I would like thank you dev team for Stronghold, it’s my favourite game mode, however I believe it requires much more polishing to make it even more fun and enjoyable.
Since I only play Stronghold right now, I would like to share my feedback and thoughts on this game mode.
-> First defense/attack
Since entire defense is based on NPCs (Guards) and you can’t destroy Gate without killing those and I would like to note that Guards are too squishy, die too easy and too fast. We often see scenario when attacker/attackers rush Guards while completly ignoring defending player or players. What is more defender (or defenders) can’t stop enemies from slaying Guards if attackers got enough sustain, so basicaly only Treb could handle those situations, but Treb is kinda useless if there is more than one attacking person, since it’s impossible to use it under any kind of pressure.
Simply by just ignoring defending player/s and killing fast Guards you may force them to “fight” against flood of Door Breakers, who are much harder to deal with than Guards.
Also, because of same issue, Archers are useless for majority of game.
tl/dr:
-> Presence of defender often isn’t enough important and it’s often easier to kill Guards and ignore defenders.
Proposed solution to the problem:
-> Add buff called “Inspired” to the Guards if there is friendly player in certain range 360 or 600 (can’t be behind Gate) which reduces incoming damage to Guards by certain value, e.g. 75%.
This way we would gain two things:
1) Fighting enemy players would be more important than just ignoring them and doing PvE aspect of game mode, it’s PvP mode after all.
2) Archers would be more useful.
-> Mist Champions
There are basicaly two problems with Mist Champions.
First, channeling Mist champions can often be done while ignoring enemy player trying to interrupt us, thats because it’s not interrupted on damage but on so called hard CCs, so stacking blocks and stability may led to situation where it’s better to ignore enemy player attacking us and channel, especially if we were able to get faster to Mist essence than enemy because of reasons.
Second, Mist Champions [MC] give great pushing power which is already advantage, however summoning also gives 20 points. So team which was able to summon MC has gained twice, since if MC will allow you to destroy enemy Gate youre already +70 points and also closer to main objective.
Such situation means that often just channeling MC whenever it’s possible to do so more important than focusing on main objective, because even if your MC is left alone and dies, it doesn’t hurt you, because currently enemies doesn’t get points for killing it so you don’t even need to follow it.
Proposed solutions to both problems:
-> Shorten channel time of summon (10->7), but interrupt it on any damage, CC or w/e.
-> Give as many points for killing enemy Mist Champions as for channeling yours (20).
This way we would change following:
1) You would have to deal with enemy who could interrupt your channel of Mist Essence before you could try to channel it.
2) Players would have to follow their Mist Champion after summoning it, if they wouldn’t want to give up on points gained via summoning. So we would have more PvP than PvE
-> NPCs and AoE
All kind of AoE (e.g. Dragonhunter traps) is superior in this mode, because NPCs unlike players won’t step or dodge those and currently AoE abilities are just too strong in e.g. Lord room anyway.
Proposed solution to this problem:
-> Rework AI.
and/or
-> Reduce damage dealt by AoE sources to NPCs by ~50% or so.
This way AoE skills would be less opressive.
Thanks for reading my wall of text.