Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Mythic Trip: More City Details

The new city siege is probably the feature most people are excited about in 1.3.5.  Yesterday, Mythic posted the details on how the city siege will work.  It's a great read and the player response has been mostly positive.  I posted some of the Q and A about the city last week.  Now it is time to go into a bit more detail on what we can expect.

I'd like to focus in on a couple areas, namely city rewards and instances.  For even more details, check out Shadow WAR, Mykiel and Gaarawarr.

NOTE:  This is all subject to change

City Rewards.  The city is still divided into 3 stages which represent a reward tier: Stage 1 is Invader, 2 is Warlord and 3 is Royal (Sovereign).  Unlike the current system, all 3 stages will occur for each instance.  Regardless of the outcome, you will receive a crest reward for participating.  That includes the Royal crest, more on that later.

Where's the loot?  Each stage is also a PQ (as described in the forum link).  Whoever wins the stage, will get a chance at the bags.  Inside the bags we will find what is in the city now, plus some of the items dropped by PvE bosses who had to go.

Stage 1 is the only time where there will always be a PQ winner.  The other stages can end in a draw, then crests will be the reward.  Players will also receive an Insignia reward for completing the stage.  That means, if the defenders win Stage 3, they will have a shot at Sovereign gear.  It certainly provides incentive to defend.

Each instance is independent, so your progress is not dependent on those in other instances.

Tokens.  In 1.3.5, the existing crest token system is getting a bit of an overhaul.  Instead of being broken down to 5 crests of the previous tier, they will now work like Insignias and be converted to 1.  Don't go rushing to break down your crests, they will be increasing everyone's crests 5x.  So if you have 2 Warlord crests (like I do), they will turn into 10.

With the new system, they can now add items to vendors for all tiers without making them extremely expensive due to the break down system.

Since we will have a reliable way to earn high end crests,  the existing item costs will likely increase.  I'm more than happy to see a price increase, now that I can actually obtain the needed crests.

Instances.  The new city siege system will be based on a 24 vs 24 instance (down from 48 vs 48).  The best way to think of it is like a scenario.  You can queue more than 1 group, but there is no guarantee you will all go to the same instance.

As the siege is instance based, it will run the risk of having empty instances.  This is a tough problem to solve.  You don't want to deny players from participating, so they seem like a necessary evil.  The developers has said they do want to address this, so we'll have to stay tuned.

In order to prevent instance hopping,  your PQ lockouts will enabled if you leave.  You can still get crests, but not any of the good loot.  This is another tricky situation, what happens if you crash?  They are very aware of this possibility but didn't have anything they could comment on.

Overall, I am very excited about the changed they have planned.  The city seems like it will be a lot of fun.  It is also nice to have a clear path to Warlord and Sovereign equipment.  It may take me a while, but some day it will all be mine!