Patch at 01:00 BST 21 September 2016

[Vigfuss]

Thanks for making adjustments quickly. Changing this to keeps might help bring fights out into the open.

Aside from that, I think it's easy to underestimate the value of a damage buff or debuff. Even 10% is a huge amount, when you consider 3 dps on one target. I think that any increase to damage should not be more than 10% and there should be no reduction in damage for the other side.

[blaqwar]

As for the issues you listed about numbers always winning well thats always going to be the case, if you make 10 players beat 15 players who are all as evenly skilled then you are just going to piss off the 15 players and which point you are better off changing sides and from what i saw yesterday ppl were more inclined to xrealm to avoid being penalised by there realm and sadly i am one of them.

What you're talking about isn't what Aza is talking about. It's one thing for greater numbers to prevail in micro-fights, engagements you can pick and avoid. But Aza is talking about realm-wide population balance. If Destro outnumbers Order 2:1 in T4 population, Order will in general, on average, be outnumbered in every fight 2:1. If Order wants to do any form of ORvR they will, on average, face greater numbers, whether they want to or not. It's not a case of just seeking out a more even fight, there isn't one. They either step into the lakes and defend against greater odds or they don't. That is why giving a hand to the underdog makes sense, since as Aza said, this is a game, it's meant to be enjoyed. Even fights are enjoyable, getting demolished every time you log on isn't.

Unfortunately the macro population balance is difficult to fix without the use of hardcaps. What the Devs are trying to do is not balancing micro pop, for which softcaps (in the form of buffs/debuffs like the last patch) don't make much sense, as you pointed out, 15 people getting beaten by 10 in an even fight isn't logical. However, softcaps do make sense in the scope of balancing the macro-population. Incentivising players to seek out even fights, rewarding them for it and making sure it's a system not easily exploitable but still enjoyable for all in the longest of timeframes is a very difficult challenge. It's a challenge Mythic started getting the hang of only towards the end of the game's life. And remember that the devs here are working with their hands tied behind their back because of the inability to patch the game (for now).

I have not been able to test the changes extensively myself but it seems to me that these changes are going in the right direction. Spreading people out in the RvR lakes and preventing the blobbing and keep funneling is one goal that this seems to be working towards. The debuffs/buffs being keep radius is a good change, the numbers obviously need to be tweaked since as pointed out, damage modifiers have a tendency to severly mess with the delicate balance. Yesterday's RvR doesn't really prove much, as it was mostly done before the hotfix. I have faith that after further testing and tweaking you might be onto a decent system.

Although I have a feeling that dropping all damage increasing modifiers and applying only the damage decreasing ones (overpoped realm needs to control the whole lake to do reasonable damage at the keep, the underdog realm can take the BOs and strike at the keep against greater numbers because they're taking less damage) would prevent the "zomg I got 2-shot" feeling and perhaps achieve the same effect of wanting to spread out and control the objectives. If for no other reason but to speed things up. But this is pure theorycrafting, I have no idea if this has been attempted before.

Either way, thank you for the energy spent on these changes and solutions.

[StormX2]

slightly outnumbered, but not by much. Pug warband could not take even a single BO in DW while Order was in the lakes. They couldn't take keep but we couldn't really fight back. so it ended up being possibly the most boring game of chase and bait ive seen in a while.

[Morf]

Spoiler:

As for the issues you listed about numbers always winning well thats always going to be the case, if you make 10 players beat 15 players who are all as evenly skilled then you are just going to piss off the 15 players and which point you are better off changing sides and from what i saw yesterday ppl were more inclined to xrealm to avoid being penalised by there realm and sadly i am one of them.

What you're talking about isn't what Aza is talking about. It's one thing for greater numbers to prevail in micro-fights, engagements you can pick and avoid. But Aza is talking about realm-wide population balance. If Destro outnumbers Order 2:1 in T4 population, Order will in general, on average, be outnumbered in every fight 2:1. If Order wants to do any form of ORvR they will, on average, face greater numbers, whether they want to or not. It's not a case of just seeking out a more even fight, there isn't one. They either step into the lakes and defend against greater odds or they don't. That is why giving a hand to the underdog makes sense, since as Aza said, this is a game, it's meant to be enjoyed. Even fights are enjoyable, getting demolished every time you log on isn't.

Unfortunately the macro population balance is difficult to fix without the use of hardcaps. What the Devs are trying to do is not balancing micro pop, for which softcaps (in the form of buffs/debuffs like the last patch) don't make much sense, as you pointed out, 15 people getting beaten by 10 in an even fight isn't logical. However, softcaps do make sense in the scope of balancing the macro-population. Incentivising players to seek out even fights, rewarding them for it and making sure it's a system not easily exploitable but still enjoyable for all in the longest of timeframes is a very difficult challenge. It's a challenge Mythic started getting the hang of only towards the end of the game's life. And remember that the devs here are working with their hands tied behind their back because of the inability to patch the game (for now).

