One thing that strikes me in this game is how incredibly fast and easy it is to kill all of the lords. Even the boss of Stonemist is a pushover if you can get into his room unopposed with about 30 people. I’m not saying 30 people should lose or even have a tough fight but they shouldn’t wipe him out in 15 seconds.
This is getting progressively worse as more people acquire “Exotic” tier level 80 weapons. (We can take out a supply camp with 2 people now. If it wasn’t for the blinds I think I could possibly solo it.)
Similarly, the zerg goes to a tower, smashes the door down in roughly 30 seconds and then kills the tower lord in literally about 5 seconds. It takes them longer to run from the door to the lord room than it takes to kill him. There’s very little opportunity for a “lord room last stand” or “defensive comeback”. If your team’s zerg isn’t RIGHT ON THE HEELS of the attacking zerg, it’s too late.
So I think Lord and Supervisor hit points should scale based on enemies in the area.
Not damage output, necessarily. Just hit points.
If a supervisor is under attack by 5 people, he has normal health. If he’s under attack by 50 people, he has 10x normal health. (And really, even “normal health” should be significantly more than now.)
I also think doors should should be even more resistant to regular attacks. Let rams continue to deal 8000 damage but reduce player damage to single digits. Doors shouldn’t drop in 30 seconds just because a ginormous zerg is out there beating it to death with their faces.
Along similar lines, all NPC guards in this game are almost totally worthless. There is a very fine line where the guards will make a difference. You plus the entire camp of NPCs in a fully upgraded supply camp can maybe stop 5 people from taking the camp. If it’s 10 people, though, then the NPCs might as well not be there.
NPCs in general simply aren’t performing the function I think they should, and the upgrades for them definitely aren’t worth the cost.
Not that I want this to be a “PvE game” but I also don’t want small groups of players to be able to wipe out all NPCs laughably fast and easily sweep a fully upgraded area so quickly that the only way to have a chance at defense is to already be standing there when they show up.
You know I completely agree with this. Because I for one, can solo a camp easily as long as its not upgraded with more guards. And I’ve had times where I’m trying to defend a fully upgraded camp, plus the mercenaries, (that’s a lot of effing guards) and 3 people destroy the guards so fast it’s like I’m alone. As long as you can kill the Lord you can solo towers/keeps if you can get in without much if any defense. That’s jut ridiculous. Not to mention the Green keep bug in EB now, as long as you can kill the Lord a fully upgraded keep is gone without you even knowing. (FC just did it to us last night. 3 people glitched inside and killed the Lord before we even knew it was under attack)
Lords and guards go down ridiculously fast, even to a small group. If they were completely removed from the game I doubt if most people would even notice. I guess they act as a “place holder” that identifies where and when a point can be captured. They are certainly not there to offer any type of resistance.
There is no sweet spot, because if the lords get harder; then there is less incentive to try and surpise attack an enemy when you are on the ropes.
Maybe guards and lords/supervisors should get an outmanned buff as well?
I’m also all for personalizing the lords, give them grandiose or even humorous names to make them stand out. “Fred The Fragile, Lord of Dreaming Bay”
If the NPC gets out manned buff at least they don’t have to pay for their repair cost. The guards and lords should scale according to size. They should be just as difficult to kill as the guild lords in GW1 GvG fights.
I’m pretty sure you could two man the lord in GW1 GvG fights, if not just solo it.
I’ve got no complaints about how it is now. If you have 1-3 people, you take camps, if you have 4-10 you can try for towers, 10 or above I’d try for keeps.
Maybe you can solo it, but it would take a while. The only time I actually saw a guild lord go down fast was with the earth ele spikers.
Right now the numbers you suggested are probably somewhat in the range of the intended use. But its more like got 40+ people let’s just zerg everything. By scaling at least the health and armor of guards to the size of the group, it would take longer then 5s to take a supply camp or a tower lord. Even the champion harpy takes longer to kill with a 40+ size zerg then a champion tower lord
I think the people in this thread are having two separate discussions.
1) NPCs should be tougher.
I disagree with this, because it discourages small groups and solo players even more than it is currently.
2) NPCs should scale with the amount of people.
This I agree with. A lord should scale up if there are 40 people compared to if there were only 10. Not only would this make it more reasonable without guards dying instantly, it would discourage the mega zergs people always complain about. Not to mention that this is how bosses work in other aspects of the game.
With the future of champions also dropping a reward chest, these champions will definitely need to scale.
Scale them as an anti-zerg measure. Also capping speed of objectives need to have a ceiling and not scale infinitely like it does now in camps/towers/keeps. Make it like taking control of a sentry point.
Maybe measures like this would help break up zergs, or at least slow down their WXP training.
