Ideas on how to improve Sieging (Shields)

[Chebermech]

Its difficult to get a good system going that everyone would like, and maybe there is one that is entirely different and seems promising from the one we have right now, but it will take a long time to make it, and there's always a risk that it might not work at all in the end. So lets try to improve on something we already have.

Right now sieging only works on the abandoned cities or newbies. The shield system can be abused in various ways, here is a list that I can think of from the top of my head:

* you can build multiple village claims to surround your main village, have walls on each layer, and make as many layers as terrain allows you to;
* you can have multiple villages placed next to each other and move everything from one village to the other during the raid;
* you can surround only your walls with the village claim and have a whole bunch of personal claims on the inside of the walls not overlapping with the village claim, that way raiding each plot separately would take forever.

The first two points could be solved, or at least make it harder to exploit by increasing the minimum distance between the villages from 3 tiles, to 30, or 50, or even 100, whichever works, i personally think even 100 would be fine.

The third point can be solved by reducing personal max shield value, so that it would be possible to siege personal claims in 1-2 hours. if people want a better protection they should make or move to a village its really not that expensive or difficult. Otherwise personal claims should only be a good defense mechanism for the early game or against weaker players, and continue to serve later in the game to prevent crimes on your property and to have a personal rule set on that land.


Another problem with sieging that I see is that it takes a lot of risk and rarely gives any reward. If you are raiding weaker players, they usually have lower quality things and hide all of their carry on baggage with valuables on their offline characters anyway. If you are raiding a village that is as strong as yours, there's a high chance you will get ambushed during the raid when you are physically drained by the long wait and boring siege and expect any retaliation the least... which is totally fine, but its one of the reasons people rarely raid someone their own size, its great risk and very low reward (no reward at the moment because of shield abuse).

I can't really think of a good solution for it, but it would be nice now that we have a kingdom system, to have raiding another kingdom give you kingdom points or xp, or even both. If you belong to a kingdom and you raid another kingdom's domain you get points by damaging the shields, and you get points / xp by killing another kingdom's players depending on how developed the character was. To have some sort of reward even if by the time you break the shields and everything's been hidden, it is still better than nothing.

Also it would probably be better if you didn't have to kill and destroy everyone and everything, but instead if your kingdom could annex villages (village claims) for a certain amount of time (week or 2) and get xp out of it for each authority gain of players, even without expanding your kingdom claim over it, and after the week (or 2) have passed, you would have to send in your kingdom representative back to that village idol to reset the timer. If a village decides to call someone else for help and/or make an ambush they can do that, or they can submit. Probably would be a good idea to have some sort of reason for annexed village to revolt, maybe have some sort of a debuff on the annexed village players.

That's all I can think of for now, I haven't really gave it much of a though, just had an idea and wanted to share, feel free to add to it, comment and criticize. The issues listed here are a few of the main reasons why many people I know have stopped playing, there was no reason in growing qualities when you couldn't do anything with them at the end. Other reason was lack of late game content.

P.S. I think removing cap wasn't a good idea and hope it'll come back in one form or the other in the next world, right now it just gives an illusion of a late game, and gives botting a huge advantage. With the cap you can tweak the balance in both pvp and pve, can make monsters that would take raids and strategies to kill, but that's a totally different subject for another discussion in another post.

[LadyGoo]

The first two points could be solved, or at least make it harder to exploit by increasing the minimum distance between the villages from 3 tiles, to 30, or 50, or even 100, whichever works, i personally think even 100 would be fine.

Then the siege camps will be impossible, but you'll have the situation like in your allied (or place of residence) Amish Paradise: cover the external walls with 1 giant village claim and have many personal plots with personal claims inside. If you wanna go for it, you'll have to do at least 2 minimaps distance (even then the strongest will get stronger by just making bigger villages).
Would you, personally, be able to siege like that?

The third point can be solved by reducing personal max shield value, so that it would be possible to siege personal claims in 1-2 hours.

