Multiplayer Siege Overhaul
Right, the last few days Siege has been within the custom servers, and since then the game mode has picked up a ton of traffic (and I hope TaleWorlds decides to keep the servers up as a lot of us are having a blast) and I have had the opportunity to play a decent amount of the game mode - one of my favourite from Warband and in many areas with this new engine, it makes Siege so much more of an improvement in Bannerlord. But after chatting in the discord with a few peeps, an idea of mine popped up in my head, with refining this idea with others, largely @Piconi, I’ve come up with a few ideas with how Siege could be widely improved (mainly the Flag System & Morale System), and some future potential ambitious ideas for the far future.
Firstly, I believe that the map should be split up into different sectors. If you look at the spoiler below (titled 'Sectors') - you can see the map has been divided into five different sectors. The first sector will be the initial assault of the castle to secure ground, then sector's two and three will be to capture the main battlements of the walls and gatehouse within the castle (each comprising duo flags, acting as the 'main gameplay stage' of the siege, with each team bustling to obtain and hold both flags), to the fourth sector which is well into the castle, and a desperate attempt to hold the attackers back before finally sector five, which is the final stage of the assault and the defender's 'last stand', which is an all or nothing approach.
The way this system would work in practice is only one sector can be active at one time, and therefore only the flags within that sector can be active. Starting at sector one, once the flag has been taken and held for one minute, the sector will be marked as complete, the flag despawned and the defenders informed to fall back to sector two and the flags within that sector will be spawned. With the duo flag sectors, although both flags need to be taken before the sector can be marked as complete, this does not remove the ability to despawn a flag - flag despawning will work in the same concept as single-flag sectors, although, no flags will be spawned in a new sector until all flags are captured in the current one. Now, how will this help improve the game mode? Well, the concept will help increase the flow of gameplay with assisting players into certain single (or dual) objective, which in turn will concentrate fights and help motivate teamwork. Does this mean that players, for example, cannot assault the left wall when their objective is on the right? No! If anything, this system should encourage players to work tactically with methods to flank their enemy. This will also stop players ninja’ing to flags like G, which in my opinion, just ruins the gameplay. I should also note, this style of system will require some flag order to be rearranged depending on the map and sector organisation.
Alongside this new system, it could facilitate the removal of the morale system with an introduction of a timer. Instead of a problematic morale system which depends on the amount of flags you hold, the timer could help a team recover and regroup to assault or defend (depending on the circumstance we’re referring to) to better their chances and allow them to recover. So, how would this work? Firstly, you would start off with an initial base timer of ten minutes, and each sector taken will increase the timer of the game by 5 mins. In addition, if a single flag is held by the attackers within a two flag sector when the timer has elapsed, the attackers will be granted a one-minute extended timer (you could see this as ‘last chance all or nothing’) to take the other flag before the timer runs out. Alongside that, if a flag is still being contested when the timer has run out, they’ll be granted another minute to flush the enemy out from the flag before the timer is up.
To help make this system a little more fair for the attackers, the defenders will have a visible thirty-second spawn timer before they can spawn back onto the field, whilst the attackers will have a five-second spawn timer - this could work quite well with @Piconi ‘s custom spawn thread, with players being able to spawn at different locations of the map, around objectives and more crucially actually within the ‘Last Stand’ sector, instead of strangely outside the keep, unlike weirdly how it is done now...
Now, finally, I’d like to discuss ideas for the future. As seen in Battlefield 1’s Operations game mode, it consists of two or three maps in sequence that are narratively linked to one another, with attackers aiming to push the frontline forward to continue on to the next map, and the defenders' trying to hold ground. This could be a rather ambitious, more advanced version of Siege, in which a siege could take place within a large town. Sectors would work similarly to how they do within the normal siege game mode, but in ‘Ultimate Siege’, there would be three different maps intertwined with each other. The first map would consist of the scenery, outlining village/hamlet/houses and main battlements of the town itself, and if the attackers successfully manage to succeed with taking the battlements, the defenders will retreat to the second map. A couple of minutes will be granted for all players to spawn in and prepare themselves before being plunged into the map, which will consist of the lower town. Due to the maps being separated, this will allow more detail and a larger town with streets which need to be taken, one by one - and maybe even things like being able to enter and battle within buildings, like the tavern! If the attackers are again successful with taking the lower town, the defenders will retreat to the citadel, where the defenders are left with the last layer of small battlements and the keep itself to defend, which could lead to some nice interior fights. Different bonus’/drawbacks could be implemented, depending on the attackers’ general quick succession and success of their previous attack, including respawn times, pre-captured flags/sector advancements. All ideas which could be discussed heavily, a rather ambitious idea to add a much longer and drawn out game mode.
But that is it! Thanks for reading, and please leave your thoughts of this overhaul below and feel free to pick out the good/bad bits and suggestion your own things to add to help improve the idea itself! Looking forward in hearing from you all.
Thanks to @Piconi for the art.
