Firstly, this isn't an idea to change or fix PvP, this is an idea to DO something with it.

(TLDR at the bottom)

As the PvP stands at the moment, I personally would not play TERA for it, and I would certainly not pay to play it. While I really enjoy the game, with the combat being one of the main selling points, the actual Player vs. Player aspects are severely underutilised. People are commonly saying that the Guild vs. Guild wars are more 'gank wars' rather than any outright fighting, being more of a contest of who can hug the safe zone the longest while you go out and murder the low level alts. This idea would see to meet those problems and fix them with not a new system, but an actual meaningful reason to the combat, with actual rewards, tying in with TERA other main selling point, the political system.

The idea is this, create a risk 'zone control' or 'king of the hill' style map control, where the guild wanting to contest a region would have to take the area, part-by-part, from either a neutral or competing party. By making the areas dominated for a certain amount of time the guild would be able to either risk moving onto the next point, holding or reinforcing other points to gain control over the area, with the result being similar to the arena style of the political system and winning the zone. (It makes more sense to win the zone then and there through larger scale combat than a 5v5 battle taking place somewhere else.)

The initial grievances with this idea I can think of would be:
"What about large number guilds, and zerg guilds, wouldn't they just win by default?"

Larger guilds will have an advantage, that's the idea of strength in numbers. Any fighting force, real life or videogame, with superior numbers will always have an advantage in that department. But larger numbers are harder to control, and the idea of a 'King of the hill' risk, where they have to protect/take multiple points around the zone would put stress on this. Furthermore, the combat, unlike other MMOs is intended to be skill based, I'm sure we've all seen examples of an Archer or Slayer taking out 2 or 3 more opponents greater than themselves. So while the 'zerg' is protecting one point, there is no reason the opposing guild/s couldn't attack the other points, pull the zerg away, then hit that point. It would actually require strategy.

"What about democracy?"

The other way of winning zones through the political system is popular vote. Now I can see the same 'zerg guild' issue being applied here, but as for the difference between the ballot victory and the battle victory, would have to be handled the same way as Enmasse has seen to handle the Ballot v Arena victories. I don't actually know HOW they do that, but I assume they do have a plan for this. If not, the battle victor would have to get at least, say, 20-30% for argument sake (a normal victory would require 51% through JUST ballots), of the popular vote, to take victory over the zone and have enough popularity to maintain control.

"But I like the current system of Gank Wars/Safe Zones"

This isn't a suggestion about that, it is about adding something new to the game to make the guild wars actually mean something.



TLDR:
To assess the problems of the current PvP, create new political style GvG that is a zone control risk battle that requires guilds to work together to gain a zone through strategy.

I am agree that Territory war/politic war must have something to see with guild war, and i think those territory fight should take place in open world, but... i disagree with that ALL the guild war must be a territory war. And what if 10 guilds declare war to one guild? (without been allied) This couldn't work in a case like this.

And no, guild war must not be only 1v1, any guild should be able to declare war anytime, even to a guild that is already at war!

I agree with you, Khaios.

I didn't say that 'all' GvG would take place in the territory control, nor did I say that it would just be 1v1, that too would take away from the major 'world PvP' aspects of the game. This is not a suggestion for replacing the current system in its entirety, this is a suggestion for using that system we have for an actual purpose. (So for example: Guild war declared, open pvp for those guilds, a Territory Control occurs/declared, guilds who want in on the control over the zone attack it and try and hold it over the other guilds in that area with/against those guilds they are at war with and the others contesting the area)

How would that work in game? I'm not sure, but you raise a good clarification point. There are certainly finer details that would need to be worked out, things like 'when' wars can be declared, or who can declare or participate. I would assume some kind of 'war effort' monetary starting point to declare war on a zone/guild in control, which occurs at a certain time each 'x' amount of days, at 'x' amount of intervals.

As for your example, Ten guilds teamed up against one, isn't that part of war? Alliances are part of the strategy of war, the problem occurs when when one of those 10 wants to be in control of the zone and not one of their nine allies? It could be interesting to watch that infighting begin. I would hope that a 'contested zone' would be more FFA than that, with solo guilds against other guilds (1v1v2v3... so on and so forth) with multiple guilds (and their allies, gunning for the zone), but your point stands as a plausible experience.

I totally agree with what you are saying. Sorry for my previous post thought i misunderstood what you meant. I really hope that the politic system will work via guild war system with some kind of territory war in open world. It would just be amazing.

I like the idea of guilds taking control of areas. I was thinking an incentive for guilds fighting would be for small outposts or maybe even a mine or mill that contains special crafting materials (Kind of thinking about EVE). Maybe if a guild holds the majority of these locations, they can get control of the "neutral" part of the zone (the Federation town, tax access, the stuff mentioned in the political system). To help prevent the massive guilds from simply overrunning the smaller guild's holdings, there could be a way to hire NPC guards or set traps to at least give the defenders time to either reinforce or grab what they can and bolt.

I can easily see alliances forming up and the guild leaders negotiating terms (we'll help hold your mine if you give us x amount of Y ore). It would be complete chaos (in an awesome way) to see several guilds/alliances fighting for supremacy. I'm sure there are many problems that could arise with this, but I still think it could be fun. Just a thought.

It's not a bad idea; but unless you know Korean and go post on their forums, it's more or less falling on deaf ears.

One change I'd like to see and is within En Masse's ability to carry out is removing the three declaration of war limit.

I don't really know about that, is Enmasse not allowed to develop the game they are meant to be producing?

Are they completely tied to the Korean Devs and limited to only changing numbers to better fit NA/EU audiences and not allowed to actually 'develop' anything?

Quote: Jeeves on 2012-03-05 11:03:08 UTC - view

No, EnMasse told us (you can go read their post on this forum) that they can change mostly anything like they want. They are listening to us and are aware of what we are saying on this forum.

So people who think KTera = NATera this is false. PvP system, GvG, and many other things are already different in NA Tera than K Tera. ( i am not talking about you jeeves)

Phew, thanks for clarification.

Sending this back to the front, people please comment if you like/dislike this idea.

Hopefully if enough do we are able to get Enmasse to consider it.