Degradation of average player skill: why the Scenario system rework is urgently needed

[Nekkma]

The game in general has turned into a farming sim. In my opinion, the largest and most pressing issue is the lack of any meaningful campaign. Winning does not matter and as there is nothing to win we instead have a "bodycount" mindset as a proxy for actuall war goals.

I disagree that it is a skill or organization issue. Well known guilds chase and dismount to kill soloers. Back on live you would have been kicked from the wb if you did something stupid like that.

The meme-answer is that we need a campaign and realmpride. This server always had the feel of late state live servers which lacked both of those btw. Live, however, used to have it so the realms and guilds had structured themselves in that previous environment and some of that persisted even after the campaing stopped to matter.

[Aluviya]

I have to say, as one of the first-minute veterans on this server (and I doubt I’m alone here), it’s incredibly frustrating how much development effort has gone into large-scale adjustments while repeated player feedback has been brushed aside.

The current direction feels like someone decided that “small scale” is the big no-no, while insisting ORvR is the core game—which, in my opinion, has been the wrong approach from the very start. The result? ORvR has gradually devolved into little more than a zergfest, with certain classes far too rewarding despite offering nearly one-button gameplay. Meanwhile, SC’s have been left completely neglected. For a year and a half now I’ve been reading about a “new scenario queueing system” supposedly in the works, yet nothing ever materializes—despite SC’s being in desperate need of an overhaul to make them meaningful for both veterans and newcomers alike.

What makes this even more frustrating is the sudden about-face from parts of the community. Many of the same voices—like Gersy—who are now loudly insisting that scenarios must be saved were previously dismissing small-scale as irrelevant (while sitting on the balance feedback team, no less, and even pushing that stance to other community members. You’ll have to forgive me for the jab, but it’s unavoidable viewtopic.php?p=568911#p568865
]). The irony is that scenarios have always been where the game’s core imbalances are exposed most clearly—and those same imbalances only grow worse when magnified in ORvR. And while many classes have been “rebalanced,” they’ve barely had any chance to be tested in proper small-scale fights—because there are literally none. It even took months to fix something as obvious as stacking armor debuffs from WL and WP, simply because people either didn’t notice or chose to ignore it.

And let’s be honest: a new queueing system alone will never “save” scenarios. Their health is directly tied to overall class balance and to a well-designed system—not the random mess we currently have where some scenarios feature cannons, others guards, and others barriers. Or take the so-called “comeback buff” in scenario warcamps, which has been left in the game for ages despite being a completely wrong approach. This is a cascading problem—it requires coordination between multiple teams, a consistent design philosophy, and leadership that actually recognizes the importance of scenarios to the core game.

To make matters worse, even within the balance team, other feedback members have voiced the same concern: they’re not being heard. Instead, it feels like a few individuals are pushing their own ideas while resisting outside input. From my perspective, the whole process feels completely stuck—both organizationally and in terms of community perspective. And another question that remains is whether this forum can ever truly be representative of the “community’s” ideas. It’s always the same handful of players posting here, pushing their own perspectives. Parts of the community treat this like a solo game, constantly whining on the forums to push their own vision of “small scale” balance for specific classes. On the other side, too many players seem satisfied as long as something new gets added—whether it’s a class or archetype change—without questioning the actual quality of those updates or their long-term impact on the game.

The result? Small but significant inconsistencies: some classes still follow Mythic’s old design rules, while others ignore them entirely—like the new Shaman instant heal, which outperforms a casted single-target heal. Or the “ninja” changes to ranked and group ranked that only degraded those modes instead of improving them, all while being presented as if they were aligned with the community’s needs. Meanwhile, I keep reading complaints about “premades”—which simply means players organizing and socializing to overcome the odds—while in reality we have scenarios full of people treating them like PvE content, never engaging in anything remotely competitive. Sadly, this has become the overall sentiment within this supposed PvP game. On top of that, there are far too many people not really playing, yet loudly offering their “opinions” on how it should be shaped—and expecting everything to be freely rewarded, without having to organize themselves as in other MMOs to overcome challenges (brings us back the the argument if a forum is really representative for the active player base). Which also raises the question: why do we even need a queueing system? The truth is, certain organized groups would rather farm pugs than actually enjoy real PvP and the game is giving 0 incentives to join the counterside to "balance other than scenario queues being dead.

At this point, I can’t help but feel the team handling these changes either lacks the resources or needs stronger direction. And the irony couldn’t be clearer: we’ve had plenty of polished PvE updates, yet SC’s—a core pillar of PvP—have been left to rot. Honestly, I’ve reached the stage where I rarely bother giving feedback anymore (even now questioning why I’m posting this)—because every time we do, we’re simply written off as being “overly critical.”

[Sever1n]

Honestly, I’ve reached the stage where I rarely bother giving feedback anymore (even now questioning why I’m posting this)

Welcome to club.

