A guard should NOT be invincible, but THE guard should be.

BBSooner

Gidorick wrote: »

BBSooner wrote: »

Agreed I like the suggestion and is a fair compromise between "I want to be able to kill guards" and "people shouldn't be able to lock down towns". I do question the type of load this would pout on the server if there were 40 people murdering wave after wave of guards. They should be buffed by the amount of guards near them so killing more than 5 or 7 gets to be more and more impossible.

What if.... The guards that are "pulled" are the existing guards in the area and they just get buffs to the point of invisibility which cools down after the target is dead?

Kill 1 guard. All guards are buffed 50%
Kill another = +50% again
... This occurs for a total of 5 guard deaths then they're all invincible.

Love it, to be honest I'm ok with any way it gets implemented, the idea in general is solid.

Clutch

I wouldn't mind if one guard was insanely powerful but not invincible and then, like your typical GTA game, as you progress in slaughtering - you get a higher difficulty rating until at some point you just aren't going to win.

But at the same time, there should be a risk. Do what they do in the Matrix, run.

bellanca6561n

BBSooner wrote: »

Agreed I like the suggestion and is a fair compromise between "I want to be able to kill guards" and "people shouldn't be able to lock down towns". I do question the type of load this would pout on the server if there were 40 people murdering wave after wave of guards. They should be buffed by the amount of guards near them so killing more than 5 or 7 gets to be more and more impossible.

The server issues with this game need to be addressed regardless. Cyrodiil has such potential if they are.

And, unless I miss my guess, they have been undergoing constant reexamination and revision since launch.

It's in the architecture really, and it began as perhaps the most ambitious scheme yet devised for an online game. Alas, that's part of the problem: all that instancing to deliver a single player game experience in an online setting.

But another, equally important problem, is content. Zone chat, when it's not filled with WTB and WTS and Price Check messages like a damned Walmart, is filled with pleas from folks who want to group.

And folks will, especially if difficulty scales with reward, and difficulty can be addressed by both teamwork and sheer numbers. In such a scheme there would be no such thing as an unwelcome player joining in.

You hit the town, achieve victory conditions, flip the town to rogue, loot like crazy, and leave. If loot spawns only at the moment of takeover there would be no incentive to stay.

Apart from the server side issues, however, are two others:

1. Perceived fairness.

What determines the loot table? Is it per player? And if it is, do players get a higher chance of higher value loot if they did more damage, got the killing blow in on more guards, healed more?

Systems like this usually fail because they're seen as rewarding min-maxers, FOTM power builds, higher level characters, and failing to treat all player classes equally.

This is why random interval reward schedules are so, so popular.

2. What about players doing quests or playing solo?

These can't take place at core quest progression hubs. Players can't innocently stumble into something and get instantly guard whacked when doing what the game tells them to do.

This is why large scale PvE landscape battles are rare in leveling games. But when you experience one....they're a splendid alternative to 4 person play, and appeal to a wider range of players.

ArconSeptim

Why would you waste your time on guard?

HeroOfNone

You know, as an added feature to this, why not add in mafia style cartel gaurds, that each level the folks manage to kill off all the gaurds in a town a guild can claim ownership to then "take over" a town? The increase to numbers each time will be a result of each guild flip or defense to a town (when player base gaurds occur) and there will be a short window of a flip over. The benefit of such a flip is that you can loot anything, kill anyone without a rising fine as long as you wear a guild tabard. At the end of a week the numbers reset.


Maybe just a pipe dream, but could be fun.

Robbmrp

The OP is exactly how Guards SHOULD be. That would make it a lot more interesting and allow people to see just how many they can take out.

Cazic

It's a great idea, but guards have to remain unkillable for a couple reasons:

1. If they were killable, we'd have too many players clustered up in town just to kill the guards
2. The Guards' sole purpose is to present risk in the Justice system. If it were at all possible to kill them, then the rules of Justice system would be bent and it potentially would not function as well as it does in its current state.

Drazhar14

They should make it like GTA. You get stars for killing guards and if you reach 5 the imperial army comes after you with siege weapons and war horses.

