New Update for the Test Realms

[Gurnsey]

Before I start, just to let you know: I'm not some super-Blizzard Fanboi trying to defend their decisions, just thinking and asking questions and hopefully forwarding the discussion - I hope that comes through.

Currently, capturing an undefended tower is not superdifficult.  A bunch of people run in, distract the guards, and someone yanks the flag down.  Capturing a well defended tower is difficult, because the PC's will snare you, and interrupt the guy pulling the flag down.

Towers do provide a significant advantage.  The archers hit fairly hard, and once they aggro they have a very long range.  The towers provide an excellent place to regroup if you are being pushed back, and are difficult but not impossible to bypass.

If towers are destroyed, not captured, it probably will put more emphasis on defending towers.  However, the towers are quick enough to destroy and spread out enough that they are hard to get to that defending them means putting 6-7 people on permanant tower babysitting duty.  Doesn't sound like fun to me.

Hmmm, let me see if I can sum up: Towers provide significant advantage, but are too easy to take when PC's are not directly defending it. This is acceptable when towers change hands, since you can conversely take it back quickly, but unacceptable when the towers are destroyed since defenders can't get there in time.

Possible solutions:
1) Towers go back to changing hands (ping-ponging and/or no progress or winning possibly).
2) Towers are destroyed but take much longer or require explosives or some other thing to make taking a tower harder (defenders have time to get to the tower, unless a major push is made by the opposing team to take it, in which case they have a weak point somewhere else).
3) Something else?

Sentry totem doesn't help for 2 reasons : these things have to be balanced for both factions, and they only last 5 min.  It is frequently a 5 min round trip from the frontline to the back, so you don't gain anything.

Heh. Still a totally worthless wind-totem. That's 2/5 that are complete wastes (Windwall and Sentry).

As far as stratagies goes, capturing random towers behind lines is one, it's just one my side said pfft to.  If, durning the time they were in enemy hands, they made a break through, they could have turned the tower they already had into major gains.  While the tower is in enemy hands, it is more difficult to go to the main base, for repairs and to drop off blood and armor.  So eventually, a group of us broke off and retook it.  While we were doing that, if they made a major push, we would be undermaned.  Making towers be destroyed, in my mind, limits that.  Since riding to a towers defense is often impractical due to distance, the only stratagy that keeps your towers safe is to keep a patrol back there.  Who wants to do that?  And once the towers are destroyed, they are elimated as a stratiegic item.

In regards to keeping patrols in the back to defend towers, are you saying that defense needs to be in the hands of the NPC's while offense is in the hands of the PC's? NPC's seem to be there to be static defenses, detturents, and to buy time for the true (read: intelligent) defense to react. Shouldn't there be a group in each team devoted to defense? Beyond defending towers, they could also provide intel on enemy offensive motion, harrass or bait enemy troops, and help fallen players reach the front lines again.

Of course, this assumes that there is strategy going on here :rolleyes:

Similarly, since the leutinants and explosive experts no longer respawn, I fear they too will be quickly assinated and removed from the game as a stratiegic element.  Briefly, there are minefield on the map.  Briefly, there are minefields on the map for both sides.  They can be avoided, rogues can disarm them, or you can kill the explosives expert to remove them.  I believe if you can kill all 4 leutenents in a set period of time, it burns down the foreward base.  I'm not sure what this does, since NPC's still spawn there.  But again, if they don't respawn, they will be killed relativly quickly, and removed from the game as a stratiegic element.

There are ways to fix the winabilty problem without making the battlefield empty after 1 hr.  And they will be, niether towers nor leutinants stand up to the large summon well.  An obious one to me is to spread out some of the GY - Tower combos that are exceptionally difficult.  And it may just be that the good stratagies still need to be discovered.  How long did it take for Oxy to go down?

Yea, but Onyxia is an NPC with a programmed encounter - theoretically, PC's can defend against the NPC's weaknesses on the battlefield.

And finally Jerry is right, capturing towers gives you mini goals.  Even if your team sucks, and you are pushed all the way back to your main base, you might be able put togeather 5 good minutes and take the first tower back.  From there you might be able to get your mine back....  Where as if you can't get towers back, you break out, but as soon as you stumble you are right back where you started.
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Very true here - if one team starts destroying enemy towers faster, it turns into a slippery-slope with the 'losing team' having less and less chance to recover as time goes on. I think this will be a tough balance, especially with the massive difference between an organized 40-man team and a team of 40 soloe'rs. No ideas here. Anyone?