Followup to the roadmap

[wonshot]

Hello,

Since the roadmap annoucement came out, some of the areas mentioned have been finished and hit the live server or being worked on in the background getting closer to a release.

The balancing patch seem to be overwith sorta.
T3 dungeon sounds like its soon ready based on a few comments from "people who knows" on RoR discord and Twitch chats, along with Dev comments on the forums.
With the new item-weight repricing of Renown-skillpoints on PTS we seem to be closer to wrapping the whole balancing and itemization, with the Armor patch still missing.
Scenario matchmaking and new mechanics to some maps are an area being talked about with Twisted tower and TalaDam.

So when and if these areas are crossed out and finished. Would that free up more hands to potentually working on City and/or rvr, would be my questions?
Right now there are a rumor traveling around in ror circles/discords (from same sources that had a correct leak of the RDPS patchnotes several months ahead of time) that the orvr ror team is closed to desolved, or one or several keyfigured are stepping down or replaced.

Honestly, with how RvR hasnt gotten ANY meaningful attention or delivered any improved RvR patches the past 5 or so years maybe this is for the best. My worry would then be; if other succesful areas of RoR would shift hands and attention over to finally give the main replayloop some desperate attention.
Because there is a timeline where RoR devs now tries to only "help/fix" the campaign by only addressing City, either fully overhauling the instances and mechanic of how to open city, or by trying to add this pve-warband-raid encounter after cities and hope thats enough.

I cant stress enough how that seem to an unpopular approach in the community, and I really hope the RoR team will upprioritize and focus on RvR too!
Battleobjectives, anti-blob tools to fight outnumbered, incentives to spreading out the numbers across a whole map, pushing several zones, keep siege mechanics and tools, keep claim upgrades and guild levels, Banners, canons and oil. There are so many smaller mechanics that could use tweaks or open up the stale gameplay with just tiny additions.
But with RvR dev team being a graveyard for five years, with the RvR focus group seemingly being underused as per sources then I really hope NOW is the time to give RVR some attention.

But honestly, I wouldnt be supriced if this again just will be ignored and you only give Citysieges a patch and add more pve on top and hope that will dripple down over the rest of the outdated rvr mehcanics in the zones.
If so, please could you say so already and spare us the wasted time untill that disappointment?

#GiveRVRattentionFiveYearsAgo!

[leftside]

Turn the PVE team loose on the RVR campaign.
They seem capable of injecting some actual fun into it.
The current numerical tinkering ad nauseam is unlikely to.

[Akalukz]

Hell bring the PVE into RVR, any change at this point is good change.

[Jajcek12]

Simple , its voluntery project.
Join developer group and help them with making progres in teams of Your interest
Profit

Since seperate teams of volunteres work on different parts of game i would not accuse anyone for pushing only pve content if only pve content team is productive
And we wait long for effects of work from othere teams , from verious reasons.
Why only pve team is productive ? We should be happy they are.

[kpihuss]

As far as I understand, the PvE and RvR teams cannot swap tasks because they use completely different programming tools.

In fact, I believe the entire RvR campaign is built in C#, and there isn't a single team member who specializes in that language; conversely, PvE content has received special, custom-made tools because it could be developed using programming languages ​​for which the team *does* have specialists. That is why PvE gets so much attention while RvR is completely neglected.

Mind you, I’m not a team member; this is just my understanding based on conversations I’ve read on the forums, Discord, and in-game chat.

What I don't know—speaking as a non-expert—is whether an AI could convert all that C# code into a different language. If that were done, they could deploy it to a test server (or even the live server), and if it didn't work, simply revert to the old version. We shouldn't forget that this is an Alpha phase; it is better to run a test that fails than to spend another month with the campaign in its current state.

Simple , its voluntery project.
Join developer group and help them with making progres in teams of Your interest
Profit

It’s not easy. Many of us have tried to help joinning the team, but we aren't allowed to

[anstalt]

If i remember the roadmap correctly, wasn't there supposed to be an "iconic builds" patch sometime after the main tank/heal/dps balance patches?

[Jajcek12]

Simple , its voluntery project.
Join developer group and help them with making progres in teams of Your interest
Profit

It’s not easy. Many of us have tried to help joinning the team, but we aren't allowed to

Not everyone have cv good enaugh to be volonteur here.

[wonshot]

..In fact, I believe the entire RvR campaign is built in C#, and there isn't a single team member who specializes in that language..

This one seems to be their favorit excause lately, previous it was "we are a small team" then it was "we are are different teams" now its "its a different codeing launguage"

But we have seen in the past how RvR changes were being attempted, and there wa a will to experiment to improve the Day-to-day rvr experience, that has kinda stopped since cities came out in 2020. So either the RvR-team was stripped from manpower and shifted over to other groups like Pve. or there is just no more will to even attempt to imrpove rvr.

In the past years on RoR, we saw a community outcry that fortress doors when it was bottomfloor funnel meta were too narrow, those gates were then improved and made wider. which is why you can still have LOS issues on the bottomfloor in Stonewatch, this a clear example of how things were attempted and not done fully correct. But still attempted, in the past.

