WAAAGH… RIP.

[ravezaar]

Agree worst state server ever bin in

[Bankei]

I lead warbands in NA time, I don't push warcamp for hours, I ask the zone to give breathing space so we can have good fights. Check me on it, ask NA folks, there are dozens of us!

Blaming WBLs is silly, because you would be the first to cry that no one is leading warbands.

Blob fights aren't my favorite but the game heavily favors funnels and all the rewards are front loaded on kills, so it's a natural tendency for players to look for big fights. Small man and solo are super fun but it's an experience you can easily find in other MMOs, giant scale battles are much harder to find with the quality that RoR brings.

There's a guild on the server that found interesting strategy to really cripple organized warbands, it's really fun because it pushes the meta to evolve.

EDIT: Like KPI said earlier in the thread, there are many ways to play and you can find the kind of fight you're looking for. I mostly play against his guild when they are near logging off, but I can attest that they take good fights and help make zones interesting.

[rorswar]

Crests were unified, so the campaign ceased to have meaning as simply getting kills is the easiest way to farm crests in RvR. Enter the blob.

As a result, people blob together as it’s the safest way to get kills. Then additional blob friendly mechanics are introduced like WB lead crowns, so now everyone can tag along or WBs can easily find each other. The blob gets bigger.

Add in questionably decisions around class balances, and other things like the AOE cap which stopped smaller groups being able to have an outsized impact. So over time most organised guilds quit, as numbers >>>>> organisation. With less organised guilds to break a blob, people stack more WBs on top of each other. The blob grows.

And this becomes the de facto strategy of the game. And it works, as there is no punishment to ignoring two zones and stacking your whole realm in a single map, as other than bags on zone locks, nobody cares about the camlaign.

[Slowbro]

Oh noez, it's like some people cried about solo players killing them and then the game was changed so that solo is maximum punished. And now you guys come out of your holes crying when there is only blob. Guess what. There is only blob and I will happily join it and spam aoe into the zerg with max Def spec. The Defs thought their vision is above the original Defs vision for the game but solo was so deeply rooted into the game that it is already present at an intrinsic class design lvl.

[rorswar]

Oh noez, it's like some people cried about solo players killing them and then the game was changed so that solo is maximum punished. And now you guys come out of your holes crying when there is only blob. Guess what. There is only blob and I will happily join it and spam aoe into the zerg with max Def spec. The Defs thought their vision is above the original Defs vision for the game but solo was so deeply rooted into the game that it is already present at an intrinsic class design lvl.

It's not the blob that punishes solo play. As a solo player, it's easier if there's a blob, and the rest of the zone is less populated so you can find other solo / small scale players.

What really killed solo is class changes. Solo is still viable for stealth classes and dot-dot-dot, kite and lifetap rDPS healers. Anything else? Good luck.

And now imbalance in 1v1 is so great, that it pushes everyone into a blob as said classes just farm anything else that runs around solo.

[chookette]

What is tiring in this kind of discussion is pointing out certain things and immediately being labelled as a whiner.

Pointing out a problem does not necessarily mean complaining. You can deeply love this game, have played it for more than ten years, recognize all the work that has been done on it, the constant improvements, the time invested by the team, and still remain cautious when some changes strongly affect the way the game is played.

Of course, everyone has their own subjectivity. I am not claiming to speak for everyone, nor to hold the absolute truth. But there are still trends that can be observed.

I know that one personal example does not make a general rule. But even yesterday evening, during EU prime time in Praag, we had more than an hour and a half of the mass constantly moving back and forth between MS and the Destruction warcamp. Personally, I was lucky enough to be in a group that still allowed us to find a few fights on the edge of that mass. But that kind of moment is becoming rarer and rarer.

Large battles are part of RoR’s identity. I am not saying they should be removed, nor that players are wrong for playing what is effective. Players naturally adapt to what the game rewards.

But if, over time, everything ends up being sucked into the mega blob because it is the most optimized option, then yes, I think there is a real topic worth discussing.

Saying this is not whining after a defeat. It is simply trying to discuss an evolution of RvR that, for me, makes the game less interesting on some evenings than it used to be.

[Bankei]

What is tiring in this kind of discussion is pointing out certain things and immediately being labelled as a whiner.

