769 replies to this topic

[Devon]

yeah, his health bar is messed up

[Rafv Nin IV]

I think Dread Visage ought to give a boost to the movement speed of allied units as well. I'd run like hell if there was a Nazgul amonst the ranks to punish slow movers.

[Devon]

i suggested a while back that it givd +damage leadership and -armor leadership to similuate that. something from the backs said something like they would throw themselves on a sword if the wk commanded it. and something else about them running madly forward with the wk pushing on behind them

[HOLY_RAVEN]

i think when we build dark lord eye of suron (a power of mordor) should become off.

[Dalf32]

the plan is that the eye of sauron becomes a fortress upgrade and when you get the ring, it will turn into sauron.

[Dalmp]

My feedback, having spent a long time playing RJ's Mordor, which has been my faction of choice in all LOTR games. I might say something already covered before in this thread, and yes I have read every page. But I want to keep it all together as my comprehensive mordor review. I won't focus on bugs, just on balance, gameplay and enjoyment.

First of all, thank you! You have restored my beloved BFMEI Mordor to me! I loved the way they played in BFMEI. It is the most unique faction ever developed for an RTS game imo. Dumbing that down in BFME2 and making every faction a virtual clone (with cavalry, no less) was a big mistake on EA's part.


Orcs:
Free orcs are more than a cannon or game balance decision. The biggest impact is psychological. When you know your orcs are free, you lose respect for them. You start sending them on stupid missions. You start killing them with your own catapults when they are in the way. In other words, you start treating them like Sauron treated them: as true and total fodder. This has an immense impact on giving mordor it's own unique flavor. So: well done sir!

On a side note, it might be a good idea to raise the orc pit price just a bit. Maybe to 400 or 450 or so. Just my opinion, mind you.

Black uruks.
I'm no fan of hero-hordes to begin with, unless they are really representing a canon hero team. What it does is make nameless grunt units unreasonably powerful, and devalues the truly special heroes of the books. Mordor has trolls and plenty of heroes, it doesn't need hero hordes. Anything I can do with hero hordes I can do with an attack troll or hero, and probably cheaper.

Uruk tent. Cool new units. Very cool new models. Thumbs up for that! But the two infantry hordes are pretty weak compared to the black orcs from the level 3 orc pit. Once I get a level 2 orc pit, I'm far more likely to crank it to level 3 than to build an uruk tent. Furthermore, they can't damage many things that the black orcs destroy easily, like trebutchets. Do they have a unique niche that I'm missing?

The archer horde also needs a fire arrow effect for sure. The invisible fire arrows are 'exploity' in a sense, denying enemy players the ability to know what they are up against.

Adding the banner upgrade to the tent does offer some incentive to get the tent, but I generally don't. A mordor player doesn't really need banners anyway, at least until he already has level 3 orc pits.

Trolls: Overall, trolls are generally fine. But I agree with an earlier comment that their knockback is a bit extreme. Hero-killing was always one of the Troll's traditional roles even without a high knockback chance. The hero knockback is really overkill.

BTW, to the above poster, you can get your trolls moving faster by targetting them at far away lairs, even when you can't see the lair. It's an old trick developed in BFMEI, and it still works in RotWK. Also, you can use the same trick to check if the enemy has destroyed a lair (sneaking in your back door). Just click a troll on a far away lair, and if he runs, it hasn't been destroyed yet.

Siege works: Battering rams seem to serve as a good way of stopping morder from rushing to catapults, as is often the idea in a spamming strat. Also thank you for giving the nazgul their status back, and removing them as a weak hero horde. There are teams of LOTR fans still wiping EA urine off of Tolkien's gravestone over this.

Armory. No offense to whoever made the building model. It's a great model! It just doesn't fit very well. It's so flashy it overwhelms the rest of the base. It's horribly laggy and it obscures sight of our own base. Alone in a model viewer I'd say it was outstanding work. But it just doesn't work in RJ fortresses where the plots are claustrophobic to begin with.

Loss of Mumakil: The loss of mumakil makes little difference. It was always just a showboating piece, and didn't really fill a needed role for Mordor. Everything mumakil can do, you can accomplish with other Morder units anyway. Besides, it gives MoTE an edge in a certain way, which is a good thing.

Loss of Haradrim: These simply diluted the point of making orcs in BFMEII. Most vanilla skirmish strats involve a haradrim startup, and that always annoyed me. It was just a step towards making mordor identical in play-style to every other faction, and not a good decision. The cavalry especially had to go. It's just too much for mordor to have them. So thumbs up for splitting off MoTE; it made sense to do so. Their forces were never seemless integrated anyway in canon.

