Successful RVR Tactics - How they are starting to kill the game

[adamthelc]

It will always be like this until there is another 3 faction game.

A third faction won't solve anything and such a reason is used by people who choose to remain blissfully ignorant of the many nuances of WAR's decline. No game with three factions operates as their proponents claim, that if one side becomes dominant the other two can team up to defeat them; whether its DAoC, GW2, ESO, Planetside, or even Rift's Conquest mode, they all operate the same way. One faction dominates, the second tries their best to counter them, and the third becomes next to non-existent. This makes sense too, because if your goal is to pool manpower to defeat a superior opponent, why would you ever split that 50/50 right off the bat?

The most prominent issue with WAR's RvR system is keeping player's morale up, i.e. their will to fight. In theory, when things get tough, you either step up to the plate or loose. However, since this is a game on the internet, players have two additional options when faced with a challenge, log off and/or complain on the forums. Since its human nature to take the path of least resistance, guess which options people choose the most.

"300 moments" are what made me fall in love with this game; the ability for an organized guild to put in tens of hours of training, so that they can stop a "zerg" three, four, five, even six times their number, dead in its tracks. With the changes to WP and BW, we will no longer see something on the scale of <Eternal>'s 48 vs 301 hold of Thaugamond Massif on Vaul's Anvil, but RoR doesn't have 300-man "zergs" roaming the lacks; max I've seen for order is five warbands, that's 120 players, easily manageable with good terrain selection and good organization (and the hamster not having a heart-attack). It all depends on whether or not the players choose to "be change" as the saying goes, and put in the time and effort to halt the Order "zerg".

Its the perception. At least its not just your faction alone constantly losing. Its not the only factor and its not totally fixed by a 3rd realm.

The reason you dont see small groups taking in larger groups is not because there arent groups "trainging". My guess would be its due to the fact that there a smaller disparity in gear power level, the prevalence of diffensive stats and some changes in abitlities/mechanics.

In order to beat a larger force you have to be able to kill very quickly before you get overwhelmed. Being good helps, but its not the biggest factor.

When the game first launched the gear disparity wasnt huge, but there were things like Melee Sorcs/BWs without all the disrupts, CQ and SE/IP built resource instead of spending it. M2s that could stun large chunks of a WB and do good damage.

I could keep going, but my point is that it has less to do with a difference in the players and more to do with the way the game is designed. Based on the way its being designed it seems they dont want smaller groups to be able to take on larger groups.

[Fallenkezef]

"300 moments" are what made me fall in love with this game; the ability for an organized guild to put in tens of hours of training, so that they can stop a "zerg" three, four, five, even six times their number, dead in its tracks. With the changes to WP and BW, we will no longer see something on the scale of <Eternal>'s 48 vs 301 hold of Thaugamond Massif on Vaul's Anvil, but RoR doesn't have 300-man "zergs" roaming the lacks; max I've seen for order is five warbands, that's 120 players, easily manageable with good terrain selection and good organization (and the hamster not having a heart-attack). It all depends on whether or not the players choose to "be change" as the saying goes, and put in the time and effort to halt the Order "zerg".

Unfortunately those are very rare. Very Very rare.

This server doesn't have the long term community (simply because it's one server and as a free game people come and go) that Live had. You can't realisticly expect the underdogs to summon 2 WB's worth of well orgernised elite players every night.

There is also two major differences; gear and player skill levels.

For example, i spent my live career on Iron Rock - home to the order zerg from 2011 to its merger. When AAO was introduced it highligted the scale of the issue; 60% AAO was considered to be a good day and more often than not destro took keeps at 100-180% AAO. How you ask? Gear and skill. Order on Iron Rock has very little knowledge of how to play, having reaching rr50+ by simply following the herd. Destro however always fought the odds and the power gap was bridged by royal and warp armour.

Niether of this exist in RoR. Gear cannot overcome numbers, and skill levels are roughly equal because niether side has had 12+ months of just walking to a high RR. This means whoever is losing starts to lose big and has no reasonable combeback. It simply isn't realistic to expect the underdogs to throw down orgernised raid parties to stop the horde each and every night, it also effectively eliminates new players from enjoying the game or playign the side they want.

