Instanced PvP should be completely gear neutral.

[Caduceus]

Gear is a fundamental part of MMO's, and honestly getting into competitive gear or even BiS doesn't take all that long in RoR.

[BeautfulToad]

Judging from the amount of players I see still playing I guess they have. Here we are on a Saturday, at 11ooam CST , which would be 600pm Euro time, ATM we have 638 online. A few years ago we averaged from Jan 2016 all through 2019 on a weekend 1200 to 1500 players on line at this same time. This was before the Lazy Peon population Surge that went to 3500, before they all decided to leave as well.

I 100% dispute those numbers. The server max size was only 1500 until 2019, when it was increased for the pandemic. RoR is a great game, it has been around over 20 years, and it is a testament it is still going strong so long after.

I wish any issues people have with certain features could at least make an effort to recognise there's always been balance issues in RoR, even when everyone was locked in their apartments for a full year.

[havartii]

They put so much effort into ranked, I would like to see them try normalized gear. It may actually be what that game mode needs to get a lot of people trying it.

Everyone would agree this is the way to go. I think it´s just to hard to implement for them to acually do it.

They already have everything they need, players could pick from Base choices of dps, support, heal or def gear, you could have specific ability's or morals only be available to your base choice, but could choose gear/talisman and pots to further specialize, you could have 5 choices of gear and a weapon. The possibilities are endless. Yes it would be a lot of work, but I think it would be worth it. Throw the idea in the hat and see if any dev or devs would like to work on it?

[Draugris]

Gear is not the only problem, you also would have to equalize Renown Ranks and Mastery Points. The biggest problem though is, Warhammer Online is not a competitive game, there are no systems in place at its core to make it competitive. It is built around "unfair" advantages in population, gear, renown points, arch type distribution etc. This is by design, and the fun, and the frustrating part of the game at the same time. I think it would cost a lot of development effort to change that design philosophy and it´s unsure if that time would be warranted. It´s one thing to come to a forum complaining that PvP is not fair and it´s another thing to actually play a "fair" game mode. The Warhammer community is not a competitive community imo, never was. Competitive people play competitive games like structured pvp in GW2 or LoL or other games where the design principles are completely different.

[Maliceblades]

How about build a decent group comp work together as a group and play the game stop looking for ways to kill the game

[Belanoite]

This mechanic you sugest was the reason I left GW2.

[oaliaen]

Endgame gear is crucial for many , if not all , weak classes to shine in ror... otherwise we gonna have only WL , WH and WEs. Even slayers shine only whit endgame gear.

[Secrets]

People won't even play SCs if they're all fair fights or not required for a gear treadmill. Ranked being the exception where a gear treadmill would not help.

This is a traditional MMORPG... Meaning, gear increases your power. Matches will suck without gear. Getting gear means you won't have as many bad matches.

Every single game I've played that does gear neutralizing results in no one playing the gear neutral mode because it's too fair. People enjoy shitstomping bad players.

There are more modern games that do gear neutral well ie; Fortnite.

This is a private server of a game that very rigidly follows what made this game great. Gearing and having options for gearing is part of the reason why this game is/was so successful.

In my professional and hobby experience with developing games, players absolutely despise games that are too balanced and will quickly quit games where they have to improve their skill but have no capacity to do so, and games like Warhammer allow a player who is otherwise not as great to be carried at some capacity by their gear, while allowing geared, skilled players to still shine.

The issue stems with the rate of gear acquisition and not the gear itself, but that's a whole other can of worms.

[Lisutaris]

For a ranked mode ... this actually makes some sort of sense....

... otherwise no, wrong game, shoo shoo.

Can pretty much underline what Secrets has posted above.

[Duukar]

Well they need to do SOMETHING to save the game. I recently had a guild that moved over to RoR. About 12 solid PvP players. About 75% of them enjoyed SCing to 40 and once the reality of the grind and MASSIVE gear imbalance hit they either quit or stay in T3.

It’s really hard to get people excited to play RoR when the weekend SC event is dominated by high gear premades. Like the kind of fights where you don’t even get to cast a spell or two. Over and over.

The weekend warfront is quite possibly sweatiest game mode around. Unique weekly rewards and a massive RR boost. If you can't compete in it then you can just not queue and do other scenarios instead...

I can and do compete. At a high level. I often stomp and often get stomped. One thing remains; it’s almost always a blowout.

It’s a big F U to new players that these rewards you speak of are gated from new players. Even worse that the experience itself is so toxic and painful.

If gear were normalized then at least new players could bring skills and coordination from other games and stand a chance.

We don’t need work arounds. We need improvement and a fix.