Return of Reckoning

Hello all,


This post is inspired by a great experience in Ostland yesterday where the forces of Order and Destruction went toe to toe for hours, resulting in epic battles and thousands of kills on either side. While the Blood God is never satiated, he certainly must've been pleased by this tribute of skulls.

It once again reminded me how crazy and unique the experience is that Return of Reckoning provides, especially when it comes to battles on a scale like this.

Now here's my idea to make this a stronger feature in the game:




Battle Sites



Mechanism

Whenever a zone has X amount of players, X amount of kills and between than 0%-20% AAO, the zone is marked as a battle site. This is checked and updated every 30 minutes.

Battle sites are divided into scales (Skirmish and Battle) depending on the amount of players in the zone,
and tiers (Minor, Major, Huge, Epic, etc.) depending on the amount of kills in the zone.


For example:

<Minor Skirmish>: Between 50 - 200 players in the zone, between 0% - 20% AAO and at least 200 kills in the last 30 minutes.
<Major Skirmish>: Between 50 - 200 players in the zone, between 0% - 20% AAO and at least 500 kills in the last 30 minutes.

<Minor Battle>: Between 200 - 400 players in the zone, between 0% - 20% AAO, and at least 400 kills in the last 30 minutes.
<Major Battle>: Between 200 - 400 players in the zone, between 0% - 20% AAO, and at least 1200 kills in the last 30 minutes.

<Huge Battle>: More than 400 players in the zone, between 0% - 20% AAO, and at least 1200 kills in the last 30 minutes.
<Epic Battle>: More than 400 players in the zone, between 0% - 20% AAO, and at least 2000 kills in the last 30 minutes.


Since player numbers and AAO might fluctuate the system could simply take the numbers at the moment of the update and combine it with the amount of kills in the last 30 minutes to determine whether a battle site is formed.

It might also be possible to ignore the amount of players in the zone, and only take into account AAO and kills, since the number of kills tends to correlate to the number of players.



Rewards

Participating in Skirmishes should yield minor increases to renown gained, which are still significant enough to encourage players to seek out the enemy, engage and hopefully escalate the battle.
For example participating in a Minor Skirmish could yield +25% more renown, and a Major Skirmish +50% more.


Battles are where the rewards start getting properly juicy. Participating in Minor Battles should yield +100% renown, and Major Battles +150% renown. Players will also receive double the amount of war crests for kills. There could also be bag roll bonuses for flipping keeps during the time a zone is marked as a battle site.


In Huge and Epic battles the renown gained is increased to 200% and 300% respectively, and players receive triple the amount of war crests for kills.

Further, to commemorate these rare bloodbaths participants could be given a special kind of token that offers access to some unique cosmetic rewards, like dyes, trophies, titles, you name it. The kind of things that will keep players of both low and high renown interested.



Purpose

The main purpose of this feature is to provide players with strong incentives to fight each other tooth and nail in close fights.

Instead of punishing overcrowding on one side with renown penalties, it rewards players for doing the opposite.
Instead of zones being locked in a bloody stalemate being seen as a negative, unrewarding tragedy, it becomes an opportunity for something epic.
And instead of players getting discouraged from engaging with the enemy after a defeat, it encourages them to keep trying, since their sacrifice of blood may lead to more blessings from the God of War. After all, Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, as long as it does.

Additionally, it increases player immersion by making the battlefield react to their actions and reward them accordingly. These kinds of massive engagements already have a way of cementing themselves into the minds of players as some of the best experiences they have while playing Return of Reckoning. This feature would further reinforce this, and even reward them with special mementos. By giving players cosmetic rewards that are linked to their realm (like medals or titles) it could function to strengthen realm identity.



Additional features

When battles escalate to epic proportions (400 players+), their dynamics change dramatically.

Additional features could be added that facilitate battles of this scale.

For example, the use of guild banners in could be encouraged in these situations by doubling their effectiveness. This fits the concept, since guilds would want to let their banners fly for all to see during epic battles.




Finally, this is an initial draft of the idea and I'm interested in hearing your thoughts and feedback in the comments.

Thank you for reading,

Are you just encouraging more mindless blob v blob warcamp pushing?

I think the idea itself is good, just players will only blob even more, for more zergfest ; for some it's fun, for many others it's just a waste of time and/or an incentive to quit playing altogether... :/

I'd rather see small fights and different kinds of engagments than bloodbath everytime, especially since it would be only for the sake of renown/crest faster gain and not for fun.


Example : I roamed yesterday in empty Avelorn with a friend (SnB KotBS + aSW duo) ; we had a blast engaging a "mirrored duo" (2H BG + WE) twice, and fought them with everything we had, sweating, dancing around to find the fault in the armor, using all our skills and potions trying to beat a similar opposing force, to finally win (over the wire) twice with 10% remaining HP each.

