[POLL] Your top reason on why roaming is dead

[TheGrimm.5624]

I think we have a number of definitions at work here to. A roamer is a solo player out doing what they can based on opportunities available. 2 up to 12 is what I would call a havoc. 13-24 moves you into a warband.  And up from there. So for some of the replies here...not sure you are talking about roamers. Are you looking for 1 v 'x' fights?

[TexZero.7910]

For me it's the numerous systems changes that made things like tactical map movement less valuable.

Watchtower/EWP/Traps&Tricks etc... all kinda took the fun of a surprise encounter out of roaming and made the idea of staying mobile on map less prevelant.
Now you're practically encouraged to either roam in packs and take your size vs smaller sadly or get bamboozled by Zergs responding to even the slightest incursion into their zones.

[coro.3176]

3 minutes ago, TexZero.7910 said:

For me it's the numerous systems changes that made things like tactical map movement less valuable.

Watchtower/EWP/Traps&Tricks etc... all kinda took the fun of a surprise encounter out of roaming and made the idea of staying mobile on map less prevelant.
Now you're practically encouraged to either roam in packs and take your size vs smaller sadly or get bamboozled by Zergs responding to even the slightest incursion into their zones.

Oh, yeah. Way back in the day, tower and keep lords didn't scale, so you could ninja a keep with a small group of 5 while the enemy zerg was distracted nearby.

Can't do that any more because as soon as the zerg gets anywhere near the objective, the lord scales up so much it's impossible to kill without a blob. That, plus Warclaw makes it so much easier for the zerg to cover distance, so even if you start attacking something with a small group, the zerg can get across the map super quick and run you over before you can finish it.

[coro.3176]

I think the current game supports "roaming" (actually just gank squadding) very well, assuming we ever get a winning-matters matchup.

PPK is very high (3-4 points per kill!), and even though big zergs get more overall points from their fights, it takes them much longer to set up and actually engage. They spend most of their time positioning and trying to bait other zergs into fights. Meanwhile a dedicated group of 2-3/thieves ganking singles coming out of spawn just racks up kills constantly, and there's very little the targets can do.

Sure, that's not the kind of 1vX "roaming" I like to do, but it's one of the more effective things you can do to get points for your server.

[Sylvyn.4750]

Roaming isn't dead, but it's a lot harder than it used to be.  The choices on voting are tough because your first 2 choices are Thief and Willbender, and then there is Broken OP Specs which mostly points to Thief and Willbender, then Roaming Gank Groups which are often comprised of Thieves and Willbenders, then Boon Spam highlights one of the issues with Willbender and Stealth highlights one of the issues with Thieves...it's like voting for one of multiple main issues but then there are also subsets of the main issues within the same poll...should have had an All the Above! 😉

[Guybrush.4762]

Roaming is not dead, I feel however there was a noticeable shift from solo roaming toward roaming party for sure.

I would attribute this shift to the World restructuring. More people than ever are now part of active guilds, and even the "pick up" players are incentivized to join an alliance. Which mean more people now gravitate toward group play, both because being part of a guild create more group opportunity, but also because they feel compelled to participate in those groups in order to legitimate their spot in their alliance/guild.

Less solo roaming has its good and bad, but I would not say roaming is dead.

Edited October 10 by Guybrush.4762

[XenesisII.1540]

3 hours ago, Sylvyn.4750 said:

Roaming isn't dead, but it's a lot harder than it used to be.  The choices on voting are tough because your first 2 choices are Thief and Willbender, and then there is Broken OP Specs which mostly points to Thief and Willbender, then Roaming Gank Groups which are often comprised of Thieves and Willbenders, then Boon Spam highlights one of the issues with Willbender and Stealth highlights one of the issues with Thieves...it's like voting for one of multiple main issues but then there are also subsets of the main issues within the same poll...should have had an All the Above! 😉

I know there's a multitude of reasons why roaming feels the way it does to anyone, and yeah a lot of the answer intersect with each other. All of the above would just be a cop out, I really wanted to force an answer. But if you really can't pick one then just select I have a unique answer and pretend it's all of the above. 🤭

[ArchonWing.9480]

Escalation. This ruins fights at all levels, and also is the main reason for most of the things in your poll.

Basically nobody wants to concede things and like to hide things to stack the deck in their favor. So you see certain guild tags, and you know they are not down for a 1v1, at least not once they start losing. So you know they don't fight alone so you bring more, and beat them, then they bring more and so forth. The same kitten exists at larger scales too; people know there are guilds coming in just to assjam, and regardless of how it started, it's always going to end in someone bringing the map queue.

On a more basic level, taking initiative is hard. People are allowed to try and cheap shot you and disengage 100x but if you decide to not play along and not give chase, kiting in the other direction, then suddenly you're the one ruining everything.

