Zone Control Issues - Other Side Boycotts

[waylander]

I know that sounds lame, but this is what's happening on my server. Ever since that stealth raid on the Capital City and Mythic's adjustment, the norm now is for the other side to:

If they don't hold any Keeps and BFO's (meaning we own the zone).

1. Not queue for scenarios that give VP's
2. Don't show up to defend, and not give VP's
3. Don't take keeps back because losing them gives VP's

Doing PQ's in the zone didn't seem to move zone control at all. The only time the bar moved was if there was RVR or a scenario for VP's. Once the Destruction side figured out they couldn't win, they abandoned all efforts completely and Chaos Wastes was stuck in a "contested" state all weekend. Without VP's or PQ's to move the bar, we're in limbo.

Then there was some bug on the Chaos Wastes Everchosen shrine where it constantly respawned Destruction NPC's, and would be capped back to Destruction if we left it.

I understand the need to slow the game down some based on the ninja cap city raids from a couple weeks ago, but if things stay like this then the other side can just abandon the zone and hold us there forever.

Anyone else having that happen?

[slog]

So is this a "The only way to win is not to fight.  How about a game of chess?" problem?

[waylander]

Yeah every time they realize they can't win, they abandon all activities that would give us VP's to take the zone. Its like trying to play a 2 player game without the other player, and the game won't start until Player 2 signs up.

[NiX]

Based on current trends, your post was 1/3 the size it should have been and it made sense.

Do it again.

[Vinadil]

I don't know if it is the same cause... but the effect for the last 72 hours has been the same on Ostermark.  We held all T4 keeps/BOs that we could take in Dwarf lands for 72 hours and the ownership bar did not budge.  If this is what they mean by "slowing it down" then I think perhaps they went overboard the other direction.

[waylander]

I don't know if it is the same cause... but the effect for the last 72 hours has been the same on Ostermark.  We held all T4 keeps/BOs that we could take in Dwarf lands for 72 hours and the ownership bar did not budge.  If this is what they mean by "slowing it down" then I think perhaps they went overboard the other direction.

Yeah that's what I mean. We owned everything, and since they couldn't beat us they simply refused to take keeps/BFO's back, stopped queuing the scenarios that would give VP's, and without PQ's to move the bar there was no way to flip the zone ownership to our side.

We'll show up to fight, win or lose, and so zones will change hands if they push into Order areas. But when we have them on the run, they won't show and we get stuck unless PQ's can go back to helping to flip the zone.

[tazelbain]

VP for PQ,Scenerios, spill over, and quests should be expressed as a percentage of VP for RvR.  +100% for scenarios, +50% for PQ, +30% for quests +20 for spill over.  That way hiding from RvR is no longer effective since +200% to zero is still zero.

[Miasma]

I don't know if it is the same cause... but the effect for the last 72 hours has been the same on Ostermark.  We held all T4 keeps/BOs that we could take in Dwarf lands for 72 hours and the ownership bar did not budge.  If this is what they mean by "slowing it down" then I think perhaps they went overboard the other direction.

Yeah that's what I mean. We owned everything, and since they couldn't beat us they simply refused to take keeps/BFO's back, stopped queuing the scenarios that would give VP's, and without PQ's to move the bar there was no way to flip the zone ownership to our side.

We'll show up to fight, win or lose, and so zones will change hands if they push into Order areas. But when we have them on the run, they won't show and we get stuck unless PQ's can go back to helping to flip the zone.

Do you know if this is a concerted effort on the part of your enemies or is it just because they get all demotivated and don't bother to play defense?

[Righ]

My guess is that its not happening. It is an illusion caused by having 1000 people playing one side wanting to fight a couple of hundred people on the other side. City raids that took place early and the one month subscription period have probably caused some attrition that is making seem more pronounced. On our server, most of Destruction is of the opinion that Order are 'not playing' or are 'care bears who won't RvR' when Order are the guys who are in some form of RvR all the time. The problem is, we can only keep about one quarter of them engaged at any given time, so the majority are of the opinion that we're quitters.

