Everything wrong with the 03/04/26 Patch

[Culexus]

...the result is a very boring, bland and uninteresting system.

And that's exactly what this gear rework is, and it is the worst thing a developer can ever do to a game. Players will put up with experiencing anger, frustration, and tedium for a game they enjoy and feel attachment to. But as soon as they're bored, they will stop playing.

I just don't get it. The team has the creative freedom to do whatever they want with their game, and we've seen the results when they harness that creativity with things like the new cities and dungeons. But with gear, one of the most important elements of game design and the reason the MMO grind exists in the first place, they've decided to use an AI spreadsheet to homogenize everything and strip every bit of character from the gear and progression from the players. And to what end? So everything can be as close to baseline as possible for a more LoL style experience for "balance" so they can appeal to the tiny fraction of players still left in the competitive scene? It just makes no sense to me that they have this amazing sandbox to play in, and rather than making sandcastles, they are counting grains of sand.

On the plus side, this gear rework finally got me to play Baldur's Gate 3. Which is the best game I've ever played!

Yes, I'm playing a 2-handed Half-Orc barbarian. I have a type it seems

[kuturu]

Nice post,thanks for taking the effort in doing this!Dint went through all the replies so maybe i put things already said!

1)Reguarding the lockout system; As a trial on a guild that actually tries to swap for balancing issues i have to say that the change is not delivering!Keep in mind that we cant always play our mains because of wb requirements, so might jump on tank /healer/dps ,as the necesity is, that they need progressing.Having a guaranteed 90 mins lock make some of us think it twice if we ll switch!Will most likely do it cause good fight come first but we feel uneccesarily punished.
Imho lock should be aao related or just get rid of it already since doesnt provides much,double account /vpns /i ll just do/play smt else etc

2)I understand this like trying to diminuish the power dif. Well,my last char was 39 cr rr 61!I had 5k hp in anihilator and coulnd use 22 rr points cause cant use more points than your cr!Maybe start from there about the power creep instead of taking away the progress feeling in and RPGmmo game!

[wonshot]

To be honest I think everything gone downhill since the ability rework (and GCD changes).
Instead of admitting the mistake DEVS keep doubling down and the result is a very boring, bland and uninteresting system.

If you'd revert to 1.4.8 with some tweaks on the glaring stuff, and start working from there, I'd be sold in a heartbeat, but pride and the time already spent wont ever allow for that to happen, would it?

Just my 2c.

I kinda just wanna eccho this,
The Ability patch took what, two full years to get done and the public statement for why it was needed and those countless hours of manpower were not allocated elsewhere was something along the lines of "this will make changes to the abilities, balancing and adjustments faster in the future"
So we waited 2 years for the Ability rework to be done, then Balancing started with the 4 Archtypes + 5th round with Special specs. We are now two years into that process too, and barely halfway through with it I guess.

First of all, the balancing doesnt seem to go faster at all at this pase.
Secondly, if Zumu's forum signature is to go by then it would seem like Ability + Balancing is entangled or atleast pull meetings/manpower/motivation from one group into the next. So why is the RoR team deciting NOW is the best time to do Item overhaul when we are technically in the middle of a full archtype springcleaning process that is already dragging out. Was this needed from melee TimeToKill to be finetuned coming into Ranged psyicalshooters and mages? or is there some other reason?
Why are we not finishing the Balancing, and then doing the items. Right now a portion of the playerbase is sitting idle and wondering what classes to progress and play based on the unknown factor of how the TTK and MDPS/RDPS patch will make the game feel, but then on top you add a waiting idle situation where players are now afraid to make big 10k investments into endgame sets or Triump rings. Is this a situation that was not foreseen, or deemed absolutely needed to be tackled right now with how things are unfolding??

I simply cant shake the feeling that some of these direction moves are massively missmanaged with no red-line across where we are, and where we are headed. Let alone the amount of undocumented changes slipping through each reboot, not even patch.

