Today I'm posting something a little different. It's a comment a mate of mine made on my blog recently about what he would like to see changed in WAR. It's an excellent suggestion and something I though deserved highlighting.
Venorath writes...
If I could change only 1 thing I'd get rid of the static feeling in the various zones.
After a shot at the Rift beta I remembered how hectic and involved you feel in a zone when you get rid of the if/then scripted events and encounters. the same was valid in Tabula Rasa, even though the game itself was rubbish, you felt like you were fighting for control in whateve zone you were in.
So... I'd add in invasions of factions fitting the pairing, with a sprinkling of skaven ontop of that. Both in the RvR and PvE areas. The invasions would pretty much be a copy of the rift mechanics seen in Rift, but with a Warhammer flavor. to make sure a zone was not overrun with invasions during periods of low activity (such as night times) I'd scale the frequency and power of the invasions to the number of active players in the zone.
By making sure that there was a clear message and indicators on the map whenever an invasion started, players would be aware of the fighting going on all over the zone, and be able to jump in to defend or attack a staging area.
Add ontop of that the PQ mechanics to reward participants with rewards based on wether it was a PvP or PvE invasion.
The end result should be a more engaging PvE experience, with oppertunities for PvP, both fun and rewarding.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I think this is an excellent suggestion. Putting aside the detail of copying RIFT's dramatic improvement of the Public Quests (which is well worth considering), I think the core concept that Veno alludes to is an important one to grab hold off if WAR wants to better cater for it's playerbase. While at times we may deride some of WAR's past and present attempts at combining PvP and PvE, we must remember that at times Mythic have pulled it off rather well. For example the new city sieges are very good when you get a proper fighty instance. But the prime example is DAoC. The game that all us vets hark back to is a PvE/PvP hybrid in ALL of it's RvR frontiers, dungeons and more.
Regardless of if there are players around, DAoC always feels like a living, breathing and very much alive world. This is due to a mixture of things, but not least amongst those are the mobs everywhere. WAR just doesn't have that same sense of world within it's limited RvR lakes, it feels much more desolate. The recently added Thanquols Incursion is a prime example of this; a Skaven infested tunnel network that er... isn't infested with Skaven. Which reminds me, instead of being in the crappy dungeon why can't those bosses actually attack the RvR lakes? Think about that for a bit. Roaming skaven nasties, hordes of rats, etc.
What about something like in the city sieges where NPC heroes like Engra charge across the battlefield capturing things? Mix it up, breath some live in.
Making things more dynamic, with a greater sense of scale and most importantly, feeling more alive is something Mythic should give serious thought to. Oh and weather effects like in DAoC pls ;)
Showing posts with label campaign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label campaign. Show all posts
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
Thoughts on WAR 1.4, RvR Packs and Campaign
So I figured it’s about time I wrote down some thoughts on how I’m finding WAR since 1.4 went live. Regular readers will be expecting this, but for those new to my special strain of bollocks… I warn you now I may ramble a little bit and I doubt it will be my shortest post ever… Oh and in this post I am just going to talk a little bit about the RvR pack and then concentrate on the campaign changes. Career balance, Skaven and the new dungeon/scenario/instance thing I’ll save for another time.
If I was to sum up the impact of the 1.4 patch quickly it would be to say: It has in many ways been a big improvement, has shown massive potential, but has introduced new problems and is far from the finished article. Overall though it’s a positive step and if Mythic play it right, it bodes well for the future.
The RvR Packs
Increased renown gain rate below 81 and more renown ranks are great. New mounts, dyes, cosmetic items and so on are also all great. The lack of content compared with traditional expansions is a disappointment and I think anyone denying that is fooling themselves. It’s not something to be hugely negative about, but it’s most certainly not ideal. However the cost was low and doesn’t offend me.
One thing that needs stressing mind you is that I don’t for a second consider the RvR Packs as optional. Technically they are, but practically they are 100% not optional. As such I can totally understand why some of my friends are very annoyed about it, particularly those who have been long time MMO gamers. If you look at DAoC for example, you never paid just for more renown ranks, you paid for very large amounts of content being added. WAR hasn’t done that, instead it’s made you pay purely to remain competitive in the future (as people hit 90-100), but has given you a small amount of new content and a campaign system revamp free.
Do I find myself annoyed by it? No. Am I happy with it? I think “Pleasantly ambivalent” would describe my feelings on the matter. I like WAR and still enjoy playing, I like the people I’ve had the chance to communicate with at Mythic and in general I like the gamer community WAR has. So if paying a few quid extra as a one off helps the game progress, then I really don’t mind.
Do I want a proper full blown expansion to be released? Of course I do, but if Mythic deliver on this new content every 6 months thing properly, then actually maybe I would rather have that. But the key word was “properly”, it needs to be decent chunks of content and not just a new scenario or things that feel lightweight. And don’t be late.
The Campaign
The new system is a vast improvement in a general sense. The keeps, siege weapons and battle objectives have more importance, the campaign feels more dynamic and there is normally more for you to do at any one point in time. Groups and warbands seem to be roaming the zone much more than before and for a lot of the time it does spread people across the zone. Of course it’s not all roses.
I asked at the Q&A if keeps would degrade in rank if people stopped gathering resources, Mythic answered no and I worried my little head about it. Alas, exactly what I thought this would mean has happened. When the keeps both get to rank 4-5 the battle objectives lost ALL meaning and relevance and we were back to 2 huge zergs lagging the shit out of the whole zone. Thankfully Mythic have started to address this with the latest hotfix where if one side has the AAO underdog buff then every time their resource carrier delivers the resources it repairs their keep door.
It’s not a proper zerg fix, but is something Mythic should build on, the resources and battle objectives should be considered as a keeps supply lines and ideally they should keep some purpose at all times. This will encourage people to spread around all time, because if you have both keeps at rank 5 and both sides with even numbers (like last night for example) you just get everyone at keeps and the zerg battle again.
Big keep battles are fun. HUGE keep battles are a trial, test everyone’s patience and give credence to the negative accusations regarding WAR’s performance. Accusations that are unfair in one sense, as 300 vs 300 in one area will lag to hell in almost any game, but because of that most games don’t set us up for 300 vs 300 fights in such a small areas. By encouraging those situations WAR is just asking for trouble. Also my server has been VERY busy, so much so that it has been impossible to avoid zergs almost every night. To many of us this has highlighted that the RvR zones are too small. Once again I would suggest Mythic consider expanding the RvR into the utterly wasted PvE areas and think about utilising them towards those keep supply lines.
Siege Weapons and Keeps
Siege weapons are much improved, but not enough and there’s a related problem for keep takes. Oil is fine, single target cannons are fine, but the AoE cannons(etc) are utter crap and can’t be used in enough numbers for those being targeted to care much about them. Aerial bombers are a good addition and when several of them combine their bombs they can dish out some real hurt. Unfortunately though the changes to sieges has caused a problem for melee careers, particularly tanks; as a Chosen player at keep sieges I have regularly found myself with absolutely nothing to do.
With most keep battles involving hundreds of players, an awful lot of the time you will find the ram is fully manned, all siege weapons are being used, the aerial bombers are taken and Skaven are either not available or are already being used. And it’s all too common when Skaven are available to find no Rat Ogres left for our warband, due to random twats running around in the arse end of no where with them. So if the defenders stay inside the walls, it leaves me with absolutely nothing to do. And I mean quite literally nothing... In fact one night I just started alt tabbing to play Football Manager during keep takes. To sort this out I would suggest that either we need an increase in the numbers of siege weapons and Skaven, or my preferred choice… give us ladders.
Melee DPS careers can (sometimes) sneak through the postern doors, ranged careers can attack people on the walls, healers are obviously busy healing, but tanks are left on a limb. So I would suggest giving tanks a career ability that allows them to construct a ladder to climb the walls. Give it a reasonable cooldown or slow build time and maybe to balance things out for defenders their tanks could use the same ability to destroy ladders. This would mean much more action across the entire walls and the battles would be far more like those classic sieges you see in the films, with warriors guarding the walls. I think it would add a great extra dimension to the battle and most importantly stop tanks (and on occasion all melee) being bored shitless for a lot of keep battles.
Having said all of that about me finding keeps boring when attacking, the thing is when I have had things to do it has been MUCH more fun than the old days of RvDoor. Being thrown onto the walls, dropping bombs on the defenders and so on has added things to do. It’s just a shame those things are only available or viable in small scale sieges.
