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Siege feedback

Discussion in 'Release 37 Feedback Forum' started by ldykllr, Dec 17, 2016.

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  1. ldykllr

    ldykllr Avatar

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    Tonight we took a group into a few sieges to test them out and see what they were like. The idea is great, but there are a few issues that need to be worked out for the next iteration:

    1. Feedback on whether or not you have broken the siege. After all the catapults were destroyed we ran around and couldn't figure out if it was done or not. It would be nice if there was some sort of visual or other notification that let's players know they have broken it? Maybe there should be an objective that we would be required to capture (i.e. raise a flag) to signify that we have destroyed the catapults and killed the engineer and the siege is broken.

    2. If you don't leave the scene, mobs will continuously spawn. Or, in one case, they stopped spawning after the siege was broken (catapults done, engineer dead) and after a few of our party members left the scene (a few stayed behind) the mobs respawned again. However, outside Ardoris, it had shown that the siege had been broken.....until a little while later then the siege equipment reappeared.

    @DarkStarr @Chris and tagging @Lace because she was there :)
     
  2. ldykllr

    ldykllr Avatar

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    Also, almost forgot, targetting and combat is a bit wonky as well...had a hard time hitting things ranged and melee fighters were complaining about missing as well.
     
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  3. Lace

    Lace Avatar

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    All that Robyn says is true .. when is done done. Folks have been up in arms over xp exploits in hunting ,. well this is one, since it appears to have no shutdown that is represented to the scene or group and you could just milk it for days. If you step out on overland, you see it as done but with a grouper inside .. hit it again at least I was able to by hitting on the catapult.

    The second issue as with all MPO things in this game is no lockdown of loot or mobs etc .. it is a free for all . Maybe t hat was fun in the 80's, but should we not teach our children well and learn the benefits of cooperation and grouping in an MMO?

    I have more to say but not today
     
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  4. Lace

    Lace Avatar

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    I lied I got more to say .. I see brand new players thrust into this .. I am trying to talk to them to say join me I will help you cross but they dont' have these basic understandings before they are confronted with a siege in ardoris. Think of new players in this implementation. I know first iteration but new players should not be forced into this unless there are skull categories on sieges and a way to bypass them. Again there is no way in current implementation to support a fully MPO world so forcing newbs into this seems pointless and they should be optional as the so called random encounters which are not optional as I have pointed out before in posts.



    SAVE THE NEWBS from this current spawn fest.
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2016
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  5. Technowitch

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    The sieges are basically 5-skull encounters.

    Now imagine being a starting level player. You've done Solace Bridge and some of the Soltown quests -- a couple of which explicitly send you merrily off to Ardoris to go meet people.

    You arrive at Ardoris as an inopportune time, as it's being besieged. You think to yourself, "Oh, this is just something I'm supposed to do." Only the results are predictable. There is no way a <10 level character will survive, never mind being able to destroy those catapults. Heck, even if you happen to decide to run down that dirt path to the left, you're still likely to be killed by the Ebon Cult archers and mages. But hey, that Oracle said I should be brave and follow a Path of Courage, isn't running away from an urgent mission cowardly? But as a brand new player with almost no skills or equipment, the mission is quite impossible.

    This is not something I want any new player to have to experience. Heck, I'm adventurer level 69-ish, last I checked. Sure, I can usually deal with a few of the Ebon Cultists at a time, but in large groups when mages and archers start raining hellfire down on me? It doesn't end well. Even if one happens to destroy the catapults, the mobs never stop respawning, and one of my guildmates said they'll include liches and such. If it's soloable in any sense, I'm not seeing it -- and in that respect, I'm also not seeing the point of preventing access to NPC towns and cities when 99% of the time, we're solo and just want to get through it. In other words, it's a repetitive interruption that for the bulk of us during the majority of our playtime is both irrelevant and a pointless annoyance.

    Constructive feedback:
    - Make entering the seige entirely optional
    - Scale its difficulty to the level of the character or party entering it
    - Exempt the starter towns and cities from seiges...or else automatically exempt low-level characters from having even to deal with them
     
  6. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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    I agree with this 100% and has been an area of concern for me since implementation. I am somewhere in the 60's, level-wise, and in no way am able to solo this. I can sneak through, but last time I checked that only trapped me in Ardoris. I can't sneak back out. How in the world is a new player expected to be able to navigate this? I love the idea of sieges and don't think it should be made optional, but it should be possible to complete regardless of level. Scalability would fix this, but from a programming perspective I am unsure of how possible it would be to implement.

    The hardest part to me is the releasing of the liches once the catapults are destroyed. Granted they are just placeholders, but they make it veritably impossible to get through. If the cabalists are just as powerful this still remains a problem. It's definitely a conundrum that needs to get fixed and quickly. One such possibility would be to have an NPC at the beginning of the zone who you can pay to get through similar to at control points. You would have to lower the fee to accommodate new players, but $250-500 would work since you get that $500 from the Oracle, daily, anyway. Just a thought. :)
     
  7. Widsith [MGT]

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    Some of us went after this Friday night (pre-desync patch). In spite of positioning wackiness we stuck with it and the last wave of liches was 5 (?) and then they stopped coming. Eventually the mercs respawned but the attacking minions also stayed down.
     
