Client Release 0.3.6 - From Dusk till Dawn

[Kwal]

Imo, more maps need to get edited in the way Swadian Town was, it's really cool to see an increased destruction from the Nord siege and new Swadian barricades popping up.

[capn_carroll]

"I don't think it was easy before.  I mean, how many times do people even get close to getting to last wave on hard mode?  Not very often at all... 

"People arent going to think of new tactics around this one if the # of NPCs are constant.  Only thing that is going to work is knights running around and archers picking them off.  Look, I like a challange too.  And thought that the game was already challenging enough.  But now we wont get past the first few waves in most of the levels. 

Maybe decrease the amount of assist xp given off from killing NPCs in hard mode.  There are other solutions than to just close off part of the map IMO. 

Having shielders in front, two handed overhead swingers behind, and archers in the back all while managing the barricades/shields/health/ammo seemed like good team work to me.  If there are no choke points in those levels, then make them.  But maybe make them on a surface barricades/shields cannot be deployed on.  The only teamwork I see now is people running around like headless chickens waiting to get killed." 

I AGREE with you Jay Nova, this game is getting old because no one can even make it past the first few waves anymore, and now with no choke points it's going to be impossible, the developers possibly started a major kill off for this mod.

[Birdtalon]

Without reading everything of the above conversation, I think I get the general gist of what people are saying.

The main point as I see it here is balance.
The development team are working hard to try and add new things regularly while still keeping the game balanced, while many people would argue that the game is not balanced a statement which I would agree with (see the large numbers of people respecing to cav due to Thunder Lance Buff). The fact is that it is nearly impossible to keep a game like this balanced.

Nord Invasion by its very nature (A XP/Level system based game) encourages grinding, and as such people will look for the choke points to build shield walls to grind away. I am not privy to the thoughts of the development team. But from my angle, it looks like they are trying to remove teamwork from the game.

Lets look at two scenarios shall we;

#1: Team builds a shield wall. Everyone has to contribute to bringing shields/medic box/ammo crates. There we have teamwork. Someone has to shield while others attack, archers fire and medics heal. Yet more teamwork. Rewards are reaped by the entire team in the form of assist XP. There's the benefit to teamwork, and the grinders with 2h weapons and the archers get the drops. More benefit to teamwork.

----

#2: Team cannot build a shield wall due to lack of defensible terrain. As a result of this, a large majority of the weaker characters in the team die quickly due to being overrun. In smaller maps like Swadian City, now that shield wall building places have been removed, everyone just gets backed into a corner and swarmed one by one. On larger maps, the harder waves just result in a huge chase which results in all characters except the cavalry dying and we are back to the situation where everyone is watching one cavalry character kill everything.

By removing places where shield walls can be constructed, are you not removing the means to teamwork?

Please do tell me if I'm seeing this from the wrong angle.

[Fighting Phil]

We can speculate a lot around teamwork with current balance, but what we lack is point of view of developers, we dont know where mod is heading and how it will looks like in future, maybe current limits fit very well in future version of NI lets say 0.4.0
I think the main question should be: how devs see teamwork in the mod? and what teamwork is designed for future versions?

[Nemeth]

As of yet, commandos are close to useless without the ability to block off an area with shieldwall. They get overhwelmed by the sheer amount of bots coming at them. Without choke points, its virtually impossible to get to the later waves in Hard Mode without cav herding the bots, which I find even worse than camping one spot.

IMO, these are the two ways of how Invasion mods work.
1) You have tons of bots coming at you, but you have defendable place at your disposal, be it a choke point, roof with one/two stairs, something. (Which is, I believe, how Full invasion works)
2) You have way less bots coming at you, maybe equal to the amount of players or bit more (and probalby way stronger), but you have no defendable place.

Atm, NI is the combination of those two, and not the good combination. Doesnt help that the two common playstyles always leave one class useless. Shieldwalling makes cavalry useless, bot herding leaves infantry useless.

We can speculate a lot around teamwork with current balance, but what we lack is point of view of developers, we dont know where mod is heading and how it will looks like in future, maybe current limits fit very well in future version of NI lets say 0.4.0
I think the main question should be: how devs see teamwork in the mod? and what teamwork is designed for future versions?

You don't need to know the dev point of view to discuss the current state of the mod. Atm, I feel no desire to play hardmode solely because its not fun to die at first waves. No matter how good your teamwork is, you will get overwhelmed, even if you have team full of commandos/snipers/knights with legendaries.
If these changes are for future versions, then I dont agree with their decision to make this version of Hard mode not fun to play.

[REXE]

Without reading everything of the above conversation, I think I get the general gist of what people are saying.

The main point as I see it here is balance.
The development team are working hard to try and add new things regularly while still keeping the game balanced, while many people would argue that the game is not balanced a statement which I would agree with (see the large numbers of people respecing to cav due to Thunder Lance Buff). The fact is that it is nearly impossible to keep a game like this balanced.