[Khaldun]

In general, I'm having a hard time understanding why and when things happen, whether it's scenario queues, zone control, and so on. I can't tell when it's "Order is doing something organized (or refusing to do it) that is having an impact" and when it is "The game is not registering what people on both sides are doing properly or in a way that makes sense". I'm still convinced that scenario queues sometimes get bugged, for example.

[slog]

This here is a great example of where Mythic's philosophy of beta testing completely falls on its face.  

[waylander]

I don't know if it is the same cause... but the effect for the last 72 hours has been the same on Ostermark.  We held all T4 keeps/BOs that we could take in Dwarf lands for 72 hours and the ownership bar did not budge.  If this is what they mean by "slowing it down" then I think perhaps they went overboard the other direction.

Yeah that's what I mean. We owned everything, and since they couldn't beat us they simply refused to take keeps/BFO's back, stopped queuing the scenarios that would give VP's, and without PQ's to move the bar there was no way to flip the zone ownership to our side.

We'll show up to fight, win or lose, and so zones will change hands if they push into Order areas. But when we have them on the run, they won't show and we get stuck unless PQ's can go back to helping to flip the zone.

Do you know if this is a concerted effort on the part of your enemies or is it just because they get all demotivated and don't bother to play defense?

There is one huge Destruction guild (Goons) on our server that have 1,200 people spread across 4 guild tags, and then a few other guilds that range in size from 50-100.  Before the zone control changes we'd have battles in Chaos Wastes with like 200 vs 200+ fairly regularly. But now when we push into their zones and they lose Keeps and BFO's, its a pretty organized effort to stay out of RVR/Scenarios. A few random Destruction will queue for Maw, but then stop after getting blown up by Order premades.

In the past we'd have people guarding BFO's, Keeps, grinding PQ's, and then have RVR/Scenario PVP going on all at the same time. They knew that if they didn't show up, we could still flip the zone so they would fight. Now they know we can't flip the zone without actual PVP contributions, so its easier for them to Boycott and then use that death/rez trick to slowly move the zone back to their side in off peak times.

[Erdrick]

Hello,
I'm a new poster here from the Skull Throne server and I just wanted to share an experience that we recently had with attempting to take T4 zones since the "fix" that was put in a few days ago. At the moment I do not believe it is possible to take a t4 zone. Over the coarse of 5-6 hours we had every keep and objective locked down. We also were winning about 2 out of every 3 scenario's which were poping up quite offten. Along side that we had at least 4 groups fully farming PQ's, and there was a good amount of open RvR happening. On top of all of that we also owned T3 in that warfront which should have given us another chunk of contribution towards our VP. We got the zone about 3/4's of the way to captured status but we were entirely unable to move it any further then that. Since the patch that slowed down t4 progression I haven't been able to find proof of any server moving the warfront to the next zone which makes me believe that they simply have slowed the progression to a point were if anything it would take a one sided murder fest to flip a zone.

- Erdrick

[Trippy]

This here is a great example of where Mythic's philosophy of beta testing completely falls on its face.  

Actually this sort of "stalemate" condition was a known issue in Beta, though it was typically because one side had the numbers advantage so it had all the BOs but the other side was winning enough of the scenarios to keep the zone from flipping.

[waylander]

PQ's need to be put back in to help flip the zone. There is no reason the other faction can simply give up, go PVE, and forget about RVR like this while the other side has 300 people in the zone with no way to capture it.

[Goreschach]

Honestly, I have a hard time thinking of any fix for this problem that wouldn't make it pretty effortless for one side on a highly imbalanced server to easily maintain control. Earlier, a lot of servers were complaining of problems where order was unable to cap higher zones simply due to the large number of destro doing pq's and such in the lower ones.

[Righ]

No, they don't need to "put back PQs" because the old system was fucked too. They need a system that rewards RvR and which awards capture accomplishments, not simply the largest side involved.

