Genesis Forums

Hello all,

Much like I have done in the past with the Cult of Chemosh development, I'd like to maintain a blog regarding the progress toward completion of the PvP Arena that I announced in the last Common Board post. We can use this thread for discussion about the arena, ideas, and dialogue back and forth. I'll very quickly delete posts that don't belong or are simply obnoxious, so lets stay on track and keep it positive.

G.

Update:

• Map of the Arena created to base everything on.
  • Area ringed by impenetrable cliffs.
  • Large area of plains with a road leading to a central Keep.
  • Forest to the west.
  • Swampland to the east.
  • North-south road leading to Keep.
  • East-west river flowing through all terrain types.
• Rooms coded and basic infrastructure for functionality in place for descriptions and exits.
  • Over 800 rooms.
  • Six different terrain types.
  • Moving between rooms includes a delay (similar to block) consistent with the terrain types. In other words, some terrain is slower to move through than others. The idea here is that with pvp, we don't want people to be able to just zip through rooms, but instead we slow everything down to allow combat to commence in a given location.
  • Pathfinding for npcs created such that they will be able to travel in the correct direction to find the Keep.
• Concept for arena functionality/play established (but NOT yet coded):
  • Whichever guild or alliance of guilds controls the keep gets a bonus to gameplay throughout Genesis (tbd) for all members so long as the Keep remains in their control.
  • Each new Armaggeddon, Npcs control the Keep, and must be conquered.
  • To conquer the Keep from the npcs, players will need to gather resources from the various terrain types (woods, swampland, etc) to create seige equipment, and then put it to use.
  • Once conquered, the Keep will need to be defended against both players and npcs (who want it back). When the Keep is controlled by players, enemy players can team up with the npcs to win it back.
  • Player Death in the arena will result in teleportation from the arena with a time delay before they can return. There will be no loss of gear or exp.

G.

gorboth wrote: [*]There will be no loss of gear or exp.[/list][/list]

G.

will there be gain of gear or exp?

Laurel wrote:

gorboth wrote: [*]There will be no loss of gear or exp.[/list][/list]

G.

will there be gain of gear or exp?

PVP gear, which would not work for PVE

Oh, wait, that's my WoW memory taking over...

Aristos wrote:

Laurel wrote:

gorboth wrote: [*]There will be no loss of gear or exp.[/list][/list]

G.

will there be gain of gear or exp?

PVP gear, which would not work for PVE

Oh, wait, that's my WoW memory taking over...

For PvP I'd rather solve it the Guild Wars way - it doesn't matter how it looks, all weapons and armours have the same stats. Zen balance.

Sounds interesting.

I think it would be a good idea if mercenary affiliation would confer the same bonus as the guild affiliated to, if that guild or any alliance it is part of control the keep.

Also if alliances will get in-code support, perhaps mercenaries could affiliate directly with an Alliance?

/M

Laurel wrote:will there be gain of gear or exp?

Regarding gear, the idea will be similar to WoW or FPS pvp, where you have the gear you have, you bring it to the party, and you keep it even if you die. What can be lost in terms of "EQ" here would be resources you were gathering and trying to get to your "base" whether that be the keep or some staging ground for a seige.

Regarding exp, I will have to think about that. One thing that makes sense to me is to keep track of some kind of separate "pvp score" based on kill/killed ratio that gives you a certain rank in the Arena. If we did that, like in WoW, we could also have it transfer to certain advantages if we wanted to. Or, it could just be for the sake of glory/pride.

G.

mumon wrote:Sounds interesting.

I think it would be a good idea if mercenary affiliation would confer the same bonus as the guild affiliated to, if that guild or any alliance it is part of control the keep.

Also if alliances will get in-code support, perhaps mercenaries could affiliate directly with an Alliance?

/M

This is something I'll have to do a lot of design work to get right, but I do want it. It won't be limited to Mercenaries, though. Rather, the idea will be that players can form alliances of any kind, whether it be a rag-tag group of players from various guilds, or a specific guild team. I think it will be up to the team that "claims" the Keep to set the parameters on who can benefit from the Keep's player-buffs. I am thinking, too, that the more you share, the less each person gets. So, if you have just one guild benefitting, the buff is more powerful than if you share it with two guilds.

What I wouldn't want is to allow Mercenaries to simply use their affiliation to switch to the winners of the Keep, and get the benefits/entry.

G.

Gorboth: Do you plan on scaling the size of the arena based on how many are participating?

If its a static 800 room area, it sounds huge? Anyone who has ever tried to PVP on the Krynn war areas (or just conquer the NPCs for that matter) has probably noticed how it's much more about running around huge plains that look the same, trying to find something/someone to kill, than it's about actual fighting. Personally, I have always felt the most fun PVP moments in Genesis has taken place in rather small areas. Like when I was a knight and someone raided the Spur or Keep and all the fighting took place in the rather small Vingaard Keep area + plains. Another example would be Flotsam/Balifor that I also remember as fun places to fight. (It was a pretty small area before the Centaurs area and Kendermore were added).

And realistically we're probably looking at 1vs1 and 2vs2 battles, and any teams larger than that fighting each other will probably be pretty rare with our current playerbase? (Which is supposed to grow of course, but... well currently its not that big. Yet).

So yeah, whether it's gonna be fun or not, I think finding the correct size of the area will be very important.

Having that said, I love everything about the idea!

merge Dragonarmies into one and Rangers into one for the calculations in this
let Shieldbearers contribute somewhat to the Clan even if they are not Neidars - similar Worshippers to Psuchae, AA laymans to AA occ, KoT to PoT
obviously AA occ and lay should contribute somewhat to MM too