Return of Reckoning

Another great well thought out post creating a healthy discussion great stuff bombling.

The general consensus I believe is that people are feeling frustrated over pushing the campaign during their playing hours and missing city and feeling left out of playing the end game content and unrewarded for the effort they put into the campaign and that people are reaping the rewards of others by just city logging and gaining the maximum reward for the least amount effort I would suggest a swing in the balance is in order

It already exists in other aspects of the game e.g i have 1 hour to play lets go where the action is, Black Crag for example, lets say i get 20 kills then have to log off and i log in the next day i will still get rewarded for my contribution i had on this zone, so why dont we just apply this aspect/thesis to the overall campaign.

Obviously numbers and aspect of my idea can be fleshed out by people a lot smarter then me but the thesis of the idea is removing the massive gain for city loggers and rewarding those who put effort into the campaign who wont be able to participate in city.

Perhaps the guaranteed rewards for each stage in city being removed or reduced and have people who reached certain contribution thresholds gain guaranteed royals lets say i reached 75% top contribution of my realm during the campaign before city happened id get 3 royals - and have the city fight be what it is now with bag rolling or if thats too egregious reducing the amount of guaranteed rewards for each stage significantly or keeping city how it is and still reward those who participate in the campaign and increase the cost of the gear

tldr - city logging shouldn't give you the absolute maximum amount of end game currency for minimum / no effort - while rewarding those who was able to participate in campaign but not able to be available for city.

I played smth like 50 cities i think, and all kind of situations was happening - logging in to find out its 1 min before queue closed or going pug from first second, 6 man or 12, channel 5 wb or guild wb. Never lost a pop if i queued.

I do play order only, though my advice - indeed, dont join overpopulated side, play order

Caduceus wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 8:38 am

wonshot wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 12:55 am
Order vs Destro winrate:
Ohhhh boy! I was currious and been asking around, some players have been tracking winrates, some class representation, some guilds have played both sides, and some conclusions the community agreed on, and others they didnt... I hope the devs are just aware of this MIGHT be an imballance issue and I hope no idea how you would attempt to fix it, as there for SURE is a playerskill related to this topic. Speaking from personal experience some order players, and crossrealmers, have found ways to win over good destro players. Where as others have failed in the same comp vs comp situations. However the shear volume of onesides total victories for one realm raises the question if dev involvement is needed, and where?

Here's the reason:

Four out of the twelve Order classes are considered bad for city (whether they really are is unclear, and not the topic of discussion). Shadow Warrior, Witch Hunter, Engineer and Archmage. Some would add Ironbreaker to this list.

These classes have a hard time finding organized warbands and will usually end up pugging. So what do Order pugs look like? Filled with these classes, which are supposedly bad at city. These pugs are a free win for any premade and all but the worst of Destruction pugs.

Ever wondered why Destruction always seems to win ~five city instances very quickly before Order starts catching up? It's because these early instances are filled with the classes no one wants to take into an organized warband. A lot of these players will be afk from the start, both because they believe they don't stand a chance even if they tried, and because a lot of these classes will not be able to fight for contribution even if they tried their hardest.

There you go. During every city siege there's multiple instances filled with demoralized Order players who play classes that few organized warbands want to bring into city with them. These are basically free wins for Destruction and probably constitute the larger part of the differences in winrate between Order and Destruction.

Agree, I play one of those classes at the moment (ASW), and allways get to PUG and - guess I've come to terms with it - allmost allways getting stomped by dessy premades. The solotion,IMHO, is a PUG city-que.

Kind regards
K

I pretty much agree with Bombling's post other than destro's difficulty's push into the palace. Here are my additional thoughts on the matter from a destro POV (mostly running in an organised premade WB that does well in cities).

Still pending issues worth highlighting:

- the matchmaker being too eager to start sieges. I've been in IC1 or Altdorf1 where it was our premade WB vs what appeared to be 24 order soloers as that's all that was available to fight. The matchmaker needs to be more patient and make use of the 30 minutes to try and fight the right sized groups to fight. If at the end of the 30 minutes things are still **** then it can go crazy and try and get everyone into the city.

