RVR Suggestions: WAR Councils, Zone Control and Trade Routes

[iwasdaking]

Hey all, these are my suggestions on beefing up the RVR system. This first post is an intro, so read it only if you feel like understanding my position. The meat and bones follow shortly after in separate posts, so no one gets hit with massive walls of text.

Introduction
I've been playing WAR for (merely?) a month, and grinded an Engineer to level 36, but now I've lost most motivation to play. My initial response was to blame balance issues, but that was mainly a tantrum thrown after receiving multiple SP steamrolls. I've had genuinely fun times with my Engineer- Witching Night's RVR, tight scenarios, partied PQs. And that's the problem- there weren't enough of these times.

That's it. There was no coordinated gameplay; it's either solo quest grinding, solo PQ attempting or aimless pug scenarios. Ad naseum. My guild attempted to hammer (har har) some things together, but nothing ever achieved the same epicness of the Witching Night.

And so, after much stewing in my head, I've envisioned how WAR should ideally look like (this thread's Mission):

Co-ordinated, Epic, Rewarding RVR (i.e. PVP)

Which raises the following (obvious) factors:
1) Co-ordination
2) Scale
3) Rewards
which I shall attempt to address in the following posts.

[iwasdaking]

Summary
1) Create official forums.
2) Campaigns: Regular, Pre-planned, Massive RVR incursions.
3) WAR Council: Consists of leaders and officers from appointed guilds; discuss Campaign plans on the forums.
4) Forum discussion, in-game announcements and Guild/Alliance calendars better coordinate execution of the Campaign.
5) Certain classes have access to the opposing side's forums; introducing espionage tactics.

Introduction
I read with interest the 'REALM WAR' changes 1.05's patch brought. It was supposed to allow "you (to) stay in the game even when you can't login!". It doesn't really. But that really sparked some ideas: War's everywhere; why not in the Internet near you?

That's when the idea of WAR Councils struck me: A regular gathering of the most influential WAR players, planning massive war campaigns, coordinating warbands, unleashing destruction (or order, damn puns).

Where will the Council gather?
This is a no-brainer: an Official WAR forum. No other site will have sufficient clout to pull every single WAR player under one banner. This will do wonders to the community spirit too, as advocated in Sir_Revo's post "He didn't seriously write another one of these...".

Naturally, the forums will be divided into Order and Destruction halves, in lieu with the current comms system. Logging in requires a validated IGN and password, so Order players can only access Order's forums and vice-versa.

Espionage
Drawing from the 'Pick Lock' mechanic in WHs, I'll also propose WH/WL/WE/Marauders be able to log onto the opposing side's forums. This will add a nice espionage factor/ intel gathering role.

Spies can either be made pure lurkers (cannot post), or a counter-intelligence gimmick can be implemented where 'Moderators' try to weed out disruptive spy posts from genuine posts. Go crazy.

Who's on the WAR Council?
While subject to change, I'd recommend the leaders and officers of 5 (or more) appointed guilds. They'll be given a private channel to discuss fortnightly (or more frequent) campaigns, then a Stickied thread to announce the finalized campaign.

Which guilds get appointed? We could go with
democracy (each player casts a vote),
prominence (Mythic/ Ten Ton Hammer's "Best Guild" features) or
activity (Guilds with most active, hardcore players, renown, level).

Hopefully it'll be such that, even if the general WAR community doesn't play along, the guild members associated with the WAR Council will be plentiful enough to execute a proper Campaign.

Campaign Planning
To help the WAR Council better manage their Campaigns, I'd also like a compilation of drawn in maps, as well as a 'Pathing Tool' to easily draw Campaign routes.

Councillors (senators?) should easily draw up Campaign maps, clearly indicating rally points, paths taken, retreat routes, ambush spots and what not. Synching into different zones (e.g. after taking X in TM, head to WC, fly to West Praag) should also be supported.

These in turn should be easily converted into a JPEG and uploaded in the Stickied announcement thread. Then again, maybe it shouldn't be saveable (or Print Screenable), so spies must rely on words to well, spy.

Warband/ Party Planner
While potentially a logistical nightmare, I'm going to suggest that Campaign participants first register, then be sorted into balanced, pre-made parties. This can be done either at the Council or individual Guild (appointed or otherwise) level.

