Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
- Most Annoying thing is to lose a Control point while spawning and having to wait the timer only to be kicked back to pick another spawn and having to sit through the timer again.
- Mira SW gate needs something done with respawn control points 3 & 4 are too close to each other in regards to the gate.
- Final Objective Location -
- I think the market is a good spot maybe place the siege where the auctioneer typically is? it seems really close to the gates on one side compared to the others.
-Gate Destruction Time-To-Kill & Chokepoints-
- Gate TTK I think would be perfect if it didn't receive any debuffs and was 5 Million HP it felt perfect Defending Winstead on Lyneth the first Dev Test.
- Bridges on Mira are a deathtrap there's no point in attacking the gates on a chokepoint just to fight through another chokepoint.
- Impact of Archetypes -
- Rangers are king at iniating in team fights because of root
- Tanks are pretty useless on Offense EXCEPT for channeling the Godspike. They need more AoE Initiating or Crowd controls.
- Fighters Get melted with the current TTK when trying to go into melee in any team fight.
- Mages using abilities through walls is lame.
- Clerics & Bards you have lots of these you win.
- Rogues mainly used to capture outside objectives because stealth is really buggy atm
Having respawns waved based is great, 30 seconds feels good. It gives both teams a chance to get the upper hand in the fight.
Final Objective Location:
Multiple capture points are needed for the final objective. Attacking and defending teams should be rewarded based upon how many points they are able to take and hold inside the city.
For example, each final control point inside the gates could represent a different service of the city, that could be looted or saved. For example, wining the market control point could mean the attackers can take a percent of the defending node's treasury. For example, wining the Caravansary could allow the attackers to loot stored caravans and commodities. Capturing the townhall control point could open a node to vassalship for the attackers. Complete Node destruction should be very hard to do, and should require all points to be captured at the same time by attackers.
You can make the defender's respawn closer to the more serious capture points, like the vassalship control point.
Gate Destruction Time-To-Kill (TTK):
It is hard to tell before siege weapons are in the game. Ideally, the gates should only be able to be damaged by siege vehicles and siege mounts. Without these, it seems like 5 million health on the gates would be a good placeholder.
Impact of Archetypes:
TTK needs to be high for AOE abilities, this helps prevent and counter zergs. But the TTK needs to be lower for single target abilities, because it requires teams to focus fire single targets to kill them quickly. It gives 1v1 fights more time for skill expression.
I took at single hit of about 5,500 during the 4/2/25 Vyra node siege from a ranger. That should not happen since I only have about 4,600 health at level 25.
Other Feedback:
Only citizens should be able participate in their city's node wars. There should be a long node war participation cooldown for new citizens, this would prevent non-citizen guilds from stacking the sides.
We do not need the top 2 guilds controlling every node war outcome, for every node war on the server. Let the top guilds express their achievements and dominance in castle sieges and guild wars. Leave the node wars for the citizens!
Ignoring the very obvious poor performance, i.e., too short character render distance, unresponsive health and stamina bars on targets and self (including the gate's health bar), and known issues like the very low TTK.
Same feelings I explained in my post on the first siege ( https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/500855/#Comment_500855 ), except:
Gate Destruction Time-To-Kill (TTK)
Gate Destruction TTK felt much better in the second siege than in the first, after gates were buffed. Still, if no secondary objectives are added, gates should be much stronger; if secondary objectives are added, then gates are fine as they are (until people are geared with level 30+ items).
Win Conditions
Attackers need only do one thing once to win -fail once, try again, indefinitely- while defenders have to prevent the one thing from happening over and over -fail once, you lose-. Sixty minutes is a very long time for a game mode with a single objective and a single win condition. As I suggested in my previous post, secondary objectives should be added, as well as different layers of defenses that the attackers should get through.
I don't think defenders should be given a win condition other than to hold off the attackers for the duration of the siege. I do think, however, that they should be allowed to actively work towards getting closer to their win condition, meaning to reduce the time the attackers have to meet their own win condition (60 minutes by default), otherwise it gets tedious. For example:
- Build devices during the siege preparation phase to reduce the time attackers have to win. Countered by attackers building their own devices during the prep phase that increase their time to win.
- Completing secondary objectives, such as destroying the devices explained above, other devices present by default and owned by attackers, or casting some channelled ability outside city walls - this could be repeated after a CD to further reduce the time remaining for attackers.
