So, let's make a couple of assumptions first.

1. Let's assume that there will be guild level progression. That seems like a rather sensible guess since most games seem to go that way these days.

2. Next, let's assume that there will be some sort of "guild hall" or stronghold you can earn once your guild reaches a certain level. That would be cool. Knowing the fluffy stuff we can assume that a battle cruiser of some sort would probably be the coolest and most convenient option. Just a simple actual hall in some sort of generic Battle Barge which might act as a "city" ( or maybe just simply a city?) would likely be the simplest and most dull option. But hey.

3. Anyway... let's also assume that, for the sake of convenience and prevention of omgrage, you're untouchable in your "guild hall". That translates to the opposing faction can't attack it as it would be kind of stupid to get ganked in the middle of your Awesome Yet Spacious Cruiser of Awesome Spaciousness. Stupid or at least sort of unpleasant.


So, 3 would take a lot of drama away. I mean... wouldn't it be kind of awesome for your guild to have some place of your own that yields some sort of benefit but is likely a target of attacks from the opposing faction? Like... wait, didn't I see something similar somewhere else?

Of course, most of you know what I'm taking about. WAR had Keeps in open pvp areas that guilds could claim after capturing them. My gawds, maybe you even know about some of the problems that system had? Like the problem with not having enough keeps around... which usually resulted in only a few select populous guilds being able to tackle that aspect of the game and eventually get them ninja-ed under their asses anyway?


Yeah, that system had some troubles. How could those troubles be fixed most easily? Well... we usually fix that sort of problem by putting stuff into alternate pocket dimensions we like to call "instances".

How about that?


So, here's the idea. Imagine guilds, once they reach a certain and reasonably high level, being able to acquire a guild keep. Some sort of fortress somewhere out there on a planet of their choice. Which is essentially in an instanced area that's not exactly WSG-sized but not really overly huuuuuuuuge either.

Let's say that the guilds "acquire" said fortress by being stationed there by High Command Something... or by conquering it by whooping some monkey ass. I don't really care, although I think it's fairly obvious which one I'd prefer.

Anyway, said guild would have certain benefits from the place like... I dunno. Who cares? It could be anything from wee stat bonuses to armor depots that increase the number of awesome and customizable guild vehicles at their disposal. Hmm, it could be the place where they keep some sort of relic... like Rogal Dorn's favourite handkerchief or some unholy piece of toilet paper Horus used back in the good old days of intergalactic civil war.


And all of this is not even the point. Oh no, the point is that the opposing faction would be able to attack the place... attempting to pillage their stash of candy, burn their infrastructure, use their toilets and exchange phone numbers with the cute waitresses from their guild Caffe. Maybe even capture it, forcing the guild ( but not some other random guild that has no claims) to try to retake it.

This could be either guild efforts of simple PuGs. The defenders would obviously get increasingly awesome rewards based on things like how much the fortress is upgraded or how much time passed since it last fell. Stuff like that. I suppose.

One other thing I had in mind is that the fortress should probably not be attackable all day long ( more likely, all night long) to keep ninja-cap situations at a minimum. Let's say that attacking it is available trough some shiny interface only in certain hours of the day... let's say at least three times a day. Which, when I think of it, could mean that the battle could actually last for hours.

Also, it would be good if allied players that are not in the guild could come as reinforcements in situations when there's not enough people online from said guild to defend the place. Yeah, that'd be awesome.


Anyway, what do you guys think?


Also, I did manage to get this thing to a whole new level already. But, uh, that's a story for another walloftext I suppose.

I like the way you think. But I think there are some other considerations.

First, I was under the impression that we're going to be limited to a specific system... or even a single world. So, instead of claiming planets I'd say it would make sense to have an instance where guilds can create a forward operating base (FOB). The zone should have strategic value... constant convoys of supplies going to the various FOBs. Make it to where the convoys deliver daily resources to the FOBs that account towards guild progression. In order to pain a guild you could attack their convoys to prevent supply drops. Also, when a guild orders something from HQ it's delivered via convoy. So, you might actually get to steal their stuff while it's being delivered. This would put some emphasis on guilds actually patroling and defending convoys. If they want something really badly it can be air dropped at twice the normal cost.

Make the FOB zone a logistical supply zone where HQ supply points are attackable. Other factions can attack promethium plants, factories, and food stocks to aquire logistical points for their own guild. If you want to take it a step further.. if the enemy captures specific supply points it could affect the main pvp area. For instance if they capture the promethium plant there would be less defensive vehicles posted. If they capture the food stock there could be less troops. This could make a more dynamic pvp aspect.

