Hey Feudalists!
During the current CBT #4 test run we plan to release another one of our main MMO features: the Battle System. In today’s devblog we’d like to provide a brief introduction to its key aspects.
First of all, we would like to stress the reason why we think that battles are so important for our MMO and PvP players. The Battle system will be the primary method for countries and kingdoms to brawl for domination of the game world in an instanced battle area.
The fact that it is instanced means that active PvP activities will not be affected by other players whom are not taking part, nor will other players be affected by participants of the battle. By ‘affected’ we not only mean direct game action involvement (looting, civilian casualties, backstabbing), but also performance-wise (to reduce render and network/server lag). Due to separate instancing, we can precisely track and share with players the following statistics: a list of guilds on both sides, initial amount of soldiers, casualties, soldiers that fled and were captured (we plan to implement these mechanics later).
In order to start a battle, the attacking guild should craft a special ‘Challenge’ monument and place it on the defending guild or kingdom’s land. After that, both guild/kingdoms have approximately 24 real-life hours to prepare and get as many players as they can to use this monument and enlist on their side.
Once the battle starts, we cap the amount of players on one of the sides to prevent very advantageous ‘zerging’ (x3 players amount advantage is the maximum). Participants are then moved into the instanced area, which is stripped of any buildings, objects and terraforming, leaving only natural foliage and water in the battle area.
The rules of the battle are quite simple - be the King/Queen of the hill (the area in the center of the map, placed slightly closer to the defending armies side) or you will also be able to eliminate all players of the opposing side.
The winner of the battle gets all the equipment of the losing army that was dropped on the ground during the battle and the losing guild’s monument sustains damage. The damage can even degrade the monument and significantly shrink the radius of the claimed lands around it. Along with the damaged monument, the losers also lose (ha, get it!) the ability to issue battle challenges for the next 3 real-life days.
With these mechanics (and with unit and formation tweaks that are soon to come), we expect players will have a lot of fun clashing face-to-face in the open field/forest environment without walls to use for cover.
Please keep in mind that this is a short explanation of the Battle System mechanics, with many details still being iterated on. If you guys can hold on while we perfect and implement this new feature, you will get answers to any questions you have upon its release!
— The team
