Amdus wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 5:18 pm
If there is any interest into keeping the project active and alive, there are a few things that must be taken into consideration as soon as possible.
First and foremost, it's necessary to acknowledge something that's fairly evident. The model being used for so many years, simply doesn't work. It didn't work for mythic, it's not working for RoR. What I mean by this, is that drastic changes are in need if you want to see any type of change.
I'd suggest focusing on a solid base to begin with. It may be the hardest thing to do, but I feel it's possibly the #1 real issue on why most newcomers quit, and many vets don't play as regularly as you'd like to.
-Fix the engine/launcher. Many of us have NASA computers for AoR standards and yet, we lag, we get dced and we crash. This is the main reason of why this game isn't attractive, it should be the number 1 priority at all times to solve this.
-Understand that it's the community who makes the game culture the way it is, not staff. What I mean by this, is that enforcing gameplay or absurd rules isn't going to have a good impact, but rather the opposite. In example, if you want to force us to play a "hardcore" game, that's not going to happen. Most of us are casuals. Hardcore players are a very tiny minority, possibly not over 48 players.
The majority of us have responsabilities as adults that we are, and we simply can't play 8 hours a day. And if the game is aimed for anyone to require 8 hours a day for a month in order to get on pair with those 48 players, well I think the result is very obvious. All those years playing MMO's have taught me that, there's a big difference between hardcore content and mindless grinding. Right now, this is mindless grinding. Gear isn't locked behind requirements, it's locked behind currencies. How to obtain the gear? grind, grind, grind. This isn't playing for fun, it's grinding in the hopes you'll have fun once you obtain the gear.
On the same line, the majority of the community are supposedly "adults". I don't understand this "nobody asked for" need to have a thought police. Why so many petty mutes and bans? There's a mature language filter and an ignore list, so why the staff meddles so much with what players say to each other? What adults say to each other. On a personal note, this last one is the reason of why many in my guild, myself included stopped playing. We try to understand that it may take time to have a working and enjoyable game, but why put any effort when we're getting constantly muted for the most petty stuff you could possibly imagine? I feel like I'm being treated as a toddler when I'm 30 years old, it's dumb and even insulting. I personally don't think you're in a position to spare players with petty bans. It's not like the influx of new players is bigger than the influx of exiting players. Of course ban people that "cross the line", but getting banned for saying that "Joe Biden is a robot"? I literally got 15 days ban for saying that.
With this solid base I believe things would go much better. How do I know this? Because I have taken a look at private server projects of many MMO's that actually work. The biggest wow private server is just like I mentioned above. You make a ticket because somebody called you the slur for a mentally disabled individual? The GM tells you to use the ignore function. Simple as that. And the community there is much more younger than the one here, like you just need to check the birthday section to find out. Same goes with the optimization of the client and bug fixing. The content was put there by the original creators of the game, all we want is to be able to enjoy it without crashes, bugs, lag and other stuff.
Moving aside from the solid base:
Pretty much the same as previously stated. Take a look at functioning projects, at modern MMO's. What works, what doesn't.
-Identical classes like wow has been doing for years? Doesn't work.
-Imbalanced classes? Doesn't work.
-Enforcing gameplay like the goddamn dailies and weeklies in wow instead of having fun? Doesn't work.
More specifically to keep old players I'd say that the entirety of game sets need an urgent rework. Almost all classes have the same set options stat wise, but not all classes are the same, this creates an undesired imbalance. For example:
Why all tank warlord sets are the same when all tanks have different mechanics? Why give arpen to SM and Chosen? Why not 6% parry instead? or 6% disrupt for Chosen and 6% crit for SM?
Make the sets more unique and more accordingly to classes so we can have a more diverse and enjoyable experience playing all classes. It doesn't make any sense that a WH has the same passive parry as all tanks if he wants to though RR points and defensive sets and yet have one of the most powerful defensive CD's in the game. Make classes more unique in the supposed role they have. WP and DoK are as tanky as Tanks, yet they have more damage than most tanks and even some DPS classes without any serious trade-off. Tank damage is currently the lowest, and if you want to have some, you need to sacrifice 33% of armor making you squishier than healers and dpsers despite having still less damage than them. There's a fundamental issue with this that makes many veterans get tired of it rather quickly.
I know that there are many things that should be discussed if we all have the best interest of the server and the continuity of this project at hand, but ultimately if the staff is unwilling to have a dialogue and take serious non biased suggestions into account, we're going nowhere. This also includes the absurd requisite for people to have an immaculate CV in order to join the staff or in order to be taken seriously as in example a realm champion. I said that Joe Biden is a robot so all the doors are closed, despite knowing how to code and use 3D software. Maybe myself, or someone else that has been muted could be able to make weapon models, or rewrite the code to end the clunkyness. But we'll never know, atleast not in RoR.