OPR is basically the main PvP in the game currently, but a decent portion of the games are essentially one-sided stomps that aren’t fun. You can never fix this entirely, but there’s some low hanging fruit to help out:
- Discourage/punish the AFKers
Too many people just stop playing. Some do it the moment they are losing. Some come in to intentionally farm 500 points and leave. Just had a guy in my group farm 500 points around the brute shrine area, then lay prone in a bush on the edge of the map for the next 15 minutes while we lost. That simply should not be possible.
- Raise the requirements to get the important rewards of a chest/gem. At least a 1000.
- Kick AFK players (with no rewards of course) after maybe ~2 minutes.
- Kick non-participating players (players who haven’t gotten any points) after a bit longer, 4-5 minutes.
Someone will always be able to do the minimum and not try, but this way they’d at least need a little effort and to sort-of participate the whole match. Hopefully at that point, most people would just play the game, since they can’t just walk away and collect their rewards.
- Balance healers
I’m not 100% sure, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any logic to who gets thrown on what team. Given the frequent scenario of one side having double the healers of the other. While you don’t queue up a role, a simple check of who has a life staff equipped, and balancing these “probable healers” should reduce the odds of it being lopsided. Yeah people can swap, but most don’t.
After the total number of (active) players, it’s the number of healers that causes the most lopsided games. If it’s a lot more likely both sides will have similar amounts, it’s a lot more likely the game will be good.
20 man teams aren’t quite enough to let randomness even everything out. I’d say about 1/3rd of my OPR games are… let’s say low quality. It’s particularly annoying when teammates are intentionally causing the problem, and being rewarded for it.