Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

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Ragemaster9999
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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Ragemaster9999 » 13 Jul 2017, 15:08

Czanrei wrote:This battle mechanic sounds like a horrible idea. If "the team" continues on this path of adding any sort of instancing to the game like this mechanic mentioned, I have zero interest in this game any more.

The whole point of a MMO is to be in a persistent world and adding temporary instances is anything but persistent.


Yeah because I totally want third party armies to show up and ruin a good fight ala eve online


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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Humerox » 13 Jul 2017, 17:29

Ragemaster9999 wrote:Yeah because I totally want third party armies to show up and ruin a good fight ala eve online


Allies. EvE is the perfect example of a true sandbox. If LiF wants to follow a good example, that's the best place to look. Preparing for all contingencies is part of good strategy.

All this carebear mentality in a supposed sandbox is surprising.


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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Ragemaster9999 » 13 Jul 2017, 21:11

Humerox wrote:
Ragemaster9999 wrote:Yeah because I totally want third party armies to show up and ruin a good fight ala eve online


Allies. EvE is the perfect example of a true sandbox. If LiF wants to follow a good example, that's the best place to look. Preparing for all contingencies is part of good strategy.

All this carebear mentality in a supposed sandbox is surprising.


eve has plenty of faults, I for one look forward to not seeing who brings a better batphone be a part of LIF.


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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Aout » 14 Jul 2017, 19:22

Ragemaster9999 wrote:
Czanrei wrote:This battle mechanic sounds like a horrible idea. If "the team" continues on this path of adding any sort of instancing to the game like this mechanic mentioned, I have zero interest in this game any more.

The whole point of a MMO is to be in a persistent world and adding temporary instances is anything but persistent.


Yeah because I totally want third party armies to show up and ruin a good fight ala eve online

Man, 3way battles are best battles ! Also, unforseen events like allies showing up just adds to the immersion in so many ways.

This battle instance stuff is nothing more than team vs team deathmatch. Yey. Exciting...


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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Humerox » 15 Jul 2017, 16:25

Ragemaster9999 wrote:eve has plenty of faults, I for one look forward to not seeing who brings a better batphone be a part of LIF.


The question remains. Why play a sandbox that isn't a sandbox? EvE has very few faults when it comes to sandbox play. The only "faults" are subjective "inconveniences" people want game mechanics to solve instead of utilizing coordination and teamwork. Carebear philosophy.

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Elindor
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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Elindor » 18 Jul 2017, 18:22

So these questions are directed at Arrakis or anyone else who *actually* knows something (has seen it from devs or something).

A couple questions about the battle system and how it works.
For starters though, I understand why you are doing instancing and have always planned to - both from a server performance stance and from a gameplay balancing stance. I think it is good that it takes multiple successful attacks to wipe someone out of a location.

QUESTIONS:

1 - You have talked about open field battles here, where your town/castle is not present...are there going to be sieges as well where those things are present and you get the chance to defend them?

2 - Someone mentioned that you fight field battles until your monument is reduced to lvl 1 and then the next battle is a siege and then you defend your base, is that correct?

3 - Why not if someone attacks you, you get to defend your base against their attack instead of open field battle?

4 - In these open field battles, is the terrain basically the stock terrain of that server square? If so, how does the computer decide who starts where? Seems like that could be problematic.

Just looking for some elaboration on how all this is going to work. Seems like a shame right now to have these cool medieval towns/defenses and not be able to use them when it counts.

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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Arrakis » 18 Jul 2017, 18:36

Please direct such questions in FAQ (mmo-tests-interactive-faq-t19456/) so we can keep them all in one place and answer.


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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Sharana » 18 Jul 2017, 19:57

Elindor wrote:...

As Arrakis said the best answer you can get in the Q&A topic when Bobik takes a look at it.

I will answer you based on my conversations with Bobik mainly:

1) Yes, your castle will be there for the siege when it comes to that. The instanced battles are like a buffer battles before your castle comes in danger. It's simulating the 2 armies marching towards each other lands and the lost retreat to their castle while the enemy closes in and starts a siege.

