Return of Reckoning

Been playing for about 5 years, do what you will with that info.
There is a real issue that the server has been facing for the past 2 years, and it is steadily increasing in intensity:
That is, people who play this game without understanding the objectives of a battle be that scenario or RvR.
That is more common in scenarios, where, unless someone joins with a guild group (and then, sometimes not even then) people will simply not comprehend
that they are supposed to be securing objectives and will NOT try to understand or ask what those should be or how to achieve them.
I am certainly not alone in noting that lately, players will join a scenario and attempt to surrender it if THEY ALONE are not scoring enough kills, due to it having a negative effect on their score. Even new players not understanding how the killboard works will immitate others players and throw matches that way.
Then on the other hand, even if things are going their favor kill-wise, they will completely ignore scenario objectives usually allowing the opposite team to win the scenario, even if they were battered around in it.
People have to spam directions in scenario chat for anyone to listen and then usually that only results in backchat or people idling in scenarios if they are not getting enough kills.
Making groups through lfg chat does little to help as well, most people nowadays simply do not know scenario rules, don't want to learn them and simply disregard them.
This kind of degrades one of the most important facets of the game: strategy.
And that brings me to the RvR aspect of this post, simply people being afraid of failing at it or not scoring enough kills.
I've led enough sieges to know that if you keep people focused, it's fairly easy to beat someone at even numbers when you're attacking them, utilizing various tricks and strategies. Nowadays people will NOT siege unless they are in far greater numbers than the attackers and will most of the time not even seek to fight people on equal terms.
Some leaders that I will not name but nonetheless you can easily identify make a silly habbit or running around the lakes, not doing any objectives, in full warbands trying to chase down the most one-sided fights of all, two or three people all the while refusing to assist in any raids or delivering any resources, simply because it's easy or because that's a foolproof way of raising their stats.
Sure, most of what I've detailed here isn't only attributed to the Killboard but the Killboard feeds into that mentality and it is what has somewhat lessened the game experience for a lot of us.
One of the assets of this game is tactical fights. I'd hazard to say that is truly the unique selling point of Warhammer in general, not elves, orks and dwarves. You can get that stuff anywhere.
But a living world embroiled in conflict where you either stick with your allies or perish.
If you want mindless 1v1 pvp or big boy numbers to show off to your mom in hope of her ever feeling proud of you (which she NEVER will), there's a plethora of other games out there for you.
The question is, where do we go from here?
I am in favor of removing the killboard as well, it really serves no other reason other than being a lightning rod for subhumans,
I highly doubt anyone disagrees with that, but further than that, how do you rehabilitate people out of this toxic behavior?
I'd like to hear your opinions.

JackLope wrote: Fri Jan 12, 2024 8:42 pm Been playing for about 5 years, do what you will with that info.
There is a real issue that the server has been facing for the past 2 years, and it is steadily increasing in intensity:
That is, people who play this game without understanding the objectives of a battle be that scenario or RvR.
That is more common in scenarios, where, unless someone joins with a guild group (and then, sometimes not even then) people will simply not comprehend
that they are supposed to be securing objectives and will NOT try to understand or ask what those should be or how to achieve them.
I am certainly not alone in noting that lately, players will join a scenario and attempt to surrender it if THEY ALONE are not scoring enough kills, due to it having a negative effect on their score. Even new players not understanding how the killboard works will immitate others players and throw matches that way.
Then on the other hand, even if things are going their favor kill-wise, they will completely ignore scenario objectives usually allowing the opposite team to win the scenario, even if they were battered around in it.
People have to spam directions in scenario chat for anyone to listen and then usually that only results in backchat or people idling in scenarios if they are not getting enough kills.
Making groups through lfg chat does little to help as well, most people nowadays simply do not know scenario rules, don't want to learn them and simply disregard them.
This kind of degrades one of the most important facets of the game: strategy.
And that brings me to the RvR aspect of this post, simply people being afraid of failing at it or not scoring enough kills.
I've led enough sieges to know that if you keep people focused, it's fairly easy to beat someone at even numbers when you're attacking them, utilizing various tricks and strategies. Nowadays people will NOT siege unless they are in far greater numbers than the attackers and will most of the time not even seek to fight people on equal terms.
Some leaders that I will not name but nonetheless you can easily identify make a silly habbit or running around the lakes, not doing any objectives, in full warbands trying to chase down the most one-sided fights of all, two or three people all the while refusing to assist in any raids or delivering any resources, simply because it's easy or because that's a foolproof way of raising their stats.
Sure, most of what I've detailed here isn't only attributed to the Killboard but the Killboard feeds into that mentality and it is what has somewhat lessened the game experience for a lot of us.
One of the assets of this game is tactical fights. I'd hazard to say that is truly the unique selling point of Warhammer in general, not elves, orks and dwarves. You can get that stuff anywhere.
But a living world embroiled in conflict where you either stick with your allies or perish.
If you want mindless 1v1 pvp or big boy numbers to show off to your mom in hope of her ever feeling proud of you (which she NEVER will), there's a plethora of other games out there for you.
The question is, where do we go from here?
I am in favor of removing the killboard as well, it really serves no other reason other than being a lightning rod for subhumans,
I highly doubt anyone disagrees with that, but further than that, how do you rehabilitate people out of this toxic behavior?
I'd like to hear your opinions.

