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Degradation of average player skill: why the Scenario system rework is urgently needed

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salazarn
Posts: 221

Re: Degradation of average player skill: why the Scenario system rework is urgently needed

Post#111 » Sun Aug 24, 2025 7:03 pm

I agree but i would say the problem is to do with low damage / OP healers in RoR compared to AoR

Premading is extra bad on RoR compared to say wow classic because of the healer tank synergy and healers being OP in RoR.

Buff dmg dealers again to AoR levels and there are more options for smaller teams to get big kills. More options for solos to get kills. More options for puggers to win vs scenario premades with 6 healers. etc etc.

More kills more blood for the blood god etc

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ASmellyMan
Posts: 11

Re: Degradation of average player skill: why the Scenario system rework is urgently needed

Post#112 » Sun Aug 24, 2025 7:31 pm

I've definitely noticed a huge lack of skill on Order. I've noticed that they need full WBs to kill my Shaman and that is both funny and sad.

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gersy
Posts: 206

Re: Degradation of average player skill: why the Scenario system rework is urgently needed

Post#113 » Sun Aug 24, 2025 7:56 pm

Aluviya wrote: Sat Aug 23, 2025 2:36 pm
What makes this even more frustrating is the sudden about-face from parts of the community. Many of the same voices—like Gersy—who are now loudly insisting that scenarios must be saved were previously dismissing small-scale as irrelevant (while sitting on the balance feedback team, no less, and even pushing that stance to other community members. You’ll have to forgive me for the jab, but it’s unavoidable viewtopic.php?p=568911#p568865
]).

I'm not sure what my post from January about potential zerg-busting solutions has to do with anything. I have been vocal about advocating for both small and largescale improvements for a long time now, including making many suggestions across multiple official channels. Everyone knows that both SC and ORvR are in terrible states currently and are in dire need of improvement. In the post that you linked I assume the statement which triggered you was where I said that balancing around the 95% is better than balancing around the 1%. I still believe this to be true. If you want new players to stay within the game it is necessary to look at the contents which most all of them are involving themselves. Clearly this means that the content the vast majority of players are primarily engaging in is Open RvR largescale fights and sieges, which is made very obvious with presently available data as well as overall community sentiment.

Does that mean that there should be no focus on city, scenarios, open smallscale and ranked? Of course these should be looked at also and helped if they can be, I am not one of the people saying that they shouldn't be touched. There are however hundreds of active players who would say that SC/city/ranked are pointless content in 2025 so you should enjoy battling them instead of me perhaps.

The fact of the matter is that the game has degraded to the point it is at because of the removal of the importance of the campaign and unique rewards from pinnacle content. Removing the unique rewards from city, forts, ranked, SCs, etc has had ripple effects which are causing damage in the modern state of the game. Because of the removal of importance and reward from these pinnacle pvp contents there is no reason for players to "get good" anymore. No reason to push forts, to push cities, to do ranked or SCs, etc. Because now you can buy full bis with a currency obtained at level 1. I think this is the root cause of almost all issues we have currently, outside of the obvious balance issues and how they are being slowly and poorly handled.

So please don't twist my words or my intentions. I have only the best interests for the overall community at heart when I craft posts such as these and the others which you spurn me for. This jab is not only perfectly avoidable but is based on some unrealistic dislike you have for me while the post you link to has almost nothing to do with the meat and bones of this thread.

If it helps, I agree with every other portion of your post except the part where you needlessly call me out.
Last edited by gersy on Sun Aug 24, 2025 8:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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diedrake
Posts: 415

Re: Degradation of average player skill: why the Scenario system rework is urgently needed

Post#114 » Sun Aug 24, 2025 8:05 pm

So mdps have high parry rate who cares, hit them from the side ir back... problem solved. Revert weaponskill to give parry again because parry connected to init just doesn't make sense.

And yes came back from 3-4 year break and I agree the skill of player has gone down significantly, the zerg mentality and lack of organization, communication and whatnot that is rvr has a lot to do with it.

