I haven't personally had miasma on myself yet to see but, before we get hasty, I'd like to know, were both of you alone in a room with guards? In a group and got gibbed? considering how much you all flip and get away, I'd like to know.
I would really love to see the guards stop breaking and start responding to patrol commands so we can like, find out where to fix things. A major reason the guards did better this time than last one is because the bug didn't break things 'as much' (guards scattering with no regard for numbers). I can tell there's something needing fixing but I'll be super aggravated if it isn't fixed in context of both raiders/defenders and right now raid defense is still pretty stupid and random.
That damage is uber though. But also my thing.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
I agree defence bugs are very important, because it gives a more accurate representation of the state of things.
That said, if the above is a remotely accurate state of things, that is a problem. Noone wants to play against random passive one shots and passive damage invulnerability, and conflict systems live and die on participation (caravans, shardfalls in the 8 months pre leylines). I'd love to see more raids (demonic raiding Antioch is actually what got me playing again), but I can't blame anyone for not wanting to bang there head against that particular brick wall.
I definitely understand the desire to want reliable tools for defence though. Consistency is what matters in pk, at the end of the day.
If you guys were in a group and getting targeted by all the guards in the room, I think maybe they need to be tweaked so that the guards attack everyone in the group more evenly and not focus fire a single target. Not sure if this would swing things too far in the other direction, but its a suggestion at least, besides straight nerfing guards even more.(Since I personally want guards that actually help to some degree in a defenses.)
I've made the following changes to guards during raids:
* New command CITY GUARD RAID - This will tell to try to get to at the beginning of a raid. All guards will move quickly to their assigned location at the beginning of the raid. Setting this during a raid does nothing until the next raid. * City guards that survive a raid will try to walk back to the spot they were at before the raid. * Both of these are *try*. If something blocks the guard they will not move. * Guard scattering will respect locked doors and will not go into sewers. * Guards may get teleported to the city council room if they get stuck. * Patrols and squads do not work during a raid. The guards will go back to their assigned squads after the raid. * Scattering now gives preference to who stays to guards manning siege engines and guards assigned to rooms with the GUARD RAID command. Even these guards will scatter if there are more than 10 guards in the room. * Guards should not scatter into houses or guildhalls, but large clots trapped in these may teleport to the city council room. * CALL FOR HELP will not result in a loop of guards coming and then scattering.
In addition, the movement timer for the raid objective will now reset if the direction it's being pulled changes. You should only be able to attempt to move the objective if no one else currently is.
No, you just need to stop the current mover and start moving in a different direction. If this causes problems I am open to changing it to require a move tick.
Zero opposition with few pauses and no wipes gets you out just before the debuff weakens. The 10-clots are okay as long as they're mostly physical damage that you can spread with defend. The clerics were hitting me for 5x as much, so I'd expect members to drop if there were more.
I'd definitely move the reset to a tick. One rush of attack pusher|beckon/push dir could send a raid into the danger zone, if not end it completely.
Guards were kinda angry and inconsiderate of Bina's predicament last I checked ;_;
I'd tend to agree with the no-wait on the reset being a problem, but personally I don't think it's the biggest one. I just defended a raid 1 vs 5 essentially, in the process of that I got shackled into a room. Now I'm a pretty tanky guy, and I can take a few hits, but when I'm bleeding for 200+ a tick and getting hit by 5 people that mostly do pretty decent damage (and inhumed) I should not be the last one standing. The reality is that guards in general are still too good, both the healers (wtf I was immortal with two of them in a room versus 5 people trying to hit me, and not like I was turtled immortal, I was still hitting people) and the damage from the high end guards.
The healers were epic and aggravating. I thought that was mentioned as a problem already from your Kins raid, though. Mostly I figured we failed at landing an insta so we could make progress. E: Do the healers have any debuffs from the miasma?
On the flip side, if one person defending can hold off an entire raiding force in a straight up melee then you're guaranteed it'll become timezones, because if you can't kill one person you definitely can't kill five or whatever. I agree one person playing smart should be able to stall out a raid, but I can't really think of any reason one person should be able to do it in the same way a regular group would.
