State of the Realms (A Community Discussion with the Devs)

[Bluestreak2k5]

I don't necessarily agree with the strategy here from the developers, but I'll add some things that might help especially with the NA problem.

One of the biggest problems in NA is that there hardly enough for a WB on both sides and it's damn near impossible to take on a warband or multiple warbands without a full warband. You stand 0 chance of basically killing anyone unless your roaming trying to catch stragglers. If you actually want to attempt to solve this problem you need to increase the rewards for getting those kills at the keep when the enemy team is 40 versus your 6.

The biggest issue is medals, you give AAO but you recieve no medal bonus and given that your fighting against odds that are usually above 4:1 the enemy team is going to be getting more medals then you are simply due to the amount of deaths your going to have. If you really want us to defend then you should make AAO affect the number of medals dropped as well. If there is 400% AAO then every kill should drop 5 medals each and be rolled on separately.

You should also raise the max AAO from 400%, maybe as high as 800%. Again if your going to take away the rewards from being able to attack empty castles, then you need to incentivize the defend of said castles. If you can manage to defend and kill a few people and get more medals and more influence even though your outnumbered 8 to 1, well then I might be more inclined to fight. But as it stands now if I see anything above 150% AAO in a keep defense I will go and do something else simply because it's an impossible task when the healers on the enemy warbands outnumber your warband. I can barely walk around the keep with the number of invisible witches that would be walking around in groups. Making the Lord's stronger has helped with this, but that only encourages defense in the lord room, not at either door of the keep.

And on top of that if the loser rewards are multiplied by the AAO, well now it might be interesting defending outnumbered. Especially if the rewards also hand out medals the way the other objectives are doing.

u havent done much rvr, currently in rvr most small grps do either gank or keep def when they got a few aao but they rarely attack ior compete for bos

this is where the system colapse , people want hugue battles and clash zerv vs zerg , because actualy the small scale warbands are what killed rvr, they good to chew few here and there poking a zerg but only when there is a wc or a postern nearby never in full open . and of course if their side gonna fall a swift change to either faction to leech .

Bahaha, I'm constantly leading warbands everynight in T4 for NA. I mean seriously your judging based purely on a comment. If you want me to defend a keep against 100 Order with 6 people, then the rewards need to scale much much higher, otherwise your deaths alone will feed the enemy more then anything your going to earn, especially in medals which is the most important.

[anarchypark]

I'm making a case that for certain time frames the only option open to players to earn Lake rewards is to PvD. By breaking that, you are effectively removing the best gear from the game for a group of players, which limits there overall competitiveness in RvR.

there is a debolstering option
it's progression is very very slow but u can max T3 inf with 40 characters
go fast to T4 with quests if there is no rvr
i stayed at 13 mastery for a long time as 40 to max T3 inf and save respec fee
it's bad for T4 experience but u can have both T3 and T4 rvr
with this way u can actually help T3 population which u have suffered

[navis]

My observations are that there are quite a lot of bad Order players in general in T4, unorganized, but who can blame them with the state of keeps.
Honestly have they considered rewarding solo healers to compensate a bit more for overall "gains"? (eg. absorbs aren't considered worthy of reward, same as removing curses/hexes/ails).

[Shutyergob]

I personally wouldn't mind different rvr systems for different zones. One Zone could have the old 'Victory Point' system, another could have the 'Resource Carrier' system, another could have some thing like we have been using here in RoR, etc. And the rvr system can rotate randomly from zone to zone. Why must there be only one rvr mechanic? Each system had it's strengths and weaknesses. And each system had its admirers and detractors. So, random rotation. Variety is the spice of life. And if after a time people really come to hate one of the systems, well then that particular system can be dropped from the rotation. Of course having more than one system could be an undue burden on the devs so of course that may be a reason to not do this. Just my thoughts on the matter. My thanks to the devs btw for all their hard work on this game that we all love.

[drmordread]

It may not come as much of a surprise to people, but I don't think PvDoor and PvEing keeps in general to be worthy of great reward. The system will continue to be shaped to the detriment of players who PvE in RvR and who duck fights to cap empty zones, and to the benefit of those who put in actual effort, which involves PvP. Stay tuned for the next small patch!

(opinion) One of the best strategies in keeping people interested in playing a faction is Rewards. The more the rewards the more people play a faction. Currently everyone (almost) is playing Destro, and as we see over the last week or so, Destro is rolling 3 to 4 WB's at a time and locking everything up. In comparison, Order is lucky to get one full WB.

On live, when I led WB's, I as well as other WB leaders, would use attacking a keep in an empty zone as a means of
(a) Taking Destro away from attacking another zone
(b) If lucky, a keep take, RR, and a loot bag.

