Return of Reckoning

As a private server we are currently facing a decrease in player base.

Devs need to act quick to solve this issue if you wish to make this game feel more alive. Here are a few ideas that float around my mind from time to time. If you do this I bet you will make this server gain a lot of new players and probably make old players comeback.

This post will cover the next topics/issues:
-Low player base
-RvR stale / keep turtling
-Make the game feel fresh



1#. Revamp RvR terrain

-Either expand or modify RvR areas, use some of the coolest PvE areas, merge them in a way to make sense.
-Modify BOs spots. Move several BOs from some zones, place them in strategic points to make them have more battles take place in. Not like some BOs that are too far away from everyone and rarely people go there. Move them closer to where the action is happening. Also add buildings or walls around some empty BOs to make some funnel action happen.
-Add more stuff to maps that lack detail, such as trees, houses, little keeps, ruins, whatever structures that you have in order to make some areas feel brand new.


#2. Increase Renown/EXP at NA times

-NA times have the lowest player base.
-Increase the rr and exp at those times x2 or x3 to increase the amount of players and bring new people to the game.


#3. Make racial career synergy a real thing

-Make it so having a warband/guild made of a single race could make sense and have a place in the meta. Such as the Greenskin have Da Freebootaz and the Dwarves have the Bitterstone Thunderers, there should be a guild for every race and the reason behind it would be that their abilities make more sense together so people could actually start playing towards racial synergy making it the new meta.
-Every Warhammer game has a solid base around the races fighting eachother, Return of Reckoning should aim for the same purpose, make it so the game feels more like a race vs race thing. It adds flavour to the game and it just feels right!.


4#. Release new sets for rr85 - 90

-Increase stats from sets lvl 30 up to 70 to decrease the gap in between higher sets. This will make low level players stronger and wont make a big difference from highRR BiS players.
-Lower by a small amount the stats from Sov/Triumph/Warlord sets. This way you can release new sets such as Warpforged and probably make new ones from the Cosmetics sets that every career has hidden.
-New sets don't need to be stronger, barely 3 or 5% better than Sov and that's already too much. More important would be the Bonuses they would have to expand the specs player can create to play their characters in unique ways.


5#. Remove M4 from all mastery trees and create new abilities for every career

-M4 from the top of the mastery trees are almost never used, it's actually a waste of a slot in most cases.
-A lot of these M4 have unique and pretty cool visual effects that rarely people see ingame. Some of they are badass but noone uses them. Bring them down to M2 with less damage but maintain the visual effect.
-Add unique abilities related to the race and spec of every career on the top of every Mastery Tree.


#6 Allow all siege weapons to deal damage to keep doors

-Sometimes siegin can be boring, ram takes too long to break down the doors so the defending realm gets in ready to defend, ram needs help, so make it that all siege weapon can damage the door just a little bit to help the ram. Also increase the damage from ram. This would make siegin feel faster and not boring as it currently is.


7#. Set a score system of kills in oRvR to lock zones

-To avoid people turtling on keeps waiting to get sieged so they can pop up a bag from repairing doors (this is too boring and needs to stop).
-Set a score system of kills. For example, the limit could be 2.000 kills to reach for each realm. Let say Destruction reached 2k kills and zone locks, that would reward all of Destru an X amount of RR points. If Order managed to reach 1.800 kills, then they would also get almost the same amount of RR points as reward. Both sides win from this, everyone gets to kill eachother and lock the zone by actually engaging in nonstop action.


8#. Merge PvE with PvP - Make Lairs / Bosses useful in RvR

-Add a timer for every active oRvR zone, something similar as in LOTD, a boss will spawn and roam around the zone BOs so both realms can fight for it. The rewards must be a bunch of renown or crests, maybe something else but it has to be good.


#9. Modify vissual effects and animations from several abilities

-Some abilities are really poor in terms of animation and visual effects, maybe if you tune it up a little bit the career gameplay may feel more fun to play with.


And that's about it.

Cool story

Cute.

I would also add these very simple things to implement:

Allow more permanent mounts besides the basic one and the one from the Land of the Dead. (We all agree the dwarf mount is awful, right?)

Make crests exchangeable between characters on the same account or give them another purpose besides buying potions or equipment to sell at the auction house.

More skins available because we are in Fashionhammer.

More dyes available as you level up in renown (and that black is not locked at 100RR but rather at 85/90).

An option to pause experience gain.

Increase the liniment duration to one hour instead of 30 minutes.

Make instances more appealing with random rewards (dyes, items, gold, talismans, etc.) during a "challenge" once a week instead of what currently exists.
Nothing too crazy, but small improvements can be very beneficial very quickly.

i am pretty much against higher sets with better stats than sovereign. It would only increase the powercreeep and it doesnt solve anything, after a bit of time you will have the same problem and you would need again another set which is better than the previous one. So powercreeping is imo a bad choice and no solution. BUT i would appreciate if there would be more options to sidegrade. Sidegrading brings more versatility instead of blant and boring upgrades!

Luthyen wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2024 9:10 pm i am pretty much against higher sets with better stats than sovereign. It would only increase the powercreeep and it doesnt solve anything, after a bit of time you will have the same problem and you would need again another set which is better than the previous one. So powercreeping is imo a bad choice and no solution. BUT i would appreciate if there would be more options to sidegrade. Sidegrading brings more versatility instead of blant and boring upgrades!

Yeah that's why the suggestion is to downgrade current BiS sets and upgrade low level sets to decrease the current stat gap there is. That way it opens the possibility to release new sets with different specs, no need to be stronger than current BiS, just different. It's something that could lure in old players to comeback and at the same time making the experience of new players not so bad when having to fight against BiS players.

So upgrading low level sets could really do good in maintaining the new player base that could arrive because there wont be too much disadvantage.

Unfortunately, whilst I'm typically an advocate for change, I personally can't agree with many of the ideas you've put forwards.

I think that more simple changes could be vastly more impactful. Often an unspoken aspect of increasing population is the marketing. People talk about streamers and youtubers a lot yeah, but forget the basic priciples of SEO.

I work as an eCommerce Manager and the Google Rankings and Meta presence of ROR is laughable. This might seem like an abstract concept, but a very, very contributing factor of low population and no new blood is a matter of ignorance.

We have to understand, most of us playing now, played back in 2009 and the average player age is probably 25+.

People of the age 25+ make up like 35% of the total global gaming community. (Fake statistic, yes, but the point stands.) So if we want to surplant playerbase, we need to be reaching the people whom actually have the time to invest in these games.

That means a strong marketing strategy that places us highly on Google Search rankings and especially META etc. Twitch Streams and Youtube help a lot, but without some big-name Tuber with 1m+ Subscribers, we're unlikely to get traction.

I'm unsure if the ROR Team are already doing this, but actively touching base with larger tubers about showcasing the game is a good idea. If an incentive is required, open crowd-funding from the community to establish a "reward/sponsorship" for the content creators.

Lost me at new sets sorry but no