How will XPers be motivated to actually RvR?

I'm curious to the measures that have been (or will be) consciously put in to ensure active BGs and non-50s RvRing in the frontiers.

From what I understand, the current changes don't exactly target non-50 players specifically. Obviously the 30% xp bonus will help, but it won't really entice actual RvR participation.

What are the concrete ways in which non-50 (frontier) RvR participation will be rewarded?

I am asking this because of the real risk of having the vast majority race to 50 through sheer PvE since it is by far the best strategy for character progression. This happened on Uthgard and burned a lot of players out. Obviously leveling was way slower there, but the only real way to prevent is is from the start.

If there are more measures than simply the 30% frontiers xp bonus I would love to hear them!

Fri 21 Dec 2018 5:51 PM by Jafeeio

How were they (we) motivated back in the day?
I spent countless hours in Thidranki and had a ton of fun gearing and playing all sorts of characters that weren't as viable in big RvR (had a Thane with 2k kills just from Thid) or just didn't feel like starting from RR1 again. It was also a great way to play something from the other realms for a few hours.

When Uthgard launched they were very strict at adhering to patch 1.65 which had one huge negative aspect for battlegrounds in that you would respawn at your bindstone after dying. Combine this with the terrible equipment most players had on their first character and the actual cost of using the teleporter it is easy to see why there was no activity.

I think we have a much better chance at establishing active BG's on this server because most of the points above don't apply here, but it's probably going to take a while until everyone has settled in with their first 50 and is ready to twink again

.

Fri 21 Dec 2018 6:03 PM by Frigzy

I get your point. However, with XP being as fast as it is now, it's still way more valuable in terms of character progression to simply level past the BGs and aim for 50 without bothering with RvR until it is reached.

As you said, we'll have to wait for people to twink their alts for BGs..

I don't think that's anywhere close to fulfilling the potential BGs have at all.

For instance, if BGs were not only good fun and decent RPs, but also worth while for XP and perhaps other goodies, players would at least consider dropping by the BGs while leveling, meaning a much more lively BG experience for everyone involved, even the ones who only play BGs on their alts.

Fri 21 Dec 2018 11:15 PM by Takii

Proper mechanics for sub-50s to participate in RvR (ie. scaling mechanics, not just BGs) are quite a bit beyond the scope of what you can do with this game without drastically changing most systems.

Sat 22 Dec 2018 12:38 AM by Frigzy

I beg to differ. A little bit of creativity can go a long way.

* Phoenix rewards for players who kill a higher level player in the frontier based on the level difference (or average level distance of the group).
* Significant XP rewards for RvR kills, keep takes and caravan kills.
* Specifically non-50 RvR participation tasks.
* ...

These things don't interfere with any core mechanic. It's not perfect, but it can make a real difference.

My biggest fear for Phoenix is to land in exactly the same spot as Uthgard 1.0 and even more so Uthgard 2.0. Sure leveling was slower, but the core flaw in their gamedesign was their complete inability to draw sub-optimized players into RvR, be it BGs or Frontiers.

Without sub-optimized players willingly choosing to participate in RvR, the ecosystem will stagnate very quickly since virtually only fuly kitted out characters will enter the fray. From this point on, it only gets worse as pressure to compete will increase the minimum viable RR and skillcap day by day. This killed Uth 1.0, it quickly killed 2.0 due to various factors and it might just kill Phoenix down the line if we're not careful.

Sun 23 Dec 2018 3:45 PM by relvinian

During the beta non 50s killing 50s can sometimes get a level or maybe 2 from killing 50s.

Not sure how that will work. But if you ran 3 35 theurgists in a group you could kill solo 50s

Sun 23 Dec 2018 4:22 PM by phixion

People just don't want to run out in to RvR at a disadvantage.

I remember on Uthgard, Mids were destroying everything, asking "Why don't you come out and defend?!?!" when we were all stuck trying to level, at the same time competing with insane lag and mobs disappearing.

I'm not sure any incentive would entice me to run to certain death.

Sun 23 Dec 2018 6:27 PM by relvinian

i played on alb that lag sucked. Mids got a month long head start and if you look the top rvr toons were always mid. Frankly the server never recovered.

I do wonder how they will prevent break out players and guilds from gaining an insurmountable advantage early on.

I have suggested things like no keep taking, relics, df for all, etc for like a month or at least 2 weeks. Will tasks be in at start?

So we can be rr 3 at lvl 20?

