Invasions as Proof of Poor Design Problem Solving

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The intent of only being able to select 10 characters to slot for invasions is proof of poor decision making and problem solving. There are many posts that define the random selection as poor design. Instead, I think its poor problem solving. It goes like this:

Problem - We want factions (who we purposely pitted against each other) to work together to win an invasion.
Solution - Give territory owners only ten slots. Random fill the rest.
Caveat - Give them the ability to kick, because obviously there will be bad actors and people who aren’t team players, and eventually there is no business for anyone under level 60 to be in it. So, obviously, they need some control.

Your logic and solution is flawed. It doesn’t make people work together, it doesn’t give the illusion of content for under 60s, it doesn’t make it winnable, and its just frustrating. Want to understand why it solves the problem poorly? Well, here is a proposed solution:

Solution - Allow territory owners to select 30 slots, but it needs to be an even distribution of all three factions. (Better yet, 15 your faction, 15 from each of the others, and 5 for whoever you want.)
It works because company leaders MUST open up dialogue with other factions and companies. It forces diplomacy and inter-factional politics (e.g. if you want my best people, well your best people have to help me).

Objection - This means that the content will be exclusive to those who do well.
Rebuttal - All high level content is exclusive. You won’t be selected for wars if you aren’t geared and don’t PvP well. No one will want to do endgame dungeons with you if you aren’t geared and know what you are doing. Even OPR, while truly random, doesn’t pit people against one another based on factions and truly random PvP has a good place without consequences. (OPR is an amazing design choice imo.)

The consequences of war and invasions is not the place for random assignment of people who are under-leveled or under-geared. It just isn’t. Plus, people like me who are only playing this game to do invasions, can’t always reasonably get into them, while randoms who are just there for the “free gold and Azoth” (or worse don’t know what they are doing), take the slot of someone who lives for invasions.

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for war why not make it locked to the company the declared and ones who currently control. and for invasions make it just company controls the area. On my server youre kicked for their members anyways.

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This wouldn’t be a problem if people didn’t just give up completely in invasions, due to the fact it’s backbreakingly hard for 99% of the remaining playerbase, and not the kind of hard that’s challenging, just ridiculous bulletsponge sort of ‘difficulty’.

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my husband signs up, gets in, and then kicked. never even given a chance and he made sure at 60 to get gear just to do it was excited, was able to leave work early to make sure he was there to join and then kicked. alot on my server arent even given the chance to do it.

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There are a lot UI and mechanical changes that can improve invasions (and wars).

  • 10 players from defending company. All good.
  • Defending company able to ‘reserve’ up to 10 additional slots. (Town upgrades or gold).
  • Companies able to establish formal alliances with faction companies.
  • Able to reserve or give slots to formal allies.
  • Remaining slots available to all comers on a points priority basis.

Points can be determined by:

  • Level.
  • Faction
  • Gearscore
  • Home ownership in defending territory
  • Connection to defending company (friends, blocks)

This way, a member of a rival faction who owns a home in the defending territory and has friends in the defending companies will get priority (or their points can be displayed for defending governor/consul to assess).

Other UI elements that can help:

  • show weapons equipped in char profile.
  • show armor weight (light/heavy)
  • allow players to self select their role (tank, dps, heal, support) so that group assignment can be easier.
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Your premise is that it should be easier. This is not an argument and is immaterial for the purpose of my post. The difficulty is fine. In fact, its perfect. Its also not bulletsponge, and is an exceptionally deep and rewarding experience that takes far more strategic planning and preparation than PvP ever will. The devs did something magical with invasions. It is just simply not winnable with randoms. ← is pretty much the only problem.

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I want a new job because invasions happen 6-11 and I work second shift and get off at 9. This or transfer to a west coast server, ping be damned. So, I understand his frustration. Because it is unwinnable with randoms, people kick for two reasons: If you’re going to fail anyway, might as well give your company members the gold/azoth. The gold equates to 31,500 in total, enough to cover downgrades if need be. The other reason is because if you are trying to win, you need to select the “right people”. Have your husband reach out ahead of time and prove his gear, stats, etc., and basically apply. That is, in a way, what I am proposing anyway.

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Invasions, like wars, rely so much on tools external to the game like discord and preplanning, that unless you belong to a very well organized company, and you make sure everyone is following instructions, you cannot possibly win them.

They are awesome content that every single player should get a chance to experience and enjoy a few times. But their nature works against this.

I would love if we could get instanced, smaller scale invasions in an environment such as the island in Outpost Rush, for just 15-20 people, that could be repeated as often as we want, just like Outpost Rush, so that most people can get a taste of how it is to take part on a major PvE event where everyone needs to cooperate, rather than compete.

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I don’t disagree with anything, really, but, wow, that is complicated. I assume you are attempting to keep random selection, but make it weighted? It also seems like you want additional things that aren’t directly tied to invasions, per say, like formal alliances? Or do you mean PvE only alliances?
Your UI changes for assigning weapons/roles would be amazing for all wars and invasions, but I doubt we will see this change anytime soon. Especially without an API and mods.

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Now, that, a well crafted argument for the difficulty. This requires many more changes than we will see. It isn’t a problem to me that invasions, like wars, require external tools, in fact, it makes the game cheaper. Do you want them spending time/money on making in-game coms when discord is free and easily accessible? Especially if you are using your phone (like I do) to eliminate bandwith and RAM issues (because we all know discord is a hog). I sure don’t want them wasting time on programming raid coms. (Plus as a previous WoW player, having Raid coms doesn’t guarantee people will participate.)
So, your assertion seems to be that you are for random selection, but want to scale the difficulty lower. In a perfect world, sure, but the devs stated they won’t be doing it. That’s fine. The purpose of my post is to highlight how if their design decision is to allow for factions to work together, their choices are poor problem solving, but my solution was under the premise that the design decision is for factions working together.
But if the design decision was for people to be able to experience it, then, yes, they need it easy enough for randoms to do, and yes, their nature works against this. Perhaps their intent was split (poorly) between these two premises. But, since they won’t reduce difficulty, we need to help them find better solutions to the premise that they wanted people to work together.

I also love your idea for an instanced, smaller version of invasions. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY PROPOSE THIS IN ANOTHER TOPIC POST.

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I am not really pushing for total random selection, or company-only selection.
I understand the difficulty of Invasions requires a more curated selection. So company-only makes sense.
What I am proposing, is to have another Invasion-kind of event that works okay with randoms, instead of modifying the existing mode to “dumb it down” to make it feasible with randoms.

I will start a new topic, as you suggested, here: Please add random-friendly, Invasion-like events, using the Outpost Rush tech

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Me and 2 friends transferred to a server to join other friends. Me and 1 guy is green the other purple. On the new server purple was the dominating faction so we couldn’t swap (we didn’t know or really cared much about the factions).

Now purple control all the towns accept morningdale, restless and ebenscale.
All 3 started on lvl ± 20 on the new server ,now we all are lvl 60 . Me and the other green guy are constantly getting kicked from invasions being replaced by a purple guy , most of the time they are lvl 50 - 59 and then there is only like 54 people that signed up. Not even mentioning having to spend like 150 -200 azoth to fast travel one way to get all your gear ready sometimes it can go up to 400-500 azoth from cutless keys to everfall if you went farming.

They should change it that each faction has a chance to defend the invasion or something or just completely remove it or make it totally random

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Yeah. It needs work.

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