I've spent the last few days soloing on various classes to get a feel for how viable campaign objectives are for soloers and the tl;dr is: not very. This is obviously just my opinion but I've spoken to several other frequent soloers who generally agree - please share your experiences as well if you've genuinely tried soloing them these past few days.
Soloing has always been a niche part of the game, but there's a not-insignificant amount of players who enjoy it. Eden staff have said in the past that all playstyles should be viable so I'm hoping some discussion can be had about how to improve it for s3 (or at least not make it worse). I've seen it suggested that players should organise solo zones themselves but that doesn't work for several reason:
1) There's no way to communicate it to everyone
2) It generally only attracts a small sub-set of die hards on solo specialist classes, which leads to...
3) Do you want /bow towns? Cost thats how you get /bow towns
Current situation and issues
From what I've seen and been told, solo boxes will be removed and instead soloers should target the minor objectives in campaigns - at the moment this is the supply portals/crates. The rewards for this scale so the theory is larger numbers will be disincentivised from doing them. Over the last few days I've found very few other soloers doing these objectives, its always duos up to 8 mans. The few times I have found other soloers, there's almost always been adds.
There are several causes of this, as far as I can see:
1) The objectives are often right in the middle of three realm BG fights. I gather they're supposed to be a zone away from the major objectives but unfortunately zergs aren't kind enough to stick to those areas. Here's a typical map from the yesterday:
The objectives were usually right in the middle of where the mid BG was fighting.
2) Even if the main BGs are elsewhere, there is a trickle-down displacement effect. FGs avoid zergs, smallman avoid FGs, duos avoid smallman etc. It doesnt matter that minor objectives do not reward them, they will still roam there to avoid larger groups and to find smaller numbers for easy kills.
3) The objectives are too sparse and not rewarding enough. There's only two and every solo/duo will be fighting over them. It's just not worth it for a soloer.
Ideas/Suggestions
Here are some ideas I had for mechanics that could encourage and reward solo gameplay, but without interfering or being detrimental to other playstyles; ranked by level of development required.
No effort: Don't remove solo box quests. These are pretty thematic already with gathering supplies and do a decent job of focusing soloers but without leading to /bow towns (much)
Low effort: Add a campaign objective for "solo kills in <zone>". The zone can change every hour or so, the zone would be in one (or more) of the non-frontline frontiers.
Medium effort: Expand minor objectives to non-frontline frontiers. Although I suspect this would still attract duos trying to escape the zergy frontier and find easy prey.
High effort: Add new objective types targeted at solo. These would take place in non-frontline frontiers. Some ideas for example:
Intel gathering:
Repurpose the treasure chest hunt mechanics, have several of them spawn randomly in a zone and respawn instantly elsewhere when opened
Chests can only be opened while ungrouped and out of combat and rewards 1 intel
Solo fair fights in the zone reward the winner with 1 intel
Losing a fair fight causes you to drop all your intel (or it goes directly to the winner)
Losing a not fair fight does not cause you to lose your intel.
Gaining intel gives a small immediate reward and a larger one when turned in (either to a keep or to a temporary location in the zone)
Rewards scale the more you hand in at once, eg 1 intel might be 200rps but 10 could give 2500. This would give a risk/reward mechanic to hang around longer and not just cooldown camp.
Dying to mobs/guards drops all your intel so you cant take the easy way back. Logging out for more than 5 mins causes them to disappear.
Boats and keep ports are disabled while carrying intel
Recon:
Gain rewards for "inspecting" (ie getting close to) different keeps/towers in a specified enemy non-frontline zone
Gain rewards for killing enemy players who have recently inspected your keeps/towers
Sabotage:
Have several capturable objectives around the zone. Can only be capped by ungrouped players. If contested then solo fair fights contribute towards the capture
Holding the points confers some reward - either in the zone or realmwide. Possibly something like each point held gives +1-2% campaign objective reward globally for your realm. Or somehow modifies your realms keeps or siege abilities. This would help to tie soloers back into the realm war effort.
Lastly, the current campaign reward system does not offer anything for people who do not participate in BG/keep warfare. I would suggest adding things that would appeal to everyone. Some ideas I had:
Recharge Stone/Repair Hammer - Single use item that recharges/repairs your equipment
Temporary cosmetic rewards - Something like the halloween effects for example
Alternative source of Hastener gems
One time use teleport scrolls that drop you randomly in a zone like the old teleports
Short duration XP/crafting boost (account bound)
