Should 6man vs 6man matter in balance discussions?

[Kragg]

You really don't like the concept of REALM versus REALM warfare...
And screw the campaign, ganking lowbie soloplayers with a 6man should be the ultimate way to decide zone dominance...?
So many other games out there with good singleplayer/smallscale options... don't understand why RoR would have to be completely altered because "blobbing bad" "feel ashamed for using AoE" "how dare you run in a 24man guild warband" "why you holding that flag go queue for 6v6 dude" attitudes.

Which part of "helping contribute towards the final score" you did not understand?
Which part of of "small fighting chance" did you not understand?
Which part of "both should contribute'" did you not understand?

This would potentially enable and push everyone to try and be more organized & better to increase their kill tally, while at the same time giving their side a small fighting chance, when completely outnumbered, to the campaign progression that you guys care so much. Not only that but how about the soloers or duos who would somewhat also contribute by ganking and killing enemies. Its really a no brainner change to me, but whatever, I've detailed much of this in that old thread I linked somewhere last year..

Nowhere I said "it should be ultimate way to decide zone dominance". Are you lying just because you cannot come with decent ideas and arguments into the topic? I'm not the one acting like a fool putting words where they were not written, trying to exaggerate what was said in order to make your side of the argument more favorable. The "attitudes" are coming from people like you.

You get renown off the kills as a reward. You want to reward killing contributing to the final score. How does this effect the gameplay of 6 mans? Will they head out and play the campaign now and take BO's or will they continue to roam and hardly participate at all? I rather have a mechanic to force them to play the damn campaign

[Aurandilaz]

1. You get renown from killing players, far more so with AAO
2. You get medals from player kills, easily advancing you towards earning "campaign reward gear"
3. Killing players in RvR has chance to drop supply box, which you bring to keep so that even your small effort of having ganked someone will help supply status of your realm, potentially even being driving force behind zone lock.
4. You, one player alone can hold a flag, giving dmg boost to ram and helping your realm kill enemy keep lord.
5. You already have very generous defensive ticks for holding/killing on defended BO flag area.
6. Solo players, small groups, you can already send your mdps to sneak into keeps via posterns, damaging enemy siege weaponry should further increase your contribution.
7. Can't sneak in? ; bring a siege weapon, help your realm by shooting down enemy siege targets.
8. Running low on weapon ammo, help your realm by clearing enemy flag holders and delivering supplies to your own realm.

Already so many ways for small groups, soloers, 6mans to help your realm fight against the opposing realm - what else do you need?

If you have some grand redesign for RvR system, I'd be happy to read but I think you might need to open a new thread so more can see your thoughts on improving the system instead of derailing this thread further.

[roadkillrobin]

Spoiler:

Your describing the system the game was launched with. Had tons of flaws but is actually one of the best wellrounded system game have had.

The VP system was one of the best by far that we had in WAR, which actually made everyone matter - as Volgo said it - the only issue with it was the fact that it basically REQUIRED enemies to fight against, so in low population times or in a certain time-zone when only one side was active, it basically blocked the entire progress because you required kills to go through.

Its why I suggested to have both kills & captured objectives matter, so when one side is completely outnumbering the other side, they will still progress but receiving less # of rewards because they didn't do much fighting at all. You could make it so that when there is not much fighting/killing that it takes twice (example) as long to lock a zone, but to be honest this is just punishing one side (the zerging one) for simply not having enemies, which is something they cannot control at all.

But I dissagree. Scenarios should imo also be more focused around the objectives. It should give you the reason to kill players to claim, or kill players to defend. Not just killing players in a loop like a deathmatch. Rewarding it removes any type of depth of strategy from the game and it creates bad behaviour like spawn/warcamp camping. It also removes any strategy that does't include killing.

...imagine if capturing BOs, keeps, fighting Lord, killing players - like all of them counted; oh wait they already do, it all contributes to your final roll and renown reward for zone lock.
Hell, they even implemented a measure to make even 6mans useful for keep fights, that is if they do not want to play in "muh evil warband blob zerg formations" at keep fights, they can and should go fight and hold BO flags which then make Lord either harder or easier to kill, but lets try guess how many of the pro 6mans are out there holding a flag making a Keep lord kill easier for their realm...

