Warhammer Online
https://www.returnofreckoning.com/forum/
https://www.returnofreckoning.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46641
if you want endless rants about why they suck just tune in to Zarbix)
wargrimnir wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 6:52 amShadowbane has been dead for a long time, they shutdown in 2009. They sold off to another company in 2012 who sat on the game until February this year. The only reason it was re-released on Steam is because old Shadowbane players were getting geared up to start playing Crowfall, which is essentially Shadowbane 2. The current version of Shadowbane on Steam is a blatantly pay-to-win zombie reskin of the original game, only the most desperate nostalgia should draw anyone in. We have slightly higher standards than that. I don't expect it to survive a full year. By most accounts, ChangYou is a pump and dump "developer" who has done essentially nothing for the game. We outpace them in development, features, and updates by a wide margin. The SBemu server was shutdown shortly before the Steam re-launch happened to keep their population one place, which backfired. Can't trust some shady cash shop dev to do what a private server will. Once ChangYou shuts down their live server, fans will bring back the emu again, hopefully.punk7712 wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 5:52 pmI suspect this comment is tongue in cheek, but it's not a good look coming from staff. If you guys want to lean into hardcore only you will be competing with an MMO that does that better than anyone, Shadowbane. These are the kind of population numbers you will be looking at though. That said, and I say this with all sincerity, this is your game and you can do with it what you like. I respect that the developers are doing this for free on their own time.wargrimnir wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 4:35 pm This thread has flailed wildly off topic, you guys keep getting baited by the same troll when he makes new accounts too.
Please stick to why casual players are bad and shouldn't be listened to as the topic title indicates.
In short, Shadowbane is really bad, and dying for painfully obvious reasons, as it should.
Crowfall on the other hand, despite it's nosedive post-release, managed to bring over several of RoR guilds because it's a modern re-release of a hardcore guild based open world RvR game. This is more the kind of thing we do around here. That would be a much more apt comparison to what an "unpopular" niche might be able to command as far as active players. Casuals, as in the kind of people who don't want to play a hardcore open world RvR game, played Crowfall anyway because the visuals were nice and it was as shiny new MMO after a long MMO drought. They're the ones leaving, not the people who actually want to play in this niche PvP genre. I have hope that Crowfall knew what they were getting into and were very much expecting a casual pop and bleed post-launch, time will tell. These are the "casuals" I've had criticism over, at least they're the ones I was referring to anyway. Lesser games that panic over the themepark ride ending for an excited casual MMO base can ruin those games as they're unfairly criticized for "losing population" who never had any intention of playing there long term anyway.
The other elephant in the room regarding RoR population is New World, which does have some interesting PvP elements, but if you're a staunch Warhammer fan, it doesn't really scratch that itch. It's not really a high fantasy game, some people really like their elfs and dwarfs and orcs. Otherwise it's a pretty good competitor if you're solely looking for some open world pvp with keep battles. Although on the other hand, I can't imagine we're really expected to compete with either of these games while the populist hype cycle is driving them forward and modern era development is actually being done.
That being said, I don't think in the long run either of these games matter much to ROR. Until Warhammer Online 2 releases (don't gasp, it's not a thing), most of the people that love Warhammer Fantasy and a fair amount of Old World fans, will come and go as they please. There's a difference in how "casual" is used in threads like this. When it comes to low effort, minimal time available, solo pug playstyle, that's fine for ROR. It's not going away. These "casuals" will lose more than they win, and as long as they can accept that this playstyle means less rewards than people who invest a lot of time into the game and play at a highly coordinated level, they can still enjoy the game for what is put into it. When it comes to casual players that I've apparently spit on recently, the hordes of people that might swarm a game for the first couple months after release, I don't find those people very important for ROR at all. Catering to those people isn't going to bring some renaissance of ex-WOW veterans to the game. They need to enjoy ROR for what it is. A niche, hardcore, RVR-first, Warhammer Fantasy MMO.
It's a good time to be a fan of MMO PvP with a bunch of options newly released. This impacts our numbers, and I really don't think there's much that can be done about it. However, we will be fine in the long run, and will continue development anyway.
The graph is essentially picking Australian TZ. The peak during lockdown was at well over 2k players, they had to expand the server. Even now, most nights EU timezone will hit 800, and is around 800 right now.
Yes, there is.Rapzel wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 12:01 amIs there though?Toggle wrote: Thu Oct 14, 2021 7:41 pmIf your organized WBs are getting “the same terrible rewards as the plebs”, then you need to find some better organized WBs. There’s a significant difference in medals gained in a zone, zone contribution, fort bags, city wins/bags, etc. in an organized WB when comparing it to a PUG WB. But you already know that…Rapzel wrote: Thu Oct 14, 2021 5:49 pm
Misconception, you may think you lose because of gear, bit it's the smallest factor in general, RR and skill outperform any gear in this game (from a group setting perspective, not the people that believe that there's any skill in going full regen and afk people to death), that's why the game has managed to be fun for such a long for many even though it's been pretty much the same maps that have been played for the last 12 years.
Whenever the "sweaty tryhards who plays for 14 hrs a day" propose that there should be incentives to actually do things as a group the solo players see red, because they believe they are entitled to stuff, even though they sit AFK 90% of the time and are so incompetent they can't even be used as cannon fodder.
6 man groups got weekend event and ranked, so I am not complaining, but when I look at the rewards people for actually setting up proper WBs for ORvR and that they get the same terrible rewards as the plebs who run around without any spatial awareness or understanding of what is going on, except for whining and proposing bad sieges in RegionRvR chat, it really makes me wonder why these people continue playing the game, I guess it's the social aspect.
