Castle Wars

[The underdog]

If you have any feedback, feel free to let us know! This is all subject to change, but hopefully a step in the right direction.

Alright, I don't really care too much about this minigame since I already have everything I'd want from it but I think the last update on it was really bad.
I didn't want to be wasting my time here, but since nobody else seems to care...

So you changed the minigame, you want to make the minigame more active and want players to actually play the minigame like they should. Great idea, however the way you try to achieve this with these updates has in my eyes the opposite effect. Why do players play the minigame? They want CW armor, any other reason? no. Ok you take away the only reason players do the minigame, but they still have to charge it. Ok you don't want the cw set, you have no reason to play, you never had, this should be addressed. None of your updates gave players that don't care for the CW set (95% of the playerbase) a reason to play the minigame still.

Ok you added the set to the pkp store, now even if you want the set you only play minigame to charge it. You lose charges on death so more players with a set need to play the minigame. The ONLY reason for them to play the minigame is to charge. How to charge? By being in combat inside the minigame. So only players that already have a set play, thus they don't need cw tickets thus they only are in combat and aren't even trying to win. Boosting wars is what it is now. "But I'm trying to kill the opponent players" yeah "But i'm trying to cap their flag" is what it was before. No reason to try to win and no reason to even cap flags as it doesn't contribute enough to charge. "The Hybrid equipment is also primarily charged by combat, which should stop flag running."

94k points for a cw set? LOL "So don't expect everyone running around in Hybrid equipment anytime soon." Took a week for everyone to run around in cw sets, ppl already had pkp and you make that amount of pkp in 3 days. Instead of the 3 years of castle wars others had to endure. You made the set nearly tradable yet you removed the point of doing the minigame to obtain it. CW still the fastest way to obtain the set? Lmfao, next time do some maths or have it discussed in the community before dropping something like this. My napkin maths shows that even during cw event you're barely touching the pkp/hr gain that will get you that many cw tix. You can farm pkp at ANY time, you can't play the minigame at any time. Only the players with their EZZZZ new sets are now playing *cough boosting cough* the minigame. Soon as those are charged it's over, nobody has any reason to play the minigame anymore
Except for that bigbrain that died with it a couple times and is now the only person in the next month to want to play the minigame, gl to that person.

Sidepoint to one of the reasons to bringing it to pkp store: Increase the need for pkp points in the late game. I don't feel this was a major problem, I'm running 310k pkp as we speak but I could choose to convert that to straight cash easily. This issue could be tackled in a lot of different ways anyhow even if it's just special untradeable cosmetics that cost a truckload. 1 mil points for a statue with your name on it ingame lmfaoo, the possibilities are endless.

The good: penalty for dying with it, that stuff was really strong so you should pay for dying with it

Alright, so what do I think should happen now? Most of the damage is already done by dropping this huge overhaul out of the blue.
My idea to make CW better the past years was to make cw tickets tradable and fix major cw bugs.

Tradable tickets will/would've hit 2 birds with one stone.
1. Normal players, who don't give a crap about cw armor or the other rewards have a reason to play: CW tix are worth A TON sell them!
2. You actually want to win the minigame, because you want the tickets. Charging is not the highest priority.
CW ticket rewards might need to be balanced yes, but a huge overhaul was badddddd.

Fix the bugs
Holy crap there's some annoying bugs still, quite a few have to do with pathing. We should get to fixing those, this should have been a priority in reviving the minigame but unfortunately damage control of last update is more important now.

Add something new, as I said I don't have a reason to play the minigame. Just add something new and WORTH. It'll be worth if the minigame is good

Idk how to undo the damage from the sets already being sold cheap for a couple pkp, if it's outright removed again would be the best imo that opens up the ability for proper rebalancing the minigame. Remove them asap, overnight I don't mind. People can hoard them now if they want but if nothing changes they're stuck with useless tickets

What I have in mind is to remove the charging mechanic as it is, you now charge with cw tickets. This removes the desire to play the minigame different to other players. Just staying in combat vs capping flags vs doing whatever etc. Everyone will have the same objective: Obtain as many tickets as possible, which the minigame should be rebalanced for. I don't think it was that bad, running flags was kind of a problem yeah but the current situation is a lot worse imo.

