Changes to how fortresses work

[peo]

Apparently Mythic has decided to change how fortresses work.
They are going to cap the number of players in the zone and boot people based on rank.

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3189110#post3189110

To me it seems to be a bad solution to the problem, I fear it will result in a significant amount of Altdorf sackings very quickly due to population or performance imbalance (order hasn't exactly performed in any meaningful way for the last couple of weeks claiming they don't "want to" which seems like a cheap excuse to me)

I fear that once Altdorf starts falling the order population will fall with it and the gear advantage gained from the fortresses and city sieges will make it nigh on impossible for order to compete.

[Caradir]

So ORVR becomes NQORVR (Not quite)

[peo]

So ORVR becomes NQORVR (Not quite)

Seems that way.
Just as the "no stealth" and "no losing control of ones character for long periods" were design goals.

[Mangala]

What a random change - theres better solutions to the issues (the devs need to look at how ccp made large fights more respsonsive etc on the tech side) and capping pop isnt one of them.

[Caradir]

How many historical battles had troops waiting at gates as "the area was too full to let them in" the more i think of this the more i think, what a bad idea in the history of bad ideas.

So Order is losing at defending a fort due to Destro being more organised, however it does have people flooding in to help, but they dont have a ticket for the gate as they are ONLY level 35 or the club is full governor ?!? very random, very crap and im sure the game will suffer as a result (not that ive logged in in an age mind)

[peo]

Yes, personally I can't understand what the big problem is.
I would think that the server side of war is similar to wow that is a sql server. Database servers are extremely scalable due to the nature of the tasks they do.
Anyway, what would make the problem much less would be to balance abilities. I have a sneaking suspicion that the prevalent use of disabling abilities on a massive scale is the prime problem since it requires a lot more data to keep tabs on especially since they don't work as they should.

They claim this is the "first step" and will be replaced by better actions. But the question remains, what is the selling point of war compared to wow?
Open large scale rvr.
Since keeps are useless as they are, no one usually cares to defend them, and bo are indefensible  where and what should the orvr be?
By limiting the only remaining large scale orvr to a select few people, I suspect that they will instance them and give priority to warbands on the average of the rr they have. Thus limiting the rvr to the absolute minority in the largest guilds on the winning side.
Nothing will ruin a game more than exclusivity.

[Caradir]

and giving the attackers more numbers ?!? destro (for instance) lets say are better equipped so not only do they have the good gear they have superior numbers = indefensible fort.

[peo]

and giving the attackers more numbers ?!? destro (for instance) lets say are better equipped so not only do they have the good gear they have superior numbers = indefensible fort.

Yes, brought that up on wha. I was told that it won't matter since order is doing poorly due to the "big guilds" not wanting to lock zones so when this hits they will start locking zones easily.

Although it seems that currently they have made the interesting choice (on the servers in the US where they are testing it) to have a high cap so they not only exclude people but the server still crashes. If i remember correctly it crashed for one of the servers with perhaps 100-150 attackers or so. (the force ratio isn't known yet but I would suspect a 4:1 or so)

[peo]

According to "nicgoa" at freddyshouse Goa has implemented this "fix" in europe as well...
Any bets when Altdorf will be burning?

[Rubino]

It's a truely crappy implementation.

However Mark @ Mythic:

Folks,

First, Happy New Year all!

Second, these changes are not "the fix" but rather the first step in solving the crashing issue that occurs in some large-scale fortress battles. As I said late last year we will do what is necessary to ensure that the all of our players get to enjoy and progress through all aspects of oRvR system without worrying about the server crashing on them. We will continue to work on the code and as we are confident that we've made additional improvements to the code so that we can raise the caps, we will raise the caps. Also, we are working on creating additional oRvR opportunities for those that are "capped out" to participate in the main fortress battles.

The most important thing we could do with fortresses right now was to put in a cap and so we did it. Additional improvements to the code take time and we weren't about to allow the situation with some large-scale fortress battles resulting in a crash to continue in the hopes that the improvements would come "real soon now". That approach is almost always the wrong approach. As always, we'll do what we need to do in order to continue to make a great game even better even if that means changing/adding/subtracting things.

Mark

[Mangala]

Redesign the Keeps and fortesses is a bigger fix in my mind.  Bottleneck fights arent fun at all.  Especially if assaulting order would find better geared Destro defending them....

[Rubino]

I agree - the entire zone should be part of the fortress with layers of walls and mountings for both Order and Destruction Siege.
There should be an arrangement of tunnels and inter-connecting passageways - much like that used in the Reikland "Live Event" scenario.

[Mangala]

I agree - the entire zone should be part of the fortress with layers of walls and mountings for both Order and Destruction Siege.
There should be an arrangement of tunnels and inter-connecting passageways - much like that used in the Reikland "Live Event" scenario.

Yup - or even better, Planetsides bases, they had multiple entrace ways, narrow corridors and open areas and where excellent to fight in and around.

[Rubino]

Aye - although from a defending perspective it needs allow a smaller group of defender  to work against a larger group of attackers.
There should also be multiple parts to capture - something along the lines of BO's in a zone - they need to be captured.  And like BO's they are safe for a period of time before they can be captured again.

[Rubino]

A little more from the US Herald:

The first step in improving the oRvR experience of fortress taking went LIVE across all servers last night.  The good news is that there were lots of fortresses captured and defended.  The even better news is that there were no fortress-related crashes last night while these battles raged and were completed by the players.  Performance in these battles was also improved, but still not where we want it to be of course.  While this is a good start, continuing to improve the mechanisms behind these battles remains one of our top priorities now and going forward.  Over the next few weeks, we will be working on a number of initiatives that I can now talk about.

   First, the team will tweak the settings for the Fortress Lords to make sure that their power is in line with the current numbers of players expected to participate in the siege.  Second, the team will continue working on optimizing the code’s performance in large-scale battles so we can increase the population cap over the next few weeks.  Third, the team is looking at additional tweaking of the pop cap to ensure that it is where it needs to be in order to allow these battles to be as well-balanced (from a design perspective) as they can be.  In the end, it is up to the players to decide to defend and/or attack a fortress but it is our job to make sure that the pop cap is set properly to ensure that the maximum number of defenders/attackers that can *choose* to participate is set up so that if the population hits max cap (and assuming that both sides are equally powerful), neither side has an advantage over the other.  Most importantly, the team will also be looking at moving the fortress areas out to their own zones to allow an even a greater of number of players to participate, while also maintaining a high level of performance.  While they are doing that, they will also be looking at ways to enhance the fortress areas to take advantage of having their own dedicated zone.  This might also allow us to get slightly lower-level players into the action, either directly in the fortress sieges, and/or in supporting roles around the main action.  However, we won’t move the sieges into their own zones unless we are sure that we can get either some design and/or performance improvements by doing so.

  As always, we appreciate your feedback, suggestions, patience, and participation as we continue to work on these issues and initiatives.  What we’ve done so far is only the first step and we have a lot more coming in the next few weeks.