Xrealming Has Got to Go

[ifirex]

I'm not sure what everyone's understanding of "xrealming" is but to me its when organized guilds influence rvr when changing sides. They might not all be playing 24 on one side then swap to the other. But gather when a call is heard.

In my experience I have seen Nightmare, Oath and famosa(sorry about spelling) be able to influence the state of rvr just by changing or joining one side. And 90% of the time they are joining the losing side because they are bored and want some action.

Players want to play rvr with strong leaders or guilds. So they will naturally change to play with their friends if they have to. No thought about bag chasing and all this stuff. Those players who swap to get a bag are not causing major influence in rvr in my opinion.

My conclusion playing in a "good wb" is the most fun and worth changing side or whatever. Give more tools to make pug wb better. Something like wow's raid warning would be a good start since most pug wb don't use voice chat. Some kind of ability for wb leader to mark a target and all wb members can see it.

[Sulorie]

I can get behind that Bombling. +1

Some bonus for loyal players is nice and good but people playing on 2 accounts will get them too, despite being able to change realms.

[Andamarine]

In medias res. The problem is made by the difference between rewards for the winning and losing side. And players motivation to progress as fast as possible.

Make non-instanced (except cities/scenarios where outcome is not decided by population) RvR rewards more even and problem will diminish. Make RvR with AAO 60-80+ rewards even and there will be no problem with joining winning side for free bags at all. To be honest in RVR zones from AAO 60 or 80+ the fate of the zone is sealed by the population distribution. And people on underdog side cannot change it even if they play like semi-gods they will still get 1/2 rewards. It is just a punishment for population distribution but as a player you can do nothing about it. Unless you join the winning side to avoid it.

Forts are a good example: Semi AFK Fort on Order side 100 vs 10 when I watch TV and press some heals/res while doing so, I got 2x 30 crests+white/green bag. Or I can go log my Destro and go defend, die there numerous times, play as my best as I can and still get third or even less reward as while plaing Order toon and watching TV. And since 90 % of the server population is playing both sides the problem is up. In RvR lake it is a little better as you can get a gold bag, but I still get better rewards for semi-AFK playing and joining winning side than what I can get for full comiting to underdog with 60+ AAO.

And any restrictions will not work at all as you cannot force anyone to play the way you want, It's players time they invest in the game and they will play it like they want or not play at all. If you use any restrictions system some players will just not log underdog realm at all and some will go play another games.

Making any realm loyality system is just a substitute for badly made reward system but with more dev workhours. But adjusing the reward system better will make players more loyal by themselves and will cost a lot less work to do.

[BardSmyth]

The game just needs to increase it's rewards for losing across all game modes. Enough said really.

But to expand on it for the sake of argument. I've said it a hundred times and a lot of people disagree with me and that's fine. However, too many people have this "boomer" mentality that you should not be rewarded for losing, winner takes all. "if you want to get rewards you need to fight harder etc". I think that's all well and good. I think this sentiment works perfectly in a single player game or games in which you as an individual have more impact. However, this game is an MMO and in order to win you have to rely completely on the competence of other people. It doesn't matter how well you play as an individual, all you can do at most is contribute to making it easier for your team to win however, YOU as an INDIVIDUAL CANNOT singlehandedly "win" in any of the different game modes currently no matter how skilled you are.

This could be for multiple reasons; your teammates are bad, you're heavily outnumbered, you're just heavily out geared or out skilled, enemy team has better setup etc... There are so many contributing factors that can lead to a loss as well as a win that you as an individual player have NO control over.

Why is this all important? Because it's a video game. If you're losing and you have no control over it, getting 0 rewards is like a hypothetical kick in the teeth. And most normal people who touch grass regularly make the sensible decision - rather than bashing your head against a wall repeatedly and getting NOTHING to show for it. People just log off completely and don't play the game.

- Getting 0 to nearly 0 rewards for getting stomped in SCs is crap and makes people either switch sides and Q on the other side, or log out.
- Getting 0 to nearly 0 rewards for losing a keep/fort defense is crap and makes people either switch side or log out.
- New players who get stomped in t1-t3 SCs and barely get any xp or rewards is crap and makes people log out.

Like 90% of the player base has toons on both sides. Xrealming is not the problem. It's the motivations behind what makes MOST people play the game, the PvP and the progression and reward systems tied to it is what is causing these problems with the game. So please stop with this xrealming scapegoat.

EDIT: The game currently, creates a sense of "wasted time" for the losing side. You get no rewards or basically no rewards for losing in both SCs and open RvR. This has led to the following mentality:

"It's a waste of time to Q SCs when we're losing so I just won't bother"
"It's a waste of time to defend fort so I just won't bother"
"It's a waste of time to defend this keep so I just won't bother"

If players were given bigger rewards for losing (doesn't have to be massive, but at least double what you currently get). It would keep players motivated to continue to play. I think players would be more willing to defend a fort even if they knew they would lose if they were rewarded for it. I know this concept is hard to grasp for some people, and there are others out there who just disagree with this sentiment because "losers shouldn't get participation medals or whatever". However, what these "better participation medals" inevitably will do, is entice more people to participate in content regardless of win or loss, which will have a positive knock on effect of just having more people playing the content because it's not a complete waste of their time.

