Are objectives a lost cause?

[wonshot]

Hello,

Over the years I and others have made several suggestions towards Battleobjectives seeing some improvements in attempts to help spread out the action. But one argument I never found a solution for, and maybe the reason there was never any changes to BOs, would be the question of

"Why would a Best In slot RR80 bother?"

Well if you are out roaming in the lake or in a scenario, why would you bother about objectives(?) You most likely play for fun and for the killing at that point. Realmpride is mostly a thing of the past, and the campaign is in a weird state and feels disconnected from cities, and without purpose outside of personal crest gainst and bagrolls.

So if we call a spade a spade, would a solo BIS roamer bother about going to an objective outside of the reason to look for other players to fight there. Not very likely. Same for a scenario 6man, its more rewarding and fun to just kill the enemy at the spawn instead of going to run a flag, bomb, capture a flag etc. when you dont need the gear or progression. Or the warband full of guildies who have planned their night and have 3 hours of playtime and organized their evening schedules made a strong composition organized builds, group and setup. Are they gonna bother going to that far away BO thay rarely sees any action on the heatmap and low chance of action(?) The answer in most cases is a big "Nope!"

So the only chance to push the BIS players towards objectives, is by luring in the progressing players as brutal as it sounds. In scenarios this works with the flags and objectives, but surrender vote often puts a stop to that effort of trying to "pve" the win home. It's simply easier to just go-next and roll the dize again to get a premade on your side to carry.
For oRvR its likely someone will run boxes and cap the flags, but a few ganks and outnumbered hits will quickly eat up supply of victums. Then what?

When guilds have planned events either in 6man or warband scale, rarely do you wanna be the ones breaking away from where the killing and farming is happening near the Warcamp or the shortest distance between the warcamps. Thats more likely the action will be there, why should you break away and cap the flag and hope the fight will come to you. If 3 warbands each side are clashing at MS in praag, why would anyone go capture Graveyard BO and miss out on the action.

So Im honestly wondering, would any incentive ever help this issue. For the realmpriders and the progression population, yes. But the dictating strong 6mans and warbands, probably not.
Are there any hopes for objectives to split the action out, or do we need to be the change we want to see as a community

[tazdingo]

yes 100%, and it could be solved by reintroducing BO ticks. then, developing players will congregate around BOs for ticks, and organized players will go there to try and kill them. literally everybody wins

[Akalukz]

The bo's simply do not provide any benefit at all. Supposedly you get renown buff fighting near them or controlling them but seems to not actually be effectively shown. So there is some question if that even works.

Could do several things with them, allow them to affect health/power strength of keep lords / doors. Allow them to affect damage of siege weapons / rams + and -.

I think a lot just comes down to manpower on coding something useful. Everyone is ultra focused on balance, which is a pipedream, when they should be focusing on the "game" the flow or battle and how things mesh together for a campaign.

[Rotgut]

I just hope a bigger change than just RR tweaking is possible.

My personal dream is we turn the lakes into MOBA maps, with waves of NPC walking down predetermined paths. Get rid of box running, Sieges start if the NPCs reach the enemy Keep. BOs can work like the "towers" in Dota/LoL or, what i think would be better, we can create new spots that would work as such, with BOs giving some kind of relevant zone buff. There has been plenty of suggestions regarding that. Cuz then you can have the big Warbands being incentivized to move between some areas of the map - around the NPCs if playing the PvE aspect has enough rewards and you could expect a fight there - and smaller groups and soloers incentivized to move on the far away BOs with a relevant goal to achieve there.

If done well this whole thing can be very engaging. Creep management is a mechanic that is very popular in MOBAs for decades now.

But any BIG overhaul that caters to RoR's diverse playerbase would be welcome. We should have enough experience to know what WBs, 12s, kite groups, roaming groups and soloers want and where they can shine. Give them stuff to achieve besides "look for kills".

[Rotgut]

The bo's simply do not provide any benefit at all. Supposedly you get renown buff fighting near them or controlling them but seems to not actually be effectively shown. So there is some question if that even works.

Could do several things with them, allow them to affect health/power strength of keep lords / doors. Allow them to affect damage of siege weapons / rams + and -.

I think a lot just comes down to manpower on coding something useful. Everyone is ultra focused on balance, which is a pipedream, when they should be focusing on the "game" the flow or battle and how things mesh together for a campaign.

Exactly this. I know there is a Renown Buff from fighting near BOs, but honestly it doesn't surprise me that you forgot about it. I've been in a hundred WBs and i've never seen a MA make a "Lets go to that BO and bait a fight there so we can get the buff". As they are, BOs just don't matter besides the occasional "lets reset the enemy" call. We cap BOs and run boxes when there is literally nothing else to do, and most MAs don't even do that.

