Proposal to remove all barriers from scenarios

[Tyrodan]

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.

Sounds more like a balance issue. There is no way making a good chunk of the playerbase miserable by being farmed like crazy in scs as a sideeffect of adding barriers against rdps-meta is worth it. At least not if devs want to bring the decline of the playerbase to a halt.

[Rydiak]

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.

True, but these scenarios also existed without barriers for a LOT longer. And I'm not sure that any of these scenarios were improved strictly by the addition of the barriers either. Even if they were, it doesn't mean that every SC needs barriers because these ones saw improvements.

[Bosli]

Sounds more like a balance issue. There is no way making a good chunk of the playerbase miserable by being farmed like crazy in scs as a sideeffect of adding barriers against rdps-meta is worth it. At least not if devs want to bring the decline of the playerbase to a halt.

Oh it absolutely is a balance issue, especially rSH have way too powerful escape tools, and even sorcs you cannot realistically catch most of the time, because when I get close as tank they use m2 flee, and even if you catch them with champ challenge you are still only at the point where you have to remove their tank and kd them to not triple pot and still survive the rare chance you get.

[leftayparxoun]

I wouldn't mind barriers remaining in scenarios as long as the kick mechanics were completely removed and/or the surrender timer was raised to be much closer to 15 minutes.

That said, I also prefer having guards instead of barriers.

The only issue I can find with guards is that their placement should not offer any team a safe shooting/healing range that could disrupt the enemy from successfully finishing the scenario via objectives

The only cases I can think of where this can happen are:

• Highpass Cemetery: where the main objective requires fast access between the 2 BOs but either faction can setup a shooting squad that is being safely healed between the 2 points

• Battle for Praag: where both teams can camp the area between the last 2 BOs that the enemy needs to capture. And while there is another way to get there, it requires a huge detour that could result in losing the 2nd to last BO if the team splits

Any other argument against guards in scenarios (imo) just can be attributed to either their misunderstanding of the main goal (scoring points via objectives, not just by kills), perhaps because of an irrational disdain to anything ''PvE'', or due to them benefiting from the status quo (killing people who were placed in an unbalanced scenario due to matchmaking and who will get quitter if they don't exit barriers to be farmed).

Imo, instead of adding barriers in every scenario it would make more sense (development time-wise) to just add guards in every scenario and eventually try to fix those 2 with the map modification tool.

[siglade]

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.

Praag and Black Cairn had no barrier.

[Aethilmar]

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.

+1 million

This has all been said before in a bunch of other posts but rarely so well.

Unfortunately the custodians of this version of the game have decided slaughter IS the main objective and have pretty much altered everything else in pursuit of that.

[Sulorie]

I wish there was some official statement why and how those barriers improve SC in any way, like some comparison of pros/cons but there is silence since they started with those barriers.

I get it, that some small sized spawns, like during city siege, need additional protection, since guards are no option there and you could get shot from outside. Totally reasonable to add barriers there.

SC got overall worse for the inferior team where barriers were added. The arguments were laid down for years, the only reaction was to add more barriers. ;>

[Fey]

Was it only Grovod Caverns that had a barrier on live? Had some crazy fights in that scenario, I would love to see it return for a live event.

I've been complaining about the placement of scenario guards for years. For the most part they might as well not even exist, but I gave up long ago. Barriers are a whole separate issue.

Scenarios are essential to entice the casual player base. There's got to be a better way.

[SRoth137]

As someone who plays in a solo / small group / premade capacity as both mdps and rdps.. the addition of these spawn barriers / idle hands has been absolutely horrible. IMO this is probably one of the worst changes that's been made since I started playing in 2016.

There were data posted here recently that showed something like 80% of SCs ended in a unilateral stomp. The barriers / idle hands combo forces the stomped side to either: 1) eat a quitter, or 2) continue to feed the stomping side. The paltry 10s buff does absolutely nothing to mitigate this. While not exactly thrilling gameplay, the old system at least gave the outgunned side an avenue for recourse, i.e. kick spawn campers into the guards. In this situation, the spawn campers could choose to either: 1) disengage and focus on the objective, or 2) continue to farm with a high probability of getting wiped by guards. Caveat, I say this as it applies to standard SC mode, I have no problem with guards being excluded from ranked.

Remove the barriers. Remove idle hands. Put the guards back in.

2c

[Bosli]

I don't think the argument of "barriers are terrible for the weak team" can be said just yet. They added the barriers with ring event where by far the most premades play as often as possible. That is the main reason why matches are crazy imbalanced in kills per team. Doing a change like that at the same time where you know that player and playstyle mentality drastically changes from one day to the next is actually insane, because you can't really get conclusion from it.