Suggestion: Partial Destruction of Choke-points.

Woke up today and had yet another idea that I thought could alleviate the potential staleness of choke-points. What I mean by this is there are many games that I have played over the years, and perhaps you have too, where you end up in an extremely annoying choke point that the enemy team is doing an insanely good job at controlling. The game stalls out and just turns into a disheartening meat grinder for the attacking force and nothing really progresses past this.

My suggestion is this, allow the terrain around the choke point to be destroyed/repaired over time. If the attacking force spends time slinging spells and attacks against the opening of a gate after its been blown open, have it start to break apart and expand the hole over time. On the flip-side, if you are defending and this happens to you, have an option where players gather debris from the gateway, carry it up to the hole and add fortifications to lessen that gap.

Sure, you could try and find another entrance to exploit and that's not really what I am talking about here. What I am talking about is stuff like the throne room gateway of the castle, and other such locations that have a single entrance. Now don't get me wrong I also suggest this for any of the other kinds of choke points as it allows players to really work at them and progress over time.

The reason why I am not suggestion full destruction for any part of the wall is simple, that would be impossible to defend against in a video game siege. Games like this need points of strategic value to fight over, and in this case there is no need for the creation of new entrances. I believe the partial destruction will make it harder to defend these points, ultimately adding more variation and reducing the staleness of such choke-point fights.

In addition to such choke points being destroyed to make them larger, we could also look into defending players having the option to pull the rug out from under an attacking force by sacrificing their choke point to buy time. Essentially, the defender can choose to destroy a bridge or arch-way, causing the terrain to change, be it falling rocks crushing the attackers or the bridge giving way to very, very hungry crocottears (crocodile otters) in the waters below. This would be a one time act for each choke point that would have a few mechanics in place so that its not usable on every single choke point ever at the last second. Otherwise that would get annoying real quick. Add a cast time, such as the mages in the defending party needing to channel a 1 min ritual to conjure a massive concentrated earthquake or meteor to bring down said choke point.

Before I continue to ramble on into too broad of a topic I'll stop there, let me know what you guys think.

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tautau

Sounds to me like you are suggesting that a successful defense should be punished for being successful.

Sathrago

tautau wrote: »

Sounds to me like you are suggesting that a successful defense should be punished for being successful.

Well not exactly. I just want more flexibility in the back and forth fighting instead of yes you win or no you suck at choke-point fights. This is my suggestion to reduce the absolute advantage that defense has after a period of working at a choke point. It is a reduction, not a complete removal of said advantage.

Taleof2Cities

Sathrago wrote: »

tautau wrote: »

Sounds to me like you are suggesting that a successful defense should be punished for being successful.

Well not exactly. I just want more flexibility in the back and forth fighting instead of yes you win or no you suck at choke-point fights. This is my suggestion to reduce the absolute advantage that defense has after a period of working at a choke point. It is a reduction, not a complete removal of said advantage.

From the Alpha testing done so far, @Sathrago, have you or anyone else encountered choke point issues with terrain exactly as you describe?

They’ve done a lot of testing on the sieges and other PvP aspects … sadly I have not bought the Alpha pack yet to test it myself.

Dygz

Not so much terrain, but it is fun when attackers bust down the gate in front of the throne room and there's a battle to keep the attackers from streaming through.
I think terrain destruction might be a bit too much to expect for Ashes.
(Also fun when trebuchets and ballistas are destroyed.)

Seems like there was a video for APOC sieges that showed wall destruction, but I don't think I've seen a whole just anywhere in a wall.
So far, crafting and repair is not in, but there seem to be places designated for crafting stations.

Sathrago

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

tautau wrote: »

Sounds to me like you are suggesting that a successful defense should be punished for being successful.

Well not exactly. I just want more flexibility in the back and forth fighting instead of yes you win or no you suck at choke-point fights. This is my suggestion to reduce the absolute advantage that defense has after a period of working at a choke point. It is a reduction, not a complete removal of said advantage.

From the Alpha testing done so far, @Sathrago, have you or anyone else encountered choke point issues with terrain exactly as you describe?

They’ve done a lot of testing on the sieges and other PvP aspects … sadly I have not bought the Alpha pack yet to test it myself.

