Five reasons why empty BOs giving rewards is better for ORvR
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 1:20 pm
Recently, the game has been patched so that battlefield objectives (BOs) only give rewards (influence, renown, experience) and medallions when players are fighting enemies on the BO. I will try to explain here why
counter-intentionally giving rewards for taking empty objectives actually creates an environment that motivates players to go for player kills more, than the present system. I will also address why basing the system around keep taking and making keeps attackable/changing the door regeneration rate doesn't always function to motivate players to go and capture BOs. I am aware the current RvR system is temporary, I am merely suggesting that as the developers go on and improve it, they should consider giving rewards for taking empty BOs.
1. When neither side is capable of taking a keep
The keep is a defensive structure that should and does give the defenders a fighting advantage. This means that when both sides have a similar number of players with similar levels of organization and skill, neither realm will be able to take the other realm's keep, as the defender's advantage will mean that both sides are able to defend but not to attack a keep. In this situation, there needs to be something to fight for, in order to create areas in ORvR where players will congregate and fight over objectives. Fortunately, most of the time, the realm populations are quite balanced - unfortunately this creates a stale RvR at the moment (which shouldn't be the case at all), as neither realm is capable of taking a keep and BOs are not relevant objectives anymore.
2. An incentive for open field RvR
However, as the situation is, the only thing taking BOs is good for is for taking keeps. So why bother when you know you can't take the keep anyway? So those desiring to participate in RvR suddenly have no place in the zone to go to in order to initiate a fight. Normally, they could take a BO and at last get the PvE rewards from it if noone came and they would motivate the enemy to come challenge them there. Unfortunately as it stands, there is no psychological 'carrot' that would make players capture BOs in a situation where neither side is capable of capturing keeps. Giving low levels of experience/influence/renown would ameliorate this.
3. Warcamp camping prevention
So where do people desiring some PvP action go when the BOs are irrelevant? Where will the enemies be? At their warcamp of course, they have to come out of it to go into the RvR lake! That being said, waves of players moving back and forth from one warcamp to another has always existed in Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. However, there are multiple entrances to the RvR lake and the realm that is getting pushed into their warcamp always had the option of going to another zone or entering the RvR lake from another avenue and capturing BOs. The BOs also usually also give some sort of a defender's advantage, furthermore it gives an incentive to leave the warcamp at all and not just sit in the warcamp/keep and wait for the enemy to come. There is no reason to go and capture BOs at the moment as they are irrelevant when their capture does not lead to a keep siege. Again this is mostly based around human psychology. Sure people could just roam around the zone knowing it's the best way to generate good ORvR, nonetheless people simply don't work this way and the system needs to motivate them to act in a way that will generate good ORvR.
4. Splitting up the RvR action across the zone and across multiple zones
Making BOs relevant through rewards for taking empty ones helps to spread action across the zones. Maybe a group is not large enough to challenge the enemy in the open field. Well it could go to a different zones and start taking empty BOs for some small rewards. The enemy groups now have to respond to that, and eventually this helps to spread fights across all the zones. If only killing players gives rewards, this most often leads to stacking one zone, and stacking one spot in that zone where all the players congregate and attempt to kill each other. This is bad for latency issues, fight size variety and environment variety, overall making the ORvR experience worse.
5. Defensive play/Camping
So, effectively players should still go into the open and fight most often, because at least they will get some rewards for killing enemies, even if they die. This also doesn't work because people dislike dying, despite the fact there is no punishment for it in the game. The dislike of dying people have, combined with a lack of incentive for taking BOs results in a preference for defensive play. People will simply wait in PvE or scenarios for the enemy to come to attack their keep/warcamp where they have an advantage to go play ORvR at all (again, this is because they are assuming that taking a keep has a very low chance of success). So at long last, one realm forms an organized force, takes all the BOs unopposed and attacks a keep. Suddenly the enemy players appear and arrive at the keep, losing the against all odds buff pretty quickly in the process. They were online, they just weren't in the RvR lake, because there was no reason to be there in terms of rewards. Subsequently they defend the keep, charging out and wiping the enemy. The door repairs. What happens now? Well, they go back to scenarios/PvE. They don't even bother retaking the BOs in the zone, knowing it's pointless as they cannot take the enemy keep. Before, when BOs gave rewards, action would swing from keep to keep across the BOs generating a plenty of open fights in the process, if numbers were even. This doesn't happen at the moment.
