Guards respawn

[Friend 2]

Today, we as BL have tested the new respawn system of deed guards.

We spent around an hour killing 75 deed guards in a mix of pain rain and by fighting trough them with weapons with around 10 people of which 3 were champs and one was not really a fighter. We didnt get desturbed much during this, the time to kill them seemed reasonable.

The results:

- Guards dont respawn until all guards are dead

- Guards respawn in constantly increasing numbers: 2, 5, 7, 9, etc.

This continues up until the deed is filled again. Killing the guards wont reset the respawn increase.

In the test here, the deed had poor defenses and we didnt bother to try and get to the token but in a deed with actual defenses i can understand the concept behind this.

How this works in reality is the following: guards function as an obstacle for raiders to go trough, it takes time and after they are all dead, there is a limited time to raid the place before they respawn in constantly greater numbers. By then the defenders should have a sizable force to fend off the attackers, since a deed shouldnt rely fully on guards. The bigger the deed/guard numbers, the more time it takes to get inside though and the more guards will spawn over time.

In conclussion, the far cheaper heavy guards wurm has now give defenders time to get together and defend the towns themselves while not taking over all the work from the ones under attack.

Guards are now far cheaper in wurm, allowing for greater number of guards. and the way it is set up now, it is actually harder to raid a town for a long time. It gets easier to raid a town in the first 30min-1hour after killing all the guards, but after that it will become increasingly more difficult.

This is how i see it. Lets see if we can have a normal discussion without personal attacks.

[PoolsClosed 37]

I appreciate your observations and the time you and your associates put into testing. This knowledge benefits everybody, even our friends on Freedom.

[Ols 305]

People at HoM seemed pretty annoyed about this. The "large burts" comment by Rolf implied they would come back very fast, and the time they took could have let us be drained. Personally, I think the system needs a little rethinking, but overall it's a good idea.

[Nadroj 3,554]

People at HoM seemed pretty annoyed about this. The "large burts" comment by Rolf implied they would come back very fast, and the time they took could have let us be drained. Personally, I think the system needs a little rethinking, but overall it's a good idea.

my annoyance was in that it didnt happen as was described.

They did not start respawning when 10 were left.

They did not respawn in large bursts.

[Maximustehgreat 353]

9 people take out 75 Heavy guards.....Real.balanced..........Yeahhhh ok!

[Friend 2]

I think it depends on the defenses a town sets up. Imagine for example LO's old dirtwalls. it took many many hours to break those down. The full plunder of it took 4 days of which 3 without defenders.

If defenses are set up and there are defenders, guards are the least of the problem the attackers should have.

People at HoM seemed pretty annoyed about this. The "large burts" comment by Rolf implied they would come back very fast, and the time they took could have let us be drained. Personally, I think the system needs a little rethinking, but overall it's a good idea.

my annoyance was in that it didnt happen as was described.

They did not start respawning when 10 were left.

They did not respawn in large bursts.

Yes, it seems his wording was a bit off or maybe we killed the last 10 guards before new ones respawned, not sure. We were alert expecting many guards to respawn and that didnt happen. but they are spawning in ever increasing numbers, giving defenders a chance to group up after all guards have been killed, and attackers a chance to try and get a bit of plunder.

[Burtward 0]

Yeah well once 75 guards are dead every ~7 minutes the number of guards double, within an hour or so you're going to get a giant burst of almost all the guards at once. Reasonably with a deed that size we have about a half hour window once your guards are dead to burst through ALL your walls fight ALL your defenders and get the drain and loot all the houses.

I'd say it almost isn't enough really.

And yes, 9 people took them all down but it took over an hour and 3 of them were champions, we had 0 resistance from MR bar a couple arrows shot our way which did nothing. You should not expect spirit guards to defend your deed for you.

[Friend 2]

well they dont respawn that fast, burt. it deffinetly doesnt need a nerf but i like the idea behind this setup:

Guards slow attackers down, giving defenders time to group up and set up to hold attackesr off, but defenders are needed to defend and cant rely on guards alone.

Bigger deeds: bigger slow down on attackers and eventually bigger bursts of guards

[Ols 305]

I'm frustrated by the system but I can't say it's bad. I guess Rolf's wording was a bit misleading.

[Nadroj 3,554]

i agree in principle. but this system really screws any new towns that are building up and don't have decent defences yet. Like ours. HoM may be able to survive ok due to its massive sizze forcing enemies to catapult on deed etc. But smaller towns and so on i can see never ever managing to get their defences up if their location is found out, as is the norm.

only 9 of you killing 75 guards is a bit extreme dont you think? especially considering the difference there would be if the numbers had been higher.

[Horton 114]

Naturally the BL are wallowing in acceptance with these guards respawns but i fail to see the burst Rolf spoke up.  

The way i see it the guards should respawn as they were killed.  

If you killed 30 guards with pain rain the first time reinforcements show up it should be the first guards that were killed not a trickle so that every time they respawn they are massacured

[Nadroj 3,554]

I honestly see these tiny little trickles of guard respawns at long intervals as the system not working as intended. Basing this off of the words of Rolf himself saying "Large Bursts"

Unfortunately this got "tested" on our guards on a Friday so it'll be days before anyone can speak to Rolf about the matter.

