The renown after BiS
Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 1:06 pm
Hello,
Targetissue:
For a couple of years the playermindset, gameplay and succes-messurement on RoR has shifted more and more away from objectives and over towards "kills" Wether it being tracking your performance on Killboard for Weekly, Monthly, guild taking screenshots after a play session of their cheeseboard, Enemy addon zonekills performance, or when communicating with other players how their last RoR sessions, often times "we got X amount of kills" is the succesmessurement.
This is not bad, after all its a pvp game so its good that players are trying to fight eachother right (?)
But the fighting is not reflected in how a kill is counted, you can be BiS and kite into Pve and let newplayers chase you and turn & burn when they get debolstered. You can dismount as a whole warband for a group, or a group can chase a soloer into pve and run him down. A kill is a kill on the board.
What I would suggestion, is a serious attempt to shift some focus back over to Renown becoming more of a chase again.
Below ill highlight some issues with how Renown becomes an empty bragging right currently, how players right now often dont even bother drinking Potions of acclaim pass RR 80 or 85. And how some of the game systems ingame, almost are enough but need a little support patch or two to make the systems connect again.
The current RR situation:
Renown has argubly never been easier to get, than it is right now. Legazy RR 80 on here used to have a special forum title because it was so hard to grind. The summer of 2021 nerfed RR gain massively from RvR and objectives, and very recently over several patches + new introduced items like pocketitem, blue gloves, event foods, stacking BO-capture buffs RP gain feels good now. It not quite at the level where we got 30k from a Fortress capture, but its still up there!
However renown is very rarely the gate-keeper, warcrests are. But of the time players will have the RR to equip a pvp set for their level, but are lacking warcrests to buy the set if they go ward-by-ward from pvp sets in T4, or they simply save their crests for BiS sove which usually they can not affort as they ding RR 78.
Pass 80 or 85 the incentives are close to gone for caring about higher RR for majority of players.
Renown bonuses from AAO, Weekend warfront 2x events are "nice" but realisticly warcrest gains are outshining RP modifyiers is most cases, for most players. Which in turn kills some of the incentive when a 50%rp bonus is slapped on top of a Weekendwarfront system, or any other incentive including RP gain. So it barely affects progression players too much in the grand scheme of things to "direct" playerbehavior in any direction from a gameplay point of view, and especially for BiS endgame players AAO incentives are a very outdated system that those who can fight outnumbered, dont even take into account.
The systems we have, and the suggestion for renown:
As I have touched in briefly above, we do have some good systems in RoR where they would work much better for improving pvp quality, helping out players get motivated to balance the population, improve their skill to reap better rewards from higher competitive gamemodes, and its all fairly simply.. Renown just needs to become relevant for apperance, braggingrights no-powercreep incentives.
The following systems I am thinking of:
- Weekly renown gain statues in captitals are cool, new players still link their screenshots on guiold discords and people congratulate eachother after a weeks work and efforts. But its a half baked system.
- Serverwide annoucements and realms going "gz" or "booh" in general chat.
- AAO as a faster progression hardmode for those who can. But it doesnt matter if the rewards pass bis are ignorable
All of the above are good systems, granted only in a gameworld where Renown is still relevant. I am not asking for each Realmreank pass 80 giving 1realm-skillpoint. But just leaning into the cusmetic side of Fasionhammer endgame way more aggresively in a replayable semi competitive system, so players want to spread out in rvr and get the BO-capture renown buffs, so they dont want to share their 24v24 fight with too many allies in a 24vs100 gank and instead they spread out more to get their own skills tested and reap better rewards. So they want to commit to a zonelock and cash in on the securing that extra tick after fighting in a zone for a while etc.
The suggestions in detail:
- Each monday the top renown holder of each class gets mailed a 6day20hour decaying item they can equip if they wish, to increase in size same as being selected champion in Stage3 citysiege. In a perfect world there would be several winners of this, where top ten player on a class gets 10% bigger, number nice gets 20% bigger etc. up to top1 gets doubled in size. Im not sure if the code would allow for this(?)
- Alternatively to size increase, it would be weapon glows for top 10 with a stronger glow based on your ranking previous week and it then expires after a week to keep players fighting week after week for gaining more renown and it not just automatically being the top overall RR of a RR100 veteran killing the competition on same careers.
- An other alternative would be heavily inspired from the Eden Daoc private server where top renown grinder per weak gets a set of glowing Wings, weapons, Cloak, Horns, Mount or whatever would fit into this game and lore. If the objective is to move the move focus away from kills and over to Renown and indirectly better combat via AAO, spreading out and less blobbing and spawncamping, then i think only keeping this reward for Solo kills each week along with Renown gain would be a start.
- Warbandleader crowns in open public warbands with a crown active are gaining a personal 25% renown from kills, when they are NOT within 200ft range of an other active allied crown. This does not affect closed warbands. Leaders shape the action, and this is a carrot for open warbandleaders to improve their performance without relying on numbers purely, and rewarding them for keeping the game alive and keeping somewhat up with what a premade closed warband can maybe gain in terms of renown gain.
Pretty much any gamemode/reward can be tweaked and controled from devs with this game vision, if renown again becomes attractive and a chase item without creating powercreep. Ranked, Citysiege, lotd, rvr, scenarios can all be tweaked in rewards and objectives if renown becomes relevant. But it does require that pass 80 you dont just get 2 random bad dye special options unlocked and a mask at RR 85. Renown would need to become more of a real chase, and for it to be somewhat competitive with several spots on for example a weekly reset, so not just one guy no-lifeing could kill the competitition on one career and veterans RR 100 dont instantly gets selected either.
