Ditching Forts Mid-Siege

[hammerhead]

As mentioned above, why would a rational person stay and fight in a lost cause when the rewards for participating don't justify the effort?

For example last night (NA) when the Destro decided to to roll Order to get to 5 start Altdorf I defended one fort where we got rolled but still did well enough to get 2 invader. Second fort we got rolled harder and got nothing. That felt bad man even for me.

But I'm just stupid enough to fight b/c I like the fights. However, you need to reward "normal" players with something for at least providing willing targets for the better organized side. PvP requires (at least) two consensual parties and if you don't provide the right incentives for "the loser" then they will just go do something else and nobody gets to play.

And that has nothing to do with "mental toughness" or what have you. That is completely rational behavior. It is idiots like me who actively fight on underdog side that are not right in the head and keep propping up a broken system.

Everyone speaks as if you have a ready-made solution. And you don't have it. Just imagine if the forts were "good content"?
The two or three dominant guilds would just farm Alt/IC in daytime. And if you put a strict xrealm lock, then one faction will simply rest against the growth ceiling.
Bad content or good content because there is no other way to limit your desires. And one fort is lost in advance, then double and triple pushes are needed to filter out certain players with a pug and close them in one of the forts.

[CountTalabecland]

The destro triple fort push was very well done this afternoon to get to Altdorf.

They pushed Shining Way and Stonewatch with overwhelming numbers pre-fort, and then let the excess population open up Reikwald so Order was stretched thin.

I thought this was well played and pretty much the right strategy for Forts, rather than open Shining Way, leave for Stonewatch, and then try to make something happen later.

[zij83]

The destro triple fort push was very well done this afternoon to get to Altdorf.

They pushed Shining Way and Stonewatch with overwhelming numbers pre-fort, and then let the excess population open up Reikwald so Order was stretched thin.

I thought this was well played and pretty much the right strategy for Forts, rather than open Shining Way, leave for Stonewatch, and then try to make something happen later.

We had the numbers for it, people were abandoning Stonewatch for Reik but we had Shining Way under such good control that some of us left from there and saved Stonewatch. So many order were just sitting in the lords room or afk when we made our initial push.

[dalen]

There's already a coming change in next patch that will help regarding this:

[Fortresses]

The time left on forts will start ticking down faster if certain conditions are met:
- It is stage 2
- There is less than 30 minutes left of the fort (15 minutes has passed in the stage)
- The door health is 100%
- The defenders have held all five flags for at least two minutes.

If all the above conditions are met, the time left will start ticking down five times faster.

I don't think this will help a lot, as it is not designed to solve root of the issue, but consequence. The real issue is why people are abandoning fort in the first place. And I feel you are overestimating how much of this is up to strategy. It might have started that way, but now people are leaving cos there is no incentive to stay. As someone already mentioned it is a boring content for most of the people, where rewards in most cases are same if you stay for full 45min duration, or if you leave after 15-20min.

@Carthage I agree with some of the previous comments, I don't think forcing people to stay would solve anything. People would just stay afk instead of leaving it.

Here is how I see some potential issues and suggestions:
1) Recent change of having to keep BOs in order for them to be efficient is right direction, but I think it needs to go a step forward. Now you are forcing attackers not to zerg and to defend what they capture, but there is nothing preventing defenders to go as huge blob and just cap everything around, in the circle. Is it possible to change this further, so that if defender takes BO back, but doesn't keep control for at least 30 sec (might need to be adjusted) timer for attacker doesn't reset? So, for example if Attacker keeps BO for 45sec, then Defenders cap it back and lose it after 15sec timer would continue on 45sec for Attacker? This would also incentivize defenders to fight on BOs as well, instead of zerging.
2) Organized guilds hate forts, at least on Destro side. It is not uncommon for them to make decision even before fort starts that they will not go in, if there are any open zones to continue fighting. Reason is that they want somewhat interesting and fair fights, that forts cannot provide. Further issue here is that, in most cases, those WBs will have most contribution, so that is straight away 24ppl less in fort that will be filled with pugs, reducing any chance of victory for attackers. Possible solution would be to ask people would they like to participate in fort, based on contribution, instead of giving it straight away. This way those players can press no, and reservations would be passed to next 24 ppl with highest contribution. Not ideal, but I think its slightly better and I don't see solution where you would force those guilds to participate (neither you should). Is this possible?
3) Rewards for losing side are very bad, as it's impossible for people to get any bags. When you add destro mentality of "we will lose this 99%, there is no FMJ to push this for us, I might as well just leave" it leads to people leaving after 20min. This could be solved with adding some bags for both sides as reward. This way people who stay know they are fighting for something, even if they lose. If you think gold bags would be too much, you can make similar reward system as in cities now - blue bag is highest you can get if you lose.
4) Forts are very advantageous for defending side. I never saw that side that had equal number of organized 2-2-2 WBs lost, while they are defending. This is applicable for both Destro and Order, but Order tends to be more invested more into forts, so it can be better and more frequently seen there. No real solution here
5) Stage 3 is very boring to participate in, as there is almost no real strategy. Pop m4, wiggle through the door, yell at people to do the same and hope that you have better gear and do more dmg/healing if you attack. If you defend pop m4, drop everything on the door and hope you have more dmg/healing. New change with flying on top of the keep is more meme than something useful, but it could work with some changes? Maybe add that those birds are taking 3-6 people at once and they all get you at the same place, but increase cd? This way you would get 12-24 man simultaneously behind defenders and hope that they are good enough to hold off till reinforcements come/to hold some kind of damage on backline.

