Gamedirection & targetaudience

[cacumen]

Balancing in this game has always been bad. Mostly because whenever a dev team tries to balance careers they always do it in a negative way, making it bad for everyone who plays that particular career that was chosen to get nerfed. I've seen so many players just quit their main characters (the game too) because someone came with the idea of nerfing it to the ground, that's just bad balance and poor imagination.

Instead you Devs could 'balance' the game in a positive way, by positive i mean to create new stuff for the careers that are 'under-performing', make it cooler to play those careers. Work towards making this game feel fresh and fun instead of hitting with the nerf-hammer the careers that are 'over-performing'.

Maybe this way you get more people into the game and make it feel alive again.

But please, stop nerfing our characters and work on creating new stuff for everyone.

[Aethilmar]

I voted RvR but I suspect that will take a while. A nice, quick way to build some goodwill with most of the community would be (as many have asked) to revert back all the barrier changes for SCs and put guards back in with kill credit.

[Toshutkidup]

Appreciate the time and effort to create a poll that has great options and logic. gj

[nocturnalguest]

My vote for SCs MM as for that the vision of what needs to be done is clear enough and commonly shared along community. RvR i would pick as top priority to thinktank. Rankeds are the most amazing environment this game has to offer but amount of veterans (not even newcomers, as they dont retented enough to consider it even) struggling there is so huge thats its very tricky and will not be received well by majority so i would personally love to see it as priority #3.
Balancing is actually the last thing on my list as that requires way too different approaches, mindsets and that we cant obviosuly anyhow afford (and here i believe rather as community, none of us would done better imo, but messing it up unproffesionally is worst case scenario, project only option in my pov is to 1) bugfix 2) thinktank useless tactics/abilities per class into more diverse build options, none here is qualified enough for AAA projects meta shakes). What is happening in terms of balancing at the moment is an absolute disaster, most harmful efforts are put there now and this has to stop. Sooner the better. In terms of balance game is way more cr*p then it was before ability rework.
There should have been better bugfixes than the "work" on balance.

Also there is missing a crucial option for a vote of a kind like "Being more user-friendly" by this i mean some actions to attract new blood. Those are small steps, like reverting gear gaps (=buffing lower tier sets), making stuff more easy on your way into "endgame" etc, here im totally convinced that following current modern MMO trend of "easy-go" is desperately required (even considering aor being oldschool, trends have drastically change since then, cant ignore them, none here are for a korean-like-grind, people would still play if it would be easier but just different classes, different specs, different comps etc) but with introduction of WoW-like (of pvp focus) grand challenges being incredibly hard to achieve, so competetion should be only left for end game while the road of getting close to end game should be way more quick and easy. Gameplay is the biggest retention factor, of that im sure. Not the awful grind (and on top of it being awful its impossible game-engine-wise to make it enjoyable like ToL, WoW, ESO, GW2 and many other commercial projects)

[Scragmuncher]

People need to get out of their small guilds and join bigger ones or at least join their warbands. RvR works better when there are 24 man wbs capable of fighting each other. Most nights now its 1 -2 per side (sometimes none) with a bunch of 6 and 12 mans tailing them. There is also a huge capability gap between those warbands. What then happens is 24 man with 2 12 man and a 6 man tail steamrolls the other 24 man and therefore the other 24 man then looks for support. End result is one blob. To all the smallscale heros tailgaiting org warbands - you are the problem.

I agree with a fair bit of this. There are so many tiny guilds around that can't have coordinated wb's, but people often get frustrated by the lack of organized groups on their realm.
Being part of a large guild in this game has been one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had.
If you are looking to have more fun in this game, join a bigger guild and get involved with them.

[georgehabadasher]

People need to get out of their small guilds and join bigger ones or at least join their warbands. RvR works better when there are 24 man wbs capable of fighting each other. Most nights now its 1 -2 per side (sometimes none) with a bunch of 6 and 12 mans tailing them. There is also a huge capability gap between those warbands. What then happens is 24 man with 2 12 man and a 6 man tail steamrolls the other 24 man and therefore the other 24 man then looks for support. End result is one blob. To all the smallscale heros tailgaiting org warbands - you are the problem.

I agree with a fair bit of this. There are so many tiny guilds around that can't have coordinated wb's, but people often get frustrated by the lack of organized groups on their realm.
Being part of a large guild in this game has been one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had.
If you are looking to have more fun in this game, join a bigger guild and get involved with them.

People have been trying to blame players for failures of game design for ten years. People blob because the games mechanics incentivize blobbing. The players aren't the problem, the RvR system is.

