Cage Lever my suggestion

[Maleus79]

Another question then, is it ok if defending side camps respawn point of attackers? if they can camp Jail of defenders? Thanks.

[Grock]

It's not supposed to be EASY to do it if there's 6 people guarding it.

Consider this:
6 people in jail + 6 people guarding it

That is total 12 people doing nothing while the rest are having fun in the actual fight.

Going for jail is a dangerous enterprise and a big risk of getting into jail yourself because you are far away from your main force and healers, you are in the open and you are risking being intercepted even before you reach the place. (And i am not talking about soloing)

There are no real incentive to be trying to get people from jail and it is hard and risky to do.
When you are losing people going into the open area where attackers have huge advantage is probably the worst thing you can do.

If there's only few people in jail then it doesn't really matter.
If there are many people in jail then it is even riskier to try and save them because attackers have even higher numbers advantage.

All in all it is a curious concept but it just doesn't add anything good in terms of gameplay, just another boring waiting game. In addition it also discourages defenders from going out and taking a fight outside, in the end everything is reduced to a one big funnel at the lord door.

[Nishka]

i understood but to me its seems quite punishing for defenders side. if you fight for longer period of time, on defenders side after each push from attacker side you get less and less ppl staying inside lord room to defend and after some time you get wiped for sure then, as ppl are not able to get to Jail because of it getting perma camped and attacker respawn point is too close to it? Btw why is attacking side not punished in some way as well as defender? if we take in account fact that defenders got 80% of players from attacking side?

I guess you'd prefer the endless slaughter of attackers in the funnel, like it often happens in the regular keeps?

[Antonis1]

i played on Stonewatch fortress yesterday the cage is really cool ^_^ that cage can be the same to all fortresses You dont see much from inside to outside plus outside can't do much to inside

[xanderous]

The only issue i see with fortresses and the jail system is that once its properly guarded by enough players lets say a single group with a decent variety of classes, it will be near impossible to release players from jail without an equal or overwhelming opposition to counter said group guarding the area.
Now i have no problem with folk doing this, its a good strategy and should be done but when you put into perspective two cons for the defenders, one being that they cannot freely respawn to reattempt this, the attackers can and the defenders are already at disadvantage with lower numbers. So essentially you'd need somewhere between 6-10+ defenders roaming to counter the jail guards whom will have an increasingly high chance of being wiped to an ever respawning zerg on each attempt, its just not feasible scenario for defenders to counter unfortunately.

I don't know a good fix for this to make it competitive other than maybe setting some kind of auto release on the jail if too many players are jailed, something like "the jail is bursting to capacity, players will be released in 30s" message pops up, giving the defenders one last hura upon a complete wipe.

[Grock]

Jail could work if it was located at the defenders side of the fortress, a place where defenders can reach easier than attackers so that it is the attacking side that need to make an extra effort to get the advantage of keeping people in the cage.

The cage should be close enough to inner keep so that in case of emergency players that attempting to open it have the option of running back to the keep and getting heals or rez from walls, otherwise risk of dying and ending up in the very cage you tried to open simply makes the risk too high.

Another option is cage can open up on its own every 30-60 seconds, but if attackers interact with the lever it is cancelled.

[Aurandilaz]

The only issue i see with fortresses and the jail system is that once its properly guarded by enough players lets say a single group with a decent variety of classes, it will be near impossible to release players from jail without an equal or overwhelming opposition to counter said group guarding the area.
Now i have no problem with folk doing this, its a good strategy and should be done but when you put into perspective two cons for the defenders, one being that they cannot freely respawn to reattempt this, the attackers can and the defenders are already at disadvantage with lower numbers. So essentially you'd need somewhere between 6-10+ defenders roaming to counter the jail guards whom will have an increasingly high chance of being wiped to an ever respawning zerg on each attempt, its just not feasible scenario for defenders to counter unfortunately.

I don't know a good fix for this to make it competitive other than maybe setting some kind of auto release on the jail if too many players are jailed, something like "the jail is bursting to capacity, players will be released in 30s" message pops up, giving the defenders one last hura upon a complete wipe.

