The return of Reckoning development team just released a new video about an update regarding the private server for August 2023. This was a 20 minute video which you can find on the YouTube channel and you can watch it for yourself. Nevertheless, I felt that I had to do my own review of the video and try to read between the lines a little bit and say what’s going on.
The video they released has a lot of general information. It has information about factors that affected the changes that did on the recent provisional patch which destroyed most of the classes, not to mention every single class, as well as future projects that they are working on changes coming into instance PVP open world PVP cosmetics and other topics.
Before we move on to analyse the video and read between the lines I would like to mention here for your information that there hasn’t been any video like this ever before to my knowledge. also it’s nice to know that at the point of this video release there is a lot of promotion going on about a second private server for Warhammer online which is called interbellum. I cannot help but wonder if this update video comes at a time when another server has been announced that’s coming in months not years and whether this has caused some sort of a panic to the team afraid they’re going to lose people to the new server and end up having no one to play on their server.
The new ability system:
The new ability system that’s been foretold for I don’t know about 2 years so far it’s finally coming out soon. A trademarked word in Return of Reckoning among of course the two weeks. I don’t even know why it’s called an ability System since I don’t think it has anything to do with the abilities. It doesn’t change the abilities, it doesn’t generate any abilities. Nevertheless, this is the main reason why the return of Reckoning right now looks the way it does and that is crap. So they came up with this update to let the people know that the ability system as they said to the people before it’s still coming it’s not ready. It will be at an unknown amount of time which is less than years but more than a couple of months. This does not sound very hopeful to me. However the new ability system as they call it meant to do faster changes, fix more bugs than ever, allow for more frequent balance changes to occur and make somehow more reliable abilities. over Theory cuz we haven’t seen anything, only been hearing about it so far.
Furthermore this new ability system has managed to revert every single chance down to our in the last 6 years since current data is unusable on the new system forcing the development team that developed the new ability system to revert back to 1.4.8 patch from the original game making every single change they did useless and every class left unbalanced and almost unplayable.
With this your ability system somehow they going to create a unifying armour penetration buff so they all additive so not half of them to be multiplicative and the other half additive question is why they couldn’t do that in the first place it seems like the interval server is doing that without this miraculous ability system already. So at this point I’m wondering whether this ability system is actually really good or it’s just a small screen for we want to reset the server and redo it because we screwed everything up so far.
Time wise this new ability system it needs a lot more testing to make sure they’re no bugs at the corn state when it will be released officially which is in an unknown amount of time then people will still have to wait two to three months before they can see changes happening in the game with no clear road map of which is going to happen first. For example, are they going to start with the class balance or are they going to start with the ability balance in fixing? Are they going to start with rvr with scenarios with PVE? It wasn’t very clear what they’re going to do there. At the same time they are announcing a public test server in the future which is the most vague sentence ever. We will do something in the future, maybe in 10 years time there will be a public server you never know.
Finally they gave a few examples of some of the things that will be changing and they are not very promising pvp-wise.
Create uniformity among the tanks single Target punt ability while keeping each tank unique. Every tank has a punt ability, every tank is unique, even from the perspective of its punt ability they are still unique because of the tactics they use.
Give to levelling players core mechanics and skill earlier in the progression with no mention or details what’s going to happen with the bolster. Giving levelling players more abilities and more crowd control without taking anything away has the potential to make them even stronger than before simply because they can control you better.
Final example was balanced single Target Buffs to bring them to the same level as the AOE counterparts and make them more useful in the gameplay. These are the changes that we are expecting. I am almost certain this has nothing to do with what people actually expect to see in the game.
At this point and looking at the information they gave out on this video it feels like they say that they are listening to the community but all I can see is how far away they are from what the community actually needs, what does the game actually need, what the people are actually expecting from them to do in the game.
Reasoning behind the class changes:
The next section they presented on this update video was an explanation, a brief explanation as to why they made the changes that did on the recent provisional patch changes for the classes.
Engineer and Magus: They mention that all the changes they did on return of Reckoning don’t go along with the Mythic systems therefore there had to be reverted back to the 1.4.8 patch from the original game which they’re going to use as the basis to develop or redo the new skills with this new ability system. So far for the engineer in the magus they had to hack around to make things work. At this point they reverted back to 1.4.8 patch but they also removed all the damage from the turrets, remove the lot of the abilities and skills the engineer has which they exist on return of Reckoning and they did exist on the patch 1.4.8 so it makes you wonder why did they completely remove them if they just reverting back to that patch.
