Where's the war?

[Dirtz]

You want something evil? I got evil for ya:

You say you want a front line to bash thru and supply lines and a general to defeat by invading his headquarters? Try this on for size:

You're out with a group wanting to do an Indes raid (fyakki) and lo and behold you run into the great red wall of death?! Thats right, areas of the eastern blight are no longer accessible because like guild houses and other structures you no-longer have permission to get there? You pull up the map and see a big red battleline drawn across or maybe small pockets of resistance. Hows this gonna work? WA builds linked structures that have permissions set to deny all and until x amount of them have been defeated the WA have their supply lines and headquarters protected.Imagine a series of structures linked to form a battlefront and successive linesbehind it that slowly receed and give you more targets to hit. Oh and just maybe with a few good scouts you you might find that crack in the armor and set up a lightning raid that could change the momentum of the war?

Now the structures themselves would have to be accessible to be defeated but act like sentry posts and build a frontage to deny our avatars access to the more vital areas of the wasteland. Silos and supply houses could be located behind these lines and could be raided once the sentries have been defeated to slow or even halt the advance of new sentry posts. Lt's and Generals have their headquarters, new mobs (non combat) might show up and ferry supplies from point a to b and can be disrupted, else they stockpile the much needed supplies to build more sentry posts. Everytime you destroy their precious silos they have to stop and repair and reform those supply lines.

Oh and you want some kewl tie ins with current content? How about emblems and militia ranks. Militia should be tied in to the trophy hunters currently in each town (level wise), each rank having its own benefits and consequences. Thats right consequences. If you belong to Auggy Militia and its under attack you get called to battle (maybe even ported lol), the higher your rank the more you're needed (higher chance of ported). You can only belong to one militia at a time but each militia can organize raids into certain red zone blighted areas of appropriate level challenges.

You want real loss? You want real sense of achievement? Imagine a week long community campaign centered around the recovery of the yew fields, ordeep penetrationbattlesinto the wastelands to defeat the Lt's andGenerals and earn a short rest (month) as they reorganize for their next push? Or how about disrupting supply covoys as wa mules lug resources to a potential sentry post site? Or, (gasp), named mobs who hold ranks in the wa have the ability (however small)to taint your armor and weapons, now you have to cleanse them (process saves comps needed for techs but requires new base resources).You'd have clear definable targets and objectives with limitedsupplies to wage war. But if you ask for war I dont want to hear any whiners, its all or nothing and either we stand together and beat it back mercilessly or get overrun as we point fingers at who's to blame.


The possiblities are endless and have real consequences that can be reversed with a solid community effort. Can it be done by christmas?No, but perhaps the long awaited expansion to Horizons would be the declaration of war and the new source code it needs to support it? Hopefully within a year? a definite possiblility!

[Aamer Khan]

To further your idea, and to introduce the anchors...

Why not have a very strong, very resistant blight spectre float quietly in from the east deadlands? It should be small, and carry with it the blight effect, but should NOT follow roads. It would be like a suicide scout, equipted with strong defenses, designed to infiltrate the living lands, and carries the anchor portal. Once it gets to its desired location, it commits suicide, and opens the portal for an anchor to spawn. If it gets killed along the way, it will spawn where it dies.

This opens up a very dynamic opportunity. If we are foolish and kill it too close to the gates of Harro, too bad for Harro! But, if we plan well and draw it away from towns, we may have a chance to protect our communities. Perhaps a WM would actually guild these mobs to allow for more varied situations to develop. If done well, and not discovered, these blight scouts could reach ANY town or community.

Tactical advantage, and strategy will come into play with these ideas. And thats what many of us truly want!

[Bori Grimbattle]

The night mist hung heavily over the land, obscuring vision and muffling sound. A greenish glow appeared in the secluded valley and a large structure casts a lurid shadow over the pristeen landscape. Furtively, in short, quick advances, the shadows move forward and the sounds of construction can be heard along with gutteral voices and the occasional snarl of anger.

