Forts and their future

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Mor
Posts: 57
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Forts and their future

Post#1 » Mon Jun 01, 2020 5:46 pm

I wanted to start a fresh topic on forts or perhaps reignite the discussion on forts since some players have concerns about the difficulty of sieging forts, espiecially on the last 3rd stage.

First of all, I want to state that, at least in my opinion, forts are great content to the game and under no condition should be removed. Removing forts from the game would increase massive, mindless, city-farming fests and as the result support the system which only feeds players and doesn't teach how to cook.

Even though we can attend to forts and enjoy all its content, there has always been this one great concern... How on earth are we going to succeed on stage three tonight? There is no need to say that the amount of players who can defened the fort inside the lord room is way enough to make lots of trouble for the opposite side. Many of us would probably agree that Order is doing it better. Nevertheless, even top organised guilds on Order struggle a lot to kill the lord. Many players have suggested widening the doorway. Some complain a lot about the balcony and the fact that healers can revive from there. Currently, we have restricted amount of people both defenders and attackers (who have roughly 50 players more).

There are porbably numerous ideas for how to balance the fight within forts. Personally, I would use caputured flags by the attacker as some kind of benefit on the 3rd stage i.e. lord is weaker or perhaps defending side's morales are building up slower. Something that would force the defender to come out and fight. In this case equal numbers of players could be allowed for both sides. Not 250 vs 200 or something like that.

What are your ideas?

Thanks, Mor

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lyncher12
Posts: 542

Re: Forts and their future

Post#2 » Mon Jun 01, 2020 10:07 pm

deleting them because its garbage

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EsthelielSunfury
Posts: 110

Re: Forts and their future

Post#3 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 9:05 am

Even if you slow down morale building somehow, by the time the next push is coming the defenders will all have m4 because of people hitting them in general from main door.

Equal number of players would definitely make them even harder to win since defenders have an inherent advantage in funnels and chokes.

I love Forts very much, massive fights all around, plenty of renown to gain. Might need the main door to be consistent across all 6 Forts, I swear some of them are narrower than the others.

p00ky
Posts: 128

Re: Forts and their future

Post#4 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 10:12 am

What is missing is a decent reward to motivate people to play forts. 0 renown when defending the nascar lagazerg is not motivating....

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Jabba
Posts: 344

Re: Forts and their future

Post#5 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:25 pm

Make them an actual siege.

Put 2 objectives outside the walls, make them siege camps or something.

Make orcapults permanent ways to attack/get over the walls.

Add a tunnel or two as ways to get past the walls.

Change stage 3 completely.
When the doors go down make the champion lead a sally out against the attackers. The lord acts like stage 2 city champs maybe. He has to go recap BO points that were lost at the end of stage 2. Buff him as required. If defenders manage to defend the lord long enough for him to recap points they win. If the attackers manage to kill the lord before he recaps everything they win.

Just make fights fluid and involve some sort of movement, no funnels

Frankly anything would be better than how they currently are though
Tushi Splats Tush Emoalbino Podge

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Brakh
Posts: 97

Re: Forts and their future

Post#6 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:38 pm

In last blog, dev confirmed implementation of external features. So why not rebuild fortress as a whole? You have these large, magnificent maps to utilize. All yours all you need is an idea what do you want to achieve. Forget retail version of the forts, it was pure garbage. Think about your own concept.

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Mor
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Re: Forts and their future

Post#7 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:40 pm

Jabba wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:25 pm Make them an actual siege.

Make orcapults permanent ways to attack/get over the walls.

Change stage 3 completely.
When the doors go down make the champion lead a sally out against the attackers. The lord acts like stage 2 city champs maybe.

Just make fights fluid and involve some sort of movement, no funnels

Frankly anything would be better than how they currently are though
Great ideas!

I would love to see forces jumping on the roof by catapult or by using portals (not sure about that). But definitely, making it happening at more than just one spot is the way to go. Roof is an excellent point because you can attack from the above and press opponent forces down a little bit forcing them to concentrate even more in the lord room. That would allow guys from the little back postern to perform a joint push at that spot.

The idea about the lord marching out of the room is a completely different thing. It would basically mean the quicker attacking side succeeds in stage 2 the more time lord travels outside of his room therefore greater chances to kill him.

I agree on making the fights on forts more fluid and active. This mad funnel breaking remainds me of opening the bottle of wine without a corkscrew!

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EsthelielSunfury
Posts: 110

Re: Forts and their future

Post#8 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 7:33 pm

Mor wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:40 pm
Jabba wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:25 pm Make them an actual siege.

Make orcapults permanent ways to attack/get over the walls.

Change stage 3 completely.
When the doors go down make the champion lead a sally out against the attackers. The lord acts like stage 2 city champs maybe.

