Fortress Fights - A way back to fun

[Aethilmar]

So last night (US West Coast time) I was taking a walk on the dark side over on Destro. We capped Reikland while Order capped BC and then we proceeded into Reikwald while they (a few minutes behind) started in on BP. We got done with Reikwald and made a War Report into the BP fort and what ensued was the most fun I've had in a fort in a long time even though we lost in the end.

The key was that Order, for whatever reason, did not bunker in the lord room but either tried to hold the bottom or pushed out on a couple of occasions to try to control the jail. This lead to a series of chaotic pushes and counter-pushes with both Order and Destro streaming back in to the fight over and over again. It was both tense and interesting and while I don't think we ever were really likely to retake the Lord room there were at least a couple of pushes that looked solid enough to be a threat.

It got me thinking how do we make this anomaly the norm?

From my perspective there were two key features:
1) The jail was always open b/c we controlled it so we could just keep fighting
2) The attacker needs to have a reason to not just bunker in the Lord room i.e. they need to have to split their forces a bit.

To facilitate this I would to see two things happen:
1) Get rid of the jail as a concept. It doesn't actually do anything to make the game more fun and it incentivizes NOT taking risks i.e. fighting.
2) Make it so the attackers have to at least devote some of their forces to not bunkering in the lord room after it has been taken by either:
a) having some sort of mandatory resource circles that have to be held by a minimal number of folks on the first floor to make the lord vulnerable or
b) allowing the defenders to "air drop" into the third floor (just like the attackers can) after the lord is under attack or
c) < insert your own idea here >

Anyway, as stated, it was a lot of fun and reminded me of the type of great moments this game is capable of when things are set up (on purpose or by accident) to facilitate them.

[kmark101]

I was there and it was seriously fun. Think we won by 4 minutes remaining on the timer and there were constant fights until then. Big part of it was that both sides had great and active leaders on that managed to rally people and warbands to cooperate.

You write that removing the jail would be a solution, but I think it was large part due to the jail that Order pushed out to try to control it, don't you think? Now removing that means why Order would push out at all? Also, the banner on the bottom floor is is a good example, compared to the poison cauldron in other forts that are in the same room as the lord... so maybe we need a similar concept for the other forts as well, that attackers have to actively hold 1. lord 2. bottom floor 3. jail and failing either of it would have dire consequences!

[Aquila228]

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.

[lyncher12]

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.

while I don't agree with all your points, I think the last bit is especially important. After you get your sovereign what is there to do? Solo ranked? dead unless someone is streaming it. Continuing to move boxes? PvEing rams? There are few moments these days that are memorable or even fun because of the fail system design. The main and typically only action revolves around keeps and the warbands that are encamped in them. The last fun moment I had in orvr was when Order was trying to 5 star Dragonwake and was struggling to hold the BO's, which was weeks ago at this point.. It was a rare moment where there weren't 48 box drones chasing 6 people for +20 rr and an officer medallion, instead the numbers were fairly manageable and it was dare I say fun. These moments make playing the game fun but they are very very few and far between. People are too busy grinding for a set that doesn't even make their box running more efficient and the gameplay loop is so predictable and uninteresting.

[Aquila228]

while I don't agree with all your points, I think the last bit is especially important. After you get your sovereign what is there to do? Solo ranked? dead unless someone is streaming it. Continuing to move boxes? PvEing rams? There are few moments these days that are memorable or even fun because of the fail system design. The main and typically only action revolves around keeps and the warbands that are encamped in them. The last fun moment I had in orvr was when Order was trying to 5 star Dragonwake and was struggling to hold the BO's, which was weeks ago at this point.. It was a rare moment where there weren't 48 box drones chasing 6 people for +20 rr and an officer medallion, instead the numbers were fairly manageable and it was dare I say fun. These moments make playing the game fun but they are very very few and far between. People are too busy grinding for a set that doesn't even make their box running more efficient and the gameplay loop is so predictable and uninteresting.

Exactly, but the thing is - you should fix every stage to make the thing work. Like if you'll fix keeps - pveers would go forts, if you fix forts but leave the city system as it is - they would just log cities. You should rip all hopes and dreams form pveers hands in order to make him evolve rather than degrade further

[Detangler]

Prior to cities, forts were end game gear. Realm priding a win also coincided with getting gear faster. All was well in the world.

Now realm priding fort defenses and zones means not getting chances at the best gear, or slowing your advancement. Hence the throwers and afk zombie plague.

How to fix this? I dunno. Give something good for realm priders that successfully reward pushing back from your city getting sieged, but somehow disincentivize throwing middle or end zones so you can "farm them in the next zone."

It's balancing on a scale while also trying to predict how human behavior works so it isn't tipped too far. One thing we know is that MMO players love nothing more than exploiting the system for maximum gains with minimum time invested.....

[Aethilmar]

Sigh .... my conversation about a tactical problem (making more Fort fights be fun and dynamic like last night) has (d)evolved into a conversation about all the sins of the game with a focus on material rewards.

There are plenty of other threads to discuss that stuff.

But feel free to weigh in on ways to make the fort fight itself more interesting. If you were in that fight (or a similar one), you probably understand what I mean about wanting more like that.

[Aquila228]

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. Motivate people to lead a fighting warband like idk, give the wb leader x2 renown from kills or something, and you'll notice there will be more dynamic fights everywhere. GW2 system is nice and it works. You pay gold to be able to lead a warband and you get bonuses for leading. On the other hand, air dropping on players won't make any sense, as well as removing jails. Fort is a "tower defend" mechanic, no point turning it into Cirque du Soleil. Stop smoking dat majestic gold weed, bro

[Vri]

Its player driven. Make friends and spice things up. Join a guild that can have fun but knows how to engage the other side in RvR.

[lolwut]

I was in that fort, and while we lost it, it was hella fun, GF.

A couple of thoughts on what could be tried on forts to make them more dynamic:

1) Remove people from active fort area when they get to 5x wounds debuff. This sounds harsh,
but forts are way more fun when people know what they are doing, and getting to 5x is opposite of that.
That would also give a chance to fight to people who are stuck in queue.

2) Reintroduce one or two BOs to stage 3, randomly selected from stage 2 BOs, and give people some incentive to hold them —
lord damage increases/reductions for attacking/defending side, maybe a MASSIVE damage increase to side that's attacking,
maybe a couple of random guild standard buffs to all members of a side that's holding it.
As it stands now, if attackers want to win a fort, safest strategy is to stay in lord room after taking it, for the entire duration of stage 3. That's boring af.