[Martok]

What makes this even more frustrating is the sudden about-face from parts of the community. Many of the same voices—like Gersy—who are now loudly insisting that scenarios must be saved were previously dismissing small-scale as irrelevant (while sitting on the balance feedback team, no less, and even pushing that stance to other community members. You’ll have to forgive me for the jab, but it’s unavoidable

Was not previously aware of this connection, but it does explain much.

The remainder of your post was well stated and accurate. SC's have been left to rot.

[shoelessHN]

Of course it is a premade, he made the group before queueing.. IE PREMADE :0 (edit) you are saying he shouldn't have to fight Advar, yet its ok to fight newbs solo queuing with 0 heals etc.

If players that were really looking for 6v6 fights have truly left the game, then they didn't really want a fight. 6v6 fights are easily scheduled in GvG ranked. No season needed last I checked. They leave because they don't really want competition.

Hazmy, was stating how they went undefeated. Is that fun? Nope its not, neither is going winless. That's the problem. Why do you think group ranked is dead? It's not because of lack of skill. It's cuz they are afraid of getting beat by another, so they go beat up solo / pugs / chan5 groups and get bored and say how great they are.

This is not a dig at hazmy or anyone else in particular, it's a general observation. how often does the ranked group queue fire off? that is your answer to how I came up with " premade group never fight each other", you can find them farming pugs / solos.


I would honestly like to see more variation in queue systems.

1v1
2v2
3v3
6v6
12v12
24v24

Everything else should fit into a solo queue that is 2/2/2 up to 6/12/18/24 groups

The system is designed to reward farming pugs over an even match. Look at any recent event, kills over everything else is all that matters.

Look at the last 10 group ranked matches, 4 to 1, 4 to 0, 2 to 0, etc. Good luck farming an event doing that.

[Fey]

+1 Aluviya

We love this game.

[kleinbuchstabe]

I have to say, as one of the first-minute veterans on this server (and I doubt I’m alone here), it’s incredibly frustrating how much development effort has gone into large-scale adjustments while repeated player feedback has been brushed aside.

Spoiler:

The current direction feels like someone decided that “small scale” is the big no-no, while insisting ORvR is the core game—which, in my opinion, has been the wrong approach from the very start. The result? ORvR has gradually devolved into little more than a zergfest, with certain classes far too rewarding despite offering nearly one-button gameplay. Meanwhile, SC’s have been left completely neglected. For a year and a half now I’ve been reading about a “new scenario queueing system” supposedly in the works, yet nothing ever materializes—despite SC’s being in desperate need of an overhaul to make them meaningful for both veterans and newcomers alike.

What makes this even more frustrating is the sudden about-face from parts of the community. Many of the same voices—like Gersy—who are now loudly insisting that scenarios must be saved were previously dismissing small-scale as irrelevant (while sitting on the balance feedback team, no less, and even pushing that stance to other community members. You’ll have to forgive me for the jab, but it’s unavoidable viewtopic.php?p=568911#p568865
]). The irony is that scenarios have always been where the game’s core imbalances are exposed most clearly—and those same imbalances only grow worse when magnified in ORvR. And while many classes have been “rebalanced,” they’ve barely had any chance to be tested in proper small-scale fights—because there are literally none. It even took months to fix something as obvious as stacking armor debuffs from WL and WP, simply because people either didn’t notice or chose to ignore it.

And let’s be honest: a new queueing system alone will never “save” scenarios. Their health is directly tied to overall class balance and to a well-designed system—not the random mess we currently have where some scenarios feature cannons, others guards, and others barriers. Or take the so-called “comeback buff” in scenario warcamps, which has been left in the game for ages despite being a completely wrong approach. This is a cascading problem—it requires coordination between multiple teams, a consistent design philosophy, and leadership that actually recognizes the importance of scenarios to the core game.

To make matters worse, even within the balance team, other feedback members have voiced the same concern: they’re not being heard. Instead, it feels like a few individuals are pushing their own ideas while resisting outside input. From my perspective, the whole process feels completely stuck—both organizationally and in terms of community perspective. And another question that remains is whether this forum can ever truly be representative of the “community’s” ideas. It’s always the same handful of players posting here, pushing their own perspectives. Parts of the community treat this like a solo game, constantly whining on the forums to push their own vision of “small scale” balance for specific classes. On the other side, too many players seem satisfied as long as something new gets added—whether it’s a class or archetype change—without questioning the actual quality of those updates or their long-term impact on the game.

