On February the 13th a Q&A session was live streamed with members of the developer team. The questions were gathered via the forums, on a thread specific for this event. Players were asked to post their questions in order to be included and answered in this session.
In this Q&A 75 questions were answered throughout the session, which lasted approximately 1 hour an 45 minutes. This session I felt was split in three parts.
- Promotion
- Community Questions from the forums
- Topic the Development team wanted to inform the community
Things that I did not like on this session were mainly the following:
- Moving from category to category and then back to it. I feel it would be more clear if they just showed what they wanted then move to community questions rather than doing 3-4 questions from the community then back to promotion then back to the questions.
- The host should have been better prepared for this. The overlays were overwhelming covering most of the slides. The host seemed not to have a clear idea of what slides he had and and when to use them. This “forced” the dev team to keep telling him when to use slides or when to remove parts of the overlays. I feel this hurt the overall image and presentation.
- Lastly the scripted feel that emanating from this session. Due to the way the lack of preparation, overlays, slides transitions, login out of the game due to inactivity etc it gave me the impression I was watching a person hosting a show that he was given a script 5 min before and felt lost. Again damaging the image of the whole effort.
- Some sarcastic comments from some of the dev team member could have been omitted. In the name of promotion and community relations.
- Deflecting some questions, especially the ones about balance and pvp issues. It was expected but if you are going to do that why bother include them?
Things that I liked thankfully were more and here is a summary of those.
- They actually covered most of the questions asked in the forum thread created for this event.
- The things they revealed for up coming content and changes were very nice and promising.
- Upcoming changes will cover a variety of content and desires including, Dungeons PVP, Ranked Scenarios, Gear, Weapons, Professions, New Scenarios and more.
Things that will NOT happen on the server in the near future replying to, and not only to the questions from the forums:
- Road map – No, as time is limited and dates can be pushed back. Don’t want to promise things they cant deliver. (Fair enough)
- No increase of the item stacks to save space – Database cant handle it.
- Create different brackets for scenario renown level RR70 & RR80 – Lack of population.
- New maps and areas – No tools to create them
- X2 events – Fast leveling will result in high level characters with no gear. – No
- Guild banners (advanced) – no time and plans at the moment to implement that.
- Guild vault log – Not a priority
- Group finder – Not due to community issues.
- Disable talismans and Armour potions – No
- Give solo player more rewards – No
- City viable spec for all classes – Some are more viable than others (No)
- Rampage for casters – NO!! FFS people!
- Add more AOE to classes than don’t have – Some are better than others (No)
- Account bound items etc.. No client support for that at the moment. (No)
Things that might happen in the near future or to be considered:
- Increase X-realm timers. Increased lock-out timer with better metrics but it was not confirmed if it will be happening, so its on my maybe list.
- Give bonuses to underpopulated realm
- Extra incentive to create classes needed on a realm that needs it. Examples. Tanks on order + 20% exp or ranged on destruction +20% exp. Etc. for a limited time.
- New professions like Blacksmiths (they are actually working on that)
- Modify current professions. Possible, but not a priority.
- City sieges with more meaning. Victor keeps the city for a certain amount of time and go do things in the city. Possibly even more mechanics to make defending and winning more rewarding. Currently exploring options.
- Enhance the LFG to make it easier to find groups but not a dungeon finder in the classic meaning.
- City disconnect issues. The code is tricky but they will try to do the best they can to resolve this.
- More mounts to be given out.
- Max camera view – If people want it they can look at it.
- Siege weapons – catapult and siege towers at the moment.
- No dyes for weapons. Need art designers mark every pixel. Possible but not likely.
- Crowed Control abilities not triggering immunities, hard to reproduce so its guess work. The add some code to help but not sure if it works 100%
- New Scenarios 3vs3 and 6vs6 arena style
Possible scenarios
- Kadrin Valley Pass
- Castle Fragendorf
- The Pyramid of Settra
- Garden of Morr
- The Arena
- Unnamed Elf (still building it)
Things that will be coming out in 2021 and beyond:
- ROR Wiki editor team – Already open to all after application on the forums to edit and help.
