Looking inside Warhammer Online's latest grab bag

07 November 2008

by br3ntbr0

The latest Warhammer Online grab bag was released recently and I thought there were some interesting items in it worth commenting on, and also gave rise to some questions about some of the things mentioned in it. For example,

Q. I was in RvR and killed another player, but I only earned 1 Renown Point. Is this because of the other players Renown Rank? How can I tell what Renown Rank my opponent is?

A. Player Renown Rank is shown as a title. These cannot be turned off and are visible under the player’s name. Titles are given every 10 Renown Ranks and broken down thusly:

Does this mean that your RVR rank title will display if you have no other title selected? Perhaps they mean it can't be turned off, and if you don't have another title selected this will display as the default? I haven't tested that, but maybe that would make sense. For some reason this one was sort of confusing to me, but not nearly as confusing as the next part.

Look at those images above. I'm seeing a rank 90 and rank 100 title displayed there. Did I miss the memo that says we have 100 renown ranks now instead of 80? If this is correct when did this happen? Can someone link me to the announcement? Is it possible that 100 renown ranks being listed is a mistake? I've always been under the impression that the max renown rank was 80, not 100. Those images confrustrate me. Yes, I made up my own new word...confusion + frustrate = confrustrate. *update* looks like someone at Mythic corrected the image above to show only 80 ranks now.

A player will never be worth 1 Renown point based on Renown Rank differences. Renown Rank difference does change the possible number of points you are able to earn, but that number will never be as low as one point due to Rank differences.

Players are only worth 1 Renown point if they’ve been killed within the diminishing returns period. Players are reduced by 25% of their worth each time they die, down to a minimum of 1 Renown point. The window for being worth less Renown in Open Field RvR is 10 minutes. This means that if you die, you will be worth 25% less Renown and XP for 10 minutes. If you die again, the timer resets and you will be worth 50% less. If you die again, you will be worth 75% less, etc. The timer for diminishing returns in Scenarios is much less (20 seconds).

I appreciate the insight to how diminishing returns work, but I have one important piece of advice for Mythic: remove DR in RVR lakes if you want people to participate there more. This is probably why most people don't defend keeps for very long, if at all. At minimum set DR to what it is in scenarios when in an RVR lake, this would be yet another good move to make open rvr more appealing.

Zone Control 101

Zone control is based on several pools, each of which is worth a percentage. Together, these pools tally up to 100%. Every time a player is killed, a quest is finished, or a scenario is completed (win or lose), this contributes points towards zone control. Battlefield objectives (BOs) and Keeps are binary. This means that once you own a BO or a keep, you have a chunk of zone control points that don’t go away unless the enemy takes it from you.

Most everyone these days looks at the map, discovers that they own all the BOs and Keeps, and thinks that’s all that’s needed to capture a zone. This assumption is false! In order to control a zone, players also need to win Scenarios associated with that zone, do quests, and kill players in that zone. Zone Control is all about total dominance in everything involved with a Zone. You must push on all fronts!

Before anyone thinks they can get around giving the enemy points by not going to fight, we have a safeguard that grants points to the realm which is queuing, in case the other realm decides not to queue -- Defend By Not Defending is what we call it. It takes longer for those points to accumulate, but if one realm decides not to queue for a Scenario in contested zones, the other Realm will get points towards zone control. This is similar to the forfeit rule in sports. Also note that points earned from queuing only gives points if you have enough players to launch 1 Scenario, not 50. This means that if Destruction has 500 players queued for a Scenario that requires 18 players to launch, they’re only getting credit for 18 players. This is to ensure that over populated Queues don’t get anything extra for having 500 in the queue or just 18.

BO's and Keeps provide the same amount of control for both realms, in other words, if order owns a keep or BO, they get the same amount of control as Destruction does when they own them. Battlefield Objectives offer less control than Keeps. When a Keep is captured, the Zone Control bar will show much more movement than when a BO is captured.

