Devs are killing soloing

[culland]

Over powered packs of stealthers did a great job of killing solo'ing all on its own, more so than a patch, imo.

[leftayparxoun]

I still remember the announcement before all the patches. "We will make all builds playable for certain playstyles. Warband, small scale, solo. What´s left after the patches is that at least half of the builds are not playable or not enjoyable. Focus is warband / blob play.

You are either misremembering or intentionally twisting the words of the balance team.
Here is the original statement from the 2024 Balancing Roadmap:

The Group’s main philosophy with the ongoing Balancing process is to create an enjoyable gameplay to as many as possible, where every career and every specialisation has a good place of its own, for a wide range of playstyles. To achieve that goal, we want to offer every career an option for both a viable Party and Warband specialisation, allowing them to join and feel useful in any group or content in RoR from Open RvR Battles, Keep or City Sieges, Roaming and Scenarios!

Soloing is never once mentioned. Party and warband specs are the things around which careers have been balanced on.
The balance team even went ahead to clarify as much in the latest patch notes:

The priority of balancing in Return of Reckoning is set around group play, meaning any number from 6 all the way up to large scale fights in RvR. However, if we can improve balance for smaller numbered fights without negatively affecting group balance, we are willing to do so. Hence you will find a couple changes to Witch Elf and Witch Hunter specifically aimed at that. The nerf to Sacrificial Stab is aimed also at group play.

Unfortunately, even though the WE/WH changes of the last patch were long overdue and even helpful for the state of the lakes, it sets a really bad precedent where for things to actually get adjusted for small-scale you have to flood the forums with 20+pages-long complaint threads over the period of multiple months about solo issues with certain classes/specs. This is objectively a bad thing because it both "weaponizes" the forums as well as bogs their overall quality down consistently with threads talking about things that go against the way this MMO is designed around and sometimes with these influencing attempts infiltrating other posts discussing other things and trying to conflate solo issues with them.

If you ask me, even if WE/WH changes were a good thing, the solo-focused changes should have addressed even more specs and classes. I wonder if the balance team felt pressured to do so because of entire forums situation and inadvertently reinforced this situation where people are calling for x/FOTM class solo-nerfs with an ever-renewed Pavlovian passion. Just a sad state of afairs all around.


However, there is one good point that you raise (imo) and that is the fact that Regen remains unchanged.

Regen gear? Still the question why this exist in first place, discussion over years and years.

Not only unchanged, but INTENTIONALLY buffed (or at least kept where it is atm).
In the 14/05 patch where we got the Jewelry re-itemization changes, Fleshrender Jewelries were not only adjusted at a higher rarity and item lvl compared to ALL the other lair drops, but they also kept their Regen values at the same spot despite for that re-itemization patch being the perfect chance to remove/reduce their regen values (in favor of other stats).
And that is on top of the same patch stating that:

Item levels/rarity are no longer arbitrary, and should now correctly match the level of the expected content.

while also making distinctions between the Fleshrender's lair and all the other lairs at the same time.

I did ask for a clarification for this specific issue, but I have since then publicly received no official answer as to why.

[Narfii]

Over powered packs of stealthers did a great job of killing solo'ing all on its own, more so than a patch, imo.

This was a symptom, not the cause.

[Farrul]

If you ask me, even if WE/WH changes were a good thing, the solo-focused changes should have addressed even more specs and classes. I wonder if the balance team felt pressured to do so because of entire forums situation and inadvertently reinforced this situation where people are calling for x/FOTM class solo-nerfs with an ever-renewed Pavlovian passion. Just a sad state of afairs all around.


However, there is one good point that you raise (imo) and that is the fact that Regen remains unchanged.

Regen gear is necessary for none healing classes to even have a chance vs Dot/kite RDPS casters and especially DPS healers. Without regen gear the Solo experience would have been truly miserable for every none healing/stealth class.

The real elephant in the room is not regen gear, it is the history of OP DPS healers, RDPS, back then AM/Shaman (currently Runepriest standing as the top dog).