- Forcing attackers to consume a resource on respawn per individual or per wave, either tickets as explained in my previous post or seconds off the remaining time - consuming X amount of time/tickets per wave instead of per individual would make attackers strategize better and think twice before pressing the respawn button, as they should coordinate to respawn at the same time, spending the least amount of resources per individual respawning.
Thanks again!
i joined as a defender at level 17, at that point we were under the 100 so i figured it was better than being short and i waited for the start. it would appear at the very last second i was swapped out for a level 25, which is completely understandable. i had a count down of like 100 but it didn't matter, i was immediately killed. i then spawned at the everspring and had a 30 sec timer, ran for the outside of the circle and was killed again, with 23 seconds remaining. spawned and tried again, same result. i also believe the area that the circle covers is bigger than it needs to be, if everything happens inside or close to the node itself, i don't think it is necessary to have it cover such a large area. it went well past the bridge and there were people out at the edge of the ring just picking off those of us trying to get to safety.
While in a world of fantasy, Why would you ever want to just be normal?
1) was a ton of fun even though it was chaos. Didnt think we were even going to get any godspike channel and we did. The whole thing was fun and again so much potential.
2) TTK was overridingly too short. Its tough to give solid overall feedback because it was so short. Killed people quickly, even though my MagPower is under 300. Felt like I died pretty much instantaneously if someone got me targeted. who was hitting for 2000-3000 per ? smoked me.
3) Clerics need some kind of group res to help resist pushes. Single reses in a situation like that seem like drops in the bucket.
4) Respawn time felt right. It seemed like the intent was for respawn was to happen in waves. I liked that, though some people were always getting max timer... which seemed like a bug.
5) My view on city design REALLY changed after that. Kudos to the city design team. Choke points, weak points, multiple gates to defend... it was great. Made the over all battle feel really dynamic.
6) I thought overall battle time was about right. I liked the overtime as well.... though the recap went way to fast imo. Should be the same rate to cap as to recap.
Here is my feedback without offering clear solutions as requested by the Devs:
Feedback:
Poison- Rogues poisons being a 10s prep is tedious (understandably the power is stronger than Ranger ammos) and may require reapplying rather than the Rangers standard set it and forget it but Its not a fun mechanic to constantly 10s reapply poison.
Death mark- The range requirement of the ability feels odd/ not intuitive of the gameplay loop of the class. Pro the use of chill into frozen is a nice synergy.
Stealth Soothing Shadows augment- easily abuseable and can create issues for other classes for balance- Id like to see some tuning of this ability with it not being spamming to get health back.
The Padded toolbelt- low skill cap and highly cheese to use throw with poison and not break stealth allowing for low skill ceiling gameplay to be abused, Removing throw and caltrops from toolbelt would be ideal to fix this issue. I Think any dmg ability should remove you from stealth to create a healthy gameplay and counterplay while increasing skill floor
Weapon Combo/Daggers- Currently aren't viable as GS is meta. Weapon combos on Dagger being 6 to become a finisher makes it less desirable compared to Great sword 3 swing combo, being relatively same speed to achieve. (Sub set problem is the stats attributed to Daggers vs greatsword of phys power and Str vs dex currently outweighs the value daggers with dex and attk speed. Which I believe needs a second look Daggers should be a viable option for Rogue but other classes as well.
It feels as if the defenders had way more respawn time then the attacker which made it hard to regroup and rush in. Also did the respawning give a bug where you respawned on the location where you died and then you died again which caused another respawn timer.
Final objective location:
It made no sense for me to have the market location as final point. IMO it would be more logical to take townshall and if you take it you win it. The market has no real value where in a siege you want to overthrow the town hall minister.
Gate destruction TTK.
I think the gate had too much HP. Yes we got it down very quickly but thats because everybody is overpowered with enchanted gear which wont always be the case. When people are less geared having such a high wall will take like 50% of the timer.
Impact of archetypes.
Alot of players were jumping over the inner walls just to get in front etc. I mean why have walls if people can jump over? To mitigate this issue i would like to see inner walls become destructive. This way your battlefield grows and changes as it goes + will never be the same battlefield twice. This means you need a strategic play rather then “run to market play”
General feedback:
There are alot of chokepoints for the defenders which puts attackers in a disadvantage.
