Lack of offline protection will cost the game

ElPerro

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Will there not be spells which let you pull loot through walls anymore either? And how sure are we that mounts won't get through walls, even if SV doesn't want them too. Or that their bags won't be able to open though walls? Believing this takes a lot of faith.

Will there not be tc inns? I guess they could be for guild members only, which I am against (guild only bankers and priests and etc, too.)

A loud noise is a good idea.
Not sure if crawling hand could be reworked to not work thru walls, but if its gonna break something as important as the TC system I'd rather have them just scrap it tbh.

If AI is still gonna teleport and shoot thru walls, then the whole TC system is gonna be garbage again anyways and raiding will be the least of their problems.

There really isnt a point in putting an inn in your own keep since you can logout safely inside houses/keeps anyways, but its probably gonna have access levels again or they just wont build one. Remember you can get rats inside your keep from sieges or opening the gates too.
 

Blood Thorn

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I see a lot of comment here of people... that have probably never get into a siege on MO. I been part in a total of 15 Keep siege and we destroyed 14 of them.

Your lack of knowledge about the subject is so low that you should not even comment here. How can you talk about sieging mechanic when you never been part of it. how dare you.

So let me stop you right there. If the strength of your argument includes insulting people because you have a different opinion, then your argument lacks merit. I'm sure you have a lot of experience with sieges in MO1 to draw upon when putting forth ideas for improving siege mechanics, so let that feedback stand on its own. You'll have a better chance of swaying opinion that way.
 
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Rorry

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Not sure if crawling hand could be reworked to not work thru walls, but if its gonna break something as important as the TC system I'd rather have them just scrap it tbh.

If AI is still gonna teleport and shoot thru walls, then the whole TC system is gonna be garbage again anyways and raiding will be the least of their problems.

There really isnt a point in putting an inn in your own keep since you can logout safely inside houses/keeps anyways, but its probably gonna have access levels again or they just wont build one. Remember you can get rats inside your keep from sieges or opening the gates too.
There were so many ways that the newer magic schools were used in ways other than intended to subvert tc. I wish they would leave them out of the game.

They never seem to quite get the ai to work like they want them to, sadly.

The point of an inn will be to keep from having to allow new members, potential rats, inside the keep so it will for sure be a risk/reward calculation .
 

Speznat

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This was the age old argument against walls in MO1, but alot has changed:

1) Mounts will not go thru walls anymore, this means you wont be able to build siege weapons from the inside. Walls will still protect against sieges and that should really be their main benefit, not creating safezones.
I see a potental problem with that.

If you are in a dungeon or just anywhere. and your horses are following you. And they get stuck everywhere. How do you unstuck them. Without investing Months over months of Development work. for a pet AI that can find a path that truly exists wich not even NPC' can now. How to implement if such AI never existed and does not exist?

they made Teleport in MO1 and i guess it will be in MO2 because its the most practical way that your horse is not stuck on everything anytime. remember the old days were the pets get stucked everyhwere and you had to call a gm 20times a day. that was great :ROFLMAO:

I try it today with just sarcasm and pure rational logic on what will happen. I hope it won't. but we all know it will.
 
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Grack

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It was like this until the TC patches, since then everything changed. At one point we no longer could log out boulders on free to plays or mail them, etc. so we had to figure out different ways. Some were visible still, but not all. My guild would bring all the boulders with us for a siege sometimes and so there was no noticeable prep.
Being in Imperial Dreams I've done many seiges, we were probably the best known ninja sieges in MO and very much wore that title with a badge of honour, didn't bother us at all. I've sieged from small houses to big keeps, and I have been on the end of both scenarios too. Pre TC/F2p/Molva's/bags was probably the hardest in some ways as far as logistics, we just had lots of players who had several accounts so this was ok for us.

Post TC/F2P/molva/bags was probably the easiest logistically until they limited F2P's holding boulders and added a weight or boulder limit if I remember correctly stopping bag stacking, then it bascially went back to the previous situation only with alerts from TC if I am remember that right which was useful.