We shall see what happens.

Mon 24 Dec 2018 8:43 AM by

Uthred

DF will be neutral for the first 4 weeks after launch, so everyone can enter. We did this at the start of the Beta and it wil be the same for launch.
In addition from Lvl 1 to Lvl 49 respecs are free at your trainer. When hitting Lvl 50 you will get one full and two RA for free. So you dont have to worry about pve and rvr-spec.
Every rvr-activity (killing a player and taking a keep) counts towards the rvr score. The rvr score is an extra bonus to xp, coins, etc. So killing enemies and/or taking keeps will reward players (besides rps & bps) with a higher xp bonus via the rvr score.

Only your home-relics are stored in the relic keep. If one realm captures a relic from another realm, this relic has to be put into a regular keep which is easier to raid. Thats why we will probably not see one realm having all 6 relics for a long time if at all. Besides that, our relics charge. They need up to 10 days to grant a realm the full dmg/heal bonus which is capped at 5% per enemy relic.

These changes should equal all realms at start and hopefully prevent one realm from dominating. But Daoc was never about all three realms being equal. There will always be one realm that is "dominating" for a period of time, but we think that this should change quite fast on Phoenix.

Another factor how fast people might start rvring should be the community in each realm and if there is someone who is willing to lead/organize dragon & epic dungeons raids. As many players (as from my experience during Beta) think that they will be only successful when having the ultimate epicdungeon-dragon-template it will be very important that there is someone or some people that organize these things. Also it will help a lot if set groups, zergers, solos and casuals will make it to work together in PVE (for example Dragon/Epic-Dungeon raids) which will help all of them. If everybody will just try to get the best for himself, this might also be a reason if one realm falls behind to a realm where people work together from day one.

Mon 24 Dec 2018 9:30 AM by Frigzy

Thanks for your reply!

Free respecs are huge! They're definitely a big factor for some classes. Also the RoG drops are a great way to boost the confidence of the people who are eager enough to RvR early on.

The RvR bonus seems a bit vague but I guess we will see how it turns out in practice. Are caravan kills counted for this?

Also, I heard there are RvR tasks, do these also grant XP?

Lastly, I presume the XP gain for player kills is increased, but are there BG specific tasks as well, or do the normal tasks also simply apply there?

Tue 25 Dec 2018 7:26 PM by

Uthred

The RvR Score will be very important. The bonus from RvR Score gives the realm a bonus toXP, coins and craftingspeed. It is divided in fixed (keep takes) and dynamic points (player kills). To increase the fixed points you need to take more keeps plus upgrade them. Every keeplevel counts to this score too. To increase the dynamic points you just need to kill players. Fixed and dynamic points will be added up and your realm will get an bonus that matches your realms percentage compared to the total score.

[attachment=2]score.JPG[/attachment]

In this example Albion would get 61% bonus, Midgard 17% and Hibernia 20%. As you can see, there is nearly no bonus from dynamic points as the server is closed for players and therefor no dymnamic score is generated. If i remember correctly the percentage between dynamic and fixed points was like 60/40 during Beta.

There are a lot of RvR tasks, and they grant rps, coins, bps and XP if you are below Level 50. There are RvR realmwide tasks divided into short-term, middle-term (not implemented yet) and long-term tasks. While short-term tasks only grant a reward when you actively help completing them (in this example killing players in emain), middle-term and long-term tasks will give a 24h bonus to rps to everyone in the realm when a task was finished. The rewards of the short-term tasks are very high when you are RR 1 and get less the higher your RR is. Those will help new players to catch up with players which are already RR5+. Dont be afraid to go out into the FZ when being only RR 1 or 2, you will easily become RR 5. Short-term tasks are switching zones to not only focus on Emain.

[attachment=1]RvRtask.JPG[/attachment]

Besides these realmwide tasks, there will also be guild tasks to give extra XP, rps, etc. Guilds will also have the possibility to buy buffs for xp, rps, etc for the guild merit points. So i strongly advice everyone to join a guild to get those bonuses too.

Last but not least there are personal RvR task which give also rps, xp, etc as reward. Those personal tasks are resetted daily. We dont have any special BG tasks as the personal and realmwide tasks work there too.

[attachment=0]personal.JPG[/attachment]

Tue 25 Dec 2018 8:27 PM by Frigzy

Thanks Uthred, this sounds great.

I hope it will deliver the desired effect.

I guess we will see how things turn out at launch!