Will hurt the newbies first. Not many people have village claims. + destroying the siege camps idea and nerfing the sieges.

to have raiding another kingdom give you kingdom points or xp, or even both.

Will have fake kingdoms emerging / or will give a little reward.
Mind that the siege camps are the only reason why people would go for long-lasting sieges.

[Ukhata]

fake kingdoms on the other hand need XP to steal. which needs to be generated through players. not saying it cant be botted ofc. but it should be more profitable to just bot in yer own kingdom then.
making normal XP making more profitable will stop making fake kingdoms probably.

[LadyGoo]

Right now having a few fake kingdom with no buggs is far more profitable than having 1 with buffs tbh. You don't even have to bot it.

[Vert]

I dont like siege camp at all. You just seat inside and use catapult every 1 hour. if something go wrong people just run away.
if i siege someone i want to destroy village or get loot, or have nice fight.
BUT
i cant destroy village it will take 24 hour for shield, and then huge resouse and additional time to destroy totem, and then i must build and protect claim. 32 hours total without sleep (if nothing go wrong). its a game or work?
no loot you cant get any loot with this system
No one will fight because of walls, visitor and new combat. the only way is get lucky shot.

[Astarisk]

Yeah, the siege system could use another iteration of updates and changes, it'd benefit from another look over for sure as there are too many flaws and abuses in the current system.

[LadyGoo]

From what I know about the devs opinion:
- sieges shouldn't be easy and the defenders should notice it;
- there should be a possibility to set a siege camp near a village, otherwise noone will raid (this is why they're not removing the possibility to build a house on enemy's territory);
- noobs shouldn't be a siege target in the first place (so making it time and energy consuming).


What do people want?

Vert says: fight & loot
You cannot get the loot if your attack has been spotted. The proper fight is unlikely to happen either, with completely dried palisade siege camp. The defenders will either outnumber and bash the siege camp's extensions/build enough catapults to counter-catapult, our be outnumbered and loose the siege. The only way to have a deadly fight is to be far away outside of safe spots. This is why the devs are making the border cheirn challenges I think, but people won't come up to defend them, thinking they'll be ambushed.


Chebermech says: we do not want people to abuse multiple shields
It is hard to achieve and there were not good suggestions done regarding the issue. Granger, for instance, suggested the 3 minimaps long distance between the villages (abusable, people can just build tons of villages everywhere to block everyone else, no siege camps <-contradicts the devs stance). Some suggested to make it so that nearby shields will lose their shield synchronically (abusable, you can just make your own camp nearby and siege it in safety).
Reducing the pclaim shield value will lead to noob massacre as well.


My personal opinion: I dislike the current time-reliance of the siege systems. People will attack during the low online time of the village, and lower the shield down to 30k easily while everyone is sleeping. Then the defenders have to spend sleepless nights to fight back + even skip their real-life stuff for the sake of defending a few months of their work. Addressing this will require the complete overhaul of the system. Maybe for the next world, since the majority of the factions aren't playing to really test it, and you need the numbers to have a proper siege.

[vatas]

I've been thinking if a literal "siegeclaim" should be added to the game. It could allow building special type of wall that could be balanced to provide cover but be bashable in prolonged attempt to turtle.

[LadyGoo]

I've been suggesting it too. But such a wall would be combined with an old-school siege camp palisades though.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Sieges in Haven are both grindy and non-interactive.
I would like to see a window of vulnerability set by a defender.
Attackers drop siege equipment with some relatively high value in brimstone.

Siege equipment is invulnerable until 24 hours later + start of next window of vulnerability.
Then the siege tool can be used to take down as many walls as it needs to crack open everything in the claim that it sieged, including the vclaim/pclaim itself.

No abusive invulnerable cities. Decisive battles that involve active players on both sides. Defender has time advantage to pick their available hours. Defender can choose to flee with their lives and goods at the cost of their entire city.