RvR, AAO and incentive for actual fights

[xoonerfree]

Current state of RvR is quite boring, player behavior runs on a simple algorithm of 'avoiding equal/bigger fights and chasing (zerging) smaller enemy groups'. And the reason is simple; it is more rewarding to do so. Game does not reward sieging and winning a keep with equal AAO, any more than zerging it with bigger numbers leading to 60% AAO. Players literally refuse to attempt a siege unless enemy is outnumbered. And current AAO rr bonus system is failing to incentivize fights for underdog either, because all it leads to is 6mans farming solo runners and strays; instead of actually facing equal or bigger groups.

There are plans for spreading the battle to map, supposedly for promoting for more even fights; but it is not hard to see how that will simply make having bigger numbers even more advantageous, leading to even more zerging behaviour. For any change to have a positive impact game needs to address two things;

• Incentivize players who will face a one-sided outnumbered battle to actually join the fight

• In terms of rewards, make it more appealing to chase equal/bigger fights rather than zerging

With that in mind here is my suggestion;

• Active zones accumulate rewards (medallions/shards/bags/bonus rr etc.) based on kills(*). Accumulation is also amplified based on AAO; zerging side gets smaller addition, underdog side gets bigger

• Once zone is locked, total accumulated rewards are distributed to players based on their contribution

• Player contribution (for getting accumulated rewards) is significantly reduced for kills via outnumbering battles, and it is significantly increased for kills fighting bigger groups.

All of that idea is based on concept of 'what kind of player behavior that mechanics would lead to?'. It would lead to;

• People running along zerg would feel more incentivized to run with a well organized but smaller group instead.

• Underpopulated side would want to take on and fight bigger number zerging enemies

• AAO now translates into better accumulated rewards (that is distributed among fewer people as well), and is a real incentive to join a one-sided fight.

• People wont choose quick zone flips over ones where there is proper resistance (in current system reward is same for both, so people see it as waste of time for same reward)

People can still stick with zerg to get zone lock rewards; but there is now the choice to go fight for a zone where your side is not outnumbering to benefit more from accumulating rewards. All of the idea is about how to steer player behavior towards desired competitive direction, based on how rewards system works.

GMs keep removing/nerfing abilities, mechanics, items and rr benefits that give classes group synergy, which normally makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. In DAOC an 8 man team could easily beat 20 disorganized players, but not in this game. Why? Numbers win in Warhammer. In Warhammer a 6-man group used to be able to defeat 15 players with lots of effort, then that was reduced to 12, then 10, now maybe 8. GMs keep removing class synergies and making classes vanilla until all seem equal. Previously, one of the greatest duo teams in the game: DPS DOK and TANK. This duo could face 6 or 8 disorganized order and actually win. What did GMs do? They nerfed DPS DOK so hard the synergy with the tank was diminished to maybe allow the DPS DOK/tank combo to kill 4 disorganized opponents. And this process keeps playing out. It's making all classes vanilla with few class synergies, and frankly boring. Then rr was diminished making it easy to hit top rr benefits, basically giving free rr to all players. I could make a toon and in 2 months have 95% the strength of character created 4 years ago. They just want a super friendly game to casuals with very little class synergy.

[mynban]

I don't know why devs are "fixing" things nobody asked for in the first place : change to Oil, change to rewards from captures...

While I can agree that some changes have not been asked for, we have a valid reason for a lot of these changes.

RP nerf from Oil kills:
Regarding the change to oil, I gathered feedback mostly from active warbands and some warband leaders. I surely did not ask everyone, but the decision of removing RP from Oil kills was unanimous. Oil is the most important defensive mechanic one can play around in order to defend a keep, and this mechanic was being taken advantage of by many for personal gains. Apparently most warbands did not mind losing the RP gain from oil because they're often the ones who are holding doors and posterns while oil is being thrown for 4-5 kills.

Change to rewards from captures:
The intention of that change was purely to help the zones get more fights but it's a dev action that needs to be well accepted by the community in order for it to thrive. I agree with you, the outcome of that change is bad, and this isn't what we wanted. That's why I have discussed the issue with Dalen and we agreed to revert that change the soonest in order to bring back previous RP rewards.

