Patch Notes 22/07/2020

[ztil]

Whirling Pin/Sticky Squigz change feels good now when I tried it in a SC.

"Lileath's Arrow
- Reduced cast time from 2s down to .5s, some cast time is needed for the animation to look right. It will need a client update so the Cast Bar behaves."

Could it be it was reduced to 1.5s down from 2? Because as far as I can tell it's not casting in only 0.5 seconds.

[detrap]

[RvR]

- Players now only respawn in keeps if they are safe, no longer if outer door is already under attack.

Awesome change!

No more suicide on ram: jump, hit ram, die and repeat x328975 times

I like this idea aswel but im afraid it might increase the number of ppl afking inside keep, and push ppl to go and afk in keep much earlier that they usually do xD.

Well you still can, as long as you have healers

[TheSnowman]

In addition this is a passive buff to WH/WE albeit a very small one. Not much use with a few WHs in a keep alone.

My thinking is: less people in keep/more AFK because nobody's doing anything = easier to gank with WE/WH.

Could greatly improve stealth utility in campaign.

If stealth players on attacking sides were doing their job and killing the keep healer, the ram suiciders would be much less effective.

This idea of no respawn after outer tag seems like it would lead to more empty keeps being taken. Which means no/less reward and faster city sieges. I would think that daily sieges are enough and some people actually enjoy rvr battles. That's actually the only reason I play.

[Duukar]

Now if they could just buff stealth to be permanent WHs and WEs could actually have some use in Orvr as wolf pack blockades.

[agemennon675]

Whirling Pin/Sticky Squigz change feels good now when I tried it in a SC.

"Lileath's Arrow
- Reduced cast time from 2s down to .5s, some cast time is needed for the animation to look right. It will need a client update so the Cast Bar behaves."

Could it be it was reduced to 1.5s down from 2? Because as far as I can tell it's not casting in only 0.5 seconds.

I can cast it in 0.5 no problem

[Tabaori]

In addition this is a passive buff to WH/WE albeit a very small one. Not much use with a few WHs in a keep alone.

My thinking is: less people in keep/more AFK because nobody's doing anything = easier to gank with WE/WH.

Could greatly improve stealth utility in campaign.

If stealth players on attacking sides were doing their job and killing the keep healer, the ram suiciders would be much less effective.

This idea of no respawn after outer tag seems like it would lead to more empty keeps being taken. Which means no/less reward and faster city sieges. I would think that daily sieges are enough and some people actually enjoy rvr battles. That's actually the only reason I play.

Exactly what I mean, the Destro site in particular rarely has enough players to win. 9 out of 10 battles are fought against the order in considerable numbers, which is now being reinforced, since the defense, even if it is hopeless, is not at all more worthwhile and you can no longer get to the castle from the camp.

[ztil]

Whirling Pin/Sticky Squigz change feels good now when I tried it in a SC.

"Lileath's Arrow
- Reduced cast time from 2s down to .5s, some cast time is needed for the animation to look right. It will need a client update so the Cast Bar behaves."

Could it be it was reduced to 1.5s down from 2? Because as far as I can tell it's not casting in only 0.5 seconds.

I can cast it in 0.5 no problem

Yes you're right. It's working here now also

[wargrimnir]

Whirling Pin/Sticky Squigz change feels good now when I tried it in a SC.

"Lileath's Arrow
- Reduced cast time from 2s down to .5s, some cast time is needed for the animation to look right. It will need a client update so the Cast Bar behaves."

Could it be it was reduced to 1.5s down from 2? Because as far as I can tell it's not casting in only 0.5 seconds.

I can cast it in 0.5 no problem

Yes you're right. It's working here now also

I would guess the client update was needed for it to fire correctly. Would have been a tiny one.

[Kaelang]

Zerging keeps will be super easy now. Pugs without healers are screwed by this. Guess they found a way to speed up the campaign.

Pugs without healers aren't a threat regardless of circumstance, it's just a bunch of solo players who don't know how to form compositions and are expecting to do something. If you're running 24 without a single healer, change or not, you're not doing anything but feeding.

Now the under populated realm has to either pick a zone and all sit afk in the keep, leaving the side with bigger numbers to run free in the lakes, or just take another zone uncontested, or they just forget trying to defend, and as soon as the outer is tagged it's over.

That's a player behaviour mentality, and not something devs should look to change. If you see this change as a 'welp better AFK', instead of 'let's discuss in region what's happening and sort out some flanks, let's be a nuisance and try to slow them down' - that's on you.

The changes made are obviously being monitored as they hit live - changes don't just drop onto the server and get forgotten about. But complaining about something within 2 hours, and 2 zone flips, is ridiculous. Let it settle and review it after it's been thoroughly played out. Stop trying to find things to be unhappy with before you've even played the changes.

It's not solely a player mentality issue though, it's a numbers imbalance issue and a game mechanics issue - once the difference in numbers reaches a certain point, or simply the mass of the funneling side's AoE reaches a certain point, it's impossible to break through one or two tiny choke points, regardless of how many healers you have, or if you're in 2/2/2 warbands. We've seen that time and time again. Absolving yourselves of responsibility for this is just a massive cop out.

Like I said - the intention is probably in the right direction, it's just the increasing absence of judgement or a gentle touch when it comes to mechanics adjustments or class balancing that's baffling. See class balance changes which lurch way too far one way and then get smacked back too far the other, rinse and repeat...

We just see changes being made that clearly haven't been thought through properly, and then the classic 'player mentality' or 'current meta' arguements get trotted out. You guys are the only ones with the power to chance the meta of the game, and the mentality of the players. Everyone else is just reacting to your decisions. Own them. (And hopefully make better ones...)

I’ll agree to a degree, devs here can somewhat manipulate the systems to adapt player behaviours, sure. And I appreciate that you’d rather gentler touches with changes - I’ll pass that along.

This being said, any change regardless of size is immediately scrutinised if it doesn’t look like it’s going to provide immediate return. Sometimes it takes these steep changes to see where the issues lie. The forums are consistently hit with feedback, some of which are QQ, some of which are valid - it takes testing changes like this sometimes to identify which is which.

To suggest that changes aren’t being thought through and are just thrown into a live environment however is relatively ignorant to the experience the developers have at maintaining this environment for multiple years. There’s discussions internally over changes that happen, as well as collective feedback between the dev team - they don’t just throw changes on live and YOLO.

Let’s trust that the team who have managed this server for years, somewhat know what they’re doing. If they’re proved wrong - changes will be mate in future patches. I’d they’re not - great, it’s working.

[Wam]

I think this change is good in theory to stop the "lemmings suicide" defense which was very abusive of old mechanics and overly effective leading to more and more stalemates (easy to defend when you can throw so many bodies at a issue) now actions require a bit more thought, risk reward.

Maybe outer being 85-90% damaged would be a better filter to stop respawns at keep... so if people sit in keep and use oil/scout they can still have a role to try slow down "zerg" a little and buy minor time for allies to react.

If not the zerg and cannon boys spamming keeps is going to maybe be overly effective for mass numbers smothering keeps and a bit too harsh on underdog... and I can already see the doom sayers breeding negativity.

A bold radical change and perhaps something long over due with some tweaking to find the right spot, between the balance of defense vs offense in high pop zones.