I mean, I try to avoid running some of the more annoying crap in this game, but sometimes when people are doing it  to you, it's just too easy to revert back to meta fallbacks.  Oh sure, those thieves could run non-perma dodge, non-SA builds but then how many of you are going to notice that and not siege their corpse after you bring 6 more? What do you think happens next? They just go back to playing those things you don't want to see.

And once we start switching to the willbenders and harbringers and vindis, and then the supports start coming. It's basically Mutually Assured Destruction at some point, and everyone ends up losing.

Btw, Anet does deserve 101% blame for creating all these broken systems that players have to restrict themselves to properly get content.

I do have a great respect for people that take fights of any size without worrying about dying. But that's a rare breed these days sadly.

Edited October 10 by ArchonWing.9480

[nosleepdemon.1368]

Warclaw and everyone running in groups.

[Riba.3271]

Roaming died because 4 reasons:

1. Linking/Restructuring system. Roaming requires good population to guarantee there are enemies and some allies to find. Ever since they removed higher tiers with different environment and opponents, there is just no guarantee there are opponents. You face against German servers? 0 roamers. You face against Spanish server? Good luck finding them before sun is down. Tier 1 always had at least 2 well-populated English speaking servers prior to Linking system, so you were guaranteed opponents.

2. Objective auras: Objective auras used to provide +400 and +800 stats in addition to +25% movement speed. The person who added to 1vs1s or was trying cheese ganking, almost always owns the nearby objective. So not only did the +400 stats change 50-50% winrate fights into 35-65% winrate fights making roaming a casual mode, but also promoted gankers/duel-ruiners coming out victorious or being able to survive long-enough to escape to nearby objective.

3. Celestial: Simple, cele was king. Couldn't kill without playing some boring backstab build so either you lost or played cele yourself.

4. Nerfs to burst damage: Roaming was more fun when there were abilities that could do 12k+ hits like Gunflames, Arc Dividers, Gravediggers and Spinal Shivers. Obviously these were killed for sake of blobbing, but roaming is meta is now tediously slow and even if you try to take a camp as soon as player shows up, they can buy time for more people to show up.

Edited October 10 by Riba.3271

[SweetPotato.7456]

if roaming is dead, why do I still get killed by roamers.

[One more for the road.8950]

I still haven't been in a WR team where I have been roaming all by myself. I've even been in several teams with several roaming guilds on the same team, not just random roamers. And fought teams that clearly has quite a few of them.

Edited October 10 by One more for the road.8950

[CafPow.1542]

32 minutes ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

if roaming is dead, why do I still get killed by roamers.

Schroedingers Roaming.

it‘s dead while simultaneously killing you.

[TheGrimm.5624]

Xen, I think we need a poll on how players define a roamer (noun) versus how they define roaming (verb) .

[Dinas Dragonbane.2978]

17 hours ago, One more for the road.8950 said:

I still haven't been in a WR team where I have been roaming all by myself. I've even been in several teams with several roaming guilds on the same team, not just random roamers. And fought teams that clearly has quite a few of them.

You and I have had some interesting back and forth over the last almost two months. Of the four re-sorts I have been on two strong teams and two weak(VERY) teams. I think most of the teams have been on the better side for re-sorts, but no matter what there seems to be at least 2 that just plain suck or have very little to no activity. Pretty much all of us here likely want the same thing, just better competetive matches of similar(equal is impossible) server teams. Its just driving me nuts that WR gave anet what they wanted, smaller pieces to balance out the puzzles and its still not quite what we hoped for...its closer than servers but still just seems more volatile at times as there will always be a fairweather component of any team.

[Dawdler.8521]

On 10/10/2024 at 11:58 AM, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Xen, I think we need a poll on how players define a roamer (noun) versus how they define roaming (verb) .

Watch all the answers claiming a proper roamer only engage 1v1 and that proper roaming is being guildless on a T1 class world so that’s why WR shafted them.

[One more for the road.8950]

1 minute ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Watch all the answers claiming a proper roamer only engage 1v1 and that proper roaming is being guildless on a T1 class world so that’s why WR shafted them.

You might also need to not have proper gear because actually doing inventory management and figuring out how to get things sounds like PvE.

[alain.1659]

I don't think willbenders are the biggest issue in wvw roaming, especially after the cele nerf. There are really worse builds rithat are not being mentioned by the majority of the players. 

The professions became so weird that powercreep feels the new normal nowadays.