Even more zerging and now mob HP Bags. I absolutely cannot wait for this bold new vision.
Even more zerging and now mob HP Bags. I absolutely cannot wait for this bold new vision.
Urrid, can you make a constructive contribution as oppose to whatever point you are trying to make with that comment?
I would rather see a different mechanic to denote the capture of a keep/tower but I think the keep lord is the easiest and most cost efficient way to do things.
I think it is rather stupid that a single npc can withstand all that a zerg is tossing their way. I can see a giant creature like a dragon absorbing the punishment but not a keep lord.
Buffing an NPC will not give more meaning to defeating the NPC. For an example see Capt. Kitty Siegeraiser, the breakout NPC in WvW. He is nothing but a bag of HP that smart servers leave ineffectively beating on a tower gate to prevent further breakouts. Killing him ONCE is interesting. Any time after that is a pain in the kitten.
Making NPCs in a WvW map “harder to kill” like Siegeraiser or parish the thought, The GRUB, do not give challenge to players.
What it would do is give defending players more time to get to an objective or form up a counter zerg. That is about it. It will not make players feel more accomplished.
If you want to make a Tower/Keep capture more meaningful approach it from the perspective of giving players better tools to play such as commander tag options.
This will encourage players to defend their map assets and by proxy give back some meaning to “flippping” a tower or keep.
Buffing an NPC will not give more meaning to defeating the NPC. For an example see Capt. Kitty Siegeraiser, the breakout NPC in WvW. He is nothing but a bag of HP that smart servers leave ineffectively beating on a tower gate to prevent further breakouts. Killing him ONCE is interesting. Any time after that is a pain in the kitten.
Making NPCs in a WvW map “harder to kill” like Siegeraiser or parish the thought, The GRUB, do not give challenge to players.
What it would do is give defending players more time to get to an objective or form up a counter zerg. That is about it. It will not make players feel more accomplished.
Good point. I think what we are discussing here is not just static buffing the lord, but to scale it to the amount of people attacking it. I was not thinking a breakout type heath, more rather enough health where a 50 man zerg won’t drop him in a second. if 10 players are attacking the tower the lord will not have much health where there are 50 attacking.
Its not meant to be a challenging fight, but it shouldn’t be a walk in the park either. Getting a balance between the two is what is needed. Scaling the lord/guards is just a proposed way of doing this.
In reference to the breakout, he does have a stupid amount of HP, but you don’t have to kill him for a tower, you do however have to kill the lord in order to cap. I also don’t think siegerazer scales to the number of people
The npcs can’t do all the work for you. On my guardian I can generally keep the claimer lord alive against 5-6 guys long enough for reinforcements to come. He should not be a buffer for bad scouting and defence.
Maybe measures like this would help break up zergs, or at least slow down their WXP training.
I understand your point of breaking up zergs, but you could accomplish (if not do better) the same by having 1-2 people stay in a tower manning superior AC’s.
Even better, have an upgrade option that teaches archers how to use AC’s and Ballistas. That wouldn’t even be a particularly difficult thing to code AI wise…
Why would you want to slow down WXP farming? That part makes no sense to me. The chests are basically worthless anyway. I only know of one or two people who have gotten an exotic out of the them. You get better loot from killing players. If you’re talking about the WvW character buffs from WXP, that’s laughable. It doesn’t take very long to get any skill line maxed out except guard killer, defense against guards, and increased supply carry. All of the “useful” lines are cheap enough.
We’re not saying that the Lord should be able to fight off zergs. We are saying that the Lord shouldn’t drop in less then a second like he was tissue paper. It should scale so it takes a 50 man group a similar amount of time a 10 man group takes to kill a lord.
Perhaps this will discourage zergging a tower and encourage breaking up into more 10-15 sized groups instead.
This is getting progressively worse as more people acquire “Exotic” tier level 80 weapons. (We can take out a supply camp with 2 people now. If it wasn’t for the blinds I think I could possibly solo it.)
I can and have taken supply camps Solo with yellow (rare) gear, no exotics required.
i think they should…. personally i think Champion Lords and Veteran Supervisors are jokes now…
I think the people in this thread are having two separate discussions.
1) NPCs should be tougher.
I disagree with this, because it discourages small groups and solo players even more than it is currently.
2) NPCs should scale with the amount of people.
This I agree with. A lord should scale up if there are 40 people compared to if there were only 10. Not only would this make it more reasonable without guards dying instantly, it would discourage the mega zergs people always complain about. Not to mention that this is how bosses work in other aspects of the game.
The problem I see with this is it’d make it too much in the defender’s favour, because they could use a mega-zerg to defend without penalty. They should make it controlled by the amount of defenders present, less defenders, stronger lord; more defenders, weaker lord.
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