AoE - Can WAR learn from WoW?

I got an email recently from CMK author of the http://www.scarytoenails.com/ blog, he wanted to know if I thought WoW’s latest changes to AoE could be the solution for WAR’s rampant AoE of doom. I have to say before I got the email I hadn’t heard about the AoE changes in WoW, but I think he just might be onto something…

Here's the exact text of the change:

”Area-of-Effect Damage Caps: We’ve redesigned the way area damage is capped when hitting many targets. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal
to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.”

Obviously those numbers are just an example, but you get the idea. Would it be enough? Unless the reduction in power is significant, when 10 Bright Wizards/Sorcerers turn on their PBAoE it’s still going to be instant death for everyone in range. Yet potentially I think it could work, with some clever number juggling it could certainly have a big positive impact on AoE in WAR.

Roll out the barrel!

Just saw this thread on WHA. These guys are on to a bloody great idea. Mythic could actually intentionally add player deployable barricades and obstacles.

As someone mentions there, this could be a great way to flesh out the "support DPS" concept of Magus and Engineers.

Potential there me thinks.

Merry Xmas

I went looking for something Christmasy to kill, but all I could find were some White bearded dwarves playing in the Snow. The little tossers.

Have a good one all ;)

It's not all zergy zerg zerg

I've had a few slightly funky RvR sessions over the last couple of days, almost all of which were not Zerg related!

Using my Chosen I teamed up with a Marauder from KF and we went looking for trouble in Reikland. In some ways this was a bit dumb as the zone had zergs from both sides trying to capture it, but we figured we could scrub about and maybe, just maybe get some small scale action. I was very pleased to find bloody loads of it! Sure, we also got zerged by warbands plenty, but we did get lots of fights against more manageable numbers. Was a good laugh taking on whole groups at once to see how many we could kill before their numbers won the day. Ego whore moment; we kicked much arse :D

It was also cool to see some enemy warbands and random players recognise and respect what we were doing, and letting us fight on fairer terms. Though I did have a full retard moment where I quaked a warband that was quite happily riding past me... Didn't work out so well for me that :p I blame the latest post pig pox illness slowing my feeble brain.

Then a bit later I went to Karak Norn's designated duelling area and had a few scraps, which is nothing remarkable in itself. However I had a duel with a Swordmaster that lasted over 10 minutes... I didn't note the start time alas, as it was only when I realised it was taking a while that I started watching it. So it may have been as much as like 15 minutes... I wonder what the longest fight ever has been? DoK versus WP could take a while I bet...

And then tonight there was a preorganised 1v1 roaming PvP event in Praag/Chaos Wastes. Unfotunately I could only go for an hour or so, as the wife & sprog needed me to resolve a conflict... Alas epic pixel bashing doesn't qualify as a good excuse to stay on the PC. Anyway, it was a cool event and if your server doesn't do this sort of thing, I would recommed you try it out.
 
As for how I did? Meh, I had a rough time. I won a few against a mixture of opponents, but I also got my arse well and truely kicked. Before tonight I had never lost to an Archmage 1v1, which led to a big shock when I was repeatedly kited to buggery :p I have a new found respect for DPS Archmages. The other people I lost to were a Bright Wizard, Ironbreaker and White Lion. They're not classes I normally struggle with 1v1 at all, but all of these guys were not only high RR but also great players and I got spanked like a cheap tart. Whilst I would have almost certainly lost against them regardless, it has highlighted to me that I need stop fucking about with my 7 regularly played alts and focus on getting Bootae's renown rank and gear up to scratch. That's not an excuse for losing, like I said I would probably have lost anyway, but I'm not doing myself any favours.

Coming up tomorrow is another server event; roaming 6v6 fighting. Not sure what my group will look like yet, as it starts a bit early for a guild like ours, but whatever we throw together it should be a good laugh.

So there's plenty of non-Zerg action out there, if you want to find it.

WAR's new Producer's Letter brings a new Producer

You can find the new Producer's letter here:
http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=1006

So Jeff Skalski role has changed to something else WAR related and Bruce Maclean is the new Producer. I'm not going to read much into that, it could be due to positive or negative things, or just the everyday office stuff we all have at work.

Bruce Maclean kicks off straight away with his first Producer's letter, which is a bit of a mixed bag. It spends FAR too much time dwelling on how amazing everything Mythic has brought in recently is, when tbh we all know about these changes. Of course I understand this letter is just another outlet for hyping up the game, but that's just not going to wash with WAR's embittered community. If you're reading that letter, you already know about the first 3/4 of it. Personally I'd prefer it if the Producer's letter spent more time putting up lights at the end of the tunnel.

Thankfully it's not without clues to the future...

