Alternate Guild Tower System
 

I'm offering this post as an alternative to the current guild tower system. After reading Rufus' thread which polled whether or not the current number of forts is okay, I saw a lot of issues brought up about the guild tower system.

From what I've read: It seems that the same guilds occupy the same towers for extremely long periods of time, and in a dominating fashion. If they exceed the point where there are no more rewards left, the dominant guilds disband and regroup into a new guild. The guilds at different towers also seem to have truces in place not to attack one another.

For these reasons, it is my conclusion that there are systemic issues in the guild tower system that detract from gameplay for all but the most elite.

After the first server wipe of Classic, I reintroduced the MoD guild fort with a new tower system. This is an outline of the system I implemented, and it contrasted with the previous system (note that the previous system is practically equivalent with the present system). There were rarely many players after the server wipe, so not many had the privelege to play this implementation of the tower. However, I will say that when towering did occur, I found it absolutely intense.

The previous system was brought back for some reason or another, and is what you presently see on iClassic. The only gameplay difference for the iClassic towering system from the first towering system (which wasn't particularly popular) is that there is now a reward for holding the tower for extended periods of time.

This was my system. The entire premise of gameplay required only 35 lines of code, albeit with respawns handled separately.

• Towering is broken down into discrete rounds in which only one guild may come out on top. Previously there had been no reward system, such as the current hats system, and I figured a victory tally would be a decent reward.
• There is a delay between rounds of a fixed period of time. This allows everyone to reorient themselves and prepare for the next round. In my implementation it was 15 seconds.
• In order to win, you must maintain flag ownership for a fixed period of time. This allows for a round to come to an end. An alternative to this could decrease the time required as the round progresses. In my implementation it was 120 seconds.
• One sword hit to the flag changes its ownership. Because of this, you can never know who is going to win the round until the very end, which endows this alternative with a great deal of intensity.

Do you think this alternate system would be an improvement over the current system? Do you see any challenges with the alternate system? Other thoughts?

I think it's a wonderful idea, it's just that I can say with certainty that the "towering" community would never go for it. I put towering in quotations because it isn't really towering these days, it's idling at a flag for hours a day.

Na im fne with the current system
Unless u think new towers should be added with that but leave the old ones the way they are

I think that it would be great to implement new towers with this system(as a trial) and see how popular they are and if people like them, than we'd keep the old towers and these ones.
But there would be different rewards for those kinds of towers so that it's not too easy to boost.

Great idea!!

Before we have a new towering system we have to be able to tower fairly which is impossible with the server lag the classic client provides our community with . But it's a good idea

The lag wouldn't have been this bad if we didn't allow someone to have 2000 1k hats in the first place.

That doesn't really contribute much to the lag.

Actually, it does contribute to the lag when 25 players received 100 1k hat (gif).
But the thing that makes it unfair even without the lag, are the 1k guilds(like beg for mercy).
I swear, they should allow you to have only 3 1k hats per account maximum.

While I see your side of the argument, I disagree. I think the real flaw is their not being the slightest incentive to continue past 1k. Sure their is this 10k Mount thing I have heard about... but like an organized system. A system that would make players want to earn new stuff instead of collecting a bunch of similar hats.

1k custom hat
5k custom gani
10k custom mount.

Hat guilds will still exist, but it will seem like more of a personal choice rather than the obvious route to take... and their would be more competition!

Also, perhaps classic should look into getting personal points for taking towers and not being afk. Like ole' west. (this means you guys could create yet another awesome shop with all those awesome graphics *wink wink*)

I did participate in this guild fort setup but I can't remember if it was any fun; the playerbase was very lacking at this point. Moreover, the system wouldn't work alongside what is already on GraalOnline Classic, since guild forts are scored entirely on hours accumulated.

I wouldn't be opposed to this being used on occasion as some sort of randomized (or triggered) 'berserk mode' to the current system to keep people on their toes, or as some kind of weekend event. It would need to be introduced after Classic moves to a points based guild system, which was always going to be a thing.

are we gonna have a guild point system?

Lol Rufus and dusty just messing with people's emotions.

There pretty much had to be at least two guilds with at least five people each for it to be any fun, and that only happened once or twice because of the **** player count.

ur right. they tend to throw stuff and make us hype, but it aint happening.

Okay, played with Thallen's guild, MDR, in Destiny for a good number of hours the past couple of days and decided to provide feedback based on that experience.

1. There was lots of PKing.
2. There was not much competition.
3. A lot of people there were only there to PK.
4. There were also a few guilds without the manpower to usurp MDR.
5. When MDR did employ strategic play, it wasn't done consistently.

The two factors where I thought having fun was at play: PKing, and restoring the flag's HP. I would imagine the people there to exclusively PK (e.g. no guild or a very small guild) have fun being disruptive.

A match or round-based system would add to that: winning a match or a round. For this particular implementation, it would also emphasize strategy.

Other suggestions: level-based guild alerts that don't require disruption of gameplay (as in clicking on guild chat). Examples: the flag room needs some defense! The room below the flag needs some defense!

That would be quite handy. Would have to decide how low is low enough to trigger the alert for each tower.

This is very interesting. I don't know how it would work out, but something needs to change to make towering better than what it is now. But 1 hit to change onwership 0-0 that sounds crazy. I like crazy.

The point of that system is it would work best with Sardons, or a tower that can easily be defended downstairs.

I.e. a tower with bottleneck areas.

The system I noted is based on actual research in reinforcement schedules. It's not the only solution, but it is a potential solution.

Right now, towers seem to run on a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement, even though variable interval schedules, through decades of research, have been shown to have a more positive response. PKing and sparring, in contrast, tend to go through relatively dense variable ratio schedules rather than interval schedules.

The research is out there.

How about brining back king of the hill? Towers like snow and the castle are ready made for this tower system.