[Repulsion]

Spoiler:

People need to get out of their small guilds and join bigger ones or at least join their warbands. RvR works better when there are 24 man wbs capable of fighting each other. Most nights now its 1 -2 per side (sometimes none) with a bunch of 6 and 12 mans tailing them. There is also a huge capability gap between those warbands. What then happens is 24 man with 2 12 man and a 6 man tail steamrolls the other 24 man and therefore the other 24 man then looks for support. End result is one blob. To all the smallscale heros tailgaiting org warbands - you are the problem.

I agree with a fair bit of this. There are so many tiny guilds around that can't have coordinated wb's, but people often get frustrated by the lack of organized groups on their realm.
Being part of a large guild in this game has been one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had.
If you are looking to have more fun in this game, join a bigger guild and get involved with them.

People have been trying to blame players for failures of game design for ten years. People blob because the games mechanics incentivize blobbing. The players aren't the problem, the RvR system is.

He has a point though, as it stands there might be more registered guilds than active players.

[Scragmuncher]

People need to get out of their small guilds and join bigger ones or at least join their warbands. RvR works better when there are 24 man wbs capable of fighting each other. Most nights now its 1 -2 per side (sometimes none) with a bunch of 6 and 12 mans tailing them. There is also a huge capability gap between those warbands. What then happens is 24 man with 2 12 man and a 6 man tail steamrolls the other 24 man and therefore the other 24 man then looks for support. End result is one blob. To all the smallscale heros tailgaiting org warbands - you are the problem.

I agree with a fair bit of this. There are so many tiny guilds around that can't have coordinated wb's, but people often get frustrated by the lack of organized groups on their realm.
Being part of a large guild in this game has been one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had.
If you are looking to have more fun in this game, join a bigger guild and get involved with them.

People have been trying to blame players for failures of game design for ten years. People blob because the games mechanics incentivize blobbing. The players aren't the problem, the RvR system is.

Nothing I was saying was about the whole 'blobbing' deal. I'm talking about making solid, coordinated warbands that play effectively after fighting alongside each other on a regular basis.
If you are not enjoying the rvr, maybe look at changing the way you play the game a bit.
And I'm in no way saying that everything is perfect, but that is something that YOU, as an individual can do to change up your experience in the game.

[CyunUnderis]

First of all, thank you Bombling for taking the time to create this poll with a very precise introduction of the current state of the game.

I personally voted for "balancing" for several reasons.

The first is that I don't have faith in the solution that will be developed for matchmaking in SC. Far be it from me to say that the developers are not competent on this subject, but I just think that it is a long development for something that will bring little because other solutions are more interesting (an addon to allow players to create/join groups - interesting for all content or the fact of grouping/creating a group manually like this is already the case).

The second is that I don't have faith in an overhaul of RvR either. Maybe it will make RvR more interesting/fun and that's a very good thing if it does. On the other hand, if the goal of the RvR overhaul is to reduce zerg, like LotD was, then I don't think it will work. LotD could have been the RvR system it was meant to be, unfortunately too many mistakes or oversights were made to prevent zerg from being possible or allow small groups to have interesting fights or impact. Right now the RvR is about which WB to follow as a 6-man or how a 6-man can escape a WB. At the moment, small structures cannot have an impact in RvR by themselves. And even if the RvR overhaul allows small groups to move around the map and have an objective to achieve (capture a BO further away from the frontline for example), they will not be able to compete or at least survive against those who are more numerous than them.

So from my point of view, only the "balancing" part remains. If this part allows to bring fun tools to certain classes, to review forgotten mechanics (Sorc/BW/SL/Choppa), to reintroduce less viable classes, while allowing organized groups to burst zerg (without it being easy to do - by pressing a key) then this is the subject to be treated as a priority.

Of course, this is a very broad part (too much perhaps) because with the modifications that have already been made, it is necessary to touch the gears and therefore, by extension, the access to the gears or the RR to diversify the playstyles. Simplifying the access to endgame stuffs would allow players to test several classes and easily adapt to the meta/patch changes that are supposed to arrive more quickly thanks to the promise of the Ability Rework.

In any case, the "Balancing" part has already been well started. I don't agree with all the changes that have been introduced and I can't grasp the big picture (I was really frustrated when they released the "roadmap" - which is not one). But, right now, the "Balancing" need to continue, because stopping in the middle to focus on another topic would leave the game in a wobbly state.

[Martok]

If you are not enjoying the rvr, maybe look at changing the way you play the game a bit.
And I'm in no way saying that everything is perfect, but that is something that YOU, as an individual can do to change up your experience in the game.

Define irony. You just proved georgehabadasher's point.