Another Monday is upon us, and I feel especially cranky this morning. WAR has not been helping my mood as of late. It has been rough times of Order on Badlands lately. For the past 3 or 4 weeks, Altdorf has come under siege every weekend. While it was interesting the first time, it is quickly losing its charm.
Not only is the city being sieged every weekend, we are starting to see fortresses being attacked during weekday afternoons. Most of the time, they do not even bother to attack the fort. When they do, it is just to try to lure defenders off the walls. We still have to defend it though, which can make for quite a boring hour. All the while they are pushing another zone.
Badlands used to be a 'balanced' server or so we thought. There was a time when Order actually pushed a fort a couple of times. However, even during this time, we never had the upper hand on the server. Since the patch which weakened fortress doors and stopped defenders from being rezzed near the keep lord, Destruction has been on a rampage. I'm sure the situation is reversed on some servers.
The Armchair Generals will be quick to say it is a tactics problem, especially when no one asked them. While tactics may play a part in some cases, the overall problem is numbers. On Badlands, Order just does not field enough people at any given time to put up a prolonged offensive. Stats site show that Destruction does have a character advantage, but not by a wide margin. What it does not show is how many are actually playing on average.
We do try an organize and go on the offensive. When we do, we are usually met with a larger force, which will change our tactics. All we can really do is go into speedbump mode to try and delay their capturing of zones. That is really doing just delaying the inevitable, because usually the side with greater numbers will win the war of attrition.
I am starting to get tired of always being on the defensive. Back before launch, I think I remember Mythic saying there would be some balancing mechanism that would make consecutive city sieges progressively harder. I may just be remembering incorrectly though. In any case, this is something that may be needed.
As it is now, the strong will just keep getting stronger. As someone who is constantly on the defense, that is not a prospect I want to think about as the game goes on. I have no desire to farm a PvE instance for hours on end in the city siege, just to watch the same folks take home bags. Even if the instance actually has destruction in it, I can only take a couple hours max. Last night, I could not even get into the city to help defend.
So what can be done? It seems Order is getting smaller every day. Tactics can only do so much when outnumbered by multiple warbands. The city battle is getting old fast. I'm not really in an alt mood either.
All that being said, I still do have some fun when I login. The battles on the small scale are enjoyable, just not the larger campaign.
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7 comments:
Hi!
I really see your point. I'm playing destruction in db mountains in EU. We have pretty much same situation there as you have on your server. Destruction is attacking the forts pretty much ever night and Altdorf couple of times per week at least. I'm getting bored too. The side of attacker is not any more pleasant than the defender. Being a part of a huge zerg sucks. Just basically same as playing the wow bot dungeons as the PvP is very limited. And if you are not part of the zerg there really is not much going on.
And the whole Altdorf is such a big dissapointmen :-(
But! Things suck now... but they must be taking notes. Fort and city sieges hasn't been going on that long yet. The haven't been able to gather data and oppinions from live server about the events until just recent. I have faith in Mythic that they will address the issue. The end game will be awesome in couple of months. We need to give them time.
Thanks for a great blog post.
Well, armchair generals who suck at strategy may blame tactics, after all "amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics".
Even if the defense could be "improved" such as to prevent city sieges, it still wouldn't make for any more enjoyable battles. The Blitzkrieg proved, once and for all, that static defenses are almost always an exercise in futility. That being the case, your most effective defenses are usually to surrender an area to an attacker, wait for most of them to leave, then push back against the limited defenses with overwhelming numbers. Ergo, not fun game play.
Unfortunately, war has never actually been all that fun for the participants. I'm not sure how they would make it more sporting though. The basic design flows just don't lend themselves well to fixing that problem. I'll be very interested in seeing Mythic's solution.
Hey Werit -- Ruined here (Chosen/Badlands/Bog Troopers)
I sincerely hope that your sentiments are not the general feeling of order on our server. Its funny, cause while Destro has been good enough to get to the City in the very recent past, I saw it (participating in both) as a very near thing (meaning it nearly didnt happen).
Both raids were due to a fair degree of coordination between multiple alliances. That means planning tier 3 raids to make sure the appropriate zones were taken, people being given specific PQ, Scenario, Keep taking etc roles. Thats all the is separating, in my mind, Order from doing the same thing with us. I would be interested in your comments. From what I am hearing, there is "friction" among what sounds like very strong leadership -- and if that could get ironed out -- it would be a different ball game. Am I off base?
I blame Order for having too many healers, not enough killers.
Seriously though. Some servers have some malaise that is falling over them. I hope the Slayer revitilizes Order, and gives them the "balls" to come after us hard.
@Ruined.
My sentiments are probably pretty positive compared to the rest of Order.
The problem is pretty simple. There are not enough Order logging on. I attribute the friction as a side effect of much losing.
At our best, we can maybe field 3 warbands, and that is with a lot of planning ahead. When we have done this over the past month, we end up seeing 4 or 5 warbands of destruction. While those numbers may not be exact, it comes down to the problem of not enough Order logging in.
@ Werit
It's the complete opposite here on Volkamr, I'm destro and order seems to out number us 3/1.
Reminds me of Averheim. Destro rolls order, order stops logging on because they're tired of getting rolled, destro continues to roll on.
This game is no different than any other game created since the beginning of time. If Side A keeps getting beat by Side B, sooner or later Side A is going to get frustrated. That's when the game stops being fun and that's when Side A stops playing.
When I play, I certainly don't expect to win every time. However, is it asking too much to log in knowing that you at least have a chance to win?
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