Improve RvR System Brainstorm

[Marawo]

INTRODUCTION:

My goal for this post is to collect ideas to improve rvr as a whole as well as pinpoint problems that make RvR unenjoyable.

Currently I am not very satisfied with the way RvR works, it feels stale.
I have been spending a lot of time thinking about multiple issues and how we can achieve this exciting feeling of having epic battles in a gritty high fantasy setting. Theres lack of incentive to fight battles besides just killing the enemy realm and get some purple numbers. Just ganking some palyers, or fighting off a wb to make it clear you are the stronger side to make the enemy log so you can take the keep with lots of aao is not what feels like an accomplishment.
Taking a zone should be something that took effort, something where smaller grps, soloplayers and the sieging zerg worked for and played their role in conqeuring. It should reward teamwork cunning and braver. A good example is the implementation of supply that happened recently, it makes a ganking grp doing something useful for the realm by providing possible supplypoints to their own realm. (but more on that topic later on)

INDEX:

1. The three phases of a Zone
   
   Spoiler:

   Open battle for resources:
   When entering a fresh zone the main goal to advance to the next phase is gathering supplies and preventing the enemy from doing so. You want for your realm to have a better supply level than the enemy to make the upcoming siege easier for your realm. To do so you hold BO and turn in supply crates and kick the enemy off of their BO. By establishing dominance over the open field you to either restrict the enemy realm to flee for their keep or sacrifice themselves to gather supplies.
   
   Sieging
   Having gathered enough resources to spawn siege equipment while keeping the enemy realm down it's time to capture the enemy keep to get a step closer to victory for the attacking side. The defending side needs to make a decision now on how to distribute their forces and how they plan to foil the enemy from taking the keep. Destroying the ram, buying time and reeling in supplies to keep the defenses up are vital points as well as a crushing counterattack. The finale of this phase should be the showdown when breaching the final door and you fight to the death face to face to protect the lord of the keep. Many things can go wrong for both sides and that is the beauty of it.
   
   Aftermath
   After finally taking the enemy keep you still need to hold your new posession. There is no point in taking over something if you can't hold it. For the Defender the situation looks brim but not hopeless. The atatcker has to spread out his forces and a opportunity for a costly guerilla war for the remainng BO and the ruin of the keep may arise, even possibly turning the tide in recapturing your own keep. The defenders may still be at a severe disadvantage but if they can fight the attackers off long enough they should be able to reclaim what was originally theirs.
2. Supply&Resources
   Spoiler:

   What is supply and what should it affect
   Supply is food, tools, building materials, medicine, ammunition etc.
   With supply you feed your army, you build siege equipment, you reinforce your keeps defenses, you repair whats damaged to keep your fighting power up. A starved army is not going to fight well, a poorly supplied keep is not going to have the sturdiest doors or unlimited burning oil, an attacking force with a shoddy ram and no ammunition for their cannons is going to have a bad time breaching a well fitted defense the gets regular supply deliveries. After taking all these things into account, supply is a major factor in warfare and should have a big impact on the zone possibly making smaller forces strong and bigger forces weak or being thedeciding factor of equally matched forces.
   
3. Battlefield Objectives
   Spoiler:

   Outpost
   BO represent smaller outpost scattered across the map, they represent important points of interst on the map and their main purpose is to generate supllies for the controlling realm. Often they also function as some sort of defensive Outpost where a group can turtle up and get an advantage against superior forces. A controlled BO also functions as a reinforcement points via wc teleport. I already established that supply is important so its natural that controlling BO is important as well. During a siege attacker or defender a steady train of supplies should give you a hefty advantage over your enemy, it should be viable to hold BO as an attacker or defender during the siege phase.
4. Siege Equipment
   Spoiler:

   Ram
   The breaching tool used for the main gate, the people working the ram are under heavy fire by the defenders while getting poured by hot oil. The attackers try to destroy it by jumping to their sure deaths or organize an all out assault ot drive the attackers off the ram and protect the entrance by securing the area arround the ram to take it apart. Its a race of ram health against door health. While doors can be fixed up via supply repairing the ram during a siege should be equally viable, pointing back to the train of supply. (you should start to see the pattern here)
   
   Cannons
   Resupplying ammunition is important to keep shooting down the enemy defensive equipment such as cannons and oil on the walls, of course it works the other way arround as well using your defensive equipment to damage the attackers siege potential. The limiting factor here should be the ammunition for fixed as well as moveable cannons, fixing up cannons with materials is a further factor (supply again).
   
