Saving RoR’s End Game and Ranked Scenarios

[LucusAurelius]

Open RvR

Issue: Open RvR is very rewarding up until you hit the Invader/Sovereign gear level. The incentive at this level becomes fort and city logging to optimize medallion reward for time investment. We’re all adults and we have lives, jobs and families and we want to maximize our playtime reward, but this often leads to low sever pops during times that forts and cities are not active.
Solution: The Invader and Sovereign rewards from RvR bags is a great start, but it needs to go even further. Blue bags 1 medallion, Purple bags 2 medallions, and Gold bags should be 1 medallion + 1 medallion for every level of your faction's city. A 5 star city would reward 6 Invader/Sovereign medallions.
Reasoning: The time that cities occur is random, and that keeps it exciting and dynamic. But people should always feel encouraged to play and maximize participation at all hours of the day. Whether NA or EU, your time spent in ORvR should feel rewarding and meaningful, even at the final stages of gear progression.

Issue: AFKing at forts and ORvR keeps
Solution: Players should be required to participate for rewards, and AFK timers in open rvr and forts should be shortened if they can be, or players need to be involved in X number of kills to be eligible for the SWAG medallion reward at the end.
Reasoning: For as long as I have been playing there has been a portion of the player population in forts and ORvR that sit idle and AFK, while others wait in queue for a fort they would actively participate in. This isn’t an idle phone game and should not incentive people to “sit” through content just for a reward payout.

Issue: Throwing Forts and Zones to farm your faction’s City
Solution: Keeping with the idea above for Inv/Sov medallion payouts from Gold bags being linked to your City’s star level, defending your faction’s fort should reward you with an equivalent Sovereign medallion reward equal to your cities star ranking for successfully defending your fort. While attackers should always be incentivized to win the fort for a flat 3 Sovereign medallion payout.
Reasoning: Defending your server’s fort should feel like the second most important objective next to defending your capital city. Players should feel like the fort has high stakes to win. Losing the Fort and risking your capital city being attacked means you will be losing your city’s ranking and your bonus from ORvR bags will be lost.

City Instances

Issue: No incentive for Attacker vs 1 Star City
Solution: Both factions should feel like reaching the city is rewarding for their side and a decisive blow to their opposition. Attackers should be rewarded a flat 2 Inv/Sov medallions per stage regardless of the city’s rank. While defenders receive a flat 1 medallion per stage regardless of city ranking. Winning a stage should reward players like a fort rewards winners, +4 medallions for the winning side. Remove bags from city instances. Contribution does not seem to be perfect for cities and bag rolls can often be disappointing. A flat +4 bonus to every player on the winning side keeps the motivation clear, it’s not about padding your stats, it’s about winning as a team.
Reasoning: I have personally witnessed chat from both factions wanting to throw forts or slow ORvR progress until an enemy city reaches a higher ranking. That is the opposite of what should motivate an attacker, you should want to strike at the enemy faction BEFORE they gain ranking. And you should never invite the enemy into your home factions city willingly.

Ranked Scenarios

Issue: Gear Imbalance
Solution: Raise the level each player is bolstered to in the scenario to 80 or 100 (if possible), so that gear is only making a 5-10% difference in player performance.
Reasoning: As it currently stands, gear makes a significant difference in ranked pvp success. That is not what ranked pvp should be about, it should be about player skill and strategy. Reducing the impact that gear has on the game mode will encourage more players who are not max geared to feel like they can contribute.

