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Raiding

I am pushing the new raiding system in a few minutes and this will be the official feedback thread.

Feel free to make comments on guard strength, how difficult it is to raid, and suggest new objectives. Please point out bugs and things I have overlooked.

Thanks!

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Comments

  • So, I've finally managed to do a second raid. Some feedback:

    - Siege kind of makes things a nightmare. Two reasons:
    * Bolt throwers throw people all over the place, so actually staying on an objective to drag it is extremely difficult. This makes bringing anyone inexperienced on the raid a basic impossibility - you just lose them the moment you hit siege.
    * Cannon damage still shreds people. You don't get one shot unless you roll unlucky on the rng, but since you can't cure while dragging an objective down a siegeline is really, really hard.

    - I'm not sure if miasma isn't working or if there's just some situation where it doesn't function properly in. A squad of 40 guards moved into our group of people and everyone basically died in seconds. It also might be that 40 times 20 is still 800 damage, which when it comes every round can't be tanked by a group. Miasma seems to work well when there are say, 10 guards - it still is pretty painful but its manageable with reflections and such. I think if you stuck a 100 man guard clot on your gates room you'd become raid immune - there's just no way to tank for any amount of time, and this damage needs to be tankable for around 30-60 seconds at least to move an objective.

    - Objectives seem a bit too close together in some cases - I could work up a list if this is something that is up for change, but it'd be nice if they were scattered around the city a bit more so as to give more strategic choices for attack and defence.

    Basically, I think I like the system, but siege and guards make it way too exclusive currently - bringing new players or non artied out guys isn't really possible with the damage numbers being put out by org passives. It also gives certain orgs massive advantages (Kinsarmar and Antioch for sure), because to get an objective out of the city you have to drag it down a full siege line. With Stavenn (and maybe Celidon? I'm not sure where their objectives are exactly) you get just the one or two rooms of siege line exposure, which you can dedicate a good few minutes to solving. Moving objectives around to limit that exposure might be an option there.

    Will try to get another raid in some time this week, do some more experimenting.
  • edited January 2017
    Edit: I can't do forums today apparently.

    anyway, jules said when she looked @ logs that she thought guards were strong as well, especially healers. Maybe tinker with their efficacy. I'd like it if they might heal one (rando?) player in the room on a slow tick instead of attacking/healing guards. It'd give some variety for squad formation which is pretty formulaic right now. And it'd give an edge to smaller defensive teams I think. idk I dont know anything about combat balance.

    Also the time limit is very short. Maybe find some way to add time, objectives, channeled captures in various spots in the city to spread out the areas that need to be defended. Also just make the time longer please :) and being able to put objectives behind locked doors is lame ~~
     You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
  • or adding shards into your/their generator for more time.
     You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
  • Maybe objectives should reset to their starting positions (if in the owner's city) when the raid properly kicks off, so people can't drag them behind locked doors or whatnot once the wardrums get sounded.
  • I fixed the problem with items not resetting (I think).

    I fixed the problem with a couple of the standards being able to be picked up.

    Raid objectives SHOULD only be movable during a raid and should reset when the raid is over.

    I will fix the problem with cities putting up doors and look at the guard stuff as well.

  • edited January 2017
    So after dragging Niccolo for 15 minutes to the Gates of Stavenn, we get stopped by a posted guard clot that doesn't move and hits like a train. So.. uh.. what are we supposed to do exactly?
    (Ring): Lartus says, "I heard Theophilus once threw a grenade and killed ten people."
    (Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."

    (Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
  • The Stavenn clots aren't even close to the worst possible setup, to add onto the above.
  • So after dragging Niccolo for 15 minutes to the Gates of Stavenn, we get stopped by a posted guard clot that doesn't move and hits like a train. So.. uh.. what are we supposed to do exactly?

    You may want to kill off some of those guards, or leave someone to do it before you get there. After the 15 minute mark, the guards will start to regain some senses. That said I am currently looking at some of the guard issues as well.

  • edited January 2017
    Another thing. When dragging, it saves the amount of time it has been dragged every 5 seconds. So if you have to stop to cure you are not starting all over from scratch each time.

  • edited January 2017
    It's just the same problem as every PvP and PvE interaction here when the numbers involved start to get too high. With 100 guards, you'd have to nuke the damage to like 10 per hit to not instagib someone every round. There's no threat management, no AoE mob CC, and not much per-mob CC. The only real driving force for splitting guards up is siege equipment, and the relative ease of killing guards during the raid means you're going to be dropping a lot of gold into replacing both guards and ammunition if you try to use them and no one is around to move the geek squad.

    Making it much easier to kill those guards in a clot isn't really an option, either. I'd probably just quit participating after 2-3 rounds of putting 500k gold into guards because a 20m raid at 3 AM wiped out half of them on the way out the door. If guards just respawned after a time (1-2 ig months) and only had commodity costs, it'd be different, but city 'gold income' is a bit of a joke at the moment, meaning it'd be more endless bashing for those of us still around.

