Where are the SIEGE LADDERS?

jbcrocks · March 2016

I played eso not just because I was a huge fan of skyrim and played 1000+ hours in it but I also liked the advertisement of eso which the three alliance war.
I liked seeing sieges and when I actually played the game, I was expecting a ladder. It's been two years now and the only thing we use to bring down a keep is to either break its walls or gate...

Please...give us siege ladders. It will create a more creative way of sieging and attacking a keep since forward camps favor the defending side anyway.

Solariken · March 2016

Siege ladders could be really fun!

If they did put ladders in, hopefully they would once again allow Dk chains and Nb Teleport Strike to work at varying elevations. It was hilarious and awesome when Dk's could pull players down from keep walls.

jbcrocks · March 2016

Solariken wrote: »

Siege ladders could be really fun!

If they did put ladders in, hopefully they would once again allow Dk chains and Nb Teleport Strike to work at varying elevations. It was hilarious and awesome when Dk's could pull players down from keep walls.

Dk chains still work going up a keep! I'm doing it with my guildies. Tho you can't do it from the ground, when you're the attacking side and the door near the outer wall's not sieged, you can jump from the stairs in front of it and target an enemy on top of the wall and you can chain yourself up.

kadar · March 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9fCA3dmGc

Skip to 2:00 for relevance.

stojekarcub18_ESO · March 2016

as long as you can kick them over or burn them, YES!

Cryptical · March 2016

It could be cool, but I don't think it would work out well.

Already, if you are in a keep and see it on the direction bar become flagged as being attacked, it can be hard to find where the attack is happening if the trebs are hitting a part of the wall far from where you are. You have to run around on the outer wall listening for the booms of the siege stones. I've been in a keep, seen it flag as under attack, been far enough from the damaged wall for the sound effect not to play and gone all the way around looking for the attackers - by which time the 8-person team had finished breaching the wall and were starting to work on the keep guards.

Coordinated mission-intent squads can do things lightning quick.

With siege ladders, I can easily picture an 8-person team using long range attacks to drop one or two mage guards in a dps burst, and being on the top of the wall less than 30 seconds after they break their stealth crouch. Another 30 to 45 seconds would have 4 of them setting up siege while the other 4 clear courtyard keep guards for elbow room. And within 2 minutes of breaking stealth at the outer wall there could be 6 or 8 stone trebs hammering that inner postern wall.

A squad of 8 is tiny. Stone trebuchets are cheap. Once the keep is flagged as being attacked, there is no transitus to bring reinforcements nor can any random people who happened to be there respawn there after death. A siege ladder would effectively make that outer wall entirely irrelevant as far as defense.

Furthermore, currently there is an advantage to having more people on the battlefield, but it only goes so far because of the relevance of those outer walls. Siege ladders would effectively amplify that numbers advantage, making the alliance with more people able to field more tiny squads, washing across the board more quickly.

So, I think siege ladders wouldn't work out long-term, even though they would be cool.

jbcrocks · March 2016

Cryptical wrote: »

It could be cool, but I don't think it would work out well.

Already, if you are in a keep and see it on the direction bar become flagged as being attacked, it can be hard to find where the attack is happening if the trebs are hitting a part of the wall far from where you are. You have to run around on the outer wall listening for the booms of the siege stones. I've been in a keep, seen it flag as under attack, been far enough from the damaged wall for the sound effect not to play and gone all the way around looking for the attackers - by which time the 8-person team had finished breaching the wall and were starting to work on the keep guards.

Coordinated mission-intent squads can do things lightning quick.

With siege ladders, I can easily picture an 8-person team using long range attacks to drop one or two mage guards in a dps burst, and being on the top of the wall less than 30 seconds after they break their stealth crouch. Another 30 to 45 seconds would have 4 of them setting up siege while the other 4 clear courtyard keep guards for elbow room. And within 2 minutes of breaking stealth at the outer wall there could be 6 or 8 stone trebs hammering that inner postern wall.

A squad of 8 is tiny. Stone trebuchets are cheap. Once the keep is flagged as being attacked, there is no transitus to bring reinforcements nor can any random people who happened to be there respawn there after death. A siege ladder would effectively make that outer wall entirely irrelevant as far as defense.

Furthermore, currently there is an advantage to having more people on the battlefield, but it only goes so far because of the relevance of those outer walls. Siege ladders would effectively amplify that numbers advantage, making the alliance with more people able to field more tiny squads, washing across the board more quickly.

So, I think siege ladders wouldn't work out long-term, even though they would be cool.

