It's extremely aggravating to see a game you followed with excitement for years meet not even your lowest of expectations >_<
Warhammer should be about rvr; this is how it was advertised, this was the most successful part of their previous game; this is what it seems, from posts on many of the fansites, many players wanted..
Yet, rvr in Warhammer is terrible; there really isn't any other way to describe it. Lets go quickly step by step:
CURRENT RVR OPTIONS- The renown system is lackluster at best with boring rewards
- Scenarios are repetitive, become very unrewarding as you get higher in realm rank, only certain ones pop, and the pop is far too slow on many servers
- The battlefield objectives might as well not even be there, there is no reason to defend them, and in their current state serve only as a pve experience that rewards renown
- The keeps are extremely unimaginative, static and boring; worse even then their previous 6+ year old game; there is no dynamic nature in their fights at all; just pound on two doors and kill a hero mob; in most cases it doesn't even involve pvp because players have no interest in defending them
- Taking a zone is frustrating, time consuming, unrewarding, too dependent on population and near impossible on smaller servers; and it depends on PVE; what?
- Sieging a city, unless it changed drastically since beta, is just more PVE disguised as a PVP experience
That's Warhammer's rvr experience in a nutshell at the moment and it's terrible; besides a lot of it being poorly done and buggy, the worst thing is most players simply don't even care about it; and why should they? They receive nothing from it..
Sadly so much of this would be easy to fix if Mythic designed their game halfway decent. Let's see:
OPEN RVR
Killing other players needs to be the most rewarding thing for an
Individual to do; and therefore, grant the best
Individual rewards. What would this be? How would this work? Easy.
The current renown system needs to go in the garbage and a new system needs to be put in place, lets call it "Realm Points" for nostalgic sake. These points should
only be possible to earn from killing other players in orvr; not pveing objectives or empty keeps; and not from scenarios. Realm Points should be tweaked to best reward small groups of players engaging other small groups of players, to discourage zerging to advance.
What should Realm Points do? They should reward the
Individual. How do we do that? With things that make their character better: gear and abilities. The gear that comes from this needs to
scale with their Realm Rank. When you are Realm Rank 30, Rare gear should start dropping as you kill players. When you reach Realm Rank 40, Purple gear starts dropping; when you reach Realm Rank 50, epic gear starts dropping; etc. Allowing you to progress through gear by killing players. Along with the gear give us some decent ability rewards, +stats is lame..
With that in place, people will want to get out there, find other players, and kill on a somewhat competitive scale; this is good.
Now, with that taken care of whats next?
KEEPS
Keeps. What should keeps do? Keeps should reward
Guilds. Having a guild level up through experience is lame. Scrap that concept! Guilds should level up soley by your guild holding a keep; the longer you hold it, the more points you get! What does this mean? It means guilds will want to take and hold keeps! You can even add in a benefit when you successfully siege a claimed keep you steal a small amount of guild xp from that guild to go into yours. This encourages some friendly guild rivalry! This is good! The actual sieging of a keep needs to be made way more dynamic also, this feels so 2003; tunnels under keeps, breaking through walls, catapulting into keeps; etc. there needs to be way more things to do in a keep siege and it needs to be more dynamic!
Currently our Guild is almost level 20. It doesn't feel like we did anything to earn this (in fact, we really have no idea why we're almost 20 and others are higher or lower then us) so no one in our guild cares. If Guilds only leveled through Keep taking and holding, and your guild was higher level then most, you would feel quite proud of it; similarly when you siege that keep of an enemy guild who's 5+ levels higher then yours, you know you gonna have one rough fight on your hands!
BATTLEFIELD OBJECTIVES
Now keeps are rewarding and have a purpose. What should battlefield objectives do? They should
Buff / Debuff keeps! If you own a keep and you own the battlefield objectives near it, it should make your keep stronger and more difficult to take. This makes the enemy want to sack the Battlefield Objectives before coming for your keep! If you are an enemy and you own the Battlefield Objectives leading up to a keep you are sieging it should debuff that keep; allow you to call in airstrikes, reinforcements, weaken their door; something! This makes the map more dynamic and people won't just huddle in the keep while Battlefield Objectives get taken then!
ZONE CONTROL
What's next? Zone Control. This needs to reward your
Realm. You are working as a
Realm to lock the zones and ultimately siege their capitol. Holding and Locking zones needs to grant visible benefits to everyone in your realm, like old DAOC relics. It also needs to be
solely about orvr. It also needs to be way more dynamic and
visible what you need to take. Locking zones should be easy when its the middle zone or near your capitol, and harder as you get to theirs.
CAPITOL CITIES
What's left? Sieging a Capitol. Just like Zone Control, this should not reward the individual, it should reward your
Realm. Having best loot from City Sieges == epic fail; it should not be about individual rewards, it should be about
Realm rewards, since so many players are working towards it. Currently you siege a Fortress with 500 people and 5 gold bags drop. That is lame. It should not work like this. Zone Control, Fortresses and City Sieges need to offer
Realm bonuses, like Relics or access to special content like
Darkness Falls.
SCENARIOS
Finally, there's only one thing left. Scenarios. These need to be treated for what they are.
Fun Minigames. Having Scenarios contribute to Zone Control or grant Realm Ranks is lame. Scenarios should be a fun option to test your skill against others in a sandbox area for casual people or limited play sessions. These should be hooked up cross realm like WoW so they can pop
instantly and provide fun, fast games for casual people or a 30 minute playing session; they can have their own reward system, independent from orvr, that perhaps grants some gear or something, like nice sets to level up with and good XP; but having them equal into the endgame formula is such a massive fail.
SUMMARY
Well, that's a long post hehe; and I'm a little edgy and angry tonite since they broke shamans this patch due to the heal cast bug, so perhaps that's a little ranty; but hopefully still enjoyable to read with maybe a good idea or two
