Tobold's Blog: I'll come by Friday afternoon at 3 to attack you

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

I'll come by Friday afternoon at 3 to attack you

For the sake of not letting the hype blind me, I haven't spent much time studying Age of Conan in advance. I'd rather play the beta, starting tomorrow hopefully, and see for myself. But while I don't read the AoC official site, I do read blogs, so I can't help but get some information from there. The best source I've found up to now for Age of Conan commentary is Keen and Graev's Blog. While I had to sign an NDA to get into the open beta, Keen says the NDA was dropped for participants in an earlier AoC event, which I find confusing, and somewhat ironic, given that Keen once chided me for breaking an NDA a few hours early. So he has not only comments on various AoC feature announcements, but also first-hand experience tales directly from the game.

Anyway, in his latest post he is talking about AoC's battlekeep vulnerability system. In other games in which guilds can conquer keeps, like DAoC, those keeps often change hand at 3 am, when the owning guild is sleeping and the attackers organized an early bird raid. In Age of Conan the owners of the keep can choose themselves at what time their keep is vulnerable to attack, and the attacker has to sign up for an attack at least 24 hours in advance. If several guilds want to attack, only one of them is chosen to be able to do so, based on PvP points.

As alluded to in the title, the result is somewhat silly. But the obvious advantage of a vulnerability window system is that the defender is far more likely to be actually present when his keep is under siege. That is an interesting reversal from a general MMORPG PvP situation in which the attacker only attacks at moments where he is sure the defender is weak, like people ganking somebody in a fight with a mob, or PvP objectives being attacked at odd hours. The disadvantage of that system is that once the strongest guilds have conquered the keeps, of which there are only very limited numbers, it becomes very difficult for anyone else to ever take them away. Battlekeep possession could easily become rather static, and thus uninteresting. If the defender is forewarned and thus forearmed, the game system has to somehow give the attacker some other advantage to make a change of ownership of the keep more likely.

Well, in any case this isn't likely to affect me. Any system in which PvP guilds conquer keeps, which will be the case in AoC as well as in WoW, automatically exclude casual players from that part of the content. A pickup raid group is more likely to succeed killing Illidan than to capture a keep from a PvP guild. And as I managed to avoid military service in real life, I'm not keen on joining a virtual military organization in a virtual world.
- posted by Tobold @ 2:21 PM Permanent Link

Comments:

Did you ever play DAoC? There were plenty of casual PvP guilds. I don't think the outlook for a casual pvper is as bleak as you paint it.

Too bad about military service. It would have put some hair on your chest.

# posted by

blachawk : 30/4/08 15:16

PvP guilds tend to be PvP guilds because they want to PvP. If you conquer the largest keep and hold it with such an iron fist that people stop trying to take it from you, or that every fight is a foregone conclusion in your favor, the game will get boring and your players are going to be less likely to log in... making you vulnerable, or in a constant state of recruiting flux. We'll have to wait and see, but I think it is a situation that will even itself out.

# posted by

Jason : 30/4/08 15:38

I agree with jason. It's something that seeks its own level. For every hardcore guild that has an iron grip on a keep, there's another hardcore guild that wants to take it out.

You don't necessarily have to enjoy that content to understand its place in the game universe. Assuming the game developer doesn't suddenly start rebalancing all the game classes around keep defense (wink, wink). That shouldn't be a problem, since the scale of the battle will preclude players finding imbalances in class design.

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/4/08 16:08

Since Keep fights are planned from the beginning to be in the game, they probably won't be as big of balance headaches as arena changes seem to be in WoW from people's comments, since the game mechanics, skills, and keep mechanics will be designed from the beginning with them in mind.

# posted by

Pickly : 30/4/08 16:52

I think the merc system will put an interesting twist to this system. With mercs even a weak guild can challenge a stronger opponent.

But the one problem I see is, will the small guilds ever get a chance to challenge a Battlekeep? Will a small guild be able to gather enough PvP points to be allowed to attack? I hope so alot!

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/4/08 16:58

Well it's just a matter of it being realistic or realistic.

The people who want to be able to attack at night when it's empty want it that way because it is realistic.

