[Topic]
Recently there has been a lot of talks about Scenarios as an alternate way of having fun, and the state they are in. One of the major feedback from a lot of players is that Scenarios have become very unfun to play unless you play with a Premade Group otherwise you are the one more likely who will face another enemy Premade Group that farms your team. With the low population of RoR, this system makes you be at the mercy of the opposing Premades, and when they would stop! It is also a huge wall and a negative experience to new players trying the game out, before getting to know others to play with. They get farmed, taken advantage of and quit.
To fix this issue, Discordant Scenarios have been created, where you can only queue up alone and players would only be matched against each other who are queuing for this particular Scenario, attempting to create a healthy Solo Queue System. Unfortunately the system can be still abused if certain people queue at the same time and this way players can still attempt to premade vs solo players, essentially ruining this game mode.
As a consequence of this, popularity of Discordant Scenarios have been diminishing, lots have stopped queuing for it, making it even easier to play the system and it became a snowball effect. Nowadays it is back to Queuing for All Scenarios and forming your own Premades or be at the mercy of RNG.
[Weekend Scenario Events]
Another complaint has been regarding the Weekend Scenario Events, or rather the lack of Solo Queue option for them, as while there is an incentive to queue up for Weekend Scenarios...the offer of rewards have made this event a playground of organized Premades stomping Randoms even more - making it a horrible experience for a lot of people who play alone, have no time to make a premade or whatever other reason they have for trying to complete it solo.
While encouraging people to play in a team is a good intension, the reality we all know is that there is a difference between /5 Premades and organized Guild Premades with Voice and the nature of really good teams farming pugs will not change no matter how much people try. Also in the end, a lot of players still love to play solo and ignoring them isn't necessarily a good strategy for the server's health and player retention.
[Proposal]
After a discussion on official RoR Discord a couple of people, including myself, agreed that perhaps a brand new [Weekly Event] similar to [Weekend Scenario Event] could be created solely for Discordant Scenarios, to revive the popularity of this mode and give a viable option for solo PvPers who would like to engage in more fun random solo queue action, rather than stop playing in fear of getting farmed by premades constantly.
This Weekly Event could give usual rewards such as War Tokens, Potion of Acclaim but even Liniments or Battle Potions to encourage not only leveling characters but old-time players to engage in queuing for Discordant Scenarios. I believe this would greatly increase the popularity of the mode to get it going again, and while it could still be abused by bad-apples to queue up together into mini-premades, it could potentially increase the popularity of Discordant SCs to the point it would be much harder to do so. Additionally people who regularly are seen in the same groups on a massive scale, could be reported to Gamemasters for further review on their behavior to keep a fair playground for everyone and keep Discordant SCs healthy.
Additionally, a healthy and popping Discordant Scenario would also fix the problem presented in the previous section concerning [Weekend Scenario Events] as Solo Discordant Players would now have a chance, albeit lower, to get into the Weekend Scenario and attempt to complete both the Weekly Discordant and Weekend Scenario event at the same time - while avoiding getting stomped by Premades.
This proposal would potentially fix both problems.
[Scenario Queue Rewrite]
There is already a Scenario Code Rewrite happening, that you can read about at:viewtopic.php?t=51520
The proposed changes written there aim to fix many of the issue listed here, to avoid continuous matching against premades, abuse the system or have unbalanced archetype teams against one another.
If that rewrite happens and is sucessful there might be no need for separate queue for Discordant scenarios or normal Scenarios, but since it is a huge undertaking, this could also offer a temporary solution for the developers until the rewrite is done!
[Discuss]
This thread has been created to give more visibility to the state of scenarios and Discordant Scenarios - let everyone share their viewpoints, whether you agree or disagree if there needs to be a change for them, and give opinions on what and how you would change anything!
Please keep the discussion on topic, don't derail, and avoid making personal attacks, stay classy and respectful!
