One of the issues that's always been a bit of a sore point with the WAR community is Fortresses. There are a number of concerns, which I will lay out here in no particular order, that always seem to come up when the topic of discussion eventually works its way over to Fortresses:
- Fortress sieges are plagued by lag, making the siege largely unplayable.
- Melee classes, aside from shield tanks, are of limited value once the realm war works its way to a Fortress, particularly when compared to skirmish or scenario play.
- There aren't very many ways for a small (and strong) guild to contribute or 'shine' at a Fortress.
- Population disparity plays a significant role on a Fortress siege, despite the population 'caps' attempting to mitigate this.
- These same population caps prevent significant portions of the population from taking part in a siege, which is often reflect by the large masses of players waiting for freenown at the border of the Fortress or their warcamp.
- Despite being the last point of access before a city siege, the scale of a Fortress siege does not seem to be 'epic' enough, and there is a total lack of ebb and flow to the encounter.
Personally, I have always felt that Fortress sieges should be more exciting and more involving than simply throwing waves and waves of bodies at a mob that is nigh-impossible to kill with enemy players around, particularly when the very design of the encounter encourages players to simply turtle up with the Fortress Lord to stall out the timer.
My belief is that the Fortress siege should be something truly different than a keep take (aside from simply being 'harder'), something that would reflect the difficulty in pushing through an enemy line to take and siege a Fortress. I wanted to design an encounter that reflected various stages of the advance -- progressing to the Fortress, beating down the outer doors, establishing control of the courtyard, and breaking into and capturing the central keep.
The big sticking point for this is that you want to involve as many players as possible in this sort of affair, but as we've experienced with Fortresses sans population caps, the lag will be incredible and the fun will be absent. A straight-up implementation of this also means that any population disparity will not be addressed, and rather than making this a winnable encounter for both factions it'll simply become yet another timed speedbump to slow progression.
So what was the solution?
Instancing.
The Pitch
Now, I'm not talking the sort of 'mirrored instance' shenanigans that we see currently implemented in Altdorf and the Inevitable City. This leads to the Victory Point route of victory that seems to have problems in and of itself in these two cities.
I'm talking about providing staggered (or layered) instances that give you some ebb and flow. Instances that you need to progress through to advance, and retain control of to retain access to subsequent stages.
I would like to point you in the direction of this wonderful MS Paint mockup image of the sort of progression I'm visualizing, and I'll run through each stage to give you an explanation.
How Access Works
Access to these instances is fairly simple: the defending force can zone into any instance at any time, whereas the attacking force can only zone into an instance as long as their supply line is established. Players can traverse instances either from the Staging Area (via a UI that shows the supply lines and friendly player amounts in each instance), or by passing through a portal to the next area after capturing one.
You'll notice from the mock-up that lines connect elements of each Stage together -- these are the "supply lines" that are followed. From the Attacker Staging Area, the attackers can access either the West or East Milegate (which could equally work as 'North and South' for the elf pairing, but that's neither here nor there).
Controlling the West Milegate instance allows access to the Left Fort Door and Center Fort Door instances. Controlling the East Milegate instance allows access ot the Right Fort Door and Center Fort Door instances.
Controlling one of the doors allows access to the Courtyard. Controlling the Courtyard allows access to the Inner Keep.
Instance access would otherwise work similarly to what we see with the Land of the Dead -- if you control all previous instances in the supply line, you respawn at your spawn in the instance; if you lose control of any previous instance in the line, players are not ejected from the instance they are in, but respawn back in friendly territory (in this case, the Staging Area) if they release.
By enabling access in this way, we allow many, many players on the side with a population advantage to 'get involved', while providing plenty of options for an outnumbered side to hamper or prevent the capture -- if the attackers advance their 'best players' to the next stage, the defenders can sent their 'best players' to earlier instances to disrupt the supply lines.
Staging Areas
Since we're progressing to an instance system, the whole concept of the approach to the Fortress also needs to be addressed. The staging area in and of itself needs to be a place where Order forces sieging (or waiting to siege) the Fortress would wait and prepare. Essentially, a sort of field camp.
As far as I'm concerned, the simplest way to do this is to have players run towards the Fortress as they do now, eventually being funneled into a portal that takes them to the 'Staging Area' instance -- this will remove the mass of players looking to get involved in the Fort Siege from the zones, preventing lag for everyone else, and will also give the defending side the chance to stage an ORvR blockade.
Options for the portals are pretty straight forward -- the massive Dwarfen gates, something like the Dragon Gate or Phoenix Gate for the Elf pairing, and, well, I don't really know for Empire, we can figure that out later.
One other thing that I've also considered is having the Staging Area be subject to invasion (like the LotD instances), provided the defenders hold both milegate access points for a set amount of time.
Stage One - The Milegates
For those of you familiar with Dark Age of Camelot and its milegates, this is the sort of instance I'm picturing for the two Stage One instances.
Centered between two spawns after a short bit of open terrain is a gate (think something similar to Gates of Ekrund for general layout). Both spawns are equidistant from the gate. Atop the gate is a gatehouse, accessed from the walls, which are accessed by ramps on the defenders' side.
The objective for the attackers is to break down the gate itself, push through and up the ramps, and capture and secure the gatehouse (done via a control point). The objective for the defenders is to hold the gatehouse, or retake it if captured. Capture (or re-capture) of the objective grants a renown bonus, and possession grants a periodic award.