Occasionally there is a regen tank roaming around that you need a Warband to kill, but these are hardly an issue since their dps is non existent.

Healers that can go full dps, kite from range with dots/hots and with the switch of a button heal perfectly well is lame, they were only second in place to Def Witch elves.

Well Witch elves have been nerfed, next up is Runepriest, Magus etc, and we shall have a better solo game.

P.S. Of course the greatest enemy to solo is the blob, herd mentality of recent years that the RoR playerbase have adopted. The solution to that is the balance team fixing the RvR campaign and introducing anti blob mechanics ( not for the sake of solo, but for the general good).

[M0rw47h]

P.S. Of course the greatest enemy to solo is the blob, herd mentality of recent years that the RoR playerbase have adopted. The solution to that is the balance team fixing the RvR campaign and introducing anti blob mechanics ( not for the sake of solo, but for the general good).

I disagree. Blob can be dodged.

[Farrul]

P.S. Of course the greatest enemy to solo is the blob, herd mentality of recent years that the RoR playerbase have adopted. The solution to that is the balance team fixing the RvR campaign and introducing anti blob mechanics ( not for the sake of solo, but for the general good).

I disagree. Blob can be dodged.

Its not about solo, although it directly impacts the small scale battles available in a negative sense for the solo roamer, not sure if you are new player but this game was a lot more fun to solo in a years ago due to this factor alone ( class balance certainly wasn't good back then).

However the reason the blob must end, is mainly because RoR has deteriorated and mindless BloB gameplay & lack of RvR campaign purpose being the main culprits for this decline.

[M0rw47h]

P.S. Of course the greatest enemy to solo is the blob, herd mentality of recent years that the RoR playerbase have adopted. The solution to that is the balance team fixing the RvR campaign and introducing anti blob mechanics ( not for the sake of solo, but for the general good).

I disagree. Blob can be dodged.

Its not about solo, although it directly impacts the small scale battles available in a negative sense for the solo roamer, not sure if you are new player but this game was a lot more fun to solo in a years ago due to this factor alone ( class balance certainly wasn't good back then).

However the reason the blob must end, is mainly because RoR has deteriorated and mindless BloB gameplay & lack of RvR campaign purpose being the main culprits for this decline.

New player since 2017, playing mostly solo.
It always was like that, playing solo always felt like **** compared to running in 6 man... and thats fine. Its game balanced around having guards and heals.

[Farrul]

New player since 2017, playing mostly solo.
It always was like that, playing solo always felt like **** compared to running in 6 man... and thats fine. Its game balanced around having guards and heals.

My apologies ( i see your post count, hard to tell on a micro phone screen ).

I will have to hard disagree on that, this game was a lot better in small scale fights available and back then 6 man groups were a thing ( today they all merged with the blob).

Something happened to RoR during these recent years which made the number of small scale RvR fights available and enjoyable drop by a noticeable amount, replaced by herd players ( i think after they introduced Crowns, this has been the worst ever).

[Sinisterror]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQgxy7AOOq4

just picked one random 6v6 Video from Age of Reckoning. You can just tell the difference, that those guys actually want to do PvP, dont care about dying because your stats and this Killboard aspect is really pathetic to care about, in PVP GAME where all of our fun depends on people dying over and over. That video actually made me miss 6vx fights.

I probably could find good 6vx video but just picking the first old 6v6 video and it look so much more engaging & Fun than current RoR PvP.

[Farrul]

I probably could find good 6vx video but just picking the first old 6v6 video and it look so much more engaging & Fun than current RoR PvP.

I definitely agree and it isn't nostalgia, there used to be true joy in the gameplay, solo, duo, 6 men.

In RoR, even though class balance was crap sometimes( WH & WE being insanely OP during the MDPV era etc) but there were always engaging fights to find in the lakes, nowdays i log in sometimes only to log out 10 minutes later, recently only the scenario change has kept me going.