Thoughts on Fort-wars and Invasions

[_Arwen_]

Preface:

In the following post, I hope to discuss my thoughts, beliefs, and experiences with the current implementation of fort-wars and consequently the invasion system. This is by no means a “this is broken, fix it this way NGD” post, simply a way for me to express my ideas and generate a creative discussion on the topic that the developers may be able to borrow from. I'll warn you in advance that I'm letting my thoughts flow freely on the subject and as such the length of the post may be rather long. Apologies in advanced also for having to split this into 3 separate posts, but I exceeded the character limit per post for the forums...

I also want to point out my experiences are exclusively from the Horus server and as much as I will try to extend my ideas so they work on other servers (Ra mainly), some issues on these other servers may slip through unnoticed. I'll also admit freely that anything I bring up about Ra is purely based on talking with (Ex)Ra players, and reading posts on the forums.

Terminology:

Soldier – I will refer to players as “soldiers” instead of “warriors” to avoid confusion between players and the class “warriors” (Sorry, I prefer soldier over player...)
Attacking/Defending Realm – From time to time the realm I'm referring to by these terms will change. I will always put a “Note:” before I change to avoid confusion.
Implementation - An alternative design for fort-wars
Potential Pitfall - An issue that may arise with a particular implementation

Concerning Fort-Wars:

This section will consist of 3 sub-sections. The first details the problem as I see it, the second and third sections will be dedicated to 2 different implementations of fort-wars. The first, I predict, will be highly unliked and I'm probably the only one that would support such a style, so I've compromised and devised a second less radical fort-wars implementation.

The Problem:

Note: In this section I will refer to the “Attacking Realm” as the realm that took the enemy fort, and the “Defending Realm” as the realm trying to get their fort back.

In more way then one fort-wars come up short the majority of the time. What I mean by this, is, a good percentage of the time soldiers of the attacking realm return to their realm either bored out of their mind since no one showed up to fight, or utterly disappointed since a wait of 20 minutes while the enemy grouped culminated in a 3 minute skirmish as the fort got “zergged”. Often times a majority of the attacking realms soldiers will just log off, go “AFK” or go grind after this. If this isn't the case then chances are the attacking realm attacked the grouping enemy and pushed them back to their save where spawn-camping commences. In this case the defending realm often gives up either by logging off or going back to grind, neither good for the health of fort-wars.

Implementation 1:

Note: In this section I will refer to the “Attacking Realm” as the realm that is trying to get the fort back, and the “Defending Realm” as the realm trying to hold the fort.

Design:

1. Remove Doors
2. Remove Guards? (see “Potential Pitfalls” for a reason behind the “?”)
3. Remove Upgrading
4. Modify Fort Layout
5. Allow spawning at bridges

Reasoning:
Past experience has suggested that forts are flawed in that they provide too GOOD of a defense (this is after 1.0 with upgrades, but also applies to un-upgraded forts as well). This can be seen in two scenarios. First is when the attacking realm is low on numbers. In this instance, the rate at which the attacking realm damages the door is much slower than the rate at which the door heals while the attacking realm is attacking any soldiers that pop out of fort from the defending realm. The second is when the defending realm severely outnumbers the attacking realm. In this case the attacking realm is lucky if they manage to make it to door. Guard Captains also come into play too, but we'll assume for simplicity's sake that if an army is strong enough to take the door down, they can take the guard captain (Again assuming the fort was upgraded).

The main idea behind this implementation is to remove doors, and possibly even guards. I realize removing guards may not be possible due to some issues that I will describe in the “Potential Pitfalls” section. Removing doors causes 2 things to happen. The first is that it forces fort-wars into more of a Realm Vs. Realm, instead of a Realm Vs. Fort with the occasional (boring) area spam from the defending realm. Secondly it allows attacking armies that are smaller than the defending army a slightly increased chance of being able to capture the fort. This also allows hunters to have a much increased role in fort-wars.

