Improving T4 - My two cents

[Tesq]

Spoiler:

T4 has been out a few days. Fun to have lvl 40 toons with all abilities. Here are a few concerns:

1. Kill quests no longer have scenario kills counted. If you predominantly play SC's, I'm not sure how you make any money any more to just "break-even" and do the day to day in the game. Kill quests were never a major source of income but over the course of an evening, doing sc's and turning them in, it was a way to cover costs and slowly but surely build some gold to purchase an item or tali here and there. I hope this reinstates.

I mentioned it in the patch notes, but basically kill-quest contribution in scenarios is getting replaced with scenario-participation quests. Every scenario will have a quest-giver inside the SC, and will be turned-in at a central location. These quests will award some experience and money. Unfortunately, I was not able to finish the necessary expansion to the quest system in time, and these will be coming soon. I'll probably get a chance to work on them this weekend.

2. Zerging is the currently incentivized way of business. Since all rvr rewards are now linked to zone capture, zerging is the incentivized course of action for just about everyone. A proposed solution that would solve #2 and help with #1. Make kill quests earn rvr medallions and make them finish twice as fast if kills are made in the rvr lakes. If this existed, I could see organized six mans, 12 mans, and alliance warbands actively looking to enter the lakes and oppose the zerg. The incentive would be rapidly gained kill quests that they can turn in for medallions. Sure - it takes skill because you need organization to combat the horde of zerg...but whereas the zerg will get 5 medallions for taking an empty keep, an organized opposition could kill 10 to 20 players in the lakes and complete an rvr kill quest for medallions. Maybe even somehow have the kill quest counter affected by an AAO buff (not sure if this is possible..but basically as AAO goes up..each kill made in rvr has a higher completion rate on the kill quest that earns rvr medallions).

There are so many issues with the state of T4 RvR that it's not even funny anymore. I spent days hunting down a bug with pairing locks/unlocks that only shows up on live, and then find out that it's moot because keeps are way too easy to take, siege weapons are broken/unavailable, and nobody is bothering to defend. I thought launching with all three pairings open and punishing the loss of territory would split up the zerg, but instead players are electing to just zerg in areas where there is no enemy, and ignore the punishment because the pairings will all eventually reset. I'm tempted to take away medallions every time you lose a keep, but I like my limbs in their current not-nailed-to-a-post status.

So instead I'm locking down the pairings so that there's only one open at a time, and taking away rewards for easymode **** like empty keeps. "Wah wah my roaming 6-man", I know. Just like when T2 was finished, leaving more than one zone open at a time means that the majority just ends up playing merry-go-round with their locks. Then I'm going to call this mess quits and start working on other things.

this is happening cos when the mid zone reset keeps are still in possession of those that had locked before and cos you can ista lock a zone after 10 min


solving the first do not solve the second and to solve the second you need vp, i am sure you have backup from t1 vp system in the ealy phase of the server. Would be nice have it back for obvious reason.
PPl will avoid to fight if they being zerg and go into other zones, enemys will follow them, keep doing these will spread ppl all over the zones: we will get lock anyway due the fighting in the end but it will take more to lock a zone and there will be no more keep trades.
Then implement timer system and it will be fine for the total avoiding of fighting.

[Genisaurus]

So instead I'm locking down the pairings so that there's only one open at a time, and taking away rewards for easymode **** like empty keeps. "Wah wah my roaming 6-man", I know. Just like when T2 was finished, leaving more than one zone open at a time means that the majority just ends up playing merry-go-round with their locks. Then I'm going to call this mess quits and start working on other things.

But this would be a temporary solution only, correct?

Absolutely. But getting something better that works is going to require a ground-up rewrite.

People avoid fights because its the easiest way to get geared.

Make get geared easy and people will go fight once they are geared.

People who only play to get geared will stop playing anyway once they get that gear, why cant we never try an approach where the only way to get geared is fights and that gear comes easy promoting the usage of alts?

