Some thoughts on Regnum in general...

[_dracus_]

Originally Posted by makarios68

This is not WOW, it is Regnum Online, the best PVP game i have yet to come across.

The endgame is PVP in the warzone - period!

« Best PvP » ... it must be a joke.

However I do agree endgame is war zone

[Raideniza]

Originally Posted by Necrovarus

Well, to be fair neither the quest, its objectives or its rewards were written by NGD.

How do you mean?

Originally Posted by _dracus_

However I do agree endgame is war zone

Yeah, but the warzone is like "ok once you hit level 50 we have put a warzone for you, now go make your own fun". And all that would be ok if the servers actually had enough people to support this idea (or wouldn't crash at times when there's enough people). Imo, warzone should be reworked into a smaller instance with xy players per team or there should be some kind of organised stuff constantly that makes everyone want to go to war. At least until there's enough people.

[Gideon_Slack]

Originally Posted by Raideniza

How do you mean?

Yeah, but the warzone is like "ok once you hit level 50 we have put a warzone for you, now go make your own fun". And all that would be ok if the servers actually had enough people to support this idea (or wouldn't crash at times when there's enough people). Imo, warzone should be reworked into a smaller instance with xy players per team or there should be some kind of organised stuff constantly that makes everyone want to go to war. At least until there's enough people.

Make your own fun is exactly the idea. This is a feature, not a bug.

There are lots of games that have organized, instanced pvp. The thing that is unique about RO is that it sets out some objectives in the wz and allows the realms to decide what they want to do. You don't have someone telling you what to do every second you are logged on. Sometimes you have downtime, other times you have far deeper experiences than I've ever had before in an online game.

Also instanced pvp would be the death of RvR. Look what happened to Warhammer Online.

Warhammer cost 100-200 million dollars. It has 100k subscribers. People are giving it 5-9 months to live.

[ncvr]

Originally Posted by Raideniza

How do you mean?

The quest was one of the winners in a player quest-writing contest some time ago.

Originally Posted by Gideon_Slack

Make your own fun is exactly the idea. This is a feature, not a bug.

This is true, but the path NGD is going right now is making this increasingly difficult. Let's see...the core of the game is the warzone, the RvR, and so is the endgame. But NGD keeps adding incentives to do things other than RvR, so most of the time will be downtime. It wasn't like this 2 years ago.

Personally I prefer the open PvP Regnum has, but it's difficult to make an idea like that work with all the potential problems. In fact wz activity was one of the major issues which caused me to quit. Some people here might not have been around long enough, but open RvR used to work perfectly. Everyone was focused on RvR, not gathering magna, grinding for drops or trying to get gold to pay for repairs. Those issues didn't exist back then because there was no magna, no uber drops and everyone had plenty of gold. Like I said before NGD is trying to add a huge amount of depth to a game which will require resources they don't have.

[Neliel_]

Originally Posted by Necrovarus

The quest was one of the winners in a player quest-writing contest some time ago.

The quest has been written by Edge.

Everyone was focused on RvR, not gathering magna, grinding for drops or trying to get gold to pay for repairs. Those issues didn't exist back then because there was no magna, no uber drops and everyone had plenty of gold. Like I said before NGD is trying to add a huge amount of depth to a game which will require resources they don't have.

Yes, back in 2007, it was like a train, you had just to rejoin the war group and you were ready for hours and hours of non-stop quality fort wars, and was by itself something that hampered leveling without the need for changes in the XP curve, and it was fun

But take apart the nostalgy, since i'm playing from scratch again, i seriously don't think about going further than lvl 40, because WZ is often dead, at least when i play (mostly around 4-8 am CET), though I dunno if it's obvious for "real" new players, and if this is one of the reason they're leaving early (grinding as it is atm is #1 for sure :P).

[monktbd]

Originally Posted by Raideniza

Imo, warzone should be reworked into a smaller instance with xy players per team or there should be some kind of organised stuff constantly that makes everyone want to go to war. At least until there's enough people.

ouch, please no.
give more options of what can be done in the warzone but no instances with xy players.