One of the things about keeps that has caused much debate is the defenders respawning in the keep. Prior to launch there was a concern that this would make well defended keeps impossible to take and we’d never see a city siege again, but as the MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of city sieges since 1.4 has clearly demonstrated that wasn’t true. Though it has certainly made it impossible to stop defenders getting into a keep and taken away the strategic element of preventing reinforcements. Which is a shame, but is another thing that could be replaced by improving the relevance of battle objectives as supply lines regardless of a keeps rank. So instead of assigning a warband to worry about reinforcements, you could have them attacking the enemy supply lines and effectively starving the defenders out. New defenders joining the zone then have to decide whether to reinforce the keep itself or protect those supply lines.
But while respawning in the keep isn’t ideal in some ways, it has been great fun as a defender. We’ve had some great times sallying forth to counter attack, without having to worry about a quick dumping to the warcamp miles away. It has made active and aggressive defences much more viable and enjoyable experiences. With a group of KF the other day I had some awesome fights in Chaos Wastes against Crimson and Champion of the Gods, as we battled around the rear postern door. Great fun. Also sieges where there is an aggressive defending force are much more fun for both attackers and defenders, as it gives everyone something to do. Unfortunately not all fights are like this.
It seems to me that Mythic have gone in the right direction with 1.4, but they need to do a lot of refinement and tweaking for it to reach its potential and be something everyone enjoys all the time. With the other game releases over the next few months it will be very important for Mythic to continue regular hotfixing, updating and tweaking the game, whilst keeping the communication levels up. They’ve picked the ball up, it’s now all about not dropping it.
If I was to sum up the impact of the 1.4 patch quickly it would be to say: It has in many ways been a big improvement, has shown massive potential, but has introduced new problems and is far from the finished article. Overall though it’s a positive step and if Mythic play it right, it bodes well for the future.
The RvR Packs
Increased renown gain rate below 81 and more renown ranks are great. New mounts, dyes, cosmetic items and so on are also all great. The lack of content compared with traditional expansions is a disappointment and I think anyone denying that is fooling themselves. It’s not something to be hugely negative about, but it’s most certainly not ideal. However the cost was low and doesn’t offend me.
One thing that needs stressing mind you is that I don’t for a second consider the RvR Packs as optional. Technically they are, but practically they are 100% not optional. As such I can totally understand why some of my friends are very annoyed about it, particularly those who have been long time MMO gamers. If you look at DAoC for example, you never paid just for more renown ranks, you paid for very large amounts of content being added. WAR hasn’t done that, instead it’s made you pay purely to remain competitive in the future (as people hit 90-100), but has given you a small amount of new content and a campaign system revamp free.
Do I find myself annoyed by it? No. Am I happy with it? I think “Pleasantly ambivalent” would describe my feelings on the matter. I like WAR and still enjoy playing, I like the people I’ve had the chance to communicate with at Mythic and in general I like the gamer community WAR has. So if paying a few quid extra as a one off helps the game progress, then I really don’t mind.
Do I want a proper full blown expansion to be released? Of course I do, but if Mythic deliver on this new content every 6 months thing properly, then actually maybe I would rather have that. But the key word was “properly”, it needs to be decent chunks of content and not just a new scenario or things that feel lightweight. And don’t be late.
The Campaign
The new system is a vast improvement in a general sense. The keeps, siege weapons and battle objectives have more importance, the campaign feels more dynamic and there is normally more for you to do at any one point in time. Groups and warbands seem to be roaming the zone much more than before and for a lot of the time it does spread people across the zone. Of course it’s not all roses.
I asked at the Q&A if keeps would degrade in rank if people stopped gathering resources, Mythic answered no and I worried my little head about it. Alas, exactly what I thought this would mean has happened. When the keeps both get to rank 4-5 the battle objectives lost ALL meaning and relevance and we were back to 2 huge zergs lagging the shit out of the whole zone. Thankfully Mythic have started to address this with the latest hotfix where if one side has the AAO underdog buff then every time their resource carrier delivers the resources it repairs their keep door.
It’s not a proper zerg fix, but is something Mythic should build on, the resources and battle objectives should be considered as a keeps supply lines and ideally they should keep some purpose at all times. This will encourage people to spread around all time, because if you have both keeps at rank 5 and both sides with even numbers (like last night for example) you just get everyone at keeps and the zerg battle again.
Big keep battles are fun. HUGE keep battles are a trial, test everyone’s patience and give credence to the negative accusations regarding WAR’s performance. Accusations that are unfair in one sense, as 300 vs 300 in one area will lag to hell in almost any game, but because of that most games don’t set us up for 300 vs 300 fights in such a small areas. By encouraging those situations WAR is just asking for trouble. Also my server has been VERY busy, so much so that it has been impossible to avoid zergs almost every night. To many of us this has highlighted that the RvR zones are too small. Once again I would suggest Mythic consider expanding the RvR into the utterly wasted PvE areas and think about utilising them towards those keep supply lines.
Siege Weapons and Keeps
Siege weapons are much improved, but not enough and there’s a related problem for keep takes. Oil is fine, single target cannons are fine, but the AoE cannons(etc) are utter crap and can’t be used in enough numbers for those being targeted to care much about them. Aerial bombers are a good addition and when several of them combine their bombs they can dish out some real hurt. Unfortunately though the changes to sieges has caused a problem for melee careers, particularly tanks; as a Chosen player at keep sieges I have regularly found myself with absolutely nothing to do.
With most keep battles involving hundreds of players, an awful lot of the time you will find the ram is fully manned, all siege weapons are being used, the aerial bombers are taken and Skaven are either not available or are already being used. And it’s all too common when Skaven are available to find no Rat Ogres left for our warband, due to random twats running around in the arse end of no where with them. So if the defenders stay inside the walls, it leaves me with absolutely nothing to do. And I mean quite literally nothing... In fact one night I just started alt tabbing to play Football Manager during keep takes. To sort this out I would suggest that either we need an increase in the numbers of siege weapons and Skaven, or my preferred choice… give us ladders.
Melee DPS careers can (sometimes) sneak through the postern doors, ranged careers can attack people on the walls, healers are obviously busy healing, but tanks are left on a limb. So I would suggest giving tanks a career ability that allows them to construct a ladder to climb the walls. Give it a reasonable cooldown or slow build time and maybe to balance things out for defenders their tanks could use the same ability to destroy ladders. This would mean much more action across the entire walls and the battles would be far more like those classic sieges you see in the films, with warriors guarding the walls. I think it would add a great extra dimension to the battle and most importantly stop tanks (and on occasion all melee) being bored shitless for a lot of keep battles.
Having said all of that about me finding keeps boring when attacking, the thing is when I have had things to do it has been MUCH more fun than the old days of RvDoor. Being thrown onto the walls, dropping bombs on the defenders and so on has added things to do. It’s just a shame those things are only available or viable in small scale sieges.
One of the things about keeps that has caused much debate is the defenders respawning in the keep. Prior to launch there was a concern that this would make well defended keeps impossible to take and we’d never see a city siege again, but as the MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of city sieges since 1.4 has clearly demonstrated that wasn’t true. Though it has certainly made it impossible to stop defenders getting into a keep and taken away the strategic element of preventing reinforcements. Which is a shame, but is another thing that could be replaced by improving the relevance of battle objectives as supply lines regardless of a keeps rank. So instead of assigning a warband to worry about reinforcements, you could have them attacking the enemy supply lines and effectively starving the defenders out. New defenders joining the zone then have to decide whether to reinforce the keep itself or protect those supply lines.
But while respawning in the keep isn’t ideal in some ways, it has been great fun as a defender. We’ve had some great times sallying forth to counter attack, without having to worry about a quick dumping to the warcamp miles away. It has made active and aggressive defences much more viable and enjoyable experiences. With a group of KF the other day I had some awesome fights in Chaos Wastes against Crimson and Champion of the Gods, as we battled around the rear postern door. Great fun. Also sieges where there is an aggressive defending force are much more fun for both attackers and defenders, as it gives everyone something to do. Unfortunately not all fights are like this.