Hmm, my idea would be;
upon dying, player is sent to 1 random jail out of possible 4? jails. These jails would be scattered, maybe 30-60sec distance from each other. Some maybe closer to each other than others. So it might be that Jail1 has 4 ppl inside, Jail2 has 5 ppl, Jail3 has 7 ppl, Jail4 has 1 ppl. Now the sneaky defenders/attackers would have to divide guardians to all jails. (or as RoR terminology goes, "splitting the zerg")
Now instead of camping one jail, attacker has to figure how many they want to guard, and defenders chances of getting people out increase, when one or two jails might be unguarded.
Current tactic heavily favours just camping the jail with several parties and just killing whoever comes to rescue, leading to defenders tactic of simply not wasting people on rescue attempts, but ignoring jails as much as possible. And if the jail mechanic is mostly ignored, well, maybe try changing it so both sides have more interest in it instead of 95% of players just focusing on the one and only lord room funnel.

Other funny idea;
3-5 "pile of dirt" game objects spawn inside prison every 30-60 sec, and prisoners have chance to search said pile and find quest item (low chance, 5-10%?) "Miracle Shovel" which they can use to place it in hotbar, and then "dig" themselves out to random location outside keep walls. So every one min, there might be low chance that randomly one or two prisoners might just make it out. Keeps people busy inside those tiny prisons digging for a hopeful escape.
But because that sounds too easy, using "Dig" gives them a 5min penalty, "So Tired" debuff, giving them -50% movement speed and -50% wounds, so any Prison Guard who is nearby might just react and send them back to prison before the prisoner can get too far.

Would make Stage 3 less boring.

[xanderous]

The only issue i see with fortresses and the jail system is that once its properly guarded by enough players lets say a single group with a decent variety of classes, it will be near impossible to release players from jail without an equal or overwhelming opposition to counter said group guarding the area.
Now i have no problem with folk doing this, its a good strategy and should be done but when you put into perspective two cons for the defenders, one being that they cannot freely respawn to reattempt this, the attackers can and the defenders are already at disadvantage with lower numbers. So essentially you'd need somewhere between 6-10+ defenders roaming to counter the jail guards whom will have an increasingly high chance of being wiped to an ever respawning zerg on each attempt, its just not feasible scenario for defenders to counter unfortunately.

I don't know a good fix for this to make it competitive other than maybe setting some kind of auto release on the jail if too many players are jailed, something like "the jail is bursting to capacity, players will be released in 30s" message pops up, giving the defenders one last hura upon a complete wipe.

Hmm, my idea would be;
upon dying, player is sent to 1 random jail out of possible 4? jails. These jails would be scattered, maybe 30-60sec distance from each other. Some maybe closer to each other than others. So it might be that Jail1 has 4 ppl inside, Jail2 has 5 ppl, Jail3 has 7 ppl, Jail4 has 1 ppl. Now the sneaky defenders/attackers would have to divide guardians to all jails. (or as RoR terminology goes, "splitting the zerg")
Now instead of camping one jail, attacker has to figure how many they want to guard, and defenders chances of getting people out increase, when one or two jails might be unguarded.
Current tactic heavily favours just camping the jail with several parties and just killing whoever comes to rescue, leading to defenders tactic of simply not wasting people on rescue attempts, but ignoring jails as much as possible. And if the jail mechanic is mostly ignored, well, maybe try changing it so both sides have more interest in it instead of 95% of players just focusing on the one and only lord room funnel.

Other funny idea;
3-5 "pile of dirt" game objects spawn inside prison every 30-60 sec, and prisoners have chance to search said pile and find quest item (low chance, 5-10%?) "Miracle Shovel" which they can use to place it in hotbar, and then "dig" themselves out to random location outside keep walls. So every one min, there might be low chance that randomly one or two prisoners might just make it out. Keeps people busy inside those tiny prisons digging for a hopeful escape.
But because that sounds too easy, using "Dig" gives them a 5min penalty, "So Tired" debuff, giving them -50% movement speed and -50% wounds, so any Prison Guard who is nearby might just react and send them back to prison before the prisoner can get too far.

Would make Stage 3 less boring.

I'm going to be honest with you but i maybe got down 4 lines of what you wrote before my eyes started to roll and lost interest in reading the rest, your suggestion sounds awfully complicated and pain for the devs to implement on an already somewhat buggy fortress system. This just could easily just be me though and my opinion, i mean no disrespect

[Hargrim]

Sounds rather easy to implement from code perspective, I'm not sure there is enough space in the zone for that many prisons tho.

[JustDust]

the 4 Prison system would be awful. Putting even more ppl on cage guard duty. Against good defenders, you rarely put anyone in prison anyway. Mostly the ppl who don't play smart get to put in there.

Only the distance from Lever to Attacker spawn should probably get changed a bit.

Dont get me wrong tho, i am not a fan of the prison system myself, but until they change how lord is reachable(only 1 funnel entrance is really boring), cages are a neccessity.