I do not have access to Alpha myself, this is just my experience with other games and my observation of the last siege video. At the very end of the video you can clearly see the attacking force get wiped in but a few seconds by aoe once the defenders found them knocking. I am not sure if attacking through the gates like they were is intended, but such a turtling tactic will be extremely difficult to break without superior skill specializations or gear. I know such things are hard to balance out so that there's a reasonable chance for either party to win the siege, and that is why I am suggesting this as it seems choke points like this will be really, really difficult to play around as an attacker. Let us not forget that there will be body blocking in the game, so only so many can run through that door in the first place. if said choke point were to expand slowly over the siege due to destruction then it puts pressure on the defense to send more builders/defenders to fortify that position or the potential for a breach is increased.

Azherae

As a three-time Siege test participant, the current map would not work for this in any meaningful way long term.

Current Siege is like playing a MOBA with less rules, and while I personally feel that it might benefit from either being considerably more like a MOBA or considerably less like one, the destructibility of chokepoints would encourage an attacker tactic that already seems quite strong (from the perspective of someone who has never played on the Attacker side, as I was gathering data).

The gates being knocked down is a thing that actually helps and matters if your mages are competent enough, so the only thing that seems to be needed now (and might be already implemented, I didn't fully check) is that your character's respawn time should be inversely related to their distance from their spawn point when they die.

This way, both teams are encouraged to push forward at least a bit, and they 'arrive back at any given point' at about the same time (there's some teleportation options that add to this, but I can't be sure enough of the exact mechanics to give a full description here - treat everything in the Spoiler tag as conjecture).

What I 'assumed was happening/intended' was that you could teleport to whatever Control Point (tower) you controlled, and that if you just burst through one of the three(?) paths all the way to the Throne Room door, that means you left one open for the defenders to use to teleport out and flank you. If you hold them all, there's still a back way out that they can take if they have faith in their ability to hold off your forces at the gate.

If the terrain itself was destructible, it wouldn't change that much right now except making things even more chaos, as I see it. We saw this in a recent siege where the Attackers actually held control of the Throne Room gate and were mostly filling the room, and defenders would just push in from the two sides and try to stop them from taking it directly.

In short this would reward you for zerging/pushing more than it would for holding, but holding (as an Attacker) might already have big enough rewards that it would just be punishing the Defenders for splitting their forces or 'not having enough scouts'. Attackers would simply bring Damage Dealing mages whose only intention was to burst and use all their mana on widening the doorway, and the advantage of the Trebuchets would be balanced only very slightly by some other mechanics.

This one's already too long, so tl;dr, the way chokepoints help defenders is countered heavily by Mages, both while the gates are up, and after they fall, and it looks like this is so innate to sieges that it can't be changed meaningfully.

maouw

I've played both attacker and defender once. The first set of gates are easy to get through for 2 reasons:

There are 3 of them, if one gate is defended too strongly, you switch to a different one - usually defenders can't tell what's happening until it's too late.
There is currently little risk (and therefore no need for tactics) involved in breaking down the first set of gates, when you reach the gates you are out of range of the wall-mounted ballistae, and most people on the walls can't really do anything to you. You only need to step back when the enemy puts down a few AoE's that reach through the gate (and that's when you simply switch gates while they waste their energy trying to repel nobody)

After that, it feels impossible to progress as an attacker because there is 1 inner gate and it's a huge choke point. It's particularly difficult because:

The defenders can spawn flank you from behind/left/right/at the gate
Second set of wall mounted ballistae bombarding people and it's harder to hug the walls
There is no other way in except through this choke point, so you HAVE to eat AoE's to get through.
And then you have to do it again to get into the throne room

As a defender it feels impossible to defend the first 3 gates and isn't much of a challenge for attackers (trebuchets are currently not worth the effort), but as an attacker it feels impossible to get through the inner gates.

HOWEVER

When I was in siege testing, there are channeling points that are supposed to let you respawn closer to the action if your team can claim them - they weren't working and this has a pretty big impact on how the siege plays out.

So what does this mean for choke points?

The gates in sieges feel very one-dimensional at the moment.
Being able to widen the outer gates honestly won't make a difference to anyone, but could have more meaning for the inner gates, however, this still won't have much of an impact on how the siege plays out.
Also remember, we have yet to consider that wall-climbing/gate repairs/other mechanics are yet to be added to sieges and these alternatives will alleviate the need for attackers to bash their heads against the gates all day.

