Poll: RvR System Proposal

[Vigfuss]

I think the idea is good, it might not work exactly as imagined, but the only way to find out is to try it. AFKers unflagged players and Mailbox guards could screw up the idea a bit, but as you pointed out there might be ways around that.

I also like the idea of SCs being included in the VPs, but it would help to know how many SCs are running at once during Prime Time, +/- 1 VP doesn't seem like a lot for an SC.

[pacman2k22]

DISCLAIMER: While I may be a dev, this proposal does not reflect the opinions of the dev team as a whole, nor does this poll represent an official development direction.

1. One zone is open for capture at a time, as per the current system
2. A zone locks when one faction accumulates enough Victory Points (VP)
3. When zones unlock, each realm owns a Keep, and two Battlefield Objectives (BO).
4. Keeps can be attacked at any time, there is no requirement to hold BOs.
5. Each BO held increases the door's HP Regen, and reduces the amount of time before the door closes after an attack.
6. Zone locks prevent any objectives from being attacked for (15 * tier) minutes.
7. Capturing a BO grants a 1x reward (Exp, RR, Inf) to all players in range of the BO, and a 0.5x reward to all players in the zone, and prevents the BO from being attacked for 15min.
8. Capturing a Keep grants a 2x reward to all players in range of the Keep, and a 1x reward to all players in the zone.
9. Defending a Keep will grant a 3x reward to all players within range of the keep and a 1.5x reward to all players in the zone, after the previously breached door closes.
10. Locking a zone grants a 6x reward and Medallions to all players in the zone, and all players in a scenario

VPs to cap: 66 + [(faction pop ratio - 50%) / 2]


Scoring / Max VP:

1. Objectives: 54/56
   • Keeps are worth 12 VPs each, BO's worth 8 each. Total VP for objectives: 56
   • In T1, each BO is worth 18 VPs, so the total VP from objectives is 54.
2. Scenarios: 15
   • +1 VP for each win where the winning team has > 250 points.
   • -1 VP for losing a scenario with < 250 points.
   • -1 VP every 30min for both factions.
3. RvR Kills: 25
   • +1 VP every (Faction Tier Population # / 6) kills.
   • -1 VP every 30min for both factions

Some Examples:

1. 50% (72 players in T2) : 50% (72 players in T2)
   1. Both sides need 66VPs to lock.
   2. If both sides can hold onto 1 keep and 2 BOs, they each have 28VPs.
   3. Both sides need to get 12 kills for 1 RvR VP. Both sides will need to continue to get >12 kills every 30min to beat the decay rate.
2. 60% (86 players in T2) : 40% (58 players in T2)
   1. Order needs 71 VPs to lock, Destro needs 61.
   2. Order will probably hold all of the Objectives, meaning they still need 71 - 56 = 15 VP to lock the zone
   3. Order needs 14 kills for 1 RvR VP, Destro needs 9. Both sides will need to do better than this to beat the decay rate.
3. 30% (43 players in T2) : 70% (101 players in T2)
   1. Order needs 56 VP to lock, Destro needs 76
   2. Destro will probably hold all of the Objectives, meaning they still need 76 - 56 = 20 VP to lock the zone
   3. Order needs 7 kills for 1 RvR VP, Destro needs 16. Both sides will need to do better than this to beat the decay rate.

Rationale:

1. Why is a scaling design necessary?
   • As the community has seen in recent days, one of the biggest problems that hinders RvR is crossrealming. Forcing RvR to happen in one zone at a time means that is it possible to be forced to fight an overwhelming foe. Regardless of personal opinions or reasons why, once one side starts doing particularly well it becomes more advantageous to join them, rather than trying to beat them. It's simple economics, and crossrealmers are behaving in a rational, if not particularly noble manner. It is impossible for RoR to implement an enforceable and fair system to prevent this.
     
     A capture mechanic that scales with faction population on the other hand, disincentivizes crossrealming seamlessly and smoothly. The more players one side has over the other, the harder it will be for them to lock a zone. If a faction is facing a strong, coordinated enemy, they cannot switch to their side to reap the rewards of a zone flip - doing so will actually push the zone flip further away.
2. Why keep only one zone open?
   • Deciding whether to restrict the fighting to one zone or multiple is tough. With the current population being what it is, having multiple zones open makes it too easy to avoid fights and just cap BOs or trade keeps every now and then. While this system would give more rewards for a zone flip, I personally do not think that the reward alone will be enough to incentivize focusing on taking a whole zone instead of trading keeps.
     
