Change, change, change

There are more changes coming as a result of feedback and info from the Public Test Server. You can find Michael Wyatt's post here, or just read below.

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(NOTE: This is not currently live on PTS) Tweaks and Adjustments made due to feedback from October 8th, 2010 test: 

• Deployable Siege may once again be placed in areas where mounting is not allowed.
• Battlefield Objectives will now lockdown for 5 minutes after being successfully captured. Resources will be generated, unable to be disturbed, during this time. Resource Carriers will continue to spawn every 120 seconds as well. (NOTE: This will cause a known issue where a Battlefield Objective's Resource Generation Timer will be reset when the Battlefield Objective transitions from Locked->Unlocked. We're looking for feedback on the locking itself before investing engineering time to correct the issue. While testing, please assume that this timer is not reset.)
• Resource Carriers will now automatically be issued orders 2 minutes after being spawned. Interacting with a Resource Carrier prior to this 2 minute timer will continue to cause them to dispatch.
• Reduced the Resource thresholds to rank up a Keep by 25%.
• Aerial Bomber abilities "Fire Bomb" and "Chaos Fire Bomb" have had their damage radius reduced and will no longer ignore AOE line-of-sight checks.
• Players may now only carry one deployable Siege weapon at a time.
• Siege weapons are once again repairable in combat but the repair duration has been increased to 45 seconds (up from 30 seconds).
• Reduced the amount of damage reduction provided to Resource Carriers by a Rank 1 Keep to 25% (down from 50%).
• Resource Carriers are now affected by their own version of Against All Odds. All damage received is reduced by a scaling percentage based upon the population ratios.

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This backs up what I was saying yesterday about being your chance to get your feedback read and responded to. Those changes are clearly related to things being said on the Mythic forums right now. So if you cba to do it, well, do it ;)

Of particular interest from those is the 5 minute lock down time for Battle Objectives and the resource carriers automatically moving out after 5 minutes. One thing quite a few people have raised concern about is with the BOs being constantly attackable, if an outnumbered force manages to capture one, the bigger force can too easily take it back before any resources are generated. This in effect buys them some time, so sounds like a good idea to me though I wouldn't want timers much longer than that.

Resource gathers automatically moving off after a few minutes is a great move, as another sensible concern being raised was about people having to sit at a BO clicking a gatherer every few minutes. This change to that will allow defenders to mount a more mobile and less boring defence.

The more this gets tweaked, the better it sounds.

PTS ponderings (updated, again.. with some video)

My chances of doing a write up about last week’s testing events were scuppered by a clash with previously arranged real life events. However I did manage to go on to the PTS at other times and tried out for the new campaign system in a small scale roaming situation. I was part of a group and a half of Kill Frenzy playing Destruction against about the same number of Order (by their movement also guild groups), with both sides trying to get control of the battle objectives and resources. It worked very well actually, as we leapt from attack to defence and back, as Order and Destruction tried to outwit each other.

One of the things that happens at the moment on live servers is when you get into a zone you look at the map and more often than not the timers decide what you can do. Whereas on the PTS we quickly discovered we had far more options of where to go, as every single Battle Objective was attackable by someone and then there was the resource carriers to think about too. This got everyone quite stoked up in a good way and we had some awesome fighting for an hour or so before time got the better of us. I didn’t get to properly attack a keep mind you.

From reading the feedback and talking to people about the PTS events last week it seems like there’s a very mixed opinion about it all. I’m not sure how much that is due to genuine issues, different play styles or people not adapting. I suspect a mixture and/or combination of all three. If you’re someone that for whatever reason tends to follow the PuG zergs then these changes maybe a little overwhelming, as I just don’t think that play style is going to work out very well in future. Guilds and alliances that can reliably send a group there, a warband here, a guild there and so on will become dramatically more effective. The spread out barely controlled zerg will struggle to achieve much and will find itself milling around dazed and confused, as the more organised set ups take them apart and control the zone.

As an aside to this; I would certainly recommend that all guild leaders start thinking about how their guild and alliance will operate in the futur. I really do think the ORvR changes will drive people towards more organised places and it could mean some guilds suffer from members jumping ship. Just remember you don’t have to run the place like some kind of anally retentive dictator, but when you are doing RvR as a guild, do make sure your groups know their role and are moving together promptly at all times. Voice comms really do make all the difference for this. And make sure that you ARE doing ORvR as a guild... In future, far more than ever before, if people are in a guild but always have to PuG they will start to question what the point of being in that guild is.

