Return of Reckoning

My experience is that most players are searching for that combination of fun + progression. More complex motivations like winning the campaign or realm pride just don't really come into it.

When players are having fun fights, they care less about progression. When the fun starts to drop, they can lean on their desire to progress to sustain their interest.


With the main campaign specifically, I think the biggest issue is how boring keep fights are. If you're a tank or melee DPS, you've basically got nothing to do unless there's an opportunity to funnel. As ranged DPS, you can spend your time plinking from or to the walls. You're using your skills, sure, but rarely getting kills. You're mostly just wasting time until someone pops an oil.


Given that keep sieges are the main method of progressing the campaign, it doesn't surprise me that most players don't wanna bother with 30mins of boredom. You might get a nice rr and crest tick if the zone locks, but the actual process is dull.


I'd love to see keep sieges get an overhaul to make them more engaging for more players.


Best solution to that I can think of is: siege towers!

A new type of equipment that can be dragged to keeps and setup against the outer walls. This then provides a ramp for attackers to gain the walls and engage in fighting, making it a lot more engaging. Combine this with, for example, the ability for attackers to "unlock" the main keep gates and the defenders to "lock" an opened gate. E.g. treat the gatehouse as a BO, and if the attackers capture the gatehouse, the door unlocks. Could do the same things with the posterns.

This would hopefully mean that sieges then involve multiple fights - main door, both posterns, wherever siege towers are placed. Those fights would have greater consequences for overall siege, rather than mostly being pointless.

For inner keeps, maybe have siege ladders rather than towers?

Or bring back the skaven dudes that could throw players over walls!



final couple of notes:

1) the currency change is the only reason I'm playing. I hated being forced to do specific content for specific currency! But just because currency got squished, doesn't mean content like cities can't offer unique rewards.

2) if the devs want to counter the blob, its easy: reduce AoE across the board. Damage, heals, buffs, debuffs. This game has sooooo much AoE! Most of it is not even noticable individually, but combined it gives warbands a massive advantage. That much AoE also has a negative effect on server performance. Reduce AoE overall, then make single target skills more significant to compensate.

3) The biggest issue with game always has been and always will be vertical progression. A PvP game built on vertical progression always, and i do mean always, results in the playerbase eating their young. How can we expect new players to stick around when they're forced against players both more experienced and much more powerful? Its a shitty experience for the new players, which is why soooo many quit before they ever reach the top of the power curve.

Aluviya wrote: Wed Dec 24, 2025 10:31 am Ranked has nothing to do with ORvR or the campaign.

Ranked is someone's pet rock that less than 1% or the population participates in. The only place you hear about it is on the forums. The amount of energy, attention, resources, and game changes as a result of its presence is undoubtedly a net negative.

Edit because I realized I didn't actually make my point:

In short, I agree it has nothing to do with the campaign directly. It does have an impact on the game as a whole by creating yet ANOTHER game mode that, in reality, requires a different design to be successful.

wonshot wrote: Wed Dec 24, 2025 5:15 amIs RoR realistically still a campaign game?

No.

wonshot wrote: Wed Dec 24, 2025 5:15 amHave the Campaign become too meaningless and no longer serve as the main motivator?

Yes.

The game is about chasing crest and kills. Thus the blob. Forts are meaningless, Cities are meaningless, locking a zone serves no purpose other than to open another zone. Rinse and repeat.

That's a good picture of the current state of RoR's oRvR and why I've been avoiding it, aside from some small scale roaming sessions. There is currently no point in oRvR, no thrill to lock zones, no reward worth fighting for either.

I still longingly remember the thrill of the first fortress fights on live, which required the coordinated effort of several guilds to lock zones towards it (it required also lower tier / SC contribution), then setup the fortress fight itself, dispatching warbands to block accesses throughout the siege and the total madness of stairs blocked in an organized way that could only be broken through by a good morale charge + banner punts (because AoE was not king by then )...

By removing lower tier, by simplifying the zone lock process to the extreme, by removing the City as a campaign objective, by adding an unified currency, by gloryfying mindless blobing instead of coordinated warband effort, oRvR is just a useless feature in this age and day. Sure, new people will like it at first, "epic" battles, the back and forth ...Until they realize those epic battles usually last 2 to 3 seconds due to intense blobing and the supremacy of brainless AoE, and that going back and forth between 2 warcamps is what they will basically do in the foreseeable future. No objectives, just mindless blobing.

I often see people saying that there is not enough players for a lower tier to exist. The current state of T2+ open rvr says otherwise. Back on live, T4 open rvr was usually 2 to 3 warbands on both sides on every given night, so less than 100 people on either side. We don't need more than that for an enjoyable oRvR. Bring back T2/3 orvr, make it contribute to T4 locks as an incentive to play rerolls. Not only will it allow low levels / new players to have an overwhelmingly better RvR experience than being carried by the blob while doing absolutely nothing, but it will also effectively cut the blob by half in T4.

As for the oRvR rewards, i think something should be done as well as an incentive to go for objectives rather than just blobing. Neat rings were added to PvE recently, annuli could be given out as rare rewards for Fortress / City fights as well (or at least components for them). Fortress weapons could be also moved back to SC as it used to be on live (they werent called Fortress but royal by then) and farmed through a separate SC currency to bring more players to SCs when the new MM is ready.