Is taking keeps too easy, and should the underpopulated realm have tools to defend them?
Taking keeps is easy in daoc 2020, especially if you have the numbers and the enemy realm you are invading are underpopulated, not only that, its almost never worth defending it, not a lot of rps to gain.
Could the solution perhaps be a stronger keep lord that scales in power depending on the enemies nearby?, adding additonal guards like mages and healers that uses different sorts of magic, im aware we dont want really batshit crazy guards because of course the stealthers should also have a fair chance of picking up vulnurable people inside keep courtyards etc.
So perhaps the solution to that would only to have these stronger units summoned to the keep if the keep is under fire, or the criteria could be having x amount of enemies nearby.
I dont really care much about siege taking/defending, the reward just doesnt add up if you are defending and the siege is over very quick.
share your thoughts.
Could the solution perhaps be a stronger keep lord that scales in power depending on the enemies nearby?, adding additonal guards like mages and healers that uses different sorts of magic, im aware we dont want really batshit crazy guards because of course the stealthers should also have a fair chance of picking up vulnurable people inside keep courtyards etc.
So perhaps the solution to that would only to have these stronger units summoned to the keep if the keep is under fire, or the criteria could be having x amount of enemies nearby.
I dont really care much about siege taking/defending, the reward just doesnt add up if you are defending and the siege is over very quick.
share your thoughts.
Comments
If one realm is underpop, they have bad luck.
If one realm is always underpop, this is a problem.
But stronger guards dont really make it more interesting. Im not very interested in killing guards for hours.
So what you are interested in, is taking a keep fast, dont really care about the numbers of the enemies inside the keep, but just take it as fast as possible and move on to the next keep, is this correct?, remember the stronger guards/keep isnt meant to entertain you the person taking the keep, but to help the strongly underpopulated realm help defend the keep, stronger guards obviously shouldnt be there if the numbers are even, but only summoned when there arent a lot of people to help defend.
Basically people wanna play the easy realm and only need to hit 2 buttons and follow the bandwagon. BA needs to need abilities again and make other classes in the other realm interesting to play. That's why I hope 1.127 is a big Nerf and love patch.
Corpseshovel - Oldstanky - Nogvi
The reason people hate to PvP is they are afraid of failure
I play hib, so I dont defend very often, bec no one is attacking.
No thats not correct. More enemies are ok, but I dont know if compensating enemies with guards is a good idea.
But then a certain heavy tank who has ruined the game for too long now doesn't like defenders anyway....
well you might see a lot more enemies defending the keep if its rewarding and more even for the underdog
So if a realm has a 40% rp bonus then the keep walls are 40% tougher, oil hits 40% harder, guards and Lord have 40% more hp/armor/damage.
Corpseshovel - Oldstanky - Nogvi
The reason people hate to PvP is they are afraid of failure
What if there was like a “duplicator” merchant? It creates duplicate NPCs of the current defenders in the area.
For example, 30 Hibs attack Beno. 6 Albs defending.
1 Alb defender buys NPCs that duplicate the defenders, adding 4 NPCs for every live Alb (Now you have 6x4+6=30). Maybe they could even mirror the classes.
Da fly family - 4501 4502 4503 4504 4505 4506 4508 4509
Da spider family - 441 442 443 444 445 447
Ywain 1 Mid - Carlingford Hib - Tullamore Alb - Dalton
https://divoxutils.com/user-characters
Now I didn't intend to derail the thread by mentioning realm timers (it usually does) but I find it interesting that the notion of swapping realms in order to defend a keep is met with such unanimous repulsion and is one of the main arguments of something that needs to be stopped with the help of realm timers; You swapped realms to give us opposition wheras otherwise we would have a keep to PvE in peace, we can't very well have that! Even Herorius wanted realm timers for this reason the way I understood it (I may be wrong here?) which is insane if you think about the fact that he takes keeps purely to find players to fight because no one ever will otherwise. If you think about that and why that is it really shows the problem at hand. Now I don't personally believe people swapping to defend was ever a big problem to begin with, and even after EC implemented timers hibs held all of the relics for what, almost 2 months immediately afterwards anyway? People couldn't take relic keeps because their own BG swapped realms to defend against them seconds later (a laughable notion, really, and NO longer timers wouldn't solve this or even remotely affect this) but because taking relics is way too hard for the current BGs to do against literally any opposition. Of course facing opposition is quite likely due to the defense bonuses involved and the fact that BGs run during prime time. Hibs didn't hold the relics for months because of overpopulation (during US prime) but because defending relics really doesn't take a whole lot against the typical alb/mid BGs, which is also to great extent their own fault.
