[Decimus]

The so called 'PvP' continent will allow the building of cities, castles, etc by player organizations. Guilds and alliances of guilds will be able to participate in consensual pvp over strategic resources. I think this is the gist of the info we have.

I want to talk about PvP in the main continents. Will these guilds and alliances be able to fight each other in these areas too? Like Eve or UO where a war declaration is made and agreed to and they can kill each other without consequence

I think weve been told there will be npc factions to join for consensual pvp in the main continents. Will this be optional or will everyone be at war with someone? What effects can players have on the greater NPC conflict?

In my opinion, these questions will define the end game of this title, if it becomes what I think they're trying to do. Raiding will hopefully be nonexistent and eventually people will be max level and the real end game in any game with large scale open world pvp is large scale open world pvp.

[Eligor]

NPC factions and player factions are the same thing, I've seen a lot of questions about the games idea of freedom.

You can do whatever you would imagine you can. You can start as a soldier for a faction and end up being the leader, player factions can declare war on eachother and kill eachother with no consequence on all islands. The pvp isle is just a place where anything goes.

A faction can also go rogue/pirate or be friends with everyone.

[gifthorse]

Decimus, on 03 May 2011 - 12:18 AM, said:

The so called 'PvP' continent will allow the building of cities, castles, etc by player organizations. Guilds and alliances of guilds will be able to participate in consensual pvp over strategic resources. I think this is the gist of the info we have.

I want to talk about PvP in the main continents. Will these guilds and alliances be able to fight each other in these areas too? Like Eve or UO where a war declaration is made and agreed to and they can kill each other without consequence

I think weve been told there will be npc factions to join for consensual pvp in the main continents. Will this be optional or will everyone be at war with someone? What effects can players have on the greater NPC conflict?

In my opinion, these questions will define the end game of this title, if it becomes what I think they're trying to do. Raiding will hopefully be nonexistent and eventually people will be max level and the real end game in any game with large scale open world pvp is large scale open world pvp.

I think the two NPC factions are just to get people accustomed to the game and give impetus to PvP for beginners. And I think Player-created factions will be where the actual fun is to be had, since player-factions will be where the true rewards are.

[KeksX]

NPC factions are needed to get new players into the game, otherwise nobody will even dare to create an account like in EVE Online.
"Hey, let's try this game, EVE online"
"Sorry dude, I have a job. Can't quit it now."

You HAVE to know certain people or hope that they will eventually approach you and invite you to join their alliance, otherwise you would just get killed over and over again or just miss 90% of the fun content of the game.
So the NPC factions are a good way to introduce new players so that they can actually get started until they're "into the game" enough.


The "open island" is certainly the one with the most fun, but a level 1 unskilled/uneqd character will just be some fodder.

[Cavarath]

I think its very much similar to EVE where high sec players can do their NPC faction warfare while 0.0 players are controlling their own territories building their empires.

Neither should the NPC faction players be able to take something in the northern continent nor should the player faction people be able to attack the NPC continents.
This would just destroy the gameplay.

[Eligor]

You can but not as an expedition force (yeah, confuced about this also).

They still advent clearly defined expeditionary force and player faction.

[Cavarath]

Now i am confused.
They cannot what? And who is they?

[Eligor]

Yeah, what I was struggling with my iPhone to write was that they (XLGAMES), haven't told us much about the two player systems.

[Decimus]

I see the similarities between eve faction warfare vs 0.0 warfare and archeages player factions on the 3rd cont. vs NPC factions on the main one. I don't think the two should be barred from interacting at all... Though the physical barrier should effectively achieve what you wish.

Where does guild vs guild come in? Where is the plain old fashion group vs group in the open field, wherever that may be, south or north, 0.0 or 1.0?

I hope the alliances of eve, (groups of guilds) will be the archeage player factions. I hope guilds or 'expeditionary forces' are allowed to 'war' each other and fight anywhere anytime.

[Cavarath]

Quote

I hope the alliances of eve, (groups of guilds) will be the archeage player factions. I hope guilds or 'expeditionary forces' are allowed to 'war' each other and fight anywhere anytime.

Im very very sure that it will be like that.

[Muzza]

Cavarath, on 04 May 2011 - 06:46 AM, said:

Im very very sure that it will be like that.

