Outpost Rush Suggestions/Improvements

[Eliminator]

Suggestions/Performance Improvement Priorities.

Outpost rush is an enjoyable PvP game mode when everything works correctly. A few changes are needed to bring this game mode to the heights it could get to.

1. The lag is insane. has been since last patch. High end gaming PC, 1gb fibre, doesn’t matter. Lags.

2. Remove the NPC’s, not sure why every MMO thinks it’s a good idea to put NPC mobs within PvP areas, because it isn’t.
   Am also sure if you removed the NPC entities from Outpost Rush, as well as the harvestable materials, the performance may improve. I’m no game dev, but I’m fairly certain less assets/animations needed to be loaded would = Better Performance.

If you really want to keep the mobs in OPR, design an “Arena” or “Battlegrounds” game mode, where people can casually PvP without having to deal with mobs.

The Brute pull is obnoxious. The entire PVE mobs and farming mechanic encourages players to join a PVP game mode, and spend the entire battle farming mats or killing NPC’s, and it has a big impact on PVP as the BRUTE’s and BARONESS change the entire game at times. If you neglect this system, your team could lose. If you have too many PVE players engaging in this instead of pushing onto an Outpost, you could also lose. For example, in a recent game, out entire team moved off to kill the baron, they got the baron to little to no HP, 1 enemy player with a musket landed the last shot and locked the score.
I don’t join a PvP game mode expecting to have to deal with AI controlled entities.

3. Group player icons are AWFUL. How often I spend panning my camera attempting to find a group member, fully believing my group members are not with me, only to find they are standing 4 metres away from me but have no icon above their head, and it always seems to be particular group members, as if there is some delay scuffness going on with your overlay.
   Doesn’t matter how many player nameplates you have active, the icon system is unreliable.
   I wouldn’t even mind if the only ICONS that displayed were my group members, and enemies. The rest of the team is irrelevant in most situations.
   It should simply be: If they don’t have an icon, they are an ALLY that is not in my group.
   If they have a coloured group icon, they are a member of my group.
   If they have a RED PvP icon above their head, they are an enemy.
   Without your scuffed overlay thinking it needs to load more than 5 ally icons at one time, am pretty sure the lesser load would have the system you already have more reliable.

4. Staggering the outposts. You have built this nice Outpost Rush map with some decent locations to battle opponents, and stuck all the objectives slap down the middle of the map, ensuring that the vast majority of the fighting happens in these small areas of the map, making other areas of the map mostly worthless and effecting the games performance.

5. Make enemy kills based on who has dealt the most damage to that enemy within their life time instead of who gets the last hit on them when they are down. The current mechanic ensures you can fight an enemy for their entire life, do 100% of the damage, you down them and then have to wait for the enemies body to fully hit the floor and hope for the best that some musket, staff or bow user that hadn’t previously hit them once doesnt decide to put out 1 light attack on them and steal the kill.

6. There is little/no reward for score for damage caused within the match, but score is awarded to healers for randomly spamming heals at their blob with little to no skill. It can’t be a coincidence that healers are always amongst the highest scoring players in a match, so the score gain must be balanced between all participates right? clearly not.

All in all, to summarise, Outpost Rush is a fun game mode when its not entirely being influenced by a PVE mechanic, or being severely effected by lag. As mentioned above, the Outpost locations could be a little better, but even with just the lag fixing, group icons being better, and a little less PvE, this game mode would truly be one of the better, casual PvP modes I have played within an MMO.

[BananaKing1]

I feel the NPCs were there to encourage the game to be more than a zerg vs zerg fight.

I think the game could be better if there were just 5 or more outposts to encourage smaller skirmishes. As you play you gain battle tokens that you can spend on upgrading your forts and buying supplies. would be nice if players could just buy battlebread and potions at the beginning.

Instead of the NPCs which are there to force PVP players to PVE.

[Eliminator]

I too feel maybe 5 outposts wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Would mean a 5 person group could think about holding onto an objective without fear of an entire 20 man group turning up.

The battle token idea is also pretty good.
I do get that people want to PVE, but you can play the entire game in the open world with PvP turned off just fine… loads of content, you never once have to deal with PvP if you don’t want to.
But in terms of PvP… you either have War’s… which due to the wars being a very particular, set time, its not always viable for a player to attend. Even if you do attend, its mostly entire armies of STRENGTH based players or Healers. Barely any company that is actually capable of taking an area would even allow a DEXTERITY user within their army. There is world PVP, which is virtually non existent, PVE mobs involved as well as huge zergs. So what to do as someone that mainly enjoys PVP and has no desire to kill mindless trash mobs? Outpost rush? oh right… I have to deal with some mindless Brute and PVE mechanics that don’t even require skill, just has obnoxious mechanics designed to disrupt, as the brute runs into the side of the outpost, and then sucks me across the map 20 metres into the side of a wall regardless of whether I was blocking, disrupting an epic fight with another player.

It just feels to me that PvP players seem to always be forced to do PVE, but the moment someone talks about forced PvP people start losing their mind. Forced PvP in the world I don’t think is ever a good move, but a PvP game mode separate from everything that can be played casually by PVP players without feeling forced into PvE really isn’t a huge ask.

[BananaKing1]

I want to pvp, but on my server there is only a 5 hour window to play OPR in which I rarely make. Open world PVP is lacking. It is hard to describe why open world pvp never works, but it lacks any guarantee of skill based PVP.
Wars are cool, but you feel insignificant. when there are so many players it is less about the skill of an individual player and more about what our composition is and whether people can follow orders.

I would like OPR to be solely PVP and try to force skirmishes between small groups of players. I think they could even try something like what eso did and put 3 teams. That way if you stay as 1 zerg you cant attack and defend enough points to win.