Number of players

[rejndjer]

while lockdowns were on, there was no crests(at least not in current form). it was easier to grind gear. it's very sad how much harder it is for new players to become competitive now compared to few years ago or on live. ROR is too grindy. couple that with bad mechanic feedback of skill usage and you get what you see. bad retention.

p.s. inb4 someone comes and says "you can only play sc now and get everything". yes im happy for you.

It was easier to grind gear?
It was never so easy to get your gear as it is now.
You can get your Invader Ward in 4 Days. 4 Days to unlock the potential to get the best gear in the game. If you are lucky, Bloodlord is already a good set to be competitive.
After that, it is really not that long to get Sov.

I, personally, don't miss the old days when you had to play cities at 3 am for a few tokens.

If a new player plays to 40 and grind throw all sets without ever asking anyone or reading any kind of guide, then it's not the system's fault for being too "grindy".
Also, you don't have to farm ~10,000 crests and buy your Sov-set all at once.
You get the feeling of steady progress cause normally you buy like 2 or 3 items and mix them with other sets, or you begin with a few Triumphant/Victorious items, which are really fast to get.

Some people seem to hate playing MMORPGs where leveling, gearing and yes, even a bit grinding is part of the core game.
There is not even a skill-gate in RoR to get your gear.

The new system is good.
If you want to tell a new player how it goes, now you can say,
"Play every class you like in every mode you want. You get Crests for good gear in almost every way you play."

In the old system it was more like
"Yo watch out. If you play a healer you don't get good gear from scenarios, you have to play RvR. The best gear is only available in Cities, but to get there you need at least full Invader, which only comes from Forts. There is also stuff from dungeons, but they have a few days lockout timer, so you have to play 8 weeks (or so) to get your trinket. And don't forget to always watch out for Cities because they are only open if two forts got taken by one faction, which can happen at any time, so if you miss them you don't get your Sov gear at all."... And so on.

I personally think that the new system is very new-player-friendly.
It's easy to learn and the amount of time you need for gear is fair.

yes it was easier to grind gear. i started ror in january 2022, getting pre-invader stuff was super easy and you could've even gotten it on SW before you had hit rr that was required to wear certain piece of armor. and that was without me having to think, "oh do i need to play pve, rvr, or sc?". i was playing everything, and wasn't even bothered with fact sc were giving different currency, in fact it was even better, since it gave you weapons. also you had extra blue and purple items from zonelock bags for <40 levels.

i've seen many people say here how renown gain was higher before and how it got nerfed. i played SW on live, i remember how it was back then. i got sov there in month or two. i still dont have sov here.

"4 days to get your invader ward". can you pls gtfo with this kinds of argument. i hate pve, and some 50% of playerbase that play this game H A T E pve. also to do that in 4 days you need a dedicated party. i dont wanna bother my guildies thru all that boredom so i could twink my alt in 4 days. it's just not worth it. i'd rather play the game. if you want to force us to play pve or scenarios, just delete rvr, then i can delete ROR and reinstall gw2, and we can all be happy.

"Some people seem to hate playing MMORPGs where leveling, gearing and yes, even a bit grinding is part of the core game."

there's a thin blue line between leveling and grinding, and ROR has crossed it big time. gear and level progression is pretty fast untill you get conq. then vanq takes you quite a while. then invader takes you a lot longer. then sov takes u as much time as everything before. that's not EVEN CLOSE to how it was on live and you all know it.

im done. looks like you people here just love unfair fights where you can trash on new people who have no mathematical chance of killing you even if you stood there afk for 2 minutes.

[Stimpz]

im done. looks like you people here just love unfair fights where you can trash on new people who have no mathematical chance of killing you even if you stood there afk for 2 minutes.

This is an unfair assumption because it is quite the opposite.

But yeah, live was so much better. Everything was so fast and so fair. You totally got from lvl 1 to 40 and to Sov in 1 month of probably casual playing against people who always watched out to not bash new players with their monster gear.

And you know what?
Fights got a lot fairer since the new system was introduced. I have been through the Sov-grind hell in the old system here. Everyone who was stupid enough, like me, will surly say the same. Only a handful of people had full Sov back then. Now a lot more people have their full sets and never had to do a single city.

You don't like to do PvE? Me neither. So we got something in common. But if you wanted to have BIS gear you had to do waaaaaay more PvE then now, so it is again a better thing or not?
You don't want to do PvE at all? Then the cost for it is to farm all sets trough RvR/SC which is a highly personal problem. Still you will get your gear, but it takes you much longer.

And yes, if you were lucky, Vanquisher was a bit faster to get as a casual new player. (now you can buy 2 Items from the AH and have to pay 1250 Crests for the rest, which is still not that hard to come by) But after that, you could literally get stuck with gear progression because in your playtime wasn't a single fort or city attack.