Or, if nothing works just admit defeat and do the same it was done on live - remove forts for good, have scheduled cities once per day/2days for both time zones and provide invader medals this way as well. At least people would know when cities will happen, so hopefully we would have more organized groups and good fights there.

P.S. sorry about this huge post, just realized how long it is once I posted it

We are aware that that forts in general, and stage 3 in particular have some flaws.

Doing a complete revamp would take some time though. So in the short term we have done a couple of improvements to them:
- Improved PQ UI
- Reservations and pop limit actually works now
- Changed flag points in stage 2 to avoid NASCAR
- Added trainers
- Added flyers in stage 3
- Tuned the contribution system a bit
- Fort lords don't crash and disappear from the world nowadays

Those changes have made forts a lot better than before, but we are very aware that they still aren't the best thing since sliced bread exactly.

We have some ideas for more improvements, and might make further tweaks. Both to contribution system to make it more fair, but also other changes to the mechanic to make them more fun. But it will take some time before that is done.

[Gurf]

If you are in a good Warband Forts can be fun, at least in the first stage, it is normal rvr but with more even numbers. In a decent warband you can attack the back the zerg to break it up, defend BO's against greater numbers, use the walls to your advantage etc, I don't really see the problem with it if you like rvr you should enjoy Fort stage 1.

If you are in a small group or bad Warband then it can suck, but that is a player issue.

[farng84]

If you are in a good Warband Forts can be fun, at least in the first stage, it is normal rvr but with more even numbers. In a decent warband you can attack the back the zerg to break it up, defend BO's against greater numbers, use the walls to your advantage etc, I don't really see the problem with it if you like rvr you should enjoy Fort stage 1.

If you are in a small group or bad Warband then it can suck, but that is a player issue.

Agree, that is why people leave at the beginning of stage 3, when the bad part starts... They enjoy the first portion of it and move on to something better.
That's not very good if you want to push to city, but I can understand the behaviour, ppl play for fun and attacking lord's room is all but fun (zerging a keep with twice or trice the population of defenders is not fun either btw)

[nuadarstark]

Can't do much with the pop. Early, midday and prime time on EU are generally just skewed to destro unless some defense/attack already failed massively, so you just get those forts where there are not enough defenders while double or tripple forting. Hard to do something else when the server is 40% to 60% at the time.

But I think that with dedicated attackers and defenders, forts in even the last stage can be super fun, especially now with the flyers. We're jumping from the top on the backs of pushing attackers, defending similar pushes when some WBs are attacking us from behind. There is almost always some sort of a jailbreak, some sort of fighting outside, etc. But yeah, just like with Cities, it has to be determined, dedicated enemy for it to be fun.

[CountTalabecland]

Spoiler:

There's already a coming change in next patch that will help regarding this:

[Fortresses]

The time left on forts will start ticking down faster if certain conditions are met:
- It is stage 2
- There is less than 30 minutes left of the fort (15 minutes has passed in the stage)
- The door health is 100%
- The defenders have held all five flags for at least two minutes.

If all the above conditions are met, the time left will start ticking down five times faster.

I don't think this will help a lot, as it is not designed to solve root of the issue, but consequence. The real issue is why people are abandoning fort in the first place. And I feel you are overestimating how much of this is up to strategy. It might have started that way, but now people are leaving cos there is no incentive to stay. As someone already mentioned it is a boring content for most of the people, where rewards in most cases are same if you stay for full 45min duration, or if you leave after 15-20min.

@Carthage I agree with some of the previous comments, I don't think forcing people to stay would solve anything. People would just stay afk instead of leaving it.