The White Lion: the White Lion one of the things that got removed was the moral cleavability with on the video that have the audacity to say that there was a lot of contributing factors that made them make the choice to remove that morale ability and those reasons were that it did not have a distinctive visual effect, no unique animation, no exclusive icon and in order to fix all those things that require a lot of resources. you destroy a class you destroy a mechanic of a class you Nerf a class based on visual effects and animations in a game like Warhammer without taking account the consequences to the game play over the class and then you want to buff flying axe to compensate for destroying an aspect of the class.
The Marauder: The Marauder might just be the only class changes that was done that would actually correct so far. They remove the start multiplier that was creating a lot of problems in the damage output, which means that the marauder at this point has been nerved significantly on his damage output therefore making a DPS class useless once again.
Archmage and Shaman: those two classes have two skills removed because simply they don’t work with the new ability system and the looking at alternatives to make the skills work better or in a different fashion. something which is very vague and I don’t see a reason removing it if you don’t intend to fix it right away which leaders to another nerve which is going to stay like this for a very long time with no reason.
The Squig Herder: this is the most overhaul class in the entire return of Reckoning and they have kept half the changes they did on return of Reckoning and half of the things existing in 1.4.8 patch from the original game they went as they say for the middle ground on this class and the reversion they did.
Now this is what they said and what they did regarding the class changes and they mentioned just a few of them. let’s see now what we can read between the lines. engineer and maggots we were hacking around to make this work cuz we didn’t know what we were doing we didn’t know how to code it and we created a lot of frustration over the years to the player base and now we’re just going to remove everything for the next year year and a half until we finish the testing and the and the ability system and then you can jump back and play your classes. the White Lion we’re just going to Nerf something that we feel doesn’t have any good animation without considering if it’s working properly in the game, if it’s balanced, if the class needs that to survive or any other reason we’re just going to go purely on effects. The marauder we are fixing a mistake we made by destroying another class making it useless to the game only live in utility which as we know nobody really plays with utility or use it in the game it’s all about DPS damage output massive damage and so on and so forth. Archmage and Shaman receive the same kind of treatment by losing to abilities which they may need or don’t need but is not justifiable since changes are not coming anytime soon. However at the same time the squid herder once again being the most overhauled class it gets to keep the Return of Reckoning upgrades making it a useful class and only losing half his arsenal by being reverted to 1.4.8 patch.
Now this changes, I don’t know how they look to you, but for me, I’m looking at this engineering and magus crippled, white lion crippled, arcmage and shaming damaged. plus one squeak harder remains strong for the one side I wonder if this just happened.
Additional future projects:
After getting a nice cold shower with the things that just announced at the beginning of this video, explaining the reasons why they destroyed the classes which make no sense to anyone playing the game claiming that it is because they want to create a baseline for the new ability system while maintaining our skills which are not compatible with the new system in some classes, they bring us some positive news about additional future projects with you cannot get excited because you have no deadlines you have no idea when that kind of line and you don’t know how long you have to wait for them.
New scenario to rewrite to make the scenarios have less down time when they’re making updates which we don’t really care that much everybody can wait 5 minutes for them to apply patch to come back into the game give priority to team formation which is something that the community has been asking for 8 years and expanding the matchmaking so the longer you are in a queue you get priority over someone who killed instantly or a minute ago.
These are simple things that they should have done years ago and despite the fact that I haven’t done it they also come out and say we will do it 8 years down the line in an undisclosed amount of time in the future. Are you joking? Also for the record from the forums which I don’t think that post exists anymore they had stated 5 years ago that scenarios is a game within the game we have no interest in scenarios we will never make new scenarios we will never deal with scenarios and we will never include them as a main thing in the game. they were actually considered a side game.
New scenario:
They also presented footage from a new scenario they are on the way of making which is called the underway. The underway is a scenario which features a single line map one fraction of one and the other function on the other end and you trying to push the opponent faction to the spawn point. a scenario which is underground with no elevations, no room to hide, again promoting blobbing and melee Supremacy over the rest of the classes from both factions. This is creating a motif that we see in many scenarios that they have changed and using ours that have created Where They are promoting Plastering blobbing and Melissa Supremacy while ignoring the ranged classes and the needs of those classes.
Not to mention that in recent times they buffed all the melee classes they could creating an indirect nerve to the range classes resulting in the following:
A drop in the bright wizard population
A drop in the engineer population
A Drop In the Shadow Warrior population
and a drop to single Target Squig herder.
