Remaining issues and suggestions for next updates

[INC4RnAt1oN]

While the March update fixed several issues and made stamina management more important once again, there still remain many unsolved problems. I will mention the ones that are most important to me:

1. Servers don’t show their player population
   On Xbox, the information for server population only shows a question mark. This keeps many people from wanting to play the game because hardly anyone wants to join several servers just to see who is on the server.

2. Low Population in general
   Considering the currently low population of the game and the many existing servers, I recommend shutting down some of the empty servers / merge servers and add console crossplay (Xbox and Playstation). That way you would save ressources whilst providing a better player experience as the remaining servers will be more populated.

3. Combo weapons and absence of hyper armor
   The recent changes to stamina make stamina management more important once again and also promote the usage of combo weapons. However, combo weapons, especially one handed swords and axes and greatswords, will still struggle to do combos as they have zero hyper armor and can basically be interrupted by anything during any point of their attack animations. Since hyper armor was removed, those weapon types became a lot less viable, as they have slower attack animations compared to most agility weapons (especially daggers and claws) and can be interrupted easily. The removal of hyper armor on most weapons is also a big reason why the focus in PVP shifted towards running attacks that cannot be interrupted (especially hammers) and agility weapons (daggers and claws) - as weapons with faster attack animations had an advantage since then. That’s why I suggest to implement hyper armor for said weapons once again - leading to a better weapon variety and a more balanced experience. It would also be fine to just add back hyper armor for heavy attacks in general - as it used to be before its removal.

4. Spears
   In my opinion, the speed of the 1st heavy attack of spears can be increased to somewhere in the middle between how it is now and how it used to be before the nerf. The attack speed as of now is a bit too slow/predictable.

5. The influence of followers and building pieces on server performance
   I recommend implementing a limit to the maximum of building pieces and reducing the amount of followers a clan can have, at least on PVP servers. This might help to reduce performance issues / lag.

6. Avatars and Protection
   As of now, avatars can only be taken out by explosive damage (mainly by explosive arrows). However, summoning an avatar can overwhelm the server to an extent, where players trying to defend cannot do anything because their stamina doesn’t regenerate and/or they just cannot act because their screen freezes. Furthermore, it is not enjoyable to actively wait for an avatar attack to happen - being stuck at the base as long as the symbol is on the map - just because there is no other defense and the base would be gone otherwise. That’s why I suggest to either disable avatars / or bring god bubbles back into the game. If god bubbles were removed because they made bases too defendable you could just change the inner layer of the bubble so it doesn’t stop projectiles anymore and make it possible to ice bridge into the inner bubble, for example.

7. Target Lock and rotation during attack
   During age of war, Target Lock was changed and character rotation during attack enabled, which caused Target Lock on several weapons to basically gurantee a hit. Those changes were not necessary at all, and still cause trouble to this day. Some weapons are still too accurate with Target Lock, especially daggers and claws. Before the changes to Target Lock and rotation were implemented, it was possible to evade attacks of locked on weapons (including daggers) by simply moving correctly. As of now, this is not possible anymore as the Target Lock is too reliable and gurantees hits unless the other player rolls out of range. I suggest to revert Target Lock back to how it was before age of war and to disable character rotation during attacks - leading to a more balanced gameplay and more options to counter certain playstyles. In my opinion Target Lock can be useable as a tool to aid the player, but should at least have its flaws (as it used to be).

Obviously there is many more issues, but I just wanted to mention the ones most important to me, mostly from a PVP standpoint.

[FCCantProgram]

I completely agree with your points here. You understand how the PvP works and should work in this game.

I would add one thing regarding Target Lock:

Remove the ability to lock on players completely and only allow it on NPCs. Then everyone has the same playing field and cheap weapons can not abuse it.

[INC4RnAt1oN]

True - that would also be a solution worth considering. Most likely even easier for them to implement than reverting Target Lock back to how it was before age of war, as they would only need to disable it in the settings of Official PVP servers.

[miBoi]

Everything above and the glit the craft and the lie trophie/achievement