Guide War of Emperium Conditions

[Wolfie]

Hello,

This thread will be updated in the future to provide a more formal briefing on playing conditions during War of Emperium. For now, here is a quick run down on how War of Emperium works in BlackoutRO.

• Only one castle is open during any one War. Check the schedule for more information.
• Guilds without emblems will not be able to enter Guild Castles.
• Tuesday: If the total amount of alliance members on a single castle map exceeds 15, no further members will be permitted to enter the map.
• Wednesday: If the total amount of alliance members on a single castle map exceeds 15, no further members will be permitted to enter the map.
• Thursday-Monday: If the total amount of alliance members on a single castle map exceeds 20, no further members will be permitted to enter the map.
• In 'War of Emperium: Second Edition', once an Emperium breaks, the castle cannot be entered for 25 seconds.

Over the first two weeks after the server opens, we will observe how things are working, then reassess these conditions.
War of Emperium rankings are something which will feature in the future. They have been designed to add context to War of Emperium. Look forward to it.

- Wolfie

 

[Wolfie]

The server has almost been open for two weeks. We would now like to invite players to discuss War of Emperium conditions. This discussion will be important, as the Ranked War of Emperium period will begin on September 10. And we would prefer not to change WoE related things until after it finishes.

Items to discuss:

1. Enforce alliance limit? If so, what number should it be set to?
2. Tuesday & Wednesday WoE times. So far, they have been poorly attended. How can we improve this situation?
3. Provoke/Mind Breaker oddity: We have been informed of the oddity with these skills. Previously, you would not be able to use them on members of your party. Should it remain in its current state or be reverted to how it was in the past?

Let us know your thoughts on these items.

About Ranked War of Emperium

It is a two part event.

Part One:

• A three week long event similar to the Hyper WoE event hosted at the end of Open Beta Testing.
• Guilds accrue points through kills, deaths, holding a castle over a period of time and winning the castle at the end of the war.
• At the conclusion of the three week period, guilds will be awarded prizes based on their points ranking.

Part Two:

• At the conclusion of part one, a tournament will be held involving the guilds who participated.
• Guilds will be seeded into a tournament bracket based on their positioning during part one.
• The tournament's format will be dependent on the number of active guilds at the time.
• There will be a threshold of points required to qualify for the tournament, so those who do not participate in part one will not be eligible to join.

 

[*kael]

1. Tuesday & Wednesday WoE times. So far, they have been poorly attended. How can we improve this situation?

The times in most woes were too "two-sided". Either 9:00-10:00pm or 10:00-11:00am (*My +8gmt time zone). Maybe swap Tuesday and Wednesday time to other times? Like 1:00-2:00am and 2:00-3:00pm. I base these on +8gmt since that's my timezone. You can convert that to server time.

 

[hogake_moves]

We need more player to play bro especially woe time! It more fun woe in the bro. Haha

 

[Coojo]

1. Enforce alliance limit? If so, what number should it be set to?
   Yes. There should be a limit enabled to allow competition between a larger variety of guilds. If not, we run the risk of making WoE nothing more than a popularity contest. I personally suggest a dual limit on both the total members in a guild and the alliance total as well. Something drastically lower than the current 92. I would say 12 each guild and 36 per alliance. I dont particularly enjoy the idea of limiting anything but the prospect of having the current woe setup of 2-3 serious guilds and a few GvG/irrelevant guilds being the standard sounds much less entertaining. Having a limit that reflects the current participation makes it much easier for new players to band together and actually be able to compete against more established guilds.
   
   
2. Tuesday & Wednesday WoE times. So far, they have been poorly attended. How can we improve this situation?
   A few different thoughts/ramblings:
   
   1) The current time for the Wednesday WoE where i live is 2am where i live and i believe 5PM in the Philippines. Neither of these are ideal as 2-5am is just absurd for most NA players and 5pm is a time people will frequently find themselves busy with work or dinner. I would suggest moving the time up a bit so that the North American players may be able to play woe before they find themselves busy during the day and after sleeping. Also it will allow PH/Malay players to be more available after dinner and work. Instead of 9UTC i would suggest 11-12UTC.
   