It seems to me that Mythic have gone in the right direction with 1.4, but they need to do a lot of refinement and tweaking for it to reach its potential and be something everyone enjoys all the time. With the other game releases over the next few months it will be very important for Mythic to continue regular hotfixing, updating and tweaking the game, whilst keeping the communication levels up. They’ve picked the ball up, it’s now all about not dropping it.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Balancing zones, keeps and sieges
Something I’m wondering about with 1.4 is how often will city sieges happen? I’m struggling to make any prediction I’m happy with because we quite simply do not know how the new system will play out in the end zones. Locking zones like Kadrin Valley or Black Crag are already quite different challenges strategically to say Praag and with the new campaign system I think the layout of zones is going to have even more impact than before.
Kadrin Valley is a prime example of this with the southern keep being so close to the warcamp; how will that work out with people rezzing in the keep, new people joining the zone so close by and the resource gathers arriving next door? And that’s before we start thinking about the routes that resource carriers take and any potential bottlenecks. What could happen though is perhaps we’ll actually see zones that are dramatically easier to attack or defend for certain factions, which in turn will change the way an entire faction views what zones and actions are important strategically. If for example Kadrin Valley was an easier zone for Destruction to take and hold, then it really starts to put pressure on Order to not let Destruction capture Thunder Mountain in the first place. That could actually be quite an interesting thing for us to deal with. I don't think every zone should be perfectly balanced, though the number of zones balanced different ways should be even.
Also, how hard is a fully upgraded and defended keep to take in 1.4? From what I hear it’s bloody difficult, but is that a good or bad thing? If it means less city sieges then I would say yes its good, but if it means no city sieges… that’s not so great. City sieges should be unusual and special enough events that you want to attend, but they shouldn’t be so rare that you don’t get a chance to unless you play 24/7. About the keeps though; I really think they should have a mechanism where they start to downgrade if the controlling side does not continue to gather resources. Otherwise we’ll get situations where both keeps are max level and it’s just zergs at keeps. Laggy, shitty and annoying zergs, the horrible thing this patch is trying to get away from. AND it puts even more importance on Battle Objectives, which is a good think in all respects.
Unless they already do downgrade? Please correct me if they already do.
Undoubtedly some tweaking will be required by Mythic over the coming months, the detail of what tweaking is required will only come out as we start to properly play the campaign on live servers. I think that’s actually going to be a lot of fun to play through, as potentially everything we’ve got used to is turned on its head.
Kadrin Valley is a prime example of this with the southern keep being so close to the warcamp; how will that work out with people rezzing in the keep, new people joining the zone so close by and the resource gathers arriving next door? And that’s before we start thinking about the routes that resource carriers take and any potential bottlenecks. What could happen though is perhaps we’ll actually see zones that are dramatically easier to attack or defend for certain factions, which in turn will change the way an entire faction views what zones and actions are important strategically. If for example Kadrin Valley was an easier zone for Destruction to take and hold, then it really starts to put pressure on Order to not let Destruction capture Thunder Mountain in the first place. That could actually be quite an interesting thing for us to deal with. I don't think every zone should be perfectly balanced, though the number of zones balanced different ways should be even.
Also, how hard is a fully upgraded and defended keep to take in 1.4? From what I hear it’s bloody difficult, but is that a good or bad thing? If it means less city sieges then I would say yes its good, but if it means no city sieges… that’s not so great. City sieges should be unusual and special enough events that you want to attend, but they shouldn’t be so rare that you don’t get a chance to unless you play 24/7. About the keeps though; I really think they should have a mechanism where they start to downgrade if the controlling side does not continue to gather resources. Otherwise we’ll get situations where both keeps are max level and it’s just zergs at keeps. Laggy, shitty and annoying zergs, the horrible thing this patch is trying to get away from. AND it puts even more importance on Battle Objectives, which is a good think in all respects.
Unless they already do downgrade? Please correct me if they already do.
Undoubtedly some tweaking will be required by Mythic over the coming months, the detail of what tweaking is required will only come out as we start to properly play the campaign on live servers. I think that’s actually going to be a lot of fun to play through, as potentially everything we’ve got used to is turned on its head.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Zone lock reward changes of OMFGness
OK some big changes are coming that will change not only the way we view controlling a zone, but also zone locks in every sense. At least it will if you're interested in renown, which of course most people will be with the new 100 renown cap.
Check out this post and this one too, or just read below..
++++
New addition that is currently live on PTS (as are all other adjustments up until this point):
Resource Carriers now reward a Realm with Experience, Renown and Influence upon making a Resource delivery. The Reward scales based upon the distance of the path that the Resource Carrier has chosen to take. The longer a path is the more Reward that will be granted to players within the RvR lake.
It's everyone in the zone that passes a server-side requirement check - in the current case, it's anyone who would normally qualify for Zone Capture rewards. I'm continuing to investigate idle hands support punting people to the Warcamp.
++++
So this should provide people with further reason (beyond gathering resources for keep upgrades) to keep control of Battle Objectives and ensure that Resource Carriers make it to the warcamp safely. The selfish renown-whore in all of us will see the obvious benefit.
And now the big news...
++++
Also - since it hasn't been made very clear at this point; Resource Carriers who have further to travel carry more Resources.
As an example; a Destruction Resource Carrier coming from Hallenfurt Manor carries about 4x as many Resources as the one from Verentane's Tower.
Also - if a Resource Carrier is defeated and drops their barrel; it only contains 25% of what was being carried. It is always better to control the Battlefield Objectives for your Realm's advancement. You lose a lot of time by ignoring the Battlefield Objectives.
We're also hooking up Zone Flip Rewards in a manner where the rewards are divvied out to both the winning and losing Realm based upon how long the battle has been active. Imagine that each zone is worth 200 points and every 12 minutes, 10% of the 200 points goes to the "loser's pool". This would have the pool values at 180 to 20. This mechanic would continue until the pool values are 120 to 80; the rewards handed out would then be scaled against those values.
The intent here is that even if a Realm loses - they are appropriately rewarded for how well they did. Holding the enemy off and defending your Keep has tangible meaning in terms of reward. In the case of AAO - these rewards would be modified by that. It is feasible that, even being outnumbered 4:1, the losing Realm could actually walk away with more reward than the winners received.
++++
Crikey... Rewards for putting up a stubborn defence? Rewards that are effected by AAO? Oh wow, this I really, really like.
Will it get leeching swines sitting in the RvR zone afk? Of course it will, but that will never, ever, EVER get fixed while there are zone wide rewards. People will always try and leech, some more than others. It also doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. But what this change will mean is there will always be a reason to put up a defence. Think of those times where your group/guild/alliance/whatever put up a long, desperate and ultimately doomed defence of a zone. In the future you'll get renown rewards, rewards that are effected by AAO.
This has massive potential to change how everyone views what is worth defending or not. And that my friends is no bad thing.
Check out this post and this one too, or just read below..
++++
New addition that is currently live on PTS (as are all other adjustments up until this point):
Resource Carriers now reward a Realm with Experience, Renown and Influence upon making a Resource delivery. The Reward scales based upon the distance of the path that the Resource Carrier has chosen to take. The longer a path is the more Reward that will be granted to players within the RvR lake.
It's everyone in the zone that passes a server-side requirement check - in the current case, it's anyone who would normally qualify for Zone Capture rewards. I'm continuing to investigate idle hands support punting people to the Warcamp.
++++
So this should provide people with further reason (beyond gathering resources for keep upgrades) to keep control of Battle Objectives and ensure that Resource Carriers make it to the warcamp safely. The selfish renown-whore in all of us will see the obvious benefit.
And now the big news...
++++
Also - since it hasn't been made very clear at this point; Resource Carriers who have further to travel carry more Resources.
As an example; a Destruction Resource Carrier coming from Hallenfurt Manor carries about 4x as many Resources as the one from Verentane's Tower.
Also - if a Resource Carrier is defeated and drops their barrel; it only contains 25% of what was being carried. It is always better to control the Battlefield Objectives for your Realm's advancement. You lose a lot of time by ignoring the Battlefield Objectives.
We're also hooking up Zone Flip Rewards in a manner where the rewards are divvied out to both the winning and losing Realm based upon how long the battle has been active. Imagine that each zone is worth 200 points and every 12 minutes, 10% of the 200 points goes to the "loser's pool". This would have the pool values at 180 to 20. This mechanic would continue until the pool values are 120 to 80; the rewards handed out would then be scaled against those values.
The intent here is that even if a Realm loses - they are appropriately rewarded for how well they did. Holding the enemy off and defending your Keep has tangible meaning in terms of reward. In the case of AAO - these rewards would be modified by that. It is feasible that, even being outnumbered 4:1, the losing Realm could actually walk away with more reward than the winners received.
