Proposal to remove all barriers from scenarios

[Garamore]

In the early live versions of the game none of the scenarios had the barriers over the spawn and guards were positioned slightly forward of where they are now in many scenarios compared to what we have on RoR. What this allowed was that even if you were getting farmed by a premade or two there was always the chance that if they were daft enough and came too close you could punt one into guards or at least build morale before engaging in combat. The better team had the choice of take this risk or do the objective. If they did the objective then the weaker side had a chance to get a kill as in many you would need to split.

The most recent addition of barriers especially in serpents passage has now meant that once the initial fight occurs and one side loses the other side can just camp the barrier and farm whoever comes out of it. The people inside the barrier have the choice of get quitter or wait 80ish seconds to walk out and die.

Whilst I get that for a premade wanting to kill a known enemy its super frustrating seeing them retreat into a safe place the penalty for stopping this is that the average person who solo queues or even less organised groups now have an even more horrible scenario experience than they did before.

The suggestion therefore is to remove all barriers in normal scenarios, put guards at exits to allow a place to regroup effectively and hide when out matched.

In ranked, clearly all barriers can be there and no guards as that is way more organised then typical pug scens.

[Nameless]

It is imo important to give renown from guard's kills cos at many situations that could be only driving force pugs to try to combat premade.

There were not a single post were someone defended barriers, basically all the community is against them and yet they keep adding them and make them even more unforgiving.
So i doubt this suggestion will do anything

[Ashoris]

i can only agree with the mentioned points.
It makes no difference if playing in group or solo i would strongly prefer no Barriers and some more active guards

[Omegus]

Completely agree. A core part of Mythic's scenario design was having the patrolling guards near spawn that went on a rampage if the enemy got to close. The guards had a huuuuge leash range once aggroed and would work their way through the aggro table and even go after healers that healed the person they had just killed.

It reinforced the idea of spawn safety, added a bit of an element of fun, and promoted the idea that the game - including scenarios - are primarily objective based and killing players is supposed to be the way of helping you achieve the scenario objective as opposed to be the scenario objective. If you get too greedy chasing a kill then you used to get punished hard for it. Kiting attackers back to spawn and then winning by exploiting the bloodlust of the attackers was and should still be a valid tactic.

To take Serpent's Passage as an example: the only reason you should be near the enemy's spawn is if the enemy has the part and is trying to capture it. If you are the dominating team then yes keeping the fight closer to the enemy spawn is a good idea, but completing locking the enemy in their spawn is not a fun experience. If the enemy has multiple ways out of their spawn with some degree of safety then there is a better chance of the fight spreading out over the map again.

Protected spawn points exist in other games (Overwatch and TF2 spring to mind and their game modes are "objective-based" like ROR rather than team deathmatch / FFA) that give advantages to the attackers. You are typically invincible in spawn with multiple ways to escape, you can return any time, etc. The drawback is that the more you hide in spawn and/or return to spawn, the more objective points the enemy is scoring.

Spawn areas are supposed to be the one area of the map that gives a huge advantage to the side that owns the spawn point, and spawn camping is supposed to be very risky. It is not supposed to facilitate a shooting gallery slaughter for the aggressive side.

[Rydiak]

Currently, the only argument that I've seen against returning to the old guard system was that it allowed two of the four archetypes, being healer and ranged DPS, the opportunity to affect fights directly outside of the spawn in a spawn-camp situation without themselves being subject to assault by the spawn campers. Clearly this is a disingenuous argument, as it posits the positions that A) spawn camping is desirable and B) that players who are being spawn camped should not have the opportunity to fight back out of the spawn without being slaughtered by the same enemies who put them there in the first place.

As Omegus so eloquently stated, protected spawns exist in plenty of other games and include mechanics that make camping them both undesirable for the camper and easy to fight out of for the camped.

Scenarios should be about who can control objectives, not who can stack the most bodies in front of doors/barriers which lead into spawns.

[calipso]

Agree with everything posted

[Tyrodan]

There is legit zero reason to fight in front of a spawn camp other than sheer greed. Likewise there is also zero reason not to punish this greedyness.

