Patch Notes 12/02/2026

[gisborne]

Just wonder what is up with this GM manually granting quitter debuffs for players who doesn't want to be farmed by premades?

If what you are doing is hiding in your warcamp for prolonged periods of time instead of fighting, then you are actually griefing your own team and trying to get crests for nothing. Quitter is absolutely deserved in such a case.

What you should do, is leave the SC so that the matchmaking system can fill your spot with someone that has the actual will to fight, win or lose.

They aren't trying to get crests for nothing. You think they are afking to get 1 crest for their loss? They just aren't interested in feeding renown and would like the scenario to end immediately. If you want people to leave right away, don't give a quitter debuff at all. Instead you did the opposite, forcing players to be farmed for a longer time since they can't surrender.

If you want to encourage players to fight, give them a permanent 10% damage increase and 10% damage reduction per death.

[gisborne]

Here are my thoughts after playing last night:

Mentor rewards: Not only do I think you missed the mark completely, but you actually managed to make me feel insulted. Here's what new (or sub-40s) players ask for help with in LFG or the new player guild chat, in no particular order of priority:
1. Dragonback Pass
2. Sewers
3. Mayhem
4. Ruin
Yet you only reward for helping with the first 2.

The insulting part is that you give out rewards for "helping" sub-40's in RvR by doing nothing more than happening to be in a party with one. So anyone who joins an open warband, putting in no special effort, will get the rewards.

What are you trying to accomplish with this system? As it stands it makes me, who was perfectly happy helping new players for no reward at all, not want to help any more. Since I spend a significant portion of my playtime with that, I'll probably end up playing less.

Scenario queues were very long. So long, in fact, that I ended up just playing one of them and did RvR instead.

It's interesting that you felt the need to threaten to stop playing, instead of just providing constructive criticism in a respectful tone.

Play less, not stop playing. I'll just be logging off when I'm bored waiting for interesting RvR instead of offering to help players.

But since this message gives off so much karen energy, I feel the need to point out that you're complaining about a system that rewards you for doing something you already enjoyed doing.

My point is that it doesn't reward me for carrying Mayhem and Ruin PQs, which are far more time intensive than a 10 minute Sewers run. As for the other things, I've never seen anyone ask for any of it except for Dragonback Pass (which imo should be run on-level to learn the mechanics and it doesn't give worthwhile rewards for the new players).

If that's insulting to you to the point of posting something in that tone, then I would be inclined to question what your goals were in helping new players. Because you were clearly not doing it for fun.

You are free to have that opinion, but the fact is you are rewarding people for passively helping (grouping with sub-40s in RvR) and not rewarding people for actively helping (carrying Mayhem and Ruin PQs). That is my issue.

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Edit: I left my original post the same but I want to apologize for my non-productive tone. My feelings about it still exist, but as you pointed out, it's not helpful to express it in such a way. I genuinely appreciate all this team has done for this game. While I may not like every change, I love that you are putting in the effort to do something at all. Thank you.

[leftayparxoun]

Want to echo some of the above commenters.

The barrier system (if it has to stay) must be buffed even more. For example a +1000% damage and heal buff after leaving the spawn.

Otherwise people will just not bother going out.
That is what I experienced in the most unbalanced scenarios I came to play during the last week. Thankfully they are far fewer than before the new system, but they are still significant.

Now, you might ask me, "Only, doesn't that just replace the NPC guard system with players having equivalent stats to those guards near the spawn?"
And, yes, you'd be absolutely correct.

Unless there is a clear reason to stay the f**** away from the enemy spawn people will continue to suffer

A bit more damage and free heals on the enemies is not a good enough reason. Especially since half the weaker team might be afk or in the process of leaving/backfilling the sc. And especially for that reason due to

The 7.5 min surrender timer. That change has made the barrier system way more obnoxious than it was before. Now your option is between taking 10 minutes quitter or waiting in the spawn point for even longer, hoping the enemy team will decide to play the objectives instead of just farming your persistent teammates.

An alternative suggestion would be to reduce the quitter timer down to e.g. 3 minutes and then escalate the timer if the player keeps quitting subsequent scenarios. But that would only cause more problems; people would leave a losing sc and create a constant quitting-backfilling chain until the timer reaches 7.5 minutes.

Finally, letting people surrender even faster (e.g. at 12.5 minutes) could solve the issue, but then you'd end up having non-games in many cases. Or people just not giving the fight another chance at all, even if they lost the first engagement by a fluke.

To recap, the best solution is to restore/make a guard/guard-like system near the spawns.
Holding on to the barrier system makes no sense (to me at least). You have already done incredible work here with this patch. Why not remove THE biggest critism people have had besides matchmaking?

Regardless, thank you for the patch and your efforts on the scenario system so far. It was a long time coming.

[Avernus]

The barrier/quitter combo is actually very good at achieving the thing they were designed for - punish you for not leaving the spawn room.

