Any ideas to bring back players?

[Ashoris]

Winter is coming

seriously ... every spring/summer people will create such a topic, i know its not the only reason, but actually a big one

[ravezaar]

Simple, just nerf destro.

I agree with this

[mryay]

I have shared my ideas with the staff. I am going to share them here.

The recipe is simple, think RoR as a business and use the power of the community.

The game is unique, the value proposition is selling itself, no other MMORPG game is like this, and the Warhammer license is also selling itself.

1. To increase the funnel and bring continuously new players, increase advertisement campaigns, on a regular basis. Twitch is great, but the game needs more channels. Youtube video, Instagram, even, why not twitter. You need the community, you need RoR influencers.

2. To increase the pace of change you need more staff. The game cannot be sold then bring more dev engineers, ops engineers, community managers, player support, 3D developers, graphic designers, project managers, content creators, bloggers, RP experts, simply by turning RoR into an Open Source Game.

3. An open-source structure still needs governance. So the leadership still needs to be in. But the decision mechanisms, the change requests proposals, the decisions, and the multi-development streams need to be as open as possible, with as much interaction as possible, with as many proposals as possible. I think a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) structure can work.

4. Also bring Games Workshop and EA to the table, I am sure there are innovative proposals/business model that could be discussed with them OPENLY (like a public discussion). It is at their best interest to help and grow this community of die hard passionate. Trust me, bring them something interesting to negotiate, (even better with a business case) they will listen.

Swizz

[Phantasm]

Simple roadmap image. People keep saying its devs server and they can do whatever they want, but forgeting that players give away their time and some have to be tempted to simply invest time in a game. There must be some idea where that leads to. There is no bigger wtf moment when you being told about new game, you hop in, spend few days and turns out, someone decided there is issue with GCD and AP regen and its changed in a day. All recent server development wasnt known widely before they were implemented.
Write down what you want to do in next six months, pack it in simple pretty image, stick to it, discuss bigger changes on forum BEFORE making them live and players will trust you with their time.

[Alubert]

How to increase the population? Some suggestions.
It doesn't matter whether you like it or not. The topic is how to increase the number of players.
You should know that this is a niche game where the influx of new players is very small so we can mainly focus on getting the old players back.

1. most important - restore NB.
After blocking in a very short time we lost several hundred people. I suppose around 300-400.
And NB is still in use only now not for everyone.

2. kick Rampage out of the game or drastically reduce it.
Kick out GTDC and give the choppa equivalent of slayer ID.

3. allow tanks to be tanks. Introduce fortitude on a large scale. Currently there is only one item with this stat. Snb tanks = better CC. 2h = more dmg.
Scrap this hopeless change where 2h tanks have 10 sec on super punts. It should be done the other way around. Snb = 10 sec cd on punts. 2h give them one more offensive tactic. Or make a general rule: all tanks on 2h spec can put on 10% more dmg tactics. And for snb spec I would extend the effect of all CC skills by one second.

4: Introduce all pve equipment with LoD if technically possible.

5. new "sov" weapons.

6. in general to give players a target and a carrot all the time.
New gear doesn't have to be much better. Just a little bit. It's all about the aim. And even let it be just fashiohammer gear.

[Sofong]

1. bring NB back 2. make lv 1 - 40 abit easier 3. better sc matching 4. sth need to be tuned about slayer train

[Paxsanarion]

The simple answer content or getting a better reality check on what RoR is doing, that other mmos cant compete with.
Pretty much anyone who has watched the 2021 RoR promotion video will notice what area of footage the server is promoting and adverticing, while also having different other gamemodes involved to add for a better overall player experience. But mostly what RoR has an advantage on in my words would be;

Classic RvR, pvp from lvl1, keepsieges and duo faction realm warfare, excelent performance pretty much unmatched in any other mmo attempting to do largerscale pvp battles, and a vast big gaming world to explore with unmirrored classes.

On top of that, the game does cater to some of its lesser gamemodes to keep a broader audience interested and provide variety.
The main issue imho has been the main-game neglect, wrong development focus, and a newplayer experience which is outdated heavily.

Starting with the new player experience, some abilities and builds need to be adjusted when you learn and get build-defining abilities, tactics and unlocks to make them function and be fun.
This game is unique in its way that it doesnt show enemy castbars, yet interrupting and preventing enemy actions is a core part of the game, which new players will struggle with and could use some new player tutorial when starting out.

