The Ability to capture and hold

[____________eleetist]

So, what do you think? Will the ability to capture and hold territory help revive org politics???

I remember back in the day, when there were conflict among guilds and truces and alliances and what not.... now there seems to be little... except for levelling and trying to grab the unique loots or kill tarasque...

I hope that something can be done soon... I want to see some revival... I can remember awhile back when we were a part of the storyline at least somewhat and we saw things happening.. battles at 4holes and trials for insubordination.... etc... etc...

Is there anyway for us to try and revive this ourselves?? Big epic battle in 4holes anyone???

[Dauhuai]

I would have to agree. Even if there were only a few areas where the terminals, shops etc. would change sides as long as someone held the area long enough. To make them even more desirable these areas could offer a special mission available only to the side that held them.

This would create whole wars just to maintain control and would give the high level Uber killers a reason to be. Of course the whole thing would also revolve around the definition of "control". I think it would help if it was based upon the relative strength in terms of levels present. A ratio of 1:1 = No control by either side, 2:1 Slight control by higher side, controlling side can use bank and shops but not mission or save terminals (who would save in this battle zone anyway). 3:1 Full control, controlling side could use shops, terminals and possibly a grid entrance (which would really add ****e) as well as access to any special missions.

One to three areas such as this could really start banding orgs together to gain control of these areas and would also add a wonderful, and missing, feeling of being able to affect change.

Now for the daydreaming part. As the game progresses more of these areas could be added, or new ones opened up as current ones are considered held. If the central areas are controlled by Omni then the new zones would pop up closer in Clan territory, vise versa if Clan controlled the initial zones then new zones would pop up closer to Omni. The front would move. It could also retreat. Example. In the initial battle for control of Crater 1, aka bloody Crater, the clan has routed Omni (no offense but I am clan). Clan now totally controls the area and it is removed from a change of control area, another area close by replaces it (Far Mountain) where the next phase is fought. If clan wins there the sites continue to creep closer to Omni, if, however, Omni holds the area the fight moves back to the previous zone.

This would really bring in an ability to watch the lines move and shift. With multiple areas Omni could be winning in some while clan is in another. Orginizations would have to plan together to launch strikes in coordination. If Omni has held an area for a considerable time and there is a danger of the line shifting it would be time for a massive joint strike to take back control and try to maintain it until shift or at least hold the line.

Oh the blood, the gore, the fun of it all. Hundreds of low level targets throwing themselves into the melee to allow the tanks and damage monsters behind them to mop up the enemy. The trenches of WWI would look like a summer retreat. YES I WANT SOME.

Pantingly,
Dauhuai
50th Level Clan Engineer
Me and My bot, Whitney, await the order to suicide for the cause

I don't regret that I have multiple lives to give for my cause.

[________nyarlathotep]

hehe clan ent? clan 1? clan HQ.....

hahahahaha

[Arila]

sorry, when this come, then you can be sure that it wont be in the startup cities, as they are, start-up areas, and spawning points for n00bs.

The startup cities are: Rome: Green, Blue: Omni-1: Ent, Trade. Tir, and Athen PFs

The chance of that being turned into CAO areas is small (Capture and hold).

And i think that this will only be in the 25%/0% areas, to a start.

I mean, i would love to take back Omni-2 (Thats Athen), but what would happen to all the newbies??? if we, with some miracle, got hold of both Tir and Athen spawn points, would that be the end of the clans??

All newbies, not aware of the danger get wacked as soon as they set foot in the city, and i am sure that Funcom would not have that to happen. Not to start with

[Dauhuai]

Do you mean CAH. But yes, I agree 100% with you. No matter how the lines move some cities would have to remain bastions. Simply the fact that you could, even on a limited basis, affect the political actions in the world of RubiKa would be reward enough.

I don't see any of the major cities becoming threatened by more than Headlines, however, in those areas and places such as MMD or other PvP areas where they could be made variable the fighting would probably intensify and it would give a standard by which to measure the relative strengths of the Clan vs Omni.