++++
Crikey... Rewards for putting up a stubborn defence? Rewards that are effected by AAO? Oh wow, this I really, really like.
Will it get leeching swines sitting in the RvR zone afk? Of course it will, but that will never, ever, EVER get fixed while there are zone wide rewards. People will always try and leech, some more than others. It also doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. But what this change will mean is there will always be a reason to put up a defence. Think of those times where your group/guild/alliance/whatever put up a long, desperate and ultimately doomed defence of a zone. In the future you'll get renown rewards, rewards that are effected by AAO.
This has massive potential to change how everyone views what is worth defending or not. And that my friends is no bad thing.
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
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.
+++++
(NOTE: This is not currently live on PTS) Tweaks and Adjustments made due to feedback from October 8th, 2010 test:
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.
+++++
(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.
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.
Monday, 11 October 2010
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 :)
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 :)
Thursday, 7 October 2010
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.
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.
Monday, 27 September 2010
Bootae interviews Andy Belford at Gamesday UK
Gamesday UK was a great day out, we got lots of solid news about WAR and there was a truckload of WAR EU players in attendance at the main event. However the highlight was I got absolutely drunk as a skunk with Andy and a collection of people from the EU servers. Well I say a collection of people, there was one representative from Azgal, one infamous Norn player and a bunch of people from my alliance that went out on the beers. Andy proved to be a quality bloke, a good laugh and a seasoned drinker, important to fit in over here which he did admirably.
I could tell you all about the many, many hilarious and at times totally bizarre events that happened, but there’s just too much mentalness to type. Let’s just say it featured a copious amount of beer, a real life pirate, about 100 extremely drunk and glammed up women from a Hairdressers convention and a very rude south African lady. Oh and I got lost for an hour at 3am trying to find my hotel and almost decided to sleep alongside a motorway, thankfully that worked out ok though and I did find the hotel...
Anyways, thanks to an epic hang over and delayed trains, it’s taken ages to get back home and meant I missed breaking the main news of the day. I won't repost what has already been covered very well on both Bruglir’s blog and WAR Aura, be sure to check out the news AND then come back here for further goodies... However we also found out a lot of little bits and had many interesting debates through the night, so there maybe some more things I post about as my brain gradually recovers.
I did however get an interview with Andy. Questions were obviously all focused on the new changes and the future of WAR.
Bootae- First thing I was wondering about, you know you talked about the resource gathering from the BOs, is that going to be the current ones so you’d have multiple resource gathers moving around at once?
Andy- It’s gonna be all the current BOs, so there will be four resource nodes open at any point and they will be capturable at any point in time. So you’ll have to actively defend them all, if you want to hold them all then you’ve got to spread out and defend them.
Bootae- And defend the resource gathers themselves?
Andy- Exactly.
Bootae- So you’ll have multiple groups of people all over the zone guarding or attacking different things.
Andy- Yup. Because even if the resource runner is moving, the resource node can still be captured. So you’ll need to protect the resource node, the runner and probably your warcamp as well.
Bootae- You mentioned the resource runners being upgradeable. Does that reset if their node is lost?
Andy- No, that’s based on what rank your keep is.
Bootae- So now we’ll never again have a situation where you’re attacking both keeps, because we’ll always start off owning one and have to capture the other, while managing and controlling everything else in the zone.
Andy- Yup.
Bootae- The campaign itself then, this continues with the one zone open in each pairing, that locks, moves onto next zone, etc? We won’t have multiple zones open per pairing?
Andy- That remains the same. We had considered changing that, considering revamping how that works actually, but we decided it would be too radical a departure from the way things currently work and that it may actually having a negative effect on the game for people that were comfortable with the way the campaign progresses, but not happy with the zone locks. So we thought we’d change how zone locking works first, see how successful it is, see how it goes over with the players and then if we need to continue with adjusting the campaign mechanism we’ll go from there. But it’s part our approach incremental changes, it’s how we approach our development. We change things incrementally one step at a time.
Bootae- Regarding the Fortresses and the revamped campaign, is there a planned way they’re coming back into the new system or is it still very much up in the air?
Andy- We have it in our mind yeah, but we’re not set in stone or prepared to talk about their implementation just yet. It’s definitely one of those things on the forefront of what we want to do, the reintroduction of fortresses, however it’s not something we doing right now. That’s not to say the next patch set afterwards wouldn’t reintroduce them. Is that possible? It’s possible if we have all these changes go according to plan, everything works out brilliantly then if something falls into place with the fortresses that allows us to reintroduce them in a way that we think will be fun and dynamic then yes, we’ll move forward on that. So while it continues to be a priority right now, no we don’t have any definite plans.
Bootae- The next bit then for the campaign, the new Skaven zone… How does that fit in? The general idea in the community is about a tunnel system linking up all the zones, is that anywhere near the truth or is it more like a Land of the Dead entry?
Andy- You’ll find out this month.
Bootae- Moving on to Skaven, are Skaven something you can log in and play whenever you want or is there like a gated access of some form?
Andy- It is gated and it ties into the new Skaven area. How exactly it ties into the new area we’re not discussing right now.
Bootae- So will you be able to have both factions playing Skaven at the same time?
Andy- Yes.
Bootae- The four classes mentioned today, are there more to be revealed?
Andy- No, that is it.
Bootae- So no Stormvermin or things like that. It seems like the Skaven are being very much built around being a component of the new siege system.
Andy- The Skaven are there to enhance the ORvR experience. To make ORvR more fun and more compelling.
Bootae- So it’s not a third faction as such as we were thinking before, its more enhancement for the existing factions?
Andy- That’s correct.
Bootae- So Order players can have Skaven fighting alongside them?
Andy- Don’t worry, we got approval from GW (Gamesworkshop) on that.
Bootae- Hah, yeah you know people are gonna go for you on that.
Andy- Well the thing is if you read the Gotrek and Felix novels then there’s actually a point where the Skaven work with Empire. Even though the most recent edition of the Warhammer playbook has grouped them with Destruction, they really are very mercenary.
Bootae- They’re out for themselves.
Andy- Yeah, they’re out for themselves yeah. As long as you have enough warpstone to satisfy their craving, they’ll do whatever they can to get that warpstone. Including stabbing you in the back.
Bootae- So the RvR packs are one thing, but it sounds like from all this that it’s really 1.4 that needs to be in place to enable all of this.
Andy- Right now 1.4 is a component of the RvR packs, I would say that.
Bootae- You’ve talked before about how we’ll be getting these packs more often than a game would usually get full on expansions. So in future are we always going to see a major 1.4 style patch accompanied by a pack? So there will be the free patch and then the extra purchaseable components like the packs alongside that?
Andy- We’re not gonna stop free updates to the game, that’s not gonna stop. There’s always gonna be free updates to the game, we’re always going to be improving content, we’re always going to be making things better and some of that just happens to coincide with the RvR Pack. So yes there will always continue to be free improvements for players, regardless of if they purchase the RvR pack.
Bootae- So this current timing of pack and patch is just a timing thing.
Andy- Yeah, it’s kinda the logistics of the development schedule.
Bootae- PvE pack? Now I don’t give two monkeys about PvE really…
Andy- Neither do we.
Bootae- …but some people will do. So is the future of PvE pretty much out of the window?
Andy- The immediate future. You know, we’ve embraced the fact that we are an RvR game. Some people say it’s niche, some people say its you know, it is what it is, but people play Bioware Mythic games because they like to kill other players. That’s what we’re good at, that’s what we do. We are dedicated to making our RvR experience the best it can be.
Bootae- So thoughts of dungeons and lairs gone?
Andy- No, no, no. There’s actually a lot of lairs that are attached to the RvR lakes. Like the one in Chaos Wastes near the north keep. It’s kinda hard to get there, it’s like a jumping puzzle to get up.
Bootae- Ah yeah like the one in Norsca.
Andy- Personally I would love to see some of the lairs and stuff repurposed into RvR fights, I think that would be very cool.
Bootae- Like the invadeable Land of the Dead style?
Andy- yeah.
Bootae- We were talking earlier about a PQ in tier 1 Orc/Dwarf, where for whatever reason it’s RvR enabled. That’s probably the best PQ in the entire game, but then it doesn’t happen anymore.