Basically, if the method a solo player use and the method a group use to defend are the same (and the solo player is viable), the group will never be worth fighting. You're going to lose, and probably badly.
For drag/push, a sliding scale might be better. Starts at zero. Say I drag Lyria west for three ticks, its now at three. Then Kabaal beckons her back two ticks, its now at one. That way it is less all or nothing and more of a tug of war.
You can't have one side immune to damage and one side not, its not a barrier that can reasonably be overcome. No raid by any circle with healers employed properly so far has been remotely close. Cyr literally defended Antioch 1 v 5 while shackled and inhumed, probably the two most debilitating status effects in the game.
Don't see why the healer guards need to heal players, honestly. Making the guard clot unkillable without a complete overkill team already makes them the best guard type by a landslide.
Basically, if you're tanky enough to not die in the span of three seconds or so, you won't die without a massive time investment (huge bleed attrition, a concerted push for an instakill, etc). That's not a problem if it goes both ways, but it doesn't. One side gets to push damage and one doesn't. The one that doesn't is going to lose.
I also want to touch on the fact that you can stack 10 of these in one room. Even if they healed a far less significant amount, if someone minmaxed healers it'd probably still have the same result.
Healers will no longer heal defenders during a raid. They will continue to heal other guards. They will also continue to heal players outside of a raid.
so now the artifactless will get murdered in three hits again. yipee. You can bet I won't be defending by myself now for sure.
Edit: my point being, this becoming another shard fall with guards just standing around trying to look cute. I already feel pretty useless in shardfalls where we don't have the overwhelming numbers, don't need to feel that way in defenses or it really kills morale and you'll see people stop trying. Healing shouldn't have went from 100 to 0. It should have been toned down without putting a full stop on it.
I agree, speaking with no experience with numbers. As was said above, it's a defensive edge that defenders should have, especially when we have no control over the number of people around when a raid begins and it very well may be only 1 person. Guards are barely mobile during raids now, and although above a 'group of healers' was mentioned as a bad thing, in the context of 'a group of healers' being what a defender chooses to have instead of like, webbers or damage or blockers should be a viable defensive strategy. It tilts the defense away from 'u vs my npc' and makes it 'my pk vs urs'. Have it scale to the # of people in a room, and not happen if there is 3+ or something, whatever.
Also:
Bug #62400 Reporter(s): Oystir
Priority: Unassigned
Reported by Oystir at 2017/02/17 18:01:
guards Guards: Some of our guards in the 'Footmen' squad were killed and have not returned since the raid 2 days ago.
Bug #62401 Reporter(s): Oystir
Priority: Unassigned
Reported by Oystir at 2017/02/17 18:04:
guards: Squads are being broken up during raids to the point that single guards no longer end up being considered in squads unless manually re-added. The majority of the guards I find wayward like this have been (G) standing guard per CITY GUARD LIST, but not all of them. I suspect part of this may be the guards dying and coming back and not being reset to the squads
We've had several guards not repop, some for almost 2 weeks now. Nearly every raid I've had to manually hunt down the ones standing around, and we're definitely down 4 guards at least from when I put them together. Ty hoping not to have to spend in-game money to fix a bug just yet ~~~
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
I guess it depends if the intent is for it to be pk vs npc or pk vs pk. Personally I don't see anything engaging about the former, but of course, personal preference.
I have to ask though why you feel defenders are entitled to such a powerful edge? I'm honestly not following the logic there. These are my thoughts, if it helps:
Things the defenders have going for them:
- Guards.
- Siege (still great hinder, good damage).
- The time limit. Wins are much more meaningful for the defenders, because they're not fighting the clock, its fighting for them.
- Geography. There's only one way out of the city, so you can prep the path accordingly. A lot of this comes down to objective placement, cities with more scattered objectives get less benefit here.
Things the raiders have going for them:
- Picking the time.
- Picking the objective (see final point of previous list, these are inversely benefitial based on placement).
But I guess my big point is there's a reason people have stopped raiding against significant opposition, even with the nerfs. I don't think its because raidings too easy. Though again, this comes back to whether this is meant to be player vs player or player vs guards.