I'd then like to see an auto-sorter which assigns Campaign registered players into parties
1) in terms of Guild association i.e. members of the same guild/alliance get priority in being stuck together.
2) in terms of balance i.e. each team should get 2 tanks, 2 healers, 2 dps etc.

Why stick my neck out to the possibility of latecomers, afkers, absentees and what not? Because I plan to neuter the Zerg Swarm in my subsequent proposal on Zone Mechanics. The basic unit of a Campaign should be a party of 6, not a swarm of 100. These fan out according to pre-prepared plans, fulfilling multiple objectives simultaneously to lock a zone. In this light, pre-made groups become essential.

That said, I am still VERY keen on the thought of a 100v100. I think that's what Fortresses and City Sieges are for though.

Why stay on the WAR Councils?
Naturally, being forced into fortnightly meetings, and into leading Campaigns with your troops needs something to sweeten the deal. Really flashy armor pieces, dyes, trophies and temporary titles. Achievements, Tome Unlocks. Waiving your subscription fee. Again, go nuts; the incentives should be impressive, but not game breaking.

WAR!
Hopefully, with regular Campaigns dreamt up by the greatest minds in WAR, WAR truly will be everywhere. In a Co-ordinated manner. Epically. Of course, that's assuming the other side catches on with the Campaign plans, and actually plans to meet in battle. Which leads us to...

[iwasdaking]

Summary
1) Scenarios and PQs should have no impact on Zone Locking
2) Campaign Flow: Reworks BOs and Keeps to encourage strategy and discourage zerging.
3) Instant WAR: Both attacking and defending players can teleport to RVR zones under heavy attack.
4) Scenarios, PVE and RVR reworked to play different 'roles' - XP, Loot and Reknown/Brags respectively.

Introduction
I'm sure you've experienced it: Server-wide WAR frenzy. Multiple warbands pooling to form lagfests. Order takes every BO and every Keep in every contested zone in 10mins. Then they evaporate- there's nothing left to do.

Maybe Destro rallies a defense. But knowing they'll never all reach Praag in time to stop its zerg, maybe they head to TM instead. Some in Order decide to rush to TM's defense, but most would rather head to Dragonwake and PVE for gold bags.

There are some major problems here:
a) Taking all Keeps and BOs penalizes players with a Game Over; the next zone rarely unlocks.
b) Zone objectives fall way too quickly, specifically to Zergs.
c) Defenders cannot rally fast or in numbers large enough to mount a defense.
d) There's no incentive to defend a Keep; but every incentive to take them. Absence of resistance is preferred.

And my solutions:
a) Holding all Keeps and BOs should be the only requirement for locking zones.
b) A RVR Redesign, termed 'Campaign Flow'
c) Implement Instant WAR, described in the next post.
d) Clearly define the roles and rewards or RVR, described in the next post.

Zone Locking
This requires little elaboration: Scenarios and PQs should have no bearing on locking a zone. As mentioned above, these only serve to screw up the momentum of a Campaign.

i.e. Holding all Keeps and BOs locks a zone, paving the way to the next zone. Then the Fortress. Then the City.

RVR Redesign: Campaign Flow
To implement a more strategic RVR, I propose that a Zone Lock occur in three phases:

Phase 1: Capturing and holding most/all BOs
Implemented to discourage zerging, having to take and defend multiple BOs forces players to divide and conquer. Only after doing so can a Keep be feasibly assaulted. This will be the most tactical of the three phases. By forcing both sides to attack/defend multiple points across large swathes of land, this phase will emphasise maneuverability and split-second decisions. The end result should be highly mobile parties, moving to reinforce the dynamic battlefronts or guard strategic locations, with more skirmishes breaking out in the RVR lakes than zits on a teen's face.

