Loot from Keep Takes

One of the joys of playing an MMO is that after each patch, you get to see how player behaviour changes and adapts. Players will always find ways to surprise developers, it’s what we do.

And apparently one of the outcomes of the new “more loot for all” regime of three gold bags per keep take is that on some realms, Order and Destruction are deliberately avoiding fighting each other so that they can instead carry on taking and retaking keeps to maximise their loot.

Frankly if you are on one of these realms, you have no one to blame but yourself. If your ‘team’ is doing this, what is stopping you from going and defending your keeps? It only takes a few people (with siege engines) to mount a competent defence. Stop being lame and go fight already! There’s good fun, renown, and xp to be had from Open World RvR and it sounds to me as though the extra loot has certainly done a lot to encourage that.

I’m going to take devil’s advocate though and also note that this is not a major critical issue:

1/ The worst thing that happens is that people get geared up more quickly. There’s no huge benefit to getting the gold loot bag more than once.

2/ It does get people out into Open RvR. The more people out there, the less likely that anyone can stop the feisty ones from provoking fights. It’s why they’re playing the game in the first place.

3/ It does however speak of player frustration at the way Mythic has structured their gear progression. People want the Annihilator gear because of the wards on it which will let them progress to other encounters. And it’s frustrating to get that at the moment, not only because of the paucity of gold bags but because of the inconsistencies of the contribution system.

And on that  note, I cannot disagree more with Regis@Wizards&Wenches who thinks that the wrong people are getting loot on keep takes. When they sort out contribution bonuses so that healing is properly recognised, THEN we can talk about rewarding higher contributions more. If I only heal at a keep take, I come almost bottom and it sucks (note: if I go into a keep take in full INT gear and dps as well as heal, I can do quite well, which isn’t helpful if people really need the healing). Everyone who has helped at all needs a chance to get the loot. If anyone thinks I am going to continue doing keep takes just to see the same people walk off with the loot all the time because they happen to be playing classes or specs that the system favours, they have another think coming.

None of this would matter if Mythic just got rid of their stupid ward system, frankly. They’ve already backed out one change they planned to make to this, and Keen writes about why that was a good thing to do here.