[RvR] Encourage Team Play and Zone Locks

[Darosh]

We can change mechanics to the end of the world every 2 weeks. What are the glaring issues with current RvR / Keeps that would warrant that rework and what would be gained?

To keep it short:
The current system - the BO situation specifically - lacks depth. While the cross-tier campaign as such is absolute excellent, RvR as a whole plays like a hotjoin of sorts. Adding complexity to the system would make for a natural incentive to organize (properly and realmwide).

Spoiler:

The old system was a stagnant circlejerk devoid of complexity, that funneled the entire server population into a single map, forcing them to throw themselves onto each other for hours without any chance to progress.
The current system is a hotjoin-esque dreadmill devoid of complexity, that whips players from one zone to another, giving them all the reasons to either log off or log onto the other realm by giving them the opportunity to emulate the old system by virtue (=excuse) of the publicly visible draw timer.
The meta of the system is fancy enough, the zone specific campaign needs more to it than three-staring for the ram or circkejerking until a draw.

The first change, as others have noted, should be to hide the draw timer ~ and if I may add, turn it into something dynammically scaling (e.g. if within an hour no outer gate has been destroyed; if within x minutes, y and z did[n't] happen; yadayada). Giving the players too much freedom, or rather adding a 'failsafe' to a system that is activated by default before the system even comes to a halt - that'd need to be taken care of... (plenty of succesful, albeit late sieges and efforts have since been turned into a waste of time) - is bound to break it.
As it stands, one can simply log in, check the draw timer, log off and come back 10min before the flip - which undoubtly plenty of pu..eople already do; see Erihon's post and the mysterious disappearance of players - the vast majority plays for gear and hasn't grasped that organization > gear and that organization leads to more gear.

TLDR: The current (draw) system just gifts a strawman, if anything.

Abbd.: Consider my initial pitch, the notion of it rather than the specifics, a makeshift city-esque goal/event to push for, if not a city-push simulator as such. To rephrase it:
Alternating win conditions from zone to zone might help alleviate the creepingly settling in of Einheitstrott; sort out specific themes for various zones and tiers (e.g.: t2 zones are skirmish heavy, t3 zones are BO-heavy, t4 zones are keep heavy; dwarf zones are all about dem sieges, elf zones are all about map control (BO), puny humans are skirmishers, yadyada). If not themed like that, slap the win conditions on a rotation, so that every zone plays ever so (slightly) diffrent and forces the players to adapt and communicate ~ even if its just the various win conditions that are exchanged.

[lefze]

I not agree with your description of the current RvR if we blob when we have up our keep 3 stars it's because we have a ram and now it's time to attack the keep.
We have spend enough time on the Battle Objectives and the zone map, if you want to give more importance to the BO's during the keep attack you can but the risk it's to have no end zone as we have see in the past, because the keep attack was too hard.

I agree to make the keep door attack imposible if you have less BO than two but you make the keep attack more hard with three BO's needed and impossible with four BO's needed.

War Camp farming was more hard with the other RvR system, I have see many time all players of one Realm locked in their War Camp by a zerg of two or three wb and their keep shuting down without defence.
Here I have not see all that warcamp farming I have see during the past, their is some warcamp ping pong or keep vs warcamp but that don't stop the battlefield game.
There are some new WB leader curently who are just runing for the battle, to the others warcamp or to the BO the most nearest of the enemy WarCamp but there is many players who leave their WB after 20 minutes and some others players who are telling them to stop that on /2 and play the RvR game and the Objectives as I have see.

There are most of the maps locked by a Realm than locked by DRAW, for what I have see during the time I have play.

As I have say above give more strategies, interest to the lock of a map and most of the players will play for those objective's.
As example give 2 points for a map T2, 3 points for a T3 map, 4 points to the T4 maps of one pair, at final the Realm who have win the most of the maps, the most of the points, is victorious with an anouncement and a tick + a bonus race for the race who have win the most of the point on his own pair.

