Is YOUR guild *REALLY* ready for outposts?

[grandma]

Your guild may be hyping about outposts right now...but are you REALLY ready? Is your guild organized enough, strong enough, communicative enough, and financially prepared to take and hold an outpost? Take this example as food for thought of tonights private, invite-only event.

Here are the details of tonights event that were emailed in-game to the leadership of 14 fairly prominent guilds (5 days prior to the event):

A very interesting event idea with outposts on the horizon...

Simulated Mass Guild Warfare
=====================================
Your guild is invited to the Matis Arena on Friday 2005-06-03 @ 01:00 GMT (Thursday Night) to participate in a PvP event: Last team standing wins! (/tells will be sent prior to the event starting). This event is a mass combat player versus player event I call "Outpost preparation".

This event is a private, invite only event and will run as follows:

Guilds will be sorted into teams of equal size up to 9 players. The teams will be balanced according to the guild who has the LEAST number of players (if smallest guild team has 5, all will have 5). Your guild will need a minimum of 4 players to enter a team for the battle royale.

If your guild has received this invite and cannot come up with 4 players to start a team, you may have the option balancing other teams to increase the team sizes.

The battle should last between 30 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes, given the number of guilds contacted. :0)

When your entire party has fallen, you can respawn and watch from the edge of the arena pit and send a /tell to me to notify of the team being wiped. You WILL NOT be healed unless it's from one of the combatants inside the arena pit participating in the event. ONLY ONE TEAM WILL WIN THE EVENT.

I have the tools to take bets and payout according to the odds of a particular team winning. Bets are to be placed NO LATER than 10 minutes after the battle begins or when 1 party has been wiped, whichever comes first! All winning bets will payout to the players who placed those bets ADJUSTED FOR THE ODDS OF THAT TEAM WINNING, and all bets are for the final winning team only! (Example: if a team has a 2:1 chance of winning, meaning that team has 1/2 the betting pool on them, will payout 2x, 100:1 will payout 100x. If you bet 2 million on a 100:1 team that wins [slim chance of winning according to the betting pool] the payout is 100 x your 2 million = 200 million!) Once your bet has been placed and the exchange has been made your bet is non-transferrable and non-refundable! You can of course bet as much or as little as you wish. The betting results will be posted after the event.

The following guilds were invited (in no particular order):
Melinoe, Infinity, Angels of Atys, Pegasus Foundation, The Samsara, Reapers of the Dark, The Sacred Order, Ballistic Mystix, OmegaV, Eternal Flames, The New Empire, Out of Cavern, Armada, Veni Vidi Vici.

The following guilds were prepared:
Armada

The following guilds attended, but were late:
Infinity

3 main reasons most guilds didn't show (ordered by most common):
Not online, Not into pvp, doing other things

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So, my afterthoughts on this event...

Several of the guilds invited were very anxious at first to come and attend but didn't, and while I won't merit my little event as something that would be as significant for any of these guilds as their own personal outpost defense; I believe this event, with outposts on the horizon, would have been fun enough or hype enough to have more than a 2 out of 14 guild turnout.

This event's details were emailed to the guild leaders and officers of the respective guilds several days in advance. This isn't bashing any guilds for not showing up (my own guild didn't show up in force :0)...rather it's something to ponder before your guild commits to taking an outpost. If I wanted maximum attendance obviously this would have been scheduled on a weekend :0P.

- Do you think that just because there are tons more outposts than guilds capable of holding outposts, that your outpost will be safe until there is a shortage of outposts?

- Do you think that you will have several days to prepare for your outpost's defense should someone declare war on it?

- Do you think that having just the hired guards there and 1 or 2 people who are on at the time will hold off a prepared attacking guild in full force?

- Do you think that all outpost feuds will be scheduled to take place on weekends or when is convenient for the most players to be online?

- Do your guild members hold any value to the outpost?

I organized and executed the event. 2 players able to take bets as bookies. Several days notice and multiple noticies and /tells to the guilds invited. Being the "outpost preparation" that it is, I am led to believe that some guilds may not be prepared to holding and defending an outpost, not just taking the outpost!

If I were an attacking guild, I wouldn't declare war on an outpost held by the smallest guild, but the least organized guild...in the middle of the day or early evening...on a weekday. :0)

Just my observations, enjoy.

[talazen]

Just like to say... it was fun... wish more would have shown up... but i to am very interested in seeing how outpost is goign to do

[caitiff]

It's sad to see that more did not show up to your event GFunk What you say does make a lot of good points though that people should pay attention to and consider.