As this is a long campaign, the FOBs can get really elaborate and eventually transition into fortresses. Let us start with a little camp with a wire obstacle perimeter and basic defenses and we can slowly work our way to battle fortresses whose gargantuan gates are guarded by titans. This would not require as much ground space as you might imagine. you could simply design the zone is a way where the FOBs are all linked to the zone wall and the Fortress graphics could appear to go off into the distance.

One thing I disliked about the "keep" system was how impersonal it was. There wasn't really any benefit to taking them except for loot, and although there is a benefit to defending them now, for a while there people would just trade wins with no disadvantage.

So while I think "keep," or "ship," or "relic," or "forge" is all semantics in this context, I do think they should be something that all races would want to keep a hold on, else the objective should be the destruction of the area/thing rather than the takeover. Except Orks; they'll take anything.

What I would like is if they found a way to take it out of the instance and put it in the real world. I don't doubt we'll have a few things instanced, but if at all possible, anything that can be thrown into the "real" world should be.

With that in mind, a possibility is to have ships in space with different areas of space dedicated to a given race. Space Marines can have a bunch of ships above the northern hemisphere, which is where the Space Marine land areas could be. I'll get to the benefit to this in a bit.

Each "guild ship" would provide bonuses. For one, it would allow the guild to "teleport" (drop pod, etc) to a planet within a certain radius below the ship. Other bonuses might include an armory, stipend of some sort, rest experience, air support, etc.

Space battles would ensue and guilds could team up with guilds to battle with their ships. It might take a few in the guild to man the ship while the rest are on the ground battling it out. The advantage to winning the space battle wouldn't just be in the form of raiding the enemy ship; it would also allow fast-deployment of reinforcements to the ground below. People would definitely "zerg" in battles, but if "zerging" required that your ship be in position for the quickest deployment to the ground, then those with air superiority would have a huge advantage and may decide the battle regardless of numbers.

Speaking of numbers, I don't want to see huge guilds automatically win over small guilds, but I also don't want to see a billion smaller guilds pop up just because everyone gets a ship. A guild should be a minimum size in order to buy a ship, but over a certain maximum shouldn't give them anything extra, or should require an increasing amount of some kind of upkeep.

To solve the issue of a guild not being around when some other guild sneak-attacks them, they could "log off" the ship by landing it in an instanced area. This would provide the benefit of only being attackable when someone is around, while keeping the actual battle out of instances.

The issue with the amount of space available is obviously solved by moving them into space.

The only issue I see (not to say there aren't more) is how to do the vehicle thing. Your idea allows for rewards like vehicle creation, but I dunno if mine does or not in this universe. Do ships create vehicles? Like you, I want it to matter more than simple horrid keep system like WAR had.

In other words, I love the idea so much that I rewrote the entire thing outside of instances.

I wonder where you got that impression from?

It's called the Sargos Sector, right? Not Sargos System or planet Sargos. I can imagine that we'll have at least a couple of different star systems and a bunch of planets.




A-a. I didn't talk about claiming planets, you misunderstood. At least, I don't know where you got claiming planets from and what it has to do with what I was talking about.




Hmm, your idea sounds a wee bit too complicated. You know, some things are better kept simple... and I think this would be one of them. Now, the whole FOB thing you came up with could play a role in overall World PvP in some capacity and would be kind of interesting if done right... I just wouldn't tie guild ownership to it.





Alright, but how many of those "keeps" could the "real world" contain? Would there be enough for each guild that manages to get to the required lvl? I doubt it.

I can't see how guild ownership of something like this could be kept from being impersonal and pointless without instancing. Because, really... there's no way there could be enough space for every guild that deserves a keep.

What I would like to point out that there could easily be fortresses and other objectives out there in the World PvP areas that factions would fight over for certain benefits... without having all that pointless ownership thing.

World PvP "keeps" and "guild ownership" just need a good divorce, in my honest opinion. Because they're not working well together. At all. And the sex is bad too.




Your idea of ships flying above and doing this and that for world pvp... is a bit complicated. Complicated isn't aways good. Other than that I'd say the same as for the above... could work in some capacity without being tied to guilds.

Hmm, yeah.

Step 1. /who opposing guild members
Step 2. Attack when they have nobody or few people online
Step 3. Successfully take objective.

That's the major issue I have with keeps in general, and instancing won't solve the problem unless it's only attackable when more than a certain number of players are online, but then we'd get grief attacks and defending it would be another stupid job. "Oh wonderful, some awful guild is attacking our fortress again. I guess we have to drop everything we're doing again. Hopefully another awful guild doesn't attack us the moment we leave."

My guild on WoW was one of the most popular on the server, despite being relatively small. We were amazing PvPers and extremely loud, and that made us a target. In DMO with a keep system as you've outlined, we would lose our keep a few hours after we got it.

And if you make it a choice to let people attack, then they'll only allow attacks when they know they will win. No risk, no fun.