The renown nerf hit premade WBs hard in ORvR.
We went from 30k locks to 10k locks, when a pleb can get 5k for a lock Idk if it's worth try harding for that extra 5k.
And wow the extra 6 vanquisher medallions you get for the lock, amazing.
Best bag is still quite rare and for the majority of players it's just 3 Royal Crests, which means you can spend 4-5 hrs getting the same amount of royal crests as one stage in a city which if you're unlucky takes about 40 mins.
Another issue is that when you queue as a 24 man for city and you get another good 24 man all of the sudden you might spend 2+ hrs in a city alone while solo queue stomps are just over in ~25 mins.
Solo queue city players get the same amount of renown/medals for winning and losing, only difference may be amount of bag rolls, haven't solo queued a city in a long time so idk about that.
Ranked at least yields triumphant and whatever the other currency is called and weekend event gives you some crafting mats and an event item, where do you get them in the "main focus" of the game?
Sure you're not wrong in that the progression is slower for a solo player, but the rewards are equal in open RvR.
This part about time to kill resonated with me a lot. However I don't see it exactly as a problem that turns off new/casual players. In fact it may turn off more invested players more since they are the ones participating in ranked and city mostly. And these are the environments where TTK can be very high. Also if the problem is the extensive safety net as you mentioned shouldn't it be actually beneficial for casual players?Caduceus wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 2:39 pm
2. Increased Time-to-Kill:
The Changes: over time many changes have affected time-to-kill (TTK), including changes to the M2 Distracting Bellow, changes to morale damage, and processes like power creep and players getting a better understanding of the game.
TTK is now extremely high and nowhere is this better illustrated than Ranked 6v6, where both sides sometimes battle for 10 minutes in wait of a perfect storm that allows for a kill to take place. However, it is clearly visible in fights between warbands too. Both sides are often engaged in an endless circling around where players get resurrected faster than they are killed, and battles are decided by which side gets reinforcements faster.
It is my opinion that these changes have taken important elements of player skill out of the equation. The defensive safety net has grown so out of proportion that even the most aggregious of positional mistakes go unpunished, and the most skillful tactical surprises go unrewarded.
Further, it is my suspicion that this subject has been left unadressed because it protects organized groups from the unwashed masses of pugs and solo players from scoring upset victories from time to time.
The Oversight: most importantly, these changes (and a failure/unwillingness to address these issues) have disrupted the balance between offense and defense in practically all avenues of play. In solo and small-scale regen/high mitigation builds dominate, in 6v6 we have to wait 10 minutes for a single kill, and in organized warbands we are stuck in endless cycles of kill > ress > repeat.
What needs to be pointed out, is that the winners in such engagements often are decided simply by gear and setup, and not by the skill of the participating individuals. In fact, in many cases this is so absolute that whichever is the losing side literally has no chance of winning, not even by a stroke of tactical genius or timing, or by luring the enemy into a positional mistake, etc. It is often a matter of one side winning by default, or both sides being stuck in an endless cycle by default. The dominance of defense over offense leads to predictable fights and stalemates.
The Consequences: when both sides are constantly unable to gain a decisive advantage over each other, the go-to option becomes simply to bring more players to the field. In other words, this current state of affairs heavily promotes zerging, and counterplay to fight against greater numbers has all but been removed.
(Sidenote: the changes to morale-damage, in my opinion, were very hard to understand. The counterplay to morale bombing has always been there, and it involved actual positioning and skill: spreading out. Morale-bombing simply punished blobbing, as it should.)
As said, one consequence of these changes is zerging, but its negative impact is also felt where zerging is impossible: duels, 6v6, 24v24. These fights are becoming an uninteresting procession to a lot of people. A wait for the perfect storm to come about. Often they are either stalemates or foregone conclusions. Instances where both sides have a bid for victory are increasingly rare, even though most players enjoy these types of fights the most.
Further, it has disincentivized players from fighting from the underdog position, because victory cannot be attained through tactical means. In fact, in a lot of cases the underdog side cannot even fight for a SINGLE KILL. The result is that people do not find creative ways of achieving victory, if those are even available, and sooner switch sides or give up.
Uncas23 wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 1:28 am
This part about time to kill resonated with me a lot. However I don't see it exactly as a problem that turns off new/casual players. In fact it may turn off more invested players more since they are the ones participating in ranked and city mostly. And these are the environments where TTK can be very high. Also if the problem is the extensive safety net as you mentioned shouldn't it be actually beneficial for casual players?
Uncas23 wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 1:28 am
But I'm going in an argument which is not my goal. I wanted to add my thoughts about time to kill. So it's clear that TTK is not too high in orvr situations. Why?
I see two factors:
1. Simply the number of possible dps on a single target is very high because of the big player count.
2. Team composition is very different from ranked and city. There are usually not 8 healers and 8 tanks per warband. They are also not distributed perfectly.
Considering the 2nd factor I think the high time to kill is partly a "problem" of the meta. The meta that "every group needs 2-2-2". Even 1 more dps instead of a tank or a healer massively reduces time to kill for both sides. I even doubt that 2-2-2 is the most effective strategy. It is the safest for sure.
To conclude I think the high time to kill is the symptom of the modern mindset. The mindset that " I read a guide to play the game and any deviaton from this guide is a heresy and trolling". It is clearly very boring to smash buttons for half an hour with barely any effect in cities. Yet people continue to bring 2-2-2.
As for solution it's a very convenient problem. It can be solved by players changing their ways and over time the meta. No developer involvement is needed.