The last few days ive just been reading, talking and thinking about the game. And I really have to ask the question
Three-Four years ago I attempted something simular, by trying to add volume and size behind the frustration about direction and shared concirn in the community. Unfortuneatly nothing really came of it, despite it being a warning and alarm desperation call from the community:"what is the vision and direction of RoR?"
viewtopic.php?t=45512
Too many of these guilds are no longer playing, some still are, but very few have come since then.
When one of the servers oldest guilds and the highest RR players are pulling the plug as partly reason of gamedirection, lack of good action in rvr, and dwindling population and overall lost faith in the server. Then something seriously should be done to address that situation.
Loosing freebootaz might very well just be the stone that creates the avelance, already several guilds are one the last leg and without faith in the direction.
Which is not a new occurance, if we also just look two years back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNYPNccr6Ws
If I connect these episodes on the RoR timeline.
We did the openletter scream for help four years ago. Rvr was ignored since then with some vague whispers about it might get attention after Ability rework.
Alright that took how many years, one? two? three? Global cooldown increase was changed ealier than abilitypatch, with the argumentation that this was gonna be needed for the ability patch, which then happend half a year later so we had to endure that nerf for half a year for no reason other than something in the future will make more sense
Now ability rework is done with, but has the overall product improved?
2021 summer RR gain reduction
Longer GCD
Ability rework taking several years and balancing afterwards is not even half way done
Attribute changes
Several directional changes all fall into the same question of:
What they did have in common is to upset parts of the playerbase and population slowly downwards spiraling for each hit with bad patches.Who are these changes for?
Half broken promises such as restoring the Ironbreaker ability, "we will address rvr after abilityoverhaul" and no just a series of seemingly random changes pulled out of a hat, which almost noone is the playerbase outside of the guildmembers of balancingteam seem to understand. This has to beg the question of
Who asked for these WS/init changes. Has the game improved since then? Who asked for sorc/Bw ner, has the game improved? Was it woryh lowering the GCD, was the game better as a result? Has the game become more balanced, more competitive? What are we even trying to do with these changes, outside of the unintented effect of upsetting a community that has been tried and tested on the patience and we feel rather ignored when big dumps of feedback are not even attempted addressed over so many years. Does it take longer to add a 5minut locktimer on a Battleobjective in RvR instead of adding an NPC which can exchange WS to Init talismans?Are you balancing the game for the playerbase, or who are the targetaudience?
Alright, so lets not be too unreasonable. I understand when putting countless manhours into ability rework that helps alot with future tweeking, bugfixing and overall quality of life from a coding perspective. That was probably needed, and we are glad it is done now.
Same for the roleplay cities added, they must feel amazing to cross off and say "hey look at this piece of content we added which wasnt on the Live servers" Amazing achivement, but also a whole lot of manhours used on something that adds close to zero replay ability for a game that was in massive content draught for years now. And all of this was decited to be done after the community feedback of please help RvR it needs attention desperately. Players have been voting since then, with their login. Population is dwindling, several guilds are calling it, one after ten years of enjoying RoR and about a handful more calling for last chance over the next month. This is not an untimatum, this is just the community being transparent with the RoR team.
Are the balancing team only responsable for career balancing, or is it all balance? Because right now, the last few years, last few patches especially and the reasoning behind. Cant be followed by big portions of the community based on feedback, population, and votes.
Someone at some points gotta ask the hard hitting question of
I've personally taken breaks over the years of RoR, and it has almost never been because of ror patches that ive returned, it has been because i miss the core foundation this game is built on. The collision, the tactic slots, the morale system, the 2-2-2 setups. But each of my breaks has been as a result of lacking game systems that make the foundation be fun to pilot characters on.Are we working in the best interest of the server and playerbase with our vision, or is it time to rethink the vision?
I dont know how to make it any more obvious, I dont know if Community managers are going around talking to people too and if they see the same warning signs. But this is not just Summertime population, the burnout, patience, and faith is at an all time low and the population is critical with how many people are thinking about leaving currently!