Gidorick

I'm pretty much re-writing this concept to incorporate some of the discussion concepts so I'm archiving the original post below

Gidorick wrote: »

I've posted this in a few threads about invincible guards and I have come to really like this idea and think it would add quite a bit of fun to the game.

The general idea is that ONE guard shouldn't be invincible but THE guard should be.

A player should be able to kill one guard but then the following events occur:

• Killing that first guard should be a feat in and of itself.
• Kill 1 guard and that guard is replaced with 2 guards that are both more powerful and more resilient than the last.
• Kill 1 guard, Here comes 2 more. Kill those? 4. Those? 8. Those? 16. Manage to kill THOSE? 32.
• Each time a guard is killed, their replacements have 50% more health and can do 25% more damage. The bounty added is also 20% greater. There is no cap on this.

Every guard should be powerful enough that only high level players should even have a shot at killing them.

Most high level players would probably get past killing 2 or 3 guards but by the time they have a dozen guards coming after them... there's no way. Groups of people, and guilds, would band up to wage war on the guards but would eventually fall... at which point they would have such incredibly high bounties it would take them forever to pay them off. There may be a few players willing to pretty much destroy their characters for a few kicks and grins but most of us would be deterred by the impact that killing a few guards would have on our character.

EDIT: There has been some concerns voiced about server load and the possibility of griefing this system where a horde of lower level players would over-run a town, cause dozens upon dozens of guards to spawn, and crash the server. To combat this type of game-play this system could be implemented with a cap.

• Killing that first guard should be a feat in and of itself.
• Kill 1 guard and that guard is replaced with 2 guards that are both more powerful and more resilient than the last.
• Kill 1 guard, Here comes 2 more. Kill those? 4. Those 4? 8. Those 8 guards are invincible... good luck. lol.
• Each time a guard is killed, their replacements have 50% more health and can do 25% more damage. The bounty added is also 20% greater. The cap would end at the 8 invincible guards.

[/edit]

The point is, I AGREE with the mechanic of THE guard being invincible... I COMPLETELY disagree with the mechanic of A guard being invincible.

Thoughts?

olemanwinter

So, every town becomes DSA.

Davadin

No.

Great idea, but no matter how much this will be implemented, this system will get abused by the players.

WILL, not might, or could. But WILL.

In a few days or weeks (or hours?), I can imagine the towns will be choked full by invincible guards thanks to people who,
a. don't give a damn about bounty (mostly pvp-ers)
b. just love to test (and break) the system.
c. part of a guild that loves either (a) or (b).


Seriously, I personally like it, but a system like this will get abused.

And ZOS probably realized this, so instead of trying to solve the issue with some kind of half-ass implementation, they went all the way to "*** it, just make them all invisible right off the bat".

edit:
UNLESS, ok, I'll admit, I didn't read the whole thing...

UNLESS... the guards are invincible *ONLY* to the players who killed them. I don't know how ZOS can pull that one, but I'm OK if your system affects only a single player in their own session.

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO

How would changing the BS unkillable guard to a BS unending wave of Guards any better so you win the fight but more and more and more and more guards pop up out of no where.

Guards need to but killable period @ZOS is forcing their views on murder on the player and thats now right I don't care about guards or NPC from AD or DC till Talos unites us all they are just things to kill point-blink-period this is War the life of my enemy and the people that help/benefit from them all should die and the land the feeds them all need to burn. This is have War are fought in this time period killing whole Villages and City to make a point was very normal.

Yea players will kill so what slap that bounty down and let them kill taking away the freedom to fight cause they can't ever kill the guard or can't stop the waves of guards is a weak illusion of choice. Some of us want to just kill make us hunted, outcast force us to hide in the Shadow take away the endless praise because of our dark deeds but have unkilable guards is the easy, and lazy way out simple as that The guard is made up of the Men and Women in it No man can live forever this means guards too

Gidorick

That is an interesting point @Davadin. My initial concept had the reinforcements being spawned specifically for the guard-killing players. Once those players are dead (or they escape)... those guards are relieved of their duty and go back from whence they came. They disappear.

