What I think Return of Reckoning is getting wrong... (lately)
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2021 7:27 pm
I have noticed that as expected, the player base is starting to get high renown overall, and with high-level gear from cities. I think this is inadvertently blocking many new players from getting a foothold, and staying in Tier 4. I would say that there is a bias towards keeping invested and organized players interested but ironically those players are the ones most likely to act as blockers for new players to join RoR (aka premades dominating scenarios). Some more consideration and thought can be put into somehow making the game more fun for weaker players and not pushing the matra that might-is-right.
Scenarios are typically favored to premades (when no events are active) with only 1 pug scenario in rotation at a time. This provides less diversity for general PUG/casual scenario play. For tackling the issue or T4 bracket being to large to encourage more balanced matches, my suggestion would be to look at adding a kind of debolster to regular T4 scenarios which is roughly equal to the highest level gear available from Scenario grinding. To even the playing field because I don't think it's really fair for full Sov. equipped players to be dominating in PUG/Casual brackets. They already have a huge edge if they are playing with their friends on com channels. I wouldn't really want to consider splitting the T4 bracket as I don't think that would work well...
T4 RvR hasn't evolved in the past year(s) with the introduction of Forts and Cities. The first iteration of Fortresses was great in my view because it had some of the highest participation rates due to the fact that they were not limited in size. This was some of the highest participation fights to look forward to, especially in lower population times. I think it is hard to keep players going during these slow times as it is easy to log off when you see that zones are dead. I would suggest trying to remedy some T4 activities during the slower hours, this might have a cumulative positive effect when the population eventually picks up during peaks.
Keeps in T4 have quite visibly become less contested and they act more of a gate for players to get to cities. I have always thought cities should be much harder to contest, and that Keeps should offer higher rank gear than Vanquisher (which basically sucks now). More consideration should be given to the fun-factor of realms that are being dominated. The main fault I find here occurred when the Keep respawn mechanic's changed to be less favorable, sending players all the way back to the warcamp if they get blocked. I realize that this does encourage organized strategy but that is at the loss of RvR in general, I find. I personally don't mind a good funnel fight at the keep - it keeps the population high and that is what is needed the most.
Career balance has been fairly good as it usually pendulates with focused patches, I would say lately the main issue is high-end players simply have too much edge now.
I have noticed that Cities are quite unfriendly to solo/casual players as well. I wouldn't mind to see if this can be improved, perhaps even if special PUG instances with only Invader/Warlord gear available... Speaking of Invader/Warlord - it's almost missing from the game. Players typically seem to go from Vanquisher to Sovereign, I think this could be done better. It was unfortunate that Sovereign was introduced so rapidly, but what is done is done.
My rr80 RP that I've been playing a lot in the past weeks has a grand total of 7 Royal crests. I think we need higher drop rates from quality fights in T4. Another consideration would be to add a similar kind of roll to the cities that the RvR keeps have. So that if you do poorly once or twice, usually the third time you will get a Gold bag. (correct me if I'm wrong here)
Scenarios are typically favored to premades (when no events are active) with only 1 pug scenario in rotation at a time. This provides less diversity for general PUG/casual scenario play. For tackling the issue or T4 bracket being to large to encourage more balanced matches, my suggestion would be to look at adding a kind of debolster to regular T4 scenarios which is roughly equal to the highest level gear available from Scenario grinding. To even the playing field because I don't think it's really fair for full Sov. equipped players to be dominating in PUG/Casual brackets. They already have a huge edge if they are playing with their friends on com channels. I wouldn't really want to consider splitting the T4 bracket as I don't think that would work well...
T4 RvR hasn't evolved in the past year(s) with the introduction of Forts and Cities. The first iteration of Fortresses was great in my view because it had some of the highest participation rates due to the fact that they were not limited in size. This was some of the highest participation fights to look forward to, especially in lower population times. I think it is hard to keep players going during these slow times as it is easy to log off when you see that zones are dead. I would suggest trying to remedy some T4 activities during the slower hours, this might have a cumulative positive effect when the population eventually picks up during peaks.
Keeps in T4 have quite visibly become less contested and they act more of a gate for players to get to cities. I have always thought cities should be much harder to contest, and that Keeps should offer higher rank gear than Vanquisher (which basically sucks now). More consideration should be given to the fun-factor of realms that are being dominated. The main fault I find here occurred when the Keep respawn mechanic's changed to be less favorable, sending players all the way back to the warcamp if they get blocked. I realize that this does encourage organized strategy but that is at the loss of RvR in general, I find. I personally don't mind a good funnel fight at the keep - it keeps the population high and that is what is needed the most.
Career balance has been fairly good as it usually pendulates with focused patches, I would say lately the main issue is high-end players simply have too much edge now.
I have noticed that Cities are quite unfriendly to solo/casual players as well. I wouldn't mind to see if this can be improved, perhaps even if special PUG instances with only Invader/Warlord gear available... Speaking of Invader/Warlord - it's almost missing from the game. Players typically seem to go from Vanquisher to Sovereign, I think this could be done better. It was unfortunate that Sovereign was introduced so rapidly, but what is done is done.
My rr80 RP that I've been playing a lot in the past weeks has a grand total of 7 Royal crests. I think we need higher drop rates from quality fights in T4. Another consideration would be to add a similar kind of roll to the cities that the RvR keeps have. So that if you do poorly once or twice, usually the third time you will get a Gold bag. (correct me if I'm wrong here)