Number 4 needs some explanation, this is the second most important design point in this implementation. The problem with removing doors is that mages become extremely vulnerable with their lack of protection spells (Locks especially, but after the nerf to sanctuary this may become more prevalent to conjurers as well). The reason they're so vulnerable without a door is that once the attacking army organizes and rushes into the fort they make a quick left, and there's the ramp to get to the wall loaded with mages. Archers have speed and low profile if needed, but mages are too slow and their main means of escape (mind push) is being nerfed. The solution to this is to move the ramp so its not so easily accessible. The best option here is to move the ramp to the opposite side of the door, but wait there's a tower there how can we put a ramp there? The idea here is to make the tower into the ramp. The balcony on the second level of the tower provides a convenient exit from the stairs in the tower to the wall. This would allow the mages more time to prepare for the incoming warriors, and also allow allied warriors a chance to stop the enemy warriors, promoting teamwork and cooperation.

The above image details the new layout for a doorless fort. The main change here is that the tower is rotated 180 degrees from its current orientation, moved flush with the wall and the door is placed on the balcony side of the tower. The first level (after you ascend the first ramp) has a new door that empties out onto the wall and the rest remains the same. The guards are placed so that 2 are guarding the flag, and 2 are guarding the tower entrance. None of the 4 guards should leave the fort, and the 2 near the flag should protect the flag as a 1st priority.

Number 5 also needs a bit of explaining. With the removal of doors, forts will be much harder to defend since the attacking realm's save is so close they can simply overtake the defending realm with constant re-spawns while the defending realm has to rely on resurrect (with its long CD) or running back from their closest save (also very long). To remedy this, we would allow spawning at the bridge IF AND ONLY IF the fort belongs to the attacking realm. This promotes constant action since the defending realm can't spawn at the bridge when the attacking realm has the fort (even if the defending realm has more players in the fort).

Potential Pitfalls:
As no discussion would be complete only talking about the good things, I'll discuss some potential issues that may arise from a fort-wars implementation like this.

First I'll touch on point 2 which has an “?” after it. The reason this is an optional suggestion is because having no guards at all would make the fort simply too easy to take. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, imagine showing up at a captured fort with a large army, only to find out a conjurer popped in to take it... You wouldn't be happy would you? So to solve this we'd have to leave guards in, but not just that, we'd also need to improve the guards intelligence so its no longer possible for a solo hunter to capture. This means a hunter can no longer tag the flag, then run off to glitch the guards, or run in circles to keep them busy. Basically the only changes that would need to be made is to have the guard tag the flag before running after an enemy, as well as fixing the different glitches that exist. One last issue regarding guards is the guards that stay outside the door, since the door no longer exists these guards should be moved inside so they aren't as easy to kill by “kiting” them, but they must also know never to leave the fort to chase an enemy.

The second pitfall is that the ability to defend with a smaller army is greatly reduced. On Ra, I don't think this will be an issue since the armies there are usually large enough. The problem on Horus is that a good number of times, the defending realm only has 10 (sometimes even less) soldiers to defend with. The easiest way to solve this would be to center an aura around the flag depending on the number of defending players inside the “<Fort> Surroundings” area (ex. Herbred Surroundings). The aura could be, healing, mana, +armor%, mana pylon, etc. The key here is to find the right balance between maximum number of players allowed in the fort before the aura deactivates, and the actual aura itself. A +armor% would probably be ideal.

The third pitfall builds on the previous one, in that since its harder to defend, invasions will be much harder to achieve. While this may sound like a good thing to some (including myself), ultimately it is not. What this would promote (at least on Horus) are invasions where the attacking realm vastly outnumbers the defending realm and as such it makes it hardly worth it to defend the gate. The solution to this is much more than I want to discuss in this section, there will be an entire section dedicated to the fort-war changes impacts on invasions later, but as a quick and dirty fix, you would have to make it easier to make the gates vulnerable (by reducing the requirements needed to put it in that state).