Making BOs Important
Well first we have to make BOs worth taking. While an obvious boon would be something like:

"Hold all 5 BOs to make the Keep Door vulnerable to attacks!",

this is nonsensical and boring. We could instead have them of:

Direct importance
- Make all players in the RVR lake receive significant, passive, automatic buffs from held BOs, as per AranStomrah's suggestion "Suggestions for more points of interest in an RvR lake"
- Give BOs holders a 'Ward' against Keep Lords i.e. it'll be very difficult to take down Keep Lords without holding most BOs.
- Increasing the number of Hero mobs in a Keep depending on how many BOs its owner holds

Strategic importance
- Deaths in RVR lakes respawns players at the nearest BO.
- Players can use BOs as Rally Points i.e. Book of Bind-ing to them. These thus become Reinforcement Points if left in enemy hands.
- Attacking BOs can affect ongoing Keep Sieges e.g. If Destro reclaims BOs when Order sieges their keep, Mobs level up/ more Hero mobs spawn/ Gates immediately close.

Some Tantalising Visions
The major goal of creating this RVR phase is to add strategy, eliminating mindless mobbing. Here're a few tactical decisions Campaigns will have to address:

Defenders might mass at key choke points (e.g. the warcamp's entrance), while attackers exploit alternative routes to counter this (think the cave in North Hammerhead Lagoon that leads into the RVR lake, Barak Varr).

Defenders might choose to emphasise border defence at the expense of the inner BOs (think Risk- players mass troops along borders, leaving inner territories lightly defended). Or they defend each BO with equal numbers, then mobilize reinforcements accordingly.

Attackers will have to decide on which BOs to take. "X gives more benefits than Y, but is closer to the enemy's warcamp" or "We've taken X, Y and Z. Are we sufficiently prepared to siege the keep? Should we try for A and B too, and risk overreaching? Will they be needed as buffer zones should Destro successfully counter-attack?"

Attackers might choose to zerg afterall, steamrolling the first few BOs. Defenders could then adopt guerilla tactics, retaking the abandoned BOs and denying access to the Keeps.

Or attackers could start with a zerg, then leave troops at each BO taken. Defenders could then try to gauge if the attackers have overreached, come from the back and surround them.

Or they could form their own zerg, to meet the other zerg, until some smartass realizes there are 6 other BOs (and their bonuses) freely available.

Having More BOs
To make the above work, I believe the number of BOs have to increase. Sure, holding multiple BOs will split a zerg, but not by much if there are only two. Opportunities for tactical decisions also increase with the number of BOs, which complicate things nicely.

Now moving on to Phase 2...

[iwasdaking]

Phase 2: Sieging the Keep
Phase 1 was designed to spread out the action across a large map, making tactical decisions have significant impact.

Here in Phase 2, we're going to take all the action and cram it into one Keep.

Improving the Keep: Keep Capture Points
Holding 80% of an RVR lake and its BOs is tough; assaulting a keep simultaneously is tougher. I'm going to suggest that the courtyard (space between first and second gates) be expanded and contain Capture Points, which give some of the benefits of the BOs in the outlying RVR lake.

As such, attackers need hold most of the BOs only until the first door is down. If they've played their cards well and still hold the BOs, they can assault the seond door, bring it down and have an easy Lord fight. Things will be quick, snappy, a reward for successfully taking and holding most of the RVR lake.

If they've not, players still in the RVR lake can abandon their posts and head straight into the courtyard, claiming the Capture Points there. Of course, defenders can do the same thing; or Postern Door into the main keep and pelt the attackers from there.

In order not to obsolete one over the other (BOs vs Capture Points), things will naturally need balance. The way I see it, holding all BOs allow for overrunning the keep quickly (say 15mins?) with a small team (maybe 1 WB?). Holding all Capture Points and no BOs requires a nice drawn out siege of the inner Keep, maybe 25mins to 3 WBs (BOs are still required to take that first door). Holding any less will ramp the difficulty up proportionally.

This results in a further layer of tactics. Campaigns confident of their player skill can choose to abandon BOs and aim for the Capture Points. This results in a long-drawn, extremely dense, heavy emphasis on combat within the courtyard- exactly to their advantage. Campaigns confident of their speed, maneuverability and co-ordination can emphasise on Phase 1 instead, gunning for a relatively quick and easy Keep Siege.

The most important result:
No more monotonous Door 1 > Door 2 > Keep Lord.