As Zulnam said, there are a lot of issues that are caused by players. There are also issues that are caused by the team, believing that a change could have a positive impact while it actually doesn't. Of course the intention is positive and the idea would be based on fixing a present issue, but we cannot figure out the real impact until it's been released and tested for some time.

Nevertheless, the important thing is to keep an open communication and take proper actions, whether it was you, as players, adapting to a more team-oriented behavior that doesn't somewhat exploit the system for rewards, or devs reverting/implementing necessary changes that satisfy enough of the community.

I think change to RR from OIL was a great example of how design changes should be. It simply takes away the incentive to waste a strategic defense tool for personal gain, shaping player behavior in the right direction.

Dev team should look more in how to "align best interest of individual with desired gameplay expected from players". Otherwise people will almost always follow what is in their own best interest. My suggestion with this thread was built on that premise. Hope we see more changes that incentivize players to act in the way it is healthy for the game.

[abezverkhiy]

I would rather see 10 casuals in a place of one arrogant elitist

[GamesBond]

I think change to RR from OIL was a great example of how design changes should be. It simply takes away the incentive to waste a strategic defense tool for personal gain, shaping player behavior in the right direction.

Dev team should look more in how to "align best interest of individual with desired gameplay expected from players". Otherwise people will almost always follow what is in their own best interest. My suggestion with this thread was built on that premise. Hope we see more changes that incentivize players to act in the way it is healthy for the game.

Dalen and I had a discussion like 2 weeks ago and things were positive, he's keen on improving the experience in RvR lakes and I believe once the tiny project we're working on is done, we should see more RvR adjustments. We are currently working on something minor for RvR which has been suggested last year.

The issues with RvR changes remain, as they impact the biggest segment of the community. Which means dozens of additional opinions, which some might be completely contradicting. Internally alone, there could be several opinions. Then, within the whole community, there could also be dozens of opinions. I have a plan to propose to Max regarding RvR changes, the process and the feedback in order to speed things up, but that will have to wait for next month.

[sjemen]

remove rewards from bags up the amount of medals (maybe even lower tiered gear) from kills profit

[lastalien]

Change to rewards from captures:
The intention of that change was purely to help the zones get more fights but it's a dev action that needs to be well accepted by the community in order for it to thrive. I agree with you, the outcome of that change is bad, and this isn't what we wanted. That's why I have discussed the issue with Dalen and we agreed to revert that change the soonest in order to bring back previous RP rewards.

This is bad news, perhaps the new system of accrual of contributions really motivated me to play every day in the rvr. More bags for kills.

or is it just about RP?

[wonshot]

Dalen and I had a discussion like 2 weeks ago and things were positive, he's keen on improving the experience in RvR lakes and I believe once the tiny project we're working on is done, we should see more RvR adjustments. We are currently working on something minor for RvR which has been suggested last year.

The issues with RvR changes remain, as they impact the biggest segment of the community. Which means dozens of additional opinions, which some might be completely contradicting. Internally alone, there could be several opinions. Then, within the whole community, there could also be dozens of opinions. I have a plan to propose to Max regarding RvR changes, the process and the feedback in order to speed things up, but that will have to wait for next month.

Thanks for the open communication.
Reverting the change to objective based Renown is a healthy revert, but Im more interested in what the goal was you were trying to acchieve?
My guess would be, that with the hotfix to Field of Glory renown buff, you were trying to promote pvp & killing on BOs. But that alone is not enough for players to focus on the BOs. They need to have system-value during sieges to split the action out.

As for the small project you are working on, my guess would be its something like a Weekly RvR quest with rewards against focused around kills/pvp and not so much opjectives, because then you give a slight incentive for replayability for any chars to visit oRvR and fight for a bit in any zone that is active and not gated to like T2 Dwarf zones.