I don't ever see this being a tactical or strategic military scenario where objectives are taken and the opponent worn down until one side is obviously stronger. I do see it allowing for a flow and flux of ownership of certain areas that gain importance only because we can, indeed, affect them as players. This would start up the rivalries in those areas, major attacks could be planned and later reported on. It would add into the game what was promised at the beginning.

Dauhuai
51st Level Engineer
Probably the only Engineer who doesn't OE to a bot 10 times tougher than he is.

[___________NightFear]

Personally, I cant wait for this aspect of the game to start. I love the idea of taking and holding territory and making changes to the landscape of the world. My only question is how the final version of this will be done in the game.

It has to be more than just the superiority of numbers that decides. Taking and holding territory is a part of War. War is only won with battles and stragetic placement of troops. Are citys/regions going to change just because there is 100 Omni all huddled together and 72 Clan huddled together? What if the 100 was made up of low levels and the 72 were high levels? What happens when people log for the day and the count flip flops? Is territory going to be switched by the minute? Please do not take this as a personal attack on your idea Soda. Superior numbers do play a strategic part, but I dont think that should be the only basis for control of a territory.

I have been to so called "conflicts" on Ruba-Ka where nothing happened. Every just stood around with their affiliated group and nobody was fighting. That was not war, it was more like a social gathering.

In War when a city is attacked, it is either eventually defended or overrun. If it is overrun, the ousted force has the option of counterattacking if they have the resources available. Above all, there is a battle for the city. Blood is shed, people die!!! Its tragic, but that is the face of War. War and Battles are the only way land/territory/cities are taken away from a soverign country that does not wish to give its belongings willingly.

In War, everyone is either fighting or dying. There is no standing on the sidelines to watch the conflict. If your in the infantry and an armored tank comes along, quess what? If you dont have something to take out the tank, your screwed. Is it fair, NO, but thats the nature of War.

My point thru this post is this. There must be a battle at some point to take over territory.

I wish I had the final solution of how this will be played out in the game, but I dont. I can only tell you of my thoughts on this subject. Please feel free to agree or disagree with this post. I'm a big boy and dont take things personally.

By the way, I have played AO since December of 2001, but this is my first post on the forums.

[Dauhuai]

All good points. Of course I never said numbers, I said levels. That does make some difference. I agree though, how do you assign a hold condition. I believe control must be maintained for a length of time. My recommendation at first thought would be to think of it as a scale, a location can have different states:Clan Dominated (No Hold), Clan Influenced (Held but Vulnerable, use of all booths), Clan Oriented (Use of basic Booths), Neutral, Omni Oriented, Omni Influenced, Omni Dominated. When an area reached domination status then the war would shift to the next area over from it, the lines would have moved.

To switch from one state to another requires maintaining superiority in that area over time. Not just instantaneous superiority either. These are all areas that may be easier to discuss in real terms and harder to program, I don't know my since my programming ability is fairly rudimentary. However my idea would be that (and remember I have previously listed ratios) if a favorable ratio could be maintained without significant (1 hour or so) disruption then the territory would be eligible shift one state to the stronger side. Then the territory would have to be held in the new state for a period before it could go further over.

So if Omni held Location1 (L1) for 1 hour with a dominating ratio, L1 could move from Neutral to Omni Oriented. It would have to be maintained in this state for a certain time limit, maybe 1 day or whatever. At the end of that time if the ratio reached dominating for more than one hour then it could shift again. However, if the ratio went to dominating for Clan for an hour it could, at any time, shift back. This would make gaining advantage more difficult than retaking it back. Once it shifted to Neutral then Clan would have the extra hold time while Omni could regain Omni Oriented with just one hours dominating ratio.

