PvE Development and Roadmap - March 2024

[zulnam]

If you are updating public quests in general, can you please:

- add emblem rewards for the influence unlocks
- leave only gear that is not occupying a set item slot for the specific level

I have never understood in this game the reason for any gear item, blue or purple, that is meant to be used in the place of a set item. And I have never seen anyone use it unless it is a last resort (leveling/fresh 40 with nothing better to wear).

It would be much better and rewarding to have emblem rewards.

Perhaps the vendors for the emblems could be expanded to also sell other items for these similar to crest vendors (weapons, offhands etc.)

[Reivren27]

I have a question: what prevented you from immediately adding weapons from city dungeons?

[bw10]

Any ETA on city dung weapons? This/next weekend maybe?

[Hazmy]

Any ETA on city dung weapons? This/next weekend maybe?

Hopefully the next update!

[Dobzse]

I really enjoyed reading all the effort that is put being put into the PvE roadmap. Thank you!

I would love to hear about if group threat management is being looked at. Since the ability rework tanks holding agroo and threat management is being pretty chaotic during PvE encounters. Is this something that is also in the focus?

[trh382]

A few Brainstorming ideas I had

Strategies for Making PVE More Relevant in Warhammer: Return of Reckoning

General Approach

Spoiler:

MMO players tend to do content based on the gearing and gold incentives. RoR currently has a lot of very fun and interesting casual PvE content, but players almost never do it because the gold and gear rewards are limited compared to Scenarios, Open RvR, City, and Ranked. By improving the rewards for PvE, you can revitalize the population of players doing that content. This will have a spiral effect as the availability of PvE groups will also increase participation.

Rewards for PvE should not crowd out PvP or make it irrelevant. Instead they should provide alternative gearing paths, supplemental PvP related rewards support, and opportunities to make gold and generate consumables for PvP. PVE rewards should also introduce players to all the gearing and consumable decision making parts of the game: which pots to use and when, how to choose between gear, and how to choose talismans.

Sub 40 PvE should help new players prepare for the shock of t4 scs and non bolstered RvR by providing gear and resources that will improve their characters when they hit that point and strengthen their characters in SCs so that min maxed sc mid tier alts feel less oppressive.

There are 5 areas for rewards improvement in PvE. I have focused my suggestions on using existing mechanics so as to reduce the need for any new coding.
1. Gunbad PQ Bags
2. Chap 22 PQ rewards
3. Chapter 1-21 PQ Bags
4. PQ Influence Rewards
5. Collective PVE rewards through Tome Unlocks

Areas not covered:

• BoE greens/blues/purples - these are mostly salvaging fodder, but I think that is okay

• Scavenging - this needs a lot of improvement. Most scavenging is not rewarding because the war token blue frags crowd out the value of the rewards. I have no good ideas here as of yet.

• Butchering - this could use improvement, but it is in an overall solid state

• Cultivating - this needs a full rework because purple seeds are a huge issue due to dissappearing bug + economic disruption. Purple seeds are also basically designed to cause drama and frustration in instance groups because they drop for the whole group, are BoP but only used by some, and are so rare that the misuse or loss of one is a huge frustration. Cultivating also reduces frames in RvR so the profession is fundamentally a bit toxic and a trap for new players. I have an idea for a complete fix, but its a smaller problem and probably a bigger coding project.

• Salvaging - I think this works well now

• Talisman Making - I think this needs a rework as well, but the issues are very minor and low priority imo

• Apothecary - this profession functions really well, I cant think of any major changes I would recommend

• Quest rewards - these need an update but this is already underway

1. Gunbad PQ Bags

Spoiler:

Gunbad PQ bags are confusing to new players. They contain irrelevant rewards that one should never take and items that the purpose of is not clear. They also treat classes unequally because 2H vendor for x2 and so the gunbad gold rewards vary a lot by class. Also, because of the clunky PQ bag interface, having more than 3 items in a PQ bag is always undesirable since you have to scroll.

Finally the blue rings are useless for some classes and good for others. It would be helpful to make them useful to all classes / specs in order to help people jumpstart their level 40scs/rvr.

Suggested PQ bag fix:

Gold Bags
A piece of redeye
15g
A purple weapon

Purple Bags
10g
A purple weapon
One of the Blue Rings

Blue Bags
5g
A box of liniments
One of the Blue Rings

The above bag options would provide 3 choices which are all valid in certain situations. Furthermore the situations are intuitive - take what you need / will use and take the gold otherwise. Much easier to follow for new players who we want to be doing gunbad to launch them into level 40 PvP.

Reliable straight gold options from bags also incentives tanks to help newer players with GB since their rewards are more reliable / better with the straight gold option compared to the old 1h/shield 4.82g spam.

