New Player Experience: Reward Scenarios

[LordBraxton]

Just wanted to contribute, I enjoyed this game for a bit back in 2020 during the covid spike and just gave it another try.

I feel like as a new player the flow of progression is kind of a mess, and the focus on open world RvR over scenarios really hurts right now. I get that RvR open world stuff is a unique experience that some people may enjoy, but from what I have seen it is mostly zergs fighting and often one side is outnumbered. T1 open world was the only fun part so far.

When I played in 2020 scenario queues popped reliably. This was the meat of the game. You actually get balanced team numbers in a mode where the fights are small enough that your contribution feels meaningful. They were a ton of fun, and what I wanted to come back to. The queue times now are brutal, and I was shocked when I figured out that's because most of the population is doing RvR. Then I realized the renown gain was much higher in RvR.

Sadly this will probably turn my small group away again soon, but I feel like we would have stuck around.

TLDR: I think scenarios need to be buffed in terms of rewards, by a lot, so that people will queue and folks have something to do who dont want to ride around in giant zergs.

[anstalt]

There are a few things at play here that are affecting you.

First, we recently had an update to the scenario matchmaking system. The goal was to make scenarios more balanced and to ensure that premades face other premades. The update has largely been successful in these aims, but the side-effect is that scenarios pop a lot less frequently. This is especially true for premades, if you queue solo its not as bad.

The simple truth is that the population on RoR isn't large enough to support both good matchmaking and quick pops. So, our choice is better balanced fights or quick pops, we can't have both. We've been through this before, and im sure we will again, as the community changes its mind on what is more important.


Secondly, renown gain from scenarios is absolutely fine in comparison to RvR. The issue is XP. You get so much XP from scenarios that if you choose to level via scenarios, your renown rank can't keep up with your level. That hurts you, so you're generally better off sticking to RvR. What I'd like to see is the scroll that reduces XP in PvE also work for scenarios.

[Templa]

Bringing back the scroll would be amazing, as well as increasing renown gain for losses in SCs. I remember leveling through scenarios, because it was also my favorite way years ago. I also remember it being incredibly frustrating if i did not win consistently.
THe increase in renown could also be a bad, because winning does not feel as rewarding and does not give people the incentive to give their best. So i dunno what would be the smartest choice there.

I can give you and your group the tip, to engage in discussions about your classes and overall gameplay tactics to improve your knowledge of the game and you will certainly see an increase in winning in whatever vcontent you decide to participate.

Farming PQs while queueing for SCs is good, farming for scavenging and salvaging is also good to make money and get your crafting professions to max lvl. That's ofc not beneficial for your RR but minmaxing RR is not the way to go about this game. If you seriously feel that you lack RR at lvl 40 you grind for PvE Armor set's and can compensate around lvl/rr 40/40-60 and you should have enough War crests to decide in what armor you want to invest next.

[kleinbuchstabe]

1.The simple truth is that the population on RoR isn't large enough to support both good matchmaking and quick pops. So, our choice is better balanced fights or quick pops, we can't have both. We've been through this before, and im sure we will again, as the community changes its mind on what is more important.


2. Secondly, renown gain from scenarios is absolutely fine in comparison to RvR. The issue is XP. You get so much XP from scenarios that if you choose to level via scenarios, your renown rank can't keep up with your level. That hurts you, so you're generally better off sticking to RvR. What I'd like to see is the scroll that reduces XP in PvE also work for scenarios.

1. I dont think that this is true at all. The population is by far big enough. The problem is, that people just dont queue. At EU primetime you can see between 800-1000 people online. If only 10% of them would queue for SC, we would have queue numbers of 40-50 people - on each side! That would lead to non-stop SC pops the whole evening, and this with only 10% of server population. For comparsion: During weekend SC event, you can see around 10 - 25 poeple in queue on each side in the SC Lobby. Thats not even 5% of population. And still, Scenarios are very playable on weekend, pop wise. And now, imagine SC would have more incentive / be more rewarding. Im sure we would reach these 10% easyly.

2. Im sure that XP is not the issue, cause it only touches the low and mid-tier Scenarios. The main topic when we talk about SCs, are T4 Scenarios for lvl 40. So EXP are not a point at all. In case of renown, maybe it could be a little bit more to make it competitive with RvR. Just because there are any kind of boosts like Aao or BO-capture bffs in the SC. But i also dont think that renown is the main issue. We need a real SC carrot. Could be something simple as more crests. Or, bring back extra scenario currency, and exclusive Items, like it was in the past. SC weapons were BiS back then, and you wanted to have it, just for example.


I dont think that people dont like SCs generaly. Its more like an attitude of: why should i do the efford in SC for something, that i can have "for free" in RvR, while im semi afk?

