cav mode- future discussion

[[ASSASSINE]]

i know this had been long discussed, but with the new restriction of tomes and barrels, cav needs to be nerfed. the final wave is almost impossible to beat, we were toming 2 days ago five times on wave 20 with 16 players and still wiped, its just ridiculous. unless you have a shit ton of tome and barreling bringers you wont get very far there...and shouldnt cav be possible to publics, at least a bit ? dont think those will ever get very far with the current difficulty.
opinion+ suggestions?

[DeadOtter]

Full on agreeing with you on this one

[Winter]

Cavalry mode was neglected this patch so that the developers could focus their efforts elsewhere.  Rest assured that cavalry mode will definitely be receiving some changes at a later date, once the bugs are worked out of the main game modes and the website finishes its next round of upgrades.  If you would like to brainstorm ideas on what exactly could be improved/implemented/nerfed/removed in this thread, that would be very helpful.

[[ASSASSINE]]

alright, ill rename it to cav mode discussion then

My first idea how to improve cav would be first of all to add some loots to it. most people i keep begging to play cav, refuse cause they see the low xp and high time investment, with almost no drops. another thing is wave 20 the boss is fine, but nerf the health and speed of the guards its ridiculous the horses take 3 headshots with xbows before they go down.. and you get catched with the fastest horse aswell if you just go straith. another point is the damage these guys deal. i was playing with full scale and 6 body armour gauntlets 2 days ago, they were 1 hitting me everytime.

[DeadOtter]

I wouldn't mind doing a brainstorm in ts and taking notes to pass on if anyone else wants to

[Yokmen]

- Cav mod should be nerfed but mainly final wave and Nord Spear Thrower
- 2 or 3 mats should only be lootable on cav mod. That would bring more people in cavalry because people will find an interest in playing cav. For example, adding a new item which has a recipe like 30x Zinc Shard + .... and removing zinc shards from rag mod would definitely attract people to cavalry. The same thing could be done with mats like bear fur, eagle Feather, Damascus Steel, ...
- Hero classes for Horses ? ( I'm half serious )
- We should add a Cav deathmatch ( Leberkas's idea )
- We should allow dep shields

[DeadOtter]

Hero horses i can see working in a sense, diff types of horses if you have highest tier mounted xp and royal guard your horse is slightly tanky, if you are ranged its less health and armour but quicker, recipes with loots solely in cav would defo attract people.

the main problem is the later waves being super OP

[Leberkass]

One suggestion of my side would be to nerf wave 20 a bit, so that you are not dead with one hit/throw as these guys are still powerful. I mean not make them so weak that you can even kite Cav, but not that you die right away with one hit of a Soldier on wave 20.
Another suggestion to keep us longer alive and not make things too OP, would be that the increase of the range of medic kits could keep you longer alive and you still do not have that volunteer horse healer who just can reach the guys around, which are most of the time only like 2-6 people or so with the current range. I do not want to make it too OP, but maybe nearly the make the range ehm x 1.6 or so, as the maps in Cav are really big.

[-Perception-]

Regarding Tarrods suggestion, I would say keep the damage, but significantly reduce the hitpoints. That way it will be still challenging, but less of a grindfest.

[Tsukiyomi]

In response to loot on cav - Currently you are able to loot some nice things (although I agree the rate is a bit low) such as Eagle Feathers, Damascus Steel, and 3x Hardened metal.  Along with that people have looted Barbutte w/ coif and the winged helm.  There are nice things to be had, just not many players who choose to play cav.

In response to higher waves being too hard - Isn't wave 20 supposed to be difficult in any mode?  Do the bots on Rag mode not 1 hit you even with the best armor available?  I have been on some successful post-patch cav runs and I can confirm that it is indeed possible to win.  Yes, it is very hard.  Yes, it requires a well geared and well organized team.

Those things being said I do agree that cav needs a little work.  Although eagles/damascus do drop, they are not until the later difficult waves.  Perhaps adding in some nice drops to early waves (pre wave 16 pretty much the only drop is 3x HM) would encourage more people to play.  It would also be nice to see some cav exclusive legendary items to actually make beating wave 20 worth the time it takes.  To the best of my knowledge the best possible reward for defeating the Queen or Field Marshal is an eagle feather or damascus (might be 2x feather/damascus but can't remember atm). 

The idea of hero or class specific horses has been tossed around in our ts quite a bit and I think it could be a really cool idea.  Not really sure how the stats would be balanced but it seems to have potential. 

As far as the bots go, I'm not really sure how much of a nerf any of them need.  My only real complaint is how freakishly accurate some of the ranged bots are at times (those cross-map headshots > ).  Other than that many of the higher waves seem to be balanced fairly well.  Yes, they are hard, but they can be beaten.  I have killed waves 16 and 18 solo as an archer without too much trouble other than running out of arrows and having to hit the shrine a few times during the wave.  To be honest I find that the biggest enemy in cav isn't the wave of bots, it's your fellow teammates charging around the map in random directions.  With good teamwork and communication even those tough post-16 waves aren't too bad.  If anything i would agree with what has been suggested and simply nerf some of the nord hitpoints. 

My main complaint overall would be the xp range.  I feel that on cav it should be extended to be map wide.  I'm sure the reason things aren't this way already is to prevent leechers.  I understand that but really don't think that it helps.  Going through a potentially 2+ hour cav run to only get 10k xp is almost laughable considering rag can now be done in ~45min and yields ~70-80k+ per run.   

Overall I'd love to see cav fixed up a bit.  I have a lot more fun on cav than any other mode for the most part and would love to see it become a more popular game mode.