[DISCUSSION] RVR - likes/dislikes/possible improvement?

[th3gatekeeper]

This is meant to be a constructive post. The last few days I have been running RVR and discussing within our guild the current system versus other previous systems, both here on ROR and LIVE. I thought there may be some benefit in having an open discussion about the current system on the forums. I have my own opinions but what does everyone thing of the current system?

I do like "locking" the other RVR lakes, forcing everyone to fight in ONE zone. I know Az is very "anti-zerg" but its very hard to implement mechanics that zergs to not benefit from. I cant help but feel that lock timers on BOs lead to zerging. People run from 1 node to the other in a giant blob. Which accumulates to the giant blob eventually taking the keep and then it seems we play a game of "trade BOs" for an hour or two until 1 side seems to give up and the zone finally locks.

Currently there is no fixed end timer for RVR. This is hard for me personally, since I will have "spurts" of time of say 1-2 hours to play. I log in, join a WB and we are doing an RVR lake. I dont know if itll take 30 minutes or 6 hours to lock the zone... So I play not knowing if Ill even be around to get a chance at bags... Which often leads me to not want to go into RVR unless roaming for kills with AAO or inbetween SCs or something...

Again, this post is intended to be constructive discussion around RVR, what do you like? what do you dislike? How do you think it could be improved...


EDIT: After some discussion and ideas in this thread. I want to be clear and get concensus around the "problems" with RVR in an effort to then possibly formulate some suggestions on how to address those problems.

Quoted from page 10 of this thread:

So to summarize. Here are the 3 problems I see:
1) zergs - generally brought about by limited objectives at any time + lock timers.
2) Locking the zone requirements are not fun but often frustrating
3) time constraints restrict RVR to too many players at too infrequent times.

Also there seems to be SOME consensus around using the Ruin PQ loot system in RVR rewards. I think the DEV team has already responded to this idea, and dislikes it, so I DONT want to spend time talking about the "loot mechanics" this is largely setting loot aside and just talking about how to make RVR more FUN to play.

[mursie]

Add more bag rolls chances (not to be confused with more bags in a roll).

People rvr for realm pride, for gear, for rvr currency, and for fun.

With the changes to Keep Lord health and difficulty in killing, it is not uncommon to see a zone stagnate for hours with neither side capable of locking. The result is frustration, patches that kill all contribution do to endless hours of stagnation, and apathy.

Solution:
3 ways to have bag rolls occur.

1. Lock zone - you lock zone, you have a bag roll for winner and loser side as currently constructed, using contribution rules currently in place.

2. Keep take - you kill and take a keep, there is a roll for bags right there and then for keep loot. It is a difficult thing to do... reward it.

3. Your own Keep Star leveling - You level your own keep to 3 stars (or whatever star count deemed sufficient).... there is a bag roll. This ensures bag rolls happen even in stagnate zones that neither side can push.. Routinely each faction can get their own keep ranked up... but fail to achieve #1 or #2 in the list. No worries... add a roll for bags on keep leveling.

[Aurandilaz]

What I like: the more hours you spend, the more renown contribution you gather, the more likely you are to get bags. If you work 8-12 hours in a non-stop session and get massive amount of kills, you have good chance of getting a bag.

What I dislike: I don't have often time to pull 8-12 hour sessions in one zone.

Lately I've noticed on Destro side that the same names keep appearing time after time when it comes to loot rolls. Sure, these gifted players run their tight 6man and kill a lot of enemies and in the end they get rewards, bags day after day. Good for them.
However, if I notice these same players in the zone, getting tops kills again and again, I come to realize I cannot compete because I don't have a tight 6man around me. So what I do, I either leave oRvR and do Scenarios or I join some pug WB and do minimum effort to somehow participate in oRvR, knowing full well I have extremely low chances to get bags.

Whilst rewarding the "top 6man contributors" is quite "fair" in many ways, it is also somewhat unfair to the actual guild warbands and public warbands that do a lot of heavy work to get BOs controlled or actually carry the full brunt of siege warfare at keeps; quite often "being the most important fighting force in the zone" is not what determines when it comes to winning bags.

