Premade groups. The hell for new players.

[Cyrylius]

Well, there's no healline that can outheal a critical amount of dps. That's why in the age of pug city roulettes you could sometimes win an instance in a comp with no heals against one with at least a few: dealing with burst requires dps and tank players to show at least a bit of skill. But back to the topic: only on melee dps classes i could agree with you. Tanks can go shield and just play the guardbot, healers can heal as long as nobody's hitting them (and if you get trained by some ST while enemy healers dont there are other issues), ranged can plink from distance. Melee suffer, which is the other side of the coin (primary one is geared mdps are core of endgame meta warband and 6 man compositions), and the only thing that I can say is changing that would require insane reworks to all the aspects of the gameplay. RoR is new players unfriendly by design, especially now that players you are meeting have been playing it for many, many years. There are ways of making the experience less painful, but you'll have to accept the fact that your score depends on other players.

[Sulorie]

8 healer in one team in sc and the people try to tell me everthing is alright here. Lie more to yourself and play with always the same people. Good luck. Thats not worthwhile anymore.

Pardon, in what team and was it good or bad?

[Caduceus]

Honestly my dude, at some point i would really reccomend you start taking the advice of the people who are alot more experienced than yourself. maybe the people who have played this for x thousand hours and have multiple RR80+ toons know something you dont. why not just ask for actual advice on how to improve your own gameplay as much as possible, if that doesnt work after giving it your all to improve yourself and learning more about how the game works. then you can post again.

just my opinion tho.

As someone with multiple rr80+ toons and probably thousands of hours played, I would actually confirm that the new player experience is broken. I cannot fault any new players for getting frustrated or quitting the game. If I didn't have my high renown toons and a strong team of players to play with, I would have 100% uninstalled by now. The game is unplayable otherwise.

I've talked about this issue a lot, but the main reason the game plays this way is because of the extraordinarily large defensive safety net provided by tanks and healers.

Putting this defensive safety net in place doesn't require much from the tanks and healers - they just need to press their buttons sensibly. To break through that same defensive safety net you need to execute very specific manoeuvres coordinated with your entire team and even then the margins to break through are incredibly small. Because of those tiny margins, small differences have a huge impact on whether or not a team is able to compete or not. One weak link in your team (team composition, gear level, player skill, etc.) is enough to be chanceless.

That's why scenarios in which one side doesn't score a single kill are so common.

This is not a healthy situation. Solutions might not be simple to find, but in my opinion it is up to the experienced players to get off their high horses and see how this situation is killing the new player influx, and thus stopping the game from developing a healthy playerbase.

In my opinion, either killing needs to be made easier, or tanking and healing needs to be a lot more of an active process in which players can make mistakes. Currently both roles (I've played both extensively) are very easy to play and keeping people protected is leagues easier than killing them as a DPS.

[Sulorie]

Currently both roles (I've played both extensively) are very easy to play and keeping people protected is leagues easier than killing them as a DPS.

Then again the reality is, tanks don't bother with guard and even if they do guard, they swap too slow.
At the same time many healers you see outside of premades have huge problems with positioning nor do they get their heal priorities right.
Both are in general better to play for new players because of lower gear requirements, at the same time they require more thinking and micromanagement than DPS. One needs more gear, one more "skill".

[Caduceus]

Currently both roles (I've played both extensively) are very easy to play and keeping people protected is leagues easier than killing them as a DPS.

Then again the reality is, tanks don't bother with guard and even if they do guard, they swap too slow.
At the same time many healers you see outside of premades have huge problems with positioning nor do they get their heal priorities right.
Both are in general better to play for new players because of lower gear requirements, at the same time they require more thinking and micromanagement than DPS. One needs more gear, one more "skill".

That's besides the point. My point is that tanks and healers create a huge safety net without much of the coordination that is needed to break said safety net.

At competent levels of play, it is a lot easier to keep things alive than it is to kill things. That situation creates much of the problems that new players struggle with, and a slew of other problems.

[bradbury111]

As someone with multiple rr80+ toons and probably thousands of hours played, I would actually confirm that the new player experience is broken. I cannot fault any new players for getting frustrated or quitting the game. If I didn't have my high renown toons and a strong team of players to play with, I would have 100% uninstalled by now. The game is unplayable otherwise.

I've talked about this issue a lot, but the main reason the game plays this way is because of the extraordinarily large defensive safety net provided by tanks and healers.

Putting this defensive safety net in place doesn't require much from the tanks and healers - they just need to press their buttons sensibly. To break through that same defensive safety net you need to execute very specific manoeuvres coordinated with your entire team and even then the margins to break through are incredibly small. Because of those tiny margins, small differences have a huge impact on whether or not a team is able to compete or not. One weak link in your team (team composition, gear level, player skill, etc.) is enough to be chanceless.

That's why scenarios in which one side doesn't score a single kill are so common.

This is not a healthy situation. Solutions might not be simple to find, but in my opinion it is up to the experienced players to get off their high horses and see how this situation is killing the new player influx, and thus stopping the game from developing a healthy playerbase.

In my opinion, either killing needs to be made easier, or tanking and healing needs to be a lot more of an active process in which players can make mistakes. Currently both roles (I've played both extensively) are very easy to play and keeping people protected is leagues easier than killing them as a DPS.

I can relate to this and before was worse (t4 31+ era), you came out of t2-t3 naked of gear and renown if you didn't use xp roll (new players ofc didn't, me too), took me years with pauses in between to gear from annihilator to vanquisher to invader to sovereign but as a tank the perception of being usefull was tangible. That wasn't with my dps guy, I stopped playing him.