Targetissue:
For a couple of years the playermindset, gameplay and succes-messurement on RoR has shifted more and more away from objectives and over towards "kills" Wether it being tracking your performance on Killboard for Weekly, Monthly, guild taking screenshots after a play session of their cheeseboard, Enemy addon zonekills performance, or when communicating with other players how their last RoR sessions, often times "we got X amount of kills" is the succesmessurement.
This is not bad, after all its a pvp game so its good that players are trying to fight eachother right (?)
But the fighting is not reflected in how a kill is counted, you can be BiS and kite into Pve and let newplayers chase you and turn & burn when they get debolstered. You can dismount as a whole warband for a group, or a group can chase a soloer into pve and run him down. A kill is a kill on the board.
What I would suggestion, is a serious attempt to shift some focus back over to Renown becoming more of a chase again.
Below ill highlight some issues with how Renown becomes an empty bragging right currently, how players right now often dont even bother drinking Potions of acclaim pass RR 80 or 85. And how some of the game systems ingame, almost are enough but need a little support patch or two to make the systems connect again.
The current RR situation:
Renown has argubly never been easier to get, than it is right now. Legazy RR 80 on here used to have a special forum title because it was so hard to grind. The summer of 2021 nerfed RR gain massively from RvR and objectives, and very recently over several patches + new introduced items like pocketitem, blue gloves, event foods, stacking BO-capture buffs RP gain feels good now. It not quite at the level where we got 30k from a Fortress capture, but its still up there!
However renown is very rarely the gate-keeper, warcrests are. But of the time players will have the RR to equip a pvp set for their level, but are lacking warcrests to buy the set if they go ward-by-ward from pvp sets in T4, or they simply save their crests for BiS sove which usually they can not affort as they ding RR 78.
Pass 80 or 85 the incentives are close to gone for caring about higher RR for majority of players.
Renown bonuses from AAO, Weekend warfront 2x events are "nice" but realisticly warcrest gains are outshining RP modifyiers is most cases, for most players. Which in turn kills some of the incentive when a 50%rp bonus is slapped on top of a Weekendwarfront system, or any other incentive including RP gain. So it barely affects progression players too much in the grand scheme of things to "direct" playerbehavior in any direction from a gameplay point of view, and especially for BiS endgame players AAO incentives are a very outdated system that those who can fight outnumbered, dont even take into account.
The systems we have, and the suggestion for renown:
As I have touched in briefly above, we do have some good systems in RoR where they would work much better for improving pvp quality, helping out players get motivated to balance the population, improve their skill to reap better rewards from higher competitive gamemodes, and its all fairly simply.. Renown just needs to become relevant for apperance, braggingrights no-powercreep incentives.
The following systems I am thinking of:
- Weekly renown gain statues in captitals are cool, new players still link their screenshots on guiold discords and people congratulate eachother after a weeks work and efforts. But its a half baked system.
- Serverwide annoucements and realms going "gz" or "booh" in general chat.
- AAO as a faster progression hardmode for those who can. But it doesnt matter if the rewards pass bis are ignorable
All of the above are good systems, granted only in a gameworld where Renown is still relevant. I am not asking for each Realmreank pass 80 giving 1realm-skillpoint. But just leaning into the cusmetic side of Fasionhammer endgame way more aggresively in a replayable semi competitive system, so players want to spread out in rvr and get the BO-capture renown buffs, so they dont want to share their 24v24 fight with too many allies in a 24vs100 gank and instead they spread out more to get their own skills tested and reap better rewards. So they want to commit to a zonelock and cash in on the securing that extra tick after fighting in a zone for a while etc.
The suggestions in detail:
- Each monday the top renown holder of each class gets mailed a 6day20hour decaying item they can equip if they wish, to increase in size same as being selected champion in Stage3 citysiege. In a perfect world there would be several winners of this, where top ten player on a class gets 10% bigger, number nice gets 20% bigger etc. up to top1 gets doubled in size. Im not sure if the code would allow for this(?)
- Alternatively to size increase, it would be weapon glows for top 10 with a stronger glow based on your ranking previous week and it then expires after a week to keep players fighting week after week for gaining more renown and it not just automatically being the top overall RR of a RR100 veteran killing the competition on same careers.
- An other alternative would be heavily inspired from the Eden Daoc private server where top renown grinder per weak gets a set of glowing Wings, weapons, Cloak, Horns, Mount or whatever would fit into this game and lore. If the objective is to move the move focus away from kills and over to Renown and indirectly better combat via AAO, spreading out and less blobbing and spawncamping, then i think only keeping this reward for Solo kills each week along with Renown gain would be a start.
- Warbandleader crowns in open public warbands with a crown active are gaining a personal 25% renown from kills, when they are NOT within 200ft range of an other active allied crown. This does not affect closed warbands. Leaders shape the action, and this is a carrot for open warbandleaders to improve their performance without relying on numbers purely, and rewarding them for keeping the game alive and keeping somewhat up with what a premade closed warband can maybe gain in terms of renown gain.
Pretty much any gamemode/reward can be tweaked and controled from devs with this game vision, if renown again becomes attractive and a chase item without creating powercreep. Ranked, Citysiege, lotd, rvr, scenarios can all be tweaked in rewards and objectives if renown becomes relevant. But it does require that pass 80 you dont just get 2 random bad dye special options unlocked and a mask at RR 85. Renown would need to become more of a real chase, and for it to be somewhat competitive with several spots on for example a weekly reset, so not just one guy no-lifeing could kill the competitition on one career and veterans RR 100 dont instantly gets selected either.