State of the Realms (A Community Discussion with the Devs)

[Azarael]

For maybe, 6-9 months, Azas sig said that player experience doesn't matter to the team. In a player driven game it should be pretty much the only thing that mattered. This has had a detrimental effect on players over a period of time. I know a few people who stopped when they noticed that they were essentially being treated like mugs.

Obliged to point out that my signature said "Development first, player experience second" and that was to head off complaints about necessary development changes and states impacting upon the player experience.

I'm also curious as to how you can be treated like a mug on a free server. Please enlighten me as to the expectations you may have of a server that's in development and for which you are not charged.

Honestly, it gets infuriating. If this project didn't exist, and we offered to bring it into existence on the simple condition that respect is displayed for the team, what would most of you be saying? "Yeah, great, just bring us our game back!" But because the game is here and the effort has already been put in to bring it to this state, suddenly we're "treating you like mugs".

Makes me sick.

Not even to go into the armchair critics who think that a magic wand can be waved to fix RvR for all times (or even just EU) when major components of the game are missing and we're talking about a game that was flawed enough to perish. The problem of players not being willing to play if they have to fight rather than PvDoor is not one that can be solved without some reason to care about the progress of the campaign, both on a realm and a personal level. Congratulations on having spotted that, but it's nothing new and you don't have a solution to it, just like everyone else here.

[Ambalynn]

Azarael,

Respect goes both ways. a free server does not give you any right to speak in the manner that you do to the players. At the end of the day, If this game is so flawed and fuct up, why is it even available to the public? why are you investing quid to pay for bandwidth and hosting? because you need the player base, you need testers for a game such as this, your code changes and unit tests are one thing, but without a healthy player base you aren't ever going to get the scale of testing required. I would appreciate some level of decorum from you on these boards. You are not a special snowflake and the player base isn't a bunch of petulant kids. Get over yourself.

There have been many proposed options for the problems you are seeing in this thread, apparently you either decided not to read them or think they suck so bad that an actual response is beneath you. recommend reading them again and responding. as far as my own thoughts, they are below:


PvDoor: no rewards for empty pairings.
who does this impact the most? the players that willfully cheating and small warbands.
Solutions?
- provide alternative means to earn Lake rewards such as SC kill quests
- only unlock one pairing at a time. if a keep isn't successfully taken, the other pairings will not open. that herds all of your cats into one place, lakes will have the large scale, scenarios will have the small scale. population is still the X-factor. players need to be online and willing to defend / attack.

XRealmers: players swapping sides to earn rewards at the last moment
Solution: whatever method you are using to determine contribution, its obviously working to some degree to prevent bags. have it prevent rewards, INF, CR and RR XP until the player has contributed some hard number. that way they cannot pop in at 5% door and get full rewards.

Realm Pride: players not declaring a side and sticking with it.
Solution: there isn't one. if you lock accounts to a specific faction, players will just make a second account and connect to RoR via private VPN (if they aren't already). Realm Pride cannot be enforced it must be built and fostered by the community.

maintaining interest:
as one poster commented, he opens RoR launcher, goes to Forum button, looks at front page, and sees his given pairing is outnumbered 65% to 45% or worse, he doesn't even bother logging into the game and watches netflix instead. This is likely the same scenario that creates Xrealmers. path of least resistance.

Solution: modify AAO as others have commented, I don't like the skull idea as its a PvE solution to a PvP problem. this is a complex issue, AAO switches aren't going to be the only fix required. getting rid of the stigma of 'wasted time' for the smaller force is something that WAR struggled with its entire existence.

[Crazyboss]

We order during last 2 weeks only defending our keeps but we didn't get bags for this. There is not roll bags evev when the outer doors go down.

camp more...

[Morf]

Azarael,

Respect goes both ways. a free server does not give you any right to speak in the manner that you do to the players. At the end of the day, If this game is so flawed and fuct up, why is it even available to the public? why are you investing quid to pay for bandwidth and hosting? because you need the player base, you need testers for a game such as this, your code changes and unit tests are one thing, but without a healthy player base you aren't ever going to get the scale of testing required. I would appreciate some level of decorum from you on these boards. You are not a special snowflake and the player base isn't a bunch of petulant kids. Get over yourself.

What a load of bs, how would you feel if u spent thousands of hours over the past 2 years (for free) to help bring this game back to life and then have to deal with self entitled morons who criticise and insult staff members ? most ppl me included would say **** you do it yourself then, furthermore if you check all the server changelogs you will see the name "Azarael" alot with a ton of fixes and implementations so he is actually "a special snowflake" in terms of this project.
Would you prefer them to close this server down and have only a test server until everything is implemented ? i doubt it so get over yourself and show some respect.

This is why big gaming company developers tend to stay away from posting and discussing the direction of their games on public forums, you get assholes making comments that only pushes them away from a project and even more so in the case of ROR where every staff member is an unpaid volunteer.

[Rebuke]

Azarael,

Respect goes both ways. a free server does not give you any right to speak in the manner that you do to the players. At the end of the day, If this game is so flawed and fuct up, why is it even available to the public? why are you investing quid to pay for bandwidth and hosting? because you need the player base, you need testers for a game such as this, your code changes and unit tests are one thing, but without a healthy player base you aren't ever going to get the scale of testing required. I would appreciate some level of decorum from you on these boards. You are not a special snowflake and the player base isn't a bunch of petulant kids. Get over yourself.

