Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Where to Respawn?

Mythic is currently hard at work on Warhammer Online's 1.4.6 patch, but Keaven managed to break away and pose a question to the forums.  When the RvR revamp occurred, one of the major changes was where players respawned after they died in a RvR lake.  It went from the warcamp to the keep.  Keaven ponders if this is the best solution...

This is a Short Run discussion, meaning it will close at the end of the week, Friday, April 13th.
When we put a call out for bugs to fix in 1.4.6, one of the issues that came up time and again was how/when players respawned in their keeps. While not technically a bug, it was deemed an acceptable addition to the bug-fix list. We are looking at this issue, and want to get some focused feedback on it. We need to keep this somewhat brief, though, so we have time to get changes in and tested in a timely fashion. 
Currently, defenders will respawn inside their keep as long as one of the doors remains up. Once the inner doors have been breached, defenders are no longer able to respawn at the keep, and will respawn at the warcamp instead. There are pros and cons to this system, but as the cons were mostly against the attackers, it was felt acceptable since it facilitated additional combat by keeping the defenders at the keep, in a position to quickly get back into the defense.
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The post was to long to fully re-post, so check out the thread for the rest.

I like the current system for 1 major reason, it makes it easier to get where the action is.  Marching across a zone just to get intercepted and sent back to the start can be rather frustrating.  Currently, if this happens you are sent to the keep which is likely under siege (fighting!).

However, I can see where this system causes problems for the attackers.  If it is a fairly even fight, it gives the defenders a rather large advantage since their numbers will really just keep increasing.  In an uneven fight, it is a plus since defenders can actually put up a fight.

My ideal solution would be to tie the ability to respawn in the keep to a Battlefield Objective.  If the attackers want to deny their enemies that bonus, they can actively go do it.  The defenders can then choose to take it back if they wish.

Another solution, which I saw in the thread, was to tie the ability to AAO.  That way, only an outmatched side would be able to respawn in the keep.  That sounds like a decent solution to me as well.