By now most of us have gone on our fair share of musical keeps, and we have seen the basic design to all keeps, and even forts fall for this problem. They are bland, more over they are like eating bran flakes every day.
The basic layout is keep wall with 2 postern doors, a keep door, and various construction points to build siege equipment. This is the tried and true build for everything, but in the world of war, and even looking back at past Mythic games I feel that there is some things lacking.
First, I feel that they need to add to the keep defense, moats, bridges, various things to make it harder to get into a keep, but on the inverse they need to give the attacker the tools to get past those obstacles as well. Such as siege towers, climbing ropes, and fix the witch hunter/witch elf lock pick mechanic. The siege towers would need to be light on the HP and very hard to defend. You could look at the T1 scenarios Gates of Ekrund for design and functionality. Additionally to that make the siege towers take 2-5x as long to build, and very easy to destroy. The destruction side uses two huge siege towers to get into the Gate. Why not offer that for keeps. Couple that with an additional keep wall to get through in T4, like terraced cities of the Middle Ages you create funnels in which defenders push people into.
Remember taking a keep and a fort is not supposed to be easy in fact it should be down right hard. The next area would be the lock pick mechanic. Allowing stealthers to do what they do best would be great. Sneak in kill a healer, caster, or other then die or run out of there fast. Coupling that with smaller harder to navigate terrain it makes for some fun encounters.
Next would be overall keep design. I would find it hard to believe that 6 races would build keeps in the exact same way. So spice it up, have some keeps 1 multiple ways to break in like forts, where you have 3 doors you can choose to break down. Add to the terrain so that there are less out in the open spots to attack from and defend from. That means adding more rooms to keeps, making it easier to hide, adding elements that you should see in high age keep construction to the battle field, and ultimately making it a challenge to take a keep.
Finally, as a defender I feel that if a guild owns a keep they should be able to buy guards of various levels, and stature, so you can have a full set of champion guards defending your keep with a hard cap on the amount of them that there can be. This would add one more layer to the challenge. Couples that with defenders successfully repelling the attacker, and all keep doors closing the defenders should have a chance to roll on loot. Wouldn't you think that at keep lord would reward those who kept him in power, just as attackers are rewarded for dethroning a lord?
All in all I think there is room for improvement, and none of this is life changing. It would add a new element to T4 keep sieges, but also raise the challenge level by utilizing more skills from various classes. As it stands rarely do I see anyone using any siege pad other than the oil, ram, and sometimes defenders use the bolt throwers, other than that the battle field is left barren, unlike the epic battles these are suppose to model after. The good thing is there is a very solid base to build on and expand the way keep sieges and mechanics work. The bad is, it requires more work and tweaking to make perfect for play.
Posted by
Enslaver
on
10:03 AM
Posts
10 comments:
The problem with keep assaults at the moment is that they're either trivial or impossible.
If a keep is undefended, it's relatively easy to take (and hence boring), but it provides reward. On the flip side, though, at least in T2-T3 defenders easily enjoy almost a full WB advantage (that is, the attackers need to outnumber the defenders by 20+ to have any real shot at taking the keep).
Keep taking should be difficult, but it should also be possible. This is why people play musical keeps - attacking a well-defended keep is nothing but hours of frustration as you beat your face against a wall. The combination of the layout and rezzing creates a stalemate, which naturally favors the defenders. The dual gate mechanic in T3 already slows down the attack enough that if the defender is inclined to defend, you're never going to take it.
More things could be added, but I don't see any of the above suggestions actually changing anything. Stealthers sneaking in? So what? Even if they kill someone before they die, they'll just get rezzed. Hard-to-build-easy-to-kill siege towers? What exactly would that accomplish, other than being a waste of the attacker's time?
Right now, every single mechanic favors the defender. Some of this needs to change:
1. Make it possible to kill the damn oil. Require attackers to use siege weapons to do it, fine, but when it can heal through an entire warband can throw everything they've got and just watch it heal back up to full, it's frustrating.
2. Limit rezzing on both sides. Sieges are about attrition. Free, unlimited resurrection makes attrition meaningless, and the ease of getting into keeps means the defense will only grow. Ideally I'd like to see people locked out of zones after a certain number of deaths, but lacking that I'll settle for attackers having some hope of actually reducing the defenders.
3. Fix the mechanics on doors. Defenders shouldn't be able to teleport through closed doors at will. It needs to have a timer, or be an activation, or open the door for some period of time.
People play musical keeps because attacking a defended keep is simply pointless. That's what needs to change, and it will have a much more beneficial effect than pretty new siege towers that nobody actually uses.
It is possible to kill the oil in the current for, it takes a lot of focus fire, and personally I feel that any siege weapon should be very hard to kill.
As for siege towers, they would provide an easy access, or another point of entry into a keep for the attacker which would weaken a defensive strategy, same applies to stealers.
For the limited rezzing I agree with that, although I think that you should not be able to use any rez other than the rank 4 moral rez just like in a boss fight. That would fix that particular issue.