Now, if another player were to attack one of the reinforcement guards they would be added to the "pool of offenders" and the invincible guards would peruse them until they are dead or until they escape.

I didn't really spell that out in the post. I should probably update it.

My original concept also had the reinforcements just get stronger and stronger @kendellking_chaosb14_ESO. Kill 1, 2 take it's place... until you're dead. Eventually the guards would be SO strong that they would be damn near invincible, but still killable. It was pointed out that there would be groups of players that would just grief and would spawn so many guards that it could shut the server down. A coordinated event across an entire Zone could indeed do just that. If there were 50 or so VR 14 players who spread across a zone and waged simultaneous war on guards in each of the cities of the Zone... I could see it happening.

That's why I capped it at 8 guards. Realistically, I don't think most people would ever even see all of those 8 guards. By the time they kill one guard in Wave 2, they would have 2 invincible guards on them... that would probably be enough to take them down. The 8 guards would act as a sort of wall that tells the player "ok, enough is enough."

Do you think that having the reinforcements is unnecessary? What if the player could just kill a guard and escape? couldn't that player (or group of players) just then go on a killing spree and kill everyone in town? What stops players from just keeping a town guardless and full of murder... I would think there is enough griefers out there that this would happen regularly and that would "ruin the fun" for the rest of us.

Thank for the feedback guys. I truly believe that this concept has merit, but I also agree that there are flaws. ANY solutions you might have would be welcome!

Davadin

Gidorick wrote: »

That is an interesting point @Davadin. My initial concept had the reinforcements being spawned specifically for the guard-killing players. Once those players are dead (or they escape)... those guards are relieved of their duty and go back from whence they came. They disappear.

problem:

if player A spawns a bunch of guards and currently fighting them, what would other players see?

a guy fighting "nothing"?

a guy fighting guards - but NOT invincible for them? (then other people can just jump in and kill the guards for them?)

Yes, I get it should be specific for the guard-killing players, but it's currently not possible with current game mechanics.

That's why I believe ZOS took the easy way out.

Gidorick

Davadin wrote: »

Gidorick wrote: »

That is an interesting point @Davadin. My initial concept had the reinforcements being spawned specifically for the guard-killing players. Once those players are dead (or they escape)... those guards are relieved of their duty and go back from whence they came. They disappear.

problem:

if player A spawns a bunch of guards and currently fighting them, what would other players see?

a guy fighting "nothing"?

a guy fighting guards - but NOT invincible for them? (then other people can just jump in and kill the guards for them?)

Yes, I get it should be specific for the guard-killing players, but it's currently not possible with current game mechanics.

That's why I believe ZOS took the easy way out.

I was envisioning guards that other players will see and CAN attack, but then those players get added to the "offending pool of players".

The reinforcement levels aren't dependent on any exterior influence. If a guard is killed, the 1st wave reinforcements are more powerful. If a new player jumps in and kills 1st wave guards, then wave 2 reinforcements are summoned who now attack ANY player that has been attacking that specific group of guards.

Iluvrien

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO wrote: »

Guards need to but killable period @ZOS is forcing their views on murder on the player and thats now right I don't care about guards or NPC from AD or DC till Talos unites us all they are just things to kill point-blink-period this is War the life of my enemy and the people that help/benefit from them all should die and the land the feeds them all need to burn. This is have War are fought in this time period killing whole Villages and City to make a point was very normal.

No offence, but I hope that ZOS never ever implements this idea.

One of the reasons given, to that those of us who were raising concerns about the Justice system for calming down and setting aside our worries, was that whole-town wipes would not be possible. From what you describe above, anything that isn't a quest/vendor NPC would be a valid target. Those towns would get wiped so fast and so often that it wouldn't even be funny.

[EDIT: Banishing spelling based Daedra]

IrishGirlGamer

Iluvrien wrote: »

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO wrote: »

Guards need to but killable period @ZOS is forcing their views on murder on the player and thats now right I don't care about guards or NPC from AD or DC till Talos unites us all they are just things to kill point-blink-period this is War the life of my enemy and the people that help/benefit from them all should die and the land the feeds them all need to burn. This is have War are fought in this time period killing whole Villages and City to make a point was very normal.

