[Opinion] Cities Are 'Meh' For A Few Reasons.

[Wam]

My personal opinion and probably shared by others:

Cities are the worst thing in RoR ever. Badly thought gameplay warband mechanic (to call it in some way). It's just dull, the only reason to play city is to get Royals, it's not because players enjoy City, it's just to get gear, which is also another reason of why it sucks so bad.

But somehow Devs love it and try to push it as it is as the endgame content to play. Seriously, cities are so bad.

Thanks gork i don't need any more Royals now, feels so good not having to play cities.

well there's mixed messages sent to us by the dev's about cities.

If they want it to be truely competitive PVP... we need rewards bounded to our account, so we can min max and play whats needed, not lowbie alt number 7 that needs gear...

It is how it is atm somewhere in the middle, so you get disgruntled people on both sides of the fence, on top of the logistics of cities and the fact the majority happen at off peak times because of how easy it generally is to defend forts with something half organised.

That, and a lack of leaders on both sides.

[Aethilmar]

Well throw my $0.02 in again:

Cities could be more interesting if they actually forced teams to split up some or all the time and cover multiple objectives instead of forcing closet death match in all three stages. Technically stage 2 comes closest to this but in practice you send the entire WB to kill the PVE dude then blob protect the survivor.

Anyway, this would also allow different classes and metas into the system and would remove the need to warp the original class designs to fit the AOE blob meta.

Of course doesn't address the larger city-is-endgame-gated-by-forts problem but at least it might make it more interesting and give the outclassed side something to look forward to besides getting spawn camped.

[MMXX43]

It would matter if there was balance , there is none so who cares.

[Detangler]

The few times it was a competitive fight, cities were a lot of fun. Like a lot a lot. 5-10 minute slug fests where no side could gain the advantage that left you feeling drained and thanking your God for the 5 minute break between stages.

Back when I did cities, I mostly joined either pug /5 balanced warbands or guild warbands (we had some good shot callers as long as our guild leader wasn't running it, lol).

-7/10 cities we faced imbalanced disorganized order with max 3 tanks and healers and it was a snooze fest.

-2/10 cities we faced a super organized Order warband that stomped us. Hard. Like slayer ball of death melting everything they touched no matter the guard/heals being thrown.

-1/10 cities it was actually a good fight with both sides getting kills and victories. Both sides would not give up and all 3 stages were close fights all the way through.

One out of every 10 city fights was fun. That's not a good record for end game content. It's not the dev's fault, though. They can't code the game to change player behavior.

[dirnsterer]

My personal opinion and probably shared by others:

Cities are the worst thing in RoR ever. Badly thought gameplay warband mechanic (to call it in some way). It's just dull, the only reason to play city is to get Royals, it's not because players enjoy City, it's just to get gear, which is also another reason of why it sucks so bad.

But somehow Devs love it and try to push it as it is as the endgame content to play. Seriously, cities are so bad.

Thanks gork i don't need any more Royals now, feels so good not having to play cities.

If they want it to be truely competitive PVP... we need rewards bounded to our account, so we can min max and play whats needed, not lowbie alt number 7 that needs gear...

This always bothers me, competitive pvp in rvr game with a warband scale. On live you had to bring your A-game if there were other warbands that brought their A-game to the table, people were on their goddamn mains then and there were no pity trade off royals for alts even then. Or just go play 6vs6 to be competetive, or just go play some dota or CSGO or whatever that revolves around that **** (Do not need to gear alts on those games). And you have mentioned about the fighting spirit a few times too, how about you shape up, do a proper **** warband and stop gearing some millionth alt. Sounds like you want some glorified grind simulator out of this. Competitive my ass.
Edit: My point overall being, why do you care about some stupid ass royals if you are looking for competitive fights. Just go and find the fights and fight them.

[Aethilmar]

The few times it was a competitive fight, cities were a lot of fun. Like a lot a lot. 5-10 minute slug fests where no side could gain the advantage that left you feeling drained and thanking your God for the 5 minute break between stages.

Back when I did cities, I mostly joined either pug /5 balanced warbands or guild warbands (we had some good shot callers as long as our guild leader wasn't running it, lol).

-7/10 cities we faced imbalanced disorganized order with max 3 tanks and healers and it was a snooze fest.

-2/10 cities we faced a super organized Order warband that stomped us. Hard. Like slayer ball of death melting everything they touched no matter the guard/heals being thrown.

-1/10 cities it was actually a good fight with both sides getting kills and victories. Both sides would not give up and all 3 stages were close fights all the way through.

One out of every 10 city fights was fun. That's not a good record for end game content. It's not the dev's fault, though. They can't code the game to change player behavior.

While it is true that they can't change human nature, it is disingenuous to downplay the impact of the developers on the outcome you describe above.

They choose the modes. They set the rules. They set the rewards. And they directly or indirectly make various classes more or less valuable.

All of this affects player behavior, especially as it may validate or invalidate many tens of hours of player time investment to even get to the point where you are "end game viable".

[PlagueMonk]

Can confirm this is correct. But they did overhaul during live also. And i think the last overhaul they did was more exactly the way it is in ROR. cause i remeber the whole Stage 3 champs party thingie from live.

if RoR would implement the Boss fight instance for the winning team (with less rewards) that would motivate to group up in organized warbands even more! Plus the cool contect factor ofc

I think they should re-introduce the City occupation mechanic after You won the city battle your faction would occupy the enemy capital for X amount of hours unlocking pve dungeons and other stuff tied to control the enemy capital.