I feel that this would provoke combat. The easiest way to deal with an invader is piecemeal. Once a group had a dominating presence the last thing they would want to do is wait until the enemy built up a large force. Attack and attrition would favor those who held. Grouping and mass movement into the area would be required by the weaker side to take back an area.

Is this all workable? In its present state here, probably not, this is brainstorming. However, combining ideas and possibilities to implement this would go a long way to silencing a lot of the *****ing that goes on about the stagnant nature of the game. I think it would add a dimension to the game that no other MMORPG has and would bring a rush of new people in just so they could participate in these battles. Also, I do think that lower level characters would be useful in them. Getting to level 25 is much faster than level 50 which takes less time than level 100 etc. So 10 level 25's might not do the damage of 1 level 100 but they can take a lot of heat, add confusion, and cover for the heavy hitters. They are the grist ground up in the mill of battle.


Dauhuai
51st level Engineer
Grist for the Mill

Randolpho
6th Level MP
Not even ready to be harvested yet

[___________NightFear]

Excellent:

I now see where the battles/fighting will come into place. Its hard to hold territory if your sitting at the reclaim terminal rezzing. I just hope that it works out like that in reality. Like you said, this is just theory, since we dont know what FC has planned.

Thanks for your reply Soda.

[sillytheclown]

how about during phase 1, no guards,

phase 2. some 1-100 level guards move in. just enough to protect gates, and grid/wompa. 1-100 guards shouldn't harm a large force.

phase 3 ( one side is in control for a certain amount of time ) then you have eliete guards 101- 200 these guards also guard outside the area for a small time, they move in 2-3 guard incriments.

phase 4 ( this means you not only hold it, you defended for a time ) then you get eliete guards, 200-250.

phase 5 ( you hold it for lets say 3 weeks ) you get 250-300 level guards. they protect the cities, the venders help, the citizens walking help.

if you hold an area for 45 days, it totally becomes that side. and unless the other side is able to mount some huge offensive, then it would be that sides. This includes, nuetrals holding area to make neutral....

also make the spawn rate on dead guards get faster in diffrent phases, the closer you are to a stronghold, the faster the respawn.

in tir/omni 1 it should be instant, in lets say, the VW omni outpost, it would be longer

Salve1 leader of Freedom's Edge. Rubi2 - 112 doc

"to secure peace is to prepare for war."

[Dauhuai]

Those are good possible additions. I am sure there are more. However, I am kind of sad to admit that I am not at all sure these ideas are ever mined by FunCom for their value. Still, I hope to keep seeing them here.

Hopefully,
Dauhuai 51st level Engineer
Randalpho 40th Level MP

When you have pets you're never alone

[______________Promoo]

Like the idea Salve1.
It would need a practical backup to reflect the cities war footing by increasingly uber guards to represent the turning of allegiances within held cities.
Given this perhaps after x time with no attacks on a city then the guards should be made less uber to represent the redeploying of resources to more combat orientated cities.

Macmoo - Engineer, BLA
Onestbob - Newly arrived independent Clan trader.
"Allright guv, got a job for a down on his luck honest trader?"

[solitaire]

I think that being able to capture and hold territory would be a great aid to getting politcs going again.

Also id like to see Players able to aid the guards in their territory
seeing a bunch of clanners bouncing around killing omni guards in omni-1 or a bunch of omni goons running around killing clan guards in Athens while heavily armed Player stand around twiddling their thumbs.. Sucks.

Players of AO join ranks in demanding the right to forming militias in defense of your cities...

[Dauhuai]

That may be true, but the last time a bunch of Omni Goons came to Tir and were killing guards, my 33rd level MP had a fun time watching the fireworks behind his qual 5000 "You can't kill me in a non PvP Zone" shield.

For me to be able to help means that they can retaliate. I think I could have done almost 100 points of damage before one of them noticed and made little MP ashes out of me. However, and I say this with sincererity, it was a blast watching them cream the guards and working as a team. The doc was healing the tanks were tanking and one NP was blasting away like there was no tomorrow.