Nord Invasion by its very nature (A XP/Level system based game) encourages grinding, and as such people will look for the choke points to build shield walls to grind away. I am not privy to the thoughts of the development team. But from my angle, it looks like they are trying to remove teamwork from the game.

Lets look at two scenarios shall we;

#1: Team builds a shield wall. Everyone has to contribute to bringing shields/medic box/ammo crates. There we have teamwork. Someone has to shield while others attack, archers fire and medics heal. Yet more teamwork. Rewards are reaped by the entire team in the form of assist XP. There's the benefit to teamwork, and the grinders with 2h weapons and the archers get the drops. More benefit to teamwork.

----

#2: Team cannot build a shield wall due to lack of defensible terrain. As a result of this, a large majority of the weaker characters in the team die quickly due to being overrun. In smaller maps like Swadian City, now that shield wall building places have been removed, everyone just gets backed into a corner and swarmed one by one. On larger maps, the harder waves just result in a huge chase which results in all characters except the cavalry dying and we are back to the situation where everyone is watching one cavalry character kill everything.

By removing places where shield walls can be constructed, are you not removing the means to teamwork?

Please do tell me if I'm seeing this from the wrong angle.

Ah ye, now cav maps where the cavalry runs stupid circles and archers die quickly and infantry not having the strong weapon and wait while the cavalry runs circles of 30 minutes, cool idea, thanx for interesting game all dev's(To sit and wait)

[Fighting Phil]

Atm, I feel no desire to play hardmode solely because its not fun to die at first waves. No matter how good your teamwork is, you will get overwhelmed, even if you have team full of commandos/snipers/knights with legendaries.

\
Ill put here another point of view, average player's skills are very low on hard mode despite on high level or lots of shiny legendary weapons, that is why full teams often dies, cause even if there are couple of pro in team they cant outbalance low skill players(who knows only spamming and rush). As example i recently played in team with 3-4 players and we easily got to 16 wave.
Also i think hardmode was nerfed too much, now it is really not hard but something like "advanced normal", too easy to get to 16 wave. Dont know if it should be so.

[Alexander]

Ill put here another point of view, average player's skills are very low on hard mode despite on high level or lots of shiny legendary weapons, that is why full teams often dies, cause even if there are couple of pro in team they cant outbalance low skill players(who knows only spamming and rush). As example i recently played in team with 3-4 players and we easily got to 16 wave.
Also i think hardmode was nerfed too much, now it is really not hard but something like "advanced normal", too easy to get to 16 wave. Dont know if it should be so.

What classes were your 3-4 players, and how did you do it on which map?

[Nemeth]

Ill put here another point of view, average player's skills are very low on hard mode despite on high level or lots of shiny legendary weapons, that is why full teams often dies, cause even if there are couple of pro in team they cant outbalance low skill players(who knows only spamming and rush). As example i recently played in team with 3-4 players and we easily got to 16 wave.
Also i think hardmode was nerfed too much, now it is really not hard but something like "advanced normal", too easy to get to 16 wave. Dont know if it should be so.

Yes, small groups have it easier, it's always been like that in this mod. Simply because you dont get overwhelmed as much as you do with 16 players. With 3-4 ppl, you get like 4-5 rangers per wave, so you dont really need to worry about that aspect, while with 16 players you get maybe 20ish rangers, and the difference is enormous. Obviously same with melee bots.
I regulary see these 2 ppl on EU hardmode sitting in a server and getting to high waves, but once more people join they leave. Why? Because the less people the easier it is.

[Chris]

The whole point of this mod is to survive the hord of ever increasing difficulty enemies before they overwhelm you.

I will go at a little tangent, but it is for good reason in the film 300 the Spartans used tactics to find a choke point in which their fleeting numbers did not matter against the overwhelming army that they were fighting, the end is in this spoiler

Spoiler

this was until the enemies were told about the location of a goat path. They were then able to use this to their advantage to finish off the remaining Spartan army.

The same could be said for this mod we were able to find a choke spot where our lower numbers meant that we were able to hold off against very high quality fighters where if we were out in the open they would pick us off one by one until we were no more then dead bodies resting on the floor, but because of the choke spot we were able to go on for a much longer time until they were able to find the goat path to our defeat and use that to their advantage (usually the nord rangers picking us off).

I support the choke spots in maps because of the fact that there is immense teamwork involved in creating the choke spot in the first place, and also holding back the enemies this incorporated every class, and also the engineer and medic in using the choke points.

I will also put in that the reason I play this mod is the fact that I find it fun. A good friend once told me there is no point in playing a game that is not fun because you will not enjoy it (bit cheesy, but I don't care).

Removing the choke points for me as a archer just makes it un-fun, mostly because I have to wait 30 minuites to spawn because the cav have to take alot of time to clear a wave, and then as soon as I spawn all I see is an arrow in my face and another half an hour of my life is wasted.

This is only my opinion I am not trying to change the fact that you as developers removed the choke points, only that this is my opinion on the matter.

Thank you for reading (if you get this far )