Maybe I'm just "salty" because I don't have a 6man carry me from bags to bags zone after zone, then again I would probably not have the motivation to perform in that fashion anyway. Playing in a perfect setup gets boring IMO.
As soloer you can get more Conq medals (easier on rdps, harder on mdps), but as member of WB you can contribute most to zone lock, but if you want bags - you better have a highly efficient 6man party.

Current system has its upsides, and also some downsides.

What is maybe most frustrating is the somewhat boring "wait after keep siege" until zone lock; very often most of opposition has given up at that point and you mostly AFK on some BO 20-40 mins.

[Darosh]

In my opinion the biggest issue is the sentiment of new players.
Most haven't grasped yet that it is pretty much required to get into a proper guild, or atleast find a proper group to play with.
Communication is literally key to having fun in WAR, one way or another.

However, in regards to zergs, and with that zone locks:
Change the way fights play out; change the way the community goes about playing the game, by adding - or, well, forcing - a "new" metalevel into the game, that'd be: Social interaction.

---

My proposal:
1.) The nuclear option:
Completely remove the option to form warbands and with that force people into guilds to participate in efficient zerging; RvR in general, or into small scale roaming.
The latter would, too, serve as jumpstart and introduction to organized scenario groups.

This would, I imagaine, revitalize the RvR community in general; overall communication.

People would be forced to communicate within their guild and realm to setup elaborate maneuvers and succesful keep sieges;
defenses and assaults - zone locks in general -, and get into touch with each other.
You would basicly add a new metalevel and even circumvent the need for fancy UI-solutions; it would utitilze the chaos that'd ensue, if you will.
Lastly, it would turn the niche game into what it is, it would serve as structural emphasizes and dedication to the systems already in place.


2.)The moderate attempt:
Solve the zerging by the means of tampering with the dynamic of the game, and with that solve, hopefully, the problem of stagnation and potential regression by proxy.
Bind the effectiveness of skills and mechanics to the amount of players participating in a brawl - similar to what Aza tried already.

-> Morales

Disable the undefensible/cleansable/disspellable trait of morales for as long as player are part of a warband.
~ That should not completely cancel out, but limit the moral cheese that is practiced.

Enable the undefensible/cleansable/disspellable trait of morales while player are part of a normal group.

->AoE,ST,Healing - all the numbers in general

Reduce, not increase, the effectiveness of skills and mechanics depending on the amount of players in a warband, not within a certain, geographical
perimeter. Have heals and damage be reduced by a set percentage whilst zerging around. Say, by up to 25-30% for a full warband.
With that, don't necessarily force them to scatter - as that is, as Aza pointed out in another thread, impossible due to the maps and all that -,
but to deploy proper tactics; to setup dedicated groups and enforce warband-wide assists, for example.
That, I imagine, would either whittle down the Zergs by the means of attrition or, at the very least, force them to properly adapt to a situations.

All the while leave small groups untouched and with that potent enough to take on more, and more numbers.

As to the difference between increasing and decreasing effectiveness of a skills and mechanics and the binding to certain circumstances:
If you increase the effectiveness of just about anything, you force - rather hold - the hand of the invidual; the hands of the masses by proxy.
If you decrease the effectiveness of just about anything, you force the hands of the masses; the hand of the individual directly.

Aka: Advantage and selfpreservation versus disadvantage and cooperation.

If you bind it to random, ever changing sets of circumstances, you will invetiably create absurd scenarios.
If you bind it to steady sets of circumstances, as you could with the group formats, you will, at the very least, limit the probabilty of absurd scenarios.

---

That'd be, I guess, a 50%/50%.
Either people finally band together; form 6mans, guilds or alliances themselves to compete with the other - not their - own realm, or everything comes crashing down...

On a serious note:
Have the fights and the community be the carrot and not the stick -
so that even fights during a downtime; after a zone lock, become desireable.
However, I might be too old and my own sentiment to nostalgic/utopian.

