RoR is harder for casuals/returning players than VoV, some fixes

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Tyrval, Jan 6, 2023.

  1. Sleppen Active Member


    Whoa, hang on. Plot twist! Heroic and raid content was supposed to be 90% of the game, and now you're saying that it takes you 90 minutes for the weeklies and 3 hours for a raid. If that's 90% of the game, you must not play much.

    Are you starting to get the point yet? It's right there in front of you. I think you actually understand it, but you're letting social media culture get in the way.
  2. Taled Well-Known Member

    No, he said the *weeklies* are 90 minutes. He didn't say that's the only time that heroics are run. H3's are more important than the weeklies for actual content use other than the Mira Miracula coins for raiders, and take more time and effort and have 18h lockouts.

    Solo content is blown through in minutes by anyone who actually has capability and skill because it is mind-numbingly easy. You *can* take your time with it, if you want to - sure. If that's what you enjoy and all you want to do, there is nothing WRONG with that, but trying to claim that there is some world of solo content that the hardcore players are somehow 'missing out on' is crazy - I am willing to bet there is next to no content you've completed in recent expansions that I haven't, for instance, and it's much the same for almost any other high end raider.

    Yes, you likely do MORE of the solo content repeatedly, but that's because the hardcore raiders don't get anything out of repeating the solo zones. The higher tier content gives higher tier rewards for a reason, and does make up far more of the game than the solo content.

    If you're considering the first 15 expansions of the game as your 'solo content', then.. well, sure, there is more 'solo content', but even in those expansions there was more actual non-solo content than solo content. It's just soloable NOW.
    Priority likes this.
  3. Priority Well-Known Member

    First, this forum and discord are as close to social media as I do.

    Two, I didnt say its 10%. I don't play much. That was stated above, but to quote another user, you probably didnt read it very carefully. ; )

    Now, please feel free to actually answer the question about how youre playing them game in such a way as non soloists couldn't possibly understand. Youve avoided it for 2 days now.
  4. Heresford Active Member

    Well, obviously Sleppen must have forgotten that the 90% comment was from Taled and not Priority. He or she never claimed that raiders couldn't understand how soloists play the game, just that they don't know how soloists' time is spent. He or she tried to stress the former point twice. I was only interested in finding out if there was some content I never experience since I only solo. I can't say running heroics and raiding doesn't sound like fun, but I can't afford that kind of uninterrupted time.

    That said, I'm a little more casual about the amount of content in this expansion. My understanding is that last year and this year are mostly about getting rid of tech debt. This means finally going to 64-bit and moving away from the ancient DX9 drivers. I'm sure there's more underlying legacy technology that we haven't even heard about. If they can take care of that and put an actual RDBMS back end on the Broker system (files? really?) then I think the sacrifice of content for a single expansion, even two, may be well worth it. It will free up an enormous amount of development time on future expansions.

    This is all fine for me to say, I'm sure. My play style is probably much more casual than most. I listen to podcasts while I'm gaming, so it doesn't get tedious for me quite so easily. I rotate between my main and 7 alts and take them all through the content in staggered form. I still have to take 5 of them through the Adventure line in Reign of Shadows and one of them through Blood of Luclin. Only my main has been through all of VoV and RoR. If I get bored, I go read a book.
  5. Arclite Well-Known Member


    A soloist needs to look at this game with two perspectives:

    a) you are a new or returning player and starting from level 1 then yes you have a lot of content take you through solo no questions- asked all the way to end game. Although it will be a very lonely time at low levels on the live servers and you should ask yourself why to play like that when you have TLE server solely created for that reason. Then again, whatever floats your boat.

    b) solo player playing in RoR - as in they are at max level - which appears to be the theme for this particular thread. Then you look at this expansion in isolation as you are talking about current content which pretty much all can agree on is wafer thin and has been since ToT on wards. For solo players, you have the solo daily/weekly. The overland mobs, the questline which all of us had to do and we are not talking about redoing on alts here. What else is there? Crafting quests? You are on a major grindfest within 1-2 weeks as a solo player considering you are choosing not to engage with heroic/raid content. The grind becomes immediately meaningless if you have no intention to do any heroic/raid content, because why on earth would you need 440 resolve armor when you can breeze through all solo zones with the free gear in the box? Your definition of solo play is literally then gaining the maximum fun out of doing the same thing over and over again like the raiders do but with the exception of getting nothing new to commemorate all that grind? Not sure how you enjoy that.