Even with a certain cow in mind as I stated I believe keeps are too hard to take. The doors on the more central keeps take forever to drop and relic guards are an especially unforgiving undertaking, at least with the current population. I assume they were made to be this way due to the ease of which the cow was taking them prior. However these obstacles won't stop the cow from taking the keep given his sheer numbers advantage and the typical lack of organized defenders it'll merely prolong the rp farm, these obstacles might as well not be there. However these difficulties do make it a LOT more harder for every other BG to take any keeps, which is part of the reason of why it's very rare to see relics taken back outside of them being PvE'd off hours. Maybe if keeps were easier to take it'd get the zergs to go for them more, even when they know a decent amount of defenders are on. The coastal keeps do get taken but it is very rare to see zergs with the exception of cow going for the more central keeps and successfuly taking them during a prime time. Now of course the other BGs are not even close to as optimized for keep taking as cow is, there are a great many things they can do to improve in that department, which is also worth noting. Should the non-cow zergs be catered to because they don't adapt and optimize their zergs for keep capture, when it is within their power to do so? Or are keeps even with such adaptations in mind even still too hard to take? Idk, but I don't think implementing obstacles that makes it essentially harder to pve keeps when inadequate amounts of defenders present themselves as suggested here will be met with much appreciation amongst the zergs. I also don't think when a BG of organized attackers brings 60 people to face 10 disorganized defenders at a keep that there should be a way for the 10 defenders to prevail. Implementing the functions required that would allow that to happen seems like something that would potentially prove greatly detrimental to the game. Like if that was the case how could anyone take a keep anymore?
tl;dr: Cows go moo, and because cows go moo no one can take keeps anymore.
YouTube
if we want to talk about cow sure.
Cow does not seek out keeps to fight people, hero wanted realm timers because irc would cruise on a realm, see hero dive for a keep, relog a caster crew in 2 minutes and kill him 5 times make him give up. (ive been in the groups multiple times killing him during the odd euro hours)
You make it sound like im trying to make it impossible to take a keep, this is NOT the case, guards are a joke until you hit relic. No i want it to make sense for the 8-12 people defending against the 50+ players.
Taking the doors is slow (lol) i dont want a larger health pool to doors, this isnt helping nor is it increasing defense rewards, i want means to kill the invaders trying to take the siege, and tools to cc/disease them with the keeps new utility casters.
Right now as soon as the attacking realm is in the keep there is almost no possibility to defend the keep from the roof. Even if you're not an offensive character like a caster you're not safe almost anywhere on the roof due to bad keepdesign. But this was mentioned a lot of times already.
You can make keep taking easier by having a lot of tanks, and you can make keep defense better by having a good mix of pbae and tanks. But ultimately it's rare that the lower pop realm will win (significant difference in pop)
If you have the qty of players in your BG, you will win. The only exception to this rule is the Rescu BG that even if they outnumber anything else by 5:1 they'll still feed.
It is frustrating when you get steamrolled in keeps by a larger force, but what would be the logic that the lower force can pull out an even fight because of NPCs spawning?
It's a population issue, that timers are making worse. Why would someone contemplate not logging on hib Euro prime time, if he knows that the odds will be facing hero BG and getting rolled by 5x their numbers. So people log on Hib and PvE keeps.
That was written in the sky when they annouced timers, not sure why people are surprised.
Ahh yes, let's not grow the population and watch the EU BG leads come back... not. Ywain is probably hopeless at this point, to be fair, as the population isn';t enough to hold up the structure of RvR that NF is designed for. I don't think we will see the days of 150+ three way zerg fights on a regular basis, or relics switching hands on the daily. Making things harder isn't the answer, in my opinions keeps should be worth 0 rps and relics should only offer some 2-5k rp reward with no magic dmg/melee dmg bonuses. It's clear that until their is a healthy population to defend during EU prime, Hibernia will dominate. US prime players log in and see a relic/keep situation ruined while they were at work, any progress they made the night before (in terms of taking relics/keeps) will be wiped away in the morning because no EU players defended.
