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Stronghold Updates
siegeric
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 41 Arc User
Some of my thoughts on how to improve the Stronghold system in the future:
NEW TEMPORARY STRUCTURES
I really liked the Temporary Structures update to Strongholds, even if there were some bumps with the Mysterious Merchant. The Recruiter and Gemcutter in particular helped fill a gap for smaller guilds by offering a means to get some limited resources through the sacrifice of other resources. I'd like to see this offering expanded to include Temporary Structures for many of the other resources not currently available. For example:
Diamond Setter - Produces 3 Astral Diamonds per hour. Can hold up to 24 Astral Diamonds. Duration: 1 week.
Mercenary Captain - Produces 288 Glory per hour. Can hold up to 2304 Glory. Duration: 1 week.
Adventuring Company Commander - Produces 5 Adventurer's Shards of Power per hour. Can hold up to 40 Adventurer's Shards of Power. Duration: 1 week.
Mercenary Warlord - Produces 5 Conqueror's Shards of Power per hour. Can hold up to 40 Conqueror's Shards of Power. Duration: 1 week.
Dungeon Spelunker - Produces 5 Dungeoneer's Shards of Power per hour. Can hold up to 40 Dungeoneer's Shards of Power. Duration: 1 week.
Guild Champion - Produces 5 Heroic Shards of Power per hour. Can hold up to 40 Heroic Shards of Power. Duration: 1 week.
Renegade Thayan - Produces 144 Dark Gifts per hour. Can hold up to 1152 Dark Gifts. Duration: 1 week.
Sharandar Ambassador - Produces 144 Fey Trinkets per hour. Can hold up to 1152 Fey Trinkets. Duration: 1 week.
Ten Towns Merchant - Produces 144 Frozen Treasures per hour. Can hold up to 1152 Frozen Treasures. Duration: 1 week.
Dragon Scholar - Produces 432 Treasures of Tyranny per hour. Can hold up to 3456 Treasures of Tyranny. Duration: 1 week.
The Assayer should also be updated. 3 Gold every 5 Hours, while costing 21,000 Gems to create, seems like a trap for the unwary. The Gems cost should probably be dropped or converted to a Labor cost and the rate of Gold production increased to 3 Gold per Hour, which also seems like a waste considering the limited alternate uses for Gold, but such a change would be better than the current state.
None of these temporary structures would ultimately be game-changing (proposed rates are based on a consideration of the Guild Mark:Donation value falling somewhere between 14-50 GM/hour, which is well below the Recruiter value of 100 GM/hour), but would certainly help smaller guilds fill in gaps in progress that they may be currently limited by. Glory, for example, is not for sale on the Zen store, which is a gap for anyone wanting to build a structure that requires Glory, especially given the current state of pvp.
BOON STRUCTURE UPDATES
I'd also recommend redoing the boons available on the current structures to make some of the boon structures more appealing, particularly Mercenary Outpost and Training Yard, which very few guilds use. To start, I'd drop the overload enchant effects as the overload system has largely been unsuccessful (or in the alternative, these bonuses could be moved to the Siege Workshop and Siege Smithy for use in pvp - though I think most pvp players would celebrate if drains just vanished from the game). I'd also get rid of the double categories of some boon structures and instead give each boon structure 1 Offensive, 1 Defensive, and 1 Utility Bonus, and make use of the stats that players account for. For example:
Barracks: 1 - Experience Bonus (Utility); 3 - Power Bonus (Offense); 5 - Incoming Healing (Defense) - matches current structure.
Explorer's Guild: 1 - Treasure Hunter (Utility); 3 - Control Resist (Defense); 5 - Group Stat Bonus (Offense) - matches current structure, though the group stat bonus likely needs a rework to make it more attractive.
Mercenary Outpost: 1 - Deflect (Defense); 3 - Group Heal Potion (Utility); 5 - Critical Severity (Offense) - adds Deflect as a potential boon and move Group Heal Potion as a Utility from another boon structure. An alternate Utility would be to improve the effectiveness of buff potions.