And regarding ST wb picking apart a AoE specced/focused WB, obviously it can be done, nothing new there. Some good healers, good tanks that can occasionally harass them without dying, decent amount of morale drains, every single warband player actually awake and aware of their positioning, 1-2 ranged assisttrains focusing on single targets and maras picking ones and twos away from the murderball with TE. Yeah, already doable, just takes shiitton of time compared to classic AoE vs AoE setting and requires possibly more disciplined players - ROR premade warbands could achieve same, random pugs nuh noh.
And if the defenders want, they might possible change their location/positioning so they cannot be picked in the open by wide-spreading enemies, possibly try run a ST assisttrain of some sort and have all their healers focus heal on whoever is getting picked apart by ST Sorc rotations.
However with the remaining playerbase of RoR and the current "competition" in large scale RvR, such complex measures just aren't needed.
Leading to best possible setup being a warband with maxed out AoE pressure and maxed out debuff potential.

So let me try be as clear as possible for everyone to understand. Firstly we were talking about RvR campaign, not really scenarios - but in a sense it could be applied there also, since the things you said that would happen, such as warcamp spawning, actually already happen today - in the system of objectives being the only source of points. And in the new system where kills add points to the scoreboard you could still win by not killing anyone, just have to outcap your enemies and not die to much. Anyway, back to topic, lets focus on what was said to back up your argument:

Ah this argument. "We can't progress the campain so lets not even try and farm kills instead. Kills is the only thing that mathers anyway". Imagine if the same logic would be used in soccer where you just run around and pass the ball within your team.

In my previous post I acknowledge that if you are "playing the game" wanting your faction to "win", then taking objectives and capturing zones is currently the only way to go. I can make 500 kills in a zone (and get many gold bags in return) but if the other faction locks it, my side "lost" essentially.

1) Since the only way to progress your faction in RvR is taking objectives, the logical/easiest way to go about them is to mass all of your forces to one group (blobbing) and take the objectives in order, one by one. If one of your objectives is assaulted after the BO timer is off, you proceed to move your whole blob there to reduce the chance of losing that fight which would set you back - and there is no penalty for it because the other objectives are locked, there is no mechanic which induces the blob to be split, this has always been a problem after the VP system.

2) Its been established (in my previous post) that the easiest way to fight against a blob & to defend/attack an objective (big part due terrain) is by abusing a large amount of AoE in choke points where people are forced to go through if they want to re-take or attack that objective.

3) This is why the perception of most of the player base is that everyone should go into warbands and stack AoE to help their faction and properly "play the game". Essentially because the current RvR system demands players to blob in order to "win", you're saying that the "balancing" should be in the direction to deal with that. You're using the currently broken RvR system to justify balancing towards large scale. This is the fallacy of the argument.

Bombing and "large scale" as you call it, neglects many skills and synergies so you're basically alienating 70% of what a class can potentially do. As you say it yourselves (and I've also experienced playing with & against warbands in this game for god knows how long), within a warband you reduce a whole class spec & player to be simply an "AoE spam guy" or a "ress spam guy" or a "moral drain spam guy". You have such a mass of players in one spot that one class can literally get away with spamming one thing only, because you've many others defending him (or he is just sitting in the safety inside the keep walls) and covering the other things/roles he should be doing, such as ressing/debuffing/cleansing and many other things his class can achieve.

Let alone the fact that how on EARTH can you fine tune and find any sort of balanced game-play when you've to enter a small area while receiving instantly 20k damage without any sort of counter by cunts who are LoSing you behind a wall? And I'm not even talking about the side effects of crashes and general lag that it happens while at it. Have you guys had any decency to ever thought about it while advocating that balance should be done to embrace that?

What you guys fail to understand is that general balancing shouldn't be done towards any sort of playing size, be it solo, premades or warbands.

The only REASON why balancing skills should take into consideration the effects of it within the GROUP of 6 other players (not necessarily a premade in the sense of elitists groups) is because most of your group skills reach only up to the other 5 players in your group.

Good god you guys are thick, I'll re-quote since it still seems people didn't get it, this guy said it best in the beginning of the thread which is why I initiated my thoughts about this topic quoting him:

Then you aren't making changes based around trying to make an objectively balanced game. Disregard for a second whatever style of play you prefer.

