Why punish PvP-players and reward winning-team-joiners?

[Tyrodan]

Good evening gits and gentlemen,

this is purely for venting, but maybe we can brainstorm some solutions to the ever growing problematic of PvDoor. This topic used to be relevant only during late NA - maybe around 2am to 6am servertime. But during the last year it has spread to even most of the day with only EU prime / early NA kind of having balanced populations.

Lately not even EU prime is save from the PvDoor zergers anymore. Today we had zones with continuously 100+ % aao for destro, chaos wastes even going up to 180%, a fort during prime with 57 vs 167 players + 1wb waiting in the q. Yesterday it was destrozerg, tomorrow it will probably be destrozerg again.

Why are you allowing this? Why are you wasting the time of so many PvP-players, that are just looking for PvP fights by letting one faction swarm the other like that? Why are PvDoor-players and winning team joiners rewarded with bags and crests? Why are they not discouraged by locking the zone for the overpopulated side once a certain absolute population is reached and one faction has 60% aao? That is more than enough to take a keep. If you can not take a keep with that much aao on the enemy side you simply don't deserve it, because your enemy is better.

The absolute majority of the server has characters on both sides and yet here we are, people log in on the side that is massively overpopulated and refuse to switch sides for the whole evening. I'm genuinely tired of seeing more and more of my friends leaving ror for games with real PvP because it's more and more just one side zerging the other by sheer numbers.

For years the team was told that aao is not enough to encourage balanced populations and PvDooring taking up more time of the day is a testament to this. So please up your game-design and either give proper rewards for the people that fight for the underpopulated side or start punishing the lazy winning-team-joiners severely, because the issue won't solve itself and it is taking a toll on the server population.

[Zxul]

What exactly convinced you that the absolute majority of the server has characters on both sides? No order toons here for example, on live or in ror.

[wonshot]

I personally think there are three underlying issues involved in this outcome.

a) Progression and AAO
AAO is good for progressing faster if you can outorganize the enemy outnumbering side, players and guilds have been swapping to the underdog side for years on RoR. There is the bonus exp/rp buff you get if you logged from a flagged outnumbering toon to the outnumbered realm and flag up, 50% bonus. Stacking with Potion of Acclaim and AAO. But why are more people not doing it then(?)

b) tools to be succesful when outnumbered
It is a fine line to allow for smaller forces to defeat a bigger force.
But right now the main ways to play outnumbered is to bunker up inside a funnel possiton, or gank the supplylines (tails) of the bigger groups roaming around.
There are barely any tools available or left, for you to deal with being outnumbered. AAO helps you progress, but you need to create the succes yourself.

c) incentive
Right now the game has had its endgame best in slot armor sets for about 3-4 years and there are no new gears to grind for the veterans. Meaning that the messurement of succes has become screenshots of how many kills vs deaths you can accumulate, doesnt matter how you get the kill. A 50vs2 kill, still counts as BiS toons doesnt need renown or crests.

I have never, nor will I belived in the winnerjoining crossrealming argument. I dont think anyone who is dying in the same zone is logging over just to stand afk watching other people ram, beating on the keeplord and getting 200rp tick. I think its more of a case of the realm who is surviving, getting a couple kills are playing longer and more people who log on stay logged on. And that creates the momentumswings in cases where zone-attendance suddenly switches. Mixed with warbandleaders logging out and suddenly its -24 players on one side.

What the game kinda needs is incentive to spread out, to chase gear and play the objectives again and not just be a kill-succes-messurement contest no matter the cost, because the cost is the fun and population honestly. Power scaling with AAO would probably never work, but more tools to dealing with being outnumbered could potentially help with people wanting to play the aao side.

Killboard & Scenario summery window is currently the endgame of RoR. A game that is built up to be a Realm Campaign against the enemy realm contesting and capturing territory from eachother, we need to go back to the roots and put the "care" back into the foundation of the game.

[Morradin]

What exactly convinced you that the absolute majority of the server has characters on both sides? No order toons here for example, on live or in ror.

The OP did say "majority". That means "most". You, who do not, are in the minority. OP was right

What the game kinda needs is incentive to spread out, to chase gear and play the objectives again and not just be a kill-succes-messurement contest no matter the cost, because the cost is the fun and population honestly. Power scaling with AAO would probably never work, but more tools to dealing with being outnumbered could potentially help with people wanting to play the aao side.

Killboard & Scenario summery window is currently the endgame of RoR. A game that is built up to be a Realm Campaign against the enemy realm contesting and capturing territory from eachother, we need to go back to the roots and put the "care" back into the foundation of the game.

Agree with most of what you said, but Gear is capped, and SHOULD stay capped. Maybe introduce more hybrid sets, but nothing more powerful than what we have at the moment. The Power Gap is a real thing, and devs have done a good job of mainly avoiding it.

[shoelessHN]

Not playing both sides is like missing half the game. There's very few (long-term players) that don't have characters on both sides.

And the OP is correct, the game has rewarded swapping to the winning side for years.