There are workarounds, but your idea will go from relatively simple to extremely complicated in short order with too many additions like that.



In other words, I'd just like the "guild ownership" system to be closer to the battle. Nobody is going to go attack your keep in the middle of a skirmish, and even if it was an option, hardly anyone wants to be sitting there defending it hoping someone will attack so they can have some fun. But if the keep is in the battle with you, suddenly it becomes advantageous to destroy it, and having your keep destroyed would set you back in the battle whereas a keep will just be an annoyance.

Keep system:

Loldar has logged on.
Loldar: "Hey guys, why am I not getting keep benefits?"
Shortsighted: "Some douches took it when we were all living real lives."
Loldar: ":("

Ship system:

Loldar has logged on.
Loldar: "Hey guys, where'd our ship go?"
Shortsighted: "We had a fight with a rival guild, and in the ensuing chaos (pun intended), it was destroyed."
Loldar: "Did we win?"
Shortsighted: "Damn right. We got their ship too."
Loldar: ":D"

I only chose the Space battles thing because it all makes sense. Space battles are happening in almost all battles in 40k, so this would tie up a loose end. The "complicated" aspect can easily be solved via the UI (the enemy has sunk your battleship!, deep strike available at point X, your ship has destroyed an enemy vessel, tactical strike available on enemy warhound, etc).

Here, from my original post:



I see no problem here. Instancing isn't meant to solve the ninja-cap problem, it's meant to solve space problems. The suggestion above is meant to solve the ninja-cap problem, and I think it would work.

You don't get sudden attacks on your keep while you're dungeon crawling, raiding, doing a scenario, cutting potatoes, eating lunch or watching porn... you know exactly when your keep is going to be attackable and you prepare accordingly. You go and defend it at the appointed time or you pass, but you still know when the show's on the road. And so do your opponents.

You could tweak the whole thing here and there to improve it, but I think it'd do the necessary job. Some tweaks I have in mind would be that guilds could flag their keeps to be attackable any time they want for extra action or maybe decide if their keep is going to be attackable in the morning or in the evening or something like that. A lot of stuff could be done to balance this out to fill the needs of individual guilds while still preventing exploitations of this and that sort ( or at least keep them at a minimum).




I respectfully disagree that the particular workaround I had in mind qualifies as "extremely complicated". And it doesn't matter how simple or complicated an idea is. Simple is often good but complicated is not always bad... as long as it doesn't become too complicated, and I think the way I set this up is far from it.

If it's attackable at a certain time, then your entire guild will just be sitting there waiting and hoping someone attacks it. Right? If the opponent doesn't attack, you've wasted a ton of time standing around doing nothing. The opponents won't attack if they know you have superior numbers, so they'll just wait until you don't. Which is after you're bored to tears waiting.



/who enemy guilds

"Well, looks like they have enough to take our keep. Let's not make it attackable today."

You can throw in all the incentive in the world to make it attackable, but people won't do it if there is too much risk involved.

IMO the system needs to give benefits that are only available when the keep is attackable, but doesn't interfere with what the guild is doing if they choose to do something other than the attack keep, defend keep game.

H'bout this. Have an instanced Guild keep/ship/base that's not attackable that gives small bonuses. Then have a variety of pvp control points that are claimable that have differing bonuses. For instance, Starport might grant rapdid air support, air deployment, ect... An Artillery Outpost that gives indirect fire support and Foreward Observers that detect enemy movement on the battlefield... A medical outpost that provides a variety of buffs and MEDEVAC. MEDEVAC would allow wiped parties to respawn at a more convienent location. A supply depot that allows air supply drops to restock on stimulants. med packs, or any other usefull items. There's plenty of other options too. There could be more than 1 of each because we're dealing with multiple planets I guess.

Another option is a petition system where you have to coordinate attacks on guild bases. This allows for it to be scheduled and all interested parties have the option to be present at an optimal time.

Personally, I think the answer is to the designated outposts attackable at any given time during prime time playing hours. A real problem we face is time zones. UK and AUS players could theoretically ninja US keeps while players are at work/asleep and vise versa. Just this fact brings to question the fairness of guild bases being prey. In the past we didn't have international servers for the most part so it was fair. The balancing factor is providing the NPC defense forces with enough power to hold attackers at bay long enough for the alarm to sound. Defenses should not be a speed bump. It should require proper seige tactics to be successful.

Wow. Just simply wow.

Could you please stop making completely silly problems up?




Completely silly. Why in the name of pink unicorns would they actually have to go there and sit around? Any MMORPG worth a damn lets us enter scenarios and the like from practically anywhere. So why not implement this into this of all things? I thought it was self-explanatory but apparently I have to elaborate.

