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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
No rez-at-shrine for guild/node sieges?
Spif
Member, Alpha Two
While I am not a hardcore player, there is something to be said for having death being permanent. Node wars and guild keep sieges are instanced and time-limited. To me this sounds like a great place to have harder limits on rezzing.
The idea is that if you die in a siege, you can't just rez back at camp. You need to be rezzed by an ally before some specific timer ends. IE, get rezzed within a few minutes of death or you're out of the siege for good. So if your group goes to cap/destroy some objective and gets wiped, you might be out of the siege for good. Or, you call for backup and win then get rezzed.
Other options:
1) Death counter/limits would be another way to implement this, but then you get weaker players deathrushing and using up your allowed rezzes. So I don't like this idea, especially if anyone can sign up.
2) A personal rez-at-camp limit, which would not tick if you were rezzed by an ally. Maybe combined with a progressive rez timer could also work. IE: wait 1 minute to rez after you die/release the first time, wait 3 minutes after you die/release the second time, and after the third death without a player rez you are out.
The idea is that if you die in a siege, you can't just rez back at camp. You need to be rezzed by an ally before some specific timer ends. IE, get rezzed within a few minutes of death or you're out of the siege for good. So if your group goes to cap/destroy some objective and gets wiped, you might be out of the siege for good. Or, you call for backup and win then get rezzed.
Other options:
1) Death counter/limits would be another way to implement this, but then you get weaker players deathrushing and using up your allowed rezzes. So I don't like this idea, especially if anyone can sign up.
2) A personal rez-at-camp limit, which would not tick if you were rezzed by an ally. Maybe combined with a progressive rez timer could also work. IE: wait 1 minute to rez after you die/release the first time, wait 3 minutes after you die/release the second time, and after the third death without a player rez you are out.
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Comments
The devs said that sieges wont have death penalties. They want people to participate without fearing that they will accumulate massive xp debt due to repetitive deaths.
Your idea pretty much says "you got one chance and you are out".
Rezzing at sieges is best done at the camp to rebuff, regroup and try again. People dont stop to rez one person. It's not eso cyrodiil.
If you don't think that rezzing in PvP events isn't going to be worthwhile, then I don't know what to say. You're going to run past a dead ally and force them to spawn back at camp? If they wanted to rez at camp they would release. I hope you're on the other side.
I'd like to see some tactical gameplay rather than people deathrushing at objectives over and over again.
beating the enemy is important. if they keep ressing you cant. what are you going to do when you are trying to cast to capture the castle and the enemies keep ressing and interrupting you?
And giving defenders an even bigger advantage than they already always have will just lead to unwinnable sieges. The whole point of defending a location is that you have an advantage and your enemies will be killing themselves against your defenses over and over again. Putting a limit on the amount of those deaths is just unfun design.
If you are defending your node against an underwhelming attacking force, having an early win condition of disabling their ability to respawn and then killing everyone seems to me to be a good idea - better than just destroying some McGuffin and that just ending things.
The castle/node will have walls and other defenses, so whichever mechanic would exist for stopping attackers' respawn would most likely be way more exposed and they'd be way more vulnerable. Defenders could just rush that point in the very first minute of the siege and even if they don't get the full respawn removal they'd at least get delays on it. At which point defenders can just sit in the castle/node and shoot as many attackers as they can, because they know that they'd always have time to defend.
In other words, defenders already have huge advantages, so why give them even more. Oh, and creating some form of attacker fort to make their respawn location more protected would just bring us back to the current design. Defenders would most likely not risk leaving their positions, so attackers would have constant respawns.
I feel like siege simplicity is key to its fun. Intrepid already plan to add some small instanced parts for small groups and shit like that, so sieges might be more complex than "just hit wall until the castle falls". Adding even more complexity to it feels like overkill to me.
It's not a limit on deaths, but a limit on how many times you can rez at camp/town/shrine. That's why a player rezzing you doesn't impact that limit.
Defender/attacker balance can be changed by many different things (more paths to objectives makes defense harder for example). The defenders would not have unlimited lives while the attackers have limits. One thing that I really don't want to see is a side-based death counter that runs down. That lets the worst of your side drag you down and promotes bad behavior.
We have some hints from IS that node siege will have several (many?) objectives, and fulfilling enough/all of them will result in a win. Destroying select areas but not getting enough will still result in disabling those node/city functions until they are fixed.
We can take some lessons from NW's node battles, even though they are just 50v50 and the maps sucked.
Although I do wonder at how large the node siege map will be. WoW's AV (if it didn't have that final choke point) may be closer to what they are thinking of, with multiple objectives that need to be held for minutes before they are actually destroyed and cannot be taken back.
Defender's win is to survive and attackers' win is to cast a several-minute-long ability deep within the castle/node. Don't think there's been any changes to this (and this was L2's mechanic as well).
