City should be redesigned

[billyk]

Cue Destro premades afk'ing in round 1 to stomp the worst Order pug in round 2.

[Nekkma]

Only because it was the only place to get Sov doesn't mean that it was better. If you had to eat dirt to get money, the dirt wouldn't taste better. The goal should be to have entertaining, fun, and balanced content, to eat cake instead of dirt.

To discuss more enjoyable mechanics is the absolut right way to change something.
To slap some rewards on the momentary system and force people into playing content that they obviously don't enjoy doesn't seem to do the trick.

It very much depends on how you view cities. Imo cities should not be viewed in isolation (wb sized scenario) but rather as the conslusion of the rvr campaign. Cities give the campaign meaning instead of just the killfarm we have atm. To me, the campaign was always the driving force in the game. Cities with all its flaws gave meaning to the campaign and made the game better as a whole. Even if the actual experience of cities often was a bit so and so the experience of rvr, i.e. the majority of playtime for most, was better just because cities existed.

[Zxul]

Very basically, cities need to stop being wb vs wb scenarios, since very few players want those- see the number of players which currently join cities.

[Stimpz]

Only because it was the only place to get Sov doesn't mean that it was better. If you had to eat dirt to get money, the dirt wouldn't taste better. The goal should be to have entertaining, fun, and balanced content, to eat cake instead of dirt.

To discuss more enjoyable mechanics is the absolut right way to change something.
To slap some rewards on the momentary system and force people into playing content that they obviously don't enjoy doesn't seem to do the trick.

It very much depends on how you view cities. Imo cities should not be viewed in isolation (wb sized scenario) but rather as the conslusion of the rvr campaign. Cities give the campaign meaning instead of just the killfarm we have atm. To me, the campaign was always the driving force in the game. Cities with all its flaws gave meaning to the campaign and made the game better as a whole. Even if the actual experience of cities often was a bit so and so the experience of rvr, i.e. the majority of playtime for most, was better just because cities existed.

In concept, you're absolutely right. The idea to have this big grand goal at the end of the road is a beautiful one.

But was it really better? We both know that the reality was another one.
Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely on your side. I too wish to have a bigger meaning behind the campaign. But again, you won't get it with only some better rewards for cities.

Sometimes I have the feeling that rose-tinted glasses are put on when there are discussions about the old campaign system.
The only goal was to have cities as fast as possible. And this is understandable. Why should you defend a fort if you already have invader gear? You got nothing for it. So the only logical solution was to throw that fort. It didn't feel like a grand campaign for glory. Sometimes I was disgusted by myself because deep inside I was happy if they threw that fort. And so, while a few individuals with a hero's heart fought against all odds in a fort, I was already in a WB and discord waiting in front of IC for another city. And that, by all means, is no desired campaign system, I guess.

I did not actively promote that behavior; in fact, I did the biggest part solo. I was in no big guild that had some power of decision.
I did what most people did at the time.
Read the tides and flow with them.

After I got my gear, I had much more fun again. I played because I liked the game, and only then could I really see how broken the system was.
Absolute stalemates till the "right" guilds were online.
Sudden loses of one side.
Mass immigration from Order -> Destro / Destro -> Order when the last fort has begun.
A lot of inactivity till city sieges.
Multiple cities in one day, and the list goes on.

So the only solution to get a better city and not that old kind of campaign again is to design a system that is first and foremost fun. Rewards should be secondary.

[joroth]

As a mostly solo player, city should be an event that makes people log in. City should not be balanced in terms of rewards. The rewards from city should grossly outweigh everything else in the game.

In the past citys have built guild rivalry, and even caused people to form guilds in the first place. When ever city is active the game is healthy.

[Detangler]

We got an City with really worth setup, no 4 healers, a lot (really a lot) of WH. Not complaining about this, it's what you get when queing solo.

First inc was pretty good, we nearly wiped them but without aoe pressure keeping enemys down and destroy cannons was not possible. Second inc was not that good but also in a funnel, so not good starting point, we lost, people left, rest died through three steps to get a little bit of crests and more important, not get quitter.

This can't be the way city should be, 3 or 4 cowards leaving and the rest is doomed to run around 30 minutest to not get punished?

Shall we start to discuss more enjoyable mechanics and systems? Please don't start matchmaking complaints here, if there is nothing to match no matchmaking system on the world will be good enough

Hey, I was in that scenario with you! .

City rewards are already quite high for crests - even in that 3 stage stomp fest i came away with 100+ crests. much better than afking in a keep siege and people still left en masse.

[Rapzel]

Just remove city. It has been bad since the day it was implemented. The whole concept of 24 vs 24 or 12 vs 12 is just so bad in an Realm vs Realm game. Just look at how none of the top tier wbs queue city, devs need to take responsibility and kill city, ranked and scenarios. To allow so everyone to play the game the way it is meant to be played, in epic large scale fights. Having 200 vs 200 is so much more enjoyable than anything else.

Devs also need to fix xrealming by adding a 30 day lockout.

[gyps]

Cities back to the original idea, Implement the city PQ's with some new items if you want and allow enemy realm to enter enemy dungeons when a city is sieged for three hours for a new experience with extra hard sewers / sacellum designed for lvl 40 and cnt / BB runs with extra hard added difficulty.

[Everdin]

In general, I did not want to talk if there should be a city or not, thread focused more on the question what happens im people leave, there should be fillup mechanics, more motivations before to stay. Atm staying in feels like you get punished because others left

[SZ244663]

Small reminder that there are some planned City changes already announced in the August 2023 Developer Update:

I’m loving a lot of what’s written in the developer updates. excited when they can have that implemented especially the backfilling of players if someone quits the scenario though there should be a buffer of a minute or two because if someone disconnects due to game crashing they should still be allowed to come back. Also the shuffling idea is really cool too, having the top performing order and Destro teams meet in the subsequent rounds sounds really cool too!