Improving AAO

[velenne]

"The pendulum swings" is what's been said of the population imbalance between our two realms. Wait a few weeks and pendulum shifts the other way. Whether it's cross-realming, flavor-of-the-month or just a bad night, it seems to only take about 20% AAO to start a tilting shift in the population numbers. One realm all but abandons the field after losing a single zone! (I'm implicating both sides in this; don't forget we're all humans after all.)

Against All Odds is a wonderful mechanic that I remember being really impressed with when I first saw it. But is it enough? Is the promise of a little more renown if you win enough to encourage the distraught, underpopulated realm back to the field?

It seems not.*

So here's my suggestion: how about a catch-up mechanic for a realm that loses a zone, any zone. Apply it across it all tiers, all zones, even forts, (but not cities, I've got a suggestion for cities here). I call it

Our Finest Hour / Our Foul Hate: Cooldown: 5 minutes; Range: 5 ft; Duration: 1 hour (This buff is given to all players currently RvR flagged in a zone that locks for the other realm. Like a Rune or Mark, you gain the ability to cast a spell that does the following:) If you're in an RvR area, you summon a champion to fight for your realm. The champion disappears after 60 seconds or when it dies. Each stack of OFH reduces the cooldown by 30 seconds and resets the duration. The champion is specific to your race and tier.

The champions should have player-like names and appearances, selected at random from a pool, so they are difficult but not impossible (with experience) to distinguish them from regular players. They escort the player who summoned them, acting like a pet, for their duration. Like pets, they're not especially difficult to kill but they represent a fraction of attention the enemy realm has to assign to them given their damage can't be ignored. Enough players on one realm coordinating their OFH could use them as fodder before a counter-attack. It's a way of adding population without adding population.

The important thing to remember is that it's only given to a losing player who was physically in the zone when it was lost, so the assumption is that they're playing catch-up. It also means that if you see your realm is about to lose a zone, you're incentivized to show up and try to defend it. I can't overstate how important that aspect is. I understand it would be difficult to code -I'm not a coder- and this isn't the final draft of the idea. I just wanted to put it out there to get feedback.


*- Without comparing the total online numbers in a tier to the numbers from SoR and to some sort of IP comparison to check for cross-realming, it's impossible for me to know where these players are. The fact that the numbers are a swinging pendulum is a bigger issue than any single mechanic can address in the long-term. Therefore, this post attempts to address the immediate issue of "I have an hour to play a game and I don't wanna play a game where I'm getting face-rolled for an hour". The best long-term solution (adding a 3rd faction) isn't possible, I don't think.

[Diragi]

That sounds way too complicated. A simpler fix would be to give keep defense renown points that would be scaled by the overall server pop (down to the current zero if you lose a keep as the over pop side)

[velenne]

If you think "you lost so now you can summon a guy that fights for you" is too complicated, I have bad news for you about this game.

[Aethilmar]

You are assuming the game design is around holding zones. It is explicitly about flipping zones with *some* resistance to gain enough contribution to get a bag roll. That was the entire point of the recent keep respawn changes ... to break stalemates.

There is no need for a "catch up" mechanic b/c there is nothing much to be gained (in terms of rewards) for turning the tide. People still do it anyway, but some folks are stubborn stupid (like me).

That said, the optimal path is what I described above plus, of course, being on the zerging side.

[velenne]

You are assuming the game design is around holding zones.

I am not.

The game is based around people having fun and no one I know sees 200vs50 and thinks "fun!". So they stay in PvE or scenarios and don't participate in the campaign. I've done it myself and witnessed it first hand from guild and alliance members, even read it in general and t4 chat. It's a fact and it's human nature.

You can't change human nature, you can only build around it.

Now I'm not saying those aren't perfectly reasonable ways to have fun, I'm just saying that many of these people would probably rather do oRvR but if they're on the imbalanced side, there's no incentive (and even less of one given today's patch notes) to participate.

This thread is my attempt to address that incentive structure in the most balanced and effective way that I, as one person, could come up with. If, on the other hand, you're correct that the game is designed to create a population imbalance so that one side inevitably curb-stomps the other into submission, then I will humbly withdraw my suggestion. Here I thought it was based around competition.

[Diragi]

If you think "you lost so now you can summon a guy that fights for you" is too complicated, I have bad news for you about this game.

Development wise yes.

[Diragi]

As it stands if you can take a t4 zone with some resistance and good contribution you can get 25-30k renown. Defending will get to 4k.

There's zero benefit to contributing to a defense u beyond if you get into the top 75% for the bag.

Sure there's renown from AAO but if you are getting zerged to hell...