What is happening in T4?

[Morf]

I think its important to realise no RvR system will ever work right, sc's will never be balanced, its the nature of a 2 realm pvp game.
The problem i see with the current rvr system is blobbing is not penalised and when i say penalised i dont mean in the sense of changing fundamental combat design and such to help the underpopulated side i mean in the sense of having to spread out to succeed.
Imo this is why the previous rvr system was superior to the one we currently have, which sucks because i was really looking forward to played carried resource system.
What was good about the old system was having to capture 2 keeps in an end zone, all bo's to lock a zone, bo's needed to attack a keep and as much as ppl hated it funneling at the outer door.
The new system with postern access does stop that, in theory it sounds awesome, bleeding your enemies keep rank down in order to use the posterns when a funnel at the outer door is happening but what happens is players dont defend no more, the outer door/wall is no longer a fortified position they may aswell be removed, it serves as only a time waster so to speak where everyone stands afk due to not being able to attack the keep door anymore.
Im starting to see more similarities with the last rvr system on live better know as doorhammer.

[Glorian]

Posterns actually removed Doorhammer.
Or are we the seven hours at the battle of Calodor allways in the funnel?

[Morf]

Posterns actually removed Doorhammer.
Or are we the seven hours at the battle of Calodor allways in the funnel?

Doorhammer has nothing to do with going in posterns to avoid any funnel, doorhammer is standing at a keep doing nothing which is what happens when players cant hit the door and players cant exit out the main door when its under attack.
Postern access does stop funnelling at the outer door (lets face it the times of holding the inner door are over as oil doesnt serve the same purpose it did on live as you cant repair it) but combined with not being able to go out the main door when its under attack has made the fight at the outer door boring as hell, you have nothing to attack, all you can do is stand afk or if you are a rdps try and attack other rdps on the wall and even that combined with engi/magus range has meant ppl play even more safe as at times you cannot hit the target that is hitting you.

You can look at forts on how you can attack multiple positions at once to spread the defenders out, this cant happen with posterns as its a click to go through rather then hold a defensive position and try to out think and use tactics to overcome your opponent and any funnelling

As for seven hours in caledor funnel yea you know what it sucked to be trapped in that zone with nobody able to capture a keep as players funnel but its either funnel a defensive position or defenders tend to not fight at all, after all a keep should be a defesive position.
The answer imo (may not work) is siege towers(client control yes), its not a clicky where 100 players can go through at once its a secondary position drawing players away from the main funnel at the door where they can still defend without being overcome by numbers as easily as you can by having posterns usable by attackers.

[blaqwar]

Posterns actually removed Doorhammer.
Or are we the seven hours at the battle of Calodor allways in the funnel?

Doorhammer has nothing to do with going in posterns to avoid any funnel, doorhammer is standing at a keep doing nothing which is what happens when players cant hit the door and players cant exit out the main door when its under attack.
Postern access does stop funnelling at the outer door (lets face it the times of holding the inner door are over as oil doesnt serve the same purpose it did on live as you cant repair it) but combined with not being able to go out the main door when its under attack has made the fight at the outer door boring as hell, you have nothing to attack, all you can do is stand afk or if you are a rdps try and attack other rdps on the wall and even that combined with engi/magus range has meant ppl play even more safe as at times you cannot hit the target that is hitting you.

You can look at forts on how you can attack multiple positions at once to spread the defenders out, this cant happen with posterns as its a click to go through rather then hold a defensive position and try to out think and use tactics to overcome your opponent and any funnelling

As for seven hours in caledor funnel yea you know what it sucked to be trapped in that zone with nobody able to capture a keep as players funnel but its either funnel a defensive position or defenders tend to not fight at all, after all a keep should be a defesive position.
The answer imo (may not work) is siege towers(client control yes), its not a clicky where 100 players can go through at once its a secondary position drawing players away from the main funnel at the door where they can still defend without being overcome by numbers as easily as you can by having posterns usable by attackers.

MDPS and Tanks have nothing to do? Am I the only one that regularly sees mostly MDPS/Tank groups skirmishing around postern and blocking the defenders/supplies access to the keep? This is especially effective once the inner door falls and the defenders can't respawn in the keep anymore, coupled with the attacking side having access to postern means that getting back into the keep is very difficult.

If your argument is that postern isn't a defensible position because of it's one click nature then the people defending the postern can just position themselves further away from it (as they do, in some cases blocking WCs), prevent the defenders from getting anywhere near it and not allow defenders to abuse sorties from the postern to clear them. Granted some maps suck and this is difficult to do but it's perfectly viable on most.