I mean, right now with just being anni, it would be the perfect point to try such a thing, giving away something conqueror or invader easy would be more problematic.

So let all pairings open, remove anni from gold bags and give medallions from kill quests, reduce the amount needed to get such gear and promote alt usage.

I will never understand your approach of making gear your carrot on a stick so people have to find ways to cheese your system, when there is no need to cheese it to obtain gear, the cheese will not much of an issue imo.

Make fighting the mean, instead of the end and you will have fights, stop woirrying about people getting full gear fast, who cares.

Edit: Hell, you can even directly modify the kill quest and put a ridiculous kill amount, 1500 kills for the helmet in Elf pairing, 1500 kills for the chest in the Empire vs chaos and 1500 for the shoulders in the Greenskins vs dwarf. Its nammed annihilator after all.

I don't disagree. The problem is, we have decidedly few carrots to work with, and a set of inherited gameplay designs that we have to work around (like keeps, which need both a purpose to PvP and a reason to defend/attack them). We need those carrots, because for every player who insists that they're here because PvP is fun and they play for the love of the game, we have three who will get up and leave a month after their grinds are gone.

The truth is most of our players don't like fighting. They only like winning. It's why they zerg in a single zone, it's why our 6v6 and duel community is a double-digit population of incestuous team-trading and drama-mongers (tbh fam). It's why 90% of the playerbase, being told that the devs actively participate on the forums and interact with the community, still prefer to stay in-game and spam GMs with hate tells when their favorite thing gets taken away, instead of coming to the place where we listen and discussing things openly.

If we had a community that genuinely found fighting fun, no matter the outcome, then we would not be having this conversation now. We wouldn't have to care about what rewards incentivize what behavior, because the behavior would drive itself. But we don't, and not only are we stuck (for now) designing around inbuilt design decisions, we're also stuck designing around a playerbase that largely doesn't want to play.

Anyway, those gameplay designs that we have to work around explicitly require a certain number of players to use effectively. Re-writing the system will let us slaughter these sacred cows, and in turn, change how we view/allocate the carrots we have. Right now, I'm more concerned with, "What can I do in an hour or two to slow the bleeding enough that I can work on a proper solution."

[Halhammer]

I'm tempted to take away medallions every time you lose a keep

Actually kinda like that idea, would need some workin on of course. Then again, people defending would prolly just log off or w/e shortly before a keep take to avoid losing medals.

[Shadowgurke]

The truth is most of our players don't like fighting. They only like winning. It's why they zerg in a single zone, it's why our 6v6 and duel community is a double-digit population of incestuous team-trading and drama-mongers (tbh fam). It's why 90% of the playerbase, being told that the devs actively participate on the forums and interact with the community, still prefer to stay in-game and spam GMs with hate tells when their favorite thing gets taken away, instead of coming to the place where we listen and discussing things openly.

If we had a community that genuinely found fighting fun, no matter the outcome, then we would not be having this conversation now. We wouldn't have to care about what rewards incentivize what behavior, because the behavior would drive itself. But we don't, and not only are we stuck (for now) designing around inbuilt design decisions, we're also stuck designing around a playerbase that largely doesn't want to play.

I think I understand where you are coming from. You removed rewards for BOs in order to stop people from capping empty zones but they still do it. Whatever you try to do people go against all logic and still do it because it is easier. However, some people like fighting. And you can make a lot of people like fighting too. But then you have to make a fullstop to incentivizing any sort of blob forming and zone capping. Zones cap every 10 minutes and you get 5! Medallions for the mid and even 10 for an enemy zone. To put that into perspective, they drop about 50% (?) near BOs when killing a player. And that is the best case Scenario already. So when you play in a warband you have to kill 240 people to get 5 Medallions on average or 480 for the equivalent of an enemy zone lock. And they are locking every 10 minutes. I love fighting, I hate sitting in a zerg and wiping empty zones. But I am not going to put myself at the massive disadvantage of farming them via player kills.

