Fort Fighting Suggestions

SagePangea

New Member
FF Ideas:

Depleting clock: After round 6 lose a second off the round clock. This should put the last few rounds of battle in the 15 second range. Overall game length would be shortened and engagement would increase.

Second Set: For offline players they "set" with a little red icon. What if players can have a second "set" in yellow and dictate the round it takes place. So Imagine if round 40 all players go flag.

Fullscreen: Why the hell am I looking at this map for ants? The rest of the game features are on pause. Just mimic the adventures and make it full screen.

Script Integration: The stats should be visible in regular game that others create script for.

Animation: Tiny pea crossing the board is cool. But can we have animation from when someone ghosts...or crits. Simple stuff like that.

Fade to Black. Entire square unit should fade with hp loss.

Coin Toss: Until first round begins you don't know which team shoots then moves...the other moves than shoots.

Stats: You should be able to find out what gear/boosters the other team is rocking.

Crow flies: The AI that controls the movement pattern for "setting" should be able to set to current...or as the crow flies.
ex. start SE corner on defense and set for AT3 (Toon goes thru north). As the crow flies would mean they go thru the WT or EW or any entrance not blocked. If blocked they stay until not blocked.
Leader: Each team elects one player to be "leader" That players stats are boosted. this makes them a larger target to kill from other team.

Chat Death: Once a player dies in FF...they are terminated from the chat...protect your leader.

Post Chat Dump: Once game ends both teams are dumped into a post game chat for 5 minutes. Yes, there will be trash talking but also comradery.

Symmetry: The game was designed with a north we have not seen but lights up sometimes...just the edge in LOS. We should clone the south of the map and make it available in the north. Northgate and Southgate. Reds have 4 sides to setup from.

Server Challenge: Do a FF event server. Let players clone their best toon. Players only start with what they have equipped...no inventory.


Hopefully this sparks some more ideas,

Sage Pangea
 

darthmaul99174

Well-Known Member
Everything except coin toss & chat death is great imo. Especially the post chat dump, what a great idea for interaction & brining people together that might never interact otherwise.
 

Goober Pyle

The West Team
Fort Balancing Strategist
I’ll add:
Black lists. An ally should be able to maintain a short list of players not allowed to join battles on their side

Position shielding. Non-ally’s can’t see where others are set (or the topic) for the first 5m or until you are ranked, and traitor ranks can’t see sets.
 
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Clever Hans

Well-Known Member
I’ll add:
Black lists. An ally should be able to maintain a short list of players not allowed to join battles on their side

Position shielding. Non-ally’s can’t see where others are set (or the topic) for the first 5m or until you are ranked, and traitor ranks can’t see sets.
Yes please, we have a lot of issues with some accounts signing up for our side on Vegas and never attending fights, while passing on where we start, signup numbers and battle topic to our opponents. This might be also happening on other worlds and sadly there is no way to prevent it right now.
 

Goober Pyle

The West Team
Fort Balancing Strategist
A possibly easy to implement solution might be:
Desertion lockout. When you desert a battle you are locked out of joining a fort fight for 23h.
 

darthmaul99174

Well-Known Member
I agree with black lists & position shielding but I can see this being abused by people with grudges or just maliciously in general.

I don't think desertion should automatically have a punishment, it may hurt attendance if people are punished because they couldn't make it. It should more be used as a way of collecting statistics to encourage those that miss battles & note those that are passing info on.
 
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Goober Pyle

The West Team
Fort Balancing Strategist
I agree with black lists & position shielding but I can see this being abused by people with grudges or just maliciously in general.

I don't think desertion should automatically have a punishment, it may hurt attendance if people are punished because they couldn't make it. It should more be used as a way of collecting statistics to encourage those that miss battles & note those that are passing info on.
If blacklists were implemented they’d presumably be limited to non-ally players and would be subject to mod oversight

The idea behind desertion join restriction is mostly about making it harder to spy. You have to make your spies attend or they won’t be able to spy the next battle until it’s too late to change how your offies are set.

For non-spies they’ll have to get online closer to battle start to get into the next one and lose priority on picking a spot.

Not a perfect solution, but it actually turns the “seen as a deserter” into something meaningful, providing a small incentive not to be one with a pretty small penalty, but a significant impact on a common spying technique
 

NovaStar

Well-Known Member
If blacklists were implemented they’d presumably be limited to non-ally players and would be subject to mod oversight

The idea behind desertion join restriction is mostly about making it harder to spy. You have to make your spies attend or they won’t be able to spy the next battle until it’s too late to change how your offies are set.
Harder to spy? I've seen a lot of times spies are "multi-accounts" (in fact, a different one in each battle and ONLY for purpose of spying, nothing else). They also don't mind attending the battle, they can just as easily suicide during battle and/or watch and pass information anyway. Spies are spies and don't mind doing what it takes to "do the job spying". Not a deterrent in the least, making them attend.
 

Sambee

The West Team
Forum moderator
I like most of the ideas except for these which just need tweaking:

Fade to Black: I'm thinking about the colour blind people who may find it harder to distinguish between teams. But I like the idea of a visual health stat.

Stats: This shouldn't be automatic, however it could be the perk of the leader to see a certain number of random player boosters. OR the boosters of enemy players are revealed at a rate depending on the distance and visibility from your team.
 
