New Player 16-39 Experience is Atrocious

[WargasmicWayne]

They should do a boost from 16 to 30, and give some lv30 welfare gear, or something, because honestly turning level 16 on this server was one of the worst new player experiences I've encountered in an MMO to date. A 23 level sync is just too much. I went from having some of the most fun I'd had in an MMO in a while to absolutely not enjoying myself in any way. Even though the game is free, I can't see most players roughing it through this horrible bracket. I guarantee this server would be way more popular if it did something, ANYTHING to alleviate the god awful 16-30s experience.

In one experience point you go from being a great build, banging through queue pop after queue pop, to being a completely useless goof wankstain of a failure, waiting in 30+min queues just to be slotted into an undermanned pug team to be trounced by the same sweaty premade over and over. In 1 experience, all your progress is gone; all the build work & gearing up, all the practical experience, all useless, and actually you are worse than a level 1 player by a large margin waiting in long queues just to be useless to your group. You may as well just queue up with the game in the background, join the queue when it pops, and autorun into a wall because HONESTLY that's how useless you are. There is basically no gameplay. Nobody is playing PvE, so you can't PvE. The game thinks the solution to low pop is to slot you in at level 16 with level 39s, so you can't PvP...

Like I said, it's virtually unplayable. Speed up the 16-39 experience. Put in some kind of boost with welfare gear or something. The game is unplayable. This is why you are losing population instead of gaining it, I guarantee it.

I spent a bunch of war crests to get good level 16-17 gear. I spent them because I figured if I don't do something to help alleviate the power gap between my player & actual high 30s players, I will just quit anyway so who cares about saving.... But guess what, I'm still completely useless even with high-end level16-20 gear. So, PQs are all empty so you can't gear up in PvE, and even if you do go out of your way to gear up you are still useless until probably 30~. In short, the 29 level sync is just a bad idea. Throw in a boost from level 16 to 29 and some welfare level 29 gear or something.

I've talked to other new players, they have said the same thing. There have been other threads like this one in the past. I'm not saying this out of hate, I'm saying this because I think it's a shame that the game is so close to being a fun experience and then this absolutely broken bracket has to exist. The changes made to create the T2 bracket are absolutely atrocious and absolutely compromise the gameplay to an extent that most will find unacceptable. If you can't make the bracket work, you need to do something to speed it up so that it doesn't constantly push new players away.

It's fine if you want it to be the same 200 people at end-game playing over on both sides while new players in 1-16 bracket quit upon hitting 16. That's what this system gets you. It feels like this server has intentionally been made inaccessible to new players, and I can't fathom as to why. The server will decline. If you want the server to be accessible to new players, the T2 experience absolutely needs to change. Honestly, there needs to be something to speed up the experience beyond level 16, and there needs to be an alternative to using war crests so you aren't wasting all your crests on trash gear just to stay up to date... The original game had more than 1 currency for this reason.

Most people just silently leave at level 16 because the game becomes unplayable. I want to say something, because WAR was always one of my favourite MMOS-- and RoR is SO freaking close to being playable & accessible to new players. If they found a solution to this problem, I guarantee you would see steady population gains.

In classic WAR, entering a new bracket was always a bit tough, but entering a 16-39 with no boon of any kind is ridiculous... You go from having a ton of fun around 13-15, to feeling like somebody has just kicked you square in the jibblies come lv16. Most sane people will just leave.

[Sulorie]

Hello, you struggle because you don't know what to do - which is normal for new players - as being at a lower rank is just a minor factor.
You gave little information about your class/gear/ranks.
Do you seek help?

[Strakar]

Some of it depends what class you are. If you are another dps, queues are longer. Mid tier you probably need a group more than t4, the pugs are awful.

Get the purple influence gear at lvl 18 from the lakes to supplement your rvr set. Have at least green talisman slotted. Bolster should prop you up but there is definitely chatter of high 30s players staying in mid tier to grief lowbies. If you get rolled in 2-3 pug scenarios in a row, just stop and rvr, or group and fight back. You can be useful in rvr being shielded by the zerg. I only found low mid tier bad on my first character when I didn't know what I was doing. Now it's fun on alts.

[Lawmay]

Hello, you struggle because you don't know what to do - which is normal for new players - as being at a lower rank is just a minor factor.
You gave little information about your class/gear/ranks.
Do you seek help?

