Revitalizing RoR

[Gravord]

Hello!
Been meaning to write down these few ideas for a while now. In my opinion and quite a lot of players i talk to, RoR got a bit stale, grindy and the worst of it, not fun in pvp. The excitement from loggin in and knowing there are good fights waiting there is mostly gone, replaced with grind and sleepless nights to not miss out on forts and cities. Constant siege meta is not a healthy state of the game. Player burn out state is painfully visible and diminshing playerbase confirms that. But, lets not go into despair! All can be fixed and those are my ideas how to bring joy of playing back to RoR, provide maximum possible amount of good fights and remove the feel from players who happen to have life outside of game (and some sort of sleep schedule) of being left out on character progression when they cant show up for every crazy hour fort and city siege.


1. Invader and sov crest for kills

Open rvr its where RoR is at its best. Massive clashes, small skirmishes, solo ganks, everything have its place its open zone. Current siege meta killed most of it in favor of range spam obliterating everything in door funnels, from the walls or onto the walls. It favors heavily aoe spam dps, preferably one that doesnt need to be close to the target or dont even need target at all. Mindless ground abilities into the doorways, no player skill needed and an absolute boredom gameplay. Open zone fights on the other hand, its where player skills can be honed and wider variety of classes/builds can be utylized to good results. All it takes to bring players back to rvr lakes is chance to progress their character gear grind in said lakes. Therefore crest for kill is the way:
- rr65+ players have 5% chance to drop invader crest upon death and anyone who contributed to a kill gets to roll for it.
- rr75+ players have 5% chance to drop sovereign crest upon death and anyone who contributed to a kill gets to roll for it.
- Modifiers: aao 100-280 +5%, aao 300+ additional +5%. Fighting near objective based on its distance to safe warcamps grants grant additional 5% based on the map (lets take Praag as example: Martyr square being at similar distance to both warcamps and in straight line between them would receive no bonus, Kurlovs Armory close to des wc would receive 5% bonus for order players giving them motivation to go this far and take the risk. Manor being only slightly closer for order would grant 5% bonus for both factions and Graveyard yet again 5% bonus for both factions).
- Summarizing possible buffs, players would get base chance of 5% to gain inv/sov crest if killing players of apriopriate rr, going to a maximum of 20% drop chance on most distant objectives during 300+ aao times.
- Massive incentive increase in defending keeps and forts - no more playing against your own realm to gear up your character. Goodbye throwing. To top it up succesfull defence should grant small def tick that includes chance for crest. Its entirely possible to have great fights, def keep for hour or hours even but if your faction lack numbers you wont take the zone. Small crest rewards just for defending with all you got and best you can would motivate more effort. Certain tresholds would have to be met, to avoid any possible abuse of the system. More how to make sieging itself more fun in point 4.
- Keeps and forts would not receive additional currency drop % as they already have heavy density of targets and def tick possibilities.
- Should also add option to pass on currency to funnel it down to team mates and help those with limited time or fresh char to fill up specific role needed in team to catch up faster.

With that, players could just enjoy good orvr fights without impairment to their character progression if they dont have option to log in at any time of day and night to show up for forts and cities. Adding crest to purple and gold bags was a good step forward, but with them alone gearing up still takes forever and doesnt create a feel like character makes any real progress towards end game gear. Increased rewards for fighting and defending would also result in smaller number of forts and cities per day, which i can only see as benefit to the game.


2. City MMR

Cities should be the endgame. The final battle ending campaign. Sadly, 90% of them are totally one sided pugstomp that doesnt bring joy to any of the sides. Just a painfull or boring, or both, crest grind.
It can be rather easily turned into what it should be with city mmr.
- Each player, based on his win/loss ratio, his own performance and quality of the enemy he faced gain or loose mmr after each city. Upon forming wb average mmr of wb is calculated and placed on ranking list. Highest order ranked wb meet highest destro wb and so on descending all the way down untill one side runs out of players.
- Preparation phase is extended to 20-30 mins. During this time each wb/group/solo players have to sign up or wont get in at all. Upon reaching deadline queue time is over, system calculates mmr and all instances spawn at once. That removes currently way too popular gamestyle of waiting to see best enemy warbands already inside city before signing up.
- Full 24 man groups take priority in q, 18 mans are filled up with similar mmr 6 mans, 12 mans matched if possible with another 12 man or 2x 6 mans and so on. Any missing spots are filled up with soloers of closest mmr avaiable.
- Possibly total player counter in q could be added, to inform players if one side have far more players than the other and give them chance to faction swap and get into the city at all.

System like that would offer best possible fights avaiable, ensuring cities stay the real endgame they should be, not just a grindfest instance 2-3 times a day. Only possible abuse of the system i can think off would be intentional taking to wb few players of low mmr to downgrade quality of the opposition, but thats pretty risky and even if it would work once or twice mmr of those players would rise high ensuring they meet adequate enemy.