Morning brings a vision that would haunt the nightmares of the bravest soul. The once green landscape is now blackened, the trees are black and twisted, the leaves giving off the scent of rot and decay. In the center of the clearing is a twisted, upside down version of the Gifteds' Bindstones. The Aegis have discovered the secret of the Gifted!

What I am suggesting here is the Aegis come covertly, settling in out of the way areas that are not often visited. Perhaps just across from the mithril, but not actually in it. Perhaps in a corner or the Aug mines that has no resources. Then they build a camp, complete with a bindstone. Unlike the Gifted's bindstone however, the ones made by the Aegis can be destroyed. They have not yet fathomed all of our secrets.

Once the "Base" is established, and this could happen in a few places simultaneoulsy, they start sending out the patrols. If the patrols from one group happen to link/meet up with those of another then the Aegis gets a bonus, a higher level General,more troops. Then it continues.

Trying to destroy them by killing the patrols alone would be foolhardy as they would just resurrect at their bindstone. The Gifted would have to follow the patrols backward in time to find out where the base is and destroy it.

The problem with the anchors,as long as one did not attack the spawning mobs, was they would leave you alone after you popped the green globes. moBs would spawn but would not protect their base and would head immediately off down to the nearest road to march up and down.

We should have to fight to get to the anchors but we were in fact fighting more away from them. The safest spot in an anchor blighted area was in sight of the anchors.

Just some more thoughts I thunked.

[Hasai]

....Lastly, manuver elements...here we are a tad weak as we have no cavalry. We do have races and classes that canrun faster than others and of course, dragons can ignore terrian altogther....

Dragons are Air Cavalry. . . . Or they would be, if they could carry other players.
[W]

....Some of this CAN be fixed.Let's say the anchors return. Over a given period of time a certain group of anchors appear hither and yon indentified by a badge, either a physical one or in the text name, i.e Anchor of the Red Hand Division. When an anchor is destroyed, two things happen. All surviving mobs return to the anchor corpse and an officer appears out of the shards of the anchor. Now we have another reason to fight. As each division as a finite number of anchors, the last anchor would be the HQ anchor. It would be better protected than any previous anchor from that division, It would spit out more mobs and it's officer would be a General, equaling in toughness at least the old pre-merge AoP....

Superb; an actual, working, military organization. Would they be able to reinforce one-another? If so, if an upper-echelon command structure is destroyed, would the subordinate echelons lose this capability?

....How's 10 Training Points sound?....

Frankly, I'd prefer crystals.
[G]

....Not only would the anchors appear so would other troops to impede our response....

Blocking forces.

....Let's say an anchor pops in the mithril fields. We have unimpeded accesss to the mithril fields and the anchor is gonna die pretty quick. Well, WA decided to impede that access. Groups of critters will patrol EVERY road leading to those fields out to a pre-determined distance. Perhaps a Fang like werewolf leading a crowd of every sort of anti-social type critter you could imagine. The Gifted have to fight their way thru those to get to the anchor....

A flaw: The WA have no anti-air capability. A good commander would pin those blocking forces, then send a flight of dragons in behind the FEBA to either tear-up the next echelon or swing around and and hit those blocking forces in the rear.

....Kwellans can raid nearby towns and settlements, killing NPCs and PCs and possibly worse. I would like to see machines, smelters, anvils, stonecutters etc get blighted....

Search and Destroy operations; I like it, but the LR should be permitted the same.

....Until the blighted structure is cleansed though, using it imparts a 25% penalty in efficiency....

Or, perhaps produce blighted products. That would be interesting.

Nice ideas all in all.
[I]

[imported_Ssilmath]

Actually Hasai, the opportunity for dragons to fly around behind and flank the WA is the perfect application for dragons...Think of them as light cavalry, the primary flanking and raiding force...able to get anywhere on the battlefield and make a difference...