   2) Again with Wednesday, it is the only WoE v2 that is enabled without the presence of another WoE v1 to boost its numbers. From what i can gather i find that most players simply enjoy WoE v1 more. There is the option of pairing this WoE v2 with another more popular WoE v1 to maintain higher participation. Although i would suggest keeping them around 12 hours apart so people dont grow weiry of clicking buttons for close to two hours in a row. (Which is primarily why i believe that this didn't exactly have ideal results when attempted during OBT)
   
   3) For Tuesday the time for PH is 10am and for NA it's 7-10PM. This doesn't seem ideal for a majority of players similar to point #1 above. People in the Philipines won't be able to play during 10am more often than not. It seems like the lack of participation would be mitigated by moving times. Something opposite from the PH favored time of 11-13UTC that i suggested in #1. 22:00 UTC would be 6-7am in the PH and 3-6PM in North America. That way some resemblance of balance is maintained while ensuring that as many players are to be available to play as possible. (With perhaps the exception of our brothers in the middle east)
   
   4) WoE itself is less rewarding than even the player enabled mini-games. I find players seeking MGC much more frequently than the WoE credits. The reward just doesnt equate to the required time/effort that goes into going out of your way to participate during times that are not convenient. Increasing rewards during the less popular times is likely to increase participation.
   
   5) This one may be a bit counter intuitive. If we take into consideration that WoE v1 is typically prefered over WoE v2 (from what i hear anyway, feel free to share if you believe otherwise!) I can't help but think that removing WoE v2 from its weekly schedule to something bimonthly, monthly or event only would provide more incentive to participate as the supply/demand would shift in favor of participation. (I am aware that this isn't economics but i do believe that the theory could be applied effectively to this situation)
   
   What i would do exactly if it was my call:
   Identify which 4 woe times are currently the most populated and switch the schedule so that these 4 times coincide with the 4 WoE v1's. Then use the 5th most populated time per week and enable WoE v2 bi monthly at this time (switching between the two locations) with a larger reward. (Double WoE creds seems like the obvious answer to the prize increase) This would keep the weekly participation of WoE v1 as high as possible while at the same time WoE v2 would be much more noteworthy and rewarding.
   
   (I have this theory: Since all players will miss some WoE's due to the timing and frequency we have, it makes missing some of them typical. Before OBT there was seemingly a majority of guilds requiring maximal participation while now we have a current expectation that almost everyone is going to miss a few per week. If we regulate the frequency enough that participating in a majority of WoE's is to be the expectation from most guilds, i think that it could theoretically result in an increase in participation across the board for all WoE's)
   
   
3. Provoke/Mind Breaker oddity: We have been informed of the oddity with these skills. Previously, you would not be able to use them on members of your party. Should it remain in its current state or be reverted to how it was in the past?
   It would be very strange if we're allowed to use a skill that has an "Enemy" target designation on friendlies. I can understand using another character that's not attached to the guild/party to do so but it doesn't make sense to me why someone in your party would be able to use a skill designated for enemies on you.
   
   
   TL;DR
   1) Small alliances and guilds = more fun and better chance for new independent guilds to be established.
   2) Less Woe= more total participation. WoE v2 not as much fun. Less fun=More prize. Move times to fix WoE population.
   3) Friendlies should not be using skills designated for enemies on each other.
   
   Edits: More idea's/clarity.

 

[Regalia]

Regarding your points of discussion:​

​

Enforcing alliance limit: You need to strongly consider the growth of the server's population. As of now, some guilds have larger numbers compared to other guilds. However, we should also recognize other factors such as:​

1. Preferred type and classes that each person wants to play,​
2. The kind of meta each guild choose to utilize.​
3. History and acquaintances of players which influence their decision making regarding which guild to join.​
4. Other smaller factors such as the lack of equipment in which a guild requires them to have.​

If we're talking about the number of alliances a guild can have, the maximum of three (3) wouldn't have much impact since ultimately, the rankings would be based per guild and not per alliance group (correct me if I'm wrong). As for the maximum number of members a guild can have, putting the growth of the population in consideration, we might as well have somewhere around 32-36 maximum members.​

​

From what I've previously observed, many players had the option to join a single guild and build a massive one but they chose to be in smaller groups to promote GvGs. Also, you can't force people to play classes they don't like. Which is why some players decide to join a guild that suits their preferences. It's also possible that some players would lose interest in playing because they couldn't play with the friends they've been with from the past years.​

Tuesday & Wednesday WoE times being poorly attended: I believe that most of the people who still play the game have lots of responsibilities in their lives outside the game. There's work and studies, as well as having a 'regular body clock' in which people from the west would probably be asleep during these times. The best course of action for this would be to move these WoE times on a different schedule. You can probably put a poll on this to know the preferred schedule of the players. Regarding the point system for the rankings, you can also award lesser points or have an entirely different point system for the less popular WoEs to balance it out.