We have seen in T2 empire that the Moor's BO was moved further away from the Order warcamp, a good logical change. But why does it stop there, why are more BO flags not experimented and moved around, since clearly the language and tools are there for it to work, and didnt need a T3 homemade dungeon to be made before this feat was "unlocked"

Im just tired of the excauses, RvR is not getting focus for five years. They have addmitted to sources that the RvR focus group is underused. A RvR dev have recently stepped down. So my question is, what is the plan looking forward for RVR, not for Citys as thats covered in the roadmap.
What are the plans for Zonelocks, battleobjectives, rams, oil, aao, randomevents king of the hill.

Are the devs gonna shift some ideamakers and theorycrafters atleast over to the RvR RoR team again, so atleast the ideas can start flowing, or will it just be more hands on the Tovl team and hopefully the playerbase will just forget about the main attraction of the game being a horrible state.

[Yaliskah]

But we have seen in the past how RvR changes were being attempted, and there wa a will to experiment to improve the Day-to-day rvr experience, that has kinda stopped since cities came out in 2020.

I'm not part of the team anymore, but i remember this, according i was part of these changes. I proposed a concept for a RvR revamp (you could find it somewhere in the forum), and having no programming skills myself, Hargrim volunteered to try and bring it to life. The project was laid out before we even started, and the challenge was to implement it gradually while keeping the game running—as I still firmly believe that live testing on a full scale is the best way to move forward quickly and efficiently, provided the community plays along (remember que 50% guard for 2H weapons ? it was me too :p).

So, we implemented about 40% of what was planned (rank progression, guild investment, the bag roll system, rank effects on postern gates, merging T2/T3/T4, bolstering, the warcamp buff...), and then, to encourage faction splitting, a somewhat daring concept was deployed: holding a BO (Battle Objective) so that it generates supplies—the idea being that a mine without miners produces nothing—in exchange for slight renown ticks.

The community's reaction was immediate: it became "Waithammer." Entire warbands ended up sharing the game's BOs while simultaneously complaining about the mechanic. As a result, the feature was removed, Hargrim threw in the towel faced with this mini shitstorm, and everything was left as it was.

I won't blame anyone, but I learned that it's complicated to propose a system that seems simple on the surface, easy to understand, and fluid, allowing players to split across an entire map—multiplying objectives and making their control dynamic on multiple levels: player (solo, smallscale, warbands, blob...), guild, and faction—while anticipating every possible way to "exploit" the mechanics, and, to top it all off, achieving unanimous approval.

Regardless, even with just 40% delivered, we didn't do so badly. :p

[Verindra]

I do want to ask where some of these rumours are actually coming from, because several of the claims being repeated here simply aren't true.

There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in saying that communication from the team is just a series of changing "excuses," while at the same time relying heavily on rumours, Discord conversations, Twitch chat comments, unnamed sources, and assumptions about what is happening internally.

The explanations around different teams, different tools, and different coding languages are not new. They have been explained for a long time. They also aren't mutually exclusive explanations. RoR is a volunteer project with different people working in different areas, and not every system uses the same tools or requires the same knowledge to work on it. Someone being able to change the location of a BO does not necessarily mean they have the knowledge or access required to change the underlying campaign systems.

I think this highlights a larger problem we have in the community right now. We have developed some fairly strong echo chambers where speculation gets repeated often enough that it eventually becomes accepted as fact. When an explanation is provided that doesn't fit the established narrative, it gets dismissed as an "excuse" rather than actually considered.

That makes productive discussion incredibly difficult.

It's completely fair to say that you don't like the current state of RvR. It's fair to want more changes to BOs, siege, AAO, zone locks, campaign mechanics, anti-blob systems, keep upgrades, or any of the other things mentioned here. Those are discussions worth having.

But I don't think it's accurate to say RvR has received "no meaningful attention" for five years.

Balance and itemization are RvR changes. Career balance has an enormous impact on how warbands are built, how fights play out, which compositions are viable, and ultimately how RvR feels. Itemization, renown abilities, scenario changes, campaign rewards, and related systems all feed into the RvR experience. Some of these are broad foundational systems, and it makes sense to address those before making increasingly specific changes on top of them.

That doesn't mean the campaign itself couldn't use attention, nor does it mean every RvR concern has been addressed. There is plenty that can still be improved.

I also think we need to be careful with the argument that because something was changed in the past, it proves that any seemingly similar change should be easy now. Moving a BO, widening a doorway, changing a siege mechanic, and rewriting how the campaign operates are very different scopes of work. One being possible doesn't tell us very much about the technical requirements of another.

And this is where I find some of the conversation frustrating. We're asking the team for better communication about what is happening internally while simultaneously dismissing their explanations when they give them, then filling the gaps with information from unnamed "people who know."

If there is credible information that the RvR team has been dissolved, key people have been removed, or development has deliberately abandoned RvR, then I think it is reasonable to ask where that information came from.

Otherwise, we should be very careful about presenting speculation as though it is established fact.

By all means, keep asking for more RvR attention. I think there are plenty of good conversations to have about what could make the campaign more dynamic and enjoyable. But those conversations will be much more productive if we separate legitimate criticism and suggestions from rumours about what the development team is supposedly doing behind the scenes.