Return of Reckoning

Currently this is an idea I'm going to further develop over time and try and re-propose until I'm happy with it but I thought I'd share a few RVR related suggestions that I feel would help improve RVR and make it more entertaining for a few more classes, and more engaging as an event. So don't expect anything extremely detailed!


Keeps
Keeps are great when they go well, and awful tarpits of not fun when they don't! And currently there is a huge problem with keep lords resetting and people just generally not knowing what they are doing. Another problem is that the Lord fight isn't really engaging 40+ People hit a guy for very little damage until he falls over, resets or a enemy force comes up the stairs and wipes the group.

I believe the following idea could rectify this particular issue and make keep fights more interesting for attackers and defenders. And that is by stealing a few mechanics from the defenders of the realm buff from City Fights. Perhaps if the player with the highest contribution on the defenders side, became the keep lord when the inner postern was broken. Buffing their stats, increasing their defences, etc, etc. This would mean that Keep lord battles would change dramatically depending on who is selected as the highest contributor as you could be facing a BW, KOTBS, BO or Marauder. What could also be done is give the attacking side a hero as well, obviously not just as strong as the keep lord, but buffed to an extent that they will take reduce damage from all but the keep lord. And will deal true damage to the lord himself.

This would hopefully allow more more interesting lord battles for both sides either defending or attacking!

BO

My current gripe with BO's is that whilst necessary to upgrade your keep up to 3, or win by capping at 5 they feel rather supporting of a none combative play style. Quite often players will just sit on a BO just to get the ticks rather than engaging with other players in an RVR lake. Or even going to where they are needed elsewhere in the lake or world!

To rectify this I suggest giving each BO either a limited pool of resources that is refreshed on a timer, once depleted effectively forcing players to seek and battle over other BO's And not just sit and wait at the single objective. Alternatively A BO could be promoted to yielding more Renown / inf / exp and keep resource per tick for a duration for both sides, encouraging people to move to the named BO and engage forces looking to take it for themselves.

Siege
Siege is rather important in keep fights, and I love how its currently done by towing the weapons across the field of battle to the assaulting keep. However once set up, unless there is a full wipe of a defender or attacker most siege weapons will survive the entire keep fight with little conflict. In addition players not near level 40 are auto blocked when attacking these items even when using their own siege weapons meaning it is down to those around level 35 or higher to counter siege.

What I propose though is a better means to disable a cannon rather than kill it, and that is by killing the crew. By giving all Siege operators, Oil, Ram, Cannon, and artillery a debuff. Said debuff would increase damage taken by the crew by a % either based off of AAO values, or a flat percentile to be decided upon later, when attacked from behind.

This change should hopefully promote WE, WH use at sieges as crew killers, and promote more MDPS to Bypass postern to either clear the walls or assassinate assaulting artillery. This could then be potentially followed by a lock out period on the weapon that has had its crew slain disabling its use and movement for a limited span of time effectively disabling the cannon.





Thanks for reading this if you did! I'm not saying this is HOW RVR should work, but just a few suggestions of what i think could help get people more engaged in the lakes. If you can think of anything you'd like to add, change or put fault to feel free. As I said this is just a loose idea for now.

(Probably) a moot point since the dev team has their own plans with RVR, and the playerbase already can't wait thirteen hours before launching into its own debate about how flawed the new system is; but I do like the idea of changing anything about the lord fight. In my opinion it is the worst part of taking a keep, since, even if you wipe the defenders, they'll normally have the chance to mount another 2 or 3 waves against you as they re-group and push the lord room again and again while you slowly whittle down lord hp. It's even worse when you split your forces, needing at least close to equal numbers to withstand defender morale pushes, leaving maybe two-three groups in lord room for 20 minutes, unless you're fighting against 100+ aao.

As it stands, I don't even go into a keep offense thinking we'll take it, even if we've been rolling over our opposition for the entirety of the zone because of how easy it is to defend a keep with lord.

Hey man if they have different plans they have different plans! I'm just happy to see the first reply not being "URGH WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" We're off to a good star! XD

Heck as a 2 hand Chosen I sympathise with you, on assaults its one of the most boring things for me to do, slap a shield on and stand there spamming hold the line, in an attempt to get some yawn-tribution. I don't even get to use the Tank RVR skills, so no taking oil showers, or repairing doors when defending. I kind of just mill about in the foreground hoping someone comes out of the postern to say hello. They typically stop doing that after 3 or four of them realise I'm stood back against the wall ready to punt them into the braying mobs of bored MDPS.

Once the entire new system is implemented and everything is working, the community will be able to criticize all they want and point out what they think should change etc. Until then, you can definitely discuss things, but I will just say it most likely won't affect the final version of the system in development. I personally think the idea of cannon/siege crew is cool, and could be further expanded on.