Monday 31 January 2011

Healer update and Producer's letter comments

Steven Engle has posted an edited version of the healing changes. Small tweaks, but much, much better. I'm still not sure if the main heals are fast enough, but with the reduction in how fragile they are I can understand it being sensible to see how a half second cast time reduction pans out. Cleanse staying instant but having optional tactics to change it, well that works for me just fine.

BTW about the producer's letter, real life got in the way of me writing up much about it and I'm sure you will have read reviews from the other bloggers by now, so in brief...

I like that it didn't do the usual focus on recapping on what's happened and instead is looking further to the future. However I'm sure nobody is shocked to hear that I wish it had information on more substantial and desired changes to the game. The new things mentioned are unfortunately totally and utterly "meh", sure they're not bad things, but inspiring they are not.

I'm tried of vague comments like "expanding existing areas and features as well as new concepts to the Warhammer Online experience". Areas could mean anything from zones to in fact any major or minor component of the game. So for now it's an utterly meaningless statement, that in the past I would have latched onto with hope, but I've had my fingers burnt too many times to do that anymore. Hopefully of course it will be something significant and James will clarify soon.

One thing though...more pets? I mean seriously? Why bother? Do people really care about that? Or is it the start of moving towards a cash shop and F2P? Carrie's new focus yet to be revealed perhaps. I can't think of any other reason to waste time making bloody pets.

All told it wasn't a bad letter compared with the past ones, it's just that for a great many WAR players (myself included obviously) this is a really critical time and to retain their interest Mythic need to, well... say something properly interesting.

Over to you James.

4 comments:

  1. Eh, I don't know if the expanded item shop is going to amount to anything more than Mythic/EA continually milking the bull. Tiny amounts of work for huge payoffs, it only makes sense to expand that aspect of the game since it generates direct cash.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pets??????? /facepalm

    ReplyDelete
  3. What have you expected from them? Mythic has from the release been horrible at most levels. I can say with very high comfort that this company is the worst one ive ever come across and ive played loads of mmorpgs.

    This is the only company ive run into that makes Sony´s CSR look like real pro´s, the management been horrible, coding even worse. The only patch they actually managed not to screw up entirely is 1.3 with the performance improvment.

    Not to mention the attitude from the company from the start. Was quite intressting having Mark Jacobs go out on a tuesday saying there had been no fortress related crashes after they put a cap on it while destro on hirn managed to crash 3 fort attempts and another 3 crashes in altdorf in less then 4 hours.

    That kind of stuff really dont look good and its been going on all the time. And as i can see thru Boots blog they distance between players and company is still lightyears.

    As for what ive seen of Rift its better at everything including the pvp. Bloody redicilous a beta game is better then profiled pvp game thats been out for more then 2 years.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have to say this was the first time that I have canceled my account before it expired. I am here from the beginning and always payed the fee since the release, I was always optimistic about the upcoming patches.
    But this ... wtf?

    I am running around in the same world for more than 2 years now, ok we have a crappy lvling zone added (lotd) we have a crappy new PvE instance added (totvl). It does not matter how many more instance they would add, the mob-pathing and boss scripting screwed in the roots! Yes I am totally aware that this is a pvp game but you know sometimes when you log on and the population is low as hell and you think that running around in the keep not that effective, maybe you want some relaxing and rewarding stuff. Even a token or a trophy or maybe some liniments, talismans?
    We have awesome public quests which is totally out of scope for more than 1 year. Not worth to do them (low xp, crappy rewards, rvr is more fun). But anyway I think it is too late to implement these features. The player base is too low and they will just raze up against these kind of things. New player wont come unless they announce some really really cool new thing, like t5 with extra 2 race what we have to admit that it wont happen.
    People writing ok than lets polish things and improve what we have, I am totally agree that the PvE zones are way too big and it would be a nice place to make t5-t6.
    Who cares that they are revamping the healerz and they will make tactics? That should be a tinny line in the patch notes what we are getting. Khmmm let me ask mr. chosens do you have your warlord shield still buggy?
    These kind of things tells me that the developers do not even log in and check the real environment, they just see the numbers and coding on papers!
    Rift is here, Bloodline champions is here, star wars is coming also ... You can bet that 80% of the current WAR players will check these out, like I will. To be honest I will buy Rift, I hate lvling I hate hitting pigs and hand in quests but I ll just give it a shot maybe they will take care more for their community.

    WAR is going down! You can see even in the patchnotes that server migrations ahead of us.

    Ohh and one more thing! The rat-ogre and packmaster should be the ultimate support classes for a warbands and keep fights, but it is not, they are crap as hell. Please tell me one case when you went to the skaven portal and rat-ogre and packmaster were gone.

    cheers,
    Meydey

    ReplyDelete

About Me

My photo
Half man half pixel. Music obsessive, likes a drink, occasional bastard.