The last few updates have been the epitome of taking "two steps forward and two steps back."
This last time the step forward was making a way to deal with unwanted Eudaemons.
The two steps back were: devolving the player farmsteads into a non-instance
Making Cloud City into a huge scene that takes along time to traverse and removes some of the convenient NPCs.
I also even have issues with how the Eudaemon "Selling" system was deployed, I'll start with that:
I think its unethical for there to be a button to "sell" Eudaemons. It reminds me of slavery. I don't know if these ar supposed to be demons or whatever but it sends a bad message anyway, especially since people tend to refer to them as "Kids" the result is people are encouraged to "sell" their "kids". All you had to do was turn the word into "dismiss" and I wouldn't even have thought about it. That said, I also am one of those who would have preferred if there would have been the option to merge two Eudaemons of the same class to get a single Eudaemon that has learned to be a better version and dismissing the other.
I've come up with a better alternative option than both and that would have been if we had a good reason to KEEP some of those extra Eudaemons. The reason I came up with that would make this game awhole lot more interesting is if we could deploy them into squads with our reserve troops, and let them grind and fight for the players. Let them live up to their name as "guards". This need only be available in 4-6 places. Wilds,Farmstead/Player city(should go back to being "instances",3 + house in fact:Countryside,Farmstead with the hamlet and house,Castle/Wall Siege) Dimension war and Sylph atoll. This should be so that there is a real pvp war aspect to this game. There is a very specific way that should be implemented so I'm willing to spend the rest of this post describing it.
Eudaemons- Instance/persistence squads, and Troop Wars
Troops,Squads and deployment-
Firstly the goal is not to make the game unbearable on players who aren't interested in a wargaming aspect. I notice that this game has been built to appeal to gamers of many different genre interests, that shouldn't change. But for those that DO want to have warfare, the Eudaemon squads are deployable with troops in certain instances. They can only operate in the instance they are deployed at until they are, eliminated,recalled or their deployment expires. They do not go through portals,enter cities or attack players unless the player is an "invader" such as in pvp city plunder/siege,dimension war or "Realm War" an event idea I will discuss in a different forum but its a faction/kingdom vs kingdom style weekly war event. That means players can attack them and the squads can attack monsters and other Kid squads, but not player characters*(they can harass though, see "Troops" section below) in Sylph Atolls,Wilds,or any other permanent common instances devs feel they could be deployed. I don't expect to see them in Battlegrounds, Amethyst mines,Guild Wars,SP Dungeons or MP dungeons..(remember low impact on other players not interested in wargaming.) But they can grind for players in Wilds and Atolls attacking npcs,sylphs,unoccupied goldmines and guard dimension corridors, and Farmstead/city siege instances that should be generated when a city is founded/moved and can be entered by the player to rearrange their defenses.(Yes put an end to the one hit plunders..well sort've those should become available for a week AFTER a siege has been successful and as a result of fighting in Guild Wars.)
The squads are deployed as a squad in the instance wherever the player is standing that is their spawn point once the player has assigned the Eudaemons ot a mission. Before they are deployed all the decisions of how they will behave are done in whatever control panel or screen is used to assign them to troops. You give the Kid Squads the desired formation and check off their "orders" before deployment. The formations are: 2-4 Eudaemons no troops,1 Eudaemon troops in front,1 Eudaemon troops in back. The squad will appear on the screen based on what kid or troop is in front or leader position of 4 kid squads. Again they will not cross through portals or go into another instance once deployed unless recalled to the player and the player goes there themselves and then redeploys them. The troops they use remain counted as reserves so players will not be able to recruit more troops than their normal max by putting some in squads. This means players will still want to keep only the best Eudaemons,maybe some as decoys and dismiss/merge the rest.
Troops
The troops strengths in this game need to be redistributed. So that every troop is fairly equal based on their levels. A level 70 lancer should be on par with a lvl 70 Demonic Knight as far as base stats. The only differences should be how they compliment the unit that leads them, and how the player has developed their troops specialties. This point allows players to feel unique and get into their characters more instead of having to use the same troops and tactics as everybody else using the same class of hero.
-"Pot Shots" This is an extra field distance attack each class of troops gets to harass other units they encounter before actually engaging in direct combat. These attacks will be activated/countered automatically by ai sometimes, or by players using a push button feat when a unit in range is selected and ready to perform them. devs try not to get too carried away with these (again,LOW impact changes). These attacks steal % of hp,magic and rage and can stun poison units for any battle they fight soon afterward, to soften targets for fights and set up field gauntlets/strategies,like tanks in GB, but these % reductions should not be able to actually eliminate a unit completely.