The fourth and final issue is that currently there is no warning that an enemy realm is trying to take your fort when there is no door since the warning is only triggered when the door is attacked. The one and only solution to this is to warn when an enemy enters the fort.

[_Arwen_]

Implementation 2

Note: In this section I will refer to the “Attacking Realm” as the realm that is trying to get the fort back, and the “Defending Realm” as the realm trying to hold the fort.

Design:

1. Reward attacking realm for trying to get the fort back.
2. Replace “Iron door” upgrade with “Repair Door” upgrade, and is upgrade 4, 5.
3. Change “Guard Captain” upgrade so the captain doesn't replace the flag, but the Guard Captain has less HP and does more Damage. Fort CAN be captured w/o killing Guard Captain.
4. Improved guard AI

Reasoning:
Let me touch on the fort upgrade tweaks first as they make up a good chunk of the changes. The key here is the emphasis on fighting without a door to promote constant action. Often times the hardest part of attacking the fort is getting the door down. This is especially true when the defending realm has loaded the fort with warriors who can keep you stunned, knocked, or dead with their areas. By leaving the door weak it allows it to go down easier and forces the defending realm into Realm Vs Realm instead of just area spamming. The “Repair Door” upgrades are moved to the 2 last upgrades to them a last resort and as such expensive. They work like upgrades used to work where they would fix the door, but they do nothing more. These upgrades would cost 150K gold and 200K gold respectively and are to be used to buy more time for your realm to show up, or during an invasion attempt.

The second change to upgrades is moving the “Guard Captain” upgrade to upgrade 3 and adjusting it so it no longer replaces the flag. In addition, the Captain's HP is decreased and his attack power increased. To go along with this change, the AI for the guards must be fixed. The guards would have to know to tag the flag whenever it has been tagged by an enemy, and would have to be smart enough not to get glitched. These changes achieve two things, first they make it harder to “tank” the captain which allows a conjurer and a barb with a few supporting soldiers to take the captain out by themselves. Second, it makes it easier for an army to kill the Captain while there is a defending army inside. This provides a nice balance between being able to capture a fort with too small a group, and making it almost impossible to capture with a defending army equally sized.

The reward to attacking realm is the other half of this implementation. The objective here is to reward the attacking realm for attacking a fort that the odds are against them for winning. Basically what would happen is there are two milestones each one is separated by some number of deaths by the attacking realm. At each milestone, the fort loses a defense. The exact death numbers would have to be worked out, and would depend on the server (Horus they would be a lot lower than on Ra). On Horus, after 100 deaths by the attacking realm (in the “<Fort> Surroundings”) you reach milestone 1 where the fort in question loses its door. After an additional 50 deaths, the fort loses its guards, returning any gold spent on the Guard Captain (assuming he is still alive) to the upgrader. The benefit of these changes is that it promotes action from the realm who's fort has been captured and rewards them for it. To take this concept a bit further, we could change the requirements to each milestone from pure death count to some ratio of attacker deaths to defender deaths over a certain period of time. For example a ratio of 10:1 over a time period of 15 minutes.

Potential Pitfalls:
The first pitfall here is the potential abuse of the death system. If you go with a system purely based on the number of deaths, you may run into the issue where the attacking realm simply suicides over and over again to get the “reward”. While I'm not sure this would upset the defending realm as it's loads of free RP, but it would certainly ruin the mechanics of invasions, and even fort wars themselves. There are two possible solutions to this, the first and easiest fix is to simply jack up the number of deaths needed. While this is a viable solution, it messes with legitimate situations where the attacking realm is doing their best, but still getting slaughtered. The second, and possibly better, solution is to calculate the ratio of attacker deaths to defender deaths and determine from there. The actual minimum ratio would have to be determined based on realm population. If the attacking realm has a much lower population online than the defending realm, the ratio would be lower. So for example if the attacking realm has half as many soldiers on as the defending realm, the ratio would be 1:20 and if by the time the milestone is reached the actual ratio is greater than that, say 1:30, the total number of deaths needed could be increased by 50. On the opposite side, if the attacking realm's population has equal or greater population online, the ratio would be 1:10 or 1:5 so the deaths would be more evenly distributed between realms.

