Return of Reckoning

After the fort in Butcher’s Pass this morning, can confirm that roughly even numbers and a long stage 2= impossibly powerful Fort Lord. Essentially if attackers can’t beat the defenders in the field there isn’t much chance of them being able to tank lord and fight off a 3rd floor drop. Essentially destro just had to build morales, drop from third, send a grp down the stairs to bomb main tank and it was GG.

Then again, Order probably should have attempted to clear 3rd, if that was even possible given the numbers/Order only had two well composed WBs. Kind of a doomed attempt from the first wipe in stage 2. Thoughts?

Silveras wrote: Tue Jun 18, 2019 2:55 pm The suggestions on the timers do sound very interesting, but from what you said the defenders are heavily favored anyways and it feels like less time for attackers to make those coordinated attacks even more difficult than it already is now.

So I feel that change would only exasperate the issue. I feel like stage 2 needs to have a larger impact on whom is going to win the fort and stop those awkward afk sessions after the attackers lose hope on the funnel pushes.

With that being said I feel there need to be a higher % of attackers allowed in forts than there already are. The attackers have pushed through the zones to get to that point. It should be the defenders pushing against an unstoppable foe and having those epic moments of an amazing defense. Not the case where there defenders just need to set up a funnel and stage 2 doesnt matter because they will defend anyways.

Stage 2 having a larger impact on the Fort is what I am trying to achieve.
Yes, the changes would "buff" the defending side by opening up more winconditions, but this can be linked to lets say overall increased artilleryfire (not so much a fan of that) or open postern doors like in regular keeps. This also seems more justifiable if defenders don't have to hold them for an hour but rather 20 minutes because they did so well in stage 2. (just random numbers)

More attackers won't solve anything, the maximum throughput is already reached, getting through the gate with the current max amount of ppl in fort is overcrowded as is without additional entries. (even with melee bypass)

Something that absolutely needs to be taken into consideration is that the defenders need to have the advantage overall or it would promote Realmzerging.

There are alot of factors that would throw off the balance too much in one or the other direction if other factors aren't taken into consideration.


One possible followup rebalance I have been thinking about to equalize the attacker/defender advantage ratio:
-Open up the side posterns for all (like normal keep) to create threat away from Main gate
-Back postern (the one that directly leads to 2nd floor) remains for mdps with bypass only

Being forced to make decisions makes people mess up and mistakes can spiral out of control.
Holding one single bottleneck doesn't.

Defenders can split smaller groups to the posterns, or a bigger reaction wb
Attackers can outplay this deploymentstyles by splitting a synchronized push and wear the def with their bigger numbers down or overwhelming one postern.

Good informationlevels on the direction the attackers will come from is going to be important, making lookouts on 2nd floor necessary to keep
Attackers can send mdps directly up to 2nd floor via bypass to clear those lookouts and mess with these people.
Defenders can dedicate a balanced grp to block this 2nd floor postern but those people might be missing somewhere else.

It becomes a cat&mouse game where the attackers don't have time to mess up too often (woundsdebuff and timelimit) and the defenders can't afford to mess up too hard once.



Ofc I have been thinking about 3rd floor defenses as well but that's a different beast, they kinda feel fine right now (even if a bit boring imo)

Trying to theorize how things actually turn out is hard. The more unknown factors are inbetween, the more the final result will vary. I definitely don't want bottom floor defense to be completely unviable as well.

Alfa1986 wrote: Tue Jun 18, 2019 2:20 pm

Ototo wrote: Tue Jun 18, 2019 12:22 pm

Alfa1986 wrote: Tue Jun 18, 2019 12:13 pm current proposals for the forts: make account of the scenarios for reserving place on the fort. there was a proposal recently to include scenarios in the zone blocking process?!?! let's say 2 groups in the attacking realm, and 1 group in the defenders. choose those players who have the maximum number of victories in scenarios in 1 hour.(or 2 h, or 30 min don't matter)

No. If you want to participate in an RvR event, you earn your slot in the RvR lake. Specially when any contribution that does not include taking the enemy keep in the lake is meaningless, or in other words; there is no fort if you don't lock the zone.

why not? if carring wooden boxes glowing red is very boring, it would be better doing some scenarious for this times. rvr lake would not be empty anyway, that only 12 men take spot for reserve, another spots(60) will be from rvr. and by the way, this service will bring more benefits for the premeydes that you love so much, not for pugs. against a good group, pugs have no chance on scenarios. Of course, there is the problem of the fact that at this time people will simply stop doing sc, but here you can introduce restrictions so that accounting is kept only if a person plays at least 4-6 scenarios in 1 hour, if less then this reserve does not work. there is also a problem that unscrupulous players in the big guild can send a part of their fighters to the opposite side and they will lose on purpose. but there is no way to protect against all possible hacking options.