No offence, but I hope that ZOS never ever implement this idea.

One of the reasons given, to that those of us who were raising concerns about the Justice system for calming down and setting aside our worries, was that whole-town wipes would not be possible. From what you describe above, anything that isn't a quest/vendor NPC would be a valid target. Those towns would get wiped so fast and so often that it wouldn't even be funny.

When I first read Gidorick's post, I thought: "Wow, what a great idea!" Then I read this through the comments and got to this post.

Yes, I see this as a real problem. Maybe not "so often" but regularly people (and even guilds) would level up a character for the sole purpose of rampaging a town. Assuming Gidorick's original diagram, it wouldn't take long for a good player with an experience crafter character to get a character strong enough to wipe out some of the guards in, say, Khanrthi's Roost. In fact, KR and the other starting zones would be regular targets because their guards would be easier to kill.

Some guilds would have rampages, where members would literally gank a starter island. Sure, you can pour on the fines, but if this were a weekend event, I could roll a character on Monday, have it ready by Friday, and then delete it - and all the fines - on Monday after a weekend of mayhem. Even if you respawn guards (reinforcements), if you get enough people in the fray, particularly on a starter island, and they might be able to beat back the guards. And then that goal becomes a kind of challenge and before you know it, the starter islands are simply guard ganking zones ...

And that would really suck. Really.

SHADOW2KK

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO wrote: »

How would changing the BS unkillable guard to a BS unending wave of Guards any better so you win the fight but more and more and more and more guards pop up out of no where.

Guards need to but killable period @ZOS is forcing their views on murder on the player and thats now right I don't care about guards or NPC from AD or DC till Talos unites us all they are just things to kill point-blink-period this is War the life of my enemy and the people that help/benefit from them all should die and the land the feeds them all need to burn. This is have War are fought in this time period killing whole Villages and City to make a point was very normal.

Yea players will kill so what slap that bounty down and let them kill taking away the freedom to fight cause they can't ever kill the guard or can't stop the waves of guards is a weak illusion of choice. Some of us want to just kill make us hunted, outcast force us to hide in the Shadow take away the endless praise because of our dark deeds but have unkilable guards is the easy, and lazy way out simple as that The guard is made up of the Men and Women in it No man can live forever this means guards too

Personally I like this, and would love this to be implemented, puts a sort of seriousness on the frankly underwhelming nature of NPC`s on the game, I am sorry, I really do not care for quests whatsoever, I do not care who lives or dies or anything remotely near it within the quest structure.

Although respects to Zeni for the voice acting and um stuff ....

In actual medieval warfare, villages would be razed and most people put to the sword and varying other things like that.
At least in Skyrim to a certain extent or even Oblivion there was a feeling in the air that a storm was coming or indeed had broke, but I am sorry, there is absolutely nothing of that vibe in ESO.

Although in terms of ESO, there are many things that could and probably would go wrong if this was implemented sadly.

I do like the Justice System in a lot of ways, but the unkillable guards and sometimes being detected for absolutely no discernable apparent reason is annoying, does a little insect report you or something??????

Anyways I digress.

IrishGirlGamer

Vaerth wrote: »

We can kill Molag Bal and save Tamriel but not take out a guard in a town, seems pretty lame to me.

Why are all guards Dragonknights by the way?

I wondered that, too, until I realized that all the guards were knocking people down and/or chain pulling them so they can't get away ...

SHADOW2KK

IrishGirlGamer wrote: »

Vaerth wrote: »

We can kill Molag Bal and save Tamriel but not take out a guard in a town, seems pretty lame to me.

Why are all guards Dragonknights by the way?

I wondered that, too, until I realized that all the guards were knocking people down and/or chain pulling them so they can't get away ...

Aye true, and something else just hit me, at least the guard DK`s are proper DK`s IMO and not the horrendous past meta of light armour harry potter staff wielding DK types, but then at least the players could be killed..........