That is not fair for a new player.

Reducing the costs for all sets would be a much better approach than to scold the whole system.

You want new players?
Stop telling them that the new currency system is bad.
And stop typing things like people love unfair fights because they have another view on the system.

[Omegus]

Remember doing 13 runs of BB/BE to get the Sentinel Ring on ROR?

[gyps]

Basic addons should be integrated like SoR is now :
- Enemy
- Pure
- Guardpack
- Swiftassist
- Cmap
- RVmod
- WarBoard

Otherwise crappy original UI is simply unuseable for new players...

This alone should be of great help to hook players and improve retention rate.

This is a key thing, I liked tha original UI but its pretty much useless and many old addons are still there adding conflicts and managing useless info...if the engine its not workable at least the "default" UI's addons should be revised and worked to achieve a smooth gameplay for newcomers.

[Gurzuk]

it was easier to grind gear. it's very sad how much harder it is for new players to become competitive now compared to few years ago or on live. ROR is too grindy. couple that with bad mechanic feedback of skill usage and you get what you see. bad retention.

p.s. inb4 someone comes and says "you can only play sc now and get everything". yes im happy for you.

I disagree so much. Grinding cities was not for me, I can't woke up at 3 am, or leave my work for hour to do so. I have started few new characters since than, and it is so easy now with all PvE gear changes.

I simply spend 100-200 crests before I hit lvl 40. On my 50+rr chars after buying full Cong(or Dominator) set I still have 3k+ crests. When i hit level 40, first I do is i buy Conq boots and gloves for gold and belt for crests and pair it with Beast Lord set. After I either go for full Conq\Dominator or farm Sent + Bloodlord weapons/set while using T4 epic quest weapons meanwhile. And now HV set is easy to obtain and pretty decent one.

• On my latest character, which is DD am, I have bought full Dominator and Full Oppressor and I still got 7k crests when I hit 73rr - enough to get 3-5 piece warlord and save crests till 78rr and get another 3-5 piece SoV. I also have Sent set and working on HV set, when i need to heal.

• I've got old Chosen that was 60+rr and was heavily hit by new changes in terms of loosing bunch of crests after system rework. I went for full Blood Lord to save crests and I was still able to hit 5Sov3Warlord when I got my 80rr.

New system hit hard existing players. U would be left broke after system rework. Best u could do - spend old currency before it get transferred to new on very poor rate.

What new system did - it made game more CASUAL - u do not need farm only RvR and can skip Forts and Cities to get BiS.

[Cyrylius]

In gonna Disagree here, i was gearing magus when currency rework happened and after it hit i could suddenly afford all the sov pieces i was missing. So no, you were not left broke.

[Gurzuk]

In gonna Disagree here, i was gearing magus when currency rework happened and after it hit i could suddenly afford all the sov pieces i was missing. So no, you were not left broke.

Well, it felt very different on my 50-60rr chars. Also i know ppl who returned after it and they were not happy with amount of currency they have.

[Dajciekrwi]

9/10 players I've gotten into this game give up when they see a bogged down fight where nobody dies or a full stomp where they can't even touch any enemies and just sorta wait for a scenario to end or a zone to be lost. If we're talking "slow paced combat", the problem isn't on the side of damage, it's that healers with skill and proper support can reach ridiculous heights that bog the game down HARD for anyone except your proper 6 man groups and coordinated warbands, where extremely tactical play is enjoyable. Play any other mmo with pvp and you'll realize this sort of bog down where damage stops existing for one side or both is very uncommon outside of high level play - such as high rated arenas.

The main point is that there is no scaling here - you don't have some fun killing stuff and eventually have to face tactical, organized combat. Nope. The entry level for a healer denying the existence of damage is super low and there's nothing separating the casuals from the hardcores.

You might say "oh yeh but this game is great because of the organized, tactical fighting and needing to work in a team to succeed" and I agree, power to that, but then deal with low numbers/declining numbers, sorry. Like it or not, video games are still for the casual player to pop on for some fun and there's nothing fun in entering a fight and doing no damage, no impact, no chance.

So yeh. I recall at the start of the development of this game, philosophy was explained as "no healers at all in pvp", i.e. healing was sometimes a side effect of some chars - buffing for rp/zealot, mdps for dok/wp, rdps for am/shaman. I don't think WAR intended to have healers AND tanks the way they are. And I think that is reinforced by the fact that even though healers and tanks are super impactful and are some of the coolest, most iconic characters, they're still not so many of them.

I personally always come back to ror once every few months/years and I will always quit when I string together a few scenarios/fights against overwhelming premades that just make me realize I've sat there for 3 hours and done no damage, had no impact and basically watched other people do things to me without participating.

