Implement Population Controls in ORvR

[bw10]

the only realistic solution is to give better than current rewards to the losing side. if character progress is directly correlated to how well your realm does in rvr its only natural people will log their alts on the winning side. getting dicked in the lakes because of numbers disadvantage is already punishing enough for many players to say **** it and go play something else. if in addition to this, players also feel their progression being soft-locked then you can imagine why rvr is like it is.

bottom line is that if pugs/autobands are not progressing their characters at reasonable/fun pace - they quit. if organized players dont have enough pug/ab bands to farm, then guess what, they will quit too, as its been proven million times over the years that org players dodge org opposition

[georgehabadasher]

in my opinion "forcing" a faction to get into the other due to pop disparity will just cause further population quitting the game.

This exactly. If people can't play the way they want, they're more likely to quit the game than adjust their playstyle.

The devs insistence on trying to force players to organize has met with failure for more than a decade. Creating mechanics which benefit more organized groups doesn't actually help with blobbing. More organized groups tend to find kills regardless of numbers by playing around safe areas like posterns, warcamps or PvE camps. More importantly are extremely difficult for the unorganized side to kill, leading to few if any rewards and frustration. As more people see the organized group having success, more players on that side engage in RvR instead of doing other activities, some percentage of players crossrealm, etc. And the opposite happens for the other side. Pretty soon, you have more numbers and more organization on the same side. It doesn't have to be a huge number of players because the game's population is so low. For example, if 10 players on one side decide to stop RvRing, and 10 players crossrealm, that creates a swing of 30 players.

I'll share a somewhat related theory. I have no evidence that it's true, but it does serve as an explanation of current observed player behavior:

Since blobbing/PvD has been the most successful way to earn rewards for so long, many players who look for good or interesting fights have been frustrated by the inability to find these fights and have quit the game. As a result, the remaining playerbase disproportionally consists of people looking for blob/unfair fights and rewards instead of good fights.

edit: bw10 said it much more succinctly than I did

[Lion1986]

in my opinion "forcing" a faction to get into the other due to pop disparity will just cause further population quitting the game.

This exactly. If people can't play the way they want, they're more likely to quit the game than adjust their playstyle.

The devs insistence on trying to force players to organize has met with failure for more than a decade. Creating mechanics which benefit more organized groups doesn't actually help with blobbing. More organized groups tend to find kills regardless of numbers by playing around safe areas like posterns, warcamps or PvE camps. More importantly are extremely difficult for the unorganized side to kill, leading to few if any rewards and frustration. As more people see the organized group having success, more players on that side engage in RvR instead of doing other activities, some percentage of players crossrealm, etc. And the opposite happens for the other side. Pretty soon, you have more numbers and more organization on the same side. It doesn't have to be a huge number of players because the game's population is so low. For example, if 10 players on one side decide to stop RvRing, and 10 players crossrealm, that creates a swing of 30 players.

I'll share a somewhat related theory. I have no evidence that it's true, but it does serve as an explanation of current observed player behavior:

Since blobbing/PvD has been the most successful way to earn rewards for so long, many players who look for good or interesting fights have been frustrated by the inability to find these fights and have quit the game. As a result, the remaining playerbase disproportionally consists of people looking for blob/unfair fights and rewards instead of good fights.

edit: bw10 said it much more succinctly than I did

RVR will never be balanced.
1)Favours zerg over all other approaches, wether tactical or strategic
2)Absolutely worthless defend with 140% aao. you get nothing more.
3)For the pushing faction is easier to mass stomp to get quick forts.

[georgehabadasher]

in my opinion "forcing" a faction to get into the other due to pop disparity will just cause further population quitting the game.

This exactly. If people can't play the way they want, they're more likely to quit the game than adjust their playstyle.

The devs insistence on trying to force players to organize has met with failure for more than a decade. Creating mechanics which benefit more organized groups doesn't actually help with blobbing. More organized groups tend to find kills regardless of numbers by playing around safe areas like posterns, warcamps or PvE camps. More importantly are extremely difficult for the unorganized side to kill, leading to few if any rewards and frustration. As more people see the organized group having success, more players on that side engage in RvR instead of doing other activities, some percentage of players crossrealm, etc. And the opposite happens for the other side. Pretty soon, you have more numbers and more organization on the same side. It doesn't have to be a huge number of players because the game's population is so low. For example, if 10 players on one side decide to stop RvRing, and 10 players crossrealm, that creates a swing of 30 players.

I'll share a somewhat related theory. I have no evidence that it's true, but it does serve as an explanation of current observed player behavior:

Since blobbing/PvD has been the most successful way to earn rewards for so long, many players who look for good or interesting fights have been frustrated by the inability to find these fights and have quit the game. As a result, the remaining playerbase disproportionally consists of people looking for blob/unfair fights and rewards instead of good fights.

edit: bw10 said it much more succinctly than I did

RVR will never be balanced.
1)Favours zerg over all other approaches, wether tactical or strategic
2)Absolutely worthless defend with 140% aao. you get nothing more.
3)For the pushing faction is easier to mass stomp to get quick forts.

That is all true, but only matters because of the current reward and incentivization structure. If there were rewards available aside from getting kills and locking zones/forts, then it would make more sense to defend when heavily outnumbered. What those rewards/incentives should be is a non-trivial problem, but the dev team needs to realize that the blobbing problems are caused by the current incentivization structure more than anything else. The first step toward recovery is realizing you have a problem.