The result? Small but significant inconsistencies: some classes still follow Mythic’s old design rules, while others ignore them entirely—like the new Shaman instant heal, which outperforms a casted single-target heal. Or the “ninja” changes to ranked and group ranked that only degraded those modes instead of improving them, all while being presented as if they were aligned with the community’s needs. Meanwhile, I keep reading complaints about “premades”—which simply means players organizing and socializing to overcome the odds—while in reality we have scenarios full of people treating them like PvE content, never engaging in anything remotely competitive. Sadly, this has become the overall sentiment within this supposed PvP game. On top of that, there are far too many people not really playing, yet loudly offering their “opinions” on how it should be shaped—and expecting everything to be freely rewarded, without having to organize themselves as in other MMOs to overcome challenges (brings us back the the argument if a forum is really representative for the active player base). Which also raises the question: why do we even need a queueing system? The truth is, certain organized groups would rather farm pugs than actually enjoy real PvP and the game is giving 0 incentives to join the counterside to "balance other than scenario queues being dead.

At this point, I can’t help but feel the team handling these changes either lacks the resources or needs stronger direction. And the irony couldn’t be clearer: we’ve had plenty of polished PvE updates, yet SC’s—a core pillar of PvP—have been left to rot. Honestly, I’ve reached the stage where I rarely bother giving feedback anymore (even now questioning why I’m posting this)—because every time we do, we’re simply written off as being “overly critical.”

100% agree in every single point

[Pahakukka]

I would like to add, that in solo/smallscale perspective 1 thing dumbing down ppl is the amount of parry in this game. With these new darkpromise sets its not uncommon to see ppl stack up 80+% parry again. There is little need for skill if your whole setup is made around passive defenses.

That can also be 1 point why it is so much better to roam with rdps, since the game does not grant dodge/disrupt as much from items, and rdps wont be affected by parry in most cases.

II dont say parry should be nerfed, but i would like to see more options to counter parry specs, with a trade off ofc. For melee there is very little block/parry strikethro making it super hard to fight parry stacked characters. There are some undefendable abilities, but i cannot think on top of my head other than DoK and Chosen as melee options, cant name single one from order side, Maybe kotb has some?

I could add some examples of parry stacked characters, but i dont want to blame anyone. Im sure most of the roamers who play mdps know what I mean.

EDIT: would parry softcap at 50% help at all?

[Shieldslam]

From my own perspective, especially during NA times, RvR feels empty. There aren’t many solo roamers or small groups anymore; it’s just 60%-200% aao nonsense. One massive blob dominating the zone. This kind of gameplay gets old fast and it drives people away — I’ve seen plenty of players quit over it. And to be fair, both sides are guilty of feeding into this cycle. It’s not just one guild or one faction. But unless something changes, unless people actively try to break out of that pattern, the community is going to keep feeling the same way, and the game won’t move forward.

How ironic. The person well known for playing a def/regen WE (especially during its broken state) is complaining about less solo roamers these days? I wonder why that'd be!
In general it's rather questionable why some people are complaining about the exact issues they created themselves. WB or guild leaders crying that xrealming is such a big problem when they do it themselves constantly. Treat people, even those on the opposite faction, the way you want to be treated and maybe, just maybe, if enough people play like decent humans it may serve as a positive example.

I would like to add, that in solo/smallscale perspective 1 thing dumbing down ppl is the amount of parry in this game. With these new darkpromise sets its not uncommon to see ppl stack up 80+% parry again. There is little need for skill if your whole setup is made around passive defenses.

For melee there is very little block/parry strikethro making it super hard to fight parry stacked characters. There are some undefendable abilities, but i cannot think on top of my head other than DoK and Chosen as melee options, cant name single one from order side, Maybe kotb has some?

SM has an undefendable attack on order.
I fully agree with this. I'm not quite certain how we ended up in this situation but when it comes to smallscale, and especially solo, defenses are through the roof (again!). Parry can be stacked to 75% cap by some classes quite easily and if you happen to have no strikethrough/2h weapon you'll now have to deal with 3 out of 4 of your hits being completely negated, is that fair? And don't even get me started on regen items/abilities for solo because that itself is the biggest joke ruining solo roaming.
Would it make sense to have certain debuffs still apply through parry/block/disrupt/dodge? For example Mara/DoK 10% parry or even possibly healdebuffs being undefendable but only the debuff part - not the actual hit/damage.
It's not "just" an issue with specifically built characters but rather overall most damage feeling like fluff if it even hits in the first place which then results in only timestamp burst killing someone in many situations - that's also not fun to play against. There has to be a sweet spot for balance between coordinated burst premade groups have and the average player feeling like their damage somewhat matters.

[leftayparxoun]

Parry can be stacked to 75% cap by some classes quite easily and if you happen to have no strikethrough/2h weapon you'll now have to deal with 3 out of 4 of your hits being completely negated, is that fair?

There is no cap to parry%, or block%, dodge%, or disrupt% for that matter. The 75% cap that people talk about often is misinformation that came to be either from an old avoidance system or by mistaking it with the physical mitigation cap (of 75%).