it can me hard to know where clans are and they usually attack on sight so it could be helpful to mark so we know to avoid that area
#away for dragons or clans to mark their territory
mellow parcel
high flint
scratch marks on the ground or trees with a scent based mechanic would be cool for this. something that remains in world for X amount of time that clan members could refresh?
zealous hemlock
The scent based thing would be the most realistic. Say dragons have scent glands in their paws (or tail for Blitz) that they use to mark territory for their clans via marking the ground or trees every one or two in game days (this could just be an animation to set up the scent marker entity, not actually marking the terrain). The only issue I can think of is colour coordination (ie: how to tell clans apart from each other). Perhaps each clan picks a colour on creation (or upon the chieftain logging in on the update it’s included in) and once a colour has been chosen no other clan on that server can chose it (the colours would have to be preset by the devs to ensure they’re easy enough to tell apart from each other). Still doesn’t help colourblind people much but symbols would be harder to do to ensure the markers match their clans without allowing clans to use their own symbols (for obvious reasons), not to mention less user friendly and not quite within suspension of disbelief.
Something like this is within the game wolf quest if you need ideas on how it could work and how to make it work within the game code. Fairly sure that one works by splitting the map into different territory grids and each grid is claimed by the pack. You could add limiters to how many grids can be claimed and so forth to limit the size of a clans official territory
elfin inlet
agreed. a few things I'd add on to this-
-clans would need to work together to claim a territory and performing regular maintenance to ensure it stays claimed- whether that's roaring, scent-marking, whatever. the amount of work the clan puts in should scale up with the size of the territory claimed- so, for example, a large clan could claim the entirety of the river area with a lot of work, but a smaller one shouldn't need that much space, and thus shouldn't be able to claim it
-A player should immediately be notified if they're entering clan territory, even if they're not sniffing. this makes sense both realisim and playstyle-wise- most roaming players do is aerial, and they're not landing every 2 minutes to sniff- and even if they were, landing is rather dangerous to one's continued existence on most pvp servers, especially in hostile territory. And, in reality, a clan's scent over a claimed area should be strong enough that one does not need to be actively focusing on smells in order to smell it
-it'd be cool if the clan received a small buff in their territory, and non-clanned adult dragons received a small debuff inside it. it would make entering or lingering inside someone else's turf a gambit, and would discourage the owning clan from chasing someone across the map rather than just to their boundaries. (I say adult dragons because, with the food situation as is, it's nearly impossible to claim a territory that has both food and water, but doesn't have any hatchling spawns within it)
-speaking of hatchlings, it'd be kinda cool if on pvp servers, clanned adults killing hatchlings or juvies within a claimed territory provided some kind of penalty for that territory, or penalized that territory's reputation in such a way that other players could see. or, if unclanned adults entered the territory and killed hatchlings, it left some kind of trace that could be used to track them later
-real question is- should territories show which clan owns it, or simply that it is owned? on PvP servers, anonymity is a rather commonly-used tool. a wise clan does not let their attacker or target know who's attacking them, and vice versa. names being attached to territory would make for some interesting gameplay, but would essentially eliminate the game of trying to figure out who's where