You could also argue that attacking while people are there to defend would make it more realistic. Though the word keep would need to imply a place that always has warriors ready to defend, in your game's story.

Personally I like it. I love when games mix elements of different genres in interesting ways. I used to play a lot of CS, sure a lot of people play CS but you can't just take your clan into a pub server and have a true fight (read: fair) with a challenger clan. So they schedule a time to have this fair fight. I think it's awesome, it, to me, gives the game a bit more depth by making keeps seem like they're worth something (hopefully by depth I don't mean waiting to pvp).

# posted by

Bonedead : 30/4/08 17:08

The AoC webiste also mentions smaller towers and "resource" nodes to be capturable. I know the Guild BKs sieges are an instance fight, but its possible AoCs version of the DAOCs frontier will have a little something for everyone.

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/4/08 17:56

here's my 2 cents and I don't pvp much.

Make a new BG that resets every Tuesday. There can be keeps and towns to capture and hold and all the impact pvp you can shake a stick at.

Lets say you use the Old Durnholde Instance as the map. It's huge for starts and you possible expand it to include: Dalaran, City of Alterac and Strahnbrad.

Along with Azurelode Mine • Darrow Hill • Dun Garok • Durnholde Keep • Eastern Strand • Hillsbrad • Hillsbrad Fields • Nethander Stead • Purgation Isle • Southpoint Tower • Southshore •Tarren Mill • Thoradin's Wall • Western Strand, etc. these could be also catchable points, every one offering some kind of bonus if you can hold for x number of hours/days/or whatever.

Players could enter and leave (maybe you can only stay for 1 hour and system boots you out and have to re que to enter again) as the please and collect HKs for there time and any "towers" they capture/rebuild while in the BG. At the end of the week a winning side is declared and winning side receives some of type reward, bonus honour, marks, whatever.

Since this "impact pvp" is set inside a BG that lasts 7 days. It won't affect the rest of the pve world (or maybe it will)

OR Maybe inside another Instance. How about pvp battle inside BRD or KARA. Maybe the pvp battle only last a day? The Alliance/Horde have a day to capture and control all of BRD and then a week later it resets.

There's plenty of pre-existing content that exist that isn't being used to it's full potential, so why not use for pvp (or something else).

(PS i'm award of all the possible pvp exploits of afking, bots, etc that could happen, but wtf, lets hear your idea)

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/4/08 18:31

The NDA for the Gamespot PvP weekend was dropped. Anything that happened during that weekend can be discussed openly. So no, it's not ironic.

Any AoC topics on my blog are straight response/reaction to information released on the official site and/or official statements from articles on sites like IGN. Furthermore, I am not in the closed beta nor has the open beta even begun.

I hope that clears things up for you.

# posted by

Keen : 30/4/08 20:22

Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) had a similar mechanism where you could select the vulnerability window on your base. The group I was with set their base to 3am and wondered why there was no one to fight and defend at 3am one night when we lost our base.

# posted by

Rob : 30/4/08 21:33

City of Heroes also had a similar system. For every relic of power you picked up, you had to open an additional window during the week your "keep" could be attacked. It's a decent idea since it ensures that you can get some decent battles rather than the empty world feeling of WoW's world pvp sometimes.

It immediately brings to mind the following conversation.

Dr. Doom: "Insufferable Richards! Doom shall come forth and squash you and your putrid, feebleminded cohorts beneath one boot! Prepare yourself!"

Richards: "I'm all booked up right now. Can you come back, perhaps on Thursday? Between 4 and 6pm maybe?"

Doom: "Doom does not bow before your asinine chicanery! My Little Pony is also showing in the middle of that time. Cinnamon Kiss and Midnight Smile are on display this week. Ah, the joys of finery beyond your pitiful understanding. You have earned a stay of execution this Thursday. Perhaps Friday at 2pm would be better."

Richards: "Friday at 2pm is fine. I'll see you then."

Doom: "Reflect on your miserable life then! Enjoy what remains of your life until Friday at 2pm, for Doom shall be upon you then!"