By having the battle focused on the gatehouse, we still offer a defensive position while encouraging people to fight on the wall, off the wall, or even hold the gate itself. This sort of instance would likely be best suited for anywhere from 12v12 to 24v24.
Stage Two - The Fortress Gates
Upon the capture of a milegate, the fight advances to two fortress gate instances. The objective of the attackers here is quite simply: break down the gate. I think this sort of encounter would be best suited to 18v18.
To capture the instance, the attackers will be required to break down one of the gates, advance to a point beyond the gate (likely between that gate and another 'portal' inner gate), and plant a standard to assert their presence. Doing so unlocks the next set in the pairing. This 'inner' part is not accessible aside from that one access point, giving the attackers a defensive position to establish themselves in once they do bust down the gate.
Beating down the door will be easy enough with sustained pressure, but NPCs will repair the door a very minor amount every so often. These repairs will stop once the door is beaten down and a standard is planted, but will resume when the standard is removed, or occur at an accelerated pace if no damage is being done to the door.
Since the only 'challenge' here is beating down the gate, the defenders will be encouraged to push the attackers off the door at every opportunity to allow the door's auto-repair to outpace damage done. This will encourage some sorties and vicious counter-attacks, as opposed to a turtle defence. The defenders should probably have some tunnels or something to allow for flanking options.
Holding the prior tier is also fairly critical here, as a lengthy loss of a milegate plus a wipe of the attackers often means the door will need to be completely beat down again.
Incentivize the defence by offering a notable reward for beating down the door and planting a standard, and periodic rewards for the attackers or defenders for holding the position.
Stage Three - The Courtyard
After capturing one or more Fortress gates, the fight moves into the Courtyard. This should probably be a larger instance (36v36 or 48v48). The attacking side has a choice of three points of entry, based on which gates have been knocked down.
Advancing to the next stage is fairly simple -- control the courtyard, beat down the outer door of the Fortress, and push inside. Once the door is down, it stays down, making control point control crucial to this battle.
Control of the courtyard is one of those things I've been mulling over -- for example, how absolute should the control be -- but I think establishing three control points (a control point near the defender spawn, a control point near one of the attacker spawns, and a control point just outside the Fortress) and requiring the attackers to hold two to advance is a reasonable total.
Nordenwatch, anyone? :)
You can incentivize this by offering a reward for control point capture and retention, and an award for the attackers for beating down the door.
Stage Three - Side Instances
You may have noticed the red and blue boxes on the map that don't seem to be connected to anything at all. These are a connected but not really connected piece of the encounter.
Once Stage Three is unlocked, another pair of instances are unlocked that can be used to provide a boost to your faction in Stage Three and Stage Four of the Fortress siege. These instances should be geared for 6v6 (or 12v12), and have very simply objectives.
Each faction has an instance, and in that instance, has a control point that they must protect from the enemy instance. Controlling your control point provides a 10% boost to damage dealt and healing received, so you want to control yours and deny the enemy control of theirs.
As an example, the Dwarf/Greenskin pairing could involve the Dwarf instance fighting over control of a brewery, and the Greenskin instance fighting over a mill. Optionally, there could be a lone instance where both sides fight over one objective (like High Elves and Dark Elves fighting over an item of arcane power).
Stage Four - The Inner Keep
Let's keep it short and simple, since this is for all the marbles.
A 24v24 instance, where resolution is simple: the attackers need to get to the roof (mainly by purging the Lord room of the defenders), plant a standard, and successfully hold it for three minutes.
There are no NPCs presence in this instance -- purely player vs. player for victory.
Rewards
Players on the winning side located in scenarios and RvR lakes (including the Fortress instances and Staging Area) in any tier/pairing will receive the equivalent of a zone capture award. This way we encourage those not partaking in the Fortress to move on to other pairings to fight the good fight, and we reward lower level players for their contribution, however minute it may be.
Players located within any of the Fortress instances receive an additional crest reward.
Each Fortress instance offers a PQ lottery, which appropriate drops based on the number of players involved.
Conclusions
Overall, this should make the Fortress encounter a more dynamic and involved process, and keeps the Rs in RvR. Looking at the list of concerns raised previously, I feel this redesign addresses each in a meaningful way:
- Lag: Getting the players out of the pairing minimizes lag for other players; moving the fights into instances minimizes the lag for those involved in the Fortress.
- Melee Classes: By move the fight to scenarios and keeping the forces at reasonable sizes, melee classes can still meaningfully contribute at each level of the siege.
- Small/Strong Guild Opportunities: A small or strong guild can cut supply lines, take part in the faction specific Stage 3 instances, or take part in the final attack/defence for the glory of victory.
- Population Disparity: Instancing minimizes the impact of the population difference, and the supply line system allows the smaller faction to impede the advance by attacker earlier (and possibly weaker) instances.
- Player Participation: The huge number of player slots should allow everyone to contribute, and the lack of obligation to 'stay in the zone' paired with the obligation to 'stay in RvR' to earn rewards discourages warcamp AFKs and encourages participation in all pairings.
- Epic Scale/Ebb and Flow: Suffice it to say, this version should offer plenty of both, especially with the right presentation.
In short, this is a draft of what I put together for a potential Fortress redesign, and I would love to hear any and all feedback you can offer.
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