DISCUSSIONS AROUND ONGOING PROJECTS

Hmm. I think the outpost owners would already be at a tactical advantage from simply having the outpost, and the accompanying NPCs.. The attackers still have to spend time to destroy the outpost building -- for a well upgraded outpost this may already take longer than traveling an army back to the outpost. Also throw in healer NPCs (spawn yourself a healer squad instead of respawning), and you've got yourself a pretty nice fortress. Giving the defenders a 'multiple rounds' advantage seems a bit too much 'easy mode' and may tip the balance too much.

Let's say you have a pretty good guild with a nice outpost, and some allies. You've got another guild attacking your outpost with their allies[*]. Your guild can quickly port into the outpost the first round to do the initial defense, together with NPCs -- at this point you have a guild with their allies attacking vs. a guild with NPCs, which can be relatively fair. Your allies are traveling in. Perhaps you fail to defend your outpost, and you all die. Maybe you have your allies tactically wait for your team to join up, or you have them advance. Either way, let's say the opposing guild destroys the outpost building. At this point they can build and have a weak non-functional outpost building -- and now they become the defenders. However, as long as the buildings are not constructed and not upgraded, they cannot get the NPCs yet. You are at this point still completely capable of regaining your outpost, by attacking it, and neither guilds have an advantage now.

Though, if one of your allies happens to have an outpost nearby, it can serve as a regrouping base... Perhaps they could even dispatch their NPC guards.

[*] An alliance system between guilds. Works like making facebook friends. In GvG anyone should be able to heal anyone directly, and allies can still be attacked directly (betrayal!), but AoE healing spells should only affect guild members and allies, offensive AoE should only affect non-allies.

At some point the whole process becomes a battle of resources. Either guilds fight each other to attempt gaining whatever they can gain from outposts, but they end up draining each other's resources.. and in the end the Kitins win... or... There should not be any artificial boundaries or disadvantages to launching an attack, to ensure that a stalemate doesn't develop. :)

@kaetemi: I'll look for the small pdf i have written and will put it here.

love those ideas kaetemi, but if you make all of pr pvp, surface sup's are a must to keep the game fair for rangers and other pve only players; if not they would never have fair access to sup dug mats when all of pr was forced pvp with op's and whatnot everywhere. surface op's could be kept but limited to 150 max Q mats (making it very friendly to f2p's and low level players), and keeping PR a high level zone and giving it appeal for the multi-masters because all op mats 200 - 250 are only produced at the PR op's) in this we've covered the low level limited f2p and noob community that could be, and the well established long standing multi-master played since beta 15 years ago player alike.but i'm just a ghost speaking my thoughts ;)

Even if I agree with you both, this obviously something that change the game soooo much it won't be accepted not even reviewed :)
Since the cry and bullstorm after it would be too much to handle for them.

Let it sink into a nice chit-chat between game design dreamer :)

Aw I missed this poll :(

The idea comes along with high level PvE-content areas.

No need to nerf an idea because something else is missing. :)

Related to proposal 3, removing q50&100 ops, are there too many ops overall? Currently 28, that would go down to 20 with proposal 3. But couldn't we reduce it more, down to 16, if we have just one Jr Op (50-150) and one Sr Op (150-250) per each material? The Ops could produce the same amount of material to increase scarcity, or production could be boosted to increase the benefit of controlling the Op.

Why not set up one set of OPs for the factions to fight over and another for the PvE folks to fight with the Kitin over.

OP refactoring presentation - 2020-08-31

See https://cloud.ryzom.com/s/pCP3JJgBrrMCgip

Ryzom Forge meeting - 2020-08-31

Q : "Change owners regularly"... Does this mean that we will be forced to abandon our "home" even if those who covet it are defeated in each of their attacks? With no chance for us to defend it ?
R : Yes this can happen; in this case the outpost will be taken by NPCs. But it will have begun to produce other materials anyway.

