Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Arrakis]

In today’s devblog, we would like to share our vision of the Siege system that we’re currently working on.

After some extensive brainstorming, we’ve developed a method of how we can use, and even enhance, the Instanced Battle system in a way that can also be used as an underlying technology for sieges. This should make the implementation of the Siege system relatively quick and painless!

Once a Siege Totem is placed in the vicinity of a Tier 1 Monument, it will claim a small (12 tile radius) patch of land. Both parties will have approximately 24 real-life hours to gather their troops for the siege event. The attackers will have to spend this time fortifying their Siege Camp, fetching equipment and ammo to stock it, build siege tents, organize storage stockpiles and deploy trebuchets and other weapons of war. The defenders will do well to prioritize disrupting the attackers as much as possible during this time.

Once a Siege becomes active, all enlisted members on both sides will move to the separate Siege server instance. This instance will be a mirror image of the main gameworld in this area. One particular difference is that, upon a player’s death, it will not force that player out of the Siege instance, instead, players will be respawned at their bind point: defenders, if they are bound in the area, and attackers will respawn at the Siege Totem.

The Siege system uses a ticket system and every respawn will cost the team one ticket each. The initial amount of spawn tickets for the attackers depends on the number of siege tents that they have built inside their Siege camp. Defenders’ spawn tickets are calculated as the minimum of two sums: the sum of all rally points (all types of keeps) and the sum of all bind slots (houses) inside the area. The defending team need to make sure they have a balanced layout in the area, or else may have some trouble during the siege!

The Siege will last for either three hours or until one side wins. Attackers will be assaulting the castle until they destroy the Guild's Monument. Defenders are tasked with defending their Monument for three hours or destroying the attackers’ Siege Totem.

When the siege ends, both parties will be moved back to the main gameworld. Those who have died or lost the battle will appear naked at their bind spots; the winning team will return to the spot they are bound to, victorious - and very much clothed and alive, of course!
The winners will have one hour of exclusive access rights on both of the claims (Siege Camp claim and the Guild City claim) for looting and pillaging. After one hour, both claims will disappear, letting those who won to decide the fate of these lands and the property on it.

Our vision of a siege is way more than the pure action of wall-bashing and ‘into-the-breaching’ - we want it to also be a matter of logistics, preparation, economics and careful planning.

Well, because Life is Feudal!

You are welcome to discuss the siege mechanics with the devs and players on our official Discord server: https://discord.gg/6PSGmDg

Stay tuned!

— The team

[Kildrith]

The winners will have one hour of exclusive access rights on both of the claims (Siege Camp claim and the Guild City claim) for looting and pillaging. After one hour, both claims will disappear, letting those who won to decide the fate of these lands and the property on it.

A point of clarification, if you are the defender and you win all the defenders get access to loot on the City Claim, does that include things like warehouses?

The way its worded it seems the city claim is over ruled by a new claim that lasts 1 hour, that would allow allies to loot and pillage the city they came to help defend.

I hope that is not the case.

[Piegefull]

Disponible en Français : sur Lifeisfeudal-fr.com

[Karabas]

if i am defender and i won - why my city claim should desapear????

siege totem has 12 radius is like 3,14*144 sq tiles ? and how many siege tents can be placed inside? several only is maximum? stupid idea! sorry, but it is =((

what does it mean - "balanced layout in the area" of keeps and houses? what is the size of siege area to count bind and rally spots for battle? one server? or less?
the siege tents for defender - counted in rally points amount????

give us numbers !!!!!!

"placed in the vicinity of a Tier 1 Monument" - what does it mean ???? on the city claim area? or 50 tiles? 100 tiles? 200 tiles?

if where are 2, or 3 or more t1 monuments nearby - wich of them will be counted as "attacked" ???

so....... its a bad news.... news of VERY bad quality =(((
bad description of the core game mechanics you going to change.....

