Welcome! I like the style of what we've seen s far very much. With that said I agree with you on the specific details you mention.

• The axe heads (shown on the merchant's table) do look much too big, or not all to the same scale. The halberd looks quite small.
• The shield in the same picture seems to be a single layer of wood planks with no covering or edging, which would greatly weaken it, while the metal fittings serve little purpose (strap attachment perhaps, but there are too many). That said, looking at the very basic, flat boss and plain textures I'm sure it's a placeholder/WIP.
• The buckler, also agree.

The "castle" looks more like a town wall to me so I wouldn't expect to see a fiendishly designed medieval castle. That said it's true the towers don't look up to much. No arrow slits either?

Overall though what we've seen looks great. Very, very happy with the style they've gone with.

Yes, now that i think about it those walls may not be deisgned to be as effective or impressive as a fort or castle. Though i still feel that the towers are a bit too bad at defense.

Anyway, thanks for the feedbak Alricj!

The pinecone towers are what get me. I'm sorry but I just think they look ridiculous.

Yeah, they are quite silly. I can accept them more however since they are SO outlandish they enter their own reality of sillyness.

The axe is a pickaxe used for whacking stone, it's being used as a weapon also though. No point carrying a pickaxe for stone and then another axe for fighting, might aswell use the same device for two jobs. Thus the "weapon" is of a special design and are you kidding me on the shields? it's a basic animation, the shields not been properly designed yet, they're simply showing how the shield would be animated.

PS: I like the pinecone towers.

Yeah, i see your point. That could be what they could becwhat they could be going for. Though i think it is wierd that all the weapon design where really good, exept for the shields an axes. It made me think that the devs maybe had not researched axe design as much as sword or armor design.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts

Posted By Gothix at 12:34 AM - Sat Feb 25 2017

About the size of axes and thickness of shields...

As I understand blacksmiths can have more or less skill, and have some freedom in crafting their own weapons.

Now, what I would guess is that several blacksmiths would offer you weapons of different sizes, different material, and also different price, and you would then chose how much you want to pay and how efficient weapon you want to get.

So if you wish cheap wooden shield (with useless metal ornaments) that will break on the first impact go for it. :) And if you wish to pay more for quality and more logically and efficiently crafted shield, go for that one.

Same goes for axes, maces, etc.

Just my two cents on how it should be.

Exactly this. Well said.

Until we start seeing shoulder pads bigger than most torsos, i'm not too worried about the aesthetics of the design.

I hope they only have 1 pinecone when it gets to launch. Unless there is some reason there are pinecones eg. Pinecone is local coat of arms

I can't speak about axes and shields, but what I will speak about are the castle and its walls, and I'll be agreeing with you a lot on this topic.

Machicolations the gap between the wall and the floor so archers and such can shoot down, giving them an advantage.

Hoards are the wooden version of this.

What really gets to me is that they already have the models in for machicolations, they actually already made them, the problem is that they don't actually work.

If the image is too large then see the full image here

Normally you build hoards if there aren't any machicolations, they serve the function of shooting straight down as most walls were just straight vertical with no extensions at the top. And I can only agree 100% on the size of the Crenels and Merlons they do seem too small, especially when I checked with the door, here's an image of how they look right now: If the picture is too big then click here and here is (if we're going with a medieval setting) how it would rather look For larger version Disclaimer, I did also make the "entrance" longer, you want it to be easily defensible with murderholes and preferably two or more gates + portcullises

I do hope the developers will "test" the "defenses" of a stronghold out, see if they can make the best possible stronghold, try to see what works and what doesn't, like "Do I need to jump up on the wall to hit enemies beneath, and can that be solved by extending the wall" etc.

One thing worth mentioning is that what works in reality might not work in games, though I do hope we'll see towers with doors (used to split walls into smaller sections, so if they're taken the attackers won't gain too much of an advantage) and the elevation of walls, and also just "tall gatehouses" etc. things that makes people want to build a wall, because if there's not enough positives to building a wall most will most likely just put down a wooden wall and not bother with a stone one if it doesn't matter in the end (You want to be able to defend a castle with as few men as possible)

• For those saying this is more of a walled in city, there's no definitive definition of a castle as the lord chose what he wanted in it, so if a lord wanted a whole town in it, if he could effort it he would put it in, so this is definitely a castle.)

• I like the Pine cone Towers, I think they look very iconic, people will remember things that stick out a bit easier ;P

Edit: Also on the term of gates, I do admit the gate does look a bit big, and there can definitely come more than 1 wagon/carriage/caravan through, but I don't know how big some of the animals will be, but it could easily shrink to half its size, you want to keep it as small as possible as it's the only "weak point" in your defenses. (Unless we see that making holes in walls will be much easier than we intended, which was really hard back in the middle ages, almost impossible even.)

I, too, feel like machicolations, as well as arrow slits, should be added in the game, i accidentaly forgot about them while writing my post.

One thought i had is if they might lock more "advanced" defensive designs behind research? Machiculations only appeared in the later medieval era so they might not want it to appear in the beggining of the mmo's lifespan. However if they do that they should remove the stone hoardings on the walls until you research machiculations.

They could also make wooden hoardings a separate structure that could built on top of walls until further research makes them obsolete. Just a thought though.

I also agree that they might have to compromise realism to make sure that walls are not too easy or hard to assault/destroy. Although, properly built castle walls where usually very sturdy so they might want walled cities and strongholds to be hard to take. Again just a thought.

Anywho, i really enjoyed reading your post, Liva! Thanks for taking the time to write such an extensive awnser!

@Googlestalcer I can see Arrow slits being a bit of a problem since you play in 3rd person, and shooting through a tight, small, hole might not be the most fun, especially if you are to aim.

• One thing to remember is that Elyria does not mirror earth, this can be seen by the designs etc. clothing and so on and so forth, they advance differently, it's low fantasy, not historical. If we were to go back in time in the early medieval era we wouldn't have buttons, the shoes you see, the clothing, there's a bunch of stuff they would need to completely change. But I think that since they implemented "Machiculations" that they might as well go the extra and actually make them use-able instead of purely aesthetic, everything is a "response" to something, machiculations is a response to not being able to shoot straight down.

• Another important thing is to make it fun, walls are generally a bit "OP" in the sense that sieges became "Starve them out" or someone (a spy) would open the backdoor and let the army in etc. that was how the majority of sieges were won, now I wouldn't mind it if sieges were like that, but that's entirely up to SBS. Real castles only needed a handful of men to defend against several hundred. But they're not going for realism for the "Sake" of realism.

I enjoyed reading yours too :) And I welcome you to the forums! :D! I think you make some good points and it was an enjoyable read. :3

Hmm, yeah third person might make it difficult to shot through arrow slits and small machiculations, didn't think of that, @Liva.

When it comes to the fun factor of walls i also see the problems of too "OP" walls. There isn't really a correct awnser since every person is gonna feel differently. However, since SBS is trying to make CoE's mechanics be somewhat realistic and "make intuitive sense". i feel that it would only make sense for the mechanics of walls/static defenses to mirror the mechanics and value of walls in real life. Exactly how they should do this i don't know. In the end i am happy as long as the mechanics are well developed and offers the players multiple options on how to deal with. It would be sweet if you could assault, infiltrate or starve the defenders and have them all be viable tactics. Again how they will manage to do that, i have no clue.

And once again, thanks for the comments, I really appreciate all the feedback i've gotten from everyone so far, it's really nice to be with a community that wants to discuss these kinds of things. :)