You know why players complained that in a WB Medallion drops were too "random"? Because if you sit in a warband farming solos is not going to get you closer towards annihilator. And imho that is fine. Instead of constantly implementing mechanisms that favor massive blobs you are not getting other players to defend. When the massive blob is favored then why would you even try to fight them?

You need to tie Medallions to player kills only. Not with a quest that can easily be done when zerging. From there on you can start to balance stuff. Increasing medallions according to AAO. Incentivizing zone locks by increasing medallion droprate in enemy zones.

And as a second system there needs to be a stepping stone gear that is somewhat easier to get. Your stalker gear. Ruin gear currently does not serve that purpose and further increases the demand to get Annihilator asap.

I'm tempted to take away medallions every time you lose a keep

Actually kinda like that idea, would need some workin on of course. Then again, people defending would prolly just log off or w/e shortly before a keep take to avoid losing medals

I liked the idea at first too. But then people would just logg to the dominating realm

[mursie]

Geni -

1. Awesome to hear about the SC quests. I hope this gets up and running soon. Will be a huge help.
2. Incentivizing the behaviors desired (balanced fighting in the lakes) has been and will always be a huge challenge. It is clear that the incentives for taking keeps/zones are good. people want to do it because they want that influence and those rvr medals. The challenge is - how do we get people to log into the underdog faction and actually challenge the zerg. I think it's clear that having two sides evenly balanced, fighting in a zone where nothing locks actually benefits no one. Neither side gets influence or rvr medals because the zone never locks. And that is the rub. I would suggest looking at a way to give the underdog side (a side under the AAO buff) a way to obtain the very rewards that the majority side is getting via the keep/zone capture. How you do that is the hard part. But that has to be the goal. Punishing the losing side by taking away medals just further promotes one side being over populated. The underdog side has to have an incentive to get the very rewards the majority side is getting.

Now the real problem is - if you incentivize those in AAO to get the rewards that a zerg side gets...the sides start to balance as people log off and onto the AAO side. Then you have each side equally balanced in the lakes...and no one takes the keep/zones.. Sure enough, as this goes by for a bit, no one is getting gear/influence as no medals drop since no zone captures. This is why bloodi's idea of having kill quests with medals is important. If those exist, then even if a keep / zone never flips and its just constant stale mate fighting occurring in a lake... rewards are still be obtained and people are still incentivized to do it.

So in conclusion:

Balance rewards (neither side is under AAO) needs kill quest rvr medals/influence rewards that would be achieved by actually fighting in the lakes

AAO underdog awards need to somehow grant the same incentives that the zerg side is getting when capturing a zone/keep. How this is done - I'm not entirely sure.

[Telen]

In the end its down to the players to get some realm pride and those that can lead to do so. Quit these pointless 6 mans or take them to games designed for that scale. Get large alliances that can effect rvr and try and get a community going.

[seara]

In the end its down to the players to get some realm pride and those that can lead to do so. Quit these pointless 6 mans or take them to games designed for that scale. Get large alliances that can effect rvr and try and get a community going.

The clock is already ticking, and it wont be improved with such a broken T4.

[Zanilos]

In the end its down to the players to get some realm pride and those that can lead to do so. Quit these pointless 6 mans or take them to games designed for that scale. Get large alliances that can effect rvr and try and get a community going.

100% DISAGREE.

At the moment, the zergs you see are justified by 'alliance nights'.
Nothing wrong with the 6 mans.
Everything wrong with the 9ish man casual guilds that are everywhere.

[Lileldys]

People want gear, and the quickest/easiest way to get annihilator is just zerg empty keeps/zones for free medallions.

Start offering more than a 30% drop chance on medallions, could start getting people fighting and seeing real progresssion. Hate getting 1 kill with a 30% chance of a medallion which is shared in my group.

[mursie]

Everything wrong with the 9ish man casual guilds that are everywhere.

DAMN you 9-man casual guilds!!! you ask for nothing and are to casual to even care!