The balance issue was never the "knowing" of an attack, honestly that stuff just works its self out, I'll explain in my experience how this tended to work in Mo1, and I believe is logical to assume will work the same in Mo2.

Invested guilds Awareness(guilds with assets)

If you have assets, you know you have to protect them, if its small stuff, you tend to find friends in the area and make some kind of non destruction, non aggression, or stright up defence/ally packs with bigger guilds close by.

Honestly, I can't remember a time where any sensible guild didn't know the names of people in their area, you couldn't so much as fart in somebodies territory without them knowing, things like "huh somebody has just hunted here the bear spawn is out of place" it was common practice to not shoot stuff if you were roaming so you didn't give away your activity. You would notice your rocks being mined out, or just stright up different names. Your area is a familar place to you so that is the first sign something is up. Mo2 will only have single characters per account so this will make it even harder to smurf your way in.

Point: Guilds with assests were onto it, you just knew your area, traffic norms and everybody had allies or pacts. And you had phone numbers and FB groups or whatever alert systems to get the whole crew on who normally were already logged off in a certain spot ready to rock with a plan.


Invested guilds behaviour

Most big groups, either a single guild or more likely an alliance with assets actually didn't war with each other very often. If two opposing forces did, they often were not actually the main aggressors or instigators. Factions would sit out of a conflict, and only jump in when they felt it was a sure thing, and they were safe enough from retalation. Even orchestration was rare, like MO politics becomes very very deep and rich fast. If a big group did want to start something, the seasoned ones would find smaller groups who were fired up against their enemy and fuel that on and often start to back them with equipment and money. However proxy warfare was risky, If a big or key guild were found out to be orchestrating smaller groups as they were at war with the most prejudice against them. This would resault in full blown warfare that normally actually meant the end of both groups assets because there were often hidden cost and compromises to this kind of strategy.

Smashing a groups assets and tearing down a keep normally meant one big thing, you just guaranteed a whole bunch of people who will always be on the opposite side of you until they get their revange on your stuff. There is an even more sinster deal you make with the devil however, those little groups you just banded together, funded and aimed at your enemies ? You better keep them happy, because now you just got intreached with a bunch of guys who are now experienced and capable at siege warfare with nothing to lose and a big short list of people they can call apone to attack you to boot (the people they just blow up). Very season politcal groups were careful with mastermining destruction because the more guilds you involve both sides the more chalances of sideway results, but if you can handle it yourself its a strong look but less messy with future issues

Point : Don't throw rocks in glass houses. Everybody with assets is tied together in a web of action and reaction and consequence.


The balance of those with nothing

Balance of those that have nothing to lose, no assets or skin in the game, against those that do. The balance in TC kinda went sideways when TC stuff cost time and effect compared to the cost it took to destroy it. One cata with the most basic logistics could do very good economical warfare in favour of the attacker.

I have been on both sides of the fence here, extensively. I won't ever complain about our stuff getting blown to high hells from a guild that had nothing, because we literally carved out our reputation for being the group you knew would ninja and blow apart your assets if you messed with us back when we had nothing (I think we were the first group to ever ninja down a keep solo in less then 50 minutes) and were not the best fighters so our threat to you was our ability to take. When we had nothing we were ruthless, when we had assets we were still deadly with that, but we eased off using it as our main weapon and only did enough to maintain our repuation or when the bridges of politics burnt down.

Point: Those that have nothing have to be kept in check in some way, its not to say the faceless don't have a role to play, to be funded and use their advantage, but there has to be a link to those with something (such as funding) or a natural logical barrier or disadvantage to some degree.
 
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Jhackman

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From being in rpk for a few months i can say keeps with 3-4 defenders who knew how to shoot an arrow and call a guard could defend 10-15 people for an hour or two till back up came. And that was when our mang supply was pretty much unlimited.

If you dont have 3-4 people online at any given time. Then maybe you shouldn’t invest in a keep.
 
