Return of Reckoning

I'm not talking about things specific to RoR, nor only talking about class balance but things in a more broad sense.

For me here some great things in the game:
Armor design. Each class gets to feel their visual identity very early on. Usually as soon as you fill all your slots you see the overall visual direction for your class. So, unlike other games, you don't have to be max level to look good, or have an idea of how you'll look. There's also a great aethetical progression from cool to cooler. The same applies to mounts. 25% looks shitty. 50% start looking cool especially for races that aren't horses. The 60% look amazing. The only caveat is that weapons/armor are very class restricted (Wildstar uses the same system with the same results).

The way the trinity was implemented, making each role useful. Now it's not perfectly balanced but I haven't seen it done better in another game since tanks tend to be problematic (SWTOR had some decent tank mechanics to make them useful in pvp). This works great with how bodyblock works in the game


Some bad designs:
Some maps are awfully designed. Elf t2 for instance, has the order keep incredibly far away from everything. Compared to the destro keep which is at the foot step of the wcs almost. Same applies to empire t2 but reversed. They sort of balance each other out but the placement of the keeps (and BOS in some maps) has an almost random feel to it.

Collision implementation. While it's great to have it, it's been done in such a poor way that there's clipping on everyone and with every prop.

Invisible walls everywhere, especially when they don't make sense. Plenty of places look like they could be jumped over but have invisble walls tacked on them for no reason. Destro camps, orc side, has those wooden spikes and short walls that can't be jumped over somehow.

What are yours?

Like the PQ system was amazing for it's time.
The Dungeons were always enjoyable. I spent hours in LV, just cause it was so damned hard.
But most importantly, you can efficiently and effectively lvl from 1-40/Cap entirely via PvP. You never have to hit an AI unit if you don't want too.

Dislike the constant Fing Clipping.
Almost every Dwarf/greenskin Zone. The layout is just bonkers, and they are all tedious to travel around.
The simplicity of the ORvR lakes.

Dabbart wrote: But most importantly, you can efficiently and effectively lvl from 1-40/Cap entirely via PvP. You never have to hit an AI unit if you don't want too.

funny how its almost the exact opposite here in ror

I just like that the game is here. It's as pretty as I remember. I like being a specific role again. I grew very tired of GW2 and its everybody can do everything mentality.

As I am questing to 40 ( rvr is almost non existent in NA times), here are my thoughts....
Npc's shooting through everything, walls, terrain, you name it. Also there seems to be too many npcs in general in quest areas. I remember being able to solo quest right up to 40 in Elf and not dying so much. I was just very careful about my insertion points. I die constantly here, mostly from simply being mobbed to death. Aggro range is bigger than I remember. There are some quest locations, I simply cannot get to because there is no way to systematically reduce the npc's before respawing, particularly when having to try moving back to take out shooters away from the other npcs.

lack of a third realm ruined all.

Some maps are awfully designed. Elf t2 for instance, has the order keep incredibly far away from everything. Compared to the destro keep which is at the foot step of the wcs almost.

Order can fly to the npc warcamp in Ellyrion, slide down the mountain and they're in their keep , it's almost the same distance.

They've done a great job with the game; it's better in many ways than live.

The things I hated most, however, are still around:

1. All AAO all the time

-AAO RvR is not fun. This 'unfun-ness' is compounded by Xrealmers switching to the winning side for easy RP/Inf. You've put a lot of work into getting this running again, it'd be a shame if people ended up quitting for the same reasons they did on live. At some point, you're going to have to sit down with coffees and address this. I vote for a scaling HP/defensive stats debuff based on the amount of overpop.

2. Cone abilities' radius too wide

-The radius of cone abilities is far too wide, and promote a skill-less way of neutralizing certain class mechanics. 180 ok. 270 wtf...

3. Level 10 class-defining abilities [rez, stealth etc.]
-should be granted much earlier ( I vote level 1)

4. Collision Detection

-I like its application to PvP. I absolutely hate getting stuck on invisible nothings. At least we're not dying from it anymore I guess.

The good
===========
The gear,
The overall look
The classes
ToK
The idea behind the introduction of RvR-lakes...

The bad
========
The force of Gamesworkshop to make it a 2realm WoW-clone
The minimap/map of your warband-members
Warbuddy


The Ugly
==========
UI... so clonky and horrible.. I still get confused on the renown-window

@Mafti - you can always customize your UI. You can make it however you like. Wanna remove all the unimporant crap? Just hide everything, have a minimalstic UI and put stuff wherever you want.

The terrible map designs can really be put down to changes in how the lakes worked.
When the maps were designed scenarios were the main rvr and lakes were just pvp lakes with bos to cap. It didn't go down well in alphas so they changed it but were stuck with the maps.

Many class mechanics are pretty badly designed. bw/sorc ridiculous am/shaman pointless sm/bo annoying. To having specs that dont work in a single class wp/dok leading to imbalance.

Crafting is about as basic as it gets. There was a overhaul promised soon after launch that never came.

Outdated PVE trinity makes balance very tricky. This at least they seem to have changed for CU.

The good the world, the art, the writing. everything that makes it warhammer. PQs. ToK. The few dungeons. The early tiers before the hastily changed campaign starts to hurt.

Many of wars problems come from initial bad planning and then not having the time to go back and fix them. Also the lack of any endgame pve and depending on a pretty broken 2 sided zergy rvr campaign as the only endgame.