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oRvR feedback openletter from organized warbands

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wonshot
Posts: 1101

oRvR feedback openletter from organized warbands

Post#1 » Wed Jun 09, 2021 6:26 pm

Hello,

I've spent close to three weeks diving into conversations with warband builders and guildleaders of known guilds across both realms to try and compile a gathered idea of the state of the "main-game" aspect on RoR. Many of the players who spend time and effort in building organized events, guilds or just warbands seemed to me to have entered a state of unhappyness with how the potential of this lovely game is slowly getting pushed into a slightly worse product but also seeminly getting ignored as if open Realm vs Realm is a finished product that everyone enjoyes for how it is currently being played.

I took it on myself to reach out to most of the corners of the server, get in touch with leaders & builders and get their perspective on how their oRvR experience currently is or has developed over the last while. This post is merely meant to serve for a feedback to the devs to give them insight in how many hundreds of players are spending extra effort in building and playing orvr as their main focus, while also enjoying other aspects of the game such as scenarios, pve dungeons, ranked etc. But still feel orvr is the main appeal potential of this game.
Lets hear what they had to say.

Lutz from AOW Destro guild/pug builder:
Spoiler:
“Since I started playing this game I noticed one major week point: a player could simply join the winning or overpopulated realm, tag along while doing nothing meaningful and be rewarded with a gear bag.
In winter 2018 when vanquisher gear got released PvDoor was so bad and restablished itself as a new/old fashion from live servers that Natherul had to introduce the "Malus" AAO were players of the underpopulated realm would be only worth 1 rr per kill.

With the release of Fort and therefore the introduction of def bags in fort things changed a little bit. People would start to "care" again and so called "pride" defend. But in the end its still about the gear in the bag.
Also forts had lesser people, lvl 40 only and 15mins preparation time. So they were more balanced and gave an opportunity to have players enjoy organized fights.
Now we have city after fort, and city has the actual BiS gear and the most royal marks, that means orvr is obsolete or just a meaningless side snack. If it wasn't for the pity royals in the orvr bags, NOBODY would defend until city.

As I see it the ideal fight must include around 100 people, be messy, cunning flanks with glorious comebacks involved and last multiple moral cycles.
All of it on a battle objective far away from an inner keep bottom funnel.
How do you get fights like this nowadays on this server?
Only with player events from both realms on the same day.”

Evilspinnre from RT on Order(warband event guild):
Spoiler:
"Rescueteam is playing as a guild in EU primetime. We used to be able to get more fights with separate warbands by roaming, but now we have to pre-organise 24v24 with other guilds to get a decent fight as most RvR is just blobbing and zerging on both sides, which isn't fun for anyone. Sieges rarely create a good fight, the only decent action left is when we run into another roaming warband."

Ashley from EWG on Destro(warband event guild):
Spoiler:
“When I'm leading WBs and forming stuff for Ere We Go my primary purpose is to play with the community we have formed in the guild and extended into the alliance. The secondary purpose is to find good fights that challenge our skill sets/capabilities to better ourselves as players. When we have our primary group it is a challenge to find those "good" fights during ORVR especially when there is a siege going and the whole focus is a single keep for both sides to focus on. Many times we form and endure lack luster fights in ORVR in hopes for a solid 24 v 24 in the city that we're pushing just to end up fighting a PUG 24 or getting a pop after the 24 man que is up and get a mixture of solo ques, 6 mans, 12 mans, etc. These instances of cities aren't fun for either side. There's no good fight for the 24 man that qued and the losing side gets farmed for 30-40 minutes which is demoralizing. A good solution to both of these issues would be to create a qued Scenario like content requiring 24 people to que and is setup for 24 v 24. Similar to current ranked SCs, but on a larger scale with a focus point on kills instead of objectives.”
Flamers from CNTK on Order (warband event guild):
Spoiler:
“We as CTNK, still run weekly wb EU timezone. During the last year we lost a good amount of active players, some had enough with the mess city sieges used to be, others can't keep up with Zerg fights, and others having only a few hours to play can't focus only in rvr , because the gear, also comes from pve..sc's etc. Splitting player’s focus away from RvR, for items that are not available through the end game (city siege/oRvR).”
Vanusk from Absolution on Destro (wb event guild):
Spoiler:
“Dear all,

To continue on the topic highlighted by Bombling and to give an insight of Absolution (Destro side) state of mind:

We must admit that some of our key members are a bit fed up by mostly having - as only opportunity in oRvR - to fight very big stack of players (24v50 / 24v100) sometime in laggy environments. We understand the wish to propose big fights to players and as such we believe it is possible to match big fights and oRvR in decent numbers or with additional tools.