VERY discouraging.... and disappointing

[Saar]

Traduction française disponible sur vonCulm.fr

[Werebear]

Our vision of a siege is way more than the pure action of wall-bashing and ‘into-the-breaching’ - we want it to also be a matter of logistics, preparation, economics and careful planning.

this is great ! i hope so too

[Greymore_Dunlin]

Well, reading through your dev news today shocked me because of two reasons:

1. The more you are developing instanced content, the more the open world feeling is dying! This is the main reason of many players to play this kind of games.
Example: Perhaps be surprised if you are on a hunting trip and suddently see two big guilds fighting each other and do some sieges. The free decision to take part in it, helping the defenders or the attackers spontaneous. This feeling of freedom is a great thing and there are plenty of more examples for pvp/pve and also rp.

A lot of open world games had this idea before with housing etc. and failed or partially failed.

2. Normally I enjoy your ideas that I can read on dev news every friday. But dont you think that there are really enough open ideas for now that never have been released? Please first finish the really important features, bring them to work as they have to and release the steam early access as soon as possible. More and more players will leave your fantastic game and hey...the more guys are leaving the less you have to test your new Features (an average of 50 players on prime time in cbt5 is ridiculous).

- salty!

[Jakkus07]

As i remember correctly sieges weren't supposed t be instanced.
There were supposed to be open and everyone could participate in them at any time. So i doubt you will be able to "get in" when instance is already in motion.

[Elindor]

This is cool and thanks for the info (although there are a lot of questions still about exactly how some of this works)...

But, any updates on timeline?

AUG 18 the plan was EA to start in 3-4 weeks, and obviously that isn't happening, but what is the new expected EA start?

[Jakkus07]

12 tile radius? Thats like 4-5 tents (48-60 bind points) and its not much for a siege. Can tents be placed outside siege monument?

[Arebon]

realy bad news, now you come to a point who will be critical for the game, and you will loos more and more players and community! You promissed us a game with open world PvP!
first you start with "IB system", well we can live with it, because you say :"siege will be live". and now you come with "IB-Siege"? are you serious? why sould we play a open world sandbox pvp game, without openworld pvp?! wtf?
Instance here, instance there, where is the sandbox? its not a damn Instance hopping game like WoW!!!

great job, if you hold on this, i know at least 100+ Players they will refound the game and go away, because you breake your promisses!

[Gutka]

český překlad http://bit.ly/2xofYKQ

[Davis105]

It's become pretty clear to me that after you guys have proceeded with instanced battles and now have made the siege mechanic the same, an instanced battle, that you're either lazy or just can't figure out how to optimize your game.

I personally want to say it's very disappointing to see you move what could have been the greatest medieval sandbox game to date, into what will be a cluster fuck of skill progression, crafting ingredients and instance battles.

I bought this game on the idea of me walking down a road made by players, past a castle made by players, with players fighting at the gates, on the walls and trebuchetes firing rocks from a distance.

Not the idea of never seeing actual guild conflict in the world because it happens in some imaginary land. You've turned your game into something different, and it's very sad.

[Negan]

Great news!!!

Disponible en Castellano! :

www.cuervosdelatormenta.com

[Wanderingsword]

Eh, mildly disappointing that it's not going to happen in the main game world. But I don't think it'll be a deal breaker in so long as they can make the system work.

[Cian]

You know what. I'm not just disappointed. I am not just annoyed. I'm starting to straddle the line of livid.

I'm going to say this as nicely as I can.

Can you guys follow ONE JUST ONE SINGLE SOLITARY PROMISE OR IDEA YOU'VE PITCHED US SINCE DAY 1.

Seriously! Instanced sieges? You guys are going down the road of Albion Online. Brag all about your open world combat and then make us suck up the giant male reproductive organ of instanced combat.

This new "vision" must have been conceive under the influence of a round of methamphetamine.

This dev blog is a giant slap in the face to all of us that have been here and contributed hundreds of dollars to make the original vision come true.

Now I am sorry if this feels extreme. It might even be considered a bit rude. I thought it was important to convey how I felt on this matter on behalf of a great many people who will likely just shake their heads and chalk it up as another nail in the coffin for a game with such great promise rather than actually saying anything.

This is how I feel. I apologize in to those who had the misfortune of reading this response.


Oh and by the way. Your website still references the non-existent and never to be implemented crock of crap about building underground cities.

http://lifeisfeudal.com/game-info under the sandbox section...

[Elindor]

Not sure why everyone is freaking out...

