Ember Isle PVP Zone Concept

[Khelendross]

Ember Isle PVP Rework (Codename: Ember Isle Conflict)


This concept serves the duel purpose of reworking Ember Isle to make it relevant again while also giving a more long term open world like pvp solution.

This is a persistant pvp zone. Not an instance per say (though I suppose whatever way is easiest for them to achieve it with. Its basically Conquest (but much better) that never ends though it does have periods of lesser activity.

The Basics:

All pvp stats are normalized and this content is accessible to anyone level 10 and up (they are scaled up using the Runic Library mechanics introduced in the BoB patch). You gain gear that is usuable only here (with a few exceptions, see below).

All of Ember Isle is used save the water areas.

All mobs are removed except the mobs in Dormant Core (more on that later).

No Rifts spawn but raid tears do appear. These can be used to open the new pvp rifts (more on that later)

The volcano area is gated off (more on that later).

Sourcewells and the 3 main cities are the primary points of conflict.

Capturing Sourcewells enables you access to certain seige weapons (purchasable at your city). You can stockpile seige weapons but they disappear when you leave the map.

Lifesprings are now defense generators. In order to attack a defense arch you must destroy all defense generators or use seige weaponry. Destroying a defense arch grants you control of the sourcewell.

Turrets are still a means of defending sourcewells and function as before.

Each city has a defense arch as well. In order to enter the city you have to destroy the defense pillars on either side of the city entrance to remove the barrier.

City Barriers can only be attacked once every defense arch belonging to that city has been destroyed.

Seige weapons do much higher damage to all city defenses.

Each city has 4 defense arches belonging to it for a total of 12 among all 3 cities.

You can teleport to a defense arch if it has at least 2 (of 4) of its generators working.

Turrets will tell you in zone chat what sourcewell is being attacked and by how many generally.

When a city is captured, the victor is declared and the zone enters a period of stability for 30 minutes. After that time all the sourcewells reset, the Volcano becomes inaccessible and the Dormant Core mobs are reset.

You can continue to do pvp rifts during the period of stability. Also if Dormant Core has not been cleared, that can be done as well. Sourcewells, defense pillars and the city defense arch all become unattackable. At the time a victor is declared all players within the cities are expelled in order to "clean out" the area.


The Secondary Systems:

There are three main secondary systems in this zone. The first is purely pvp, the second is pvp and pve and the third is purely PVE.

PVP rifts are back! But now they award currency used to purchase seige weaponry (you can also loot these from players or from capturing sourcewells). They work for the most part as before, the provide a flashpoint for pvp.

PVP rifts and Dormant Core both award loot (armor and weapons for dormant core. Sigils, accessories and essences for pvp rifts) but this loot only works inside this zone. Otherwise your stats are normalized for all gear
.
Dormant Core is a open world pvp raid area. You get loot that drops off the normal raid mobs (rarely) and then the boss at the bottom drops a chest that each player gets to loot from (contribution bronze or better required, yes the contribution meter makes its triumphant return!). They also drop currency used for seige equipment (as do pvp rifts).

The third system at play here is The Volcano. This area is sealed during conflict and open only to the winning side after. The portal for the winning side takes you inside Infernal Dawn for a 20 man raid. Here you fight the 4 spirits of Mount Carcera driven mad by corruption to the sourcewells. This is the only place where you can get loot that works outside the Conflict map. As the bosses (and mobs rarely) drop loot for the zone but also drop currency for the raid tear below the current max (so FE stones) and the current PVP marks (myrm) as well as RIC's. The idea is to make this appealing to all types of players. PVE, PVP and people who do Conflict exclusively. Mobs inside the volcano grant both exp and favor/prestige.



To wrap this all up the basic thought is to really create an objective driven pvp system with its own checks and balances but one that allows access to alot of players and is large enough to not be laggy as all hell constantly. Moreover to reward players of all types for doing content that may be new or unfamiliar to them. And for sub max level players an opportunity to have a different and unique leveling experience where they can if not compete completely even, at least have some chance of surviving against a max level player.

I also wanted to wipe the slate clean and have an internal gear system so there is advancement, but it doesn't let people who are already myrmidon just walk all over everyone.

