Constructive Feedback for Rival Wings

[DivusJulius]

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.

[saucyshortcake]

rather than only having a frontline roulette, they should have a general pvp roulette, that rotates between game modes per day, not a map per day.

[Mistress_Irika]

I can probably agree with the brute justice ignoring guard. Heck, maybe it can be a guard buster on top of this (lol). Everything else I'll disagree with.

I haven't played at all this expansion. Yet based off of what I'm reading I can pretty much guess that everyone is diverting bodies towards the middle just to get the train that has the ce supplies, especially in the beginning of the game. This is equivalent to teams rushing dragon the moment they spawn in League of Legends. Whoever loses gets further behind from dying and losing the dragon on top of this. Same thing with Rival Wings. You can lose the huge team fight mid, especially the 50% damage buff active for those who's in the zone grabbing train, respawn, and having to deal with them for a second time with Soaring High stacks between 4 and 10 after 2 to 3 minutes. Nerfing the ce tanks isn't going to do anything as long as everyone is putting a huge value on the train. One team will still walk out with a ton of Soaring High stacks. If you see ahead of time that you're not going to be able to capture mid you're better off either grabbing the small tanks or going as a group to kill the minions. It's 10 for a small tank and 20 if your party manages to kill the minion alone. It's possible get 50 before the first train arrives.

Maybe some things needs a nerf here and there, but for the most part the mode is working as intended like a MOBA. If you die then that person gets stronger. If they've gotten too many kills then the other side is just going to get ran over if they don't have the stacks to combat this. Chasers and Brutes is your friend and your way of catching up. if you're not dealing with a mech focus the big group that doesn't have any chasers or brutes covering them. They'll either back up or feed your team stacks.

If you are going to suggest to take the mercenaries out then I hope you have a suggestion as far as the cave goes. The top balcony can still be used for range players to snipe folks from higher. There will be 0 reason to go in the cave at all.

I can't believe I'm suggesting this, but if most aren't willing to adapt I wonder if towers and core should start attacking players to help with defending from a losing side...