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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Finally: Some presumed @:s:
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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.
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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).
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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.
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Cringe, effortposting is cringe, you're cringe
Your mom cringe