   Oil
   Oil is an useful tool to clear up the area arround the ram and secure the space, it uses up barrels and barrels of oil so its only resonable that its use is limited by supply an not by ones inventory of how many they bought previously.
   
5. The Keep
   Spoiler:

   Postern Doors
   Control the postern doors of a keep, then you control the flow of the supply. Controlling postern doors is a major objective for attacker or defenders and gives more opportunity for the defenders to flank arround the sieging force or for the attacker to starve the defender out of their defensive equipments (like oil cannons) and door repairs as well as their food (wounds).
   Smaller grps fit perfectly for that role but also the whole zerg may mobilise to one side of the keep to get a stacked train of multiple supply cartes inside the keep sacrificing their people for those juicy materials.
   
   Main Door
   The one side wants to get through, the other side wants them to stay out. The main door is a battle/race against the ram and after it falls it serves as a chokepoint that needs to be broken up by a tactical flank from moving a group through the postern or by brute force. The oil up top makes it a very strong defensive point. The point being that nobody can get in or out under assault.
   
   Lord
   The guy who runs the keep, the lord is the deciding factor if a keep has officially fallen or not. The lord is a tough adversary that supports the defenders but alone without help ,while he should be still a challenge and give the defenders a possibility to make a last few attempts to clear the intruders out of their keep, succumb pretty quickly being outnumbered like this.

After reading this wall of text ( kudos to you) you may understand while my following suggestions make sense in my opinion.
Keep in mind these are merely suggestions and should inspire discussion or an idea of how the rvr should look like. If anything i wrote helps then it served its purpose.

Suggestions:

Make BO generate supply crates
Gives value to holding BO during sieges for steady supply income for attacker as well defender. More importance to postern doors. Gankers have something to do during siege time as well. Anyone can do this even without grp giving the opposite realm slacks. Do I siege with my full force or do I leave some ppl on BO's? (vice versa for defenders).

Supply repairs cannons and ram
Defending fixed cannons already regenerate health automatically, they can be very lethal to any attacking siege equipment, rightfully so, but they are too devastating right now during high population times. If Door can get repaired with supply why cant ram? Smaller grps are perfect for this, solo players as well but the smaller the force the higher the risk of counterplay getting their supply stolen destroyed.

Oil respawnrate is affected by supply level
This is mainly for balance if ram repair and the supply from BO change is introduced. I dont see why a 0 rank keep should be able to use oil at the same rate as a 3 star keep as well.

Low supply level disables BO portals
Promotes smaller grps in fresh zones before a dominant side establishes itself. Ripping weak links out of a unorganized zerg also helps weaken one side without porting to their grp again too easy. Giving more meaning behind hunting grp besides renown.

Supply crates dropped from players destroyable
You left behind supply you dropped but you won the fight, why shouldnt you be able to destroy them or pick them up again to make them vanish? Important counter mass supply accumulation in zone as well as clearing clutter from the ground after huge fights in chokepoints.


-See you in the rvr lakes

edit: removed a suggestion that was already implemented

[Torgrimmerr]

I really like what I see here, it would really help to improve the quality of the experience.

[Herthin]

This would be amazing. I like it!

[Yaliskah]

Hoy!! Actually in holidays and reading on my phone. Unless Hargrim who worked with me on ORvR give some answers and reactions, will keep more time to answer on some propositions you made when back.

But that's an interesting post and some suggestion you make were initially planned ( like siege rank who should fit to realm/resource rank) but it was a bit complicated to dev. ( maybe later who knows)

Feel free to make more suggestions.

Any good idea is interesting if :

- It seems it can provide a real improvment for actual system.
- If we are technically able to make it.
- If it doesnt make the system more complex than it is.
- If ir doesn't generate new issues.

On side note some little tweak about BO will be deployed when ready :

When left; BO will take some time before becoming neutral (around 120 sec, still producing resources, probably desactivating portal) giving the possibility to players to be able to move and avoiding a bit the afkBO complain

[Cylwen]

On side note some little tweak about BO will be deployed when ready :

When left; BO will take some time before becoming neutral (around 120 sec, still producing resources, probably desactivating portal) giving the possibility to players to be able to move and avoiding a bit the afkBO complain

This is great! It will help to improve the rvr movement and reduce wait-hammer whine! For those who still wish to wait at the BO will they still get renown?

P.s. thank you for your work on the game and enjoy your holiday!

[Tesq]

I think the main problem yet still unsolved is how spread ppl trought all zone without generate too easy points of aggregation ( unwanted zerg)

My idea would be instead have no lock timers to have 1 big lock timer for all the 4 flags so they all open and close at the same time, that way ppl is forced to contest em, all of 4 at the same time and the best is send a base equal number between em then send some adjusting reinforce from your "hq". When they open any flag can be cap ir be loose ; if not remain neutral, then at timer end all lock and supplys are granted . Then when they re open all 4 reset and the thing starvall over again.