Stable: 1 - Defense (Defense); 3 - Armor Penetration (Offense); 5 - Mount Speed (Utility) - matches current structure.
Temple: 1 - Life Steal (Defense); 3 - Revive Sickness Reduction (Utility); 5 - Recovery (Offense) - adds Recovery as a potential boon and drops the double Utility.
Training Yard: 1 - Critical Strike (Offense); 3 - Glory Bonus (Utility); 5 - AoE Resist (Defense) - adds Critical Strike as a potential boon.
Wizard's Workshop: 1 - Hit Point (Defense); 3 - Healing Potion Bonus (Utility); 5 - Combat Advantage (Offense) - adds Combat Advantage as a potential boon.
GUILD HALL RANK 21-25
Larger established guilds have little to spend resources on and probably should be given the opportunity to continue to grow. However, I would cap non-Guild Hall Structures at Rank 10. This avoids some of the concerns regarding the value of the Stronghold Boons and possible power creep. The reward for the continued growth would be the option of additional structures following the existing pattern from earlier Ranks. For example:
21 - Requires 13 Rank 10 Structures - Unlocks 1 Boon Plot.
22 - Requires 14 Rank 10 Structures
23 - Requires 15 Rank 10 Structures - Unlocks 1 Support Plot and 1 PvP Plot.
24 - Requires 16 Rank 10 Structures
25 - Requires 17 Rank 10 Structures - Unlocks 1 Boon Plot.
The additional boon structures simply give additional choice and flexibility to users rather than additional power. It would also give guilds more flexibility on which boon structures they wanted to consider and allow them to adjust for early mistakes by providing an option down the road to build a structure they may have overlooked.
Thank you for your consideration. Constructive feedback from the community welcome.
NEW TEMPORARY STRUCTURES
I really liked the Temporary Structures update to Strongholds, even if there were some bumps with the Mysterious Merchant. The Recruiter and Gemcutter in particular helped fill a gap for smaller guilds by offering a means to get some limited resources through the sacrifice of other resources. I'd like to see this offering expanded to include Temporary Structures for many of the other resources not currently available. For example:
Diamond Setter - Produces 3 Astral Diamonds per hour. Can hold up to 24 Astral Diamonds. Duration: 1 week.
Mercenary Captain - Produces 288 Glory per hour. Can hold up to 2304 Glory. Duration: 1 week.
Adventuring Company Commander - Produces 5 Adventurer's Shards of Power per hour. Can hold up to 40 Adventurer's Shards of Power. Duration: 1 week.
Mercenary Warlord - Produces 5 Conqueror's Shards of Power per hour. Can hold up to 40 Conqueror's Shards of Power. Duration: 1 week.
Dungeon Spelunker - Produces 5 Dungeoneer's Shards of Power per hour. Can hold up to 40 Dungeoneer's Shards of Power. Duration: 1 week.
Guild Champion - Produces 5 Heroic Shards of Power per hour. Can hold up to 40 Heroic Shards of Power. Duration: 1 week.
Renegade Thayan - Produces 144 Dark Gifts per hour. Can hold up to 1152 Dark Gifts. Duration: 1 week.
Sharandar Ambassador - Produces 144 Fey Trinkets per hour. Can hold up to 1152 Fey Trinkets. Duration: 1 week.
Ten Towns Merchant - Produces 144 Frozen Treasures per hour. Can hold up to 1152 Frozen Treasures. Duration: 1 week.
Dragon Scholar - Produces 432 Treasures of Tyranny per hour. Can hold up to 3456 Treasures of Tyranny. Duration: 1 week.
The Assayer should also be updated. 3 Gold every 5 Hours, while costing 21,000 Gems to create, seems like a trap for the unwary. The Gems cost should probably be dropped or converted to a Labor cost and the rate of Gold production increased to 3 Gold per Hour, which also seems like a waste considering the limited alternate uses for Gold, but such a change would be better than the current state.