Pointing out a problem does not necessarily mean complaining. You can deeply love this game, have played it for more than ten years, recognize all the work that has been done on it, the constant improvements, the time invested by the team, and still remain cautious when some changes strongly affect the way the game is played.

Of course, everyone has their own subjectivity. I am not claiming to speak for everyone, nor to hold the absolute truth. But there are still trends that can be observed.

I know that one personal example does not make a general rule. But even yesterday evening, during EU prime time in Praag, we had more than an hour and a half of the mass constantly moving back and forth between MS and the Destruction warcamp. Personally, I was lucky enough to be in a group that still allowed us to find a few fights on the edge of that mass. But that kind of moment is becoming rarer and rarer.

Large battles are part of RoR’s identity. I am not saying they should be removed, nor that players are wrong for playing what is effective. Players naturally adapt to what the game rewards.

But if, over time, everything ends up being sucked into the mega blob because it is the most optimized option, then yes, I think there is a real topic worth discussing.

Saying this is not whining after a defeat. It is simply trying to discuss an evolution of RvR that, for me, makes the game less interesting on some evenings than it used to be.

This is a really good post, thank you for articulating the argument so well

[Hazmy]

The way I see it, a lot of people are completely missing the problem of why blobs form nowadays, and it's largely due to skill + organization problem. It almost has nothing to do with effectiveness and rewards, as 80% of a blob gain almost nothing out of it and it's the 20% that reaps most of the crests and rewards.

The reason majority of the blobs form is due to badly organized and extremely weak bands that are incapable of achieving anything on their own, either because there are too many low level players in them, or they don't have a viable composition that's at least somewhat closer to 2/2/2 with proper supports.
This is somewhat of a design issue by now, because if the community is unable to fix its own skill issue, then a new game design needs to be adopted that assists this problem.

The moment the enemy faction bring a warband that is more organized than the opposition, the current game design punishes the weak side into:
1 - Organizing better
2 - Kicking Low Levels
3 - Blobbing up

Option 1 takes too much effort for majority who just want to chill.
Option 2 heavily punishes new players, no wonder they leave the game. Or they join an Overflow warband that is weak again = forced to blob on other warband.
Option 3 is easy to do for everyone.

Even if the devs punish blobbing, it won't fix the main issue which is that there's too big of a gap between warbands in the current design - so by punishing blobs, you punish pugs, you will alienate newer and weaker players even more, because they will be hopeless.

Since you can not magically improve the skill level of the playerbase overnight and it's going down more than up nowadays - the only real feedback I can personally give is that low level experience and new player experience has to be significantly improved and made better.

As long as Level 16 players want to join warbands and are completely useless ( yes they are ) compared to RR60+ players - they will be either farmed or forced to blob up on others to leech off and get scraps.

The blob that is happening is largely a symptom of the massive balance issue (skill-gap wise) and inproportionate fun in RvR. Fix Low Level player strength, and make fights last longer where everyone has a chance to get kills on both sides, and people will be willing to split more and enjoy it.

Majority of players, especially pug players and low level new players have no other option to play the game than to blob up in RvR. Scenario system is supposed to be an alternative but it's kind of dead.

[tefnaht]

The way I see it, a lot of people are completely missing the problem of why blobs form nowadays, and it's largely due to skill + organization problem. It almost has nothing to do with effectiveness and rewards, as 80% of a blob gain almost nothing out of it and it's the 20% that reaps most of the crests and rewards.

The reason majority of the blobs form is due to badly organized and extremely weak bands that are incapable of achieving anything on their own, either because there are too many low level players in them, or they don't have a viable composition that's at least somewhat closer to 2/2/2 with proper supports.
This is somewhat of a design issue by now, because if the community is unable to fix its own skill issue, then a new game design needs to be adopted that assists this problem.

Set proper 8/8/8 where all people in voice and talk on the same language, have same time window to play and have enough personal discipline to follow the orders... Even at EU prime-time it's something hardly achievable.

How dev can tune it?

Do not remove achieved zone contribution when person relog on same side to another role in reason to balance wb.
Contribution to a fort ticket has to be applied on current online char from whole "one side" chars on account.
In 8/8/8 all dps must have good performing setup and can be replicated 8 times and wb not become a wet noodle, or like 1 engi/magus potencial slot to wb.
Dungeon queue has to be done and at the same time lockout system has to be deleted.

All this not about huge rewards or campaign rework.