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ElPerro

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I see a potental problem with that.

If you are in a dungeon or just anywhere. and your horses are following you. And they get stuck everywhere. How do you unstuck them. Without investing Months over months of Development work. for a pet AI that can find a path that truly exists wich not even NPC' can now. How to implement if such AI never existed and does not exist?

they made Teleport in MO1 and i guess it will be in MO2 because its the most practical way that your horse is not stuck on everything anytime. remember the old days were the pets get stucked everyhwere and you had to call a gm 20times a day. that was great :ROFLMAO:

I try it today with just sarcasm and pure rational logic on what will happen. I hope it won't. but we all know it will.
They can always just not let you build siege weapons inside someone else keep radius. But we 100% need ladders
 

MolagAmur

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I see a potental problem with that.

If you are in a dungeon or just anywhere. and your horses are following you. And they get stuck everywhere. How do you unstuck them. Without investing Months over months of Development work. for a pet AI that can find a path that truly exists wich not even NPC' can now. How to implement if such AI never existed and does not exist?

they made Teleport in MO1 and i guess it will be in MO2 because its the most practical way that your horse is not stuck on everything anytime. remember the old days were the pets get stucked everyhwere and you had to call a gm 20times a day. that was great :ROFLMAO:

I try it today with just sarcasm and pure rational logic on what will happen. I hope it won't. but we all know it will.
........imagine thinking "teleporting" AI is the most "practical way" to go about this.

Yes, proper pathing will take months to do. Yes, they should do it. Yes, it does exist in many many other games. And yes...we can wait for it in MO2.

The teleporting AI is one of the major issues MO had. It was especially annoying with pets in PvP when you would waste a stambar trying to kill it and it teleports away back to its owner.

Let's all as a whole stop settling for some of the trash coding and mechanics that were in MO1 hmm? I've seen too many people expect these things to transfer over to MO2...and that's just not a good mindset imo.
 

Speznat

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........imagine thinking "teleporting" AI is the most "practical way" to go about this.

Yes, proper pathing will take months to do. Yes, they should do it. Yes, it does exist in many many other games. And yes...we can wait for it in MO2.

The teleporting AI is one of the major issues MO had. It was especially annoying with pets in PvP when you would waste a stambar trying to kill it and it teleports away back to its owner.

Let's all as a whole stop settling for some of the trash coding and mechanics that were in MO1 hmm? I've seen too many people expect these things to transfer over to MO2...and that's just not a good mindset imo.
i think you didn't get what i mean. Othergames even big games dont have that because its buggy as hell. and it will cause more problems than it fixes.
Not that your horse will stuck anywhere it will be the same like with your car in cyberpunk, or random clipping fails. or catapult you in the air. and all that funny stuff. Many other games also do mikro teleporting until unstuck because its sadly the only way.

I also want that mounts cant go through walls. but the reality is. they will glitch/bug teleport or clip through the wall in some way or another.

Or if we dont get the teleport feature than they will stuck everywhere and they will be more buggy than guard ai.

I dont think henrik have the capacity for true real path ai, because even cyberpunk, gta, eve dont have that. and its impossible to programm that without thousend of bugs. becasue you have like million opportunities to go wrong.
 

Rorry

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Being in Imperial Dreams I've done many seiges, we were probably the best known ninja sieges in MO and very much wore that title with a badge of honour, didn't bother us at all. I've sieged from small houses to big keeps, and I have been on the end of both scenarios too. Pre TC/F2p/Molva's/bags was probably the hardest in some ways as far as logistics, we just had lots of players who had several accounts so this was ok for us.

Post TC/F2P/molva/bags was probably the easiest logistically until they limited F2P's holding boulders and added a weight or boulder limit if I remember correctly stopping bag stacking, then it bascially went back to the previous situation only with alerts from TC if I am remember that right which was useful.