2) It's not the next battle, but the enemy can and probably will start a siege at that point.

3) It's answered in 1. When it comes to the siege part (where your castle is in danger) you can defend your walls the same way you would during JH atm. The IBs just give you buffer, you can ignore them (technical defeats) and defend your castle when the monument drops to level 1.

4) The maps will be some themed parts of the MMO map. Also Bobik said that it depends on the guild locations, algorithm will be checking the land between the guilds in war. For example it's only flat field between our claim on 37 and one of our enemies on 24 for example - in such case forest battle is out of the question and we will have flat field instances.

Other then that I tried to put most that I know about the system based on conversation with devs here:
what-we-know-about-the-planned-mmo-war-mechanics-t22008/
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Elindor
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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Elindor » 18 Jul 2017, 20:30

Sharana - Thank you for sharing that info...

Some of that makes sense but it leaves me with some concerns.

So it sounds like what happens is this:

- Attacker declares war on Defender and an instanced field battle is scheduled
- They fight and if the Defender is defeated their monument is downgraded or just suffers damage
- If they lose enough of these open field battles their monument is degraded to lvl 1 and then the Attacker can initiate a siege mode on Defender's base and they (and all on server) can damage Defender's base as they please, this is open to all and lasts X amount of time, it is not scheduled.
- If their monument is destroyed they are done in that area and have to restart somewhere else.

So, questions / concerns, maybe you can answer:

1 - What happens if the Defender wins some of these instanced field battles? Does it stop the forward progress of the Attacker or no?
2 - What if the Defender's monument is ALREADY lvl 1 at the beginning, then do they not get to do instanced field battles at all? Does the Attacker get to go directly to open siege on their base? (along with the entire server)

CONCERNS:

The field battles sound fine, but it seems odd that the most important battle, defending your own base which you've spent tons of time on, is non instanced and non capped and open to everyone on the server (which is gonna be a shark fest disaster). Shouldn't ONLY the Attacking group be able to damage/loot? I hope this open siege period has a pretty short timeline that is in primetime.

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Ishamael
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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Ishamael » 18 Jul 2017, 20:47

The game is a bit boring without judgement hours, so I hope this gets done soon for testing. Maybe we can have a JH this weekend if the battle system will take a while?
"Yes, Betrayer of Hope. They gave me the name to revile me, but I will yet make them kneel and worship it."
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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Sharana » 18 Jul 2017, 21:24

Elindor wrote:...

Again based on what I know.
Yes it should happen the way you described it. Then:

1) Each lost battle burns support points, so it's not monument level damage straight away. If you win few battles you win time to regain some of those points or even to be able to upgrade the monument to the next level and gain some extra buffer for more lost battles. While your attacker loses support points on his own monument if he loses the battle. So winning a single battle won't stop/reset the entire progress so far. While the exact values will be determined during the CBT testing let's say it takes 8 lost battles to level tier 3 monument down to level 1. Tier 3 monument support up to 3 defensive instanced battles per day, so if you lose every single one of them you will be down to tier 1 after the battles on day 3 and they can siege you on day 4. If you lose only 2 each day winning 1 then it will take 4 days and the siege will be on day 5. If you lose just 1 while winning 2 daily then you will collapse your enemy's monument faster and you will siege them instead.

2) If it's level 1 they can't attack and can't be attacked with the instanced battle system. But that also means that siege can be started right away as there is no "buffer", so it's not some kind of noob protection :)


About the instances - many are not fine even with the pre-siege instancing. Also it's a political game and you will need all the friends you ever made to help you defend when it comes to siege which will be time limited event with objectives and during the primetime ofc.
Also it depends on the game optimisation and servers performance. If the game proves it can't handle big scale open world battles then the siege will become instanced event as well with only you and the enemy. But that's double edged sword. Imagine you are alliance of 200 players and the enemy that sieges your guild is 100. In open world siege you can call all your friends and defend with advantage, because when the defenders are more then the attackers it's exponentially harder to win. But in case of instanced siege you will be limited in numbers and the attackers as confirmed by Bobik will be more to have chance to win as well. Won't you feel bad if your alliance of 200 can only put 60 guys to fight 90 enemies (out of 100) in instaced siege?

