Five reasons why empty BOs giving rewards is better for ORvR

[Shadowgurke]

Are we talking about the live game or the RoR ? If it's the second case, then I, for one, don't remember that. What I do remember is warbands locking BO's and taking undefended keeps during hours with very low population. At peak times, it was very rare to see a warband leaving a big battle to lock an empty zone. It happened, but it was too rare to be considered as a problem.
And in the end, I never understood why it's only the attackers to blame when they lock an empty zone. I mean, the enemy realm is there, let them make a warband and fight back.

Are you kidding me? Why do you think they wiped the Annihilator gear? Zones were locking every 10 minutes. In very few cases you would have keep defenses and even more rarely with success. You are in denial if you think there were great fights going on.

I am not "blaming" the attackers, it's just that the system was abused.

[Ramasee]

This is what I'd like to call the pioneer problem. You need an incentive to get into the lakes to fight. The problem with giving BO rewards is that this doesn't incentivize people to fight, it incentivizes them to farm BOs for free stuff. This is not something we would like to see.

The challenge set before you all, and I freely admit that this isn't something we fully resolved in the next RvR system, is to come up with incentives or penalties, of any kind, which encourage players to enter the RvR zone - either of their own accord, or in response to another realm's attack. It goes without saying that this would be trivially simple to do with ideal conditions (one account per player, realm lock) in that you would first set an active threshold for zones (number of players present on one side before BOs would give rewards), prevent players from activating another zone barring exceptional circumstances of population, and then punish players with low to no RvR participation relative to total playtime if a zone was lost, thus allowing full rewards for any take provided enough players were actually available and refusing combat to fight, pity rewards for losing, and preventing the enemy from simply deciding to take another zone's BOs.

That is a punishment based element, however. What I'm mainly interested in is valid gameplay design for RvR lakes which handles lower population and encourages more players to join, and I wish anyone seriously considering this good luck when this system cannot be purely reward-based given that R40/RR40 players with full Annihilator will have no need of rewards.

What about ego-stroking as a reward? In addition to whatever changes you guys are bringing to us next for RvR have a T4 ORvR leaderboard on the website. Each action such as a kill, taking undefended objective/keeps, taking contested objective/keep, and successful defense of objective/keep gives varying points. Obviously weight towards the things we would like to see happen.

Have the leaderboard reset and update once a week. The top ten players from each faction each week get displayed as a server announcement to people when they first log in for that week. Have a separate leaderboard that runs for like 2 months. The longer duration leaderboard causes statues (or named NPCs) to be displayed in capital cities and warcamps near the flightmasters.

People tend to love such things and it works in other games to keep people playing and competing long after they reach max armor for the game.

[Akalukz]

I believe people will chase a reward, even if it is minuscule. Put the cap at 41, with renown gain as 1 RP per "reward" (kill / objective whatever) and people will chase it. No need to put in new armor sets etc, just make some cosmetic kits, no stats etc, just skins, bring out the Sov / Doom / Warp sets, just for looks. People will chase silly things, even though they know it will be wiped later. Put the amount so high that it will only be obtained by a few, but people will still chase it. Make some cool as trophies, that can only be gained by xxx kills at certain bo's etc. People are vain, prey upon it.

[Hotrailz]

For me personally the purple renown numbers gave me motivation. Once i hit rr80 on live or 40/40 now game lost a bit of magic and i went to playing alts.
I think maybe add 5 renown ranks with renown required being equivalent of going 75-80 on live. Make BOs and keeps give some trivial amount of purple juice. And increase low end AAO to help with faction balance. Top end of 400% is fine but low end should be maybe 60% to 100%.

[7rere7]

Lock all the zones in every realm in T4 but have only one zone realm open in either empire vs chaos ,dwarf vs green skins or high elf vs dark elves.
When that zone is locked by order or des then another zone will unlock in a different race realm.

This will force everyone to take or defend a single zone until its been captured. This will make it easier for everyone to get Anni and inf.

Way to many open T4 zones in this game......always have been.

[Grimspire]

As someone who played Live at release and onward, I always felt the end game RvR system was needlessly complex and convoluted. Be warned, radical ideas inc...

We all know players will take the path of least resistance when it comes to most anything. Therefore, if the goal is to have players actually fighting one another as much as possible then the path of least resistance must be to actually fight other players. All of your rewards should come from the act of actually killing enemy players. I believe you have to start there and work your way forward. BO's and keeps should serve a different function from actually progressing your character.

