[1796] Siege changes

How is it "trashy"? Setting up offensive siege is supposed to give an advantage. It makes perfect sense that knights need to be nearby so they can quickly respond to an opening. Why on earth would you be using a ballista to shoot only where your team can't go? I thought you were saying offensive siege was an important tool to end a game when you have more control of it, if bomb bolts can teamkill it would just as easily sabotage your push. Usually when you have forward siege you have to make a choice with each bolt, shoot at the structure, or shoot at the fighting? If your knights are doing well and as a result, have climbed up their base, then the structure and the fighting are in the same place, why should you be punished for that? It is a little harder to push against a ballista, that's pretty much the point, you lose control of mid and the enemy has the opportunity to set up there to make it easier for them to win. They are rewarded for their conquest. It's not impossible to come back by any means, but it is harder, and will take some good plays.

I guess I might have misunderstood your idea of "defensive" siege use. I see it as a ballista set up on your tallest tower that you built over flag on buildphase, that makes it impossible to build anything in the no man's land. That's what I think is the actual problem, a game begins, one team gets the advantage and starts setting up forward structures, then when both teams set up a ballista on their base, all the terrain past the flags becomes a desolate crater. If you're foolish enough to build anything there, it gets demolished in a matter of seconds from the completely safe base ballista.

I still don't see why you think the black area one is infeasible. It's true that it wouldn't work on every map, but I think it would definitely fix some problems.

And yeah the air time nerf is to deal with the ridiculous range, and while it might be easier to nerf the range outright, it would still get more and more range with height, which doesn't really fix the problem of desolate crater middle areas ruled over by a few massive flag towers with siege. The air time nerf should fix that.

Ways to reasonably regain ground to fend off ballista:

• Play especially well, dodge/break some bolts, and win the fight from a disadvantage.
• Bombjump over there and mess it up.
• Don't even try to regain ground, just snipe it with bomb arrows

Most of the options are difficult, but when the enemy has siege set up and is blowing up your shit you're supposed to be at a disadvantage. That's their point as game enders. It isn't impossible to come back from that though.

 

Look, when you're getting rekt and your fighters all get demolished and the enemies have a bunch of space to set up shop right outside your base, it's supposed to be kind of an "o shit" moment, when they start setting up a ballista. If you can't come back and swing the fight your way somehow, yes, you are in a really bad position and will probably lose. But it's obviously not impossible to come back from that, there are a ton of ways to ward off siege, and yes, they mostly involve a fast response and some tight gameplay, it isn't even that hard to just shoot a couple bomb arrows at it. You're painting it like a ballista can destroy an entire squadron of knights and destroy the base at the same time, which is only true in pretty specific situations. Like I was saying, most of the time you can choose to shoot your ballista at either the base or the enemy fighters. Teams don't instantly surrender the moment a siege engine comes out, but if nobody deals with it, it accelerates the losing team's downfall. This is basically the good part of siege. I guess I'll just keep stressing that setting up siege right in front of an enemy base is supposed to tilt the game in your favor, that is what it does. It's a reward for winning a fight, it adds to the sort of snowball effect. So in that context, it isn't supposed to be 100% fair! The game isn't supposed to be 100% fair all the time, when a team plays better than the other side for a while, that translates into an in-game advantage. I don't think this is a problem.

I get that, but I think any solution that doesn't involve making it really easy to accidentally teamkill someone when there's low communication (which is basically every pub game) should be sought out. If you don't think it's fair that siege can be used to kill enemies, and to be honest I think it's too strong as well, it would be much better to simply nerf its effectiveness at doing that more directly by reducing its damage, or making it more readable as a weapon by adding animation or some other visual indication or even just a sound that reveals when a siege engine is charging up a shot. That would make it feel like such less bullshit, and that's why other solutions should be sought rather than making it easier to be instagibbed by your teammates.

...There is literally nothing that would fix all the problems. Why wouldn't you add something that fixes some of the problems and doesn't seem like it would introduce any more problems? It wouldn't work on every map, yes, but it wouldn't harm the maps that it wouldn't work on.

And yeah I guess the airtime thing might not really be elaborate enough. The idea I think was to encourage direct placement rather than bolt rain from afar, and I think it would do that to an extent but I think high-arcing shots have their place. I think if the bolt exploded if it got to a height below its ballista (or at a certain distance below the ballista), that would probably work better. You'd basically have to put them on the ground, but that seems fine to me, they feel less untouchable when they're on the ground, and more fair. But at the same time, I think it's natural to want to put siege atop a tower, so I'm kind of conflicted about this... I'm gonna need to bust out the ol' mspaint sometime to try to draw siege range restrictions that look fair and could be implemented

 

Just to round out the HUGE INCREDIBLY LONG ARGUMENTATIVE POSTS THAT WILL OBVIOUSLY CHANGE THE OTHER GUYS' OPINION ON THIS MATTER WE ALL FEEL DEEPLY ABOUT

Ballistae, bolts, and the bomb bolts upgrade all cost more next build. Obviously this doesn't affect TTH, but I don't have time or drive to change things there at the moment.

 

Yes it would, 100 gold.

Should make it less of a "default" choice over building tunnels and will slow down the spam of them while not making them totally inaccessible. We'll see how it goes, I dont have time for a more in-depth change and team damage is not something we're really happy to consider at this point, it's just more griefing/complaining potential.

 

It's four bombs worth. A little less than a keg. Two bomb arrows. When you think about how safe and easy it is to shoot six bomb bolts, it still seems like a pretty good way to destroy shit. Assuming nobody is slashing your ~15 coin bolts :P

 

Limiting the amount of Ballistas and Catapults always sounded good in my opinion. Bomb-Bolt spammy Ballistas are not always reachable with bomb or normal arrows, as most of the players claim.