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  8. Baratan

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    I'm usually solo and I'd like to see the opposite done with them.

    Make them more significant. Make them attract everyone from the surrounding region. Make them a reason for cooperation and social interaction.

    Create smoke visible from afar on the map. Have town criers shout for help at the different towns. Have the citizens shower rewards on the heroes. Make them infrequent. Put different areas of the battle with their own skull poles to direct players to where they can help.
     
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  9. Evadrepus

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    A like isn't good enough; Technowitch has great points here. Please devs, take note. The siege system is different, and you know, it's neat. But right now it's death for new people. At level 50 I got mauled last night because after you get past the chain-spawning green to me mobs, I found chain spawning yellows that come en masse. Luckily I knew from a guildmate where to go to escape but there's no way a new player would know.

    Any town on the "newbie hit list" should not have these sieges, or they should be super weak if there. You know, the bad guys sent their Z-level recruits out. Let the newbie mow them down and feel strong.
     
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  10. Quenton

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    Technowitch, agree with your whole post, except for this part:

    Running away from these sieges isn't cowardice, it's strategy.
     
  11. Quenton

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    I need to know when these sieges have been sorted out, because I can't really log back in until they are.
     
  12. Elwyn

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    The thing I noticed most was that you can't heal the mercenaries. I understand the whole "can't heal other players because you might be interfering with a PvP fight" thing, but there is no such excuse with these guys.

    Not that it would have helped much, they seem to have less HP than all but the greenest bad guys.
     
  13. Chrymylch

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    I am one of these newbies and I can sneak in to Ardoris ok but when I try and sneak out of siege I am returned to Ardoris.

    Luckily it seems if you just turn around you go to Novia not back to Ardoris and then can just run past the catapaults on the over world map
     
  14. Elwyn

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    When you come out of the city, it currently puts you at the "outside" end of the siege. I think this was a compromise to fix the problem of being unable to leave the city at all.
     
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  15. Traveller13

    Traveller13 Bug Hunter

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    I can go through the siege without coming close to any of the mobs. Of course, if Richard Garriott reads this, there will be a JIRA to "fix it". Until then, I'll show the way to anyone I come across.

    Several things I'd like to see with sieges...

    1. The town crier of a town under siege should bark the news.
    2. Place a guard at the exit gates when a town is under siege, warning of it.
    3. When a player zones into a siege from a town, it should be on the town side of the siege, not the far side. I'd like to try my hand at sneaking through the opposite way.
     
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  16. Unaccounted4

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    As a new player, I wholly subscribe to this sentiment. More than once I had to quit the game and go do something else until the siege is broken, since I can't really do much of anything else. Unless it's grinding, but if I'm forced into grinding 17hours into an online RPG, something's gone wrong...
     
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  17. Turk Key

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    Until they come up with a point to the sieges, it makes no sense to have them at all IMO. One suggestion though that might make sieges workable: Make the siege an access to a moongate. If you get through the siege a path will be opened to a moongate allowing travel to any NPC city (one way). Effectively the siege instance would be a gateway for a limited time after defeat to any place on the map. All entrances to towns then would be normal as it is now, just that there will be an alternate way to traverse the map (through the siege instance). Once defeated, perhaps the gate would remain open for 30 minutes or so before the siege resets allowing anyone who accesses the siege instance to travel wherever they want via the moongate. These siege instances could be located one in each quadrant of the map.
     
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  18. Duke Olahorand

    Duke Olahorand Localization Team

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    I just decided to lead my last account out of isle of storms after some break, since localization is still frozen and Arabella still hesitates to talk German without enforcement.
    Selected path of courage. Got killed by a gang of 4 elves in Highvale with bow and sword without any chance to loot the first one I managed to kill before or to run away. This is with leveled swords near 50 and knowing the basic mechanics!

    Went forward to Resolute. Entered Resolute and ended up on Forest Siege. Could not believe it and tried again, landed finally here.

    Really - it should not be easy to die in the first minutes of the starter quest (unless you do something crazy such as bathe in fire), even if not on the polished path, and a brand new untrained and unequipped character which had not even the chance to visit a bank should not be thrown into a Siege without choice.

    *Salute*
    Olahorand
     
  19. Weins201

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    That is exactly all they are is more encounters - the town is irrelevant.

    Sad that they implemented such a weak system when it could be so much more.

    Just another encounter, you can even figure out where they are to pick them off.

    You can even just walk thru them to avoid them like most players do with 95% of the plain encounters.
     
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  20. mass

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    Keep in mind you can always exit to menu and then 'Start on World Map' to by pass the siege. They really do need to make it more clearly marked how to by pass it for beginners.
     
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