Blue Ring fix: Add healing rings for RP/Zeal, tanking/dps rings for classes/specs that dont have them.

2. Chap 22 PQ rewards

Spoiler:

Problem: Healers get much worse rewards in Chap 22 because of how contribution works. This makes chap 22 runs harder to fill and fire, as well as just less fair.

Solution: remove white bags and make green bags go down to x24. This way the full warband is guaranteed the talisman box.

Like with GB, Bags should also be rationalized with irrelevant rewards removed.

Gold bag
Head/Helm/Chest of Onslaught
Gloves/Boots of Onslaught
Talisman Box

Purple Bag
Gloves/Boots of Onslaught
Talisman Box

Blue Bag / Green Bag
Talisman Box - there is no reason to take anything else.

3. Chap 1-21 PQ Bag Rewards

Spoiler:

The only relevant rewards currently are war tokens and set pieces - everything else is strictly worse.

Simple fix:

Remove everything except war tokens and set pieces. Downside is that this is boring.

Note: as a general rule, profession stuff is so easy to get that putting profession mats in PQ bags like low level seeds, fragments, etc does not seem worthwhile. You could try putting A LOT in them, but profession stuff is already so inexpensive and it would crowd out scav/butch/salv/cult as useful professions. I think the better solution is focusing on niche gear options.

Outline for a Better Fix:

Each tier should provide access to a tier appropriate set of off items to supplement the pvp or pve tier set:
x3 set rings with a small bonus for the 3 piece set (eg 1% crit, 1% crit reduction etc)
Ring A) slightly higher level, higher stats (eg level 8, 28, 34)
Ring B) mid level, mid stats (eg level 5, 25, 33)
Ring C) lower level, lower stats (eg level 2, 22, 32)
Weapon in set with cloak+belt
Belt in set with weapon+cloak
Cloak in set with weapon+belt

Sewers provides all of these slots in t2. Missing areas are t1/3/4. Could add t2 as well for completeness, but I would focus on other tiers first.

My understanding is that PQ bags provide roughly the same gear within a zone, its just the distribution bag quality that changes pq to pq.

Outline for a PQ Bag system
note: keep all war token numbers the same for bag OR remove war tokens from bag and provide scaling war token bonus per contribution for completing the PQ that gets automatically received similar to a zone lock crest reward

Gold Bag
Tier Set Weapon
Ward set piece head/chest/shoulders - as currently functions
Set Ring A

Purple Bag
Tier Cape
Set Ring A or B
Ward Set Piece gloves/boots

Blue bag
Tier Cape
Set Ring B
50s / 2g / 3g for tier 1/2/4

Green Bag
Tier Belt
Set Ring B or C
50s

White Bag
Set Ring C
50s

4. Chapter 1-21 Influence Rewards

Spoiler:

Most chapter influence rewards are:
tier 1: useless green pots
tier 2: useless green item
tier 3: useless blue item with occasional useful blue weapon

Restructure the influence rewards to be:

tier 1: x5 Useful blue potions
By providing players with a mix of stat/armor/absorb/healing/restoration/ap potions during pve questing, the game can better encourage people to incorporate pot usage into their game play - a core skill for level 40 PVP.

tier 2: Could be a few things: Talismans / 25% influence bonus for 1 hour pot / War Tokens
All of these things are useful and not overpowered to give from t2 influence - makes it much more worthwhile than the current reward.

tier 3: Purple quality Weapon / Jewelry / Belt / Cape
By providing slightly stronger Purple quality offslot gear from the influence, players can choose between building blue quality offsets from the PQ bags, purple quality solo pieces from the influence rewards, or mixing and matching. By providing more powerful and varied gearing options from PVE where casual/first time players are likely to level - the game encourages players to start making more stat and gearing decisions before they get to 40 and it powers up the more casual portions of the playerbase to better balance mid tier scs against alts who know how to minmax a character on the way to 40.

5. Rewards from PVE Tome Unlocks

Spoiler:

Goal: give relevant but not overwhelming completionist rewards

• Tome unlock for completeing 500 quests: 100 War Crests

• Tome unlock for completing 1500 quests: 500 War Crests

• Tome unlock for completing the influence in each full War Story chapters 1-22: 200 War Crests each (600 total for all 3)

• Tome unlock for completing all of the PQs in a war story (clearing the ??? from each stage in each PQ in the entire war story) - rewards pocket item - choice of 1% crit, 1% magic crit, 1% heal crit, 1% reduction in change to be crit. Provide follow up repeatable quest for 50 RvR kills so that you dont get spammed with complaints if someone loses theirs (similar to keg follow up). Adding gearing choice in pocket items adds some variety and these numbers are low.

This is not time efficient compared to just doing PvP, but it adds some useful completionist bonuses and makes use of the quite interesting and well done PQ content.