Post#84 » Fri Jun 18, 2021 12:56 pm
As far as my own suggestions go:
Forts should be population gated by the defender. To explain: If attacking the enemy city is the end goal of the campaign, the carrot, the big cheese, then it stands to reason that the potential loot should be greatest from WINNING in an aggressive city. It follows that the second best thing should be preventing the enemy from sieging your city. Technically several zones lead up to this, but the fort is the lynchpin that locks the whole pairing, and as such should be the point in the campaign where it becomes necessary to care about things like limiting number advantage. Because we cannot guarantee even or close numbers throughout the day, it should remain possible for defenders willing to show up to a fort to have a fair fight, up to a point. A large, structured, fair fight is what forts are designed around, or else why gate the population at all? (Performance is also an issue in forts and sieges in general with enough people, of course).
To go along with this change, the rewards for successfully defending a fort need to be drastically improved. Less than a win in an aggressive city, but a sizeable amount more than ordinary keeps, and with even a slight edge over winning in a defensive city. Letting your city be sieged should be something that you are encouraged to avoid, not throw for. As such there should be a REASON to fight to stop your city from being attacked, else the current culture of throwing will continue.
The current max pop in fort is, 167attackers to 135defenders, roughly a 23% allowed aggressive numbers advantage, (and not even an even amount of 6's, 12's and 24's). The defenders have the advantage of terrain (funnel and superior spawn location). I propose that, down to a minimum limit to prevent griefing, Fort pop be changed to scale based on the number of defenders. For example, (numbers of course flexible) If there are only 60 defenders in fort, Attackers would only be permitted to bring around 75, to maintain the ~25% attacker advantage. This would accomplish several things:
1) During severe server pop imbalances, which are most pronounced during off peak hours, This change would permit dedicated defenders even a slight chance of a fight they can win. People would be more motivated to show up to defend forts if they knew they wont just be outmanned 2 or even 3:1
2) With the above suggestion to increase the rewards, it would create further incentive to attend, a tangible reason to "pride". A fair(er) fight and a chance at a good reward will put more butts in seats than a half hour+ of sitting waiting to get wiped instantly by twice your number for a single (1) guaranteed invader. This would, I believe, hold true during full house forts during peak hours. Again: limiting the incentive to throw a fort while still encouraging defenders to attend.
3) Should more defenses be successful, It would allow for more fighting in the lakes and a more healthy rotation for when cities get sieged.
4) Should fort defenses fail despite the above change, then the resulting city could not just be blamed on "xrealmers" or "zerging" or any other excuse. (Which is not to say those never happen, only that excuses in a competitive environment are unhealthy to improvement). If you lose a fair fight then the campaign (rightly) should proceed apace.
5) Tying into the topic of the thread, This would allow for a determined, semi or full organized band a greater share of the ability to affect the campaign, primarily during off peak times. The theme of what many of the guild leads spoke of in their letters was: 'we want to be able to be significant outside of the zerg', and my suggestions allow for that somewhat, but with a focus at the endpoints of the campaign instead of the middle.
My example numbers are of course flexible, and changes like this would no doubt require adjustment post implementation. But I think that it addresses a critical issue of flawed player incentives. This suggestion is also not meant to say that no other changes might or should be made, just addressing a specific problem I have observed.