We are defintely not playing the same game. For one thing it takes a pugblob 15 tries to get down the outer door against any form of equalish opposition, and they give it like, three attempts or something usually? After that it's just BO sitting. What you are describing is how things SHOULD be, but it's as far as you can get from how it is currently.

As for BOs, they are not only an issue in sieges at the moment, they are useless all around. Again, you see warbands massing on one BO at all times, you can even catch them on BOs during sieges from time to time, too often actually.

[dansari]

The main thing I would change with the current system (skirting discussions on how hard it is to take a keep without 80 aao in the first place), would be to give people incentives to fight for BOs when they're taking a keep. Currently, yes, BOs give you ammo for cannons and such, and you need people to sit on them to supply that ammo, but there is no incentive for anyone to come off the keep fight and fight over those BOs (whereas there are normally more of the defending realm out in the lakes away from a keep take, especially if the keep isn't ranked to 3 yet.) Maybe even implementing something specifically for WE/WH on BOs after one of the outer doors takes damage. I don't know what that would look like, but currently, even though they serve a purpose of supplying ammo, there is no player incentive to do anything with BOs once a siege is in progress.

[dansari]

Bear with me here. WHAT IF:

Current system works the same up until one of the outer doors being damaged. Once an outer door is damaged, the BOs start to act as a supply line system for the keep. The more BOs you have under your control means more ammo is supplied to your realm's siege equipment. Similar to what gatekeeper envisioned in previous threads, make it so that the BOs have a countdown timer of 5min. So every 5min, a BO starts as neutral again and you have to retake them. Locking a BO from neutral can be done normally: gather people in proximity and lock it over time... maybe extend the period to lock it from a minimum of 30s to a minimum of 1.5min to encourage fighting. This also de-incentivizes zerging from BO to BO since it will take too long for one zerg to capture all four BOs based on the minimum time required to capture. Then locking the BO for your realm locks it for that period. But WEs and WHs, after using their Bypass ability, can steal the BO and flip it immediately for your realm after the 10s capture channel. This gives WEs and WHs a specific, unique advantage on the lakes besides trying to find solos to gank.

Then add incentives *to the people taking the BO* (this is a crucial separation because currently, people at the keep benefit from BOs being taken, but the players on those BOs see very little benefit once their keep is rank 3). I don’t know what that looks like, whether it’s a chunk of renown for capturing the point, or what, but an incentive should exist.

Each BO then grants you added bonuses based on how many you capture, something like:
- First BO gives you 50 total rounds of ammo for your ranged siege (both attackers and defenders)
- Second BO gives you +10 more total rounds of ammo, plus 15% extra range on your ranged siege.
- Third BO gives you +10 more total rounds of ammo.

• Attacking realm gets +1% more per hit with their ram
  Defending realm gets -1% more per hit against their doors

- Fourth BO gives you +20 more total rounds of ammo and +15% extra damage with your ranged siege.

These benefits exist for 5 minutes, then the process starts over when the BOs go back to neutral. This gives you a purpose to fight over BOs, encourages small skirmishes around BOs, gives incentives for small scale fighting and specifically boosts the significance of stealthers in the lakes, and specifically outlines the benefits of taking BOs during that time.

[lefze]

Bear with me here. WHAT IF:

Current system works the same up until one of the outer doors being damaged. Once an outer door is damaged, the BOs start to act as a supply line system for the keep. The more BOs you have under your control means more ammo is supplied to your realm's siege equipment. Similar to what gatekeeper envisioned in previous threads, make it so that the BOs have a countdown timer of 5min. So every 5min, a BO starts as neutral again and you have to retake them. Locking a BO from neutral can be done normally: gather people in proximity and lock it over time... maybe extend the period to lock it from a minimum of 30s to a minimum of 1.5min to encourage fighting. This also de-incentivizes zerging from BO to BO since it will take too long for one zerg to capture all four BOs based on the minimum time required to capture. Then locking the BO for your realm locks it for that period. But WEs and WHs, after using their Bypass ability, can steal the BO and flip it immediately for your realm after the 10s capture channel. This gives WEs and WHs a specific, unique advantage on the lakes besides trying to find solos to gank.