For exemple a 3 min lock and 3 min reset chain of windows will.make that ppl will have to hold flags and tab em / fight for em all at same time with also some min between the fights to micro-manage the population accordimg where there is need. This should grant a spreader pops on all maps; wanna say this is totally different from individual lock timer for each flag as on AoR, it basically is like the currently without lock out but it force ppl to not be able to chain lock flags with a big blob. So even if it involve a lock timer force yourself to see the differences even revarding the conseguences when using such system.

[Cylwen]

I think the main problem yet still unsolved is how spread ppl trought all zone without generate too easy points of aggregation ( unwanted zerg)

My idea would be instead have no lock timers to have 1 big lock timer for all the 4 flags so they all open and close at the same time, that way ppl is forced to contest em, all of 4 at the same time and the best is send a base equal number between em then send some adjusting reinforce from your "hq". When they open any flag can be cap ir be loose ; if not remain neutral, then at timer end all lock and supplys are granted . Then when they re open all 4 reset and the thing starvall over again.

For exemple a 3 min lock and 3 min reset chain of windows will.make that ppl will have to hold flags and tab em / fight for em all at same time with also some min between the fights to micro-manage the population accordimg where there is need. This should grant a spreader pops on all maps; wanna say this is totally different from individual lock timer for each flag as on AoR, it basically is like the currently without lock out but it force ppl to not be able to chain lock flags with a big blob. So even if it involve a lock timer force yourself to see the differences even revarding the conseguences when using such system.

I'm interested in this idea too which addresses the "elephant in the room" . Though rarely in history is warfare about two equal sides battling it out gallantly, it is more interesting. It's also interesting to work out a strategy to gather your forces to fight against and defeat the zerg through superior tactics and organisation. After all we potentially have unlimited resources (players) who can login to join the underdog.

This idea from Tesq offers an option and it would be interesting to see if it was worth trying out. Another suggestion to try out is to add a defensive buff if you are within 100' of your own flag. This is because currently the attacker onto a BO has a big advantage in that the attacking zerg can target and release their spells/abilities as they charge in while it's much harder for a defensive group in an open BO to focus their defense against an attack. Of course in enclosed spaces this is different.

[Torgrimmerr]

This is where i think the Devs might want to set up a second server as a test server to test ideas like this out before taking things like this out live, bc this idea kicks ass, but needs some testing and twinks to it, but yes if we can test it and work with it i think this idea can improve ORvR greatly.

[Tharund]

My (dream) suggestion on Public Quests :

1.
All Open Tier are ORvR : no more PvE zone.
On a lock tier, PvE comes back to normal

2.
All PQ are transformed to be PQ for both side:
At the begin, if the PQ is failled, the other side win the PQ.
Loot bag is only if all step are done. So the other side don’t win bag if they win the PQ, but the have contribution for the keep.

Spoiler:

Then, improve PQ to have different step for both sides.

3.
Make that all PQ improve the level of the Keep.
Remove all heroes guard camps lvl55 to let possibility to each side to move on the other easiely.
That allows fighting in different environments and buildings.

4.

Spoiler:

The last step: PQ shall be done on the right order to make a frontline on both side.
Each side knows where the other is.
Each PQ win, to move to next PQ.
The PQ is lost, move to previous PQ.

Each PQ win (and locked) give an adventage on the battleground.
The first can be more guard on the keep, more canon, doors repair …
The last (example Chap 22) can be a buff/debuff on the lord keep for x minutes.

With oll these improvments, stick WB shall be separate to fight everywhere.

Except spoiler steps which don’t respond to:
“ - If it doesnt make the system more complex than it is.”, I think that can be a good improvement.

[anarchypark]

@tesq
nope, it'll make underdog zerg.
1wb vs 2g for example.
1g each BO vs 2g zerg killing 1g.
while 3g playing wait-hammer.
make 3g chase 2g? they can circle the zone endlessly.
intels can make difference, soon there'll be false intels.
don't underestimate trolls.
it's too much hassle for too little gain, IMO.

@OP
zerg will sit at keep with repairing ram.
destroyed ram is much better to split zerg compare to supply runners.
embrace the idea that 2~3 rams are required for keep taking.

small scales are their own.
you can't rely on them.
if they ignored campaign what can you do?

closed 2 BO are enough to split wb.
nobody likes to run other side of map while rest having fun.