Melee troops (Lancers,Paladins,Templars,Taurens,etc)-Encirclement.I imagined the push button feat to be a circle of duplicates appears around the target, if the target picks the correct unit they have blocked the encirclement and might stun the attacker.
Mounted/Flying troops-(Knights,Demonic Knights,Gryphon?) I see this as obviously the attacker charges a target stunning it. The attacker must choose a direction that determines where the squad is facing and how far away they land after the charge. This is good for facing multiple squads, and every successful charge allows them to keep charging other unit faster. The counter is if they are able to use a QTE or something to dodge the charge, and flank the mounties dealing severe penalties and stuns to the attackers, and breaking their charging momentum.
Ranged troops (Hunter,Eye of Yaros,Umbral Hunters, anything with a bow,or dart) longest physical ranged attack, can shoot at any targets within visual range unless obstructed, deal hp loss, can cause stuns in next battle. No way to avoid the shots, but other ranged units can automatically counterattack if they win a QTE/feat match, other targets can use "take cover" reaction feat/qte to end the sniper's attack but they are "pinned down" from moving across the field for a few moments (until the special attack ends.) As one can see the best way to deal with ranged troops is to get a unit close enough to engage them because a few of them can slow a large umber of troops from moving and living long. Magical units and Mounted units with their ability to chain together charge attacks and therefore move across a battlefield quickly are clearly the best option to go after them. While answering with your own archery units are a good way to counter them long enough for other units to catch them.
Magical troops (priest,angel,warlock,demonic angel,etc) get area effect and chain reaction/lightning attacks, to hurt or hinder enemy troops and or terrain(eg icing the ground to stop mounted charges and generally slow movement,raising walls of earth to block ranged attacks,firewalls to quickly sow destruction throughout an enemy horde) maybe some monster summoning/banishing effects too, and healing other units.These will be troops to have on hand to make up for holes left open in a defense setup.
K that is all for now..not all at once. Please consider these ideals seriously, and avoid half arsed implementations of them. Next Weeks suggestion box: Siege to Plunder battles,Capital Cities fun and Realm Wars.
This last time the step forward was making a way to deal with unwanted Eudaemons.
The two steps back were: devolving the player farmsteads into a non-instance
Making Cloud City into a huge scene that takes along time to traverse and removes some of the convenient NPCs.
I also even have issues with how the Eudaemon "Selling" system was deployed, I'll start with that:
I think its unethical for there to be a button to "sell" Eudaemons. It reminds me of slavery. I don't know if these ar supposed to be demons or whatever but it sends a bad message anyway, especially since people tend to refer to them as "Kids" the result is people are encouraged to "sell" their "kids". All you had to do was turn the word into "dismiss" and I wouldn't even have thought about it. That said, I also am one of those who would have preferred if there would have been the option to merge two Eudaemons of the same class to get a single Eudaemon that has learned to be a better version and dismissing the other.
I've come up with a better alternative option than both and that would have been if we had a good reason to KEEP some of those extra Eudaemons. The reason I came up with that would make this game awhole lot more interesting is if we could deploy them into squads with our reserve troops, and let them grind and fight for the players. Let them live up to their name as "guards". This need only be available in 4-6 places. Wilds,Farmstead/Player city(should go back to being "instances",3 + house in fact:Countryside,Farmstead with the hamlet and house,Castle/Wall Siege) Dimension war and Sylph atoll. This should be so that there is a real pvp war aspect to this game. There is a very specific way that should be implemented so I'm willing to spend the rest of this post describing it.
Eudaemons- Instance/persistence squads, and Troop Wars
Troops,Squads and deployment-
Firstly the goal is not to make the game unbearable on players who aren't interested in a wargaming aspect. I notice that this game has been built to appeal to gamers of many different genre interests, that shouldn't change. But for those that DO want to have warfare, the Eudaemon squads are deployable with troops in certain instances. They can only operate in the instance they are deployed at until they are, eliminated,recalled or their deployment expires. They do not go through portals,enter cities or attack players unless the player is an "invader" such as in pvp city plunder/siege,dimension war or "Realm War" an event idea I will discuss in a different forum but its a faction/kingdom vs kingdom style weekly war event. That means players can attack them and the squads can attack monsters and other Kid squads, but not player characters*(they can harass though, see "Troops" section below) in Sylph Atolls,Wilds,or any other permanent common instances devs feel they could be deployed. I don't expect to see them in Battlegrounds, Amethyst mines,Guild Wars,SP Dungeons or MP dungeons..(remember low impact on other players not interested in wargaming.) But they can grind for players in Wilds and Atolls attacking npcs,sylphs,unoccupied goldmines and guard dimension corridors, and Farmstead/city siege instances that should be generated when a city is founded/moved and can be entered by the player to rearrange their defenses.(Yes put an end to the one hit plunders..well sort've those should become available for a week AFTER a siege has been successful and as a result of fighting in Guild Wars.)