It looks like they are trying to make people play more Melee glasses in order to have the ability to generate massifieds. massive fights in this game cannot happen if half the population is ranged because they stay out of the fight and the shooting from afar. if they’re trying to create some sort of a meta for the server I think they’re going the wrong way about it.
City Sieges:
This might actually be the only topic that has some Merit to the changes they’re making, creating a reshuffling process in which after each stage there will be a dynamic matchup so the winners of one instance will find the winners of another one and the losers will find the losers from another instance. back feeling players in a Citizens after somebody quits but without any details whether they’re just going to put someone who is at the Q or someone that is needed. if the system is going to check if you need a healer, do you need a tank, do you need a dps, and then pick one from the queue or just randomly pick one or just pick the first on the Queue time wise.
Realm Vs Realm:
Realm versus realm is another joke of the topic that was brought up on this video. For most people this mode of the game constitutes 90% of the gameplay time. For this massive topic the only thing that has to be said is our current plans are in the infancy stage, and the changes in the round versus realm are coming don’t worry. only to follow by the by statement saying short term small tweaks are also going to be happening.
They gave no real information about this topic. the very little they said was cryptic with no Direction no details just a notion of we are going to do something about this. for me that is unacceptable they may not give you a road map but at least I could say we’re looking at better sieging mechanisms we’re looking at Sage weapons we’re looking at anything except don’t worry changes are coming.
PVE
Dungeons
On this topic they gave a little bit more information saying that they are going to rebalance the dungeons they’re going to fix broken mechanisms they’re going to add new abilities to monsters and bosses and through the information and data they’re going to acquire from this process they’re going to build a better Laswell dungeon in the future. please now the changes will be happening in the months following the new ability system which after this point we still don’t know how many months is going to be released.
Cosmetic pets:
Another PVE item that brought up was cosmetic pets which I have to admit generally speaking fashion Hammer is something that happens in the game however again they didn’t give any specifics except that they going to be able to be summoned as soon as you leave combat or you come out of a PVP Zone and it’s they’re going to be part in the future of event or dungeons without specifying if they’re going to be temporary or if they’re going to be permanent because I asked them and they said we don’t know so if you don’t know the mechanism and you don’t know what you’re going to do why are you announcing that you’re going to bring things in the game that you don’t know what exactly you’re going to do with them. I was under the impression that they don’t give information unless they’re certain they’re going to do something and I have a time frame and a half started something to get an idea and now they come out and they give all this information without knowing what they’re going to do? Are you joking?
Other things:
At the end it’s just told everybody that there’s a few more things that have to have a new terrain editor Which should help create new maps and new areas. a new launcher for better patch process and faster downloads. and a new backtracker to help everybody make the game better. all those things are good and great and extremely good for the future but I’m not sure how good they’re going to do for the server in the short term which has the main problem.
Summary:
Okay let’s summarise what we’ve seen on this video update from Return of Reckoning developers. a new ability system that we don’t know when it’s going to come out. A new ability system that we don’t know exactly how it works. a new ability system that is not complete yet. a new ability system that requires extensive testing and a little bit more programming to iron out the bugs before it is ready to be deployed.
A ridiculous announcement of an update which it may show what the developers have been doing but it doesn’t show what’s going to happen to the players in the near future or what’s going to happen on the long term because there’s no information about what that new ability system is going to fix, is it going to return the classes to what they wear, is it going to make the classes better, is it going to make the gameplay more fun, is it going to fix the tool tips, is it going to fix the lag, is going to fix the starter, is it going to fix the long queues, is it going to fix more bugs? a lot of details are missing and I think this update just made people more confused than they were before
A ridiculous reasoning for why they created this provisional patch saying they are reverting back to 1.4.8 which only happened for most classes not all of them. a reversion that left the characters and the class is crippled. a reversion that made the play based cry out in anger and Desperation not being able to play the classes the way they used to. a reversion of everything we knew about the classes creating even bigger and balance in the game with no means to balance or fix in the immediate short-term future which means that this unbalance this broken classes and this frustration is going to carry on for at least six to eight months before they start working on a fix for those problems resulting in approximately one year frustration broken class and unbalance on the server.