If you want assisted keep fights, go play a single player RPG keep defense game. This is RvR - realm versus realm - not RvNPCs.
so what is the difference between the hero/hib zerg and the rescu/alb zerg........
1. Rescu BG has like 2-3 armsman, tops. It's almost exclusively casters. So it could be decent in open field, but the mid BG is tank/thane heavy while the hib BG is pretty balanced. So they usually just get steamrolled unless they have a crazy number advantage.
2. Rescu has this paranoia about spies. If you are an alb group and you want to help, his BG will ignore you and not provide any intel on where they are. If he coordinated a little bit with the better grouos, his success rate would be so much higher.
3. They just feed. We'll tell them in region that irc hib bomb group is in tower X and to just leave, they'll ignore and run in the tower. Then you just watch the never ending green spam.
4. They are completely clueless about using RAs in a smart way. Alb has all the tools to win every single tower fights. Run up, pop tic r5, ST, tbeurg r5, minst r5, etc. Them? They run up without using cooldowns and just feed.
They are hopeless
This is something I have been thinking about also. Currently there is little risk playing a heavy tank attacking a keep due to many LOS breaks. Heavy tanks can take the outer oil easily as they can break LOS and be healed with spreadheals and group heals. There are just too many LOS breaks allowing tanks to be healed up.
When the enemy realm gains entrance to the courtyard they also can drop multiple catapults and just target and homing missile seek their targets. It's silly. I've had one person just target me when defending and just repeatedly catapult me to interrupt for over five minutes even if I broke LOS for a while. I've sat afk in the lordroom and still see the catapult ammo animation hit even if it did nothing. Being able to just repeatedly shoot at a person even out of los tracking them is silly. Seige targeting needs a revamp imo.
First of I think the keep doors and tower doors need to be returned to the way the were they take too long to open this is ok for herorius as he has the numbers .
For other realms such as Albion in makes it nigh on impossible to retake a relic.
Rather than make the Keeps stronger make the actual relic temples defendable like a keep and return the main land keeps to there previous strength.
Keep the oil level doors and strength of oil but return to the ram needing 8 riders to drive the ram this would mean climbers would generally have to be on the ram having one ram driver has Freed up 7 tanks to climb.
So in conclusion
Make relics temples actual defendable keeps
Return keep doors to old strength
Keep the current oil and oil level doors
Return to 8 people on the ram
Possibly make the ramparts only accessible by climbers or individual tower courtyard level doors that can be broken down for access.
Look at the utility on Albion for group make up something that really needs an honest debate about.
From these changes you would get people taking Keeps and towers in Hibernia and relic keep fights would truly be epic as for standard keep retakes or relic retakes it wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass and would mean one realm could not dominate so much.
All very simple very logical and easy to implement.
The RELIC temples are the key!
Maybe increase the damage on Leviathan to something similar to the mauler's phoenix strike? Make it cold damage again like it used to be, instead of spirit? That way you could have a pretty cool synergy between the PW necro and reaver. Solo reavers would lose the synergy of using spirit leggys to debuff spirit for their SR spells though.
Reducing the ae mezz caster from Minstrel isn't too far fetched as well I think. Going from 5 sec to 3.5 could make sense. Lower than that the Minstrel might be too strong of a rupting class in smaller settings.
I dont think 8men in ram is a good idea. No BG other than hero has 8 tanks to go in ram, who can take the damage of the oil. Its also quite boring to sit in ram, boring enough for 1.
My main thoughts were
Improvements to armsmen these ideas are in another thread
Maybe giving tic a greater group heal as they can template for power and remove the group heals from pallys
Remove st from tics give it to pallys
Change the tic melee styles from reactionarys to positionals
Like the idea on Levi getting increase reavers definetly need something
Minstrel aoe mez definetly needs looking at as does the melee line maybe duel wield for minis and have a trade off of not being able to have it if specced for stealth
Finally up the survivability of pw necros just so they are not so squishy.
