DEV DIARY - March 2016

[Tholkienn]

Oh my gad!!!

[saupreusse]

Release the Kraken!

[Sera]

Click here to watch on YouTube

Londo, you're the best

[navis]

... but I do agree with eliminating renown that was gained for doing nothing - and by this I mean taking undefended BOs and capping empty keeps.

I agree with this and think it should be considered to implement the removal of renown from keep and bo takes.

Siege and general gameplay direction. At the moment, there's too much emphasis on the keeps. Some people may disagree with me on this (and I'm sure most of them will be supporters of mass AoE) but the game seems basically to resolve to "We're outnumbered, retreat to keep where we can try to farm them" or "We outnumber them, push to their keep". There's no real concept of a middle phase, or indeed any kind of advancement in the engagement. There's no room for any real strategy and the only real tactics I've seen are baiting people from a keep with fake retreats or hiding behind a wall waiting to ambush people who can't see you. As long as the emphasis remains on this type of gameplay, and keeps are kept as enclosed meatgrinders with one attack strategy (the doors), things will remain uninteresting.

Totally agree and you can see this more clearly in T1, so fix T1 RvR then move on to T2+.

The above is why I mentioned siege towers and Orcapults. There should be multiple ways of attacking a keep, and thus defending one should require multiple approaches from the defenders. So there should be slow, vulnerable siege weapons that have to be bought and transported around in order to open up multiple avenues of assault - IF the defenders fail to contest them, either by sending a force to attack the weapon directly or by using their own siege weapons to destroy it.

after 1.4x there was plenty, I mean plenty of extra stuff to attack keeps with. So much so that the need became clear for more Defensive 'aids', especially since all the previous 'Keep upgrade' stuff was removed (the NPC upgrade stuff). It was awesome to know your keep at least had Guards at it to alert you if it was under attack. Other ideas for 'aids' would be adding NPC healers with AOE heals, anti-griffon shields, anti-magic effects, stronger Oil and siege weapons. Deadbolts.

[Koryu199X]

This is where we need the induction of siege towers and ladders to facilitate more varied gameplay. If we had ladders it would mean that players couldn't simply stand behind part of the door and bomb to their hearts content.

[th3gatekeeper]

@ Geni

Any updates? Your video (which I just re-watched) suggested a monthly Q&A video. No stress, just asking

[Abolition]

Spoiler:

There is also work being done on instances. This tool being developed will help us recreate original live instances (or create new ones).

Still early in development, but here is sneak preview


Click here to watch on YouTube


Click here to watch on YouTube

LFG TOVL.

[StormX2]

Click here to watch on YouTube

omg what have you shown to me

Pls next time, NSFW tag

[Genisaurus]

@ Geni

Any updates? Your video (which I just re-watched) suggested a monthly Q&A video. No stress, just asking

My plan was to release the next video after Tier 4, so I wouldn't have to deal with people messaging me, "why did you do this instead of working on T4." Also, I could talk about things besides what we're doing for Tier 4.

That's still the plan:
T4 finished -> 1 last Hype Video -> 1 more week of internal testing and preparation -> T4 release -> 1 week of diary prep -> Dev Diary

[saupreusse]

So.... two more weeks until the dev diary