Patchnotes 20/09/16

[Akalukz]

Thanks for the additional information Az. I appreciate the explanation of how it all works. Totally love the way things are progressing. From a generic play perspective, I am being rewarded 3 times for a successful capture of a BO

[Vigfuss]

Also, I don't think I understand how exactly a mechanism to diminish the impact of having superior numbers - an uncontrollable factor - diminishes winning or losing. It's actually the opposite way around. A win through having more players on your side is meaningless. A loss through being outnumbered is meaningless. You lost to a game design flaw, nothing more. Under a realm balancer working ideally, you are judged as two realms of equal overall power and only under such conditions does a win or a loss have worth behind it. A game should never be designed to progress only when one realm is allowed to have an uncontrolled and essentially random advantage over the other.

Feels like some people think that a perfect solution exists, but are unable to propose it.

Most groups, no matter what the size try to be self sufficient and pick engagements they think they can handle, and if possible help the realm. Some of us are willing to take bigger risks than others, but we still try to make a decision based on what we're seeing. This buff/debuff makes a lot of that moot, and the buff only works how it's meant to work if everyone in the zone is working together in one place (zerg vs zerg).

There are already mechanics in the game that are meant to balance these issues. Capping groups are 6 and not having buffs or AoE heals affect more than six palyers is an obvious one, and it works really well. If you want to look for solutions to this problem you could consider DAoC style mezz, but honestly i think some things are better left alone. The forums will always be full of people complaining about their experience, and you don't have to turn the game on it's head to try to appease them.

[Grobbok]

During prime time today we spent almost the entire time in TM, the one active zone, and we found only zergs and random groups. A few halfhearted pushes towards a keep in either direction, and a few skirmishes over BOs.

It seems to me this debuff just takes the fighting spirit out of everyone. Winning or losing has much less meaning with this in the game.

totally agree

[Bozzax]

Seems a side effect of implementing DR zone wide is it did pretty much kill roam/skirmish
(based on the quality of gameplay since release).

Last 2 nights our groups strength feels completely random. The experience acquired from playing together giving us the knowledge when to kite when and what to push is useless as some random guy flips a BO in a remote area which in turn dictates the outcome of our 6vX encounters.
(Even checking if you are debuffed is annoying.)

on several occasions we've even held back from engaging other groups in the open as they do % more damage to them and we do % damage less to them - feels really weird.

Judging by the quality of the order PMs in SCs I'd guess many groups don't play since change. Maybe it is a coincidence but I feel all the wrong players are loosing interest.

Btw our group almost never participate in keep takes, because it is boring. So for us SC and roam matters.

[Sgttimmen]

The Changes are great. Theres no Point in even trying when you are outnumbered by 3-1 or more, and no reason why it should had remain that way. I hope to see this develop and get even better. Yesterday in a pug wb we had to adapt, and it was way more fun when some guys lit bo:s and we had to cap it back. It gives a lot more to the game than just steamrolling, and when you win you actually had to work for it. I guess from what i read here that is just too much for some of us

[Tiggo]

as with any change: people should give time for adapting before complaining about THEORETHICAL problems they see.

play it, give feedback based on actualy gameplay and then the next changes will be made.

[Azarael]

I think any talk about existing balancers in the game, such as group cap, is pointless when people can and do complain about the impossibility of winning when your realm is outnumbered. I didn't just wake up one day and decide "Hey, how can I screw with a working system and make it worse?" If you're outnumbered in an engagement where skill is even on both sides, you're going to lose. If we can expect most engagements in a zone to be fought under such conditions, then we have a problem.

If you have more players than the enemy realm, I don't understand what prevents you from actually forming up in larger groups than usual to make use of that numerical advantage.

Now, regarding that last: you dispute that outnumbering affects smaller engagements, and believe that most of a realm's outnumbering power exists within its zerg. If you are correct, then there is room to remodel or remove the debuff if we shift responsibility for dealing with outnumbering onto siege weapons, which are going to be intentionally effective against zerg and were the intended countermeasure in the original RvR proposal I made, in which rationing did not feature.

