Road to invasions #4: Character movability and Fort capturing

[Adrian]

Hi Community,

As another step towards Invasions we performed in the latest update (0.9.36) some enhancements to the current gameplay.

Character movability:

Horses are now available to be bought with in-game gold. This will allow every player to travel at the same speed and reach their destiny faster, improving the arrival to battles even if they are far away.

Fort capturing:

Forts are very important for the invasion system to work as it should. They are now harder to capture with small armies. Guards were re-balanced among all realms, having similar health, weapons and damage rates. Fort doors have better regeneration times.

Eagerness is growing among us!

Regards from NGD Studios team.

Please only comment about the impact of this changes in the game. If you have any questions, please post them in "Begginner's Questions".

[eXp4nD]

Nice move NGD! I especially like the new Guards and the stronger fort/castle doors. Now that the Guards from all three realms are equal, It will make it more of a challenge to capture from now on

[Angelwinged_Devil]

Originally Posted by Kailer

Character movability:

Horses are now available to be bought with in-game gold. This will allow every player to travel at the same speed and reach their destiny faster, improving the arrival to battles even if they are far away.

change wanted for long, this is better than removing them from the war zone, way to go.

Originally Posted by Kailer

Fort capturing:

Forts are very important for the invasion system to work as it should. They are now harder to capture with small armies. Guards were re-balanced among all realms, having similar health, weapons and damage rates. Fort doors have better regeneration times.

I can't wait to see how this will affect overall battles, if it will be just harder for a group of equal size to conquer a fort

[_dracus_]

About character mobility: First effect I hate it. It just ruins my barbs role. Barbarian used to be needed to catch people or group now it's the end. Moreover horses are unfair against non-horses warriors. For me it's a terrible move, WZ looks like horse races now. Each levelers can afford for horses, when you are a fighter (lvl 50) no more quest no more real income unless lucky with drops.

About forts: I really feel sad for people playing on horus. It's gonna be even harder to capture a fort ... great move.

General opinion is I don't really like the update, the removal of /users command make it feel even weirder than the disappearence of realm chat. Not sure my opinion does matter, but I don't think game is going in the good way.

[Miraculix]

Removal of "/users" is probably implemented to hide the gross underpopulation of Horus compared to Ra from new players. (The site no longer reports player count as well). So instead of solving the problem, it gets hidden.

[Enitharmon]

Originally Posted by gph

About character mobility: First effect I hate it. It just ruins my barbs role. Barbarian used to be needed to catch people or group now it's the end. Moreover horses are unfair against non-horses warriors. For me it's a terrible move, WZ looks like horse races now. Each levelers can afford for horses, when you are a fighter (lvl 50) no more quest no more real income unless lucky with drops.

About forts: I really feel sad for people playing on horus. It's gonna be even harder to capture a fort ... great move.

General opinion is I don't really like the update, the removal of /users command make it feel even weirder than the disappearence of realm chat. Not sure my opinion does matter, but I don't think game is going in the good way.

100% agreed...
From playing on Ra today: Most fights ends with the part having most friends on horses riding in and zerging everybody. Maybe too early to make a judgement... But I was already of the opinion that horses should be removed altogether from the wz, rather than have more of them.

From playing on Horus today: It is dead... Just... dead. I don't know what your intentions with removing the /users command were, but if it was to make more people log onto Horus - it had the opposite effect. Nobody bothers to log onto this server when they can't tell if there is anybody else on to fight. I did login to check, but after running aimlessly around in the warzone for an extended amount of time, i logged off again. With the new fort "fixes" not a single fort have swapped hands all day... not enough people bothers taking a shot in the dark and logging on, at the same time.

I understand that you are working towards this new fabled invasion system, but please consider also how these changes affect the already fragile environment on Horus. As far as I am concerned, none of the changes made in this update make much sense with the number of users we have here, only to make the environment for fort wars even harder. There is no point in having a fort war there anymore when it will *always* be decided by whichever realm can muster the greater amount of people on horseback...

[Mikan]

Originally Posted by gph

About character mobility: First effect I hate it. It just ruins my barbs role. Barbarian used to be needed to catch people or group now it's the end. Moreover horses are unfair against non-horses warriors. For me it's a terrible move, WZ looks like horse races now. Each levelers can afford for horses, when you are a fighter (lvl 50) no more quest no more real income unless lucky with drops.

About forts: I really feel sad for people playing on horus. It's gonna be even harder to capture a fort ... great move.

General opinion is I don't really like the update, the removal of /users command make it feel even weirder than the disappearence of realm chat. Not sure my opinion does matter, but I don't think game is going in the good way.

100% agreed as well..

While horses have somewhat revived fort wars (due to the ability to reach them very quickly, even at the remote forts like Algaros), they have also given rise to very underhanded tactics tnat everyone and their entire family now has the ability to execute, en mass.

Essentially, the horse update makes every class behave like Hunters in believing they can always get away. This is because the penalties for horses are not yet high enough. The movement speed is too high and the knock chance needs to be 100% on any hit. Yesterday I was able to take someone down to half health while he was riding a horse, to make that many hits... yet still he rides happily off into the sunset.

It has also given rise to such tactics as "new age" save camping, where the people come in, kill everyone in save, mount horses while their victims' resurrection timers are counting down (and they cannot possibly chase), ride off into the sunset then come back again a few minutes later. Rinse, repeat.

Another problem is that while horses were designed to keep people together, they are actually having the opposite effect thus far. Some people aren't buying horses (even mages), some are, and the horse users always leave the non-horse-users behind and charge into battle in a mounted fury of death that almost always results in our loss each time. And as mentioned, it takes the role of keeping everyone together away from the Barbarian, even to the point where I might drop Onslaught from my setup.

I really hope that NGD see the negative, potentially gameplay-degrading consequences of horses upon the game and makes them more of a get-to-forts-faster, rather than gank-players-in-drive-by-shootings kind of tool. I think that's what NGD intended, but it just hasn't been working out.

Regards,

[Tyr]

Originally Posted by Katiechan

I really hope that NGD see the negative, potentially gameplay-degrading consequences of horses upon the game and makes them more of a get-to-forts-faster, rather than gank-players-in-drive-by-shootings kind of tool. I think that's what NGD intended, but it just hasn't been working out.

One would have thought that when they first released horses in the beta and this exact same thing happened with horses they would have done more to fix it. Now that the masses have them again it is funny that the same problem is back. I think it was George Santayana who said "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

I understand that horses are here to stay but away to limit them to aid in traveling only should be seriously looked at.

[-Drv-]

we just tried to take algaros, a party of 6 high level players didn't managed to break the door.
we were 3 marks, 1 hunter, 1 warlock and 1 conjurer (all lv50 except for the conjurer that was lv47)
the guards respawned 4 times before we give up.

[Gideon_Slack]

On Horus tonight we managed to take Samal with a party of 6-7 high level characters (only two in the mid-30 range).

Then, about a half hour later, with 4 characters (3 50s, and 1 34), we failed to take Hebred -- after wailing away at the door for 10 minutes. We just gave up to go hunting. (Making the guards stronger was a fine change. Anything that makes combat more challenging is okay, imho).

I would put this change in the short-term pain for long-term gain category, because Invasions sound like they will be alot of fun.