After few discussion internally, it appeared that increasing the importance and the role of the BO would force some WB to split and compete on the whole map instead of only being used for supply and then stacking as 200v200 on a 20ft² boss room in the keep. It also appeared that some frustration came from the lack of tool for little teams (6 or 12 players) to fight bigger warbands, and we must admit that the lack of impact of the flanking strategies can be kind of dissappointing.”

Rowan destro/order discord pugbuilder 12/18/24 warbands:
Spoiler:
“I like this idea and how it can bare some fruit. I cannot however speak for TUP, yet i feel i can speak for the 100's of people who join my warbands on both sides.

The reason people join my discord warbands, on both sides is because I go for fights. Its probably the only reason people still stick around after having their fourth character in the best gear. However eventually even through fighting in the lakes. The progression eventually leads to a keep siege. Where all the warbands flock to, the Bo's keep somewhat absolute and no one is roaming anymore, the pinnacle of a fight comes to funnel and then pushing through that funnel.
If there was a way to keep BO's relevant or other parts of the map, guild warbands and organized warbands would be more inclined to fight outside of keep sieges.”
Wam from TUP Order/Destro guild warbands:
Spoiler:
“" After years of farming orvr the bread and butter of the game the campaign as become stale with hardly any of the map being used, its just promoted zerg play more and more and certain balance changes (morale bomb nerf helped promote this too as it was a slight counter for smaller forces to take on larger) so comes more down to numbers and thats boring..
With Patches continunely nerfing one realm and buffing the other, without considering the bigger picture properly and current state of the game, let alone changing things that dont need to be reinvented and losing essence of the game the uniqueness and the fun factor as been really diminished... needless changes and priorities on ranked small scale instead of large scale... the neglect of campaign shows and why guilds are taking breaks or losing players, because trust and motivation has been mishandled and eroded over time with careless changes with sledgehammer instead of scapel approach..."
(This is a not the full version and Wam can post the full post if he desires. We agreed on a shorter version but the rest of his comment is connected to the whole topic)
Cature from BeneTleilax on Order. Guild/alliance warbands:
Spoiler:
"Large part of the RvR content are the keep fights. I found that over the past year or two the keep fight became less and less interesting. The reason the keep fights became bland is due to numerous changes implemented by our DEVs. During live and a couple of years ago Lord room defences were a big thing. As a defender you had to decide whether to defend lord room or bottom. Usually lordroom defences resulted in big carnage and very tight encounters. However changes to keep lord mechanics meant that lord room defences do not happen any longer.
Last point about keeps are the mechanics that are where people are spawning. Being able to spawn inside keeps also results in more exciting keep defences. I have the feeling that too little attention is put on this part of the game
Dansari from SF on Order. Guild/alliance warbands:
Spoiler:
“ I simply don't think the devs are going to listen. They don't have the manpower right now to overhaul the rvr campaign which is kinda what we need. I would much rather have static times for things like city content, for example, rather than city hitting at any time of day. The campaign is simply rather stale and repetitive, which makes it especially difficult outside of EU prime to have a really enjoyable experience.”

Ybilla from NGE Order/destro 12man warband:
Spoiler:
“The nature of oRvR right now is just to siege, everything else is on a grand scheme of things not needed or even counter productive to the "common goal" of progressing zones to forts and cities. Smaller groups like ours who play for a good fight here and there are reduced to being "elitists" picking on people who try to reach the next siege. I think with more incentives to have small groups and warbands fight for BO's while there is a siege going on we could have way more depth in the campaign as it currently has.”
Hao 6/12/18/24 order/destro builder:
Spoiler:
"as a real life architect; first thing they teached us in university was "if you design something, every corner or space should have a meaning"
best way to design a **** building is having a lot of "unnecessary spaces".
for us, biggest issue is there is no "natural" roaming between bo's which leads to %50+ of the map is not being used by players (example; thunder mountain)
it's happening due to BO's mean nothing.
and after both order and destro keep reaches 2* rvr become "mid bo zerg pingpong" or "lets sit in front of keep and hope to break funnel"
I'm not blaming guilds for it since they have no reason to roam between BO's.

Graffer from Gimle on Order (Warband/alliance campaign focused guild):
Spoiler:
“Gimle Guild is focused on amateur players. We do not have those who seek to kill as many rival players as possible, or certainly win in a 1 versus 1 battle (WB). 90% + of guild players enjoy playing in guild war gangs regardless of the result of the battle, and to a greater extent we play compain - i.e. promotion / protection of zones.
Of course we are more interested in winning than losing. And taking into account many factors (level of players, characters, equipment), our guild cannot compete with most of the top guilds. Our strategy is to search for unorganized WBs or avoid meetings with top guilds (FMJ, PNP, Absolute). If there are no options to avoid fighting them, we try to carry out tactical maneuvers using the environment with other allied warbands.”