[monktbd]

Originally Posted by Necrovarus

Anyway, many games fail because they don't have a good balance of early game, middle game and endgame content. Regnum is one of them. Sure, a well balanced warzone (class and realm balance) is awesome, but let's face it, you can only truly enjoy this at 45+. 90% of players who have just begun in this game will take a long time to get there, even if it takes an experienced player who knows what he's doing 1 or 2 months.

Early game is necessary because it gets a player attached to his character. You need to offer some enticing content or give players a taste of the endgame to keep them playing. Middle game in Regnum is the grind - around lvl 32 to 49 (or a little lower, depending on how many points you are willing to sacrifice for pvp), and it's the worst part of the game. Lots of players leave at under lvl 20, but even more would leave during the middle game even if NGD fixed the early game up.

Overall Regnum doesn't have a lot of content and it only appeals to a small audience. That's another point - NGD keeps trying to appeal to the masses who came from WoW and such, when they really don't have the resources or the time (with such a small team) to add such a huge amount of depth.

Huge +1 to the bolded parts.
I am gladly still enjoy my middle game .

[Raideniza]

Originally Posted by Gideon_Slack

Make your own fun is exactly the idea. This is a feature, not a bug.

There are lots of games that have organized, instanced pvp. The thing that is unique about RO is that it sets out some objectives in the wz and allows the realms to decide what they want to do. You don't have someone telling you what to do every second you are logged on.

I know it's a feature, but us (players) don't have nothing to make our fun with. Either the warzone is dead for hours and there's nothing you can do, or the server is too crowded that it crashes. There are also other problems, for instance - some mates and I have tried to make our own fun numerous times. Us 7-8 would go take empty fort and scrim with others. The fun lasts max 20 mins then zerg comes and decides to camp in that fort, killing the fun not only for us, but also for opposing realm. So our group decides to move on, we take another empty fort and scrim with others. For about same 20 mins until zerg realises action has shifted and starts ruining the fun for everyone. Again. Scenario repeated (and still repeats) itself numerous times. In those cases everyone craves for an instance (reliable information) where you could scrim against even group with no retards (pardon my French) to spoil your fun.

I know that not everyone percieves fun the same, and that to majority the fun is camping fort for hours and farming rp's out of heavily outnumbered opponent. All I want is a fair system (be it instance or whatever) which would provide me with challenging fights and fun times online. Imo, it's not the realm population imbalance that causes this, it's the timezones. Seems all 3 realms are in a timezone of their own and can zerg (proved) at given times. There's nothing you can do about that except add some system/feature that would match up groups of similar numbers and levels against each other. It doesn't have to be an instance, maybe just prevent realm imbalance in wz by putting the cap on how many players can enter the wz from a specific realm. And when realms are evenly represented raise the cap of allowed players per realm in warzone for e.g. 15, etc. So basically, if there's 50 Syrtis in warzone against 30 Ignis and 20 Alsius, prevent additional Syrtis players to enter the warzone, and every time a player from Syrtis dies send him to inner realm and repeat the action until there's ~30 Syrtis, 30 ignis and ~30 alsius, then raise the cap of allowed players per realm in wz to 45, making it even for everyone, etc.

That being said, it's just a suggestion, maybe not even that, just some simple idea throwing with no real goal. It doesn't mean there should be a carbon copy of my idea integrated to the game but I strongly think NGD should implement some sort of automated wz balance system to make it fair and fun for everyone.

[linearguild]

So if the warzone is empty (0 players), nobody can enter at all? And if I want to grind in WZ, I must compete for a slot with actively warring players (and AFK dancers)?

http://regnumonline.com.ar/forum/showthread.php?t=52758

Tactics are possible for the smaller group to defeat the larger. I've been on both side of such fights (the "good job, guys" and the "wtf happened") and to me it's always funny to see well-executed strategies no matter what side. It would be a shame if some misguided attempt at automating realm balance imposed constant equal numbers in the warzone.