Sorry for the long post, but just my 2cents

[Andamarine]

Just one example from this weekend:

First night: I joined with my BG only wb on Desto side which was led by Mijal. 12-18 ppl for the most time. Almost all were on discord. With some luck we killed some ppl in first zone, we got wiped sever times when moving around keep under siege in the second zone. Almost every action is tricky and every single mistake you made is quickly punished by 2-3 order warbands in the area. And after 2-3 wipes ppl just starting to log off. But with some luck I got like 100+ crests and some bags and thanks to AAO renown bonus made almost one renown rank.

But nothing from it is guaranteed when playing underdog. You can die several times just trying to get one box to WC with bad luck and get nothing at all.

Second night: I joined with my WP warband led by Nesi. We took 6-7 zones (including 2 PvE forts) in 4 hours. Most were with 240-400 AAO for Destro. There was like one decent fight in 4 hours but considering the mumbers the outcome was predicable. And yes it was Mijals WB and we wiped them.I was sorry about it because I want them to have fun in this game too, but it is what it is. After it, there was no destro at all for a few hours, except for some WEs trying to kill peaple running boxes.

I got around 400 crests+6 bags and made 1.5 renown rank with my WP. And all of it was almost guaranteed I havent died a single time. All without discord needed and in several times I was even AFK on toilet or making a coffee.


Now with this experience please help me to choose which side should I play next weekend. Thank you. I can not decide myself.

[Scottx125]

I can get behind that Bombling. +1

Some bonus for loyal players is nice and good but people playing on 2 accounts will get them too, despite being able to change realms.

Yeah, there should be a way to identify if people have multiple accounts. Maybe utilise the launcher to detect if 2 different logins have been used.

[Acidic]

Just one example from this weekend:

First night: I joined with my BG only wb on Desto side which was led by Mijal. 12-18 ppl for the most time. Almost all were on discord. With some luck we killed some ppl in first zone, we got wiped sever times when moving around keep under siege in the second zone. Almost every action is tricky and every single mistake you made is quickly punished by 2-3 order warbands in the area. And after 2-3 wipes ppl just starting to log off. But with some luck I got like 100+ crests and some bags and thanks to AAO renown bonus made almost one renown rank.

But nothing from it is guaranteed when playing underdog. You can die several times just trying to get one box to WC with bad luck and get nothing at all.

Second night: I joined with my WP warband led by Nesi. We took 6-7 zones (including 2 PvE forts) in 4 hours. Most were with 240-400 AAO for Destro. There was like one decent fight in 4 hours but considering the mumbers the outcome was predicable. And yes it was Mijals WB and we wiped them.I was sorry about it because I want them to have fun in this game too, but it is what it is. After it, there was no destro at all for a few hours, except for some WEs trying to kill peaple running boxes.

I got around 400 crests+6 bags and made 1.5 renown rank with my WP. And all of it was almost guaranteed I havent died a single time. All without discord needed and in several times I was even AFK on toilet or making a coffee.


Now with this experience please help me to choose which side should I play next weekend. Thank you. I can not decide myself.

Here is the real problem in my opinion.
Order currently run blobbed warbands even when they heavily outnumber the enemy.
There is no negative effect in the game for just blobbing, the ego guilds protect their k/d numbers and rewards are good.
With the boost of rr to warband kills (in general a good change) the blob rewards are good.

Should enforce a version (but harder) of blobbing penalty in land of the dead

We hear order saying it’s destro blobbing but we had a no blob agreement that a certain order guild got it removed by stating they would not adhere to not blobbing.

[Andamarine]

The game just needs to increase it's rewards for losing across all game modes. Enough said really.

But to expand on it for the sake of argument. I've said it a hundred times and a lot of people disagree with me and that's fine. However, too many people have this "boomer" mentality that you should not be rewarded for losing, winner takes all.

You can have different PvP systems. I play a PvP sandbox with full loot. It is about spaceships. And the penalty for loosing can be ultimate. Like loosing thousands of workhours in last few years. Biggest ships costs several thousands USD and you can loose it with one missclick on jump button. There were wars that lasted a few years and were fought 24/7. And biggest alliances can form and field 2-6 fleets of 256 players in different timezones.

But the actual fighting is not fun at all. Most common strategy of winning the war is to bore enemy to death so some of them stop to log in. Its called "Helldunks or blueballs" and it means to bore enemy with long structure grind (like PvDoor in RoR] while denying him any good fights until signicant number of the enemy stops to play the game. Then you engage in combat with superior numbers in superior ships and stomps him several times in a row with minimal losses. It can take months of waiting but it is very efective. And it is mostly about forming fleets and waiting and waiting while you play another games with your friends on mumble/TS. 95 % of "fights" are decided without fights even before enemy undocks by directors based on the informations from spies about enemy numbers and their fleet doctrines.