The balance issue was never the "knowing" of an attack, honestly that stuff just works its self out, I'll explain in my experience how this tended to work in Mo1, and I believe is logical to assume will work the same in Mo2.

Invested guilds Awareness(guilds with assets)

If you have assets, you know you have to protect them, if its small stuff, you tend to find friends in the area and make some kind of non destruction, non aggression, or stright up defence/ally packs with bigger guilds close by.

Honestly, I can't remember a time where any sensible guild didn't know the names of people in their area, you couldn't so much as fart in somebodies territory without them knowing, things like "huh somebody has just hunted here the bear spawn is out of place" it was common practice to not shoot stuff if you were roaming so you didn't give away your activity. You would notice your rocks being mined out, or just stright up different names. Your area is a familar place to you so that is the first sign something is up. Mo2 will only have single characters per account so this will make it even harder to smurf your way in.

Point: Guilds with assests were onto it, you just knew your area, traffic norms and everybody had allies or pacts. And you had phone numbers and FB groups or whatever alert systems to get the whole crew on who normally were already logged off in a certain spot ready to rock with a plan.


Invested guilds behaviour

Most big groups, either a single guild or more likely an alliance with assets actually didn't war with each other very often. If two opposing forces did, they often were not actually the main aggressors or instigators. Factions would sit out of a conflict, and only jump in when they felt it was a sure thing, and they were safe enough from retalation. Even orchestration was rare, like MO politics becomes very very deep and rich fast. If a big group did want to start something, the seasoned ones would find smaller groups who were fired up against their enemy and fuel that on and often start to back them with equipment and money. However proxy warfare was risky, If a big or key guild were found out to be orchestrating smaller groups as they were at war with the most prejudice against them. This would resault in full blown warfare that normally actually meant the end of both groups assets because there were often hidden cost and compromises to this kind of strategy.

Smashing a groups assets and tearing down a keep normally meant one big thing, you just guaranteed a whole bunch of people who will always be on the opposite side of you until they get their revange on your stuff. There is an even more sinster deal you make with the devil however, those little groups you just banded together, funded and aimed at your enemies ? You better keep them happy, because now you just got intreached with a bunch of guys who are now experienced and capable at siege warfare with nothing to lose and a big short list of people they can call apone to attack you to boot (the people they just blow up). Very season politcal groups were careful with mastermining destruction because the more guilds you involve both sides the more chalances of sideway results, but if you can handle it yourself its a strong look but less messy with future issues

Point : Don't throw rocks in glass houses. Everybody with assets is tied together in a web of action and reaction and consequence.


The balance of those with nothing

Balance of those that have nothing to lose, no assets or skin in the game, against those that do. The balance in TC kinda went sideways when TC stuff cost time and effect compared to the cost it took to destroy it. One cata with the most basic logistics could do very good economical warfare in favour of the attacker.

I have been on both sides of the fence here, extensively. I won't ever complain about our stuff getting blown to high hells from a guild that had nothing, because we literally carved out our reputation for being the group you knew would ninja and blow apart your assets if you messed with us back when we had nothing (I think we were the first group to ever ninja down a keep solo in less then 50 minutes) and were not the best fighters so our threat to you was our ability to take. When we had nothing we were ruthless, when we had assets we were still deadly with that, but we eased off using it as our main weapon and only did enough to maintain our repuation or when the bridges of politics burnt down.

Point: Those that have nothing have to be kept in check in some way, its not to say the faceless don't have a role to play, to be funded and use their advantage, but there has to be a link to those with something (such as funding) or a natural logical barrier or disadvantage to some degree.
Thanks for the thoughtful answer. I had thought from your comment that you hadn't played in more recent times and was updating you on how it had changed. I was Pyre so we did a lot of siegeing and were sieged a lot, too, but there was less of politics about it than there was before we formed .
 

Wesley Snipes

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a boring game.

