Changelog 08/08/2016

[Dresden]

The killing-for-gold was the cherry on top in Scenarios.

Making the EFFORT to kill was a fundamental part of it, the Scenario dynamic will never be the same without it.

I can't stand the grind of it, it's just tiny rvr without gold!!!

Okay, i officially give up my arguement about this, i can just sell the items, killing just for fun is now gone for me BUT at least the gold issue has been dealt with in a roundabout way.

Edit: kill-quests are essentially kill-quotas and those kill-quotas were the main incentive to keep killing more!

I've played MANY Scenarios where i've been on the weak side and we were losing by focusing on objectives and then started winning when we started focusing on kills! leaving out kill-quests/kill-quotas narrows the array of tactical approaches available to a side that could allow them to win a Scenario!

[Renork]

Does this mean siege kills give xp/inf/rr again?

[bloodi]

I understand the idea behind the scenario changes, it makes incentivizes playing for objectives, however the change to make people not drop loot its a huge deal on the pug side of things.

Currently, you get 3 drop every 100 points. And that is shared with all your group. Furthermore, the score kills grant to the score is 2, meaning to to 100 points, you need to kill 50 of them, which basically doesnt happen in any scenario besides the long ones and specially doesnt happen for the losing side.

Usually you could at least get something, between kills and how it contributed to score, you could get out of a losing scenario with some drops, a medallion from kills and an extra one from the points scored of kills. Currently, kills will grant you nothing.

So the losing side now loses even harder, the renown in scenarios is minimal, the loot has been gutted and getting medallions is even harder.

I like that you want to make objectives more rewarding, please dont make it in expense of making losers lose even harder, it was already bad enough.

[Genisaurus]

Does this mean siege kills give xp/inf/rr again?

At the moment, no. That note was from the old change that was pushed in-between notes.

[Penril]

Spoiler:

I understand the idea behind the scenario changes, it makes incentivizes playing for objectives, however the change to make people not drop loot its a huge deal on the pug side of things.

Currently, you get 3 drop every 100 points. And that is shared with all your group. Furthermore, the score kills grant to the score is 2, meaning to to 100 points, you need to kill 50 of them, which basically doesnt happen in any scenario besides the long ones and specially doesnt happen for the losing side.

Usually you could at least get something, between kills and how it contributed to score, you could get out of a losing scenario with some drops, a medallion from kills and an extra one from the points scored of kills. Currently, kills will grant you nothing.

So the losing side now loses even harder, the renown in scenarios is minimal, the loot has been gutted and getting medallions is even harder.

I like that you want to make objectives more rewarding, please dont make it in expense of making losers lose even harder, it was already bad enough.

I think what devs are trying to do is make us play the objectives so SCs end faster. Currently, one side will spawn camp the other one for 15 minutes (unless someone gets bored and decides to cap the flags/carry the bomb/etc; just last night I had a Howling Gorge like this and i was the only one carrying the bomb to make the SC end faster). SCs like the one i described end up being boring for everyone. With the latest change, people will go for the objectives (it doesn't matter if you get 1 kill or 100 since your rewards are based on reaching a certain point threshold) therefore ending the SCs much faster.

As for getting items from kills? Let's be real: the losers usually end up having 0-1 kills. However it is not rare to see them with 100-200 points (the losing side simply decides to do the objectives in the SC avoiding a fight). Hell... several times I have seen these guys actually win a SC in spite of having like 0 kills. Anyway, losers won't really lose even harder... they will probably gain the same loot/rewards as in the previous system. The difference is that they will only be spawn-camped for 5-7 minutes (or maybe not spawn-camped at all) instead of 15. I like it.

Also, this: "The duration and tier of each scenario match is now saved at its end. This data will be used to scale the rewards granted by different scenarios based on the average completion time of each. Some scenarios will also have a reward scaler and provide greater inherent rewards". Which means devs will be keeping an eye on this system and adjust the rewards appropiately for each individual SC, in time. In other words: let's test this, and have faith they will make it work.

Keep in mind this only applies to some SCs. Those who don't like this system can simply blacklist those SCs.

As for renown in SCs, it is minimal because you only gain like 25% renown after rr40 iirc. In RvR, AAO can make up for this penalty but in SCs it really sucks. Specially for some classes/specs that really don't shine until rr60+. I really hope they remove this renown-gain-nerf-thing.

[Azarael]

As Penril indicated, loot will drop as normal within SCs that are not strongly objective-based. It was absolutely necessary that players not drop loot in strongly objective-based scenarios simply because that leaves the incentive there to prioritize killing over the objective.

The proper design is that the objectives are the primary focus, and through being the primary focus, they drive the killing, which is what most people find fun. For that to happen in these scenarios, there absolutely must not be any incentive to play them as TDM.