I do agree as well that scs, a piller of the game has been left to rot while pve ( never really the focus of this game) has gotten loads of updates. I appreciate the devs for doing that but I would love to see scs get same amount of love that pve has gotten over the year.
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siglade
Posts: 121

Re: Degradation of average player skill: why the Scenario system rework is urgently needed

Post#115 » Sun Aug 24, 2025 8:12 pm

@leftayparxoun

Don't think the Scenario system rework will change anything with what is happening on RoR.

They will need to change so many things to make it actually fun, not just the matchmaking.
  • Editing some map (hello black crag keep and punt that disable someone for 1min+)
  • Scenario reward best rr/crest is from stomping scenario, balanced fight mean less reward as it can last up to 15min vs 4min for the same or less reward and ironically not even close to what you can earn in rvr
  • People being worse than bot (keep running into enemy while you call for a regroup and suicide every 40s) or act like a third faction
  • Found a way to prevent people stacking on one side
  • Make objectif actually playable and not something you ignore the whole time.
List is so long :D

But even if they try it won't change the fact that RoR had no real content since 2021? so no carrot to log, all reward that asked people to play actively was removed, lot of content died because it's not needed anymore (ranked for triumphant/victorious gear, city..).

Rvr is just a crest blob farm simulator where you just farm all the gear by following the side that dominate the rvr, enjoy a rain of bag and gear your char until you are bored.
All class/spec are viable as long as you dedicate your time to making it work.

Farrul
Posts: 656

Re: Degradation of average player skill: why the Scenario system rework is urgently needed

Post#116 » Mon Aug 25, 2025 7:01 pm

A real solution must come with real ambitions from the development team. If they are just happy adding PVE content and do some class updates( for better or worse) nothing significant is going to happen to RoR. Status quo shall be until the end of days.

They way i see it, the unified currency for the end game sets was the beginning of decadence. It removes the challenge from the game. This could have been fine up until Vanq gear but not past it.

I understand casuals may be upset by that comment but it is the true. Good games need to be ambitious or they will become dull fast for the veterans. The best gear etc should only be available to the players who are willing to commit for it, make the effort to reach the top.

The old system of City Siege and Royal Crests was way more enticing from a design poing of view, it wasn't flawless but at least it was in the right direction. Devs should have built from there and added/improved on it.

Now the real question is , how the hell to fix that? If they implement such a thing( in the right direction) it would just create an unfair situation. Imho one thing devs could do( but again it requires courage and ambition) is to introduce another Gear tier beyond SoV and Fort weapons.

I know this is heresy for casuals, but alongside such a new tier of gear could be the improvement of all lower level sets, to close the gap. Bring in the freshness to RoR once more.

As for scenarios , i disagree it is the most important thing to fix since the RvR campaign is the core of the game/server. But i do agree it is an indication of how the game is doing. I say this without the intentions to hurt anyone on the dev team but... the last time i logged a Scenario in T4 it made me want to uninstall the game and forget about its existant.

Yes it's that bad. It's the most toxic experience imaginable yet somehow there are still victims playing that. :) I will never understand.

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Martok
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Re: Degradation of average player skill: why the Scenario system rework is urgently needed

Post#117 » Mon Aug 25, 2025 7:25 pm

salazarn wrote: Sun Aug 24, 2025 7:03 pmMore options...

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Dezibagel
Posts: 11

Re: Degradation of average player skill: why the Scenario system rework is urgently needed

Post#118 » Wed Aug 27, 2025 7:23 pm

Better late than never (and I think this thread deserves to be kept alive from OP alone, even though the it obv. turned into a bit of a meme at points as to be expected):

I very much agree broadly with the thoughts expressed in the OP and would like to add some of my own:

Note: I'm by no means the greatest player to grace this game, nor would I even consider myself paticularly good, and I'm not really an oldhead either, but I'm at least old enough to have experienced the same shift expressed by several people here.

