Few infos about event's end and fort test.

[Yaliskah]

Hi all;

Hallows' all eve event :
Please take note, that the Halloween event will end on next update.
-The pumpkin fields and the pumpkins (all) will rot and disappear. The event item (pumpkin) will remain without its stats.
-Don't forget to get your rewards back from even't master ( Bawon Sanmdi) before the end of the event. (You have to do Jack's quest to make him appear)

Fort test :
As announced, the recent change is a test. Some seems to be annoyed about it, but well, we have no solution to check mechanics involving massive amount of players (and in the end, live is the real test).
Some explanations to help you to understand the reason who pushed us to make this test :

During forts, and especially the last one, no more RvR area are open. We can't open any without taking the risk of breaking everything.

Previous Fort event mechanics led to 2 nested issues :
- Many players were "removed" from game, wasting their time clicking on a portal during the whole fort duration, removing them from ORvR/SC. Attackers were camped.
-Pre 40 players had no option during fort phase, than waiting and praying for a SC if possible, the ORvR being dead or closed.
Those 2 situation were leading to frustration.

We are aware that last change makes fort a bit messy, but hey, atleast, can everybody plays, and it was precisely what we were looking for.

If you wonder, we are not satisfied with phase 3, and some change will come patch after patch. Problem being that we must find the "magic formula" to make a fort hard enough for attackers and not undefendable on the defender side in the same time.

Many options are on the table, all with advantages and disadvantages. Be assured that it's not as simple as you may think it can be.

Thanking you for your patience, and waiting for your ideas if you got some. Who knows, maybe we missed something obvious .

[DanielWinner]

If only scenarios were as attractive as PVE and Forts (both hold BIS gear now), probably we could see people enjoying them during fort time and not swarming portals or logging off.

[OndeTv]

While i would like to see some fixes for core mechanics (server stability and rewards being rock solid, opt out system working properly, respawning from rvr pool into pve area being fixed and many more small issues), the main problem with sieges as i see it, is static environment in a dynamic population.

What i mean by this, is that both fort and keep sieges work just fine when it is 1-2 warbands on either faction against eachother. However, once the population scales up (yesterdays fort of ~150 people on each side being an excellent example) it all "breaks". This because the population has changed, but the environment - namely chokepoints - have not.

While there is nothing wrong with chokepoints in or of themselves, the way the game handles collision causes problems when so many players have to attempt to enter through the normal gate size in the game. Even if every attacker lined up perfectly and started moving at the same time, due to small latency differences and desync, they could not keep walking inside while collision is on without bumping into eachother and create "stuck" points in the line.

Add on top of that the larger the population fighting, the more general lag there will be, the more damage will be focused in that still same size choke point, and the more the likelihood of the presence of all types of CC going off in that narrow space.

In short, as i see it, this is why both keep sieges and forts work when the amount of people fighting are rather small, but starts to collapse when each side grows past around the 50 people mark in chokepoints. Usually the reason some of them succeed past those numbers, is when a large number of either attackers or defenders make fatal mistakes that in one way or another breaks the efficiency of the chokepoint. This happens sometimes on normal keep sieges, but rarely during fort sieges since the psychological stakes are much higher.

Now the first obvious solution would be to widen the siege chokepoints to combat the collision slightly without harming the defenders chokepoint power too much. However, that not only requires changes to the core geometry in each and every siege zone - something that you probably have the tools to do by now but which would still most likely be quite an arduous task - but it wouldn't be guaranteed to work either. It might even be detrimental for sieges when they are smaller scale.

The second obvious solution would be to change mechanics so that those chokepoints become less important for the overall siege. But again, many of the ideas that has been thrown around require changes to core mechanics and/or environment while not necessarily being good for gameplay.

At the end of the day though, the core goal is to have the factions fight it out to determine the winner of a specific time and place regardless of the population on each side. Currently the collision and chokepoint sizes are the main obstructions to this goal in a dynamic player count environment.

A "dream" scenario would be to have the chokepoint sizes change dynamically with the player count. However, while ofcourse theoretically possible, i am not sure if this is something the dev team could pull off successfully. And even so, it would also need a lot of tweaking to find the right size to numbers ratios. Too wide for the current battling population, and it is no longer a chokepoint. Too narrow and it is the scenario we currently have.

I don't have the answers, but for what it is worth you now have my thoughts on what the problem is.

[Ysaran]

While I really appreciate the work the team done for the halloween event and the forts changes I would ask you a couple of things about scenarios: how is proceeding the work on the scenarios? When will we see the chenges on Lorgrin's Forge? Will we see a new SC gear in a near future?

[nocturnalguest]

Generally speaking fort changes are fine, except few things:
1. No rewards at all. Needs to be fixed asap, its frustrating.
2. Lowbies. There should stay 40/40 requirement. Im pretty sure there are very low amount of active accounts with all chars lesser than that (mostly people have at least one of 40/40), so if fort happens - relog to your 40/40 char, level a twink after.

[Yaliskah]

Logrin forge needs few work to be ready ( minimap info stuff), so it should come in the next weeks.

Scenario rework, as announced has just started and it is gonna take time to be fully deployed, some changes being very deep (not only SC redesign).

I'm unable to give you an answer about gear, but I see no reason to stop gear progression to oppressor. Keep in mind we have to take care about the gap any new gear could create, purpose being to avoid the rr90-100 gear syndrome.

Now, at a very personal level, I don't focus on gear or reward when I focus on mechanics. I'm looking for an interesting and efficient system. Rewards in general don't make a **** a better taste, unless you just look for rewards, and in this case, a free item shop would be the solution, and project dev would be finished.

[Natherul]

Generally speaking fort changes are fine, except few things:
1. No rewards at all. Needs to be fixed asap, its frustrating.
2. Lowbies. There should stay 40/40 requirement. Im pretty sure there are very low amount of active accounts with all chars lesser than that (mostly people have at least one of 40/40), so if fort happens - relog to your 40/40 char, level a twink after.

1. already fixed. It was announced prior to the fort last night that a fix was on the way and its on the patch note at hotfix 3 (it was hofixed after the fort last night)
2. The test is for no exclusions as such it would be troublesome to exclude players who can legitimately partake in t4 campaign

[Dajciekrwi]

Its a veery good move form Devs to open forts, brave and cunnig, ppl need to have feeleings that they all serve their realms. It need some works but a good job!!
Grats!

[Ysaran]

Logrin forge needs few work to be ready ( minimap info stuff), so it should come in the next weeks.

Scenario rework, as announced has just started and it is gonna take time to be fully deployed, some changes being very deep (not only SC redesign).

I'm unable to give you an answer about gear, but I see no reason to stop gear progression to oppressor. Keep in mind we have to take care about the gap any new gear could create, purpose being to avoid the rr90-100 gear syndrome.

Now, at a very personal level, I don't focus on gear or reward when I focus on mechanics. I'm looking for an interesting and efficient system. Rewards in general don't make a **** a better taste, unless you just look for rewards, and in this case, a free item shop would be the solution, and project dev would be finished.

Ty very much for the answer. To know that SCs aren't forgotten is always good news. About the gear I want to clarify a point: I don't care much about SC gear, I already have all the gear I need on all the toons that needed it. I play SC because I find it funny and because they give you a close environment in which test your skills and your team coordination. But many care about gear and to know that the team is working on a new set would give a strong message to them on how much the team is involved in SCs reform.

[Alfa1986]

Thanks for your great work. all is well, maybe in the third stage, raising the AOE cap caused even more troubles for the attackers. but despite this, yesterday's fort was very funny, at least at the 1st and 2nd stages.