[CountTalabecland]

Blob v blob and pvdoor are highly prioritized by players due to the rewards.

As other have stated, mass EXP rewards from scens make them actively punishing to your character.

Really wish the debs would address this and reduce scen EXP.

They could also return the reduced EXP scrolls to remove this problem that they created by changing the scrolls in the first place.

[anstalt]

1.The simple truth is that the population on RoR isn't large enough to support both good matchmaking and quick pops. So, our choice is better balanced fights or quick pops, we can't have both. We've been through this before, and im sure we will again, as the community changes its mind on what is more important.


2. Secondly, renown gain from scenarios is absolutely fine in comparison to RvR. The issue is XP. You get so much XP from scenarios that if you choose to level via scenarios, your renown rank can't keep up with your level. That hurts you, so you're generally better off sticking to RvR. What I'd like to see is the scroll that reduces XP in PvE also work for scenarios.

1. I dont think that this is true at all. The population is by far big enough. The problem is, that people just dont queue. At EU primetime you can see between 800-1000 people online. If only 10% of them would queue for SC, we would have queue numbers of 40-50 people - on each side! That would lead to non-stop SC pops the whole evening, and this with only 10% of server population. For comparsion: During weekend SC event, you can see around 10 - 25 poeple in queue on each side in the SC Lobby. Thats not even 5% of population. And still, Scenarios are very playable on weekend, pop wise. And now, imagine SC would have more incentive / be more rewarding. Im sure we would reach these 10% easyly.

2. Im sure that XP is not the issue, cause it only touches the low and mid-tier Scenarios. The main topic when we talk about SCs, are T4 Scenarios for lvl 40. So EXP are not a point at all. In case of renown, maybe it could be a little bit more to make it competitive with RvR. Just because there are any kind of boosts like Aao or BO-capture bffs in the SC. But i also dont think that renown is the main issue. We need a real SC carrot. Could be something simple as more crests. Or, bring back extra scenario currency, and exclusive Items, like it was in the past. SC weapons were BiS back then, and you wanted to have it, just for example.


I dont think that people dont like SCs generaly. Its more like an attitude of: why should i do the efford in SC for something, that i can have "for free" in RvR, while im semi afk?

This topic is about mid-tier scenarios, as the OP has just reached tier 2. And the mid-tier population for SCs is far smaller than endgame SCs, and XP definitely is a problem.


Making endgame scenarios more popular is a whole other topic, worth exploring for sure.

Personally, I don't do scenarios at endgame very often. I've never really had the same problems as other people (getting farmed by premades etc), my issue is more straight forwards: boredom. Its just inevitable that the more you repeat something, the more boring it becomes. Scenarios feel very samey. There are some maps that are just badly designed, but even the good ones become boring when you've done them so many times. I have a lot more fun in RvR, roaming solo or in a small group, so thats what I choose to spend my time doing. And that sentiment seems to be felt by most vets that I speak to.

[Fey]

I'm a vet, and I have far more fun in scenarios when the fights are even. And to say they are samey feels way off to me. There have to be several dozen scenario maps. Meanwhile you spend the entire week running around Praag trying to avoid the blob. That's boring to me.

[arandel2007]

This is unfortunately going to be the nail in the coffin for me. I love SC's, and I think blob PvP is mindless and boring, but now, even though I can play across two different time zones, I can't get any reliable sc pops, and there's no alternative for players like me. So my only option is to blob or quit, so I'm quitting. I spend more time afk in town waiting for 6 sc pops across 10 hours, that wait doesn't justify the time I spend on this game at all. Add in all the extra ways the game drops you from an sc queue now and the game is hostile to people who play as I do.

[jshort]

The Problem ist that you can ride the rvr zergtrain with in afk mode and still get enough rewards. Scenrarios dont rewards loosing so much and loosing in scenarios has a different feel compared to rvr. You feel helpless and often its hard to recover or get Kills at all. But if you want to win scenarios back to back even against premades you have to be able to Play your character to its full potential. If you run into the enemy spamming gtdc and dont Focus important Targets, making guard tanks immune to kicks.... you will loose against Players who know how to Play smallscale and get stomped. Even If you form a group. And i feel alot of players just take the easy path.

[Fey]

The new SC queue system is still fairly new. And we have summer coming up. The pops are low it's true. While it is frustrating I wouldn't give up casual queueing quite yet.

I do agree that losing rewards for scenarios need to increase. Something like 5 crests 5k renown. Me and a buddy queued quite a bit on Friday, and ran into a Lords premade. It was particularly galling to get stomped during a x2 weekend, and get essentially nothing for 2 hours of play.

Still reaching for that l2p, git gud acme after all these years.