One additonal side note, theres far too many cities happening right now. Crest dropping in rvr could solve that, but i was pondering idea of scheduled sieges. Lets say every 2 days (or 3/4/5 all could work), 2 sieges, one in EU and one in NA prime time, with player being limited to gain crest only from one of them but can still participate in both if playing such hours and willing to fight. That would allow create more organized warbands for the city fights, with more stable setups and would reduce randomness of when city can happen. Which city is going to be sieged could be tied to fort ratio win between factions over previous designated period of time (winning attack 1 point, winning def 0.5 point). Some sort of lasting contribution could be added to it too - if your character actively helped to lock xx zones and xx forts, it could increase your crest drop for winning city stages. Im not sure on the this particular idea in general but curious what others would think of having cities on a schedule and not random hours. It would still be tied to campaign, just not straight up 2 forts and city time.


3. Reducing pve grind

RoR replayability lie in good fights and alts. How to get more good fights was already described in point 1 and 2. Now lets go down to alts. Currently, when deciding to roll a new alt, biggest concern for most players is "do i want to go tru all the dung farm yet again?". And its a valid one. Exp, rr - with weekend event scenarios and renown pot its not a big deal. PvP gearing up the char is harder, especially with neccesary fort farm, but crest for kills concept solves that. Whats left is 13 city dungeons for just one ring thats mandatory in most builds. And sure, one could argue that they dont need best possible gear on every char, but then again, its natural player mentality to get all the best stuff for his characters and denying them that is rather effective way of driving players away. 3 Gunbad runs are fine, 3 Bastions for the weapon also fine. City dungeons however need tweaking. Going tru 13 of them for a ring and after that again every single week, for every single char, for the rest of your RoR gaming life just to keep the tali is not sustainable. Id propose this kind of solution:
- Ring to be removed from influence reward and replaced with something else, either unique weapon proc or just cosmetic item. That new final reward would be reached on 7th city dung run to make it standarized with BS.
- Added new repeatable quest that requires 5 city dungeon runs completed, rewarding with sentinel ring and token for permanent talisman of choice. Re-earning same talisman over and over again just to keep character ready to use is draining players will to play rather quick. Also, there are certain classes with more than one build avaiable. Best example would be a shield healer benefitting from block tali into one of his senti rings, heal crit for chalice build and melee crit/power for his dps build. As they receive more possible builds they would have to invest more time but thats only fair.
- Added to current tali merchant option to swap 5 current time limited talismans for new token that can be exchanged for permanent talisman. It should be time limited offer for 2-4 week after patch.
- Added weekly quest of decent reward for completing 1 full dungeon run, be it city, BS or Gunbad (or possibly a quest for each of them separately) - with rewards around purple 200 boxes/vials and some other goodies, to incentivize players who just like to do dungeons to participate in them more frequently for profit. With the usual tank/healer shortage those professional farmers would fill up the niche in groups rather nicely.

Possible drawbacks? Maybe, possibly, fever players doing dungeons in the long run but thats doubtfull. Myself id happily roll 5+ more chars if i didnt had "city dung every week for tali on each of them untill you die" on the back of my mind. With weekly quest reward pro dung runners would solve that issue if it would even occur at all.


4. Rat Ogres

RoR is quite limited by its engine with how developed sieging can be. We have rams... and few more war engines that are mainly build around doing dmg to players and other engines. What we dont have its ladders, siege towers, tunnels under the walls or even blowing up the walls itself. Which narrows down entire siege fight to tight funnels on 1 door and occasional postern, unless they are locked by high rank of the keep aswell, Its not any better in forts, one main door, tiny postern easily blocked by few tanks. Defender spam aoe into one door, attack pushes its ppl tru that aoe and hopes enough makes to the other side. Thats all. But there could be more. Live WAR already created solution to that - Rat Ogres! Claimable npc with ability to throw friendly players upwards and forward, to deliver them to the enemy walls or inner keep. I strongly believe its exactly what RoR needs to increase quality of the sieges. No more mindless stacking everything into 1 door. When fight happens on the outer gate, you got to get whole outer walls properly covered with tanks and melees or enemy groups and warbands will deliver their members in weak spots and start flanking from the inside or take a hold of oil room. Inner keep? No more funnel stacking everyone inside ever again as enemy groups can enter from above and start bothering your way too safe backlines in current meta. Overall it would cause bigger spread of defenders and attackers, created more interesting gameplay options and made sieging into something more than who can throw enough aoe into that one door. Now into more specifics how to get Rat Ogres:
- When new zone open every faction sc win grants a point, 30 min after zone opening all wins are accounted, faction that won most receives access to ogres 30 min later, faction that lost have to wait 1h-1.5h (subject of balancing).
- Rank 2 keep have 1 ogre that can be claimed from inner keep altar. Rank 3 have 2 of them, rank 4 gets 3. No additional one for rank 5 as its game over at this point.
- Ogre replace player hotbar with its own skills: 1. Throw friendly - 10s cd, 2. Bash door, dmg of 1/4 of ram, 5s cd, 3. Self heal, 5k hp, 10s cd, 4. Big aoe kb frontal, 30s cd. 10k hp pool, medium armor and resists. No ap cost and immunity for cd reduce/increase effects.
- Killed Rat Ogre can be claimed again, with 10/15/20 min (subject of balancing) respawn timer. Groups/wbs would have to heavily protect their ogre to not loose its benefits.
- Defenders can benefit of Ogre gameplay too. Upon outer gate going down, ogre spawn moves to warcamp. That allows defenders for ogre gameplay on the outside of sieged keep and attempt of reclaiming outer walls again.
- There should be also ogres in fort sieges to break the same monotonous gameplay they currently offer.


