Lord Tagging being trolled by Witch elf/hunter

[Slapshot]

This screenshot has been posted on Discord by someone. That's a team effort and a thing that could be annoying, but it can be annoying for 10 minutes only instead of 30 mins and 40 minutes of random keep defenses. It's a WE that died trying to sneak in and getting body blocked and revealed, then killed.

Whether the WE is under-leveled, unskilled, unlucky, etc. we cannot deny the team effort here that prevented any other WE from entering.

Is this the SPIRIT of why the timer exists? That the front and inner gates of a keep cannot close because a single stealther might somehow sneak in and throw a single dagger at the Keep Lord? To me, it is not but it is not my game, it is yours. To me, it is not a question of whether 20 people (your screenshot shows 10+ blocking one entrance) should have to work in unison to counter 1 enemy. It's whether the mechanic makes any sense and or fun. Even in your description you say it can be annoying... and to annoy 20 people for something that to me is against the spirit of the mechanic seems... flawed. And remember, if the WE/WH is successful it's not just 20 people for 10 minutes, its now 20 people for 20 minutes. That's a crazy long time to want players to stand in one spot as a group.

That said, I don't want to dwell on it as you asked for proposals, so therefore:

My proposal #1 would be to determine a minimal amount of damage that the Lord would have to take in order to reset the timer. Maybe balance it so that a really well geared WE/WH who manages to sneak in, and get off a few quick crits can still do it if the RNG gods are in his favor but that this would be a roll of the dice.

Proposal #2 is to link the reset timer to the damage done. If you do X damage then you get a full reset. If you do less than X then that percent of damage indicates how long the timer is pushed. 50% of x would be 5 minutes. 10% of x would be 1 minute. In my view, throwing a random dagger would be on the 10% side while having a few people hit the Lord for legit damage would be the full 10 minutes.

[nuadarstark]

This was absolutely not just because of 1 enemy. I'm was that blob (Guernios Barca) as was one of my guildies (the engi a bit to the back) and was one of the folks on /1 that was advocating for better defense (was 4 in the morning for me and I was getting very irritated).

This was a stretch of 40-50 minutes where we tried to prevent a lord tag, with 3 times WEs doing the work and 2 times a 24man of Nobodies pushing through the whole keep, outer into oil room and into keep via back postern uncontested aside from us on the post.

It could've been very easily avoided if more folks actively tried to defent the keep from lord tags till the door closed - we only had 1 half WB on back post and 1 half WB on main. considering we had 110+ people defending that keep before pushing destro out, it's pretty pathetic defense.

The timer is fine, the lord tags are fine. Defend your keep before the door closes. If you don't **** off to do whatevs all over the map, it can be done very easily.

[carlos]

This screenshot has been posted on Discord by someone. That's a team effort and a thing that could be annoying, but it can be annoying for 10 minutes only instead of 30 mins and 40 minutes of random keep defenses. It's a WE that died trying to sneak in and getting body blocked and revealed, then killed.

Whether the WE is under-leveled, unskilled, unlucky, etc. we cannot deny the team effort here that prevented any other WE from entering.

Lock this

[Peaches92]

The first thing to understand is that there is never a 'solution' to a 'problem' in such a complex atmosphere. There can only be trade-offs.

I've thought about this instance a lot since I was there when the event which spawned this thread occurred. My initial reaction was like OP, "this shouldn't be possible". Then I thought back to all the dozens and dozens of other sieges I'd participated in. I can't recall another instance of a WE/WH repeatedly tagging the lord to keep the doors down for such a long period of time (anecdotal, admittedly). This is significant, I believe, because it illustrates that it is obviously not a recurring situation (that the tagging goes on for the better part of an hour).

I very much agree that this tactic can be seen as a guerilla type maneuver. It's in the same vein as a duo of WE's or a small group killing/picking off reinforcements to the front as they run from the war camp in the sense that it hinders the foe at large. Tagging the lord and prolonging the fight, putting more ppl on alert is practically espionage--which is of course a part of war (along with the moral of the groups, which i think applies even in this game ).

However, "should there be a limit" seems to be the real point of contention. I liked the idea of the timer getting shorter each time, but then that places a constraint on the attacking force that is regulated by 'god' and not the abilities of the defending force.

I think that's the reasonable and logical conclusion of this whole situation: winning & losing of a keep/siege/fort should come down to the ability & skill of the attackers vs the defenders. The less intervention by 'god' (coding/gameplay changes), in my opinion, the better. In this specific case, the event which I was in and which spawned this thread, the ability to detect & prevent a lone agent fell short--that cannot be denied. Either by lack of numbers, afk-ing, laziness, whatever, the fact was that not enough vigilant people put their efforts into defending the last 10 minutes as did, for example, in the picture above.

Did it suck? Yeah. Should we risk the potential for an unforeseen gameplay consequence of big brother coming in and hard-coding a preventative measure? I say no.

edit: and as far as the "should 20+ people have to defend against 1?" argument: if you were a King and you knew there was someone in your castle trying to kill you, how many men would you send on the search? One? Two? How many police officers/detectives does it take to find a serial killer? My point is this: it is not uncommon in video games or reality for it to be necessary that it takes many to respond to the actions of one.

[Slapshot]

edit: and as far as the "should 20+ people have to defend against 1?" argument: if you were a King and you knew there was someone in your castle trying to kill you, how many men would you send on the search? One? Two? How many police officers/detectives does it take to find a serial killer? My point is this: it is not uncommon in video games or reality for it to be necessary that it takes many to respond to the actions of one.

If I was the King I would order the Doors closed. Does that help? Also, if you want to remove the "god" actions then just make it so that players can actually rebuild the doors by running supplies instead of the timer. To me that actually seems like a good idea. If the attackers do not want the doors closed then they should have to run interference and contest the supply points.

[anarchypark]

1 dagger throw might be too effortless to reset timer.
5~10sec of active battle should be threshold ?
that's 3~6 GCD ( more if u manage 1.1 ) and kinda hard for WH/WE to hold lord that long. since WH can 100% parry without moral, 10s seems too long.

if it's allowed to reset timer by sneaky assassin, 5s holding lord is enough task I think.

[M0rw47h]

People cry WH useless, when WH does something useful, they say to "fix" it...

[Vri]

People cry WH useless, when WH does something useful, they say to "fix" it...

100%^

[Sulorie]

1 dagger throw might be too effortless to reset timer.
5~10sec of active battle should be threshold ?
that's 3~6 GCD ( more if u manage 1.1 ) and kinda hard for WH/WE to hold lord that long. since WH can 100% parry without moral, 10s seems too long.

if it's allowed to reset timer by sneaky assassin, 5s holding lord is enough task I think.

How long do you think the WE/WH survives, when lordroom is full of non-afk defenders, who just CC them, when they pop out of stealth? Do they survive 1-2 gcd?

We talk here about guarding the lord and paying attention for 10 minutes. Blocking doors or ramps is not that hard with enough people and nowadays even during low pop hours we should have enough people in zone.

[Lyability]

People cry WH useless, when WH does something useful, they say to "fix" it...

Not gonna lie, I logged into my forgotten WH last night for a bit to lvl some because of this thread. Hearing some cool stories about gorilla warfare ganking.

Now I just need to just play for 70+ more levels so I can make an impact.