Into the Vault #147 | Reckoning Expansion – Territory Control Overhaul
Mortal Online 2 · published
Territory Control Overhaul
Information Stream
Yesterday we revealed more details surrounding the Territory Control Overhaul feature during a livestream on the official MortalOnline2 Twitch channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKZTOEhpmlI
Overview – What is Changing?
Currently the only major form of large scale Territory Control in game has been tied to the Keeps, which are able to grow their Territory area based on how high their Guild Tier is. Keep Territory areas then collide with each other and can not grow while touching another Keep’s Territory area. The idea behind this mechanic was to fuel conflicts from the desire to continue to grow past any other Keep Territories which may be adjacent to yours.
This design however had several problems, most of which many of you in the community are already aware of, such as not enough benefits to owning a Keep or increasing your Territory size beyond earning more taxes from player houses as well as being able to build Territory Control structures anywhere inside your Territory without the use of Claiming Stones. Additionally, this limited the mechanics of large scale Territory Control to only those guilds who own Keeps, of which there are 16 on Myrland, leaving out all other guilds.
To address these problems, we have gone back to the drawing board, overhauled this system of Territory Control and completely scrapped the growing and colliding Keep circles.
Instead, we have split up Myrland into fixed capturable Regions to compete over via more engaging mechanics, each offering their own benefits.
Regions of Myrland
The continent has now been separated into 31 distinct named Regions.
The map below shows the current layout and size of these Regions, however the final map will look somewhat different regarding specific border positions:
Any guild may contest and claim any of these Regions by engaging with the new Outpost Siege mechanics, meaning Territory Control is not restricted to just Keep owning guilds.
Each Region has its own unique set of benefits, such as guild-wide buffs, collected taxes from every Player House and Stronghold located inside the Region, hourly generated Supply, local resources which are generated within the Region’s Outpost and must be withdrawn after reaching a certain cap in order to generate more.
These benefits will all be tailored to the local environmental aspects of each Region. For example, owning the Region which contains Cave Camp (the Northern Foothills in the above map) will likely provide a buff to Mining Yields, while owning a Region containing coastline will likely provide a buff to Fishing Catch Yields, or owning a Region containing dense forests and many creatures may provide a buff to Pet Experience Gain. We are endeavoring to make each of these Regions appealing for different reasons, so they are always desirable.
Each Region also has a set nation affiliation, such as Tindremic, Khurite or Wilderness.
We are also designing these Regions to be heavily and frequently contested, with a primary goal in mind being to facilitate reliable and engaging fights, centering around the Outpost Siege mechanics.
Outposts
Each of the 31 Regions on Myrland contains its own Outpost, which is a fortified wooden structure belonging to the guild who currently owns the Region it is in.
- These Outposts are where the owners of the Region can withdraw any generated local resources, as well as store items in their unique Outpost Banker as well as use the Outpost Priest, which is currently planned to be set to guild use only, both of which will be locked behind a gate that only the Region owners can operate.
- Outposts are the location where Outpost Sieges happen, which are the events that determine who will be the new owner of a contested Region.
- Initiating a Region Claim and starting an Outpost Siege is done via the in-game map, by clicking on a Region and Contesting it. Contesting a Region will cost a decent amount of Prominence as well as some gold from your Guild Treasury.
- Doing the above will start a countdown timer until the Outpost Siege begins, which we are currently setting to 1 hour. At this point everyone who looks at the map can see that the Region is being Contested and can view the Outpost Siege countdown timer. A guild can only have one outgoing Region Claim at a time.
- There is a zone around every Outpost which disables murder counts while the Outpost Siege event is ongoing.
- You will receive a message saying: “There is an ongoing Outpost Siege in this area, if you die here you will not be able to report others for murder.”
Outpost Sieges
After the cooldown timer has ended to initiate the Outpost Siege, the Outpost Siege event timer begins which currently lasts 1 hour, meaning the Attackers have one hour to complete all stages and successfully claim the region.
Outpost Sieges are designed to allow you to engage with their mechanics without requiring you to bring any resources or specific items such as Siege Tents or Manganons. This means you will not need to build anything or traditionally siege anything once the event starts.
The layout of the Outposts has also been designed to facilitate a variety of gameplay, with consideration for increased verticality and breaking lines of sight in certain areas.
Outpost Sieges consist of three main stages.
They are:
- Break down the Outer Gate
- Raise the Inner Gate
- Raise your Guild Flag
Stage 1 – Breaking the Outer Gate
Once the event starts, three specialized structures will spawn outside the Outpost which produce Oil Pots automatically at a fixed rate of 1 every 30 seconds. These structures do not need to be built, do not require adding any materials and can not be destroyed during the Outpost Siege event.
- Note: We are very open to feedback here regarding if the Oil Pots should require a player interacting with the station to produce them or if they should be produced automatically as we currently plan to.
The Attackers then need to pick up and carry these pots of oil to the outer gate of the Outpost.
- Once enough oil pots have been piled up outside the gate (currently 20 pots), they will be ignited by fire, which will burn down the gate.
We are currently planning for allowing players carrying Oil Pots to drop them if they are shot or hit by the Defenders. We have the potential for several potentially interesting mechanics here, such as fire spells causing you to take increased damage when carrying an oil pot, or giving players the “Oiled” debuff if they’re forced to drop a pot etc. Things such as this naturally allow for the Defenders to interrupt the Attacker’s progress without fully committing to a fight outside the Outpost walls.
