An article has been posted on the official War site detailing what they needed to do to improve keep design. This hopefully will say goodbye to the single point of combat at the top of the ramp to the lord room. Over at thatsskarwithak they rightfully voice concerns at what this means for smaller groups of defenders but they also comment this may mean city sieges become regular events.
Hopefully this may mean the fights within keeps become more dynamic, with multiple tank walls needed. The reduction in AoE might also help to make keep combat more interesting.
But could there be more additions to keeps to make them even more interesting? I have already posted a few ideas on possible simple solutions for siege weapons. When thinking about ideas I always try to make them simple to include. Mythic probably don’t have the time to include whole new structures and mechanics not already part of the game in some capacity.
In keep combat the end is usually when the lord is killed and the almost immediate wipe of the defending side. What if this wasn’t the end, there is third floor and a lot of the keeps have outer siege pads with single bridges to them. Smaller groups could further defend these points. Taking this idea I came up with the following possible stage two keep encounters:
Keep Cleansing Stage
This is the simplest idea, once the lord is down and the doors respawn. The lord and champions don’t immediately respawn. Instead the opposing side have given amount of time to completely wipe out the defenders to eradicate their taint within the keep walls. Who ever wins within this time frame, would get further tokens or renown tick.
Supply Line Sabotage Stage
Again once the keep lord is dead, small barrels/containers spawn around the keep, at the top or along the keep walls. If any defenders still live they have the chance to taint the supply barrels to the keep reducing the hit points of the new NPC’s giving them a slight advantage when they decide to try and take the keep back.
Defence Sabotage Stage
As before once the keep lord is dead, explosive crates spawn at each of the walls above the inner and outer doors. If the defeated defenders can protect this spawns for a limited time they explode and reduce the hit points of the keep doors, again giving the loosing side an advantage when trying to take the keep back.
I am not suggesting all keeps would have all three mechanics; maybe they are spread out making each keep attack unique within the zone. It also might provide smaller groups an extra incentive to hide around the keep defending parts and bring even more dynamic combat to keeps.
Maybe you need to just step away from the game a while.
ReplyDeleteI remember at launch a lot of people rolled Destruction, but because it became imbalance due to numbers a lot of the more organized guilds re-rolled Order for the challenge. I can only write from a point of view. Karak-Azgal has large numbers on both sides, and even when we are out numbered we find ways around the zerg.
On the point of this game is dying, don't forget morg players are fickle and drawn to shiny new toys. There are at least 3 triple ‘A’ titles in late beta and it’s the summer. Also don't forget most morgs loose numbers after launch. I have friend who plays WoW and they have trouble filling places in there regular raid nights, where once they had a queue of guild members wanting to fill places…probably due to the same issues.