Thank You for the Feedback
Firstly we want to say a big thank you to all the people who filled out the recent feedback questionnaire, we greatly appreciate the time and effort it takes to write out your opinions and suggestions to us.
Your feedback has resulted in various plans being set in motion, as well as adjustments to some aspects of the proposed new systems we outlined in the previous Into the Vault post here on our website.
Before we get stuck into the rest of the post, we want to express that we are happy to see the vast majority of you who submitted responses to the feedback questionnaire are excited and looking forward to the content of the Territory Control Overhaul!
To recap a few stats of note:
- 95% of you said you were a member of a guild
- 86% of you said you thought the new Territory Regions are a positive addition to the game
- 80% of you thought that any guild should be able to contest Regions, rather than only Keep owning guilds
- 77% of you said you thought the new Outposts and their associated Outpost Siege mechanics will be a positive addition to the game
- Of the 23% who said they were not so excited about them, we isolated your feedback and saw that the primary reason was concern over issues like rampant AoE Elementalism spells and potential exploits such as climbing over the walls, and we are happy to say we are taking steps to improve that which will be detailed further down!
We are hosting another feedback questionnaire so you can all let us know what you think about the proposed adjustments, which will be linked at the bottom of this post.
Without further ado, let us continue on!
Splitting Up A Few Regions
Although the majority of feedback on this was that the shown sizes and quantity of our 31 new Regions was “just right”, there was a slight trend in asking for a few more Regions, particularly in certain areas of the continent.
As a result, we will be splitting up a few of the larger Regions to make new ones. Exactly which ones and where the split will happen is not yet finalized, however we are looking at the Eastern Greatwoods, Eastern Talus Mountains and Tindremic Heartlands.
Outpost Structure Adjustments
We have made various adjustments and plans based on your feedback about the Outposts.
The most common point of feedback we received about the Outposts was your concerns about Elementalism and the potential to both boost over the walls of the Outpost as well as generally saturate the inner areas with Area of Effect spells such as Fireball and Lightning Bolt.
We have also had these problems specifically in mind when designing the Outpost layout, and so we have included various measures to mitigate the issues.
Climbing Over the Walls
Firstly, it should not be possible to boost yourself inside the Outpost walls using Elementalism spells (or any other methods mind you, besides perhaps launching yourself out of a Manganon from certain angles) as there are one-way collision blockers on every wall.
Naturally we would prefer to also build out the physical design of the Outposts to visually represent that you are unable to access an area from the outside, however these blockers are the only safe way for us to almost guarantee that it won’t be possible.
Additionally, these collision blockers do not interact with projectiles such as spells, arrows, or targeting, so they will not interfere with normal fighting.
Elementalism AoE
As for the general threat of large AoE spells overwhelming the inner yards of the Outpost, we are planning to make several adjustments.
First of all, we are taking a look at the AoE size of the Fireball spell’s impact, and will likely reduce it to match closer to the spell’s visuals, so it doesn’t feel like you’re getting hit by it even when you are several meters away from where it lands.
We will also be looking at the balance of Lightning Bolt, and making adjustments where appropriate such that these two spells still have a specific individuality and purpose in a Caster’s toolkit.
We are also taking the chance to make additional adjustments to various other Elementalism spells in different ways, to make a few of the lesser used ones more appealing.
We have also added new structural elements to the Outpost outer and inner yards, with the specific purpose of breaking additional lines of sight which would otherwise be advantageous when casting many AoE spells at once.
Outpost Siege Stage Feedback
Oil Pot Production – Automated or Not?
The responses to our feedback questionnaire were surprisingly torn on this topic, with 53.5% of you thinking they should be produced manually by players, and 46.5% of you thinking they should be produced automatically.
Reading into why this might be a little more, we believe the significant desire to have them be produced automatically stems from experiences with the existing Siege Tents, and how they must be interacted with by many people to produce ammunition such as Boulders at a fast rate.
As a compromise here, we plan to take one of the following approaches:
- Allow the Oil Pots to be produced automatically at a slow rate, but be significantly sped up by even just one player interacting with the station.
- Require the Oil Pots to be produced manually by at least one player interacting with the station, however we will make sure that it does not require a lot of people to do so, even one player actively engaging with the station will produce them at a decent rate.
There will be a question about this in our new feedback questionnaire, and we would very much like to see what you all think about these two options, and hopefully the answers will be less polarized this time.
King of the Hill Flag Contest – Weight Based or Not?
As with the Oil Pot question, your answers to this were even more polarized.
- 51.4% of you said that you thought it should be weight based, while 48.6% of you said you would prefer if even one player from the opposite team should stop the flag from ticking.
On the surface this seems difficult to interpret, however looking closer at the data we can see a strong trend that those who voted for the mechanic being weight based belonged to larger guilds with more players, while those voting for the opposite tended to belong to smaller guilds.