Stage 2 – Raising the Inner Gate
Once the outer gate has been opened, the Attackers will then gain access to the area inside the outer gate as well as the first floor platform on the outside walls of the Outpost. The Defenders maintain access to the inner second floor wall platforms, however are able to drop down if they wish to fight the Attackers attempting to open the gates.
The Attackers must then open one or both of the two Inner Gates by operating a mechanism such as turning a wheel. While the defenders try to stop them.
- Each gate has a wheel next to it, which when turned on will cause the gate to slowly rise, and when turned off will cause the gate to slowly lower. You do not need to stay next to the gate mechanism after interacting with it to turn it on or off, it will continue to raise or lower on its own unless toggled the other way by a member of the other team.
- It currently takes 10 minutes for a gate to rise from 0% to 100% if uninterrupted.
- If either gate is raised to 100%, the Attackers then gain access to the Inner Yard of the Outpost where the “King of the Hill” flag raising mechanic is played.
Stage 3 – Raising your Guild Flag
- A flag in the middle of the inner yard raises and lowers based on who from the attacking and defending guild is standing within its area.
- If only the Attackers are standing in the flag area then the attackers will gain points.
- If only the Defenders are standing in the flag area then the defenders will gain points.
- If the flag reaches 100% for the Attackers, they win the Outpost Siege event and are the new owners of the Region.
- If the Defenders manage to stop the attackers from raising their flag to 100% before the Outpost Siege event timer ends, the Defenders win and remain as the owners of the Region.
- If one member of both the Attackers and Defenders are present in the flag’s area, the flag will not move. Either group must push out or kill the remaining members of the opposite side in order for the flag to tick up in their favor.
- The flag will change to show the Heraldry design of guild with positive points, so as the attackers stand around the flag the following will happen:
- Initially the flag will show the Defender’s Heraldry on it
- The Attackers occupy the flag area and the flag will slowly lower to the bottom of the flagpole.
- After the flag reaches the bottom of the flagpole, the flag will change visibly to the Attacker’s Heraldry, and begin to slowly rise to the top.
Overtime Mechanic:
- If the Outpost Siege event timer ends but the flag is still being contested by the attackers, it will enter an overtime state where the attackers can continue to gain points, however the moment they step out of the area they will lose and the event will end.
After an Outpost Siege
- After an Outpost Siege event has ended, that Region can not be contested again by anyone for 2 hours. This number will very likely need to be adjusted based on playtesting and feedback during the PTR.
- The initiation and outcome of every Outpost Siege event will be broadcasted via a new chat channel, for example:
- “HedgeKnights has contested StoneMen’s claim on the Meduli Badlands!”
- “The battle for Meduli Badlands has ended, StoneMen were victorious in their defence!”
- “The battle for Bullhead Gulch has ended, Gorehammers now rule over the land!”
What about Keeps?
With the new systems, we can think of Keeps as larger versions of Outposts.
Each Keep has its own named and fixed Region it is located inside, which will offer specialized Keep oriented benefits, such as for example increasing the amount of taxes collected from Player Houses and Strongholds in any Regions you own, in addition to stronger versions of other Region buffs in order to make owning a Keep Region quite appealing.
We are still experimenting with many different ideas to make Keeps even more appealing, such as increased benefits from owning Regions that are connected to your Keep Region, however this is also an area that we are very open to feedback and suggestions about!
Changes to Existing Sieging Mechanics
We have seen some questions amongst the community about this Territory Control Overhaul in regard to any additional changes we are making to not just capturing and owning Territory and what benefits that gives you, but to the existing sieging mechanics.
We were not able to reveal what changes we are making here in last night’s stream as we are still looking into what we will be able to do alongside the rest of the larger changes and additions, however we are indeed looking at every aspect of sieging and declaring wars and plan to make adjustments and changes wherever we can to improve the overall experience.
We do have a list of things we plan to do already at the moment, however we don’t want to mention the specifics of them just yet in the event we might not have time for them in the end.
With that said however, we acknowledge that the current implementation of sieging has various problems. Such as siege windows with the potential for “false sieges” where a siege is declared but no attackers show up, with no option for the defenders to end the siege early via some kind of win condition, siege windows applying global vulnerability to all guild structures so we don’t know where on the map a siege will happen until it starts, war declarations requiring a guild to have no murderers in it which causes problems with Wilderness based guilds not showing up to Alert Towers, using cheaper TC structures like Culinariums and Alert Towers as blockers, issues with keep Supply Lines and Supply Storehouses being rebuilt during an active siege after being destroyed, the 24 hour vulnerability window on newly placed structures making it difficult to compete against a much larger force, and so on.
All of these things and much more are being evaluated and we plan to make adjustments where we can, and if certain aspects of the changes we want to make don’t fit inside the schedule for the Reckoning Expansion, we plan to follow up on them hopefully shortly afterward.
We Want Your Feedback!
If you have any thoughts, feedback or suggestions about the new Region based Territory Control systems, please provide it using the link below to our feedback questionnaire!
https://forms.gle/JjqmCBqrz1rurFJWA
There will be a few specific questions in there regarding planned mechanics, along with space for you to provide longform feedback.
Note
Please keep in mind that as development progresses, any details described above may change or be adjusted where necessary.
See you in Nave,
The Star Vault Team