TTK needs to be adressed. If you get a stun or silence put upon you and there are no allies to help at that specific or they stunned or silenced too, its basically game over.
Enchanting:
Some people were so over enchanted they just 1 shotted the lower geared people (non enchanted people) this inbalance makes it rlly unfair for those with low lvl enchants. It isnt a matter of skill at this point but rather a wallet vs wallet (who spent most money in enchanting)
Render distance:
I couldnt see anyone. Which was a issue because the enemy was only visible after they were on top of me
Final Objective Location - location itself was fine, i think it is too easy to get to the channeling stage and there should be more "steps" or objectives involved since currently it is very one dimensional
Gate Destruction Time-To-Kill (TTK) - extremely low ttk, my expectation would be that it takes at least 5-10min for 100 people with +6 lvl 20 heroic+ gear to take it down, but this might be connected to defensive stats being nonexistent or defensive formula being incorrect
Impact of Archetypes - bard shielding had significantly stronger impact than any other class during the channeling stage and melee classes were almost useless during the gate attack stage
I think that the whole event is too concentrated on one spot/location and this promotes zerg mentality, diminishing any advantage that well organized groups could bring to the table with multi objective approach.
I'd like to see requirement to take and hold multiple different points (camps) for channeling stage to open. I'd like to see objectives across the city and outside that would have impact on respawn rates for attackers and defenders. I'd like to see special objectives that give buffs to your side or debuffs to the opposite side if your side is holding them. Basically it would be nice to see the fight being broken down to several areas instead of 100v100 in the market.
Melee archetypes so bad in node siege (except tank)
Rogue have so low damage( his range abilities like throw or caltrops or shadow cascade )
P.s i was 23 lvl rogue with 470 ppr
And respawn bugging you spawning on place where u dead, not on camp
And of course servers too laggy, i think 100vs100 its too much for current optimisation
Feedback regarding Node Sieges:
Control Point Respawns - What did you think about the location of the control point respawns? Did you have any thoughts regarding wave respawns?
Wave respawns are good. they allow people to regroup and have actual tactical influence. The respawn timer is too quickly. If you time your death properly you almost immediately are able to respawn at a different location, this is explotable if you can swap points or makes it hard to push an enemy out of a certain location as an attacker or defended because if you kill or wipe the team you at best bought 20s or time.
Suggestion: Increase the wave-timer to 60s or maybe even 120s, and make the wave-timer be dependent on the ammount of control-points owned.
Final Objective Location - What did you think about the final cap objective locations?
This could use some work. with the current node layout(s) having a singular controlpoint is rather strange and might lead to just focus a single gate/chokepoint
similar to how attackers have multiple Control-Points outside the node, defenders should have multiple control-points within the node. here a simple CTF or Majority-Conquer could suffice but it would spread attackers over multiple locations of interest (Example: Market, Storage, Node-Production, Town Hall could all have a seperate CP that attackers need to contest)
Gate Destruction Time-To-Kill (TTK) - What did you think about the gate TTK?
In the Miraleth offence the gates where made way more tanky then the Winstead one. Personally the 10M no status-effects felt a bit of a chore to take down, and effectively meant that attackers chose to only take out a single one. It might be better to limit the get TTK and instead opt for multiple CP inside the town to make the mechanics more interesting. Also hard to provide feedback on this particular point given that we only used player-power to take down the gates at this stage, and in this fight the player-power was slightly inflated as we know the pvp-crews run highly enchanted gear outside of the expected envelop
Impact of Archetypes - Did any archetype stand out as having too much or too little impact? Why do you feel specific archetypes had more of an impact?
Rangers are super powerfull, they are the only class that excell in many-vs-many combat with their ability to distort the whole enemy fight by using a single vinefield. when combined with mage classes it effectively dominates the gameplay of PVP in general (many-vs-many) but especially node-wars
Melee classes are close to pointless, we rarely see tanks or fighters be able to close the natural gap in the many vs many to clear out the "backlines" or disrupt the fights in a meaningfull way. Tanks can pop a shield and maybe a wall but thats about all they offer, fighters are even more tricky, they juist suicide bomb essentially or play bow. could be related to the TTK issues on the server, but in general this is what any many-vs-many pvp situation ends up in.
Other Remarks
Having mounts available means that mobility is further increased for both teams and the ammount of lag mounts cause might be detrimental. in case of a siege consider to DISABLE mounts for better game performance.