[Hiiq]

The simplest and most elegant solution is....<drum roll>
convert the AAO to 150ft... any blob will get penalized and small nimble specimen who are the ones who actually bring life to zones and not suck the life out of them will avoid the penalty..
beautiful if i man say so.. but i might be biased considering i said it
Lets see how many haters i can stir up

[Alubert]

Destro is zerging all zones during primetime Feb. 14th. More than 300 dest in Avelorn to less than 200 Order.

There is no point in playing as Order. It is just a farm.

You surprised me a lot.
I play the Order side for exactly this reason. Outnumbering by enemy is a blessing not a curse.
My main characters are on Destro and I don't miss them at all when i have that constant AAO.

[Magusar]

Implement Population Controls is calling "none effort - none reward" or as soft alternative "your reward = your effort".
Steps:
1. Successful zone lock not the prior criterion for the reward amount, only one of them. Link reward to more personal contribution.
You had hard fight, had a lot of actions in zone and were really usefull? Here is your good 150k renown, 10k crests, 5 trillions XP, 300k infl. You fight 30 mins as zerg and all what you did was a fights against hard outnumbered enemy then pvd, not a single step from this lines of conduct and you are happy? Here are your 3 crests and 200 renown, continue to be happy. Сombine with a new gear to motivate(mb evolution of genesis jew?). And ofc if you defend hard, but lost zone you should be rewarded.
2. Rework rvr. Think its already in development, but I'll state the obvious - split is good. For me ideally, this would be expressed through simultaneous control of BO.
3. Split population between other contents - scs, rankeds and to a more lesser extent - pve. With ranked need to be carefull here, because hard lock of good items behind very highly segmented content, which inevitably sooner or later wil stop pop - not the best idea. None all classes are playable in this mode atm, no a lot of population to support it in a long time(total number of players on server must be much more than 1-1.5k considering time zones and distribution in other types of content),availability, ranked wound 's rework(yes) - none of this points does not provide lifespan for rankeds. Dynamic mmr system(with a decrease in mmr, if in a long inactive state), more cosmetics and relaunch seasons more often then one in year, mb will help.
Point:
Zergblob, pvd besides ranked and city are the most rewarding content in the game. It have just abusrd risk-skill-reward state. Less responsibility, less effort, less everything. Most people should pick the easiest way esp if it has hight rewards.
I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that the zones are not designed for +200 players on each side, even t4. It is obvious that rvr is oversaturated. I were 4 times in org wbs in last month(chosen and rp) in primetime and always the same, min 1.5 wbs from each side in one point, while the others is somewhere near, fight near 30-40 secs(15-20 secs directly fight, then the another half running and chasing), if there others wbs not join in this "fight" from first seconds, they will do it in next few seconds(technically its another fight, but ok), so mb it would be 70-80 secs in total in best case or just run away.
There is no roam, there is no gank. The small man dont have spot, excluding to join the zerg and stay near. The war and activity not everywhere its only at one point in zone. Even 1 wb dont have spot and roam and do stuff normally in zone - such a density of zerg.
Overpopulation of the RVR caused by the ratio of minimum effort to maximum reward, thats why impossibility of creating normal matchmaking for scs, rankeds etc-not enough people for the contents, to much in rvr, why you can't play solo in normal way(there are still some balance issues, but it discuss for another topic), or group/12/18 in rvr, besides to stay close to zerg or warcamp, there is why skip citys.
Advantages:
Everyone has spot in game, all types of content will be alive. Even zergblobbing, but it will not be the only content anymore in primetime.
Cons:
Resource intensive - a lot of work.
The danger of dropping the current population - During the current system, more than one or two generations of players have grown up who believe that the current situation(rewarding for nothing) is good + some old players force this phylosophy. I don't think all of them will accept this concept after years of this kind of gameplay. Drop possible, possible without fresh blood. So its as always.

Note.
It turned out to be a wall of text.Typed text by voice than google translate with small fixes so mb a lot of mistakes in post (en not my native language), sorry, but to lazy to fix it. Moreover, the meaning should be clear.

[Alubert]

100% agree with Drukar

[CountTalabecland]

This game has failed to retain higher population and retain any spikes in server population because of the exact reason I made the post about. In a 2 faction multi-player game no reasonable system would allow one side to be outnumbered to this extent. The underdog cannot win, has no chance of even a worthwhile defense, and is just there to lose.

It would be nice if this project could expand or hold a population in a timezone other than EU. This system that favors zerging on one side killed the game on live and prevents higher server population here. Warhammer wasn't as popular in the US when the game came out, or when this server came out, but it is now wildly popular. Yet this server has never built a strong NA following.

So many ppl in this thread defending zerging is proof of the mentality of the "long timers" in this game that don't want to do anything other than farm pugs with server pop 600-800 ppl. Enjoy the recent population bump (that appears to be from this games recent expanded youtube presence) until all those ppl once again leave.

[Tisaya]

Destro is zerging all zones during primetime Feb. 14th. More than 300 dest in Avelorn to less than 200 Order.

There is no point in playing as Order. It is just a farm.

You surprised me a lot.
I play the Order side for exactly this reason. Outnumbering the enemy is a blessing not a curse.
My main characters are on Destro and I don't miss them at all when i have that constant AAO.

AAO only benefits you to a certain point. 20% is fine, 120% means that any fighting back is essentially impossible. You can't even do small-scale when there's a wb around every corner.