My point is the more hardcore and more punishing PvP system is then less good fights it generates. Also it has a direct impact on the player retention rate. Like more time it takes to recover from the loss and catch up then more players will leave the game. The spaceship game has retention rate about 4 % after 30 days, so 96 % of new players leave the game after first month of playing.

[BardSmyth]

The game just needs to increase it's rewards for losing across all game modes. Enough said really.

But to expand on it for the sake of argument. I've said it a hundred times and a lot of people disagree with me and that's fine. However, too many people have this "boomer" mentality that you should not be rewarded for losing, winner takes all.

You can have different PvP systems. I play a PvP sandbox with full loot. It is about spaceships. And the penalty for loosing can be ultimate. Like loosing thousands of workhours in last few years. Biggest ships costs several thousands USD and you can loose it with one missclick on jump button. There were wars that lasted a few years and were fought 24/7. And biggest alliances can form and field 2-6 fleets of 256 players in different timezones.

But the actual fighting is not fun at all. Most common strategy of winning the war is to bore enemy to death so some of them stop to log in. Its called "Helldunks or blueballs" and it means to bore enemy with long structure grind (like PvDoor in RoR] while denying him any good fights until signicant number of the enemy stops to play the game. Then you engage in combat with superior numbers in superior ships and stomps him several times in a row with minimal losses. It can take months of waiting but it is very efective. And it is mostly about forming fleets and waiting and waiting while you play another games with your friends on mumble/TS. 95 % of "fights" are decided without fights even before enemy undocks by directors based on the informations from spies about enemy numbers and their fleet doctrines.

My point is the more hardcore and more punishing PvP system is then less good fights it generates. Also it has a direct impact on the player retention rate. Like more time it takes to recover from the loss and catch up then more players will leave the game. The spaceship game has retention rate about 4 % after 30 days, so 96 % of new players leave the game after first month of playing.

I think everything you've posted is perfectly valid. I could deffo see this being an issue amongst the players who only care about winning and people can be pretty degenerate when it comes to video games. People will stoop to exploiting every possible scenario that nets them a win and will push the line right up until they're punished for it by the actual devs. So I think it's valid to suggest that maybe even some RoR players would play this way. Hell, I've even played this way.

HOWEVER, I also think it's really not that deep either. I think a lot of people just don't log in because the game wastes your time for losing. If that's deliberate design that's fine, the game is designed a certain way and if that doesn't appeal to someone then just don't play. But we cannot deny that the current pop since the 2020 drop off is tragic, ESPECIALLY during NA hours and the PvDoor / switching to the winning sides is just the side effect of the crap rewards in my honest opinion. What's the point of playing for 3 hours and getting nothing in comparison to Pvdooring for 3 hours. It's either that or just log off and don't play the game.

[tvbrowntown]

So how about a Realm-lotalty system (inspiration from several DaoC freeshard servers also facing realmlockouts and crossrealming)
The longer you are logged into one realm and being RvR flagged (afk in lake abuse potential but atleast can be killed then vs just being logged in) you accumulate loyalty to the realm you are on.
Loyalty will give enhanced rewards the more you have on a scale from 1-100%.
If you do log to the other realm and gets rvr flagged in orvr or sc/city, you will rapidly decrease your loyalty on the other realm
Then its just a matter of making loyalty rewards appealing enough that people dont go chase empty keep bag and instead stay and fight uphill battle for your realm no matter the odds.

While this could be a really good idea it will just shift the problem... what will happen is, that simply everyone willing to xrealm, just have one destruction and one order account and just logs only onto that realm -> 100% loyalty 0% disadvantage. We need a more dynamic system..


I mostly play on one realm, but i'm not against cross realming... The biggest issue with changing sides is the problem of people "win team joining"... To me only solutions for such stuff is to introduce incentives to participate and stay on the side where they started or if the other side is having a hard time, allow (tbh the only really allowed case) switch (Join the underdog side).

Things i can think of to counter PvDooring:

• Instead of AAO per Zone, introduce a second AAO, for global T4 State. The maximum positive affect is taken. Zone A has 100% AAO and Population AAO is 120%, every active Zone has now atleast 120%.
• Give the underdog side more tools:
  1) During a Siege make the lord more powerful
  2) Give Players a Buff like Champ Buff in City(Maybe not Damage to avoid abuses).
  3) If AAO in a Zone reaches >60-80% A Keep lord is only attackable if all BOs are under realm control -> This gives the losing side a carrot .

These are excellent ideas but 3 can be gamed if the underdog zergs those BOs anyways. Might make it each BO allows 25% damage on boss. zero BOs = 0 dmg, 1 BO = 25%, 2 = 50%, 3 = 75%, etc.

Honestly, the structure of the RVR Lakes progression should be closer to that of a MOBA than it is now. It games itself and the players help push it along in different ways.