[Suggestion] Battlefield Objectives

[Culexus]

Overhaul - Battlefield Objectives (BO)

Issue I: Poor Rewards for BOs
The rewards for capturing BOs or running supply boxes are significantly lower than rewards from player kills.

Suggestion:

- Greatly increase the renown, experience, and influence rewards for capturing BOs.
- Successfully capturing a BO should grant 1 Warcrest.
- Players killed near a BO should drop 1 extra Warcrest.

Supply Box Overhaul:

Players can carry up to 5 supply boxes.
Picking up a new box resets the 6-minute timer.
Rewards scale with the number of boxes turned in:

1 box: 500 RP + 1 Warcrest
2 boxes: 1,100 RP + 2 Warcrests
3 boxes: 1,650 RP + 3 Warcrests
4 boxes: 2,200 RP + 4 Warcrests
5 boxes: 2,750 RP + 5 Warcrests

New Feature: War Scrap (Enemy Supplies)

- Dropped enemy supplies can be collected as "War Scrap" (stack up to 5, same timer).
- Turn in at any friendly BO for RP/XP/Influence and 1 Warcrest per scrap.
- War scrap does not contribute to keep leveling.

The problem with any changes to RvR that provide rewards is that the player base will min/max them to obtain the maximum reward with the minimal effort.

If the above system were introduced, I guarantee you players would switch from zerging zones to capture keeps, to zerging zones to farm BOs. Keeps would then only be captured when a keep has been levelled to 4*, or more likely, cap the zone with a 5* keep to max the BO farming. There's no incentive to take a keep when a player can farm BOs for more renown and crests. The enemy realm would do the same thing in whatever zone the zerg isn't, as the best way to max rewards with minimal effort is for both sides to avoid fights as much as possible.

People talk a lot about rewards as an incentive to direct player behaviour, and this is true, but rarely is effort taken into consideration as a factor in player behaviour. Players will happily accept a lesser reward that requires little effort to obtain over a greater reward that requires more effort. It's why AAO doesn't work as an incentive and players keep solo queuing in scenarios when they're full of premade groups. The rewards are greater for switching to the side with AAO or joining a group for scenarios, but it requires more effort than joining the zerg or queuing solo, so players don't do it.

BOs interacting with the zone capture in some way is fine. Put extra rewards on them and it will be abused.

[saupreusse]

Some great suggestions here!
I don't think tying combat buffs (cannons, oil, etc) to BOs is a good idea because it'll make it much more difficult to lock zones when numbers are relatively even. Doubly so when it's pug vs pug. We already have a problem with it being extremely difficult to siege in this game with close to even numbers, so that zones stay contested for hours at a time if there are good fights. Rewards are highly tied to zone locks for many pugs because they aren't getting many kills without a numbers advantage--and a numbers advantage dilutes the rewards for those kills. Since rewards are highly tied to zone locks, this also contributes to blobbing because it incentivizes people to crossrealm to earn rewards.

I agree, when the numbers are even it is too hard to take keeps.
Now I have a solution to this problem, but I don't know if it is yet technically possible to implement, yet:
Add Siege Towers to the game. They would add another entry for attackers into the keeps and could break stalemate keep sieges.

What we need are game mechanic and incentivization structures that reward players for switching to the underdog side. Currently, the only reason to crossrealm to the losing side is for AAO. However, AAO fails as incentivization for two reasons. First, AAO doesn't grant a significant increase to crest drops. Second, organized groups generally receive more rewards (crests) by fighting on the blobbing side either by blob surfing or farming pugs while the blob is in the keep sieging.

Yes, tying crest drops to AAO is a good idea. I would suggest to increase drops for the outnumbered side, but leaving them as is for the side with the bigger pop.
I am not a fan of punishing players with reduced crest drops simply because they chose to play on the higher pop realm.

I think your ideas about incentivization are a productive approach to splitting up blobs, but might need some tweaks to avoid perverse incentives. For example, with your crest reward for BOs, I could imagine a situation where blobs just nascar around RvR capping BOs to get everyone in the blob a crest, especially in smaller zones like Avelorn & Saphery.

BOs interacting with the zone capture in some way is fine. Put extra rewards on them and it will be abused.

Yes, this may be the case. If there was a lock timer introduced to BOs this could be counteracted.
In practice I believe it would not change much, because people are already running around in circles capping BOs. At least now they get something out of it.
Also, this would not be a problem if there was a campaign goal. Taking a zone should have more meaning. Right now it doesn't because city is at a timed slot and there are no rewards in the city, that would make it worth doing.
Tl;dr: the solution to nascar can't be solved solely by my BO design. Nascar in itself would be the result of a missing campaign goal where people don't care about taking zones/advancing the campaign.