If you're going to make changes based around our perception of what most people take part in, then you're going to be making changes based around an area that is prone to overlooking mechanics of the game that interlink with one another. You're balancing around results that are made up of incomplete tests.

Does making changes as a result of conclusions drawn from more thorough testing not seem like a better way to approach things? This isn't about solo players vs PuGs vs 6mans vs Warbands, it's about a fundamental design philosophy.

Arguing for balance changes to be made based on an area of game play that doesn't utilize all of the tools available (even if that isn't every tool the game has to offer) doesn't seem logical if you're striving to create an objectively balanced game. No matter how popular that area of game play may be.

The same logic applies if balancing is only done towards groups of 6 considering 2 tanks, 2 healers and 2 melee dpses - as you guys tend to think that's the only viable "premade" format out there. It shouldn't. Because you're neglecting the effects of having a 2 ranged dps, 1 tank & 1 melee dps in the group - or 3 healers being one of them hybrid for a slot of a dps & so on.

I also find it a bit hypocritical that small scale community always push for a system of rewards to their prefered playstyle in any context of the game while the large scale playerbase actually have to comfort to the rules and size of scenarios to get the scenario rewards.

Seconded. I understand why they do it but at times its blatantly obvious.

Its very funny how you guys are quickly jumping to conclusions & making assumptions (while you tell me that elitists have a toxic attitude).. but my suggestion enables ANY sort of organized play, including warband groups too. How about when you guys ripe 200+ kills in the zone fighting blobs but in the end it really amounts to nothing, because you're still outnumbered 5:1? Shouldn't the 200 kills you did against their 40 kills (example) matter in the grand scheme of RvR? This would potentially enable and push everyone to try and be more organized & better to increase their kill tally, while at the same time giving their side a small fighting chance, when completely outnumbered, to the campaign progression that you guys care so much. Not only that but how about the soloers or duos who would somewhat also contribute by ganking and killing enemies. Its really a no brainner change to me, but whatever, I've detailed much of this in that old thread I linked somewhere last year..

Im for adding more objectives to RVR actually. I think an alternative wincon would solve the linear progression which leads to the blobbing of multiple warbands.

Example: Zone flips either by capture the enemy keep and holding it OR the realm that raids the warpstone cave of X warpstones and deliver them to the warcamp.

What im against is making a kill X players to flip the zone coz it doesn't really add any deepth to strategies and just promotes 6v1 ganking, something I think is just as toxic as 32v6 is.

70% of skills arn't used in small scale rotations either. It's a really bad argument.

[altharion1]

If you want 6mans to participate in helping to lock zones and pushing zones then they need a reason to do it.

Lets say there is praag open. Destro have 100aao. Why would any 6man want to log order to help lock the zone? There's less enemies so less action, more allies thus much easier fights, less renown profits, more zerging, you get to spend 30mins semi afk looking at a keep door health bar, then spend another 30mins in a laggy **** fest waiting to get past a tank wall, then spend another 30mins semi afk hitting a keep lord. Just to lock a zone to get a cow pie or your 7th genesis shard when you only need a fragment. Or you can log destro with AAO and have insane action.

There is currently no reason to help lock a zone. Give 6mans a reason to help lock a zone and they will (gear or renown). The reward has to be great enough in value to offset the boredom of helping a dominant realm lock a zone.

[Acidic]

One way to simplify the balancing mode is to address the fundemental difference between the two styles.
Blobs : aoe spam
Small scale : targeted st

When looking at it the skill cap in small scale is much higher than blobs play style.

So why not raise the skill cap on blobs and address blobs aoe spamming so it becomes situational and needing timing and coordination to a higher level than now.

How: simply add immunities like cc immunities, spirit aoe immunity, elemental ..
We add a .3 (number is a detail) second immunity to each type of aoe so that it cannot be used mindlessly exactly the same as cc
Not sure if this is client or server or even doable but this would immediately bring the blob in to a non rewarding state and force the blob and small scale to be similar

[Vayra]

If you want 6mans to participate in helping to lock zones and pushing zones then they need a reason to do it.

