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Siege feedback

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

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  1. Black Tortoise

    Black Tortoise Avatar

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    I think Port is trying to solve some bigger, more ideological problems in the game market of the last decade with a project like SOTA. I think the last 10-15 years of MMOs produces this kind of thinking, that new player experiences are supposed to be guided along in such a way that you have to really not be paying attention to encounter any real considerable consequence. Plenty of games hold the players hand in this way all the way to "endgame," which further entrenches this thinking. I think this project (SOTA) gives us the freedom to break away from the same patterns most mmos follow and create a much more engaging experience.

    While new players need some guidance, the game system itself doesnt need to hold their hand. Afterall, its not tremendously consequential for a new player to die.

    I think players should be forced to respect the game world and its systems. If you play on rocks with no safe fall ability, you die. If you walk through a graveyard and are new to "garriot games," you die. If you try and swim across a continent (hypothetically...), you die. If you charge into a siege at adv level 5, you die. You learn that there are alternate routes, how to predict the environment will react, what equipment mitigates certain problems, and what skills help you navigate the world better. If you dont, you just die, then you respawn, and you retry or think of a new approach. The game world should be highly navigable with this process, and players remain engaged and always learning and exploring the nuances of their environments (again, hypothetically... use your imagination and think of a finished game in the future).

    My experience in MMOs shows me that hand-holding results in disengagement, lack of exploration and innovation on behalf of the player, and eventually, a boring game.

    I even want them to ditch the predictability of adv level in zones. The 1-5 skull concept can remain, but scenes should have a variety of different "levels" of creatures. A 1-skull zone could have a 2-3 skull bear stalking around in it. And yeah, its going to kill some new players. Theyll learn to avoid it, or team up with friends on it. Theyll learn the game world is dynamic, and a player needs to remain vigilant and aware of whats around them - things arent so predictable all of the time. I loved the idea from Everquest where a relatively low level zone, by day, would all of the sudden start spawning level 30-45 undead by night (in certain key areas of the scene, like the forested area of a road). Players could choose to drink in the tavern until daylight, scout out a safe way through the (massive) zone that doesnt go near an undead spawn, or hire an experienced paladin friend to guide you through. Much like SOTA, you could get a level 30 quest at level 3 and not realize it it until you try and go to that zone and die. The troll at the Hilt is a good start - 3 skull scene with a "6 skull mob" in it. I think there should be similar challenges lurking in all scenes, esp low level. The game environment and its creatures should make it a big challenge to find a place to AFK ;) .

    Remember your first UO character? If you walked out of Britain, youd almost surely die. Someone needed to show you where the sewers were, so you could fight little lowbie rats for a while. You probably died a few times to the Giant Rat or the big frog down there. Eventually, you figured combat out enough, food, bandages, basic armor, etc, that you could handle enough rats and run away before dying. It probably took a while, but after a few days, you could actually survive beyond the first encounter outside of Britain. In all actuality, none of that was really hard either, you just had to learn. It simply diddnt hold your hand. You probably also died the first time you thought an orc mage was a regular orc...



    Or, perhaps, foster a better in-game culture of exploring the environment and trying things out during the new player introduction scenes ;)

    By the time you encounter a siege, it should feel intuitive to think "well that road looks tough, let me back up and see if there is another way around here,...".
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2017
  2. kaeshiva

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    This is one area that 'skill decay' has kind of ruined.
    The impulse to 'go, explore, try new things, new challenges!' is quickly stifled by the knowledge that dying is going to set you back several hours.

    When I finally did go to a siege just to see what it was about, I was pretty disappointed. We killed a few catapults and we killed a few liches, and then we were all standing around for an hour trying to figure out what was happening. There was no reward or even any indication that the siege was broken, until someone crashed and logged back on and informed us the catapults were gone. Just seemed anticlimactic.

    And now? Now its just more annoying load screens getting in and out of town or having to run around something.
     
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  3. GrayFog

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    Sieges to me are currently just another feature nobody really wants/uses/needs (same like the wandering monsters).

    A lot of dev time gets eaten up for "not really needed" stuff in Episode 1.

    Same soon with the "cover system", do we really need it now?!

    I would prefer they simply finish what we have now.
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2017
  4. Traveller13

    Traveller13 Bug Hunter

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    Yes. I'm getting tired of arrows and fireballs going through solid objects and hitting me. "So don't fight mages and archers", you say. That is exactly what my mitigation is, and what I do. Or don't do. Yeah.

    I mean, the green goo that spiders shoot at you travels in a straight line, and can be dodged by a move made by the player. Why can't arrows and fireballs? Fireballs I can buy as being magical heat seeking missiles. However, both going through walls and such. Come on.
     
  5. Tiina Onir

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    Sieges have potential, but when they are broken, they need to be BROKEN. Something should happen to let you know you've cleared it. There should be some reward. That reward doesn't need to be money or an item either, just the cheering townspeople rushing out to greet you would be good.
     
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  6. TarrNokk

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    Your reward is fun while playing.
     
