Defense vs Offense in Regnum Online.

[Miraculix]

There is no doubt, that the majority of players here enjoy open field battles more than anything. There are those that avoid them, either out of fear or out of plain conservative approach to combat, but I'm pretty sure that the majority of the players agree on this.

Lately, open field battles have faded into non-existence. The reason? Defense is far too easy in this game. People no longer take the risk to venture out of a fort, away from the gate etc looking for a fight, because the advantage of staying in a well fortified position such as a fort or a gate is just too great to pass.

It started with making doors stronger; (Yes, it was a problem that 2 people could take a fort, I know - I will talk about this later on) It was further enhanced by fort upgrades. Steel doors, guards with spells, captain guards. And now, IMO, it is about to get worse: One of the hardest battles for the attacking side, the gate battle, is about to get even harder: Even more guards, and captain guards.

I do agree that defensive constructs need to fulfill their purpose, which is to aid the defending side in actually defending. But with such boosted defense as forts, castles, and soon realm gates have, the WZ become stale; People claim an empty fort or castle, and stay in there because the advantage of defending in terms of numbers is too big. There are those who consider it smart to do so, though it does not require a PhD in rocket science to see that it's easier to defend. Some even consider it a "clever tactic" to take an empty enemy fort instead of re-claiming your own, just so that you can fight with the advantage on your side or not fight at all. The latter is, as expected, the usual case scenario.

The point is that a WZ with no battles is a boring WZ. There is little point in fighting against a larger force that is defending, or even sometimes with even numbers. Defenders just have it too easy, and this makes WZ boring.

Realm Gate battles will become even more difficult for the attacker, it will probably be pointless to attempt an assault on a gate unless you severely outnumber the enemy.

All changes so far in that direction were made with balance in mind, or gameplay improvement. Stronger doors lead mostly to massive fort battles instead of 3-man groups taking random forts, upgrades kind of helped in that direction. But at the same time, the more you give incentive to defend, the less the other side wants to attack, so the less battles there are.

I think that instead of giving the underdog a defensive advantage, they should get an offensive one. Give the underdog motive to fight back, not to crawl inside their hole. Spawn siege machines on enemy gates of stronger realms, instead of guards for the weakest realms. Remove guards from stronger realms. Put a level restriction on forts of stronger realms. Make their doors weaker. Anything but more defense boosts. The more you encourage a weaker realm to defend, the more they will stay on the defensive side. Which means the more they will get attacked.

Anyway, this is something I wanted to share for quite some time now, I was trying to figure out what was the cause of this dead-end in fights, I think this is it...

[Kianoni]

WHOA! I never really thought about why but I see now why I have experienced such dramatic drawbacks in the game mechanics. you just clarified everything that bothers me in the game (even I didn't know what bothers me)

+1, really good points of view.

[monktbd]

First I agree with almost everything you said here Mira.

One thing I read a bit different though from the changelog:

One of the hardest battles for the attacking side, the gate battle, is about to get even harder: Even more guards, and captain guards.

I read that there will be one guard captain, archers on the tower (2? 3?) and guards on the ground (in addition to the existing ones?) any time the realm gets vulnerable no matter how the numbers of possible attackers to possible defenders is. So this likely makes it a bit harder if a guard captain spawns in any circumstances not taking a current player difference into account at all. Also I don't know what will happen to the currently always existing guards, whether they will be replaced totally or not.

However one can speculate that because the realm is in danger the defenders numbers are actually already smaller because otherwise they would have possibly taken the castles or the fort(s) back. The attacker needs to fortify one fort and a castle splitting its current power so with even numbers it should be possible for the defender so prevent gates in danger anyway.

If the defenders numbers are actually smaller then having additional guards is a valid feature to prevent too easy invasions. Also I am not convinced if a plain difference between attackers and defenders is the best thing or a mix of ratio and difference to justify the additional guard captains. I guess we will find out.

Also the whole process seems to take only numbers in account and not the levels of the connected players which makes quite a difference as well unless NGDs stats show that the level distribution in each realm is quite independent of the actual numbers of players online at any given moment.

