Suggestion: ladders, grappling hooks, and siege tower.

HeroOfNone

Morning folks. Had this suggestion sitting in drafts for a while but couldn't figure out if it would balance out well. Figured I'd let it go down in flames or rise like a phoenix among the experienced pvp crews.

As we saw in several of the promotional videos, there were multiple enemies climbing up walls with ladders and grappling hooks. I think we may be able to incorporate some of these elements into pvp in a controlled way to add a bit more variety to the common siege.

The Purpose
allow players access to the walls of an outer keep to counter act siege weapons, sniping, and allow more versatility to stealth melee fighters. This would also make it necessary for several scouts to keep an eye on the outer walls for potential threats, rather than focusing just on the siege location.

The Tools
Grappling hook - can be used on any outer wall of a keep, usable up to 4 times. HP would be around 2000-4000 health and targetable, making it easy to destroy. This counts toward the siege weapon limit, and even after destroyed count toward it for anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes. When folks climb it there is a climbing animation that if uncompleted will make the play fall outside the wall. Also, the rope can support only 1 person at a time. After climbing up players will have a climbing debuff.

Ladders - similar to grappling hooks, this allows up to upwards of 8 people with 10k health. The ladder can support up to 2 people at a time. Same restrictions still apply as the rope otherwise.

The siege tower- this is a tower with a stairwell inside it to climb into an outer wall. To use this however, all 3 resources to a keep need to be captured, it has to be deployed at the resource, and 6 people minimum need to push it, 10 max for speed. This tower would be susceptible to siege, with heath on par or half of a battering ram, and only use able on outer walls. This would not come with the debuff, given the time it took to transport, the resources required, and the vulnerability of it.

The Balancing
The Climbing Debuff - getting access into a keep doesn't come without its cost. Once someone has climbed into a keep, there would be a 15, 30, or 60 minute debuff on them that would prevent them from laying down or operating siege weapons, capturing a scroll, or counting toward the flag capture of a keep. If additional debuffs are needed, there could also be a debuff to disallow any ressing from soul gems. This makes the act of sneaking in a risky gambit. Debuffs would be removed upon use of a transit shrine or respawning at one. Soul gems would not, to prevent folks suicide to guards and getting a friend to res.

Additional factors - additional guards patrolling the upper and lower wall, depending how many resources are captured. These could also be sold for above average costs, to make it expensive to use in large amounts

There it is folks, discuss how game breaking this would be to your AP farming =3


Edit: Moved to Feedback & Suggestions

DDuke

heroofnoneb14_ESO wrote: »

The Tools
Grappling hook - can be used on any outer wall of a keep, usable up to 4 times. HP would be around 2000-4000 health and targetable, making it easy to destroy. This counts toward the siege weapon limit, and even after destroyed count toward it for anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes. When folks climb it there is a climbing animation that if uncompleted will make the play fall outside the wall. Also, the rope can support only 1 person at a time. After climbing up players will have a climbing debuff.

Interesting trivia: these were actually considered during development of the game, they even showed us a concept where these grappling hooks would connect on keep walls, if my memory doesn't fail me

Gyudan

+1 for those suggestions!

Roechacca

I imagine there was something terribly wrong with the mechanics to make it happen , hence the reason it was never implemented . Does anyone have a video link of said advertisement so I can see for myself ?

Cody

I'm sure it has been suggested many times.

Would be nice if we had grappling hooks and siege towers: would make keep capturing more strategical than blobing up and charging into the meat grinder over and over

HeroOfNone

Cody wrote: »

I'm sure it has been suggested many times.

Would be nice if we had grappling hooks and siege towers: would make keep capturing more strategical than blobing up and charging into the meat grinder over and over

Not much since September, and a lot of it without ways to balance it in some way. Not to say mine is on totally stable footing, but it there does hAve to be some restrictions to prevent abuse and easy keep captures.

Oughash

(Grappling hooks and siege towers are awesome)

I'm at the point where I like every damn idea for Cyrodil. Seriously. Just put it all in. Anything to shake up what it currently is.

Subtomik

People cried about chains until they were nurfed into oblivion, same with take flight.

You think people would be ok with this? No sorry it would ruin the "immersion" for people who want to sit on a wall and attack with relative impunity.

Junipus

Subtomik wrote: »

People cried about chains until they were nurfed into oblivion, same with take flight.

You think people would be ok with this? No sorry it would ruin the "immersion" for people who want to sit on a wall and attack with relative impunity.

