Fortress final stage suggestions

[wraithghost]

Are the attackers always supposed to win?

You guys win most keep's, Win most city's, have higher population and seem to have the better tip of the scales at the moment in terms of class balance.

But let me get this straight, now cause sometimes you lose something it needs to change. I like forts its nice to win for a change.

[Marawo]

Are the attackers always supposed to win?

You guys win most keep's, Win most city's, have higher population and seem to have the better tip of the scales at the moment in terms of class balance.

But let me get this straight, now cause sometimes you lose something it needs to change. I like forts its nice to win for a change.

No attackers are obviously not always supposed to win, in fact defenders are supposed to have an advantage during the fort, hence the bigger reward for attackers if they win.

"You guys" , I don't exactly know who you mean because I think you don't know the toons or the people who posted in the thread well enough to identify them as "realm biased" in their proposals.

This is clearly not a realm issue but a general design issue that came up when the overall fort population was increased without increasing the funnel throughput possible.

It's really just simple math.

Throughput = Unit/time
Double the defenders should be able to handle double the throughput, since this game has healing/ressurection and is more about keeping the wb machine running than getting a kill.
Double the defenders with the same old throughput makes defenses roughly 2x easier than before.

"when you lose something needs to change" basically tells me you have no idea that the increased fort pop is a very recent change that was only very briefly tested beforehand on eventlike occasions.
The knowledge we have now (even if it was a forseeable effect) tells us it needs further tweaking.

p.s. just pretend the characters in my graphic are their mirrors

[Stophy22]

id love to see any change happen to forts right now! So I'm all for it

[adapter]

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.



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.

You are right, that is true. The evolution of Forts since they were released plus the new wave of players joining the game since the City+Youtube hype happened, it overwhelms Fortress mechanics, we are now down to a Zerg running in circles and then a choke fight with really smalls doors.

Since that new wave of players, Fortresses haven't been tweaked to work properly, it now needs a new approach to deal with, which is shared at the beggining of this post.

Thanks for the reply, that scientific depiction is on point!

[Arcrival]

Great art work you brought it to life. Mar is right more people tight quarters same could be said about Keeps as well. The choke points are by design though you don't build a fortress with a huge hole allowing ease of access.
A valid point though to make it more engaging could be the fight getting to inner and the lord. I do not like the idea of buffing a side but actually holding BO's and getting kills in the stage having an impact might be worth thinking about. Such as Lord strength and HP or siege weapons offensive and defensive.
IMO the root of the problem is AOE damage doesn't matter if its 6 pools of purple ooze, puddles of fire or meteors falling if you can stack damage on the choke point that pretty much wipes most then the tactic becomes: OK build morals you get warded and HOT run in knock back we follow pop morals and wipe them oh yeah stack a bunch of aoe's in the entrance first. The other side: OK block the door throw aoe's on the door and maybe they screw up and don't time their morals and KB right and we wipe them.
So how about instead of round robin on BO create more physical barriers to navigate the terrain and you have have to battle each objective. The defenders get the set up for vantage point and attackers have to overcome. If you die and your team does not resurrect then you release to inside the Lords room but cannot go back out to assist. If the defenders kill you off you spawn outside the fort if your team does not resurrect, and don't come back to assist until your side kills off defenders. If the defenders when the BO stage the siege is over no advancing to the Lord. The next stage is the Lord defense like normal with the above mentioned changes as far as a increased door size after all its an official court area not unrealistic to have larger grand entrances and multiple side entrances.
Then all that has to be done is AOE's reduce their damage some so we actually have to fight more than 30 seconds of AOE spam garbage and maybe do debuff rotations heals etc.

[Drekan]

Allow attackers to put fire to lord room to make roasted dwarfs

[Wdova]

Or just remove colision from ally players, keep it with enemy players. 2 ppl can just block whole fort push when they are scared to enter seeing first line melting by morales.

[EsthelielSunfury]

IMO the root of the problem is AOE damage doesn't matter if its 6 pools of purple ooze, puddles of fire or meteors falling if you can stack damage on the choke point that pretty much wipes most then the tactic becomes: OK build morals you get warded and HOT run in knock back we follow pop morals and wipe them oh yeah stack a bunch of aoe's in the entrance first. The other side: OK block the door throw aoe's on the door and maybe they screw up and don't time their morals and KB right and we wipe them.

This happens in every single MMO because of how the softcore target gameplay is like. The moment multiple people are in, there's no particular showing of skill by any side, spamming AoE in City as you're cleaving 24 targets isn't exactly world class gameplay either. Forts are more about realm-wide coordination being your reward than some display of individual skill. I mean, I've never heard anyone in this forum complain about healer gameplay being "Stay behind a pillar and spam AoE healing to people you cannot even see", which is completely ridiculous and would be a travesty to think of in most online games, I laughed my head off when I found out you could do that here. Or your guard target being behind obstacles or another floor entirely and still benefits from 50% inc damage reduction.

But for some reason, Forts are getting the flak because people wanna rush in alone as they usually do or with their 6 man to wipe hundreds inside.

[Nekkma]

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.

The typical destro pug wb in forts has terrible composition and terrible performance (just like the typical order city wb). It is not unusual to have 1 healer per group (some of them being lowbies) or have half the wb at postern and rest at main resulting in people dying left and right because out fo range from guard/heals. My pug experience was so bad that i even stoped joining wbs and just stayed solo but found out I did not get contribution that way. Still, I much rather form a duo or trio than join the shitfest that is pug wbs in forts.

This have many reasons. One, you cannot control who gets in or "fortlog" as you can in cities. Two, I get the feeling alot of destro are not there to win (after the countless failures I know I aint at least) but rather just collect their 4 tokens.