Also to clear something up, Guards do not stand around and look cute, guards massively hurt, Septus and I are among the tankiest people currently playing the game, raiding in professions that give additional tanking benefits. If we couldn't tank the guards it would be far more worrying than the fact that we can.
Picking the time is a huge advantage and the biggest one imo, especially with mechanics as they are. It gives you control over the size of your group vs the size of a defending group which is largely the deciding factor of who will win a raid. Us vs Siath is a raid that is over as soon as it starts unless he can survive and kill/scatter all of us and have enough time to push back the objective. 1 vs 5 that's not going to happen. & if Aodan is the 1 then he might as well go fishing and turn CT off. Defense inherently requires PK ability to the tune of 20 uninterrupted seconds.
And Cyr is exactly right. Guards who do damage/affs are very valuable, and giving up some measure of that added damage to have a guard who does nothing but increase your ability to survive an actual PK fight is a reasonable cost/benefit to actually make pk vs npc/pk vs pk something that can be decided on for the defenders. If having a wall of guard damage isn't enough to help you kill anyone then you lose, but if you were feeling bold enough to go for an affliction kill and better healing at the cost of NPC damage, that could and should be an option.
I'm not saying 100% immunity is the way to go and I do think having it not work at all with enough defenders in the room is a good way to go, something to keep it from being OP in a group but still useful to a smaller group/singler. Idk numbers or mechanics, but from a strategy view and a logical view it does give options that defenders do need to have resistance against the 'we pick the time' advantage of the raiders.
Edit: And I'm not saying 1 vs 5 should be a match-up that the defenders can ride to victory every time but right now 1 vs 5 means you lose period. No pass go. No 200$.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
I think in general some guard changes to tilt towards PK over just raw damage would be very cool. Guards who do affs only or can be utilized as part of a combo on a large cooldown. Something. But it'd probably be OP but now I'm just fantasizing.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
I guess we just will have to agree to disagree on that. Personally I'm of the opinion that losing 5 v 1 should be the expected result. Of course the argument is people who want to win enough will just raid when there's only one person around: that's true. On the flip side, if they really care enough to win and one person has a chance at stopping them, they'll just wait for their to be zero. Balancing around the extreme desire to win is probably not going to produce a fun system, imo.
Sorry for triple post, but maybe something that can restrict raid pushing would help a lot in a situation like that. Maybe only 1-2 raiders are allowed to move an objective during any given raid, so instead of killing the entire raiding team to stop us from moving the objective, Siath just has to kill like, me, and then work his odds at moving it back versus people he doesn't have to kill.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
@Septus - If it just ends up being 5v1 you lose then that really only emphasizes how large and insurmountable of an advantage 'picking the time' really is.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
I was being extremist in my earlier post. I don't expect to win a 1 v 5. What I did have a problem with was a defending group bigger than the attacking group still having trouble stopping the attackers. Had Owyn not swooped in and got that last kill you all would have had the objective using 3 vs 4 defenders.
Honestly though whats the point of having healers if they ain't healing me? Moar damage and hinders plz. I'm not asking to go from squishy bard to supertanksician. Just asking for it to be turned up a bit so I last longer the 3 seconds I normally do. I'll trade heals for damage if damage needs to be toned down a bit. It just went from everyone being super tank to lulz artifacts with one felt swoop without even trying an in between approach. I guess I should have spoke up earlier but I thought I'd give the no healing a chance. Can't tell you how many times I went wtf reading the post about not healing players.
I was being extremist in my earlier post. I don't expect to win a 1 v 5. What I did have a problem with was a defending group bigger than the attacking group still having trouble stopping the attackers. Had Owyn not swooped in and got that last kill you all would have had the objective using 3 vs 4 defenders.
Honestly though whats the point of having healers if they ain't healing me? Moar damage and hinders plz. I'm not asking to go from squishy bard to supertanksician. Just asking for it to be turned up a bit so I last longer the 3 seconds I normally do. I'll trade heals for damage if damage needs to be toned down a bit. It just went from everyone being super tank to lulz artifacts with one felt swoop without even trying an in between approach. I guess I should have spoke up earlier but I thought I'd give the no healing a chance. Can't tell you how many times I went wtf reading the post about not healing players.