I don't know how often people play in groups in NW, but organizing a big group of people isn't that hard, as long as each party within your guild has played together for longer than a few days. I've done this with a huge guild of absolutely casual players who barely even played together. Literally any slightly more coordinated guild would easily do this. I feel like NW's soloness just ruins this.
Death rushing only exist when you're in a small space and can reach your goal within a short time. And also when there's no coordination in your guild (comes back to my previous point). L2's sieges had bigger spaces that took way longer to regroup at the same location and also had more coordination, because groups worked together instead of just being a collection of solo players.
It's the attacker's job to come up with a way to outsmart the defenders. I've seen sieges where smaller forces managed to win against much bigger groups simply because they used their resources and timings in better ways.
Ending the siege early should just require all of the attackers leaving the siege's instance. But as long as they're fighting - there should be no "end quickly" mechanic imo.
And these timers will depend on how much the node defense was upgraded?
it is a limit. lets say you can only res one time at a shrine. what happens if everybody gets wiped for a second and there isnt anybody alive who can res you? now cant res anymore and you are out of the siege? o-o
Spoken like a true person with pvp siege experience. People trying to advocate against respawns have not done a siege clearly lol.
That is exactly it. Real personal consequences for being outplayed by the other side multiple times. Rather than losing inventory items/durability, you lose out on the remaining "fun siege time".
There could be strategy to this. With several rezzes left you can afford to try to accomplish more risky things. When on your last life, you may have to play it safer.
player elimination is rarely a good thing...
NW definitely has solo-ability. But on the other side, a person could "respec" from solo damage dealer to raid healer with just a gear swap. In a game like AoC, the number of optimal-setup groups are going to be limited by available key classes
There are big differences between set weekly raids within a guild, and random-day battles (the time may be pre-set, but the day of week probably will not be) with an unknown roster. Yes, a node defenders will likely have core groups. And the person declaring war will have their core too.
And then there will be the many other groups, partial groups and soloists that will sign up. Most of them will show up. Some may not. And here's where the headaches come. Because if you don't force organization on the "randoms", they will be mostly useless. They can't be allowed to organize themselves, because that's a clusterf all by itself.
If IS splits the difference and allows 160v160, that's 20 set groups per side. "Slightly more coordinated groups would easily do this"...I really don't think that's the case.
We're getting a little away from the original topic of players having limited rezzes. Doesn't seem to be a popular idea though. No big deal.
Costing the enemy a resource (players), is a reason to do strategically interesting things like set traps so you can get a wipe, or hold a reserve to support an overwhelmed group and get them rezzed. IMO this would elevate gameplay. Also you would have a chance to wipe out an opposing force, more like an actual siege.
Castle sieges will be about guilds. Most likely about best guilds on the server. There won't be any dicking around in castle sieges, so there's already no point in limiting rezzes there.
Node sieges will be for anyone who wants to join on the fun. Yes, there's obviously huge repercussions for dumb actions, but that's just part of the process. If a player decides to do smth dumb and then his node falls - he'd probably not do that dumb thing again (well, that is if he doesn't just leave the game lol).
But if that player does smth dumb within the first minute of the siege and then he is pretty much out of the siege forever (his own defense btw, with his stuff on the line) - he'll just go complain about it on the forums and will start crying how the game is shit because "everyone else lost the siege for him". And I agree with you that this player would be dumb for saying this, but that's just how quite a lot of people operate. Limiting their actions to the extent you want would just lead to them being upset at the game, rather than reflecting on their actions.
Attackers would have to strategically choose where to place their rez area, and have people coordinated to ensure that they are keeping them up.
This would give defenders incentive to not just turtle forcing them to need to eliminate clerics to stop the rezzes and requires them to keep pressure on at the frontline forcing more healers to stay in the frontline area healing rather than setting up rez areas in safe locations.
As a bonus this helps to reduce spawn camping since spawns won’t be at predictable locations.
Maybe item-based respawner is a personal spot with a single use, skill-based is for your party and group-based is for the entire guild. These would introduce a ton of sneaky strats to the process.
Item is the only one I really don’t want to see. Well idc actually but Steven said we won’t have these kind of things, so because of that I don’t want to see them in sieges.
Mah immersion getting all broken when some how we can make personal respawners for sieges but no where else.
I think it’s reasonable to expect clerics to battlefield rez important allies and also manage other respawn locations.
If 5 clerics is too restrictive it could work like summoners where they don’t all need to be summoners.
In both cases I would like to see it cause a toll on the groups. Maybe the cleric siege ability takes a percentage of the groups health forcing them to rest before joining the battle.
Maybe to expand on that the length of the rez location is based on the health channeled into it and works like a held ability where you can channel quick for a strategic temporary respawn location or drain everyone to 1 Hp for a long uptime and longer time to heal up.