Fortress Fights - A way back to fun

[wonshot]

Fortresses have always been sandboxy. You can make it what you want, if you have an active and good warband. You dont HAVE to do the funnel, you can jump and kill the healers as the tanks push in. you can toy with your food at the jail, push from 3rd floor with the flyers.

The problem is that majority of the server likes to pug, and put in lowest effort despite the game offering greate fights when they atleast join the leaderes who try to make these good fights.

Jail as a concept, i agree there is just no fun mechanism to this. People being unable to fight is what kills pvp. Same for when Fort-defenders have no acces to a NPC healer to get rid of their wounds "oh we got 3 stacks of woudns debuff, lets not actively try to defend because our wounds are too limmited" That is just the PVP and fighting you are limmiting, its barely strategy to zerg your enemies to lower their wounds.

Forts are fine, they are a garenteed fight. Promoting pvp in forts is mostly up to the players, but getting rid of the Jail will probably just lead to attackers breaking a funnel, and then doing the funnel while killing lord. The leaders and the followers make the good fights.

[Sinisterror]

The Forts in not a problem really. What IS a problem however is that the community on this server become more and more PvE oriented and developers seem to support this. How? Let me explain a bit.
A couple years ago we had lots of fun fights both in RvR zones and on Forts. How come? Because you were to hold BOs to make stars and such system provoked fights. Nowadays you see warbands just carrying these stupid boxes around. Many times I saw destro and order warbands just dodging each other to carry boxes to their keeps. Than these PvE players just throw a Forts stage to make it faster to the city siege. Why? To crab 1-2 Royal crests to make a Sovereign set and just stand in the city, pretending they worth something. Noone wants to fight anymore and this system gives you an opportumity for that. Pug WB "leaders" just gather their 2-2-2 WBs without even knowing why, most of them don't even want to lead really, they just want to gather a zerg to make PvE. To create fights we need a system that would MAKE you to find yourself fights and MAYBE after that some extra players would at least try to understand how their classes work. All the time I see healers who don't heal AT ALL, tanks that just chillling around and run away on flee from any potential threat, dd without damage etc. Why? Because they don't give a sht. Why bothering, you'll get your highend anyways.

What's need to be done to at least try to fix and improve the current situation?

1) Change the stars system back to holding BOs, NO MORE FREAKING BOXES PLEASE
2) Ram should disappear and respawn on keep's gates after it reaches the gates zone (just like in the Fort). It should not be attackable nor be able to move around by anyone. 4 tanks fill the ram - ram attacks the gate. Less than 4 ppl in the ram for more than 10 minutes? Ram is dead. No ram in another 20 minutes? Gates are at full HP. This would solve a problem with people trying to exploit the siege mechanics to siege an extra zone while holding defenders in the semi-broken keep AND this will make PvE ram killing wall jumpers sad, which is awesome. Fight with players or go cultivate your gold weed.
3) Now about Forts. If attackers leave a Fort to go in another zone to continue carrying their precious garbage boxes around or to siege an empty keep, Fort should END instantly, giving defenders an opportunity to defend other stuff rather than just stand for 30 minutes in an empty zone for no reason.
4) No contribution on zones or forts? You don't go to attack OR defend a city. That's sad, I know, but Sovereign must not be a thing to wear for a casual player or a lazy dude that just go to the city dodging any other content. City sieges would not happen that often. Well, go out there and fight. You don't get your high end set? Well, probably you don't need one. There are more than enough cosmetics for you to make a screenshot of yourself for your friends anyways.

Probably Devs think that this is bad for the server, like if you do that, many players will leave. But the truth is if a player is interested ONLY in getting Sovereign than he/she would leave anyways after the set is complete. And 300x300 in the zones which is created for more like 100x100 is not that funny thing, especially if these 300x300 are interested just in getting their boxes and PvE the Keep's Lord.

100 % ageed full support!

