Current RVR state

[Hargrim]

New system does encourage you to split up, but only if you're attacking. Defenders can blob like normal from BO to BO without ever needing to split, which is why I'd prefer it if holding BOs as attackers also dropped Lord health like holding them while defending regens health.

I agree with this 100%. The attacking side should also have some benefits from holding bos while doing the lord fight. Maybe a constant dot on lord health based on BOs held or just a drop on the lord's defense threshold (5% or 10% more damage taken from each BO's the attacking side is holding for example, of course fine tuning would be needed) would be fantastic.

While the focus on the BOs during the entire zone is a great change from the old "reach 3 stars, forget BOs exist", what we have right now is the defending side needing only to hold 1 or 2 BOs to seriously disrupt a siege, while the attacking side needing to be constantly on a cat and mouse game to chase the defenders off the BOs while having no incentive whatsoever to hold them. The moment the attacking group that took the BOs back for the sieging side leaves it to chase the defenders from another one (again, no incentive for staying), all it takes is a single defender to cap it back and start disrupting the siege again.

This really shows on large maps with BOs across the map i.e: during a Talabecland/High Pass siege the defenders took Hallenfurt Manor, which literally on the other side of the map from the fort we were sieging at the time. The groups on "BO duty" would get there, kill the defenders and leave to do the same thing on Tavern, Tower or Feiten's Lock and by the time they finished sweeping out the defenders on these BO's, Manor was capped back by the defenders and back to healing the lord. If there was some sort of buff to the attacking side, people would be encouraged to just hold said BO instead of running around the map on a endless cycle of "attack X BO, leave for another, repeat" and that would make the siege a zone-wide event that every player is participating in, whether they are hitting lord, killing the defenders or holding BOs to help with the effort.

Your incentive for taking BO is that you can actually kill the lord. If opponent control BOs you can't.

[Harkonen]

Which basically results in a situation where the attacker always has to outnumber the defender in order to down the lord and get a zone lock?

Makes sense if you look at sieges in real life, dont know of its a wishable scenario in a video game

[dansari]

Your incentive for taking BO is that you can actually kill the lord. If opponent control BOs you can't.

Which is fine to break up the zerg, but invariably only works when you're fighting >80% aao, since (as kowabunga stated) you can just move your warband out to roam between 2-3 BOs and the attackers will never, ever, be able to kill lord with remotely even numbers.

Spoiler:

I'm not saying it should be easy to take a keep when you have even numbers, but honestly if the attackers have broken 1-2 doors and wiped defense at the keep, they should have an honest shot at downing the "LORD." Last week I think the mechanics were great (coincidentally when lord healing was broken). If you got wiped on the keep, lord hp didn't reset, so the defenders were forced to either huddle in keep to protect lord from getting ganked, or venture forth to try to nab BOs). Hell, last night destro couldn't even try to defend the keep in SL. Outside of the wb they had 4 groups half filled with shammies just sticky feetz kiting everyone that tried to flip BOs until the warband arrived and having their high rr groups sitting on Unicorn picking off solo level 25s

[Hargrim]

Your incentive for taking BO is that you can actually kill the lord. If opponent control BOs you can't.

Which is fine to break up the zerg, but invariably only works when you're fighting >80% aao, since (as kowabunga stated) you can just move your warband out to roam between 2-3 BOs and the attackers will never, ever, be able to kill lord with remotely even numbers.

Spoiler:

I'm not saying it should be easy to take a keep when you have even numbers, but honestly if the attackers have broken 1-2 doors and wiped defense at the keep, they should have an honest shot at downing the "LORD." Last week I think the mechanics were great (coincidentally when lord healing was broken). If you got wiped on the keep, lord hp didn't reset, so the defenders were forced to either huddle in keep to protect lord from getting ganked, or venture forth to try to nab BOs). Hell, last night destro couldn't even try to defend the keep in SL. Outside of the wb they had 4 groups half filled with shammies just sticky feetz kiting everyone that tried to flip BOs until the warband arrived and having their high rr groups sitting on Unicorn picking off solo level 25s

For the spoiler thing - how does this (and this here is the no healing from BOs) solve the issue of attackers not giving the damn about the BOs when keep doors fall?

[Hargrim]

Which basically results in a situation where the attacker always has to outnumber the defender in order to down the lord and get a zone lock?

Makes sense if you look at sieges in real life, dont know of its a wishable scenario in a video game

I somehow agree, but I'm not sure there is some kind of good mechanic we can have to allow even numbers to play it well enough to lock the zone.

[Aurandilaz]

Good question would be, what is the ideal numbers advantage that helps with Keep capture?
1:1 won't work, funnel fest or even if keep is cleared, attackers don't have enough numbers to hold bottom, fight lord and control BOs.
2:1 in favour of attacker means 100 AAO, at which point some people will gladly log to the underdog side or exit game because taking zones with limited opposition or nothing to kill also gives no rewards; you don't get rewards from zerging minor numbers.
But say 100 attackers, 80 defenders, not too far fetched. All attackers focus Keep, 2 wbs bottom, 2 wbs on lords. The defenders capture the BO, Lord cannot be killed. Quit or send 2 wbs to contest BOs, which meanwhile either allows defender to commit organized push to keep wiping the last 2 wbs or wiping the 2 WBs sent to the BOs. Typical stalemate, keep siege is lifted and fight moves back to BOs until one side or other gives up.
120 attackers vs 80 defenders, now defenders get that juicy 40% AAO, and mostly have 2-3 6mans clearing flags given the opportunity. If all 5 attacking WBs commit to keep, defenders can hold flags and prevent Lord kill. If attackers again divide their forces, they either cannot hold enough BOs or they lose numbers at keep, allowing defenders to wipe what defenders remain.
150 attackers vs 50 defenders, zerg that zone with 200 AAO; gankers on defending side get juicy gank renown and with numbers superiority attacker can both dominate BOs and Keep, unless some exceptional stratagems are used by a smaller but more organized defending force. Limited rewards for taking zone with excessive number advantage.