Latency and game performance made even top pvp-players in regular situations crash out. it is very difficult to have reactive immersive pvp action if everyone is lagging all over and you can die before even casting a thing. or get ported back due to latency issues
First, why did I not participate? I was stuck in a queue. And I was in this queue for longer than the siege lasted. After hearing how the siege went from my guildies, I decided that joining the second siege is pointless, as I am not at 400+ power, so my impact would be nonexistent anyways.
11 minutes for a siege. I'd like to remind you that that is shorter than it took to get the first gate down during one of the PTR sieges. That is insane.
Additionally, siege leaders just randomly kicking people to invite their friends? That's fine for a regular siege, but a siege that YOU make happen should remain as first-come-first-serve instead of first-friends-then-whatever.
After seeing what rogues can do, I feel like all of the "nerf rogues before they go live" PTR feedback was simply ignored.
Frankly I am quite disappointed in what this "siege" turned into.
Control Point Respawns
The control point respawns seemed fine on the attackers side but the spawn felt pretty terrible when you as an attacker would approach a choke point that had the defenders spawn point near it and see a flood of 20+ defenders spawn at the same time right in front of you. If they were to individually spawn maybe this would be better but idk.
Attacking wise the control points seemed fine but idk how it felt like for the defenders probably not too impactful.
The location of the control points at the Miraleth Node seemed fine as we had the chance to attack from 4 different angles which gave us the variety in strategy.
Final Objective Location
I think the location that was chosen for the objective is fine there are quite a few building that allow for more vertical gameplay for rangers and rogues but unfortunately we didn't manage to break the defence too much so I didn't get to get on the spike.
Gate Destruction Time-To-Kill
The TTK of 10 Mil seemed much better than 3 Mil it took us attackers about 15 min to take down a gate with a split attack on multiple fronts. which was much better than the previous test in which the gate fell down in like 5 min but I don't know how its going to feel with the TTK changes that is ultimately going to nerf the damage we deal.
Impact of Archetype
I feel like most archetypes were pretty impactful (except for maybe the fighter with the lack of range abilities), but there is a meta that has formed to stay at range which has impacted the melee classes preventing them from jumping straight into the enemy group because they would instantly die and because of this Ranged classes feel much better in large player group combat.
Performance
Performance itself wasn't too good at least for me, but that is fine were in Alpha state and a lot is going to change regarding this so I'm not worried but it did feel like at times by abilities casts were delayed and trying to Rogue dodge would rubber band me to where I was a couple of times.
It was great to be part of this test and see this game take shape.
Thank You for hosting.
Control Point Respawns:
Control points for the Miraleth node felt fine. The wave respawn for attackers also felt good for attacks, but for defenders it felt a little strong, especially since defenders can simply jump/grapple over a single wall and rejoin the fight immediately in some cases.
Final Objective Location:
This opinion is skewed by the TTK issues ofc, but the single point of control does not feel good at all. Area control of the market does not work if the Attackers don't get a respawn in town after taking a gate, there needs to be some sort of penalty to the defender for losing a gate. Obviously the level 3 town is VERY small for 100 vs 100 but I would love to see additional objectives that the Attackers can choose once broken into the town.
Gate Destruction Time-To-Kill (TTK):
I don't mind a prolonged engagement at gates with 10mil HP, but 40 people shooting a gate with Bows just feels off. We need siege engines to do this. This would encourage the defender to mount an attack to the outside to try and destroy the engines too at risk of being wiped. These siege engines also need the ability to pressure high ground and neutralize Towers.
Impact of Archetypes:
The ranged meta needs to go. I spend 95% of my time at max Longbow range as a Fighter, not just because of the fact that melee die super quick once we run out of Overpowered dodge roll immunities, but also because my longbow shots hit for 1000+ which is way too much and does not incentivize me to need to go in.
Classes being able to do the same DPS at range as a Melee does while risking much more does NOT feel good. Especially since ranged classes can use their dodge to roll out of range completely (yes I'm saying dodge needs nerf, but also Fighter needs more stamina)
Ranger Vine field being an instant effect is much too strong and even having only a handful has an unparalleled effect on the battle field.
