I'm really surprised that players and moderators are not up in arms over the shortcomings of fort battles and duels. If duelings to become a 2 stat guess game, well fort fights are a 1 stat no guess game.
No... Wait... You're seeing things from only one perspective. Many players are actually interested in upcoming changes but are not willing to post anything.
Duelings are not going to be 2 stat guess game. As stated by devs, modifications mean an end to one build (ring?) that will rule them all. We know only a small portion of the change which practically means only one thing and that is nerfing resistance builds. What devs are trying to make is something that exists in some other games (sometimes I ask myself why aren't we allowed to post game names - it'd make life easier when you're trying to give an example or comparision) where one class beats another class which beats the third one that easily beats the first one.
Imagine if dueling is not skill based, but class based. And then imagine that dueler always wins over worker, soldier pwns dueler however worker nails every soldier. A circle. That's the rough idea, but without seeing how things work now it's impossible to know what impact will the change have.
Also, as noticed by one player, tactics' impact in duels will be lowered which means nerfing soldier class - not enough of nerfing that class if you ask me, but it's a nice start.
Forts are not a subject in this update. Unfortunately. Unlimited and buyable on some worlds - health - is not the only issue, but is a major design fail. Changes are needed definetly, but we'll have to wait for some future update to adress all issues.
But if we'll read between lines, dodge and aim are becoming more important in duels, right? That means semitank fort build, that includes aim and dodging, won't be easy to beat in a duel by pumping appearance skyhigh (which currently gives the resistance+appearance attacker ability to hit the fort fighter in all 8 rounds and win every single duel against a fort fighter who's dodge can't compete with current appearance*aim!).
To keep it short, Inno is the biggest enemy of every alliance on every world.
This is partially wrong. Alliances' biggest enemy are players that pose as dictators.
Assuming there is no such player in an alliance, next biggest enemy is a town of idlers.
Assuming all towns in an alliance got only active players, next biggest enemy are townless players (forgive me for not writing more about this).
It's all connected. The part of a problem is on players' side, another part is on Inno's side. Devs' side. It's Inno who refuse to design a system which would punish idling/inactivity and playing as townless. There are two things that should persuade players to join a town (lower fees if not townless and XP nerfed from NPCduels townless players can perform) but that's not enough.
The dueling system change however can only benefit alliances. Instead of a town filled with only resistance duelists, now you'll have to get players with several different builds if you want to make sure your town can beat anyone. Town, alliance, doesn't matter really. The point is that unlike forts where only HP monsters rule and in 99% of fights a side with more premium soldiers win, duels got a change where, as I've stated before, only one ultimate build (primarly designed to kill builders, but works as a charm also on fort fighters, pure hiders, and etc) won't exist any more.
The continuous failures to balance the fundamentals of the game have far out shadowed all the apparent energy put forth into things that were never on the road map or of high concern to players. When the money grab overtakes the artistic endeavor the art is gone.
And I can agree with you on this. Devs should have made things planned in The Roadmap first, and only after that work on stuff that's not in there. For example, how many more years we'll have to wait for the change of class bonuses (adding a bonus to a player every 10 or 20 levels)?
But let's not forget that the first round in the fight over money grab overtake was won by the community. None of new worlds will contain the evil skillbuying premium.