[Znurre]

I think that instead of giving the underdog a defensive advantage, they should get an offensive one. Give the underdog motive to fight back, not to crawl inside their hole. Spawn siege machines on enemy gates of stronger realms, instead of guards for the weakest realms. Remove guards from stronger realms. Put a level restriction on forts of stronger realms. Make their doors weaker. Anything but more defense boosts. The more you encourage a weaker realm to defend, the more they will stay on the defensive side. Which means the more they will get attacked..Exactly my thoughts.
The warzone is nowadays (atleast on RA) more statical than ever before, and the thought of going to a fort just feels like a big burden.

A very, very good post in general.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Miraculix again.

[e30G]

I agree with Maedhros. The realm gate defense boost is there to balance out fights particularly on off-peak hour invasions. Because of that, I like this change.

What I think is lacking is incentive to actually go to war and fight for your forts other than the danger of getting invaded. After the realm gate boost is applied, invasions will be tougher, and I sense a lot more forts will be taken to start fights. However, since it will be highly unlikely an invasion will happen, no one will try to take the fort back.

I suggest penalties and rewards be given for ownership of a fort. A few things that pop into my head right now are:

- Do not allow a realm to take another realm's fortified structures if one of their own fortified structures is owned by another realm. They can break down gates, but they will not be able to capture the flag.

- A stackable 5% xp bonus for each fort of another realm you take over and 10% xp bonus for each castle of another realm you take over and -5% xp for every fort in your realm taken over by enemy realms and -10% xp if your castle has been taken over. These bonuses/penalties will be reset once the forts or castle has returned to their proper owners.

Why the xp bonuses and penalties? People need a reason to stop grinding and fight for their own damn realm structures.

- Allow siege machines (to be bought in towns in the inner realm to break down other segments of a fort (but not castle) such as walls and not only doors. These siege machines must be destructible. This adds another tactic, you can place siege machines behind a fort and hammer away at the wall to create an alternate entrance. Defenders will have to exit the doors and destroy the siege machines before it breaks down the walls.

Siege machines must have a longer range than archers on a fort. I suggest somewhere between 50-60m. However, give all ranged units fighting on a fortification's wall and tower added range % bonuses (a marksman with max range would hit 50m on a wall and 60m from the tower for example).

To keep this balanced, walls will have to be a lot tougher than doors and a limit on the maximum number of siege machines will be allowed realm-wide (ex: a realm can only have a maximum of 5 siege machines regardless of where the other machines of the realm are in the warzone). Siege machines should also have a timer on them and they should not be reusable (once the timer expires, you have to buy a new one). Whether they are used or not, siege machine scrolls will expire 1 hour after you buy them from the NPC and you can not have more than 1 siege machine in your inventory. Prices for siege machines must be dynamic with very low prices for realms with less players online at the time the machine was bought to very expensive (or even not available) for realms with currently superior numbers of players logged in while the machine was bought.

[Znurre]

I really don't like those suggestions.
Invasions are already hard enough, and one good and valid tactic is to go to the enemy forts and capture them to motivate the enemies to go to their own realm and fight.

What if, as on RA, all Alsius gems were captured and Syrtis and Ignis still attacks us, and even tries to invade?
This happens at RA daily.

Should Alsius not be able to capture another realms fort then? ...
The key is to make invasions easier for low-populated realms, and keep it the same for high-populated realms imo.

The "attack the realm gate" system sucks big time, it's static and it's only about who have the most players.

[e30G]

I think NGD may need to differentiate certain tweaks between Horus and Ra then. As of now, there are barely any fort fights in Horus because people can't be bothered to. At least some incentive and penalties should be given for gaining/losing a fort. As long as fighting for your own forts gets rewarded then it should be ok to lose my first suggestion (disallowing taking other forts if you don't have your own forts).

What can you say of the +/- xp for taking/losing forts?

[Kianoni]

...
What can you say of the +/- xp for taking/losing forts?
I don't like the idea - a stronger realm would keep a weaker ones forts and only gain more advantage that it already has.
Imagine if a stronger realm would keep some enemy forts under their command all the time. Weaker realm players would have even more reasons to quit due to negative bonus - and the stronger realms low level players would level up faster to create even more imbalance between realms.

