Return of Reckoning

Here's my two cents based on seeing the effects of the current changes as well as past experience in other mass pvp games.

Suggestion Goals:

1. Encourage actively playing instead of passively standing around soaking up reward ticks.
2. Reward attempting to take objectives.
3. Reward attempting to hold objectives.
4. Encourage spreading out to defend multiple BO's instead of blobbing and doing a brainless zerg patrol when possible.

Assessment of player populace and psychology:

There are two main groups of players, with some overlap, those that play primarily to fight, and those that play primarily to advance along the path of least resistance. The latter are unfortunately the majority so any changes must be taken into account to ensure they show up to drive the pvp content for the former.

BO's (all tiers)

Capturing a BO will award the attackers an upfront chunk of Renown and XP/gold based on the rank of the BO at the time of capture. The capture timers should be relatively short to punish leaving a BO deserted or under-defended, and to encourage small groups to seek out and cap enemy possessed BO's that are in such a state for the easy renown gains.

BO's rank up over time as they are held, and decrease in rank when captured. (This is to discourage BO "trading", constant flipping a particular BO over a short time window would rapidly de-rank it back down to level 1) Defensive kills within a BO also cause it to rank up faster. High ranked BO's contribute more to the zone control ticks as well.

Possession of a BO grants the possessing side a zone wide scaling bonus based both on the rank and number of BO's held.

Defending a BO grants the local defenders at that BO an additional scaling bonus to renown/xp/gold rewards based on the rank of the BO, which stacks with the zone wide bonus. (Perhaps to the point of ensuring a minimum floor on kill rewards to make it worth killing even attackers that normally only grant 1 xp/renown) Also, defensive kills also get added into the zone lock reward pool bonus.

BO's (T2+)

BO's in addition to the prior mechanics, also interact with the keeps in their zone by granting a defensive bonus to the Lord. This is to encourage both taking *and* holding BO's even during a keep assault. Attackers will want to take BO's to weaken the Lord as well as to gobble up the BO capture reward. Defenders will also want to hold all the BO's to make the Lord as beefy as possible, as well as to keep their zone and local defense bonuses stacked as high as possible.


Mechanics not used and why:

BO lockout timers, be they hard timers or soft timer on the reward schema: this is because it encourages blobbing by preventing or discouraging an immediate recap by a small group once a zerg caps a BO and moves on. BO's should require and reward constant defense at all times to encourage zerg fragmentation over time.

I just had an idea that might be a bit better. Currently there is a problem that the BOs do not matter enough to the people who would actually hold them, unless they are pushing for fort.

And as it was agreed beforehand the game of zergs is not desirable.

What if instead of increased % to whatever gain. The effect the buff gave was global tics, which would diminish with lack of contest or delivery of supplies periodically spawned on said bo.

I think that would give insentive to hold/take BOs even for solo players, while allowing and giving incentive to the more active players outside the zerg, while complimenting the system maps were built around.

Musica wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2019 11:56 pm I'm just throwing this out but, maybe you haven't noticed but the afking mechanic became so instilled into people, that they are now actively afking in warbands.

There's a bunch of people who join the warband and then afk during keep defense, keep take, everything.

Don't bring ticks back, while they may have been a reward for active players, bad habits are really easy to pick up and it's a trend that has to be addressed.

While changes may be needed to the BO system, ticks are not the way to go.

You are just pulling claims out of your ass. Fine you dont like BO ticks, but BO ticks dont teach people the behavior of going afk in a wb. If anything the sharing of rewards from a wb does that. That is real leeching BTW.

If we are so against leeching, why not change the way rewards are distributed in a wb based on who is actually contributing. A good dps having to share with a **** dps is actually worse than someone getting small rewards for sitting on a point.

adamthelc wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:34 pm

Musica wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2019 11:56 pm I'm just throwing this out but, maybe you haven't noticed but the afking mechanic became so instilled into people, that they are now actively afking in warbands.

There's a bunch of people who join the warband and then afk during keep defense, keep take, everything.

Don't bring ticks back, while they may have been a reward for active players, bad habits are really easy to pick up and it's a trend that has to be addressed.

While changes may be needed to the BO system, ticks are not the way to go.

You are just pulling claims out of your ass. Fine you dont like BO ticks, but BO ticks don't teach people the behavior of going afk in a wb. If anything the sharing of rewards from a wb does that. That is real leeching BTW.

If we are so against leeching, why not change the way rewards are distributed in a wb based on who is actually contributing. A good dps having to share with a **** dps is actually worse than someone getting small rewards for sitting on a point.