[Gorani.7205]

(defines roaming as one person going after small scale targets with high tactical impact, who fights other people)

The discrepancy between viable builds and over powered builds has not been addressed by ANet (at this point, they seem to be unwilling to act, IMHO) for a long time. Being able to burst others in single digit second intervals from max health to downed in addition to some other perk (e.g. being completely in stealth, super mobile, invulnerable, all cleansing etc. in the meantime) makes roaming an activity that lacks the right balance between fun, challenging game play and  frustrating experiences.
Combining specs with those abilities mentioned above is not a linear, but close to an exponential problem (with boon balls being the result at about 8+ players).

[Dawdler.8521]

2 minutes ago, Gorani.7205 said:

(with boon balls being the result at about 8+ players).

8+? That’s like weak HoT levels of boons. It’s been 3+ for many years.

[Gorani.7205]

8 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

8+? That’s like weak HoT levels of boons. It’s been 3+ for many years.

I would not define the boon output of 3 players as a boon ball, because how to address those 3+ players compared to those big stacked on one square foot groups that have 100% uptime on all the boons maxed out, where nobody gets downed, everything gets reflected and the boons don't even get partially stripped or corrupted).
Your definition may vary.

[H K.4057]

4 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Watch all the answers claiming a proper roamer only engage 1v1 and that proper roaming is being guildless on a T1 class world so that’s why WR shafted them.

I've had someone tell me that solo roaming isn't actually roaming, and that only 5 man comped groups are considered roamers. Meanwhile, some people think having mobility and disengaging to wait for cooldowns isn't real roaming. Basically, people have such different answers for what roaming actually is that I don't blame the devs for not balancing for "roaming."

[Nitrosiili.5628]

28 minutes ago, H K.4057 said:

I've had someone tell me that solo roaming isn't actually roaming, and that only 5 man comped groups are considered roamers. Meanwhile, some people think having mobility and disengaging to wait for cooldowns isn't real roaming. Basically, people have such different answers for what roaming actually is that I don't blame the devs for not balancing for "roaming."

This is true, that there are many definitions. That is why many or some of the PvP nerfs to some classes should come to WvW as well.

1 example would be WB F2 to be reduced to 1 charge like in PVP.

[Leger.3724]

Numbers matters because spamming is the meta and combat design. If you like spamming braindead combat then sure, you'll love roaming in this game and then you're going to hate it every time the other team has 2 semi-competent spammers roaming who come across you. And so on and so on.

And that's why roaming is dead. It's how many people who have a basic idea of what their abilities do spamming them. Completely uninspiring. Completely braindead. And that's why all competitive and semi-competitive content in this game is so miniscule compared to other MMOs.

Edited Friday at 04:54 PM by Leger.3724

[TheGrimm.5624]

2 hours ago, H K.4057 said:

I've had someone tell me that solo roaming isn't actually roaming, and that only 5 man comped groups are considered roamers. Meanwhile, some people think having mobility and disengaging to wait for cooldowns isn't real roaming. Basically, people have such different answers for what roaming actually is that I don't blame the devs for not balancing for "roaming."

🙂 

As I said I think in many threads people mix small scale play and running solo. Got asked in another thread why I bring up fighting 1 v 'x'. If you are a roamer (a solo player) odds are good you need to be ready to try and fight more than 1 if a Havoc jumps you let alone if you get hit by a Warband or a zerg. A roamer's goal is whatever they can take on be that simple targets up to a keep. A Havoc (2-13 players) might be claiming that they are out roaming meaning they are also looking for targets of opportunity but these scales are different. So when people say roaming is dead its a different story if they aren't finding actions in single player options or small scale options.

WR is grouping up more players in prime times as I have seen while testing. So in player versus player there are less targets. It hasn't reduced the number of objective targets though. Since the more a side just runs as a mass it means there are more objective targets.

As far as havoc play, the same could be said. There are still Havocs out there but we seem to have more zerg play in prime time. Is that good or bad....mileage varies. Not testing the WR gameplay in a Community/"Alliance" guild so I can't speak to what people might be experiencing there. Maybe there is more pressure for players to have to run as full group versus bring multiple scales of play. 

I think players are also still getting used to not having servers, which impacts their gameplay if they were a solo players or a guild that never moved servers. They think more in terms of who else is out here on myside and how might that impact my gameplay. Had a lot a players ask me in weeks 1 & 2 who are we seeing on the other sides, why what does it matter? It matters since some guilds follow patterns just like some servers had habits, so do a lot of guilds. It impacts which types of play might be needed. More counter roamer, more counter havoc, more warband needs and if they are just zergs, plans to try and not get run over but still try and counter them. This also impacts roamer play and havocs roaming.

So yes there are still things for Roamers to do, and room for Havocs finding fights and objectives for both if the other side if just deciding to run as a full map group. But, that is my 2 cents. Hold our stuff, take theirs, ours up, them down, have fun.