[NoRKaLKiLLa]

Can we just preemptively close this discussion... it's an open invitation for people to bitch and moan about the game

[navis]

All in all I feel kind of detached from RvR now then I ever have previously. A lot of changes have come and gone and there is what I think positives and negatives. All my own opinion ofc, I would like to return to discussions with dev's if they are open and interested but I feel they need to be the ones to re-start the discussions.
And ya it's so hard to do this without a massive derailment or digression of the topics.
With so many people making statements of what is right or best it's not surprising there is no active developer discussions. What they have achieved is amazing.
It's hard to really give feed back when it might involve undoing work they have already done.. Or coming off the wrong way like a giant complaints post.
OMG the amount of work required for only volunteers to complete!!
Clearly there is much that could be done without the need for "the client patcher", IMHO. Indeed I fear a editor could do more harm than good, but who knows. I have been wrong many times before.

[Asherdoom]

This is meant to be a constructive post. The last few days I have been running RVR and discussing within our guild the current system versus other previous systems, both here on ROR and LIVE. I thought there may be some benefit in having an open discussion about the current system on the forums. I have my own opinions but what does everyone thing of the current system?

I do like "locking" the other zones, forcing everyone to fight in ONE zone. I know Az is very "anti-zerg" but its very hard to implement mechanics that zergs to not benefit from. I cant help but feel that lock timers on BOs lead to zerging. People run from 1 node to the other in a giant blob. Which accumulates to the giant blob eventually taking the keep and then it seems we play a game of "trade BOs" for an hour or two until the zone locks.

Currently there is no fixed end timer for RVR. This is hard for me personally, since I will have "spurts" of time of say 1-2 hours to play. I log in, join a WB and we are doing an RVR lake. I dont know if itll take 30 minutes or 6 hours to lock the zone... So I play not knowing if Ill even be around to get a chance at bags...

Again, this post is intended to be constructive discussion around RVR, what do you like? what do you dislike? How do you think it could be improved...

I love the "lock zone" idea, it won't disperse people inures or destroy RVR by making one faction getting one zone while other is fighting in other side of the world.
What i would implement is a different loot able: instead of giving roll on zone lock you could give something like this:

-lot roll for killing enemy leader in his keep
-loot roll for locking zone
both of these made not in general but FOR EACH WARBAND. for example, if 2 war bands partecipate and kill a lord in one area, both war band got separate rolls for bags. while not overflowing population with "loot gifts" it will motivate single war bands to increase their efforts.

Enable more npc! seriously! in open RVR area is desert pointed only by sporadic fight! I never played retail and joined here after seeing WH trailer! now i log in there a pug! no one around :O
make each keep spawn guards/npc that will patrol BO once every time keep is upgraded.

[Acidic]

Very unfocused post, the thread itself seems to try to have the same focus as the whole forum. The purpose of the forum is to have open discussions on what we like and dislike. The debts and game masters are very good at giving opinions , so I do wonder why we have a thread about everything.

[ZewKrwi]

I like RvR very much, but I don't like this bag roll system. I see that usually same ppl win, from conribution you are 20 and after roll you are 40. For me roll is to big, I can be 15-25 but now it's more important to be luck then to make contribution. I fight all time vs enemy players, but didn't win bag. I went BO's and keep also lose. I don't run with supplys because it's not important, for win but I guess ppl that do that win bags, but why?

I don't understand this system and would like old system with bags for keep. You take BOs for supply, supply for ram, ram for keep, keep for bags. Logic and clear. Why go now for keep, no bags no profit just 1 hour wasted time with high risk of wipe.

I also would like to have keep lord weaker, because when you lose at assault, xrealmers switch side and we don't have balance, also ppl get bored after 6h at same map with no profit.

[Rozackroo]

Well they improved the System (bag rolls and contribution ) to what it was before. Now a 750 contribution will mostlikly give you a bag. However it's still rdm if you win your desired bag or not. There is no other way as long as they keep the "only this loot for all" system. You can't really remove the roll either because if you do you endup with the same people winning over and over again while everyone else won't get anything. The people getting top contribution like myself would probabbly benefit from this while everyone else who are just as important (a 2to3 man gank grp can't claim a keep...) are left out which is not okay.

I would however change this annoying gold bag to a specific currency you get after lock. Everyone gets it. You could make it depend on contribution how much you get. You could make it dependend how long you stayed in Zone or how long it took to lock. Then you just add a merchant selling everything currently in the bags and scale the token priece to how much grind you want. This makes it possible to remove the tidious rdm roll and you actually feel rewarded after 20h kv. Makes it possible to work towards your goals instead of praying for luck when placed high up in the contribution.