1 - Instanced battles and sieges were ALWAYS the plan as far back as I can remember and that was before the alpha testing started. They specifically talked about this exact system we are seeing unveiled now.

2 - Sure, is LIF optimized wonderfully? No, it is not. But the idea that any large battles of any kind can happen in the open game world with the terraforming and all that jazz clogging up the server is just out of the question...it will never happen.

[JohnValentine]

[[Moved to MMO Interactive FAQ]]

[Mx11foxracing]

Once a Siege Totem is placed in the vicinity of a Tier 1 Monument, it will claim a small (12 tile radius) patch of land. Both parties will have approximately 24 real-life hours to gather their troops for the siege event. The attackers will have to spend this time fortifying their Siege Camp, fetching equipment and ammo to stock it, build siege tents, organize storage stockpiles and deploy trebuchets and other weapons of war. The defenders will do well to prioritize disrupting the attackers as much as possible during this time.

"The defenders will do well to prioritize disrupting the attackers as much as possible during this time." Does this mean we can kill them as they transport supplies, build up and fortify w/ out losing alignment?

Once a Siege becomes active, all enlisted members on both sides will move to the separate Siege server instance. This instance will be a mirror image of the main gameworld in this area. One particular difference is that, upon a player’s death, it will not force that player out of the Siege instance, instead, players will be respawned at their bind point: defenders, if they are bound in the area, and attackers will respawn at the Siege Totem.

"All enlisted members on both sides will move to the separate Siege server instance." Are both sides going to be equal amount of players or just a complete toss up w/ an advantage to who ever has the most players?

The Siege system uses a ticket system and every respawn will cost the team one ticket each. The initial amount of spawn tickets for the attackers depends on the number of siege tents that they have built inside their Siege camp. Defenders’ spawn tickets are calculated as the minimum of two sums: the sum of all rally points (all types of keeps) and the sum of all bind slots (houses) inside the area. The defending team need to make sure they have a balanced layout in the area, or else may have some trouble during the siege!

The tickets should be even across both sides. Example 1: 10 vs 10, 2 or 3 tickets per player. Example 2: If nothing is even and it is 10 vs 40, 3 or 4 tickets per player on the (10) side and 1 ticket per player on the (40) side.

The Siege will last for either three hours or until one side wins. Attackers will be assaulting the castle until they destroy the Guild's Monument. Defenders are tasked with defending their Monument for three hours or destroying the attackers’ Siege Totem.

"The Siege will last for either three hours or until one side wins." So for us working people in the world, how exactly are start times established? Not going to stay up all night or get up in the middle of the night just have a drawn out siege. Need a better idea for the 24 hour totem.

When the siege ends, both parties will be moved back to the main gameworld. Those who have died or lost the battle will appear naked at their bind spots; the winning team will return to the spot they are bound to, victorious - and very much clothed and alive, of course!

The winners will have one hour of exclusive access rights on both of the claims (Siege Camp claim and the Guild City claim) for looting and pillaging. After one hour, both claims will disappear, letting those who won to decide the fate of these lands and the property on it.

"The winners will have one hour of exclusive access rights on both of the claims (Siege Camp claim and the Guild City claim) for looting and pillaging." What if the defenders won, does everyone have access to everything? I don't need some new guy looting my warehouse.

"After one hour, both claims will disappear, letting those who won to decide the fate of these lands and the property on it." What does any of that even mean? Do the defenders who won have to re-establish land claims and make sure everyone gets back what they individually owned before the siege? Do the attackers who won get to lay claim to the land and property or completely destroy everything?


Do we have an option to decline a siege or battle? Big power house guilds are going to go around and troll the smalls guilds sooner or later. Can the attackers place items in or around claimed areas during the 1 hour looting spree?


More thought needs to be put into all of this. Here is an idea: Release the Steam EA so we can actually start playing the game. Update and add as needed like usual. I do thank you for the work and time spent on the game but we are all tired of waiting!

[Sgttater]

How do the defenders allies spawn?

[Cian]

Not sure why everyone is freaking out...

1 - Instanced battles and sieges were ALWAYS the plan as far back as I can remember and that was before the alpha testing started. They specifically talked about this exact system we are seeing unveiled now.