(Disclaimer: I see more of Ignis peak than Syrtis peak due to my time zone.)

[Gideon_Slack]

Originally Posted by Raideniza

I know it's a feature, but us (players) don't have nothing to make our fun with. Either the warzone is dead for hours and there's nothing you can do, or the server is too crowded that it crashes. There are also other problems, for instance - some mates and I have tried to make our own fun numerous times. Us 7-8 would go take empty fort and scrim with others. The fun lasts max 20 mins then zerg comes and decides to camp in that fort, killing the fun not only for us, but also for opposing realm. So our group decides to move on, we take another empty fort and scrim with others. For about same 20 mins until zerg realises action has shifted and starts ruining the fun for everyone. Again. Scenario repeated (and still repeats) itself numerous times. In those cases everyone craves for an instance (reliable information) where you could scrim against even group with no retards (pardon my French) to spoil your fun.

I know that not everyone percieves fun the same, and that to majority the fun is camping fort for hours and farming rp's out of heavily outnumbered opponent. All I want is a fair system (be it instance or whatever) which would provide me with challenging fights and fun times online. Imo, it's not the realm population imbalance that causes this, it's the timezones. Seems all 3 realms are in a timezone of their own and can zerg (proved) at given times. There's nothing you can do about that except add some system/feature that would match up groups of similar numbers and levels against each other. It doesn't have to be an instance, maybe just prevent realm imbalance in wz by putting the cap on how many players can enter the wz from a specific realm. And when realms are evenly represented raise the cap of allowed players per realm in warzone for e.g. 15, etc. So basically, if there's 50 Syrtis in warzone against 30 Ignis and 20 Alsius, prevent additional Syrtis players to enter the warzone, and every time a player from Syrtis dies send him to inner realm and repeat the action until there's ~30 Syrtis, 30 ignis and ~30 alsius, then raise the cap of allowed players per realm in wz to 45, making it even for everyone, etc.

That being said, it's just a suggestion, maybe not even that, just some simple idea throwing with no real goal. It doesn't mean there should be a carbon copy of my idea integrated to the game but I strongly think NGD should implement some sort of automated wz balance system to make it fair and fun for everyone.

Yep, I understand what you are saying. Unbalanced realms and realm fights are one of the problems that will crop up with open RvR (along with its advantages). This is inevitable. On the otherhand, the cure might be worse than the disease.

The system you are describing is actually used in Warhammer Online. They put a limit on the number of people who can participate in their RvR sieges. If the limit is reached you have to idle in a warcamp until someone leaves before you can enter. I think they did this for performance issues though (WAR has thousands of people per server and so much larger fights).

Obviously this also solves imbalance issues. But it introduces 3 new problems:

1) You have to wait. I have no idea how long the wait times are in WAR. One could imagine though having to wait 20 minutes to a half hour to get into the war zone (where many of the best grinding locations also are). So you trade getting flattened in a zerg to no action at all.

2) Can't come to the aid of your friends. This breaks up one of the big social aspects of RvR games -- everyone can come and fight for their realm and their realm mates. You might lose some degree of realm cohesion.

3) Pressure on lowbies to stay out of the war zone. If access is limited, how soon before the level 50s start pressuring the lower levels to leave the wz to make room for the high levels they need to take that crucial fort and stop an invasion? This would have a terrible impact on player retention. (You could have allow in so many of X level, so many of Y and so many of Z. But what are all the level 50s going to do who are locked out of the war zone?).

Warhammer is probably going to fail soon. You can debate whether limiting open RvR is one of its major problems (the worst is including only 2 realms). But in my opinion removing the open world RvR feel was one of its mistakes and makes it too much like other games out there (which are better).

(As a side note, instancing and limiting entrance to battles is also used in the ship vs ship game Pirates of the Burning Sea. They also have realm imbalance problems. Apparently most people want to play the British side, but not the French or Spanish. And this is another failing game, though Sony keeps it around to pad out their multi-game subscription offer.)