Followup to the roadmap

[wonshot]

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..


...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...

..And this is where I find some of the conversation frustrating...

..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..

Hey Tali. Thanks for taking the time.
Well mostly the sources are the devs themselves in direct DM conversations with me, or focusgroup members sharing their experiences and frustrations with me.
So that would be the sources.

While we could play the game of which area is rvr or not, the patchnotes when they are out do seperate pve, rvr, itemization, and balancing. While I do agree all of it does directly or indirectly affect RvR. Maybe I should had been more clear that RvR core systems have remained the same, have been acknowledged to be unsatisfying by devs. Im honestly not really looking to pick a fight, or twist words here.

But I am glad to hear that there is actually frustration to be found, that was almost the goal if I am being fully honest.
RvR HAS been neglected, it has been stated publicly that it was a desire to improve on, and that core work was being done in the background by Max on RoR discord. But the designers were then left to figure out what to do with it, and that is the core issue. If Natherul has stepped down, as he told me directly in a DM and that being my source. Then what is the future of RvR design going to look like, RvR core systems havnt changed much or at all since City sieges game out. And the last big rvr core system change was as Yali mentioned when we went from the 20rp per tick BO system to more of a box running system.

And that is kinda the essence of all of this, we might have ideas and solutions for RvR concepts but before they are tried we might not know which ones are going to work and which ones arent. So when the RvR focus group votes 3/5 to not focus on the campaign about a year ago, who is to say they know what is best before we see it in the game. And that is the will to experiment with RvR systems im talking about. (again same source)

Ive tried with public votes, tried acting as a community manager before that was even a role on RoR and collected the warband/guild builder quoutes and gave collective feedback, ive tried with 10+ suggestions to spark ideas and conversations, ive tried with direct sparing sessions in DMs to the people involved.
Worst part is, after this topic i got a couple of DMs showing me that the focus groups are even less fruitful than I had previously heard, and that RvR is beyond stuck in idea/concept phase with barely anything moving. Let alone the group didnt even know Natherul had taken a burnoutbreak and no replacement is put into place, so what does that say about the state of working on RvR.

And in all that time, the RvR focus and focusgroup is seemingly still not closer to picking a system or having an idea about what future RvR will look like, five years later. So yeah that is my frustration.

[Mishas]

Tbh we need to remember that people supporting this game are not getting any profit out of it and, in my opinion, they have already delivered a lot. I am not sure its fair to put pressure on them. Everything we get its a gift.

I think sometimes we forget about that.

[Wavv]

Is it possible to join dev team? Instead of "btchn" on how slow dev goes, i'll rather help in that matter.

[Hecksa]

Tbh we need to remember that people supporting this game are not getting any profit out of it and, in my opinion, they have already delivered a lot. I am not sure its fair to put pressure on them. Everything we get its a gift.

Not to speak for Bombling, but my reading of what he's saying - and my own feelings on the matter too - aren't that devs have to "do more", or feel more pressured to deliver faster or anything like that. In fact, I think they deliver the stuff they do astonishingly fast, given it's all in their free time.

The question I'm trying to make sense of is this:

A majority of the dev team who responded to Bombling's poll felt that RvR should be the main priority. Why, then, are many of the devs spending lots of time on things that aren't what they themselves consider the main priority?

The answer we're regularly given is that coders need to know C# to work on RvR, and that very few of the team have that skill.

That makes sense - if the only thing required to change RvR was code. But it isn't - before you can code anything, you need to know what it is you're building.

...it's complicated to propose a system that seems simple on the surface ... <snip> ... while anticipating every possible way to "exploit" the mechanics, and, to top it all off, achieving unanimous approval.

Do the devs have a viable, clearly planned out vision of how to fix the issues in RvR? Do they have an agreement on what the issues *are*?

If they do - fantastic! I think the community even being aware that such a thing exists would go a huge way to making us feel like there's a route forward on RvR. It'd be very exciting to know that as soon as the current system can be changed using LUA, work could start on implementation!

If not - wouldn't now be an excellent time to work on that? Couldn't those members of the dev team who are keen to see improvements in RvR, but are unable to work on the C#, help out here? By spending the time they were using for non-RvR projects to instead plan what RvR improvements might look like?

I'm sure the community would be more than willing to help out if some focused threads asking for help in particular, well defined areas were created, too - like the one asking for suggestions for the new event system a while back. I think the community is at it's best when given well-bounded tasks to work on that they know are subjects the devs want contributions on.