Obviously its good that endgame content is challenging, but at some point throwing pugs into meatgrinder stops working. Maybe 2-3 guilds left in this game can field a full guild warband, and maybe another 3-5 can fill semi-organized Alliance warbands.
So the reality is that vast majority of keep sieges become pugfests and whichever pug leader gets the momentum going might just be able to lock down the zone, assuming the defender doesn't fight back with too much dedication.

Hopefully with further adjustments a "sweet spot" is found between MegaBlobZergtrain and the AllQuietInPugHell stalemates.


Random suggestion:
Make it even more complex by adding VictoryPoint system to the mess. Both sides start at 50:50. You could kill Doors and Lord at any VP situation. Holding BOs moves VP track closer to 100, enemy holding them starts moving it towards 0.
At 100 VP, enemy Lord takes 100% dmg. At 50 VP, only 50% dmg. At 0, well somewhat between 1-0% dmg. (Or 200% dmg at 100VP, 100% at 50, 50% at 25 VP and so on).
In preparation for siege, attacker get high VP so they can smash Lord. Defender can keep getting BOs back and slow down the process. Maybe VP track moves faster with more BOs held and AAO maybe helps defenders get it down faster.

However this would allow that instead of instantly making Lord harder to kill when defender recaptures BOs, there is some delay of 5-10 mins before VP progress starts shrinking too much, either Lord is bursted down hard and fast, or defenders attempts to hold BOs, keep attackers busy and launching counterattacks is enough to halt the attempt on Lord.

edIt: maybe find a way to get guild keep claiming contribute to VP movement/decay. And make keeps cheaper to claim, so that even limited investment can provide solid contribution to helping your realms siege effort.

[dansari]

I somehow agree, but I'm not sure there is some kind of good mechanic we can have to allow even numbers to play it well enough to lock the zone.

Totally agree and applaud your effort to make it work if it's possible. It's definitely not an easy job.

For the spoiler thing - how does this (and this here is the no healing from BOs) solve the issue of attackers not giving the damn about the BOs when keep doors fall?

This is just a pleb talking, but I liked that the majority of fighting was focused around the keep once doors were down. You fought for BO control, now fight for keep control. If you want BOs to be part of the keep take, I think you could go a couple of ways with it.. but BOs shouldn't benefit just one side and should supplement a keep take, but shouldn't be a deciding factor unless 3 or even 4 are held.

- x healing/damaging lord per BO held with minimal rewards at 1-2 BOs and higher rewards at 3-4.
- x Morale gain/drain on keep attackers/defenders per BO held with minimal change at 1-2 and higher at 3-4.
- Bring back resources in some way so that when doors are down, BOs turn neutral and both sides can grab resources for the purpose of granting short duration buffs for a multitude of things (this could be cool but might require a lot of heavy lifting.. but I'm brainstorming...). You could have 4-5 resources spawn on BOs and respawn every 5min after turn in, each labeled with the buff they grant, with two drop points (friendly keep & warcamp). Buffs could be anything from lord health gain/drain, zone wide morale gain for 30s, 20% movement speed buff for 30s, 15% avoidance increases for 30s, etc. Nothing crazy but stuff that grants meaningful buffs to realms that can turn in the resources. Allow people to stealth with resources to give unique purpose to WE/WH. Allow resources to be stolen, etc.

[Tesq]

Which basically results in a situation where the attacker always has to outnumber the defender in order to down the lord and get a zone lock?

Makes sense if you look at sieges in real life, dont know of its a wishable scenario in a video game

I somehow agree, but I'm not sure there is some kind of good mechanic we can have to allow even numbers to play it well enough to lock the zone.

Aao:

,no aao flag not matter
Yes aao flag .matter to some degree 40%
Yes huge aso flag matter a lot 80%
Way too much aao need 4 flag all the time 100% +

Viceversa only the faction with aao can lock with rank 5 stars super fast while side with higher number need a very long time.

-Prevent keep camp from higher but also unskilled pop side
-system flags aggravation scale with the population aggravations./ Unbalance

Tbh i prefered when lord dmg helped defender wipe and scaled with aao as dansari wrote the things where more keep centered that way but underdog had way to make it.

[dansari]

Yeah honestly just scaling with aao may be better, but that runs into the issue of: aao doesn't appear the same for everyone; it's different depending on where you are in zone.

[Tesq]

Yeah honestly just scaling with aao may be better, but that runs into the issue of: aao doesn't appear the same for everyone; it's different depending on where you are in zone.

What you mean? I know it bug out and you need to reclick your healt ui to refresh it but it should br the same for anyone