And I see the supermulticlassed less as infantry and more like heavy cavalry...the shock troops of the army that are supposed to lead the charge...

It would be awesome to see the WA start acting on the suggestions, and would certainly add a huge amount of fun to the game, making it an active war instead of passive hunting...

Oh, and add "Blighted Golems" to the mix as well, would be interesting...Perhaps give them a hike in armor and make their attacks area of effect so that they are dangerous heavy troops, kind of akin to the trolls that come through the gates of Minas Tirith...

[Dragonboy]

The ideas are cool and I even gave my idea as second poster, but after posting it I began to wonder if the decreasing playerbase is ready for a war like this...

Of course each server has its own share of (heavy cavalry) Demi-gods and large amount of (fast cavalry) dragons, but even with this in mind I wonder if the servers have enough players for this war...

[Goibhnie]

I believe with the increase of a WA assault front and word of how fun it is (war as fun, a little odd) I believe we'll see a good many of our old friends come back to take up arms. I know I'd be on a good bit more then I am now.

The ideas are great! Just hope they are feasible and aren't falling on deaf ears.

[Aamer Khan]

Chaos has enough, but you may be right about order and unity.

The good thing about these ideas are they will draw more players to Horizons.

Almost any idea that will increase the fun factor and give existing players a new thing to do will do wonders on getting the playerbase to grow.

I hope that ideas like these are seriously considered by the Dev's and used whenever possible.

[Kwinn]

[img]/Web/Themes/default/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]Kwinn wrote: ....Lastly, manuver elements...here we are a tad weak as we have no cavalry. We do have races and classes that canrun faster than others and of course, dragons can ignore terrian altogther....
Dragons are Air Cavalry. . . . Or they would be, if they could carry other players.
[img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-52.gif[/img]

Yeah, players with parchutes! Vertical envelopment! CURRAHEEE Airborne!

....Some of this CAN be fixed.Let's say the anchors return. Over a given period of time a certain group of anchors appear hither and yon indentified by a badge, either a physical one or in the text name, i.e Anchor of the Red Hand Division. When an anchor is destroyed, two things happen. All surviving mobs return to the anchor corpse and an officer appears out of the shards of the anchor. Now we have another reason to fight. As each division as a finite number of anchors, the last anchor would be the HQ anchor. It would be better protected than any previous anchor from that division, It would spit out more mobs and it's officer would be a General, equaling in toughness at least the old pre-merge AoP....
Superb; an actual, working, military organization. Would they be able to reinforce one-another? If so, if an upper-echelon command structure is destroyed, would the subordinate echelons lose this capability?

I would think they were close enough help, they would. If upper echelons were destroyed, I don't think lower units should necessarily lose cohesion or command and control. By example I offer the german in Russia during WWII after Stalingrad. They were superb, even down to company and platoon level. No reason WA shouldn't be the same way.

....How's 10 Training Points sound?....
Frankly, I'd prefer crystals.
[img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-51.gif[/img]

....Not only would the anchors appear so would other troops to impede our response....
Blocking forces.

....Let's say an anchor pops in the mithril fields. We have unimpeded accesss to the mithril fields and the anchor is gonna die pretty quick. Well, WA decided to impede that access. Groups of critters will patrol EVERY road leading to those fields out to a pre-determined distance. Perhaps a Fang like werewolf leading a crowd of every sort of anti-social type critter you could imagine. The Gifted have to fight their way thru those to get to the anchor....
A flaw: The WA have no anti-air capability. A good commander would pin those blocking forces, then send a flight of dragons in behind the FEBA to either tear-up the next echelon or swing around and and hit those blocking forces in the rear.

True, WA has no AA capability. This is a weakness we should exploit to the fullest. Any army's weakness should be exploited by it's opponent.

....Kwellans can raid nearby towns and settlements, killing NPCs and PCs and possibly worse. I would like to see machines, smelters, anvils, stonecutters etc get blighted....
Search and Destroy operations; I like it, but the LR should be permitted the same.

