TW idea...

calavera wrote: »

The problem i see with this aproach is that as long as a faction needs to defend itself from only three attackers at any given time, it can actually more than succeed in putting up sufficient force to defend it's territories. You should consider that not only said faction will count with the largest amount of people with actual TW experience, but that it can easilly attract recruits from amongst the top tier of high level pvpers at any time. This is dismissing other methods, fake bids, rigged TWs, etc. it may actually put in place were a large scale cordinated assault be ever succesfully implemented (and this already is a very questionable assumption). Adding a fourth time slot would defeat the very purpose of making things fair for them, so it really comes down to only a matter of degree on how "unfair" you want to make things.

If the end result you are looking for is opening TW to a larger part of the player base i really fail to see how you can acomplish this without capping the max amount of land a faction can hold. It is sad but it's true. The system is rotten, yes, but it's also the players fault for allowing through neglect the growth of a faction to such a status, the situation in Sanctuary is pathetic to say the least. You need at least in between 6-9 guilds who can actually stand to the top dog to break the tie, as you must also consider defense, expansion, alliances. This means not only a massive amount of resources but certainly a lot of people comitted to a sustained long term effort. If your server already has half that, then it should be well on it's way to somewhat reversing the situation. If it doesn't, only GM intervention through rules changes will allow more people to access TW.

It's as simple as this, you either cap the amount of lands and allow the weaker factions to hold land, or you mobilize your server and actually fight, yes with odds against you, for the land. In either case you need a very strong consensus on what needs to be done and this is the really big bump, and i hope am wrong, you'll never be able to overcome. Things will stay the same, in all likelyhood, for a very long time.

Edit; With 5 attackers the defending faction would have to spread it's resources to a likely maximum of 40 defenders, at 8 is 25. And odds are not all 200 members will be on at the same time. Organized gankings hardly seem like the way to resolve the situation. Yes they can strategize and loose some territories to the weaker attackers but this is just a dishonorable way of enforcing a cap on lands anyway...

calavera wrote: »

Rereading my post i realized i was a bit more vague than i could have been, i do apologize. What i meant with allowing these factions to grow was that they shouldn't have been allowed to become so dominant in the first place. Territory holding factions should realize that past a certain point the growth of a single faction is a threat to all and act accordingly. There was probably a moment in Sanctuary in which, had the other factions worked together, they would have probably been able to beat their top dog down to a manageable level. This is what i meant with neglect.

I certainly didn't say alliances were easy, if you read my post it is one of the consensus scenarios i actually don't expect to see hapening. Yes, TWs are meant to encourage participation, but it's reward system doesn't really work that way, there is a strong trend towards one participant becoming dominant.

I'm not sure what you mean by free for all, if it's something like the OP's suggestion i've explained why i believe that wouldn't work, look at my edit, but the bottomline to me is it would make the bidding system so corrupt it would turn TW into an exclusively cash shop event (much more than it is already). This bidding system is also what would make attacking any day of the week a disaster, as it would turn it into a daily wallet race. If you allowed a system with no time slot limits, daily TW and no bidding then everyone and their mom would give it a try and the whole thing would descend into a system where only loaded no lifers would even have a shot at holding territory and most battles would be noobish 10 min affairs involving no skill.

Occam's razor mate, just putting a cap on max amount of land owned by a faction would allow strong guilds to join in and encourage mid level ones to get better. We would have as a result a very competitive environ and factions at the top would actually have a challenge and be required to bring their A game. Can the players do something about it? Yes, there's certainly a point to be made for good competitive factions coordinating or the comunity building a consensus they can bring to GMs. However since neither of these are things i expect to see happening i think will be seeing a single color on an entire map pretty soon.

Zoe - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I think you should have to defend every land you have at the same time if they all get attacked that week. Real war does not have time slots.

For that matter, throw out the time slots, anyone can attack at ANYTIME. Then it would be like a real war.

calavera wrote: »

I would have been careful not to contradict myself if i was going to claim someone's else's idea as dumb. I mean, are top guilds "strong" or "greedy"?

A cap would still mean guilds holding the max amount of territory would need to defend themselves, and as for the "soft" cap if that was working people wouldn't feel a need to continue making threads like this one. The basic dynamic we are discussing here is that when a faction becomes too overpowering it seems to discourage further competition, granted anything that "opens up" TW is in a sense giving the weaker factions a break but in a server like sanctuary (where apparently you have only 2 factions actually on the map) this may mean going from around 200 people doing regular TW to 1000 or more. The idea is strong guilds would benefit by increased competition whatever the loss of revenue (which is less important than it would seem).