without a PVE Server to make it more interesting for all types of players !

Speznatz adressed one on the biggest propblems of MO2 in his latest Video. Many PVE Players are unhappy with the current state of the game and i wanted to give some feedback how SV could create a world that offers something for all players ! MO2 can only achieve a high number of players if if...

mortalonline2.com

 

[Anabolic Man]

Controll tower was a mechanic with some quirks, but a very good mechanic that led to multiple teamfights a day. Castle sieges happen very rarely in comparison. We need a mechanic that triggers multiple big teamfights every day, and sieging alone isn't enough. There needs to be a competition for control points that are generated, which can either be spent, or for which we are entitled to a reward at the end of the season. For example, in Albion, there was a special mount after each season.

Furthermore, I think it is extremely important that bolders cannot be kept in houses, only in guild banks. Otherwise, every foreign house is immediately classified as a threat, instead of the guilds being happy that many players set up houses in their area to benefit from the taxes.
This was one of the biggest design flaws in MO1, which destroyed the whole concept behind Terretory Control.


"I think the Territorial Control system from the first game will be carried over with a few changes.
A certain radius around the castle was then indicated as their area, when a large guild captured a castle. Within this area, the landowners could determine the property taxes for the player houses, which then automatically benefited the guild and filled their treasury / war chest. The territory of a kingdom could be expanded with the Terretory Control Tower in MO1. If the taxes are too high, this should lead to peasant revolts and that the control towers are being attacked. The guild with a castle benefited from the residents and should be interested in many players wanting to live in their area. This did not worked out so well in MO1, becuase houses were seen as a thread, becuase you could store Bolders in them. Hopefully this will not be possible in MO2. I hope that landowners will come to the aid of their residents, if someone wants to destroy their home. If the kingdom is attacked, many players might rush to the aid of its king, if they are satisfied with the sovereigns and if they have treated them well. Who knows how high the future owner would turn the tax screw. If the territory is expanded to include a city, entire cities could have been captured. The guild that occupied a city received taxes from the auction house and had full control over the laws that prevail there. The occupiers of a city could blacklist thieves and grievers. These could then be attacked by anyone and were flagged as criminal, as soon as they entered a city in which they have been blacklisted. I was also possible to deactivate the guards, but that did not please everyone and generated great displeasure. Surely players would form up and want to drive out the ruler of the city and try to destroy the control tower. If a control tower was attacked, the guild who owned this tower and all other players got a message in the chat and tryed to defend or attack it. That lead to some huge battles.

The problem with the territorial control system was that the towers had too few hitpoints. Often these were destroyed before a major battle broke out. Sometimes the towers were only hit and the attackers then ran away.

SV has to improve this mechanics a bit this time. E.g. by repeating messages in global chat, every time a tower loses 1% of its hitpoints.", so the players know that the attack was not "faked". Another problem was that the towers could be placed in inaccessible places. Such towers should be removed from gms.

 

[Anabolic Man]

Bump becuase of TC patch.

 

[Domtomsen]

I totally agree that there needs to be a siege window. Or at least something that tells you that a siege is very like in a given time frame. Like Henrik is always advertising his supplylines. Like the Keep is never indestructable but has 90% dmg resistance by default. And you need to set up sieges by long term activities like conquering towers or said supply lines. I like the idea with the siegecamp. Maybe let them also siege keeps whenever they want but it make not feasable without whatever machinery they get out of the siegecamp.

But in the end even a full fledged siege window would be better then random 4am sieges on mondays.