You can go the other route and argue tanks - and I'll agree, balance on a tank is that, because defensive tanks exist, to make it a little more fun for htem, they can dish out damage and disrupt you a ton. That an unkillable tank can kill makes unkillable tanks more common and thus less killing.

But I think tanks are WARs special flavor and I like them.

Regardless, I'm just ranting that when you can be disabled from playing for hours, that's the easiest way to lose the majority of players.

Agree in 100% with all this above. Warhammer just shows how meaningless is live of singular soldier:))
Imagine situation when gotrek gurnisson jumps to fight, meet 24 Freebotaz and saga is ended:)))

[Vaikaris]

9/10 players I've gotten into this game give up when they see a bogged down fight where nobody dies or a full stomp where they can't even touch any enemies and just sorta wait for a scenario to end or a zone to be lost. If we're talking "slow paced combat", the problem isn't on the side of damage, it's that healers with skill and proper support can reach ridiculous heights that bog the game down HARD for anyone except your proper 6 man groups and coordinated warbands, where extremely tactical play is enjoyable. Play any other mmo with pvp and you'll realize this sort of bog down where damage stops existing for one side or both is very uncommon outside of high level play - such as high rated arenas.

The main point is that there is no scaling here - you don't have some fun killing stuff and eventually have to face tactical, organized combat. Nope. The entry level for a healer denying the existence of damage is super low and there's nothing separating the casuals from the hardcores.

You might say "oh yeh but this game is great because of the organized, tactical fighting and needing to work in a team to succeed" and I agree, power to that, but then deal with low numbers/declining numbers, sorry. Like it or not, video games are still for the casual player to pop on for some fun and there's nothing fun in entering a fight and doing no damage, no impact, no chance.

So yeh. I recall at the start of the development of this game, philosophy was explained as "no healers at all in pvp", i.e. healing was sometimes a side effect of some chars - buffing for rp/zealot, mdps for dok/wp, rdps for am/shaman. I don't think WAR intended to have healers AND tanks the way they are. And I think that is reinforced by the fact that even though healers and tanks are super impactful and are some of the coolest, most iconic characters, they're still not so many of them.

I personally always come back to ror once every few months/years and I will always quit when I string together a few scenarios/fights against overwhelming premades that just make me realize I've sat there for 3 hours and done no damage, had no impact and basically watched other people do things to me without participating.

You can go the other route and argue tanks - and I'll agree, balance on a tank is that, because defensive tanks exist, to make it a little more fun for htem, they can dish out damage and disrupt you a ton. That an unkillable tank can kill makes unkillable tanks more common and thus less killing.

But I think tanks are WARs special flavor and I like them.

Regardless, I'm just ranting that when you can be disabled from playing for hours, that's the easiest way to lose the majority of players.

Agree in 100% with all this above. Warhammer just shows how meaningless is live of singular soldier:))
Imagine situation when gotrek gurnisson jumps to fight, meet 24 Freebotaz and saga is ended:)))

If Gotrek was in RoR he'd basically meet a shaman and get kited for about an hour until he just gives up and dies. Honestly, I don't think slayers are lore accurate in RoR, because if you were a slayer and you couldn't die as long as you had a healer, what's the point lol

[Vaikaris]

im done. looks like you people here just love unfair fights where you can trash on new people who have no mathematical chance of killing you even if you stood there afk for 2 minutes.

This is an unfair assumption because it is quite the opposite.

But yeah, live was so much better. Everything was so fast and so fair. You totally got from lvl 1 to 40 and to Sov in 1 month of probably casual playing against people who always watched out to not bash new players with their monster gear.

And you know what?
Fights got a lot fairer since the new system was introduced. I have been through the Sov-grind hell in the old system here. Everyone who was stupid enough, like me, will surly say the same. Only a handful of people had full Sov back then. Now a lot more people have their full sets and never had to do a single city.

You don't like to do PvE? Me neither. So we got something in common. But if you wanted to have BIS gear you had to do waaaaaay more PvE then now, so it is again a better thing or not?
You don't want to do PvE at all? Then the cost for it is to farm all sets trough RvR/SC which is a highly personal problem. Still you will get your gear, but it takes you much longer.

And yes, if you were lucky, Vanquisher was a bit faster to get as a casual new player. (now you can buy 2 Items from the AH and have to pay 1250 Crests for the rest, which is still not that hard to come by) But after that, you could literally get stuck with gear progression because in your playtime wasn't a single fort or city attack.

That is not fair for a new player.

Reducing the costs for all sets would be a much better approach than to scold the whole system.

You want new players?
Stop telling them that the new currency system is bad.
And stop typing things like people love unfair fights because they have another view on the system.

I don't think him telling anyone that people love unfair fights is as much of a problem as entering a scenario or trying to roam and meeting a dedicated 2-2-2 premade that can smash an entire uncoordinated WB if they want and basically having to afk until they go away (which they don't, since they play the whole day)