- Realm Champions – A focused group of community members to go through the most of the debate and will drive most of the changes that will be coming in the classes regarding balance.
- New server for testing specific to ability testing. (No public access).
- Establishing seasonal metas
- 13 week balance cycle, same as the new ranked duration. So during the ranked season and for the duration of it, the developers will work on balance changes that will be released on the next season. So balancing will be happening in a set 13 week cycle.
- Week 1 :
- Set priority chances for the next cycle that need to be discussed by the realm champions.
- Choosing of new realm champions to be introduced to the closed forums.
- Week 2-4: Develops present the changes they thing need to be made. Realm champions talk and debate. Realm champions can discuss these topic with the community.
- Week 5-6: Talk between the Developers and the realm champions
- Week 7: Draft patch notes and review to what the will do.
- Week 8: Development team starts to work and put the new skills and changes on the test server.
- Week 9-10: Class reps to be invited on the test servers to group up and test all the changes the way they are supposed to work. Identify bugs and problems for developers to fix.
- Week 11-13: Flex time. Aim to lock everything down at week 11 and do the patch notes.
After the 13 weeks and the change released, there will be a few months of down time to see the changes and the next season will start then.
- Freeing more character names from older unused accounts.
- More attractive pve areas (long term)
- More changes in the city queuing system (Not major)
- Hunter’s Vale in 2021 (Dungeon)
- Lost Vale after Hunter’s Vale not clear if in 2021 or 2022.(Dungeons)
- New gear sets via dungeons
- Puzzles in lair bosses (slowly not a priority)
Objectives and hopes the developers have for the ROR future:
Objectives
- Get Hunter’s Vales dungeon out
- Secret content finished and released
- Finalize the path finding
- Get Lost Vale out
- Finish more parts of the Land of the dead
- Build tools to make new animations
- Work on the new city siege mechanics
Hopes:
- Find the Blood Hunt expansion pack to give it to them to work with.
- Get more talented modelers to build stuff
- EA give tools to make npc and other.
Over all I have to admit that this Q&A, as far the answers and information released, was way better than the one we had on November. The new mechanisms that will be implemented such as the realm champions I believe that will help a lot both the development team to get a load of their back but also make the community happier. I think this choice was a step on the right direction. The ideas to make PVP and sieges more interactive is a plus as well. Lately oRvR has been very stale with a lot of player issues, most notable one is the siege and leave when the outer door is at 5%.
New content with dungeons , gear and weapons will surely revitalize the server in 2021. Further more the announcement of ranked seasons and set times for balance changes will also bring some peace and quite so much needed. Now we will have some break from all the voices since the changes will be happening in set times. In addition the new realm champions should moderate the communities outcry for more input on the changes on their part. I am not sure I understood how they will be selected. I hope there will be a community choice or at least to be involved in the realm champion picking. Other wise I fer that the team might be blamed for cherry picking what is convenient for them.
The future looks brighter already from here. Lets hope that the rest will see it this way and to help the game to move forward with less toxicity, complains and “crying”. The team seems to be making the necessary steps, again, to come closer to the community as requested. Lets hope that the community will make some too, to get closer to the development team, and not keep a one-sided demanding stance.
I would like to take the opportunity to remind us all that besides the team of developers (coders) there are also a lot of people behind and in front of the scenes that work as well. Those people are the art designers, the graphic designers, forum moderators, discord moderators, website managers, ROR Wiki editors, communications officers, Twitch streamers, You tubers, and more that all contribute to the best of their abilities and all deserve support and respect. SO before you rage, complain or point fingers think twice.
To see the Q&A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBZP_BtrA_U&feature=youtu.be
There is only one thing that remains true over the ages:
The WAR never ends!