What's exciting about logging off and back on the next morning to find all your hard work is gone because you had to sleep? That will cost the game players, just like it did with MO1. Is henrik planning on a service of a few dozen, or a thousands? What will it take to keep player growth in the positives (these games NEED constant player growth, other wise you end up with shambling corpses like M01 and LiF

That would be completely stupid to have offline protection beyond guards. I pray that the devs do not implement such a retarded mechanic. Unfortunately ninja sieging is apart of the game..guess what sucks to suck. Rebuild and start over. If you don't feel comfortable in a keep or palli then live in a city. This is not a care bear game so don't try to turn it into that just like every other retarded mmorpg on the market today.

The real stupid decision would be to leave the offline protection solely on the shoulders of the "improved" ai of the guards. What you have to realize is that people won't stick around to rebuild, especially if they thick the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Those groups just leave and they won't come back. MO2 needs those groups to survive. The question is do you want a live and thriving game, or a zombie.
 

Aesorn

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Sep 15, 2020
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Don't know if this has been posted in this thread yet but Henrik on a livestream said they are looking at a way to allow time-windows for raiding in a more realistic way such as setting a time guards need to sleep which would be the pseudo-window for attacking. If this existed it wouldn't matter if there was a shit ton of guards preventing sieges during the window they were awake because it could in theory prevent most offline sieges but then during actual sieges you wouldn't have to deal with AI as the attacking force which sounds much better to me then AI guards at all times. So i'd prefer a system like this
 
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Dracu

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Don't know if this has been posted in this thread yet but Henrik on a livestream said they are looking at a way to allow time-windows for raiding in a more realistic way such as setting a time guards need to sleep which would be the pseudo-window for attacking. If this existed it wouldn't matter if there was a shit ton of guards preventing sieges during the window they were awake because it could in theory prevent most offline sieges but then during actual sieges you wouldn't have to deal with AI as the attacking force which sounds much better to me then AI guards at all times. So i'd prefer a system like this
From what i have heard in the streams, Henrik also said that AI has to be supplied with playermade armor/weapons gear etc etc. If they die the ressurection costs ressources... basicly everything is now a ressource grind.
 
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Amadman

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A padded room.
From what i have heard in the streams, Henrik also said that AI has to be supplied with playermade armor/weapons gear etc etc. If they die the ressurection costs ressources... basicly everything is now a ressource grind.

I have never been involved with sieging or defending against a siege.

But this sounds like it could work.

If the supply was only large enough to keep x amount of guards supplied for x hours then there is your window.

Not only would this make effective ai guards finite, it would also be economically damaging to the keep owning guild when their guards are killed.

Even if players where there making gear for the guards, their supplies and resources would still be getting whittled down.


But again this is from someone that has never been involved with a siege in MO.
 

Bogler

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From what i have heard in the streams, Henrik also said that AI has to be supplied with playermade armor/weapons gear etc etc. If they die the ressurection costs ressources... basicly everything is now a ressource grind.
That's really good if true. Kinda like Conan Exiles thrall system if anyone played. Killing a guard and getting a set of steel would be cool, but they need stambars ect...
 

Kaemik

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When they made guards killable in Crowfall it became meta to make max range archer builds and snipe enemy guards off keeps ever time you saw any. We had one person on our faction that was infamous for keeping all the Balance keeps completely devoid of guards 24/7 so they would constantly have to buy new guards. (This was the same patch I was solo-flipping outposts in a full tank build so our faction could keep the guards)

Eventually, nobody really enjoyed how easy it was to snipe guards and they were put back on an auto-respawn timer with no cost like they were before.

If we're talking about giving guards sets of regular crafted fully-lootable gear but they sit in the same location 24/7 and don't have the brains to run when attacked then they would need to be exceptionally powerful and non-exploitable. Like some spell with double the range of player abilities and no LOS that hurts like hell / fairly tanky with good health regen. Otherwise, you may as well remove them entirely.

THAT became meta in Crowfall eventually before the system was reverted. People realized it wasn't worth the costs to run them, and you eventually started seeing most everything unguarded. People would buy guards immediately before a defensive siege when all their forces were assembled, and not otherwise.