Now if the Tanks/MDPS choose not to do that and rather stand semi-afk in front of the keep, that's a different issue all together and has to do with the mentality of the players who prefer the path of least resistance and can't easily be resolved with in-game changes (more carrots in the form of rewards isn't always a good thing, neither is punishing people because they tend to just ***** out and quit).

Also Aza has pointed out several times that as soon as he is able to start working on implementing siege towers he will do so, as that is the next step in the ORvR system evolution. So that's not a new idea, but as you point out, client control is needed for that (and time, things can't happen overnight even with hard-working coders like the RoR team).

[Morf]

MDPS and Tanks have nothing to do? Am I the only one that regularly sees mostly MDPS/Tank groups skirmishing around postern and blocking the defenders/supplies access to the keep? This is especially effective once the inner door falls and the defenders can't respawn in the keep anymore, coupled with the attacking side having access to postern means that getting back into the keep is very difficult.

This can be done by rdps aswell, melee always was at a disadvantage at keep siege and rvr in general, when you can no longer go out the main door to make a push to destroy a ram and players can no longer attack the door, you shift the fight to the posterns.
As a defender when you have a zerg waiting by the postern stopping players from coming out and stopping players from getting in the fight becomes dull, as a defender you cant do anything and as an attacker when the defenders stop bothering you stand around doing nothing, its not as if im making this up, this is what happens to myself and the group im with.

If your argument is that postern isn't a defensible position because of it's one click nature then the people defending the postern can just position themselves further away from it (as they do, in some cases blocking WCs), prevent the defenders from getting anywhere near it and not allow defenders to abuse sorties from the postern to clear them. Granted some maps suck and this is difficult to do but it's perfectly viable on most.

This is part of my point, they position themselves somewhere else and in the defenders case your only option is to defend the keep lord or sadly in most cases not defend at all.

Now if the Tanks/MDPS choose not to do that and rather stand semi-afk in front of the keep, that's a different issue all together and has to do with the mentality of the players who prefer the path of least resistance and can't easily be resolved with in-game changes (more carrots in the form of rewards isn't always a good thing, neither is punishing people because they tend to just ***** out and quit).

Its not so much they dont want to its that there is nothing to do, as i have said when the defenders get zerged when playing postern a few times they look to move, they either move to keep lord and wait or move away from the keep, in each situation the attackers have less to do.
The mentality of players does play a part but changing players mentality is not something that can be easily done, and likely cant be changed.

Also Aza has pointed out several times that as soon as he is able to start working on implementing siege towers he will do so, as that is the next step in the ORvR system evolution. So that's not a new idea, but as you point out, client control is needed for that (and time, things can't happen overnight even with hard-working coders like the RoR team).

I know this better than most, but this wont stop me from criticising implementations, especially ones that appear to not have the desired impact, this is a double edged sword, criticism and disagreeing only makes Az push harder to make it work(his words not mine), so you either suck it up and play a system you dont enjoy which in turn leads you to not playing or you criticise and disagree, the system stays and goes through change after change and becomes unrecognisable which again causes players to not play it.

[Aurandilaz]

Also keep in mind that RoR is a game, something that people play in order to have fun and enjoy themselves. If T4 does not provide any enjoyable experiences, people might as well quit.
Ask yourselves, are T4 keep sieges FUN?

[blaqwar]

@Morf: I wrote a big post but then realised it all boils down to what the attacker vs. defender ratio is. If the attacker is zerging without much resistance the chances are both sides will be standing around fiddling their thumbs for the most part. As soon as defender number rise to a point where they're able to put up a strong resistance there's a strong precedence to defend posterns/control the battlefield for the attacking side, thus giving them something to do.

An additional factor is whether or not the MDPS players are in an organised group or not. Being solo or part of a PuG WB narrows down your options considerably, due to not organising/having decent support and being unable to contest other organised groups.

I mostly agree with you but I believe that the door change was a good one. It incentivised cheesy, stalling behaviour as popping out of a BARRED door under attack required only a click and was thus very easy, safe and consequently illogical. I wouldn't want that behaviour back. In a semi-balanced pop state the MDPS will not be standing around unless they choose to do so. I am intentionally ignoring states of extreme population imbalance and xrealming as a solution to the former needs to be implemented first before we can asses the state of ORvR.