Lots of Numbers: Twilight's Tide Event Scenarios

[DirkDaring]

I remember years ago, the Devs tried to separate the premade from the pugs for SC, however from what I remember, a premade group would form up all in voice coms, but only in groups of two, then they would que for pug SC, and when all got in the same sc, they would reform as a premade, to stomp actual pugs.

Most of the time, they would trade wins with the other side, if faced with another premade, to speed up medallion farm, personally I haven`t bothered with doing any SC since 2019 ish, doesn`t interest me, I think I've done maybe 7 forts, and 3 city since 2019 as well, but none in the last 3 years .

The game as whole was far better from 2016 thru 2020, than it is today, and from looking at the average population numbers on the weekends, compared to back then, and now, a lot feel that way as well.

[Speedyluck]

sh and sw need to be toned down asap.

[Templa]

Can confirm the statistic. I usually don't play solo unless i feel like i deserve to be punished and the winrate is always at around 80-90% a session with a group kd ratio of around 20 to 30. It's due to matchmaking, pugs don't stand a chance and if equal premades face each other the one with worse pugs auto looses. To be fair though i did not play in 2 weeks. But aside from even more ranged enjoyers nothing should have changed.

[sven85z]

This is why i stopped playing event scs but i wish you could q up for Disc event scs.

[guessgap]

thank you for these stats!

they objectively show what me and many other players already felt subjectively.
scenarios, esp event scenarios are in a bad state, bc its one-sided and boring.

ive been on the winning side a lot, but im still considering taking another ror break, bc there is just absolutely no challenge in stomping pugs with my premade. sure for some it may be fun, but i hope the devs dont orient their design philosophy around this type of gamer personality.

as a result i tried to challenge myself and queued solo, but that was just an insurmountable challenge with mostly undergeared pugs vs premades, so i stopped that as well.

last hope i had then was to give up on events and just queue discordant scenarios, which i enjoyed the most, bc at least every 2nd or 3rd game was balanced and exciting. if ror "works", its the best mmo pvp experience (for me at least).
negative side of this: the queue times were very long (even for me as a healer) and i was not able to get event updates or event ring quest kill updates.

so dear devs, i honestly value your great work on ror, but please could you tell us how (or even if) you think about this topic? and what you intend to do about it?

[Aethilmar]

Nice job. Would be interested in the mean and median completion time. Bet it is just over 4 minutes i.e. when you can surrender.

Personal anecdote. I pretty much always solo queue into SCs on my Swordmaster. My career win/loss ratio for SCs is about 52% i.e. I'm at worst neutral to the outcome and at best I slightly tilt it for Order. And I'm okay with that. As long as there are a couple of interesting fights then win/loss doesn't really matter.

By the time I got through 10 participation SCs for the event I was 1-9. I think by the time I got my 5 wins I was like 5 and 17.

It wasn't fun. It was a slog. And add in the new barriers all it did was teach people to die once and stay down until 11 minutes. Near the end I was advising folks who were really upset with it to wait couple of days until the premades switched from their Destro mains to their Order alts to get the event on that side.

All that is to say, clearly the devs in charge of scenarios have an agenda and are sticking to it out of pride or stubbornness. If different devs are in charge of the events, then they should not maintain a dependency on SCs because that agenda is antithetical (for the general population) to what the events are supposed to be which is fun.

[lumpi33]

Nice job. Would be interested in the mean and median completion time. Bet it is just over 4 minutes i.e. when you can surrender.

Thanks! Yeah, most ended just over 4 minutes which is the time you can surrender.

Code: Select all

from > 0s to =< 60s duration: 1 <- 0 to 1 minute duration
from > 60s to =< 120s duration: 0 <- 1 to 2 minutes duration
from > 120s to =< 180s duration: 7 <- 2 to 3 minutes duration
from > 180s to =< 240s duration: 5
from > 240s to =< 300s duration: 1424 <- 4 to 5 minutes duration (after 4 minutes you can surrender)
from > 300s to =< 360s duration: 267
from > 360s to =< 420s duration: 136
from > 420s to =< 480s duration: 109
from > 480s to =< 540s duration: 77
from > 540s to =< 600s duration: 77
from > 600s to =< 660s duration: 56
from > 660s to =< 720s duration: 38
from > 720s to =< 780s duration: 28
from > 780s to =< 840s duration: 21
from > 840s to =< 900s duration: 21
from > 900s to =< 960s duration: 57
from > 960s to =< 1020s duration: 0
from > 1020s to =< 1080s duration: 0
from > 1080s to =< 1140s duration: 0
from > 1140s to =< 1200s duration: 0

2324 scenarios were recorded. 80% of that is ~1860. 1424+267+136 = 1827. So yeah, the vast majority ended quickly. It matches with my domination assumption.

[Uchoo]

That is indeed what happens when you pit groups vs pugs in the current state of the game.

Small note: I think the reason that SH is an outlier for kill damage is because pet damage is not actually recorded, but it does count for Kill Damage. Sometimes a SH can have more Kill Damage than damage because of this.

[lumpi33]

sh and sw need to be toned down asap.

I can see that SHs are dominating, SWs not so much. The event scenarios are perfect for ranged classes.

Code: Select all

T4 Event SCs - career kill damage of total damage (percentage):
1.SQUIG_HERDER: 56.34
2.WITCH_ELF: 46.25
3.SHADOW_WARRIOR: 36.57

SHs kill damage to total damage is 20% higher than SWs. SWs are still in the normal range of 26-36%. If it were a less open field scenario they would be much lower.

I think that both, the rSH and mSH are doing very well and in my personal opinion it has to do with these things:
- rSH: tactic that gives 50% auto attack speed boost for the pet and the herder paired with lots of instant attacks in skirmish spec and a spiked pet that gets 150% contribution from herder ballistic. From what I can see the SHs didn't have the 50% auto attack speed tactic when WAR came out. It doesn't make sense since they already have a pet that gives additional hits. Furthermore WLs have a similar tactic but the bonus is only for the WL, not the pet and it is a melee pet. The spiked squig with 150% contribution is also the only pet in the game that gets such a high contribution. All others are max 100%. All this together let them make full use of auto attacks (since it's not being interrupted by casts) and they hit like machine guns.
Just a random kill from Teefz: https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com/kill/37580123 50% auto attack damage...
- mSH: here I think the problem is the sneaky git tactic that gives 10% to all defenses while in squig armor. They can boost their defenses to very high levels and still do very good damage. Add their mobility and you basically have a tank like class with great mobility and damage.

[ShadowWar]

Huge thank you for collecting the data, and doing the work on this. I know that's time consuming and I really appreciate it.

For commentary: this should be a clear as day spotlight on the reality of the state of scenarios. People like to say, "get a group, organize, it's not *meant* to be played that way* - to which I say, what is the value in keeping it the way it is? Does the current implementation HELP or HARM the success of the game? Answer those honestly, and then proceed from there on what should be done. Design in a vacuum is pointless. If the way an item is being used is contrary to the intent, either the design needs to change to make the intent realized, or it needs to change to how it's being used.

That's all given that everyone is acting in good faith and wants the overall game to succeed. I hate PvE, and I never do dungeons, but I understand that making dungeons better is important to the game's overall health. Scenarios are arguably a MORE broken system right now, and potentially more impactful to player enjoyment.