[waylander]

No, they don't need to "put back PQs" because the old system was fucked too. They need a system that rewards RvR and which awards capture accomplishments, not simply the largest side involved.

Without PQ's contributing something, even if its small, how do you flip a zone then when the other side makes a willing and coordinated effort to avoid PVP in that zone and you can't get VP's? You get stuck at 75% is what.

[Erdrick]

I forget if it was in a chat or during beta but one of the devs said that they were going to implement a system that prevented the one side from not fighting. The basic premis was and don't quote me on this "if one side has all of the objectives and is queued up for scenario's but the other side doesn't, after about an hour the zone will flip." Sadly I haven't seen anything to support this but at least there is an intent to fix this problem.

[Righ]

Without PQ's contributing something, even if its small, how do you flip a zone then when the other side makes a willing and coordinated effort to avoid PVP in that zone and you can't get VP's? You get stuck at 75% is what.

If zone control is dictated by owning the keeps and battlefield objectives, it doesn't matter (to you) if the other side doesn't fight back. You get zone control.

Essentially, if you own the keeps and BOs, the slider should start moving in your direction until somebody does something about it by taking them. Making it an "RvR" game about completing public quests is a fucking joke. Do you really want to play THAT game?

[slog]

This here is a great example of where Mythic's philosophy of beta testing completely falls on its face.  

Actually this sort of "stalemate" condition was a known issue in Beta, though it was typically because one side had the numbers advantage so it had all the BOs but the other side was winning enough of the scenarios to keep the zone from flipping.

What I was getting at is that they didn't do anything about it.

[waylander]

Without PQ's contributing something, even if its small, how do you flip a zone then when the other side makes a willing and coordinated effort to avoid PVP in that zone and you can't get VP's? You get stuck at 75% is what.

If zone control is dictated by owning the keeps and battlefield objectives, it doesn't matter (to you) if the other side doesn't fight back. You get zone control.

Essentially, if you own the keeps and BOs, the slider should start moving in your direction until somebody does something about it by taking them. Making it an "RvR" game about completing public quests is a fucking joke. Do you really want to play THAT game?

Nah I'd be cool with it if zone control was determined by who owned Keeps and BFO's.

[UnSub]

This here is a great example of where Mythic's philosophy of beta testing completely falls on its face.  

Actually this sort of "stalemate" condition was a known issue in Beta, though it was typically because one side had the numbers advantage so it had all the BOs but the other side was winning enough of the scenarios to keep the zone from flipping.

This reminds me of whatever online football game that let one player pause the game indefinitely. So, if one side was losing, they'd just pause the game and wait for the other player to give up in order not to mar their record.

Again, amazed at how much Mythic appear to not know about their players.

[Lantyssa]

Honestly, I have a hard time thinking of any fix for this problem that wouldn't make it pretty effortless for one side on a highly imbalanced server to easily maintain control. Earlier, a lot of servers were complaining of problems where order was unable to cap higher zones simply due to the large number of destro doing pq's and such in the lower ones.

They could do this funky mathematical concept called normalization.  Where any contribution is weighted against the total population.  Numbers are hard though, so I'm not expecting it.

Coupled with the other suggestions, it might just work.

[Nebu]

It's as if Mythic is trying so hard to emulate WoW that they forgot about all of the things they learned from DAoC.   Sure, I appreciate the new mechanics that they're attempting to introduce, but many seem so ham-handed in implementation. 

1) Defense should be easier than offense.  This allows for realm imbalances in that a small number of defenders can stave off large numbers of attackers.  The small defense groups are rewarded by high kill rates.  Unfortunately this setup creates a downward spiral when the overpopulated realm takes the difficult objectives (the lower population realm is unable to EVER reclaim lost areas). Lantyssa's suggestion of normalization may be helpful here, but I can't think of an easy way to implement it without it being readily exploitable. 

2) Rewards for success should not cripple the opposing side.  Taking of all relics in DAoC gave such a HUGE advantage that getting them back became quite difficult, especially in cases where there accompanied realm imbalances.