[_Arwen_]

Concerning Invasions

Note: In this section I will refer to the “Attacking Realm” as the realm that is invading, and the “Defending Realm” as the realm being invaded.

I'm quickly changing my mind that maybe it isn't fort-wars that would benefit from change. Yes, I still believe my suggestions in the previous sections are relevant and would be beneficial to fort-wars and the game as a whole, but I'll tailor this section more towards an invasion system that would work with any 3 implementations (current, suggestion 1, suggestion 2).

Design:

The actual mechanics of Invasions remain exactly the same, but we would add an extra requirement to allow a realm to invade, this requirement is called the “Siege Timer.” The general idea behind this addition is that a realm needs to Siege the opposing realm before their defenses are weak enough to allow an invasion attempt. Instead of being something that a realm can achieve in less than an hour, Invasions are now a long term goal that requires the help of your entire realm instead of just one group of players in one timezone.

Here is how the Siege Timer would work. In order for a realm to be able to attempt to put another realms gate in danger they would need to siege the enemy by capturing and holding their forts for a total of 12 hours. This time can be accrued over a series of days so the only penalty for losing the fort is that you can no longer increase the Siege Timer against that realm. There are 3 Siege Timers, Alsius Vs. Ignis, Ignis Vs. Syrtis, and Syrtis Vs. Alsius. When I discuss gaining time, or increasing the timer, I'm talking about Realm 1 sieging Realm 2. So for example, Alsius is increasing Syrtis' Siege Timer means Alsius holds some of Syrtis forts and they're getting closer to being able to invade Syrtis (or removing time that Syrtis has accrued to their timer).
The Siege Timer acts like the rope in a game of tug-of-war. The rope starts with it point in the very center, and as realm's capture and hold forts the rope is “pulled” towards the realm holding enemy forts See the image below for a “mock-up” of what the timers would look like on the World Map.

Time Rules:

1. When 1 building is captured, the Siege Timer is increased 1 minute for each “real” minute its held.
2. When both forts are captured the Siege Timer is increased at a rate of 1.5 minutes for each “real” minute.
3. When the castle and 1 fort is captured the Siege Timer is increased at a rate of 1.25 minutes per “real” minute.
4. When all 3 buildings are captured, the Siege Timer is increased at a rate of 2 minutes per “real” minute.

There are certain ways a realm's Siege Timer can be modified to increase or decrease faster, they are detailed below:

Home Defense Modifier:
For each of your buildings that are taken, your Siege Timer against another realm increases at (4 - X)/4 where X = # of your buildings taken. For example if Syrtis captures Samal, and Alsius has Herbred while Ignis has Eferias, Syrtis' Siege Timer against Ignis increases at ½ the rate it normally would (or 30 seconds per “real” minute). Similarly, Ignis' Siege Timer against Syrtis increases at ¾ the rate, or 45 seconds per “real” minute.

Idle Realm Modifier:
To prevent the endless run from enemy fort, to your fort when the realm not involved in a fort-war captures your fort, another modifier exists. When a realm captures a fort of a realm that is currently at war in another realm, the attacking realm's Siege Timer against the defending realm increases at ½ the rate BEFORE subtracting the “Home Defense Modifier”, so yes these modifiers stack.

Shorthanded Realm Modifier:
To promote warzone activity even when you're realm is underpopulated, this modifier (which is a bonus) exists. Using the formula already in place for the spawning of guards at the gate, we can give undermanned realms a bonus for capturing a fort. When a fort is captured, the formula is applied and based on its results we award the capturers 1 of 3 bonus time multipliers: 1.10, 1.25, 1.50 times their base times (after applying the above modifiers).