Man, if you want to believe i'm pulling what i said out of my ass, you're free to do so, but i was playing before the BO ticks were here, i rarely saw people going afk as frequently in warbands, as they get kicked.
Now, i've been here almost a month again, possibly a little more or a little less. Before you had people afking on BOs, and you can say that's not true, and i'm just sayin it because i don't like BO ticks.
But still, there are videos and pretty much anyone knows that it's an actual thing. You can still say no, i mean, up to you, but that doesn't make it fake tho.
Since i don't record gameplay, it's useless to make claims, but if i had to make an example, which you can believe or not, in Dragonwake before BO ticks were removed i was running a warband. There's a BO next to Destro warcamp, we went there the first time, hoping we could get a fight. There was almost a WB worth of people of destro on the BO. Got cleaned almost instantly as most of them were afking. We got the BO, proceeded to literally hide behind the ruins.
People started trickling on the BO, we waited for them to cap it, we charged in again. They were less this time. Afk again.
We did it again. Less people this time. Same thing, we let them take BO, we charge in again, they are afk.
From there we just sat on the BO because we were close to rank 2 and the last "fishing" wasn't worth the effort to try it again.

Black Crag, same story. Lobba Mill. This was actually funnier to see. We did exactly the same thing, this time we hid behind a rock tho.
Same pattern, we clean the BO, hide, they take BO, we go in again, clean. Repeated 3 times. Last time, someone was expecting that because 3 people crashed the game as we charged in.

I'm talking about destro because i play only on order side. I am sure this happens also in reverse.
Once again, you're free to not believe it as i don't have video proof because i never really expected i would be talking about this in this manner and not as just a funny tale with a bit of sadness in it.

Let's talk about now that ticks have been removed.

People who participate actively in the Lake, end up holding BOs anyway, keeps tend to be harder to rank up, as there is less incentive to stay on it or because sometimes, covering all the BOs even for people running warbands is hard because they are forced to split on the BOs and it's not really that easy to coordinate pug. People who participate actively tho, are also very very happy when the zone locks since the gains are boosted by 40% every time you lock the zone. That's a big increase, especially if you were really active in the zone, which is something that needs rewarding.
But at the same time, there is a considerable influx of people(Talking about pug warbands) that join, stay active for a while, and then completely afk. I don't believe sayin the names would be of any use, or a cool thing to do to point the finger at somebody, especially if they don't roam around the forum, but there are many people that join to be complete zombies.
The easier to spot, are the healers. Or that guy that dies and stays dead for a bunch of time, every single time he dies in a keep defense.
I spend a lot of time online, i see many players. And i can tell you that sometimes people are asked to "remake the wb this is most all afk". I also have the habit sometime to salvage my wb and send people from my wb to strengthen another wb. I usually leave last because if i was managing the wb and then tell people to move to another one, i think it would kinda suck if i were the first to jump ship and take spots from other people. I can just start another overflow, or surf, or just log and do something else if i don't wanna continue doing RvR. But the times i wanna continue, i will make many calls in the wb telling people to switch to the other wb because i'm going to disband this, so "join now that there are still spots". "Guys, go in the other wb, this one is getting disbanded" and such. And to almost no surprise, the same people that i had doubts if they were just along for the ride semi-afking, or completely afking with some follow, tend to just stay in the WB. And sometimes, the WB that i left stays up for a while, with the players afking, in the WB usually at the WC, exactly where i left them.
Were those just cases? Maybe, but it's something i've been noticing just lately and being on a lot makes it so i notice it.

To answer your first opening bit:
" Fine you dont like BO ticks, but BO ticks dont teach people the behavior of going afk in a wb. If anything the sharing of rewards from a wb does that. That is real leeching BTW. "

No, the increase of the behavior of going afk in a WB is a subproduct of the ticks. With the ticks on the BO you could just stay there, barely active to not proc the afk flag and get rewards. Since they are no more, the next place where you can do nothing but get rewards is joining a wb, get into a keep while defending or attacking(once you get to lord) and then proceed to afk, since as long as they fight around you and you're in the wb, you're gonna get rewards.
BO ticks make you lazy. And take it from a lazy person, is really easy to just work out how to keep being lazy and get rewards passively.

As for the last part, elaborate, because maybe you're actually right about what you're tryin to say, i'm just not really sure what exactly is you're referring to. Is it rewards from kills? Items? Contribution at the end of the keep/fort?

Btw, it's 4 am, i was about to go to sleep. I hope i didn't make a bunch of mistakes typing and was somewhat able to explain what i had to say.

It's anything, it's not really important enough to elaborate. People have been carrying other people in this game as long as it's been a game. BOs provide an outlet for that, they didnt cause it.

You might think I care about the BO ticks because of what I am arguing, but I really dont.

The only thing that kind of rubs me the wrong way is that it's better than WC humping or running around aimlessly looking for something to kill. Which mostly manifests in T1, but is not unthinkable in low pop times in T4. But to be fair sitting on a BO is barely better than logging out. And only sometimes is it better.

@Musica That may be the case, however i would rather see a couple afks get kicked, than suffer massive snowball zergs(which is a bad thing) or nothing other than 40/?? gank squads.

Plus leveling is basically worthless. You don't get taken into warbands, get slaughtered by 40/?? ganksquads, wait usually upward of two hours for a sc which you get very little from. And that i know is a problem on both realms, which requires attending and is unlikely to be fixed by previously mentioned supply drops alone.