Tioras wrote:
I generally agree with Gilgon (omg I can't believe I said that), but I'm hesitant about removing bounty NPCs. Granted, any elite player runs through them like a hot knife through butter, but the average player finds them a serious threat; they're a tribunal's first line of defense.
I truly don't understand why I couldn't bring my trib NPCs to Ayamao to defend it (if anyone were ever around QQ) when it's under attack. It really makes it so there is no benefit to an alliance over a truce, unless I've missed something.
As for the MC, yeah, they can tough it up and deal. Rynusi, you should know that MC has no need of it's law NPCs to defend Losache, and if they do, they're doing a pretty poor job of defending. Same for Harlies. If they don't want to deal with fighting a trib, well, they have ways of being unseen, don't they? Plus, if a trib can take law NPCs to enemy HQs, how do they get to the Manor if they can't go through uxmal?
Law NPCs can get to the manor through other means currently (as simple as having a friend sit 1 room outside of the HQ, opening a gate to them, and instantly walking inside -> gasp, your law NPCs stay with you.
An incredibly important part about game development is balancing a game for beginners, intermediate players, and advanced players. Take a look at starcraft for example: an incredibly large amount of testing was done to insure that the game had been balanced at a very high level -> that the newly put in 'lurkers' (in the broodwar expansion) wouldn't imbalance the game for beginners. Comically, Blizzard had to have 'crappy' testers who barely played Starcraft to battle against eachother alongside their 'pro' testers who tested the game for korean "gosu" play.
Anyways, I can't wait for SC2, but SK is the issue just now. Dulrik is notoriously hesitant to disable code he has spent time on, so perhaps an adjustment of bounty hunters rather than a removal could theoretically be done, if addressed appropriately. I personally would recommend drastically lowering the rate of bountyhunters appearing, but I would change them to add more tactics into their usage.
Perhaps if bounty NPCs were only level 35-40 NPCs but they appeared in customizable groups of 2 (a tribunal leader can make their NPCs spawn swash/barb, or barb/priest, or paladin/paladin, or any other combination) it would really make each tribunal have to decide tactically what combination of NPCs was the best for who they were up against.
It would take some balancing, and the #1 thing to remember is that the overall rate of bounty NPCs should go down, but it would add some interesting pieces to the game. These changes, though, would put more ACTIVE tactics into the game (always my top priority) and would help beginners, because tribunal leaders would doubtless have their 'set bounty NPCs' to be one that would harass their veteran enemies the most, so beginners would have the upper hand slightly.
To explain that a bit further...assuming a veteran warlock in a tribunal was always attcaking your city, you might want to make your guard NPC group sorcerer/sorcerer. This way, they would have a chance to dispel your enemies elemental and completely disable him. If an average pker who was a barb, though, came to attack your city -> he would be tearing through your sorcerer tribunal NPCs and have the upper hand.
Anywho, this suggestion would only require a couple of hours of coding (keeping low coding time for developers is always my second priority when proposing changes).
Groups of 2-3 level 35/40 NPCs that spawned infrequently but forced both tribunal member and attack to consider their method carefully could really add some flavor to the mud. This change would likely WIMP tribunals (if done appropriately), so it should be combined with letting tribunals bring their guards anywhere.
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