Scottx125 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 4:57 pm
Not to be rude, but the new player experience isn't important IMO. What's important is revitalising the RvR scene, the class balance etc. Most people, don't play the low level content and don't care to. It's pretty much accepted that the PvE aspect and the levelling process is rubbish. Always has and always will be. That's just a design flaw with the game. The PvP is the heart and soul of this game. That is IMO what needs to be addressed. For me, the problem hasn't ever been levelling, it's been in the realisation that when I dinged 40 on my engineer, I find that it's an inherently unfun class to play because it's like playing with a lead weight strapped to your feet. Or the fact that nobody wants me in a warband on my Wrath WP because it's worse than any pure DPS and doesn't bring any utility to group play. Or you log on one night to play, and find the pop is swung 40-60% in a single zone and you think "forget that" and log off.
There's no point worrying about making the process of getting into the game easier, when the end game content is in my opinion stagnated and ailing.
I agree. Which is why it's important to get potions and talismans in the hands of players as early as T1, so by the time they hit T2+ they aren't out of practice of crafting more talismans and potions, or at least know to look for them, so they don't suck at PVP.
The amount of new players who simply don't know what statistic potions (primary stat or liniments, plus armor) or combat potions are available and their cooldowns (crafted heal/renown heal/crafted absorb/renown&crafted ap/snare&blasting) and how useful those are is sky high in comparison to veterans who will whine for not having an armor pot on and knowing how important that is.
That's not going to be something a new player can randomly find ingame without that being either told by someone in /advice, or by looking at the wiki (unlikely they'd know what to search for)
With crafting being introduced early, they can get in the habit of having potions or working with allies to obtain them, same goes for talismans, which will increase the quality of life in their early years, which will make them stay around in 'end game' easier.
If you look at these forums and how many veterans are here, they consistently whine about not having endgame content or it being stale while continuously spending their time in the game but also while complaining in a significant majority in comparison to disenfranchised new players, who don't have a voice because they aren't willing to stick with the game. They'll simply stop playing without warning.
I have longed for MaxHayman to put in retention statistics for the game to actually prove this point, the only metric we have is CCU and how many veteran players stick around despite complaining, and those people number in the hundreds.
The LazyPeon video brought thousands, and not all of them will stay. For the next 'lazypeon wave' or whatever youtuber decides to give the team an influx of players they can't retain, it will be great to have existing systems in place to guide them through game basics, since the community is unwilling to teach them and have them stay (and personally, I think it's the game's responsibility to teach them, not the community's responsibility)
As for your individual class complaints:
Plenty of Wrath WPs have enjoyed the game (Halcite being the best example I can think of) and the spec is wholly enjoyable but you need the gear to pull it off.
There's no amount of changes that the team can make that will supplement your lack of appropriate gear with better gear. That's your fault, as it is for every other healer that decides to play a melee DPS of any kind. You now feel the pain that every MDPS has been feeling since the inception of this game in 2008, and the pain my WL felt being in the shadow of my friends when I started until I got Conqueror gear (the max tier at the time) - I'd have killed to have quests guiding me through what I had to figure out on my own, and the fact that you want people to suffer as you did is basically the driving force for why I fundamentally disagree with your assessment, even if we reached the same conclusion.
Professionally in the industry (ie; not this project or any hobbies, but the ones I actually worked on as a real job as a generalist engineer), every time we had spent actual money on designers for 'class balance' in the 3 games I worked on,that's time that could be spent letting a metagame form and letting the least common denominator take over as preferred, with some people playing the off-meta specs but still enjoying it because it wasn't what everyone else ran. We wasted so much time and we ended up hurting the goodwill of the players when the game was unrecognizable to them after a major patch.
They found it insulting and belittling that we, as developers, would dare to touch their favorite toys. They were wholly right, and we learned. I share that knowledge with every hobby project I go to now, because it's the correct thing to do.
You risk losing people every time class balance is altered, especially with heavy-handed nerfs that force people to reroll. In the same way your class sucks now, what happens if you change it, people enjoy it, but it's too powerful, but some people only play it because it's the most powerful class? They get pissed off and quit, and blame 'the devs' (as they should)
I think class balance is in a highly respectable state right now only because we let the metagame form and there hasn't been a major shakeup in over a year, almost 8 months since my departure from the team.
When the team makes it easier to make class changes with their abilities revamp, I expect a major shakeup to happen every 3 months to a year and to be fully transparent to the community while being developed - not every 2 weeks like we did previously. And I hope those changes are in public view for all.
By the way, that 2 week balance patch cycle ruined new player retention - the same thing you're proposing RoR should do - simply because classes were changed so frequently that no one had any idea what was 'good' and those new players may make decisions based on the current 'meta' - but if there's a meta changing drastically every 2 weeks, someone's favorite class could be nerfed every 2 weeks, which gives the players a spike of resentment in the dev team. That lead to harassment of developers due to frequent changes that appear targeted to your specific class.
I wouldn't wish that on anyone for 5 years, which is why I'm glad they paused the metagame shakeup every 2 weeks.