My main takeaway currently from sieges is that, while already fun (gj!) they still need more content and CHOICES for both sides. Be it additional strategic cap-points in town with respawns, or destruction of towers/buildings. Idk. Right now the defender can very effectively defend if all they do is stick to a massive death-ball of 80 players+. There needs to be some way that an attacker can split their army to2-3 raids and force the defender to need to do the same. I believe making walls NOT jump-able and making sure dying as a defender is impactful is a good start to this tuning.
> The weaknesses and strengths of the archetypes really showed up in mass pvp. I think anyone who goes to these events will see that there are about 10 skills that dominate the combat, the other skills are not worth much. I could be wrong, I guess you can check this in the log.
> I know it's still a basic system, but it's clear that TTK is a very negative experience for players. And even siege weapons are not included.
> Something should also be done about team marking. Many times I had no idea where the raid leader was, despite having a huge moon over his head. On the minimap, it would be cool if the raid leaders were shown, for example with a number. If there is a way to do it, then maybe the other Raids could be seen, or at least the location of their leader.
> Wouldn't be bad some sound and a sign warning you that you won, neutral or lost control point XY.
I think the Ticket system would add a lot to the experience of the sieges:
Battlefield 2's Conquest game mode has this system polished to perfection.
Tickets are a representation of troop vitality, and the goal of the game is to reduce the enemy team's tickets to zero.
Sources of ticket loss:
Deaths - When a player dies, his team loses a ticket.
Loss of Bases (Bleed System) - If a team has fewer flags than the opposing team, it will passively lose tickets over time.
Special events in some parts of the game - certain events (e.g. collapsing buildings) can also affect tickets.
Flags and the "Ticket Bleed" mechanic:
Teams capture flags (capture points) scattered across the map.
The more flags a team has in relation to the opponent, the faster the number of tickets of the opponent decreases.
In general, if a team captures all flags, the opponent loses tickets much faster (full ticket drain or domination mode).
Ticket numbers and victory conditions:
The number of tickets per match may vary from game to game
If a team's tickets reach zero, they lose immediately.
In some games, the ticket system delays defeat in close games (e.g. if someone is still alive at the last ticket, they do not lose immediately).
The points that can be booked can be set within a circle. It can also be weighted by the size of the circle. For example, in a small city, if there are only 3 reservation points and 5000 tickets per person, you can test how long the match lasts. With the number of tickets, ticket bleeding and weighted reservation points, a great siege system can be developed.
Down system:
I also think the introduction of the Down System is an idea worth considering. A PUBG down system would be plenty enough, I don't think it's necessary to pair skills to this state like in GW2. It could also work great for PvP and PvE content. It would also add a new experience for team play. Helping your fellow players, begging for help.
The empty node cork area around the nodes should be utilized for this.
With this method, there is no need to redesign the inside of stage 3 nodes to make it more "siege-compatible".
Before a siege, a (non stage 6) node should automatically place make-shift walls, trenches, etc. around its walls. Basically any form of obstacle that can slow down the attackers' advance and spread the players apart instead of just everyone being at the very middle of the node from the start.
I think at the very least 3 layers of gates should be used for the defending node, but even more for higher level ones. For a stage 3 node, 2 of these layers can be placed around the default node walls.
Here is a rough example of what I'm thinking:
Although all node stages on the picture have 3 layers, it shouldn't mean they are equally hard to conquer.
I'd expect that inside the node walls there are considerably more defensive buildings and guards than between the node walls and the outer walls. This means that the higher stage the node is (and the further the node wall is out), the harder it will be to siege.
Of course the number and position of walls can differ from my suggestion:
e.g. inside a stage 6 node there could be multiple districts, each with its own wall, and a successful siege could require taking over all of them.
I saw some players removed who would have liked to participate.
- Respawn locations for attackers was fine but for defenders was next to the market, making way too easy to back up your defenses.
Did you have any thoughts regarding wave respawns?
- Spawning as a wave is good as it makes for a more organized gameplay on respawn. However, the time for it felt very low at later stages.
Final Objective Location - What did you think about the final cap objective locations?
- The market point felt nice, very good choking point to defend but hard to capture. However, duo to the tight places, it can sometimes be hard to have a proper overview of the situation, something a more open field would be better at. Most likely a combination of the 2 would be a good combination.
Gate Destruction Time-To-Kill (TTK) - What did you think about the gate TTK?
- Even though I liked the amount of effort needed to break down the gate and the time it takes, it makes it very hard to break it later in the siege if you want to open another point of entry, making attacking very limited.