To make my point more clear I'll discuss the following example, the forts are labeled in the order they were captured.



(Siege Realm VS. Defending Realm)
Ignis VS. Alsius
1.5 * [(4 – 1)/4] = 1.5 * ¾ = 1.13 minutes per “real” minute

Alsius VS. Syrtis
1.0 * [(4 – 2)/4] = 1.0 * ½ = 0.5 minutes per “real” minute

Syrtis VS. Ignis
1.0 * ½ * [(4 – 1)/4] = 1.0 * ½ * ¾ = 0.38 minutes per “real” minute


If, for example, Alsius loses Algaros, Syrtis will no longer get the “Home Defense Modifier” but will still have the “Idle Realm Modifier” and as such will earn 0.5 minutes per “real” minute against Ignis. If Ignis loses both Trelleborg and Aggersborg, Syrtis will now earn 1 minute per “real” minute against Ignis since they will no longer be effected by the “Idle Realm Modifier”.

Once a realm's Siege Timer against an opposing realm reaches 12 hours normal invasion mechanics come into play. A realm must capture at least a fort and the castle to start the Vulnerability timer, once that timer runs out, the attacking realm may break the defending realms door for 2 hours. After the gate is vulnerable, there are 4 possible outcomes:

Outcomes:

1. Fails w/o breaking door
2. Fails with door breaking
3. Succeeds with some gems
4. Succeeds with all gems taken.

Timer after each:

1. Siege Timer against defending realm is reduced by 3 hours.
2. Siege Timer against defending realm is reduced by 6 hours.
3. Siege Timer against defending realm is reduced by 9 hours.
4. Siege Timer against defending realm is set to 0 minutes.

Here are alternate explanations (minus the formula's) that may be more understandable:

Originally Posted by _Arwen_

Basically think of the Siege Timer as a 2 sided progressbar, meaning 0% is in the middle, and 100% on both ends of it. When an enemy holds your forts, the progress bar moves closer to your end, if it hits 100% on your end the opposing realm can start the normal invasion process. (this isn't a complete removal, we're just adding a pre-condition to the current invasion process). By holding another realms forts you can move the progress bar closer to their end. Keep in mind if the progress bar on your side of the 0% you must first decrease it to 0% before starting on the other realms side.

Originally Posted by Bardar

For the invasion section, its a bit hard to follow, but does this sound right?

Between each realm, there is a meter, with the mark in the middle. While one realm has taken another realms forts, the more forts they have, and castle also, the faster the meter goes towards the realm thats being attacked. When the meter reaches the realm being attacked, the attacking realm must capture and hold the castle and: 1 fort for 30 minutes, or 2 forts for 15 minutes, then the door goes vulnerable, and an invasion can be started. This helps encourage fort wars, by for example if the ignis/syrtis meter is getting close to syrtis, ignis would want to take syrtis' forts to get the meter to hit syrtis, so they can invade, and syrtis would want to take ignis' forts, to send the meter back the other way to stop them invading.

Reasoning:
The main reasoning behind the addition of a Siege Timer is to minimize the effect timezones have on invasions. Not only does it prevent 1 timezone from being able to initiate an invasion and carry it out, but it gives the players in opposite timezones a chance to contribute towards the invasion or defense of their realm.

You may think that this new system may actually cause people to ignore fort-wars since they have a full 12 hours where they don't have to care, but once the timer nears 12 hours the “tug-of-war” between realms will actually increase the rate of fort-wars as the attacking realm tries to push the timer over 12 hours and the defending realm tries to reduce the timer.