Im more than excited to hear there is finally some dev Focus on the main game of RoR, the oRvR! It's not an easy time as this playground litterlally involves everything from new to veteran, from soloer to zerger. So best of luck, it would be nice to hear what the vision is for what oRvR should be though. Will it just be a hamsterwheel you keep treading untill you are Geared, or does the Team want Best In Slot chars to still be playing oRvR after done gearing? (pvping not 100% opjective focused)

[NSKaneda]

Spoiler:

Dalen and I had a discussion like 2 weeks ago and things were positive, he's keen on improving the experience in RvR lakes and I believe once the tiny project we're working on is done, we should see more RvR adjustments. We are currently working on something minor for RvR which has been suggested last year.

The issues with RvR changes remain, as they impact the biggest segment of the community. Which means dozens of additional opinions, which some might be completely contradicting. Internally alone, there could be several opinions. Then, within the whole community, there could also be dozens of opinions. I have a plan to propose to Max regarding RvR changes, the process and the feedback in order to speed things up, but that will have to wait for next month.

Thanks for the open communication.
Reverting the change to objective based Renown is a healthy revert, but Im more interested in what the goal was you were trying to acchieve?
My guess would be, that with the hotfix to Field of Glory renown buff, you were trying to promote pvp & killing on BOs. But that alone is not enough for players to focus on the BOs. They need to have system-value during sieges to split the action out.

Just theory crafting here inspired by yesterday's KV battle but what if BOs were tied to keep ranking a bit more - for example:

• to rank up from zero to one star you need 2 BOs.

• To rank up from one to three stars you need 3 BOs.

• To rank up from three to four stars you need 4 BOs.

If you can't take the keep with two rams then you must control whole zone (4BOs) to rank up to 5*. On the plus side it'd thin out the zerg and promote more strategic manoeuvrers as well as out-of-focus zone roaming (aka ranking up two or more zones at the same time). It would certainly slow the campaign down significantly - which can be both good and bad thing. It would also make BOs really mean something. There certainly would be more skirmishes in the lakes and resources would be more valuable than ever (also something worth fighting for... and intercept for your own side maybe? Though xrealm would quickly frag it up).

I like your idea of weekly rvr task - slowing the campaign (and progress) down might be worth doing those weeklies for a bag of medallions (currency grade to be tied with character's renown rank).

I'm also glad that dev focus is coming back to rvr - let there be WAAAGH!

[Caduceus]

Personally I enjoy most of the weekend warfronts and they certainly motivate me to play SCs every week. Perhaps something along those lines could provide a solution for RvR. A focus on scoring kills would motivate a lot of folks to play and engage, I suspect.

If this route were to be taken, I would suggest the following:

- Balance rewards, so they are useful but skipping them isn't a big sacrifice. (Pretty much in the same way SCs work now).

- Make tasks that focus on engaging with the game in a way that is natural - Kills, taking zones, participating in fortress sieges being some obvious ones. Tasks that are very situational like getting kills on certain BOs or claiming certain zones are frustrating and time consuming to a lot of players, leading me to my next point:

- In this instance, drop the "no rewards for losing" philosophy - I think the main goal of a system like this is to promote participation, so reward players for participating.


On a sidenote, if I am reading between the lines correctly the "tiny project" Gamesbond is referring to is possibly not so tiny and related to the climax of the Greenskins vs. Dwarfs event chain.

Or maybe this is wishful thinking?

[Koryu199X]

A few things noted. Firstly meta, all classes need to be able to bring something to the table, but unfortunately lots of people don't know how to play them, a good example of this is from live, I regularly remember white lions complaining about the choppa moral that added extra damage and that they didn't have anything like that even though they had fighting as a pack. But this is the thing order players always play fotm which is why we only see 2 slayer, 2 kotbs and 2 wp in ranked and in normal sc we regularly see similar situations though there is usually a bit of variety. I agree with change to oil, however the not respawning in keep means that only organised wb can defend one now which is again squeezing PUG and soloers, not saying that a disorganized wb should win a siege. But they should only win if they fight back with the madness of death and the attackers are disorganized or play badly.