You don't want to be killed by guards? Don't fight at the spawn. It's as easy as that.

[Bosli]

Whilst I get that for a premade wanting to kill a known enemy its super frustrating seeing them retreat into a safe place the penalty for stopping this is that the average person who solo queues or even less organised groups now have an even more horrible scenario experience than they did before.

I play a lot of premade of all kinds, and the most annoying thing about the old system was that it was perfect safety not for some pug players, but for the hardcore rdps groups that you cannot properly disengage and just have to continously push. The number of rdps premades especially for the ring event has at least tripled, and if you cannot corner them because they simply kite back behind guards, it's almost impossible to win against the really good ones unless you have a much better second group than they do.

players who are being spawn camped should not have the opportunity to fight back out of the spawn without being slaughtered by the same enemies who put them there in the first place.

That is not quite true because if they regroup in spawn, wait for morales to drop and go out together, the 15s almost-invulnerable buff is a huge help even with the barrier/area disatvantage. If the ones getting pushed into spawn are unable to regroup inside spawn and keep going out in tiny numbers, well then they don't deserve to get any kind of comeback imo.

Edit:

There is legit zero reason to fight in front of a spawn camp other than sheer greed. Likewise there is also zero reason not to punish this greedyness.

You don't want to be killed by guards? Don't fight at the spawn. It's as easy as that.

There is a reason to fight there, and the reason is that you have to relentlessly push forward to have a chance against a proper rdps group.

[Rydiak]

Whilst I get that for a premade wanting to kill a known enemy its super frustrating seeing them retreat into a safe place the penalty for stopping this is that the average person who solo queues or even less organised groups now have an even more horrible scenario experience than they did before.

I play a lot of premade of all kinds, and the most annoying thing about the old system was that it was perfect safety not for some pug players, but for the hardcore rdps groups that you cannot properly disengage and just have to continously push. The number of rdps premades especially for the ring event has at least tripled, and if you cannot corner them because they simply kite back behind guards, it's almost impossible to win against the really good ones unless you have a much better second group than they do.

players who are being spawn camped should not have the opportunity to fight back out of the spawn without being slaughtered by the same enemies who put them there in the first place.

That is not quite true because if they regroup in spawn, wait for morales to drop and go out together, the 15s almost-invulnerable buff is a huge help even with the barrier/area disatvantage. If the ones getting pushed into spawn are unable to regroup inside spawn and keep going out in tiny numbers, well then they don't deserve to get any kind of comeback imo.

Edit:

There is legit zero reason to fight in front of a spawn camp other than sheer greed. Likewise there is also zero reason not to punish this greedyness.

You don't want to be killed by guards? Don't fight at the spawn. It's as easy as that.

There is a reason to fight there, and the reason is that you have to relentlessly push forward to have a chance against a proper rdps group.

I'll correct my statement then. Another argument against returning guards to SCs is that because rDPS exist that the spawn system in SCs need to suffer for it (rather than address rDPS themselves, of course), and that if a side finds itself pushed to spawn well then gosh darn it they don't deserve any chance at playing the game and might as well just sit there and think about what they did while they idle out.

[Bosli]

I'll correct my statement then. Another argument against returning guards to SCs is that because rDPS exist that the spawn system in SCs need to suffer for it (rather than address rDPS themselves, of course), and that if a side finds itself pushed to spawn well then gosh darn it they don't deserve any chance at playing the game and might as well just sit there and think about what they did.

I don't disagree with you that it's pretty crap for pugs vs pugs losing just because one team got pushed into spawn once, and the rdps will probably be less of an issue shortly after the ring event already. But then again, there are a lot of scenarios where players cannot return to guards (mourkain, phoenix*, gromril, ekrund...) and also some scenarios where you cannot even punt-punish some overextender into guards (talabec, dwarf road).

Also, barriers have been in the game for very long already, but only in some scenarios (praag, black cairn, citadel), so it's not like it's a completely new thing.