Family Name: Pelat

Region (NA/EU): EU

Suggestions/Comments: 

Hello,

Going forward with a moderate and constructive feedback. Not short.

Disclaimer: I'm a BDO player, not a BDO developer. Coming with some ideas, I'm not pretending to balance the systems to its best posibilities as there is actually people being paid to do that.

Main Goal of the System: Avoid "Cartel" from KR

More or less a success. It is hard to pull off and likely one of the guilds from the Cartel will end up zerged. Was this a EU problem? No. Usually diplo was arranged with balanced fights.

Most of the following problems are pretty much interconnected.

Problem 1: Last minute plays

Anything that wants to be made to improve NW experience, as long as it is allowed that someone does nothing for the entirety of the fight and then just shows up on the last moment and has a last lucky last hit washing the efforts of everyone involved in the fight, the system won't be worth playing. As its likely that it will become meta for a snipers  (or other alliances from doubtable ethics). 

How to solve?

Make all nodes "?". Easy, you can't try to pull a last-minute hero move if you don't know when is the last minute. This forces all alliances to try to secure a node from minute one instead of trying to help others

Edit: Additionally to all forts being "?" whenever a fort changes hands, if the timer is below 5 minutes, it gets increased to 5 minutes. Forcing guild to hold a fort for at least 5 minutes or until the entire 60 minutes run out.

Alternative: Make the first 2 nodes "?" and the 3rd (each time) with visibile timer and as well the shorter timer. Allowing weaker guilds to attempt an early way out of the NW with rewards.

Examples for the Alternative:

In a 3 forts nw: 2 "?" and 1 timed.

In a 5 forts nw: 4 "?" and 1 timed.

In a 6 forts nw: 4 "?" nodes and 2 times forts.

Problem 2: Last hit gets the fort

As mentioned before, what is the inncentive to fight before the 5 or 10 last minutes of the fort? "Oh for content, we don't care about the bag, chad pvpers" yes yes, all clear but, what is the inncentive for OTHERS that are not in the "PVP Chad sphere" to NOT sit and wait until the last minutes? Even worse, to zerg someone between few alliance on the last few minutes? None.

How to solve?

Add a point system. If you fight on a fort, you kill the defending guild and you fight other  attacking guilds around that fort, the alliance should be awarded points (i.e. 2 points for killing a defender, 1 point for killing an opposite attacker) you know the drill, we have it for sieges but please don't count own deaths makes no sense. And once the fort HP drops to 0, whoever attacker scored the most points gets the fort. Last hitting mechanic is just bad.

Bonus point: Incentive to not full PVE enemy fort and rather do some PVP in PVP content. Crazy.

Edit: The discussion is about who, from the attackers, gets the fort once it drops to 0 HP. If it doesn't drop to 0 whoever is holding it holds it, no need to rocket science it.

Problem 3: Snipers

Everything above sounds cool but if 3 real guilds are on a region and 3 snipers too, there is no content for anyone. The 3 guilds will sit on the forts and the other ones will do whatever snipers do. Play Shai and grind oluns or something.

No mercy, just full out or the system is dead no matter what. 

Problem 4: Fort PVE

The core system of NW (since always) is PVE kill the fort. Bodythrowing and all of that which is not fun at all. That is still there. Unsolved. Maybe the points system helps but its certainly not a solution. At least without Spawn Protection CTG's the problem is less annoying, and you can still re-capture the fort after getting pve'd out.

How to solve?

I have no idea.

Problem 5: Lag

Today's nw in EU Calpheon was very laggy. Specially when 3 guilds where on top of the Fort, which should be the expected scenario on most part of the new NW system. Please improve servers connections or whatever is needed je beg

Hot take: Keeping the defendat structures once the fort adds a fun little gimmick that forces attacking guild to fight the structures that are left, giving an oppening for fast counter attacks.

There are other issues with the system, and bugs and so on, but those has been already brought up a few times so no need of repeating that.