Hopefully it will be full scale guild on guild, would be great to have all your buddies next you when the siege engines start hitting your walls

[Cavarath]

I guess it will be more about alliance vs alliance (player made faction vs player made faction) than about guild versus guild.

[Tomahawk]

I really doubt it will be declaring war with no penalties. And I sincerely hope there are no "war declarations". From what Ive read its supposed to be free for all pvp. You choose to kill whoever you want. And there are consequences. If two guilds/alliances are in the act of war against each other on the 3rd continent and they happen to have members run into each other on the other 2 continents so be it. Feel free to kill them however there are "laws" on those two continents and I don't think some fabricated one sided war declaration should influence the law of the land on the other continents.

As it stands we don't know how the siege system will work. Is there some sort of timer initiated before the battle can begin, or is it all out middle of the night and a guild comes in and destroys it while you sleep? Whats to stop another guild from coming in right behind the battle and destroying the guild that wins?



If it were up to me(and I know its not because my perfect fantasy mmorpg is just that, a fantasy) It would be 100% free for all. You die, you have serious consequences. You make all items lootable. yet you implement a system similar to eves. Some items get destroyed outright in the battle, all needs repairs afterwards. You make the game about the actual person playings skills and not about the gear he is wearing. Of course you have really good gear available, but the difference between the very best gear and your average player in high end crafted gear should be marginal at best. Castle raids wouldnt always be about taking over the castle. Some guild of 150 players occupies that castle, why couldnt me and 20 of my friends, or 20 hired hands (insert the original meaning of raid) raid the castle and make off with the valuable resources that we are lacking, and disappear to the 4 corners of the world with the loot divided. And that raid shouldnt be meaningless. It should piss the occupying guild off to no end because they just lost say a months worth of resources.

Don't get me wrong Im not venting or saying whatever they do here will be crap because to be honest Im going to play the game no matter what. Whats out there is terrible and living in a WH in Eve is fun and all, but I miss my hack and slash D&D type fantasy MMO.

Its just that in my personal opinion and experience games without consequences lose their interest in the long haul. UO was an amazing game when it came out. But they ruined that game by changing the rules as it went. Yes I was fine with all the rules that prevented or were implemented to prevent exploits. But breaking into someones house because dude died and dropped his key along with a recall rune to his front door was amazing. The notoriety system when it first came out was something I would love to see in a current generation MMO. To be a Dread Lord, you needed to kill A LOT of people. That should be the only way to get to that level of Notoriety. Simply macroing casting an "evil" spell or killing wandering animals that were considered "friendly" But there were consequences for someone who wanted to be a Dread Lord. He/She was unable to go into ANY NPC towns other than the single lawless town of Bucs Den. Implementing stat loss for people who wanted to PK was the end of the line for UO as far as I was concerned. But the game had something that no other game has had since. Open world PvP that was truly engaging. That miner KNEW the risks when he went out to mine. He took precautions. It forced him to train defensive skills instead of simply becoming a crafting mule. People PLAYED those roles because they enjoyed them.


Im hopeful that AA will turn out to have at least some of the things that I and people like me have been missing all these years. Eve is a great game for PvP, but it doesn't have that certain aspect that makes you FEEL like you are in the game. Its more abstract. Anyhow /end threadnought. I cant wait for this game to release

[Cavarath]

Why should there be no war declarations?
I think they are a great thing and should be in game because they are doing three things:
1. They suggest that there is peace between the player made factions and not an all time war.
2. Play made factions will really war each other instead of randomly pking.
3. People could backstab someone by waring them without declaration of war.

And just because there is a war system it doesnt mean that laws of the NPC continents doesnt count anymore. But it should disable the PK system on the third continent. And yes there should be one.

PS: There was an interview where XL Games said that there will be siege timers. However, they were very vague regarding this.

[Tomahawk]

Cavarath, on 02 July 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

Why should there be no war declarations?

The reason I think there shouldn't be some sort of "system" for declaring war is that by doing so you are now instituting "rules" of war. I think that in a game with this much potential having as few restrictions as possible on the players will ultimately make the game a bigger success. Are there pros and cons to having a war dec system or not? Sure. But I personally am a proponent of not having the game dictate how it is played.

Cavarath, on 02 July 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

I think they are a great thing and should be in game because they are doing three things:
1. They suggest that there is peace between the player made factions and not an all time war.

