Shattered Kingdoms

Baldric convinced me to make this post, so if you hate it blame him.

I have a few problems with the current city-warfare PvP system in SK. To start, the more that someone becomes outlawed, the more that they attract bounty NPCs. The more bounty NPCs they attract, the more outlawed they become. In addition, being banished even with no crimes causes a noticeable amount of bounty NPCs to spawn if you're walking within a city.

The typical result of this system of the city-warfare system is that once a player becomes banished, they spend the majority of their time fighting bounty NPCs, which while not threatening in and of themselves, negatively affect any attack so much that usually one of a few things ends up being the best choice for the attacker.

A) To sit somewhere in a corner and try to summon defenders.
B) To bring an overwhelming force so that the home advantage granted by bounty NPCs isn't enough to sway the tides of battle.
C) To avoid city PK in general except for "ninja-ganks" where the attacker gates into a target 2 rooms from the inn, looks in the inn, and if someone's in there, attempt to kill them, otherwise, just leave.
D) To take advantage of the limitations of the law code to avoid getting outlawed for murder, as banishment is a death sentence which means you are not going to be able to attack the city "normally" ever again. This involves doing things like stunning attackers and full-looting them, charming PCs and leading them out of the city to kill them, constantly turning yourself in for crimes of the city you're at war with, etc. Things that make little sense from an outsider's perspective, but that are the best choice mechanically (And as such, is often the best choice ICly even if it otherwise makes little sense.)

For the defender, likewise, the existence of bounty NPCs typically means that your best options are one of the following:
A) To exclusively focus on ranged combat, meaning that warlocks, scouts, and ranged weapon mercenaries have an unbelievably huge advantage. Retreating as a mercenary is virtually impossible to stop.
B) In the case of an overwhelming force, to constantly sit a few rooms away while the opposing group moves around the city endlessly slaughtering NPCs.

Now, I'm not saying that these are the only options available for attackers or defenders: They're just usually the -best- options available for getting kills or winning the battle safely. Defenders especially have many options, but in general a defender that can take advantage of ranged combat has absolutely no incentive to fight face-to-face with his opponents, which is a very frustrating experience for the attackers.

I view these symptoms of the current system to be very negative. I feel that it encourages attacking cities with overwhelming numbers, that it rewards abusing the law code in strange quirky ways, and that it also involves way too much NPC killing when a city is under siege. Additionally, the current system does nothing at all to ensure that inns are actually safe havens: Rather, they're often the first place that is checked when someone is attempting to "attack a city," and can often be checked without anyone noticing, even if they're outlawed or in a tribunal that's at war with yours. I think this hurts the realism of the game in many ways: What's the point of having gate guards, or even gates at all, when the greatest security vulnerability are the gate targets within the city? Why do the bounty NPC guards, while plentiful, provide no real deterrent to attackers in and of themselves?

What I'd like this thread to be is a discussion on any options that you think are better, and in addition, I have my own suggestions and I'd like to see what your thoughts of my ideas are: Specifically if you want to theorycraft, I'd like to know what you think the natural result of my ideas would be, and if there are any negative effects they would have on the game that could be shored up with modifications. If there's good suggestions my intention is to modify this thread with them or with potential downsides I hadn't thought of.

Current downsides of city PvP:

A) There's no safety within cities, and inns are especially vulnerable to gate-ganks without warning from NPCs 2-3 rooms away.
B) Bounty NPCs adversely affect the balance of city PvP by making ranged combat and retreat way too powerful.
C) Players are given too many incentives to avoid the law code entirely through quirks and abuses of the law code.
D) Bounty NPCs cause a very huge snowball effect on one's outlaw list, in that killing bounty NPCs gets you more outlawed which then makes you kill more bounty NPCs.

My suggestion:
What I would suggest, is that capital cities should be made completely summon-proof and gate-proof, yet recall in and word of recall out should still be possible. All entrances to any major city should have 1-2 rooms of unorderable guards that yell, including a report over tribunal chat, when they're attacked and/or killed. The guards themselves should be dangerous, in that a solo player would have trouble killing them but a few players could do so with relative ease (a little more powerful than the groups of Nerinan guards for example), and they should attack warring trib members on sight. They should track, but be chained to the city. Remove bounty NPCs completely, perhaps replacing them with wizinvis scouting NPC which merely report on the location of outlaws, if anything. The primary detractors of tribunal accounts should be the gate guards and judges.

Here's the part people might argue the most with me on: I think the gate guards should have truesight, to avoid giving "secret ambush power" to possessors of <INSERT CABAL SPELL> and <INSERT OTHER CABAL SPELL>. If you get outlawed and/or banished, being part of a certain cabal should not make you able to ignore the law completely.