I must stress these are only ideas if 1 or 2 were implemented I’d feel it was a start
As for the inner oil i think the climbing point should be reversed a the lower lvls have climbing points ant not the higher lvl and line of sight yo the roof can be fix by lowering the towers on the walls.
Pallys don't need ST, friar has it and is in every group, but I agree about removing ST from tics.
Dual wield minstrel? Seriously?
up the survivability of necros? They can be warlords and already have access to rampage and Fury.
I don't want to be mean, but it's hard to take your requests seriously when you propose things like that.
Plenty of minstrels have agreed that the mini melee ability is very poor would be nice to have an option.
I’m stating how a lot of alb players feel about the pw necro in groups but it’s an opinion I have no problem if you disagree the pally having st fits the class better as does a tic having a greater group heal both ideas that would make it better for utility in alb groups I expect to be flamed with these suggestions but the state of the realms are not right at this moment in time so again I stress everything should be up for debate I would rather see Albion get something than other realms be nerfed.
I did read your post. Not all classes should have everything. Minstrel with DW? Why should the minstrel be good at melee? It has access to pets, shouts, endless kiting, etc. I mean if you want to DW melee dps things down, play a merc, kinda fits the DW melee dps in chain archetype, no? You are even proposing to remove stealth, so you want a merc with DDs and CC? I mean come on.
PW Necro has high dps, normal for it to not be as durable as a pally/arms. When you fight an alb tanker, you have the choice to beat on an arms, a pally or a necro. For sure necro is target every time. Maybe that's why people think he's squishy in groups, because he's going to be the first dps to get dropped.
I don't think you'll get any sympathy looking to add stuff to the tic. If anything, tics should be nerfed. The UI ramp needs to go, the insta snare needs to provide immunity. The ae ramp snare range should be down to 1500. Probably should remove ST from tics and give ST to reavers. Reaver is closer to champ than the pally is.
You get flamed because your proposals aren't really thought out. You are just looking to make some alb classes completely OP, there's no logic in some of the proposals.
im not interested in a 300% increased HP on gates either, then you misunderstand this post if thats what you assume.
Someone mentionned catapults locking down a target and I agree that's really lame. How is that possible? catapults (and all siege) should be ground target only. Get a stealther to go up and pick you a GT.
The whole concept of siege defense is that your realm built these fortress to protect you when you are attacked. Then you fight in Crim, as an example, where attackers all have the higher ground and LoS advantage over the defenders. It's really dumb.
Defenders should have access to better siege than the attackers. It makes sense that you would be able to have bigger siege weapons in a keep than what you had in your back pack as an attacker.
I'd also remove climb walls from heavy tanks, have them be Ram bots again.
#morewaystospendguildbps
1. Remove siege tent requirement for defending realm. The keep acts as a siege tent and we shouldn't need to add anything to a level 10 keep to put down our own defenses.
2. Allow trebuchets/palintones/catapults to hit enemy siege tents. You should be able to stop a siege in more than one way, we already kill rams. Allowing a defending realm to reduce your siege tent to rubble, forcing the attacking realm to keep removing the rubble and restoring a tent to allow more rams to go down.
3. Remove /bank command in RvR zones, or do not allow siege in personal vaults. It's extremely unbalanced that an attacking force can bring an unlimited amount of siege with no downside at all. There's literally a vault keeper in relic town.
4. Remove inner climb points, create player-crafted oil pots, and allow players to put oil pots on any part of the roof to pour down. This will force all of the extra casters, that are usually just standing on the outer towers overlooking the roof waiting to nuke somebody down the instant they come in LOS, to focus on hitting oil. Allow casters to do some damage to the oil pots, but not a lot. This new oil system will also force the attacking room out into LOS more often.
5. Increase trebuchet damage on keep walls. Attacking forces don't like to come inside through a funnel, they already need to do it inside. Allow more holes in keeps and expand the range on the siege tents.
Then change the siege tents within the keep to be undestroyable and be owned by the current owner of the keep.
No need to have two siege tents available for the attacking realm. Because it is like it is... As soon as the attacker are inside the keep the defenders have no access to the higher tier of siege equipment anymore. Attackers destroy the inner siege tent within a minute and that was it, no more fortified palintones and catapults for defenders.