Even without a war dec system there is the ability for politics to have a place. Take for instance Eve. They have a war dec system that only has merit within High Security space. It is a way in which the players can circumvent the "laws" of High Sec. The war decs hold no purpose in Low Sec or Null sec outside of a security level standpoint(i.e. notoriety)


So in the AA system all having a war dec system is going to do is allow larger guilds/alliances to just declare war on EVERYONE and then be able to grief and harass people on the main 2 islands that have no desire to partake in the politics of the game and just want to explore/craft do their own thing. Without the war dec system, sure they can still be griefed and harassed but at least then the people doing will have the consequences installed to deter them from doing so.

Cavarath, on 02 July 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

2. Play made factions will really war each other instead of randomly pking.

This will ruin the game for those not so hard core players that the game is trying to assimilate into its population as well. I myself was a Dread Lord in UO. I picked them game up in November of 97, got PKed the 3rd day in game, and said HOLY S@&% I want to do that. By the end of December I was running around with a group of 5 or 6 people PKing.


The point of that story is that if you implement some sort of "war deccing" system all that will happen is people like me will declare war on everyone. You will still have random pking. People like me LIVE for the rush of ganking random players. With or without this system it will still happen, however with it, there will be less reason NOT to pk(or in this case it wouldnt be pking it would be war)

Cavarath, on 02 July 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

3. People could backstab someone by waring them without declaration of war.

I don't understand what you are saying by this. People will backstab with or without a war declaration system.

Cavarath, on 02 July 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

And just because there is a war system it doesnt mean that laws of the NPC continents doesnt count anymore. But it should disable the PK system on the third continent.

Again I don't understand this point. If there is a war dec system in place the ONLY reason to do so is so that guilds can keep a list of who they are at war with, and so that they do not suffer any of the implemented penalties designed to deter people from PKing. If the system is put in place and does not apply to the 2 main continents, then there is no purpose to it other than to let guilds keep track of who they are at war with. I don't understand what you are saying by disable the PK system on the third continent. As far as I understand it the laws of the 2 main continents do not apply to the 3rd exploration continent. So there is nothing to disable.

Cavarath, on 02 July 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

And yes there should be one.

I disagree =/

[Cavarath]

You should read more carefully instead of just repeating what you said before. I clearly said there should be a war declaration system like the one of EVE you mentioned. Except the thing that you turn off the high sec security. This should stay in place in AA.

And there has to be a PK system. If you allow to loot people you also have to implement a system that increases risk for people that PK others that couldnt fight back.
Easy equation.

[Tomahawk]

Cavarath, on 02 July 2011 - 02:46 PM, said:

You should read more carefully instead of just repeating what you said before. I clearly said there should be a war declaration system like the one of EVE you mentioned. Except the thing that you turn off the high sec security. This should stay in place in AA.

Apparently YOU should read more carefully. I KNOW you stated there SHOULD be a war dec system like the one in Eve. What I am saying is that there should NOT be. If there IS a war dec system that means people can go into the 2 main continents and kill any person in a clan/guild they have war decced. If this type of system were in place people like me would just war dec EVERYONE so we could just kill willy nilly anyone that we wanted to. I think this is a terrible idea.

The laws on the two main continents should apply to all at all times. There should be no system put in place to circumvent the penalties on those two continents for killing other players.

I have no clue what you are saying about turning off the high sec security. My point about security status of a system in Eve was that the only place that a war dec actually mattered was in High Sec space(which is the two main continents in AA) Outside of High Sec in eve a war dec is completely irrelevant when engaging in PvP other than the fact that your "personal security status" lowers making it so you can't go into high sec. This would be akin to killing people on the North Continent making you an outlaw on the other two continents. Which if Im reading things correctly about the different continents this is not how it is intended to be.

Cavarath, on 02 July 2011 - 02:46 PM, said:

And there has to be a PK system. If you allow to loot people you also have to implement a system that increases risk for people that PK others that couldnt fight back.
Easy equation.

This we agree on. There needs to be "something" that makes killing other people WORTH killing them, but also at such a cost that you risk a great deal when doing so. I like the idea of people becoming outlaws for randomly killing others and then either not being able to go into NPC towns, or having a bounty place on their heads.


I think you misunderstood my "I disagree" or I misunderstood your "Yes there should be one". I was assuming you meant that there should be a war dec system. I was simply implying that I disagree with that. I agree there needs to be a system for PKing.