Randalpho
40th Level MP

Now I could do 110 points of damage

[solitaire]

and what if 6 of you in Tir had attacked them or 12 or 50 or every player in the Tir soon joined by every player clan player in Athens once they heard of an attack through the chat?
The dmg would soon have been more than enough to kill that team.
if attacking a guard made the attacker and those teamed with him open to pvp without them being able to pvp unless that person attacked him in aid of the guards.

It would Make these actions mean something..

not just players running around being totaly useless.

[Laeni]

No the start-up cities should be left alone. But there are other towns out there. (Of course the only ones I can think of off-hand are Bliss and Home since I'm at work and my brain is fried)

These other towns could be made more high level type towns with apartments, high level stores, their own clubs etc. Then we could have battles back and forth over these towns. Newbies would be protected and high levels would be fighting for something valuable (namely if the opposing faction captures "your" town you don't get into your apartment for a while )

[Artery]

im sick of lvling ... why not make alot more wars and stuff at mmd or 4holes.. that would make the days of lvling dead, cuz that not the main thing in this game! its the conflict.. kill clanners!

[Kithraks]

Its the "lets kill everyone not on our side" mentality that killed guild politics.

Everyone is too busy shooting at each other simply because they can and probablly the main reason FC stopped hosting their events for a while. The story NPCs like Radimant or Ross gets ganked as soon as they show up before they can do anything meaningful.

I'm not going to talk to you because you are Omni/Clan and for that you must die!!!

[_________Decameronus]

I think the best way to capture and hold territory would be if a town, say MMD, had a building in the center that would be the control center. In that center would a terminal. Simply by activating the terminal, the town would switch to your side. The catch would be that (if it were in enemy hands) you would have to get past the guards outside the town, in the town AND in the room, plus any clan/omni players on guard duty or in the control center. When the town control is switched, all the guards run/terminate and the town is lawless until they respawn as the new side (this would be instead of the guards simply changing sides instantly, meaning they would gank anyone that they had been fighting with before the side change). This sytem would work because the act of getting a town would be like a series of missions - get to the town past any border guards, then get to the control center past any guards and enemy characters, then go into the center and fight for the control terminal... how fun would it be to organize teams to infiltrate and capture? And no messy 'we have this many ppl at this lvl' calculations

Decameronus
General, Dust Brigade - RK2

[____________Ironheel]

Problem with that idea being that people could just ignore the guards and run like hell to the terminal, flip the switch, and suddenly the town switches sides.

[Dauhuai]

Two things. The idea, like most of them in this thread has merit. The only drawback is that this works for towns. What about areas. I don't see the conflict as only being town related. If you could capture an area that would isolate a town, then you have gone a long way to capturing that town. This brings in more strategy as well as combat.

As to messy calculations, who cares, calculations are what computers are good at. I don't think it should be fully dependent on level although that should count, maybe title level instead. Then two newbies = 1 low level etc. But once programmed calculations of this sort are only difficult for the planners to figure not for the servers.

As to running in and capturing a town, that, I feel is the stong point of the scheme. Maybe all these high level sneak classes could actually perform and shine. Let them sneak into town, flip the switch (effectively killing all NPC guards) and the rest of the attack force can now come in and mop up the unfortunate players now guarding the city without the extra support.

Think about the anticipation as three or four sneakers head off into an area. The rest of the group is hiding and buffed with one or two look outs to watch for the signal. Pop there go the guards, one of the spies has suceeded, probably at the cost of his own life (don't worry we'll applaud him posthumously back at the reclaim terminal). Charge, and everyone rushes in for the slaughter. Of course there's the old Number 6 party later that night (ref.: "Blazing Saddles").

Of course FC would have to fix the sneaking abilities so that these classes weren't spotted two seconds after they started sneaking, but that is another issue.


Sincerely,
Randalpho 43rd Level MP
Happiness is three Pets
Security is three Red Pets