I think his problem isn't one of not knowing what to do, its one of numbers. Are you seriously trying to imply that you aren't immediately horribly underpowered when you move on from T1? OP may of been a bit overdramatic, but hes not wrong.

[Sulorie]

Hello, you struggle because you don't know what to do - which is normal for new players - as being at a lower rank is just a minor factor.
You gave little information about your class/gear/ranks.
Do you seek help?

I think his problem isn't one of not knowing what to do, its one of numbers. Are you seriously trying to imply that you aren't immediately horribly underpowered when you move on from T1? OP may of been a bit overdramatic, but hes not wrong.

I am fairly sure that it is a knowledge gap combined with the limited resources of a new player.
At level 16 you for the most part still use t1 gear, which is lacking a lot.
At level 17 you should farm keeper set and slot talismans, at lvl18 you can use all gear from sewers/saccellum dungeon and have update stats.
This results in a huge bolster with competitive stats.
You will still lose against premades but a lvl39 would lose too.
When you want to win more, build groups and don't roll a dice every SC whether your group setup are good or bad.
Teamplay and knowing your class wins SC in midtier, as gear gaps hardly exist, not player level.

Not using talismans gives you a huge disadvantage, because of weak bolster.
With recent patches it became more difficult for new players, I can give you that, because people are more hesitant to slot talismans, when XP gains are so high and they outrank the slotted gear in no time.

[Secrets]

There will be a rumored patch coming that the team is working on to address this very issue by giving you your full ability kit earlier.

I'd hold judgement on the current pre-rank 40 experience until then.

[Detangler]

The biggest issue I have for 16+ is lack of group heals and challenge for ranks 16-19. Not having these tools and fighting players that do is a huge disadvantage.

[regularspecial]

The biggest issue I have for 16+ is lack of group heals and challenge for ranks 16-19. Not having these tools and fighting players that do is a huge disadvantage.

i really think tanks should be given guard at lvl 1, same as challenge

not even touching upon how much more enjoyable the lower levels will be, maybe new players will become more famailiar with the buttons if using them from lvl 1 onwards instead of 10 and whenever you get challenge

trying to fight ranged dps in t1 without challenge just makes my soul hurt

[tazdingo]

the elephant in the room is new players hitting prems in the mids, getting demolished over and over regardless of what they do and then just uninstalling. we all know it, but nobody says it cause you just get called bad

[WargasmicWayne]

Yeah, I'll admit I was being dramatic but honestly that was my experience last night. It did feel like a painfully dramatic shift. So, I'm just trying to convey how it 'felt' hitting 16.

It was incredibly demoralizing. In the span of about 20minutes I went from having a blast to having no fun at all just because of a tier switch.

It was like night and day, honestly. Like I said, my main reason for making this post is just to point out how bad this is of an experience for new players. The game should at least be playable as a pug, that was the beauty of WAR's game design. It felt bad enough that I was willing to talk to other players about it and get their take, everyone I'd talked to admits t2 feels pretty bad atm. I also searched around online, because surely I can't be the first one to note this, and sure enough others have mentioned how bad it feels. In t1, I certainly lost to premades, but nothing compared to in t2 where if you're pugging you might end up with a couple completely underpowered low levels like yourself and just get decimated over and over.

At level 14-15 I was like, "Hell yeah this game is great, just like I remember it, can't wait to get max level and start participating in endgame RvR..."
to turning level 16 and being like, "Yeah... I don't know. I think this is it for me and this game... This is really too bad. How could they decide to let this be the bracket switch experience...?"

I feel like many people just quit at this point because, like I said, you go from feeling viable and having fun to being utterly useless against an even smaller bracket pool consisting mostly of 30+ premades. It's already tough facing premades, but when you face premades constantly in mid-tier with lv16 bolstered up, it just feels completely hopeless. You end up waiting for like 30 mins for a queue to pop, just to get into a game where your side may be short a couple players and facing the same pre-made over and over. It just makes you want to stop playing tbh. You're almost glad when not enough people show up so you can just get it over with in 60 seconds for the participation exp.

There will be a rumored patch coming that the team is working on to address this very issue by giving you your full ability kit earlier.

I'd hold judgement on the current pre-rank 40 experience until then.

Honestly, that is good to hear. They need to at least try something here. It's incredibly demoralizing.

I'll see what I can do to make things work, but if my experience yesterday is anything to go by I may just shelf the game until that patch comes around.