Issue: Rewards
Solution: Remove the cloak from the armor set and add a Slot 3 jewelry piece with a slot similar to the Sentinel ring. Add talismans similar to the sentinel talismans that decay over time and add a significant boost like the sentinel talisman +4% crit chance, etc. In the future consider adding the next upgrade to the 61 renown pvp weapon. Change the gear appearance to Warlord, too much Invader equivalent already in the game.
Reasoning: There is currently no incentive for players in full sovereign to play in ranked other than MMR. By the time you have the gear to feel confident entering ranked play, you no longer need the gear it provides. Adding a slot 3 ring to the ranked pvp set will make it an ideal set to mix with sovereign as a replacement to sentinel for players who do not play dungeons. Adding a decaying but powerful talisman will bring players back for more ranked pvp even once they've obtained the set pieces they want. Changing the appearance of the gear to Warlord would also add a further incentive players who desire the look of this armor without having to spend Royal medallions to obtain it. Since most players spend Royals on Sovereign anyway and only purchase Warlord for the alternative look.

Issue: Kill only Scenarios
Solution: Add in scenarios like gates of Ekrund and Reikland Factory.
Reasoning: These small 3 capture point maps are perfect for 6v6 and really open up the strategy for capture and hold. 6v6 slugfests can be pretty boring for every role and equally matched teams often stalemate on 0 kills. Giving players objectives to spread out and fight over, creates strategy and 1v1, 2v2 opportunities that bring excitement and will change the way players approach building for ranked scenarios. Compare to another MMO with popular ranked pvp scenes such as Guild Wars 2.

Guild Mounts:
Please make the beautiful babies available in a non decaying form for RR 80+, you can even make them available at staggered ranks like the special dye vendor. 81, 82, 83, etc.

BLUF: City and fort logging are caused by rewards being heavily weighted behind these events. Spreading the rewards more evenly across ORVR will keep the player base active at all times. Ranked PvP can be saved with better balance, more useful rewards and capture points instead of kills. My numbers may need to be adjusted for the medallion rewards, but I hope you can all see the intent behind it. Thank you to the volunteer devs who have kept this game going.

[toffikx]

Sounds good. Can’t agree 100% with everything, but the majority of the things you wrote seems great.

[nanakaros]

The only thing i agree with, is the Guild mounts.

[jvlosky]

Ranked Scenarios

Issue: Gear Imbalance
Solution: Raise the level each player is bolstered to in the scenario to 80 or 100 (if possible), so that gear is only making a 5-10% difference in player performance.
Reasoning: As it currently stands, gear makes a significant difference in ranked pvp success. That is not what ranked pvp should be about, it should be about player skill and strategy. Reducing the impact that gear has on the game mode will encourage more players who are not max geared to feel like they can contribute.

I dont think that would be a good idea, I think ranked gear requirement should be upped to require the Vanquisher full set TOK achiev before you can queue for ranked.

The issue is players going in and not know what they are doing and it is apparent because of their gear. I didn't enter ranked till I was Invader/Oppressor/warlord mix at the lowest because I did not want to waste my teammates time.


I feel the gear requirement and understand go hand in hand with showing how a player is ready to compete in the ranked environment. If you care about ranked you'll have the gear for it.

[LucusAurelius]

Ranked Scenarios

Issue: Gear Imbalance
Solution: Raise the level each player is bolstered to in the scenario to 80 or 100 (if possible), so that gear is only making a 5-10% difference in player performance.
Reasoning: As it currently stands, gear makes a significant difference in ranked pvp success. That is not what ranked pvp should be about, it should be about player skill and strategy. Reducing the impact that gear has on the game mode will encourage more players who are not max geared to feel like they can contribute.

I dont think that would be a good idea, I think ranked gear requirement should be upped to require the Vanquisher full set TOK achiev before you can queue for ranked.

The issue is players going in and not know what they are doing and it is apparent because of their gear. I didn't enter ranked till I was Invader/Oppressor/warlord mix at the lowest because I did not want to waste my teammates time.


I feel the gear requirement and understand go hand in hand with showing how a player is ready to compete in the ranked environment. If you care about ranked you'll have the gear for it.

They could even raise it to require the Invader ToK unlock and I don't think it would change anything. Ranked has 0-1 matches going on at any time of the day with barely anyone in queue (according to SoloQ addon). Take a note from Guild Wars 2 where all structured PvP has gear with set stats and everyone starts on equal footing. This game may not be able to get to that level of balance but raising the level and making gear less important would be a step in the right direction.