Nobody could have told how this encounter would have ended, until the end.

That for those pure adrenalin moments me and my mates are playing this game.
Not to swarm onto mindless zerg accumulating bodycount ; it's rewarding for nobody since this gameplay is basically taking the most AoE meta classes you can stack and hitting same three buttons.

Nothing really engaging, nor memorable in a zergfest. Only boring forest of arms swagging in the air, everywhere.

Gice us 2v2, give us 6v6, 12v12. Something more skillfull than boring blobs over warcamp spawns.

I know, there are scenarios too, but judging the average level of players in those, it's really not the same, not to mention it's timed matches on symmetric and/or small maps.
We also cannot find the thrill of stumbling onto another small group in scenario, with the incertainty of who will show, when and where.

That's this feeling making the RvR to us.
The solution of encouraging big blobs AND rewarding them is not the RoR experience me and my friends are seeking for, but who knows ? We could be a vast minority amongst the zergfest addicts... :p

It's more a problem of an uninteresting RvR Campaign Mechanic.
Wait for 2* keep. Get ram, siege, done. Lets be real, running supplies is pretty dull. More entertaining to run from warcamp to warcamp killing peeps.

Also, need more incentives to get people into Guilds and Group with them. I know when I tried to double from 6-8 active players a few years ago to 12-14 active players it was nigh impossible to get people interested.

This would just lead to people ignoring the other zone completely and just Zerg in one.
Definitely not what the game needs.

Fenris78 wrote: Fri Oct 07, 2022 8:47 am

I think the idea itself is good, just players will only blob even more, for more zergfest ;

I personally don't think this change would encourage blobbing. "Blobbing" or "zerging" is a natural product of the amount of players that are in the game at any given time.

It does encourage players to concentrate more on a certain zone, and within that zone they will play to whatever style they prefer.

Lithenir wrote: Fri Oct 07, 2022 9:14 am

This would just lead to people ignoring the other zone completely and just Zerg in one.

This is already the case, and the game has gravitated towards it by closing the third RvR zone. The campaign doesn't provide that much incentive to spread out over the zones, and it has always been like that. I think there is nothing inherently wrong with that. The zones are large enough to facilitate different playstyles.

Of course, players who are interested in a quieter setting are in no way forced to play in the populated zone.

In the end, I think the goal should be to bring as many people together as possible, and encourage them to engage and play the game.

Lileldys wrote: Fri Oct 07, 2022 9:09 am

It's more a problem of an uninteresting RvR Campaign Mechanic.
Wait for 2* keep. Get ram, siege, done. Lets be real, running supplies is pretty dull. More entertaining to run from warcamp to warcamp killing peeps.

I think this is an important bit.

In my opinion, when there are so many people online it is better to get them together and encourage them to engage with each other in roughly equal fights. Currently that is seen as a "stalemate", because no bag rewards, but it should be the preferred situation! The larger the fights get, the more people should feel encouraged to participate.

And what is the alternative? When there are so many players online, do we want them instead to gravitate towards the winning side and start landsliding without much good fights going on?
Do we want players to avoid fights and wait in keeps to be sieged, where hundreds of players stand around waiting for the doors to go down, before cramming themselves through the smallest choke possible? Do we want warbands to dance around zones in an attempt to avoid each other or break the stalemate by lighting sieges of empty keeps?

In my opinion, none of these options truly are in the spirit of the RvR, nor do they generally produce interesting PvP situations.


Good fights are what most players are interested in, and you get those fights when players are encouraged to engage on roughly equal terms.


It is true that the fighting would gravitate towards larger fights, but if we are honest we can't rightly say that the current situation has been encouraging a flourishing 6v6 or 12v12 scene in RvR. If anything well-populated zones produce target-rich environments in which these smaller groups may find success - and they get to contribute to and benefit from the battle site mechanic aswell!

Could just change it so that kills add to the zone levelling.

I'd also get rid of the 3* means you cant get in the back door stuff as makes it too hard to take a keep in prime time and the suggested change will lead to higher * keeps

I'd give 2 rams at 3 star, 3 at 4 star and 4 at 5 star. Also needs a mechanic to limit funnel damage or better yet give the attacking side something to blast through it better as the * rating goes up so its possible to take a keep in primetime (3 org wbs stacked in a keep means no one is taking it).

This makes sitting in keeps waiting for a siege so you can farm a waste of time which leads to more rvr for all.

One good addition would be to make rvr event every week from friday to sunday midnight and move weekly scenario event from monday to friday
People play scenarios more during work days as its quick in and out fight and most cant spend more than 1 or 2 hours ingame
Rvr is strongest during weekend from friday to sunday

bump

we need a change to flag meccanic to encourage stay spread the more you can 100% of time while ranking and not more renown increase for zerg vs zerg.