State of the Realms (A Community Discussion with the Devs)

[bloodi]

Well, because what he is saying is simply, there will be no rewards if you dont kill people in the zone.

Having rewards for RvE just encourages avoiding fights, does it suck for the NA population? Yeah but having people avoid fights sucks for both EU and NA, so better not encourage that.

IMO, there should bring back Kill quest for medallions that work in scs so at least you can progress for anni via scenarios in situations where you just cannot find ORvR or are getting stomped in it via numbers.

The reward is there as long as there is a fight, in my experience with the new changes the amount of rr/inf/tokens gives for just BOs is quite big, i assume the same changes will come to keeps too.

[Azarael]

Where do you get the idea that I assume everyone PvDooring is an asshole? My current stance is motivated by people who I have personally witnessed leaving zones in which there is fighting and going somewhere else for an easy cap and nice rewards. It is those people who are going to find themselves in a world of hurt in the next patch.

RvR is designed around having high population. NA population problems aren't my fault, and if you expect there to be a design which can sustain 20 people across huge maps while generating fun gameplay for them, you're asking too much. Scenarios were designed to handle lower playercounts, and while I'm terribly sorry that some people scoff at the idea and would rather PvDoor, because of whatever assumptions they may have about the place of scenarios in the game, I cannot do anything about that, unless you believe that I can pull 200 players out of my rear end so that NA players can have full-on RvR.

Then why would any player who plays during NA even come to the server if the devs themselves can't make a system that encourages them to play? There's no incentive to doing rvr atm as there is no guarantee that attacking a keep will reap rewards. Why would people then spend 3 minutes + at each BO that gives no xp/renown and then spend 15mins + at a keep that gives little to no reward. In other games, if you spend time actively doing something, you at least progress somewhat piece by piece.

I'm not advocating that pvdoor should be granting great rewards but they have to give some sort of reward to encourage players to actually attack the keep in the first place.

Behold, the problems you inherit when you take on a game that died. Would it surprise you if I said that I thought one of the major weaknesses this game had was that its greatest feature is vulnerable both to general lack of population and to population imbalances?

Let's not kid ourselves, either. People in NA aren't going to play because rolling around empty keeps with a warband gives rewards, unless you're suggesting that doing so is actually fun for anyone. Given how much the crowd for this game talk about its PvP as its strength, them coming here just to PvE makes no sense.

IMO, there should bring back Kill quest for medallions that work in scs so at least you can progress for anni via scenarios in situations where you just cannot find ORvR or are getting stomped in it via numbers.

It's interesting how design decisions were made on this server based on holding up old Mythic states and acting like they were all that and a bag of chips, and then we come to the realization that everything that was changed on Mythic was changed for a reason (War Crests.)

[Ambalynn]

Azarael, I believe that it is the responsibility of the Devs to create and sustain systems that are in the best interest of the player-base as a whole. You've made changes to SCs that penalize solo players, where a solo player was previously able to queue for an SC and contribute, now the community is primarily pre-mades. That negates your comment of low population times defaulting to small skirmish SCs in my opinion. Surely there is a means of preventing the behavior you have witnessed in RVR lakes without causing damages to legitimate players. I realize this is WAR, yet your actions remind me of a Witch Hunter, culling an entire Village to kill the one heretic that lives there.

Live RvR was sustainable with small populations. there is no reason why that shouldn't be the case here. especially in the lower tiers. Loot is King in progression. Players are going to gravitate toward the best gear. that is the Lakes. telling players to run SCs only because the population doesn't support RVR lakes is telling them to go after subpar gear. Do you plan on including non RVR lake methods to obtain gear that is currently only available by RVR INF? Of course not. Your recommendation baffles me.

[bloodi]

It's interesting how design decisions were made on this server based on holding up old Mythic states and acting like they were all that and a bag of chips, and then we come to the realization that everything that was changed on Mythic was changed for a reason (War Crests.)

They were not that stupid, the reward system is one of the best things this game had, really encouraged people to go out and pvp, in every tier, because it gave you the best items and you got them really fast.

It also encouranged altholism and with that, you can sustain a lower population because if needed, someone can always swap to a needed class.

I never understood the trend of "Work for your gear" that became prevalent here, it was against the very spirit of the game, currently is troublesome to get geared in rvr/scenario gear past t2, that is a problem.

Humans are reward driven, we can all circlejerk about how we dont care about gear but after all, its what drives a major % of the population and needs a lot of work.

[Azarael]

Azarael, I believe that it is the responsibility of the Devs to create and sustain systems that are in the best interest of the player-base as a whole. You've made changes to SCs that penalize solo players, where a solo player was previously able to queue for an SC and contribute, now the community is primarily pre-mades. That negates your comment of low population times defaulting to small skirmish SCs in my opinion. Surely there is a means of preventing the behavior you have witnessed in RVR lakes without causing damages to legitimate players. I realize this is WAR, yet your actions remind me of a Witch Hunter, culling an entire Village to kill the one heretic that lives there.