[Jojin]

Tomahawk, on 02 July 2011 - 03:02 PM, said:

Apparently YOU should read more carefully. I KNOW you stated there SHOULD be a war dec system like the one in Eve. What I am saying is that there should NOT be. If there IS a war dec system that means people can go into the 2 main continents and kill any person in a clan/guild they have war decced. If this type of system were in place people like me would just war dec EVERYONE so we could just kill willy nilly anyone that we wanted to. I think this is a terrible idea.

I think there might be a lack of understanding in the examples used.

• In EVE one can only wardec a Clan/guild/corporation, not individual players, so unless a player grouping has been formed one could not be subject to war declarations.
  
• You cannot declare war on an individual group, if it is part of a larger alliance. You must declare war upon the entire alliance.
  
• War declarations take 24 hours to become active, and notice that it will become active is given to all involved players.
  
• War declarations cost fees, which are based on the time active and the number of individuals (size) involved. This cost is for the logistics of the NPC governments.

With those rules at play, some of the items mentioned like the idea of declaring war on everyone, wouldn't be possible. Also, in actual play many people will disband or leave a group if they do not wish to take part in the war (whole world PvP), for the duration is it active.

In the end the system is designed to allow larger fix groups to truly fight each other without being able to hide behind NPC and Mechanics of safe locations.

[Tomahawk]

Jojin, on 02 July 2011 - 11:56 PM, said:

I think there might be a lack of understanding in the examples used.

• In EVE one can only wardec a Clan/guild/corporation, not individual players, so unless a player grouping has been formed one could not be subject to war declarations.
  
• You cannot declare war on an individual group, if it is part of a larger alliance. You must declare war upon the entire alliance.
  
• War declarations take 24 hours to become active, and notice that it will become active is given to all involved players.
  
• War declarations cost fees, which are based on the time active and the number of individuals (size) involved. This cost is for the logistics of the NPC governments.

With those rules at play, some of the items mentioned like the idea of declaring war on everyone, wouldn't be possible. Also, in actual play many people will disband or leave a group if they do not wish to take part in the war (whole world PvP), for the duration is it active.

In the end the system is designed to allow larger fix groups to truly fight each other without being able to hide behind NPC and Mechanics of safe locations.

There is no lack of understanding... Having been playing Eve since 2007 I am well aware of the mechanics of the war dec.

While the if there was a similar war dec situation the fact of the matter is that the greater majority of players will join a guild/clan and will get sick of "dropping for war" if the war is non stop.
Im not certain what the 24 hours till it becomes active and the other party being given notice has to do with the topic at hand, but yes I am aware of that stipulation in Eve.
The fees for war decs in Eve are not based on any number of individuals. There is a flat fee based on whether you are in an alliance or just a corp, and how many wardecs are currently against that corp. The declaring corp can declare as many times as they want for the same fee, and the fee does not change so long as you do not let the dec drop regardless of how many people dec after you. And the cost isnt for "logistics" Its hush money so Concord looks the other way.

While yes if the put in place a system exactly as it is in Eve you will miss out of war deccing players labor alts that they leave out of guilds/clans and the very select few players that don't want to be in a clan/guild. However I highly doubt you will see people dropping their guild/clan as they do in Eve because the mechanics of the game are completely different. Not to mention any serious clan won't keep players that do that.

At any rate the system as it is in Eve will not work for a game such as this. It would need to be drastically modified. However none of these points deter my opinion that a war deccing system at all would be a terrible idea, and none of your points would detract from my statement that if there was the system people will exploit it to its fullest.

And in the reality of Eve the system allows larger or smaller groups to randomly PK whoever they feel are easy targets. You look at 80% of the Privateers war decs and you will see that they are either A.) Griefing E-Uni for the umpteenth time B.) against some other small corp/alliance that they feel are easy prey/noobs for picking off in trade hubs.

Nothing about that system works in favor of larger corps fighting larger corps other than maybe RvB. Everyone else exploits the mechanic for griefing.

[Cavarath]

The point i wanted to make, and which you made yourself, you DONT have to declare war to fight someone. Its up to you.
You could just kill them without doing so.
Why do you want to limit possibilities? Let the people that like to use the system use it. Let the ones that doesnt not use it.

The only difference should be removing of PK penalties like increased drops upon death.

I dont understand why you want to reduce possibilities in the game. And yes, it will hurt politics if there isnt a war and PK system.
Those are needed.