[Flet]

Its a game, game players will always seek to optimize the game play methodology to assure success and reduce effort. Instead of blaming players for doing this natural and totally expected human activity, it is designers job to ensure the method that produces success at the least effort is a fun and interesting one.

WARs problem back at release, which was the last time i played it untill just now (for about ~6 months starting right at launch) was an emphasis on PVE in what was sold as daocs successor. I dont know what all happened in the years between then and now, it seems some attempts were made, but clearly right now as back then the game is more pve-focused than one would expect. As such the post saying its too focused on PVE stikes a sympathetic chord with me.

My solution would be to remove cities, remove forts, remove BOs, and siege keeps all day. Heavy handed and would probably just break everything because the game was never designed around that, but keep sieges and large scale rvr between keeps is what makes rvr games unique. Other forms of pvp people do in them can be found in other kinds of games as well, but keep sieges and zerg herding are the genres niche. As it stands teso and even planetside2 is a truer successor to daocs RVR spirit than this because they dont have you doing a bunch of pve activities as part of their gameplay.

What made me try this server out was the memory of walls built out of tanks blocking ramps and posterns while aoe spam went back and forth and heal spam countered it in a gigantic laggy chaotic mess. You cant get that in other games. sadly these things happen less than they did when i played live where it was a fairly common occurrence when i played, though happily i have experienced it a few times.

[Alfa1986]

just make a siege of the fort as the capture of a regular Keep, and after that to make a possibility to form only 2 warbands for killinig the lord, after successful winning first/second stages, as it was on life.
stages:
1st. all players can participate. the main goal is to break the gate, as in the case of a regular Keep.
2. The second stage can be left as it is now, that is, the capture and retention of BOs. here you can already limit the number of players who can enter the inner courtyard of the fort as it is today.
3. third stage seizure of the fort itself and the murder of the lord. limit the number of attackers and defenders within two warbands, choose the best players and start capturing the fortress. conditionally for exp need to give three attempts or 30-45 min.
when the fort is on under attack, defenders cannot go to it in any way except in the pre-fort zone. upon death in the fort, the defenses and the attackers are resurrected in the pre-fort zone. this will encourage and motivate people to form groups with healers and to join to organized warbands.
Stage 3 will induce the whole faction to unite to choose the best players, otherwise pug simply will not be able to win in an equal fight with the defenders, and the fort will be failed. this fact will create a better atmosphere for social interaction than what is now.


and yes, most importantly, you need to delete all the wards in the fort zone, so that the path to the fort from the warcamp would be difficult and dangerous for all players of both order and destruction. after the start of the third phase, this will force people not to scatter in all zones, but to provide escort to the fort for both defenders and attackers. without this escort, the defending faction will be able to simply block the approaches to the fort for the attackers after the first wipe when trying to push in the lord's room.

[normanis]

keep system and fort system is so simple vs what was before when rvr and forts was added.
there was antizerg system ( u need hold objects so u can kill lord- split zerg)
firsst forts lords where very hard and very much depend on objects and special lord abilities. now its so simple that i wud not wonder if lords soon will be with 1hp. so more unbalanced destro wins in city. rvr become pve ;-(

[Detangler]

BRING BACK ORCAPULTS!!!!

[Caduceus]

You won't get any fun or dynamic fights if people don't wanna fight. So you should motivate people to fight instead of giving them more content they don't need.

I agree.

The game should incentivise people to engage with each other, and not to avoid fights or only look for easy pug-stomps.

Right now, if victory is not easy or zone flip is not possible, people log off because there is no reason to play.
Close fighting = Almost no reward.

That is a huge issue.

[normanis]

You won't get any fun or dynamic fights if people don't wanna fight. So you should motivate people to fight instead of giving them more content they don't need.

I agree.

The game should incentivise people to engage with each other, and not to avoid fights or only look for easy pug-stomps.

Right now, if victory is not easy or zone flip is not possible, people log off because there is no reason to play.
Close fighting = Almost no reward.

That is a huge issue.

my thumb up