How are my BW blue quest gloves with 3% renown getting adjusted on the Weapon adjustment patch, but the same item on my SH is not. Is this done by AI, is it manual. Why is it done on the Weapon-patch? Are several ror-teams not working together and informing eachother what is getting pushed on each patch? It seems like a mess!
Today was a hotfix reboot, a massive issue happend which results on a "minor" rollback. when it initially happend I DMed a couple of Coders and GMs, most were at work expecting nothing should had been changed with the reboot. Again, why are random things that break the game getting pushed without the team being in the known of a potential big issue getting pushed to live and no hands are on deck to handle the aftermath.. Missmanagement red lights are on!

WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE? Can we get to talk to an adult anytime soon.
WHY are we getting the Ability patch which takes two years, for balancing to go faster. When its the slowest it has ever been?
Why are we getting full itemization reworks in the middle of balancing, is this absolutely needed? And for whom exactly. Right now gearing up weapons almost goes against the flow of the game becoming counterlogic that the better dungeons or pvp levels are not garenteed to give the best weapons.. No wonder players are scared to invest into armor or accesories as we saw how the weapons landed, and all of this is done so.... We can have future weapons that are more streamlined? But then why do it NOW, in the middle of balancing??

@MaxHaymann are you in charge here, who is pulling the strings on the game direction, and IS there even a clear direction on what gets shipped in each patch?
MMOs are a big timeinvestment compared to lobygames. Can the community actually get some transparenty on where this server is headed and what the vision is for balancing, gearing and content?

[rorswar]

For me, it's not the itemisation patch that was the final straw. I mean, it barely had any impact on any of my classes, BiS or not. Furthermore, everyone was affected, so on average, I wouldn't have been worse off.

It's the gameplay that's just horrible at the moment, and we got there through a cascade of changes, including adjustments to GCD and WS, and very odd choices around career balancing. Whilst some career patches like tanks and healers were generally OK, the mDPS patch has just been horrible, and there seems to be no desire to fix anything, or at least not in a reasonable time frame. The focus on PVE, rather than fixing RvR what the game is all about. And then the RDPS patch still isn't here.

Worse, the actual RvR gameplay is just dead. All the good guilds have left, or become much less active, for a reason. There's no campaign. What made WAR fun was the feeling of it actually being a war - multiple fronts, taking keeps, pushing for forts, and then fighting in cities. There's nothing left. It's just PUGs and solo players running around, looking for easy caps.

Once one side starts losing, they xrealm, and it becomes PvD until the winning side gets bored, logs off, and the pendulum swings to the other side. Rinse and repeat. What made WAR epic has become horrible in RoR. The low population exacerbates this issue, and then the overtuned solo classes add insult to injury.

I've seen the guild I'm in become less and less active, and I've drawn my own conclusions. What kept me was nostalgia for WAR, the lore, and the guildies.

I'm aware this not an airport departure lounge, but I too have stepped away and started playing other MMOs (GW2 predominantly). I'll dip back in every once in a while, but when I've done so the last few weeks it just reminds me why I got disillusioned.

[Keula]

Next patch in may will be jewelry and jewelry sets. The patch after that will be Armor and their Set bonuses.

That means weapon balance considered as success and you proceed with exactly same rules?

You will see minor adjustments around procs and their cost. The overall system and calculation is solid. Most complaints are around higher tier weapons with procs seeing their stats decreased as procs now have an inherent cost associated with them. If you wouldn't have a cost on procs however, a weapon with procs would always outshine a weapon without one. And that is also not great.

D&D costing 9 is solid calculation to you? Parry is least part of guard so the makes some sense for tanks, mdps a bit high still, but D&D a literal whatever stat and any gear that has it(though the same is true even pre-rework) as a "premium stat" is inferior to anything else. Unless the RDPS rework boosts their dmg massively OR there is an un-announced renown point rework coming as well, I really don't see why it costs so much stat points.

Same can be said for crit/anit-crit and real stat vs power, why the same cost? Strikethrough costs are also bit odd and look they were made without the strikethrough changes in mind where you always get half avoidance.
The crit cost is especially weird to as to why it is so low compared to everything which makes everything else look expensive as it is the most sought after stat by far and like I've said many times the cost of crit should be increased, a lot, as should the allocation of stats so 2% crit item(4% two hander ofc) would be unchanged, but lower crit items would get a bit more stats that way.
I get that there is probably some sort of max "premium stat" allocation per item, so that there won't be a 21% crit staff ever, even though that would be a theoretical possibility, but it's the type of thing that would be nice to know what it is and how it affects item statting as there is no scaling costs either. Or we just going off vibes or what? And if we going off vibes and feels, at lest make some silly items then instead of all being "normal".