Discuss! Or not give a crap and let the minigame die while everyone has a 1 week CW set I'll deal with it either way.

[Akuizm]

Before this update I had around 10 cw tickets. Today I have almost completed my cw sets and only needing 2 more pieces. Cw sets are no where near how hard they used to be to obtain. It's true that 95% of the playerbase don't care for the sets at all because there is no need to when they aren't that far in to the game yet. So far the minigame will only serve as a charging station and nothing else since it's faster to obtain the sets through only pkp. Once people finish charging the minigame will go back to only the same few people farming. I think the tradeable tickets could work because it will bring players who don't have any of the pieces yet. It's just so hard to balance because you can't tell what will happen until it actually happens.

[Iron adam]

Holy crap there's some annoying bugs still, quite a few have to do with pathing. We should get to fixing those, this should have been a priority in reviving the minigame but unfortunately damage control of last update is more important now.

pathing is perfect.

here are my thoughts on cwars: viewtopic.php?f=73&t=79907
i don't care to do anymore thinkings on it

[Abood172]

hi

[Thoby]

Alright, since this is primarily aimed at me, I guess I'll go ahead and respond:

So you changed the minigame, you want to make the minigame more active and want players to actually play the minigame like they should. Great idea, however the way you try to achieve this with these updates has in my eyes the opposite effect. Why do players play the minigame? They want CW armor, any other reason? no. Ok you take away the only reason players do the minigame, but they still have to charge it. Ok you don't want the cw set, you have no reason to play, you never had, this should be addressed. None of your updates gave players that don't care for the CW set (95% of the playerbase) a reason to play the minigame still.

The reason we aimed it at this is because there was HEAVY ABUSE in the Castle Wars minigame. Anyone playing before the update will recognize that most sets obtained were obtained through boosting, and games were played improperly (99% flag running). There were even discussions on making boosting outright legal? It was bad. Our first fix was to remove the effectiveness of flag running, and made gaining tickets based on actually playing and winning.

Ok you added the set to the pkp store, now even if you want the set you only play minigame to charge it. You lose charges on death so more players with a set need to play the minigame. The ONLY reason for them to play the minigame is to charge. How to charge? By being in combat inside the minigame. So only players that already have a set play, thus they don't need cw tickets thus they only are in combat and aren't even trying to win. Boosting wars is what it is now. "But I'm trying to kill the opponent players" yeah "But i'm trying to cap their flag" is what it was before. No reason to try to win and no reason to even cap flags as it doesn't contribute enough to charge. "The Hybrid equipment is also primarily charged by combat, which should stop flag running."

I might need to rephrase, since people now think that AFKing combat is the best source of charges. Gaining tickets (so playing, winning, scoring, etc) is DIRECTLY correlated to charging the equipment. As a matter of fact, code-wise they're the exact same function. So playing the minigame is the best source of tickets AND charges, not just AFKing in combat or whatever (which is way way way slower). Sorry for the confusion on this, I should've said "The Hybrid equipment is also primarily charged by playing the minigame, which should stop flag running." I was mostly aiming at the ineffectiveness of flag running.

94k points for a cw set? LOL "So don't expect everyone running around in Hybrid equipment anytime soon." Took a week for everyone to run around in cw sets, ppl already had pkp and you make that amount of pkp in 3 days. Instead of the 3 years of castle wars others had to endure.

There were exactly 42 players that had over 94k PkHonor Points upon release. Keep in mind, this has been saved up over years and years of playing (some of these 42 players already had the sets, including you). These points were never going to be spend otherwise. It was generally accepted that PkHonor Points became useless after obtaining the Chaotics and burning through a few PvP equipment sets. This update changed that and provided A LOT more incentive to farm the WildyWyrm, kill Revenants, and hoard PkHonor points. It's easy to only look at the issue from your perspective, but for newer players- this actually added an entirely new reason to collect PkHonor points after their first few Chaotics.