Looking back at past accomplishments is all well and good, but we’re not resting on our bloodied laurels here in the land of WAR! Next year is going to be an exciting one, and I am looking forward to sharing more of our plans during the frigid days and long winter nights of January. We’ll have exciting new Live Events, new weapons and cloaks earned by spilling the blood of your enemies in RvR, a new Scenario structure, economy and loot drop improvements, adjustments to the King and Warlord encounters to convert them to RvR-only battles, UI customization enhancements, Tier 4 RvR campaign improvements, daily quests and so much more - and that’s just our near term plans for 2010.
 Farther into the year we’ll see…oh but you’ve heard me ramble enough! It’s time for that drink, battle, and crying enemies!

OK, brief but fairly interesting.
The RvR weapons and cloaks I presume everyone already knew about, but this is definately worth a nod to. It really can't come soon enough and I'll be most intrigued to see how it works. I'm hoping it uses the existing crests.

New scenario structure? That could mean anything... I suspect it's cross server scenarios.

Economy and loot drop improvements... Ok, if it means less utterly irrelevant green drops, that's no bad thing.

RvR-only Warlord and King battles? Now that is very interesting. Is this the end of RvE? Or will it be like the current city sieges where half the people involved are in empty instances watching a counter tick upwards? Perhaps Mythic have a cunning plan... Regardless, this is something a lot of people have been asking for and fair play to Mythic for acting on it. This will undoubtedly have a LOT of eyes on it from the community.
 
UI customisation... uhm ok. Not got problems with the current UI myself, but sounds good.
 
Tier 4 campaign improvements... Another "this could mean anything" comment. However, it's desperately needed. The current campaign is an utter farce and on my server the Underdog system has actually made it worse. It's just meant even more city sieges for BOTH factions... Real improvements can't come fast enough.
 
Daily quests... Err.. unless oRvR related... whatever. WoW is that way -->
 
Farther into the year we’ll see… Damn it! More info now pls :P

Bombtarding

Tonight we went out for some RvR action with a two and a half group Kill Frenzy warband. Without really intending too we ended up with an almost entirely melée based warband, other than a few healers and one single target spec sorc. All told it was a frustrating experience.

Obviously against the Order puggies we cleaned house, including us delivering some brutal maiming in a busy Altdorf instance... This was despite the Destro puggies (supposedly on our side) best efforts to constantly guard pull...

It was against the Order premade guild warbands that our unintentional melée theme became annoying. Every single Order warband was bombing, and credit to them they did so effectively, but it was frustrating because there wasn't a great deal we could do. Partly our fault because not only did we lack range and bombers, but also our warband was cobbled together and didn't really have any synergy with the class balance in it. Other than just having lots of melee, there was no proper theme to givr it direction. You can make effective melée groups, in fact earlier today some of the guys were doing a 2 Chosen 4 DoK group that was brutally effective in scenarios. However tonights warband just wasnt right for facing bombers. I guess the thing is just like the best bomb groups you have to start excluding people because of the choice they made when they very first logged into WAR. Can't take more than 1 of class X... Go re-roll bitch.

A few weeks back we ran a 3 group bomb warband. Obvious results against decent opponents really, same as in the earlier days of bombing when we bombed regularly like everyone else. If we outnumbered the enemy we won, if they outnumbered us they won, if it was roughly even numbers then it's 50/50. Just depends who's bombs & CC go off first, with better gear adding an edge occasionally. Had some damn tight fights against one of my fave enemy guilds "Crimson" that night, /salute to them, but even so it was still boring as hell. I so hate bombing.

Amusingly, or perhaps it was just tragic, on that night we went up against a full Order warband that had a few tanks, a good collection of healers and ONLY Bright Wizards for DPS. Not a single other class. Got burnt by them, shock horror. 8+ Bright Wizards turning on their AoE at once has predictible results no matter what they're fighting...

Anyway not really sure where I'm going with this other than to say... Bombing is still ruining the game and for Gods sake Mythic will you please address it. I dont want to have to bomb, but it seems that all anyone does these days. Putting aside tonights lack of synergy in our set up, because I put my hands up, that was our stupid mistake, but it is bloody annoying to know we can be as effective as pretty much anyone, if we decide to play in the most boring way and bomb bomb BOMB!

PS: I don't blame bombers for bombing. It is the most effective way to win in WAR. I won't stop using Ravage because it hits hard. Which I imagine is why even when I'm solo, if I encounter Bright Wizards they bomb me :p

Could the public test servers be more public?

I saw this post today and it got me thinking:

Why don't Mythic (and GOA) start using their Public Test Servers a bit more imaginatively?

At the moment the PTS is only used to test the next patch, which is fair enough, but it could be taken further. Use it to try out new things, not things planned for patch 1.x but things that it would just be interesting to see working (or not). Crazy ideas from both Developers and the playing community, things like that thread suggested and much more...

Making all AoE cause friendly fire.
Or remove ALL AoE entirely, heals, damage, debuffs, the lot.
Make Tier 4 full RvR with some of each zones PQs converted to Battle Objectives.
I don't know... whatever interesting thing that could be tried out with minimal effort but still providing something potentially funky.

Of course if Mythic were to do this, the hate brigade would jump on it as them showing a lack of direction or something. Pffft... I think it would show a game developer showing more interest in their players suggestions and being open to creativity.