Well they advertised it and there's none for two years now. Sieging is very boring for me now since there's no change for two years. Now that the forward camps are changed, defending a siege is way more fun than attacking since when we're attacking, we could go against many enemies and even if they keep dying, they can just spawn...so what's the point of sieging? With siege ladders, it will definitely change the tactics of the game. You're talking about pvdoor coz of the lightning quick ninja siege and I don't think anyone wants to attack a keep with no enemies since there's no AP, no? Anyway, I do expect that would be a problem but it's just a suggestion that would change the boring way of sieging for two years already.

runagate · March 2016

How could you carry around a siege ladder? That's silly.

There's no room with all those ballistae and trebuchets in there!

Course, having siege ladders would require defenders actually patrol keep walls.

Farorin · March 2016

I think it's an awesome idea, and could work well if they were expensive, fragile, and counter able.

Sausage · March 2016

1-man ladders would make sieging more intersting, but they have to get it right, so theres actually reason to siege too, if everybody uses ladder, thats going to suck.

I also hate how people go inside each other and making basically a turret, especially 4 Bow NBs can make massive dmg. They should add Collision Detection too.

Knootewoot · March 2016

WARBAND, a great game, had siege ladders. But I don't think it will work well in TESO unless there are good rules.

If TESO has siege ladders, undefended keeps can be taken by just sieging inner because you can skip outer

- solution: Only when keep is under siege, siege ladders can be placed.

Problem: then you still siege only inner, once under siege place siege ladders and continue to siege inner.

- solution: Only when outerwall is <50% health siege ladders can be placed around the walls surrounding the damaged wall.

If a ladder is placed against a wall and that wall has <25% health, siege ladder is destroyed also.

Siege weapons must be able to be place close to ladders so people can oil the ladder climbers. Even when they are close to the oil and should not use the same rule as groundoil (which is i believeplayer has to be down 6 meters and up)

Climbing a siege ladder should go slow (like in warband). It will be to overpowered if you can climb a siege ladder in less then 2 seconds.

Sharee · March 2016

The walls are not high enough for that. If you could get over it with a ladder then the walls would basically become a non-factor.

Wing · March 2016

I could see siege towers, for a possible way to bypass outer walls working like rams.

you have to place them so far away then they slowly advance on a wall, the defenders could have time to either prepare a defense or use ballista's and trebuchets to bring them down before they hit the wall.

Mettaricana · March 2016

Cryptical wrote: »

It could be cool, but I don't think it would work out well.

Already, if you are in a keep and see it on the direction bar become flagged as being attacked, it can be hard to find where the attack is happening if the trebs are hitting a part of the wall far from where you are. You have to run around on the outer wall listening for the booms of the siege stones. I've been in a keep, seen it flag as under attack, been far enough from the damaged wall for the sound effect not to play and gone all the way around looking for the attackers - by which time the 8-person team had finished breaching the wall and were starting to work on the keep guards.

Coordinated mission-intent squads can do things lightning quick.

With siege ladders, I can easily picture an 8-person team using long range attacks to drop one or two mage guards in a dps burst, and being on the top of the wall less than 30 seconds after they break their stealth crouch. Another 30 to 45 seconds would have 4 of them setting up siege while the other 4 clear courtyard keep guards for elbow room. And within 2 minutes of breaking stealth at the outer wall there could be 6 or 8 stone trebs hammering that inner postern wall.

A squad of 8 is tiny. Stone trebuchets are cheap. Once the keep is flagged as being attacked, there is no transitus to bring reinforcements nor can any random people who happened to be there respawn there after death. A siege ladder would effectively make that outer wall entirely irrelevant as far as defense.

Furthermore, currently there is an advantage to having more people on the battlefield, but it only goes so far because of the relevance of those outer walls. Siege ladders would effectively amplify that numbers advantage, making the alliance with more people able to field more tiny squads, washing across the board more quickly.

So, I think siege ladders wouldn't work out long-term, even though they would be cool.

All of that sounds awesome

Deadfinger6 · March 2016

Great idea.

Lucius_Aelius · March 2016

I think it would be cool but there needs to be some kind of passive counter to compensate, not just an active counter of a person pushing the ladder back down. There would have to be something like NPC guards patrolling the walls which would both sound an alarm and fight the attackers, and a new kind of icon to display on a keep which is under attack but isn't damaged and can still be traveled to and from freely.

That way if you attack using ladders you have to accept that the keep won't be burst before people know what you're doing. It's not perfect but the combat during sieges is already wildly unrealistic, a real castle would have soldiers stationed all over the walls and would mobilize to any threat, even on the other side of the keep. This game doesn't even have NPC's react if they walk practically right next to you while you're attacking, and if they do they certainly don't alert the whole keep.

