Mythic Highlights Upcoming City Siege Changes

[PhoenixRed]

Today, Andy Belford, Community Coordinator, dropped in a post explaining some of the things that Mythic is planning on doing in response to concerns about city sieging. Here's a snippet of his post:

My post earlier in the week was an acknowledgement of some of the areas that we recognize as concerns for the players about the City siege changes. As was stated, we have been in "observe and report" mode for the last few weeks. So what's the short term results of all that observing and reporting?

Well, we are planning to make the following changes by the end of this week

• Guild Hall access and functionality will no longer be tied to City rank. All privileges granted by the Guild Halls will be available in a 1-Star City.
• Cities will now start to recover rank more quickly. We have drastically sped up the effort required to rank your City back up.
• Access to the Citadel and the Imperial Palace will no longer be tied to City Rank. You will now have permanent access to the quests and vendors that lie within.
• We are retiring the two Scenarios formerly available when a City is under siege: The Undercroft and the Altdorf War Quarters. Ok, this is nothing new since 1.3.2, but this paves the way for...

• During Stage 2 of the City siege there will now be two scenarios permanently available for those of you who do not wish to participate in the City siege experience, depending on which City is being seiged: If Altdorf is under attack, then Reikland Factory is enabled. If The Inevitable City has fallen to the armies of Order, The Twisting Tower will be active.
  
  -These two scenarios will not contribute to the Victory Points of the City siege in any way however they will offer a 10% bonus to Renown and Experience gained.
  -Anyone from Tier 2, 3 or 4 may queue for these scenarios. For this Scenario only, everyone is Bolstered to 40 for some face smashing good times.
  -You may only queue for these Scenarios from outside of the City instance.

Source

[Gaugamela]

Bravo!
Those are great changes. And it is a good way of introducing those scenarios that were developed for the Live Events. It was a waste of development resources not having them implanted in the game.

Honestly, i feel that the city star ranking system is a relic from the times where the game was supposed to have 3 capital cities per pairing. It made sense in that context because although there was a 1 star ranked capital, the other 2 capital cities could be used instead. As it is the star ranking system is just an hassle for players.

It's curious that the way the game was designed at release is getting further and further dismantled... This just shows that the game endgame was poorly designed and that it wasn't Beta tested enough to find the flaws in that design.

First, the Fortresses aren't required anymore, second the keeps were redesigned, now they introduced scenarios for when the cities are on siege...

[Jostle]

Pretty cool! Now if they could only tell us when Fortresses are going to hold relics and if they can be sieged during a city push...

[Natums]

This addresses zero of the real issues with the city

Pathetic

1) access is to high, city should be weekly not daily experience
2) Content is to linear once in the city, each stage needs multiple things to do that are unique to the city, need to add pve content, ORvR, and scenario content for each stage

short-sighted, unprofessional, and kinda lackluster change

Very similiar to recent changes to balance by mythic

[Khaela-Mensha-Khaine]

Think someone didn't read the thread title, 'Short Term Changes'.

[Mjalnir]

I just hope they plan on changing how many zones you need to lock for a capital city siege. Without forts, locking 2/3 zones for the zerging faction is far too easy; If the enemy puts up resistance in one zone, you can simply go and cap the other one and reach IC/Altdorf.

[Vilhelmina]

Yeah, I'm happy with these new short term changes. Nice move.

Now get to nerfing Bombtards!

[Zodan]

I hope even GOA manages to push these changes before the weekend, I really do.

[Meztli]

Originally Posted by Zodan

I hope even GOA manages to push these changes before the weekend, I really do.

Lets pray together

[n0th]

Good short-term change.
This will make me play WAR more, as i would log-off the minute destro pushed to Altdorf.
This being said 1.3.3 and underdog system better be good..

[Snoxx]

Good changes.

I'm a bit worried about Undercroft and Altdorf War Quarters scenarios, because both require a lot of players (36vs36, right?) and will probably never open on my low-populated server, but we will see.

[Blacklight]

Good changes and a step in the right direction.... I just hope that if they're dropping the city lock times by 50% they understand that means they have to tweak a LOT of other things related to the city, such as:-

Every minute we're not in the city will be twice as damaging as it is now i.e. the lead the defending faction gets on the first PQ or the door hitpoints.. reducing city lock time by 50% should really also mean reducing the door's HP by 50%.

VP contributions will have to be accelerated by the same degree so we get to stage 2 lock twice as quickly as before because we have half the time.

Every Champion, Hero and Lord from Adell, throught the Warlord PQ bosses to the king and his sub-bosses, will have to have their HP lowered (technically halved).

The amount of time the defending side takes off the stage 2 timer will have to be cut in half, if it stays at 30 mins the attackers will be booted out of the city before they can complete even one warlord PQ let along the king and certainly not the warlord PQs and the king.

I'm sure there's more things to consider but if Mythic don't tweak all of this stuff and just lowers the lock times this change will be a complete disaster.

(I sincerely hope someone from Mythic reads this and reassures us that all of this stuff is being taken care of, I don't trust them in the slightest to get this right).

[stjobe]

What about the fact that city sieges are immensely more frequent than they should be? On Karak Norn, four city sieges a day isn't unusual, and it's really taking away from the T4 campaign.

For me, the city is boring. Open field RvR is my kind of fun, but it's increasingly rare these days. It's just zerg-lock the zones and another 2.5 hours of no T4 action. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I wouldn't mind so much if they made the city fun, but it's very rare to see a good fight in either Altdorf or IC. It's usually a steamroll from one side or no opposition whatsoever.

[AndrewSquared]

So someone fill me in on one tidbit, what exactly does a city's rank now give access to?

Other than that, these changes are ok in the short term, but we obviously all agree that in the long term something more substantial needs to be made to address the issues currently alive in regards to the city siege.

[KatzenKratzen]

Originally Posted by Blacklight

Good changes and a step in the right direction.... I just hope that if they're dropping the city lock times by 50% they understand that means they have to tweak a LOT of other things related to the city, such as:-

Every minute we're not in the city will be twice as damaging as it is now i.e. the lead the defending faction gets on the first PQ or the door hitpoints.. reducing city lock time by 50% should really also mean reducing the door's HP by 50%.

VP contributions will have to be accelerated by the same degree so we get to stage 2 lock twice as quickly as before because we have half the time.

Every Champion, Hero and Lord from Adell, throught the Warlord PQ bosses to the king and his sub-bosses, will have to have their HP lowered (technically halved).

The amount of time the defending side takes off the stage 2 timer will have to be cut in half, if it stays at 30 mins the attackers will be booted out of the city before they can complete even one warlord PQ let along the king and certainly not the warlord PQs and the king.

I'm sure there's more things to consider but if Mythic don't tweak all of this stuff and just lowers the lock times this change will be a complete disaster.

(I sincerely hope someone from Mythic reads this and reassures us that all of this stuff is being taken care of, I don't trust them in the slightest to get this right).

This man has the right concerns. The encounter, HP and score accumulation rate should be adjusted to the new city siege timer. Also NERF ADEL and make Warlord PQ's more challenging. Warlord PQ's are just boring while Adel's random one-shots are really something completely not fun.