TL;DR : Is there some reason why devs can't be working on planning/designing changes to the RvR system, at least up until they're actually able to work on implementing it?

[Jajcek12]

If only time to write cry/excuse/making conspiracy teories/ spagetti posts would be exchange for learning coding, proper and full rvr system analisis (from code to evaluation to end product) and delivering complex solution not that shalow proposition hidden behind community support that are worth nothing.

Neeeeiiiiii

[Nameless]

Isnt coding much easier with all AI tools available?

[wonshot]

..A majority of the dev team who responded to Bombling's poll felt that RvR should be the main priority. Why, then, are many of the devs spending lots of time on things that aren't what they themselves consider the main priority?

The answer we're regularly given is that coders need to know C# to work on RvR, and that very few of the team have that skill.

That makes sense - if the only thing required to change RvR was code. But it isn't - before you can code anything, you need to know what it is you're building..

And that is kinda the core essence.
When I first learned that the Main rvr dev asked for a break, without the RvR focus group even knew about this prior to me starting to make noice. It kinda highlighted the situation for me, that RvR is so under prioritized and not being worked on, and not being taken seriously with how the Focus Group is being used, or not used..

Unless Max is singlehandedly making both new tools to improve rvr, and to design the new version of rvr, then sorry to break it to the community but RvR as we know it, might be the same stale situation for 2-3 more years (guesstimated by how things usually takes times on RoR)
Yeah they seem to want to do a top-down approach starting with new overhauled Citysieges, but that will not affect Battleobjectives, Rams, keepstars, boxes, rvr zonelocks. Adding Chapter 23 behind a won city, will likely not be recieved well by the community and will not motivate to do more zonelocks into more forts, into more citysieges... (speculation)

I had a very long and productive DM conversation with Tali, but the one big question on my mind is still the same.
- Who is going to run RvR as the main guy now that Nath stepped down (shared my direct source with Tali)
- What will happend to the RvR focus group, and the general situation of making RvR better.

Atm. Nothing.. And that is why I put my neck on the line here.
Yesterday I made a rant video, where i tried to be calm and polite still, but after five years of providing handfuls of overhaul rvr suggestions, being told "just wait" patentice is running out at the idea of having to wait two more years for anything meaningful to happen to the staleness of rvr, the bread and butter of the game.. At it sounds on the RvR focus group, they havnt even figured out what gameplay, direction, or solutions rvr needs. This is not a coding bottleneck, its lack of giving the matter attention!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyeFzqza054&t=

[JohnnyWayne]

Isnt coding much easier with all AI tools available?

You need to be on a senior dev level to produce proper code with those. Trust me. I am. Moreover, it kind of became a meme among the gaming community, to hate on AI in general. If you'd publicly state you'd use it, you'd earn a shitstorm.

I feel like there is a bottleneck in C# dev resources and a deadlock in regards of RVR design directions among the team.

[Hazmy]

That makes productive discussion incredibly difficult.

EDIT: LOL, and you removed my Former Staff title for daring to write the truth here just proves our whole point. Amateurish, childish and unprofessional through and through. Never fails to impress.

Quickly, quickly remove me from the credits of the project as well boys. Hurry!

The team is not interested in any meaningful discussion, so yeah it's hard to have one like that. If they were, we would have a lot more official news and PUBLIC polls regarding what the players actually want. There's been almost zero steps made to improve communication in recent years, it only got worse, and LUCKILY people are getting fed up with it, so they leave.

It's also funny that you would accuse the playerbase of having an echo chamber, when probably the biggest echo chamber is the development team itself regarding their stance at how the server is handled. Refusing to listen to the same feedback for over 6 years, dismissing data and just blindly following the same failed road.

We can also see friends of friends and Devs getting into the the Dev Team to enforce this echo chamber even more, so the chances of anything changing positively is pretty slim.

There's a lot more to be said, but it's upsetting to see you try to shift the responsibility AGAIN towards the playerbase and sugarcoat just how bad management is, and that goes all the way to the very top. It's a very small community, so when people get kicked out of focus groups or are invited and experience the reality of RoR Development, yeah those news spread pretty fast. Not to mention the Dev Team also talks privately fortunately, so you can't keep up this charade.

Hard to give respect when this PR non-sense is the response to players valid concerns.

( Also in before this message will get deleted again by Rydiak because the Team can't handle criticism. Yikes )

[DevanShell]

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.

well said. thank you for your response.