Why scenarios still suck

[altharion1]

Not trolling.

We were stuck in a middle ground before: not incentivizing group play enough but not catering to solo players either.

We chose to cater to the casuals, and sacrificed the integrity of the game for it.

For all the complaining about casuals not wanting to X or Y, this is still a MMORPG. It's a group game. It's a social game. That's the whole damn point. I should never have bought any of the ridiculousness about people wanting to play this type of game alone. It should always have been developed to cater towards the formation of groups, warbands and guilds, and the changes should have been directed instead towards measures to prevent people from screwing themselves in that environment and to push them towards guilds and groups. Restrictions on group size and composition are such an example.

Have you had any thoughts on how you could implement incentivization for group play? I assume it wouldn't be straight up increased rewards or renown gain.

[Tifereth]

Not trolling.

That's genuinely nice to hear, mate. It's an alpha, some things break, some things don't work out as intended. Multi billion dollar
companies have a hard time with balance or feature implementation aswell. You guys are definately getting more flack for trying than
is warranted. It's not too late to implement another system that might positively impact group play after all, without getting rid of the solo queue all together.

We had the discussion about VP contribution before and I heavily disagree, however. If you want to incentivise people not yet comfortable with group play, it might be a bad move to make these trying players feel bad for their loss on top. Changing multiple things at once might overshoot the goal, if all we want to achieve is more group play.

[Jaycub]

@Glorian

I'm talking about small advantages, I agree that RvR should be won through RvR. We saw how cancerous scenario's in the VP system was on live, but the devs were dumb/lazy and just removed them instead of addressing the problems.

Maybe scs could help a zone lock faster after you have taken both keeps, or supply additional siege ammo, or beef up the guards at a BO/keep, or spawn extra seige, etc...

I don't want to go back to having them cockblock zones and make them impossible to take like they did on live, but I also think scenarios can in a positive way contribute to the actual game (the campaign is really all the matters).

[7rere7]

Well if the SC changes then players will know who to single out and whine to more easily when they lose.

SC pop time ,probably a nightmare.

Balance archetype is going to fix players playing properly ?

A duo can deal with stuffed rdps , my two hand BO alone wins 75% of SC's, charge into order back line , take two heal pots ....game!

Maybe give certain classes more renown in solo SC's like tanks and healers.

SC's design incorporated into RVR ,more excitement and population,get rid of SC's all together.

[altharion1]

Well if the SC changes then players will know who to single out and whine to more easily when they lose.
my two hand BO alone wins 75% of SC's, charge into order back line , take two heal pots ....game!

BO name?

[Dragaz]

Not trolling.

We were stuck in a middle ground before: not incentivizing group play enough but not catering to solo players either.

We chose to cater to the casuals, and sacrificed the integrity of the game for it.

For all the complaining about casuals not wanting to X or Y, this is still a MMORPG. It's a group game. It's a social game. That's the whole damn point. I should never have bought any of the ridiculousness about people wanting to play this type of game alone. It should always have been developed to cater towards the formation of groups, warbands and guilds, and the changes should have been directed instead towards measures to prevent people from screwing themselves in that environment and to push them towards guilds and groups. Restrictions on group size and composition are such an example.

To err is human, but not unavoidable.

To be honest - and please don't get me wrong i don't want to descredit anyone -, don't you think this has to do with the way the RoR team took?
i mean: in the days of T3 (which are widely considered as the finest hour of RoR) you mentioned the goal of development is based around group play. the intention was to create a PTS with a core team with outstanding people who spent a lot of time within groups and theorycrafting to fix the (rather few real) balance issues the game in fact has.

at some point certain people joined the team who played nothing but solo/duo. since it is common to bring in your opinion combined with effort, don't you think these people turned the ship slightly into the wrong direction?

i mean we all credit the team for their effort and daily work but don't you think it would have been better to follow your original intention? i know that everyone of the team tries his best to fix the "problems" from his own PoV but in all honesty i think you might have become a bit too obsessed with fixing everything and the ship went off course. you do a great work, honestly and a few months back you stated that you don't want to fck up with certain people of the community as you need them like they need you. You even admit that you lack some knowledge and experience, hence the team and the pts. Due to the hype RoR has experienced some things might have gone to fast, others into the wrong direction.

After all this is a social project as you stated yourself above. Don't you think the team might have done the same mistake certain elitists did when becoming a bit overbearing? I mean especially within a small private server you need the people as much as they need you, without descrediting anyone. But you simply can't balance/create a game if you don't see the max. potential certain changes will have or lead the community into the wrong direction, like this one: playing as pug over grouping up in an mmorpg.

[7rere7]

Well if the SC changes then players will know who to single out and whine to more easily when they lose.
my two hand BO alone wins 75% of SC's, charge into order back line , take two heal pots ....game!

BO name?

BO : Dabull

Magus : Zuerig

haven't played my BO in awhile cause of my Mag ,but usually get the same effective results with my Magus.

[Tiggo]

Discussion switched a bit away from the really big problem:

"Having a system in place that ensures scenarios do not start, or at least let you leave the spawn until the numbers are even, and doing so for late coming players on both sides would go a long ways to making scenarios much more enjoyable."

Archetype balance means nothing if sc starts unbalanced in NUMBERS.

I guess its technically just not possible yet to alter the sc queue in that form?

[Jaycub]

^Ya i typed this assuming that it would require client control, and I agree that it is the #1 problem. But some people seem to think that a ~2 player advantage doesn't really matter for some reason.

>A good player can easily control 2-3 people, especially a tank

I had to stop reading there tbh my man.

[Noiree]

People complaining in /1 "omg, you dumbasses - you lost the game! We won't lock now" - the sweet memories from early live. No SCs for oRVR locks, please.
Also no cherry-picking players for SCs. This would lead to many players complaining about not getting pops and that was the reason to melt T2 and T3 together in one slaughter fest aka the side with more 1[x] loses.

Speaking from my experience with F2P twinking in wow: archetype picking doesn't work. The community is too small. You would have to drop the goal of balancing for actually getting an SC going at all.

Short explanation for the F2P thingy and some other ideas:

Spoiler:

Blizz came up with the archetype q-ing about two years ago. When qing, you have to choose a role that you will play in battlegrounds. Still you had BGs without healers etc in F2P (lvl 20-29) games because the community was too small. Archetypes in general got some sense drilled into that when they introduced stat templates. Gear doesn't matter much anymore, which is actually quite enjoyable, only item lvls matters. Paying players still have an edge over free players, but it's not rofl stomping uber dmg anymore. Also, enchantments don't work anymore, either.
Archetype stat templates for SCs could be interesting for ROR and might solve the power struggle as it did in wow.

Having a form of skirmish arena in ROR could be interesting. On one hand, it would keep the groups focussed on competitive play busy, also their awesomeness would be visible to everyone. On the other hand, "omg, mdps is so op, you only win because fotm classes" whine inc.


Sidenote: pugging <3