Periodically, NPC towns will come under siege by the Obsidian Cabalists. The timing, duration, and location of these sieges will be driven by Celestial Mechanics. When you attempt to enter a town under siege, you will first enter the Town Siege scene where the enemy has made camp outside the town and is fighting the town defenders. You can choose to join the battle and end the siege early or work your way around the perimeter, perhaps encountering only some scouting parties.
We hope to have the first iteration of this feature and one map live in Release 37.
[A Dev+ Forum Posts by Chris “Sea Wolf” Wolf and Keith “Sannio” Quinn]
Hey folks, Sea-Wolf here with some screenshots for the new forest siege encounters!
The Entrance
The Blockade
The Battlefield
The Enemy Camp
The Forest
Chris Wolf
Level Designer
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Town Siege Comments by Keith “Sannio” Quinn
For those wondering about “Town Sieges,” they’re currently on the schedule for Release 37. How will they work? Well, here’s an overview:
Anyone approaching a town in the overworld that is under siege will see a temporary “siege weapon” object (e.g. a catapult) next to the town. If you try to enter that town, you’ll instead be sent to a “siege encounter” scene. (As with roving encounters, your fellow party members will see a special icon in the overworld that they can use to join you in that siege encounter scene.)
The siege encounter appears according to a schedule and won’t leave until the schedule says it should (for example, it shows up at dusk and won’t leave until dawn).
You’ll spawn into the siege encounter on its edge near an enemy camp. Nearby is a central battlefield, where waves of enemies and allies clash again and again while also being assaulted by periodic catapult attacks. On the opposite side of the map, is a squad of allies, pinned down by enemy forces as they defend the only exit.
There are two obvious paths: The long way around includes a handful of low-threat enemy patrols, while barreling through the enemy camp and frontline will be quicker but far more dangerous. There’s a third option: Your allies need your help destroying the three catapults that keep them pinned down. Destroying the catapults and their high-threat siege engineers will draw out the greatest threat, the siege commander. If you can take out the siege commander, enemy reinforcements will stop coming and the siege will end.
Some additional notes: The forest siege is only the first “siege biome.” More will come over time, with a variety of enemy types. Also, we would like the act of defeating the siege commander to immediately remove the siege from the overworld as well, but this is a future consideration and won’t be in the initial implementation.
Keith Quinn
Level Designer
This really sounds like a good idea. Just wondering how the servers will handle the rush of folks entering at the same time. Although they wont be in the same instance I am sure there will be an overload of folks trying to get in.
Also how would one destroy the catapults if they choose that path. I would suggest finding a crate of explosives or some such that would help in this part. The rest is pretty obvious on how to work it.
Just concerned about overload…..guilds will group together and hit a town pretty quickly once the call is out to go attack. As for single players or smaller groups it will be interesting to see how emmersive they can be.
Other wise great idea. Hope the rewards of defeat are worth it
I am trying not to be doubtful about it. To me it sounds like a control point, just added to an NPC town or entrance of an NPC town, but I am trying to stay open about it. Many of us were hoping to come home to town invasions, dragons, trolls, daemons wandering around our town, not just more of the same. Send a flash announcement that at own is under siege on the screen above our character A pack of wolves, or skeletons and then higher level skeletons is just more of the same imo. We have control points already. We need reasons to visit towns enrolling and engaging content added in. Game mechanics too. Let us not teach, buy, and steal skills and recipes, let us earn them through character development game play, such as quests and actions. No teaching, each player has to do the work, if promised teachables have to be honored then honor them.