Some people, you included (opinion) are against this. They would rather hole up in a keep, maybe kill 5 attacking destro (average number of destro from zerg dying tonight before inner was taken down), die in 3 min or less, feed the zerg, go to next zone, rinse and repeat.

People from Order are just not playing anymore in t4, or, xrealming and going to destro and thus making the problem even worse.

If there is no point in attacking an empty zone, then the only option for Order players are to go play Destro, and we can all agree that this will kill the game.

So maybe, after thorough and careful thought, taking away rewards for "PvEDoor" is a bad thing. Because
(a) destro will wind up playing pve door, because order is simply not going to be around to defend.
(b) the few order playing in t4, will have no option but to only play feed bags for destro.

You want players to "Put in the effort". Effort for what? The last two nights have been horrendous for Order. People are doing PvE quests, login into destro toons, or watching netflix. (The Walking Dead season 6 came on today so that is what I am doing). The only other option is feed destro, and I will not do that. Let them PvE in RvR and get nothing imo!

[Pixie126]

Or, the Order person simply ceases playing, which doesn't help NA times (at least in my case).
I found a new (to me) Korean drama to watch (yea Netflix!), so I am occupied. I haven't even bothered to log on. I check the front page, see 65% destro, and don't bother being cannon fodder.

[Kali14]

We order during last 2 weeks only defending our keeps but we didn't get bags for this. There is not roll bags evev when the outer doors go down.

[nibbles]

Have never liked pvd/rve, but consider the times that (happens a lot in t4) attackers just cannot take a zone (kv most notable for desi) and the talk in /r# is 'my wb will go prepare DW, you keep order busy here' and then call comes over 'inner 10pc all get here' and the zerg arrives to claim their 65000 reward, cookies n beer too. That’s a game mechanic that needs to be mentioned here.

Had always thought the aao did not live up to expectations, it never fully helped the small guys, it was just the mechanism that organised groups chased after all the way back to when it was introduced on live, and it just extended their slow deaths a little.

Once the keeps have been took, the war continues, there is always pvp to be done, out back of Mandreds is a good place to find it for instance, yet nearly all players race to the next rve/pvd experience. Maybe introduce a sort of pk multiplier to the next zone lock rewards for that tier would help here?

As for the lack of population/unbalance, there was the alter summoning back on live with skulls, perhaps the aao could be re-worked to include a counter of undead that could be summoned and that adds to the defenders rr count as they charge in alongside them?

[Jaycub]

We order during last 2 weeks only defending our keeps but we didn't get bags for this. There is not roll bags evev when the outer doors go down.

Implementing defense rewards is tricky I think, there needs to be a balance where defending doesn't become too good like it used to be, especially if Az is gonna go through with the changes hinted at in this thread. We could very easily have zergs waiting in keeps again hoping the other realm attacks.

AAO is definitely reward enough for defenders, but AAO isn't guaranteed... so there needs to be a incentive for defending if you don't have AAO... but I don't think it should be RvR gear, same for forts/cities.

Defending will always be easier, and require less coordination. Gonna be sad if we go back to alliance premades cheesing city defenses to get sov gear on the backs of the hard work the other realm put in to push the campaign to that stage.

[adei]

If there is no point in attacking an empty zone, then the only option for Order players are to go play Destro, and we can all agree that this will kill the game.

So maybe, after thorough and careful thought, taking away rewards for "PvEDoor" is a bad thing. Because
(a) destro will wind up playing pve door, because order is simply not going to be around to defend.
(b) the few order playing in t4, will have no option but to only play feed bags for destro.

You want players to "Put in the effort". Effort for what? The last two nights have been horrendous for Order. People are doing PvE quests, login into destro toons, or watching netflix. (The Walking Dead season 6 came on today so that is what I am doing). The only other option is feed destro, and I will not do that. Let them PvE in RvR and get nothing imo!

This is a work in progress, and pvdoor is possibly one of the cheapest tactics ( if you can even call it that ) in this game. Plenty times we see the destro warbands going on a merry adventure to attack a keep with some defence, only to find out that the other half of the wb has gone to attack an empty keep and then everybody leaves what could have been an actual keep siege. Some use this tactic more than others and people know who they are.

The idea that it is good for the game I find hard to understand, it takes no effort to do this. If people are xrealming so much then it's time to stop blaming the developers for this and start looking at the community itself, as xtrealming is something that will have to work with the cooperation on both ends for the time being.

There has been much discussion over realm pride in the past, its clear there is little of it, and its clear all people want is easy rewards, these days I see very little people actual fighting for the actual sake of fun, which is sad. People are getting to hung up over rewards and its time to start addressing this by adding more incentives to move the war effort forward, perhaps when the full system is in place this will be more apparent.