This thread is meant to foster positivity, and optimistically point out changes that can be made with the usual 7.1 pvp overhauls. The intent is to focus on the mechanics of Rival Wings themselves rather than any single job's balancing, which is a wider issue that affects Frontlines as well.

Rival Wings: Hidden Gorge

Like the first Rival Wings, it is very easy to snowball a victory in Hidden Gorge. The causes of this issue are a.) the vast, one-sided potency of winning train objectives, b.) the sheer amount of advantages that can be earned, and c.) the resources required simply to counter these advantages is too great.

Say a team wins the main ceruleum tank objective in the middle. Every single alliance can now field a mech. Six mechs is a lot for the losing team (who are greatly deprived of CE themselves because they were also attempting to win the middle) to deal with, and an extreme threat. Significant alliance strength must be diverted to simply dealing with these threats, lowering CE gain and also making it unlikely to have the manpower necessary to contract a mercenary. All the while, the team with six mechs is not under enough pressure where they can't easily regain CE to fuel mechs when the first wave dies.

I believe that either the Brute Justice, the supposed "last resort" you get when your towers are downed, should be buffed to perhaps ignore player Guard and have more HP, or that the potency of the middle objective should be lessened somewhat, to reduce the lopsidedness of winning or losing it.

I also think the map objectives in general are intimidating for newcomers. There are: mammets to push, three different mechas to learn, ceruleum tanks, the middle train, two mercenary spawns, cannons, and towers and a core to destroy. It is generally "busy" and 24 players per team is not really enough to cover even half of these objectives if the other team gains any significant advantage. I think removing the mercenaries and lightly reducing the number of middle trains would reduce the complexity and busyness of the map, and keep it truer to its mecha-focused, lane-pushing identity.

Queuing

Beyond these balance suggestions, there needs to be a bit more incentive to run the map in the first place. There should be a roulette (might as well bring back the original map too since it's easier to understand, just similarly fix/overhaul the middle objective balancing) to expose players to its existence. Rival Wings also offers very few rewards compared to Frontlines, with only a couple titles and mounts for wins, compared to Frontlines' much larger pool of titles, mounts, and glam. Suggestions for new achievements include towers destroyed, kills while riding a mech, and lifetime ceruleum gained, with appropriately thematic rewards.