WAAAGH… RIP.

[chookette]

I’m going to speak like a tired old soldier, because that’s kind of what many of us are becoming after watching the same things happen night after night.

We knew a living RvR.

A real one.

Fights where positioning mattered.
Welltimed pushes.
Clean disengages.
Mistakes being punished.
Flanks that could turn a fight around.
Small groups that had a purpose.
Warbands that won because they played better, not just because they had more bodies.

Today, far too often, all of that disappears under one single thing:

mass.

Not a warband.
Not a well organized fight.
Not an epic battle.

No.

Warbands glued to other warbands, themselves glued to other groups, until they form one huge ball of players that moves forward, crushes, pulls back, comes back again, and repeats.

A blob.

A big pile.

A soulless meat grinder.

And the worst part is not even dying to it.

We all die.
We’ve all taken hits.
We’ve all been rolled over at some point.

The real problem is that this kind of gameplay makes RvR poorer.

When everyone stacks together, nothing can breathe anymore.

Small groups have no space left.
6man and 12man groups have no room to play.
Organized warbands have to choose between joining the mass or avoiding the mass.
Pugs follow without really playing.
Good fights become rare.
Decisions matter less.
The level of play drops.
The motivation drops too.

And everyone eventually ends up thinking the same thing:

Why even try to play better, if the best answer is simply to bring more people?

That is what kills RvR.

Not one class.
Not one realm.
Not one guild.

That logic.

One side blobs, so the other side blobs too.
Then you need to blob even harder.
Then nobody splits anymore.
Then the rest of the map becomes empty.
Then the whole zone becomes nothing more than a corridor where two huge masses try to crash into each other.

And we still call that RvR.

But deep down, we all know something has been lost.

RvR should make you want to move.
To think.
To try a flank.
To hold a position.
To punish a mistake.
To take a risk.
To win because you played better.

Not just follow the biggest ball possible and hope it rolls over the other one.

I’m not asking for large fights to disappear.

Large fights are part of Return of Reckoning.
When they are well set up, when they come from real map movement, they can be incredible.

But permanent blob gameplay has nothing incredible about it.

It wears players down.
It makes the game poorer.
It discourages those who want to improve.
It turns RvR into a simple contest of density.

And honestly, for many of us, it is becoming boring.

Not difficult.
Not challenging.

Boring.

And maybe that is the most serious part.

WAAAGH… RIP.

[tefnaht]

But blob is a pure WAAAGH and blob is ALIVE.

And another thing, "Fights where positioning mattered.", all the way, especially before 24 targets change, big brain org wb was - grab 8 tanks and 8 mdps and place them into one pixel. No big diff 8 or 40, big diff - now people dont need to sit in teamspeak to do so.

[Bankei]

WAAAGH… RIP.

Pareto principle, less than 20% of players making 80% of the noise. If everyone hated blob gameplay so much, it wouldn't happen. You're part of a special interest group that lives in an echo chamber.

We can talk about rewards and incentives, how to favor other types of gameplay. But RoR offers massive battles that are difficult to find in any other MMO while at the same time leaving enough room for other types of gameplay like small man and solo.

[kpihuss]

The key to fighting the blob is not feed it.

If your side is blobbing, go to maps with fewer players, capture flags, avoid the hot zones, or go somewhere empty and start ranking up the keeps. Or deploy a crazy ram, even with few AAO or similar numbers.

If the enemy side is blobbing, force them to split up: capture flags and move to other maps. With patience, enemy players will eventually show up too.

The most important thing is not feeding the blob. If the side that is blobbing gets easy kills, they will keep blobbing. Get inside the keep, stay in PvE, or go to scenarios, but do not give them kills or help the blob get them. Be an active part of anti-blob gameplay.

Do you have to wait 10 minutes doing nothing? Well, that is basically the same as being in the blob and not enjoying the game.

In the last few weeks, I can say we have had some very enjoyable WB vs WB fights by doing exactly this. With patience, you will find good fights, not just a pointless exchange of deaths inside the blob.

I have a lot of hope for the new campaign system. I think they are going to design it in such a way that blobbing will no longer be “profitable”; instead, playing the campaign to win will be what matters.

[chookette]

I think this misses the point.

Nobody is saying that large fights should not exist. Nobody is saying that warbands should not group up. Nobody is asking for RvR to become only small-scale or 6-man gameplay.
The issue is not massive fights exist.
The issue is when permanent blob gameplay becomes the default answer to everything.

Saying the blob is a pure WAAAGH and the blob is alive is funny, but it does not really answer the problem. A WAAAGH should feel wild, aggressive, dynamic and alive. What many of us are describing is the opposite: one oversized mass moving around the lake, deleting every other form of gameplay and making the map feel smaller.

That is not alive gameplay.
That is one playstyle suffocating the others.

About the old organized warband argument: yes, optimized warbands have always stacked. Yes, groups have always tried to maximize AoE, guard, healing and positioning. That is not new.

But there is a huge difference between:
an organized 24-man warband playing tightly

and

multiple warbands glued together into a mega blob that removes most decision-making from the zone.

Scale matters.

A tight 24man group can still be flanked, outmaneuvered, baited, split, punished or avoided.
A 40/60/80player mass changes the entire ecosystem of the lake. It does not just win fights. It absorbs the map.

Small groups disappear.
Medium groups disappear.
Other warbands are forced either to join the blob or avoid the main fight.
Objectives away from the blob become secondary.
The lake stops being a battlefield and becomes a corridor for two giant balls.