Back on topic… From what I heard the first PTS events didn’t necessarily see that many people move independently. Many still tried to zerg, others sat queueing to try out the new toys (aerial bombers!) and it didn’t really represent a true zone lock battle on live.

Yet, a load of people from my guild went along to the EU PTS event and their feedback was mainly very positive about the overall concept. Of course they also had a range of comments and suggestions on things that need changing, but the overall feeling is good and despite the rather unrealistic situation they could see the potential. These changes suit us though, we’ve always tried (where possible) to move away from the zergs and do our own thing. So I’m not sure exactly how the PUG warbands will fare in the future, perhaps if they learn to coordinate things will work out ok for them, but certainly moving in one giant zerg is dead and buried. You’ll lose all resources and end up sat in a low rank keep being battered to buggery. That is as long as having the higher ranked keep works out as significant advantage enough, from what I’ve read and heard so far I’m not sure.

What is absolutely key to all of this though is making sure we get our feedback to Mythic. If you’ve been following the developer forums you will have seen they have already made changes based upon the PTS. So remember right now this is an evolving system and your feedback WILL be considered. Obviously not everything that everyone wants will happen, but if you don’t provide those wants to Mythic then you’re relying on someone else to say the same thing. If you’ve got a good idea, go post it on the suggestions forum or in the focussed discussion threads.

UPDATE!

OK I just saw these awesome videos by Oberheim from the PTS event.


And...

Now get over to his blog, there's plenty of other WAR videos there and I would highly recommend bookmarking it for future updates!

Oh and one other thing, this is funny as fook....

lol :)

Loads of WAR stuff to write about, but...

Real life has got in the way, so instead of a WAR post I shall provide some random distraction for you people.
I suspect this Robot wasn't quite as good as they made out...





And as for this, well.. I'm straight off to Amazon after posting.

Werit has posted a PTS video

Go check it out the video from last night's Public Test Server event on his blog (which you should have bookmarked anyway ofc) or for higher def version, directly on youtube.

If you've not played WAR for a while you maybe rather surprised at how well its running, which this video in turn demonstrates rather well.

Goodbye guard or hello shield?

One of the things that went live on the PTS last night was a change to the Guard ability on tank careers; it now requires a shield to work. This has kicked off a lot of debate and after reading lots of it, I think it's fair to say that the change appears to be popular with most people, but unsurprisingly is not so much with great weapon wielding Tank players.

I think it’s an excellent change. It further defines the purpose of sword and shield tanks, making those players feel a bit more worthwhile and as Guard is an incredibly powerful ability, it now comes with a restriction to partly compensate for that power. I 100% think this is a good idea.

However, I do think there should be something to balance out the fact that Great Weapon tanks are losing an important ability. Because if things stay as they are, then without Guard all great weapon specced tanks are going to be pressured into using shields when grouped in any form. You just know that people will get flamed and ridiculed for using great weapons, instead of guarding Player X, Y or Z. It will cause rifts, arguments and lead to everyone using shields.

In my head at least, ideally a group should want both a Shield using guard tank AND a great weapon one. There should be purpose to the great weapon tank beyond just extra DPS, but I totally agree it should not be guard, it just feels right for that to be associated to a heavily armoured bugger with a bloody huge shield. So perhaps something buff or crowd control related?

Swordmasters and Blackguards SHOULD be using great weapons, just go look at the miniatures on the Gamesworkshop site and you’ll see that’s what they use. I can understand why their players in particular might not like this change, as it is forcing them into a different play style that isn’t quite what they’re meant to be.

With my Chosen I’m great weapon specced at the moment and I’m really enjoying it, so will I change back to shield spec? Probably, I really enjoy playing shield spec too, so it’s not a hardship. But I do have DPS sovereign and my best wep is a great weapon, so maybe I’d rather stick with the big stick. All told, I’m not screwing about the change at all, it is a good one and is needed, but I do think it should have something that goes alongside it to keep both playstyles as viable options.

New Tank Armour sets

You can find the in development post here. Or because I'm quite nice really, read on...

With the upcoming RvR pack, we will be introducing 2 brand new sets of armor. These sets will be above and beyond Sovereign, requiring Renown Rank 90 (Doomflayer) and 100 (Warpforged). Much like the changes to Sovereign that were implemented in 1.3.6, there will be 2 version of each of these sets.


