Some thoughts on Siege

[Thedrah]

i think there should be a 24hr warning then hell can be raised without the attack every 4hours. so people have to raise the jolly roger 24hrs before the start and we need a proper reincarnation system, current one is so painful
otherwise sieges will be easily botted for harassment. if i wanted to piss someone off, build many catapults and constantly siege him while hes offline and hearth when he shows up
maybe have scents tied to sieging and have it so you stay online for an hour after attacking

with bots i think we need NPCs the players can make, give normal players bots that can defend the base. even if that NPC is an animal, something to defend against sieges while you're away will give you time to come back to defend. a scout would be really cool
only the most devote will be able to be able to fend off a large siege for long. as a hermit i think i'll be constantly moving farther away from the starting area to avoid conflict

the wizards will have NPCs just patrolling there base and have a program send them a message the instance someone comes within range
or just let players use bots
if enough hate for bots then people will have to go on a manhunt and have honor but i doubt many will band together

[MightySheep]

The game's pop is dropping and I highly doubt that more frequent destruction would draw more sheep to the game

can only speak for myself but this update is exactly the kind of thing that would get me to log in more

also I do think that if the moot subforum became interesting again then the forums/game would feel more alive and exciting for people, when theres nothing going on the game just feels dead

on top of that, I think this new danger and rebirth of pvp is a decent enough motivator for people to want to get their shit together and improve themselves

[jordancoles]

Like I said, they can do whatever they want to and I'll try it out, but I think it's important to consider many things before making large decisions

Jorb and Loftar are notorious for half-assing so I would just like to see something like this be fully discussed first (they'll still do whatever they want in the end anyways though)

[pheonix]

For a fun Sieging system imo a few of the things i would like to see if not mentioned previously, would be to encourage defending and attacking more. So far this world i believe there was maybe 3 or 4 raids and even then barely anything of any value they were mostly revenge attacks and sitting and waiting for a ram to dry for 24 hours is painful. I saw the siege system in Salem with all the fucking time-gates which basically said come back in 20 hours and get ready for a fight for 4 hours unless were asleep oh btw were not gonna show up we are going to make you leave scents to stop the siege then kill you when your asleep(tbc/stocks). This system is an example of how to destroy raiding completely im not going to go into it but suffice to say if you want an idea of things to stay away from in regards to pvp go read their patch notes.

More valuable items(jewels/whale oil i dunno) or very hard to make structures/moveable objects (golden statues that grant faster hunger regeneration etc).
Rampart walls and gates
Siege towers
Greek fire arrows
different rams (some that provide durability from arrows while ramming)

Basically a system where the invader shows up and means business you can see the Siege towers slowly moving towards you and you get your town to help man the walls firing at the enemy archers and trying to destroy the Siege towers, at same time their fighters slowly approach in the towers ready to pop out over the walls and take out the archers and open up the gates. Throw in some Trebuchet trying to take out the Siege towers and rams and you got one hell of a battle on your hands.

[sabinati]

Sounds to me like you are just against pvp and raiding in general JC. It doesnt make much sense to me to use the "people might quit if they lose stuff" argument in a perma death pvp game.

If you think sieging should remain basically impossible as it is now then theres not much point in posting in this thread because this is a thread for brainstorming how to move forward with implementing a working siege system, not to debate whether or not siege should be in the game in the first place.

I think the defenders can't complain if it is set up so that the attackers have to put in a lot of time and effort and the defender has some kind of big advantage. Losing entire village seems like an appropriate outcome to me. The whole point of perma death is the fun of the risk factor, I dont see why it should be any different for villages. A village raid should be a big event that people would be willing to skip work for

i can't even start to count how many levels of retarded you are

[Patchouli_Knowledge]

1. Immediately annihilation should never be the result of the attacker breaking through. Losing all infrastructure will make even veterans quit until next world and anything lower quit permanently. If anything, destruction should be over period of time. Also there needs to be better results of attacker winning other than total destruction. A related game I played have the option of having the option of the losing (but not destroyed) defender surrender to the attacker and become their vassal; the defender won't be destroyed but has to give something up or pay a price or tribute of some sort until the vassal duration is over in which the attacker could either renew or release the vassal or the defender refuses to renew.