     On the other hand, even keeping one zone open might incentivize simply trading keeps within that zone. This is why the rewards for successfully defending a keep are greater than the rewards for taking a keep - to help convey a higher priority on protecting your faction assets rather than mindlessly trading them back and forth. Similarly, because BO ownership is important toward protecting or weakening a keep, players trying to secure and protect BOs share in some of the rewards of a keep capture. Mindlessly zerging a keep gives your opponents more ways to defend.
3. What happens if one faction doesn't want to "come out and play" in the lakes, and only queues for scenarios?
   • Under the proposed system, it will be possible to lock a zone without any RvR kills so long as one faction does well enough in Scenarios and holds every objective. This remains true until the RvR'ing faction outnumbers the other by more than 10%; if they have more than 60% of that tier's population, it will be impossible for them to lock a zone without facing some opposition.
     
     I think this is a good thing. While it causes the RvR to temporarily stagnate, it incentivizes some of their players to switch back to the other realm and organize a defense, evening out the odds. Quite frankly, if one zone has >60% of the tier population, something is wrong, and that faction should not be able to steamroll over the other.
4. Why not have AAO? Wouldn't AAO fix the crossrealming problem on its own?
   • This proposal is entirely independent of the presence or lack of AAO. To put it simply: AAO is the carrot used to encourage the underdog realm to put up a fight, this proposal is the stick used to beat the overpopulated side back into an even distribution. You can have both, just one, or neither. I would like to see AAO be implemented alongside this proposal, but this proposal should and will remain independent of AAO, and does not require it. Personally, while I think AAO is a nice and elegant reward for the underdog faction, I do not think it will be enough on its own to prevent major imbalances.
5. Won't "mailbox guards" throw off the population numbers, and make it harder for a faction to lock a zone?
   • Yes. Yes it will. Mailbox guards are bad, and they should feel bad. In all seriousness, this is an actual concern, but it could be alleviated by having the server wait a shorter length of time before disconnecting AFK players, or by those players getting out and playing the actual game.
     
     If possible, a permanent solution would be for the population numbers to rely on a poll of only those flagged for RvR, updated every 5-10min. This should give reasonably accurate numbers..

I voted maybe with a modification so here is my input:

First off, this direction i feel is the best direction. There is very little I see that could be better as far as providing a fair and equal system. Beyond that the player base is largely accountable for the goings on.

I do think this system is exploitable with afk'rs, but if we have a system to have them punished effectively enough I think it could be deterred.

Also, I think this system would benefit from AAO, primarily to keep a motivating factor to the underpopulated realm. On a live server I dont think it would be necessary, but the population swing on the server is much more dramatic during peoples prime times.

[navis]

First, this is awesome 'plan' here, very complete and well thought out.

I am willing to let the '1 zone at a time' idea fly even though it's not my favorite but it seems worth a shot at least.

My only concern..
my main concern is that RvR will suffer if each zone is locked into being 'locked' or flipped. my only addon to this is to let players at least change to another zone if there is a 'stale-mate' in on zone... I don't know how that could happen though. Perhaps once enough players zoned to another zone the zone could then change? there is a lot of things to factor in though.
Actually I don't really like '1 zone at a time', I think it's better when all is open...
Anyways it don't matter, I might like it too?? lots of factors...

second concern..
the 'mailbox guarders' issue. I would say that I would like to be in a zone and not get heckled for just standing around in the wc, or doing PvE, or testing or w/e.
Soooo, we just need to find a easy solution for that....

So with those to things, I think the rest is really solid. I will also be interested in the Tier 1 results as I am interested in the rvr being improved by improving those mechanics slightly with minor tweaks to the overall system and incentive.

great job!

