Destruction takes flight
This is something that I’ve seen Order do in the past, and the Phoenix Throne official forums have many threads pointing at cowardly Order and there fleeing armies, but I got to experience it firsthand in the Warband I was in.
I logged in the other day eager for some RvR and noticed that Order controlled all the keeps across Tier 3. “Wonderful” I thought to myself, time to take them back. So I grabbed a few guildies, put out a call to the alliance, and picked up some strays and in no time I had a full warband hell-bent on finding some RvR action.
It was my warband and I was calling the shots, as I’ve done in the past, and we proceeded to take the objectives in Avelorn. I got a bit of criticism from players whose names I didn’t recognize for warning Order of our intentions. “Good” I said “The more Order the better”. And I meant it. We then headed to the keep and the Order defenders started to appear. In short time it was warband vs warband, much to my delight. Not so for a vocal number of the party who wanted to flee Avelorn and take the undefended keep in Black Fire Pass. I put the guy with the biggest mouth in charge of the warband since he seemed to be such an expert (sarcasm btw) and we all headed to Black Fire and the keep. We only got the first door down before the warband from Avelorn arrived to drive us back, at which point the warband started to fall apart. I was angry and not in the mood by that stage so I said my goodnights and logged.
This was a new experience for me. Any other time Destruction found Order to fight they would slog it out for hours; the battlefront moving from the keep, to the respawn area, back to the keep, to the Objectives etc. But on this occasion, we fled. I wonder whether it has to do with the server transfers. Are we getting a different type of player arriving on Phoenix Throne? Are players the same across all servers? Or do the developers need to do even more to make Open RvR the best place to be. They’ve been listening to the community to make it more desirable, but now people would rather swap undefended keeps than PvP.
Tabula Rasa had a couple of good game mechanics that I think would work in Warhammer. At TR’s Control Points, defending or assaulting them would give you tokens which could be traded in for XP potions etc. They also had an XP multiplier, where fast continuous combat was rewarded with extra XP. Perhaps WAR ORvR could use a similar system, where the longer you are engaged in a keep assault/defence, and the more players you are killing, the more XP/renown/tokens you get.
Apparently just earning renown from killing players in ORvR isn’t enough. Some people need more reason to stay and fight. I wish it wasn’t so.
Comments
Comment from Varian
Time: December 8, 2008, 6:56 am
To my dismay, this is the common pick up group PuG mindset. In T4, more often than not a great majority of the warband wants to play musical keeps with Order. While the Order forces are retaking Kadrin Valley, Destro will be in Dragonwake. When finished in Dragonwake, Destro will move to Praag to take keeps while Order sweeps in behind them to totally reclaim Dragonwake. Getting pieces of the annihilators set is all well and good, but I’ll certainly agree that sticking it out in a massive slugfest is my favorite thing to do (especially with the empowered transfer career tactic from the sacrifice tree. You can essentially heal -everyone- in your warband for 400-500 per swing with consume essense, granted if they are within 10 feet of you) Keep defending just got a big bonus to renown rewards. Let’s hope that at least drives people into the RvR lakes.
Comment from Ainilome
Time: December 8, 2008, 7:26 am
I think it’s sad and a little weird how Mythic has to keep coming up with way to coerce people to RvR. Does a PvE game ever need to coerce people to level or dungeon crawl? It just seems so odd to me that people RvR but … don’t really. I hate musical keeps and it’s a big reason why I almost never do keep battles anymore. I just get sick of jogging around the globe, usually avoiding any conflict and flipping keeps. WAR has such an odd community.
Comment from caliga
Time: December 8, 2008, 7:34 pm
I know that I’d rather take a keep after slogging it out for an hour, than flip an undefended keep in 15 minutes. I don’t quite understand why it’s like the way it is, I guess it’s really a case of where there’s a way to do something we (people) will find the easiest route. If we start taking keeps for the loot then it makes sense to take as many in as short a period of time.
I don’t have the answers and Mythic’s been in the game long enough that I thought they would.
Comment from Kyrana
Time: December 9, 2008, 4:27 pm
I’m not loot-motivated, and I think that puts me in the drastic minority of gamers. Don’t get me wrong, I like getting the pretty shinies as much as anyone else. But, I play so I can….play. To me, it means more to earn xp and renown by defeating the enemy than to take out a few NPC’s and collect a chunk of renown and the tiny possibility of a loot bag. *shrugs* Most people want it NOWNOWNOW, though, and don’t like having to work too hard for it. I think that’s why we see games get easier and easier all the time–to keep those with short attention spans and big wish lists paying their subscription fee every month.
Comment from Glen
Time: December 10, 2008, 6:10 pm
Unfortunately the case in the article is the rule and not the exception on Darklands. After the server transfers opened up Order have convinced themselves that there is no point fighting. Even if they win most of the time only one loss is enough to make them leave the zone.
I am not sure what it is. They do lack the will of the warrior at the moment and the servers key order guilds don’t seem to appear often. Hopefully it will get better. With Fortressses crashing every time we get near them it doesn’t matter much anyway. Hopefully by the end of January things will ahve sorted themselves out.
caliga
Comment from Kyrana
Time: December 6, 2008, 8:21 pm
That annoyed me to no end. What is the point of RvR if you aren’t going to fight anybody?