---

1. SC's as a newb

I, like most people afaik, started cutting my teeth as a complete noob in midtier SC's, and while it does teach you some ""wrong"" things (it's ex. where I think all the str tali tank memes come from etc. - believe me I once was in full BL/Str trying to max DPS as a BG too ((but back then the BG channel had actual scaling tbf /QQ)) before getting a better understanding of the role), but at least it teaches you to bind and click buttons, the value of CC, immunities (hopefully if you got some ambitions it also pushes you to get an actual working UI setup to track stuff and get some clickcasts going etc.), to start using your toolkit, assist, the importance of layering certain buffs/debuffs etc. etc. in an enviroment where you actually have time to think about and work on these things instead of your out-of-position pug wb group getting blown up by Mr. Blobbys' AoE spam in .5 seconds.

Later on I got picked up by a more veteran guild who taught me most everything I currently know, and got me to actually play in RvR.

Tldr: I fully agree that SC's are the best self-improvement tool this game has, and if nothing else rewarding (new) players for actually playing them should be top priority both for the devs and the community as well (teams of veterans effectively "twinking" in midtier SC's is honestly a bit of a **** move imo, but you obv. can't stop it.) to improve the general standard of play, and to encourage veteran guilds having an actual interest in picking up more newer players.

---

2. Short point - Why improving the standard of play is desirable:

I think this is a point worth adressing for any newer players reading the topic. "Wtf are you people yapping about?//isn't most of this community casual puggies, let us be//we're doing just fine in our pugblob//let the sweaty veterans sweat" etc. are valid concerns imo.

Well my friend, I'll just say this: When this game is what I'd call actually being played either in smallscale or larger scale RvR, it's a beautiful pvp game. When you have a proper group/wb with support, and you're playing against competent opposition, with good leadership on both sides and you get to actually actively play and engage with your role and work both mechanics, positioning, and macro with timings and larger maneuvers, there's nothing else like it. And to facilitate that (the "good fight"), we need a community at large that actually understands at least the basic mechanics of the game, the importance of community and communication, and is willing to engage with them.

Some might not agree that that is some kind of proper end-game goal and instead just want to grind for gear or "win" for their realm or whatever, but I, and I'd wager most older players (feel free to correct me), think that's a bit silly since we're all just a pretty small community engaging with eachother on both sides.

I believe there's a big divide here in the community, and I'll adress it further down. But first I'm just gonna whine a bit ;)

---

3. **** puggies/Why engaging with a lot of the RvR content is miserable as an older player/the paragraph where I'm an asshole

Firstly, and this is harsh but I want esp. newer people to understand it. RoR, when played at any level is at it's core a pretty unforgiving game imo. The nature of the role based pvp in 6-man groups means that if you're not actively engaging with your role you, and your group, is just going to get btfo'd by any group that even in a limited capacity does. If you as heal ain't healing, not cleansing, not ressing and not defending yourself and/or getting out of position and eating dmg your group will obv. die. If you as a tank aren't doing your job your dps won't have a chance at dropping any actual damage, your dps and heals will get bullied, isolated and die, or at the most basic level of not mitigating anything your group will just straight up eat so much damage that you die. And - in my experience the most common - if you as dps aren't doing your job, the opposition will not feel any pressure, will not have to react to anything, their tanks and dps will have free reign to just go ham and bully you and your group will die. Or you just haven't found the detaunt/pot buttons, have no clue any damage drop is happening, don't actively position to avoid anything and proceed to kill your tanks and overload your heals - you will die. (Sidenote: I think one reason (apart from seeing numbers being fun) why so many puggies gravitate towards dps is because the way you're screwing over your group is more indirect, but no less impactful). This is mostly felt in SC's - the "ZOMG double premade/all SoV/ultrasweats 98% of the time just... aren't. Most groups I've seen in regular sc's just run meme AoE specs with varying levels of RR and seem to casually roll over the opposition while presumably chatting about the weather with the occasional call of "my target".)