This result makes sense and is expected, as naturally those of you in larger guilds would like to benefit from it, while those in smaller guilds would prefer the ability to impact the outcome of an Outpost Siege with fewer numbers, if engaged tactically.
Looking to one of the other most common points of feedback we received, a large number of you expressed concerns over making the new Territory Control content too favored to larger groups, or colloquially “Zergs”.
With this in mind, we are currently leaning toward the more favorable option for smaller guilds, which is to allow even one player from the opposite team in the stage 3 flag area to contest it.
We will likely ask this question again in our new feedback questionnaire, to see if the result changes somewhat now that it has had some time to be mulled over amongst you all.
Abusing the Region Contests
One extremely valid concern which was brought up more than once was the potential for friendly guilds to abuse the rules and cooldown timers of contesting a Region by contesting their own Regions with friendly or “alt” guilds with no intention of taking them, for the sole purpose of locking out other guilds from being able to contest them.
This behavior would indeed stifle genuine competition, and result in much frustration for everyone who would attempt to use the systems as intended.
To address this we plan to make various changes which combined together should help to mitigate this problem, such as:
- Individual cooldowns per guild on how soon you can contest the same Region after failing an Outpost Siege, which are longer than the base cooldown for the Region.
- This means attempting to contest a Region and failing will lock you out of contesting the same Region again for longer than other guilds who are then able to contest the Region. We are also looking at potentially adding this extended cooldown to all guild allies of the contesting guild, however this step is uncertain at the moment.
- We are also experimenting with the idea of progressively increasing cooldowns for the initiating guilds upon repeated failures when contesting the same Region within a short amount of time.
- Minimum guild member requirements.
- We plan to set this at a reasonable number of for example around 10, primarily to ensure people are not making “alt” guilds with only a few characters in them specifically planned for use in this tactic.
- Minimum Guild Tier requirements.
- This component serves the same function as the minimum guild member requirement, and acts as yet another hurdle to doing this easily.
Another idea we experimented with to solve this issue was to remove the “one attacking guild only” rule and thus allow any guild to arrive at the Outpost Siege event and compete for the Region, however this would have required a substantial re-write of a core system, that has been built so far with the one attacker in mind. A change this large would almost certainly require pushing back the release of the Reckoning Expansion, and so we needed to look elsewhere for solutions to this problem, hence the group of mitigating factors listed above.
If you have any suggestions for additional ways we could secure this from happening or being feasible, we would love to hear them!
Localized Regional Benefits
We originally planned for all of the Region benefits to be active globally for a Region’s owning guild regardless of where they are on the map. Primarily this was to ensure each Region could be appealing for any guild to contest regardless of where they primarily live on Myrland. However, after much consideration, we have made the decision to localize all the benefits of a Region to only be active when you are inside the Region itself.
This means if for example the Gaul’Kor Wastes Region offers an increased Ore Extraction Yield, you will only receive that bonus while inside the Gaul’Kor Wastes Region.
We believe this change will result in improved balance potential for all of the Regions, while allowing us to make each benefit more appealing and impactful considering they are no longer global.
Nation Standing Rebalance
Something which is not directly tied to any of the main previously mentioned features from the Reckoning Expansion, but that will still have a significant impact on the game is the coming rebalance to Nation Standing ranges, and the introduction of more nuanced Standing penalties.
All Standing ranges have been updated to scale from -1000 up to +1000 depending on the various in-world inter-clade relationships and lore. Each step of 100 Standing is also equipped with new descriptive labels which better represent how the Nation feels about you.
The additional granularity of the new range allows us to have different penalties based on what crime has been committed, such as for example a much greater Standing loss penalty when being reported for murder compared to simply being sighted by a town guard.
We are currently planning to leave the amounts of Standing gained from various sources alone for the most part, which means it will take a lot longer to reach your maximum caps for each Nation. It also means that it will take more effort to offset the Standing loss of murdering a lot of players, should you wish to maintain access to a Nation’s towns.
We have a lot more plans for utilizing this upgrade to the Standing system, however we will discuss those later on in the future when they become more relevant.
After the Reckoning Expansion
Planned Solutions to Existing Sieging Issues
In our last Into the Vault post, we outlined various existing issues with Territory Control and Sieging that we are aware of and want to fix. Some of the mentioned issues will require a lot more attention than others, and so because we don’t want to rush such sensitive changes and need to be able to take the time to do them correctly, we cannot do them now without pushing the Reckoning Expansion further away. As such, we are currently planning to work on a large batch of TC and Sieging related fixes and changes as part of a follow up patch after the Reckoning Expansion releases.