Realization from FOW order/destro warbandbuilder:
Spoiler:
"Fog of War plays Primetime EU when it comes to RvR or other events, but also a lot of "Late night mainly because we consist of NA players. We are always looking for fights in the lakes, and pushing campaign is like a side effect of doing RvR. Recently we switched the entire guild over to destro, because the current state of the game of order zerging their way through zones does not appeal to us. Now that being said, RvR currently is in a dying state, RvR doesn't appeal to big guilds anymore, something I experience, since I am pretty much on this game all day long now days, gearing my destro toons. There is no "Easy way" for us to get proper fights anymore.
Holding, defending and fighting at BO's means absolutely nothing in this game, which is lame, since its a huge part of this game, you literally just run boxes back and forward to keep. Fighting on BO's should give passive progress to keep, and you gain 2* - 3* by doing this. Cuz let's be honest here, you rarely see 4* and 5* anyway."
Trippie from THK on Order 6/12man roaming:
Spoiler:
“In THK we focus on 6-12 man roaming and core RvR fights, but we've hemorrhaged quite a few players due to the state of the game. The main reasons we've gotten have centered around motivation to RvR and keep/zone mechanics.
Some options to address these concerns are:
1. Guild Cosmetics to the keep so people are more motivated to claim keeps i.e. Guild Banner on walls etc.
2. RR 81-90 items/cosmetics/mounts i.e. RR82- specific class cosmetic, RR86-Rhino/Helldog Mount
3. Increase Rewards for ORvR : Make zones give you invader or royal shards for a flip (2-4 based on Contribution)(make shards account bound)
4. Modify the design of ORvR : i.e. Adding back champions/heroes on BOs would be better considering the player base is larger and having 1 WE/WH take a BO solo is not healthy in ORVR
5. Make keeps & their upgrades have more customization i.e. changing your keep's PvE mobs to Champions/Heroes or increasing their damage.
These could also be tied to controlling BO's. BO's could send patrols of champions(4),hero(1) to support your siege and or defense, if you control all 4 BOs a NPC patrol can run with a ladder, making fights over BO's more important, there'd be more use of the map because your keep and BO's would be relevant.”
Horrificcat from PNP on destro 12/18/24 guild warband:
Spoiler:
“The orvr campaign in it's current state is a zerg fest. The system doesn't encourage players to split to different zones, leveling up a keep feels like a waste of time for an organized group(transporting ressources in an empty zone). The system doesn't encourage to fight over different battle objectives and the good 2/3 of them are just useles scenery now(Quarry in Reik, Lobba Mill in BC, Stand in Cale and so on). Past two stars there is only zerg between warcamps or siege which is a boring waiting-game, in a feeble hope, that enemy premades will not get inside and if they will that your realm maybe siege an empty zone at the same time.
Basically game does everything to either stop you from spliting from a bigger group or avoid actual pvp.
I wish that orvr would have offered better pvp content that promote team play, interraction between different leaders and actuall pvp.
As it is right now when my guild wants an interesting pvp content we organize it on our own outisde of rvr. Which is frankly speaking very strange and leads to the situation that people don't bother playing orvr anymore.”
Kahzog from Odyssey on Destro (newplayers friendly warband)
Spoiler:
I'm Kahzog and I'm a guild officer of Odyssey (Destro). We are by no means one of the top guilds, but we have some very skilled players. We focus on recruiting new or returning players. Once a week, I host an organized warband for the guildies during EU primetime (21 Altdorf time). For many of our members, that is their first impression of organized group play, using balanced warbands and discord. Thus I focus on the basics - what is your role in the warband, when to wait and when to push, moving as a team. One of the biggest challenges is positioning, but it is also the most rewarding. I think every member of our guild has memories of epic lord-of-the-rings style flanking action, boxing order warbands in, creating the classic hammer-anvil situation. That's why people join oRvR and organized warbands.

Over the last year though, those battles have become more scarce. There is the destro population decline of course, but also the tendency of people to blob up. I think most warband leaders know the situation - SoR shows that there should be a vanguard of order in the zone, but roam all you want, you find none - they all hole up in the keep. So, when I organize guild warband today, I focus on getting the most out of a difficult situation (without xrealming ...), learning how to move back-and-forth with the zerg, snatching some kills and retreating again. While this can generate a good stream of renown, it's ultimately pointless and not motivating in the long run. People yearn for the hard-earned victories. They want to feel like they have an impact. But fighting against the zerg does not feel impactful at all. And that is kinda sad.