I think this would have the following positive effects on city PvP:

A) Cities would feel much safer. If you are resting in a city's inn you should feel much safer knowing that anyone at war with the tribunal or outlawed will not be able to enter without first going through the gate guards.
B) Players would not be required to rack up huge outlaw lists of NPC kills in order to engage in city PvP. In the situation that you are caught and killed, you will not be faced with an absurdly huge list of hundreds of bounty NPC kills causing days or weeks of RL time required to pay your sentence.
C) Jail would be more meaningful, as it would be more difficult to break people out of them. Coupled with the fact that jail sentences are virtually guaranteed to be shorter, I think this is a positive thing.
D) Bounty NPC farming will not be an option nor feel like a requirement for attackers.
E) There will be much clearer starts and ends to any city attack, compared to the current system where attacks can begin and end without warning.

Potential downsides I can foresee at the moment:

A) It will be more annoying for people to meet up quickly through gates. The current system of having people recall and then go to a gate target in their city will be over, and instead the quickest option will be to have people go to their stones or another gate target for gates (Or just walk to the meeting point).
B) It may encourage camping of gates and/or portal stones more than at the moment.
C) It would heavily discourage solo-pk in cities as an attacker (Thanks to Mundy for this one)

Any thoughts, improvements, potential loopholes or downsides that I've not thought of?

Downside would be it would pretty much make you have to do group pk, solo pk would be non-existent in cities. And as someone who likes to do solo-pk that'd be really annoying.

the change is not needed cuz the problem is not the code. the problem, if there is 1, is the players. if ur not wanting to pk in exile, menegroth, sith'a'niel, the moot or nerina, this won't change anything at all cuz people will still just run away or move.

bounty guards r the symptom of the problem, not the actual problem.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, Finney. I think that if you -want- to PK, you have to wade through countless NPCs and rack up huge outlaw lists unless you abuse the law code, and that if you -don't- want to PK, then city centers don't provide any real warning at all. I think those are bad things.

Are you saying that my problems stem from people not wanting to PK?

On a more conceptual standpoint, while I think that player attitude often contributes to things like attacking with overwhelming numbers constantly, I also think that there are aspects of the built areas and code that currently reward and encourage that sort of behavior, and that those things should be changed.

correct. this is the problem, if u want to look it at that way, and the symptom is the bounty guards.

i'm not against this change i just don't think it will make any difference. if dulrik wants to spend time coding it and give it a spin, it won't hurt to try it out for a few months. ur probably going to be vry disappointed with the results tho.

In a way this still encourages you to bring an overwhelming amount of people. If you can kill the guards quickly you can rush to the inn and fight. If you don't bring a lot of people it will be a slow walk to the inn and by that time everyone would be gone.

Thank you Edoras.

I strongly support moving in this direction. Bounty NPCs are bad. They make little sense ICly, make city PvP boring, and encourage all sorts of stupid (But currently necessary) behavior, like abusing the law code and bounty NPC farming.

I would not be opposed to putting one room in the city that you could gate into and out of, and filling this room with guards - maybe even more than the regular gates. This should solve the inconvenience problem.

I'm not keen on the true-seeing idea, and I agree with Mundy that discouraging solo pvp is undesirable. What if the gate guards were high hp, so going through them would alert the city and give everyone advanced warning, but they didn't hit tooooo hard, so a well prepped character could solo them as a challenge? Somewhere between a regular GM NPC with a weapon and an outer guardian.

I am very fond of SK's "Nowhere is truly safe" thing it has going. To me, this either encourages someone to be way better at hiding, or turn around and face the pursuer. Making a city zone no gate/summon would then make those in the city unable to gather "log in time" though right? No clue if it would be better or worse but: I would rather see more of a response unit for city attacks. A group of npcs that respond to the city being attacked to go to and engage an enemy formation. Similar to, but not nearly as powerful as, the war-party summoned by slaying a judge. It just feels dumb that guards all over the city are screaming for their lives that there are enemies there, and all the other guards kind of sit there thinking "Hm, should I do anything about that?" I'd think SOME guards would go and check it out (not gate guards obviously, gotta maintain their post).

At the very least I would rather see bounty NPCs reduced in quantity and risen in quality.
"Oh no an enemy has breached the city, we must retaliate! But we don't have enough funds for swords! *gasp* Just throw your bodies at them and punch these people in adamantite armor until our corpses pile up enough to block them out! Chaaarge!"
Maybe greatly decrease the spawn rate of bounty NPCs in cities, but improve their equipment and skills. And for the love of the Pantheon do not dispatch guards to attack when they are using nothing but their fists. If the Nation can't afford to send them out geared, then don't send them out. This way, aside from bogging down an enemy in a wall of flesh, keeping coffers full might actually help you with a few challenging NPCs. My 2 cents.

