IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Kind of small towers or spires that can be built on empty construction sites at the outposts. Towers would provide certain effects to the players appearing to be in range of effect, say 25 or 50 m around tower. Type of effect would be determined by type of tower. Each tower would cost dappers, with expensive towers providing stronger effect and wider area.

1) Sentry tower - inflicts direct damage of magical or ranged type upon hostile players (attackers) within area of effect. Types of magical damage would be also depending on type of tower. So there would be electric towers, poison towers etc. The effect of tower would appear as DoT spell, dealing damage constantly until target die or leave area of effect.

2) Buffing tower - provides defenders with different types of buffs depending on type of tower. Boost or accelerated regen of HP/Sap/Stamina, increased speed of movement or higher hit rate, dodge or parry boosts and so on.

3) Debuffing tower - same as the buffing one, but inflicts negative effects upon attackers entering area of effect: slowing them down, slowing down their attacks etc.

The OP owners would have to decide which towers to choose and adapt tactics accordingly to their needs and numbers. I.e. stay tight within range of tower to obtain its buff, or stay behind debuffing tower and kill attackers crawling through slow movement zone. If battle enters 2nd phase, towers would still work in favor of OP owners. But once OP gets captured, all towers become inactive, preventing new owners from using them and leaving them no option but destroy it manually in order to build their own towers.

That would grant a lot of new possibilities and tactics for OP battles, making them more diverse and intersting. Also, implementing sentry towers would partially solve the one-man attacks issue.

Indeed, this would be cool.

However, it would give an advantage to the defending side compared to the current situation, making it easier to hold onto outposts while I think the devs intend to make outposts switch hands more.

So, if we're going to having towers for the defenders, we're also going to need siege equipment for the attackers :D

Could be easily balanced out by decrease in number of NPC guards if the OP has any active towers. Besides, towers supposed to have area of effect, that means they could be avoided or attackers would have to maneuver trying to drag defenders away from them, or come from another side and killing guards with spells, thus forcing defenders leave area around tower in order to save them.

and forcing the attackers to maneuver around them is not an extra benefit to the defenders? :p

If the defenders have an advantage, the offense just has to employ better strategy to overcome it :)

It is, but quite a minor one. I dont think it would really turn outcome in the favor of defenders. And forcing players to maneuver instead of blindly rushing ahead in stright line is definitely good in my opinion. Of course, there would be some tough nuts to crack, i mean OP's located in landscapes making them harder to break in, like Ginti or Demon's Crossroads. But again, towers would have area of effect, which makes their impact limited.

A very similar scheme was put forth many years ago when Nevrax brought in "Jessica-keth" . It was abondoned much to the relief of most of the game population at the time. Though there was significant part of the population in support.. Im sure you can find the threads on the original forums:

http://forums.ryzom.fr/showthread.php?t=19074&highlight=Tower s+PvP+outpost+region

That was different in that it would have an entire region become open pvp with the controlling side being able to gank the other side at will with no risk of reprisals.
Would have been impossible for those of the non-controlling side to enter there without opening themselves up to constant harassment attacks.

If this scheme is reserved solely to the scope of outpost battles, and/or a narrow area in and around controlled outposts, it's not so bad (except that there's some boss spawns inside or very near outposts that'd need to be relocated to avoid having some bosses effectively become property of specific guilds).

Yeah... that's nothing like this except it shares the name "towers". :P

Oh wait, not even, they were called "spires".

The central point is the same, just smaller zone of influence .... alliances would result in the abuse of the system leaving whichever one rose to the top in perpetual control.