City Siege Queues

[Tabelrel]

I really liked this post by @Omegus but it got a bit lost in the other thread discussing xrealm. I think he makes some really sensible points so re-produced it here. Tried to reply to it on the other thread but now locked.

I would just add a few suggestions my self to it.

1. Do we need a race to the gate at all? As this is just a scenario, could wb leaders just queue using the Existing scenario queuer? I know it adds a bit of “drama” but at the moment I thinks it’s the wrong kind of drama.

2. Could the devs do anything about the issue where if someone drops out of a warband you lose the queue. I’ve experienced this a couple of times and meant so far no city siege.

3. What was the reasoning behind only a level 40 city siege. As population cap is not an issue, is there anything wrong having a few 38/39’s in the party as surely if the wb wants to carry them then that’s the wb choice.

4. The 10 minute grace period and a more equitable selection criteria, ie not fifo would definitely give wb leaders a bit of breathing space to sort things out and give everyone hopefully a fair chance to have a go at a city siege.

Omegus wrote:

Disclaimer 1: I'm not going to get into the who-did-what-during-what-timezone-and-zerg-vs-coordination crap as it's just toxic.
Disclaimer 2: this will be from the destro POV so replace Reikwald with The Maw when appropriate. Please try not to troll this thread based on faction as while destro are having these issues at the moment one day it'll be order so we might as well work to make it fairer for the people within the larger faction now, regardless of which faction that is.

If the devs are saying that there will be no empty sieges then that's fine, but I'd just like to point out some of the behaviour the current system encourages, who it unfairly punishes, and what can be done to make it a bit fairer for the realm with more numbers.

The currently system seems to be first come first served, e.g. the first warband to get queued is the first one that gets in. This is already promoting a number of poor behaviours such as ensuring your warband is full of 40/40s for the second fort siege as there's no time to organise afterwards meaning lower people get kicked out of WBs that up until 2 days ago there was no problem with them being in. Secondly, people/warbands are abandoning the second fort early so they can get their warband into Reikwald first and queue up leaving the people actually pushing the zone at a disadvantage of getting a scenario queue. And fianlly, the way to guarantee your spot in the city siege is to just skip the second fort entirely and have everyone sit in Reikwald. Other people do the work of capturing the fortress so your warband gets to do the city siege.

An actual real situation that has happened since live: during both of the sieges that have happened so far my alliance's warband has been unable to get into the city siege. In addition we weren't even able to get into the test that happened due to the lack of order numbers. We have worked hard in all zones, helped push keeps to 3 stars, had our invader-equipped people deliberately avoid the first fort so their reservations could be taken by other people who need the gear, and during that time they went to Kadrin Valley to help push it ready for the second fortress which we then all participated in as a warband. But because we stayed to the end, because we were downstairs killing the keg and trying to fight off order who were flooding in when the lord was on 10%, etc, we got to Reikwald later than most (by seconds) and didn't get into the city as for some people it's now 3 times in a row where we've missed out due to not being greedy or abusing the system.

Developers, please can you look at implementing something similar to the following to make it better for all:

1) Once the second fort fails, please implement a 10 minute grace period to allow warbands full of 40/40 to be formed before any siege instances launch. This will prevent sub-RR40 people from having issues at forts getting into semi-organised WBs. It gives time for smaller alliances to merge together to get the numbers up, etc. The fortress already has 5 minutes to get there and the city siege involves changing zones and forming new WBs so 10 minutes should be enough. Some people might want to switch to their higher RR characters as well and this will let them do so.

2) During this 10 minutes the warbands from either side can queue up. After the 10 minutes the siege instances begin and the queued warbands from either side are chosen based on something much fairer than first in, first out. Examples for ranking the warbands (and parties) could be:

a) just picked randomly
b) sum of each person's fortress contribution for the 2-3 forts, thus prioritising groups of people who contributed more
c) sum of all the renown ranks, thus prioritising people who are closer to needing the gear offered in the siege
d) anything else but first in, first out.

3) The moment a city siege is triggered all realm lockout timers on all accounts are removed so those people on the overpopulated side who are willing to switch can easily do so.

A grace period and a fairer priority system will cut down on most if not all of the negative behavior being shown and will help prevent the people who didn't get in from feeling quite so ****. Next time we're tempted to try just sitting in Reikwald during fortress 2 to try and get into the siege as the warband's members are very annoyed about contributing to every stage and missing out on the siege as a result of it. Removing lock-out timers will help people switch sides to balance the numbers if they are willing and able.

4) Assuming there is no cap to the number of instances that can be launched, when the message comes up saying "no more queues" please can you kick everyone who is currently queued so we know there is zero chance. Currently people remain in the queue unsure if there will ever be a siege instance spawned for them after this message appears. Kicking people out of the queue will make it obvious that no more instances will be created.

edit: 5) please look at updating the SoR addon with information about the city siege as well, such as grace period (if introduced), time left to queue and how long until the campaign resets.