dwyur wrote: Wed Sep 21, 2022 12:59 pm
Why remove a game mode just because it's enjoyed by 'an elite few'? A lot of the elite few keep this server going when the population recently reached low points, and run many of the organized warbands, inviting pugs when trying to fill. I don't see the point in removing ranked simply because at the moment it's not active, though there are still pops that happen. Once the gear was attained yeah it was always going to die down- there should be some sort of incentive related to it or have a monthly ranked event to get it running again. I agree with the decision to make it accessible to players who never want to play ranked, no issue there really. I would also have no issue if it remained only accessible to ranked, as I would've eventually started to queue to attain the gear.
I think I queued for ranked handful of times but I don't have a BiS character and didn't want to be a detriment to my team being targeted and killed over and over, plus 6v6 just isn't that appealing to me.
I don't thnk removing another game mode & purpose for BiS players to play the game is good for the server.
I'll preface this as my own random thoughts and not explicitly representative of the team. Clearly I've had internal conversations that have reflected parts of this, but there's also where we ended up, so eh.
Having a game mode designed for the elite few to consolidate even more power has been a constant criticism from the rest of the playerbase. My considerations for design never ever take into account how much alleged altruistic work a subset of players take, particularly when they stand to gain the most from the result of changes aimed at them. It is dangerous to assume the people who benefit the most are also the ones who provide the most value to the community. Perhaps I have a unique perspective as a GM to not lend a shred of trust or faith in the goodness of others, quite so blindly. These are similar reasons we abandoned a public balance forum discussion, and went instead with internal members of the team and trusted community members in the Realm Champ program.
Ranked being inactive is not a reason to remove it, I made recommendations to continue the experiment in a direction that would be more inclusive and to attract a wider playerbase, while still retaining the core concept of prestige and competition. That was the whole point of ranked in the first place. Gear sets came in much later. The argument was that this tier of scenario play deserved a higher tier of gear and that scenario gear was not keeping up with RvR gear when it came to power scaling, which it was never designed for in the first place. Scenarios are literally a mini-game, as the meme goes, and while they're exceptionally accessible and fun™, they're not the core of the game. Dungeons and RvR are the core of the game, the evidence is apparent for anyone looking at it critically.
Statted gear is a bad incentive every step of the way, particularly when it's designed to be significantly better than other gear at its item level. I didn't design the gear, someone may have asked me to review a draft, it was exceptionally disinterested at the time for shoving more power scaling into what I considered a flawed game mode. It worked to prop up the population, as implementing heavily optimized gear will do, but in the long run the flaws in the system were made apparent as the mode has regressed to its current state. People saw gear at the end of the tunnel and treated it like a grind, because you didn't have to actually be ranked to acquire or wear any of it. What's the point of calling it a ranked mode, if it's just a 6v6 deathmatch that you can grind for BIS? You can see now how that caused a knock-on effect right? The more people treating it like a grind meant more people not treating it like a serious high-skill cap mode, leading to more people complaining about the quality of matches, the accusations of throwing and colluding, the poor random RR60 players that accidentally saw the dreaded "Ranked" words in his scenario pop causing 5v6 matches to start. A lot of player behavior issues needed to be patched, but the core driving motivation of Ranked wasn't the prestige or challenge, it was the gear grind.
Players who "never want to play ranked" are not a factor for consideration in my mind. Clearly that sort of game mode isn't intended for them. That doesn't entirely invalidate their concern about being "forced" to play the mode, but it's more important to not rip away achievements from people who put in an effort to earn them. If a game mode has gear you want, and you don't want to play the game mode, then your option is to sit there and mald, or provide suggestions and feedback that move the game mode to a state that you find acceptable with the understanding that your suggestions might simply not be compatible with the design of the mode, at which point revert to option a.
The last completed solo ranked match was on August 23rd, it ended 50 to 0. It was 10 members of the same guild. Nearly a month without a single pop is a dead mode. This is after they made it cross-faction to try and give it one last gimmick to support the population that no longer existed. Now the only thing left is the reminder that some BIS gear is stuck behind a paywall that no one wants to pay. Sad really, we could do better.