Appreciate how anti toxic you are in your absolute derailing wall of text

“It isn't an individual player issue, but affects the server's health as a whole. One shouldn't feel stressed or bad about fighting for their faction against the odds and dying in the Warhammer universe”

Opinion not a fact

IMO ths is not correct one should feel stressed about being below par in a pvp game

Campaign as a whole has no effect and doesn't affect anything. (City 2 instances with 624 players online)

Individual or guild performance affects your status in the community that is the only end game there is.

Git guud, be ignorant, accept, find your individual enjoyment or move on

Pitty dev representatives are posting in this thread

Bozzax wrote: Fri Jan 12, 2024 8:59 pm

Pitty dev representatives are posting in this thread

They can speak for themselves if they wish, I don't represent that team. I just find this to be a trivial issue for a tool that is well developed and very unlikely to go anywhere. Considering how few staff members post on the forums in discussions, maybe keep that shade to yourself.

But that isn’t how it is perceived you know this I know this

You know I am simply a tester you aren’t

That's fine with me, I'm usually accurate enough despite not speaking for them directly. Most people posting here probably have a realistic expectation that it isn't going anywhere.

Air your grievances anyway, feedback has value. Maybe someone can run a poll.

reynor007 wrote: Thu Jan 11, 2024 8:55 pm and let's remove armory so that people come up with builds themselves and don't look at armory and ctrl+c ctrl+v

if the only "skill" left in this game is a build we're in trouble.

Third time trying to post this. That is a far bigger issue than any kda list

wargrimnir wrote: Fri Jan 12, 2024 2:30 pm People have been cowards in RvR long before the killboard ever existed, for many other reasons than someone might see their magic number.

I think this is absolutely spot on. To me, though, it points to the fact that this discussion isn't really about just Killboard in itself - it's about all those "many other reasons" too.

I think there's lots of reasons that lead to fun fights happening less than they could do. I think some players being afraid to commit to fights is one of these reasons. Sometimes this is partially because they want good stats on killboard.

Personally, I don't believe that the Killboard is having a large enough effect to overcome the positives that others have highlighted. For that reason, I personally am not in favour of removing it - but I can totally understand people that argue the other way and I could be persuaded by evidence showing that it, by itself, has a significant impact on player behaviour.
(EDIT: Hadn't considered the oversized impact changing the behaviour of a warband leader would have, pointed out by Garamore below. I think for this reason at least removing deaths from the killboard might be a good idea.)

Just to quickly roll back to those "many other reasons" - To me, the most important high-level goal we should be focusing on to improve RoR is to make more fun fights happen, more often. Because to me, those "fun fights" are the heart of what brings us all to RoR. Certainly risk-averse players are one thing that makes fights happen less often, but it's not the only one.

I think there's lots of avenues that we could explore that could really improve this metric, if we look at what is required for these fun fights to happen, and then trace them back to look at obstacles that stop those requirements from occurring. To pick a really obvious starting point, to have a fun fight there has to be two realms with groups of players to fight. I think a lot of us will have seen times when there's no one in the lakes on one realm because no one wants to lead a warband on that side. Can we find ways to make people more likely to start warbands? Can we find ways to get people fighting in a warband/party even when no one *does* want to lead it? I feel like these problems are solvable and could definitely lead to more fun fights for everyone, more often.

It only has to change the playstyle of 1-2 wb leaders to have a massive effect on rvr. Certain wb leaders have got more defensive and only engage with a /t4 zerg. Yes they did it before, yes the would do it again if it was removed but I think they would do it less.

I'd keep the kills just remove the deaths. Give rewards for top 10 guilds with most kills in rvr per week. That way your encouraging people to stay in the lakes to chase kills even when getting wiped and encouraging people to join bigger guilds. RvR a lot better with 4-6 wbs out in the lakes.