# posted by

Anonymous : 30/4/08 21:42

The siege window idea works great. It is a way that attackers can "harass" the big dogs into a forced window of defending when they can also measure up the battlefield and sum up whether its worth fighting for or not. The mercenary system also heavily weighs against the defenders as they must actually defend something vs farming bosses/mobs with their one valueable asset (time played).

Im not sure how well it is balanced so far but you specifically mentioned lineage 2.. which has very epic large scale fights vs players or vs pve fortresses. Age of conan might actually 1-up lineage 2's combat system considering it isnt nearly as lvl/gear/number intensive.

~Tenmohican

# posted by

Anonymous : 1/5/08 00:20

one sentence: "They need to have awesome siege weapons of burning death +12 implemented for the attackers to use." :)

# posted by

Thallian : 1/5/08 01:19

I really hope they do something like that in WOW. Have keeps you can take over and set vulnerability windows ect..

Would be so much better than current pvp is now.

# posted by

Anonymous : 1/5/08 12:32

“As alluded to in the title, the result is somewhat silly.”

Actually more silly is the idea that a keep could be sneak attacked repeatedly and conquered with such cheese. Wars were slow noticeable things in the real world. Spies and scouts on both sides, and large hordes of troops to be spotted as they approached a heavily populated center hardly leave much room for complete “caught with your pants” down moments. As an army approaches a city both sides should be fairly well prepared to fight, as the threat shows it self with agonizing slowness.

I’d look at these war appointments and sign up sheets as simulating all the other apparatus of war. They set it up in a way to be more realistic, defenses prepared and attack plans ready to fire.

- Jason (DPS Liberation Front)

# posted by

Anonymous : 1/5/08 17:35

I like the 'window' mechanic. But why let the defenders choose the most opportune time? Like you said that will can make getting keeps from big PVP guilds potentially impossible. They can plan their vulnerabilities.
Maybe an automated system is better. Your keep is vulnerable to attack when enough guild members are online to potentially defend it. Regardless whether these peoples are in a raid or on the other side of the world. So if you have a big guild your keep will be vulnerable 24/7, but on smaller guilds the keep will be vulnerable only during prime time.
Some measure must be taken to prevent guilds from locking down keeps by just not letting enough members log on, maybe by lowering the number of online guildies required to count as a big enough defensive force if not enough are online after a certain time of keep invulnerability.

# posted by

Jeroen-bart Engelen : 1/5/08 17:55

I like the 'window' mechanic. But why let the defenders choose the most opportune time?

Excellent point. Why not let the attacker choose the time a day or so in advance. Maybe a “Prepare to Lay Siege” option that when chosen takes 24 hours to get ready. Presumably, this is to get your “army” positioned near the keep. The defenders would get notified that an “army” was preparing to attack them and an estimated time of attack. “The enemy has been spotted, sir. It appears they’ll arrive by noon.”

# posted by

sid67 : 1/5/08 18:53

I don't appreciate your misrepresentation of the facts. The topics on our blog and the discussions we have had are not covered by any NDA. I feel that your insinuation of irony in this matter places us in a negative light. Personally I don't appreciate these comments and would hope you would recant them.

# posted by

Anonymous : 1/5/08 21:16

My god, you guys are sensitive! I said it was ironic and confusing that I was under an NDA and you were not, I didn't say you broke an NDA. Meanwhile it turned out that the Fileplanet beta ISN'T under NDA, the only confusing part is that you have to sign one when you register your beta key.

# posted by

Tobold : 1/5/08 22:49

Sensitivity is very important on the internet specially regarding other forums.. infact trolls prey on the weak and sensitive!

1000 lashings from the noodle of truthiness for you tobold!

/pillage and stomp

~ten

# posted by

Anonymous : 2/5/08 18:59

To properly clarify, the "PvP Weekend" which was held earlier was not under NDA, presumably because Funcom was fine with information getting out there in regards to the state of PvP, which by most accounts is more advanced than most games preparing for launch.

For the current 'open' beta, the official AoC forums were so swamped I think they realized that enforcing an NDA was impossible at this point. It's still a stress test though, it really is still a beta and not just a promotional ploy. I think Funcom is doing their best to try to avoid the near-disaster type release that they had with Anarchy Online.

# posted by

Anonymous : 3/5/08 06:59