08/28/2008    |    Devlog    |    Taelorn    |    Discuss

 Five Sided PvP Battles
We’re wrapping up the recent open sea battle revamp with another big change – battle markers are going to open up to all sides. That means there’s the potential for up to five sides in a battle (the four player sides and neutral NPCs). This doesnt apply to PvE flagged encounters, but it does apply to battle markers with NPCs that are inside hotspots.

Spawn points will be arranged in a pentagon shape.

Allowing multiple sides means that battles will be more dangerous and international relations become more important.

Jumping from one NPC battle to another to get through a hotspot will be dangerous with five-sided battles. Instead of preventing hostile members of other nations from joining, it just changes their spawn location and wind orientation. When sides 3-5 join the battle, they’re automatically orientated towards the center of the battle.

 Ad-Hoc Alliances
There are no game-enforced alliances. All alliances will need to be established and upheld by players. That means it’s not possible to guarantee that any third side in a battle will assist you, or that they wont turn on you after you work together towards defeating an opponent.

Let’s say six British attack three French, and there’s a group of six Brethren roaming the area. When the Brethren join the battle, a likely course of action would be to engage the British from behind to help the French. The engagement would probably be cautious to avoid placing themselves in any serious danger. However, once the British are defeated, the French could become the next target.

Naturally, it’ll be more beneficial for specific sides to work together, which will make it easier to build trust and long-term cooperation in those cases. The weaker the nations, the more benefit theyll get from establishing good working relationships with others.

 Outnumbered Battles
The additional sides that join a battle do not count for the outnumbered calculation.

 New Battle Marker UI
As part of the set of changes, you’ll see a new battle marker UI since we need to show more information. Aside from that, we’ve also wanted to update the battle marker for awhile now to present the information in a better format. This gives us the option to take care of both of those at once.

That’s it for now. Let us know what you think.

08/28/2008    |    Devlog    |    Taelorn    |    Discuss