2 - Sure, is LIF optimized wonderfully? No, it is not. But the idea that any large battles of any kind can happen in the open game world with the terraforming and all that jazz clogging up the server is just out of the question...it will never happen.

1. Instanced battles were. Instanced sieges were not.

2. If they can't run open world battles in and open world game they shouldn't advertise it as such.

The idea that people will confine themselves to these instances for fighting is wishful thinking and will not prevent lag fest combat from being a problem.

[JohnValentine]

This news really asks more questions than it answers. I'm skeptical like many of the other players, but I think it's a natural player response to be concerned that an "artificial" environment wont be able to capture the magic of the "open world" feel, or at least the vision of the magic of open world feel.

The more I've thought about the siege instance vision, the more I feel I understand why this makes sense from a performance and play quality side of yard. Just really curious to see if the developers can "have their cake and eat it to" on this one.

[Jakkus07]

As much i dislike entire idea of closing all the stuff in instanced above everything, im worried about possible exploits that this can create.
So the the question everyone should be asking what happens in the "real world" when defenders are in instance?
What if after battle, siege army will spawn back to the siege (ptfu) monument and there is enemy army just waiting for them?
As much im trying to swallow idea i dont think i can guys.
Answers would be appreciated i mean clear ones.
I might accept it but under condition that everyone can join the instance at any time (im not giving conditions to DEVS so they can appease me or something but, so i can swallow the idea).

[Halauas]

Sadly the instanced sieges not only kill the open world feeling in this game as everyone pointed out, but it also leaves endless questions on how this is gona work properly if it can even work. First of all, the attackers radius is to small to place a proper amount of tents to feed a decent sized force. Second this mechanic gives a huge advantage to the defenders witch they already had for a long time. Thirdly it is not rewarding at all for the attackers, even when the battle is over im pretty sure that every defending claim will still have supplies to keep the fight going on to defend their claim.
And for last i can see this mechanic being abused more often to grief enemy claims rather than starting an actual siege battle.
All you got to is place that totem and start digging up a farm part in the middle of the night for example and never join the battle afterwards.

I am sorry but i cant see something positive for this mechanic as its currently presented.
I can understand that right now the game cant handle big battles in the open world, but if that cannot be fixed at all (witch should be the focus) i could suggest trying to atleast make smaller scale battles more rewarding instead of turning down the open world element of the game.

[KPEBETKA]

guys, you can not optimize IB, and you do by analogy "siege" where will be on many more people + siege devices and buildings

[Jakkus07]

I mean they will optimize it eventually...
First IB was a disaster and second one was playable (to a degree )
Third should be more stable (again should... )
I mean cant they optimize normal game servers so they can handle 100+ or 200+ players?
Is that really only possible solution?
Or are their trying to push the game and that is just easiest solution or less costly one?
Again if they implement some kind of event and many players would come like 100+ they will lock it in instance again? (i can imagine that)

[Sharana]

All that whining, RP, immersion and so on, omg...

Let me ask a very simple question - do you honestly believe any game servers can handle unlimited amount of people? Esp games with complex physics where on top of that almost everything is performed server side to avoid client cheating (speed hacks, aimbots, damage changes etc). Let's say they push the technology to it's limit and achieve 200 vs 200 open world battle in playable state (which would be remarkable achievement and impossible currently) - then what? Do you know that the major alliances on the MMO already have 300+ members each (only part of them bought the MMO packs, rest of their members are waiting the OBT)? The defenders will herd all their allies in the server and just crash it or if it survives then the enemy alliance coming for the siege will finish it off. If they do another miracle and manage to hold 600-700 people on a server without crash then those major alliances will recruit even more players - that's a race the devs can't win and they are smart enough to not even try.

Stop flying in the clouds please and come down to the reality - there isn't a single game out there that can handle large scale open world action. There are limits you can't go through and all of them use instancing in different forms. Sometimes it's just harder to spot when you have NPC environment and all the players are spread around in World #1, World #2, World #3, World #4 etc that are copy of each other, it's pure illusion that they are all in 1 world actually. There can be no game without defined limits of players - gameplay always comes first. Let's be realistic - the ones that need "immersion" over PLAYABLE world are better off in a single player game play M&B anyway, it's much better suited for such needs.