Anyway, there is one tweak left outstanding. DR responds instantly to population shifts, causing frequent shifting, as Bozzax has indicated. I will be changing the calculation to use the enemy population high over a period of time, similarly to how some other scalers work, for the purpose of determining supply. That should result in a significant reduction in debufffing and the frequency of changes in value of the debuff.

[Bozzax]

I think any talk about existing balancers in the game, such as group cap, is pointless when people can and do complain about the impossibility of winning when your realm is outnumbered.

There are macro and micro perspectives. The recent patch affect both and imo only one needed fixing.
(I think group cap is brought up because this is what normally dictates 6vX or micro.)

If you have more players than the enemy realm, I don't understand what prevents you from actually forming up in larger groups than usual to make use of that numerical advantage.

There was nothing preventing us from doing it before and yet only randoms plus maybe one or two "open-to-everyone-guilds" did it.

I can only speak for myself but personally WB-play is the least appealing type of RvR Warhammer offers. Less then 0.1% of my playtime combined is WB.

However, I love team play and playing with my friends. One could argue expanding “friends” to 12+ would increase the fun but it doesn't. It also becomes proportionally harder to form consistent groups and build experience as a team.

remodel or remove the debuff if we shift responsibility for dealing with outnumbering onto siege weapons, which are going to be intentionally effective against zerg and were the intended countermeasure in the original RvR proposal I made, in which rationing did not feature.

Well for dealing with funneling and outnumbered defenders this seems like a much more direct approach.

This aside I believe the root problem is the zerg optimal RvR-system. Having BO/Keep capture and BO lock timers pretty much makes a zone cap sequenced. A smaller force realistically can’t recap a Keep or guerilla warfare BOs as zerg can go from place to place together and lock. X-realm magnifies the issue. Hence the auto win situation.

A domination, VP or hybrid system http://imgur.com/HL6cgl7 for instance gives smaller forces tools to prevent locks outside of just defending the keeps (fighting the blob heads on). Even removing the locks in the current system would be an improvement so the blob can't lock them down in sequence on by one. Denying the captors keep doors could make keep retakes possible or at least split the zerg.

[roadkillrobin]

The argument that if equal skill vs superior numbers can only be aplied to a engagement if it takes place in the open without any terrain, and this pretty much never happen so using it as a ballancing factor should imo not be done either. Also equal skill can pretty much only be aplied in a game with 100% mirrors as both faction have completly different ways of dealing with different situations. The best way to get somewhat ballanced faction populationin the lakes without making population caps is by getting people to participate. You get people to participate by giving em either a reason to be there or punish em for not being there. You can do this by so many ways but tweaking dmg modifiers is something that just effects the game in so many negative ways. Also gainng renown points past 40 atm doesn't really gain any rewards once people see better sets and weapons with higher rr requirements they are goin to need renown and to gain renown they need to participate. The AAO was a teally good carrot for people to get out there but it doesn't work in RoR coz the rewards simply aint there. Just look up the old wounds stacking mechanic from keep seiges if you need a way to counter the retreatment to keeps.

[Akalukz]

Would be nice if the dynamics of the bo lock system could be modified with AAO / DR, where the underdog side stands a better chance to cap a bo or two. In almost every zone a wb/zerg can get to atleast 3 bo's before the 3 min timer is up from either keep.

I like the idea of the seige changes, the WC siege work nice, maybe a little to hard hitting. Problem with implementing something like that currently is the funnel that is needed to take a keep. If there were multiple spots to attack a keep that could help disperse a zerg, I think it would be great to implement that. As it stands, it would be death to both sides basically, attackers and defenders due to the nature of the keep.

As to DR, i feel that both incoming and outgoing damage modifiers are too much. IMO it should probably just be the damage reduction for the zerging realm. This will allow the underdog side longer TTL, and not mess with the heal / damage balance of the zerging time.

Maybe an implementation of both would work, siege to bust the zerg and longer ttl for the underdog side based on zone population.