I will wheesht now, I feel another rant coming on...

leshpar

I like this idea a lot. I've always been able to kill guards in the single player elder scrolls games, and to be able to do it in eso would be quite fun. Even though in the end you will die, its the fun to be had that counts. Could you imagine an entire town fighting against the guards? Rebellion and treachery. Oh my!

IrishGirlGamer

SHADOW2KK wrote: »

...
In actual medieval warfare, villages would be razed and most people put to the sword and varying other things like that.
At least in Skyrim to a certain extent or even Oblivion there was a feeling in the air that a storm was coming or indeed had broke, but I am sorry, there is absolutely nothing of that vibe in ESO....

There was a mod for Oblivion entitled "Enhanced Daedric Invasion," which had a number of features including quests and attacks on cities. It didn't always work as intended and some of the quests were broken, but it really made the Daedric invasion seem real. Step out of the Chorrol Mages Guild and into a fight between the town guard and a half dozen daedra. It was awesome.

I never understood why Zeni didn't code in some city attacks. I mean, seriously, Molag Bal is attacking Tamriel, not just the wilderness. There's a kind of city attack in Stonefalls, but meh.

I agree, it feels like there are pockets of problems, but I never feel like there's any significant "threat."

Sorry, didn't mean to derail the thread.

SHADOW2KK

leshpar wrote: »

I like this idea a lot. I've always been able to kill guards in the single player elder scrolls games, and to be able to do it in eso would be quite fun. Even though in the end you will die, its the fun to be had that counts. Could you imagine an entire town fighting against the guards? Rebellion and treachery. Oh my!

Exactly, some mods in Skyrim/Oblivion had that happening, more so Skyrim and it was epic haha.

IrishGirlGamer wrote: »

SHADOW2KK wrote: »

...
In actual medieval warfare, villages would be razed and most people put to the sword and varying other things like that.
At least in Skyrim to a certain extent or even Oblivion there was a feeling in the air that a storm was coming or indeed had broke, but I am sorry, there is absolutely nothing of that vibe in ESO....

There was a mod for Oblivion entitled "Enhanced Daedric Invasion," which had a number of features including quests and attacks on cities. It didn't always work as intended and some of the quests were broken, but it really made the Daedric invasion seem real. Step out of the Chorrol Mages Guild and into a fight between the town guard and a half dozen daedra. It was awesome.

I never understood why Zeni didn't code in some city attacks. I mean, seriously, Molag Bal is attacking Tamriel, not just the wilderness. There's a kind of city attack in Stonefalls, but meh.

I agree, it feels like there are pockets of problems, but I never feel like there's any significant "threat."

Sorry, didn't mean to derail the thread.

Aye I remember that mod for Oblivion, and completely agree with you there lass, the vanilla war was good enough as is, and you had a feeling that great things were afoot.

But ESO although so great and ace on so many levels, really does not cut the mustard in terms of immersion in this regard for me personally.

i mean there is a massive flux of events with the Molag Bal invasion with the 3 alliances at war too, and while there is some stuff related to it in the quest system, again i am sorry, it is so underwhelming to me in the quests, at least in Skyrim and other TES games, I actually cared who lived and died most of the time.

I still remember in a playthrough in Oblivion where Baurus fell at the battle of Bruma, and I was gutted, I was locked in combat, and could not save him, but it hit home about the sacrifices that happen in war, and in Skyrim other things happened too, where it affected me.

Nothing affects me NPC related in ESO, but stupid guards who are invincible and should be killled and the daft detection when its impossible stuff also.

I agree with OP on this thread though, sorry for slight derailment there mate hehe.

Yolokin_Swagonborn

Sounds great, but the guard mechanics were designed so that PvE'ers dont go into a zone and see dead bodies everywhere and cry.

If things can be killed they will be killed. And if you do emergent gameplay in a PvE zone, a precious snowflake with have his immerzunz ruined and cry to ZOS.

So that's why we cant have killable guards.

