Changelog 11/11/16

[NectaneboII]

I am certain that when its all said and done, this will be much better than Doorhammer.

Amen

[Crazyboss]

https://github.com/WarEmu/WarBugs/issues/7939
ability still broken , fix possible ?

[Razid1987]

A few days have passed, and with yesterday as fresh experience where we ended up locking 5 zones, I guess I'll give what will probably be my last feedback for the current RvR system:

(De)Ranking of Keeps: The whole mechanic with Keep-ranks doesn't seem very impactful. The rank of the enemy keep is more of less meaningless, in the sense that you can't really de-rank the keep by other means than going for a full-on attack at the door. I'm wondering if it's too hard to de-rank the enemy, without attacking it directly. Also, even if the enemy keep is rank 5, it's still not much stronger than a rank 0 keep. Or at least it doesn't feel like it. So, what this basically boils down to, is that the ranks pretty much only matters the attackers, by how many cannons they can bring to the siege.

BO Timers: The timers seem very short. It's often just a chase from one BO, directly to the next, with almost no time to even fight at them. By the time you cap a BO, another one is already burning, at the other end of the zone - "Time to saddle up again, I guess". Could the timers possibly be increased? It can very easily become a stalemate, where the factions are ultimately just switching which two BOs they are controlling over and over, with no progress at all. It basically just becomes a game of cat and mouse. Not very exciting, or progressive. It's especially apparent in zones like BC or KV, where the distance between the BOs is quite long, compared to other zones.

Siege equipment bug out: Sometimes when you click a cannon or ram, they just kinda de-activate themselves. As in, you're unable to interact with them anymore. When this happens, they usually fall through the floor (If they are higher up). This is especially crippling when it happens to (one of) the ram(s), or when you have a low rank keep, and only a very low number of cannons.

Rams are way too tough: Well, before the problem was that the ram died too fast - Well, now it's the opposite The ram is really tough. Like, really, really tough. You can take a rank 5 keep with a single ram, and if you're doing really bad, it might drop below 75% HP. I think you could probably double, or possibly even triple, the amount of damage it takes, and it would still be really tough. Most keeps we have taken, the ram never dropped below 90% HP. Some keeps it still had 99% or 98% Hp when the inner went down.

Crashes at keeps: Being known as "Crashid" in Kings Own, I'm no stranger to this, or even new to it. I know this has been around for a long time (Since T3 at least), and that you don't exactly know what causes it (Corrupt packages or something, right?), but I still have to point it out. It's so disheartening to spend 4 hours trying to cap a zone, only to crash twice with 2 mins, when taking the keep, only to find out that I didn't get any influence at all and only 50% of the renown of everyone else (12k Renown, instead of 25k - Only got from the zone, but not the keep itself, I think. Might have been the other way around).

Ram spawn timers: This is pretty minor, but we found a few times that we ranked our keep up to rank 1, and then couldn't spawn the ram right away, had to wait for at least 5 mins. And since we didn't really have to worry about enemies taking the BOs (They hardly even matter after rank 1 has been achieved, we found out), we didn't really have to defend anything. We would just rush the keep and take the zone. Is that 5 min delay intended? And if so, what is it's purpose?

BO's impact: And last, but not least, are the BOs themselves - They are the highest priority, when your keep is rank 0, or your keep is under attack. But if you are have a rank 1-5 keep and it's not under attack? Then the BOs are completely pointless. They have no purpose. They are essentially just a distraction, or something for the pugs to chase, for free renown.

1) Resources - Rank your Keep to 1; and
2) Get siege equipment at your keep; and
3) Take the keep.

That's pretty much how the system works now. Any alteration from this sequence is just a chase for good fights, or an attempt to get a bigger tick, from the zone lock.

[Azarael]

A number of these criticisms were echoed by Morf recently.

Deranking of keeps: The decay timer will be reduced by keep rank. This is also to prevent a common strategy which is to zerg with 3 or 4 resource carriers and turn them all in at once.

BO timers: I got feedback saying the system encourages zerging, and the system is already dynamic with respect to the lock timers. I can't change this without a definitive answer in the RvR design topic in the balance forum about the system promoting zerging.

Siege bugging out: Haven't had it happen to me. I'll have to investigate it.