2. A raid should not to the point that it interfere with real life nor should it cause disruption to ones living. If anything, it should also be flexible enough that people that goes to work will have close to 100% efficiency when participating on their factions' behalf.

3. Sabinati needs a new scouter.

[thomas_ewing]

Anyway on the siege, what if you implemented the concept of supply lines in some way? For example, maintaining a siege requires constant supplies from the attackers, and surviving a siege depends in part on the ability of the target village to survive a lockdown.

So when a siege starts, both village idols get a new interface which pops a random item at random intervals, representing which supplies you need on the front and inside the city - somewhat like the old numen system -, for example: hides, food dishes, bone glue, common metal bars, ropes, and so on, which would need to be arranged and spent on the siege effort. The required quality for the supply gradually goes up, until one side has to give up, or is unable to continue. And this would be used as a variable to determine wall/ram repair times, thus influencing the conflict directly.

I think this would add a more direct economic factor to the siege, as one party will starve to death or the other will run out of funds. It would make sieges more engaging among villagers too. And it wouldn't be an exclusively pvp mechanic.

This is a useful suggestion that got lost along the way. Since Haven involves so many different, and at times conflicting, play styles, why not embrace that? Give peaceful crafters something useful to do in the event their village is being attacked.

As Ven suggested previously, Haven is too often reduced to a nothing more than pvp. If the game is developed primarily in that fashion (I can't imagine an afterlife for crafters has ever been seriously considered, for example), it will never reach its full potential. Since real warfare depends on people other than warriors to carry it out, why not embrace that idea in a game that has far more to offer than pvp.

[Satharis]

I kind of have to agree with the sentiment that there are a lot of background issues involved in making sieges 'fun' for both sides.

Sieges are all about destruction, destruction in the game is currently devastating the people on the receiving end, there isn't really a way to make this 'fun.' I might consider that a big issue. Losing a character is painful and you feel less like "Damn I made a mistake, how can I rectify that next time" and more like "well there goes months of progress because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time." The same can be said of towns, once someone gets in a wall the town can be completely obliterated almost and all progress in the game such as the quality grind can be completely lost. Sure some people might find that fun but I would daresay if we look at how many people leave they definitely represent the minority. A lot of people likely WANT to participate in conflict but the actual loss from losing is just too painful to deal with and it is often easiest to just say "Screw it, wait for world reset" before bothering again.

- I can only really say the way to soften blows like this isn't to make towns into invincible fortresses, but instead make it so people have ways to bounce back from a loss. Perhaps make it so character deaths aren't as painful and people can level back up easier, make it so raiders don't want to level a town but maybe just rob some of the stuff from it and leave a lot of the infrastructure. People won't wave some white flag and avoid trolling, if they can walk into your town and level it they will, so the GAME needs to protect against these things and make it not worth destroying all progress. I'm sure some people will really disagree with this point but I feel like it almost more important to making sieging more fun as the actual sieges themselves are. Being raided should suck and you should not want it to happen to you, but you should be able to bounce back from it.

Scale is an important issue, you kind of have to decide if people being able to be hermits is 'okay' and if it is okay, then there should be reasons for big towns to not want to siege hermits and leave them with no chance to fight back, and instead only siege things like competitive towns, or maybe have large groups of bandits siege towns for profit. Hermits are a big deal, a lot of people play as one and having them work together with towns or have some kind of political situation there rather than mindless destruction seems like much more compelling gameplay IMO. I think sieges shouldn't just be interesting mechanics but be made for interesting political reasons as well, even if that reason is just looting.