....Until the blighted structure is cleansed though, using it imparts a 25% penalty in efficiency....
Or, perhaps produce blighted products. That would be interesting.

Nice ideas all in all.
[img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-55.gif[/img]

Kwinn

[Carinde]

These sound like wonderful ideas, and I do hope that Tulga is watching this thread and taking note of the suggestions here. While I'm certain they have ideas and agendas of their own, this sounds like something that could be very enjoyable.

I would also like to suggest that the attacks are primarily tier based depending on the region the battles take place, with higher / lower tier armies appearing randomly from time to time. Purple Vexators in Sslanis might be a bit much all the time.

A wonderful suggestion all in all, and you can believe that I will be there to assist in any way that I can.

[Senkeleron Fell]

I think we may have to accept that our side isn't going to be able to engage in much more than a squad level war. Might be a good idea to find out if you have the number of players and the interest for a full scale war. Lots of players get upset at the presence of any mobs at all in their resource fields, imagine the complaints when they are filled with an enemy brigade. It also has to be a war that can be fought with characters popping in and out of the game. The machine never sleeps, the players do.

[Jayne]

Sounds fun, but yes some players wouldnt like it. Me being a killing machine totally void of crafting would love it.

I am not quite sure about the fairness of access though, being that dragons can fly anywhere and go into areas that a biped couldn't.

Jayne

[Guaran]

I killed an anchor once that spawned just northeast of the spiral in the western deadlands, it was right along the coast up there. Not sure what resources that one was guarding, I guess was after adventurers laying waste to the flame blights :)

Anyway, for the anchors, there are anchors that spawn the blighted mobs.

How about a "Super-Anchor" that is responsible for the ocassional respawns of the regular anchors? Would have a 2 to 4 week respawn, try to hide itself in far-away corners of the land, and be very difficult to defeat. once the main anchor generator (some new mean looking 4 headed monster/machine) was defeated, and then the regular anchors, we get a 4 week reprieve from the assaults. The anchor generator would need to be manually spawned by dev's, or pre-set ahead of time to repsawn on certain dates. Basically a server reboot should not reset it's spawn.

Give it a few million hp, and rezzing kwellen druids for guards. Could rival the satyr machine raids in difficulty.

I can picture a machine with biological parts, lightning repeatedly striking it, with a blight maelstrom overhead. The swirling, storming clouds. Kinda like the sky in the blight regions except closer to the ground swirling effect. Really nasty and scary looking.

[Xorith]

After reading every post here, I think that Tulga should post a sort of reply with their thoughts on the ideas here.

Also, the concern about 'all players' is one that has to be considered, but really... my thoughts on making everyone happy is that you won't ever accomplish that. As it stands now, everyone who enters the game and reads through any text on it knows one thing: There is a war going on. If you want to play a game with no war, with no risk, with no challenge, I'm quite sure some of the other MMOs out there can accomidate you.

I really think war should be a reality. I love how Lesser Aradoth is right now, however it is getting kind of boring. I started shortly after the change, so I never knew how it was before. I just liked the idea of a risk when I was still level 10 and trying to move around the land. I don't know how many times those undead patrols handed my own dragon tail to me, and I remember feeling awesome the first time I felt I could stand and fight against one, and win.

The problems have already been outlined though. A static war is a boring war, especially when you KNOW the results. You know that the raids on the player towns will be fended off, or will retreat. You know that there's no real reason to drop that mining pick and to run out and fight, except for whatever personal reasons you may have. This is something that burns me in every game, that there's no risk. Quite frankly, there NEEDS to be risk. Buildings can be rebuilt, let it be player plots or otherwise. So lets have them destroy buildings. I'm sure a raid on Augh that results in some NPC casulaties and the Augh mine being blocked off until repaired would be sufficient to provoke some players. The very first raid with new 'risks' would be devistating simply because people won't believe that there's risks... After that though, you can be sure that players will be more interested.