Impact of Archetypes - Did any archetype stand out as having too much or too little impact? Why do you feel specific archetypes had more of an impact?
- As a bard, it could be very hard to keep the mana up as a lot of your mana regen for yourself and teammates revolves around using Weapon finishers from Resonant Weapon as well as Auto Attacks from The Silent Pantheon (Saga). With so many AoE abilities and high range combat, you and others barely use Auto Attacks to regain that mana from those abilities.
On the flip side of that, skills like Shielding Dance and Nimble Dance never felt situational as basically every moment these skills were needed because of the massive amount of AoEs and stuns. Besides of those 2, engaging skills like Mesmerizing Dance are also very strong as the amount of players stacking makes it a very big ability. And because the respawn timers are fairly short, it actually pays of big to just go full ham and just engage with Mesmerizing Dance, following it up with something like Chilling Lament, Maddening Dance for more offense or Shielding Dance and Nimble Dance for more defensive purposes, only to die often for the cause and respawn few seconds later to do it all over.
or commision/quests to get addition seige weapons (when added) like balista/canons and what not
Commision to get packs to fortify walls/structures
A few other could be and could be based on the crafting benches the town has
- Cooking quest for food buff options (Cooking bench)
- Weapon/armor polish grants a bit of dmg or defence stats (armor/weapon smithing respectivly)
- Book of scriptors buff all stats slightly (Scribe)
- Fortify structures (Carpentry or stoneworks)
- Animal horde 1 time use by mayor that release a large amount of animals that will rush the largest group of enemies (Hunting or Animal husbandry
I noticed a channel "Siege" in the chat "dropdown", it didn't seem to be working but it would be extremely useful having it functional for future sieges, so I am hoping it is gonna be a thing.
The "final objective" position in nodes with the Miraleth layout, seem to favor defenders vastly more than attackers, as they can simply jump, no abilities needed, over the wall beside their respawn and be in range of any attackers on the flag within 10 seconds. Personally I believe moving it just on the opposite side of the "stalls", near where the current Market NPC can be found, would allow for a bit more balanced gameplay. while still minorly favoring the defensive team.
Give siege leaders, the option to block a participant from re-applying, once removed. So both having the "kick from active team and a block option. (I was not leader, so I am unaware if this is a feature already, but I just noticed a few people seemingly spam re-joining despite being kicked for extremely low level.)
Additionally make so that when players "sign-up" for the team, they apply for a "wait-list" instead, still remembering their "position" in signing up chronologically, there could also be a single "notes" field for them to write relevant information, that only the siege leader could see.
The leaders when approve the players to the active team, perhaps a few hours before the siege begins, and if the team is not full 15 minutes before the siege starts, participants from the wait list will be added based on their join time, so the team is filled up, hopefully, while allowing for some better control and planning for the siege leader.
Lastly a thought on the current way the node sieges are declared and the participants able to join. I realize the system is likely to change from the current one, but here are my thoughts on it, in the current state regardless:
The purchase/acquisition of the siege scroll itself is purely from player goods, gold and materials, where the user needs no node affiliation or mayorship to use them. There are no node resources or node exclusive material that needs to be utilized, just pure purchasing power from players.
It could create a situation where a rich player, guild or alliance simply bankrolls sieges, and just hire in the strongest group on the server to simply wipe nodes for no other reason that they can, not due to node competition or advancing other nearby nodes, but purely for the rewards given to the winning team, effectively farming them over and over again, using the rewards to fund new sieges or just to acquire "harder to get" enchanting scrolls, consumables and XP scrolls to be saved for later use.
In terms of participation I am similarly worried that the system will be abused, that node citizenship, at the moment, provides no benefit for defenders and is not required for either side.
I had hoped the node sieges would have been similar to the node wars, where it is node vs node, allowing citizens of either node to compete with each other, instead of it being an assortment of players throughout the server, both attacking and defending.
If the current system remains, it will likely be fought and defended by the same few select guilds/alliances that are "the best", whom have no relating to the nodes being defended and nothing to lose should they lose a defense. Meanwhile the actual citizens are relegated so simply sit and watch, as their node is potentially destroyed and the good and materials lost.
I was on Miraleth attack team.
Control Point Respawns -
This aspect seems to be ok. The principle of batch is nice.