In other words, the guard system served purely to bolster the strength of online forces actively defending a keep. That seems to be the opposite of what prettymuch everyone here is talking about wanting.

_______________

A much better system IMO would be an armory structure where you can "gear" the guards at your base. On death the gear takes a dura hit and a bit of coin is deducted when they respawn. Using that method you could get a similar idea across without gear costs being so high everyone decides it's simply not worth it to have guards.

Because I think if the common understanding is guards are way to hand free gearsets to your enemies, people will be reluctant to even give them cheap gearsets. Much less full steel.
 
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Dracu

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When they made guards killable in Crowfall it became meta to make max range archer builds and snipe enemy guards off keeps ever time you saw any. We had one person on our faction that was infamous for keeping all the Balance keeps completely devoid of guards 24/7 so they would constantly have to buy new guards. (This was the same patch I was solo-flipping outposts in a full tank build so our faction could keep the guards)

Eventually, nobody really enjoyed how easy it was to snipe guards and they were put back on an auto-respawn timer with no cost like they were before.

If we're talking about giving guards sets of regular crafted fully-lootable gear but they sit in the same location 24/7 and don't have the brains to run when attacked then they would need to be exceptionally powerful and non-exploitable. Like some spell with double the range of player abilities and no LOS that hurts like hell / fairly tanky with good health regen. Otherwise, you may as well remove them entirely.

THAT became meta in Crowfall eventually before the system was reverted. People realized it wasn't worth the costs to run them, and you eventually started seeing most everything unguarded. People would buy guards immediately before a defensive siege when all their forces were assembled, and not otherwise.

In other words, the guard system served purely to bolster the strength of online forces actively defending a keep. That seems to be the opposite of what prettymuch everyone here is talking about wanting.

_______________

A much better system IMO would be an armory structure where you can "gear" the guards at your base. On death the gear takes a dura hit and a bit of coin is deducted when they respawn. Using that method you could get a similar idea across without gear costs being so high everyone decides it's simply not worth it to have guards.

Because I think if the common understanding is guards are way to hand free gearsets to your enemies, people will be reluctant to even give them cheap gearsets. Much less full steel.
Exactly my worry... i dont believe in AI good enough to be able to deal with such „exploiting“. Once they have it its not a bad idea, but till then i think its a bad idea.
 

Kaemik

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I'm not sure it will ever be a good idea to make guards full loot like players. A lot of people are concerned with how powerful guards are, but if they drop a full gearset for your enemies upon death then they NEED to be insanely powerful or nobody will actually use them. I think the effectiveness needed to justify the cost of a fully lootable guard that runs regular player gearsets is unbalancing in other ways.

Making it gear that's instead inside of some form of armory and takes a dura-hit when guards die allows them to play around with the cost vs. effectiveness a lot more, and IMO is the only way they're going to reach a good balance between those two factors.
 
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Blood Thorn

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I'm not sure it will ever be a good idea to make guards full loot like players. A lot of people are concerned with how powerful guards are, but if they drop a full gearset for your enemies upon death then they NEED to be insanely powerful or nobody will actually use them. I think the effectiveness needed to justify the cost of a fully lootable guard that runs regular player gearsets is unbalancing in other ways.

Making it gear that's instead inside of some form of armory and takes a dura-hit when guards die allows them to play around with the cost vs. effectiveness a lot more, and IMO is the only way they're going to reach a good balance between those two factors.

I'm still a bit lost on how guards are supposed to work. Had some folks the other night drawing out guards one by one from Fab and easily killing them. I like that the guards are killable, and with enough 'criminals' a town may be overwhelmed unless the local pop fight together to help drive them off, but it would seem to me that guards shouldn't be so dumb as to run out alone when there are other 'criminals' within the area.
 

Jab

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what offline protection, if you cant protect ur territory you shouldnt have it simple..... maybe have a guild that can protect ur territory 24/7 have both NA and EU in ur guild
 
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