And of course real players can't be expected to guard every keep 24/7 as would be needed for players to make it realistic, so some kind of system where the NPC's interfere more competently needs to be implemented along with this or it would just completely ruin the siege combat and allow people to take relatively undefended keeps with preposterous ease.

Also I think any ladders or siege towers would need to be at least somewhat clunky and slow to activate and utilize, possibly requiring multiple people to make use of effectively like a ram. The idea of a slow moving siege tower sounds about right, with a minimum distance required away from the keep to use it, where the instant it gets set up the keep gets alerted for the whole map to see while the tower moves in, taking about 60 seconds before it gets to the wall, and then 120 seconds after that if the siege tower is still up on the wall then the keep becomes automatically bursted even without being damaged.

And that's just what I thought of off the top of my head right now, suffice it to say there are likely lots of interesting ways more siege technology could be implemented, but whatever way (if any) would need to be carefully and meticulously considered to avoid radically altering the game in any kind of negative way.

AriokoSan · March 2016

Bump.
Sounds like a good idea if it can be done right.

jbcrocks · March 2016

I hope they make it by DB

KramUzibra · March 2016

I play ebonheart and there's a mission in davon's watch that has u destroy siege ladders.

Lightninvash · March 2016

I think if keeps inner area was larger and as soon as a ladder goes up it is instantly flagged otherwise someone would take a keep before the rest even knew that it was under attack

scorpiodog · March 2016

They would have to increase damage from falling.

In real sieges, having your ladder repelled could result serious fall damage (try jumping from 20' in heavy armor), so there was a serious downside.

But in ESO you can jump from battlements and not even feel the damage.

So ladders would be a major imbalance for gameplay - zero risk and high reward for the attackers.

Fallen_Ray · March 2016

a war beast would also be nice to break walls, like mounting atop of a giant daedroth and such. would make the war more alive.

stojekarcub18_ESO · March 2016

runagate wrote: »

How could you carry around a siege ladder? That's silly.

There's no room with all those ballistae and trebuchets in there!

Course, having siege ladders would require defenders actually patrol keep walls.

Same way you carry around all your mounts, pets, and upwards of 200 item inventories.

deleted220701-004865 · March 2016

Just command the Argonians in your group to stand on each other's shoulders and provide a makeshift ladder for the higher races.

Note: Argonians also make excellent bridges, boats, mounts and emergency ammo for trebs..

dodgehopper_ESO · March 2016

Yes. Siege Ladders would be great, though I think players should have the easy option of using oil or kick the ladder off.

THEDKEXPERIENCE · March 2016

Solution: Climbing ladders takes 30,000 stamina. If you can't afford it, you can't do it.

Give the mages an insanely expensive teleport or something and we're off!

HebrewHatchet · March 2016

Alternate solution: While climbing, any successful attack kills you. Also, you climb slowly (maybe 10-25 seconds to go up), and only one at a time. If you die on a ladder, you can not be resurrected by another player. That would make it pretty risky.

Vrienda · March 2016

Sure, but there'd have to be a reason for it, otherwise everyone or nobody will do it.

Maybe climb over to sabotage the gate with a small team or something?

mb10 · March 2016

Impossible to defend against.

Do you know how big the keeps are in terms of circumference? Imagine defending one side of the keep and 25 people using ladders on the other side which realistically should take a few seconds to set up and get up.

Will anyone ever use siege weapons again after that? Will completely unbalance PVP imo.

Great idea in terms of war and battle but for eg when it was used in Lord of the Rings, the Helms Deep keep only had the front of it being attacked.

However, I am for more updates towards how the keeps are faught against and that type of battle in general but I dont think ladders are the correct answer.

Fellenore_Ewalion · March 2016

No, I think siege ladders shouldn't be added to ESO.

Actually the keeps' defense is barely realistic even now, a 20+ attacker group can defeat the same amount of defenders with same skills on both sides. This shan't be happening very often, and also it is too rare that a half sized defender team beats the double sized attacker.

If we should add something, that would be a defense mechanism or device, not an extra siege option.

isailandshootub17_ESO · March 2016

I think the siege element has too much power. I think it is strange that such a small force can take a keep of similar size. I would like to see keeps defensible more readily by a smaller number of people. I'm not certain how they should do that. I would love to see the incorporation of ladders and even siege towers as others have mentioned, but I think in order for them to have a purpose with appropriate risk there should be some added realism.

Perhaps (just off the top of my head without much thought... forgive me if they are ill-conceived):

Increase cost of siege
lower damage of siege
siege take up much much more space in bag (10 slots or so per item perhaps?)
perhaps add keep specific defense counter-siege weapons?
improve keep npc ai
etc.