That is the actual issue.

And the Pareto argument does not prove much either.

If people hated blob gameplay, they would not do it is not a strong argument.

Players often do what is efficient, not what is fun.

If the safest and most rewarded option is to stack with the biggest mass, many players will do it even if they find it boring. That does not mean the gameplay is healthy. It means the incentives push them there.

People zerg because it works.
People blob because splitting is often punished.
People follow the mass because being outside of it can feel pointless.
That does not mean everyone enjoys the result.

It only means the current environment rewards the behavior.

And yes, Return of Reckoning offers massive fights. That is one of its strengths. But again, massive fights are not the problem.

The problem is massive fights replacing every other kind of RvR experience.

There should be room for big battles.
There should also be room for 6-man, 12-man, roaming, flanking, objective pressure, warband movement, split play and tactical decisions.

Right now, too often, the blob does not coexist with those things. It consumes them.

So no, this is not about a small echo chamber crying because it lost a fight.

It is about asking whether the current RvR environment still creates varied, dynamic and interesting fights or whether it increasingly rewards one simple answer:

bring more bodies, stay glued, roll over the map.

If that is the best answer too often, then the problem is real.

And pretending that “the blob is alive” does not change the fact that for many players, the rest of RvR feels like it is slowly dying around it.

[live4treasure]

It's not just about blobs. It's also about the current playerbase and warband leaders pushing a mentality that encourages blobbing. What do I mean, you may ask?

I mean that whenever someone loses, they always have an excuse, and no such thing if they win. If they lose, it's because the enemy blobbed. If they win, it was equal numbers and they played better. I've seen destro claim that order is blobbing, while order had 40% AOO. I've seen guilds accuse each other of blobbing, only to all stack on the same side with 60% AOO in their favor in an attempt to punish the evil "blobbers", and still lose in kill count, and claim it was because the enemy blobbed harder. I've seen pugleaders claim the enemy has 3 organized warbands sitting in discord, when they got wiped by a motivated 12 man. People will feed whatever lies to their players that they need to.

Therefore, regardless of the actual reality of the situation, if someone loses, they think it's because the enemy is a blob and then they decide to blob themselves. That's a softer world to live in, than having to admit your side might just be playing worse, positioning worse, not coordinating morale drops properly, have bad gear, be low renown, have tanks that aren't guarding, not using discord to coordinate properly and the list goes on.

Rather than trying to deal with this meddlesome and long list of things that players on your side could potentially improve upon, why not just make it simple and say the enemy blobbed you down? In fact, why not make it even more simple, and blob up yourself, because they CLEARLY did it first?

I don't think game mechanics are at the root of the "blobbing" issue. I think it's the fact that the server is indeed populated by "tired old soldiers", who used to be good at games 20 years ago, and would rather believe the opponent is playing unfairly or dishonourably than come to terms with the reality that they're not the same gamer they used to be back in the days.

[Culexus]

It's not just about blobs. It's also about the current playerbase and warband leaders pushing a mentality that encourages blobbing. What do I mean, you may ask?

I mean that whenever someone loses, they always have an excuse, and no such thing if they win. If they lose, it's because the enemy blobbed. If they win, it was equal numbers and they played better. I've seen destro claim that order is blobbing, while order had 40% AOO. I've seen guilds accuse each other of blobbing, only to all stack on the same side with 60% AOO in their favor in an attempt to punish the evil "blobbers", and still lose in kill count, and claim it was because the enemy blobbed harder. I've seen pugleaders claim the enemy has 3 organized warbands sitting in discord, when they got wiped by a motivated 12 man. People will feed whatever lies to their players that they need to.

Therefore, regardless of the actual reality of the situation, if someone loses, they think it's because the enemy is a blob and then they decide to blob themselves. That's a softer world to live in, than having to admit your side might just be playing worse, positioning worse, not coordinating morale drops properly, have bad gear, be low renown, have tanks that aren't guarding, not using discord to coordinate properly and the list goes on.

Rather than trying to deal with this meddlesome and long list of things that players on your side could potentially improve upon, why not just make it simple and say the enemy blobbed you down? In fact, why not make it even more simple, and blob up yourself, because they CLEARLY did it first?

I don't think game mechanics are at the root of the "blobbing" issue. I think it's the fact that the server is indeed populated by "tired old soldiers", who used to be good at games 20 years ago, and would rather believe the opponent is playing unfairly or dishonourably than come to terms with the reality that they're not the same gamer they used to be back in the days.

"No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth."

[chookette]

Yes, some players probably use “blob” as an easy excuse after a loss.
Yes, some leaders sometimes prefer to explain a defeat by saying the enemy had more numbers, rather than admitting bad positioning, poor coordination, a bad engage, poor morale usage, or simply a difference in skill level.
That exists.
But it does not mean the blob problem does not exist.
These are two different issues.

[live4treasure]

Yes, some players probably use “blob” as an easy excuse after a loss.
Yes, some leaders sometimes prefer to explain a defeat by saying the enemy had more numbers, rather than admitting bad positioning, poor coordination, a bad engage, poor morale usage, or simply a difference in skill level.
That exists.
But it does not mean the blob problem does not exist.
These are two different issues.

You think this is a niche minority case, that barely has anything to do with your issue. I'm afraid this is the root cause of the problem you are stating.