4 replies to this topic

[Nerevar42]

Walls are a difficult subject in AOTR. They are now very expensive, twice as much as they were before. Nobody builds them anymore in multiplayer (way too expensive), and even in skirmish mode against the AI it is rather impossible to spend that much resources in a wall and not something else that will actively help us to win the game. In fact turtling in itself is possible, and even very efficient with a lot of factions, but not with walls because they're now bad for this, and for anything else to be honest.

 

I don't specifically remember the main reason for raising so much the price of those walls (it was a 6.0 feature if I remember well, maybe not). But now, I think it's safe to say that nobody is using them anymore anyway. The problem with reducing their price back to its normal state would be, I think, that annoying players would spam walls to kill the fun of the RTS game and basically do nothing until... the end of the world, by any chance.

 

I think, honestly, that if BFME had a way to win while turtling, walls at their actual price would actually be truly interesting. And that also means that you could add walls to factions that typically don't have them in order to make this kind of victory possible (just like Scandinavians in AOM that had shitty walls, but walls nonetheless). I would honestly give walls, in this purely fictional perfect world where the code works and everything is fine (completely rational I know), to all factions except MM. Tweaks on efficiency, hitpoints, upgrades, whatever you want, but make them useful, just like they were in ROTWK.

 

We could also think about other new win conditions, such as completing quests or whatever, but meh, more like a campaign thing. I don't know if this is even possible to implement something like that, or if it is "balancable" regarding other aspects of the actual RTS core of the game, but this is my suggestion. At least one new win condition in AOTR so turtling becomes a way to win, and so expensive walls still serve a purpose in the game (because they don't now, which is okay overall but a bit sad).

[Pestum]

I don´t like walls at all i don´t like walls on any game but i see your point. Another win condition would be fantastic.

[Nerevar42]

In fact, those walls still are part of the game, so I was thinking about a way to rebalance them so people keep using them in multiplayer, but to scrap them would also be a valid option, given the direction AOTR is taking on its non-fortress skirmish maps. I don't know which option is the best, but for now, walls are in the game without being useful.

[Helper01]

I still find them to be quite useful and fun. I'm an Age of Empires player, so I'm used to walls being used and I find no issue with them in the BFME games. But one idea would be to make them more accessible would be to make them easier to destroy with infantry. I heard the devs say in a recent livestream that they're going to try giving Lothlorien walls, but ones which are attackable by normal troops. In vanilla ROTWK, walls can be attacked by normal troops, which makes them more viable. They might still take a while to take a segment down, but it makes them more viable, all the same. Either that or make smaller wall segments like those found for certain factions' outposts in BFME1 and the Edain mod, but attackable by troops.

[lonkipt]

I think I've come to agree a bit more with you about the severe change to the cost of walls being a detriment to their use. A player should have the ability to be able to build walls a bit more freely than as is to open up more turtling options and long form games. Especially for the Dwarves wherein they have so many options for their wall segments, combined with towers, especially. A big part of the fun of the vanilla BFME2 games, and even AOTR before they changed the prices of walls, was being able to make city-like fortresses, more like Age of Empires. A big part of that playstyles and appeal is gone, now.... For all of us fans who really appreciated that aspect of the game, I encourage the devs to keep working on this to find a better way to incorporate walls. I personally think 1.09v2 of BFME2 did it best with free-form wall building, but upping the price just enough to make it so you had to think best about where to put them while not being able to "wall rush" the opponent as easily as in 1.09v1. The price is increased, but not overblown.