Andy- We should have done more of those. We should have continued to build upon the PvP foundation interspersed with the PvE. Unfortunately that one PQ is one of the only places in the game where that happens with a PQ, up until the city revamp of course. So you know, it’s lessons learnt, no development team gets everything right, no development team is perfect. And I know a lot of people like to point at warhammer online and bash warhammer online, it’s the cool fashion. But you know, we’re still here, we’re still going, we’re still developing and delivering a visceral, heart-pounding experience for our players. And you know, our community is right now in a better place than its been in the last 2 years. The players, while they’re critical and while they still let us know what they think, they really do love the game and you can see it, you can see the passion.
People sometimes like to attach the word failure to our game, but you know we are not a failure, we are profitable, we are making money for the studio, we are still developing new content and we’re doing something that a lot of games are afraid to do, you know we’re saying yeah we made a lot of mistakes when we first launched the game and we’re gonna take 12 months, 16 months, we’re gonna take however long it takes to go back and fix these things.
My recording went a bit dodgy from here and I’ve got a horrible hangover clouding my memory, but I asked a cheeky question about sub numbers and while Andy wouldn’t divulge the numbers, he did confirm that subscription numbers are increasing. We also talked about the amount of people in one zone and Andy mentioned recently Badlands saw over 700 people in one zone, 500 of them attacking a keep. I also learnt a few things that I've been asked not to blog about, but lets just say I'm very positive about the next few months and the future of WAR.
And that was that for the interview, Andy had to head off to do yet another presentation to the masses and I went and joined the mass debate amongst WAR players about all the announcements. I'll post thoughts and stuff over the next few days.
So thanks to Andy for his time, the beers, chicken wings and a bloody comedy gold night.
I could tell you all about the many, many hilarious and at times totally bizarre events that happened, but there’s just too much mentalness to type. Let’s just say it featured a copious amount of beer, a real life pirate, about 100 extremely drunk and glammed up women from a Hairdressers convention and a very rude south African lady. Oh and I got lost for an hour at 3am trying to find my hotel and almost decided to sleep alongside a motorway, thankfully that worked out ok though and I did find the hotel...
Anyways, thanks to an epic hang over and delayed trains, it’s taken ages to get back home and meant I missed breaking the main news of the day. I won't repost what has already been covered very well on both Bruglir’s blog and WAR Aura, be sure to check out the news AND then come back here for further goodies... However we also found out a lot of little bits and had many interesting debates through the night, so there maybe some more things I post about as my brain gradually recovers.
I did however get an interview with Andy. Questions were obviously all focused on the new changes and the future of WAR.
Bootae- First thing I was wondering about, you know you talked about the resource gathering from the BOs, is that going to be the current ones so you’d have multiple resource gathers moving around at once?
Andy- It’s gonna be all the current BOs, so there will be four resource nodes open at any point and they will be capturable at any point in time. So you’ll have to actively defend them all, if you want to hold them all then you’ve got to spread out and defend them.
Bootae- And defend the resource gathers themselves?
Andy- Exactly.
Bootae- So you’ll have multiple groups of people all over the zone guarding or attacking different things.
Andy- Yup. Because even if the resource runner is moving, the resource node can still be captured. So you’ll need to protect the resource node, the runner and probably your warcamp as well.
Bootae- You mentioned the resource runners being upgradeable. Does that reset if their node is lost?
Andy- No, that’s based on what rank your keep is.
Bootae- So now we’ll never again have a situation where you’re attacking both keeps, because we’ll always start off owning one and have to capture the other, while managing and controlling everything else in the zone.
Andy- Yup.
Bootae- The campaign itself then, this continues with the one zone open in each pairing, that locks, moves onto next zone, etc? We won’t have multiple zones open per pairing?
Andy- That remains the same. We had considered changing that, considering revamping how that works actually, but we decided it would be too radical a departure from the way things currently work and that it may actually having a negative effect on the game for people that were comfortable with the way the campaign progresses, but not happy with the zone locks. So we thought we’d change how zone locking works first, see how successful it is, see how it goes over with the players and then if we need to continue with adjusting the campaign mechanism we’ll go from there. But it’s part our approach incremental changes, it’s how we approach our development. We change things incrementally one step at a time.
Bootae- Regarding the Fortresses and the revamped campaign, is there a planned way they’re coming back into the new system or is it still very much up in the air?
Andy- We have it in our mind yeah, but we’re not set in stone or prepared to talk about their implementation just yet. It’s definitely one of those things on the forefront of what we want to do, the reintroduction of fortresses, however it’s not something we doing right now. That’s not to say the next patch set afterwards wouldn’t reintroduce them. Is that possible? It’s possible if we have all these changes go according to plan, everything works out brilliantly then if something falls into place with the fortresses that allows us to reintroduce them in a way that we think will be fun and dynamic then yes, we’ll move forward on that. So while it continues to be a priority right now, no we don’t have any definite plans.
Bootae- The next bit then for the campaign, the new Skaven zone… How does that fit in? The general idea in the community is about a tunnel system linking up all the zones, is that anywhere near the truth or is it more like a Land of the Dead entry?
Andy- You’ll find out this month.
Bootae- Moving on to Skaven, are Skaven something you can log in and play whenever you want or is there like a gated access of some form?
Andy- It is gated and it ties into the new Skaven area. How exactly it ties into the new area we’re not discussing right now.
Bootae- So will you be able to have both factions playing Skaven at the same time?
Andy- Yes.
Bootae- The four classes mentioned today, are there more to be revealed?
Andy- No, that is it.
Bootae- So no Stormvermin or things like that. It seems like the Skaven are being very much built around being a component of the new siege system.
Andy- The Skaven are there to enhance the ORvR experience. To make ORvR more fun and more compelling.
Bootae- So it’s not a third faction as such as we were thinking before, its more enhancement for the existing factions?
Andy- That’s correct.
Bootae- So Order players can have Skaven fighting alongside them?
Andy- Don’t worry, we got approval from GW (Gamesworkshop) on that.
Bootae- Hah, yeah you know people are gonna go for you on that.
Andy- Well the thing is if you read the Gotrek and Felix novels then there’s actually a point where the Skaven work with Empire. Even though the most recent edition of the Warhammer playbook has grouped them with Destruction, they really are very mercenary.
Bootae- They’re out for themselves.
Andy- Yeah, they’re out for themselves yeah. As long as you have enough warpstone to satisfy their craving, they’ll do whatever they can to get that warpstone. Including stabbing you in the back.
Bootae- So the RvR packs are one thing, but it sounds like from all this that it’s really 1.4 that needs to be in place to enable all of this.
Andy- Right now 1.4 is a component of the RvR packs, I would say that.
Bootae- You’ve talked before about how we’ll be getting these packs more often than a game would usually get full on expansions. So in future are we always going to see a major 1.4 style patch accompanied by a pack? So there will be the free patch and then the extra purchaseable components like the packs alongside that?
Andy- We’re not gonna stop free updates to the game, that’s not gonna stop. There’s always gonna be free updates to the game, we’re always going to be improving content, we’re always going to be making things better and some of that just happens to coincide with the RvR Pack. So yes there will always continue to be free improvements for players, regardless of if they purchase the RvR pack.
Bootae- So this current timing of pack and patch is just a timing thing.
Andy- Yeah, it’s kinda the logistics of the development schedule.
Bootae- PvE pack? Now I don’t give two monkeys about PvE really…
Andy- Neither do we.
Bootae- …but some people will do. So is the future of PvE pretty much out of the window?
Andy- The immediate future. You know, we’ve embraced the fact that we are an RvR game. Some people say it’s niche, some people say its you know, it is what it is, but people play Bioware Mythic games because they like to kill other players. That’s what we’re good at, that’s what we do. We are dedicated to making our RvR experience the best it can be.
Bootae- So thoughts of dungeons and lairs gone?
Andy- No, no, no. There’s actually a lot of lairs that are attached to the RvR lakes. Like the one in Chaos Wastes near the north keep. It’s kinda hard to get there, it’s like a jumping puzzle to get up.
Bootae- Ah yeah like the one in Norsca.
Andy- Personally I would love to see some of the lairs and stuff repurposed into RvR fights, I think that would be very cool.
Bootae- Like the invadeable Land of the Dead style?
Andy- yeah.
Bootae- We were talking earlier about a PQ in tier 1 Orc/Dwarf, where for whatever reason it’s RvR enabled. That’s probably the best PQ in the entire game, but then it doesn’t happen anymore.
