Edenwolf wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 2:47 pm
AAO and WTA hinder the overpopulated sides gear progress while increasing said progress to the other. We all get crests and bags at the end of the day, though I can feel for those who are hit by a weakened moral(the real kind.) As you said, it's tidal...the population can shift within the hour and happens often, what it really comes down to is state of mind and the communities will to take on leadership and rally together through "dark times," there is a lot of fun to be had in these moments(and rewards).
Increasing stats etc. to the underpopulated side is never the answer, this would kill any small scale fights and in turn, make zerging more of a necessity for the overpopulated side. Not to mention you shouldn't punish those who've played the game and have earned their gear. Unfortunately, a 2 faction war is the stem of all this and locking out players from their favourite realm via forced population control would only hurt the game. The only thing I could see to fix a string of unbalanced population is the introduction of a pve element to the underpopulated side, as in being able to summon more bodies(or bots) into battle.
AAO and WTA do the exact opposite. I got way more Renown while under WTA because the kills came in faster than with AAO.
I literally get more Renown doing Scenarios at this point. Order hasn't taken or defended a single Keep during most of the times I play. I believe I was 5/7 Keeps for the last RVR Weekly (might have been the Week before last; but it was the first time I hadn't finished a 'take X-number of keeps' requirement for the Weekly).
((I reference Keeps because of the chunk of Renown you get. Which is on par with the 'chunk' you get from Scenarios.))
Summoning 'champions' for your side doesn't work in practice. The overpopulated side just steamrolls the players then kills the summon. My source? WoW's Alterac Valley. Horde have no trouble dispatching the Alliance and then, in some instances as a 'snub', killing Ivus. Before proceeding to win. And that's with an instance forcing body count symmetry.
IF, and I stress 'if', we were to go the route of Summons to balance. You would need a variable amount that depends on how much of body count discrepancy there is.
And, at the point, you're doing exactly what the Boon 'n Bane idea would do: Artificially increase the power projection of the weaker (due to body count) Faction. You're just moving the 'power up' to that of an NPC rather than putting the power in the hand(s) of the player.
Plus, NPCs are notoriously easy to 'cheese'. Back to Ivus in Alterac Valley. A single paladin with epic mount (100% speed) and Pursuit of Justice (+15% running and mount speed) could easily kite Ivus all around his leash point the entire, keeping the script that starts him marching to the Horde base from triggering, the entire round.
EDIT: I also know that the proposed system can be cheesed...logging on to Order alts to give that side the Tzeentch's Bane. Then switching back to gain the Tzeentch's Boon while also having superior numbers. ...but it's a start. And an improvement over dangly relatively useless rewards, to anyone that's play more than a month, as an incentive to step into a slaughter-fest.
You have to learn the rules of the game. Then play better than anyone else.