Every game has risks, except the MMOs of the world. The reason is because players put so much real life time into building their characters, plots, and whatnot, that they're just ripe with anger if anything they can't control comes along and takes it away. That's just it though, this isn't about a single player's control. It's about players grouping together and controlling things. It's about all the non-blighted inhabitents of the world teaming together to fight. I think this community could handle risk... I think the majority would understand what it's all about. Those that don't? Well... perhaps they'll adjust. Perhaps they're the root cause of why this game can seem like a kindergarden MMO sometimes.

Risk is what drives me, as a player. I'm sure it drives others. In life, we take risks all the time... but the really fun risks are the ones we often opt to not take because they will leave a lasting impression on our real lives. MMOs are meant to be places where we can do things that we wouldn't normally be able to do in real life. I say give us the risks... so we can take them... and so we can run with them.

I'm starting to feel that the only challenge in this game is figuring out how many monsters you have to kill for your next level, or darting between golems trying to harvest from near-by resources. Really, even though I've only seen T1 and T2, I'm starting to feel as if it's just going to be a game of repetition for T3 and beyond. The only thing that changes are the names and colors and sizes of the mobs. Hell, even the types of mobs stay the same. Treants... Golems... Spiders... Pygmies... Ogres... Beetles... Wolves... Just insert the proper prefix, color change, and size and there you go.

An active war would breathe much challenge into the game, as it'd be hard to know just what's safe and what's not. I'd hate to see it be too challenging though. I mean, I consider it a challenge when there's a chance to overcome the challenge. A level 20 player running down roads between T1 and T2 cities shouldn't happen upon a squadron of T3 blights. Perhaps they could run into a scout... kill it... carefully progress down the road and then report back the intelligence - there's blights on the road between Dalimond and Tazoon! Gather a group... take out the squad. Have a real battlefield. Make it more dynamic... The WA activated a portal, there's reinforcements coming... gather more players! This is war! Take out the commander, take out the mages. Little time for a big strategy, so lets make do with what we can come up with before they reach a city... and what if they do? Burn it! Pillage! Destroy buildings, cut off transportation. Ravage the lands.

Make it interesting.

-- Valerith / Xorith -- Of Order

[Dragonboy]

I killed an anchor once that spawned just northeast of the spiral in the western deadlands, it was right along the coast up there. Not sure what resources that one was guarding, I guess was after adventurers laying waste to the flame blights [img]/Web/emoticons/emotion-1.gif[/img]

Anyway, for the anchors, there are anchors that spawn the blighted mobs.

How about a "Super-Anchor" that is responsible for the ocassional respawns of the regular anchors? Would have a 2 to 4 week respawn, try to hide itself in far-away corners of the land, and be very difficult to defeat. once the main anchor generator (some new mean looking 4 headed monster/machine) was defeated, and then the regular anchors, we get a 4 week reprieve from the assaults. The anchor generator would need to be manually spawned by dev's, or pre-set ahead of time to repsawn on certain dates. Basically a server reboot should not reset it's spawn.

Give it a few million hp, and rezzing kwellen druids for guards. Could rival the satyr machine raids in difficulty.

I can picture a machine with biological parts, lightning repeatedly striking it, with a blight maelstrom overhead. The swirling, storming clouds. Kinda like the sky in the blight regions except closer to the ground swirling effect. Really nasty and scary looking.

Why only 1 of those generators...

I would say an automatic spawn every 2-3 weeks no matter how many there are still left...
The more of these generators are present in Istaria, more and more Anchors will spawn... [H]

[Kravix]

OK so I havnt played since not to long after release. I could see that the game was going to be what it is now, maybe not as bad. But I have always held a special place in check for HZ. I have always hoped that it would one day become the game that I thought it would be. Dont flame me for not playing anymore, but this post made me almost reinstate my subscription.

