Family Name: AllTea

Region: EU

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Heya, I know this is a pretty contentious topic and everyone has their ideas about how to fix nodewar or saying it should just be reverted entirely. For better or worse I don't think a revert is coming any time soon but I would still like to see some adjustments to the current system since as things are now, many guilds are choosing to back out of nodewars entirely due to a number of issues: last hitting forts, loot lockout rules (no participation even with 100+ kills/deaths), performance due to too many guilds being forced into one zone, expectations vs reality due to maintaining the name 'nodewar'.

To elaborate on each one a bit:

last hits + lockout - The rewards being back-loaded while also needing to hold a fortress at least once per war for any participation at all creates a bad dynamic where it's both super important to capture a point early to gain any participation rewards but you also feel punished if you do so at a bad time, as you often end up in a situation where nobody contests your zone until there are only minutes left on it culminating in ridiculous 1vX dogpiles that are impossible to defend.

performance - The 1vX dogpiles I mentioned aren't just unfun but also have a very negative impact on performance when action does eventually happen! I'm sure we've all seen stream highlights of shotcallers dying and having every player magically turn invisible, have their minimap stop updating etc. to the point they are shotcalling completely blind.

Expectations vs Reality - The biggest blunder by far was calling the new system a nodewar. Nodewar is a very different type of content from what we have now. Since the first mention of a new nodewar system, many people have said they were cautiously optimistic, but that the proposed system didn't feel like it would live up to the legacy of nodewars. It still doesn't.

Hopefully a rework will hit on all of these and provide healthier ways of improving the 'nodewar' system going forward. My main solution so far is that the current system should change its premise, the idea of capturing a fortress and holding it at the end does not work with this system. It forces PA into building the game mode around the old premise rather than making a fun PvP mode first and foremost. Below is a simple idea that fits the "king of the hill" game mode much better and while it's not entirely unique, I dont see the harm in using a tried and true concept with a BDO twist of great action combat and annex/base building elements.

Solutions

Setting

The world of black desert is steeped in conquest, power struggles and politics. While the world seems at peace the threat of war is never too far from becoming a devastating reality. Signs of weakness could spell disaster for the powers, governments or the citizens of each region, so proving they have a formidable defense and arsenal is crucial to maintain balance through mutually assured destruction. Recent developments and discoveries of methods weaponizing raw blackstones and dark energy have happened quickly, these resources collected through high powered drills needing constant supervision has lead to a shortage of manpower in each region. Resulting in frequent demand from adventurer guilds to help provide aid to regions hoping to arm themselves. With lucrative rewards on the table and favour to be earned these developments have resulted in their own small scale conquests between these mercenary groups hoping to prove their worth and build a reputation.

Gameplay

Once the battle begins guilds choose between local safe zones to gather their forces (or strategically scout). Several locations will be marked as vacant mining camps with varying timers. rather than counting down until a fixed deadline many of these will instead be counting down until operation starts, not all drills are operational just yet! However since a handful of drill sites will be immediately available for occupation we'll focus on them. The goal, capture a site and maintain control for as long as possible, using any and all tools at your disposal including additional annexes and defensive structures. Doing so accumulates points over time based on the amount of resources gathered, different mining locations will have different durations and tiers, which provide additional points toward your alliance's reward tier.

To briefly dip into the concept of reward tiers and what they could look like, lets say the war has just started and you are the first to occupy a node. You are now immediately at tier 1 or "participation" reward level. You captured a T1 location so you get 10 points per minute and you successfully defend for 10 minutes. With 100 points you now reach the second reward tier granting better rewards than the previous tier, ranked as "occupant" within that specific nodewar. To achieve tier 3 rewards you will require 150 points, tier 4 will require 250 etc.

While these reward tiers shouldn't be capped there should be diminishing returns based on the current reward tier of the alliance relative to the tier of the site they currently occupy, in addition to the greater point requirement for each reward tier. So for example having the second reward tier means T1 zones only grant 7.5 points each minute resulting in 20 minutes needed to reach 150 points for third reward tier. This is to incentivise winning guilds to move away from lower tier sites eventually making fights feel more varied allowing many guilds to fight different guilds over the duration of the war as well as having players spread out organically, much like the original vision of the new system!

Adding complexity to this would be the timed locations. While you might see 3x60 minute duration locations at the start of the war from tiers 1-3 for example, higher tier nodes will still be available. These locations will be announced before becoming available and with multiple random factors between each nodewar, they could last 45 minutes until end of nodewar or last 15 minutes changing location regularly for example! Each with a high point accumulation multiplier scaling with the risk. Guilds may choose to pre-build structures near these locations when announced to give them the best chances at making the most out of the duration, whether accelerating through the early tiers or pushing even higher the reward will be worth it!

TL;DR

Nodewars should be rebranded, instead of capturing sticks we should capture a location like Capture the Flag (CTF) and accumulate points, granting higher and higher reward tiers. Losing a base should be part of the game and not something to feel bad about when it happens last second, instead the rewards should be for not only capturing but maintaining control over a point. Make incentives for guilds to organically spread out such as having many sources of points available rather than having everyone collapse on a single zone based on a timer.

Don't grill me on this ;-;

I want to emphasise that this is just a rough idea of what a system could look like. Specific deets like the amount of points granted, the reward tiers and timers are all up for interpretation. The point is that a system like this could easily be adjusted to match player behaviour and make fights fair, rewarding and satisfying.

I like the idea of "mining for points". As a defense player, this would also give me a job to set up defenses around a drill that'll eventually become active.

This would also remove the shitty last hit mechanic we've got currently, but still keep the revamp of "things become active with a duration on them" concept. Love it.