Had to be expected. After the gold bags at keeps encouraged avoidance instead of conflict (keep trading) now there’s the new influence system that takes player kills in very little consideration while it hugely rewards keeps takeovers.<\/p>\n
Result: another incentive to avoid a fight and cooperate with the enemy faction. You trade keeps and maximize the rewards. Before it was gold bags for gear, now it is gold bags + influence. I also note that now there are three overlapping systems just in ORvR that provide gear: gold bags, renown vendors and influence system. How many broken systems you are going to pile up before you start to make work what’s already in the game?<\/p>\n
This is a perfect example of Mythic not understanding the basic of game design. Not only they made the mistake with the gold bags, but instead of recognizing it, they make it worse.<\/p>\n
Official response from a CM:<\/p>\n
James Nichols<\/b>: Unfortunately the path of least resistance is also tempting,<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Nope, it’s not tempting. It’s the way the game is designed. Doing quests in WoW isn’t “tempting” it’s the way the game was designed.<\/p>\n
Simply put: You continue to design RvR so it promotes avoidance. You got many occasion to correct this, instead you make it worse.<\/p>\n
James Nichols<\/b>: rest assured though we’ll continue to improve RvR to make it so that conflict is a common occurrence as best we can,<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
How? Does your team even recognize how game design works? Because with every step they are making things worse.<\/p>\n
James Nichols<\/b>: but players adjust to massive RvR may still have yet to learn that a lot of the fun of RvR has to do with what you make of it.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s hard to be fun in a game when bad game design is an obstacle. Blaming the players because they don’t know how to have fun is blaming them for your very own faults and failures.<\/p>\n
James Nichols<\/b>: We expect to see players naturally migrate towards conflict as the initial influence frenzy calms down.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
After the players understand even better than avoidance maximizes the reward? I don’t know what trends you see in games, but over time things get “gamed” more and more. If players pursue the path of least resistance NOW, in a week or a month they’ll do it even more.<\/p>\n