Back on Topic

Dynamic war is right. The player base needs to be challenged. There has to be consequences for everything. I know that the surrent engine has severe limitations, but I saw some excelent ideas that could be implemented. My faorites with some elaboration from me.

An advancing line of WA. They should be coninually advancing, and slowly. The should spread from their heart outwards. Dropping anchors, and building up walls/forts/defenses. Once they have a secure line they would advance somewhat farther out. They are guided by the machine it should be slow and methodical.

NO RESPAWN-- The lines should advance but they should be clearly beaten back. If the WA cant get theor line solidly estwablished then they cant advance. If an anchor is destroyed its gone, It has to be planted again. If the players destroy their def structures. They are gone the WA then has to retreat back some more.If the players can hold them back to a certain point, sure they can come out, and sure they can try. And maybe the player base decides to take a day off.Well the WA sinally get the chance to get an anchor up, and start building their def.

Of course there has to be a point where it would take more than the current playerbase to push any farther. But by then with a real war maybe more will come back or join.

The WA advancing. Of course perhaps everyone is involved somewhere else. The WA are pressing hard on the Satyr mines. Obviously they arent moving against just on front. the are advancing on others also. and perhaps winning. Eventually taking over towns and cities. I like the idea of blighting everythhing through WA occupation. Also every hour something is blighted it can decay 1hp or so. So if the playerbase doest retake a town back in a week they could come in to find it wrecked with no buildings. This should include player structures. I know that some will cry and scream about them paying money to have their accomplishments destroyed. Theycan go play WoW with all the kiddos. It will never truely be a war until the players have consequences for not doing anyting.

At the same time it cannot be impossible to make the WA go away. Thats disheartening, thats the way it is now.

OK semi rant. I left for this reason. HZ catered to the crafters. rant off. There has to be rewards for the Adv. to go out and push back the blight. Yes theres a war yes we can lose towns yes the WA are gonna win, who cares nothing in it for me. If the Adv push the blight back or defend it what do they get? Hammerd by crafters that are harvesting the goods that they protect. Unfortunatly this could be a harder thing to implement. Give out tokens? Well soon they will mean nothing if you get one everyday. And large offensive or defensive once a month=boring. Kill counts.. yes but how to keep down farming? Ranks based on kill counts...again cool but how to keep down farming?

Farming thoughts..

Not every WA gives "War Fame" (I couldnt think of another name). Maybe they have to be connected to a certain defensive structure/anchor/etc. But after the initial spawn is killed the structure has to be destroyed before anyy more "Fame" can be generated.

Ranks as you gain progressivly more "War Fame" you gain ranks from the Imperial Court(sorry cant rember the Govt in HZ). Ranks can bring with them extra skills, higher caps, abilities to use extra items. Of course there could be a system like this for crafters, and de-blighting certain parts of the world etc..

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

I've been resisting a post in this thread, but here goes...

Q: Where's the War?

A: I mah pants!

[Kulamata]

Some stray thoughts from a very hot afternoon.

I'm with Levity; I'd like to push back the WA. If only to open up the Eastern continent. I'd prefer that to more WA incursions. And the big war... that's why I've been so partial to some players heavily multi-classing. They may be overbalanced with respect to necroflies. [;)], but with SoG and lots of lieutenants in an army encampment or the wedge...

I thought Aamer's idea of the the slowly moving, self-sacrificing anchor "mother" was very interesting. It would need to move slowly enough that players would have time to mobilize, and be in some way responsive, as Aamer says, to allow players to "steer" it in some fashion.

In the later days, anchor spawns did attack players on the scene. Good stuff. The bad stuff was overuse of the idea, since other additions were delayed I think, and anchors were used to fill in the hole. And the invisible anchors were terrible. In the beginning, anchors were great. Just over-exposed later, (how do you over-expose an invisible anchor?I'm silly with the heat I guess. )

[Crazyfingers]

Sounds like at one time folks knew that they were waiting around Horizons for.

Bring on the War!

NimKhazad