Final Objective Location -
The layout of Miraleth is creating a particular situation, with the defence respawm close to the market and with a upper position (vs the attacking group).
Gate Destruction Time-To-Kill (TTK) -
Seems ok, giving the opportunity for defender to push attacker.
Impact of Archetypes -
As a tank, the fight was a nightmare (as abilities was not effectives or useless in big pushes) and global TTK remains a concern.
As an exemple, was kill by a rogue within a second with 2 hits..
What did you think about the location of the control point respawns?
~For the node sieges I have done, the spawn points feel close enough, if there are no siege weapons. This is for the attackers. It is not too far from the attackers camp to the other spawn points. If you are a defender, sometimes it feels like one point is a little too far away from where you need to be.
Did you have any thoughts regarding wave respawns?
~I like that there are time delays from respawning. There should be an ebb and flow to the battle.
Final Objective Location -
What did you think about the final cap objective locations?
~I like where it is for this layout. It has enough room to get some people on the point, but not so much room that it is an easy way to get hit/
Gate Destruction Time-To-Kill (TTK) -
What did you think about the gate TTK?
~If the time frame is about an hour, the health of the gates is ok. I would say you could adjust the TTK on the gates based on how debuffs affect the gates themselves.
Impact of Archetypes -
Did any archetype stand out as having too much or too little impact?
-Rogues, rangers, mages have a solid impact with area cc and large impact attacks. This softens up groups and allows for changes in the flow quickly.
-Tanks and fighters have little impact. The TTK favors ranged and burst attacks. At most, fighters and tanks can sit on the control point and channel. However, they do not provide a useful
Why do you feel specific archetypes had more of an impact?
~Bards and clerics have some solid group wide supports that bring utility to the battle.
~Rangers, rogues, mages have aoe CC and damage that can soften up targets.
As someone who took part in both of Lotharia's sieges and on both sides (Attacker and Defender) I shall impart my overall feedback on sieges both those of which you have highlighted and other aspects.
I like the idea of there being multiple spawn locations to give attackers more of a chance to switch attack directions or to split off into smaller groups, however I feel that for the first siege of Winstead some of the spawn locations were further away than in the Miraleth siege.
As for Wave respawning I feel like this is the standard approach as it means attackers are typically grouped together on respawn rather than trickling in to little effect and provides more time for quickly communicating a change in strategy. a good 20-30 second respawn timer for now should suffice which we already have so I currently like the setup as it is.
Honestly had no issues with it for a village node seeing as the marketplace is as close to the centre as possible whilst still having the big enough open space for a battle around the buildings.
However I hope when we see Towns and up these locations might change or better yet, me more than one for defenders to concern themselves with almost like a multi stage event of claiming one objective then the other one becomes active and capturable. I just think that as the nodes get bigger the sieges will likely need to increase in difficulty also for both sides as it can be difficult to say you won a siege holding a marketplace whilst the rest of the town/city/metropolis is still within enemy hands technically.
For this I Feel there was a regional divide. Whilst those of us on Lotharia had no issue with the gates being at 10 million HP the NA servers seemed to greatly struggle. If anything the gates being 5 million HP like at the first siege of Winstead was simply too easy to break down without any options for defenders to repair the gates and also did not give them enough time to try much in the way of counterplays/counterattacks of which we managed in the defence of Miraleth during the second siege.
I feel there is a half way point we all could accept of 7.5 million to 8 million HP for the gates which would likely be just about perfect for the village node as it stands until siege equipment gets introduced and you will likely have to revisit this topic again. Also I am thinking that large nodes will allow for bigger siege equipment to be used and thus have higher HP on the gates.
Oh boy! Where to start with that one. I have played a Ranger in both Sieges so far and have done so since p1and to me the Rangers are the king/queen makers of sieges and dare I say PvP overall so far in Alpha 2 in my opinion.
This is due to the use of Vine Field for plays to be made as well as Concentrated Scatter Shots passing through the walls to hit attackers/defenders. Vine Field alone can set enemies up on a silver plate for mages to AoE down in and out of sieges whilst also just providing a method of blocking off or holding chokepoints, when you combine this with Concentrated Scatter Shots and Lighting Reload for that third shot you can kill some players without them seeing you or being able to do anything about it besides pray a Cleric keeps them alive.