Ram toughness: All good. Will increase damage sustained from melee.

Keep crashes: Sorry, but there's nothing I can do about it.

Ram spawn timers: WAI. Ranking up a keep increases the supply cap, and the keep will then increase an internal variable to represent delivery time until reaching the cap.

BO impact: See point 1. I am also adding warcamp returns, so that the defending realm can return to the warcamp for a lesser payoff to heal the door, since a number of people posted recently indicating that the requirement of 3 BOs to attack a keep was something that they missed.

I've already written most of this, was going to push it this morning but decided against it. Bad move I see

[Razid1987]

Deranking of keeps: But what I mean by it, is that the decay timers seem pretty nonexistent, unless you're banging on their door. Maybe the decay should be more aggressive?

BO timers: Well, it certainly doesn't prevent zerging in my experience, that's for sure. We had 2 WBs of Order just sitting on the Everchosen-BO in CW for an hour or so, yesterday. They were blobbing the entire evening, which meant that we had to blob with the pugs, just in order to beat them, and take the BO.
But I honestly don't think any system can prevent zerging. We are group animals, after all. There are safety in numbers, and it's easy as well. Unless you force the players' arms, I don't think you can ever get people to stop zerging, or blobbing rather.

Siege bugging out: It has happened to a few different people in our alliance, in different zones, at different times. So it's not just a single occurrence

BO impact: Okay. That might both be good and bad, though. What if you have the numbers to take the keep itself, but not to take the keep AND defend 3 BOs? I mean, BOs can be pretty much soloed by some classes, so they are quite defenseless.
Which reminds me, why are the NPCs so weak at the BOs? I always remembered there to be 1 Hero with 4 Champs, at a BO. I guess it got changed after I stopped playing on Live, but I don't really get why, though. Are BOs just suppose to be something that can be soloed? That doesn't seem very much in line with the other objective in the zone: The keep.

Haha! Always follow your first instinct

[Azarael]

What I meant was that the decay timer's changing in the next patch to be linked with keep rank.

We wanted to encourage splitting more, which meant not having strong automated defense at BOs. As for the siege question, well, that's what siege weapons were for. The idea was not to require overwhelming force to take a keep, only continued map control and keep rank, and to have the siege weapons be used to dismantle zerg and blobbing. As I note in the RvR topic in the balance forum, I violated that by overnerfing the siege weapons instead of just handling the case where they were a problem.

[Razid1987]

Ah, right - Good change then! I was unaware that they didn't do that already.

I can see the idea, but I don't feel it's very realistic. In many cases there just aren't that many players around (I don't even want to think what it's like doing NA prime times). I guess it falls back to the point I made a few days ago, with the attackers have to be everywhere at the same time, doing everything. I'm not really a fan of that, because many times, you just don't have the numbers to pull that off, especially because it mainly only splits one side of the equation up: The attackers.
The defenders can for the most parts sit with 99% of their players in the keep and make sure that the siege goes no where, while 1-3 players leave through a postern and sneak to a BO, take it, and then that pauses the entire siege. It's not a very fun thing to happen, I think. A Keep is a nice big reward, but it's not particularly fun itself, so spending too much time on it, or having interrupts with it, only really serves to drag it out, or even make it frustrating.

Problem is that if you have a single WB, and you have to guard each BO with a group, well, then you have a total of 0 players left to attack the keep. Which again, makes you having to rely on outside players to do very important things. And if you have to do that, then what is ultimately the purpose of having a guild WB with voice communication? I'm all for communication and cooperation, but with this, it just takes it a bit too far, I think. Either the WB would have to attack the keep, or defend the BOs. Which ever we don't choose to do, will be left to others. But even sitting with a group at a BO doesn't really do much. As soon as the enemy discovers that, they just call for reinforcements, and boom, 3 groups come and attack from the keep, since they had little to do in the keep anyways. All the pressure is on the attacker. It's a fight uphill, and against the odds for the attackers. And a "oh well, I guess we should actually do something, other than afk in the keep" for the defenders. That's at least what it feels like.

[Azarael]

Just to be clear, are you posting from an EU or a US perspective?

[Razid1987]

That's from an EU perspective.