Notum Wars - Tower Control PvP BassAckwards

[__________Sid Scheer]

Okay.

I'm new to the game and I don't know everything.

But now that I'm getting involved in the low level PvP fights with the Notum Wars...something rather blatantly obvious is occuring to me.

Is it just me or is having a "scheduled" time for a tower to be vulnerable to attack a little dumb?

Scheduled meaning that suppression gas keeps the tower from being attacked at any time other than when its at 25%.

So...instead of real war, we have nifty little pre-determined conflicts in which Omni and Clan face off with usually fairly even odds...or the odds slightly in favor of one side. Usually in favor of the defending org or faction because in general...most people attacking low level towers are doing pick up groups via OOC channels.

Now. To me....it seems that there should be a way to compromise a towers suppression gas. That way its more like...well you know....a real FIGHT. You don't know when someones coming so instead of making sure everyone in your little guild is online at a certain time every 24 hours to defend the tower...you'd have to either have defensive watches...or god forbid....run your ass off from whatever your camping or blitzing to come out and try to save your tower.

It just seems incredibly stupid that theres no randomness to it at all. Whats the point of fighting at pre-determined times when everyones ready? Thats hardly what a real conflict is about. Conflicts are about reactivity to attacks. Not about setting a calendar date to BE attacked.

Maybe instead of suppression gas....the tower builders would have to depend on defensive towers to keep attackers at bay until they could get reinforcements to the site? Wouldn't that be a tad more real?

Personally I think its rather dumb...overall. I'd like to see FC reconsider this. The Towers were a great idea...the 24 hour suppression gas crap is the badly implemented part of it And the only thing I can think of its for is for the Art team to have time to update the land control map or something.

Towers are technology, and technology should have weaknesses. Nothing should be uncrackable with the right procedures. As of right now...the suppression gas timer seems to completely defeat the purpose of going after an enemy tower. Because you can't do anything about it until a certain time...and when you do show up at that certain time with a team or two...theres the controlling faction or org...sitting there waiting for you because they know exactly when the gas is going to be at its lowest too.

Dumb...overall.

[Sethil]

PvP in AO is only a patchwork... nothing is really well overthought. Rules are exploitable, areas too much restricted.

Its hard to say, but I guess the devs at FC dont really have a clue about PvP...
I hope Shadowbane - a game designed around PvP and GvG - will be much better. I dont like PvPing in AO anymore. Too much lag, too many restriction, too many exploits.

[Blackwing]

the original intent was mostly good but due to bad wording it opens backdoors to greedy exploiters which are called lawyers, solicitors or attorneys depending on country.

imagine if the gas level could be changed at any time.

would you drop whatever you are doing to defend your tower every time even if you WERE logged on?

i guess not. it can get a little annoying to try finding a team in between attacks.

i do not care for pvp because it is my firm opinion that you cannot balance it in a rpg as complex as ao.

scratch that i think it is impossible to balance it in ANY level based game. and ao IS a level based game.

paper rock scissors wont work, this concept is way to simple to encompass all classes in ao. it might work when you only have fighters, mages and archers but whenever you add more of that you ll fail.

[_______________Aerkk]

I think the original idea is fine. Otherwise each org would wake up everyday and discover their towers destroyed by players in different time zones around the world. Having a set gas gas time compensates for the global market and introduces a bit of strategy
into land control. If FC did away with attack times then they would need to do something like allow orgs to hire NPC guards or make defense bots or have towers that actually are worth something in terms of DEFENSE of the area.