PS: What would really be cruel if all cities worked like the delf city's response to an attack, just keep summoning/calling in guards(who are armed) until they can actually take you out legit.

I think we simply have different points of view then. I'm not trying to make it more difficult or less difficult to siege a city: I'm trying to make it the -right- kind of difficult, by providing more protection to the central points of a city while removing the blanket city-wide protection of bounty NPCs that spawn en masse every time the attacking force moves. I'd like city PvP to be more about the PCs than the NPCs, yet without making people who choose to spend their time in inns feel exposed.

I can understand that point of view, and there's something to be said for the fact that it's all but impossible to code a system that actively punishes people who bring "too many attackers" a la cabal defenders. That said, it's really difficult to draw the line sometimes between giving an advantage to the defenders yet not making it a requirement to bring overwhelming numbers. I would prefer a system that emphasizes warning the defense over being the defense. I'd rather the system prioritized the ability for attackers to see you coming, but didn't give them a huge upper hand in the actual defense itself. The current bounty NPC system unfortunately does both, but only sometimes: By having the bounty NPCs deal no damage, but spawn endlessly and take time to kill, there's too much assistance given to the defenders, and in the wrong sorts of ways too.

For what it's worth, I preferred -defending- the city before bounty NPCs were re-introduced many years ago, merely because it seemed that I was more often defending against just a 2 man attack if I was the only peacekeeper.

This is a road to potentially go down as well, but the issue I take with it is that we've already gone down these roads. Since the reintroduction of bounty NPCs, we've gone from them being really powerful and unique (Taslamar NPCs would holy word, ayamao/zhenshi/northern wastes NPCs would berserk, and Empire NPCs would CLEAVE), to being purposefully hampered to silly scripts, to their current form of roadblocks that pose no threat while alone. All in all I prefer the current form the most out of all the previous options because they carry the least feeling of the NPCs doing all the work for the defense, but ultimately I would really like to move away from any form of automatic endless guard spawning. Static solutions are just better in my eyes, and provide more depth to the defense of a city. Killing bounty NPCs as an attacker feels meaningless (despite it outlawing you like crazy) and watching bounty NPCs die as a defender feels meaningless too (despite the fact that they're the #1 casualties in any city PvP). It has a lousy OOCness to it.

This is a good point. A current intermediate form of this that would require less work on the side of builders would be to simply remove gate targets from within cities, which, while it would still allow for the potential of PC gate targets, would at least provide more security for inns as a whole by making "drive-by" tactics less potent. The primary reason I suggest making gates/summons impossible in cities was to reinforce the "city" feel of a siege, in that you're going to have to enter the gates with your warparty, rather than bypassing the static guards with a single un-outlawed person only to gate in an entire army that's banished.I really like this idea.

I'm not trying to be contrary to your idea here, but let me just try to take this thought of yours and turn it around on you here, because it's actually the basis for my entire line of reasoning behind this thread.

If you join a tribunal, -you're- that group. That's you. I'm not a fan of having a roving set of guards like the Teronian enforcers because that job is, quite literally, why you join a tribunal in the first place. There's a reason why NPCs like that only exist in places like Teron and Ch'zyyrm: Those cities don't have a PC-based tribunal. If you're a member of the Peacekeepers/talon/legion, congratulations, you're the roaming guard!



This is a good direction to take things, I believe. As long as the guards are static and aren't going to spawn on the attackers automatically, I think they should pose a reasonable threat that has to be taken seriously. I'm thinking something along the lines of Zhenshi's defense system (where there's a few different classes in formation near each gate) is what every city should follow. Can a single person kill them, especially with a tribunal NPC in tow? Sure. Is that a good idea? Eh, it depends on how crazy you are.

In other words, while I don't want to discourage solo PvP myself either: Is it really -right- that a single person can easily bypass a city's defenses if he's a known outlaw? As fun as it has been to be that person in the past, the answer to that should be no.

Summon proof and gate proof means that if I get hit with curse, I have to fight my way back out since gates and rifts will not work.

A single person cannot kill the nerina guard clusters under normal circumstances.

I really like baranovs corpse wall idea.

Who was the last person to get hit with a drive-by inn gank? And how did they die? Proper precautions like formation should prevent gate in kills.

The solution would just be the ability to strategically place 5 high hp, low damage non bashing guards unarmed guards at specific locations of your choosing instead of trying to funnel your enemies 300 style vs mini warparties.