You made the set nearly tradable yet you removed the point of doing the minigame to obtain it.

And that's partly the beauty of it. Just glimpsing at the logs will show that there now are way more Chaotics being traded than a few months before. There's actually demand for PkHonor points now. Newer players are able to sell their Chaotics for more and wealth is being distributed. This demand will likely further increase in the months to come since the supply (based on years of point hoarding) will dimish. Besides, dying with PkHonor point items will lower the percentage return- since you don't get the full amount of points upon death. Also a neat point sink.

CW still the fastest way to obtain the set? Lmfao, next time do some maths or have it discussed in the community before dropping something like this. My napkin maths shows that even during cw event you're barely touching the pkp/hr gain that will get you that many cw tix. You can farm pkp at ANY time, you can't play the minigame at any time. Only the players with their EZZZZ new sets are now playing *cough boosting cough* the minigame.

It's now about 12 tickets per regular game = 240 PkP per 15 min = 960 PkP per hour.
24 tickets per event game = 480 PkP per 15 min = 1.920 PkP per hour.

To me that doesn't seem to be an easily achievable amount per hour. We could've made the tickets more expensive, but this seemed like a good price.
Besides, I'd honestly like players to enjoy grinding their way to the CW equipment with diversified gameplay, instead of solely having to wait a week for a specific moment where they can play the minigame. But hey, that's just my personal opinion.

Soon as those are charged it's over, nobody has any reason to play the minigame anymore
Except for that bigbrain that died with it a couple times and is now the only person in the next month to want to play the minigame, gl to that person.

Well, true, but that's the same as it was before. Players that had the equipment didn't have any reason to play, besides charging. I think adding the death mechanic was a positive addition, since now there atleast is a more frequent reason to head into the minigame.

Sidepoint to one of the reasons to bringing it to pkp store: Increase the need for pkp points in the late game. I don't feel this was a major problem, I'm running 310k pkp as we speak but I could choose to convert that to straight cash easily. This issue could be tackled in a lot of different ways anyhow even if it's just special untradeable cosmetics that cost a truckload. 1 mil points for a statue with your name on it ingame lmfaoo, the possibilities are endless.

Like I mentioned before, this was also one of the reasons. Killing two birds with one stone; the demand will increase and people will finally be able to burn through their saved PkHonor points. Adding some special untradeable cosmetic would not really spike any interest, except for just a selected few. But these equipment sets did.

Tradable tickets will/would've hit 2 birds with one stone.
1. Normal players, who don't give a crap about cw armor or the other rewards have a reason to play: CW tix are worth A TON sell them!

I agree that tradeable tickets would've been an interesting alternative, and it was certainly something I took into consideration. But there's just too many problems with it. The entire game would be ruled by gold, and you'd get weird situations because of it. Asides, why would players with more cash even bother playing the minigame? They could just buy the tickets on the Grand Exchange from others. Lastly, players would be more tempted to find ways of getting more accounts into the minigame and just afking on them. The resulted tickets could be traded to their main anyways, so why not try to get another few accounts in. Atleast in the current situation there is no incentive to do something like that.

2. You actually want to win the minigame, because you want the tickets. Charging is not the highest priority.
CW ticket rewards might need to be balanced yes, but a huge overhaul was badddddd.

I think this argument is invalidated because of what I said earlier; gaining tickets = gaining charges. So playing and winning the minigame should be the highest priority nonetheless.

Fix the bugs
Holy crap there's some annoying bugs still, quite a few have to do with pathing. We should get to fixing those, this should have been a priority in reviving the minigame but unfortunately damage control of last update is more important now.

I fully agree that the bugs should be fixed and that those impact the play-ability of the minigame. It's easier said than done though. I'd have hoped to have fixed some of the pathing bugs already, but I still hear about some problems. So might be worth more attention.