To be completely honest, that means you expect it to always be in the favor of the attackers. ALWAYS. In terms of they have to have superior numbers (not superior tactics/abilities). Your argument is kind of unhelpful in the long run. You want skill to have nothing to do with it, and you want mechanics to entirely rule.
@Septus - If it just ends up being 5v1 you lose then that really only emphasizes how large and insurmountable of an advantage 'picking the time' really is.
Oh no, I think you're missing my point. This is an insermountable advantage. You can't balance around it because someone can legitimately just wait for you to have noone online. Its not something you can account for while keeping things relevant in the cases that are actually worth promoting (the case when both sides have people). This is the same for any conflict system in imperian: if someone wants to win badly enough at the cost of it being fun, they will. People sleep eventually.
You can scale for numbers etc, but again: this doesn't work. Numbers aren't a good gauge of things because people's pk ability varies so greatly. Artefacts also don't work: for instance a team that brings Tikal would get punished about as much as a team that brings me. You could say "then we wouldn't bring artefacted players that aren't great pkers", but I think at that point the system has failed.
Comments
That damage is uber though. But also my thing.
That said, if the above is a remotely accurate state of things, that is a problem. Noone wants to play against random passive one shots and passive damage invulnerability, and conflict systems live and die on participation (caravans, shardfalls in the 8 months pre leylines). I'd love to see more raids (demonic raiding Antioch is actually what got me playing again), but I can't blame anyone for not wanting to bang there head against that particular brick wall.
I definitely understand the desire to want reliable tools for defence though. Consistency is what matters in pk, at the end of the day.
* New command CITY GUARD RAID - This will tell to try to get to at the beginning of a raid. All guards will move quickly to their assigned location at the beginning of the raid. Setting this during a raid does nothing until the next raid.
* City guards that survive a raid will try to walk back to the spot they were at before the raid.
* Both of these are *try*. If something blocks the guard they will not move.
* Guard scattering will respect locked doors and will not go into sewers.
* Guards may get teleported to the city council room if they get stuck.
* Patrols and squads do not work during a raid. The guards will go back to their assigned squads after the raid.
* Scattering now gives preference to who stays to guards manning siege engines and guards assigned to rooms with the GUARD RAID command. Even these guards will scatter if there are more than 10 guards in the room.
* Guards should not scatter into houses or guildhalls, but large clots trapped in these may teleport to the city council room.
* CALL FOR HELP will not result in a loop of guards coming and then scattering.
In addition, the movement timer for the raid objective will now reset if the direction it's being pulled changes. You should only be able to attempt to move the objective if no one else currently is.
I'd definitely move the reset to a tick. One rush of attack pusher|beckon/push dir could send a raid into the danger zone, if not end it completely.
Guards were kinda angry and inconsiderate of Bina's predicament last I checked ;_;
E: Do the healers have any debuffs from the miasma?
I do think that one-person defending of raids should be feasible, otherwise it just becomes a time-zone game.
Basically, if the method a solo player use and the method a group use to defend are the same (and the solo player is viable), the group will never be worth fighting. You're going to lose, and probably badly.
For drag/push, a sliding scale might be better. Starts at zero. Say I drag Lyria west for three ticks, its now at three. Then Kabaal beckons her back two ticks, its now at one. That way it is less all or nothing and more of a tug of war.
How long is the guard respawn?
Raiding is definitely impossible right now unless there's zero opposition willing to sit on healers.
You can't have one side immune to damage and one side not, its not a barrier that can reasonably be overcome. No raid by any circle with healers employed properly so far has been remotely close. Cyr literally defended Antioch 1 v 5 while shackled and inhumed, probably the two most debilitating status effects in the game.
Don't see why the healer guards need to heal players, honestly. Making the guard clot unkillable without a complete overkill team already makes them the best guard type by a landslide.
Basically, if you're tanky enough to not die in the span of three seconds or so, you won't die without a massive time investment (huge bleed attrition, a concerted push for an instakill, etc). That's not a problem if it goes both ways, but it doesn't. One side gets to push damage and one doesn't. The one that doesn't is going to lose.