3) Class imbalances should be minimized during large scale or seige situations.  Some classes are better geared to open field tactics while others excell while stationary.  It's crucial that class balance be maintained for both field and seige situations

4) Allow things to change hands easily.  Zone changes should be able to occur nightly.  Make this process too hard and players stop feeling the impact of their actions.  Of course, trivializing this makes the effort seem pointless after a while.  Balance is going to be difficult and likely take time to perfect.

[Checkers]

I've been playing the game for about two weeks now and have absolutely zero idea how RvR works or whether I'm having any impact, ever, on anything other than my own characters progress.  If there is any obvious notification that anything I do contributes in any way to the PvP metagame . . . I've missed it.  I come from a EQ, WoW, L2 background. Warhammer has the least intuitive PvP system I've ever experienced.  For a PvP game, that's very very bad.

[Lantyssa]

That's true.  Now that I think of it, I have no idea when I'm contributing except in the major cities, because it tells me I have contributed towards raising their rank.

[Checkers]

That's true.  Now that I think of it, I have no idea when I'm contributing except in the major cities, because it tells me I have contributed towards raising their rank.

Now that you mention it, I did once kill an otherwise completely unnotable mob where I was informed that I'd contributed VP to my realm (or possibly Altdorf, I can't remember).

[Righ]

Almost certainly "you have helped towards increasing the rank of Altdorf" - I've killed mobs where it results that message. Victory points, and even the rate or direction of control in a zone are completely hidden. I've mentioned before that you should be able to mouse over the zone control display and see something like "Destruction will gain control of this zone in 2 hours and 15 minutes" based on the current rate of change. That way, when you take a keep, you know how long you have to defend to get the zone capture. Otherwise, people just bugger off and go chase XP in Tor Anroc (or whatever your current tier's FOTS scenario is).

[balobalo]

The same situation happened in my server(Darklands - largest Oceanic server). Every Order guild has either stopped playing RvR in T4/rerolled/quit game.

After almost two weeks of zero RvR actions in T4, the top guild on Dest. decided to move over to Order. To do so, we deleted our Rank/RR 40 characters, gave away the 5000 gold in guild vault. It was a hard decision for everyone, but something has to be done.

 

[Sjofn]

My guess is that its not happening. It is an illusion caused by having 1000 people playing one side wanting to fight a couple of hundred people on the other side. City raids that took place early and the one month subscription period have probably caused some attrition that is making seem more pronounced. On our server, most of Destruction is of the opinion that Order are 'not playing' or are 'care bears who won't RvR' when Order are the guys who are in some form of RvR all the time. The problem is, we can only keep about one quarter of them engaged at any given time, so the majority are of the opinion that we're quitters.

Ah, yes, I remember this well from my DAoC days. My underpopulated realm was given every reason EXCEPT pure population as to why we were always "losing." Lost all our keeps and the relic we took four hours before because Hibernia has more 50's in our frontier than our entire realm has logged in at ALL? We just need better leadership.

[waylander]

That's like 3 servers with similar issues just in this thread, and there's a long multiple page post over on the Vault with people from other servers. Considering how fast they "fixed it" when they thought it was too fast, I sure hope they can do something about this stalemate issue this week.

[Micow]

It's the same situation on Monolith. We had every keep and objective in Dragonwake for a good 7 hours, and were winning scenarios until they stopped queuing. We waited until 3am, before we decided to give up and get sleep. I logged in today at 11:30, and destruction took everything back when we logged.

While there is a lot of asshats in this thread, there's some good information in it also;
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143425

[belabor]

Why are these equations so cryptic?  It doesn't make any sense to me.. We're going to figure out how to game your system in a week anyway, quit trying to be so secretive.

Also, I'm a lurker from 2005.. check my profile... (please don't ban me)

[Kirth]

Also, I'm a lurker from 2005.. check my profile... (please don't ban me)

Its like the Spanish inquisition over here.