On the note of political reasons I feel like the system should ideally scale with the political reasons as well. If someone wanted to raid a town irl for loot they would get inside and take things of value, they wouldn't knock down every building and salt the earth like they do right now, they also likely wouldn't return the next day to butcher everyone that showed up. If people want loot they should want to fight their way in, grab stuff and then leave, perhaps not even all of it, but just enough to make the siege have been worth the effort. The defenders get to live another day and they have to deal with the losses they took. On the other hand if someone wants to level a town nearby because they feel they are a dangerous competitor then perhaps they should be given that option, perhaps they can destroy the town after a long amount of time, but the defenders should be able to take things and flee. Give people ways to escape and not lose all their progress just because someone wanted to wipe their town off the map. Make it important to the attackers to decide on what their goals are.

Jorb talked about wanting law and order to be something you can create in the game world but currently it is so easy to kill, the losses are so great and the reasons to really kill people other than for sport are usually pretty shallow, so a lot of PVP deaths in the game just go down to troll mindset, if we want people to be able to trade and have relations and things like that then you need to make it a bigger deal to engage in conflict and people need to be able to bounce back from conflict.

[DeadlyPencil]

i don't like this idea. i would prefer the current system over it. i wouldn't want a ram outside of my camp that i cant immediately destroy. i dont want a prolonged seige, i dont think i would find that fun. i dont want to spent an entire week seiging someone. ramming someones village is already like half a day job already.

My suggestion:
Instead of focusing on prolonged seiges, create seige ladders which you can put up against walls that would have drying time. If a person climbs a seige ladder, they are given a debuff that only allows them to steal and knock people out (no murder unless you have active scents on them). They can however murder you. you might have to remove ability to kill by leaches. once u climb a ladder you would drop a ladder on the other side, allowing you to leave. you might make it so the ladder can be used a few times then fall apart so that you can go in, grab stuff, put it outside and go back in, not to many times though. If you want an army of theives to go in, u might have to put up multiple ladders. The ladder could be constructed outside of claim and dropped into place, u could have a special scent left for this that has a reduced red handed time or something so u can place your ladder and leave shortly afterwards. You could make it so ladders have some sort of minimum stat requirement to place against the 3 different wall types.

The idea is that people can rob you but your characters will stay alive and ur infastructive stays alive. also you can go in an kill someone if you have a scent on them without needing 4 guys to use a ram.

[Haba]

What kind of a person will kill another player, knowing fully that they will lose their entire progress and most probably quit the game altogether? Is this your core audience you want to attract?

Like... everyone? Even Sodomites (quiet, peaceful, tiny village) went to kill Zox and destroy his stuff, perfectly knowing he would quit afterwards.

Like I said, that is the only option you are left with. If someone threatens you, you kill them. I can admit that I still have enough humanity left that I feel bad about doing it, for a passing moment.

But I don't think any of us haven veterans are really representative of the "normal" player. We've grown accustomed to taking things granted. Just look at what the hermits are doing and what kind of stories they are posting on the forums (before they quit).

So remove permanent death entirely?

I think it is a problem that you cannot establish law and order presently. If you wish to avoid punishment for a crime you can just vault it up and hide in perfect safety. Is this desirable?

There are no easy solutions here, a radical change would be required, after which the game wouldn't quite be the same. For example, if you want to to focus on the PVP and siege warfare, then the time investments need to be smaller, character stats need caps and bouncing back from death must be easier. Conversely, you'll spend less time on flower arrangement and debating which colour mansions you want in your perfectly designed villages.

Currently sneak attacks, stealth and deception are the smart way to do things. You won't openly announce anything, you'll do your best to remain anonymous and hidden. Because if you reveal yourself, you'll have ten guys waiting for you to teleport to your swamp crossroad to forage.

Diplomacy and established law and order make no sense, since you reveal your position and make yourself vulnerable. Even if you wanted to protect your neighbours from random raiders, you won't do it because that'd just paint a giant target on your forehead. Not to mention the fact that you most probably don't have the muscle to do anything anyway. In old haven there at least was the real risk of a big faction having a brick basher who would breach your vault and kill you if you had scents on.

Maybe the threat of siege can be that muscle, who knows. But I think it should be counterbalanced with systems to support diplomacy and actual non-violent interaction between factions. Truces, white flags, surrender and capitulation. When you overpower an enemy, do you always need to murder them?