Andy- We should have done more of those. We should have continued to build upon the PvP foundation interspersed with the PvE. Unfortunately that one PQ is one of the only places in the game where that happens with a PQ, up until the city revamp of course. So you know, it’s lessons learnt, no development team gets everything right, no development team is perfect. And I know a lot of people like to point at warhammer online and bash warhammer online, it’s the cool fashion. But you know, we’re still here, we’re still going, we’re still developing and delivering a visceral, heart-pounding experience for our players. And you know, our community is right now in a better place than its been in the last 2 years. The players, while they’re critical and while they still let us know what they think, they really do love the game and you can see it, you can see the passion.
People sometimes like to attach the word failure to our game, but you know we are not a failure, we are profitable, we are making money for the studio, we are still developing new content and we’re doing something that a lot of games are afraid to do, you know we’re saying yeah we made a lot of mistakes when we first launched the game and we’re gonna take 12 months, 16 months, we’re gonna take however long it takes to go back and fix these things.
+++++++++++
My recording went a bit dodgy from here and I’ve got a horrible hangover clouding my memory, but I asked a cheeky question about sub numbers and while Andy wouldn’t divulge the numbers, he did confirm that subscription numbers are increasing. We also talked about the amount of people in one zone and Andy mentioned recently Badlands saw over 700 people in one zone, 500 of them attacking a keep. I also learnt a few things that I've been asked not to blog about, but lets just say I'm very positive about the next few months and the future of WAR.
And that was that for the interview, Andy had to head off to do yet another presentation to the masses and I went and joined the mass debate amongst WAR players about all the announcements. I'll post thoughts and stuff over the next few days.
So thanks to Andy for his time, the beers, chicken wings and a bloody comedy gold night.
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
What are you least and most looking forward to from 1.4 and the RvR Pack?
Now that we are starting to get a picture, albeit a limited one, of what the future of WAR holds… I would like to ask a question:
What are you least and most looking forward to from 1.4 and the RvR Pack?
Prior to the Gamescom/Gamesday Baltimore news I was most excited about the chance of playing Skaven, but afterwards I find myself not that bothered about that at all now. It might be fun, but no matter what Mythic have up their sleeves it will not be what I wanted and for me personally, to stay excited will only lead to disappointment. So unless fresh news comes out to change my mind, I’ve kinda written that off as something to get all hyped about. You may accuse me of being blinkered by the past and I shouldn’t be so limited in my desires for a MMO traditional playable race, but sorry folks, that IS what I wanted. It is ok to not be happy about everything, particularly as blind faith is, well… blind. And not really any different to blind hate.
So as a customer and devoted WAR fan, it is now up to Mythic to convince me that their new idea for Skaven is better than my (and most people’s) preconceived perception of what a true playable MMO race is. I don’t think that’s a harsh or unfair thing to say.
The thing that really has me quivering with thoughts of potential slices of awesome pie (with custard AND a raspberry coulis) is the campaign update and how the new Skaven zone(s?) links into this. We know that victory points and domination are going, we also know that Mythic want to move the campaign away from waithammer and give us something more dynamic, yet easy to understand. I don’t think we’ll move away from zone locking, as I think it was a wording issue when I was told this before and they actually meant domination, which is a shame if so, but there’s still so much potential here. Instead, I suspect we’re going to get something heavily influenced by the new city siege system.
The new city siege is in a way telling a story, a story that is built around the clear objectives that each stage provides. The sappers desperately trying to destroy the defenders siege weaponry, Warlords marching through the city looking to challenge and defeat their rivals. The Emperor Karl Franz and Tchar'zanek nominating their champions for the final battle… it’s all just a bit more melodramatic than the Victory point system before it. So imagine if there were similar things within the campaign itself? NPC warlords leading assaults, defensive/offensive goals that have a tangible effect and objectives that had more purpose than just adding a few points to a scoreboard.
I could be way off the mark with the thoughts above, but I’m rather excited about the potential of a completely revised campaign and what it could mean for WAR. The campaign is the lynch pin of WAR and a complete revision that genuinely improves it would be a monumental change. I can’t wait to see what happens.
How about you?
What are you least and most looking forward to from 1.4 and the RvR Pack?
Prior to the Gamescom/Gamesday Baltimore news I was most excited about the chance of playing Skaven, but afterwards I find myself not that bothered about that at all now. It might be fun, but no matter what Mythic have up their sleeves it will not be what I wanted and for me personally, to stay excited will only lead to disappointment. So unless fresh news comes out to change my mind, I’ve kinda written that off as something to get all hyped about. You may accuse me of being blinkered by the past and I shouldn’t be so limited in my desires for a MMO traditional playable race, but sorry folks, that IS what I wanted. It is ok to not be happy about everything, particularly as blind faith is, well… blind. And not really any different to blind hate.
So as a customer and devoted WAR fan, it is now up to Mythic to convince me that their new idea for Skaven is better than my (and most people’s) preconceived perception of what a true playable MMO race is. I don’t think that’s a harsh or unfair thing to say.
The thing that really has me quivering with thoughts of potential slices of awesome pie (with custard AND a raspberry coulis) is the campaign update and how the new Skaven zone(s?) links into this. We know that victory points and domination are going, we also know that Mythic want to move the campaign away from waithammer and give us something more dynamic, yet easy to understand. I don’t think we’ll move away from zone locking, as I think it was a wording issue when I was told this before and they actually meant domination, which is a shame if so, but there’s still so much potential here. Instead, I suspect we’re going to get something heavily influenced by the new city siege system.
The new city siege is in a way telling a story, a story that is built around the clear objectives that each stage provides. The sappers desperately trying to destroy the defenders siege weaponry, Warlords marching through the city looking to challenge and defeat their rivals. The Emperor Karl Franz and Tchar'zanek nominating their champions for the final battle… it’s all just a bit more melodramatic than the Victory point system before it. So imagine if there were similar things within the campaign itself? NPC warlords leading assaults, defensive/offensive goals that have a tangible effect and objectives that had more purpose than just adding a few points to a scoreboard.
I could be way off the mark with the thoughts above, but I’m rather excited about the potential of a completely revised campaign and what it could mean for WAR. The campaign is the lynch pin of WAR and a complete revision that genuinely improves it would be a monumental change. I can’t wait to see what happens.
How about you?
Monday, 5 July 2010
Dispersing the zerg with... a Fortress???
OK so yesterday I posted about Mythic basically confirming the ORvR lakes will stay small, which while disappointing (for me anyway) is not all bad news because at the same time Mythic also confirmed that they are going to be doing something to disperse the zerg:
“We have a lot of plans for the future and dispersing the zerg, in a mindful way, is high on my priority list”
Now regardless of if you sign up to any of my previous posts on how this could be done, I think most people would agree that it should be done. Zergs breed lag, emphasize the over dominance of AoE, seriously punish outnumbered realms and generally spoil the game. So what other solutions could Mythic have in mind? Pondering on this got me thinking about something that may hold the answer and is also something we do know is coming; the return of Fortresses.
At present the campaign’s only purpose is to lock zones with the ultimate aim of laying siege to the enemy city. So everyone is zerging the zone closest to lock with no real need to go elsewhere, other than the occasional quick zerg and back if somewhere else gets close to locking. However, if the Fortresses did return, but with Dark Age of Camelot style relic raids, this could provide a set of alternative goals for the campaign.
I know I've posted about relic raids before, but just in case you’re not familiar with them, this is how they work. Each Fortress has a “relic” inside and each relic provides a realm wide buff for the owners of that fortress. Fortresses cannot be captured like keeps, they are always under control of their original realm, but they can be raided and the relic captured... If you manage to successfully raid a Fortress and capture the relic, you then have to escort it all the way back to your fortress and place it there. This then means you get that relic’s realm wide buff in addition to buffs from any other relics you control. It’s pretty much a game of capture the flag, albeit on a monumental scale.
So if WAR had this, with relics being captured and escorted between the 2 fortresses in each pairing, then each relic would provide an alternative target. If Order are zerging and pushing the campaign in the Elf pairing, what happens if Destruction start pushing for relics in both of the other pairings? If the relic buffs were enough that they can’t be ignored, perhaps this would break things up a bit.