SHADOW2KK

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

Sounds great, but the guard mechanics were designed so that PvE'ers dont go into a zone and see dead bodies everywhere and cry.

If things can be killed they will be killed. And if you do emergent gameplay in a PvE zone, a precious snowflake with have his immerzunz ruined and cry to ZOS.

So that's why we cant have killable guards.

And people wonder why PvEers are called care bears, lol.

No offence but surely some RPer or something can patch something into their experience about some village being hit, and put it down to the fact well that um there is a 3 side war going on with a daedra invasion, there would be corpses everywhere if it were real life, villages would be razed, and dead things would be everywhere.

Even the TES games were way more serious and treated war a lot more seriously than the cutesy non immersion way ESO has in regards to a multi levelled war going on.

I lost count of the amount of times in Morrowind or the other games, modded or not, that I came on my travels to a burned out house or something and seen the slain everywhere and my blade was in my hands without conscious thought, eyes scanning round, looking for threats, that is a part of immersion to me personally.

Ok ya see a few peeps dead here and there in the game but maybe I am a bit callous but it does not impress me at all, certainly not to the level of the hype stimulated by the advent of a daedric invasion on top of already tumultuous 3-way war going on.

Well IMO anyways....

bedlom

They are much better off staying invincible for ESO

Iluvrien

SHADOW2KK wrote: »

And people wonder why PvEers are called care bears, lol.

Not really, PvEers have encountered people who use similar language before. Guess what? We have names for them too. What fun!

SHADOW2KK wrote: »

No offence but surely some RPer or something can patch something into their experience about some village being hit, and put it down to the fact well that um there is a 3 side war going on with a daedra invasion, there would be corpses everywhere if it were real life, villages would be razed, and dead things would be everywhere.

Really? Deep behind the front lines? In areas where forces are actively working to prevent the effects of the daedric invasion spreading too far (the Fighter's Guild and Mages guild, not to mention your own character and the other players). You want a body-strewn wasteland, so you portray it as the only realistic possibility. It isn't.

SHADOW2KK wrote: »

Even the TES games were way more serious and treated war a lot more seriously than the cutesy non immersion way ESO has in regards to a multi levelled war going on.

I lost count of the amount of times in Morrowind or the other games, modded or not, that I came on my travels to a burned out house or something and seen the slain everywhere and my blade was in my hands without conscious thought, eyes scanning round, looking for threats, that is a part of immersion to me personally.

You do realise that this isn't a single player game, right? The maps in Morrowind were of such a size that you could have several entire settlements empty or destroyed or both without impacting on the available feature density in the game. ESO cannot do this. That said, I have found multiple locations where houses have been wiped out, or adventurers have fallen in the wild (heck, we have a competition based around giving some of them stories). Not sure how much more of this you would like to see before the population dropped to the point that Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim would no longer be possible because the population would be unlikely to have rebuilt enough of Tamriel for us to play in it.

SHADOW2KK wrote: »

Ok ya see a few peeps dead here and there in the game but maybe I am a bit callous but it does not impress me at all, certainly not to the level of the hype stimulated by the advent of a daedric invasion on top of already tumultuous 3-way war going on.

Well IMO anyways....

So how many settlements would you have preferred to see? It sounds like what you seem to be looking for is a map with perhaps a single hub for banking/crafting/group organisation... and then a wasteland of wandering daedra. Is this the case?

All of that said, what you are asking for is a significant change to the way the game currently works. You are asking for a change that would impact on the playing experience of others. You do not seem to care about this and label those who would be affected, for the sake of your own increased enjoyment, with a derogatory name. Why? Why? would you be that person?

Heromofo

+1

Julianos

why would anyone wanna fight with guards for 250 or 500 or 1k gold worth lockbox item? especially bounty start from 5k.

BuggeX

Also wave 3 should be killable, and after you could flee.
each soldier has a bountry of 100k
you have after a total bountry of 915k.

If you kill the last wave, you bountry doesnt decreas Auto. it force you to buy the fee.
But there should be some Special qs to decreas your fee in metter you have killed the 3 wave ...