The goal of adjustment's for oRvR should be to get players out in the open field. Defending a keep while the enemy holds most BO's? Should be impossible. Think of real-life - people will just starve to death. Attacking a keep without any BO's? You'll lack the supplies to support your army, leaving your men vulnerable and exhausted.

Greetings
Grufrip DF Destro greenskin guild
Spoiler:
I've been long time around in ror, joined in 2014 and started to lead greenskin parties and warbands with my guild which
ended on my control in 2015 and is still up and running but for last few years it's been feeling like ORvR has lost its former glory, epic memorable 24vs24 times are long gone and pvp turned into mindless zerging and easy reward searching, still getting amazing fights but those are getting more and more rare. Too often finding ORvR in situation where I have to face triple or quadruple amount of opposite faction players with my guild party and warband runs, maybe even more, and it turn everything frustrating, boring and stale to all. This zerg rollercoaster jump back and forth between factions causing there to be too much enemies to face or nothing at all. Either way is bad and is eating the fun out from ORvR. Not mentioning lack of purpose of holding battlefield objectives in ORvR lakes or doing other tasks. Need iron will to stay in game while running parties or warbands, not looking good if asking me.
Reached out to the following guilds and awaiting a responce or ignored:
Smash,VII, Beavers, FMJ.

If your guild is not included here, id still love for more guilds to chip in and share their feedback on the area I asked the above guilds about. "how does your guild or roster find the current state of oRvR (ignoring forts and city).
All of the quotes guilds have agreed to have their quote shared in this combined feedback post, and they feel like this represent not only themselves but their guilds values and view on the oRvR state.

Wha the Devs want to do with this feedback is up to them. Several of us have tried to bring attention to how many of us find orvr in need of a slight tweek to how the open zones function, should it promote more killing, splitting, zerging, sieging or whatever. What we simply want to do with this, is to show that we are many hundres of players who log in week after week and spend time organizing and playing open rvr. And most of us are not too happy with the current version of it, and the neglect.

- Bombling & the builders.
Last edited by wonshot on Thu Jun 10, 2021 8:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Cabron101
Posts: 29

Re: oRvR feedback openletter from organized warbands

Post#2 » Wed Jun 09, 2021 10:20 pm

Thank you for caring enough to do this. I hope this honest feedback is useful for and valued by the devs.

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Kaelang
Posts: 1275

Re: oRvR feedback openletter from organized warbands

Post#3 » Wed Jun 09, 2021 10:23 pm

Just commenting on here to say following this thread myself and other team members had a public conversation with Bombling on Discord regarding this thread and appreciate the feedback from varied sources on the points made.

This type of feedback is well received and we will refer to these types of structured threads when opportunities arise.
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tvbrowntown
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Re: oRvR feedback openletter from organized warbands

Post#4 » Wed Jun 09, 2021 10:36 pm

feels like you need a comment from Brodda tbh - one of the only "organized" destro wbs left and even then he struggling to fill it for orvr these days cause destro = struggletown. Maybe even Laserheals/Cueleen if she still organising wbs on order.

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Meliannia
Posts: 276

Re: oRvR feedback openletter from organized warbands

Post#5 » Wed Jun 09, 2021 11:05 pm

thought this was an infamous list of Order's Most Muted at first....

then i saw Trippy and Cature from THK and BT, always good to hear those two speaking their thoughts as they can be trusted to behave with dignity honesty and conduct themselves like reasonable adults in chat.

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saupreusse
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Posts: 2386

Re: oRvR feedback openletter from organized warbands

Post#6 » Wed Jun 09, 2021 11:47 pm

As the guild leader of a 6 man guild i helped my 5 mates from level 1 to 80. Were not active atm but the things that annoyed us the most were:

Its incredibly annoying that city is the only way to get end game gear. I could not get even the most dedicated of my mates to farm even a few pieces of sov. So yeah, we are also in favor of making rvr worth more. Ofc as a 6 man party in rvr we often tried to play around bos instead of keeps. Sometimes there were some nice fights at bo, some of them are really far off, though (thundermountain being the most famous) . As a small guild leader it would be nice if it was encouraged to fight around bo and even move to different bo instead of camping the ones in the middle of the lakes. Walking supplies is a nice thing which we did when we were on our way to the keep anyway, but running only supplies is not fun at all and its a shame that bo are pretty much only supply crate generators. So i wished bo had more meaning and be much more engaging than just being there for supply runners. (running supps for more than 10 minutes makes us dull bois).
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Stophy22
Posts: 444