Add something new, as I said I don't have a reason to play the minigame. Just add something new and WORTH. It'll be worth if the minigame is good

I loved Adam's suggestion on it. Kinda sucks that the update was already wrapped up and forwarded when I read his post. Might be worth revisiting it though. I'd be a fan of expanding on the rewards a little more.

Idk how to undo the damage from the sets already being sold cheap for a couple pkp, if it's outright removed again would be the best imo that opens up the ability for proper rebalancing the minigame. Remove them asap, overnight I don't mind. People can hoard them now if they want but if nothing changes they're stuck with useless tickets

I don't see a point in removing them from the PkHonor Point store. We've seen how dead the minigame was before, and it's arguably more active now. We cannot make the tickets tradeable, since that will just result in ruining the minigame even more. More players now enjoy armour sets that were previously solely locked behind a minigame that was heavily boosted. There's a higher demand for PkHonor Points now, and players finally have a reason to collect the points.

Locking end-game pieces of content behind a periodically played minigame is just bad design in my opinion. The minigame lacks general player interest, and it's arguably not because of the rewards (otherwise it would've been more active before). Maybe lower-priced rewards would've fixed this though, like Adam suggested. But, like Akuizm rightfully said, it's just hard to balance because you can't tell what will happen until it actually happens.

What I have in mind is to remove the charging mechanic as it is, you now charge with cw tickets. This removes the desire to play the minigame different to other players. Just staying in combat vs capping flags vs doing whatever etc. Everyone will have the same objective: Obtain as many tickets as possible, which the minigame should be rebalanced for. I don't think it was that bad, running flags was kind of a problem yeah but the current situation is a lot worse imo.

Like we established, gaining tickets = gaining charges, so removing charges would entirely remove any reason to play past gaining the rewards. The running flags issue might have been bigger than you remember, it was an ongoing debate for several weeks. Asides, players didn't even want to play the minigame anymore, because it was basically just an elaborate Runecrafting skill.

I personally don't really see how the current situation is any worse. If the general public think that AFKing combat is the way to go, lets inform them of the actual mechanics. I might be at fault for that one, but if that's impacting the playability of the minigame we should correct that.

Discuss! Or not give a crap and let the minigame die while everyone has a 1 week CW set I'll deal with it either way.

At the end of the day I just try to do the thing that seemed best. It was a well-thought out decision though, taking into consideration a lot of different variables. I've discussed the issue with a lot of different players, got critique and support from several different sides, and I made the final call.

If players agree that the price per ticket is too low, or the minigame doesn't rewards enough tickets, we can certainly look into that. I am not eager to give up on the minigame or whatever, and I would love to continue to improve it in the future.

[The underdog]

Yeah I'm personally not too bothered by it but it's just what I've seen in the couple cw games I played, nobody else seems to have an issue with it so it's whatever. I just think the change was too radical, could've put it in twice the price and see how it develops. Big risky change for in my eyes just a really short term boost in cw games that won't last long.

You'll get that amount of pkp by wyrming, thing is you can always do it vs the once a week cw event. The difference in the difficulty obtaining a set is enormous and I don't think this was the best way to do it. Maybe it doesn't matter too much that everyone has an easy set since so far I can see people don't actually use it much.

[Iron blix]

However many arguments pro or con stand here, the idea behind it is still motivation. Heck I've even asked the cc I'm in if they wanted to schedule runs so more people could play. There's an incentive now to go out there and work for the sets, be it in or out of the minigame, and use them to our fancy.

Attracting more players to this minigame, independent of how it was or is activity-wise, is a win in my eyes.

[Thierryu1]

Free post count

[The underdog]

I still can't get people to play this minigame, apparently everyone quickly charged their ez sets already in the first week. Should receive a follow up update with incentive for average players. Idk why nobody cares about these threads fuck all replies, same for my magic accuracy in pvp stuff. Complaining ingame but ignoring the threads.

[Rapsey]

At the risk of defying our development god, I'm not a fan of the PKP thing and kinda wish I had known about it before I read it in the news post. Of course now that so many people have the sets it's too late to undo it.

Very infsightful post though, tyvm for taking the time to write it.