  7. Tiina Onir

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    Even Shigeru Miyamoto knew, in the 80s, that when Mario cleared the level, little fireworks should go off. That's a reward. The research into this goes back decades before that. We aren't talking about something major here, we're just talking about an acknowledgement that you successfully did a thing. Right now, sieges are just annoyances. 9/10 I don't bother to fight ANYTHING in them and just sprint through them. I suspect most people do the same for world encounters (although I tend to do those just to strip-mine them).

    There's no sense of accomplishment for doing them, so after the first time, let the peasants burn, I have to get to a vendor to pickup reagents from before I go with my guildies to take on a serious foe. Hell, even making towns get damaged and repairs start afterward would make it feel more significant.
     
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  8. TarrNokk

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    After they put in loot tables,we will have better rewards, i am sure.
     
  9. Tiina Onir

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    Did you bother to read at all? We aren't talking about loot tables.
     
    Last edited: Jan 5, 2017
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  10. Technowitch

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    It's not fun when I just need to visit a merchant for some arrows or reagents because my guildmates are waiting for me, and for no rational reason Resolute is yet again under siege.

    It's not fun when I'm schlepping back from South Shattered Hills, overloaded with halberds and war axes, only to find that while Resolute wasn't under seige when I left an hour before, now it is.

    (I'll further add it's not fun arriving in town to discover everybody's in bed and I have to wait X pointless minutes for them to wake up, just so I can sell those looted weapons and re-up on spell components, when my own character never, ever needs sleep.)

    The first time I saw a siege, I thought "Wow, this is kind of interesting." I explored a little, found out I was supposed to destroy catapults and engineers, ended up being killed because even though the Ebon Cultists were all green to me, they included lots of archers and mages with long engagement ranges, all of whom can shoot through walls and any other physical obstruction. Eventually after two more deaths, I gave up and moved on. A friend told me about the left side trail, so I began using that.

    Eventually, I decided to check out the siege, put in the effort to destroy the catapults and engineers...and all that happened was more lethal mobs began spawning and in larger numbers, who then killed me.

    If as designed these sieges cannot be soloed, what is the point in sending a solo player into one -- especially low adventurer-level beginner avatars just learning the game -- save as a repetitive and pointless (and for lowbies, potentially lethal) inconvenience? I'm given to understand the 'siege breaking' mechanic is also faulty, in that it either doesn't show or else the Cultists can be right back minutes later with a new siege. So there literally is no reward for breaking them. As Tiina Onir pointed out, those who broke the siege don't even receive a notification they'd won.

    This has nothing to do with loot tables, but whether something feels like a fun and worthwhile activity, and for me now 100% of the time, a siege is nothing but a repetitive, pointless and unnecessary interruption of my game-playing fun, right down to the same forest scene. Why? Because all I'm going to do is buff myself, hit Sprint, and run out of the secene as fast as I can.
     
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  11. TarrNokk

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    So many dislikes....looks like you need a SotA-break to get back to the fun factor. No offense.
     
  12. Valeric

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    These need to removed until there is a more healthy player base. At the moment they are nothing but an annoyance for players who just want to visit the towns. There isn't enough population to be actively completing these at regular intervals.
     
  13. Arya Stoneheart

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    Yeah getting back into town can be a pain if you are loaded down with loot to sell. I usually run around or exit to world map.
     
  14. Tiina Onir

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    Actually, completing them isn't that hard. The problem is, once you do it doesn't go away... It's just an endless trickle of low-level archers and mages. Great if you want to collect wood scrap!
     
  15. Gix

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    The catapults have a nasty habit of shooting at you the moment you get near...

    It's one thing to get hit by a volley when you're just in the middle of the map, but when you're actively avoiding line of sight and trying to sneak up to them, it's frustrating as hell. So now I avoid them like the plague.

    So, what's the trick? Rush in blindly and AoE spam?
     
  16. Barugon

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    Go to the catapults from behind.
     
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  17. Tiina Onir

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    What Barugon said. I figured it out by the second time I went into a siege.

    The only time I've ever got hit by one of the catapults was when I stood around in the center of the map fighting the cultists before the catapults were taken out. Even then I have to stand around, which was a pretty silly thing for me to be doing.
     
  18. Gix

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    As far as I know, the scene has 3 paths.

    From where you spawn:
    • the path on the left is safe and allows you to avoid most of the scene.
    • the path in the middle is suicide.
    • the path on the right leads to an encampment. The catapults are further in.
    I die from catapult volleys on the path to the right... within the encampment. If there's a path that leads behind the catapults, I don't know where it is.
     
  19. Barugon

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    You have to get up the embankment to get behind the catapult.
     
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  20. Proteus Tempest

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    The siege system needs some fine tuning, this is for sure.

    One problem I see is, if the Obsidians can lay siege to a city and not have a chance to take it over..... What is the point? There should be an amount of time that the city is under siege and after some time the town wins or loses and if it loses the Obsidians get to take the town over. Then players can go in and take it back. Currently there is no loss by not doing anything.

    Don't let the siege happen to starter towns? Probably a good idea or scale the attack so starter players can beat a much lower henchman of the Cabalists. Surely the Cabalists have lower level henchman.
     
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