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Raiding
Jeremy Saunders
Administrator Posts: 1,251 admin
Jeremy Saunders
Administrator Posts: 1,251 admin
Comments
- Siege kind of makes things a nightmare. Two reasons:
* Bolt throwers throw people all over the place, so actually staying on an objective to drag it is extremely difficult. This makes bringing anyone inexperienced on the raid a basic impossibility - you just lose them the moment you hit siege.
* Cannon damage still shreds people. You don't get one shot unless you roll unlucky on the rng, but since you can't cure while dragging an objective down a siegeline is really, really hard.
- I'm not sure if miasma isn't working or if there's just some situation where it doesn't function properly in. A squad of 40 guards moved into our group of people and everyone basically died in seconds. It also might be that 40 times 20 is still 800 damage, which when it comes every round can't be tanked by a group. Miasma seems to work well when there are say, 10 guards - it still is pretty painful but its manageable with reflections and such. I think if you stuck a 100 man guard clot on your gates room you'd become raid immune - there's just no way to tank for any amount of time, and this damage needs to be tankable for around 30-60 seconds at least to move an objective.
- Objectives seem a bit too close together in some cases - I could work up a list if this is something that is up for change, but it'd be nice if they were scattered around the city a bit more so as to give more strategic choices for attack and defence.
Basically, I think I like the system, but siege and guards make it way too exclusive currently - bringing new players or non artied out guys isn't really possible with the damage numbers being put out by org passives. It also gives certain orgs massive advantages (Kinsarmar and Antioch for sure), because to get an objective out of the city you have to drag it down a full siege line. With Stavenn (and maybe Celidon? I'm not sure where their objectives are exactly) you get just the one or two rooms of siege line exposure, which you can dedicate a good few minutes to solving. Moving objectives around to limit that exposure might be an option there.
Will try to get another raid in some time this week, do some more experimenting.
anyway, jules said when she looked @ logs that she thought guards were strong as well, especially healers. Maybe tinker with their efficacy. I'd like it if they might heal one (rando?) player in the room on a slow tick instead of attacking/healing guards. It'd give some variety for squad formation which is pretty formulaic right now. And it'd give an edge to smaller defensive teams I think. idk I dont know anything about combat balance.
Also the time limit is very short. Maybe find some way to add time, objectives, channeled captures in various spots in the city to spread out the areas that need to be defended. Also just make the time longer please
I fixed the problem with a couple of the standards being able to be picked up.
Raid objectives SHOULD only be movable during a raid and should reset when the raid is over.
I will fix the problem with cities putting up doors and look at the guard stuff as well.
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
Making it much easier to kill those guards in a clot isn't really an option, either. I'd probably just quit participating after 2-3 rounds of putting 500k gold into guards because a 20m raid at 3 AM wiped out half of them on the way out the door. If guards just respawned after a time (1-2 ig months) and only had commodity costs, it'd be different, but city 'gold income' is a bit of a joke at the moment, meaning it'd be more endless bashing for those of us still around.
I'd probably personally do something like the respawning guards above, slowed guard movement during raids (making their starting position impact response time some), and forcing guards in clots to split up their targets (G1 targets P1, G2 targets P2, all the way through enemied players in the room til it loops back to P1). I'd also maybe make the pusher take less damage from both in-room guards and siege, reasoning being a touch more tankiness that helps whatever the party size is (and their proximity to a valuable object for the IC reasoning). Another 5 minutes on the timer might not be bad, though I'm not sure if it should be 15m debuff+/10m debuff- or 20m debuff+/5m debuff-.
It's obviously not an easy thing to balance, so I'd also like to say it at least feels like it could really be a decent PvP activity with a few tweaks.
- Large clot of guards will be unnerved and scattered a bit when a raid starts
I mean... I don't really have any alternative suggestions. The way it stands now, though--it is awful.
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
All I'm saying is it would be much more fun to raid if it weren't impossible to actually secure an objective.
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
Also the fact that you get all the way to the exit of a city only to be destroyed by guards because it took 25:00 to get there.
I think SHARD MIASMA should make it so guards don't attack period. It's up to the players to defend their city.
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
or have them have a true chase like Skegdald ogres did (do?) so they can be lured
have time be added for every room the objective is successfully moved
reduce the channel on the objective push
boltthrowers hit too often. Siege is too powerful in general
some way to discern the squad leader of enemy squads
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
Also, instead of just one big clot of guards, divide up the teams. AKA, spending to activate a 10-man SWAT team would get reinforcements up to 10 every minute or so. You can adjust the strength of the shard-suit guards, the cost of fitting them, the max number, all that without interfering with the normal guard setup.
They should probably spawn at a barracks or predefined spawn point and make their way relatively quickly to the most threatened objective/where a war aide points them.
A minimum number of guards should spawn, though, especially if there is no one with war powers on to do so.
Also, the VIPs really need protection
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
Otherwise for comments on recent changes, the incoming siege felt endurable if still a definite advantage for the defenders.
2. Walling for hurr durr guard clot to start is dumb. E- But they did seem to scatter up after we broke through the walls.
Guards can potentially move further away and there should never be more than 10 in a room while a raid is running. There are some possible exceptions to that, but I doubt it will pop up.