An idea regarding keeps...

Tasmin · Post by **Tasmin** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 12:48 pm

Agree Ambra,

there was a MMOG space based game a few of my friends played and the war zone got reset each day. Ended up people left as they felt they made no difference.

I'd like to see the level of guards and spawn rates altered to help out with underpopulation bonuses. Couple this with guards that you can take with you on a raid and you end up with no underpopulated RvR force.

Big alb zerg from overpopulated realm attacking underpopulated hib keep, higher level guards on hib side compensates for lack of numbers. When attacking, npc guards alongside hib force gives similar numbers against defending alb force.

Obvously you would have to give some sort of rp reward for killing an npc guard and they would never be as good as a real player, but it would help restore the balance.

Tas

Aran_Thule · Post by **Aran_Thule** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 1:10 pm

How about if you have the underpopulation bonus (hookpoints half price) you get the option of Veteran Guards which cost twice the amount normal ones do.
What type of enhanced guard you could purchase would depend on the type of keep/tower.
ie guardians in melee keeps and towers, elds in magic keeps and shades in stealth keeps.

Craft · Post by **Craft** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 1:20 pm

guards that mezz, use styles etc would also be an option im thinking

Post by **Xest** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 1:34 pm

Assassin guards to 2h PA like SBs imo.

Sharkith · Post by **Sharkith** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 2:08 pm

machine guns with arrows that have a range of 3 zones to strafe teh Alb zerg....

Post by **Xest** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 2:18 pm

omg, Zinedine guards!

Genedril · Post by **Genedril** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 2:39 pm

Upgraded guard idea isn't soo bad & has been kicked around for a while (nominally to stop a/c raids), issue is is it overall population based, RvR population based or real-time population based.

Unpopulation bonuses have been an issue due to people saying that the majority of albs don't RvR actively & therefore the ones that do get penalised. Same would go for guards based from this.

RvR population based guards would be a good thing, but if we take the cluster as an example then come September when the Alb force disappears (this situation has happened before here many times, just that pryd didn't have it soo bad) the Albs that remain are going to struggle.

Real-time population based could prove to be an issue. You're attacking a keep, there's defenders & it's not going too badly; Everyone who's pve-ing decides it's 11 o'clock & it's suddenly time for bed. Bloody hell look at that guard pop, they're all 40 times harder than we can deal with & all the hard work is suddenly undone.

That's not to say it's a bad idea, just how would be the best way to put it into practise.

LGM's having unique siege craft could be usefull & interesting - Alchs can apply a potion to a keep door that makes it more vunerable. Fletchers (are there any??) can perform upgrades to palintones & trebs. Weaponcrafters could enhance the ram head. Armourcrafters could make some sort of covering to protect from the oil. Can't think of anything for sc'rs or tailors off the top of my head.

I like Crom's inactivity timeout for towers held in enemy lands - would cut down on the camping.

ambera · Post by **ambera** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 2:44 pm

I think real-time npc assistance for the outnumbered side in an uneven fight is how they're planning to balance zerg fights in WAR - looks like Mythic have already looked at this and come up with the same answers. Perhaps they'll try it in DaoC as a test-bed - but I doubt it.

Cromcruaich · Post by **Cromcruaich** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 3:39 pm

I think using npcs to balance keep rvr is an ugly solution, that will be difficult to implement, and once implemented will be buggy, and undoubtedly add to lag and possibly link deads.

Post by **Xest** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 4:42 pm

Cromcruaich wrote:I think using npcs to balance keep rvr is an ugly solution, that will be difficult to implement, and once implemented will be buggy, and undoubtedly add to lag and possibly link deads.

Gotta remember that DAoC could handle pretty decent sized fights 5 years ago, processors have advanced a fair whack since then and also Mythic aren't serving on a budget this time round either so it's suprising how much servers will be able to handle. For reference UO/EQ1 servers that used to handle ~3000 players can now easily be run on only an average spec desktop machine.

Also, DAoC was plenty playable on dialup and still is really, it's fair to aim for the broadband market now so bandwidth shouldn't be such an issue either.