    I'd probably personally do something like the respawning guards above, slowed guard movement during raids (making their starting position impact response time some), and forcing guards in clots to split up their targets (G1 targets P1, G2 targets P2, all the way through enemied players in the room til it loops back to P1). I'd also maybe make the pusher take less damage from both in-room guards and siege, reasoning being a touch more tankiness that helps whatever the party size is (and their proximity to a valuable object for the IC reasoning). Another 5 minutes on the timer might not be bad, though I'm not sure if it should be 15m debuff+/10m debuff- or 20m debuff+/5m debuff-.

    It's obviously not an easy thing to balance, so I'd also like to say it at least feels like it could really be a decent PvP activity with a few tweaks.
  • You don't have to pay for guards each time they're killed anymore.
  • As Dec alluded, guards DO reset now. In addition, you can store siege ammunition within the siege weapon, rather than giving it to guards. It can only be removed by players with the Security city power. This removes the risk of siege ammunition drop on guard death.
    Like what we're doing? Why not take a second to vote? Vote for Imperian at http://www.imperian.com/vote
  • That makes it easier. Bring on guardageddon!
  • - Siege will not hit quite as often when raiding as the guards are confused.

    - Large clot of guards will be unnerved and scattered a bit when a raid starts

  • Does the scatter break up squad assignments? Will it be possible to order the guards move after the scatter? What is a 'large' clot?
  • The NPC objectives should probably have their health increased vastly and be made immune to crits, both to save idiotic raiders from themselves and to prevent defenders from killing the NPC to foil a raid.
  • Something has to change with this system.

    I mean... I don't really have any alternative suggestions. The way it stands now, though--it is awful.
    (Ring): Lartus says, "I heard Theophilus once threw a grenade and killed ten people."
    (Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."

    (Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
  • Something has to change with this system.

    I mean... I don't really have any alternative suggestions. The way it stands now, though--it is awful.

    This post was a bit reactionary..

    All I'm saying is it would be much more fun to raid if it weren't impossible to actually secure an objective.
    (Ring): Lartus says, "I heard Theophilus once threw a grenade and killed ten people."
    (Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."

    (Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
  • Illucidate?
  • The fact that guards can SHIELD and you can't remove them is stupid.

    Also the fact that you get all the way to the exit of a city only to be destroyed by guards because it took 25:00 to get there.

    I think SHARD MIASMA should make it so guards don't attack period. It's up to the players to defend their city.
    (Ring): Lartus says, "I heard Theophilus once threw a grenade and killed ten people."
    (Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."

    (Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
  • edited February 2017
    have an engineering item or something that disperses guards or has a chance to lure them in a given direction
    or have them have a true chase like Skegdald ogres did (do?) so they can be lured

    have time be added for every room the objective is successfully moved

    reduce the channel on the objective push

    boltthrowers hit too often. Siege is too powerful in general

    some way to discern the squad leader of enemy squads
     You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
  • Allowing healing while moving standard would be a huge start. But even then, we can't get past a stationed guard clot of 20.
    (Ring): Lartus says, "I heard Theophilus once threw a grenade and killed ten people."
    (Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."

    (Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
  • Yeah. I found a major bug while working on this today. I will be loading it up today.

  • Maybe disable all guards and allow a SWAT team to be activated with generator energy or shard powered suits that protect them from the miasma? Basically, defenders have the choice of bringing out more guards if they need the help, but it'll cost. If you can defend, then you can opt for a lower amount of guards or no guards.
    Also, instead of just one big clot of guards, divide up the teams. AKA, spending to activate a 10-man SWAT team would get reinforcements up to 10 every minute or so. You can adjust the strength of the shard-suit guards, the cost of fitting them, the max number, all that without interfering with the normal guard setup.

    They should probably spawn at a barracks or predefined spawn point and make their way relatively quickly to the most threatened objective/where a war aide points them.

    A minimum number of guards should spawn, though, especially if there is no one with war powers on to do so.

    Also, the VIPs really need protection :lol:
  • and for effs sake make it so the stupid city tutors can't be targeted using 'guard'

     You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
  • Not sure the new guard changes worked, @Jeremy. Antioch's room of 50+ guards didn't split.
    (Ring): Lartus says, "I heard Theophilus once threw a grenade and killed ten people."
    (Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."

    (Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
  • There was a bug. Think I fixed it, but I think the raiders had stopped by the time I did.
  • edited February 2017
    We stayed far longer than we should have with the ridiculous clot in place as it was :| We would have gladly taken a do-over with things working, though :>
    Otherwise for comments on recent changes, the incoming siege felt endurable if still a definite advantage for the defenders.
  • edited February 2017
    1. I mentioned the obvious problem with NPC health ages ago. It's ridiculous that it wasn't fixed.
    2. Walling for hurr durr guard clot to start is dumb. E- But they did seem to scatter up after we broke through the walls.
  • Made some changes here:

    Guards can potentially move further away and there should never be more than 10 in a room while a raid is running. There are some possible exceptions to that, but I doubt it will pop up.

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