Another thing to consider is that the meta around the 3 dragons is yet to be established and all these plans combined seem to be weighing heavily in favour of attackers.

tautau

Another option that could be considered is to allow healers to heal the walls/gates/choke points if we want to advantage the defenders to offset the attacker advantages that the OP suggested.

Dygz

Crafting and repairs are not online yet. True.

Azherae

After participating in another two sieges, I think I can finally articulate what is 'wrong' with Siege as it is now, but I don't know what they'll do about it because it would be a pretty big departure from what we've already got.

The 'problem' with Siege as it stands is either that it has too many defined paths once you get close to castle, making it more MOBA, or that it doesn't have enough prep and tactics required on either side, which means it isn't MOBA enough.

If we wanted it to be more MOBA, three things would need to be different:
1. The Dragons or any other similar boss type triad, should be 'in the way' more than they are now, and therefore 'define the lanes' unless you choose to fight through them, and they should probably attack trebuchets and other siege engines, while also being more likely to drift toward the castle over time.
2. The Ballistae need to be destructible.
3. The respawn time needs to be tied to your distance from your base camp, increasing (but not too much) when you die closer to home base, to encourage 'use of the Control points', as mentioned (Attackers might need to spawn on an unreachable ridge that they can jump down from)

If we wanted it to be less MOBA, three other things would need to be different:
1. Instead of the gates being destructible easily by players, the entire top of the outer wall including the Ballistae should be destructible and able to collapse down to about half their height or lower, and in return the gates would be harder to destroy.
2. A siege engine that would allow people to be protected while climbing over those destroyed sections should exist (think a big box that you climb up the inside of), and so should ladders (much more open and easily countered)
3. Mages should be able to destroy the walls as well, but retain their current 'reduced' effectiveness once inside the courtyard (so it's good to bring mages for the walls, but then you get stopped inside if you bring too many, if you're concerned that this will make mages too good, there's no real reason why they aren't 'too good' right now)

It might be my group being nitpicky, but the novelty of the current implementation has waned already, and I don't think it is because of the lack of classes available or the TTK shift.

Of course, this is just from Siege testing and none of this might be relevant, but we were already discussing 'the current implementation', so here it is.

Dygz

Ballistae are already destructible.

Sathrago

Hey guys I really appreciate all the feedback. Like I said, sudden thought hit me and thought id throw it out to stir up a discussion. Now, for what seems to be the case with the current siege design the outer walls are too easy and the inner gate is too difficult. So let me try and think of a few things real quick.

For the outer wall defense I like the idea of adding in ladders, scalable debris created through partial destruction to create more "entrances" and all that. The issue with this is how to increase the defensive effectiveness of a group of players manning this scalable wall throughout its wide range. There need to be tools to interact with that help defend the wall or maybe even magical nodes that enhance a ranged character on them, allowing the player to extend their attack range and aoe capabilities. Kind of like a living ballistae as one example. The goal with these tower defense tools would be to have staying on your wall to defend it be the standard. If players want to get fancy and send out war parties to hunt down backline supports then that is fine. However it shouldn't be considered as part of the walls actual defense otherwise the wall will always be in a weak position.

As for the inner gate, with its singular choke point, I honestly can only think of one thing that could help balance it out. Allowing the attacking group to create new entry points via digging, explosives, or some sort of earth magic related tunneling. An example of this I could use for simplicity would be the destroyable barracades/rocks in Starcraft 2. You can destroy them to open up a path, or break down a nearby terrain piece and have it block the path. Same concept but on an attacker/defender template where Attackers are constantly fighting to blow multiple holes through to the inner sanctum and the Defense are using outside attacks, defensive destruction of walls to cause cave ins, and all sorts of fun stuff like that.

So that's the basic concept, how do you guys feel this would help with the sieges?

Dygz

I think we need to leave room for Crafters - like building and setting traps.
We also might expect that of Rogues.
Right now, we've got 1/4 of the Primary Archetypes in and none of the Crafters, so it's difficult to meaningfully discuss balance. Same with the Dragons, really.

