Making Open RVR Awesome in Warhammer

Open RVR is not nearly as fun or active as it should be in Warhammer; there are many possible reasons for this, but perhaps the biggest is it is just not rewarding enough.  Fortunately, this is something Mythic can fix.  So what can be done to make Open RVR more rewarding?

Keeps should be Contested Public Quests that can reward Defenders. A keep should be a multistage contested pq, where the first stage is breaching the outer wall, the second stage is breaching the inner wall, and the final stage is killing the keep lord.  Defenders should be rewarded with the completion of the pq if they repel the attackers at any stage; each stage should be timed, say 20 minutes or so.  And a kill counter should be active for the keep, to make it more fun, showing the kills on each side while it is under siege.  Even if the attackers fail, at the end of that contested pq they should receive some small reward; this would encourage the idea that attacking or defending keeps is always rewarding.

Taking Keeps should be more rewarding when defended. Taking a keep grants XP, renown and loot.  Taking a keep that is not defended at all should reward much less XP, renown and loot then a heavily defended keep that took effort to take.  For example, a defended keep where 30 attackers had to break through a warband of defenders to take the keep should get 50k XP, 5k renown and some purple bags.  Whereas 30 attackers who stole an undefended keep at 5am should get 1k XP, 100 renown and green bags.

Holding a Keep needs to be more rewarding. Holding a keep currently grants no meaningful bonus.  No one cares if they own keeps.  A meaningful solution to this has already been found in DAOC; darkness falls.  And its simple to add in Warhammer.  In tier 3, make Gunbad only open to the realm that currently holds the majority of the keeps; and increase the loot rewards from Gunbad to make it the best gear option in Tier 3.  Bastion Stairs can help entice Tier 4 by functioning the same way (though tier 4 needs less incentive due to city sieges); and then add a similar dungeon in Tier 2 and do the same thing.  This way owning keeps in each tier provides an actual reason to want to hold them - you gain access to a dungeon with sweet loot you cannot get any other way.

Remove renown gain from scenarios. I personally believe scenarios are the worst mistake Mythic has made with Warhammer; introducing them has had an attrocious effect on the game, making the game world barren and empty, both in the RVR lakes and at Public Quests.  But since scenarios likely won’t be going anywhere, the next best thing Mythic can do is remove renown gains from them.  This allows people who want to use them as an option to level continue to do so, and people who enjoy them can continue doing them, but it prevents people from grinding them to max realm rank, and gives further meaning to the RVR lakes by making those the place you gain renown.  Making the renown gear a little more worthwhile would perhaps get more into the RVR lakes while leveling also.

RVR Lakes should have influence rewards. Each RVR lake in each pairing should have an influence bar and have unique influence rewards.  Would be nice if it formed a set so players want to fight in all 3 of the lakes in each tier to get that set of gear.  The influence for these should not be rewarded from scenarios or taking battlefield objectives or keeps; it should be rewarded purely from killing other players in the RVR lakes (killing players at keeps or BOs would still count); as a way to encourage skirmish fighting in the game.

Zone Control needs to be reworked. The idea of “everything you do contributes to the war effort” sounded real nice and markety leading up to the game; but the truth is its too complex and it just doesn’t work.  Owning all of the objectives and then having to go grind a public quest to get enough points to take the zone is extremely lame.  Holding all the objectives in a zone needs to be all that is required to capture the zone; once you hold all objectives, the opposing realm should have 10 minutes or so to reclaim something or the zone is yours.

Diminishing returns in Open RVR need to go. Improving experience gains by 100% in Open RVR while diminishing returns are still in place really doesn’t do much.  Very quickly players become almost worthless to kill.  It’s very discouraging to finally get a few kills after hunting around the RVR lakes for 30 minutes only to see those players were killed recently and grant you almost nothing.  Remove diminishing returns, or at least greatly reduce them.