05-26-2005, 08:05 PM
Whew... I started replying to you last night, then decided to check if the AV was back up. It was, and I ended up playing in 3 battles over about 4 hours, and going to bed way too late. Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly, and then responses to your comments. Hang on tight folks, this might run a bit long, long enough it might be faster to log on yourself and make up your own mind.
The good: a long list of fixes posted on the public relm, you can read them yourself. For whatever reason, and I'll speculate later, it seems to be more winnable, as two out of three of my matches ended in a win, as opposed to 0 out of 2 before.
The bad: Mongo and I were right about the towers. Most of them are destroyed within about 2 hours of the game starting. Also, maybe I just hadn't noticed before, but Pally's can pull flags while bubbled. Very imbalanced.
The ugly: NPC's still cause equipment damage, and on the forums Blizz is saying it is a possibly reversable design choice, not a bug. At least with fewer towers around it happens less often :P
I think you misunderstand the design of this battleground a little, it is pretty much linear. Take a look at this shot of the map Mongo made. You also might have an inflated idea of how many towers there are, they are only 4 each.![[Image: alteracearly6.jpg]](http://www.lurkerlounge.com/mongo/alteracearly6.jpg)
99% of the action is one big zerg fest.
Right now the difficulty of the towers is well balanced. Properly defended, they are nearly impossible to take. But if the defense gets scattered a little bit, or the defending side overextends to try and take the next graveyard, it is possible to mount a quick push that tears down the flag. They are annoying to bypass, but it is possible, making one viable stratagy to use against a turtling team to run to the next graveyard and try to take that, then come back to the tower, now that their reinforcements have to run farther then yours. If you make the towers tough enough to take down that the back ones can stand up to 5 PC's for the 5 min it would take relief to get there, they will be almost impossible to capture if defended at all.
The explosive idea is a great one. Maybe PC's can pull down flags to disable towers, but destroying it requires escorting a sapper team there. Maybe the sapper team will only go to frontline towers.
This battlefield is too linear for that. There is one big furball, and a couple of stragglers running back to town for repairs and to drop off blood for elemental summoning. Maybe if the mining mechanic was better understood and worked better a group would stay behind and do that and would be available for defence, but in reality it would just be 6-7 guys sitting on their thumbs.
But the NPC's are the hard part of winning: the last base might be too tough. There is a village, where a sizable number of NPC's spawn, and then a ramp going up to 2 towers, that fire down onto people fighting in the village. The ramp also has a lot of spawns on it. Last night the alliance hit on one stratagy: rush past to the final graveyard. Still, 30 alliance took 45 min to take that final base against 12 incomplete idiots (if we were complete idiots there would be 40 of us).
For now, it seems the main stratagy is to bottle the losers up in their base until they get tired and try relogging to a more competitive battleground.
You should get crushed. Join a guild, or hope you get put into a ground where you are filling out an organized group. If the game can't be won easily by superior tactics and orginization, then it is random and silly. This could be mitigated by trying to balance the teams when people come in from the random queue according to honor.
The good: a long list of fixes posted on the public relm, you can read them yourself. For whatever reason, and I'll speculate later, it seems to be more winnable, as two out of three of my matches ended in a win, as opposed to 0 out of 2 before.
The bad: Mongo and I were right about the towers. Most of them are destroyed within about 2 hours of the game starting. Also, maybe I just hadn't noticed before, but Pally's can pull flags while bubbled. Very imbalanced.
The ugly: NPC's still cause equipment damage, and on the forums Blizz is saying it is a possibly reversable design choice, not a bug. At least with fewer towers around it happens less often :P
Gurnsey,May 25 2005, 03:19 PM Wrote: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).
I think you misunderstand the design of this battleground a little, it is pretty much linear. Take a look at this shot of the map Mongo made. You also might have an inflated idea of how many towers there are, they are only 4 each.
99% of the action is one big zerg fest.
Right now the difficulty of the towers is well balanced. Properly defended, they are nearly impossible to take. But if the defense gets scattered a little bit, or the defending side overextends to try and take the next graveyard, it is possible to mount a quick push that tears down the flag. They are annoying to bypass, but it is possible, making one viable stratagy to use against a turtling team to run to the next graveyard and try to take that, then come back to the tower, now that their reinforcements have to run farther then yours. If you make the towers tough enough to take down that the back ones can stand up to 5 PC's for the 5 min it would take relief to get there, they will be almost impossible to capture if defended at all.
The explosive idea is a great one. Maybe PC's can pull down flags to disable towers, but destroying it requires escorting a sapper team there. Maybe the sapper team will only go to frontline towers.
Quote: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,
This battlefield is too linear for that. There is one big furball, and a couple of stragglers running back to town for repairs and to drop off blood for elemental summoning. Maybe if the mining mechanic was better understood and worked better a group would stay behind and do that and would be available for defence, but in reality it would just be 6-7 guys sitting on their thumbs.
Quote:Of course, this assumes that there is strategy going on here :rolleyes:
Yea, but Onyxia is an NPC with a programmed encounter - theoretically, PC's can defend against the NPC's weaknesses on the battlefield.
But the NPC's are the hard part of winning: the last base might be too tough. There is a village, where a sizable number of NPC's spawn, and then a ramp going up to 2 towers, that fire down onto people fighting in the village. The ramp also has a lot of spawns on it. Last night the alliance hit on one stratagy: rush past to the final graveyard. Still, 30 alliance took 45 min to take that final base against 12 incomplete idiots (if we were complete idiots there would be 40 of us).
For now, it seems the main stratagy is to bottle the losers up in their base until they get tired and try relogging to a more competitive battleground.
Quote: 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?
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You should get crushed. Join a guild, or hope you get put into a ground where you are filling out an organized group. If the game can't be won easily by superior tactics and orginization, then it is random and silly. This could be mitigated by trying to balance the teams when people come in from the random queue according to honor.