Q : In the case of GvG OP battles, is there anything scheduled to prevent the temporary recruitment in the conflicting guilds of members of their allied guilds?
R : Two solutions to address this issue are currently being studied to evaluate their respective side effects:
1 • Authorize temporary recruitment by capping the number of combatants
2 • Make the right to fight subject to a minimum seniority in the guild.
In any case a GvG battle (an option which, incidentally, will not be available immediately) must not be identical to an FvF battle.

Q : How will the type of OP battle to be fought be decided?
R : By clicking on the OP when launching the attack. But the number of GvG attacks per guild will be capped.

Q : Won't the new system only favor the big guilds by allowing them to attack in GvG the small ones that have become incapable of benefiting from the help of their allies?
R : It is true that one of the objectives of the refactoring is to prevent single-member guilds from holding OPs. But, as far as small guilds are concerned, the extent of the damage will also depend on the capping of the number of GvG battles and they will still have the opportunity to conquer OPs through GvE, knowing that OPs thus conquered will not be able to change owner again during the following two weeks.

Q : "GvE: Guild vs NPCs to win the OPs taken by NPCs"… What kind of NPCs will these be?
R : Homins for sure, but the possibility of also having kitins was evoked (and submitted to the developers for consideration).

Q : An OP may be held for its faction by a small guild that has received it as a reward for its help and then takes over the work of extracting and redistributing its materials. If the OP is taken through "easy" GvG by a large adverse guild, the faction will be the one that suffers. Shouldn't the faction, therefore, be allowed to help defend it?
R : If solution 1 above is chosen, the faction will be able to help. If not, it may indeed be necessary to review the organization of the factions.

Q : As all OPs will produce materials from Q150 to Q250, an OP in Fount, for example, will be able to produce exactly the same materials as one in Flaming Forest?
R : Each OP, regardless of its level, will indeed be able to produce materials of all three qualities, but the materials production rate of OP of a given level will be higher than that of OP of lower level.

Q : How will materials and owners rotations be done? At fixed or random intervals? All together or staggered over time?
R : All together (server reboot), at an interval of two and a half to three months IRL, but the exact date will be random. Many mechanisms remain to be specified, however, regarding rotations: they will be detailed to you in a future meeting.

Ryzom Forge meeting - 2021-04-12

Q: During this test period, will the battles still include two phases?
A: No, because these are test outposts. If conquered after one hour of battle, an outpost will be returned immediately to its owners: the defending NPCs (out-of-faction marauders). But, if any battle can be a rewarding challenge, it costs equipment, ammunition, and time for those who fight it. So, the guilds that test will be rewarded for their commitment (to a degree yet to be determined).
We're planning for a guild to launch one attack per week, so hopefully four tests per week (one for each of the outposts) will allow everyone to participate.

Q: Will fighters be tagged and PvP allowed during these test battles?
A: These are outpost battles, so attackers will be OP tagged, yes. But they are also GvE battles in which, in order to not skew the tests, only the attacking guild's PCs will participate, with no allied or enemy PCs, so no PvP fight will be available.

Q: Will the level of NPC defenders be the same for all four outposts?
A: No. As with outposts in other regions, the level of the outpost is determined by the quality of the materials it can produce. The "level" 100 outpost in the Nexus will, as elsewhere, be easier to "conquer" than the level 250 outpost, so a guild will be able to judge its progress in the fight exercise by the level of the outpost it manages to conquer or the threshold it manages to make it reach.

Q: Will the level of each outpost be unchanging?
A: Yes, and once the project is finalized, i.e. once the redesign of the outposts is effective throughout Atys (the tests at the Nexus are indeed just the first ones of a long series), only the nature of the materials produced by any outpost will change between battles, not their quality.

Q: Are there any plans to establish new outposts, for example in the Prime Roots?
A: No. For now, our priority is the completion of the current project: we don't want to slow it down by spreading our efforts.

Q: Given the "PvP area" status of the Nexus, what will prevent anyone from attacking the guild busy testing an outpost battle?
A: Outpost PvP prevents guild PvP by construction, plain and simple.

Q: Does this mean you can quietly drill or hunt for an hour in the Nexus as long as your guild is engaged in an outpost test attack?
A: Basically yes. Relevant comment.