As for the content and last 1-2 years of releases, the roleplay cities have offered very little to none replayability and just serve as glorified questhubs. I understand the bragging point of finishing and publishing something the original game didnt have, but for gameplay these cities are doing very little to add to the game on a week to week basic. Garden of Q was annouced as the biggest addition yet to be seen on RoR because it was homemade, but has since been long abandonded by devs and communite alike despite pulling articles and could have been a good population magnet, yet right now its not worth mentioning on any mmorpg platform in its current state.
LOTD with a modern twist is the closest we get to a good new content release, but at the same time the classic rvr campaign has never been less appealing or interesting.

As someone who sent Lazypeon a buisness email offering to sponsor a "return to return of reckoning" video to help boost the awareness, there honestly have never really been any content releases or time periode since his last visit where i though "wow now is a good time to tell the world about how great RoR is becoming".

The every day action will attract the same usual crowd, summer period will hit as it does every year, and players will come back in the Fall. But for any new player to hear, or try the server if they dont have the nostalgia from Live I simply struggle to see how they are going to get hooked and stay with the current newplayer experience and if endgame doesnt get more exciting in the maingame, as even the currentplayerbase seem to be loosing interest in Citysieges, LOTD & ranked. And as long as the career changes approach is to nerf the top instead of buffing and bringing up the underpopulated specs and classes, the playerbase will more likely be scared away with changes instead of encourage more playtime and those shoes are not exactly getting filled with fresh players coming in by the dusins. Hopefully the future is bright though!

Well stated, as a full time order player I suspect making the classes / specs which seem to be underpopulated more fun to play while giving those same specs more contribution to the ORVR experience would help tremdously. I hear often that destro classes are simply more fun to play and have better synergy within warbands, easier to make pug warbands work on destro because destro classes simply work better together…..etc. Make order classes more fun to play / contribute more to warband and make order warband building easier for leaders. As long as the meta is melee and one side lacks melee both in tanks (lack of fun and varied specs to play ) and effective mdps (slayer is all order has for AOE)…..things won’t get better for new order players looking for fun in a video game.

If you want more players you need to make both side fun to play

Another way would be to reduce AOE cap from 24 as some have stated.

Just my two cents……

[Culexus]

I have shared my ideas with the staff. I am going to share them here.

The recipe is simple, think RoR as a business and use the power of the community.

The game is unique, the value proposition is selling itself, no other MMORPG game is like this, and the Warhammer license is also selling itself.

1. To increase the funnel and bring continuously new players, increase advertisement campaigns, on a regular basis. Twitch is great, but the game needs more channels. Youtube video, Instagram, even, why not twitter. You need the community, you need RoR influencers.

2. To increase the pace of change you need more staff. The game cannot be sold then bring more dev engineers, ops engineers, community managers, player support, 3D developers, graphic designers, project managers, content creators, bloggers, RP experts, simply by turning RoR into an Open Source Game.

3. An open-source structure still needs governance. So the leadership still needs to be in. But the decision mechanisms, the change requests proposals, the decisions, and the multi-development streams need to be as open as possible, with as much interaction as possible, with as many proposals as possible. I think a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) structure can work.

4. Also bring Games Workshop and EA to the table, I am sure there are innovative proposals/business model that could be discussed with them OPENLY (like a public discussion). It is at their best interest to help and grow this community of die hard passionate. Trust me, bring them something interesting to negotiate, (even better with a business case) they will listen.

Swizz

This.

Spreading more awareness will bring in more players, and more importantly, more developers. This is after all a mainly a development project that the rest of us are lucky enough to get to play in. More developers = more content = more players.

A dedicated community and marketing manager that can put together great videos could do wonders for spreading awareness of RoR. Imagine a YouTube channel with semi regular updates on development progress, upcoming features, plans for the future, a mini documentary on AoR and how the team built RoR from nothing to it’s current state after it died etc. Could also be a great place to post proper video guides for dungeons and RvR and short intros to each of the classes which could give new players a feel for the game before jumping in.

The Skywind project is an excellent example of this kind of thing. Imagine a development progress video like this for RoR.

https://youtu.be/fhFBuUbndfo

[Gargis]

I convinced some friends to try this game and they all bailed before reaching RR 50.

One went WL and quit before lvl 40. Reason; pet is garbage and does not survive. Its been years and when a basic core function of a class does not work, its startling. Neglect and/or intransigence in its finest form.

Another quit not long after reaching 40. Reason; The amount of AE damage is absurd. That AE damage is so high in delve, that its counter to use anything else.

The last, was playing a tank quit before 40. Reason; Took too much damage for the amount he put out.

Intuitively, all three left because because of game balance.

Poor class balance leads to realm imbalance, and here we are.

[Kpi]

Just curious, are there any ideas by the Dev's or others players suggestions to help lift a lagging population?

Get back the NB for all and a lot of players will be back. A lot of players leave because only a few still use it and this is not fair