Forts for instance, are pointless to defend and still give rewards for a 100vs20 player win. Why would anyone try to defend that? The contribution nerf years ago made pvdoor a garbage grind but it is still better than trying to defend when you have zero chance.

[Zxul]

What exactly convinced you that the absolute majority of the server has characters on both sides? No order toons here for example, on live or in ror.

The OP did say "majority". That means "most". You, who do not, are in the minority. OP was right

And you base it- on what exactly? Since I don't remember any kind of survey asking players if they play one side, or both.

[Tyrodan]

What exactly convinced you that the absolute majority of the server has characters on both sides? No order toons here for example, on live or in ror.

The OP did say "majority". That means "most". You, who do not, are in the minority. OP was right

And you base it- on what exactly? Since I don't remember any kind of survey asking players if they play one side, or both.

It's true that I don't have any kind of survey or statistics at hand for this and it's purely based on my personal experience, playing with both "tryhardy" as well as very casual players over the course of several years. That being said: I don't begrudge anyone that disagrees with this premise and discards this post as nonsense.

[Lion1986]

a) Progression and AAO
AAO is good for progressing faster if you can outorganize the enemy outnumbering side, players and guilds have been swapping to the underdog side for years on RoR. There is the bonus exp/rp buff you get if you logged from a flagged outnumbering toon to the outnumbered realm and flag up, 50% bonus. Stacking with Potion of Acclaim and AAO. But why are more people not doing it then(?)

300% this. Even if you lose zone, each kill you manage to get is beefier. a possible solution to avoid mid swap, apart the already in place lockout, would be to make such lockout RVR only but daily [you can log your other faction toon and scenario/pve/professions but not joining rvr]

c) incentive
Right now the game has had its endgame best in slot armor sets for about 3-4 years and there are no new gears to grind for the veterans. Meaning that the messurement of succes has become screenshots of how many kills vs deaths you can accumulate, doesnt matter how you get the kill. A 50vs2 kill, still counts as BiS toons doesnt need renown or crests.

this is a problem of many private servers mmo. Once you arrived to the top the only solution you got is reroll new toon or simply enjoy a sandbox experience with top gear (example to many wow private servers)

Killboard & Scenario summery window is currently the endgame of RoR. A game that is built up to be a Realm Campaign against the enemy realm contesting and capturing territory from eachother, we need to go back to the roots and put the "care" back into the foundation of the game.

I 100% agree on this point.

[Garamore]

We used to have wb leads that would spend time working out what side needed support to try to get on the underdog side. Now there are more guild leaders that play set sides on set days. This makes for bigger imbalances if one or 2 of those are on holiday. There were 0 org wb leaders out on destro last night as an example.

[Paxsanarion]

I personally think there are three underlying issues involved in this outcome.

a) Progression and AAO
AAO is good for progressing faster if you can outorganize the enemy outnumbering side, players and guilds have been swapping to the underdog side for years on RoR. There is the bonus exp/rp buff you get if you logged from a flagged outnumbering toon to the outnumbered realm and flag up, 50% bonus. Stacking with Potion of Acclaim and AAO. But why are more people not doing it then(?)

b) tools to be succesful when outnumbered
It is a fine line to allow for smaller forces to defeat a bigger force.
But right now the main ways to play outnumbered is to bunker up inside a funnel possiton, or gank the supplylines (tails) of the bigger groups roaming around.
There are barely any tools available or left, for you to deal with being outnumbered. AAO helps you progress, but you need to create the succes yourself.

c) incentive
Right now the game has had its endgame best in slot armor sets for about 3-4 years and there are no new gears to grind for the veterans. Meaning that the messurement of succes has become screenshots of how many kills vs deaths you can accumulate, doesnt matter how you get the kill. A 50vs2 kill, still counts as BiS toons doesnt need renown or crests.

I have never, nor will I belived in the winnerjoining crossrealming argument. I dont think anyone who is dying in the same zone is logging over just to stand afk watching other people ram, beating on the keeplord and getting 200rp tick. I think its more of a case of the realm who is surviving, getting a couple kills are playing longer and more people who log on stay logged on. And that creates the momentumswings in cases where zone-attendance suddenly switches. Mixed with warbandleaders logging out and suddenly its -24 players on one side.

What the game kinda needs is incentive to spread out, to chase gear and play the objectives again and not just be a kill-succes-messurement contest no matter the cost, because the cost is the fun and population honestly. Power scaling with AAO would probably never work, but more tools to dealing with being outnumbered could potentially help with people wanting to play the aao side.

Killboard & Scenario summery window is currently the endgame of RoR. A game that is built up to be a Realm Campaign against the enemy realm contesting and capturing territory from eachother, we need to go back to the roots and put the "care" back into the foundation of the game.

Agree 100% Can we please get back to the campaign and strategy portion of the game rather than being so concerned with how many kills a person racks up? If this is a team game as many say then let’s make it about the team and not the individual. For some reason the game is being shaped to esport and scenarios focusing on kill count rather than the war between the factions. So many great ideas have been put forth to be tried…..lets try them.