AMUN: Vigilance Towers

[Adrian]

Hello everyone,

Finally we are able to present you an initial version of the Vigilance Towers so you can test them and let us know what you think and also give us suggestions. For this to happen, first we must clarify some important points, to which we beg you pay a lot of attention:

- This is a Beta version, meaning that there will be a lot of details to polish (such as errors with textures, 3D models, map edition, collisions, etc.) and mechanics to adjust (timings, damages, defences, distances, etc.)
- We haven't tested with a large amount of players, so it will take some time to adjust the variables in order to provide a more pleasant gaming experience.
- The towers will not replace the forts and castles and they will not represent an objective that gives direct rewards or a time consuming gameplay.

With these points cleared up, we can continue to explain our vision of the Vigilance Towers:

The goal of the towers is to make it more difficult to access the war zones but in a strategic way. By no means they are designed to act like a complete roadblock for bridges (or in other zones in the future) but to pose a dilemma to those that want to cross them.

Currently, fort and castle capturing takes place through a non-warned attack of an army that will have to wait, with their arms crossed, to the owner of that building to come and recover it, if they are willing to. This, without any strategic cost to the attacker. Also, when a single player or a small group of them wants to spread terror upon those that are training, they just cross a bridge and enter a conflict zone that is not defended in any way. This makes no sense, doesn't it?

So, what can the towers achieve to compensate these issues?

- That an army must silently capture a vigilance tower avoiding the guards letting nearby enemies or a whole realm know they're coming.
- That a hunter must be camouflaged to avoid being detected.
- That a group depends on a hunter and their importance and role in war gets to be determinant.
- That those that want to cross the bridge without defeating the guards can do it, but at the cost of the accessed realm to know about it so they can go and find them.

To achieve all of these, adjustments will be needed.

We need you to understand that this addition can be easily neutralised by those that are adequately organised and this is one of its most important features: articulate organised groups.

The gameplay, as it is now, is pretty easy. Depending on how it is used in the tests we will think about expanding it and big changes are not discarded, but always following this main idea that we have explained.

Some ideas that are still to be thought about:
- Allowing one warning that can't be avoided, but just to nearby enemies.
- One guard that can go mounting a horse to go and alert allies, that can be neutralised if caught.
- Changing the shape of the front of the tower to change from open battle to platform/ranged battle.
- Through a calculation of the average population of a realm, the influence of each player depending on the realm can be balanced.

Known bugs:
- Ignis tower lack of collision in backdoor, can jump inside easily.
- Ignis tower inner illumination is not working properly.
- Alsius tower top torch is not properly located.
- Some points of the barricades are not easy to attack.

Below, a quick guide with some details of how the towers function:

[Adrian]

- The towers are located in the extremes of the bridges that act as a frontier between the war zones of each realm. Currently, there are towers only in the bridge between Aggersborg and Herbred, or the brigde between Aggersborg and Samal

- Each tower is composed of a Barricade, three guards in the access to the brigde and two guards up in the tower.

- When getting close to the guards of an enemy tower, the General will proceed to let nearby enemies (maximum 250 metres) unless he is defeated before the time visualised on-screen. If you get away quickly as soon as the countdown starts, it is possible that the General cancels the warning.

- If the General is defeated or has issued a warning, the Watcher is the next one that can warn, but this time to all the enemies throughout the whole war zone that own that tower. The countdown can be visualised on-screen. This countdown can only be cancelled with her death, what makes it mandatory to destroy the Barricade to go and defeat her.

- Once the General and the other two guards are defeated, the Barricade will be vulnerable and it has to be attacked in order to dominate the tower.

- The Watcher and the guard in the tower can't be attacked until the Barricade is completely destroyed.

- Once the Barricade is destroyed, the domination process will begin, in which the presence of enemies and allies will determine how fast the tower is captured or recovered. For example, if there are the same quantity of alive enemies and allies, the state of domination will not advance or go backwards. A player inside the area of the tower (determined by the Barricade) will help the domination process better than one that is a few meters away.

- On-screen, an indicator of who is dominating the tower can be seen. This progress bar will be completed with the color of the realms so it is clear who will be the next dominator of the tower.

- Once the tower is dominated, the guards will re-appear.

[Hollow-Ichigo]

From playing on amun for 20 minutes, these towers are already a great addition. Bridge wars are so good.

[Pery3000]

Really liking this so far. Quests gonna be counted at these towers?

[Hollow-Ichigo]

The forts capture and switch control too fast, the barricade should be down longer between each capture.

[UlrenAsir]

Just tried for a few minutes and it was really fun.
This will make things more tactical when it comes to do something important in ZG. I really like what is pretend with this.

[-Aniara-]

Yes! Great fun, towers looked splendid and adds a twist to the bridges.

I saw more ppl in 15 min on amun then i have in weeks on haven, happy as can be, cant wait for transfers.

/A

[erzsi]

Like what I see, although:

When you log out on the tower, you log back in right there, on the tower. Of course, while I was on, control was not shifting; it was very static.

If someone puts a Christmas tree (or other placeable item) beside the barricade, can they simply jump on the tree/placeable item and hop over the barricade, ignoring it?

[Adrian]

Thank you for testing! Soon we will open Amun again with changes and fixes regarding what we observed until now.

I will post some screenshots soon!

[Redo_Ger]

At the tower east of Aggersborg on Alsius' side you take falldamage if you leave the bottom door.

the constant teleportation is very confusing, you/ your enemy skip around like crazy. if you accidentally press twice on the wall you get teleported in and out again. also you sometimes get into a loading screen when teleporting trough the wall/doors and sometimes you come out turned around the wrong way.

Also you loose enemies from your selection when they teleport through the wall/doors.

It's very cramped inside the towers and you need 5 seconds to angle your camera the right way so you can see something.

The archer guards have an enormous range, they don't hit hard but it can be very confusing ^^

The flag on the ground and on the top of the towers didn't match up, so it was not clear which realm the tower belonged to.

Was it for testing purposes that the wall taken down in just a few hits?
Will we get more time to kill the guards/watcher on the live servers?

PLUS there was no chat for those of us under lvl60 + WM, I can imagine they would have wanted to know what's up too

(Please translate the Watcher in german to something like "Aussichtsposten" or "Beobachter" or else we get a Wächter and a Watcher up there D: )