Fortress heroes: Overall, there's almost too many to find a use for them all in any game, but I'd rather have ones I never use than miss out on some nazgul (BFMEI) or combining them into pathetically weak hero hordes (BFMEII:ROTWK). It would be nice if some thought could be placed into making them not only different, but actually have them filling special niches. But overall, that's a minor quibble, and I know how hard is to find niches for everything. It's good enough as it is.

Snaga: Awesome! This guy is a great addition. Many are complaining about his single power, but as a 500-cost hero, and one who respawns at 200 gold very quickly, I can't say that I understand the complaints. At 200 gold respawn he's the most powerful unit in Mordor at that price-range, blowing the orc units right out of the competition. His special power is just gravy, and very appropriate to the early-game unit that Snaga is.

My only beef with Snaga is his name. Snaga simply means 'slave' in black-speak. It's a derogatory term uruks use for all lesser orcs. A bit weird to see that as a hero name, imo.

Gothmog: Nice to see him on a warg. Makes a great addition as a cavalry-hunter for the mordor early game.

Nazgul. Great job on the powers and uniqueness. Please, if you ever give them individual models, don't make them gaudy popinjays like the WoA mod. They should at the very least stay black lol. But anyway, I understand the reason to move two to MoTE and agree with that. It makes sense. Yes they might fight each other in a non-canon way, but so can two mordor players. *shrug*

The Eye: Also, I love the Eye as a fortress nest-hero idea. Pity it would be lost on gaining the ring though, because the embodied ring-bearing Sauron should be more aware of his environment, not less so. He has a stolen palantir for starters... Perhaps the eye ability can be replaced with a palantir spy ability when you gain the ring?

Fortifications: The walls are simply stunning. Much respect for bringing these to life.

Balance: It's hard for me to comment here, as I'm really biased. But I have no doubts that Mordor is at least powerful enough, when used well. I'll let others decide if Mordor is overpowered.

PP tree: Pretty good. But given that Tainted Land is more powerful than the other unit buffs for the spam-happy Mordor, I think placing it under barrage and balrog is a bit too much of a no-brainer. I'd think war chant would be better swapped with it to encourage variety. I actually like Untamed also, for the record, and think it's PP position is a good one.

Inn mini-factions: I understand that these are a work in progress. But if I may, a suggestion: Giving Morder 4 seperate choices of infantry, archer, pikeman is not very game-enhancing. It almost wouldn't matter which I picked. Mordor can certainly use upgradeable infantry units in the early game, but it would be nice to give compelling reasons to prefer one over the other depending on the strategic situation. I'd suggest giving each minifaction a niche. Haradrim might offer upgradeable troops. Angmar might offer necromancers. Goblins might offer fast spider infantry, or even offer a builder that could build nothing but resourcless tunnels (now that could be useful!!). Isenguard might offer warg riders (cavalry!). Just spit-balling here, but you get the idea. It would be nice if the choices were made strategically unique, instead of generic.

Overall, I'm very pleased with Mordor, and i think her balancing is a great credit to canon, to her BFMEI roots, and to the spirit of diversifying factions rather than cloning them. Hopefully, Mordor can serve as a template for how to diversify factions while keeping balanced play, rather than making them all the same and generic. Great job with Rohan too btw, but that's another post...

Edited by Dalmp, 08 March 2008 - 09:33 AM.

[Shikari]

Thanks for taking the time to write this in a easily readable way, your opinions seem to be a very true reflection of the mordor faction. In the future the orc units should all find niches, at the moment they have just been added without really being given a unique purpose.

[Myrdin]

For Dalmp :

I FULLY agree with your opinion of Inn system ( wont write more, becouse he allready said all that was necesarry ).

[Dalmp]

Thanks for taking the time to write this in a easily readable way, your opinions seem to be a very true reflection of the mordor faction. In the future the orc units should all find niches, at the moment they have just been added without really being given a unique purpose.

Roger that. And don't thank me. Thank you for working on this jewel of a mod!

Yeah the models are an impressive part of the new orc work, so I have no complaints and understand they are still very much in development. My intention was to provide a decent overview of the current state of the faction in my eyes, rather than judge any part of it as insufficient.

For Dalmp :

I FULLY agree with your opinion of Inn system ( wont write more, becouse he allready said all that was necesarry ).

Not really opinion on that one, just a suggestion. I know the inn is a WIP, so judging it would be completely unfair. For all I know they already have something similar (or better) in mind.
Most likely they've given it more thought than I have. But it never hurts to toss our two cents in, I figure!

Edited by Dalmp, 09 March 2008 - 11:40 AM.

