There are quite a few people who are putting forwards their suggestions for improving the oRvR in WAR at the moment. I’ve been slowly developing my thoughts on this over the last week or so. One thing I’ve definitely noticed is that while it’s easy to decide what you don’t like about certain aspects of the game, developing a workable solution that may actually be possible to implement is a hell of a lot harder!
Here is what several sessions (read: 20 minutes) of deep and profound thinking has come to so far. Some of these have been mentioned many times before on other blogs but I agree that they are essential to improving RvR:
None or very little renown from capturing BO’s/Keeps. Also Increased renown/inf from killing enemy players.
This is the main reason why it is so much more rewarding to “RvE” empty keeps and undefended BO’s. Last night 2 destro warbands spent close to 30 minutes trying to take Mandreds. Half an hour of killing enemy players and it was hardly noticeable that my renown and influence bars had moved. So we went and took Stonetroll which was undefended and in 10 minutes had earned more inf & renown from essentially PvE. This only encourages players to take the path of least resistance and avoid long drawn out fights that are going to be difficult to win.
Holding BO’s increases renown gain from killing enemys.
I think the capture mechanic should be changed as well. BO’s shouldn’t be defended by NPC’s. Instead if a realm wanted to keep hold of one they would have to have a few people on hand to defend it. The lockout timer for recapturing them should either be reduced to around 5 minutes or got rid of, and the time taken to capture it increased to 5 minutes to allow the defenders enough time to get there.
Reduce the size of Warbands to either 12 or 18.
This would hopefully help reduce zerging somewhat while remaining useful for healers to see other players health and buffs etc. and keep people organised. Smaller groups would be able to defend/assault separate objectives with cohesion as a unit, but more units means (hopefully) more objectives will be fought over at any time.
Keep Capture Changes.
- No keep lord/champion NPC’s.
- Renown merchants relocated to keep lords room and are the top rank for the tier (eg. 21 for tier 2). These NPC’s will fight attackers but not unbalance the fight in the defenders favour.
- Keeps must be taken by planting a battle standard on the very top floor of the keep. These can be bought at rally masters and are automatically equipped once purchased, however they can be put down, and picked up by a different player.
- If they are put down or dropped they can be destroyed.
- Battle standards give a small buff and renown/influence gains to the warband of the carrier, battle standards with different buffs can be bought. If put down it gives a buff to all nearby friendly players (but can be destroyed). Once it is used to claim a keep it no longer gives the buff.
- Siege towers/ramps (which can be destroyed like oil etc.) or other ways to get directly onto the second floor. Being on the wrong end of a tank wall, as much as I love them, is extremely frustrating. Giving a couple of different options that don’t involve trying to fight through one heavily defended bottle neck would be nice and make the fights more dynamic.
- Guilds can still capture keeps by planting their standard at the top. They can add some champion level guards and upgrade keeps as proposed in 1.2.1, a guild that claims a keep would get increased renown/influence gains in that region (more so then other player not of that guild).
- A transport scroll similar to the one for the guild tavern can be purchased from a vendor in a guilds keep that gives instant travel to the keep lords room. (not sure if anything like this exists already)
Get rid of loot bags.
The current system of loot bags and Vegas rolls is such a random system it’s bordering on being unfair. I’ve never got above 17th place in any roll, even after coming 3rd in the contribution rankings. Our WB leader (a chopper) last night was saying how he’s already won 7 gold loot bags by level 17. Having one part of the best T2 PvP set only being in a gold loot bag means a large proportion of people will never complete it. I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that I will probably never get it. Unless we got a bonus to the roll that increased with every keep you are involved in and didn’t get a bag, and was saved even after you log out , eventually you should get something for your effort. I cant see rolling for loot bags being a fair way of attaining gear without it.
Attackable Warcamps.
I do agree with Pancakez as far as warcamps should not be like a huge roadblock that stops a warband in its tracks, and provides a completely safe haven the other side. If the NPC’s at the edge were brought down to the top level for the tier it would make it possible for a side that was being beat badly to fall back to the warcamp and use the NPC’s to help them out. It wouldn’t however provide a completely safe shelter where no one could get you. If the enemy force was big enough they could take out all the guards and run into the camp and still kill you.
The rally masters should become like the keep lords here and be hero level, and the other quest givers and merchants Champion level; It would be a huge undertaking to kill all the NPC’s, chapions and Rally master. If a rally master is killed the zone would be locked down by that side, however anyone of that faction in the area would be worth twice as much renown for an hour.
I also agree that attacking the war camps and objectives could be made more fun, like murderball fun. How about having a big explosive device in your warcamp. (‘da bomb’), someone can pick it up and you then have to try and carry it into the other sides war camp and detonate it to lock down the zone? Or perhaps that could just net you a nice amount of influence and renown. Little quirks like that would add a lot to of life of oRvR IMO.
The changes I’ve outlined above are mainly aimed at making it harder for a large group to defend keeps. At the moment I feel it’s far to easy for a full war band to keep attackers out of the lords room, and if there was only a small force defending from a much larger one there wouldn’t be much in it for the attackers, but the defenders should get a reasonable amount of ren/inf.
If anyone’s got any thoughts on my thoughts feel free to post a comment (if anyone actually reads this that is!)
*Edit* I completely forgot about the token system coming out in patch 1.2.1. I'm looking forward to being able to work towards a reward from oRvR, I just hope that everything you can get in the loot bags is available to purchase with them. Also they are reducing renown/inf gain from keep/BO capture by 50%, which is a good start to encouraging engaging the enemy players and holding a zone untill it gets locked. I really hope this will encourage the two sides to engage in battle and not shy away from a long, drawn out fight. I guess we'll soon see :)