If one side's winning all the time, the other is only deploying premades at every step you suddenly find the problem magnifying. I don't want to repeat my experiance of iron rock, waiting 12 months for the losing sides skills to balance out the winning sides ridiculous power train, it just isn't going to happen.

i haven't been on RoR but the shift from destro to order seems to be, in part, due to the fact certain order classes have become far stronger and much easier to play then their destro counter parts. It's a hard problem to fix, short of adding renown penalities for constanting taking zones (i.e 80% of the orvr flips are your realm, -25% on renown for the following week) or a bonus to the losing side. AAO is nice, but it just isn't covering the gap between potential RP's. Theres also the leveling issue, XP from orvr is great for the winning realm but the losing realm gets shafted by the inability to complete quests.

I'm now seeing every increasing numbers of Destro taking SC's instead of Orvr because its the only place they can get a fight that isn't utterly stacked.

Come to think of it, I hsvn't seen the Black Toof boyz for a long while.

We are starting to see a massive inbalance in T1 in Destro's favour. Whether that's all the WL re-rollers hitting mixed tiers or a new influx of Destro, only time will tell.

[szejoza]

We are starting to see a massive inbalance in T1 in Destro's favour. Whether that's all the WL re-rollers hitting mixed tiers or a new influx of Destro, only time will tell.

T1 is fluid like a piss and never has been a good measure, but in most cases people get bored of BO sitting and start to group up against underdog to profit from that fat 400% AAO

[Fallenkezef]

I still contrnd that a bonus to contrib roll for the side with aao is the best way to balance the numbers, or at least a good start.

Right now you don't lose much bu being on the winning side. The negative to loot roll for having more prople is balanced by the fact thay the zerg will kill more people, capture more bos and take the keep lord AND you get the winner bonus to conq medals which is very tasty in your racial pairing.

[Buling]

Isn't forming a 6-man and playing hit and run against the larger force while enjoying 100++ AAO, a successful RvR tactic that's not killing the game?

You would be right, if that tactic was in any way a functional one. I've tried that a few times rescently, with extremely good players. You can be as good as you like, but with the gear gap being negligable and the bolster working as intended you find quickly 6 vs 24 is pretty one sided. In fact oddly enough the side with the biggest number of healers and dps seems to win comfortably every time.

This isn't live. Small crack teams can't dismantle warbands anymore, or where they can its not the same extent of days past.

Come to think of it, I hsvn't seen the Black Toof boyz for a long while.

We are starting to see a massive inbalance in T1 in Destro's favour. Whether that's all the WL re-rollers hitting mixed tiers or a new influx of Destro, only time will tell.

It's existing t4 players going somewhere they can have fun, or at least not lose horribly. I've been going to t1 or sub 30 SC's for the past week on my Alt's because t4 has become nearly unplayable. It either goes direct to keep and lose within an hour or its a 8hr stand off as destro has just enough numbers to wipe the keep during a lord fight but not enough to do anything useful.

If their is no reward for fighting the H-order then why bother going into the rvr lakes? AAO means nothing if you can't get any kills. Zerging has become so ridiculously prevelant the only way to combat it is with your own zerg, which is often not than fun.

[Fallenkezef]

Isn't forming a 6-man and playing hit and run against the larger force while enjoying 100++ AAO, a successful RvR tactic that's not killing the game?

You would be right, if that tactic was in any way a functional one. I've tried that a few times rescently, with extremely good players. You can be as good as you like, but with the gear gap being negligable and the bolster working as intended you find quickly 6 vs 24 is pretty one sided. In fact oddly enough the side with the biggest number of healers and dps seems to win comfortably every time.

This isn't live. Small crack teams can't dismantle warbands anymore, or where they can its not the same extent of days past.

Come to think of it, I hsvn't seen the Black Toof boyz for a long while.

We are starting to see a massive inbalance in T1 in Destro's favour. Whether that's all the WL re-rollers hitting mixed tiers or a new influx of Destro, only time will tell.

It's existing t4 players going somewhere they can have fun, or at least not lose horribly. I've been going to t1 or sub 30 SC's for the past week on my Alt's because t4 has become nearly unplayable. It either goes direct to keep and lose within an hour or its a 8hr stand off as destro has just enough numbers to wipe the keep during a lord fight but not enough to do anything useful.