Then add incentives *to the people taking the BO* (this is a crucial separation because currently, people at the keep benefit from BOs being taken, but the players on those BOs see very little benefit once their keep is rank 3). I don’t know what that looks like, whether it’s a chunk of renown for capturing the point, or what, but an incentive should exist.

Each BO then grants you added bonuses based on how many you capture, something like:
- First BO gives you 50 total rounds of ammo for your ranged siege (both attackers and defenders)
- Second BO gives you +10 more total rounds of ammo, plus 15% extra range on your ranged siege.
- Third BO gives you +10 more total rounds of ammo.

• Attacking realm gets +1% more per hit with their ram
  Defending realm gets -1% more per hit against their doors

- Fourth BO gives you +20 more total rounds of ammo and +15% extra damage with your ranged siege.

These benefits exist for 5 minutes, then the process starts over when the BOs go back to neutral. This gives you a purpose to fight over BOs, encourages small skirmishes around BOs, gives incentives for small scale fighting and specifically boosts the significance of stealthers in the lakes, and specifically outlines the benefits of taking BOs during that time.

Good idea, like many others. But bonuses would have to be extremely steep for the general playerbase to actually care, and right now I'm afraid changes that would suffice in pugs taking notice, would also break the game, as the skill level on the server is so low we would see an incredible number of misplays. And as such, I think a mechanic that REQUIRES your realm to focus on one, or two additional objectives during a siege would suffice.

Simply put, if you make focusing on additional objectives optional, it's not gonna work. If you make the additional objectives required, but in a way that splits the population too much, it's not gonna work. If the additional objective is required, there needs to be extreme incentive incentive for defenders to send an equal force that the attackers send to contest said objectives, or the pugs at keep are gonna wipe so damn hard.

All in all, I don't think splitting the zerg during a siege is doable, or beneficial. Any new mechanic would probably be best designed for pre- or postsiege. Also, you mentioned renown on taking a BO, as it was in the past, and I think this alone would be a great change. I see a lot of really nice ticks from time to time on BO takes with fighting even now actually, but the additional mechanics on BOs somehow makes the whole capture pretty meh, which I guess is a shared feeling as people still prefer to afk on a single BO.

[Fallenkezef]

Any reward for a BO had to match the reward (and ease) of zerg kills for people to care. This includes organised and guild WB's.

[Aurandilaz]

What if some of the old "run supplies" mechanic was brought back?
Maybe split the keep ranking between passive "stand on the flag" doing your duty, and actively doing supply runs?
And somehow, make it so instead of 1 carrier, its actually a team of carriers. When the supply is picked up, the entire team of the carrier is given 1/6 of the actual supply. Would be actually incentive for people to run as a "supply convoy", instead of just one single carrier.
Want to rank keep up faster? Send our supply convoys.
Want to interrupt supply convoys? Bring more than 6 people to stop them, meaning you would have 2x6mans or semi-sized pug WBs laying ambushes in zones harassing the supply lines.
Maybe the supply would be like a "relic" object that drops and can get picked up by players just like on live, or functions like a Mourkain SC object or Maw of Madness object (though no self dmg, but maybe inability to mount?)
Wouldn't need to replace current "control the flags, rank the keep" mechanic, but add more flavour to it. And essentially guarantee that people who really want fast ranks would actually do proper groups to get more supplies moving, and enemy would also group more to ambush those sizeable supply convoys with their escorts.

[Fallenkezef]

To be honest I'd remove renown from kills completely and markedly increase the rewards from BO ticks, Keep Lord kills and locks.

[Akilinus]

To be honest I'd remove renown from kills completely and markedly increase the rewards from BO ticks, Keep Lord kills and locks.

Would that not make people xrealm even more? Since you really dont want to be on the losing side.

[Fallenkezef]

To be honest I'd remove renown from kills completely and markedly increase the rewards from BO ticks, Keep Lord kills and locks.

Would that not make people xrealm even more? Since you really dont want to be on the losing side.

Any idea is flawed in some way