I will add - kind of non-sequitter - I was trying to click on or tab on @mcstackerson while he and his Turtle were hovering around the Throne and nothing seemed to work. Switching between AC and TTC didn't seem to be reliable either.
(Targeting people in my group was noticeably better than trying to target people solo.)

mcstackerson

Dygz wrote: »

I will add - kind of non-sequitter - I was trying to click on or tab on @mcstackerson while he and his Turtle were hovering around the Throne and nothing seemed to work. Switching between AC and TTC didn't seem to be reliable either.
(Targeting people in my group was noticeably better than trying to target people solo.)

Yea, i was bugged and couldn't get off my mount. The targeting issue was probably linked to that.

Dygz

Haha. I wonder if you were swimming!!

Azherae

Sathrago wrote: »

Hey guys I really appreciate all the feedback. Like I said, sudden thought hit me and thought id throw it out to stir up a discussion. Now, for what seems to be the case with the current siege design the outer walls are too easy and the inner gate is too difficult. So let me try and think of a few things real quick.

For the outer wall defense I like the idea of adding in ladders, scalable debris created through partial destruction to create more "entrances" and all that. The issue with this is how to increase the defensive effectiveness of a group of players manning this scalable wall throughout its wide range. There need to be tools to interact with that help defend the wall or maybe even magical nodes that enhance a ranged character on them, allowing the player to extend their attack range and aoe capabilities. Kind of like a living ballistae as one example. The goal with these tower defense tools would be to have staying on your wall to defend it be the standard. If players want to get fancy and send out war parties to hunt down backline supports then that is fine. However it shouldn't be considered as part of the walls actual defense otherwise the wall will always be in a weak position.

As for the inner gate, with its singular choke point, I honestly can only think of one thing that could help balance it out. Allowing the attacking group to create new entry points via digging, explosives, or some sort of earth magic related tunneling. An example of this I could use for simplicity would be the destroyable barracades/rocks in Starcraft 2. You can destroy them to open up a path, or break down a nearby terrain piece and have it block the path. Same concept but on an attacker/defender template where Attackers are constantly fighting to blow multiple holes through to the inner sanctum and the Defense are using outside attacks, defensive destruction of walls to cause cave ins, and all sorts of fun stuff like that.

So that's the basic concept, how do you guys feel this would help with the sieges?

To start from my own side, a correction. I've been told by my team member that the Ballistae are destructible, or at least definitely were in the first sieges and there's no reason to assume that's changed. But she also said she 'had to wait a few minutes for them to respawn', whereas I was talking about 'that whole section of the wall collapses'.

Whether they 'respawn' or not, patching or rebuilding the wall is good, though I'd leave the holes broken if the attackers managed to make a proper one.

The inner walls, I feel could get a similar treatment, even if you limited it to only the Ballista mounts there. Wreck it so you can climb up. I can't say fully though because there is a way currently for Attackers to bypass... the entire thing. They can get to the Throne Room gate via specific pathing right now (can't say if that's intended, though the terrain implies it) without dealing with any walls. It's just easy-ish to defend and inaccessible from any courtyard control points.

Technically the only reason that isn't the First Order strategy now, is that it takes long and is very defensible so it's a worse chokepoint than the inner gate itself, but you can definitely use it as an alternate once you've got enough done, to make the opponents not defend it.

I assumed that the wall being 'a defense that is intended to eventually fall' was part of the design, since it would feel unrewarding to the attacker side, otherwise. If you aren't 'guaranteed' to be able to eventually break down a meaningful part of the wall, it would be similar to if it was easy to repair the gates. Battles would almost always just stall at the wall because the defense would have stronger ability to attack from the wall or behind the gate, down at the attackers, than the reverse. I would worry that it would become a numbers tweaking game from the Devs side instead of tactics, and they'd probably still have to tweak it so that the gates would 'eventually always fall', which has some... issues, if you crunch the numbers.

RocketFarmer

Where castle sieges do not align with reality.

The timer. It’s a game, so there’s a desire to conduct the siege over a much shorter time. Talking around 1-2 hours.

The entire castle siege would have been a campaign over many days and weeks. Part of it involved the strategy of winning via attrition. Forcing the resources to run out, which in turn forces the defenders to abandon their position of strength. 250 vs 250 for a castle siege is generally a no win situation for an attacker for a direct assault. This is why the Trojan horse story is so significant. Or perhaps the battle of Alesia, which was a battle of attrition by an attacker out numbered significantly.