Ishamael wrote:The game is a bit boring without judgement hours, so I hope this gets done soon for testing. Maybe we can have a JH this weekend if the battle system will take a while?

You are in a mood for turn based battle aka 1000+ ping as last time? :)
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Ishamael
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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Ishamael » 19 Jul 2017, 00:46

Yes, I would have a laggy JH with 100x the people on right now.

The game that nobody is playing except the less than 100 role-players is the game that the RPers want.

The game with 100x more people is the game the PVPers want.

Quite literally, only a few people will play this game without the PVP driving it. I hope the Devs take note about the difference of what works in practice and what works in theory.

Maybe they should consider getting rid of that coward-tower bullshit?
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Elindor
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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Elindor » 19 Jul 2017, 13:17

Sharana - thanks for all the info.

Yeah I am not opposed to open or instanced battles really...
Open world battles are ideal in many ways except server performance. Of course you want those battles to be in prime time so you can be a part of them and use your alliances etc.

My point about the sieges was that I thought that your base should only be vulnerable to your enemy and their vassals/allies maybe....not just the entire server at large.

I also had always imagined that the battle system would have been a series of sieges on your base that the attacker had to win in order to flush you out from the area...not just ONE successful base attack...since really I mean for most people the base is the primary aspect of this game.


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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Yotoni » 19 Jul 2017, 14:41

My point about the sieges was that I thought that your base should only be vulnerable to your enemy and their vassals/allies maybe....not just the entire server at large.


I don't think the siege battle on Tier1 monument will be open to all since you need to build a monument to raise a war and enlist your allies on it to participate as Arrakis mentioned. To me it means siege battle is instanced as well. If battles lag too much on open world, direct sieges will lag as much tbh.

I also had always imagined that the battle system would have been a series of sieges on your base that the attacker had to win in order to flush you out from the area...not just ONE successful base attack...since really I mean for most people the base is the primary aspect of this game.


I agree that one successful base attack on alliances who have only Tier1 monument is bit short to deserve monuments full destruction, thus wiping claims. It is even unrealistic. That will especially be abused on holidays period, Christmas, Valentines day or New Year Eve etc. Imagine your siege battle lands on Christmas Eve and your guild mates are on holiday, what are you gonna do? Call Santa for help?:D

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Re: Development News #59 - ‘Battles Inc.’

Post by Elindor » 19 Jul 2017, 16:21

Yotoni wrote:I agree that one successful base attack on alliances who have only Tier1 monument is bit short to deserve monuments full destruction, thus wiping claims. It is even unrealistic.


Yeah this is my issue too, when you are at lvl 1 monument (whether you've been knocked down to that through field battles or you just were never above lvl 1 monument) - someone comes along, declares war, theres one singular event one night where everyone jumps your base and destroys buildings while you and allies try to defend and if you fail, they destroy your entire base, monument, etc and you wonder off into the sunset to start a new base or ragequit (more likely for most groups after all the work that goes into a base).

For most players in LIF, the BASE - the planning of it, the building of it, etc, is A MAJOR MAJOR aspect of the game....to have the actual defense of something you've spent months building be determined in one event one night is kinda weird.

I always thought the staged battles would be a series of defenses of your base against the attacker, each one reducing the monument, and only after winning a couple sieges over a couple nights could they reduce you to lvl 1 and wipe you out.

Instead, the field battles are how this process is done - which is fine, except that it's definitely in the favor of numbers (in a castle the numbers effect is minimized) and you don't get the enjoyment of defending your base that you've designed and worked on for so long - you only get to do that once.

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