Point system sounds kinda bad, NW should be more about strategy and not RBF. There are a lot of other ways to do stuff, like getting points for holding the stick, or holding it for a certain amount of time instead of it saying "yep ok im done now this guild won instantly for hitting it last minute".
And lots of other ways. They just need a good game designer :D

Or just someone that play the game and understand how it work.

My suggestion would be, revert back to original in EU/NA and redo the whole thing again, i see an opporunity of how you can use war of the roses system to be implemented in the NW system, having a pier or a flag to be capped in nodes by guild securing an area in the node and defending those areas using in game strategy and equipment, if a guild secures all piers for example wins the node by default other wise the guild with the most secured piers wins. also increase the nw duration, 1h or less doesnt seem like we are getting a pvp done.
The revamped system is just very unappealing to play nodewars, only rewards are good.

take them

- invisible tower time for everyone
- Only visible time for the tower owner
- increase nodewar time 1.5x
- increase 1.3x fort hp
- last fort still standing after being taken would be added + 1/2 min whenever it was taken again

Smart suggestions have already been said, I will add or confirm some points : 

- yes, timers should only be known by the possessing guild

- no timer under 30 minutes

- forts should be captured through destruction AND a 1-min cast on it after destruction

- only one (or two?) designated members should be able to make this cast.

- once captured, a fort timer would be brought back to 5 minutes if the remaining time was lower than that

- if this new timer ends after NW time, once the war is over the possessing guild would still have to protect the fort until the end of the timer, but the fort can only be liberated, but not conquered.

If the timer is known by the possessing guild, once they lose the fort they will know the end time hence opening it again for last minute plays.

1-min cast is just crazy. Try to put down any structure while 2 alliances (at least) are blasting you.

The rest of proposals sound good

Although I  don't disagree with your incentive and brainstorm for improving the NW experice, I don't agree either because the solutions suggested can and will be exploited, if not from enemies, then from allies. It is very hard to make this and equal (both in terms of equality AND equity) experience.

1) When including known timers for either or both parties (allied/hostile), there are ways to circumvent the neutrality of it by keeping track of it and plan long ahead. On the other hand there can be no random timers as it will impact the neutrality and favor one side. Maybe make a sufficient time window?

2) Point system will greatly discourage weaker guilds as stronger ones will not really need to put in the effort needed and still be an RBF style zerg running around. The neutrality of the system will be compromised the further in the NW is. Would need to be somewhat time gated and received some kind of diminishing returns so there would not be "willing" point submision by unofficially allied guilds (like "hey, you are not in the alliance, but you are a friend, let me feed you kills to help you because I dont like the other guild).

3) Sniper guild should get a lockout penalty as well as Guild Silver penalty, like 1 or 2 billions. Personally I dont mind having my NW ruined once or twice, as long as the guild that ruined it by sniping get a penalty adequate enough to not be able do it again. And since those guilds will slowly be discouraged doing it, I will have better experience.

4) This is indeed a hard one. Especially in lower tier NWs as there are no annexes to defend sufficiently. This might have to be revised and studied for a proper fix, proportionate to the participation and damage output.

5) We know there are potato servers since BDO release. Rubberbanding forever and whenever more than 2-3 hundred people were in the same area by doing 1 skill each. And as always people were exploiting this fact with high hit count skills. Hence PAs initiative to lower the hit count on skills and raising accuracy rates and damage multipliers. We'll have to see how these 25tick servers will react to the change and if the server lag caused by latency and high number of calculations will resolve itself. 

That's why I talked about making timer going back to 5 minutes min when captured, and why I suggest a cast time. No "last minute plays" with that. 

But for sure, cast time can be tweaked depending on max res time. 30 sec sounds better?

Thank you, Paco. Your experience of never being in another guild other than "Life" that has never done anything connected to any PvP ever is valuable. Feedback of your 18 Shai lifeskiller characters will surely fix this broken system almost twelve thousand people want reverted.