People complained mainly because it was one-class specific and also because it wasn't working as ZOS intended (otherwise they wouldn't have "fixed" it).

The ideas above are really clever and would make a big difference to keep taking. I wonder how the OP would want ZOS to implement the siege alert side which highlights both a keep/outpost under siege and displays the number of siege weapons. Makes it seem otherwise than a successful group could well ninja a keep without any notification to the current owning faction.

This is even before ZOS make a hash of implementing it and we can use grappling hooks to get past closed gates or ladders to ninja outposts.

Aoife32001

+1 for these suggestions

Subtomik

They fix things all the time that were intended, enough people just complained that they changed it under that guise.

Otherwise those moves never would of had a vertical axis.

miahq

dap_robertb16_ESO wrote: »

People complained mainly because it was one-class specific and also because it wasn't working as ZOS intended (otherwise they wouldn't have "fixed" it).

.

Wasn't working as intended should mean broken or bugged, not "we didn't think of that." People are always going to come up with clever uses for skills that the devs didn't think about, you can't just hit everything with the nerf bat every time people start complaining. And that's basically it, people were just complaining it wasn't fair.

The siege stuff, it would be nice to add some variety, but I doubt you're going to break up the zerg. The whole intent was for cyrodiil do inspire people to use strstegy, but so far devs have rewarded clever thinking and strategic use of skills with nerf bat or simply taking things away. Most of the changes they're making are just going to turn it into even more of a zerg fest. Good idea in other words, but it wouldn't hold my breath.

Eldarth

Siege towers I kind of like.

Grappling hooks and ladders...not so much. I think it allows too much power to individual, small groups of attackers since usually (in my experience anyway) there aren't enough defenders on top of walls (all outer walls) and enough coordinated communication.

However, if there were some notification, and visual indication to defenders that a grappling hook or ladder was attached somewhere, it might be worth trying in some limited capacity.

Roechacca

I think if it could be done right it would change the dynamic of PvP overnight . No more bursts keeps to let you know the enemy is there . You'd have to pay a lot more attention to your castles / keeps / forts ect .

IxSTALKERxI

lol taking an undefended keep would be even easier then it already is...

1. Sneak entire group over the outter walls
2. Set up 20 siege on inner flagging the keep in the process.
3. Capture flags, no need to repair outer...

HeroOfNone

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

lol taking an undefended keep would be even easier then it already is...

1. Sneak entire group over the outter walls
2. Set up 20 siege on inner flagging the keep in the process.
3. Capture flags, no need to repair outer...

The Climbing Debuff -...prevent them from laying down or operating siege weapons, capturing a scroll, or counting toward the flag capture of a keep. ..


As for the outer wall defense, I admit it may lead to more inner keep turtling, but could be interesting still. again, not entirely sure about the balancing factors of it.

Asgari

heroofnoneb14_ESO wrote: »

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

lol taking an undefended keep would be even easier then it already is...

1. Sneak entire group over the outter walls
2. Set up 20 siege on inner flagging the keep in the process.
3. Capture flags, no need to repair outer...

The Climbing Debuff -...prevent them from laying down or operating siege weapons, capturing a scroll, or counting toward the flag capture of a keep. ..


As for the outer wall defense, I admit it may lead to more inner keep turtling, but could be interesting still. again, not entirely sure about the balancing factors of it.

I'll send in 2 of my 8 players and clear the inner guards. Siege front door, have inner down 4x as fast since the npc are dead already. Instead of taking keeps in 2 min I took it in 1.5 min. Thanks!

Scamandros

Anyone think groups may jump walls and clear guards without flipping flags due to climbing debuff and then camp the transitus shrine for 30 mins until their debuff ends and they take the keep undefended anyway

miahq

Scamandros wrote: »

Anyone think groups may jump walls and clear guards without flipping flags due to climbing debuff and then camp the transitus shrine for 30 mins until their debuff ends and they take the keep undefended anyway

You my friend, have just discovered the first un intended exploit. Pre-pre-pre-release, even.

HeroOfNone

Scamandros wrote: »

Anyone think groups may jump walls and clear guards without flipping flags due to climbing debuff and then camp the transitus shrine for 30 mins until their debuff ends and they take the keep undefended anyway

And that's my own debate on the balancing part. currently you can do this already with folks hiding in a keep after its been captured, pretty easily in fact with the poor searching skills. waiting out 30-60 minutes though is a while to be sitting in, making it less viable long term AP farming or strategy wise, seeing as who ever did would be out of the major war for that long. you could also make the debuff permanent till they use a wayshrine, but is that just overkill? not sure.