In conclusion, giving rewards for taking empty BOs actually helps to make ORvR better. About 66% of the population playing this game indicated they prefer playing ORvR the most. So it's not the case that people would simply like to play scenarios or PvE more than to do open field fights and keep fights. However, there needs to be a proper rewards system to motivate behavior that generates good ORvR. The current system doesn't effectively achieve this and returning rewards for taking empty BOs could help it do so.
counter-intentionally giving rewards for taking empty objectives actually creates an environment that motivates players to go for player kills more, than the present system. I will also address why basing the system around keep taking and making keeps attackable/changing the door regeneration rate doesn't always function to motivate players to go and capture BOs. I am aware the current RvR system is temporary, I am merely suggesting that as the developers go on and improve it, they should consider giving rewards for taking empty BOs.
1. When neither side is capable of taking a keep
The keep is a defensive structure that should and does give the defenders a fighting advantage. This means that when both sides have a similar number of players with similar levels of organization and skill, neither realm will be able to take the other realm's keep, as the defender's advantage will mean that both sides are able to defend but not to attack a keep. In this situation, there needs to be something to fight for, in order to create areas in ORvR where players will congregate and fight over objectives. Fortunately, most of the time, the realm populations are quite balanced - unfortunately this creates a stale RvR at the moment (which shouldn't be the case at all), as neither realm is capable of taking a keep and BOs are not relevant objectives anymore.
2. An incentive for open field RvR
However, as the situation is, the only thing taking BOs is good for is for taking keeps. So why bother when you know you can't take the keep anyway? So those desiring to participate in RvR suddenly have no place in the zone to go to in order to initiate a fight. Normally, they could take a BO and at last get the PvE rewards from it if noone came and they would motivate the enemy to come challenge them there. Unfortunately as it stands, there is no psychological 'carrot' that would make players capture BOs in a situation where neither side is capable of capturing keeps. Giving low levels of experience/influence/renown would ameliorate this.
3. Warcamp camping prevention
So where do people desiring some PvP action go when the BOs are irrelevant? Where will the enemies be? At their warcamp of course, they have to come out of it to go into the RvR lake! That being said, waves of players moving back and forth from one warcamp to another has always existed in Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. However, there are multiple entrances to the RvR lake and the realm that is getting pushed into their warcamp always had the option of going to another zone or entering the RvR lake from another avenue and capturing BOs. The BOs also usually also give some sort of a defender's advantage, furthermore it gives an incentive to leave the warcamp at all and not just sit in the warcamp/keep and wait for the enemy to come. There is no reason to go and capture BOs at the moment as they are irrelevant when their capture does not lead to a keep siege. Again this is mostly based around human psychology. Sure people could just roam around the zone knowing it's the best way to generate good ORvR, nonetheless people simply don't work this way and the system needs to motivate them to act in a way that will generate good ORvR.
4. Splitting up the RvR action across the zone and across multiple zones
Making BOs relevant through rewards for taking empty ones helps to spread action across the zones. Maybe a group is not large enough to challenge the enemy in the open field. Well it could go to a different zones and start taking empty BOs for some small rewards. The enemy groups now have to respond to that, and eventually this helps to spread fights across all the zones. If only killing players gives rewards, this most often leads to stacking one zone, and stacking one spot in that zone where all the players congregate and attempt to kill each other. This is bad for latency issues, fight size variety and environment variety, overall making the ORvR experience worse.
5. Defensive play/Camping
So, effectively players should still go into the open and fight most often, because at least they will get some rewards for killing enemies, even if they die. This also doesn't work because people dislike dying, despite the fact there is no punishment for it in the game. The dislike of dying people have, combined with a lack of incentive for taking BOs results in a preference for defensive play. People will simply wait in PvE or scenarios for the enemy to come to attack their keep/warcamp where they have an advantage to go play ORvR at all (again, this is because they are assuming that taking a keep has a very low chance of success). So at long last, one realm forms an organized force, takes all the BOs unopposed and attacks a keep. Suddenly the enemy players appear and arrive at the keep, losing the against all odds buff pretty quickly in the process. They were online, they just weren't in the RvR lake, because there was no reason to be there in terms of rewards. Subsequently they defend the keep, charging out and wiping the enemy. The door repairs. What happens now? Well, they go back to scenarios/PvE. They don't even bother retaking the BOs in the zone, knowing it's pointless as they cannot take the enemy keep. Before, when BOs gave rewards, action would swing from keep to keep across the BOs generating a plenty of open fights in the process, if numbers were even. This doesn't happen at the moment.
In conclusion, giving rewards for taking empty BOs actually helps to make ORvR better. About 66% of the population playing this game indicated they prefer playing ORvR the most. So it's not the case that people would simply like to play scenarios or PvE more than to do open field fights and keep fights. However, there needs to be a proper rewards system to motivate behavior that generates good ORvR. The current system doesn't effectively achieve this and returning rewards for taking empty BOs could help it do so.