None of these temporary structures would ultimately be game-changing (proposed rates are based on a consideration of the Guild Mark:Donation value falling somewhere between 14-50 GM/hour, which is well below the Recruiter value of 100 GM/hour), but would certainly help smaller guilds fill in gaps in progress that they may be currently limited by. Glory, for example, is not for sale on the Zen store, which is a gap for anyone wanting to build a structure that requires Glory, especially given the current state of pvp.
BOON STRUCTURE UPDATES
I'd also recommend redoing the boons available on the current structures to make some of the boon structures more appealing, particularly Mercenary Outpost and Training Yard, which very few guilds use. To start, I'd drop the overload enchant effects as the overload system has largely been unsuccessful (or in the alternative, these bonuses could be moved to the Siege Workshop and Siege Smithy for use in pvp - though I think most pvp players would celebrate if drains just vanished from the game). I'd also get rid of the double categories of some boon structures and instead give each boon structure 1 Offensive, 1 Defensive, and 1 Utility Bonus, and make use of the stats that players account for. For example:
Barracks: 1 - Experience Bonus (Utility); 3 - Power Bonus (Offense); 5 - Incoming Healing (Defense) - matches current structure.
Explorer's Guild: 1 - Treasure Hunter (Utility); 3 - Control Resist (Defense); 5 - Group Stat Bonus (Offense) - matches current structure, though the group stat bonus likely needs a rework to make it more attractive.
Mercenary Outpost: 1 - Deflect (Defense); 3 - Group Heal Potion (Utility); 5 - Critical Severity (Offense) - adds Deflect as a potential boon and move Group Heal Potion as a Utility from another boon structure. An alternate Utility would be to improve the effectiveness of buff potions.
Stable: 1 - Defense (Defense); 3 - Armor Penetration (Offense); 5 - Mount Speed (Utility) - matches current structure.
Temple: 1 - Life Steal (Defense); 3 - Revive Sickness Reduction (Utility); 5 - Recovery (Offense) - adds Recovery as a potential boon and drops the double Utility.
Training Yard: 1 - Critical Strike (Offense); 3 - Glory Bonus (Utility); 5 - AoE Resist (Defense) - adds Critical Strike as a potential boon.
Wizard's Workshop: 1 - Hit Point (Defense); 3 - Healing Potion Bonus (Utility); 5 - Combat Advantage (Offense) - adds Combat Advantage as a potential boon.
GUILD HALL RANK 21-25
Larger established guilds have little to spend resources on and probably should be given the opportunity to continue to grow. However, I would cap non-Guild Hall Structures at Rank 10. This avoids some of the concerns regarding the value of the Stronghold Boons and possible power creep. The reward for the continued growth would be the option of additional structures following the existing pattern from earlier Ranks. For example:
21 - Requires 13 Rank 10 Structures - Unlocks 1 Boon Plot.
22 - Requires 14 Rank 10 Structures
23 - Requires 15 Rank 10 Structures - Unlocks 1 Support Plot and 1 PvP Plot.
24 - Requires 16 Rank 10 Structures
25 - Requires 17 Rank 10 Structures - Unlocks 1 Boon Plot.
The additional boon structures simply give additional choice and flexibility to users rather than additional power. It would also give guilds more flexibility on which boon structures they wanted to consider and allow them to adjust for early mistakes by providing an option down the road to build a structure they may have overlooked.
Thank you for your consideration. Constructive feedback from the community welcome.
4
Comments
Also the way of having more choice/options once expanding sounds great to me. It rewards the current maxed guilds with more flexibility and something to work for, but it doesn't expand the gap between guilds/players.
Chapeau!
Just one thing from me to add as suggestion for stronghold boons system - make different tears of the same boon (similar to Chult system) and let us do every possible combination (with some limitations ofc).
For example: instead of the option that you can select a single boon in each category that gives you 8k stats, you can have 4 points that you can spend in each category and each point gives you 2k stats.