Summary

If solutions listed above would make their way to server, i strongly believe quality of fights would improve greatly for cities, forts and open rvr. It would massively increase fun players get out of the game and population growth would swiftly follow.
My post end up far longer than initially planned but im hoping players and staff interested in RoR well being will get tru it and see my points in the light im trying to present them - as concerned player with non existent english grammar who wishes the game to rise to its best and be fun for its playerbase as much as possible.

[Koteskoo]

Reasonable thoughts

[Neverever]

+10 to these suggestions. As an addition with the developments achieved the gear gap feels a pain to catch. I have just decided to give it a try two weeks ago but considering all the things I need to achieve to reach endgame lvl is just discouraging. Getting your toon from lvl 1 to 40 with limited game time is already a gap for me and going through all that stages from anhi to at least vanq just feels too long and I didn't even consider stepping in PVE. Too much grinding in both RVR and PVE.

[wiscel]

Plus another +10

[Noslock]

+10 to these suggestions. As an addition with the developments achieved the gear gap feels a pain to catch. I have just decided to give it a try two weeks ago but considering all the things I need to achieve to reach endgame lvl is just discouraging. Getting your toon from lvl 1 to 40 with limited game time is already a gap for me and going through all that stages from anhi to at least vanq just feels too long and I didn't even consider stepping in PVE. Too much grinding in both RVR and PVE.

they already reduced sets price by half what else do you expect?free stuff ?gettin a full vanq sets is just a matter of joining a decent guild and do some raids and with all the amount of cities and forts happening lately gearin a char shouldnt be that difficult even without playing 24/24

[Gravord]

Its hard to find decent vids of Rat Ogre gameplay from live and used properly on the keep siege but this one can give a good clue about the mechanic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fDbXKGD6CY

[GamesBond]

Love your idea man, that sounds something i would cladly return to. Hope people in the dev team finally realize what is the real reason this game is dying ... we had so many people coming in and checking the game out and it looked like we are on the right track, but what the dev team has failed to do is to catch all the people and show them that this is a great game and worth their while. Some very very serious decisions are to be made and sooner than later. this mindless fort/city farm is not what warhammer is all about and if you guys up there on the "throne" cant get that then stop what you're doing and go back to playing tetris. Now sorry for sounding harsh but i have just given up, and unfortunately for the game so many other people have as well. us streamers were doing anything we could to give all the new player all the info and insight and helped them understand the game and invite them to come join. And what is left of all the 3k people we had on a daily basis?? ... its all the rejected ideas that would have made this game so much more enjoyable.

[Kungfumantis]

Full Vanq is 900 vanqs and decent guilds don't have WBs running 24/7 to meet everyone's play style. With the recent population imbalances it can be even more difficult to get the 900 vanqs, you'll often get invader before Vanq and that doesn't help either as many class' invader sets are worse for them than the Vanq sets.


Good ideas Zunig, the game is largely losing its shine for me as well and this would breath some life into it.

[Neverever]

+10 to these suggestions. As an addition with the developments achieved the gear gap feels a pain to catch. I have just decided to give it a try two weeks ago but considering all the things I need to achieve to reach endgame lvl is just discouraging. Getting your toon from lvl 1 to 40 with limited game time is already a gap for me and going through all that stages from anhi to at least vanq just feels too long and I didn't even consider stepping in PVE. Too much grinding in both RVR and PVE.

they already reduced sets price by half what else do you expect?free stuff ?gettin a full vanq sets is just a matter of joining a decent guild and do some raids and with all the amount of cities and forts happening lately gearin a char shouldnt be that difficult even without playing 24/24

Chill down dude and just consider that Vanq set is the 4th set gear in game atm and imagine all the grind from invader to warlord and sov gear... Sov gear bonuses provide an indeniable advantage to the players who already own them. I just dont have that much play time to go all that work to be bashed again by people who are already enjoying the advantages of the endgame stuff. Lowering the set prıces of certain sets was a good constructive change back at that time but at the moment it doesn't really help to close gear gap which is totally my experience which feels more valid than your assumptions : Shouldn't beeeee that hard.

[Ysaran]

I may be wrong but I think that ppl left RoR because it was summer. This happen every year (well, for at least three years). During summer ppl stop playing and then come back in fall, around October/November. I too stopped playing during summer and now, here I am again!