I remeber as Destro you used to be able to hunt down Felix and Gotrek in a tavern in altdorf for some blue weapons that were fairly decent early gear afaik.

Here is a video showcasing the Altdorf BW college pve raid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWHZ_OKFkE8

As long as the shunt town gets a couple more amenities, I would be down for that. Your city get successfully invaded? The enemy deserves to have free run of it for a while.

The only question is, did that content exist on live and if so, do the Devs have access to it now?

[VindicoAtrum]

The few times it was a competitive fight, cities were a lot of fun. Like a lot a lot. 5-10 minute slug fests where no side could gain the advantage that left you feeling drained and thanking your God for the 5 minute break between stages.

Back when I did cities, I mostly joined either pug /5 balanced warbands or guild warbands (we had some good shot callers as long as our guild leader wasn't running it, lol).

-7/10 cities we faced imbalanced disorganized order with max 3 tanks and healers and it was a snooze fest.

-2/10 cities we faced a super organized Order warband that stomped us. Hard. Like slayer ball of death melting everything they touched no matter the guard/heals being thrown.

-1/10 cities it was actually a good fight with both sides getting kills and victories. Both sides would not give up and all 3 stages were close fights all the way through.

One out of every 10 city fights was fun. That's not a good record for end game content. It's not the dev's fault, though. They can't code the game to change player behavior.

This is unfortunately my experience. Stomps great for royal farming however.

[CountTalabecland]

Stomping a PUG wb gets you the same reward as a hour long duel with heaviest geared basement dwellers on the server. That is the crux of the issue with city warband comp and the gaming of the queue system.

The game rewards making a warband of the most meta (AoE blender) classes possible and then timing your queue to guarantee you a spot and, hopefully, a weak opponent.

Truly organized guilds that can coordinate 100% Invader or Sov gear don't really have to worry about who they get but that is like 4 out of 12 instances per city at best.

And that's all before we even get into the gameplay of cities. Generally, for each stage there is 1 strategy that everyone knows by heart and a second "rush defense" style where you try to catch the attacker at the first two objectives. The kill the heros stage is usually a decided matter based on results of the first stage and everyone settles down for a good lol AFK/contribution suicide.

The final stages when the defender is winning have some potential for movement and fun strategies but the lord's room battles tend to be straight AoE bomb brawls. By the time you have even half Sov on one toon I find it to be tedious repetition let a lone trying to gear one of each archetype.

If I didn't have to grind city to get a chance at full sov on 2 characters in the next 5 years I would play them maybe once per month. And that's a Slayer who is one of the strongest city classes. I can't even imagine doing city that many times on a healer.

[Wam]

My personal opinion and probably shared by others:

Cities are the worst thing in RoR ever. Badly thought gameplay warband mechanic (to call it in some way). It's just dull, the only reason to play city is to get Royals, it's not because players enjoy City, it's just to get gear, which is also another reason of why it sucks so bad.

But somehow Devs love it and try to push it as it is as the endgame content to play. Seriously, cities are so bad.

Thanks gork i don't need any more Royals now, feels so good not having to play cities.

If they want it to be truely competitive PVP... we need rewards bounded to our account, so we can min max and play whats needed, not lowbie alt number 7 that needs gear...

This always bothers me, competitive pvp in rvr game with a warband scale. On live you had to bring your A-game if there were other warbands that brought their A-game to the table, people were on their goddamn mains then and there were no pity trade off royals for alts even then. Or just go play 6vs6 to be competetive, or just go play some dota or CSGO or whatever that revolves around that **** (Do not need to gear alts on those games). And you have mentioned about the fighting spirit a few times too, how about you shape up, do a proper **** warband and stop gearing some millionth alt. Sounds like you want some glorified grind simulator out of this. Competitive my ass.
Edit: My point overall being, why do you care about some stupid ass royals if you are looking for competitive fights. Just go and find the fights and fight them.

when you play both sides, you have to do twice the gearing... when you have 24 40's... that is alot of alts also

When certain people are missing or certain classes get nerfed, it is best to move around or just for fun... i played chosen for years leading destro... thousands of medals i never cash in and thousand more i passed for others... i would not play the game anymore if i was just a chosen bot, order community would not be what it is now if i kept stomping on it back in the day when there was 60 people online EU primetime being zerged if we didn't swap and save some respectful guilds from trauma. Nothing left to fight = zzzz.

we have already done proper warband bro, its why we get alot of salt from people when we point out that it can be done, and when our millionth alts are generally good enough and need the gear anyways, it doesnt matter if you lose in the current system or if you solo, only matters if you get a pop tbh...

Cities are about gearing, some people have the weird notion they are about competitive fights, if they want to make them about competitive fights account bound rewards is the way to go if you want min maxed setups... otherwise its just filler random alt and go with who needs/wants and make them best out of it... bringing full sov wb all the time when they dont need it anymore is overkill and you don't earn anything, it gets bounded to characters its wasted on... (see global rewards) it would also give order a possible solution to their over stacking of niche classes that are unloved/unwanted if some people had the mentality of playing a support class to increase their chances of win/team to gear their unwanted dps char... but most people have the solo mememememe mentality of instant pops, wins without any effort or team building ... but what i do know

Im fine try harding in a premade, casual in 6 man, or effectively leaching solo... i know what to expect