Suggested fix to the xRealming/Zerging/PvDoor state of the game

[Culexus]

The whole draw of ROR is supposed to be Realm vs Realm, Player vs Player group fights with large scale battles of Warbands clashing into each other while small scale skirmish groups cause disruption across the map.

Unfortunately, due to many factors, the game has now become primarily about gearing your character by the easiest method possible. This usually involves logging on to whichever side is zerging at the time to gear your character for that realm. Gearing your character is supposed to only be in service of helping you do better in fights, not the entire game itself.

So here are my random shower thoughts on how open RvR could change to make it more about fighting other players rather than PvE zerging to victory and it’s pretty simple……Character progress is made though actual PvP!!!

24hr account based lockout timer to help prevent xrealming.
Force players to choose which side they want to represent on login. Give a warning box when a character is selected “You will be locked to this realm for 24hours and unable to switch to the other realm. Do you wish to continue?”. I know there are ways around it, but it will help prevent xrealming to some extent at least.

Change the RvR weekly to just 750 kills.
Nice simple change. Give a reward at every 250 kills. Make the weekly rewards earned through PvP rather than the current PvDoor.

Give the underdogs a chance to fight back by making zone locks a 2 stage process. Make taking a zone an actual hard fought achievement.

Stage 1

Basically the same but with one tweak.

- Make supplies count more towards ranking the keep but increase the spawn timer and make the boxes visible on the map. Same way the ram is currently. Will make it easier for small groups to interrupt supply lines and make it so boxes have to be escorted.

Once a keep reaches rank 2 a ram can be spawned and a siege can take place as normal. Supplies can still be handed in to further increase keep rank.

Once a siege has taken place and the attacking side has taken the keep, stage 2 begins.

Stage 2 “Purge the enemy/Regain control”

Stage 2 allows the side that has taken the keep the chance to lock the zone and the defending side a chance to reset the zone and reclaim the keep. The progress would be displayed in the HUD much like forts.

Stage 2 “Purge the enemy” attacker objectives:
Hold all BOs and keep
Kill 300* players in the zone
or
Hold all BOs and keep for 10min (this is incase the enemy side just leaves the zone to prevent the lock)

Once these objectives are met the zone locks. Contribution is based on both stages to prevent players switching to the other side to be farmed for a zone lock knowing their attacking character has already taken the keep. Another reason that the 24hr lockout should be in place.

Stage 2 “Regain control” defender objectives:
Kill 300* enemy players
Retake your keep (can cap it like a BO but takes longer. Doesn't put doors back up or respawn lord/guards)
or
Hold all BOs and keep at the same time.

Once these objectives are met the zone resets. Your keep begins at 0 stars and the enemy keep loses 1 star and they are unable to respawn a ram for a set amount of time. Any players that complete this stage have increased contribution if the zone is locked in a counter push.

*This is just a random high number. The devs would have the data to know what an actual good number would be. Should be pretty high though to stop zones flipping really quickly and make players really scrap for the kills.

Thoughts?

[Evilspinnre]

Xrealming is not the problem, it's the solution. Personally I like to Xrealm to the underdog side with my WB to farm AAO - much better RR and crest gain.

[Satz]

24hr account based lockout timer to help prevent xrealming.
Force players to choose which side they want to represent on login. Give a warning box when a character is selected “You will be locked to this realm for 24hours and unable to switch to the other realm. Do you wish to continue?”. I know there are ways around it, but it will help prevent xrealming to some extent at least.

So I gotta wait 24 hr to change characters just because someone is blaming xrealming. The problem that xrealmer doomsayers miss is it wont change anything. Lets say there is 24 hr realm lockout, people will go do something else rather fighting same zerg on same/different map. When that happens this time you will blame people giving up quick and your blaming has no end. Today xrealming, tomorrow players give-up quick, then devs poor take on class/realm balance and so on. Xrealming is not problem. I hope you open your eyes and see it.

This is 999999999th of the xrealming post. I'm glad you guys trying to come up with ideas but adding second stage to zones is too much. Even if there are 2nd stages, zerg will get through it anyway.

[thefryinallofus]

There have been many, many posts like this before that misunderstand the problem and blame X-realming for population imbalance. X-realming is actually the vehicle for the solution to the problem. Back on live players were 100% locked to a faction and the result was organized guilds dominating and killing whole servers. Allowing players to move between faction characters (albeit on some reasonable timer) allows things to even out.

Buffs like 400% AOO and penalties like attacking undefended keeps are in game mechanics that motivate players to fight on one side or another. You have to find proper 'motivators' for an even, healthy population while still have enough restrictions on 'side-switching'. The current game has a pretty good balance.

I think the only major shortcoming currently is when things are vastly outnumbered to one side, there should be more incentives to play on the other side, or even some kind of buff to the under-represented side. Maybe something like 200 wounds (at lvl 40) buff, proportional to the population imbalance in increments. The point being, you not only get rewards, but are getting a buff - and this will push people to come and take advantage of this till things even out.

[Culexus]

Xrealming isn't the problem, it's players seeing which side is zerging and switching to that that side for easy bags that's the problem. This is why we have multiple months of one side domintating until the other side start to fight back a bit and gains some momentum then players switch to that side and the whole things starts again. This is why xrealming keeps being brought up as it allows players to follow the path of least resistance. Stopping the ease of doing this with a lockout timer is a possible fix to this but if someone can come up with another fix that addresses the issue then even better.

If people don't like my suggestions please give feedback on a possible change or another idea to fix the problem. Let's get a constructive dialogue going here to try and come up with community ideas that the devs can actually take in consideration.

And please let's not just get hung up on the xrealming idea here as that's only 1 idea that I just threw in there. The weekly and RvR changes I feel are more important.