Fortress final stage suggestions

[adapter]

Hello! Kabuchop here.

It's well known that the final stage of Fortresses are really hard to play due to it being a 200 vs 200 choke fight. I'm one of some players that think Fortress need tweaking. A few reasons of why it don't feel good to play that final stage are:

-Low FPS, for some players it feels like a slideshow ppt.
-Constant crashes.
-Laggy.
-Stuck in a 30 minutes choke fight with no chance of winning / getting farmed hard.
-Defenders have a notorious advantage at holding and winning Final Stage.
-If defenders wins, it stops oRvR progression, mostly allowing City Sieges to happen in awkard dead times like early EU time and very late end NA time. Only a small player base gets to play City Sieges at those particular times.
-It's frustrating to so many players that put hours and effort into pushing zones to get stuck at a choke fight that has no hope resulting in a blame game and anti-climatic end.
-Low quality of gameplay.
-Not being able to play City Sieges on both EU and NA prime times.
-Too many players in one small room.
And so on I could continue mentioning more reasons of why Fortresses final stage need a rework, the ones I mentioned I notice are the most experienced by players, i'm sure there are more reasons and also there must be some players that enjoy Fortresses for some reasons too.

So what I'm trying to do with this post is to open up the idea of Final Stage rework to improve the gameplay quality. I will name some suggestions/ideas that may result in creating a new way on how a Fortress is won:

1) Move Lord to Bottom floor. (due to it being big enough to handle 300 to 400 players fighting in there)

2) Create new main doors at bottom floor, it could be 2 main doors up to 4 main doors, one on each side of bottom floor.

3) If Lord is moved to Bottom floor, allow Defenders to spawn Oil on each of the main doors. These Oils should have less HP than the regular Oils at oRvR keeps. This would create a whole new way of playing a fortress, it will require coordination and timing from both sides and making it more dynamic for everyone by having more options to push/defend from. It open up a whole new meta.

4) If the idea of maintaining the Lord at second floor remains, I would suggest to widen both main and postern doors at second floor. Because the body block is too much, it's hard to deal with it due to too many players trying to push in at the same time.

5) Increase the numbers of Bag winners from 24 to 48 or 72. Also allow loosing side to win Bags too.

6) Reduce Fort player capacity by around 24 to 48 players (this would help to reduce Lag, low FPS and Crashes)

If these ideas are implemented, we may have Cities happening at both EU and NA prime times due to possible increasing the chance of winning Fortresses by attackers. It would allow players that work on pushing zones have the reward of playing City Sieges before going to sleep resulting in the so desire character progression.


That would be all, I propose these ideas with the intention of improving the game experience, I hope it benefits everyone, cya around!

[SuperStar]

I love the idea the fort is quite boring imo. We just stand build morale make a wipe or be wiped. Actually now more the waiting for morale than fight.
I would like to suggest make the flag stage more interesting too coz now more the running there than the fight, maybe be only 3 flag separate but not to far each other and for inner dmg the attacker have to hold all of them. Now we are running on stg 1 and standing stg 2 mostly. Of course it is our mistake coz we choose this way but you can makeforce us to fight more. Or what do you think instead of flag be a really siege with ram keep the original idea and make 4 main inner door and oil and a time limit and the attackers have to fight and siege for the more opened inner door. ( If it is works maybe we should use Rams on outers to 3-4 main gate and 3-4 postern on outers.. etc)
Thx

[EsthelielSunfury]

The only change I'd like to see for Forts is widening the main door and that's it. Postern and main door are more than enough to push through if you got realmwide communication, at least it's been working everytime I've been there. Build morale, have a reputable person countdown and have everyone push together.

Doesn't seem to happen very often on Destro side, I guess you're getting too cocky from easy City wins.

[MMXX43]

The only change I'd like to see for Forts is widening the main door and that's it. Postern and main door are more than enough to push through if you got realmwide communication, at least it's been working everytime I've been there. Build morale, have a reputable person countdown and have everyone push together.

Doesn't seem to happen very often on Destro side, I guess you're getting too cocky from easy City wins.

THIS ^^^^^^^^^ 10000% THIS !!!^^^^^

[SuperStar]

Nope mate I think we r just boring in fort that's all. I don't really like running and waiting and nowdays the fort time's 90% running and waiting maybe the order like it coz they usually do this run or wait at the keep but we da destra looking for fight ;P

(Nothing personal just desro pride

IMO The fort more boring as a standard keep siege and it is not oke.

