Besieged (03/27/2006)

[Falce]

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/topics/060327.html

Owners of the FINAL FANTASY XI Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion disc will be able to experience a whole new way of doing battle--"Besieged"!

Besieged is a form of Conquest on the new continent of Aradjiah. After creating a new town, the development team decided to utilize the opportunity to implement beastman attacks within the city walls, and thus began the idea of Besieged. We then decided that these invasions were to be a struggle over a single treasure of great power.

he Empire of Aht Urhgan and the beastmen of the western half of the Aradjiah continent are in a constant state of battle over this magnificent treasure--the "Astral Candescence."
Only you can protect the Astral Candescence from the beastman threat by fighting off the savage hordes. If the Astral Candescence should be taken, you must gather your fellow adventurers and storm the beastman strongholds in order to return the Empire's treasure.

So if you thought fighting for control over regions with your fellow adventurers was tough, just wait until you find yourself Besieged by hordes of monsters!

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[Lordwafik]

yay for flan in last pic

[Eaglestrike]

What I have to wonder is...

What is the penalty for not having the Astral item? What do you lose when the beastmen take it? And how hard will it be to take back? I hope it's something important and actually takes effort to retrieve, would make things very interesting.

[Severance]

joy ^-^

[Not Kuno]

Woulda been better if they said a little more then what we already knew. Images are nice though.

[Gamutstreet]

Where as CoP was the Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting of FFXI (a few new moves, no new characters) ToA is the Super Street Fighter II (4 new characters, lots of new moves). This will be beautiful.

[Stilgar]

that analogy doesn't work, though, because hyper fighting was always the best game in the SF series, and we're hoping CoP is NOT the best expansion for FFXI.

[Gamutstreet]

I always thought Super Street Fighter II Turbo was the best (supers and Akuma added) but that is just my opinion.

[royze]

you must gather your fellow adventurers and storm the beastman strongholds in order to return the Empire's treasure.

http://www.mrargus.com

[Francisco]

we're hoping CoP is NOT the best expansion for FFXI.

RoZ ftw.

[layoneil]

What I have to wonder is...

What is the penalty for not having the Astral item? What do you lose when the beastmen take it? And how hard will it be to take back? I hope it's something important and actually takes effort to retrieve, would make things very interesting.

i remembering reading somewhere that says if you lose the Astral Candescence, to get it back you have to do a special Assault mission, which seems to fit the "storm the beastman strongholds" description.

except Assault is suppose to be for 3-6 people. which means if your entire server loses the AC, you only need 6 people to get it back? that would be kind of messed up.

also, considering that Besiege + Assault is suppose to be the new form of Conquest, i'd say the extreme case is if you lose the AC you either won't be able to do any normal Assaults or you would get no/reduced Assault Points when doing it.

that would be similar to say in the current areas, if Beastmen Control a region you can't get CP.

of course CP doesn't mean all that much, but if Assault Points are similar to Ancient Beastcoins, not being able to get them for an extended period would suck.

[Julius]

i heard through the grapevine that you wouldn't lose any EXP when you die in beseiged? any confirmation on that being true or not?

[Maguspk]

i heard through the grapevine that you wouldn't lose any EXP when you die in beseiged? any confirmation on that being true or not?

1. It's Great Vine I believe.
2. You didn't hear it through the "grape vine" you heard it from SE, SE said they wouldn't have exp loss because lower level characters might get caught up in beseiged.

[layoneil]

i heard through the grapevine that you wouldn't lose any EXP when you die in beseiged? any confirmation on that being true or not?

1. It's Great Vine I believe.
2. You didn't hear it through the "grape vine" you heard it from SE, SE said they wouldn't have exp loss because lower level characters might get caught up in beseiged.

it's Grapevine.

and if he wasn't at the Fan Festival himself than he didn't hear it from SE, he heard it from other people who claimed they heard it from SE, which is the definition of "hearing something through the grapevine".

and i heard the same thing.

[kareface]

it's Grapevine.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... =grapevine

gossip that is spread by spoken comunication

Yea, don't you remember that old school song from marvin gaye:

http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/thebigch ... pevine.htm

I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine.
Oh I heard it through the grapevine,
Oh and I'm just about to lose my mind.
Honey, honey yeah.

[epigram]

I have the general belief that particular zones will be setup for Assault. These zones would be open for any purpose when the AC isn't in play. But if AC is in play the zones get closed and assault may begin.

This may be more of like a conquest r/l week type situation and during a week either AC is in play and assault is open for a few areas, or AC isn't in play and beseige is running. Assault will most likely be under the guise that it is a retalitary action to both obtain the AC and to force the beastmen back.

So more than likely you are looking at several regions, each region has a selection of zones that are assault'able. A zone is either in beseige or assault for a tally period. When a tally period is in assault all these zones are setup to be run as 3-6 person raid zones with around 1 hour time periods.

I believe it was also mentioned that a NM must be defeated before assault may begin, so perhaps an assault zone isn't set to assault until that nm is defeated.

My big concern is over crowding and lock out of zones. SE hasn't done a stellar job about this before but hopefully they get it right this time.

[Epincus]

The problem I have with Besieged is that it sounds like world events from Asheron's Call.

Allow me to elaborate for those who are not familiar.

Asheron's call had a system which allowed Admins to run world events in random places and make a world event saying something was going on. The network of transportation, however, was sophisticated enough that everyone on the server was typically there within 30 seconds and it turned into a 0.03fps nightmare. As an example, I was in a town (Eastham) when one of these events started. I started the fight alone, was joined by about 20-40 players within a few seconds, and had about 200-400 there within a minute.

The way SE phrases this would sound 'somewhat' similar without the world message. I would expect given it's something new that many players will set homepoints in this city and when a 'besieged' event goes off, you'll find that about 50-300 people will warp in within 1-3 minutes. What will follow will be a lag bomb the likes of which hasn't been seen since the King Simurgh incident. Don't get me wrong. I always have and still do think that events like this are a good idea, but unless SE modifies this in a manner which prevents SEVERE overcrowding (Making the events very fast or locking out zones [Even for homepointing?]), I think there will be offensive amounts of lag in these areas when this happens and you'll end up with people lagging out at best, the zones crashing at worst.

Or, in Layman's terms:

Think Lower Jeuno AH in full scale warfare.

[epigram]

I don't think besiege will be that bad. I think most servers have 2000-3000 people on during prime time. Many of these people camp kings, exp, run limbus, run dynamis, level npc, enm/bc, pvp, kill gods, kill sea crap, craft, fight wyrms, and other events that take up the evening.

Assuming new hnm class nm's are added then there are more windows added and less people in beseige zones, or would be running to them.

Unless the gear and items from beseige and assault are absurdly good, I highly doubt anyone will be leaving a fafnir window to make some points. Most of the people that will be doing this content will be the high level casual players that just bumb around and do things they think are fun.

[Not Kuno]

I don't think besiege will be that bad. I think most servers have 2000-3000 people on during prime time. Many of these people camp kings, exp, run limbus, run dynamis, level npc, enm/bc, pvp, kill gods, kill sea crap, craft, fight wyrms, and other events that take up the evening.

How will it be different from any Fafhogg, or KB/Aspid HQ day? Except for this you wont need an HNM ls to do. If the rewards are good expect everyone and their mom to show up.

[Hirronimus]

Seriously doubt SE will implement anything that rewards you with items that you can attain w/o the help of others. Team work GO!