Some thoughts on Siege

[Naeght]

Ill stay on the concept side of the discussion and tackle only one of them for now.

The Razing of Cities or The Strong get Stronger and the Weak get trampled:
Main argument is the wasted time in quality grind for competitive cities, or just wasted time for regular village.
Each city generally grinds their own tools, not having any "need" to share them even among allies. If you managed to relate q grind to diversification of the economy in a "Kingdom System" it would negate it, by having previously established a diverse economy among the Kingdom's subjects which allows to replace a high q cow with trade or expropriation. For example, cattle could have a "gene pool" which lowers its q gain after a short while if they keep reproducing in the same group (i cant think of a way to determine this). This would encourage developed Villages or "Kingdoms" to help or "invest" in a hermits or small village cattle production, to have a completely different gene pool that doesn't lower their cattle q. It would also add some mobility to the quite static economic hierarchy, since the bigger subjects of a competitive Kingdom would each have a developed area of the economy, allowing for general hi-jinks treason and backstabbing.

Trees, farming and a few other stuff, could handle a similar system, the key being that it doesn't really bother you early world, becomes an advantage by middle world and an absolute necessity by end world. It would also tackle the so called PVE end game, by mixing it with Player Management outside your own village or alliance.

[Grable]

How about siegers / criminals can only damage a structure, be it house, wall, kiln etc, 25% per approximately 2 hours, meaning it takes at least 8 hours to gain entry into a wall. That gives people on the inside a lot of time to either vault everything they can, or call in defenders. I think it would be unfair to have the defenders be able to just walk out and bash the rams, catapults, or ladder towers in one go, but I also dislike the idea of trying to re-arrange your own pclaim, and having to wait 8 hours per structure to "move some furniture" around lol.

8 hours time to respond to attackers is absurd for anyone that has any kind of activity outside this game. I think this game needs to decide just how time demanding it wants to be. If it's for 'hardcore' players (aka players with a lot of time on their hands) or does it want to cater to players that do not play this game 24/7 too. But let me also say this: time investement is not difficulty, unless you're an asian MMO developer, but even they are realizing this is not the way to build difficulty. And I much prefer actual difficulty to just raw time investement to achieve things in a game.

[stya]

• Place a ram. Four hours later you can move and use it.
• Ram a wall segment. You can knock the wall down two steps (arbitrary scale) every, say, six hours.
• Repair a wall segment. You can repair the wall one step every four hours.
• Place a catapult. Eight hours later the catapult can be loaded.
• Load a catapul. One hour later the catapult can be fired.
• Fire a catapult. A shower of stones scatter with some randomness over an area, damaging constructions and players in it if they hit. Four hours later the catapult can be re-loaded.
• Strike a cow. The cow falls prone. 6 hours later the cow can be struck again. Three strikes and the cow dies.
• Smash a siege engine. Three hours later it can be smashed again.
• Smash a locked door. Four hours later you gain entry to the house.
• Smash a locked chest. Two hours later you gain entry to the chest.

Share your thoughts if you have them.

So here are my thoughts, people are going to place a ram, get inside, camp until we get on and kill us (maybe smash a random chest ? WOW). Just because they don't really care about the base during most of the raids, done for the "lulz" and griefing, revenge. Plus most of the raids do not occur between two big factions but between a faction/raiders and a small/smaller village.

So I'm going to die and /quit, because I can't log in every 3 hours (which was obvious).

PvP is one thing, traders, medium level players a bit safe would be nice. Not everyone plays for the competition and in a big faction.

[Tonkyhonk]

And I much prefer actual difficulty to just raw time investement to achieve things in a game.

i often wonder what kind of things people expect from "actual difficulty" in a game. surely making things complicated isnt a way either, i hope.

[Grable]

i often wonder what kind of things people expect from "actual difficulty" in a game. surely making things complicated isnt a way either, i hope.

What kind of a question is that even? Can't you imagine what difficulty is in games? For example in H&H when fighting bears it could be made that bears (or in PvP) use special attacks where you have to react fast and do a counter move or move out of the range of attack to dodge it, for one example. Not that it's all one stat fight, aka who invested more time. I mean really, tony dude.

[Tonkyhonk]

i often wonder what kind of things people expect from "actual difficulty" in a game. surely making things complicated isnt a way either, i hope.

What kind of a question is that even? Can't you imagine what difficulty is in games? For example in H&H when fighting bears it could be made that bears (or in PvP) use special attacks where you have to react fast and do a counter move or move out of the range of attack to dodge it, for one example. Not that it's all one stat fight, aka who invested more time. I mean really, tony dude.

now thats only the matter of animal ai, not siege, unless you are expecting siege to be pve which leads you to pvp.

[Grable]

now thats only the matter of animal ai, not siege, unless you are expecting siege to be pve which leads you to pvp.

I was speaking in general about difficulty and how it's important to build on difficulty rather than time draining activities. The bear is a random example. Now if you asked 'how do you imagine difficulty in H&H sieges' and not 'i often wonder what kind of things people expect from "actual difficulty" in a game'...

[Tonkyhonk]

care to share what can be considered "difficult" in sieges that you can be satisfied with? or even farming, or defense? whatever other than animal ai.

(my point: assuming players generally want something difficult is a myth.)

[Kaios]

Your point actually makes no sense at all and neither does this conversation, your time might be better spent discussing the ideas and suggestions already put forward.

(such as my suggestion which I feel was quite good with respect to the mechanics of this game yet nobody has commented on)

[Grable]

(my point: assuming players generally want something difficult is a myth.)

Correct, a lot like it easy. You're ignoring however how popular esport games are though, for example, and those are usually the most difficult and hard to learn/master games. Even with that I strongly believe that people would prefer difficulty over grind/time investement. The idea is not to just make the game more difficult, it's to shift the time investement into difficulty instead.

As for this:

care to share what can be considered "difficult" in sieges that you can be satisfied with?

No idea, to be completely blunt. At this point my mind is telling me it's not really possible in this type of game. It'd need a much improved combat system, for example. In Mount&Blade: Warband a successful siege depends on each players mechanical and positioning skills along with group synergy, for example.

But whatever, I guess this discussion isn't exactly on topic. In the end my point is this as well:

"Permadeath, open PvP, high investment - pick just two"