[Keep takes] Rethinking keeplords

[wonshot]

Hello,

The concept of having a keep-lord as a pve encounter after breaching the keep worked back in Dark Age of Camelot because that was a game without morale building from pve monsters, and because that game had casters running out of mana in a long drawn out fight. In the last five or so years RoR keeplords have seen some attention, mainly the resetting and running off portion of them. But if we are being brutally honest, have any attacking realm actually wiped to a keeplord in ages(?) These serve as an artificial timebump to give the defenders a second chance of retaking control over the keep, but after the 2018 wincondition removed of respawning a keeplord or locking the zone after your realm's keeplord have died, then the idea of having keeplords seem like a leftover from a previous era.

The negatives:
- Players in general dont find bashing on a keeplord that amusing and tends to go afk just auto attacking
- Keeplord encounters are not hard, healers are not pressured, its not mandatory to have a "Maintank"
- The morale building advantage from beating on a lord, very often scares a "retake attempt" away or leads to a morale advantage cleanwipe.

Suggestion for improving the fun and attempt on breaking the funnel meta abit:

- Keeplords are fully removed (fortress lords stay as they are)
- Instead of Keeplords the 1)bottomfloor, 2)lord's room, 3)Thirdfloor will each be turned into a Battleobjective within the keep and holding all three for ten minuts will flip the keep over (also for the previous owners in a retake)
- Each floor will get a square captureing zone with visual border and associated UI element near the minimap showing the timer and control over the floors.
- The floors can be captured even if the doors are up. Letting stealthers, postern Bypass and keep-ninjas become a thing again.
- Holding two out of the three floors will over time force capture the last remaining floor, focing a turtling last-stand effort to make a move on either of the other two floors.
Example:
Order is holding 3rd floor in a blue keep. Destruction have control over bottomfloor and Lord's room floor. As time goes more players join the zone and suddenly enough Order have formed up from their warcamp and arrive at the keep to push the bottomfloor while the main forces of Destro are busy in a stalemate between lord's room and 3rd. Destro now have to commit to either side and this opens up the fight for the floors. However if the attackers are succesful in killing and repelling the attempt on a 2nd floor the force timer will slowly capture the funnel on the roof and the keep will be taken and doors respawned. However should the order live for long enough that the forces of destruction have moved out of the keep trying to lock the zone by holding 3/4 BOs + 2keeps then now Order can make a move and attempt to hold all three floors and retake the keep and stop the lock or draw forces back to adress the situation.

So while a zone is open, boxrunning and keeprank can still be built up like currenly. But with the extra twist that the keep can be flipped after holding all 3 floors for 10minuts at any point after the zone is opened up. Flipping a keep will reset the stars naturally. There might still be standard keep door breaks, funnels at bottom etc. But should enough attackers breach the postern and capture some of the two higher floors, the defenders succesfully funneling might have to send up manpower to the topfloors and get control over the floors before the forcetimer let the keep swap hands.

Siegeladders/siegetowers would ofc make this system even less funnelfriendly. But keeping that out of this for now.

This suggestion was made to inspire, rethink and evaluate the current systems of openRvR on RoR. There are plenty of room for improvments, maybe this exact suggestion is not exactly what RoR needs, but talking and thinking about how we can make RvR better is the clear goal. Thanks for reading!

[Lion1986]

- Keeplords are fully removed (fortress lords stay as they are)

they are just useless dummy with lot of hp and little else. They are useless. I agre on removal.

- Instead of Keeplords the 1)bottomfloor, 2)lord's room, 3)Thirdfloor will each be turned into a Battleobjective within the keep and holding all three for ten minuts will flip the keep over (also for the previous owners in a retake)

Useless. Keep normally get swarmed or not. no middle ground. downvote this.

This suggestion was made to inspire, rethink and evaluate the current systems of openRvR on RoR. There are plenty of room for improvments, maybe this exact suggestion is not exactly what RoR needs, but talking and thinking about how we can make RvR better is the clear goal. Thanks for reading!

rvr got 3 issues:
1)running like amazon delivery box guys. boring, useless and not engaging for pvp
2)Totall and utter lack of NPC in a rvr lake. They might collect resources for faction owning the BOS instead of forcing players to make useless box runnin and focs more in roaming and fights.
3)RVR in ror is pure zerg without brain. No teamwork is needed apart from spamming aoe skills (dpsers) and aoe heals and dispels no stop (healers).
4)Instad of make zerglakes , you can make the BO areas to be contested more lively by giving a renown bonus areas around BO. This could focus ppl to fight more for bos.
I know after 10 years things won't change much, but these are my 2 cents idea to make a RVR area not a zergfest or fortress wall staring simulator.