I have not been able to test the changes extensively myself but it seems to me that these changes are going in the right direction. Spreading people out in the RvR lakes and preventing the blobbing and keep funneling is one goal that this seems to be working towards. The debuffs/buffs being keep radius is a good change, the numbers obviously need to be tweaked since as pointed out, damage modifiers have a tendency to severly mess with the delicate balance. Yesterday's RvR doesn't really prove much, as it was mostly done before the hotfix. I have faith that after further testing and tweaking you might be onto a decent system.

Although I have a feeling that dropping all damage increasing modifiers and applying only the damage decreasing ones (overpoped realm needs to control the whole lake to do reasonable damage at the keep, the underdog realm can take the BOs and strike at the keep against greater numbers because they're taking less damage) would prevent the "zomg I got 2-shot" feeling and perhaps achieve the same effect of wanting to spread out and control the objectives. If for no other reason but to speed things up. But this is pure theorycrafting, I have no idea if this has been attempted before.

Either way, thank you for the energy spent on these changes and solutions.

Without directly responding to all your points lets look why this change was implemented, the idea was to give the outnumbered realm a better chance against superior numbers, the flaw in this system is you are counting every player in the zone not the players you are fighting, there could be 20+ afk players inside the rvr zone who dont have any impact but they are enough to give the other realm a bonus to damage.

Az has stated that he doesnt care if this has a negative impact for 1v1/6v6 in zones but at the same time why would you then expect small groups to roam, recapture bo's, cut of supply lines etc etc ? they will just cling to the zerg if they see there side has more numbers or xrealm and further increase the effectiveness of the elite players on the side with less numbers.

Like i have said before i am so very grateful for the work being done on this project, its **** difficult and negativity does not help but at the same time if i disagree with a change i am going to say so.

Any artificial stats gains/damage gains/mitigation gains is bad, it brings imbalance to an already unbalanced game and for alot of ppl ruins what little non zerg rvr there is.

[roadkillrobin]

I just wanna remind that population ballance and activity in the lakes are two completly different things. We have attacked keeps many many times while having AAO. The "greater" number realm isn't always the side on the offence. The lack of activity in the lakes from one realm is a 100% community based issue. People don't expect eequal numbers in ORVR, thats why it's ORVR. People getting pissed about unballanced numbers in scenarios coz it's supose to be ballanced numbers. Imo community issues like lack of organization isn't something thats up to the Devs to fix.

The Xrealming issue will be solved within time as it's gonna be grindier and grindier to get both gear and renown points. At some point you gonna need to chose A: be undergeared Xrealmer/Altaholic or B: Focus on your main. There no real punishmeant to do either atm and thats why you see people switchin sides.

I had a flashback to live today, and I think I remember a mechanic devs introduced to help break funnels. I think it was something like this: If you died in a friendly keep you got a 10% wounds debuff wich stacked up to 9 times. This debuff wasn't cureble by healers or npc healers. You had to leave the keep area and wait X amount of time (I belive it was 10min) And then it cleared by itself.

[Akalukz]

Didn't they change it to the buff only being in area of Keep? therfore 6 man / solo / duo etc AWAY from the keep are not affected?

I will be issuing a patch with the following changes:

[Rationing]

- If a realm is outnumbered, the ration system will only affect them if they are within the radius of a friendly keep.

Additionally, I think penril has a very good idea to help lessen the impact of crossrealming.

[sotora]

I see the reasoning behind and we will see what will actually happen in game in coming days & weeks but I fear inc/out damage buff/debuff will promote blog zerg gameplay with all it's consequences to game, community, x-realming, population, class balance, etc

[Kattastrof]

You might be correct. But my squad of imaginary friends will run and oRvR and fight for bo's. And we will fight other squads playing for fun. While the zerg is using the tactic Zombie at standby from The art of war.

Sure, some days Ill be smashed so hard Ill take a break and play in a different tier for a while. But this is def a step in a new and interesting direction

[Morf]

Didn't they change it to the buff only being in area of Keep? therfore 6 man / solo / duo etc AWAY from the keep are not affected?

I will be issuing a patch with the following changes:

[Rationing]

- If a realm is outnumbered, the ration system will only affect them if they are within the radius of a friendly keep.

Additionally, I think penril has a very good idea to help lessen the impact of crossrealming.

I was affected by a 9% damage increase earlier on my lowbie wp while roaming, cant remember what the aao or bo situation was but it certainly hits you away from keeps.

[Bozzax]

I think it's easy to underestimate the value of a damage buff or debuff. Even 10% is a huge amount, when you consider 3 dps on one target.

This is important imo

Even in a WB you typically are backed by two healers. An easy kill "occurs" whenever damage output > healing output (of those 2 healers).

Buffing incoming dps 10% pretty much is an easy kill in most situations when 2mdps +1dps tank assist.

If your outgoing damage is gimped at the same time you basically turn into a renown pinata.