As for procs, I have some hopes cause it's not like it can be worse than the 1st pass, but not a lot of hope considering how the 1st pass went, if I see spike vii on charms still taking more than 1 point... back to the drawing board.

[Paxsanarion]

To be honest I think everything gone downhill since the ability rework (and GCD changes).
Instead of admitting the mistake DEVS keep doubling down and the result is a very boring, bland and uninteresting system.

If you'd revert to 1.4.8 with some tweaks on the glaring stuff, and start working from there, I'd be sold in a heartbeat, but pride and the time already spent wont ever allow for that to happen, would it?

Just my 2c.

I for one, would love to see the server revert to 1.4.8 and just tweak it from there. We also need the Campaign to return to put the War back in Warhammer. It would be great to play 1.4.8 again.

[krumhur]

Next patch in may will be jewelry and jewelry sets. The patch after that will be Armor and their Set bonuses.

That means weapon balance considered as success and you proceed with exactly same rules?

You will see minor adjustments around procs and their cost. The overall system and calculation is solid. Most complaints are around higher tier weapons with procs seeing their stats decreased as procs now have an inherent cost associated with them. If you wouldn't have a cost on procs however, a weapon with procs would always outshine a weapon without one. And that is also not great.

Your logic ("a weapon with procs shouldn't always outshine one without") seems fine to me: it means, after all, that more options can be given to players, especially if we can get more weapons, with or without procs, on somewhat comparable levels.

What I'd add to the above logic is that "weapon with procs that are straight upgrades of weapons without procs should always be strictly better, both stats and proc wise, than their precursor".
The best example here is the besieger -> subjugator -> fortress upgrade path: each step should be a strict upgrade over the previous. Not even a sidegrade would make sense considering you have to pay for the next tier in the upgrade path. Having less stats on the higher tier, only "to make room" (in terms of item "points") for the proc, makes little sense: fortress weapons are, after all, the top end RvR rewards, and even if in the future more tiers are added, this logic should still hold true.

[sterger7]

Isn't this kinda how the whole game has gone though? Everything is being homogenized. They made witch elves and witch hunters "raid-able" which is to say, you just give them an aoe tactic to make them like eveyr other aoe melee class...everything becomes the same, and the game gets realllll boring real quick. I can't even tell a dif using any weapon over another at this point.

[Tyrex2017]

In an RVR game, when weapons obtained in PVE are stronger than weapons obtained in RVR, it means there is something broken in the game (aka darkpromise vs scenario/fort weapons).

[georgehabadasher]

To be honest I think everything gone downhill since the ability rework (and GCD changes).
Instead of admitting the mistake DEVS keep doubling down and the result is a very boring, bland and uninteresting system.

If you'd revert to 1.4.8 with some tweaks on the glaring stuff, and start working from there, I'd be sold in a heartbeat, but pride and the time already spent wont ever allow for that to happen, would it?

Just my 2c.

Bingo, great post.

One case in point: The ability rework patch (accidentally?) removed internal cooldowns (ICDs) on procs, which made classes that could grant them or benefit from them overtuned. Slayers and choppas benefitted because of fast AA speeds and bonus damage from their mechanic, WL and mara benefitted because their channel used to tick twice per second and their +25% damage buff (and loner on lions). BW/Sorc granted an extra proc to the other dps and tanks in the group. Instead of just reverting the ICD change on procs, they proceeded to nerf proc abilities, and prevent +damage bonuses from applying from procs. Then they found that SL/Chop/BW/Sorc were still overperforming and nerfed their skils and mechanics. Now we have a situation where these classes are underperforming in almost any situation except warband play.

The spreadsheetization of stats in the game has also been disastrous. Moving parry to initiative is another discussion, but the standardizing every stat bonus at 3% per 100 points of the stat (100 ini = 3% parry & dodge, 100 willpower = 3% disrupt, etc.) was a huge mistake because it made healers functionally immune to casters. Instead of reverting that change, I expect them to double down and give each magical rdps class some random strikethrough bonus or undefendable skills in the upcoming rdps patch.