If their is no reward for fighting the H-order then why bother going into the rvr lakes? AAO means nothing if you can't get any kills. Zerging has become so ridiculously prevelant the only way to combat it is with your own zerg, which is often not than fun.

Yeah I also love all those clever "form a group, farm aao" comments.

it doesnt work that way, you farm a few BO afks, run around avoiding the zerg till the zone locks.

Order get massive contrib from licking bos, farming destro and taking keep. Your little "hit squad" even if successful gets a fraction of that return.

Atm there is no good reason NOT to xrealm to the winning side

[dansari]

Is that why I regularly see destro 6mans in the top 10 dbs in zone with 100+ aao? Guess it's just fantasy

[Luuca]

You would be right, if that tactic was in any way a functional one. I've tried that a few times rescently, with extremely good players. You can be as good as you like, but with the gear gap being negligable and the bolster working as intended you find quickly 6 vs 24 is pretty one sided. In fact oddly enough the side with the biggest number of healers and dps seems to win comfortably every time.

This isn't live. Small crack teams can't dismantle warbands anymore, or where they can its not the same extent of days past.

While I agree that a RoR 6-man, even the very best of them, in open field against 24 players is gonna have a bad time of it, I submit that you are doing it wrong. We run at the fringes, picking off players on the tail. We farm the 1st floor defenders during a lord attempt. We harass them while on the lord. On one occasion recently, we had a 6 man with roughly 200 kills out of the 600 kills by our faction in the zone. I gained nearly a full renown rank and won a gold bag. Something along the lines of 26 Conq medallions. Yes, we got wiped a few times. Yes we had players die - rez - rinse and repeat, but the rewards are very good with AAO. No this is not live wherein a 6 man can cruise the PuG warbands like npc mobs, but if you play it right, pick your fights, stay mobile, you will have a good time and get rewards.

One f the opposition, frustrated with out hit and run tactics made a statement that we should "Rush the lords room and give them a good fight instead of picking them off from the balcony." This is your mentality I fear. You would take your 6 man into 30+ players for what? Honor?

Yeah I also love all those clever "form a group, farm aao" comments.

it doesnt work that way, you farm a few BO afks, run around avoiding the zerg till the zone locks.

Order get massive contrib from licking bos, farming destro and taking keep. Your little "hit squad" even if successful gets a fraction of that return.

Atm there is no good reason NOT to xrealm to the winning side

It does work. We do it every night. Sorry you can't make it work. Perhaps NA primetime weeknights is different animal.

Is that why I regularly see destro 6mans in the top 10 dbs in zone with 100+ aao? Guess it's just fantasy

^This. I forget the actual numbers, but our little 6 man had players 67 kills to zero deaths, 77 kills and 4 deaths.. something along those lines. Alls we did was play smart, kite, and pick our fights. The zone locked for the faction with the bigger numbers; however our faction had over 600 kills in the zone to the winning factions 230ish. So who really won? Last night we ran around BV and MoM with a 6 man, harassing the destruction warbands. It was a lot of fun. I don't know the kill totals for lock, but we were doing very well. Only issue was that there were a lot of lowbies in the zone on the enemy team, kinda makes the renown gains less.

[Rokhnar]

Meet lags only when TUPs and tail (both) into the zone of battle.

Perhaps it makes sense to change Guild day randomly, what would the tail do not destroy the area because of lag

• massive lolder zerg
  
  destro has 100 aao
  
  TUP keeps on fighting despite being zerged constantly
  
  lolder finally wipes
  
  we get blamed for lags

Never change lolder, never change.

[lastalien]

• massive lolder zerg
  
  destro has 100 aao
  
  TUP keeps on fighting despite being zerged constantly
  
  lolder finally wipes
  
  we get blamed for lags

Never change lolder, never change.

Personally smeared TUPs a few times(oc with order 3 lolwbs), then went to sleep, the order still took the keep.
If you played a couple of hours more, the total domination over the whole earth would be exactly yours.

a few weeks destros collected a huge rink, and they rolled the zone, now the order did it first time and you're already crying?