    Now, if you just log on here and there during the week and spend a few hours and enjoy all of this then good for you. I think most will be if they played very casually but that is not the case with majority of the live server population.

    The content is designed to keep the raiders hooked because I can assure you if they decide to remove raids in the next expansion, you are not going to see many "solo" players on the servers. The entire game is designed to keep endgame front and centre for player progress - no mmorpg will thrive if players do their solo thing and have nothing to gauge their performance against. Granted, solo stuff is there but it is so minimal that I find it odd that "soloist" players don't complain about it more often but then again this genre is called "massively multiplayer online" for a reason...

    Looking at this from a "raiders" perspective then the solo stuff is just a tiny stepping stone to the laborious grind we end up going through in each expansion. Nothing has been done on the content or mechanics side to make this grind a bit more palatable and fun. It is a cookie-cutter case of utilising minimal development resources to push out bloated $250 premium packs. The reason why TLE every year draws a lot of player is because former "live" players yearn for the difficulty, the class uniqueness, the risk vs reward with appropriate itemisation still exists or to an extent reminds them of how the game once was - all of which has been taken out of the live server.
    Carynn, Dude and Dead Alt Account like this.
  6. Dead Alt Account Well-Known Member


    ^^^ This.
  7. Heresford Active Member

    Taken in isolation, "b" sounds pretty dreary. You did say, "You are on a major grindfest within 1-2 weeks as a solo player." I think that's a good opening to ask a question I asked before, "How many hours a week do you spend playing the game?" Priority criticized me for asking that as a general question (ie. casual vs. non-casual,) but I think this makes for a good specific case. It's relevant because it took me perhaps six weeks to complete the adventure and crafting timelines, get most of my needed advanced crafting books, switch out and level up mounts, mercenaries, and familiars, craft and experiment my gear for myself and my mercenary, and complete the music box quests. I'm still trying to get through all my Graceless solos. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that our time commitments are different. At most I'll play 12-14 hours a week. How many hours did you play the first two weeks of this expansion?

    I have no idea if my play style is common, rare, or extraordinarily unique. I could describe it. Maybe it's what a soloist typically does; maybe it isn't. I started playing in 2005 because my brother got me into it. I did some grouping with him before he left the game. I got into some pickup groups, which in 2005-2006 was very easy to do even with lackluster gear. I joined a guild in 2006 and was able to group fairly consistently. I was just starting to raid before I left the game in 2009. I came back in 2014 and my guild was a shadow of its former self. It's pretty well gutted right now. I was also starting to advance in my professional career, which included on-call rotations. I can't dedicate uninterrupted time to the game the way I used to be able to, and I definitely can't commit to late nights raiding. Soloing is a necessity. I have to be able to come and go as I please and play however long I please.

    From my perspective, it's really not that onerous. Not every game is an MMORPG, and this game can still be entertaining if played like a standalone game rather than an on-line game. I'd love to join some pick-up groups, but I think my style of play is too casual for the current state of the culture and the game mechanics. I have a feeling folks are trying to wrap up their Heroic IIIs just as I'm ready to run Heroic Is. I also get the sense that many players would be pretty impatient with someone who wants to run a dungeon just for the sake of running it rather than helping them to achieve their own goals of prepping for raid content. Also, I listen to podcasts while I'm playing. It makes things seem less tedious than they probably actually are.