Prior Zone control is a direct correlation to the points you get for the higher Tiers. For example, if Order owns 50% of Tier 3 in HE vs. DE, then 50% of that Prior Zone pool is carried over. If Order took over Tier 3 completely, they would not get 100% of the Prior Zone pool; they would simply get as many points as they have earned in that lower tier. The lower tiers don't cap out at 65% either. Players can keep pumping points into the lower Tiers to get up to 90%+ ownership, which results in owning 90%+ of the Prior Zone control pool for higher Tiers.

Finally, points degrade over time in all of the pools except for the points contributed by BO and Keeps ownership simply because they are either owned or not owned by a realm. The reason that points degrade is to ensure that a stalemate doesn’t occur over long periods of point gains.

Now let’s look at a few situations:

The Zone control bar is pretty even between Order and Destruction, but Destruction owns all the BOs and Keeps in a zone. This means that Order is doing very well in Scenarios. Destruction needs to step it up in Scenarios to flip the zone.|

The Zone control bar is empty on Destruction, about half way for Order, and Order owns all the Keeps and BOs in a zone. This means that no one is fighting in Scenarios in that zone. Order needs to queue up and fight or Destruction needs to queue up and take BOs/Keeps to flip the zone.

The Zone control bar is about ¼ full for both Order and Destruction and BOs and Keeps are split 50/50. Usually this means that no one is fighting in Scenarios in that zone, or killing anyone in that zone at all.

So the long and short of it all? Fight on all fronts! Take BOs and Keeps, fight in Scenarios, kill players in open field…it all counts!

Again, the insight to zone control and victory points is appreciated and this info was very much needed in the community. Still, it doesn't seem very conducive to incentivizing open RVR. PQ's should be removed from the equation, I think its a bad plan to have PVE contribute to RVR. This gives people the ability to tip the scales on war without actually having to fight. What's worse, is that we are guaranteed to have to camp scenarios now to flip the zone. With this design, how is anyone at Mythic surprised that people are in scenarios more than open RVR? It takes 15 minutes to cap the BO's and take the keep if uncontested, and then the rest of your time is spent churning scenarios? Am I way off here?

This is all good info and I'm very appreciative for the work Mythic is doing to improve the game and to speak to the community. I'm not trying to bite the hand that feeds me this great information, so I do want to apologize if I seem ungrateful here. I won't harp on some of these things too much, because by the time a problem can be fully illuminated to by the community Mythic has already fixed it internally. Patch 1.1 may hopefully bring closure to some of these issues, and that will be here soon enough.

6 comments:

Convert of rpthatway said...: The window for being worth less Renown in Open Field RvR is 10 minutes... The timer for diminishing returns in Scenarios is much less (20 seconds)"

And you want us to go WHERE and do WHAT?
Tell you what, if my renown timer is RESET to 10 minutes every time I kill somebody repeatedly... ugh. I understand the mentality, but 5, maybe even 3 minutes is more than plenty.

No wonder the scenarios are full... and to think, Mama Jacobs expects people to go to Open RvR. PFFT!; November 7, 2008 4:40 PM
Elsherath said...: Convert of rpthatway wouldnt that be more usefull if you sended it on a feedback ticket than on a blog? Nice thoughts though :); November 7, 2008 7:29 PM
D-Lyrium said...: Where are you seeing rank 90 and 100 reknown titles, Brent? Either the image has been updated since you posted the entry, or Hocus has been eating too many glowing green fungi? :p; November 8, 2008 7:04 PM
br3ntbr0 said...: They updated it, that image is just a link from the herald. I should have downloaded my own copy, but it did have 100 ranks at one point.; November 8, 2008 7:11 PM
Anonymous said...: lol, we'r in europe still rr 100 ;)
no updates so far; November 10, 2008 3:56 AM
Pamela said...: Yes, if you don't have a title selected, your PvP rank title will show as default. But I still don't see much of a point since most people will have a custom title displayed.; November 10, 2008 8:45 AM

Q. I was in RvR and killed another player, but I only earned 1 Renown Point. Is this because of the other players Renown Rank? How can I tell what Renown Rank my opponent is?

