Been an insanely busy week here in my little realm, as I attempt to keep my head above water between the stresses of working a day job, keeping up with my own side projects, and simultaneously planning a wedding. Hence the quiet last couple of days on the blog.
On to the topic at hand… the endless game of musical keeps that seems to plague WAR’s open RvR areas. You all know what I’m talking about. I think anyone who’s participated in oRvR in Tier 4 has likely experienced it.
You look at your realm war page. You notice that there’s a fight going on in Dragonwake. “Hey, is there a warband up in DW?”, you ask in alliance chat. A few responses, people are distracted. “Join /XYZ”… so you do. You get there just as they’re taking a keep. It’s undefended, but you still heal like crazy during the keep lord battle and come in #3 in contribution. You then proceed to roll something terrible and rank 38th out of two warbands present in the effort. Sigh. Nothing new there.
Finishing off that Annihilator set is going to take a while, you think to yourself. You’ve taken a good 10-15 keeps already and haven’t won a single gold bag. Your frustration subsides a little as you head out of the keep, until you see the rank 35 KotBS wearing a complete set of it walk past you. You clench your fists in anger, slamming one down on your desk (“ow!”), vowing that you’ll get the drop next time.
The warband continues to the next keep in the zone, clearing battle objectives as you go. Another keep, undefended again. You do your duty to your realm, healing like a madman during the lord fight and again coming in in the top 5 for contribution. You roll… and come in 46th. Thanks, randomized rolls.
The warband leader speaks up (it’s been silent from an RvR perspective in chat the entire time; just the usual random chatter of bored people in a warband), letting everyone know that the warband is moving to Reikland to roll keeps there. Rinse, repeat, and two keeps later, you’re headed back to Dragonwake. Looking at your realm war map, both of the keeps and all four battle objectives that you had taken 30 minutes ago were now in the hands of the hated Destruction forces.
Back in Dragonwake, both keeps fall with not a single fight to be had until the warband begins to dissolve out of sheer boredom, and the remaining stragglers wait around long enough for Destruction to show up again to regain the keeps they lost previously.
‘Round and ’round it goes. And we all know why. It’s easier to farm renown when no one’s there to put up a fight. When you pick up 1,000 renown per objective, and 1,100 for a keep, as well as a shot at a few gold bags each time (assuming you don’t get stuck with a crap roll entering the zone), where is the motivation to RvR? The renown earned in a half-hour of farming objectives is probably equivalent to a very good scenario run, in most cases (around 6,000 RPs for clearing an undefended zone, versus 3-6k RPs for a single, very good run of Serpent’s Passage.)
And since people can pretty much AFK and tag along for the ride when retaking undefended keeps, it becomes even more appealing. Scenarios involve work, and also a good team working together. Which happens about 50% of the time if you’re not running a guild or other form of pre-made group. Which means in a successful half-hour of running scenarios, you may luck out and gain as much renown as if you were rolling a bunch of undefended keeps for the same amount of time, guaranteed.
Something’s wrong there, isn’t it? It seems to me that reducing the amount of renown earned by dropping keeps and taking battle objectives — in conjunction with increasing the renown earned by killing players in RvR and in scenarios — would probably solve the problem in one fell swoop. That’s probably much too simple of an answer, mind you.
What’s the problem here? Human nature will always try and find the quickest and simplest path to achieve a goal. That’s just how we define efficiency. In this case, the goal is equipment upgrades and farming renown. Since undefended, stationary objectives and keeps give both, why bother with fighting the other side if both sides can farm unmolested? It’s calculated, boring, and yawn-inducing, but it works, right? It’s also not the way Mythic intended you to play the game, but it’s pretty well-understood that the players will decide how they want to play the game, based on the available rewards and the guidelines and available routes to attaining them.
I can’t imagine that this is what Mythic had in mind when they planned out the open RvR end-game. And I don’t think Mark Jacobs and Paul Barnett are going to sit there and let things play out the way they’re going. At least, I really hope not. From my point of view, I could see less rewards for doing what we’re doing now as a viable solution, and rewarding players more for activities that Mythic wants encouraged — like fighting to hold keeps and actually engaging the other side — seems like an easy enough fix. Although I’m sure it would anger all of those freeloaders on the current game of keep merri-go-round we’re seeing today.
When I think back to how Dark Age of Camelot handled keep taking in the frontiers, I can’t help but recall that there were no obvious rewards for taking a keep, since there were no battle objectives, aside from potential access to a crafting merchant, less guards at the relic you were after, and ye olde much touted “realm pride”. I remember that in general, people RvR’d for Realm Points, Realm Abilities — which, although many were overpowered, were a great motivator to RvR that seems missing from WAR — and the prestige granted by gaining a new title. The rewards were slow coming, but when you saw a Norse Isen Herra or a Lurikeen Thunderer jumping you from the side of the road, you knew you were in trouble. I don’t really see as much of that in WAR and that’s definitely an adrenaline rush that I miss.
There are a few obvious solutions here, but Keen seems to have already covered most of them in a couple of posts from the last week, and Ferrel at Epic Slant also has a pair of posts on the subject that are worth a read. I’d encourage you to check out both of their suggested fixes and see what you think. More interestingly, yesterday also marked a new video blog post from Paul Barnett that included some discussion of patch 1.1.1 and the upcoming zone domination system. This sounds like it’s exactly what’s needed to get people to actually sit and hold keeps and lock zones, instead of the pillage, plunder and escape to another zone “strategy” being employed currently. I’m not sure if it’ll do enough to alleviate the the whole oRvR situation, though.
I’m embedding the video below for your viewing enjoyment (and I think Paul’s really taken the humour up a notch this time; definitely making up for some of the more depressingly awkward videos from a month or so ago.) I’m glad to see that the dev/creative team at Mythic is a little less stressed out these days. :)