Note that this suggestion is akin in spirit to Alluvian_Est-Endrati's "Comprehensive Keep Redesign: Reikland Factory is a great Example". Or any of the five thousand posts on how Keeps need to be redesigned.

More Siege Weapons
While not an integral problem with the current RVR system, it would be nice if Siege Weapons offered something besides DPS. Quoting Aran's post again, things like Medic Camps, Dogs of War Camps and Dungeons which provide passive buffs (yea it reeks of Conan) would freshen things up.

Phase 3: Locking the Zone
Once a Keep has been taken, all that's left is to clear up the remaining BOs, lock the zone, and head to the next map. If there's more than one keep, the attackers take that too. This Phase indicates a significant change in gameplay as the attackers are now defenders also, and will have to accomodate both roles.

That said, this is a relatively simple phase with no suggestions for improvement.

Rallying a Defence
One of the major reasons for a lack of RVR is the difficulty in mounting a defence. Sometimes its not the lack of incentive; its just impossible to get to X in time, and in numbers large enough, to stop its fall.

Looking at what the above RVR suggestions have done however, things are now easier:
a) It takes longer to sweep a map, so there's more time to prepare a defence.
b) It's more complicated to sweep a map, and the defence has many avenues in the form of BOs to mount reprisals.

I feel the above isn't enough though, so I'm going to make things even easier.

Instant WAR
Once attackers have taken a proportion of BOs (say half), I suggest a pop-up appears (not disimilar to Scenario queues popping) offering to teleport defenders immediately to the affected zone's Warcamp, regardless of which zone they're in.

Perhaps the same can be done for attackers. Once Order claims a BO with the property "Reinforcement Point", a pop-up will appear offering to teleport Order players not currently in the RVR lake to the BO. Taking this will immediately trigger Destro's teleport mechanism too, to prevent attackers from bee-lining this BO.

If we're worried above servers crashing due to 800 000 players being in the same RVR lake, we could limit the number of teleport vacancies to 5 warbands. Not unlike how scenarios are restricted to 3 parties. The unlucky ones get announcements (current announcements play only within the same zone, when the Keep Lord is attacked. Way too late), and can head there on foot . Or just go smash another Zone. WAR is everywhere right?

And with that, I hope to solve one of the biggest problems with the lack of WAR: not that there aren't enough incentives (having a chance to smash the other side is often incentive enough), but there's a hugh dis-incentive with it being impossible to mount a defence. Throw in the spark to regularly start WARs in the form of WAR Councils, and we should keep the fire blazin'.

Carrots and Sticks
Still not convinced that WAR will be everywhere? Well, there're more than enough threads out there suggesting better incentives. My approach will be slightly different, but there is one thing that must change:

"Renown points earned do not diminish with distance."

This is important so that players assigned to guard areas/BOs far from the action still benefit. Tweaking will be needed to prevent exploits of course, but the basic principle must be retained.

And now my own take on how Carrots and Sticks should be done.

Roles: PvE, Scenarios (SC), RVR
I don't know about you, but I think the perception that 'RVR is unrewarding' is due to PVE and SCs' gains appearing to eclipse its. A bit like how everyone thinks ENGs and SWs suck because BWs are too bright. Or how Tottenham appears trashy since the other clubs are so much better (fine, irrelevant example). But I digress.

The solution therefore is to assign clear roles to each:

PvE (Quests, PQs, Raids) is for loot.
SCs are for XP (both Rank and player skill experience).
RVR is for Renown and looking really, really cool.

Each can give some of the other, but never on the same scale. This results in:

a) Zone Locks to prevent Scenarios actually hurt now.
- Successful attackers can hamper XP gain. This sort of works both ways though.
b) Lvl 40s can focus on pimpin' their characters in RVR
- Instead of griefing everyone in SCs, or whining about the lack of things to do (there really is a lack).
c) Consecutive RVR ownage will not give significant advantage over the other Realm
- Order players will look waaaaaay cooler after 700 City siege victories, but won't have a significant XP or gear advantage since RVR's not the place to get them.

That said, I have two more suggestion:

How RVR Rewards are Procured
Emphasis on how RVR rewards are obtained need to move from Keep Lord's Gold Bags to Player drops. The former encourages sieges but not defence; the latter encourages both. I think this is a very obvious and very much needed tweak. If you want gold bags, go do PQs (see, two fixes with one post).

