O Come, All Ye Fortful
Now that we have released our third suite of changes to duelling, it is time to turn our attention elsewhere. For now our focus remains on fixing bugs, however the next major project is clear: adjustments to the fort battle formula! We plan to focus on five priorities here:
- Improve the balance between attackers and defenders.
- Improve the balance between all four classes.
- Maintain or decrease the chance of battles reaching fifty five rounds.
- Decrease the importance of health.
- Bring the maximum attacker to defender ratio closer to 1:1.
For this we wish to bring back an old approach from a couple of years ago. The attackers currently enjoy a significant advantage because by placing attribute points in strength, they gain points in both health and their strongest aiming/dodging/resistance skill. Clearly this is unfair for the defenders, who must choose between the two. It also leads to weird flow on effects in battle strategies, which increases the importance of duellers (sniping through the gate) and decreases the effectiveness of workers (not mounting fortifications). Simply removing this advantage should, at least in theory, reverse the series of unfortunate events. With that in mind, we intend to swap the following skills:
- The attackers will use hiding instead of stamina.
- The defenders will use setting traps instead of hiding.
These two changes will mean health and leadership become the lone fort skills in their respective attributes, while mobility and dexterity each contain two fort skills. We anticipate this will mean a decrease in the attacking team’s average health and therefore the length of battles. It would also increase the desirable attacker to defender ratio for a balanced battle from about 1:1 back closer to 1.2:1, although likely not quite as high as before. Hopefully the better team will be joyful and triumphant and not always the largest.
Of course, any major changes will undergo significant testing before they reach your local worlds. We are also mindful of avoiding disruption to the fort battle championships. However, in the meanwhile we’d love to know your thoughts!