Trying to balance your stats was never an easy job and trying to do so with enchants might be too expensive for some players. This will not only be a great QoL upgrade but might actually encourage some smaller guilds to work on their boons.
I would also like to see some guild structure decreases based on guild size to help smaller guilds. Or increased rates (voucher drops) based on guild size. small, medium and large.
Please adjust the guild zone drops too for the vouchers and make them higher reward. They don't make sense.
Why only 25 for Tyranny? Please change them to all be consistent amounts based on their Epic drops and Structure Costs.
Plus change them from Uncommon to Common or Rare. Epic would be great. Add more drop types too (Food, Metal etc).
They help for updating Guild Hall without adding Farm, Mine or Quarry right away!
And some of the Guild rewards are lacking. Like the 100 Mob reward. One Gem
vary the gem reward. If necessary, make it non-repeatable with 24 hours.
Another change to make Tending the Guild Outputs less tedious, would be to make it one 24 hour drop instead of 8 hours.
Or even one full week that doesn't disappear when structure expires. Or ability to tend all in one shot! TIME is Money!
Maybe make it an additional VIP reward?
And I feel the Temporary Structures don't help small guilds as much as they help Larger ones or higher level guilds.
Small Guilds (low level guilds) cannot have two structures going at once. IE Gems and Influence. I would like to see them made Permanent or have a weekly lower renewal Fee based on structure currently in production.
Basically what I'm looking for is the ability to farm the Guild and get all materials needed just from it.
And stop the Over Priced Epic Voucher costs in AH. Or come up with one Structure Cost (reward) that comes from all Adventures and Doesn't Make folks run OLD Content. Lose Tyranny, Dark, Frozen, and Fey for One New Item (Renown).
Members of my guild that do professions are constantly left out of game play as they have to farm for guild marks just to buy scrolls and then have to run around collecting resources just to have to spend more guild marks on profession resources from vendors and then the failure rate is outrageous for them.
example guild mark cap 30K, scroll cases from the new area cost 3k each so that's only 10 cases allot of work for 10 cases.
Also from what they show me is some recipes take 10 , 15 and some 20 resources just to make another resource to use to make another object that it takes 4 or 5 of those to make 1 item and that don't count the failure rate.
That adds up to allot of guild marks, but their ability to get them is not easy, they have to grind old content just to try and get enough marks to buy scrolls and that leaves them out of new content or the ability to keep up in the game.
Some have suggested to lower the requirements for cost or increase the number of guild marks to reflect the new content and increase the amount you can have, and some have suggested to make available in the Zen market crates of guild marks for purchase and have a professions vip where the cost is reduced like regular vip that can be purchased.
This does not count the fact that just as soon as they unlock the ability to make the new items the next mod comes out and the new gear is better than what they can make, allot have given up on the professions just for this very reason.
You have a good idea, guild/alliance event, inclusive, with scaling difficulty, you want it easy for basic rewards, vote to end, you want to try the more and more difficult for higher rewards.. you can (in theory)
All the ingredients for a great event.
People ran it on preview, the devs were warned that it's useless as it is, because the reward spread is just wrong.
We got the usual response of silence with later "The team is constantly looking bla bla bla bla"
I don't know what the team is looking at.... When it's clear that no one runs pass the first phase (5 weaves) and it's a complete failure if compared to it's potential.
More amazing is that just to look at the forums last posts about Strongholds:
1. Conqueror shards - not willing to PvP and deal with it or buy via ZEN packs at that price (I will not go into this, as you can recuperate the cost via GMs and trading).
2. Maradours rewards sucks.
Lets think.... Here is an idea.. .
Add shards to the later phases of the event... And some campaign currency, like Tyranny and Frozen.
How to solve 2 issues in one go, and all it takes is an hour bureaucracy and meetings and 10 minutes to update the loot table.
Sounds simple. Will we see the change? I wouldn't bet on it.
It would have taken those 10 minutes back then when it was on preview to adjust to make a great event, instead all I associate this with, is disappointment.