Equip-over Items (Costume Equips)
If you've played Maple Story (you'll never get me to admit that I've played it!), this is basically their Cash Item function. You get cool gear in RVR, and it equips on top of existing equipment, changing your appearance but retaining the underlying equipment's stats. Voila: Visual flair, sealed with PVP goodness. Now go RVR with Kossar's Helm or something.

[iwasdaking]

Summary:
1) Gold can be used to buy ridiculously powerful/cool things, at astronomical prices.
2) Trade Route: The longest path connecting Chapter Camps and Keeps owned by a Realm, in (across?) racial pairings.
3) Trade routes generate gold over time, proportional to the length of the trade route.
4) Guilds who own Keeps tax a percentage of the gold generated by trade routes, if it passes through their Keep.

Introduction
The sharp reader would have realized I side-stepped the problem of Keep defence: there's still little incentive to do it. My solution was to massively encourage RVR (WAR Councils, Instant WAR, mindset change on RVR gains), and hope it never amounts to a problem.

But my creative ego refused to just cut loose, as this is a very interesting issue to attempt to resolve. Conventional solutions, namely rewarding Keep defenses, are a nightmare to implement: How much defending would qualify for a Defence reward? What would the reward be? Unconventional solutions however, decided to elude me.

And so, like all great creative minds, I stole someone else's idea. Herein I shall explain the concept of Trade Routes, ripped directly from Sins of a Solar Empire (and associated 4X games), as well as suggest Mythic marry Stardock and produce lots more customer-oriented game companies.

Trade Routes
Like in Sins, Trade Routes will generate gold over time, and the longer they are, the higher this rate will be.

A Trade Route will be defined as the longest route that can be travelled between a Race's Chapter Camps and owned Keeps. This transcends maps and tiers, and should read something like:

Dwarf Chapter 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > Dwarf Keep 1 > (Tier 2) Chapter 5 > 6 > 7 > Orc Keep 1

In the above example, assuming this is the longest unbroken chain, the Trade Route will have 8 nodes. It will then generate 8 X 1000 gold per day, for example.

For the visually inclined, imagine a Trade Route as the longest path (across chapter camps and keeps) a level 1 ally can walk without dying.

The important mechanic here: Holding Keeps is important in building a long Trade Route. To really see large gold numbers, keeping Keeps i.e. defending them will now be important.

And also: Every Tier's Keeps need to be held for the longest Trade Route possible. This gives another low tier RVR incentive, potentially solving a bonus problem.

Milking Trade Routes
So where does the gold generated from Trade Routes go? I've got two suggestions:

a) Divide it amongst all players in a Realm
This results in a steady income of gold for each player, plus a bonus population handicap: If Destro outnumbers Order, although they have a higher chance of holding more Keeps i.e. a long Trade Route, they also have more people to divide the gold amongst. Interesting way to even realm populations eh?

b) Taxing Trade Routes
Guilds who lay claim to Keeps which are part of a trade route get to tax a percentage of its gold income. This again solves a bonus problem: there being little incentive for Guilds to own Keeps.

To recap, we
1) take and defend Keeps
2) to create a long Trade Route which
3) generates Gold over time

And that begs the question of...

What's there to buy?
There isn't much to spend gold on. I won't dig deeply into this issue as this is a RVR post, but truly epic items priced at truly epic numbers will be needed to encourage use of the Trade Route mechanic.

To keep in line with my belief that RVR should be for brags, such rewards should not be game breaking. To diffrentiate themselves from RVR awards though, they might be a different type of brag. Say RVR is for permanent Titles, Achievements and Costume equips; Trade Routes might be for temporary Effects: Pocket Items, Scenery (100,000 gold buys a Volcano that lasts 15mins?), Audio (plays a Guild theme ?). Go crazy.

Conclusion
That's alot of things written over the span of a week, and alot to read. Thanks in advance to all who actually sift through everything!

[Gabby]

Yeh the above is awsome!!!

however myfreind i dont ever see it happening, you are living in dreamworld :-)

and thanks for that, i actually imagined the above and had the best 30 minutes this week reading that.

