Village Warning System

[Onionfighter]

I like the warning idea, but it shouldn't require more built objects. Or maybe it should radiate from the town bell, and be extended by other objects.

[Sevenless]

I like the warning idea, but it shouldn't require more built objects. Or maybe it should radiate from the town bell, and be extended by other objects.

To be fair, I'm feeling the plain old town bell needs some more whistles to be worth the buck too. I'd prefer this just be innate to encourage people to have them.

Perhaps lets say the more precise ones (giving location, or what type of vandal act) could be "rented" from a professional indian tracker NPC for a silver cost per month/week/day.

[Darwoth]

i do not think giant zergtowns need any extra tools to their advantage, if you cant properly police your **** with a bunch of extra bodies then thats your fault/problem.

[staxjax]

What kind of extra tools are you talking about? As far as I know, there are no tools that come a long with a town bell. I don't know what you consider a zerg, but I would say a village less than 20 people would hardly be called one, even if every person in the village has a pvp toon. You want to see a zerg, get some CN in here and then we'll all be in trouble.

[MagicManICT]

Thing is, town claims still aren't fully implemented and have several bugs associated with them. Any argument about advantages right now are pointless. Besides that is the point it's derailing the thread of the core idea that, once towns function properly, may or may not have merit.

I've forwarded my own thoughts on this type of thing to the devs. Whether they've looked at it, recall it, or what, I don't know. My suggestion was to make the town somehow unassailable for a period of time after initially attacked. This forces attackers to spread raids out over days instead of giving instant gratification and allows defenders time to organize a live defense at the time the protection ends. (Those that have played EVE will probably recognize the source of my idea right away.) I can't recall how much more detailed I made my post than that, but it sums it up.

[Kaol]

I don't really like the idea that much. What's wrong with being able to sneak into a town?

[Kaol]

Also i'm not sure how your system is supposed to work magic man? Whats to stop you using an alt to give yourself permenant raid protection?

[MagicManICT]

Also i'm not sure how your system is supposed to work magic man? Whats to stop you using an alt to give yourself permenant raid protection?

Did I imply anywhere in there that characters would in any way be what powers this "protection"? It might be a valid question, but I did say:

make the town somehow unassailable for a period of time after initially attacked.

I realize I left that a bit open because, well, who am I to dictate what exactly would power it?

I don't really like the idea that much. What's wrong with being able to sneak into a town?

It's a valid concern and tactic and certainly one of the holes in my (stolen) idea. The question is: Should someone be able to come in and wipe out your town/claim overnight be it with one character or an army of alts or should you, the defender have a chance to mount a live defense? Allowances could be made for simply sneaking in and stealing things if certain other skills, such as lockpicking, are implemented.

I only mentioned this as the concept of the original post seems to be a way to encourage live encounters. It's not my intention to derail the subject, only add other possible ideas to bring about the same game play style.

[G1real]

I would rather see the capability of hiring NPC guards to patrol for you, but I don't think really know loftorb's stance on that. Those guard mechanics would have to be fleshed out then, but think selecting areas for the patrol route and areas that no non-village member is allowed to walk on and areas that they are. Think players able to wait and snipe them down to sneak in, then when some other guard sees the corpse he could also alert the town.

The bell would then be rang by one of the guard NPCs or one of the villagers and emit it's sound over a large radius (think 500/1000 tiles, perhaps slightly dampened by trees) to alert people nearby. All those "village chat/system log message" just devalues the experience. Let people rely on their hearing for a change. It could then also be used for churches, village gatherings or pissing off a nearby village by building 5 of them and constantly ringing them.

You could perhaps argue "what if only guard NPCs are in town and no players nearby to hear it". Well you want a player in town so he can use village chat to alert the outsiders (since a more realistic communication method might be hard to implement and annoying to use and would just lead to out of game chat programs being used). Or you could perhaps have a mobile app that gets info from your surroundings within the world when you're offline, like that bell being rang while you were logged out in your village.

[colesie]

I would rather see the capability of hiring NPC guards to patrol for you, but I don't think really know loftorb's stance on that. Those guard mechanics would have to be fleshed out then, but think selecting areas for the patrol route and areas that no non-village member is allowed to walk on and areas that they are. Think players able to wait and snipe them down to sneak in, then when some other guard sees the corpse he could also alert the town.

The bell would then be rang by one of the guard NPCs or one of the villagers and emit it's sound over a large radius (think 500/1000 tiles, perhaps slightly dampened by trees) to alert people nearby. All those "village chat/system log message" just devalues the experience. Let people rely on their hearing for a change. It could then also be used for churches, village gatherings or pissing off a nearby village by building 5 of them and constantly ringing them.

You could perhaps argue "what if only guard NPCs are in town and no players nearby to hear it". Well you want a player in town so he can use village chat to alert the outsiders (since a more realistic communication method might be hard to implement and annoying to use and would just lead to out of game chat programs being used). Or you could perhaps have a mobile app that gets info from your surroundings within the world when you're offline, like that bell being rang while you were logged out in your village.

From what I've gathered in the time I've known Jorbtar adding NPCs are very low on their list of things that they would like implemented. Haven only has like 3 after all.