- the barrier that protects order's spawn in the Altdorf palace (stage 3) is a mess. Destro can be super-punted into it, there is a gap at one edge where a champion can stand and receive direct heals, and you can push into the barrier at various points to become untargetable (I think this is at the "corners" of the barrier). All are on bug tracker (I'm saying this not to blow up the devs, but just so people know it has already been logged)

- the BW warlord on stage 2 has buggy pathfinding in Khorne which causes him to go in a loop after taking the Khorne BO, making it much easier for destro to kill both warlords before they get to mid. Yes order, this is how destro kills your 2 warlords so quick in IC and why we always do Slaanesh first. Sorry destro for revealing the secret strats that were publicly on the bugtracker anyway.

- terrain issues everywhere in both maps that affect both sides that cause players to get stuck. There needs to be a way of teleporting back to spawn if you haven't moved more than a meter from your position for X seconds to help fix this. Currently the only fix is either wait until the stage ends so you get teleported to the next stage's spawn area, or deliberately crash your client and pray for the re-invite to the siege when you log back in as it will then place you in the current spawn. This is dangerous for obvious reasons. Known problem spots should be on the BT (and some have been fixed already) but a general solution to un-**** yourself would be great as the / and . commands don't work.

- bugs that stop people getting into the siege. people press yes when the window appears to join but then don't get put in and instead get the quitter debuff. This is REALLY frustrating in premades. This the same bug that often happens with scenarios which isn't surprising as it seems cities are based on the same system. In addition, back-fill usually doesn't kick in so you're down one player for the entire siege. On bug tracker.

- not being able to respec while in the queue. This usually causes people to bug out and if I was a betting man I'd say this is due to some scenario code about assigning people roles based on spec.

Altdorf vs IC:
The palace push on stage 1: Honestly I haven't found the push to the palace door in Altdorf stage 1 much of a problem, but then again I always run up and cast Winds of Instanity for that first knockback and the tanks then follow it up with a second which clears out the blockade very well. Considering how well destro can turtle up in the same area if they wipe order while the NPCs are doing their thing I wouldn't make this any easier to attack. Compare this to the bridge on IC where if destro wipe they can still try and kill the NPCs from ranged and a running battle forms on the bridge between the 2 factions.

Order vs Destro winrate:
I honestly believe this would help out a lot: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=38668

Contribution:
From what I've seen the best way to get contribution is to double or triple dip. First dip is damage, second dip is healing damage dealers, third dip is other useful things (guard, objectives, etc). Third dip may or may not exist. Black Orcs are excellent triple dippers. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE "Mr Three Sets" AND HOW MANY GOLD BAGS YOU'VE STOLEN FROM OUR WARBAND.

Good post. I generally agree. But I strongly disagree with 2 points. 1:

wonshot wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 12:55 am
- Gates at the palace-gate stage1 and palace gates stage3 being bugged and pbaoe not hitting in the doorways giving the defending Order players an advantage in Altdorf.

How is stage 3 an advantage for Order? The Kings go to the destro side. The side which has to push through the doors has the disadvantage. Destro just could wait till champ phase is over. But ye, order has advantage in stage 1 (never thought about that actually ), so its kind of balanced this way.



2:

wonshot wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 12:55 am At first I thourght contribution for sure was bugged. If I would do an instance with a 24man premade and everyone doing their assigned roles I would often find myself at the bottom of the contribution roll, simply because of my assignment of sharing my damage on the kills with the other AOE dps-ers. However in instances where I join as a 6man group ish I can out contribute the rest of my pugging realmmates and then the contribution system works. So for one bracket the contribution system works, and for the other it doesnt really. In the end of the day, if the contribution system was completely removed and only the 1-999 RNG roll was kept I fear the will go go out and continue fighting from some lost first-engagement teams would not stay and they would just afk and hope for a good role, where as the persistant players will go out and fight for their contribution atleast despite facing utter defeat. So rewards for those who try, I can support that!
If Royal Weapons are introduced and contribution will be related to obtaining these, I do hope the contribution system will be more "fair" to both brackets though. both the full premade scale bracket but also the pure pug scale.

This makes no sense at all.
I don´t know (and care that much) how and if contribution works. But the experience you share with us, is evidence that it works. In both cases you gave as example.

Arbich wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 5:23 pm Good post. I generally agree. But I strongly disagree with 2 points. 1:

wonshot wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 12:55 am
- Gates at the palace-gate stage1 and palace gates stage3 being bugged and pbaoe not hitting in the doorways giving the defending Order players an advantage in Altdorf.