Provoke / Mind Breaker oddity: As long as the user of the Provoke / Mind Breaker characters remain on a different guild, and would still get hit and damaged by the 'friendly' guild's skills even when they are under the same party, I don't see any problem regarding its fairness and balancing. In the past, guilds and players were able to get around under these conditions by creative means. However, under the condition of being in a different guild but in the same party, if the Provoke/Mind Breaker user receives group healing such as SPP, and also not being hit by 'friendly' players, then that's a different story.


Other important stuff: There are many different strategies in how to keep the players active in the game. For as long as there are many things to do, many available alternatives other than the usual farming / bg / woes / a series of repeated events, then you ensure that people will not only retain their activeness and participation, but attract other people in playing the game as well.

 

[Parascythe]

if we are not planning to disable Mheal in WOE then we should enable mindbreak/provoke because the clashes takes too damn long to end like nobody dies lmao

Post automatically merged: 29-Aug, 18

Mheal is just too broken right now in WOE. We dont have to remove Mheal we just need something to balance it out.

 

[CancerKid]

@Parascythe I agree. However, in order for guilds to use it strategically, a cooldown with increased duration for the skills must be applied or anything in exchange for having high damage output. I mean, there should be a compensation for it.

 

[hogake_moves]

@Parascythe I agree. However, in order for guilds to use it strategically, a cooldown with increased duration for the skills must be applied or anything in exchange for having high damage output. I mean, there should be a compensation for it.

Nope just a plan of the guild haha

Post automatically merged: 30-Aug, 18

if we are not planning to disable Mheal in WOE then we should enable mindbreak/provoke because the clashes takes too damn long to end like nobody dies lmao

Post automatically merged: 29-Aug, 18

Mheal is just too broken right now in WOE. We dont have to remove Mheal we just need something to balance it out.

No no no this is a tactics find your way how to solve it

 

[Parascythe]

Nope just a plan of the guild haha

Post automatically merged: 30-Aug, 18

No no no this is a tactics find your way how to solve it

oh no my guild never had a problem with mheal and never will cause we can wipe even the enemy team has mheal, im talking about other smaller and newer guilds. we never worried about mheal enemy team coming at us.

Post automatically merged: 30-Aug, 18

oh no my guild never had a problem with mheal and never will cause we can wipe even the enemy team has mheal, im talking about other smaller and newer guilds. we never worried about mheal enemy team coming at us.

my guild have won GOTMs alot of times already im pretty sure we know how to handle that tactic. we use it as well.

Post automatically merged: 30-Aug, 18

 

[Wolfie]

Thank you for the feedback so far. To clarify one thing, the alliance limit is the total number of members an alliance may have present on one guild map.

Example:
Alliance limit = 24
Guild A has 16 members
Guild B has 16 members.

Once 24 members of Guild A + Guild B are on the castle map, the remaining 8 will not be able to enter.
This is similar to a "guild cap", but applies to any allied guilds along with your own.

 

[Regalia]

Thank you for the feedback so far. To clarify one thing, the alliance limit is the total number of members an alliance may have present on one guild map.

​

Example:​

Alliance limit = 24​

Guild A has 16 members​

Guild B has 16 members.​

​

Once 24 members of Guild A + Guild B are on the castle map, the remaining 8 will not be able to enter.​

This is similar to a "guild cap", but applies to any allied guilds along with your own.​

​

​

​

Thank you for this. In my opinion, here are some additional factors that can possibly happen:​

​

Based on observation, a smaller number for a guild cap will only work on WoEs that are less attended. But it would provide much more work for the staff to implement, and many people would prefer to have a better schedule for the said WoEs to attract more people to attend. Having said that, placing a smaller number as a guild cap with the intention of promoting healthy competition, would instead have a different impact in the game due to the following reasons:​