[mmatto]

One consideration for future outpost wars.. timezones. I do not have to guess why couple of European guilds listed might have had problems with this event

Friday 2005-06-03 @ 01:00 GMT (Thursday Night)

[grandma]

nah, i have hosted MANY events and this was a good turnout as far as player count goes... like i said if i wanted maximal turnout, obviously i'd have scheduled it on the weekend.

when it comes to planning events, the more you do...the more you will have with lots of people attending, and the more you will have with no people attending. just the way it goes as far as events.

but hopefully this will maybe touch on some unforseen points to KEEPING an outpost that people may not be aware of.

One consideration for future outpost wars.. timezones.

This is one of the points I was trying to make. This event was planned ahead of time, and people were notified, but for outpost war declarations, I think it's impossible to expect people to all schedule their attacks when it's most convenient for the defending guild. :0D

[mmatto]

This is one of the points I was trying to make. This event was planned ahead of time, and people were notified, but for outpost war declarations, I think it's impossible to expect people to all schedule their attacks when it's most convenient for the defending guild. :0D

Expect counterattack at more convenient time for original defenders

[raynes]

Actually you will have 24 hours to prepare to defend your outpost. So don't think your going to be able to attack an outpost on the spot. Also don't get too full of yourself just because you were good at PVP. Outposts are a different animal all together. It will be very possible for my guild of 4 to wipe out your guild of 20 attacking my outpost. How? When you attack my outpost the npcs come in timed waves and are not all visable. So you will never know how many an outpost has and you might defeat a wave and another come flying along.

[predzz]

24 hours preparation doesn't mean that much...
Imagine an american guild planning to attack an outpost from a european guild. They start at around 10 pm their time, so 24 hours later they can attack the outpost. However, 10pm their time would be around 4-5 am european. I can't imagine much people in the guild being online. So they could just attack the outpost without the guild being able to defend it, except for NPC's.
But where's the fun in that? It's much more fun defeating the other guild in person than just defeating a bunch of stupid NPC's. Besides, i wouldn't wanna put too much faith in just some NPC's. Also the negative thing about having them come in waves, is that its much easier to destroy them in waves than all at once. Think of it.... 5 npc's at a time in 20 waves vs a guild of 10-20 ppl or 100 npc's vs a guild of 10-20 ppl... Might as well have them each get slaughtered one by one. I wonder if you can adjust how big the waves are.

[sprite]

3 Things:

- Is it me or are those guilds the ones that were listed in the PvP event on the notes? If so, did the event team take the list from you, or did you take the list from them? (tell me on IRC/klients if you'd rather not say it publically )
- You invited 10 guilds and only 2 (including your own) showed up?
- I'm virtually TNE myself; I'm on TS every night with their guild leader and I never heard of this... I'm thinking that your invites got lost in the mail somewhere O_o

[raynes]

24 hours preparation doesn't mean that much...
Imagine an american guild planning to attack an outpost from a european guild. They start at around 10 pm their time, so 24 hours later they can attack the outpost. However, 10pm their time would be around 4-5 am european. I can't imagine much people in the guild being online. So they could just attack the outpost without the guild being able to defend it, except for NPC's.
But where's the fun in that? It's much more fun defeating the other guild in person than just defeating a bunch of stupid NPC's. Besides, i wouldn't wanna put too much faith in just some NPC's. Also the negative thing about having them come in waves, is that its much easier to destroy them in waves than all at once. Think of it.... 5 npc's at a time in 20 waves vs a guild of 10-20 ppl or 100 npc's vs a guild of 10-20 ppl... Might as well have them each get slaughtered one by one. I wonder if you can adjust how big the waves are.

The reason I mentioned 24 hours is because much of this post and event is built around the idea that you will be able to attack an outpost on the spot at anytime. That isn't the case.

Also remember we are talking 24 hours. So if a guild declared war against my outpost at 10am paris time, that would be 4am eastern us time. I would have until 4am the following day to respond or 10am paris time. When th dev mentioned this I asked what would happen if the guild leader didn't log on for 24 hours. His responce was to tell me that someone in the guild should be and it would be up to them to get in touch with the leader. Or the leader would have to give a secondary memeber the powers to react.

As for the power of 6 npc's against groups of 10 or 20? Go attack the antikami or master of the goo camps and tell me small groups of NPC's aren't powerful.

If you really want to be prepared for outposts then you should be saving up money.