My reasons NOT to play Return of Reckoning in 2025 as a NEW/SOLO player!

[AsylumZA]

To all the "the new player experience is fine, git gud noob" people, you are part of the problem and the reason why this game cannot retain its new players.

If it feels right to tell a new player to join a big guild to get carried to rr80 in the blob, you have a grave misunderstanding of what getting into a new game means. It means you need to have fun, a meaningful gameplay and meet a friendly behaviour from the old timers.

You also need a learning curve, as in - learning how to play your class - which is currently completely skipped in the big RR factories on both sides... And it's on full display given how many new RR80 seem completely clueless about basic game mechanics concerning their class when they get out of the blob to play SCs or Dungeons.

The main issue is the lack of T2 / T3 RVR. Being mixed with BiS toons as soon as you get out of T1 is an horrible experience for most, as Bolster is mostly a placeholder which doesnt compensate the lack of tactic slots / important class skills / morales nor does it even out the gear itself. We could completely have lower tiers, as the population of RoR is healthier than most live servers past the 2 first years, contrary to the poplar belief that "we don't have enough players for lower tiers".
Furthermore, new players are often being misguided by people telling them to stay the underdog as long as possible to max out their RR, which is total bullshit. To be able to learn your class, you need your tactic slots, your skills, your morales as soon as possible and you can very easily compensate a low RR when you reach lvl 40 by getting the dungeon gear (which is up to Invader lvl, so pre BiS), then take your time grinding to 75 for sov. By shortening the time spent feeding the ogre for free, you can at least hope for some fun within a few days after reaching 40.

Lastly, I've tried to bring at least two dozen of friends to RoR in those past years, in the end only two remained and leveled past T1, despite the fact that all of them were initially very interested by the universe and had some good fun in T1 RvR / SCs. Those are probably the proportions of new players leaving because of the current state of the new player experience past T1. You need some power scaling to be able to retain them, the feeling that each new level brings something fulfilling rather than rushing through the bullets on a DDay shore until you finally reach BiS.

Well said! Thanks for adding value to the discussion! <3

[Tusakano]

Hello I've read through this all I'm a new-ish player, (played live and meddled around on the server but never reached lvl 40 here or live). I'm super fatigued from the pve grind of every other mmo (WoW, Archeage, Black Desert, somehow TnL was the worst of all), unrelated but w/e that's why I'm here now.

I've been having a great time tbh. I've heard that'll change once I hit 40 so we'll see. I've settled on kotbs at lvl 33 for now as my first main after playing engi and wp to 30ish, slayer to 20. I haven't had much issue with bolster as long as I keep my gear up-to-date with my level. Yeah I'm not hitting as hard or as tanky as fully geared vets but I don't feel like I should be anyway and after I specced the engi right from following the lad to chad guide and started slotting talis as I level it's able to hit pretty damn hard. It helps there's always a lot of other ppl leveling alts and things and I tend to focus those targets rather than ones marked "dangerous" or w/e in open RvR.

I've been kicked from wbs a few times but it's never been a big deal, one time he even invited me back and apologized for his autoband settings being what they were at the time lol. My interactions I'd honestly say have been the inverse of yours: 90% good, 10% bad. I ask questions and get offered help almost every day in-game and the RoR streamers on twitch have been super helpful and welcoming unfortunately the order streamers seem to be mostly solo and the rest are destro. The bad is literally just the usual incompatible/toxic personalities that are about, which unfortunately I don't feel like I have the luxury of blocking since the population is so small practically anyone that's vocal in-game is an asset.

Guilds have been tough. I got invited to a guy's guild after he carried one of my toons through sewers and it's pretty dead here. I feel bad for leaving especially since they do still help me whenever they are online but I'm a organized mmo pvp vet and I want that itch scratched. Now aside from that it's been tough to decipher what guilds are actually doing things. I know xrealming is popular but I'm not anywhere near the point of wanting to start over on destro yet or progress 2 realms simultaneously. I'm hesitant to go through the whole rigamaroo of applying and getting on discord just to find I don't like the guild or they don't like me and have to do it again. That's certainly not unique to this game but makes it feel worse because of the small population. After reading through this it seems like a lot of resources/info are somewhat hidden in those guild discords though so maybe I'll just make a RoR folder on my discord and start joining guilds and keep them all in there.
some edits for clarity.

[megakatten]

Are you looking for people to play with, Asylum?

I am available to run around and slap stuff in that case