Using Ember Isle I think lets the zone have a permanent place in the game (something it deserves) but it works because its a large zone with already built in objectives. There is alot of behind the scenes work required to make a pvp system like this happen. This isn't something that would be ready in a month. But since there is little to no graphic work added, it will cut down on some of the production time and resources required to make this happen.

I didn't talk to much about seige weaponry as I think the team can surprise us there. We have catapults already in the game (graphically speaking). But we also have cool stuff like mechs that are uniquely Rift. There is alot of room for cool seige weaponry ideas. I also didn't go into much detail on the pvp rifts, again the designers have been making Rifts for 3 years. They can easily come up with something much better than I can.

[Pocketzoar]

All sounds extremely interesting. Thanks for taking the time to write this, Its nice to see productive posts that serve a purpose other then complaining.


I really really wish something like this could happen for Rift. Its world PvP used to be very engaging and worth while. A lot has changed that since then, I it would be nice to go back to our roots a little bit with some even more fresh ideas.

[Khelendross]

All sounds extremely interesting. Thanks for taking the time to write this, Its nice to see productive posts that serve a purpose other then complaining.


I really really wish something like this could happen for Rift. Its world PvP used to be very engaging and worth while. A lot has changed that since then, I it would be nice to go back to our roots a little bit with some even more fresh ideas.

I've been championing something, anything like this since well pretty much beta. Most of the players who were really behind such things have long since left (at one point there was like a 300 page thread about getting some sort of open world pvp in).

When Conquest was announced I thought that would be it. And I actually enjoyed it on the PTS but through various changes, its been made into what is basically a glorified warfront. The new Conquest is a little more interesting but still Conquest I feel doesn't achieve what even Trion wanted to achieve with it. And honestly part of that I think is because it was way to rushed. A real concept even like the one outlined above would take many months before it would even be ready for testing. Its not like I don't understand why Daglar doesn't want to do an open world pvp idea such as this,. Its a lot of allocated resources. That being said you can take some shortcuts (such as using EI and all its assets) to alleviate a lot of its pressure. More importantly I think it looks bad for Rift, a game that seemingly has it all, to be missing such a core feature that is in every other major MMO in some way or another. If WoW can do it, so can Rift.

[Slipmat]

When Conquest was announced I thought that would be it

Same, when the concept of Conquest was first put out there, my first thought was "three Factions, three Keeps in Stillmoor, surely it'll be a defend the castle/be siege the castle" type with people gathering nodes like wood and ore to craft siege engines, maybe empowering a 'Champion colossus to fight for you.

Unfortunately it didn't quite pan out this way

Your Ember Isle concept is excellent, although i'd prefer to have it "instanced" so you'd have the PvE version left intact and there for non PvP'ers, who could learn a thing or two from your post on how to present a Thread on how to improve PvP, a well thought out, well written post without the usual "rabble rabble" that infests the PvP Forum

[toodles]

This 'concept' is not very much unlike conquest and what we already have now. it's slightly different but it's just more of the same.

Something serious for open world PvP would be nice. As in, something that goes on in the open world and something that effects it. If I win a PvP zone event I don't want loots. I want control for my guild of that zone + Huge perks and 'ego boosts'. I wana run around with a HUGE crown avatar on top of my toon and I wanna be undisputed ruler of Telara/Zone until the next event....

[Godmoney]

They just need to have zone events on seastone that are more pvp oriented. Like drop pvp stuff like rics cool mounts pets favor. Have them go off a few times a day. Everyone can port there now so no reason not to.

[Khelendross]

This 'concept' is not very much unlike conquest and what we already have now. it's slightly different but it's just more of the same.

Something serious for open world PvP would be nice. As in, something that goes on in the open world and something that effects it. If I win a PvP zone event I don't want loots. I want control for my guild of that zone + Huge perks and 'ego boosts'. I wana run around with a HUGE crown avatar on top of my toon and I wanna be undisputed ruler of Telara/Zone until the next event....

Its nothing like conquest. I think you need to read it a little more carefully, cause you get that from the concept I'm presenting. During the period of "inactivity" you have control over the Volcano area (which has the modified ID instance).

