Siege participation

Non-registered combatants are not permitted on the siege field in castle or node sieges.

• Alpha-1 castle sieges are located in a separate zone that is accessible via a NPC teleporter.
  • Castle sieges (in the final game) may or may not be instanced.

• Players may choose to respawn at their HQ as long as they are registered.
  • Non-registered guilds are not granted the ability to take ownership of the castle if victorious.

• Players could potentially intercept stragglers with the guild war or flagging system en route to the siege field.

Lower level characters will have usefulness in mass combat that does not depend on their level, such as manning siege weapons, helping repair fortifications, bringing proximity-based buffs to key positions, using stealth or scaling walls. These types of things are relevant to the tide of battle and do not require the player to be max-level or have high combat stats.

Sieges

There's node sieges and castle sieges: I think the castle sieges will be more structured towards a guild element and having some structure there. Neither will be instanced in the sense of what an instance actually is, which is taking you out of the open world and putting you into your own shard of existence. But both will be in the open world. But there will be participation structure in sieging castles. With regards to the open siege on nodes, really the only structural component there and participation has to do with what what node you're a member of, what node you're a citizen of. That will restrict your participation to a particular side. – Steven Sharif

Sieges in Ashes of Creation refer to:

• Castle sieges, where guilds battle to occupy one of five Guild castles.
• Node sieges, which are open world battles fought to destroy nodes.

Q: Why does the design want to try to account for these types of large player battles?

A: The reason why is because, in my opinion, the types of PvP events where you have large player orchestration and coordination is really the ultimate goal for what a massively multiplayer experience is trying to provide. – Steven Sharif

Server prime-time

Objective-based PvP events such as node sieges, castle sieges, guild wars, and node wars will occur within a prime-time window somewhere between 3PM and 9PM server realm time. This is subject to testing.

• Guild wars and node wars can be declared at any time, but the objectives will only spawn during the prime-time window.

The key about the server prime time is that events cater to prime time. So, these inflection points where our expectation from a gameplay design is to allow or afford players an opportunity to participate in highly impactful events within the game: Those get delegated to prime time. – Steven Sharif

Siege alliances

When a siege begins, temporary alliances are formed among attackers and defenders.

• For node sieges, citizens of the node or provincial nodes being attacked are automatically registered as defenders.
• There are many reasons to participate as an ally in the attack or defence of other nodes.
  • Titles.
  • Items.
  • Materials.
  • Money.
  • Social bonds.

Many incentives exist that can benefit your node and yourself personally by participating in the attack or defense of cities. These range from titles, to items, to materials, to money. Additionally, aiding others may help you strengthen bonds when your assets are threatened. – Steven Sharif

Spectating battles

The ability to spectate battles, such as Sieges is being looked into.

One of the issues I did have about that system in Lineage 2, was like certain people just have alt accounts logged in and tuned into that thing; and like they would then utilize that information. Which, I guess is a means of information gathering. But it's maybe too easy of one. So we're - like i said - we're just looking into that. I haven't decided on that yet. – Steven Sharif

See also

• Castle sieges
• Node sieges
• World PvP