1-way funnel in fort

[Marawo]

Issue:

Bottom floor 1-way funnel is still the dominating defense strategy.
It is bad design, because it promotes static instead of dynamic gameplay. It also circumvents any dis-/advantages you get from the outcome of stage 2 (especially timer part). In 1-way funnel you have to solely focus on the main gate which means you don't have to make any decisions. Not having to make any decisions about your positioning or where to place your dps means you can't make the wrong decision because you have to react to the same situation every time.

As a result having more/less time available to you is not really a dis-/advantage since as the attacker you can't present different situations to the defender and hope for them to make the wrong decision how to handle it or be overwhelmed by 2 different threats to panic and lose their organisation.

Possible solutions:

A) Openbottom floor postern doors
This is the easiest fix and will result in alot more lordroom defenses.
To avoid making bottomfloor def completely useless I'd reccomend to open up only 1 of the posterns.
That way Lord/bottomfloor defense strategy both have 2 directions where the attacker can come from.

As the attacker you can create different situations because you can rebalance your forces between main/postern and make the defender move to react to the shifting threats. The synchronisation or a purposeful desynched attack as well as a "pretend" push creates more dynamic in the defenders behaviour and forces them to adapt to whats currently happening.

Having good vision on the attacker helps track their movement but can only really be done from the 2nd floor/balcony, those are good targets for WE/WH or other mdps bypassing the postern that leads directly to 2nd floor.

For clarification when I said open up 1 postern to all attackers I am talking about one of the posterns that leads into the bottom floor.


B) Postern levers
This is a suggestion I only came up with today so I haven't thought through every possibility yet.
Create a Lever that results in opened postern doors (maybe 1 for each postern).
This could make postern bypass actually useful and give, especially stealth classes, mdps a great task.
I'm not sure yet if defenders should be able to relock those posterns or not.
I'm leaning to have the levers be "sabotaged" after they got unlocked otherwise the whole attempt is too finicky.
These lever mechanics only become available in stage 3 ofcourse.

C) Extra stage inbetween stage 2 and 3
1. Open all posterns (not the one that leads straight to 2nd floor that one should be bypass only)
2. Add a bottomfloor objective to destroy/cap (something thematic, a khaine altar, well of life, fire pit, bugman kegs,...)
3. Add barriers/doors (passable by defenders) in the 2 gates leading into lordroom
4. Respawn in keep stops 1 minute after objective from 2. is capped/destroyed
5. Doors/barriers drop 1 minute after objective from 2. is capped/destroyed

this is a low risk setting for defenders to defend bottom floor making it an appealing way to stall out some more minutes, but it also breaks the insufferable bottomfloor 1-way funnel

This suggestion is alot of work and I'm not sure if it is worth the trouble just to keep the fort bottomfloor as a place for figths.

Conclusion:
Breaking the bottomfloor 1-way funnel meta is a requirement in order for the changes that happend to fort during last 3 months,
stage 2 capture the flag and "get out of jail" scroll, to have any meaningful impact.


As always any possible constuctive additions to these suggestions are welcome.

[CountTalabecland]

TBH the first floor funnel comes down to organization and morales. If one side has more guilds on comma then in theory they should be able to morale drop and win.

In less than peak hours, yes, bottom floor funnel can be nearly unbreakable due to a lack of coordination by the attackers.

Solution? Opening postern is probably the right idea but it should only happen x minutes from the end of the forr to force the attacker to make a balls to the wall rush for the lord. Having posterns open all the time to everyone would make first floor indefensible.

[wpc56]

If attacker side have more tanks and melee dps (with M4 up), should be more than sufficient to rush through the front gate.

Conversely if defensive side have nothing but range dps, no one keep the line and they'll just melt.

Big key is coordination. If half the group goes in then you will wipe, not enough tanks you would wipe without M4 protection.

[Marawo]

In less than peak hours, yes, bottom floor funnel can be nearly unbreakable due to a lack of coordination by the attackers.

This is not true, In peak hours there are more people in fort which increases the effectiveness of a chokepoint.

Opening postern is probably the right idea but it should only happen x minutes from the end of the forr to force the attacker to make a balls to the wall rush for the lord. Having posterns open all the time to everyone would make first floor indefensible.

This is a decent idea, but it still wouldn't make the outcome of the second stage meaningful. Bottomfloor defense would still circumvent the point of the second stage, creating engaging fights and encouraging proactive play. You still can ignore the flagcap game and funnel the bottom floor for 30-40 min because you don't have a drawback as the defender if yo udo this.

Now if posterns open, instead of x minutes from the end, 15 minutes AFTER the inner gate drops it would tie into each other nicely.

-Defender get the option to use bottomfloor defense for the whole duration of lord stage if they do well in the cap flag stage.
Holding the flags for 30 minutes is not impossible if you try.

-Attackers are finally able to set the tone of the siege and aggression in stage 2 is rewarded instead of your previous performance
having no meaningful impact.

Now I aggree completely that having all postern doors open, all the time after the inner door drops, would make the bottom floor defense unviable. I mentioned that in the initial post. Just because it is viable doesn't mean it is good design. It is a boring fight, the mission of game mechanics is to encourage interesting/active player behaviour.

[CountTalabecland]

Spoiler:

In less than peak hours, yes, bottom floor funnel can be nearly unbreakable due to a lack of coordination by the attackers.

This is not true, In peak hours there are more people in fort which increases the effectiveness of a chokepoint.

Opening postern is probably the right idea but it should only happen x minutes from the end of the forr to force the attacker to make a balls to the wall rush for the lord. Having posterns open all the time to everyone would make first floor indefensible.

This is a decent idea, but it still wouldn't make the outcome of the second stage meaningful. Bottomfloor defense would still circumvent the point of the second stage, creating engaging fights and encouraging proactive play. You still can ignore the flagcap game and funnel the bottom floor for 30-40 min because you don't have a drawback as the defender if yo udo this.

Now if posterns open, instead of x minutes from the end, 15 minutes AFTER the inner gate drops it would tie into each other nicely.

-Defender get the option to use bottomfloor defense for the whole duration of lord stage if they do well in the cap flag stage.
Holding the flags for 30 minutes is not impossible if you try.

-Attackers are finally able to set the tone of the siege and aggression in stage 2 is rewarded instead of your previous performance
having no meaningful impact.

Now I aggree completely that having all postern doors open, all the time after the inner door drops, would make the bottom floor defense unviable. I mentioned that in the initial post. Just because it is viable doesn't mean it is good design. It is a boring fight, the mission of game mechanics is to encourage interesting/active player behaviour.

It is true. Prime time = more organized morale bombs to break funnels. Funnels are best against pugs as they can’t be broken by random AoE.