Q (off-topic): When will range weapons be finalized, like 1H weapons were?
A: Since our goal is to finish as many of the current projects as possible in order to have a constant rhythm and an increasingly efficient team, we had to postpone the launch of some others. Thus, the final development of the shooting weapons is not abandoned, far from it. It is just put on hold.
However, if you wish to participate in the working group that is nonetheless reflecting on the subject, you can contact Tamarea privately.

Q (off-topic): Are there any plans to do anything to boost non-outpost PvP to make it more attractive? If not, wouldn't it be possible to have a meeting to discuss this?
A: We'd like to be able to address all the topics, issues and difficulties that players may encounter. But we can't answer all the requests right now, it would be counterproductive.

Patch - 2021-05-17

The four outposts recently established in the Nexus are activated (opened to homin attack). The characteristics of the battles to be fought for their conquest not only differ significantly from those of the "historical" outposts, but will evolve as the redesign project progresses. Below are those adopted for the first phase of testing:

• Mode: Guild vs. NPC (GvE), where only the guild having declared war can participate in the battle (no allied or enemy PCs on the battlefield).
• Duration: 55 minutes (11 rounds of 5 minutes).
• Declaration: Only one battle per week per guild and per outpost is allowed (so any guild can fight, at best, four battles per week, one on each of the four outposts).
• Schedule: a new battle can start at the beginning of each hour for each outpost. A guild wishing to attack must make its declaration within 5 minutes before the start time. For example, a guild wishing to be the attacking guild for the 9pm battle must make its declaration of war at the earliest 8:55 pm, but before 9:00 pm. If several guilds wish to register, only the first one will be retained, the others will have to try again for a next battle.
• Victory conditions: the attacking guild must pass the threshold set for it (10 at most) at the outpost it is attacking.
• Outcome: A won battle does not give the victorious guild possession of the concerned outpost (the latter is returned within the hour to the NPCs who defended it) but any battle fought closes with the granting of a reward.
• Reward: its nature and size are determined by the threshold of the attacked outpost and are displayed as soon as the war is declared. It is automatically awarded to the testing guild at the end of the battle.

  The thresholds set for a given guild at the outpost that will be the target of its next test battle and the rewards to be expected for the latter will evolve as follows:

• The initial threshold for the four outposts is set at 3.
• The higher the threshold, the higher the reward... and the reverse is true.
• After a defeat (outpost threshold not exceeded during the battle), the outpost threshold will remain the same for the guild.
• After a victory, the offered threshold of the outpost at subsequent battles of the same guild will be increased permanently by one. But if this new threshold is found too difficult to exceed by the guild, the latter can choose to set a lower threshold to the outpost for the next battle.

  Example:

  A guild attacks for the first time the outpost 250 of the Nexus (whose threshold is then for it set to 3) and wins. From then on, it can choose, for its next test battle, to attack the same outpost with threshold 3 or threshold 4. In the first case, even if the said next battle is victorious, the threshold that will be proposed it for a third battle will be 3. In the second case, the latter threshold will be preset to 5 (if victorious) or 4 (if defeated).

Ryzom Forge meeting - 2021-06-24

• Can two guilds that don't have enough people in each of them join together into one for the time of an outpost test battle in Nexus?
  Yes... For now, because it will not be possible later on, since these test battles are actually part of the development of the future outpost system.
• I find the new features tested on the Nexus outposts very refreshing, but is reducing the time of outpost battles still the objective of the refactoring?
  Yes. The only thing that remains to be determined is the strength of the defending NPCs, as the number of rounds will be reduced as a result.
• In the last few months on Atys, we have seen several battles that go well beyond 10 rounds. Hence my question: by reducing the time of outpost battles, don't we risk impoverishing the strategies?
  This debate has already taken place. Out of respect for the group that discussed and argued at length and finally reached an agreement, we will not go back on the decisions made. But there are still many points to be refined and your opinions, feedbacks and suggestions are still very welcome.

Patch 904 (2022+04-25): OP refactoring

The patchnote is available here.

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