With the warcrests change and the ward system (I was skeptical about) the thing changed. I did a new character, dps, and the progression was better, much better than before. At rank 40 you're nearly 50rr, you're naked for the lake but you have the option to gear with dungeons, beside gunbad quests not always giving you credit, you then get sentinel armor / weapons that are godlike as an entry point relatively fast. This path is now doable by anyone and as a dps you start seeing some numbers.

The progression is good now and move players actually doing pve, good thing.

Everything fall apart when you start putting your shoes in sc and weekly sc or by just watching some ranked gameplay. You see all the problems you've said.
What were the funniest matches have done? Groups with 1 healer, 3dps, 2 tanks, was challenging for a tank to actively swapping guard on demand and not sitting on the same for 90% fights, close deaths, recovered some, other don't. There was action with kills from both side and active plays.

My opinion on the matters? Healers do too much healing for the low investment in their career main stat, they can go full defense and still provide more than reasonable healing. But I can see why it's like that, a new 40 healer has to put defense or they are shotted so they can still provide healing even without high willpower.

If devs are bold enough next ranked season should require 1/3/2 to start.

[nocturnalguest]

As someone with multiple rr80+ toons and probably thousands of hours played, I would actually confirm that the new player experience is broken. I cannot fault any new players for getting frustrated or quitting the game. If I didn't have my high renown toons and a strong team of players to play with, I would have 100% uninstalled by now. The game is unplayable otherwise.

I've talked about this issue a lot, but the main reason the game plays this way is because of the extraordinarily large defensive safety net provided by tanks and healers.

Putting this defensive safety net in place doesn't require much from the tanks and healers - they just need to press their buttons sensibly. To break through that same defensive safety net you need to execute very specific manoeuvres coordinated with your entire team and even then the margins to break through are incredibly small. Because of those tiny margins, small differences have a huge impact on whether or not a team is able to compete or not. One weak link in your team (team composition, gear level, player skill, etc.) is enough to be chanceless.

That's why scenarios in which one side doesn't score a single kill are so common.

This is not a healthy situation. Solutions might not be simple to find, but in my opinion it is up to the experienced players to get off their high horses and see how this situation is killing the new player influx, and thus stopping the game from developing a healthy playerbase.

In my opinion, either killing needs to be made easier, or tanking and healing needs to be a lot more of an active process in which players can make mistakes. Currently both roles (I've played both extensively) are very easy to play and keeping people protected is leagues easier than killing them as a DPS.

You have a very valid points here. You basically pinpoint the most crucial part of why this game is not newcomer friendly.

In a form what is considered competitive gameplay (6v6) anything is barely dying assuming teams are equally skilled because the burst window (the time when you can actually score a kill) is extremely tight, around 2-5 seconds you have to burst down focused target which requires alot of effort&synchronization from team, let alone a single party member.
In other form of what is considered competetive gameplay (24v24) things are a little bit better, cause at least something is dying but its barely possible to wipe the other team. Fights are absolutely endless because there are alot of ways to recover.

However i dont think its so hard to balance out. Why instead of what you propose just not increase some basic scalers&modifiers for all DPS classes and weapon DPS itself by ~20% as a starter point to test it out? We saw solo ranked matches then decent DPS guarded by decent tanks were dying thru guard cause other team had better composition and shield healer, is this the real goal - being able to kill not only in 2-5 seconds, but just by raw pressure? For me, why not. It's too complex at the moment for alot of people. 6men's that are heavily dominating other groups at very first and most important are doing their synchronized CC teamwork incredibly great, however it, of course, has nothing to do with random scenarios then things are explained with many other reasons.

Tanking and healing in this game is pretty cool i'd say. I wouldnt change that.

[madrocks]

Spoiler:

As someone with multiple rr80+ toons and probably thousands of hours played, I would actually confirm that the new player experience is broken. I cannot fault any new players for getting frustrated or quitting the game. If I didn't have my high renown toons and a strong team of players to play with, I would have 100% uninstalled by now. The game is unplayable otherwise.

I've talked about this issue a lot, but the main reason the game plays this way is because of the extraordinarily large defensive safety net provided by tanks and healers.

Putting this defensive safety net in place doesn't require much from the tanks and healers - they just need to press their buttons sensibly. To break through that same defensive safety net you need to execute very specific manoeuvres coordinated with your entire team and even then the margins to break through are incredibly small. Because of those tiny margins, small differences have a huge impact on whether or not a team is able to compete or not. One weak link in your team (team composition, gear level, player skill, etc.) is enough to be chanceless.

That's why scenarios in which one side doesn't score a single kill are so common.

This is not a healthy situation. Solutions might not be simple to find, but in my opinion it is up to the experienced players to get off their high horses and see how this situation is killing the new player influx, and thus stopping the game from developing a healthy playerbase.

In my opinion, either killing needs to be made easier, or tanking and healing needs to be a lot more of an active process in which players can make mistakes. Currently both roles (I've played both extensively) are very easy to play and keeping people protected is leagues easier than killing them as a DPS.

Very well said.
I blame this insane safety net on removal of aoe anti heal mechanics.

[nocturnalguest]

I blame this insane safety net on removal of aoe anti heal mechanics.

Yes, and this one is very long overdue, especially once morale damage cap was put.

[Everdin]

Most of the statements here are not really wrong, it just depends on the point of view:

If there are only new players without a clue on both sides -> luck and gear is everything
If there is experience on both sides -> basic task (guard/guard-switch, assist, crossheal) are important, gear still is a important point but far less then before
If there are premades -> koordination is everything, like mentioned before from someone else, there are only small windows for a kill and not much room for mistakes, here gear just is a problem is the gap is to