Re: oRvR feedback openletter from organized warbands

Post#7 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 1:07 am

One thing I've really noticed about ORVR during NA times is destro really doesn't have a primary building force and Order has a huge over population. This overpop results in order winning a lot in zones due to sheer numbers. I don't think destro is underpopped as a side but Destro takes advantage of PVE during the NA hours and this really kills the zones and leaves very big AAO numbers. While order doesn't typically run PVE pug, only organized guilds really try to do any sort of PVE and it becomes very hard to find groups for CNT/BS and even gunbad sometimes on order without knowing the right people. This could be to the overpop of warrior priests and their lack of need for PVE since it gives dps gear.

Due to the overpop of Order fights are typically won with numbers and not skill and people tend to use tactics and ideas that don't really work and develop a very faulty understanding for the game and how to play their classes in an actual organized setting, correctly. I think it would be nice to have the zones breathe life back into RVR with a refocus of how to ORVR because the current state of the game just wants 2star->push and that's not really healthy.

I want to improve the order NA playerbase's skill, when it comes to general gameplay and it really shows when you take it outside of the overpop zerg. Destro has learned how to fight large groups as smaller numbers and it really shows when going into organized gameplay where you can't hide behind bigger numbers. I find the state of the game to be a bigger issue than any sort of balance concern between classes, if the game remains stale then it'll be hard to keep people playing. Other people before me have brought up the whole gear is the driving factor and how priding has become a thing, It would be very nice if defending keeps and forts did things beneficial to progression so you don't find yourself torn between having fun with a nice keep defense and getting rewards with losing that keep because it'll push to fort. This kind of split of interest is not very healthy for the campaign or playerbase as a whole.
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tvbrowntown
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Re: oRvR feedback openletter from organized warbands

Post#8 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 1:36 am

Stophy22 wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 1:07 am It would be very nice if defending keeps and forts did things beneficial to progression so you don't find yourself torn between having fun with a nice keep defense and getting rewards with losing that keep because it'll push to fort.
No reason to defend a fort from a city push when everyone in the game wants royals. Could make it so the defending side of a city push (just before sieging a city) gets to roll for Royals on a successful defense. Attackers will only get Invaders - but they open the city should they win to get the chance at Royals. Should give people a reason to defend against their city being sieged - because it will benefit them and hinder the other realm.

If you implement this idea though you MUST find a way to make forts more interesting/fair tactically. Seems like destro struggles to push in most the time cause Black Orcs are too big to squeeze past, lol. There has to be a way to split up the nascar nature of fort sieges.

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13eara
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Re: oRvR feedback openletter from organized warbands

Post#9 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 2:01 am

I was originally coming here to troll, but seeing as this game needs ALL the help it can get at the moment to keep it barely alive as it stands, I'll say that I like this. I like that you're actually getting feedback from players of the game rather than people who are on the Forums. The people in-game are the ones you should be talking to. The people who are too busy playing their 15th alt to comment on some nonsense on the forum.

Nice job Bombling! I hereby promote you to King Dev!
Long live the king! Long live the king! Long live the King!

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wonshot
Posts: 1101

Re: oRvR feedback openletter from organized warbands

Post#10 » Thu Jun 10, 2021 4:05 am

tvbrowntown wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 10:36 pm feels like you need a comment from Brodda tbh - one of the only "organized" destro wbs left and even then he struggling to fill it for orvr these days cause destro = struggletown. Maybe even Laserheals/Cueleen if she still organising wbs on order.
I did reach out to him :)
Not everyone was interested on going "on record" or lacked motivation to get involved at all, and I completly understand and respect that!
[more generally on the topic]
I tried to gather volume in the number of people i contacted to show how many players oRvR actually involve on a weekly basic.
I absoutely love how PQs, Pve dungeons, Scenarios, Ranked, dueling, smallscale and 6v6 tourneys get their dev-time! 100%

but I also felt like orvr has been in a stale state for a long time, and since I am only just a person I wanted to check my bias and reached out to hear of many other felt something simular.
Thanks for chipping in after my initial post, keep the topic constructic. Suggestions forums are on an other subforum. This is feedback for the devs to get an idea about how the playerbase enjoy the product atm. Not a wishlist, not an idea board.
Share insight of what make guilds and groups keep visiting orvr, and what make the motivating fade. Individuals are more than welcome to chip in. But I dont think its a secret that known bigger guilds or groups hold some more volume in their feedback, and thats why i reached out especially to the guilds and builders.
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