Guildwars

[Garile]

It was mentioned in an other thread and though to put a few thoughts on a row.

As is guildwars aren't used to often. This is 1. because people don't feel the dueling is balanced and so it's not as atractive as it used to be and 2. it's unrealistic and it is pointless because you don't really know who won.

Well balancing the dueling obviously is a must but going to leave that to the other threads, but making it so armor makes one hit kills impossible again seems like one of the easiest solutions one can think of. Obviously there are many others, but seeing this is such a large topic on it's own lets move on to the next point.

Guildwars aren't realistic. You can fight anywhere and this would be strange if neither of the guilds have the power to fight against the guard of a city for example. It is also unrealistic because of the inviting required. As said before did Hitler invite Poland to a war and Poland went like "hey cool I'm sure we can win this one"? So I feel declaring war shouldn't be done like this, but should be a true declaration.

However to counter endless wars I feel there should be a maximum duration programmed to a guildwar for example it could be 1 week and after that you can't declare again on the same guild for 3 weeks. This to keep the enjoyment of the game so that some guild is not constantly harassing a certain other guild.

For realism and enjoyment there should also be safezones where the pvp doesn't work. Personally I would feel the safezones should be the Deathrealm and the cities. The deathrealm to prevent killing after killing after killing and because it should be hard and a torment just to get out and the cities because the guards would prevent the fighting there. Once the guards can really interact with the players when they do something bad you could change it that the guards find you hostile once you fight there, but at the moment the AI is simply not smart enough for that so sounds better to prevent pvp there.

Also a point would be the pointlessness. Unless someone is really superior it is really hart to see who has one and obviously this isn't really realistic either. In several wars the fighting might be so close that both try to claim victory, but in most wars there is normally a sign to clearly show to an objective observer who has gotten the upper hand. So a way to "win" a war should be implemented. Now I am not a big fan of killcounters, but in this case it seems to be the only real way at the moment to count how a war is going. Guilds don't own land or NPCs and there is no "king of the hill" system either. So the number of deaths I feel would be an objective way to show who is winning, specially seeing if people know this is the criteria they can easily change their tactics around it and with the safezones the "low leveled" persons don't have to partake in battles.

If a killcounter is chosen I feel there should also be a sytemmesage when someone has won. One shouldn't be able to win however unless they have passed a certain minimum in their score and a certain difference in score with their oponents. This to minimize misuse when ahead in the points.

Last point I feel should be done is make alliances useful. This could be done by making it possible to join an ally in a war. Why is this necessary you ask if war can simply be declared anyhow? Because people who declare using the ally option would then be in the same war and so try to gain the advantage together. With a killcounter this would mean it would count all deaths and kills of that side and not just the one guild to see who is victorious.

[eldoth_terevan]

Good stuff. Alliances should be made useful. Allies should go to war as well, after all, that is the point of an alliance. And alliance chat for leaders would be useful too...

[Garile]

Well that is why I suggested what I did, although I don't feel allies should go to war automaticly. People might agree to keep it a one on one war after all or an ally might not feel like helping in a war unless declared upon themselves depending the terms of the alliance.

PS: the edit on the message was to take away some of the typo's. It was late when I wrote that I suppose

[lordraleigh]

I don't remember the Japanese Empire declaring war on the United States before attacking Pearl Harbor

[Garile]

hehe isn't the attack a declaration by itself? A declaration of war doesn't need to be a nicely written letter

[Narure]

Surely a guild with 100000 members would defeat a guild with 10 even if the guild with 10 had killed 13 of the 100000 members guild and they have only killed 9 of the 10 members guild.

[lordraleigh]

Surely a guild with 100000 members would defeat a guild with 10 even if the guild with 10 had killed 13 of the 100000 members guild and they have only killed 9 of the 10 members guild.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_marathon

Strenght of each of the forces in manpower

Athenians and Plataeans : 11,000

Persians: Modern historians estimate between 20,000 - 60,000. Ancient Historians estimate between 200,000 and 600,000

And there are other examples of outnumbered forces achieving victory. Of course in the example Narure gave only if Laanx was one of the 10 guildmembers they could stand a chance, unless they had an extreme tactical advantage over the others.

[dying_inside]

There is obviously alot of work to do on guilds to make them more interesting in game and validate peoples want of good PVP with purpose.  Guildwars is the type of thing that fits into Planeshift well.

For now killcounts is the only thing I can think of too that really works for decicding the victor. There should also be a penalty for the losing guild maybe? Some tria for instance. Although this would mean you'd have to implement a "vualt" system into  the game. This would give a little roisk factor to the guidwas, and thus not have them erupting all over the place.
It would be nice to see a king of the hill style  objectives and such later on in the game, and then you would really have to make use of alliances. Also the delay period would be nice, and give you a bit of time to saviour anything you gain from the guild war.

Personnally I think they would have to work on both the combat and PVP/guildwars simultaneously to really figure out how interesting / over powered player attacks are.
I personnally think its better to have attacks  underpowered than overpowered because at least then if its  balanced you still have interesting battles between you and an NPC or player.

[lordraleigh]

For now killcounts is the only thing I can think of too that really works for decicding the victor. There should also be a penalty for the losing guild maybe?

My two cents: On roleplay, to make things interesting, in less lawful guild wars the penalty should be a massive disruption of its activities and losses of members, or in other cases: the complete annihilation of the guild that lost it. In other cases, the losing guild should sign a letter of surrender, or some kind of armistice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wwi#End_of_war

[Garile]

Surely a guild with 100000 members would defeat a guild with 10 even if the guild with 10 had killed 13 of the 100000 members guild and they have only killed 9 of the 10 members guild.

First of with that many people involved in the war I doubt that 13 would be enough to reach the minimum and I also think the difference would have to be more then 4 kills to reach a victory.

As for the numbers themselves if you can't kill more people then them with an advantage of 100.000 against 10 then I am sorry but your tactics are really bad or you are really a zerg guild with no quality at all.

But anyhow I didn't hear a counter suggestion in that post. Just saying you think it wouldn't be realistic in, lets be honest, a ridiculously out of proportions example isn't very constructive.

But lets see if we can think of an example. Ever heard of the spartans? Or perhaps Alexander the Great? Just look through their histories and you'll find plenty of examples of well trained and prepared troops winning against overwhelming numbers.