On November 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.
Although Q&A sessions were made in the past, they were all in the form of video on YouTube. This was the first live session ( i know of) which happened concurrently in YouTube and Twitch where people had the opportunity to chat between them during the session and also ask questions and get some answers by developers on the chat or other members of the team.
This Q&A answered quite a few questions from the community (50 questions) as well as gave a better view to the history, present and future of the server and the long term projects that the team wants to accomplish. Never the less, this Q&A also raised a few new questions as well, BUT let’s take things from the beginning.
The developers do not have the source code of the game, so, making big changes in the game is hard. During the session they showed some photos of how the two main cities were meant to look like and they did look amazing. The size of the cities and the design resembled that of Stormwind from WOW and it looked cool. They also showed the Dwarven capital including a lot of areas and history (design history) of it. The Cities and the racial capitals / cities is part of their long term projects since they are huge and will take a long long time to complete and implement, since they work on their off time and the members of the coding team at the time of this post are only four.
History and long term projects (5 years or more) are fine and nice to know but it doesn’t answers the more immediate concerns of the players, at least for most of them.
And here comes the first new risen question. Why spent 15 min on this ? Is this a Q&A or a promotional video?
As a streamer of this game the viewers in my stream usually were more concerned about class balance, fort mechanics, city mechanics, faction imbalance, gear progression, gear acquisition while behind behind cities, dungeons etc. Mainly they were concerned with PvP and progression issues. The amount of questions on these topics were very little, which beckons the question: “Did the people asked those questions in the forum thread, or they just like to complain without taking any actions to make changes?” I mean this was a perfect opportunity to ask “hard” questions right? Is the community lazy? Complain for complaining?
During this Q&A there were some answers given but a lot of the viewers (on my stream) felt that they did not answer them in depth or at all, by giving vague or “political” answers. The majority of the questions revolted around permanent mounts, pets, Twitch Drops, cosmetics, ranked seasons, token changes, website facelift, RoR Wiki updates etc. Also, although i did not count.. i am not sure if the answers 50 questions as advertised.. maybe i missed them??
This brought up the next 2 new questions. Who is asking these questions? and if this is the main concern of the player base, permeant mounts and pets, why a lot of people complain about not wining forts, cities, scenarios etc? Personally I was expecting more questions like this: Queuing system improvements, dungeon finder system (since LFG not working well) and more things to help people in their every day game play PVE and PVP. Ideas on pvp mechanics etc. Things and problems that i /we encounter in a daily bases and frustrate us.
This made me also wonder about the community. I felt, like the community is divided in two. Those that complain and “cry” about PVP mechanics, class balance and those that think, or are OK with the current status and worry about cosmetics and other “pretty” stuff. Considering that this is by many a 95% PVP oriented game.. it felt strange to see what the community worries the most about. I mean, IF the majority of the player base is looking for “other” content than pvp and improvements on it… then i guess i am the one that has no clue what’s going on here!
For the class balance, there were a few mentions to some classes including some reveals such as ranged Squig Herder changes by the end of November 2020. One of the most anticipated class updates ever, i would say, especially after the Shadow Warrior changes.
Further more Rampage stays as is, since its been like that for 12 years, which is funny since is the number one complain that comes up when melee balance is concerned along with get to the choppa which is reverted back to its original form to be defendable damage, which is considered a nerf by many choppa mains. No other class changes were mentioned, however a point was made that for a class changes to happen there has to be a goal they are trying to reach, with a hint of minor changes (maybe) between Bright Wizard and Sorceress.
Some of the new things you can expect to see by the end of this year (2020) and next year (2021) are the following as hinted in this Q&A:
- Siege towers for forts or keeps (they will be as helpful as the gyrocopter i think)
- rSH class changes
- Guild mounts becoming permanent or longer duration than 7 days.
- More Twitch Drops
- Permanent pets via Twitch Drops
- Improved Website Design
- New scenarios (1-2)
- Modifications in current scenario mechanics
- Tome tactics (Maybe)
- New dungeons ( Lost Vale, Land of the Dead, Hunter’s Vale) one or all…?
- Reduced prices in token gear for new players to catch up
- New weapons ( PvE and PVP)
- Access to edit RoR Wiki based on your forum rank (Maybe)
- No Skaven
- Better ticketing system for bugs etc
- Change in the battle objectives in ORVR to have more significance in RVR ( What ever that means)
Other things that you might or not; find interesting that were mentioned in this Q&A:
- There are 120 pets on the data base which will be given out in Twitch Drops
- Next Twitch drops will be 12 days long. (OMG)
- There are several mount models in the data base, but with no animations, so they will take a lot of work to complete, so don’t expect permanent mounts any time soon
- No server wipe
- No North American server
- No token up-scaling
- No changes in Tiers ( Maybe in scenario)
- Yaliskah ( art design dev) leaving the project by the end of the year. ( I really liked this dude)
These are all the things i managed to retain from this Q&A. You can of course have a look in the Return of Reckoning forums to find out more. I am sure there will numerous posts for this topics popping up. https://www.returnofreckoning.com/forum/
The Q&A was smooth and with out any problems besides the first 5 min. Technical things happen.. GOD know i have a lot 😛
I believe that the Developers promoted the server mainly. I am sure there will be some sort of posts popping up in various promotional social media, magazines etc soon. They hinted some upcoming things. Showed for sure the potential of the game and the server as well as what they have managed to do so far, which is amazing and most of us are grateful that they did and we can still play this game. They answered the questions from the community, but not sure if there 50 questions answered in 90 minutes. Now whether the questions were on the line that i wanted or other wanted? that’s irrelevant and we cant blame the developers for what people asked on the forums. I suppose including myself , i / we should of asked some better questions.
I believe that most were satisfied with this Q&A, if nothing else with the effort the developers put in starting to communicate with the community a bit more and in depth. This was a thorn in this community for a long time ( the lack of communication), one that I personally was trying to remove for a long time. Lets hope that things will be different on this matter in the future. Unfortunately there were some, that during or at the end of this Q&A quit the game as the felt that the game will not change and that the imbalances, faction and class, were not addressed and never will. Some others got their “faith” and trust renewed to this project moving forward for the years to come.
The server has been around for nearly 7 years and holding a healthy population of EU prime time of around 1200 -1400 in a daily bases. Numbers better than some free to play / paid games out there. Now whether the game is balanced, good, bad, or great i will leave this decision to you. To see the Q&A as broadcasted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mELLo7L0el4
There is only one thing that remains true over the ages:
The WAR never ends!