City as Endgame

[Starx]

Ive been back to WAR for about 3 months now and im starting to feel the burnout, that's normal for any game really and ive been here for I think over 5 years now on and off. But now the game at least resembles the final product from live sans LotD. Character progression is a strong motivator for most people, but it does run out, and when it does you either play alts infinitively or realize you are just playing the game as a gear treadmill. To the point, what also gives people a reason to play the game after they already maxed out is usually a competitive avenue which for the history of this game has pretty much just been 6v6, and well your either in that extremely small group and know how dead it is, or you think 6v6 is something you just que for.

As the thread title states city is endgame in WAR, but as it stands now its not really competitive at all, but its a shame because it easily could be. There are a good number of guilds and alliance that put a lot of work into their 24 mans, thats a lot of people to manage and comps to lock in and I suspect thats why we see a lot of people just doing 12 mans now. And what they are greeted with in city is more times than not an absolute stomp vs pugs. Maybe im just really unlucky but 9 out of the 10 times my guild has qued our group up for city we have just been fighting pugs, going through the motions and the only thing keeping some of us from falling asleep is trying to top dmg charts. And this isn't to say we are amazing by any stretch the one time we did fight another warband we lost, but here we are 9 cities later without any chance of a rematch ever.

Im not suggesting a separated premade/pug queing system, but if we could get a separate que that starts before the general que that requires you to have 24 people say for 2-5 minutes. So...

>10 minute setup just like before
>5 minute 24 man only que
>24 man que closes and regular que is open for 30 minutes

People that actually want to fight something other than a pug group can now choose to do so, and obviously that que would reward slightly more medals even if it was just +1 per stage so everyone got 3 more medals total I think that would be incentive enough. The general population que would also benefit from removing potentially really bad matchups of warbands as well and overall I think more people would have fun. From a development point of view you now have cities to look at as indicators of real balance rather then someone in a pug crying about destro being OP, or WL's being too strong when they are fighting the best order premade online. And lastly people that put all these hours into their characters gearing them out, and the leaders putting together 24 mans and organizing it will have a competitive outlet. If things continue as they are now I don't really see why im even bothering putting in the work on my characters because they aren't 6v6 viable and if city is just going to be us stomping pugs 90% of the time why even log in after I have sov?

[MoltenCoreMoshpit]

I like your suggestion

[Noslock]

Why even log after you have sov?
To make order cry and bath in their salty tears about how op is destro and blablablabla

[growill]

To be honest im in an awesome small guild with a very skilled leader and good synergy and i just play orvr with them and its so much fun. Loot then is also good but i play for the fun. Its just so satisfying flanking in and crashing enemy good guilds or managing to hold that funnel against 2x people or just clashing in open fields etc.

Ofc numbers don't ever match but hey, it's a war after all. Escaping incs and counting casualties is all part of it.

Ofc if people only xrealm and play for loot it would get boring quickly (not talking about you just saying)

[Scrilian]

Sadly original endgame stage 3 pve didn't make it. As a blob-zerger I actually enjoyed those much more than current interation.

[M0rw47h]

Why even log after you have sov?
To make order cry and bath in their salty tears about how op is destro and blablablabla

Ah, I see you're man of culture as well.

[Vayra]

Sadly original endgame stage 3 pve didn't make it. As a blob-zerger I actually enjoyed those much more than current interation.

Stage 2 and 3 as PvE was pretty good on live, yeah. Have some good memories from those fights when half the wb (or more) would lack wards.

[Serilian]

Yep, also think I’ve stage 2 and especially stage 3 was quite fun

[adamthelc]

I think the biggest problem with the end game in this game is also the thing that makes it cool.

Conceptually progressing the war effort through the zones until you eventually reach the king, kill them and get the best rewards is very cool.

The problem comes from the real world practicality of that endeavor.

So if I am playing a different game and am into raiding. I am going to know that when I am going to do the current raid I am going to be able to log in and do the content that interests me. Sure I might log in at other times gather, craft, mess around or whatever. But generally I can know that when I want to log in to do something I enjoy I am going to be able to do it.

Also logging in just to do that thing I currently enjoy is not discouraged or frowned upon.

So right now I really enjoy cities more than anything else, especially if its an evenish fight. I personally don't even care about the rewards I just like that format when its competitive.

With the unpredictable nature of getting to a city I dont get to do it that much and when I do I can't preprepare the group I want to do it. Something just has to be scrapped together from whats available. Sometimes you log on all the stars align and its really good, sometimes not as much.

So we have to play every progression level of the game to get to the part we want and you could say that defeating the other side is the endgame. OK, but if killing people you outnumber or are not as progressed as you isnt fun and doesn't give rewards you have any use for, that is not much of an endgame.

What can be done about that? Probably not a lot, the original design of the game just wasn't very well though out for what keeps endgame people engaged.

I have been mulling over an idea in my head where you could queue up for a city once per day without getting there just to do it, because you enjoy it or maybe they reward winners with 1 sov per stage win or something. It could help with overpopulated lake zones and give people who like that format an opportunity to play it, instead of having to do something they don't really want to do.

Now I dont expect that idea to be taken seriously and maybe it shouldn't be since it would kind of make actually getting to a city less of a cool event.

Basically end game in this game is goofy because there really isn't an endgame. There are just parts of the game you are more interested in for whatever reason.

[Panodil]

So when no pop in 24v24 premade we can q as normal?