The squads are deployed as a squad in the instance wherever the player is standing that is their spawn point once the player has assigned the Eudaemons ot a mission. Before they are deployed all the decisions of how they will behave are done in whatever control panel or screen is used to assign them to troops. You give the Kid Squads the desired formation and check off their "orders" before deployment. The formations are: 2-4 Eudaemons no troops,1 Eudaemon troops in front,1 Eudaemon troops in back. The squad will appear on the screen based on what kid or troop is in front or leader position of 4 kid squads. Again they will not cross through portals or go into another instance once deployed unless recalled to the player and the player goes there themselves and then redeploys them. The troops they use remain counted as reserves so players will not be able to recruit more troops than their normal max by putting some in squads. This means players will still want to keep only the best Eudaemons,maybe some as decoys and dismiss/merge the rest.
Troops
The troops strengths in this game need to be redistributed. So that every troop is fairly equal based on their levels. A level 70 lancer should be on par with a lvl 70 Demonic Knight as far as base stats. The only differences should be how they compliment the unit that leads them, and how the player has developed their troops specialties. This point allows players to feel unique and get into their characters more instead of having to use the same troops and tactics as everybody else using the same class of hero.
-"Pot Shots" This is an extra field distance attack each class of troops gets to harass other units they encounter before actually engaging in direct combat. These attacks will be activated/countered automatically by ai sometimes, or by players using a push button feat when a unit in range is selected and ready to perform them. devs try not to get too carried away with these (again,LOW impact changes). These attacks steal % of hp,magic and rage and can stun poison units for any battle they fight soon afterward, to soften targets for fights and set up field gauntlets/strategies,like tanks in GB, but these % reductions should not be able to actually eliminate a unit completely.
Melee troops (Lancers,Paladins,Templars,Taurens,etc)-Encirclement.I imagined the push button feat to be a circle of duplicates appears around the target, if the target picks the correct unit they have blocked the encirclement and might stun the attacker.
Mounted/Flying troops-(Knights,Demonic Knights,Gryphon?) I see this as obviously the attacker charges a target stunning it. The attacker must choose a direction that determines where the squad is facing and how far away they land after the charge. This is good for facing multiple squads, and every successful charge allows them to keep charging other unit faster. The counter is if they are able to use a QTE or something to dodge the charge, and flank the mounties dealing severe penalties and stuns to the attackers, and breaking their charging momentum.
Ranged troops (Hunter,Eye of Yaros,Umbral Hunters, anything with a bow,or dart) longest physical ranged attack, can shoot at any targets within visual range unless obstructed, deal hp loss, can cause stuns in next battle. No way to avoid the shots, but other ranged units can automatically counterattack if they win a QTE/feat match, other targets can use "take cover" reaction feat/qte to end the sniper's attack but they are "pinned down" from moving across the field for a few moments (until the special attack ends.) As one can see the best way to deal with ranged troops is to get a unit close enough to engage them because a few of them can slow a large umber of troops from moving and living long. Magical units and Mounted units with their ability to chain together charge attacks and therefore move across a battlefield quickly are clearly the best option to go after them. While answering with your own archery units are a good way to counter them long enough for other units to catch them.
Magical troops (priest,angel,warlock,demonic angel,etc) get area effect and chain reaction/lightning attacks, to hurt or hinder enemy troops and or terrain(eg icing the ground to stop mounted charges and generally slow movement,raising walls of earth to block ranged attacks,firewalls to quickly sow destruction throughout an enemy horde) maybe some monster summoning/banishing effects too, and healing other units.These will be troops to have on hand to make up for holes left open in a defense setup.
K that is all for now..not all at once. Please consider these ideals seriously, and avoid half arsed implementations of them. Next Weeks suggestion box: Siege to Plunder battles,Capital Cities fun and Realm Wars.
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