[Paulchatterton]

I have a few questions.

1. The attacker's camp is described as having a radius of 12 tiles, but how much of the defenders' base will be counted? I would suggest that the defenders' radius would need to be much bigger as the permanent buildings are likely to take up much more room than the temporary tents the attacker has. Perhaps the 40 tile radius town claim would be appropriate. This radius is important to know because it will seriously affect castle design.

2. How will this siege system affect the use of bark boxes and bed rolls to scale walls? Will, perhaps, outsiders be prevented from placing anything on the ground in a guild claim except inside a siege instance when siege ladders will be permitted?

3. Will anything be done to prevent people running along the tops of walls, particularly wooden walls? With the way walls are of fixed height and can only be built on flattened ground, it is currently impossible to ensure that walls meet at different heights to prevent people running along the walls around outer defences to get into inner areas, making realistic multi-bailey castles indefensible where they should improve defence.

[Jakkus07]

Let me ask a very simple question - do you honestly believe any game servers can handle unlimited amount of people?

No but I was somewhere told that server were supposed to hold somewhere like 500 players.
And telling the truth i was sceptic o thought it would hold like 200 max and minimum 100 players. For now it cant hold even that.

Here i found it in faq archive:

Question: How much ppl you imagine on your server? 3000 online? 10000? You will use cluster technology or just one-standing server + SQL server maybe? Or one server - one game zone?

Answer: Hard to tell. Of course we currently plan cluster system for our world (like 1 server per 3*3 km block of landmass), but we need to do a lot of optimization and tuning before we ever be able to collect and analyze any performance results. I have an experience from other Torque MMO developers of like 500sh online players per one server. So, in theory, we can have battles of 250vs250 on one terrain block, or 500*47=24 500 players. But it's very rough and i missed a lot of details - real numbers will be way smaller I suspect.

http://lifeisfeudal.com/forum/interactive-faq-t3/page50//

About sieges:

Question: Will there be any instances, like in sieges or can a third or fourth party come and conquer while others are fighting?

Answer: Sieges won't be instanced (everyone can come). But we plan to make territory battles. It will prearranged battles on a fixed territory, where every side should make a list of participants and only those player, who are listed will be able to battle there - rest players will be booted from that territory and won't be able to join battle, until it ends.

http://lifeisfeudal.com/forum/interactive-faq-t3/page50/

IB gonna eventually gonna fix that i get it. Additionally you cant expect that people won't be angry. Especially that they were told it was possible for so long. Although i know every information should be taken with grain of salt, the idea of core mechanic was sold that sieges would be free and etc.

Enough said i accept the idea as it is. If sieges would be open for ALL people or at least allied troops to join ANYTIME just in instance.

[Sharana]

Well the thing is back when there were still players counters we had up to 150 players on our 37 server, but it wasn't lagging as players were spread around in different claims doing their own stuff. At the same stage of development fight involving more then 50 players was causing lags. It's simply different level of calculations when you have 100 players fighting each other, swinging left and right, arrows flying etc in 1 spot and 100 players around the entire server mining, forging, terraforming etc. Holding 500 players doesn't mean playable 250vs250 battle, that's some theoretical possibilities, but as was said in that answer the real ones will be much lower.

I was always skeptical about the open world sieges, because I was more familiar with the community and the big alliances. That's really high amount of players and if flooding the server with pure numbers to lag it to unplayable stage and save your castle from siege only because the server can't handle it was viable strategy those alliances would grow larger then the devs could optimize the code to hold more players. That's a reality and a race the devs can't win. That's why you have to draw the line somewhere and you can't let all your 300 allies to fight for you while the attacker brings all his 400 friends etc. Yes it's unfair for both sides, everyone want to enter with the best he has, but that's impossible. So there is instance with a cap on players and with optimizations progressing it will get bigger and bigger - like 100 vs 100 initially, 150 vs 150 later on etc. If you have more players then that - use them. You can use your numbers to prevent the enemy from building the siege camp they want and give advantage to the defenders (your allies). Or during the siege you can attack some other claim in the enemy alliance to pull out at least part of his forces. The community will figure it out.