Lets say there is praag open. Destro have 100aao. Why would any 6man want to log order to help lock the zone? There's less enemies so less action, more allies thus much easier fights, less renown profits, more zerging, you get to spend 30mins semi afk looking at a keep door health bar, then spend another 30mins in a laggy **** fest waiting to get past a tank wall, then spend another 30mins semi afk hitting a keep lord. Just to lock a zone to get a cow pie or your 7th genesis shard when you only need a fragment. Or you can log destro with AAO and have insane action.

There is currently no reason to help lock a zone. Give 6mans a reason to help lock a zone and they will (gear or renown). The reward has to be great enough in value to offset the boredom of helping a dominant realm lock a zone.

That's why you should be forced to choose 1 faction, not just swap between them based on AAO.

[peterthepan3]

If you want 6mans to participate in helping to lock zones and pushing zones then they need a reason to do it.

Lets say there is praag open. Destro have 100aao. Why would any 6man want to log order to help lock the zone? There's less enemies so less action, more allies thus much easier fights, less renown profits, more zerging, you get to spend 30mins semi afk looking at a keep door health bar, then spend another 30mins in a laggy **** fest waiting to get past a tank wall, then spend another 30mins semi afk hitting a keep lord. Just to lock a zone to get a cow pie or your 7th genesis shard when you only need a fragment. Or you can log destro with AAO and have insane action.

There is currently no reason to help lock a zone. Give 6mans a reason to help lock a zone and they will (gear or renown). The reward has to be great enough in value to offset the boredom of helping a dominant realm lock a zone.

That's why you should be forced to choose 1 faction, not just swap between them based on AAO.

I'm sorry, Vayra, but you've gone off on tangents several times when people have replied to your posts/made posts pertinent to the OT. You completely missed the point, and forcing people to stick on a dominant side = boredom (one side dominating the other is usually in the guise of a zerg, which means jack all to do as a 6-man) = people logging off.

For example, if a player kill counts for 1 point, a scenario win could count for 50 points, as it takes more efforts/time. By making everything count, we are giving a clear vision for balance : everything counts. It would put an end to this never ending WB vs 6 man balance waste of time.

Good points. I wouldn't mind seeing SC play more of a role in zone efforts (as they once did).

[roadkillrobin]

If you want 6mans to participate in helping to lock zones and pushing zones then they need a reason to do it.

Lets say there is praag open. Destro have 100aao. Why would any 6man want to log order to help lock the zone? There's less enemies so less action, more allies thus much easier fights, less renown profits, more zerging, you get to spend 30mins semi afk looking at a keep door health bar, then spend another 30mins in a laggy **** fest waiting to get past a tank wall, then spend another 30mins semi afk hitting a keep lord. Just to lock a zone to get a cow pie or your 7th genesis shard when you only need a fragment. Or you can log destro with AAO and have insane action.

There is currently no reason to help lock a zone. Give 6mans a reason to help lock a zone and they will (gear or renown). The reward has to be great enough in value to offset the boredom of helping a dominant realm lock a zone.

That's why you should be forced to choose 1 faction, not just swap between them based on AAO.

I'm sorry, Vayra, but you've gone off on tangents several times when people have replied to your posts/made posts pertinent to the OT. You completely missed the point, and forcing people to stick on a dominant side = boredom (one side dominating the other is usually in the guise of a zerg, which means jack all to do as a 6-man) = people logging off.

Well it creates just as many problems as it solves by allowing realm swapping. A good fix would be to have a system that punish the realm as a whole for not participating. Now people don't coz they don't have to and swtch sides or log iff instead coz there is no downside to doing so. Scenarios could play into this system aswell Thats how the game was intended with the city ranking system.

[Penril]

I rather have a mechanic to force them to play the damn campaign

If there is something i've learnt in these past few years, is that it is a terrible mistake trying to force people to play the game the way YOU want.

[Penril]

There is currently no reason to help lock a zone. Give 6mans a reason to help lock a zone and they will (gear or renown). The reward has to be great enough in value to offset the boredom of helping a dominant realm lock a zone.

So, give a huge reward so some players don't feel bad for being bored for hours by playing on the dominant/zerg side? Sounds like terrible game design.

Sometimes people forget that this is a game and some people are just looking for fun. If your side is zerging and you want your premades to stay and help (even though this would mean zerging) then you have to make it FUN to them. How? No clue.