And Slip the idea wasn't to get rid of the current EI, but rather have this be a seperately accessed zone (or instance, whichever is easiest)

[Khelendross]

I'll clarify what makes this different from Conquest (and hopefully highlight why Conquest fails). The reason why this is so different from Conquest is because Conquest is to much about zerging and running over extractors. There is little incentive to protracted battles of a objective.

Here because of the seige aspect, and the ability to teleport you have the ability to attack and defend strategically. There are also more objectives to spread things out instead of simply running around in a circle capping extractors. On the face the idea may seem similar to Conquest but its really not at all. Conquest tried to be open world pvp but while taking away seige. You can't do that. If you do then its just people running around clicking things.

The volcano area I mentioned it as an instance but the whole volcano area could be something akin to Darkness Falls if you guys remember that. With mobs to farm for in zone currency and maybe mini bosses, you could make it so if the zone changes hands, you dobn't need to kick anyone out. Also you can expand on it throughout the life of the game. Adding other instanced or non instanced areas (there are alot of nooks and crannies in Mount Carcera).

[Godmoney]

They just need to have zone events on seastone that are more pvp oriented. Like drop pvp stuff like rics cool mounts pets favor. Have them go off a few times a day. Everyone can port there now so no reason not to.

[Riane]

Kind of a waste of a thought because unless they add open world PVP bolstering with "Ascended Courage"... something like this is never going to happen.

They would have to make it in instance like a warfront or CQ.

[Khelendross]

Kind of a waste of a thought because unless they add open world PVP bolstering with "Ascended Courage"... something like this is never going to happen.

They would have to make it in instance like a warfront or CQ.

Yea I don't worry about the backend stuff cause I dunno what is possible and what isn't but this definitely needs to be normalized. They may be able to do something like that in a zone, but I dont know. But its not a waste of a thought because there are numerous ways around any problem. I tend to think this is possible cause they do it in Runic Anthaem, it kicks you down to 15 and sets your stats accordingly. So I suspect there are ways to make it work. Even if not you could do it as a instance and just not have the instance ever shut down save for server resets.

[Riane]

I tend to think this is possible cause they do it in Runic Anthaem, it kicks you down to 15 and sets your stats accordingly. So I suspect there are ways to make it work.

All it's doing is auto-mentoring you down to level 15. It's not really replacing any of the gear you have like the "Ascended Courage" buff in instanced PVP.

[Khelendross]

All it's doing is auto-mentoring you down to level 15. It's not really replacing any of the gear you have like the "Ascended Courage" buff in instanced PVP.

Yea. I just don't know what they can do and can't. So I just present the idea what Trion chooses to do with it (use it, not use it, expand on it, whatever) is up to them. I just want Rift to succeed and I think in PVP right now Rift is not succeeding.

[Furyon13]

This 'concept' is not very much unlike conquest and what we already have now. it's slightly different but it's just more of the same.

Something serious for open world PvP would be nice. As in, something that goes on in the open world and something that effects it. If I win a PvP zone event I don't want loots. I want control for my guild of that zone + Huge perks and 'ego boosts'. I wana run around with a HUGE crown avatar on top of my toon and I wanna be undisputed ruler of Telara/Zone until the next event....

Yes and get a cut from vendor sales!

[Khelendross]

I personally am a proponent of faction buffs and suchlike but I suggested something long ago with the planar breach and was met with IMMEDIATE cries of pain from the PVE crowd. The pvers don't want to be forced to pvp for any sort of pve related THING. That being said (and I feel that Daglar somewhat agrees) I say, tough cookies. People who play MMO's should be playing every part of the game. I'm sorry but I'm very old school and when I started playing MMO's you did everything. Why would you limit yourself? Rift has a huge amount of content to offer. Though I love pvp I do more pve in rift than anything else. Partly because of the current state of pvp but also because I find pve fun also.

So I'm definitely down with having areas, buffs etc accessible to the winning side until such time as another side takes the buff away. I like the idea of having the Dormant Core boss give a buff to the side that kills him, partly because its a pve and pvp objective anyways. But I also like the idea of having some advantage to actually being the victorious side. Rift tried this briefly for pvp rifts if you guys remember. And the buffs were so small that it was largely a non issue. But that also meant that people didn't bother.