Scamandros

heroofnoneb14_ESO wrote: »

Scamandros wrote: »

Anyone think groups may jump walls and clear guards without flipping flags due to climbing debuff and then camp the transitus shrine for 30 mins until their debuff ends and they take the keep undefended anyway

And that's my own debate on the balancing part. currently you can do this already with folks hiding in a keep after its been captured, pretty easily in fact with the poor searching skills. waiting out 30-60 minutes though is a while to be sitting in, making it less viable long term AP farming or strategy wise, seeing as who ever did would be out of the major war for that long. you could also make the debuff permanent till they use a wayshrine, but is that just overkill? not sure.

Well some groups still spend a long time trying to bust resource tower farms without any strategy. It would be those same groups who make the call "THERE IS A ZERG IN OUR CASTLE EVERYONE GET THERE NOW" and repeatedly transitus shrine into the unseiged keep only to be blown up immediately.

HeroOfNone

Scamandros wrote: »

heroofnoneb14_ESO wrote: »

Scamandros wrote: »

Anyone think groups may jump walls and clear guards without flipping flags due to climbing debuff and then camp the transitus shrine for 30 mins until their debuff ends and they take the keep undefended anyway

And that's my own debate on the balancing part. currently you can do this already with folks hiding in a keep after its been captured, pretty easily in fact with the poor searching skills. waiting out 30-60 minutes though is a while to be sitting in, making it less viable long term AP farming or strategy wise, seeing as who ever did would be out of the major war for that long. you could also make the debuff permanent till they use a wayshrine, but is that just overkill? not sure.

Well some groups still spend a long time trying to bust resource tower farms without any strategy. It would be those same groups who make the call "THERE IS A ZERG IN OUR CASTLE EVERYONE GET THERE NOW" and repeatedly transitus shrine into the unseiged keep only to be blown up immediately.

how so? this would only allow them to get to the outside walls, not inner, and if the inner is down, then you can't port to the keep (flagged to be under attack)

Cathexis

Agree with the idea. Dks can already jump walls. Sorcs should be able to teleport up keep walls too. Inners would have to be buffed though.

Roechacca

We have roving NPC guards outside Castles . If they had roving guards inside it would make this more possible and reasonable .

Jaxsun

I'm in.

Cody

Subtomik wrote: »

People cried about chains until they were nurfed into oblivion, same with take flight.

You think people would be ok with this? No sorry it would ruin the "immersion" for people who want to sit on a wall and attack with relative impunity.

well to be fair, people used pull chain on alts to pull enemy players into keeps; why else would low level DKs want to pull high vet level enemies into the keep?

the take flight though I completely agree with. I was in a group today, the leader said "don't go near the ledges, or else DKs can get in"

not one DK dragon leaped into the tower: NOT ONE.

Just mind your surroundings; and if you are not a ranged player, don't go near the d**** ledges to begin with

miahq

Cody wrote: »

Subtomik wrote: »

People cried about chains until they were nurfed into oblivion, same with take flight.

You think people would be ok with this? No sorry it would ruin the "immersion" for people who want to sit on a wall and attack with relative impunity.

well to be fair, people used pull chain on alts to pull enemy players into keeps; why else would low level DKs want to pull high vet level enemies into the keep?

the take flight though I completely agree with. I was in a group today, the leader said "don't go near the ledges, or else DKs can get in"

not one DK dragon leaped into the tower: NOT ONE.

Just mind your surroundings; and if you are not a ranged player, don't go near the d**** ledges to begin with

People don't want to think, they just want to complain about everything until zos changes it for them, and unfortunately that's pretty much the side they've chosen to listen to.

Eglath

Without increasing walls HP or applying other solutions to lenghten sieges, it would be useless, why to use ladders or hooks, when you can bring 19 ballistas and tear down the wall in a minute?

HeroOfNone

Eglath wrote: »

Without increasing walls HP or applying other solutions to lenghten sieges, it would be useless, why to use ladders or hooks, when you can bring 19 ballistas and tear down the wall in a minute?

So there would be no negative impact, great to hear =D

Cody

Eglath wrote: »

Without increasing walls HP or applying other solutions to lenghten sieges, it would be useless, why to use ladders or hooks, when you can bring 19 ballistas and tear down the wall in a minute?

well if the siege at the wall got stopped, you could use the hooks to sneak behind the enemies on the wall and kill them all:)

OrangeTheCat

I would add the ability to make cavalry charges/knocking down people. Maybe make it stamina based and so maybe people would start putting stam on their horses.