Obviously there are a lot of details that would need to be sorted out and I’ve no idea if this is anything like what Mythic have planned, but it might just work…
“We have a lot of plans for the future and dispersing the zerg, in a mindful way, is high on my priority list”
Now regardless of if you sign up to any of my previous posts on how this could be done, I think most people would agree that it should be done. Zergs breed lag, emphasize the over dominance of AoE, seriously punish outnumbered realms and generally spoil the game. So what other solutions could Mythic have in mind? Pondering on this got me thinking about something that may hold the answer and is also something we do know is coming; the return of Fortresses.
At present the campaign’s only purpose is to lock zones with the ultimate aim of laying siege to the enemy city. So everyone is zerging the zone closest to lock with no real need to go elsewhere, other than the occasional quick zerg and back if somewhere else gets close to locking. However, if the Fortresses did return, but with Dark Age of Camelot style relic raids, this could provide a set of alternative goals for the campaign.
I know I've posted about relic raids before, but just in case you’re not familiar with them, this is how they work. Each Fortress has a “relic” inside and each relic provides a realm wide buff for the owners of that fortress. Fortresses cannot be captured like keeps, they are always under control of their original realm, but they can be raided and the relic captured... If you manage to successfully raid a Fortress and capture the relic, you then have to escort it all the way back to your fortress and place it there. This then means you get that relic’s realm wide buff in addition to buffs from any other relics you control. It’s pretty much a game of capture the flag, albeit on a monumental scale.
Getting a screenshot of this zerg cost me a "solo WAAAAGH into them looking like an idiot" death.
So if WAR had this, with relics being captured and escorted between the 2 fortresses in each pairing, then each relic would provide an alternative target. If Order are zerging and pushing the campaign in the Elf pairing, what happens if Destruction start pushing for relics in both of the other pairings? If the relic buffs were enough that they can’t be ignored, perhaps this would break things up a bit.
Obviously there are a lot of details that would need to be sorted out and I’ve no idea if this is anything like what Mythic have planned, but it might just work…
Thursday, 1 July 2010
June Producer's Letter reviewy thingywingy
Yesterday we got to see the latest producer’s letter and as such, today is the day when the Internet starts picking it apart, reading too much into things, being overly critical and all the usual RAGE! HAPPY! RAGE! lark.
In an attempt not to write a monstrous wall of text and considering you’ve probably already read it after I linked yesterday, I won’t quote the whole thing, just bits I feel particularly need it. Which is really only the very first paragraph, it’s an interesting statement dripping with potential joy or disappointment, depending on your general outlook on WAR.
“Through these communications I’ve emphasized how we listen to the community and take your feedback seriously while planning the future of WAR. For the most part, the “P-Letter” (as I like to call it) is intended to be a short term look at the next version or two, giving you a look forward at the months to come. However, it’s very clear that there is a lot of desire to hear about long term planning. We hear these requests loud and clear, and it is our desire to give you a better sense of WAR’s long term plan by the end of summer. Our detractors like to make fun of us for “being really excited” and “itching to tell you about” some “really cool things” (yes, we read the snarky posts), and in this case we want to shout it from the rooftops…but not just yet.”
Some people have chosen to read this as “we acknowledge what you say, but we’re still not saying anything, so like whatever...”. I think that is more than a little harsh. I’ve been at the forefront of calling for proper and solid news for the future of WAR and it seems to me that the time is ripe to do so. However I understand that there may well be reasons, that I am unaware of, that prevent Mythic from saying anything until a certain point. Actually if you think about what's coming out over the next year from Blizard who love to shaft other MMO news releases, betas, etc (poor FF got it this week), perhaps Mythic are right to be cautious. What the above statement does do is confirm that there are major developments in the pipeline beyond the ORvR campaign improvements we’re starting to see now, certainly “shout it from the rooftops” doesn’t allude to something small and crappy.
Everyone, who isn’t being negative for the sake of it, will have read that as meaning there will be an expansion announcement made at the end of summer. Mythic must know we’ll do this and they’ve dropped clues elsewhere (“its Red, a Plague and probably a portent”, etc), so this latest comment will have been a calculated decision to tease us more. As such my no doubt unsurprising prediction is at the end of summer we will see announcement of the Red Plague expansion. Of course this leads to all manner of questions about what the expansion will be (Skaven obv, but how/what/where?) and the big question of when actually is the end of summer? That last one has a very varied answer depending on what country you live in and which form of measurement you sign up to, ranging from the beginning of August to late September… So we’re waiting a couple of months at least for the big news.
Moving on… There is mention of the EU players transferring from GOA to Mythic, no shock there and it’s not dwelled on too much, which makes sense as plenty has been said already.
As the letter starts to focus on 1.3.6 we get a few interesting bits of news. First there’s word of a dev diary on its way to explain in more detail about the new armour appearance system. Not much to say about this, other than I look forward to hearing the details. Now we start getting to the stuff that will get the speculation going. In the letter it refers to the ORvR changes coming in 1.3.6 as “the less significant portion of the work”, and it’s pretty clear that Mythic have some big changes in the pipeline for ORvR, so what pray tell are the more significant changes going to be? Larger RvR lakes? Missing Cities? Fortresses? A change to the zone locking system? Hopefully we’ll hear more soon.
Defenders of the Mailbox… Ahh bless, so you’ll have to go into the RvR lakes and risk being attacked while you’re busy AFK leeching renown. Of course I’m sure you’ll find somewhere to hide, but now we should at least be able to hunt you down and slice up your AFK buttocks.
Carrie also talks about “Against all Odds”; a new system that gives you bonus XP, renown and influence when you are outnumbered in a RvR area. Having pondered and discussed this a bit, it seems that this is one of those changes that has a lot of potential, but I’m not entirely sure how it will actually play out on live. It doesn’t encourage you to fight away from your faction’s zerg, it encourages you to fight in a different zone to your zerg. That is an important distinction. For example say Destruction outnumber Order and everyone is fighting in the Chaos Wastes, if I chose to lead my group away from the zerg and try to fight Order in different parts of the zone, then Against all Odds does nothing for my small group because we’re in the same zone as the zerg. However if lead us to a different zone, Against all Odds will still do nothing for me as it makes more sense for the outnumbered Order players to stay in Chaos Wastes and fight the zerg for increased renown, so we won’t find Order elsewhere. Therefore whilst this system does have potential and I don’t think it will really cause any harm, I’m not sure that potential will be realised until further campaign changes are made that properly require us to spread out across different zones at once (i.e. the changes I’ve been banging on about for a while!). Of course once Mythic reveal the full extent of their ORvR changes, perhaps this will work out very well.
And finally, the new options for Sovereign armour. There will be alternate versions of Sovereign armour you can trade yours in for that provide different stats and bonuses, so a DPS Shaman can have DPS Sovereign and a Healer a healing version, etc. This is a good thing. A lot people I know that have Sovereign don’t bother with it and this may change that.
All told it’s a decent letter, sure I’d like more concrete future news, but at least we know it IS coming. 1.3.6 is shaping up to be a half decent patch and I’m intrigued to see what else the Summer of WAR brings us.
In an attempt not to write a monstrous wall of text and considering you’ve probably already read it after I linked yesterday, I won’t quote the whole thing, just bits I feel particularly need it. Which is really only the very first paragraph, it’s an interesting statement dripping with potential joy or disappointment, depending on your general outlook on WAR.
“Through these communications I’ve emphasized how we listen to the community and take your feedback seriously while planning the future of WAR. For the most part, the “P-Letter” (as I like to call it) is intended to be a short term look at the next version or two, giving you a look forward at the months to come. However, it’s very clear that there is a lot of desire to hear about long term planning. We hear these requests loud and clear, and it is our desire to give you a better sense of WAR’s long term plan by the end of summer. Our detractors like to make fun of us for “being really excited” and “itching to tell you about” some “really cool things” (yes, we read the snarky posts), and in this case we want to shout it from the rooftops…but not just yet.”
Some people have chosen to read this as “we acknowledge what you say, but we’re still not saying anything, so like whatever...”. I think that is more than a little harsh. I’ve been at the forefront of calling for proper and solid news for the future of WAR and it seems to me that the time is ripe to do so. However I understand that there may well be reasons, that I am unaware of, that prevent Mythic from saying anything until a certain point. Actually if you think about what's coming out over the next year from Blizard who love to shaft other MMO news releases, betas, etc (poor FF got it this week), perhaps Mythic are right to be cautious. What the above statement does do is confirm that there are major developments in the pipeline beyond the ORvR campaign improvements we’re starting to see now, certainly “shout it from the rooftops” doesn’t allude to something small and crappy.