However I would not say this is too much impact, as outside of these scenarios their heavily focused single target damage is typically behind that of mages as well as now some rogues. Not to mention with the TTK being what it is, there is no need to say try to snipe a Cleric or Bard to lower the enemy healing or utility. It is simply better to reduce numbers by killing those you can.
Generally speaking Ranged have it easier than Melee, Clerics and Bards are always needed for the buffs, healing and other utility and even tanks with their Wall, Absorption Field and multiple trips as well as Rogue with Smoke bomb and trips can find themselves being useful within siege combat and having an impact.
If I had to pick one Archetype that has been struggling it has been Fighter and that is mostly down to being unable to really "pop off" with the need to build momentum and the current TTK for PvP generally, hopefully when this is fixed we will see Fighters be more useable on the battlefield as for now they simply cannot perform as well as they should/you likely designed them to be and everyone knows this and so simply CC and burst them down.
I mean even the Rogues have more sustain and built in defensives than the fighter, that is bad, albeit hilarious to me. We go so far as to use Strength based Tanks instead who live longer and able to do more in terms of disruption and still push out good damage.
A quick list now of some other parts of the siege experienced I either liked, disliked or just things to think about;
Thank you for taking the time to read all of this and keep up the good work!
Desseus
The Cartel
Spawn Timers:
i think that having wave spawns makes sense. my issue there is about the length of it. 30s is a time where a meta will form that does pushes around these timer to have a low respawn time. i would be okay with that if the timer is always visible iingame but thats probably not intended so people will use it offgame. imo the better solution would be to reduce the timer to 15s. that way the difference between using the timer for your advantage or not is marginal.
Range Meta:
Due to a few issues the game is in a range state. that is also true for siege. the upcoming ttk changes will hopefully help a little on that topic. but they are probably not enough. we have 4 range classes 2 melee and one in stealth now. on top of that range roots are the best cc in the game. imo roots should be 3s instead of 4. range classes can still do something when they are rooted while melees have only auto attacks. to further fuel that issue some range abilities like vines, scattershot, prismatic beam, ball lighting and also some melee abilities like intimidating aura go through walls. thats something that is bad for pve and pvp and should get fixed soon.
Siege participants Organization:
If the plan is to have uncapped players for node sieges everything is fine. if not i would suggest to make it that the player in lead for the organization can pick around 50% of the max participants while the rest gets randomly selected from the people that apply. we have the castle siege system planned for a perfecty planned setup and i think its important to have it in one of them for that highly organized guilds. thats why node sieges should be different. every citizen should be able to have a chance of defending their home. to ensure that it still can have competitive guilds planning it half of the roster is pick and choose. also there will be some of those players already get randomly selected that you would end up with around two thirds of planned participants that can also help the randoms to follow a mutual plan.
if we dont change it we end up with the same issue new world has with their war system, where only a few percent of the playerbase ever participated in it and im sure thats not the vision for ashes of creation.
Siege Objectives:
currently theres only the main objective on the marketplace and the mechanic is to use interact and then wait to die or win. thats not engaging gameplay. it would be nice if channelers would be thethered to the godspike with, lets say, a 10m range and still could use their abilities but with 50% less dmg while they are channeling. that would make them less effective but still be able to do something instead of just waiting.
More objectives: the siege is atm pretty zergy. more meaningful abjectives could help lessen stacking of all players in one spot. a simple change to the respawn camps outside could help to spread the players already. as example for defenders per camp in their control they get 2% base mitigation while attackers get 1% power per camp in their control.
Defenders Respawn Location:
The Node layout for Miraleth and Winstead are different. but the placement of the defenders respawn is at the same position. that leads to miraleth being way easier to defend since you just jump over one fence and you can shoot everyone that want to get to the marketplace, while in winstead theres one more road and a ledge before you can get there. thats why i would suggest to change the respawn location from miraleth to be in the upper right corner of the node layout to increase the distance they need to travel to be at the objective by a few seconds.
Overall i like the system. i am excited for the further improvements to it and how many players we can have when dynamic gridding finally gets online.
ryzen 7 3700x
4070ti super
High settings
In my view current node siege more looks like guild war with flag to cast
Mabye vehicles will change it a bit
Also maybe attackers in future will be able to capture buildings to increase flag casting speed? Would be more fun when you have such onption or at least more options to win like doing 2500 kills( to prevent strategy when defenders just non-stop diving into you from respawn)