In explanation of how spires would be a faction balancing mechanism where outpost battles are concerned (that's all I said, by the way, I did not attribute any supernatural healing powers to them, or anything else) :xfluffee wrote:How would that affect gameplay when one side or the other owns most of the spires, for whatever reason? ...
An extreme example to illustrate the point. Suppose that one faction controlled only one spire - let's say one in the Grove of Confusion - and the other faction controlled ... 20. For players in the dominant faction to be able to spawn at their altar in the Grove, they have to first destroy the spire in that region. Which has 20 times the hp of any of their spires. Until they do, after any wipe at an outpost battle in the Grove they will have to trek all the way from their nearest available spawn point at the far side of the Knoll of Dissent, while players of the weaker faction can teleport-spawn in the Grove. And, if they do destroy that spire and erect one themselves, it will only have 1/21 of the hp of the one they destroyed, so is far more easily lost than it was won.
So long as the hp pool of the spires is large enough - something like 10 or 20 million hp per faction, maybe? - then that's a pretty significant balancing factor.
I'm not saying that I am in favour of spires. This is the only thing thing in their favour, if you ask me, and I don't think that is quite enough, but then I don't give nearly so much value to teleport access as most people. I found the loss of those I had in the past not only unexpectedly easy, but even made a surprising improvement to life on Atys.