[Friend 2]

The way guards respawn now is a constantly increasing number making it eventually unbearable to continue the attack, at this point, the defenders would have succeeded. until this timer is reset (probably after 24hours like how it was in the old system)

The attackers role:

Kill all the guards, raid/plunder until guards respawn ontop of defenders become unbearable, and then leave

The defenders role:

Build defenses to slow down raiders together with the guards, gather reinforcement when under attack and repair and fend off the attackers after the guards are dead until the guards come in such a force that the attackers have to give up.

This really puts the responsibility by the defenders and their defenses instead of an AI guard

Guards are now cheaper, allowing for greater numbers of them to slow down defenders and make the bursts bigger over time.

[Horton 114]

Look just because you like it does not mean its what was intended

There was no Large burst

[Nadroj 3,554]

As i said PTO. It screws over a deed that hasn't got those defences built yet.

Also what Horton said, just because you like the way it works doesnt mean it's as intended, i feel that it isn't working as intended because neither of the things Rolf said about it happened.

[Friend 2]

Its not about me liking it or not, i am saying how it came out from the test results.

"There was no large burst", This is correct, not at the beginning, but the numbers of guards that respawn increase over time.

Nadroj, Ye i agree it does screw over a deed without defenses. but the old system did the same really, any deed without defenses has easily been raided. As example the Woodscove raid can be taken. There were no defenses and a drain was achieved but after the defenses came up, no one wanted to try anymore.

[DragonSpawn 0]

As i said PTO. It screws over a deed that hasn't got those defences built yet.

Also what Horton said, just because you like the way it works doesnt mean it's as intended, i feel that it isn't working as intended because neither of the things Rolf said about it happened.

why should an un defencive deed be hard to drain?

[Norad 0]

you guys bought a deed expecting the guards to do all the work for you.

rolf never, ever wanted npcs to take over the jobs of actual players.

the guards are there to augment a defense, not supply it.

get better at the game and try again.

[Friend 2]

Come on, this isnt going to bring the discussion the right direction. Lets not make this go into flames.

[Norad 0]

no discussion deserves to be had, there is nothing wrong.  you sat there for over an hour according to your post mostly undisturbed and killed guards.  its obvious the defenders want to buy their problems away and that's just silly.

[Guest HamsterPants]

no discussion deserves to be had, there is nothing wrong.  you sat there for over an hour according to your post mostly undisturbed and killed guards.  its obvious the defenders want to buy their problems away and that's just silly.

Friend wants this conversation to be civil. So just calm down dammit, all of you.

If there's no discussion to be had, then don't participate in the discussion.

[Gavin 971]

Question to MR: What would you consider a fair burst of guards?

Note: going by these numbers after 2hrs 20 guards spawn every 7 minutes, can you honestly even begin to imagine the force required to do that? even the 55 person raid force on woodscove couldnt do that at the time, to make matters worse templars have been buffed since then and shields have been nerfed.

[Friend 2]

well at the same time champions and kingdom bonusses are introduced though so thats evens it out a bit. the 'norma' guys like Zerobyte who really is a good skilled fighter still can get down to bleeding which was the case here though.

[Maximustehgreat 353]

Nadroj, Ye i agree it does screw over a deed without defenses. but the old system did the same really, any deed without defenses has easily been raided. As example the Woodscove raid can be taken. There were no defenses and a drain was achieved but after the defenses came up, no one wanted to try anymore.

You don't seem to know many facts about that, At the time the drain was achieved because the heavy guards were naturally weaker and hadn't been updated with the times. Also i'll point out the same problem happened there as it did today, They guards did not come back fast enough. I'm not going to disclose figures to how many guards respawned today until i can talk with Rolf on monday.

The respawn time for guards on a deed this size was really utterly pitiful Nowhere near the old system we had in place. I will point out again, 9 people should not be able to take out 75 guards in that time. To take out a deed that size should take in excess of 60 people.

It should be an epic event.

Based off the past large deed i lived at "Woodscove" was size 50 having 66 heavy guards, That took roughly 50 people to take out and that was with us defending the token center. For 3 hours of defense we got guards respawn in 2's and 3's in that 3 hours and they were easily cut down, That reminds me of what you lot pulled off today. So to correct your point of it having no defenses it very well did have.

so please tell me why should 9 people take out 75 heavy guards?

If this is how fast a big deed respawns, I'd hate to think what would happen to a small deed

[Nadroj 3,554]

no discussion deserves to be had, there is nothing wrong.  you sat there for over an hour according to your post mostly undisturbed and killed guards.  its obvious the defenders want to buy their problems away and that's just silly.

You're clearly trolling but meh.

How can any deed of any size build up if the amount of guards they pay for don't help to defend them? Like while building a new deed i would put the gaurds on max and pay a little extra for the security while i build defences so that i don't need to pay through the nose so much because i can defend. But up until i have those defences bbuilt i would rely on the extra money i'm spending to help me defend. In this case a small group of people can kill of any number of guards no matter what i pay for and if they want, grief constantly to prevent me ever building up the defences to a decent level.

You can complain that we spend a lot of money on a deed with a lot of guards all you like, but the fact is we pooled together and fought to get the money for this deed to be planted. It's not like some millionaire waltzed in and paid for the whole place in one shot. We paid through the nose for a big deed and that took effort, then we paid through the nose again for a LOT of guards to help us defend it while we build the deed up, they cost so much in fact that we requested horton put the capitol bonus on the place.

So the argument "they try to buy their problems away" seems rather silly to me because yes we pay a very large sum of money for this deed to be protected so that we can get it built up. With this new coding system no amount of guards will help, it makes no difference if we have 75 of 750 because they respawn at this ridiculous tiny little amount at a time.