[gersy]

The way I see it, a lot of people are completely missing the problem of why blobs form nowadays, and it's largely due to skill + organization problem. It almost has nothing to do with effectiveness and rewards, as 80% of a blob gain almost nothing out of it and it's the 20% that reaps most of the crests and rewards.

The blob that is happening is largely a symptom of the massive balance issue (skill-gap wise) and inproportionate fun in RvR. Fix Low Level player strength, and make fights last longer where everyone has a chance to get kills on both sides, and people will be willing to split more and enjoy it.

Majority of players, especially pug players and low level new players have no other option to play the game than to blob up in RvR. Scenario system is supposed to be an alternative but it's kind of dead.

I agree with you about the skill/organization gaps and the new player thoughts, however I find that reward structure is a massive part of the issue (or at the very least it was part of the issue and was the catalyst that provided the guiding hand of gameplay degradation to lead us to where we are at today).

When the original character progression system tied to the original campaign was gutted and unified currency was added they opened an un-sealable can of worms that would eventually deal unmitigable, almost irreparable, damage to the future of the game. To fix this there must be an initiative to revive and repair game modes and promote game features, like scenarios and city siege (and NOT as a 24man pve raid btw), which incentivizes players to engage with others (core to the genre as well as the title itself and something that has been almost lost currently). With proper feature design players can be funneled in to participating in certain content that is beneficial to them in multiple ways and also beneficial to the overall health of the game - the original design framework(s) did this fairly well and should've been either left alone or gently iterated upon to make them better NOT torn apart and replaced by a universal system.

Removing the necessity of zone locks, forts, city sieges, SCs (and even ranked) absolutely destroyed the playerbase's overall skill level in the long term and caused the devolution and watering down of gameplay on a universal level that we have arrived at today. Because of the one-two combo of campaign irrelevancy and unified currency there was an immediate, although slow to mature, drop off of any true need to group up, learn the game, form guilds, form alliances, form teams, play together and get better - because quite simply there wasn't a strong need to do so anymore. Yes people still do those things, the need for them is not completely gone, but it is heavily disincentivized and for the worse from an overall perspective.

Many of the strongest, most knowledgeable and most skilled alliances, guilds, smallscale teams and players have now quit or take extended breaks because there is no longer any enticing gameplay for them remaining. The state of guilds and leaders now is absolutely laughable compared to the past, the players you see glorified in public channels is absolutely backwards from what it was and should be - they are a meek shadow of what once existed and flourished here. The few remaining good players either play trio queue SCs at 10am or 10pm server time and exist in the shadows or play 6-12mans and fight in such a way that takes no almost risk and maximizes pug farming which provides an extremely stale environment for anyone on the receiving end. The majority of truly competitive players have grown tired of the game, fatigued with patches upon patches of meaningless changes or lackluster changes, leaving those who remain with nothing to fight until eventually they get fatigued and stop playing.

Why push keeps and forts if there better reward to be had elsewhere? After all spawning a ram risks pausing a zone and pausing active fighting for upwards of half a hour at a time while everyone stares at a door. Only siege when you've got 3:1 odds and it's a free win. Why queue for city when the rewards are the same as fighting at the mid BO in an open rvr zone while requiring immensely more skill to succeed? Exact same for SCs as with city. True rivalries and combat pretty much ceased to exist giving way to uncoordinated, headless chickens running around with arms flailing all without a semblance of a clue how to actually fight. Because they don't need to know how.

New players are robbed of the opportunity and the fun that comes from true organization, personal skill growth, proper learning, group composition crafting, sweaty fights where winning feels amazing because you actually had to give it your all and capitalize on enemy mistakes to win, smallscale and many other things. They lost out on the opportunity to experience the game as it was meant to be and instead are forced in to a blob simulator due to lack of incentivization to do anything besides that, which comes as a result of blunders from the past. Press W and 123 in open rvr and do some pve dungeons is enough to earn bis now, with newer players never learning the game as a result, and that should have never been the case.

While I am sometimes not the most tactful and may come off as abrasive, I want to say that all of this comes from a place of passion and care. I'm extremely grateful to the curators of this server for providing us with the opportunity to enjoy the game. My criticisms and suggestions come from my desire to see the game succeed and evolve in a positive manner which all players, new and old, can look forward to and enjoy logging in to.