[Zxul]

The issue with ranked is player willingness to do them. As in for example, if 4% crit tali become available from ranked, personally I would still rather farm dungeons then touch ranked.

And now to clarify, I'm not willing to farm dungeons for the 4% crit tali.

[doxifera]

Open RvR

Issue: Open RvR is very rewarding up until you hit the Invader/Sovereign gear level. The incentive at this level becomes fort and city logging to optimize medallion reward for time investment. We’re all adults and we have lives, jobs and families and we want to maximize our playtime reward, but this often leads to low sever pops during times that forts and cities are not active.

Yes. When I started, the bis gear there was a Vanq and Oppr, you could play either in the RvR getting medals and pieces of the Vanq in gold bags, or SC. Everything was simple and clear. You just have fun and progress.

[jvlosky]

Ranked Scenarios

Issue: Gear Imbalance
Solution: Raise the level each player is bolstered to in the scenario to 80 or 100 (if possible), so that gear is only making a 5-10% difference in player performance.
Reasoning: As it currently stands, gear makes a significant difference in ranked pvp success. That is not what ranked pvp should be about, it should be about player skill and strategy. Reducing the impact that gear has on the game mode will encourage more players who are not max geared to feel like they can contribute.

I dont think that would be a good idea, I think ranked gear requirement should be upped to require the Vanquisher full set TOK achiev before you can queue for ranked.

The issue is players going in and not know what they are doing and it is apparent because of their gear. I didn't enter ranked till I was Invader/Oppressor/warlord mix at the lowest because I did not want to waste my teammates time.


I feel the gear requirement and understand go hand in hand with showing how a player is ready to compete in the ranked environment. If you care about ranked you'll have the gear for it.

They could even raise it to require the Invader ToK unlock and I don't think it would change anything. Ranked has 0-1 matches going on at any time of the day with barely anyone in queue (according to SoloQ addon). Take a note from Guild Wars 2 where all structured PvP has gear with set stats and everyone starts on equal footing. This game may not be able to get to that level of balance but raising the level and making gear less important would be a step in the right direction.

I hope they take 0 notes from GW2 pvp, GW2 pvp is notoriously shitty, the devs dont even play the game and with their new patch they are back to shitty bunker meta where they were in 2012 when they tried to debut for esports and they crashed and burned hard.


Please no. I hope devs don't take anything from GW2 into account.

[nuadarstark]

I dont think that would be a good idea, I think ranked gear requirement should be upped to require the Vanquisher full set TOK achiev before you can queue for ranked.

The issue is players going in and not know what they are doing and it is apparent because of their gear. I didn't enter ranked till I was Invader/Oppressor/warlord mix at the lowest because I did not want to waste my teammates time.

I think issue with ranked is that hardly anyone is ever doing it...

Look, I think the gear requirements makes sense, but with so many classes and so many gear combinations you run into issues that not everyone has that Vanq ToK. My WP went from Conq to Inv because Vanq was pretty meh and took forever to grind. To this day I don't have the Vanq ToK. Some classes and players also completely skip that set or never get it whole. I'm also a salvager so any time I salvage any of the Vanq lvl gear pieces from my own set (for 200lvl purple tali mats), that particular piece disappears from Tome.

I agree about the gear but have no idea how to implement it.

[Alfa1986]

Ranked scenarios are interested no more than 10-15% of the server population. accordingly, if 200 people are currently playing in t4 (100 destro / 100 orders; also assume that everyone who plays in t4 is quite high-level with good equipment allowing them to play ranked), then a maximum of 20-30 people potentially play in ranked, and then if they are not busy with other activities (like RVR, cities, forts, dungeons). in order to ensure uninterrupted filling of ranked, it is needed to increase the pop by 5-10 times.