1. Having less people to defend a castle would result in other guilds just zerging to break the Emperium. Let's use these numbers as example. We implemented a guild cap of 16, and an alliance limit of 32. Guild A has around 16 and Guild B also has 16 members. On a good day we have about 100 people attending WoEs. Guild A and Guild B has a total of 32 and has to deal with 68 opponents coming from other guilds. Only Guild A has the access to the flagpoint, and a sequence of clashes will eventually drop Guild B out. Other guilds can easily zerg Guild A, and the new castle holder will most likely get zerged by other guilds again. This will result in a loop of zerging and breaking.
   ​
2. Not everyone would be able to maximize participation in GvGs. Since Guild A would be focused in defending the castle, Guild B would most likely be the ones engaged with other guilds around the first and second room (v1) / area (v2). By the time other guilds reach Guild A's defending spot, they will probably get zerged eventually.
   ​
3. "Friendlies" do not need to be 'officially' allied with each other. They will just enter the castle without being allied and not engage with each other. In my opinion, there is no point in placing a guild cap and then welcome guild alliances due to redundancy. Also, if any guild at all would like to be allied with another, they would work around under these conditions and its implementation would prove ineffective.

It's a wiser decision to promote this idea: 3 guilds with nearly the same number engage with each rather than have 5-6 guilds with smaller numbers and then be allied with one another.

Also, putting the Rankings in consideration, lesser people will have the benefit of being included in the ranked guilds. Depending on the point system that will be implemented, they might even consider zerging as the primary option if breaking the emperium provide higher points, or portal defending the first room/area if killing players would incur higher points in the long run. The essence of GvGs, planning and putting these plans into action, as well as being able to think of creative means to overcome other guilds would eventually be minimal.

 

[Wolfie]

Bump. Any further contributions?

 

[XKuramaYouko]

1)Reset all the castles before the event
2) Fixed the bugged skills I dm'd you in discord few days ago before event.
3) Consider participation rewards for being active (30min) inside castles during the 3 week event.

 

[duckbenok]

It would be nice to use some hyper woe mechanics like getting points by KDA. So guilds would really do GVG instead of Emperium Breaking Contest.

 

[Collaboration]

When is this tournament happen?

 

[Coojo]

It would be nice to use some hyper woe mechanics like getting points by KDA. So guilds would really do GVG instead of Emperium Breaking Contest.

This encouraged portal def during hyper woe and ruined the event during the last round. (IMO) Please no.

 

[duckbenok]

Portal def is one of the most annoying strategy used in WoE. But It's been a reliable tactic in securing the castle ever since. Its War of Emperium anyway so I see no problem in using all the tactics possible to secure the Emperium. Way back before guilds can actually penetrate portal def by being synchronized. We did not ruin the event btw we just used an old sneaky strategy to catch up. If ever you guys will be interested in the KDA additional points I suggest All Kills and Deaths wont record within 5 cells away from the portal. If you really cant handle the oldest play in the book.

 

[Coojo]

Portal def is one of the most annoying strategy used in WoE. But It's been a reliable tactic in securing the castle ever since. Its War of Emperium anyway so I see no problem in using all the tactics possible to secure the Emperium. Way back before guilds can actually penetrate portal def by being synchronized. We did not ruin the event btw we just used an old sneaky strategy to catch up. If ever you guys will be interested in the KDA additional points I suggest All Kills and Deaths wont record within 5 cells away from the portal. If you really cant handle the oldest play in the book.

Im not saying we should ban the practice, im saying don't enable/encourage it.

 

[duckbenok]

Part One:

• A three week long event similar to the Hyper WoE event hosted at the end of Open Beta Testing.
• Guilds accrue points through kills, deaths, holding a castle over a period of time and winning the castle at the end of the war.

Oops forgot to read the original post lmao. Anyway I understand your point @Coojo. Portal Def is a really tempting strategy and both effective even with KDA enabled or not. And for sure a guild or 2 will do this tactic just to secure the castle or farm kills. Thats why I am suggesting to make kills and deaths only count if the player has walked 3-5 cells away from the portal to avoid the portal def farming or whatever solution they can provide.

In other news, I see a possible ranking manipulation by using hidden alliances. Like we help you defend the castle this war and you help us defend the castle next war.

There will be a threshold of points required to qualify for the tournament

So basically if Guild A,B,C are in a secret alliance and they secured the points for Part 2. They could easily play with Guild D and make them not qualify for the Part 2.