Let's say it's nearly 4pm and your guild keep is going to be attackable at that time. You simply don't get into something time-consuming like a battleground or dungeon and you wait for the battle to start. You do something useful that you can drop in an instant ( like farming some crap, I dunno) or you sit around somewhere... whichever hits your fancy.

So that's the sitting around. But I'd really bitch-slap you for the next bit.




You're talking about Warhammer Online here, right? The omg-so-fucking-PVP-centric game where apparently 90% of the player-base did everything in their power to avoid actually doing any PvP unless the odds where something around 3 to 1?

Granted, that's how it mostly worked out in outdoor PvP in that game. But I can't believe you're actually basing your reasoning on something like this.


See, if people are not ever going to do any PvP unless their chances of winning are over the roof... why have PvP at all? Why have keeps and objectives and world PvP in DMO? Why not simply throw them all into Warsong Gulch and let them farm it out?

Simple and plain old 10 vs 10. And you actually leave the battleground if things start looking bad in the first 5 minutes.


So, given that it's true that most people are lazy idiots that only care about winning and farming with minimum effort... why would Vigil ( or anyone else) make a game with relatively engaging PvP mechanics that actually involve strategy or something like that? Doesn't it seem a bit pointless?

How do your space ship battles look any better if people would just simply not even get them off the ground unless they could get into 3 on 1 battles they're almost 100% bound to win?


Yeah, that's very well how it may end up. Which shouldn't stop a) people from making awesome games awesome for the sake of the games being awesome and b) our theorycrafting.



Anyway:



That would not be optional. You couldn't just make your keep unattackable for a week to eliminate the risk of losing your shiny benefits. That'd be pointless. Where did you even get that idea from?

The whole idea is to create a little game out of having to fight for the right to have benefits from your holdings. "Not opening the gates today" would obviously be a stupid concept.


Next, the simple guide to not allowing your opponents to overpower you with sheer numbers.

Step 1: Make a set maximum number of attackers and defenders. ( Granted, there could be more attackers than defenders, but not by a particularly large margin.)

Step 2: Profit.

That's one of the reasons it's instanced. I don't like world PvP a whole lot because it mostly boils down to which side has more people on the field at any given time... which is realistic but bad for a game. This would make it completely unimportant how many people each side has online. Well, not completely... server population disparities would still make a lot of people sit on their buts most of the time - which is not directly related to this topic.


Now, you could argue that many people would be left out if this was the case. Like, you want to try to attack some guild's keep but the instance is already full. Well, guess what, there are tons of guilds with keeps around. And, if nothing else, people could just get into a BG or go watch porn.


Lastly, incentive.

So, here's what we have:

Defenders:

- gain benefits from controlling their bases
- get attacked a certain set number of times per day, can opt to increase the number of attacks for lols but can't prevent opponents from attacking
- timer based victory, they have to hold out
- get rewards for successfully defending their holdings ( even if they lose, based on how long they held out)
- potentially get to use their keep bonuses during some interesting world pvp event that happens a while after sieges are resolved
- can re-capture their keep at any time they want... after a certain timer for it has run out ( so not right away, but wouldn't lose it for days and days) -> opponents can't stay in the keep, they just loot stuff and go... optionally they could leave NPCs behind to guard it

Attackers:

- gain rewards for attacking enemy keeps -> jackpot if they conquer it, neat rewards based on how much damage and stuff ( think of mini objectives like gate or tower) even if they lose
- no real risk involved but chances for great rewards
- don't even waste time if they lose as they get rewards for participating and doing stuff even if they don't win


Yeah, you're right... there wouldn't be much incentive to do this. Would probably be best if this never got implemented anywhere... would just be a waste of time that we could spend grinding arena points.

I'd definitely like to see something like this for World PvP... but I'd still not like it if it was tied to guild ownership. It would be awkward to instance... which means it would have to be in the game world... which would mean it would have all the usual problems like "what's the point of our guild capturing this piece of crap if it's going to be taken in about 30 minutes anyway?".




You're on to something I think. It wouldn't be good if this was the only way to capture/lose stuff as some people would simply opt out and then there would be no risks and the benefits of having stuff wouldn't be justified (imo).

However, I think it would be brilliant if opposing guilds could choose to have such battles on their own terms when it suits them most.




While I wouldn't get into this that much I'll just say that there are ways to handle this.

Like, having random people from outside the guild that might be online at the time be able to come to fight if there are not enough people online. It's a band-aid at least.

Other than that I'd say that losing the keep should preferably NOT be a terrible tragedy. I wouldn't let opposing factions capture them and sit there all day. They'd have their own keeps for benefits and bonuses and they'd have their opponents guilds for looting, pillaging and burning.

Capturing something to sit on it is more like something for world PvP... as I've kinda said a couple of times already.