[oamer]

Amazing post...post it everywhere. Send it as feedback. Go to VN. Just keep up the bumps and replies. It is so well thought out and seems fun to play from just reading it. Impossible to implement? Who knows

[iwasdaking]

Thanks for the support guys, I'm surprised anyone would actually want to read all that.

Acknowledging issues with the RVR, and suggesting improvements, is nothing new on this board. Here are more links to other great ideas, just to prove they're in no short supply.

Better RVR Notifications:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=197923
Summary: Better Open Parties, Keep and BO information for players, regardless of zones.

Easier, but intuitive, Zone Locks:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=197063 (post3)
Summary: Holding all all Keeps and BFOs starts a countdown, locking the zone once it ends. Winning scenarios and holding lower tiers shortens this countdown.

RVR Lake Quests:
Multiple posts.
Summary: Encourage more Order/Destro clashes by placing quests in the RVR lake. A susbset of which being:

NPC aides in RVR:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=196639
Summary: Introduce quests which spawn NPC aides for the side which completes them; make each antagonistically completable by both sides to encourage RVR.

[immunil]

Really nice post, it is evident you have put a lot of effort into writing it.

While the majority of suggestions here are top notch, the section I am a bit less enthusiastic about is the War councils idea.

Currently it appears WAR actually has ample infrastructure to implement your suggestion on War councils. There are custom channels (not sure if they work though, never tried one myself ;)), alliance systems and so forth.

Correct me if I am wrong, but your War council system seems to simply nudge people in to using this kind of infrastructure more readily. I think people would actually be up for using this infrastructure as it is, but the problem is World RvR is rather lackluster (in my opinion) at the moment.

Inherently improving RvR would provide the incentive for people to make alliances, organise frontier pushes, and so on.

Considering there are easy-to-use in game channels, and forums such as this, or VNboards, I don't see the need for official forums at all. I think it is far better for the customers infact not to have an official forum run by Mythic/GOA. My experience of official game forums such as that used for WoW is that it is almost entirely a venting for people to whine about class imbalance (to a greater extent than unofficial forums ;)).

As for your suggestions on RvR mechanics, these all seem really intriguing. Your section on trade routes has some brilliant ideas, I would love to see something like this perhaps being added in an expansion at some point.

[Thorek Ironbrow]

Actually I changed my mind. I was going to post how I didn't agree with the ideas of Campaigns and things, but that was untill I read the stuff about needing to capture BOs before you can assault a Keep (although I'm not sure what'd be there to stop you assaulting them, maybe make all the NPCs champions, to at least make it incredibly hard to get in.

Although the Keeps still need some kind of significant reward (Big XP & Renown ticks for every 3-5 minutes spent defending, 100% item reward for successfully defending a keep) for people to want to bother defending them.

[iwasdaking]

When a friend vetted my post, his reaction was simply 'go get a better guild'. Thinking that through, a well organised guild with a streamlined forum looks alot like a WAR Council.

But!
a) Think of all those who can't find such a guild! (Like me! And yes, I've better rebuttals than this!)
b) Planned Campaigns on an official board with lots of patronage should result in RvR on scales completely off those currently seen.
c) Campaigns will essentially be known to both sides due to "spies", so take point b) and double its epicness.
d) Every kid in WAR now has something to aspire to when he grows up: a WAR Councillor! Think of the epic rewards, titles, renown (not renown rank) and celebrity status! Like the WOW idiot who got invited to blizzcon for wiping his team by breaking eggs.

If you're worried about even more QQdom (there's enough in WAR Alliance to sink a ship. Or ten.), instead of having a forum we could have a bare-bones corner in the Realm WAR page. Perhaps a table displaying current members of the Council, then a log-in for these Councillors to discuss plans. Then a box, separate for Order and Destro, announcing what these plans or. Coupled with in-game announcment to assist the Internet impaired.

On that note, WAR Councils weren't the only thing my friend mentioned. He also explained, in all patience reserved for five year olds and retards, that BOs are Black Orcs and BFOs are Battlefield Objectives. But I don't believe him.

[Thorek Ironbrow]

Leeeeeeeeeeeroy!