Again, no. If you want Invader gear, do what the rest of the player-base do. And again, no. Cause if you have to point out that scenarios will be more empty, and that ppl will xrealm to loose, I can't even imagine what actually exploiters will do. If it's so damn easily exploitable, then it's clearly worse, and as you pointed out, I would feel it's a very bad choice to reserve 12 spots for a minor part of the community that barely hit 1/5 of the player-base. So, no, I don't want your idea implemented.

Nice proposals on the initial post. I would add to more. But first i need to justify them.
S2 is usually neglected so there should be a metric making it more important and further strengthening the lord. That would encourage defenders to defend lord room and 3rd and not bottom which is a hellhole funnel.
S3 bottom floor defence should become a bit harder 2 since now its way 2 easy to defend bot especially if you have 20 rdps.

1) Open postern doors when the inner fort door falls down. Just like in keeps. |Give access just by right click to all attackers. This would make the fort battle much more challenging. (this helps attackers)
2) Further enhance the bonuses the lord takes the longer s2 lasts as follows:
Give him a 10-20-30% room size range heal debuff aura depending on his strength (gained from s2 duration) could really change the game. (this helps defenders)

1) helps the attackers 2) helps the defenders and both of them make the fight more reactive and interesting.

jasonX wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2019 12:51 pm (...)
2) Further enhance the bonuses the lord takes the longer s2 lasts as follows:
Give him a 10-20-30% room size range heal debuff aura depending on his strength (gained from s2 duration) could really change the game. (this helps defenders)
(...)

It's hard enough to keep the main tank alive without this. This boosts defense way too much imo. With your proposed numbers, defenders just need to rush the main tank over and over again to win, oversimplifying their duty to a single task: move to 3rd floor and kill the tank.

1/3 of those numbers may be restricted but doable, at 0-3,33-6,66-9,99% defenders will be encouraged to seize as much as they could in S2, and attackers still has a chance, even though a tough one if they hit the 6,66% or more mark, in tanking and killing the lord.

Keep Lord seems sufficiently strong already. Super punt and crazy high absorb shields give the defenders enough time to do whatever they are going to do.

Opening posterns to all seems like a no brainer. Currently Defenders can either funnel if out matched or sit on 3rd floor and wipe a bad attacking force with ease as they know that they can choose when to engage because attackers have to go through one door/struggle to control the Lord anyways.

Ototo wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2019 1:24 pm
It's hard enough to keep the main tank alive without this. This boosts defense way too much imo. With your proposed numbers, defenders just need to rush the main tank over and over again to win, oversimplifying their duty to a single task: move to 3rd floor and kill the tank.

Well last fort we defended against order wiping them at lord 8% (after we almost got wipped at pushing on lord 49%, we stabilized the warband with chain rezzes) we did go for the main tank . its not hard. there are many counters on going for the MT aint gonna list them. We are doing all those in our warbands.
Still minimizing those numbers as you suggested makes sense in terms of making this transition more smoothe.

CountTalabecland wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2019 2:50 pm Opening posterns to all seems like a no brainer. Currently Defenders can either funnel if out matched or sit on 3rd floor and wipe a bad attacking force with ease as they know that they can choose when to engage because attackers have to go through one door/struggle to control the Lord anyways.

You confuse me.... So why is it that the only wins order have against us the last 3 weeks in fort defences are when they defend bottom? Why do order cry in so many posts before that that 3rd is a failure (I disagree but then I am running coordinated warbands not pugs).

Dont think that by struggling to persuade the devs to keep the posterns closed so that your usual always-win-strategy works will keep paying off in the future. Many destro are bored with this imbalanced situation and you wont have many fort defences in the forseeable future. Destro adapt nowadays

Postern should be locked only if defender did good on stage 2.