As someone who enjoys a bit of PVP every once in a while, WoE1 and WoE2 each week are a fun bit of gameplay I often look forward to. As time goes on though I’m realizing there are some serious inherent issues with WoE as a whole. Would love to hear others take on this especially my suggested fixes and especially especially if you don’t WoE currently.
Anyway, I’ve split this into sections so please feel free to comment on any particular part.
TLDR: No one WoEs since there is no reward at all, gameplay is tired, it’s too long, most of the castles are empty, other players are too strong, and it costs way too much to even start to catch up, but a couple tweaks and it could be great again for everyone!
High barrier of entry for people wanting to try:
Damage taken is very high due to iRO having lower damage reduction on WoE maps compared to other servers, which is made worse by our mix of OCP/Kachua gear making our players considerably stronger than anyone on those other servers. Anecdotally I hear from most players that they only can enjoy being in fights if they have 90%+ demihuman resistance gear (for me I feel squishy below 97%!). Recent OCP and Kachua have helped immensely in giving more options for resistances but those items are still expensive. Also even if the players have those items it’d cost too much to decard their gear multiple times a week from their PvM setup to a PvP setup.
High barrier fix:
With the damage in the millions from every skill it may be time to reexamine the reduction % applied to the WoE maps.
Beyond that to make preparing for PvP less expensive three things can be done:
First greatly reduce or remove the cost of decarding - I expand on this idea below.
Second, add versions of popular equipment to the cash shop as rental items like they do on thRO and we do to a limited extent for WoE TE.
Third, offer more options for useful consumables in the cash shop or bought with zeny. Additionally it would be very helpful if the event consumables stopped being deleted when the events end as they can be very helpful for WoE.
Bad incentives:
Currently WoE only provides a random reward to just one character who is leading the guild which holds the castle. There is no personal incentive for anyone else in the guild to participate in the mode. That lack of reward is made worse by how extremely expensive it is to equip for and prepare consumable items for woe each week. Additionally with no change to the rules or other overhaul to WoE people who tried it 5-10 years ago have no reason to come back and try it again.
Bad incentives fix:
Each player needs to be given something, anything, for their time spent in this game mode. This could be a guild wide benefit like access to special NPCs or tokens given out for a limited time at the end of WoE.
Length:
While the modes last for two hours the only time that matters is the final three to five minutes.
Length Fix:
Cut the duration to 1 hour to keep it consistent with TE, or potentially even less. That still gives plenty of time to attempt whatever plan of attack you spent the week coming up with but doesn’t waste everyone’s time while defending.
Alternatively if we’re getting crazy, keep it at two hours total on Wed/Sat but have it swap modes after one hour (Wednesday WoE1 at 4-5pm and WoE2 at 5-6pm then on Saturday WoE2 at 4-5pm and WoE1 at 5-6pm). This forces guild to be more active, allows timing attacks and other strategy/play making while groups swap areas, and who wouldn’t like having more castles to fight over.
Hard to find a fight:
At the moment not enough people attend either WoE 1 or 2 for it to be possible for there to be more than 2-5 people in every castle since there are too many active castles. Most fights end up being very small like 1v5 or 2v3 and you almost never see more than 5-6 people on screen at a time.
Hard to find a fight fix:
Either reduce the number of castles or encourage players to focus on one target which likely has some additional generally useful reward.
Bringing it all together/My Ideal solution:
WoE 1&2 remain on the same day and the same start time but last for 60 minutes. Damage reduction on WoE maps is increased by at least 5% and maybe even as much as 20% more. The number of castles and loot from treasure boxes would stay the same but an additional reward would be added to one castle per week which would get a NPC added in the emperium room to warp you to a free decarding NPC. The NPC changes which castle they appear in each week but every WoE the focus of the fights should be that castle. Additionally every castle would have an NPC which provides tokens to members of the winning guild but they only have 2-3 min to grab the reward before the npc goes away. These tokens can be exchanged for WoE healing items or traded in very large quantities for things like a Kafra Blossom Card or a Kachua Key.
Would love some feedback and if this sounds good or you think it wouldn't work at all please let me know! Thanks everyone!
Bits of feedback I heard from Discord
- We need Herosria WoE mode!
- I fully agree. Getting a new mode would breathe life into all the versions of WoE.
- Won't guilds just ally each other or have everyone join one mega guild to sell the decard service?
- It certainly is possible with so few people participating that everyone piles into one guild or some sort of alliance might happen but if WoE gets large enough again that won't really be realistic since there are limits to how large guilds and alliances can be.
- Should the decard npc be limited to certain gear?
- Well maybe having only gear with player resist on it being eligible for the decard would be a good compromise to lowering the barriers of entry for WoE but I think being able to sell the service of decarding anything will make people want to fight more for that castle.
- WoE Kafra healing shouldn't need VIP and have no zeny cost.
- Another change I completely agree with. This would let people help more at the entrance to castles even without using pots and I'd still keep VIP on myself for the extremely helpful castle warping option.
- Even guild leaders don't like the rewards currently since the random nature means they can't depend on drops to supply others. "Then it'd be like ~80 of each type per day, would at least supply like a dozen people in a week instead of 2 peoples worth of pots."
- I thought this was a great point, and if the castle additionally always gave one of each box instead of the random items then it'd be much more meaningful of a reward.
- Guild dungeons are supposed to be a reward as well but no longer provide any benefit.
- This content was so outdated I hadn't even remembered to mention it! lol But an update to the dungeons or the addition of an exclusive memorial dungeon would be welcome as well, especially if it were a permanent Corridor of Phantoms style map or a new version of a memorial dungeon like Central Laboratory. Another good suggestion I heard was to add more MVP spawns (10+ on random timers) that can appear in guild dungeons as well so people have a reason to go more than once every 36 hours.
- This content was so outdated I hadn't even remembered to mention it! lol But an update to the dungeons or the addition of an exclusive memorial dungeon would be welcome as well, especially if it were a permanent Corridor of Phantoms style map or a new version of a memorial dungeon like Central Laboratory. Another good suggestion I heard was to add more MVP spawns (10+ on random timers) that can appear in guild dungeons as well so people have a reason to go more than once every 36 hours.
Edited by Ralen, 04 July 2024 - 02:01 AM.