[Dalf32]

wow, thanks for that! really appreciate you taking the time as shikari said. pretty much sum up everything about mordor so good work.
the inn system will give heros remember, so each faction has their uniqueness there and you also must keep in mind the uniqueness of each faction itself. i.e. dwarves have strong infantry, elves have strong archers, goblins could supplement with cheap infantry, etc. thats my view on it, but of course it will still be fleshed out more in the future.

[Dalmp]

As far as infantry went I'd likely choose stronger archers in every game, regardless of how the game was going or what I was facing. Mordor already has both amongst the cheapest (orc) and most powerful (troll) infantry in the game. While pikes would seem to be a logical choice for defending against cavalry, the mordor method of dealing with cavalry is more about gumming them up with spam and then firing at them with arrows than stabbing them. I don't know.. I'll have to think about pikes vs archers, but I really think even vs cavalry archers would be better. It sounds contradictory but to a die-hard modor fan it makes sense LOL

Also, keep in mind that about the last thing mordor needs is more heroes, so if it relies on that then the inns will be weak for mordor.


Oh another thing about orcs: The archers run far faster than the infantry.
This is a bit troublesome, as when you move a group your archers end up getting to the enemy way faster and dieing before the (defending) infantry catch up! It forces me to micromanage my spam orcs, which is a little frustrating as spam shouldn't require obsessive micromanagement lol. I haven't tested to see if it's all the time, or just under the orcish horde bonus.

Edited by Dalmp, 09 March 2008 - 12:15 AM.

[Devon]

Hey Dalmp, thanks for the comments! I agree with pretty much everything, except having nazguls have different models. In the books and movies, they good guys had no idea who they were going against. Inns will pretty much have all the units and heroes that don't quite fit or that we don't have room for in the faction I think. Also, something will be done about hero hordes, we're trying to figure out a way to make them un-op Anyway, I agree, Mordor is awesome to play as!

[Dalmp]

Hey Dalmp, thanks for the comments! I agree with pretty much everything, except having nazguls have different models

Oh, I don't think they need different models. I actually prefer them generic. One of the things I like about SEE is that even the witch-king looks normal. I was just sayign that if they ever DO get them they shouldn't be all colorful. If you have played Arda, you'll know what I mean. They are all red and blue and white, like oily fops dressed up for a fashion ball LOL. I was saying this because I heard someone mention neew models somewhere, so I thought I'd toss in my two cents ehhehe.

Edited by Dalmp, 09 March 2008 - 12:18 AM.

[Devon]

Oh, ok I think I suggested somewhere that WK look normal until either he's level five or he dies and respawns.

[Myrdin]

of course hero hordes are op against normal units, thats the point hero hordes are counter with heavy units ( troll ents, mumakils ) or groups of heroes. nerfig em will take a lot of fun from the game

[dojob]

Tell that to Yoda, who's seen idk how many heroes and units get slaughtered by my KodA, who simply ride off with a few scratches afterwards There are certainly hero-hordes which are simply rediculous and must be nerfed, but to a point where they can still be thought of as elites and be useful, just not too useful.

[Myrdin]

tell that to me who slays any shit you throw at me with Black Serpent Guard ( all 3 bats ) who dont even have abilities

of course, if hero uses his abilites, ( like saruman for expample ) he can screw your hero hordes up the sewer ( wizard blast 500 spell dmg, fireball dunno how much, if needed he can convert them for few secs on his side, and after that he usus that lvl 10 lightning and see ya hero horde ). of course they will rape early shitty heroes, like boromir, argleb, eovin etc etc. speaking of hobit heroes, would be absolute nonse ( they die just by looking at hero hordes ). Troll hero, ( mostly cah ) can rape hero horde too same with dwarf, and good designed elf hore shoots them before they come closer.
soo only coz one man complains, it doesnt mean the others do soo too ( no offense )

Edited by Myrdin, 09 March 2008 - 01:59 PM.

[Shikari]

Hmm, i'd make it too men complaining.

Baby Drakes- Need removing from goblin faction, putting on drake lair
KoDA - Need nerfing a bit
Arnor Legendary Battalion - Need nerfing a lot
Deathbringers - Need replacing with something that actually fits isengard. Such as orthanc guard
Black Serpent Guard - are ok.
Noldor - Pretty much ok
Black Uruks - A bit op, but they aren't really an option until quite late game. So they're probably ok.
Zealots - These guys are amusing, so they can stay.
Rohan - Royal Guard are a bit op.

[Myrdin]

are they ? i mean rohna royal gurad ? dunno, they cant even lvl up soo thats why im asking

ohh and the baby drakes ? ( i newer liked them, they were expensive and shitty ), what they get instead ?

Edited by Myrdin, 09 March 2008 - 02:49 PM.