[noisestorm]

I cannot support the whole 'reward everyone in zone' thing at all. the overall thoughts arent bad, but lemme point out:
*need min 2 zones open , 1 just is not enough.
*keep rewards should not be handed out to everyone!
important!
to prevent afk leechers you have to require lets say 5 kills (contributions) in the zone OR fighting over a BO (capping,deffing. need some mechanic to detect afk at BO) OR active participation directly at the keep in the last 15 minutes before an actual cap of the latter mentioned. this way people have to at least be vulnerable to opponents in order to get any rewards (example, riding towards keep in order to leech - others can gank them, or they fight back and get their 5 kill contribs).
*the scalings of the rewards are too high.

(currently in work and on my phone - will add more in 10h when im home)

[Mez]

This link sums up 2-faction, small lake rvr, in a single zone https://33.media.tumblr.com/129efb70e32 ... o1_400.gif

[Marley]

I support this 100 % as I think that it is the way to go with balancing Zerg meets Warband cause usually when people are getting owned they tend to want to do something else, for example ORvR not going well -> Do SC's thus I like the fact that the SC's are benefitting zone locks becuase it provides more means to work towards the same goal. Furthermore I like the Victory point idea and that it scales with the current pop.

Regarding the Guardians of the mailbox discussion. What could be done is to enable players that are in an SC / RvR lake to be flagged for renown gain, this would force players to be in the lake (and do something usefull to be flaged, for example player damage, healing players, caping objective) from the locks since they are fueling the war effort. This is a bit tricky but I think you understand the concept of what I'm proposing.

[Sulorie]

No rvr mechanic should support people in leaving the rvr lake to do somethin else, only because they lost.

[Tiggo]

I cannot support the whole 'reward everyone in zone' thing at all. the overall thoughts arent bad, but lemme point out:
*need min 2 zones open , 1 just is not enough.
*keep rewards should not be handed out to everyone!
important!
to prevent afk leechers you have to require lets say 5 kills (contributions) in the zone OR fighting over a BO (capping,deffing. need some mechanic to detect afk at BO) OR active participation directly at the keep in the last 15 minutes before an actual cap of the latter mentioned. this way people have to at least be vulnerable to opponents in order to get any rewards (example, riding towards keep in order to leech - others can gank them, or they fight back and get their 5 kill contribs).
*the scalings of the rewards are too high.

(currently in work and on my phone - will add more in 10h when im home)

so people guarding a bo to get the lock but no enemy comes to take it, wont get any reward? sounds not right ...

[Tiggo]

i dont like the whole vp idea as IMHO its intransparent. If its chosen we need a really good gui which shows what actually happens. This was a BIG problem in waithammer, no one actually knew why the **** zone didnt lock etc.

so we need a gui which shows all vp contributed by what methods, killcount, scenarios being played and their realtime score, vp points from scenario, perhaps a realtime table what will happen when scenario is won by x etc. (like sky soccer info channel ^^) how many rvr kills yet needed etc. You need to connect the scenario players with the rvr players. In Waithammer those parts hardly interacted and everyone did his own thing only blaming went on when scenarios werent (supposedly noone knew exactly) won enough.

Then it must be sure when other side denies scenarios, the zone still can be locked! This actually happened a LOT on live that the enemy didnt queue scenarios to prevent lock and it worked thus --> waithammer.

i think the current objective based system is just more transparent and more simple and could be tweaked via reward and the underlying reward system to actually work. And RVR is won by RVR and no other means. Want to lock the zone: get the zone objectives. This is simple and everyone understands it. Fuse it with the "only rewards for locking when there is killing/oposition" and IMHO you still have a winner.

[punkindonuts]

I like the idea as a whole but I would raise the number of VP's needed to lock a zone and add a 1 VP tick every 15 mins or so to each BO held.

If the underdog faction want to try and sabotage a lock by not queuing for SC's the BO VP tick would eventually allow the lock to happen and I would also allow the underdog faction the chance to get some points on the board if they capture and hold 1 or 2 BOs over time.

I would remove the welfare zone ticks as well as i don't think players in the WC should benefit from what is happening in the RVR lake while they queue for scenarios because the ORVR players don't get any XP or RP for their faction winning a scenario.

these are just my ramblings but at the end of the day im happy to try any different ways we can to make the game as much fun as possible and encourage relatively balanced and even fights.