RvR Ideas: The Campaign

I had too much to dream last night, too much to dream.

I've tried to think of a different campaign system for WAR's RvR. It borrows a lot from Bootae's posts about DAoC and WAR and I've also incorporated features from the new City Siege. I've found it a bit tricky to convey exactly what I wanted but will post anyway :p.

The campaign would involve two phases, first a fight for control of the keeps, then assault and defence of the Forts.

Phase 1: WAR for Territory

Summary: All zones and all keeps are open for capture and Order and Destro fight to claim as many keeps as they can until all are controlled. When claimed, keeps can be used as port locations for guilds and alliances. Keep control will offer a strategic advantage in Phase 2.

All 18 keeps in T4 are contested and open for capture at the start of the phase. There are no Keep Lords or Keep Doors.

To gain control of a keep 6 players need to interact with an objective inside the keep. Controlling a keep will NOT lock it down, i.e. they are immediatley recapturable.

Controlling a keep will spawn a very low HP door, this door is only designed to a allow some response time if it's attacked.

Rally Flags: Once a Keep is under a faction's control guilds can place a Rally Flag within the keep that will allow guild members to port inside using a Keep Scroll. Guilds can only have one Rally Flag active at any time but multiple guilds can have a Rally Flag in the same keep. Alliance Rally Flags are also available. These allow all players from an alliance to port there.

Guild and Alliance Flags are bought just like standards. Keep Scrolls have a 10 minute reuse timer on them. The whole point of generous use of scrolling is to avoid a situation where players have to stand guard at keeps for a long time as that is boring. Alliance scrolls give well organised alliances an edge.

Taking an already controlled keep will place it in a neutral state for the next 10 minutes. After this it becomes open to capture again by either side. The reason for this 10 minutes of neutrality is to keep Phase 1 from ending too quickly.

When every keep is controlled by one side or another (i.e. there are no uncontrolled keeps left) a 1 hour timer starts after which Phase 1 ends. This extra time is to give some final furious fighting over the keeps in key locations (see Phase 2). In the final hour keeps don't go into a neutral state when captured but pass straight into the control of whichever side captured them.

Phase 2: Push to the City

Summary: Order and Destro now battle for the Forts. Capture all 3 enemy Forts to win the phase and open up the City. Keeps control from Phase 1 provides strategic advantage as keeps are now permanently locked and are available to port to and from for the entire faction who control them.

Every keep you controlled in Phase 1 will be locked and uncapturable during Phase 2. They act as permanent port locations for all players from the faction who control it, not just the guild or alliances that placed Rally Flags there. Keep Scrolls are still on a 10 minute reuse timer.

Keeps can then be used to stage attacks on an enemy Fortress or to rally to and defend your own. The value of controlling the keeps closet to Forts should result in some serious conflict over these in Phase 1.

Capturing a Fort
Capturing a fort involves killing a Fortress Lord. These don't do damage, they just require a lot of killing. Fortress Lord's HP doesn't reset or regenerate so any damage done to them is permanent and once they are dead the Fort is captured until the campaign resets. They will take a tonne of killing so it will take numerous attempts to take them down.

Attackers cannot rez inside a Fort but Defender's can. Several waves of attack will be needed therefore, each one aiming to chip away at the Lord's health as much as possible.

Controlling the Middle Zone
The top and bottom zones are strategically important to assault or defend nearby Forts so the middle zone needs a reason to be important too (i.e. Praag, Dragonwake and Thunder Mountain). In Phase 1 BOs weren't involved but in Phase 2 the four objectives in the middle zone in each pairing come into play. Control of 3 out 4 BOs spawns a Monster who makes it's way to the enemy Fort and gives the Lord there a wallop. Doesn't kill it, just makes a nice dent in it's HP. Monster's can be killed and healed. I'm not totally sold on this monster idea but control of the middle zone's needs to offer something of value.

RvR Ideas: Player-Monsters!

I'm going to get myself all in a lather over the next few weeks with ideas for improving the RvR in WAR. I'm also going to try and scour other WAR blogs and forums for great ideas and collect them together, with proper kudos attributed of course.

My first idea is just a small thing and won't affect the overall campaign but it'll be a lot of fun and bring some epic moments.

It's giving the players the option to play as Warhammer Monsters! One of the great things about fantasy is the monsters. Ogres, Trolls, Giants, all that jazz. Take a look at these bad boys.

The introduction of Player-Champions to the new City Siege has been a big hit and Player-Monsters is really building on that. I actually had this idea in March - shoulda posted that shit.

The nitty gritty details don't matter here but basically a player would collect some kind of currency, be that Invader Crests or new Monster Tokens, and then trade these in at a merchant to receive an item that would turn them into a montser of their choice.

The Monster-Buff would last about an hour I'd guess and have a lockout timer on it, perhaps a day. The monsters wouldn't be super-powerful, just a bit different, maybe have twice the Wounds as normal, nothing extravagent, it's really just for variety and fun.

I would try to implement 3 monsters choices for each of Order and Destruction. All monsters would be hybrid classes - they would each have ranged ability, melee, and some heals. Basic stuff, think T1 :)

To make it more interesting I would also tie a mini-progression system to the Monster-Buffs, so that whilst you are playing a Monster you earn influence or something that levels your Monster up earning you new tricks. Nothing major of course, just a few different abilities, some specialisation, or access to bigger and better weapons.


Order Monsters - not so easy to find monsters for the good guys - any ideas??
Ogre Butcher : Ths guy is big and fat and carries two giant cleavers!
Ogre LeadBelly: Carries a small hand-cannon so short-ranged RDPS is it's thing
Treeman: Treeman. Nuff said.

Destro Monsters
Troll: Vomits Acid for fun. Swings Big Clubs.
Minatour: Giant Bull prone to feeding frenzies. Perhaps have a Charge for it's ranged attack?
Giant: Be that big, bald guy from Nordland!

I think this would be a great addition to the game, not too hard to implement and would provide some epic massed monster battles!