So what's the point of that giant paragraph of QQ? I just want to ilustrate one reason (and I think it's a big one) why so many older players, including myself, more often than not simply refuse to engage with the a lot of the puggier elements and instead keep to themselves. Playing in a group/wb that lacks even basic cohesion/competence is Very frustrating due to the simple fact that you're relying on others playing their roles in order to play yours, whatever it is. It's just the nature of the game, like in any group based mmo.

Now, and to a point ilustrated in the OP. You can kind of bypass all of this in the lakes by just using overwhelming numbers ("blobbing"). If you have 50+ ppl just pressing something in roughly a relevant area you can overwhelm any wb/group and "win". Congrats, you got some RR and crests doing nothing, the org. wb will probably get a bit pissy and come back with some puggie blobbers of their own and farm you for the rest of the zone, everyone just feels bad and noone gets to actively play, and noone got better at anything or got to engage with anything. Then all the fickle ppl who just want to what I'd call leech (since they've convinced themselves it's not their lack of engaging with either the community or the mechanics that's the problem but rather percieved class/realm imbalances, lack of gear, crossrealming, other people, or whatever other excuses is currently being spewed in /ad or otherwise. @You - things like these are **** minutiae if you're not even engaging with the game at even the most basic level /Me: Ahole gatekeeper) will just move off to pve or whatever. This combined with the percieved lack of personal angency (not true fyi) in these kinds of blobby enviroments creates apathetic players (I'll agree with the broad strokes of the title by just saying that I've never seen so many 80+ BiS toons having so little impact in either SC's or RvR) and shitty lakes imo.

4. Community divide and the consquences (more ahole paragraphs apparently, sorry)

So above I've messily tried to illustrate some of the reasons for what I percieve as a community divide between newer players and veterans, and I'll try to break down the consequences of it.

Firstly, and kind of obvious if you hang around the lakes at all: There seems to be a (to me kind of new?) breed of puggie guild that has effectively taken blobbing to an artform. Not gonna namecall, but these guilds seem to pick up just about anyone who plays regularly and then proceed to just effectively teach them nothing apart from numbers = good and that if you can stack parts of multiple wb's in a disc you can effectively ULTRABLOB with no required engagement or mechanical knowledge from any of the participants, including the leadership. What this means is that from how I percieve it at least, we have a huge group of players who never "graduate" from effectively just blobbing/pugging, never get better even though their gear does, and are stuck in eternal pug limbo since no org. guild will be willing to pick them up due to the above. And I don't really blame ppl here apart from the more actively malicious ones since they don't have the playerbase/knowledge or experience to do much else if they want to "win", and retain their fickle players for the next wb.

Now sidenote: I'll never hate on pug leaders, it's the most thankless thing you can do in this game, we all owe them gratitude, and without them the game would effectively be dead. But if you're a multi-year veteran who should know better actively working to make the lakes a worse place - check yourself/piss off.

So, what are the smaller numbers of veterans doing then? Mostly running annoying 6-men kite groups or gank squads (often playing off the blob) that don't contribute to the health of the lakes at all either. And I don't blame that side much either - the pool of (depending on your standards ofc., but I'm talking basics here) somewhat competent players is small, and as illustrated above, I fully understand and agree not wanting to engage with others who have no interest in actually playing or learning so just sticking to the people you know is the natural thing to do if you don't want a headache-inducing evening.