This future patch is planned to include not only many impactful and needed changes to Sieging, but we also plan to possibly expand on as well as adjust the various new mechanics being added with the Reckoning Expansion where necessary. This way we have a dedicated follow up patch for adjusting and balancing anything necessary related to the Expansion, without potentially taking unplanned time and effort away from our next planned Sprints.
To make sure you all remain a part of the discussion and iteration of these planned changes to the existing Sieging systems, we will list out our plans here for how we want to address each of the issues listed in our last post. We will then include questions about them in our latest feedback questionnaire linked below, so you can all let us know what you think about them, and whether or not they will improve the experience of sieging.
As such, please keep in mind that the following changes are not set in stone in any way, and are very much open to change depending on your feedback:
- Issue: Keep Supply Lines and Supply Storehouses being rebuilt during an active siege after being destroyed.
- Proposed Solution: Add “Destroyed” state to both structures that lasts until at least the active Siege Window has ended, which prevents them from being replaced until the window is over.
- Issue: Keep Supply Lines do not have no-build zones around them, resulting in the Supply Line being “walled off” by structures and not easily accessible as intended.
- Proposed Solution: Add no-build zones around all Keep Supply Lines.
- Issue: Using cheaper TC structures like Culinariums and Alert Towers as blockers.
- Proposed Solution: Add a guild specific placement distance restriction on these structures of 100m, preventing them from being placed too close together and used effectively as walls, or placement blockers for Siege Tents or Siege Machines.
- Issue: The 24 hour vulnerability window on newly placed structures making it difficult to compete against a much larger force, and resulting in many “offline sieges” on newly placed structures.
- Proposed Solution: Lower the vulnerability time on newly placed structures to 12 hours.
- Issue: Siege windows with the potential for “false / ghost sieges” where a Siege is declared but no attackers show up with the intention to waste the defender’s time.
- Proposed Solution: Add an option for the defenders to end the Siege early via some kind of win condition. Our planned solution to this issue ties very closely into the next issue.
- Issue: Siege windows applying global vulnerability to all guild structures so you don’t know where on the map a siege will happen until it starts.
- Proposed Solution: Implement a mechanic which requires the attacking guild to, after their declared Siege window begins, place an item (currently internally referred to as a War Standard) close to the structures they plan to Siege. This item will make the target-guilded structures around it vulnerable to Siege damage. The placement of this item would be visible on the map, as well as trigger guild-wide fanfares to alert the defending guild that it has been placed and where.
- This item would be contestable by the defenders, and if the attacking guild is unable to protect it, could result in the Siege window ending early.
- We are also considering requiring the attacking guild who declares a Siege to select which Region they would like to Siege, so the general area of the map is also decided and exposed before the Siege begins. Selecting the Region could also potentially allow us to do things such as having different length Siege window timers for different Regions, such as longer windows for Keep Sieges.
- This item mechanic would also allow us to phase out the Supply Storehouses, as we could simply change the default defence of every structure to be as if the Supply Storehouse was there, and simply begin to lower the structure’s defences in the presence of this item, to function in almost the exact same way but preventing the possibility of walling off or concealing a Siege-critical structure.
- Issue: Guilds primarily based within Wilderness Regions do not gain murder counts often, which results in them not being eligible for having a War declared against them, which makes Alert Towers which send alerts for guild enemies not function correctly in these areas.
- Proposed Solution: Update the War Declaration system to not require a guild to have at least two murderers to be eligible, while introducing new mechanics to prevent the War declaration system being used as a griefing tool.
- The mentioned update to the War declaration system is quite a significant overhaul, which would involve introducing scaling Upkeep costs to declared wars depending on the average Standing of the guild, making it economically taxing to maintain several forced War declarations on guilds which are in good Standing. It would also include a system for gaining a “Case for War” against another guild, which allows the forcing of a War declaration with no Upkeep required. A Case for War could be awarded in response to another guild killing your guild members, or damaging your guild structures outside of a declared War. It would also allow two guilds to declare a War against each other with both sides consenting, resulting in no Upkeep, as well as a new mechanic to “Sue for Peace”, by which one side of the War can make offerings to the other side to end the War early.
- The above brief description is a limited outline and view on some changes we have been evaluating for a long time now with the War systems, however despite this we must clarify once again that everything in this section is not guaranteed to make it into the mentioned follow up patch, or be implemented at all depending on your feedback. There will be questions regarding this in the new feedback questionnaire, so if you have any thoughts on it we definitely want to hear them!
- Proposed Solution: Update the War Declaration system to not require a guild to have at least two murderers to be eligible, while introducing new mechanics to prevent the War declaration system being used as a griefing tool.
- Issue: Players being able to resurrect extremely quickly at Territory Control and legacy priests in a short time span with almost no downside for repeated deaths, resulting in near unending waves of attacks despite being killed many times.