[-Edge-]

I agree with Mira on all the points, except the extra guards (no one has even been able to test it out yet, so lets test it, then discuss this later)

I had the chance to play on Ra again recently, and it still differs from Horus in many ways. One of the biggest ways it differs is that there is almost non-stop battle everywhere in the map. (I know this isn't true everywhere, but I want to talk about Horus) In Horus I feel wars are dull because almost everything takes place at a bridge, a fort, a castle, or gate. Everything is only at places with high player density. There is a lack of skirmishes and open-field battles like you pointed out.

I don't like how when a fort is captured, and players cannot take it over for what ever reason, (or sometimes that they don't want to) people run from one fort to another, to draw attention. Although action in Horus is usually always circulating with one side attacking, there is too much of this defending. Ive noticed it too, the defenders are usually immortal, while behind the door, or behind the gate, not to mention too many NPC's (I don't like too many NPC's in RvR, they should only be there to balance out timezone problems)

I think the problem could be fixed if attention could be drawn to different aspects of defense, because right now, if you want to invade, theres only one way through, the gate, same thing with the fort. If there were more options to give people what to target, then it would vary out for almost every battle, right now we just have this One side attacks one target (the gate) one side defends behind a target (the gate)

What if for example there were other parts of a fort that were important BESIDES the gate? Like the tower which seems very nice, but ultimatly has no use except for a final hiding spot after the gate falls, (which most players don't even use anymore) or what if the walls had some kind of better advantage too? (Im going to pull out a fun thing in GW is that whenever a ranged class is on high ground, the ranged attack has a damage bonus) This could be overpowered, but it came to my mind a couple times. Or what if the back part of a fort was able to be attacked too, just like a gate? Znurre said in another thread that the initial idea of these objects in the warzone was to keep players spread out all across the map, this works, but to a certain extent.

Someone suggested before that the flag should be placed on the top of the tower, im going to say this here again. And with it I also want to suggest what if there was a capture the flag concept? Ok, try to imagine for example that the towers in forts right now are twice as big as to handle more players, and that they have points where players can range off them, then the walls which are currently inside the fort would become open, and the gate would be moved from its current spot, to the tower instead, so a gate to the tower instead of the whole fort. (Possibly even two gates) Im drifting away from what Mira is talking about, but I will get to that in a second. Walls would be open to all sides to climb and attack from, including the attackers.

(Another suggestion is how I don't like the fact people can enter in and out of the gate so simply. It should either be closed until broken, or there should be a wait to have to enter in and out of it, like a casting time) Anyway, what if all across the map, there were smaller forts layed out, or better yet, ruins of forts. They would have no gate but have parts to range off of and parts to hide behind, and the attackers would have to claim flags from here?

For example if there were 2 points where flags are kept around forts, and these spots contained blank flags, when the other realms besides the fort controller pick up these flags, they change to their respective realm flags. Then players would have to carry these flags into the fort they want to capture, and place them at the top of a tower. This would split up players because some players would need to stay and defend the fort manually (guards ruin this) and another group would have to spot the other from taking the flags. That would split up defense; The offensive side would have to have one group attack the fort, and another group to carry the flag. This is just a brainstorming idea on how to get more people into different parts of war.

Sorry for hijacking your thread Mira, it just got me thinking xD

[Angelwinged_Devil]

I agree with your thoughts about forts, they are just too easy to defend, you rarely see people out in the open anymore on horus.

But I don't aggree on your stance with invasions, it's not like a fort where you capture it and get upgrades, there's not really any consequences of losing a fort to the enemy again, whereas an invasion will be like entering a fort owned by another player but you can never capture it, and getting inside will get an ingame advantage.

I believe NGD's original Idea is better than what you proposed but I don't like NGD's upgrade too much if there's gonna be a guard captain NO MATTER WHAT, the extra guards should spawn when the realm gates are in danger and to a number which evens up the ratio of attackers army strength with the army strength of your own realm, the hardest part here is spawning the right and the right amount of extra guards.

Why I think this is the right way to go is that a realm is different from a fort, nothing happens if you lose one of your forts to an enemy, but as a player in a virtual world I have to defend my own realm from getting overrun, you have to think about the gate and the health of this one too (which is hard getting down)