But why do you don't want to not leave the spawn room?

Because your team is losing (usually it's stomped).

Because you think your teams are not really balanced (for example, you have def engie instead of dps and fresh mayhem-level tank with no talis slotted while the enemy team is at least decent).

Because you see that it's the same premade that farms ppl for some time already, and your team is still a bunch of punchbags and neversurrenders.

Because you don't want to leave the spawn if you think that it's a waste of time, and by waste of time i mean "lost match". And not just lost but lost with a point that even if you do everything you can the only thing you can achieve (at best) is a kill or two (while feeding the enemy team to the brim) or even win sc by points (because the enemy team didn't give a damn about BO and just killed you again and again).

Those alternatives aren't really fun i guess.

Summary, barriers/quitter aren't here to punish the team who's busy spawncamping (even though they can do that sometimes). They are here to punish you for being weak/bad/unlucky player. They are here to punish you for not willing to fight - even if the fight is already lost. They are here to punish you for losing.

IMHO, obviously.

P.S. I absolutely HATE the barrier system.

[Brakh]

Seriously, if the vast majority of people here are against barriers, why do they still exist? They were created because of one influential streamer and his premade couldn't stomp ranged kiting classes back in the day.

[Avernus]

Seriously, if the vast majority of people here are against barriers, why do they still exist?

Because none of those people's opinions matter.

They were created because of one influential streamer and his premade couldn't stomp ranged kiting classes back in the day.

While may be/not be the case, i'm sure there is a certain (small) group of people which opinion DOES matter to the devs. The best we can do is to hope that some of them actually read the forum and agree with the stuff written here.

Did the forum actually had an effect on some balance changes? Judge for yourself.

[Sinisterror]

Seriously, if the vast majority of people here are against barriers, why do they still exist? They were created because of one influential streamer and his premade couldn't stomp ranged kiting classes back in the day.

You answered your own question! I might be wrong but this same reason was also one of the reasons GCD was changed to 1.5s from 1.15s - because certain players didnt like when they died to timestamping : D 15% Crit dmg nerf for sorc/bw was probably due to this as well, even though NO ONE expected it or thought its needed.

[lumpi33]

Seriously, if the vast majority of people here are against barriers, why do they still exist? They were created because of one influential streamer and his premade couldn't stomp ranged kiting classes back in the day.

You answered your own question! I might be wrong but this same reason was also one of the reasons GCD was changed to 1.5s from 1.15s - because certain players didnt like when they died to timestamping : D 15% Crit dmg nerf for sorc/bw was probably due to this as well, even though NO ONE expected it or thought its needed.

I think the server is just not able to handle 1.15s correctly. Last time when the big streamer was here and lots of people were playing we noticed that sometimes the abilities did just not fire from time to time. You were seeing a heal cast but it just didn't heal. All people in the group noticed that. The server runs impressively well but I think there are limits and 1.5s might be a bandage for that.

But yeah, 1.5 feels clunky. Especially when you want to drink potions or fire Focused Mind. In these cases the 1.5 feel really bad.

[Keula]

To recap, the best solution is to restore/make a guard/guard-like system near the spawns.
Holding on to the barrier system makes no sense (to me at least). You have already done incredible work here with this patch. Why not remove THE biggest critism people have had besides matchmaking?

Regardless, thank you for the patch and your efforts on the scenario system so far. It was a long time coming.

So what are guards gonna do for scenarios that have highground spawns? Which is a lot of scenarios and they just stood there doing nothing in the past. For all these barrier discussions, it feels like Serpent's passage is the only scenario that exists in their mind, nothing else and all they remember was farming kills/being farmed during the ring events where only thing mattered was getting kills as fast as possible and well serpents passage was very good for doing that. Plus the objective sucks so it'll never end, unlike say nordenwatch which will end on stomp quite quickly, so what you should be complaining is the objective of that scenario, not the barriers.

If ppl want their lucky 1 kill punt back for serpent's passage, sure you can have it, but don't act like guards are gonna solve much, when it won't do anything for the vast majority of scenarios and all the barrier is doing is just making highground for scenarios that didn't have it. Plus they added cast through barriers, finally, which imo is enough.

[georgehabadasher]

Seriously, if the vast majority of people here are against barriers, why do they still exist? They were created because of one influential streamer and his premade couldn't stomp ranged kiting classes back in the day.

You answered your own question! I might be wrong but this same reason was also one of the reasons GCD was changed to 1.5s from 1.15s - because certain players didnt like when they died to timestamping : D 15% Crit dmg nerf for sorc/bw was probably due to this as well, even though NO ONE expected it or thought its needed.

But yeah, 1.5 feels clunky. Especially when you want to drink potions or fire Focused Mind. In these cases the 1.5 feel really bad.

Potions at least feel awkward because items don't enter the ability queue like other abilities. So if you push your pot button before the gcd is up, it won't fire.