Are objectives a lost cause?

[Lion1986]

in the current state of RVR objectives are there just as placeholder. I barely get 200 renown for flipping a flag and did not registered a big improvement in RR gain while fightning near a BO. This lead to the endless praag/eataine zergs that last a whole day.

BO should be removed or make automated by npc delivering crates to keep.

[shoelessHN]

Risk reward for capping BO isn't worth it. You should do a couple to get zone contribution and then ignore until zone flips again.

Capping a BO gives like 200 renown, running the box is another 200? You're better off camping the route from the BO to the warcamp/keep and killing box runners for 1000+. Doesn't make sense to even both with capping or sitting in BOs them since they introduced boxes.

The old BO tick system produced more fun but usually resulted in 2-3 wbs sitting inside a BO like praag armory and defending it like a keep until it was overrun. Apparently that wasn't good for the game.

[Caduceus]

At this point RvR should simply be reverted to how it was ~5 years ago.

The campaign had meaning then. It was working well. No idea how or why it drifted so far from a more or less successful formula.

Right now, so many nonsensical changes have been made which evidently did not produce positive outcomes that it's time to bite the bullet and start reverting. Chances are this won't happen because sunk cost fallacy and all that.

[Lion1986]

At this point RvR should simply be reverted to how it was ~5 years ago.

The campaign had meaning then. It was working well. No idea how or why it drifted so far from a more or less successful formula.

Right now, so many nonsensical changes have been made which evidently did not produce positive outcomes that it's time to bite the bullet and start reverting. Chances are this won't happen because sunk cost fallacy and all that.

was drifted because people complained that RVR lakes were too zergy and without objectives to do while ranking up keep.

[gyps]

Lets be honest, the game is fun when population peaks and when its even between the two realms, otherwise its just boring.

We need PVE challenging mobs to be integrated in the lakes, and by challenging I mean truly difficult mobs to be killed with healing abilities between them, guarding each other, having mechanics to counter. Each battalion (let's call it this way) could have different difficulties in order to have space for every solo player, group or wb in the lakes.

I already posted some ideas in this following link:
viewtopic.php?t=53262

People keep saying this is not the way but perhaps a system where the more real player appear the less mobs are present, with a 500-1000 total max per side could be nice (i.e. 200 players on desert + 800 mobs), then help those mobs to reach enemy bo's for buffes, defending them while running boxes, or helping them sieging. lets be honest even ramming a door is boring.

Consider this way of play as becoming a "hero" of battalions of your own army where if no one appears there's no advance (army of mobs vs army of mobs results in equal fights that can advance any further)

Regarding incentives for >rr80, special mounts like the griffon should be left for them, believe in Warhammer lore heroes got pegasus, gryphons, dragons, manticores...without timers for sure. Or lets just create a reborn mechanic to return to rr 1 after rr100 to start over and gain some cool features from your god like a permanent skill like the one present in SOV/off SOV/ Warlord gear, without actually using SOV/off SOV/ Warlord gear.

[Topdude]

Are there any hopes for objectives to split the action out, or do we need to be the change we want to see as a community

There are and always have been 2 entities that drive this game, The Devs and The Community. If The Community changed the way we played it would be inevitable that The Devs would change their plans, or at least I hope so.
If players started focusing on zone ranking and tier conquest rather than blobbing, well the fights would come to them. I put the blame for the lack of interest in playing the mechanic on the reduced RP for BO locks, the fact the resources only benefit the 6 man that turns them in and the painfully low RP for taking a zone. It's all but removed the drive of zone conquest from the game.
Then there's the contribution issue. I log on, "Order ram in TM". I fly in, run out to join the fight, maybe get a kill or die. When the lord goes down I get nothing. When the keep gets captured, I get nothing. When the zone locks, I GET NOTHING! I've learned. If I don't have contribution, I'll stay in WC thank you very much!

[anstalt]

There are a few things I would suggest to improve BO's:

1) Add the RP ticks again

This would encourage players to "hang out" at the BOs, making them a good place to seek out a fight.

2) Make them more interesting places to fight.

I don't know about everyone else, but BO's just aren't exciting to me. Both aesthetically, as well as mechanically. Having a fight in a BO is no different to having a fight anywhere else in the lakes, it's mostly just open air fighting.

I'd love to see BO's with a single entrance to funnel to enemy. Drawbridges so I can punt people off. Lava moats to kill the unsuspecting. Plenty of walls and corridors to setup ambushes and stuff.


3) Add NPCs.

I realise this will be an unpopular opinion, nobody wants to PvE in the PvP lakes (me included). However, this game is seriously lacking in any sort of self-balancing mechanisms. NPCs are one method of self-balancing.

Lets say I'm roaming as a duo, but come across a roaming 6man. What can I do? nothing, except run away or die. But, if the BO's had a few NPCs, then my duo could retreat to a BO, and the NPCs could help balance the fight. Getting the balance right would probably be a real difficulty, given the massive range in player power, but not impossible. Maybe tie the NPCs into box running? The more boxes you run from that BO, the stronger the NPCs get?

[leftayparxoun]

So Im honestly wondering, would any incentive ever help this issue...
...Are there any hopes for objectives to split the action out, or do we need to be the change we want to see as a community

The issue is one that can be solved by design. It just falls into the dev-team's court to decide if the issue is important enough to take drastic measures to fix it.
Before I talk about how this could be done, let me touch on the concept of ''rewards'':

• Warcrests: While it might enough of the most important incentives for players, it comes with 2 issues; 1. it's worthless for veterans (as there is no way to share it in your account) and 2. faster Warcrests gain might lead to lesser player retention since lots of them could reach BIS and decide to quit the game.

