Scenario Barriers

[saupreusse]

I have just leveled a new Alt and one thing i noticed is that the barriers in scenarios are absolutely punishing and demoralizing to the underdog and new players specifically.
I get why these should be added to ranked, but I don't see them working in standard scenarios.

My suggestion is to revert this change and reintroduce the safe spawns with guards for scenarios so the underperforming side can at least try to snipe some kills and not be completely demoralized/quitting the sc after a wipe. This would also give the opportunity to make a comeback when being pushed back to ones own spawn.

[Hazmy]

Amen to that.

One of the top reasons new players leave this game is because they are being farmed in Scenarios for various different reasons and have a terrible experience. "Git Gud" or "Form a premade" is not a valid response as a game designer. This is clearly a key point of complaints and feedback.

• While Barriers are not the sole reason for it, they make it worse and further encourage farming the opposite side by forcing players out into clearly lost fights, with no hope of retreating at all.

• In these cases people just wait to surrender and flame each other instead of having the opportunity to at least fight next to guards.

• Guards instead of barriers allow the losing team to play on their enemy overextending and get a few kills on guards, then snowball into a counteroffensive. It is a natural comeback mechanic.

• The exact same behavior can be observed in Tier 1 RvR Lakes, where Warcamp and Cannons allow the losing side to still fight back and have fun. And more often than not, the oppressive side also isn't discouraged from getting attacked by Guards or Cannons. It is encouraging people to keep playing instead of quitting.

It's been said the Scenario Matchmaking Rework is going to address and fix it, but it's been much over a year now without any update or news to that system, while different updates are implemented into Scenarios making them worse. This is highly illogical and amateurish to do if you claim the Matchmaking is at fault.

If the MM Rework isn't being done - then halt or even revert all the changes to Scenarios that keep worsening their state and damage player retention.

There's more than enough statistics, evidence and community feedback to back this up, that the RoR Team knows about, that's been blatantly ignored since the new barrier system was implemented.

[ Sources ]
Barrier Patch Huge Community Outcry
Post-Barriers Community Complaints
Scenario Rework Thread and Barrier Feedback
+ Focus Groups feedback
+ Various Existing Discord Logs on Return of Reckoning Server

[MaxHayman]

We are working on the Scenario Queue system. We aren't planning on putting that on hold to work on something which isn't that.

[Hazmy]

We are working on the Scenario Queue system. We aren't planning on putting that on hold to work on something which isn't that.

Good to hear steady work is being done on the matchmaking, looking forward to it!

But in that case, why were further barriers added into Scenarios and work put into something else than matchmaking during this wait period?

That goes directly against what you just said. What purpose and who do those changes serve then?

[leftside]

I'm still in awe that, after systematically removing the come-back mechanisms built in by Mythic, we doubled down and slapped a debuff on the losing team.

Dilly dilly, come and be killed.

[Sulorie]

So barriers still exist? Being busy with other games at the moment but to this date I never read a convincing explanation why the barriers were added in the first place.

[Nameless]

Matchmaking system wont work since you expel all pug players from scens and player pool is microscopics now.

I am all about removing barriers but since the main goal is to punish range setups that fall back to the safety of guards, you could just make barriers with opening so ppl can come back but cat hit from within like it was at the start with serpent passage barrier. You still can go to the safety of wc but cant do anything when inside. I dont like even this solution but it is better than the current "go to die for the fame" system.

[Aethilmar]

Three things that made scenarios worse than on live:

1. Focus on cage match over objectives. There used to be more newbie friendly scenarios where you could still be "competitive" by focusing on the objectives (like old Thunder Valley and Blood) but they have been reworked into fight-in-a-box situation.

2. Barriers - when your team is getting overwhelmed the barriers (and the aggressive afk timer) remove the ability to pull yourselves together especially when death is waiting 10 feet outside the barrier.

3. Reduced safe zones/guards - yeah some folks could kite back to the guards as mentioned above but, you know what, just go finish the objective and make them come to you. The guards were an anti-camping mechanism and could, in some situations, allow for a comeback if the other team allowed themselves to get punted into the guards. This made scenarios more competitive by giving the underdog hope.

Bottom line is we got to where we are because the development team was too busy servicing the winning premades and forgot that you need to make it fun for the losing side as well.

[saupreusse]

It's good to hear that it's being considered as part of the sc rework. Thanks for the replies.

[Bozzax]

Honestly guys barriers isn’t the problem