Fullscreen: Why the hell am I looking at this map for ants? The rest of the game features are on pause. Just mimic the adventures and make it full screen.
Sometimes while FFing, I also chat with other players in saloon, alliance, send telegrams, check out other things. I wouldn't want to be limited to just the battle, especially once I've been KOd. I like being able to watch the battle while doing other things.

Script Integration: The stats should be visible in regular game that others create script for.
Inno's view - why pay a developer when scripts are free? :D

Animation: Tiny pea crossing the board is cool. But can we have animation from when someone ghosts...or crits. Simple stuff like that.
Server resources on an enterprise level, this likely won't happen.
Also, with the fade-to-black, players use multiple devices and inno shouldn't develop an experience that works well on a desktop, but on a mobile, the player might not be able to FF efficiently.

Symmetry: The game was designed with a north we have not seen but lights up sometimes...just the edge in LOS. We should clone the south of the map and make it available in the north. Northgate and Southgate. Reds have 4 sides to setup from.
I think this is interesting, and it is similar the suggestions where the fort is more 'interactive' with the amount of players shooting at a tower.

Stats: You should be able to find out what gear/boosters the other team is rocking.
I find this odd- this was presented, but a bunch of other suggestions want to limit spying. This isn't logical.

Second Set: For offline players they "set" with a little red icon. What if players can have a second "set" in yellow and dictate the round it takes place. So Imagine if round 40 all players go flag.
That might be the best suggestion of the list, it'd certainly add a different dimension to the strategy.

Chat Death: Once a player dies in FF...they are terminated from the chat...protect your leader.

Post Chat Dump: Once game ends both teams are dumped into a post game chat for 5 minutes. Yes, there will be trash talking but also comradery.
In 2010-2012, we used outside chat rooms on a different platform and the chars were invited there - a rank and an invite. (i currently play on a world and utilize outside chat areas with some chars) The in-game chat wouldn't be utilized so all that development effort would be wasted. Likewise, the post-game chat is the saloon, what's the difference? Use the saloon now and even the chars that were watching can participate, and it's not just limited to the ones that made it into the battle.

Server Challenge: Do a FF event server. Let players clone their best toon. Players only start with what they have equipped...no inventory.
That's interesting, but I'm thinking only workers and dueler char will join :D I want an event that will find a balance between attackers and defenders, with hopefully educated players with proper builds and gear for the build. That's the challenging part.
 

Goober Pyle

The West Team
Fort Balancing Strategist
Harder to spy? I've seen a lot of times spies are "multi-accounts" (in fact, a different one in each battle and ONLY for purpose of spying, nothing else). They also don't mind attending the battle, they can just as easily suicide during battle and/or watch and pass information anyway. Spies are spies and don't mind doing what it takes to "do the job spying". Not a deterrent in the least, making them attend.
What about adding “joining the opposite side of a Fort Fight as a freelancer” to the list of disallowed activities for accounts on a shared IP?
 

NovaStar

Well-Known Member
Normally spies just want to see topic, number of sign-ups and what side their opponents sign up on...they can do that on a phone (different IP). Spies will be spies and there is no way to deter them...it will happen and they will find their way...

There are a lot more things needing the attention in the game and fort fights than figuring out how to stop that.
 

Goober Pyle

The West Team
Fort Balancing Strategist
Normally spies just want to see topic, number of sign-ups and what side their opponents sign up on...they can do that on a phone (different IP). Spies will be spies and there is no way to deter them...it will happen and they will find their way...

There are a lot more things needing the attention in the game and fort fights than figuring out how to stop that.
Yes, most multi activity can be gamed to hide the ip overlap. But it does make it a bit more effort and often people who engage in that trip up at some point.

Citing other things to fix is a bit silly since those are all dev efforts; my charge is finding things The Team can do without dev involvement to improve the player experience. This is one of those things.

Also, spying is currently more or less perfectly legal and virtually impossible to do anything about.

This suggestion is to extend enforcement of an existing rule to something within the spirit of the rule to mitigate some of the common situations that actually favor the creation of multis.
 
Black Lists ~ Not only no but HELL NO. You trying to kill fort fighting more than it already has been? The abuse would be terrible! We want players to come to battles not be locked out!
Agree with you BBJ, we do want players coming back, but i like the suggestion that players who do not front for battle still be shown in Battle Report as blank and no zero's. Reports should have a full disclosure on all signees and attendees, otherwise it is not a full report.
 
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Clever Hans

Well-Known Member
For those not familiar, after trying a successful tactics from the previous worlds like Houston were they captured all 42 forts and decided to sit on them for months/years while server FFing died as a result of it, they did the same recently on Juarez. And instead of balancing sides by redistributing towns and fighters, a player's idea of balance was to donate 2-3 forts to underdogs and then dig them over and over in one sided slaughters while farming exp and bonds. He´s still doing it but since most of the underdogs have quit by now, he and other hat from his town have left the alliance, founded their own "independent" towns and each got 4-5 forts from dominant alliance and then dig friendlies on each other. Creative solution but attendance is 15 vs 15 on a good day. I recall the time when maneuvers had a better attendance than that.

Something should be done about fort donations since those have been abused on few new worlds recently to avoid the balancing of sides.
 
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Goober Pyle

The West Team
Fort Balancing Strategist
One think I could pull out of my bag of tricks is dynamic cap adjustments. Ie, every time an attack fails the next time defense cap is lowered by one (or attack cap is increased by one) and vice versa.

The conditions for implementing this are the hard part….. hard to find sufficient consensus
 
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