A. Player Renown Rank is shown as a title. These cannot be turned off and are visible under the player’s name. Titles are given every 10 Renown Ranks and broken down thusly:

A player will never be worth 1 Renown point based on Renown Rank differences. Renown Rank difference does change the possible number of points you are able to earn, but that number will never be as low as one point due to Rank differences.

Players are only worth 1 Renown point if they’ve been killed within the diminishing returns period. Players are reduced by 25% of their worth each time they die, down to a minimum of 1 Renown point. The window for being worth less Renown in Open Field RvR is 10 minutes. This means that if you die, you will be worth 25% less Renown and XP for 10 minutes. If you die again, the timer resets and you will be worth 50% less. If you die again, you will be worth 75% less, etc. The timer for diminishing returns in Scenarios is much less (20 seconds).

Zone Control 101

Zone control is based on several pools, each of which is worth a percentage. Together, these pools tally up to 100%. Every time a player is killed, a quest is finished, or a scenario is completed (win or lose), this contributes points towards zone control. Battlefield objectives (BOs) and Keeps are binary. This means that once you own a BO or a keep, you have a chunk of zone control points that don’t go away unless the enemy takes it from you.

Most everyone these days looks at the map, discovers that they own all the BOs and Keeps, and thinks that’s all that’s needed to capture a zone. This assumption is false! In order to control a zone, players also need to win Scenarios associated with that zone, do quests, and kill players in that zone. Zone Control is all about total dominance in everything involved with a Zone. You must push on all fronts!

Before anyone thinks they can get around giving the enemy points by not going to fight, we have a safeguard that grants points to the realm which is queuing, in case the other realm decides not to queue -- Defend By Not Defending is what we call it. It takes longer for those points to accumulate, but if one realm decides not to queue for a Scenario in contested zones, the other Realm will get points towards zone control. This is similar to the forfeit rule in sports. Also note that points earned from queuing only gives points if you have enough players to launch 1 Scenario, not 50. This means that if Destruction has 500 players queued for a Scenario that requires 18 players to launch, they’re only getting credit for 18 players. This is to ensure that over populated Queues don’t get anything extra for having 500 in the queue or just 18.

BO's and Keeps provide the same amount of control for both realms, in other words, if order owns a keep or BO, they get the same amount of control as Destruction does when they own them. Battlefield Objectives offer less control than Keeps. When a Keep is captured, the Zone Control bar will show much more movement than when a BO is captured.

Prior Zone control is a direct correlation to the points you get for the higher Tiers. For example, if Order owns 50% of Tier 3 in HE vs. DE, then 50% of that Prior Zone pool is carried over. If Order took over Tier 3 completely, they would not get 100% of the Prior Zone pool; they would simply get as many points as they have earned in that lower tier. The lower tiers don't cap out at 65% either. Players can keep pumping points into the lower Tiers to get up to 90%+ ownership, which results in owning 90%+ of the Prior Zone control pool for higher Tiers.

Finally, points degrade over time in all of the pools except for the points contributed by BO and Keeps ownership simply because they are either owned or not owned by a realm. The reason that points degrade is to ensure that a stalemate doesn’t occur over long periods of point gains.

Now let’s look at a few situations:

The Zone control bar is pretty even between Order and Destruction, but Destruction owns all the BOs and Keeps in a zone. This means that Order is doing very well in Scenarios. Destruction needs to step it up in Scenarios to flip the zone.|

The Zone control bar is empty on Destruction, about half way for Order, and Order owns all the Keeps and BOs in a zone. This means that no one is fighting in Scenarios in that zone. Order needs to queue up and fight or Destruction needs to queue up and take BOs/Keeps to flip the zone.

The Zone control bar is about ¼ full for both Order and Destruction and BOs and Keeps are split 50/50. Usually this means that no one is fighting in Scenarios in that zone, or killing anyone in that zone at all.

So the long and short of it all? Fight on all fronts! Take BOs and Keeps, fight in Scenarios, kill players in open field…it all counts!