I'm not about to apologise for what I did with scenario soloists, because it works in the interests of PUGs. Those solo players? They're going solo because they believe they should not have to share "their" rewards with other players, and they are almost always classes with high burst damage or self-sustain. This has been said numerous times by such players. They also render themselves and their team weaker by soloing, because they cannot be targeted by group effects - that's especially devastating considering the prominence of WP and DoK. That is against the spirit of scenarios and I have no idea whatsoever why you are criticising me for that.

Bloodi has already commented about the nature of priorities. I will do what I need to do to prevent PvE and zone ducking in primetime. I want people to stop acting as if PvDoor is valid RvR. It is no different than PvE and it's far less PvP than scenarios are, so why on earth am I expected to sustain it?

Live RvR was sustainable with small populations. there is no reason why that shouldn't be the case here. especially in the lower tiers. Loot is King in progression. Players are going to gravitate toward the best gear. that is the Lakes. telling players to run SCs only because the population doesn't support RVR lakes is telling them to go after subpar gear. Do you plan on including non RVR lake methods to obtain gear that is currently only available by RVR INF? Of course not. Your recommendation baffles me.

Let me put it this way. I started making changes to a system that was fundamentally broken, by my own admission. I will be happy if RvR performs acceptably during primetime with many players. I certainly don't mind during this stage if PvDoor is a complete and total casualty. Might it be revisited later on, when higher priorities are dealt with (i.e. making sure people actually FIGHT for rewards rather than spilling them out for PvE, which is the primary NA acquisition method)? Perhaps. But right now, I don't really care that much. This situation is unnatural, because the ideal is that a EU and a NA server exist to ensure that there is a concept of a primetime for both in which RvR is playable.

The whole Emblems/Medallions vs War Crests debate is something in which I have not stuck my head, and it's not my responsibility.

The rewards for BOs and keeps were tweaked. The broken rewards for zone locking are about to be fixed. Loser rewards will be added and the reward pool will update.

If you want rewards? Fight each other. Most of the scalers protecting against PvEing and zone dodging are relative, and will not take effect in balanced engagements of any scale. Don't look to me to give you rewards from PvE because there are fewer players in your primetime.

[nat3s]

Preface by saying this is obviously a subjective debate. My personal opinion is there are a couple of fundamental misconceptions:

• PvDoor is the product of low realm pop, not players apathy to pvp. I don't see people leaving RvR lakes to avoid a fight, I see them leaving an RvR lake because there is no opposition to fight with.

• No opposition to fight with means no content and your time spent capping the undefended keep is worthless i.e. better off doing other things where you can see progression through pvp (like Scenarios).

Would love to see someone think up the mechanics that rewards pvp in the rvr lakes the most, but still provides a token reward in the event that the population is too low or imbalanced to support a full scale keep war.

[Rowhin]

• PvDoor is the product of low realm pop, not players apathy to pvp. I don't see people leaving RvR lakes to avoid a fight, I see them leaving an RvR lake because there is no opposition to fight with.

I see that happen a lot, actually. "They are deffing here, let's take another zone instead." All the time, unless the other faction has 100%+ AAO.

That is not to say that what you describe doesn't happen as well. I've just noticed it less, maybe, because I tend to play during peak hours.

[Azarael]

The second point is a product of the game not being RvR at the moment, as previously mentioned. There is no reason to care if a keep is lost, so there is no reason to defend one. This is actually a huge problem. Campaign designs depend upon opposition existing, otherwise a realm without opposition can just walk to the end of the campaign and reap the rewards. This type of design does not mesh well with a MMO without realm locking.

The first point? Well, I was talking about EU prime. I've seen it happen enough times since the modifications to rewards to have devoted quite some effort to making sure fight dodgers will get nothing.

[Ambalynn]

Azarael,

I am not defending 'getting RvR rewards for PvE actions'. Nor am I making a case why PvD is a good thing. I'm making a case that for certain time frames the only option open to players to earn Lake rewards is to PvD. By breaking that, you are effectively removing the best gear from the game for a group of players, which limits there overall competitiveness in RvR. You want to hold up SCs as the alternative fine, I'd be more inclined to agree with you if as another poster commented that Lake rewards were earnable in SCs via kill quests or some other means. Right now that isn't the case.

[nat3s]

• PvDoor is the product of low realm pop, not players apathy to pvp. I don't see people leaving RvR lakes to avoid a fight, I see them leaving an RvR lake because there is no opposition to fight with.

I see that happen a lot, actually. "They are deffing here, let's take another zone instead." All the time, unless the other faction has 100%+ AAO.

That is not to say that what you describe doesn't happen as well. I've just noticed it less, maybe, because I tend to play during peak hours.

If that does happen then it's absolutely a problem, but i find it hard to reconcile with my experience in-game. Might be the times I play, but the warbands I'm in moan about empty RvR lakes and no reason to cap BOs / keeps.

Zone locking and city raids as part of a full campaign system will definitely help.