Suggestion for a future chapter: Save the Town!

In a future chapter of Guild Wars I would like to see a feature I call 'Town under siege!'. The premise is very simple: Certain towns would be under seige by the enemy and it is the player's job to fight them off to keep the town 'friendly'.

In my idea, certain specific towns across the map would be designated as towns under siege. Depending on the status of the siege, a town would be designated as 'friendly' or 'unfriendly' which I will explain later.

At certain random intervals, perhaps between 2-3 times a day, a town would be attacked - players across the continent would be notified of this by the blue text announcing that an attacking force has been spotted encroaching on the town and will arrive in 15 minutes, then again when the attack starts.

When a town is under attack, players in the town will be notified and their skill bars will be locked and all npc's would cease to trade and instead run for cover. They would also find that they are able to use skills and weaponary against the enemy. A heavy battle would then ensue and players would have to fight off the invasion to save the town. This would be achieved by beating all the enemies in a district and at least 51% of the available districts would have to win the fight.

Things to note about these battles are:

• Districts with less than 10 people would be exempt so as to not skew the results unfairly.
• Deaths in town would not increment the /death counter (collective sigh from survivor seekers)
• Winning a district would net each player scoring 10 or more kills a small sum of gold. If enough districts win and the town is saved then then players will net another small sum of gold (only if they achieved the first reward though). AFK players would receive nothing.
• Players may need to be sent to another district in order to keep the performance of the area acceptable. However, parties would not be split up and would move as a whole or not at all.
• Casters can cast beneficial spells on any other players and shouts etc would affect friendlies as normal.
• Skills like heal party, dark fury etc would only affect party members as usual.

As a town survives sieges, they will start to get stronger and more intense. The next siege will have more enemies, higher level enemies and the arrival of bosses and super bosses (think glint strength). Depending on the interval between attacks, towns might survive for days, but eventually they will fall - this is inevitable and by design.

When a town falls, all players are transported to a nearby outpost and the town becomes 'unfriendly' i.e players cannot map to it anymore and the icon will change on the map.

In order to recapture a town, players must form parties and enter the town portal as they would normally. However instead of warping into the town district, they must now battle to clear out the town.

Success in clearing out the town would reward all party members with some gold, some XP and a small chance at some unique green weaponary not available anywhere else.

Note that:

• These battles would be balanced so as to make farming impossible.
• They would be tough enough to prevent one party continuously repeating over and over every 15 minutes.
• Failing the mission would have no negative impact at capturing the town. Only wins count.
• Winning or losing teams are warped back to the outpost from which they left.

Once the town instance mission has been beaten, a counter would appear next to the town icon on the map and a progress bar which represents the number of beaten missions required to take the town. Depending on the significance of the town this might be between 20 and 100 (this would be carefully monitored by a-net to retain a healthy balance).

Once the progress bar is full, the town is freed and becomes 'friendly' again. Players may once again map to the town, trade and form parties. The town would be under ceasefire for a few hours to give players a break and a firework display would celebrate the recapture of the town. Furthermore, players who helped to free the town will be rewarded (again) by temporarily cheaper prices at the merchant (limited to several purchases).

Once the ceasefire ends, the cycle begins again...

In addition to the above, new titles could be constructed, one for defending and one for recapturing towns. This would have the added bonus of keeping the new game mechanic running for a long time.

Comments & constructive criticism please

Very nice idea. Adding some stuff..

- The town should be "Out-of-place", in that it won't be something that would effect the major story line and progression of missions. Its more like a optional outpost, but if can keep under control, will allow easier access into the "frontier" area via by map jumping.

- When the town come under attack, it would change from a Town, to a Mission Outpost, where you can group player (8 to 12) and "enter mission".

- Progression bar in town take over is great idea. Might also add a time duration as well, where you much win it over within some time period (30min or so)

-To retaking over capture town, would make it where you much fight back throught the exploration area back to a outpost again, where you can find other to join in for the mission. However, that mission outpost will not be tele map accesesed.

Overall, very great idea. Cann't find much fault in it, and is ensure to be great fun. Can even make it PvP style as well. Kudos.

Nice idea. I think these "towns" would have to be in outlying areas of the map. Not main cities many people visit. Maybe when the "announcement" happens, you would have maybe...15-30 minutes to get there and enter a battle.

Perhaps you could always access the town but if it is controlled by the enemy you will not be able to access "special" areas these towns contain and all the NPCs (merchants, armor, etc...) would be gone. There might be nice 15k armor in some of these towns or special "elite" missions in them that are only accessible when the town is controlled by friendly forces. The battles that happen in these areas would be calculated like the alliance battles but between human players and the cpu monsters.

Monsters would be random spawns of different difficulty and professions so you cant easily exploit the area and constantly control the town.

VERY nice idea. And very well thought out.

I would love to see something like this in a future chapter.

If it was implemented correctly I could see myself only playing town siege maps.

It would be a nice change from the walk to the enemy kind of PvE.

yeh that would be an awsome idea. I would love to have a sort of defending the castle or attacking the castle sort of thing. :-) i think a lot of players would enjoy it. But you would have to make it unsolo farmable to ensure it was a team thing. It probably should be a co operative mission however to make it more fun sort of like Alliance Battle but against monsters

Thanks for the feedback guys. I agree with the comments about the town not being critical to missions or a main trading centre etc. Still, it shouldn't be too far out of the way otherwise no-one will bother to travel there.

Personally, I would rather see the town get assaulted head on rather than having to enter it like a mission; if a town is under attack it should cease to exist as a regular district and become a hostile instance. Having people talking and trading as normal only to have the front gate smashed in and hundreds of monsters pour through it and start killing everyone would be a moment to remember

Keep the feedback coming, I'd like a few more people to read it before it sinks into oblivion...

I like it but I got a few points I would like to say.

First of all how many people will be playing in one district while the town is being defended. Will it be the usual teams of 8 or the elite mission teams of 12. Those hardly seem to be a defending force unless NPC will also be fighting. Maybe if two teams of 8 joined in that would make it more like a defending force.

How will teams be made. Will the people arrive at the town under seige and be placed automatically into a group or will there be a place to form a party and then enter the battle area of the seige.

For attacking the town, same idea. How many people will be attacking, a party of 8 hardly seems like a seiging force, but a party of 50 will lag the game tremendously.

Seige equipment, will there be any? Trebuchet that kill you in one hit unless you have prot spirit on? That would seem right but there shouldn't be 10 of them so where ever you go you get hit.

Just a few questions, but a great idea! I hope it gets implemented.

It should bea bit far out.. but possibly near a good Farming Area..as to attract player to hold on not it.

I am not sure about regular district become hostile. While fun, it may cause different problem if certain change from one to another. And how would you manage people and teams? Its a more natural the way you presented, but it also might not fit well with the instanization technology of GW.

So I am hoping to see more of Town Area change to Mission Area, where at that point, you can form group and have the Enter-Misssion Button show up. (as well as a control meter) The start of mission would take you to a replicate of the same town/out post you were just in, minus other player. (and Mob knocking on the gate)

For re-take the town after loose control... Could go either way, but I still think it would be easier to count the "control points", as well as eaiser to find groups, if also make it a mission, and not a continues part of exploration area. (the re-take outpost could be like small tents outside of take-over town, and would be a place where you can not teleport travel to, only reachable by foot. And should your team fail, you will be dump to a town, and not that out post)

Well, thats how I see it. Also I will add it to my listing too...