[sjemen]

yeah it's been pretty hard to push forts now that the mass disconnect lag pushes don't happen anymore. :3

[Alfa1986]

the main reason for such dull mechanics in
1. Crazy damage from AOE that kills all living things that tries to get into narrow doors in a matter of seconds
2. Actually these narrowest doors
3. a very small crowded space of the Lord’s room.

none of your suggestions solves these problems. Yes, on the ground floor it can be a little bit more spacious, but again very narrow entrances in which tanks will also die in seconds, not to mention DPS and healers.

the only solution it could at least somehow correct the existing mechanics of the forts is to create some kind of need for part of the defenders and attackers to go outside the room of the lord. maybe to create some kind of buff that the fraction receives from holding the BO, or something like that.

just as an example, a flight of fancy)
when you hold all five BOs, the lord for attackers / defenders starts to lose a little bit HP / becomes invulnerable).

[EsthelielSunfury]

Nope mate I think we r just boring in fort that's all. I don't really like running and waiting and nowdays the fort time's 90% running and waiting maybe the order like it coz they usually do this run or wait at the keep but we da destra looking for fight ;P

(Nothing personal just desro pride

IMO The fort more boring as a standard keep siege and it is not oke.

What do you mean running and waiting? In Forts you get more renown in 40 mins than what you do in like hours of oRVR simply because there's so much action happening in the phases before Lord. In some Forts there's been 600 people inside a confined Keep constantly killing each other, the renown there is a million times higher than anything happening in other T2-3-4 zones.

Yes Lord phase is a bit boring if you allow it to be. Last 3 Forts I've been in,Destro has pushed an average of 3 times. 3 times in 20 mins, not a lot of destra looking for a fight apparently. No jumping squigs in the mid, backpedaling tanks, no pushes from all the amazing organized 2/2/2 warbands I keep reading about in City threads on postern. Nothing at all, just praying our overstacked Engis and BWs roll over from the top floor and die.

I'm half-joking of course, I'd like an overall change to doors, just not weird ideas of "buff attackers" or whatever that might certainly have a slippery slope effect.

[adapter]

Forgot to mention that maybe by reducing Fort player capacity could also benefit in the Lag/Crash/FPS factor.

[Marawo]

Thank you kabu

1) Move Lord to Bottom floor. (due to it being big enough to handle 300 to 400 players fighting in there)

2) Create new main doors at bottom floor, it could be 2 main doors up to 4 main doors, one on each side of bottom floor.

These 2 points in particular should/could be the key to resolve the whole fortpop balance issue.


To explain why let's go back in time and look at the evolution of fort from summer 2019-ish till today.

Over most of the time except some tweaks tests forts were always pop-cap roughly arround 144 att vs 120 def or in short 6wb vs 5 wb.
Forts were defended in the lordroom/3rd floor with the posterndoor locked with a magic barrier. Depending on the weekly patch,
lords were either pushovers or gigachads that wrecked and chainstunned the attackers when the lord hp went below 50%. Hence 3rd floor or Lordroom def switching back and forth as the "meta" strat.

As time progressed and it was decided that lords shouldnt have that much impact, everyone learned how to perfectly defend that 1-way funnel and make it unwinnable for attackers if the defender are somewhat competent. That's the nature of an overstacked funnel.

The postern door of Lordroom was opened up. Suddenly it was the other way round depending on the fort Lordroom was a liability due to easy pulls from postern or postern doors that were bigger than some main doors and resulted to an massive increase in attacker wins and "easy fort " atttacks. Defenders developed a habit to defend the bottomfloor maingate, sure it was a bigger door in most cases BUT it was only 1 door, and the possible threat through bypasser mdps who are unguarded and unhealed wasn't enough to sway the balance.
Bottomfloor defense with proper defending warbands reduced attacker wins back to a low 1 digit percentage again.

Now the big problem was lordroom def was too hard and bottomfloor def was too easy.
Levers were introduced and the doorsizes on lordroom were adjusted.
This had 2 effects, bottomfloor was too volatile and risky and thus defusing the toxic bottomfloor 1 way funnel, AND it madedefending lordroom for defenders easier shifting fort outcomes closer to 50/50 winrates in even skill/comp matchups. Then someday 24cap was introduced and efending got a bit more numb but the outcome was still kinda in the 50/50 area.

Again over the whole fort development course the zonepop was always hovering 120v144 you could absolutely say fort in it's current mechanics was designed towards this participant number.
Serverpop also peaked at 700-800 serverlogins and 500 ish rvr players so playing the endzone before fort for 20-30 min or assaulting a medium well defended keep was enough to yield a fort reservation in most cases.


2020

City hype, youtube hype etc. attracted huge numbvers of returning and new players AND demand for Fort spots.
Devs raised the fort pop-cap to roughly 260vs300 (dont know exact number), but the mechanics stayed the same

The following graphic is an absolute scientific depiction of what happens when you increase attacker and defenders without changing the dimension of the throughput/funnel (be it number or size).

Spoiler:

Imo it would be best if the population slots are locked when stage 2 starts, if it is a fort with a population of roughly 120 vs 140 or lower let the lord spawn in lordroom.
If it is a primetime fort full on 250 vs 300 ppl let the lord spawn in bottom floor with some of the changes kabu thought of.

e.: put the graphic under spoiler because it was too big