• Gold: Shareable, but it comes with the risk of balancing off and crashing the economy.

• Cosmetics: Good incentive but it cannot be easily linked to Objectives, perhaps only in the form of tome unlocks from achievements. They also would have to be frequent enough to motivate players to go for them but in that way it requires a lot of investment from the art-team

• Renown: The name itself indicates that it's meant to represent a players fame/notoriety against the enemy faction. Therefore you won't see any non-PvP activities tied to renown gain. This is probably the best way to go around rewarding people for playing the Objectives of the game. It is also linked to cosmetics by itself.

Suppose now the dev team decides that Objectives should indeed have a major importance in the overall faction v faction war. That importance should then also translate in importance in the campaign. Even as it stands now, capturing and holding a BO is proportionally rewarded to its importance; minimal rewards tied to minimal impact to the campaign.

If there is desire to do so, the first part would be increasing the importance of BOs in the campaign.
Together with that, there should also be proportionate rewards tied to them. And as I proposed earlier, renown gain is the way to go about the rewards.

Here is an example of high BO importance & high related rewards system:

• Increased BO area around current objectives to force people to defend around a larger perimeter

• To decap a BO a faction needs to kill/push away all non-stealthed defenders from that area

• Defending a BO would grant Renown Points (RP) every few seconds, split between all members in the vicinity and the RP reward would scale up the fewer the BOs your faction controls to incentivize defending but also splitting due to the reward being divided (e.g. 1 BO = 2*RP, 2 BOs = 1.5*RP, 3 BOs = 1.2*RP, 4 BOs = 1*RP)

• Total RPs from defending BOs would also scale exponentially with time, and would be reset back to normal if lost and recaptured. (e.g. the rate of RP would would increase by 10% every tick: 0s = 1000, 20s = 1100, 40s = 1220 ... 5min = 4177).

• An upper limit could be placed to avoid issues (e.g. cap =100k of shared RP reached at ~16 minutes)

• Successfully capturing an enemy BO would grant RPs proportionately to the total amount it had generated --> Incentivises taking last bastions of defence and promotes fights at BOs in general

• Holding more BOs than the enemy faction would, similarly, directly provide contribution to a keep proportionally to the BO differential and exponentially with time (keep progresses only if you hold more BOs) with the contribution rate also resetting if the BO is lost and recaptured OR if your realm loses, even momentarily, the advantage in BOs held (2-2 means both realms stop generating contribution) --> Places a time limit before Enemy Keep ranks up.
  
  A system like that would achieve:
  - Defenders having to split across BOs to maximize RP gains (e.g. 24 people holding the only 1 BO would give 2/24 = 8.3% of the default RP tick to everyone while holding 2 BOs with 12 people on each would grant 1.5/12 = 12.5% of the default RP tick)
  - Defenders incentivized to defend specific BOs due to the exponential rewards.
  - Attackers incentivized to capture long-held BOs to reap the cap bonuses first.
  - Attackers incentivized to capture BOs to stop enemy Keep rank-ups (exponential rate if they keep the BO advantage)
  - Major focus in coordination and reconnaissance since people will try to both be equally split across BOs when defending (to maximize rewards), but also to group up and hit enemy BOs with larger forces in lightning-style combat or to detect such manoeuvres and either gather more forces to defend, flank attackers or even try to exchange BOs when enemy forces are absent.
  - Tie of renown gains to notoriety/fame: Small forces defending BOs for long prolonged amounts of time against lots of enemies trying to reap the rewards of their defence should rightfully earn them big reputation. Similarly for Attackers who manage to breach long-held enemy defences.
  
  Only possible issue is if both factions decide to just sit on BOs and refuse to fight. This shouldn't be a problem though if the scaling of the BO capture reward is generous enough. It also isn't likely to happen since most people will be chasing after fights (to get War Crests to buy their gear) since Renown Rank will no longer be/is not the limiting factor for progression.
  
  As mentioned before, in the end it comes down to a decision by the devs. If they want to place importance in BOs they can do so without having to affect the in game economy (Gold), the gear-progression rate (War Crests) or having to strain the art-team (cosmetics).
  They just have to introduce exponential RP rewards tied to escalating Objective importance.
  Being stingy has no benefit when RR 255 is unreachable anyway (as long as there is a renown tick cap)

[Zxul]

Being stingy has no benefit when RR 255 is unreachable anyway (as long as there is a renown tick cap)

Its reachable, can get it even with renown tick cap 20 years before net energy gain positive fusion reactor, quantum computer with practical applications, and actual general AI. Though by the time you get to it, it might be just 40 years away.

[galaxgal]

The idea that an undefended or uncontested BO, keep, zone, whatever is a "handout" seems strange and silly to me.
The enemy realm fails to show up to something that contributes to realm war victory and it's my WB's fault?

It's not ideal that there are times when players will be avoiding the enemy army but that's an inevitability of a game about mass warfare. Sometimes you cannot defeat the enemy head on, sometimes all you can do is stall them. Sometimes there is no enemy because they are utterly demoralized. The realm that accomplishes this should be rewarded IMO.

All that idealist stuff aside though BO ticks are not about wanting "free stuff," it's about wanting strategy, it's about giving a way to cap zone when both realms are in a stalemate. Boxes are supposedly the answer to this but no one ever wants to run them because it's monotonous and even when helping your own realm cap them you can sometimes get nothing. I'm sure the current tuning was introduced to counterbalance some kind of broken incentive structure that was leading to pure pvdoor or BO /afk but it feels to me we've gone too far in the other direction, and now all anyone cares about is mid blobbing.