Your number 3 about defenders being able to teleport through doors, I agree with that for the main door, but not the postern doors. Although I think if you are attacking the main entry you should not be able to go through it until it is taken down, or the attackers leave.
Assuming that everything is a waste of the attacker’s time does not solve the issue. I don’t know how it is on your server but the ones I play on defenders will move from keep to keep that we are attacking so that they can defend it, and we do the same. I agree that people look for the easy way around it, but we also need to bring the "epic" fight to the people. More options mean more fun. Allowing more things to happen concurrently means that the battle field is more active while providing room for more tactics.
Remember taking a keep is not suppose to be easy, it is suppose to be hard, but I agree it should be do able even with defenders. So change the mechanics a bit and give people proper tools to attack and defend. I am not saying anything life changing, in fact I am taking from the castle siege books of the middle ages.
It may be possible to kill the oil in T4, but in T2/T3 as long as you have a somewhat intelligent operator, it's simply not. It can heal to full in less than 10 seconds - you simply cannot overcome that. Siege weapons don't help either. Personally, I'd like to see direct-fire weapons able to target other siege weapons only, and do a LOT more damage. If we're pounding that oil with 2-3 ballistas, it should go down.
I like the idea of the siege towers - I was taking exception to the "Long to build, easy to kill" argument. What's the point of that? If they take forever to build and die before anyone can use them, who's going to use them?
I dislike the insta-port on the postern doors as well, primarily because keeping defenders out is the only way to reliably take a keep. As it stands, many keep layouts make it nearly impossible to stop defenders from getting through the doors. Heck, Order can get into Stoneclaw before they even flag for RvR. There needs to be some balance which gives the attackers a reasonable chance of blockading the door. Given the huge advantage a defender has once they're inside, there should be some balance to stopping them from getting there.
I also agree with a lot of that as well. That is why I do feel that there needs to be a revamp, but to what extent and where. I also think that siege weapon to siege weapon instrument would be a nice touch, maybe make weapons designed for the attacker specifically and the defender specifically. That could do the trick. As for the siege tower, the slow build easy to kill was just a though. Maybe keep the same build/kill rate of other items.
I just think defenders need an award. In ungrim its a circle, and the defenders don't get a good reward besides rr. A good thing to do would be to offer defender loot chests where the castles in t4 give set items for a set that gives certain wards if your defending one of your own keeps or something....
I like a lot of what has been said here. It's been a bit since I played in T3 (few weeks), so my memory is already getting hazy on that aspect of game play. However, in T4, the single shot siege weapons do a lot more damage to other siege weapons than they do to players, and I don't think that's something that has really caught on. I think the tooltips for the different weapons should more clearly spell out what they are intended for.
Also, don't discount the AoE weapons, if you have four of them on a wall, focus firing one area, you're talking about major damage to a lot of people, plus the chance of knockdown. The main problem with the current weapons, is a lack of understanding fo them I think, more than anything else. All those melee guys standing around with nothing to do should make sure they are on a cannon/ballista/what-have-you.
All the other stuff are great ideas as well, anythign to add another layer of strategy and complexity to the game makes my heart pitter-patter.
Defenders do get a reward: defending a keep is the absolute best source of RvR Influence, bar none. I love it when we manage to set up defense against a group of stubborn attackers who are willing to keep grinding themselves against the stalemate. Incidentally, this is another reason I don't try to take defended keeps - it's not going to work, it's not fun, it's demoralizing to the warband, and it does nothing but give the defenders a LOT of points.
A lot of people complain about the current door tactics (beat a door down to almost nothing and then leave so you can bash in quickly later). This is simply players adapting to the "can't take it if it's defended" problem. Currently, the only way to reliably get a keep is to find it with no defenders, and take it before they respond. Door tricks dramatically reduce the amount of time the defenders have to respond.
I can agree with what you are saying influence is best gained by keep defending, except in my case where I have max influence in all 3 areas, so I would rather get a bag, but I think that is a valid point in the argument. Maybe instead of 3 gold bags, or a gold bag at all you get 1 purple bag or something along those lines.
As for beating doors to 10% then running off, and coming back later, it happened everywhere, and it is a solid tactic to avoid a fight, but it does not always work well.
I wasn't necessarily holding it up as a "good" tactic, or unique to any particular group. Rather, I think it's something that evolved to avoid keep defenders due to the attacker/defender imbalance.
Your situation with maxed influence is easily duplicated in loot bags, too... Once you've got the gold bag, and have your appropriate set piece, it's nearly meaningless to get another. Don't get me wrong - I do think that some extra reward could be added to sieges on both sides, but as it stands there are rewards for each - influence for defenders, loot for attackers. I think the split is actually good, as it encourages/requires you to spend time doing both to cover all the possible rewards.
I can agree with that, although with the new changes coming I think people will see a lot more effort put into defending in order to gain access to DF2.
Post a Comment