5. Wow, that is a lot of QQ - what should actually be done then?

I believe helping these issues requires engagement both from the dev side and the community, and I'll just make a few points I think would help:

Dev side:

1. Increase rewards for actively participating in SC's. I don't post often, but I think I made a post earlier that suggested using a contribution-based (broad strokes, but rewarding heal/prot/kill dmg...) system for determining end of match rewards which I stand by (thus pretty directly rewarding active participation in an SC which has actual fighting going on, and making stomps meh. Could be abused ofc, but that'd go under killtrading or similar) and upping the Crest + RR contra exp. rewards, esp. in midtier, as the carrot to encourage people to participate. Lowbies in RvR honestly don't contribute that much ((generally, depends on the player ofc.)), and I for one would much rather see people playing sc's and presumably having a good time (and learning) rather than trying to optimize RR GAINZ by leeching off actual WB's in the lakes. Even if nothing else, I think making sc's just straight up more lucruative than what they are now would be a good thing. And even a silly pug sc with weird comps is imho much better content than the blob. (All dps sc's ex., while obv. not representative of any sort of group play can be a blast and still gets you to click buttons :)) )

2. Requires more people in the pool, but an updated role-based matchmaking system with hidden MMR. If we can, due to the carrot above, get more than like 30 people in the pool then a more sophisticated matchmaking system could premumably make the sc's a generally more even and enjoyable experience. Do note I think there's been some improvements to the matchmaking system since I started (I see less really imbalanced role comps than I used to, at least that's my perception), but I think it could go further. Mind you, I don't know jack about the specifics of how the system currently works, but assigning a hidden MMR to players (W/L and relative contrib. or smth) and trying to matchmake using firstly roles, and secondly that could at least in my head help even the field more. Do note as said, that I don't experience the matchmaking as that bad right now, and I feel a lot of SC's are way more winnable than people think them to be.

3. Slash the rewards for surfing in RvR. Surfing wb's/competent groups is currently by far the best way to powerlevel your characters (esp dps). I'm no better - I do it too for my alts, but it' messed up imho. And then you get /ad encouraging newer players to do it for the GAINZ, and all of this is completely backwards and messed up imho since it's also very brainless and is not really engaging with the game other than witnessing the spectacle of large-scale RvR. In combination with increased rewards for SC's, maybe assigning a weighted contrib penalty to kills near groups pulling weight (i.e. high contrib with heal/prot) could help steer people away from this playstyle?

Community side:

1. Take the whining from /ad or /3 to the forums (and encourage others to do the same). It's both funnier, and in seriousness imho this place needs more active discussion around player issues other than "my class bad, waah", here where you can actually have an ordered discussion and reply with some thought (or just further shitpost, but you know, one can filter). Maybe it could also help foster some cross-faction/class/role understanding and imho much needed Kumbaya :)

2. Host some low-stakes community pvp events. Now this is a big ask for someone who's never organized something themselves and isn't a voice at all (I've been thinking about trying it though, if ppl would be game), but some casual (regular?) 4v4, 1v1, 12v12, 3v3 or whatever would at least be fun to me if our fragile egos could handle it. Just, you know, try to actively get people playing together beyond what the game feeds us.

3. Encourage your fellow players to hop on voice. Just in general, this game imho, is pretty much unplayable in RvR (unless you already know eachother very well) if you're not in call with at least your group and it'll speed up the knowledge spread 10x. A lot of ppl are already very good at this, but I just want to add it since I think it's important, if basic. Talking to eachother is how we bridge gaps /hippie.

---

Finally: Some presumed @:s:

* Wow that is a long post, and a lot of it is QQ

Yes, fair. I'm trying to do more than vent here though, but the post did come out a bit more negative than I intended at first. I hope the forest is visible for the trees etc.

* You suck, and don't have the knowledge/skills or authority to speak on this!

Yeah, maybe fair, but then please do explain to my dum-dum brain what I'm getting wrong here though. You'll win many discord pvp points if you do. (In seriousness, I'm trying to both +1 what I think is a great OP, and to further the discussion about what I percieve as community issues/grieveances at large by being very blunt. I more than welcome people challenging my perspective here).

* You seem to have a very narrow perception of what it means to play the game in a *correct* way, take your elitist bull elsewhere and just let people be, man!

Fair to an extent, but the point here is not to lecture people on how I think they should play, but it's a cross-section of some of my ideas of how to improve the RoR experience for everybody, which I think entails explaining where I'm coming from.

* Cringe, effortposting is cringe, you're cringe

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