    I'll quickly circle back to "a." I think I said earlier that I can't imagine introducing someone to this game for the purpose of playing end game content. The learning curve is too steep. The patchwork of foundational requirements from several different expansions is too time-consuming. If you could bring in 4-5 friends willing to schedule time to group together and take a few months to learn the game and have the patience to "pause" their adventure and quest experience from time to time, then I think it would work starting them up from level 1. I don't see many people who don't expect to rush to end game. Heck, everyone on TLE servers is trying to get to the end game on those servers as fast as they can. The only people I see interested in simply questing their way through the older content are the ones who don't abjure soloing. I would be delighted to be proven wrong.

    As far as how time spent soloing goes, unless I miss my guess, soloists spend more time on their alts. They are also likely over-represented among the population that does the decorating, shiny collections, side quests, trying out multiple classes in older content, and seeing how many quests from several different expansions they can complete. I know that once I think I've maxed out on what I can do with my main, I'm going to go back through my 7 alts and start going through some of the same content with them. I haven't finished VoV on all of them. I haven't finished RoS on half of them. I still have to take one through BoL, and I have a 90 Beastlord that I've been casually taking through RoK.

    It's fine with me if you think this sounds rather dull. I'm still curious how many hours you put into this expansion the first couple of weeks. I'd like to know if I play less or if I just play very differently.
    Twyla likes this.
  8. Arclite Well-Known Member

    I am not sure gauging the time spent playing the game yields any meaningful conclusion of whether the game has plenty of content or not. It is an arbitrary metric of measuring the depth of content and you cannot really factor in levelling up familiars, mounts etc as they are gated behind time or RNG walls that can easily be overcome by P2W. Moreover, you said that soloist more often then not end up playing alts (which they enjoy and there is no harm in that) then you can't really say that playing this 4-6 weeks of questing (like for yourself) equates to a lot of content for an expansion. Because even if you stretch out the time it takes for you to complete everything solo, you are done with solo content the first time around in under 3 months (being generous on time here as people have different learning curves/aptitude, etc). What took you 4-6 weeks to complete, some can do in a day or two and that is what some of the recent posts are alluding to.

    What we would say that the content in RoR is not hard for casuals as the underlying issue is the way the developers have stretched the absolute bare minimum of content to an extent where it appears to be challenging because of gating mechanics such as RNG, resolve (if you are doing heroics/raids - not in your case) and stat checks. I guarantee you that if they remove the small stat ceiling from solo zones, people will come here saying the content is too easy for casuals and you run out of things to do quickly because the core game is really really basic. They have to put these artificial restrictions in because a) there is no accountability, b) they are low on resources and c) they have hooked-suckers like us to fork out $250 every year.

    For those who spend more time then you playing this and have been doing non-stop for years, for them the content from solo to endgame is very trivial and I would imagine if you were in that state then you would be saying the exact same thing.

    I think I have made the points I wanted to and would try to abstain from posting here again (unless something triggers me) as I would just be reiterating what I have said before.
  9. Heresford Active Member

    I really have no interest in telling anyone to manage their expectations based on how much time they spend playing this game. I understand the implied position that this game is for raiders and not casuals, or at the very least that this game is kept afloat by raiders and casuals don't contribute significantly to the bottom line. I'm neither bothered nor offended by that position. I also have no interest in arguing against it. I just want to know what those expectations are. If the expectation is that someone should be able to play 8-12 hours a day, or more, and that there should be enough content to sustain that activity for at least a few weeks, then that is what I'd like to know. I agree that the amount of content is thin. I'm just trying to get a handle on what it should be. How many hours should it be taking to get through the timeline? Should it be taking 60 hours? 200 hours? What would an acceptable amount of content look like from a raider's perspective? Forgive me if I express it in hours, but I don't think there's another way to translate this between the different populations of players.
  10. Dude Well-Known Member

    There is no such estimate. It takes some people longer than others and few people keep a timer going while they do it.
  11. Heresford Active Member

    I'll rephrase the question this way:
    1. Do you raid?
    2. When a new expansion comes out, what time do you personally usually log in?
    3. What time do you usually log out?
    4. What are the different times you log in and out on weekdays and weekends?
    I can do the math. I can even keep it to myself, if everyone prefers. I think each person has some idea of their personal log in/log out times.