Last week, WAR's Keaven Freeman started up a new thread discussing possible changes to keep doors. This post is a little late, not used to so much communication when planning my posts :) Needless to say, I'm happy to have this problem! Alright, on to the issue at hand.
Keep doors have always been an issue with WAR. Prior to 1.4, players could directly damage them. This was sometimes known as RvDoor, if there was no real defense being mounted. When 1.4 came along, keep doors were adjusted so that they could only be damaged by the ram and Skaven Rat Ogre. For some melee players, this meant they had less to do which is not very fun. Of course, hacking on a door isn't very fun either.
Let's take a look at what Keaven has proposed:
- Keep Doors would be open to attack by all enemy players
- Doors would be Enchanted and Reinforced, limiting the amount of damage they take
- Rams and Rat Ogres would continue to be the primary methods of breaking down doors
- Keep leveling progression would be changed slightly to accommodate the addition of a Wood Merchant
- Rams would become available at Keep Rank 5 (currently available at Rank 4)
- Arial Bombers would become available at Keep Rank 4 (currently available at Rank 3)
- Wood Merchants would become available at Keep Rank 3
- Wood would be available from the Wood Merchant for Gold
- The Wood Merchant would have a limited quantity of wood available for sale (possibly linked to resources gathered?)
- Players would be limited in how much wood they could carry at one time
- Both the door, and the player attempting to repair the door, would have to be out of combat
We may also see that a large enough force can just ignore the need for rams and Rat Ogres all together and just burst down the door. Either way, I don't think it will make keep sieges any more fun.
Giving players fun activities to do is going to be a challenge since keeps are quite small. Some players have been asking for ladders and other methods to bypass keep 'defenses.' This would just make defending near impossible if you have a smaller force. There are already a number of ways to bypass keep walls: Pick Lock, Arial Bombers, and Rat Ogre tosses. The last I don't see used very much.
I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I agree with Testpig's latest video. He gives some ideas that will make things a bit more interesting. It may not solve the major RvR issues, but it is something.
