Thoughts on Fort-wars and Invasions

[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.

[Znurre]

I like the fort design ideas, especially the first one.

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.

This got me thinking about something else...
Why don't we reverse this suggestion?

Make it that the realm trying to recapture their fort have to kill a certain amount of enemies to advance to the next milestone.
Why would this be good?

Because usually, the best tactic as a small realm is to kill enemies one and one, and it is very possible with coordination.
The problem is that reinforcements will arrive way too fast so they cannot keep up with the pace.

I know this, since I've always played in the underdog realm Alsius on RA.

So, by making it possible for the realm trying to take back their fort to advance to the next milestone simply by killing enemies you achieve 2 things:

1. In a zerg vs small group situation the bonus would never arise, because the enemies would get killed at once and no reinforcements would have the time to come back before the fort was captured.
The bonus would then only be given to the realm if there were past 100 enemies at the fort, but that is very unlikely and if the realm trying to take back their fort can manage to kill all those 100+ enemies the fort will be theirs anyway, making the bonus obsolute.

2. It will promote fighting for both sides.
And not only this, it will promote defensive tactics from the realm holding the fort (heals, etc) because its the best way to assure that none of its players will die and thus give the other realm a bonus, creating better fights.

Now to the invasion part.

Sorry, but here I have to disagree 100%.
I really like that you are trying to solve the timezone problem, I really do.
But to me, your suggestion will make invasions even worse than they currently are because you only strengthen the bad sides of the invasions.

The waiting.

Other suggestions have been put to improve invasions.
Take a look at those, I prefer those.

Really good job with the fort suggestions though.

EDIT: One thing that becomes more and more obvious judging by player reactions and forum posts, is that the current system is totally flawed and that noone really likes it maybe with the exception of Efrendi

[SmUrV]

The fort ideas are great. I prefer open field and hate being closed into the forts. A fort without a door is a fun that actually shows team instead of just buffing/area power. However, the invasion ideas would become extremely tedious and ultimately frustrating.

Originally Posted by Znurre

EDIT: One thing that becomes more and more obvious judging by player reactions and forum posts, is that the current system is totally flawed and that noone really likes it maybe with the exception of Efrendi

Even Efrendi and "his crew" get bored of invasions.

[Akooo]

Originally Posted by SmUrV

Even Efrendi and "his crew" get bored of invasions.

Maybe it's because zerging 4 low levels with 15 lvl 50's isn't much of a challenge?

[SmUrV]

Originally Posted by Akooo

Maybe it's because zerging 4 low levels with 15 lvl 50's isn't much of a challenge?

Lol we did it with 12 once.

[platyna]

I am strongly against removing the door, door guards and upgrades. Come on, fort war is supposed to be something different than open field battle.

Regards.

[SmUrV]

Originally Posted by platyna

I am strongly against removing the door, door guards and upgrades. Come on, fort war is supposed to be something different than open field battle.

Regards.

Fort wars are also suppose to be something different from area spamming as well, but look at how most are won.

[_Arwen_]

Originally Posted by e30ernest

Removing the fort door will make it too easy to capture (like in the old days where 1 level 50 can capture a fort).

Well the important thing is, the guard's intelligence needs to be fixed so they can't be glitched. I'd imagine you'd need at least 4 or 5 to take a fort with 4 "intelligent" guards.

Originally Posted by Seher

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.

You're 100% correct that its not possible to create perfect balance, the point of the Siege Timer is to allow other timezones to have some say in the process of being invaded or invading. I suppose this is more tailored towards Horus where timezones are more of a factor. The problem with the current invasions on Horus is they can be done in 2 hours, I'm talking not just about invading a realm, but opening a portal. In fact, 90% of the portal openings have been done this way. In my opinion I'd rather be invaded once per week instead of once per night. Plus this way the timezone that is "cut out" from these invasions (mostly the European timezones) can actually help us defend without having to turn their schedules upside down. But I agree, the balance will never be perfect.

Originally Posted by Znurre

I like the fort design ideas, especially the first one.
This got me thinking about something else...
Why don't we reverse this suggestion?

Make it that the realm trying to recapture their fort have to kill a certain amount of enemies to advance to the next milestone.
Why would this be good?

Yea, in this section the "Attacking Realm" is the realm trying to get the fort back, so we agree 100% here. This would mean after 100 deaths of the realm that holds the fort, the milestones.

Originally Posted by Znurre

Now to the invasion part.

Sorry, but here I have to disagree 100%.
I really like that you are trying to solve the timezone problem, I really do.
But to me, your suggestion will make invasions even worse than they currently are because you only strengthen the bad sides of the invasions.

The waiting.

Other suggestions have been put to improve invasions.
Take a look at those, I prefer those.

Really good job with the fort suggestions though.

Hey, no reason to be sorry, these are just my thoughts and I don't expect everyone to agree . Also, I'm not sure the waiting would increase. Since I'd be more willing to rally my realm to take a fort back, or (if it comes to it) the enemies fort to slow the timer if I knew it would help. I'm too used to invasions where you really have no say at all since the enemy comes at you with triple the defender's numbers.

Originally Posted by platyna

I am strongly against removing the door, door guards and upgrades. Come on, fort war is supposed to be something different than open field battle.

Regards.

They're still something "different" in that you have 4 walls and a tower (ok more like 7 walls) to use as defense. Even though I can "area spam" with my lock, I still find doorless forts more fun to defend, there's a certain satisfaction that comes that you don't get from area spam.

[platyna]

Doorless fort is simply hillarious, what is the point of fort then? Forts are to fortify.

I think fort wars are cool, forts are easy to take anyway.

Regards.

[UmarilsStillHere]

I like the idea of having the ramp to the walls on in the tower, by having a second "bottle neck" section in the fort it would make fights more interesting by giving the attacking (fort holding) realm a chance to fall back to some extent within the fort, Maybe even have a door on the tower, only with low Hp (10k ish) and as has been suggested 1000 times, move the flag into the tower, to do this though something would need to be done with towers and the current game camera, trying to fight in there is madness,