What a load of bs, how would you feel if u spent thousands of hours over the past 2 years (for free) to help bring this game back to life and then have to deal with self entitled morons who criticise and insult staff members ? most ppl me included would say **** you do it yourself then, furthermore if you check all the server changelogs you will see the name "Azarael" alot with a ton of fixes and implementations so he is actually "a special snowflake" in terms of this project.
Would you prefer them to close this server down and have only a test server until everything is implemented ? i doubt it so get over yourself and show some respect.

This is why big gaming company developers tend to stay away from posting and discussing the direction of their games on public forums, you get assholes making comments that only pushes them away from a project and even more so in the case of ROR where every staff member is an unpaid volunteer.

The fact that the devs tend to stay away from posting and discussing the direction of the project with the testers (apparently the players playing on this server) is what makes people make asshole remarks (this includes me obv). Just an observation and trend since the last 9 months or so.

[Morf]

The fact that the devs tend to stay away from posting and discussing the direction of the project with the testers (apparently the players playing on this server) is what makes people make asshole remarks (this includes me obv). Just an observation and trend since the last 9 months or so.

Thats bs, not i am a experienced gamer but the games i have played no where have i seen a dev be so forthcoming then Azarael is here and tbh thats prolly his downfall and why he gets annoyed when ppl ask the same questions over and over, the same (wrong) answers to problems over and over, if players cant be bothered to use the search feature or cant be bothered to spend an hour seeing how this project works why should devs take time away from development to have to respond to the same old bs they did last week or month ? and you expect them to be nice when they get the blame pointed at them or are disrespected ?

As for you making asshole remarks you have been here for what 18 months or so ? you should know better and you should know how much hard work goes into running and developing this project all for free so why be an asshole in the first place ? it screams self entitled moron, lets see how things would be if they were the other way around, you would not like it one bit if you were a dev here and ppl were being demanding/disrespectful all the time, most ppl would throw in the towel.

[Rebuke]

The fact that the devs tend to stay away from posting and discussing the direction of the project with the testers (apparently the players playing on this server) is what makes people make asshole remarks (this includes me obv). Just an observation and trend since the last 9 months or so.

Thats bs, not i am a experienced gamer but the games i have played no where have i seen a dev be so forthcoming then Azarael is here and tbh thats prolly his downfall and why he gets annoyed when ppl ask the same questions over and over, the same (wrong) answers to problems over and over, if players cant be bothered to use the search feature or cant be bothered to spend an hour seeing how this project works why should devs take time away from development to have to respond to the same old bs they did last week or month ? and you expect them to be nice when they get the blame pointed at them or are disrespected ?

As for you making asshole remarks you have been here for what 18 months or so ? you should know better and you should know how much hard work goes into running and developing this project all for free so why be an asshole in the first place ? it screams self entitled moron, lets see how things would be if they were the other way around, you would not like it one bit if you were a dev here and ppl were being demanding/disrespectful all the time, most ppl would throw in the towel.

1: The fact that the developers even bother with these forum retards is a riddle to me. I 100% agree on you with that one.
2: The devs (especially Azarael as lead gameplay dev) should know by now who they should ask feedback for regarding gameplay, hint: its not Torquemadra.
3: The fact a group has been set up a couple of months ago with more prominent players (sort of advising council) but has never been approached afterwards says enough.
4: I started becoming an asshole right at the moment I realized the devs do not master point 2.

[Luicetarro]

The fact that the devs tend to stay away from posting and discussing the direction of the project with the testers (apparently the players playing on this server) is what makes people make asshole remarks (this includes me obv). Just an observation and trend since the last 9 months or so.

Here for a couple of months and I've seen ideas get implemented if they were worth it.
Like adding currency to purple and lower bags for ruin-gear. After like what? 2 weeks, after that suggestion has been made?

Ppl yell 'Stop making BOs reward RR!! Ppl are avoiding fights to farm!!'. Devs deactivate rewards... ppl come all over the forum 'Make BOs give RR-rewards!! It will encourage ppl to fight!!'.
Great. What would be your suggestion now?

So... where do you draw the line?

[Rebuke]

The fact that the devs tend to stay away from posting and discussing the direction of the project with the testers (apparently the players playing on this server) is what makes people make asshole remarks (this includes me obv). Just an observation and trend since the last 9 months or so.

Here for a couple of months and I've seen ideas get implemented if they were worth it.
Like adding currency to purple and lower bags for ruin-gear. After like what? 2 weeks, after that suggestion has been made?

Ppl yell 'Stop making BOs reward RR!! Ppl are avoiding fights to farm!!'. Devs deactivate rewards... ppl come all over the forum 'Make BOs give RR-rewards!! It will encourage ppl to fight!!'.
Great. What would be your suggestion now?

So... where do you draw the line?

Read my previous post.

[Luicetarro]

The fact that the devs tend to stay away from posting and discussing the direction of the project with the testers (apparently the players playing on this server) is what makes people make asshole remarks (this includes me obv). Just an observation and trend since the last 9 months or so.

Here for a couple of months and I've seen ideas get implemented if they were worth it.
Like adding currency to purple and lower bags for ruin-gear. After like what? 2 weeks, after that suggestion has been made?

Ppl yell 'Stop making BOs reward RR!! Ppl are avoiding fights to farm!!'. Devs deactivate rewards... ppl come all over the forum 'Make BOs give RR-rewards!! It will encourage ppl to fight!!'.
Great. What would be your suggestion now?

So... where do you draw the line?

Read my previous post.

I did, still the question will stay the same.
If you're suggesting, Devs should know how to ask for valuable infos, why do you even bother to post?

Post your suggestions, note your concerns and observations. Just don't be a fuzz about it.