The ability to reduce your Defense Timer (how close another realm is to being able to invade you) promotes warzone action even in the “dead hours” of the server (probably Horus only). It also promotes war over grinding since even holding a fort for 10 minutes helps your realm. On Horus this means the “off hours crew” for each realm can do more than just defend, they can actively help initiate an invasion. The loss of Siege Timer hours after an invasion has been initiated prevents “all nighters” where the defending realm has to defend 4, 5, 6 hours straight and allows them to either level a bit, or take the offensive since another invasion can't happen immediately afterwards.

Potential Pitfall:
The one concern I would have with this implementation is that it may not be possible for a realm undermanned at all times of day (Alsius Horus, though things are changing) to initiate an invasion. There are 2 fixes for this, first you can modify the “Shorthanded Realm Modifier” so that it gives more of a bonus. Secondly we could change the Siege Timer so there are 2 of them per realm. Basically the way this would work is that Siege Timers only increase in time and never decrease. This way a smaller realm could eventually initiate an invasion, even if it takes a month.

The End:
Well, sorry, when my thoughts get flowing they can't be stopped except for when I need to be somewhere. To prevent this from getting any longer, I won't write a conclusion instead I'll leave you to decide whether you really want to read the entire content or not (I urge you to at least read the Invasions bit if you just skipped to the conclusion).

Comments Welcome.

[Dannboy]

Im not reading all that, its 1 Am over here.
Can you do a "summary" of all that?
Like tell what you want to do in General? ^^
EDIT:
Meh, nevermind

Ill read it tomorrow >.<

[_Arwen_]

Heh, sorry.

Disclaimer: If you're in a rush only read the "Design" sections, the rest is just a discussion about why the change was made. There should be only 1 of them per post and are in yellow (do a search for "Design:" to find them easily)

[AntibioTsu]

Okee, so, I read the whole post .... (impossible, I know ).

Here's my opinion:

1. I really liked the part which refers to changing the forts. The upgrades are just insane atm, with the Iron Gate and the Capt Guard, which makes capturing a fort very hard, and translates into no wars at all (since after a fail it's common to see ppl quitting). Giving a real mean to the tower would also be good, since it should be a more vital part of a fort. Making it the way to access the wall and turning the balcony to the center of the fort would increase its usefulness greatly. About ressing on the fort... donno really, but it may be an interesting idea to explore.

2. About guards, I would really like them to be more intelligent, not able to glitch (meaning no going through walls and keep attacking, like mobs and pets do) and with less armour - mainly the capt guard. It takes too much time to take a fort atm, and if the numbers on each armies' side are equal, then the one with the capt guard has a HUGE advantage. In the other hand, the Capt helps smaller groups protecting their own fort...

3. And now invasions... hmm... To be honest, I really didnt understand about 80% of what you said, about the new timers and so . But the idea I got was that you want to make invasions a more "global" event, and non-static like it is now (only occuring when the enemy has the forts). I think this would be an interesting idea, but imho, removing the whole current Invasion system would be a better solution, or even a serious rework.

Cant really think about anything else to say... because I'm kinda tired and I still need to "digest" some of the suggestions you posted here


Overall: it has some good ideas which should be considered and given attention; Awesome brainstorming Arwen

[Seher]

Originally Posted by _Arwen_

Number 5 also needs a bit of explaining. With the removal of doors, forts will be much harder to defend since the attacking realm's save is so close they can simply overtake the defending realm with constant re-spawns while the defending realm has to rely on resurrect (with its long CD) or running back from their closest save (also very long). To remedy this, we would allow spawning at the bridge IF AND ONLY IF the fort belongs to the attacking realm. This promotes constant action since the defending realm can't spawn at the bridge when the attacking realm has the fort (even if the defending realm has more players in the fort).

That would fit perfectly to the bridge-forts idea.


But I don't like your invasions. One realm would invade all the time, no matter whether it's the under or over manned. (Due to your bonus to undermanned realms)
In order that invasions are balanced and every realm invades sometimes you'd need a perfect balance in those bonus variables, imho impossible to achieve.