Hwatever wrote: ↑Mon 17 Jun 2019 10:26 PM
I speak as one who had never played NF before, who fled Live on the announcement of ToA.
I was seeing a lot of regular small/8man action in OG, the kind of stuff you hope for going into Hadrian's in OF (which was as often dead as it is locked down by a Hib BG at the MMG).
Overall, it seems much more friendly to non-zerglings. You have much more varied terrain, mazes, etc. to dodge THE SWARM! You have boats that can land you anywhere along the long axis of any realm. You aren't stuck running through a single doorway. Towers to duck into when outnumbered. Massive siege engines to smash large zergs of PvE door breakers and their 'shroom farms.
And no more single gateway everyone has to travel, thus no more "Well, enemy BGs at both realms' MGs, and we don't have numbers. Practice getting farmed or no RvR today" scenarios.
You would have to work with the Emain zerglings who don't want to predict good ports, or learn how to effectively communicate and chase the action; as it's their game, too. I would expect, though, that they would eventually decide on a spot that worked as the go-to for folks who just want to endlessly join in large predictable blobs to smash back and forth (EV seems right for that).
As it is, NF supports more play styles, better. All the problems I saw leveled against NF are bigger problems in OF. The only issue of substance I can see is that taking actual keeps in NF is much harder. This can be both better and worse; taking or removing a foothold in a realm can be much harder/take a larger force/require more planning and a longer process...but it also removes the daily routine of "they took all our keeps, now we have to take them back".
It also brings RvR into keep takes. OF keep turnovers and retakes has become, as often as not, a dry, tiring, bloodless extension of PvE that I, and many RvR focused players, don't want. Have grown to hate, even. I want messy sieges against actual players, and NF sieges were giving me the messiest.
And if I just want to take things with a smaller group, boating to empty towers and taking them is actually faster and easier than hitting an OF keep, can't be made literally impossible by a sufficient number of people camping 20 square feet of real estate, and nets you about the same reward. It's actually got better features for small-capture-parties-turned-defenders, too, with the palintones and oil.
My zerg experience in NF was as good or better than my zerg experience in OF; and non-zerg experiences were not only better, but much more available.
I'll vote yes for NF.