- Proposed Solution: Add a progressively increasing Death Sickness debuff when resurrecting at non-town priests, such that repeated deaths take longer and longer to resurrect.
As you can see, we have quite a few different plans to address the various existing issues with sieging. As mentioned earlier, some of these would require a lot more development time and effort than others, and so we still need to prioritize which ones would have the most positive impact and deliver the best bang for the buck in the patch after the Reckoning Expansion.
A few of these items are still being considered on whether or not we can try to squeeze them into the Reckoning Expansion as they might be necessary, such as the Keep Supply Lines not having any no-build zones. However, the vast majority of the above changes will certainly not be seen until after the expansion releases.
Possible Future Keep Benefits
As mentioned above, we are currently planning a follow up patch after the Reckoning Expansion to adjust various things and potentially expand on certain aspects of the major update which we can’t quite squeeze into its initial release.
Something we know could use more attention is the role of Myrland’s Keeps and the benefits and aspects of control they provide.
Keeps are already planned to have appealing and strong benefits which make them worth fighting for, however there is a lot more to explore here. Primarily in an effort to add more control for Keep owners over the Regions they own.
What follows is a description of what ideas we are experimenting with internally, planned for closer evaluation after the Reckoning Expansion releases. However as with the caveat given in the previous section, all of this is open and subject to feedback from you, the community!
It is also crucial to note that the items listed here are not guaranteed to make the final cut or be implemented, however we want to share them with you sooner rather than later to start discussions and hopefully get some valuable feedback about them all.
Potentially, as a Keep owning guild:
- Any Regions which your guild owns that connect back to your Keep in an unbroken chain of owned Regions could benefit from a multiplier bonus.
- For example, a Keep owning guild could own one adjacent Region to the Keep, and another Region adjacent to that one which does not border the Keep. In both of these Regions the owning guild would receive a greater benefit compared to a non keep owning guild. Should another guild contest and claim the middle Region, breaking the chain leading back to the Keep, the Keep owning guild would no longer receive the bonus while inside their now isolated Region which is no longer connected back to the Keep.
- You could modify the Upkeep Tax amount paid every tick on all Territory Control structures within any Region you own.
- For example, a Keep owning guild could set the Region’s Upkeep Tax modifier from +0% to +100%, ranging from no change to doubling the Upkeep Tax.
- This would allow Keep owners to have a direct impact on how much gold needs to be paid by all of a Region’s citizens for their Territory Control structures, fueling potential political conflicts and strategies.
- An additional idea that we have been experimenting with is to change the way Player Houses and Strongholds pay Upkeep once they have had a Claiming Stone placed inside them. As any structure with a Claiming Stone is considered a “guild asset”, we might be able to change them to instead draw Upkeep Tax directly from the Guild Treasury, opposed to being paid manually in installments of up to 60 days.
- This additional step, if feasible, would allow the Keep owners to vary the Upkeep Tax on all the Player Houses and Strongholds within a Region dynamically, without running into any issues related to the current manual payments.
- You could control and benefit from certain aspects of Myrland’s many towns, by owning the Region the town is located in, with an unbroken chain of claimed Regions leading back to your Keep. Such as:
- Earn a small percentage of the Broker Tax Fees
- Decide whether or not murderers should be allowed in town
- Decide whether or not the town guards will react to the War Combatant debuff
- Blacklist certain players from the town
- This would likely come as a limited and short list which you can populate with specific players who would then be killed by the guards on sight until they are either removed from the list or your guild loses control of the town.
- We have had many discussions about this in the past, and the request of a town Blacklist similar to how it worked in Mortal Online 1 has been submitted to us for quite some time. It comes with a few concerns however, namely the potential for it to be used as a “griefing” tool. We would like to open the floor for discussing this anyway however, as we believe there are a few extremely valid and healthy use cases for this feature, such as using it to combat “bad actors” who might frequent a town and seek to harm or inconvenience its citizens.
- One mitigating factor against this being used for griefing normal players could be to add an upkeep cost to each name placed on the Blacklist, which could conceptually be thought of as a bribe given to the town guards to look out for that person, despite their Standing. Such a cost could potentially also scale with the Standing of the player in question, making it harder to Blacklist players of very high Standing with a given Nation.
- There will be a question about this in the new feedback questionnaire, and we are very interested to see what you all think about it.
We Want Your Feedback Again!
What do you think about the above changes and plans?
Now is the time to let us know your thoughts in our newest feedback questionnaire!
The feedback questionnaire is now closed.
Thank you to everyone who responded!
Note
Please keep in mind that as development progresses, any details described above may change or be adjusted where necessary, especially the later sections regarding our plans for the future after the Reckoning Expansion.
See you in Nave,
The Star Vault Team