I also want to touch on the fact that you can stack 10 of these in one room. Even if they healed a far less significant amount, if someone minmaxed healers it'd probably still have the same result.
Edit: my point being, this becoming another shard fall with guards just standing around trying to look cute. I already feel pretty useless in shardfalls where we don't have the overwhelming numbers, don't need to feel that way in defenses or it really kills morale and you'll see people stop trying. Healing shouldn't have went from 100 to 0. It should have been toned down without putting a full stop on it.
Also:
We've had several guards not repop, some for almost 2 weeks now. Nearly every raid I've had to manually hunt down the ones standing around, and we're definitely down 4 guards at least from when I put them together.
Ty hoping not to have to spend in-game money to fix a bug just yet ~~~
I guess it depends if the intent is for it to be pk vs npc or pk vs pk. Personally I don't see anything engaging about the former, but of course, personal preference.
I have to ask though why you feel defenders are entitled to such a powerful edge? I'm honestly not following the logic there. These are my thoughts, if it helps:
Things the defenders have going for them:
- Guards.
- Siege (still great hinder, good damage).
- The time limit. Wins are much more meaningful for the defenders, because they're not fighting the clock, its fighting for them.
- Geography. There's only one way out of the city, so you can prep the path accordingly. A lot of this comes down to objective placement, cities with more scattered objectives get less benefit here.
Things the raiders have going for them:
- Picking the time.
- Picking the objective (see final point of previous list, these are inversely benefitial based on placement).
But I guess my big point is there's a reason people have stopped raiding against significant opposition, even with the nerfs. I don't think its because raidings too easy. Though again, this comes back to whether this is meant to be player vs player or player vs guards.
And Cyr is exactly right. Guards who do damage/affs are very valuable, and giving up some measure of that added damage to have a guard who does nothing but increase your ability to survive an actual PK fight is a reasonable cost/benefit to actually make pk vs npc/pk vs pk something that can be decided on for the defenders. If having a wall of guard damage isn't enough to help you kill anyone then you lose, but if you were feeling bold enough to go for an affliction kill and better healing at the cost of NPC damage, that could and should be an option.
I'm not saying 100% immunity is the way to go and I do think having it not work at all with enough defenders in the room is a good way to go, something to keep it from being OP in a group but still useful to a smaller group/singler. Idk numbers or mechanics, but from a strategy view and a logical view it does give options that defenders do need to have resistance against the 'we pick the time' advantage of the raiders.
Edit: And I'm not saying 1 vs 5 should be a match-up that the defenders can ride to victory every time but right now 1 vs 5 means you lose period. No pass go. No 200$.
Honestly though whats the point of having healers if they ain't healing me? Moar damage and hinders plz. I'm not asking to go from squishy bard to supertanksician. Just asking for it to be turned up a bit so I last longer the 3 seconds I normally do. I'll trade heals for damage if damage needs to be toned down a bit. It just went from everyone being super tank to lulz artifacts with one felt swoop without even trying an in between approach. I guess I should have spoke up earlier but I thought I'd give the no healing a chance. Can't tell you how many times I went wtf reading the post about not healing players.
To be completely honest, that means you expect it to always be in the favor of the attackers. ALWAYS. In terms of they have to have superior numbers (not superior tactics/abilities). Your argument is kind of unhelpful in the long run. You want skill to have nothing to do with it, and you want mechanics to entirely rule.
Oh no, I think you're missing my point. This is an insermountable advantage. You can't balance around it because someone can legitimately just wait for you to have noone online. Its not something you can account for while keeping things relevant in the cases that are actually worth promoting (the case when both sides have people). This is the same for any conflict system in imperian: if someone wants to win badly enough at the cost of it being fun, they will. People sleep eventually.
You can scale for numbers etc, but again: this doesn't work. Numbers aren't a good gauge of things because people's pk ability varies so greatly. Artefacts also don't work: for instance a team that brings Tikal would get punished about as much as a team that brings me. You could say "then we wouldn't bring artefacted players that aren't great pkers", but I think at that point the system has failed.
Pffft. I'm a master's student. What is sleep?
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."