Here is how I see some potential issues and suggestions:
1) Recent change of having to keep BOs in order for them to be efficient is right direction, but I think it needs to go a step forward. Now you are forcing attackers not to zerg and to defend what they capture, but there is nothing preventing defenders to go as huge blob and just cap everything around, in the circle. Is it possible to change this further, so that if defender takes BO back, but doesn't keep control for at least 30 sec (might need to be adjusted) timer for attacker doesn't reset? So, for example if Attacker keeps BO for 45sec, then Defenders cap it back and lose it after 15sec timer would continue on 45sec for Attacker? This would also incentivize defenders to fight on BOs as well, instead of zerging.
2) Organized guilds hate forts, at least on Destro side. It is not uncommon for them to make decision even before fort starts that they will not go in, if there are any open zones to continue fighting. Reason is that they want somewhat interesting and fair fights, that forts cannot provide. Further issue here is that, in most cases, those WBs will have most contribution, so that is straight away 24ppl less in fort that will be filled with pugs, reducing any chance of victory for attackers. Possible solution would be to ask people would they like to participate in fort, based on contribution, instead of giving it straight away. This way those players can press no, and reservations would be passed to next 24 ppl with highest contribution. Not ideal, but I think its slightly better and I don't see solution where you would force those guilds to participate (neither you should). Is this possible?
3) Rewards for losing side are very bad, as it's impossible for people to get any bags. When you add destro mentality of "we will lose this 99%, there is no FMJ to push this for us, I might as well just leave" it leads to people leaving after 20min. This could be solved with adding some bags for both sides as reward. This way people who stay know they are fighting for something, even if they lose. If you think gold bags would be too much, you can make similar reward system as in cities now - blue bag is highest you can get if you lose.
4) Forts are very advantageous for defending side. I never saw that side that had equal number of organized 2-2-2 WBs lost, while they are defending. This is applicable for both Destro and Order, but Order tends to be more invested more into forts, so it can be better and more frequently seen there. No real solution here
5) Stage 3 is very boring to participate in, as there is almost no real strategy. Pop m4, wiggle through the door, yell at people to do the same and hope that you have better gear and do more dmg/healing if you attack. If you defend pop m4, drop everything on the door and hope you have more dmg/healing. New change with flying on top of the keep is more meme than something useful, but it could work with some changes? Maybe add that those birds are taking 3-6 people at once and they all get you at the same place, but increase cd? This way you would get 12-24 man simultaneously behind defenders and hope that they are good enough to hold off till reinforcements come/to hold some kind of damage on backline.

Or, if nothing works just admit defeat and do the same it was done on live - remove forts for good, have scheduled cities once per day/2days for both time zones and provide invader medals this way as well. At least people would know when cities will happen, so hopefully we would have more organized groups and good fights there.

P.S. sorry about this huge post, just realized how long it is once I posted it

We are aware that that forts in general, and stage 3 in particular have some flaws.

Doing a complete revamp would take some time though. So in the short term we have done a couple of improvements to them:
- Improved PQ UI
- Reservations and pop limit actually works now
- Changed flag points in stage 2 to avoid NASCAR
- Added trainers
- Added flyers in stage 3
- Tuned the contribution system a bit
- Fort lords don't crash and disappear from the world nowadays

Those changes have made forts a lot better than before, but we are very aware that they still aren't the best thing since sliced bread exactly.

We have some ideas for more improvements, and might make further tweaks. Both to contribution system to make it more fair, but also other changes to the mechanic to make them more fun. But it will take some time before that is done.

This is true, forts have come a long way. The contribution seems to make more sense now and the nightmare times of disappearing keep lords are a thing of the past.

Really, the lord's room door being the deciding point of the whole fort is the only thing left that is not fun about forts. Yeah it was messy on live too but the devs here have already fixed a lot of the other fort issues so I am optimistic.

As with the flyers, the answer to lords room is probably a 3rd, yet risky, avenue of attack.

[nat3s]

Reward is way off. The design of RoR is incredibly conservative when it comes to reward and forts are no exception. 2 medals and no bag rolls for losing, when you consider Order wins 72% of all forts and 94% when they are attacking that's little incentive for Destro to show up and stick around.

Increase it back to 4, remove invader from rvr bags and introduce loser bag rolls. Increase minimum contrib to ensure people keep trying and leavers lose all rewards.

[CountTalabecland]

Reward is way off. The design of RoR is incredibly conservative when it comes to reward and forts are no exception. 2 medals and no bag rolls for losing, when you consider Order wins 72% of all forts and 94% when they are attacking that's little incentive for Destro to show up and stick around.

Increase it back to 4, remove invader from rvr bags and introduce loser bag rolls. Increase minimum contrib to ensure people keep trying and leavers lose all rewards.

I would not recommend removing Invader from ORvR bag. Those measly 3 Invader are all thats keeping this server from degrading into a 100% zone throwing/city logging apocalypse. Its already hard enough to get ppl to do ORvR when they don't have a 200+ zerg advantage, don't make it harder.

Order hasn't pushed a zone before 2:00 AM for a week (slightly exaggerating but not by much).