This may be something from a developers perspective which is okay because we create a new systems that going to make things work faster, we create a new systems are going to solve a lot of the queuing problems, we create a new systems which are going to make ability to work better more reliable but we have screwed everybody else who’s playing on the server in the meantime so we can bring you back to the state you are today in approximately 3 years from now. I cannot say how many people are willing to wait for the game to go back to the way it was for another two to three years because they are developing tools instead of looking after the play base. This is one reason why most people were going to play interbellum which is already PVP orientated and then don’t waste time on PVE dungeons Quest be accused tool tips Etc. The interbellum server will be dealing with the PVE aspect of the game. As soon as the PVP is fixed and people are having fun they start adding more things for them to do in the long run. Let’s not forget that most people play Warhammer online for the PVP aspect and not the PVE aspect. It seems like the developers from Return of Reckoning have been spending most of the time dealing with PVE things rather than focusing on the main activity of the population.
The new scenario they presented which has no set mechanism at the moment and the only thing they know is that it’s going to be a one lane scenario with no other information on that is like giving a candy to a kid and then taking it back before it they unwrap it, this is just cruel to the player base. I would say they’re also taunting the player Base by saying don’t worry there things are coming in a year or year and a half when they have already been waiting for class balance and rvr changes for over a year and a half so far and you’re extending it for another year. I’m not even certain if they are conscious that they are actually doing that to the player base, or they are just so lost in the coding.
At the current state I cannot personally say that I’m going to play this game simply because the classes are unbalanced and the population low and getting lower and the only population left on the server at this point are desperate people who have nothing else to play and they want to play Warhammer only. players who are incapable of learning to play another PVP game because they don’t want to start from the beginning or because they just don’t want to.
That population stays in a game that is stagnant and boring, making them very toxic for everybody else and of course toxic for the game damaging the reputation and any chances the game has to move forward in the online world of 2023-2024. Even when streamers are trying to promote this private server they have to fight with people coming to the streams and stream sniping them constantly not allowing them the time to help people, to explain to people, to show them what you can do solo, what you can do in a group, what you can do in a warband setup, simply because the instantly dying over and over again showing the new players or potential players that join the game you’re just going to die.
So we’re having a very toxic community that doesn’t care about promoting the game, only complaining that it’s a dead game and there’s no people when 50% of the reason why there’s no people is themselves.. Then we have a developer team who is listening to what the player base wants but they go on making more tools, more development, more future plans without dealing with immediate problems and the population is just getting reduced day by day making the game boring, making the game empty and hard to find people to play with, making scenarios pop even less than they did, forcing in an indirect way people to go play something else because – let’s be honest who wants to stay in a game that you have to wait for an hour and a half to do a match- I would not stay! I don’t know about you but I definitely wouldn’t stay that long for a match. I would go and play something else because I just don’t have all day to wait. I don’t know what they’re going to do and if they’re going to pull this off but I am personally looking for other games and I’m hoping that the new developer team on interbellum is going to do a better job producing a more stable, more fun refreshing and fresh gameplay and characters and animations. so far these guys on interbellum has done a good job of being transparent communicating answer questions and looking after the people who are interested in their project while at the same time I can’t say that I see the same effort being done by the return of Reckoning team and I don’t want to go back into the public posts they are doing, trying to promote the game with our one-sided bias posts, showing Shadow Warriors in the bush saying they are scum, showing Orcs how they have fun after destroying the dwarfs, showing dark elf celebrating the victory over the High Elves and there’s no equivalent for the other side.
At least the promotional team and the community manager should be impartial and show that on the posts and the way they type and not constantly promote the destruction of one side over the other, the deletion of one race over the other. If that’s how they present themselves then that’s how they present the game. When the game feels one-sided, they lose their trust in the developers and the game Masters to create a fair game for all..
Let’s not forget that is a lot of times in game, when you tell people “I’m going to report this” they reply to you “don’t bother because they’re not going to do anything about it”. Even when you present them with video evidence you’re still treated with either silence or get an answer that says we’re going to fix it with a new ability system which comes out in about a year and a half and in the meantime those people can run free create problems, harassment and make people leave the game because they can’t play because they are exploiting, they are abusing broken skills and they’re just being toxic overall.
Good luck to the Return of Reckoning server and anyone who is brave enough to stay there. Anyone who is brave enough to try it. Everyone who is brave enough to keep on playing in a game that has more problems than benefits. Everyone who is brave enough to keep fighting the imbalance and not just in game, but also in the forums. on Twitch and everywhere else in this server /game..
For Those About to Play Return of Reckoning We Salute You.
So Magus and Engi got a “Factory Reset”.
What do you think about mobility system he talked about?