How is stage 3 an advantage for Order? The Kings go to the destro side. The side which has to push through the doors has the disadvantage. Destro just could wait till champ phase is over. But ye, order has advantage in stage 1 (never thought about that actually ), so its kind of balanced this way.

Kings go to the destro side as order has a massive spawn advantage with the giant unstoppable barrier. It's not great, but as discussed in a different thread both palace maps suck for cities and it would be far more balanced to always use the fountain areas (south of IC and Altdorf) for stage 3 as a workaround.

Arbich wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 5:23 pm
This makes no sense at all.
I don´t know (and care that much) how and if contribution works. But the experience you share with us, is evidence that it works. In both cases you gave as example.

He's saying that when in a good premade your DPS and tanks will be tagging almost all kills (and contrib doesn't seem to be tied to damage done, just assists), where-as when group with crap pugs there's a chance Bombling's party is doing the majority of the work before people can tag into kills thus his relative contribution is higher. This might just be a Zealot thing but I've noticed that when I just heal my contrib is fairly average, but when I make use of Winds of Insanity (which does damage and tags me onto kills), Chaotic Agitation and Demon Spittle if I have spare CDs then my contribution goes through the roof as I'm getting healer contrib and kill contrib. Also, dying lots is an easy way of missing out on contrib so if the pugs die lots then while they are dead they don't seem to earn contrib. More anecdotal evidence: I've had a fantastic stage 3 before (dealing damage, heals, etc) vs random pugs. Everything was going well until I got over confident and ate a BW burst and Engi burst. I was the only person who died on our side during stage 3 and my contrib at the end of it was 24th. I also wonder if Bombling's lack of contrib could be similar, i.e. he's often the primary target when in a big premade so could spend more time dead and thus get less contribution.

I really wish the contrib system was public

Omegus wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 5:31 pm

Arbich wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 5:23 pm Good post. I generally agree. But I strongly disagree with 2 points. 1:

wonshot wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 12:55 am
- Gates at the palace-gate stage1 and palace gates stage3 being bugged and pbaoe not hitting in the doorways giving the defending Order players an advantage in Altdorf.

How is stage 3 an advantage for Order? The Kings go to the destro side. The side which has to push through the doors has the disadvantage. Destro just could wait till champ phase is over. But ye, order has advantage in stage 1 (never thought about that actually ), so its kind of balanced this way.

Kings go to the destro side as order has a massive spawn advantage with the giant unstoppable barrier. It's not great, but as discussed in a different thread both palace maps suck for cities and it would be far more balanced to always use the fountain areas (south of IC and Altdorf) for stage 3 as a workaround.

Arbich wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 5:23 pm
This makes no sense at all.
I don´t know (and care that much) how and if contribution works. But the experience you share with us, is evidence that it works. In both cases you gave as example.

He's saying that when in a good premade your DPS and tanks will be tagging almost all kills (and contrib doesn't seem to be tied to damage done, just assists), where-as when group with crap pugs there's a chance Bombling's party is doing the majority of the work before people can tag into kills thus his relative contribution is higher. This might just be a Zealot thing but I've noticed that when I just heal my contrib is fairly average, but when I make use of Winds of Insanity (which does damage and tags me onto kills), Chaotic Agitation and Demon Spittle if I have spare CDs then my contribution goes through the roof as I'm getting healer contrib and kill contrib. Also, dying lots is an easy way of missing out on contrib so if the pugs die lots then while they are dead they don't seem to earn contrib. More anecdotal evidence: I've had a fantastic stage 3 before (dealing damage, heals, etc) vs random pugs. Everything was going well until I got over confident and ate a BW burst and Engi burst. I was the only person who died on our side during stage 3 and my contrib at the end of it was 24th. I also wonder if Bombling's lack of contrib could be similar, i.e. he's often the primary target when in a big premade so could spend more time dead and thus get less contribution.

I really wish the contrib system was public

Order has a disadvantage about winning in stage 3, no advantage. Yes, the palace maps are worse than the "loser" maps, but IC palace map is balanced. The fountain area in IC is the best of all stage 3 maps, yes.