The new sets will consist of 5 pieces of armor. The goal of having 5-piece armor sets is to encourage players to acquire items from multiple sources, giving players more flexibility without having to sacrifice set bonuses by removing pieces from a 6+ piece set. Due to the combination of this change and the increase in item power, we have also removed set bonuses of a single stat to make each individual non-set piece more impactful.


In addition to these new sets, we are also introducing a brand new stat. The stat is called Fortitude and is effectively "Toughness Power." It works with the same relationship as Melee Power/Str, Ranged Power/BS, Heal Power/Wil and Magic Power/Int.


Below is the stat allocation and set bonus information for Doomflayer (RR90) and Warpforged (RR100) for Tanks. As always, please keep this thread on topic with providing feedback to the set stats and bonuses.


Doomflayer (Defensive)
Tou - 289
Wou - 182
Init - 170
Str - 141
7% reduced chance to be crit
5% block
80 hit points every 4 seconds
4 AP per second
4% reduced armor penetration
80 fortitude
Set Bonuses
2 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to increase Fortitude by 238 for 10 seconds.
4 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to Heal yourself for 1030 health over the next 5 seconds.

Warpforged (Defensive)
Tou - 374
Wou - 228
Init - 212
Str - 178
9% reduced chance to be crit
7% block
120 hit points every 4 seconds
5 AP per second
6% reduced armor penetration
120 fortitude
Set Bonuses
2 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to increase Fortitude by 308 for 10 seconds.
4 piece - On Being Hit: 10% chance to Heal yourself for 1325 health over the next 5 seconds.
5 piece - 2m cooldown - Your group becomes immune to Stagger, Knockdown, Root and Knockback effects for 5 seconds.

Doomflayer (Offensive)
Str - 289
WS - 182
Tou - 170
Wou - 141
6% melee crit chance
80 melee power
5% reduced chance to be parried
4 AP per second
5% parry
6% critical damage
Set Bonuses
2 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to reduce the next two heals on the target within 10 seconds by 516.
4 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase Melee Power by 238 for 10 seconds.

Warpforged (Offensive)
Str - 374
WS - 228
Tou - 212
Wou - 178
8% melee crit chance
120 melee power
8% reduced chance to be parried
4 AP per second
6% parry
10% critical damage
Set Bonuses
2 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to reduce the next two heals on the target within 10 seconds by 662.
4 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase Melee Power by 308 for 10 seconds.
5 piece - 2m cooldown - Nearby allies have their movement speed increased by 60% for 10 seconds.

 Hmmm interesting. I like the idea of armour sets only being 5 parts in future.


LOVE the new Fortitude stat. Great idea to improve the defensive side of tanks, which just doesn't work correctly with toughness as it is right now.

Obviously this armour is quite potent in its power, but with everything changing and renown 1-80 being greatly accelerated, I suspect that won't be too much of an issue. Hopefully... hmmm. I do wish at least Invader and Warlord could be improved too.

If you like Warhammer this mod is one to watch

You might not have heard of Mount & Blade: Warband and if you have, well... I wouldn’t be shocked if you had written it off because of the fairly basic graphics (by modern standards) and the fact that it’s not by some big name developer. And even if you have tried it, you might have found it a little inaccessible and not bothered further. The thing is, if you stick with it past the initial WTF moments you will discover an incredibly deep game with an excellent campaign system and the best melee combat system ever. When I say the best I mean it, seriously it absolutely dumps over everything else from a great height.

The combat system is fully directional, as in; you direct the swing of your weapons, parry direction and the blocking with shields. Also it’s not sloppy like Oblivion for example, this is very slick. No hotbars or button spamming, it’s a very fluid and deep system, yet one that is quite easy to pick up the basics of. An absolute bitch to master mind you… Watch the video below to see how it works:


So what has this to do with Warhammer?

There’s a mod being made by the name of Grim Age and it's a full warhammer conversion for Mount & Blade. This has the potential to be amazing. All new campaign map, factions, races, weapons, UI enhancements, everything…. I don't know if it has multiplayer too, but if so... :) [edit] Yes it will have multiplayer :) [/edit]

Here's a link for you, check out the screenshots. Keep an eye on this one folks.

Oh and if you fancy trying out Mount & Blade, it’s free to download and try a few levels in single player mode. I've been playing this game a lot for months now and I highly recommend it.