[Zxul]

Currently its not just BOs which are a problem, realistically rvr as in trying to accomplish something vs other realm doesn't exists anymore. And the reason behind it is not lack of incentive, or coding, the core reason is RoR devs always making it their first priority insuring that there is no chance of anyone getting a free rewards.

Now it might look like a good thing, why would anyone get renown without fighting? Here is what that line of thinking is actually leads to:

-If the other side doesn't protects the zone, the attackers do not get any renown. Why give a renown if there is no fighting, right? Gratz, no renown= there is no reason to try and take an offzone while the other side is staying elsewhere, so everyone just blobs up in main zone, or if one side outnumbers sufficiently just xrealms. Zerg fight at best, or no fight at all since everyone logs the same outnumbered side. No, chasing AAO, "logging on the outnumbered side for a better fights", etc doesn't actually works- at most what it realistically translate to is 6 men trying to find soloers running to the main blob, since you ain't doing anything as 1 wb vs 4.

-3 zones open leads to chance of capturing an unprotected zone= unearned rewards, so must prevent that, right? Yep, blobbing in the main zone/ xrealming it is.

-And now to BOs. Renown ticks might lead to free renown. Live's npc runners from BOs might lead to free renown. First goal is to insure no free renown, so pizza delivery it is.

-Same for sc BOs. Winning by capturing BOs is winning without fighting, must prevent that right? Yep, blob fight mid sc, or camping wc, it is.

Until the attitude changes, RoR rvr is a lost cause.

[Nameless]

There is some iniative for running to bos but it is very slim one.
I for example run to take bos and occasionally resources on my bis healers when I stuck online and there is no wb and I need influence for orvr weekly.

But anyway I am up for BOs mechanic change. I like the initial idea from live version for BOs with lock times which at ror could scale with aao. Sometimes locking BO under the feet of dominant realm and prevent them progression feel like a win even if the end result is death. Nowaday at ms realms just exchange bo ownership which just feel bleak

[Culexus]

When guilds have planned events either in 6man or warband scale, rarely do you wanna be the ones breaking away from where the killing and farming is happening near the Warcamp or the shortest distance between the warcamps. Thats more likely the action will be there, why should you break away and cap the flag and hope the fight will come to you. If 3 warbands each side are clashing at MS in praag, why would anyone go capture Graveyard BO and miss out on the action.

Spot on analysis.This is what makes primetime RvR such a boring slog half the time. Both sides staying in one area and refusing to split off, which leads to more players having to stay in that area as no one will leave as there's no action anywhere else, which leads to both side accumulating massive blobs, which leads to the 'we push you and you run, then you push us and we run' back and forth for hours, which leads to people taking to the forums/discord to moan about the blob.

Even if the devs do a great RvR overhaul that really makes BOs matter, if the mentality of the player base doesn't change it will all be for nothing. On live warbands would roam all over the map and clash into each other in WBvWB fights, now it's just a 'you go then I'll go' blob fight in the middle of the map. Unless there's some concerted effort by all the big WB leaders to start roaming again so fights are spread across the map this situation is unlikely to change.

[Gunlinger]

Right now you get less renown for winning a zone by pure capture. That is why everyone is going for maximum player kills. If you want to see org WBs rather going to take and hold BOs, the reward for a captured zone would have to be bigger than the reward you would have from zerging in the middle for the same amount of time.

[Rotgut]

Even if the devs do a great RvR overhaul that really makes BOs matter, if the mentality of the player base doesn't change it will all be for nothing. On live warbands would roam all over the map and clash into each other in WBvWB fights, now it's just a 'you go then I'll go' blob fight in the middle of the map. Unless there's some concerted effort by all the big WB leaders to start roaming again so fights are spread across the map this situation is unlikely to change.

I don't agree with this take. Like yes you are right, if player behaved differently the game would be different, but since you can't force people to behave a certain way, smart game design works thru incentives. Its all the Devs can do. If a great RvR overhaul doesn't work its gonna be because the incentives weren't good enough and not because of the players.

The incentive right now for big WB leaders is to keep their roster engaged. Otherwise people stop showing up. They are, and will always be, looking for fun things to do first, with Renown gain for the new guildies or Alts as a secondary goal. WB Leaders that don't seek fun are the ones losing their members left and right.

If the oRvR loop was more engaging than "keep looking for fights while we wait for roamers to run boxes so we can siege (we can go deeper into Sieges and how sometimes they are out of the question but its a big post on its own)", then WB Leaders would seek that. I mean, we do that in LotD right? Go somewhere, take a fight, analyze the map, inform /region where they are going to spread to to deal with w/e problem the enemy realm is presenting to us, react to other's /region calls, take another fight, repeat. LotD has both blobbing and spreading because the incentives, in this case a simple Score Counter where both fighting and BOs matter, are there to make people care about the campaign.