His claim about contribution is, that it sometimes works and sometimes not. While the experience he shared with us (and your experience also), suggest that it does work. If you outperform the rest of the players (which is easier when you are somewhat organised and share a instance with pugs and harder when its a full premade wb and everyone is organisded), you get more contribution. Kills seem to harm your contribution...

Arbich wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 5:45 pmHis claim about contribution is, that it sometimes works and sometimes not. While the experience he shared with us (and your experience also), suggest that it does work. If you outperform the rest of the players (which is easier when you are somewhat organised and share a instance with pugs and harder when its a full premade wb and everyone is organisded), you get more contribution. Kills seem to harm your contribution...

Yes, but in full premades it seems harder for the DPS to get high contribution (source: the complaining on discord from our DPS at the end of each stage lol). If the fight is a one-sided stomp in your WB's favour then usually the DPS are often the only ones capable of building up contrib (nothing much to heal!) and they do well, but for longer sieges I've heard complaints from many DPS that ending up with high contribution is difficult as it's usually packed with tanks and healers in the top end before the rolls take place. I suspect double dipping helps (I get good contrib from doing it and our DOKs who seem to like using their melee from time to time do as well). It definitely does seem staged in favour of healers and tanks for longer fights but this could just be coincidence if the DPS die more often rather than the tanks and healers receiving too much contrib in general. It's really hard to test

orillah wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 3:58 pm I played smth like 50 cities i think, and all kind of situations was happening - logging in to find out its 1 min before queue closed or going pug from first second, 6 man or 12, channel 5 wb or guild wb. Never lost a pop if i queued.

I do play order only, though my advice - indeed, dont join overpopulated side, play order

Sorry not picking on you here, but this is a common misconception.

The last 2 cities I was in were IC sieges where Order had a big overpopulatrion over Destro in the forts that secured the city siege. We can only speculate because we cannot see the number of each side in the queue, but given many Destro queuers missed out on these days, it appears the Order overpopulation xrealmed to Destro for the siege.

Now ignoring the fact that forcing people to play a side they may not actually have chars on or an affinity with is just going to lead to people quitting... Suggesting players do not play the overpopulated side is not actually as easy as it sounds, because nobody can know until it's too late that there actually is an overpopulation in the city queues and to which side (given we cannot see city queue stats in realtime so there was no way know an Order overpopulation in the Forts switched to a Desto overpop for cities). The first you know of it is after 20 minutes of queueing you didn't get an instance for your WB despite queuing as soon as the timer started.

Hope that clears things up for you

Adding some stats for SoR to report on queue numbers may actually help for the few players that are prepared to xrealm it.

Omegus wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 5:51 pm

Arbich wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 5:45 pmHis claim about contribution is, that it sometimes works and sometimes not. While the experience he shared with us (and your experience also), suggest that it does work. If you outperform the rest of the players (which is easier when you are somewhat organised and share a instance with pugs and harder when its a full premade wb and everyone is organisded), you get more contribution. Kills seem to harm your contribution...

Yes, but in full premades it seems harder for the DPS to get high contribution (source: the complaining on discord from our DPS at the end of each stage lol). If the fight is a one-sided stomp in your WB's favour then usually the DPS are often the only ones capable of building up contrib (nothing much to heal!) and they do well, but for longer sieges I've heard complaints from many DPS that ending up with high contribution is difficult as it's usually packed with tanks and healers in the top end before the rolls take place. I suspect double dipping helps (I get good contrib from doing it and our DOKs who seem to like using their melee from time to time do as well). It definitely does seem staged in favour of healers and tanks for longer fights but this could just be coincidence if the DPS die more often rather than the tanks and healers receiving too much contrib in general. It's really hard to test

Ah got it... So the longer the fight, the higher the contribution for tanks and heals? But isnt that somewhat justified? It´s dps job to kill the enemies, it´s the tanks and healers job to keep your team alive. If the fights go on for a long time, you could say that your dps "fail" while your heal and tank succeed. Obviously its not that simple (2 equal warbands, 2 dps severely underperfoming while the rest does fine,...), but what other contribution system would work? amount of dps/killing blows? would put single target dps at a disadvantage even when their lower amount of kills/dps might be the more important one to break the enemy team...
Contribution should be a thing to punish behaviour like going afk/doing only the bare minimum (which hurts the experience for the rest of the players that at least trying). It seems that this is actually working...So its fine...