The x1 -> x5 in sequence to win makes sense. It keeps the BG focused on a true war-like scenario. This is actually how everyone tried to play AV at first - resulting in the 4 hour games and probably 2 hours of that was spent sieging an enemy base. At an enemy base 40+NPC's+2towerstocap+1graveyardytocap+boss was just too much to fight through.
The allied NPC's were meant to be the solution to this. There was a giant boss you could summon, ram/wolf riders, elite soldiers and some flying riders. Combining these with a siege usually tipped the balance enough to get the next capture. But it would take 15 minutes to get the materials to summon them. And AV being formed of random players rarely managed things like organising troops and giving them tasks. Saying "Team 4 to mine pls" just didn't result in anything.
For solutions you just need to look at like-minded scenarios. There was a mod for Warcraft 3 called Tides of Blood, where NPC's automatically spawned at towers at random intervals and then marched accross the map. There were 3 paths and two bases for each path. (one halfway, one at the player base). This meant losing your base on one path wasn't an immediate failure (no npcs marching) you could still support the other two and defend the lost path. Upgrades could be bought for your npc's (a new unit in the mix, a better weapon) forcing fighting between players to earn the gold to pay for it and ensuring the gameplay slowly headed toward fights that resulted in greater significance. If a base building was ever lost it stopped spawning the soldiers, making that area a liability.
The key to that mod's success in my mind was the automatically spawning npc's. You didn't need to pay for a spawn, just for the upgrades. It in many ways ensured you knew what your goals where (destroy the enemy buildings) , focused the fighting around those areas, and by gradually increasing the power of the players/npc's ensured that one side would eventually win.
One side must reach a point of overpowering force, or underwhelming defence. In the case above it was overpowering force, but it could just as easily been based on increasingly damaged armor for each death, making defence harder and harder and resulting in a team that doesnt have the resources to defend itself. Real war is based on 'wearing away.'
Re: Objective-based PvP in WoW
The x1 -> x5 in sequence to win makes sense. It keeps the BG focused on a true war-like scenario. This is actually how everyone tried to play AV at first - resulting in the 4 hour games and probably 2 hours of that was spent sieging an enemy base. At an enemy base 40+NPC's+2towerstocap+1graveyardytocap+boss was just too much to fight through.
The allied NPC's were meant to be the solution to this. There was a giant boss you could summon, ram/wolf riders, elite soldiers and some flying riders. Combining these with a siege usually tipped the balance enough to get the next capture. But it would take 15 minutes to get the materials to summon them. And AV being formed of random players rarely managed things like organising troops and giving them tasks. Saying "Team 4 to mine pls" just didn't result in anything.
For solutions you just need to look at like-minded scenarios. There was a mod for Warcraft 3 called Tides of Blood, where NPC's automatically spawned at towers at random intervals and then marched accross the map. There were 3 paths and two bases for each path. (one halfway, one at the player base). This meant losing your base on one path wasn't an immediate failure (no npcs marching) you could still support the other two and defend the lost path. Upgrades could be bought for your npc's (a new unit in the mix, a better weapon) forcing fighting between players to earn the gold to pay for it and ensuring the gameplay slowly headed toward fights that resulted in greater significance. If a base building was ever lost it stopped spawning the soldiers, making that area a liability.
The key to that mod's success in my mind was the automatically spawning npc's. You didn't need to pay for a spawn, just for the upgrades. It in many ways ensured you knew what your goals where (destroy the enemy buildings) , focused the fighting around those areas, and by gradually increasing the power of the players/npc's ensured that one side would eventually win.
One side must reach a point of overpowering force, or underwhelming defence. In the case above it was overpowering force, but it could just as easily been based on increasingly damaged armor for each death, making defence harder and harder and resulting in a team that doesnt have the resources to defend itself. Real war is based on 'wearing away.'