To expand on the statistic tracking: The plan is to have two scalers on the rewards for a scenario. The first being a config scaler, to use for scenarios that are intrinsically less popular, and the second being a relative time scaler. We'll peg a group of scenarios (most likely Nordenwatch and Mourkain Temple) as representing average-duration scenarios, and compare the average completion time of these scenarios to the average completion time of a given scenario to determine appropriate rewards for that scenario. Based on this data, we may or may not decide to adjust the point scoring within slower scenarios, though I'm a fan of longer games myself, so...

[bloodi]

I am just talking about my experience in 2-3 hours of scs today, it was not pretty, objectives can be done by 1 or 2 guys while they still camp you and killing them is even less rewarding that it was, we just lose even harder.

Kills still grant renown, people still go out their way to camp you and let the timer run since they can just finish the objectives fast when there is 5 minutes left. On the previous system you could at least try to exploit their greediness and kill them to get something, currently you get nothing at all.

I understand the idea behind it, just take in mind the consequences of it, nothing whatsoever for losers even if they manage to get a bunch of kills its not incentivizing people to queue and we already have a problem enough with pugs getting stomped and not queueing.

Maybe a system like we have with bos, where kills around objectives grant extra loot would be better than just removing them altogether.

Anyway, losers won't really lose even harder... they will probably gain the same loot/rewards as in the previous system. The difference is that they will only be spawn-camped for 5-7 minutes (or maybe not spawn-camped at all) instead of 15. I like it.

There is no incentive to finish the game faster, camping the other team till there is time to just run the objectives is still the best way to get rewards in the sc, you get your triple drop for the group every 100 points at minute 14 or with 30 seconds left, doesnt matter, you just farm renown and then do the objectives.

The proper design is that the objectives are the primary focus, and through being the primary focus, they drive the killing, which is what most people find fun. For that to happen in these scenarios, there absolutely must not be any incentive to play them as TDM.

But what incentive there is to queue when you just lose then? You spend 15 minutes and get nothing, why to incentivize one thing you have to gut the other?

Promote teamplay, give better rewards for playing the objective but dont screw the losers because of it, its a game, getting nothing out of 4 scs in a hour is not something your design should promote.

[Dresden]

As Penril indicated, loot will drop as normal within SCs that are not strongly objective-based. It was absolutely necessary that players not drop loot in strongly objective-based scenarios simply because that leaves the incentive there to prioritize killing over the objective.

The proper design is that the objectives are the primary focus, and through being the primary focus, they drive the killing, which is what most people find fun. For that to happen in these scenarios, there absolutely must not be any incentive to play them as TDM.

To expand on the statistic tracking: The plan is to have two scalers on the rewards for a scenario. The first being a config scaler, to use for scenarios that are intrinsically less popular, and the second being a relative time scaler. We'll peg a group of scenarios (most likely Nordenwatch and Mourkain Temple) as representing average-duration scenarios, and compare the average completion time of these scenarios to the average completion time of a given scenario to determine appropriate rewards for that scenario. Based on this data, we may or may not decide to adjust the point scoring within slower scenarios, though I'm a fan of longer games myself, so...

A lack of incentive to kill means a lack of incentive for teamwork/zerging, simple as that! weak sides NEED to kill.

Adding a simple gold-reward kill-quest to THIS current configuration WOULD satisfy all interests and inspire kills.

Edit: stronger sides will still camp against weak sides wether or not there is a gold-reward kill-quest involved.

[Lindisfarne]

sweet!! thanks!

[Penril]

I am just talking about my experience in 2-3 hours of scs today, it was not pretty, objectives can be done by 1 or 2 guys while they still camp you and killing them is even less rewarding that it was, we just lose even harder.

Kills still grant renown, people still go out their way to camp you and let the timer run since they can just finish the objectives fast when there is 5 minutes left. On the previous system you could at least try to exploit their greediness and kill them to get something, currently you get nothing at all.

I understand the idea behind it, just take in mind the consequences of it, nothing whatsoever for losers even if they manage to get a bunch of kills its not incentivizing people to queue and we already have a problem enough with pugs getting stomped and not queueing.

If the losers end up getting a bunch of kills that means it was a close SC. The SC scores will probably be close as well so in the end, both sides end up getting similar rewards. Losers who are spawn-camped never get a bunch of kills. They might get a couple.

The only problem I can see with this system are single-objective SCs where whoever captures the flag first (assuming it is a really close fight where no one wipes) will win, probably 500-100 (or less). This would be a really close fight where the loser will not even reach the 100 points threshold (and therefore receive close to zero rewards). Then again, I think none of the SCs that follow the new rules fall into this category.