A good bit of time involved sapping the fortifications in order to make breeches more achievable. That also led to the cat and mouse games of trying to figure out where the sappers were targeting.

Now perhaps they could create a mechanism for the leadership of the attackers to target locations along the walls where the sapping/breeches could occur. Perhaps this mechanic could be more or less successful by the number of attackers dedicated to this effort, as well as the number of defenders. Perhaps a subterranean system of tunnels and caves. A battle below the battle. Perhaps monsters could also spawn down there to make it even more interesting and allow for boosts, much like the dragons above.

BTW, while the dragons are an interesting twist for a battleground, it may be too much for a castle siege. If these were relatively rare and random, that might be interesting in that it shows the corruption isn’t passive in this world. Has anyone considered the possibility of a dragon winning the castle? So maybe these sieges could sometimes be PVP vs PVP vs PVE. Each with their own victory conditions.

Another point is that the attacking camp wasn’t just out in the open and unfortified. Alesia is a good example of the use of fortifications by an attacking army. Also, traps of various types are utilized by both sides to defend their lines.

So there are features that could be added to suit players of the roguish types and crafters.

Azherae

Yes, it's entirely because this is a 'numbers game intended to simulate a siege' that it needs to have a lot of design 'conversions'.

The idea is that the defending force can't hold out forever and 'has to send out forces to push the attackers back' eventually or they lose, so I'd assume that this is represented by 'unless you're quite powerful, the wall will fall eventually'.

The dragons, or whatever other large bosses, I saw as a reactive force meant to accelerate everything and add interest, so I figured they should 'move toward massive concentrations of battle, death, use of weapons, or magic', while still just 'attacking anything that passed their way'. Like, conceptually 'the reason the dragons are there' is because they are intelligent and 'know a siege is coming' and are there to get easy pickings.

This is also the reason (other than development strain) why tunnels and caves weren't a thing I figured they would go into, because the effect of having the tunnels is equivalent to having the Control points. An accelerated way past a defensive line, which the defenders would then need to deal with.

A lot of the times, game design ends up working like this. You can't make an engaging version of the real-life form of something, so you look at 'what effect it has' and do the equivalent of that. Changing the Control Points to 'Tunnel Exits' might work, but I worry that it might be confusing.

maouw

Something to note about the ballistae at the moment:
As soon as the first gate is breached, all frontline ballistae become tactically irrelevant.

you become a sitting duck if you remain strapped into a ballistae - completely unaware that the enemy has flooded in behind you, until you realize you are being slashed from behind.
there is nothing to shoot outside the walls because the enemy is inside
Since defenders abandon the outer ballistae when this happens, ballistae get ignored by attackers too.

This means the only situation when attackers would destroy ballistae is before the outer walls are breached.
Which means you need to give attackers a reason to prioritize getting on top of the wall before they break in.
i.e. what advantage does my team get from scaling the wall, fighting my way along the wall, just to destroy ballistae? What can the rest of my team do now?

At the moment, attackers on mounts are too fast for ballistae - you only have time to shoot twice before mounted attackers have crossed the field and reached the wall. Anyone who tries to walk/run to the wall is easy pickings though.

Potential solution - some sort of net/trap on the battlefield that defenders can use to trip up mounted attackers, leaving them vulnerable to ballista targetting. This would also provide incentive to destroy ballistae instead of the current tactic of zooming straight through ballista firing range to the walls/gates.

Other siege thoughts:

Having the same 3 dragons every siege seems excessive? (But totally necessary for testing)
Would be cool if:

less dragons per siege
randomize the type of dragon(s) that spawn

That should help with replayability and hopefully is enough to shuffle the type of tactics to consider during the siege.

Azherae

I don't think the balance of the Ballistae specifically is currently part of the main test, in terms of closing space. This is because the regeneration rate when your weapon is sheathed is so high that you can just walk casually through Ballista fire. It's not nothing, but it's definitely 'Cleric ignorable', and I say this because I ignore it for up to 30 seconds at a time.

I'm not claiming this is a good idea, but rather that Ballistae are probably meant to help in battles or hold off some siege engine we haven't seen yet.

It might be cool if they had a DoT though.

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