Next is that 3 zone pairings worth of RvR lakes is just too much. Hell, 3 zone pairings for PvE is just too much as well. That's why they made it so every new character started out in the same zone pairing. It splits the player population too much. They were dividing their players by a third so even when the player population was decent it still felt empty. I feel like the zone lock system just doesn't work...at all. It just disrupts the fights that are going on. Perhaps, like another poster said, only one pairing should be open at a time, and by that I mean all 3 zones of it (we are abandoning the lock system for individual zones, but we can lock the entire pairing when a set of conditions is met using our keeps and BO's. A new pairing would then open.)

After that, you have to decide what the focus is, scenarios or Open World RvR. These two systems are at odds with one another. I feel like most people would say Open is the focus here, but maybe I'm wrong. I'm not saying remove scenarios, not by a long shot. Keep them, but you have to make it where Open RvR will produce way better rewards than scenarios. Maybe even make scenarios reward something completely different. When things become futile for your side out in the lakes, then those players can fall back to playing scenarios for a more even playing field (because typically the lower population faction has better queue times anyway.)

Suggestions:

1. All of your renown, influence, and experience to advance your character comes from killing players only. Influence gained would be for whatever pairing you're fighting in at the time. Adjust speed of renown rank leveling accordingly. Renown gained from killing a player is split between all involved with the kill down to a minimum threshold (a minimum amount of Renown is received no matter the number of players involved.)

2. All 3 zones in a single pairing are unlocked. The other 2 pairings stay locked. After a set of conditions related to keeps is met, this pairing locks. A new pairing (all 3 zones) opens and the fight can begin again. The first faction to win 2 pairings can unlock whatever you want at this point (city sieges..whatever) Obviously, beyond this point is a whole other discussion.

3. BO's increase the power of keep attackers. Since keep defenders have an innate advantage, this is a method of evening the playing field for those attacking a keep. This part is tricky. Perhaps each BO your side controls actually debuffs enemy keep defenders. Make it significant. Make it so these could turn the tide of keep battles. If enemy keep defenders had their damage debuffed or their siege damage debuffed by 5-10% per BO, it would put a huge emphasis on taking and holding BO's where most of your open world fighting will occur. So defenders make a choice to stay and defend even though they are weakened, or they can try to get BO's back to gain back their natural advantage of keep defense. Attackers make a choice to keep as many BO's as possible to make taking the keep easier, or let them go and try their hand at a standard keep take.

[Halhammer]

Perhaps, like another poster said, only one pairing should be open at a time, and by that I mean all 3 zones of it (we are abandoning the lock system for individual zones, but we can lock the entire pairing when a set of conditions is met using our keeps and BO's. A new pairing would then open.)

Yea. Been there, done that in T2. Spoiler: it ain't workin

[Artwork]

Grimspire, considering that was your first post, I have to give you props. Well thought out, and one of the better solutions to RvR that I've seen proposed.

[Eathisword]

Blah... it's dead now. But once renown rank increase again, people will flood back in.

2 weeks ago, RvR was full of people cause everyone thought they would get their Annihilator supa easy by flipping zone non-stop.

Now, Anni is hard to get, and since Mercenary is nearly as good (or better) for a lot of classes, you see scen pop non stop. Ruin is good for tanks : PQ are always full.

So if people are willing to do something as boring as PQs for hours (I did...) I think once they get something to work for in RvR they will, no matter the oil, the BOs, the ram or whatnot.

Imo, mercenary should've been bought with medallions too. RvR lakes would be full all the time. Let weapons be the scenarios thing... Wait... I has full merc... no don'T change it. But for the next sets, please do. No more scenario armor.

On live, no matter the system, people wanted sov, then warp. RvR was alive. Gank group were active. Medals/insignias had value. Atm in RoR, medals have very little value except for certain specific classes. That's the problem for me.

Some of the staff said the philosophie is ''no freebies'', well in my book (Eathisbook!) merc armor is a freebie. Way too easy to get.

[quda]

Nowadays I didnt play Any kind of RvR as my main 36 SM, cause after dead t3 I have only 31 RR rank, and I wonder when farming renown in t4 is much much less!! Are you kidding?? No rewards for BO - and "impossible" to take keeps makes RvR so boring. SC without premade - sucks cause other side always have a premade. So for me there is nothing to do in t4. Farming RR is so boring now, and this system that you like? Really Warhammer is created to fight for ALL RvR zones, and if the most people fights in 1 zone, there was some parties then go to other and taking BO and can start sieges an empty keep. And this is fun, this is kind of backdoor. People Should watch alerts and check map to Know whats going on in other realms!! it makes people not to crowd in one place and to move and to take creative solutions.

Aswell, BOs should give awards for being captured - small for undefended and bigger for defend BO, aswell as higher rewards for takin BO that was defended!