Just make fights fluid and involve some sort of movement, no funnels

Frankly anything would be better than how they currently are though
Great ideas!

I would love to see forces jumping on the roof by catapult or by using portals (not sure about that). But definitely, making it happening at more than just one spot is the way to go. Roof is an excellent point because you can attack from the above and press opponent forces down a little bit forcing them to concentrate even more in the lord room. That would allow guys from the little back postern to perform a joint push at that spot.

The idea about the lord marching out of the room is a completely different thing. It would basically mean the quicker attacking side succeeds in stage 2 the more time lord travels outside of his room therefore greater chances to kill him.

I agree on making the fights on forts more fluid and active. This mad funnel breaking remainds me of opening the bottle of wine without a corkscrew!
Allowing top floor entry to attackers would trivialize the process completely. There's only so many entry points you can cover with that many people. It's even worse in Keeps because you got less focused people inside, and even more AFKers.

That thing would only work if morale damage was completely nerfed, as it should, to the ground. I personally think these things go hand in hand, there's no point giving such a hard advantage to one side of any siege and making the game basically a chore to win.

I don't know, I just don't see it the top floor access as anything remotely balanced.

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Aurandilaz
Posts: 1896

Re: Forts and their future

Post#9 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 8:52 pm

The best way to improve forts would be to switch the focus from "funnel to win" lord room fight to a system where the whole fortress area is used.

So here goes another suggestion that will probably also be ignored;

merge stage 2 and stage 3 into a long "clash" session
All 5 flags either add to mechanic which will to reduce Lord health points, with 20-30sec intervals. If attackers control 5 flags, lord takes massive dmg every tick, and 4 it takes decent dmg, if 3 only minor dmg, if 2, it starts healing and taking reduced dmg and if 1 it starts healing faster and mitigating way more, and at 0 it will be taking no more dmg and only will be healing.
Every door will vanish when the "fight" begins, meaning attackers and defenders can naturally split to either control all 5 flags + Lord room (you can still hit Lord to speed the process) - but trying to blob either just the Lord room or just race around the flags would not be enough.
Or in case of defenders choosing to just sit tight inside, they would give attackers 5 flags, which would be enough to cause Lord to die over 20-30mins. Lord would be "rooted" inside the centre of the room to prevent random troll pulls + HP resets.


Defenders would only be jailed if attacker controls more than 4? - 5 flags, and would normally be spawning near the portals that lead to other zones (far away), and to make the deaths matter, you would have to walk from there over 2-3mins to get back to fight (allowing rear gate to be held + funneled to prevent respawners from getting back to reinforce the fights).
In fact, since dying + rushing back is too easy, whole fortress area would be a place without mounts, so you have more time to consider moves and the usual "race around the flags" would slow down, or become less efficient as holding + defending gains value over fast moving mounted leech trains.
The whole "fight" would take place over 40-60mins? during which the main contested areas would be 5 flags, 3 outer gates, 1 major rear gate to close off reinforcements, 1 Lord room (to speed up Lord kill process with normal dps race).

The fight would most likely evolve into hunting the defenders, and preventing them from reaching the fortress by holding the rear gate area. Some defenders would choose to hold Lord room, and some would risk their lives to either roam as groups getting flags back + occasional prison release (from where people would still scroll out randomly instead of permalocked within). Attackers would have to prioritize cutting off reinforcements/respawners, and split to control 3-5 flags, and create possibly a force that is capable of clearing the actual Lord room from whoever chooses to defend that place.

Sure, some tactics/strats would be annoying, but still all this splitting should be preferable over 40mins of throwing AOE into a narrow funneled doorway and watching people crash/lag out and melt instantly when they get too close to the storm of fire.

oldgiant
Posts: 7

Re: Forts and their future

Post#10 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 9:40 pm

Unpopular opinion, but I like forts and think they're probably best left the way they are. Friendly collision detection and narrow doorways are an issue, but the defending side SHOULD have an advantage imo.

Sometimes a good push loses to a good defense. Maybe there's a useful discussion to be had about those cases. But what I see most often is players, as a group, failing to put together a real push and then blaming game mechanics for their own failure. Melee dps afraid to try and run through a door. Tanks whose idea of "push" is to run TO the doorway and then hold the line. I don't think the game should reward behavior like that with success.

I haven't been around nearly as long as some of you, but I have 2 characters with full invader and (outside of bugs, which have been pretty rare) I've thought "The attacking side deserved to win that, but game mechanics prevented it" maybe once or twice. I see good pushes succeed and bad ones fail, and I think that's how forts should be.

A lot of good things about this game get ruined because people want city. I hope forts don't get ruined.

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