On Raids, a collection of observations.
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This isn't exactly a bug report, but a collection of observations based on the last couple raids I was involved in.
I will preface this by saying that I am not typically a Raid/PvP type player, so this is not from an expert in that regard.
- The walls need to be subject to damage to something other than siege engines. Otherwise, you kill the catapults, the raid is basically over for the attackers. Might as well at that point end the raid if the wall hasn't been breached.
- On walls, it does appear that wooden walls and stone walls take about the same amount of effort to destroy, so there really is no advantage (just cosmetic appeal) to upgrading from wood to stone walls. If anything, Wooden walls should be more susceptible to 'Fire' based damage from player spells, so a wood gate could be knocked down by Fireballs let's say. On the same note, something like the Tectonic spell should help knock any wall down eventually.
- Pass through abilities: It turns out that some movement abilities can allow you to get through sealed walls, Things like Lunge, The Thunder Rush spell(misremember the name) and possibly Battlejump (heard someone say it, but not sure) can bypass walls. Relocate didn't seem to work. In one raid, if there was a lootable body on the other side of the wall within click range, you could click the body to just walk through the wall as well.
- A big fail for the raids was the ability by players to move their avatar in around other features, like the catapults themselves, preventing them from being targetted. When you try, you get the gears/interaction cursor instead of targetting swords, thus making it that much harder to protect the catapults, which as aforementioned, makes a raid hard if the catapults are taken out early. Might be a good idea to also up the HPs of the catapults so they can at least last longer, OR, have a seige only mechanic for hot-fixing/healing catapults by adding wooden logs or something to them during the seige to symbolize patching broken rigging.
- In one raid, I was out getting ammo for the catapults when the raid timer started, and I was frozen with my wagon full of stone on my way back. Mainly need to know if this kind of freeze is intended, or not. This way we know if we have to be back in the raid zone before the raid starts or not. It was known that logging into a town during a raid is supposed to freeze, then kick you out of the town if you are not a defender, but it is not known about my particular issue.
These are just several observations. I'm not sure what the solutions to these issues might be, but wanted to give as detailed a set of feedback as I could. I know I was one of the ones that was able to Lightning Rush through the walls after the Catapults went down, but I would like to know if that was intended, or would be considered an exploit. (we did stop doing it, as a guild decision)
As others have said, the collision mechanics need to be looked at in regards to seiges/raids as well, as just ironing out collision code would probably go a long way to improving raid experiences for everyone. We would know, for instance, if wagons were meant to block ranged attacks/totems, and of course the pass through mechanics would be ironed out.
Thanks,
Doc!
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1: it has been alluded to that the hellfire demons are able to damage walls. Having any player able to damage a wall would mean that zergs just spam and destroy walls.
2: It seems that if a stone wall is built but the tech point is removed (to save points and put em elsewhere) then the walls revert to wood wall durability. When trying to siege a stone wall town a week ago it took much more than 60 stone, implying that the difference is not in the appearance alone. This seems fine to me as if you are not willing to spend the tech point you should not be getting the benefit. since the raid timers are known 3 days in advance there is plenty of time to swap around tech points to re-invest in stone walls before the siege.
3: yup, bad bugs.
4: yup, need harder boarders and object collision.
5: if you are out of the siege zone then I think it is intended... will have to test with a cart -in- the siege zone to see if it happens even there.
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@OlivePit your 1st point makes 0 sense, you already have a anti zerg mechanic thats why you can only bring 30, 2nd if you have people dmg doors the people inside the city can push them easy from the inside its not like the other 30 people are afk well the enemy hits the doors lol.
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@MrFlako
if, say firebolt, were able to damage doors then attackers could just sit at range and spam firebolts to destroy the door allowing for no real counter play as -if- the defenders open the door to stop the barrage, they get hit and killed by the ranged attacks. at which point meta becomes just setting up a firing line and constantly attack. which sounds really boring.
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Some of those issues depend on the fact that getting killed carries no drawbacks. You respawn and are back in the fight without even a respawn timer.
The fact that enemy siege weapons are prime objectives for the defenders is perfectly fine. What is not fine is that the defenders can suicide rush onto them.Getting killed should have consequences.
One possible change is to set a limited amount of instant respawns per side. Something like 100. After those, to respawn that side has a 30 sec timer.You can even tie this number to a certain amount of gold that you have to deposit into the attacker tent. Reduce the raid cost, but have them pay for the amount of lives the attackers will have. The defenders instead will have an amount of lives depending on a city tech, since they are already risking their gold. At the end of the fight, if the defenders win, they get the gold spent in lives by the attackers (half is sinked, as usual). This way, you give a reward for succesfully defending.
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@OlivePit what are the defenders NPC's? they can just use other doors to leave and come kill u they can also use the walls to fire back if the walls worked a lot of counter play
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@MrFlako
only certain towns have layouts where the defenders can leave from more than one door.
In addition the use of eruption, bone barrage, cobweb, slow, ice totem, earthquake, and entangling roots can effectively block a single gateway.
If you have 2-3 mages with said powers and cool down reduction I bet they could block a gateway indefinitely.