Everyone, who isn’t being negative for the sake of it, will have read that as meaning there will be an expansion announcement made at the end of summer. Mythic must know we’ll do this and they’ve dropped clues elsewhere (“its Red, a Plague and probably a portent”, etc), so this latest comment will have been a calculated decision to tease us more. As such my no doubt unsurprising prediction is at the end of summer we will see announcement of the Red Plague expansion. Of course this leads to all manner of questions about what the expansion will be (Skaven obv, but how/what/where?) and the big question of when actually is the end of summer? That last one has a very varied answer depending on what country you live in and which form of measurement you sign up to, ranging from the beginning of August to late September… So we’re waiting a couple of months at least for the big news.
Moving on… There is mention of the EU players transferring from GOA to Mythic, no shock there and it’s not dwelled on too much, which makes sense as plenty has been said already.
As the letter starts to focus on 1.3.6 we get a few interesting bits of news. First there’s word of a dev diary on its way to explain in more detail about the new armour appearance system. Not much to say about this, other than I look forward to hearing the details. Now we start getting to the stuff that will get the speculation going. In the letter it refers to the ORvR changes coming in 1.3.6 as “the less significant portion of the work”, and it’s pretty clear that Mythic have some big changes in the pipeline for ORvR, so what pray tell are the more significant changes going to be? Larger RvR lakes? Missing Cities? Fortresses? A change to the zone locking system? Hopefully we’ll hear more soon.
Defenders of the Mailbox… Ahh bless, so you’ll have to go into the RvR lakes and risk being attacked while you’re busy AFK leeching renown. Of course I’m sure you’ll find somewhere to hide, but now we should at least be able to hunt you down and slice up your AFK buttocks.
Carrie also talks about “Against all Odds”; a new system that gives you bonus XP, renown and influence when you are outnumbered in a RvR area. Having pondered and discussed this a bit, it seems that this is one of those changes that has a lot of potential, but I’m not entirely sure how it will actually play out on live. It doesn’t encourage you to fight away from your faction’s zerg, it encourages you to fight in a different zone to your zerg. That is an important distinction. For example say Destruction outnumber Order and everyone is fighting in the Chaos Wastes, if I chose to lead my group away from the zerg and try to fight Order in different parts of the zone, then Against all Odds does nothing for my small group because we’re in the same zone as the zerg. However if lead us to a different zone, Against all Odds will still do nothing for me as it makes more sense for the outnumbered Order players to stay in Chaos Wastes and fight the zerg for increased renown, so we won’t find Order elsewhere. Therefore whilst this system does have potential and I don’t think it will really cause any harm, I’m not sure that potential will be realised until further campaign changes are made that properly require us to spread out across different zones at once (i.e. the changes I’ve been banging on about for a while!). Of course once Mythic reveal the full extent of their ORvR changes, perhaps this will work out very well.
And finally, the new options for Sovereign armour. There will be alternate versions of Sovereign armour you can trade yours in for that provide different stats and bonuses, so a DPS Shaman can have DPS Sovereign and a Healer a healing version, etc. This is a good thing. A lot people I know that have Sovereign don’t bother with it and this may change that.
All told it’s a decent letter, sure I’d like more concrete future news, but at least we know it IS coming. 1.3.6 is shaping up to be a half decent patch and I’m intrigued to see what else the Summer of WAR brings us.
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
ORvR changes announced - updated
UPDATE! Producer's Letter is out. Reading it now, will comment ASAP.
First off we have a couple of small but important changes posted here:
We'd like to announce a couple upcoming changes for General Gameplay in v1.3.6. Please keep in mind that these are not patch notes and additional adjustments may be in the works.
And then the big news posted here and I've highlighted something in this that is very important and easily missed.
We'd like to announce some upcoming changes for RvR in v1.3.6. As stated by Carrie Gouskos in a recent Producer's Letter, there are many upcoming changes for ORvR in the near future. While some of these changes do affect ORvR, they do not conclude the list by any means. We are vigilantly working on much larger improvements to be released in a later version.
ORvR: Victory Points for PVE and Prior Tier have been removed. New pool values are as follows:
Tier 1
Objectives: 40%
Scenarios: 40%
Skirmish: 20%
Tiers 2 & 3
Objectives: 45%
Scenarios: 35%
Skirmish: 20%
Tier 4
Objectives: 45%
Scenarios: 30%
Skirmish: 25%
No more PvE being linked to the ORvR campaign, no more annoying prior tier nonsense. I am pleased with all of these changes, it's not everything we need, but this is another important step, moving towards a much better campaign system. I'm very keen to hear about the "much larger improvements to be released in a later version". I've really got my fingers crossed for larger ORvR lakes... pleeeeeeease.
I'm liking what I hear Mythic, keep it coming!
First off we have a couple of small but important changes posted here:
We'd like to announce a couple upcoming changes for General Gameplay in v1.3.6. Please keep in mind that these are not patch notes and additional adjustments may be in the works.
- New User Interface option: Sticky Targeting. Enabling this option will prevent you from clearing your target(s) by clicking an empty location in the gamespace. (Developer Note(s): clears the offensive target first in the event that both an offensive and defensive target is selected.)
- Player health bars will now update correctly when receiving damage or heals. (Developer Note(s): this corrects an issue where health bars would "flicker or bounce" upon receiving a heal or damage.)
And then the big news posted here and I've highlighted something in this that is very important and easily missed.
We'd like to announce some upcoming changes for RvR in v1.3.6. As stated by Carrie Gouskos in a recent Producer's Letter, there are many upcoming changes for ORvR in the near future. While some of these changes do affect ORvR, they do not conclude the list by any means. We are vigilantly working on much larger improvements to be released in a later version.
ORvR: Victory Points for PVE and Prior Tier have been removed. New pool values are as follows:
Tier 1
Objectives: 40%
Scenarios: 40%
Skirmish: 20%
Tiers 2 & 3
Objectives: 45%
Scenarios: 35%
Skirmish: 20%
Tier 4
Objectives: 45%
Scenarios: 30%
Skirmish: 25%
- ORvR: Zone capture rewards will now only be awarded to players within the RvR lake or an associated Tier's Scenario. Players will remain eligible for rewards for 5 minutes after leaving the RvR lake or an associate's Tier's Scenario as long as the player is within the appropriate pairing.
- Against All Odds: in the event that an army is outnumbered within an RvR lake, members of the outnumbered army will receive a scaling bonus to Experience, Renown and Influence. This bonus becomes active on qualified players after being outnumbered by 20% or more. The bonus cannot surpass 400% and requires at least 6 players of each Realm to be present within the RvR lake. (Developer Note(s): this bonus is additive.)
- Scenarios: players with the "Quitter!" debuff will no longer suffer a penalty to Experience and Renown but will now be unable to queue for a Scenario until the "Quitter!" debuff has faded.
- Contested Cities: Players belonging to the Realm that lost Stage 3 will now always be properly disabled by the Routed ability.
- Contested Cities: Portals leading out of the Khorne War Quarters and Slaanesh Chambers no longer check for combat status. (Developer Note(s): YAY!)
- Contested Cities: Guards will no longer spawn at the six objectives within Altdorf and The Inevitable City. (Developer Note(s): this corrects an issue where Warlords could become stuck inside geometry.)
No more PvE being linked to the ORvR campaign, no more annoying prior tier nonsense. I am pleased with all of these changes, it's not everything we need, but this is another important step, moving towards a much better campaign system. I'm very keen to hear about the "much larger improvements to be released in a later version". I've really got my fingers crossed for larger ORvR lakes... pleeeeeeease.
I'm liking what I hear Mythic, keep it coming!
Sunday, 27 June 2010
WAR's Lost Lands - Chaos Wastes
I wrote recently about my thoughts on how Mythic should be “Changing Tier 4 zones from OK to awesome”. I was suggesting not only opening up the zones to become full oRvR enabled, but also changing all the existing quality scenery from completely unused Public Quests into PvP themed objectives or events. This would give the rest of the zones more purpose, would spread the combat out better and help to reduce lag, as well as give alternatives to the constant and oh so bloody tedious zerging. In the post I included some screenshots of some of the awesome wasted scenery from Kadrin Valley’s PvE areas, which after posting got me thinking a bit more about how much of the game people just don’t get to see and what amazing potential there is for RvR if those areas lost the PQs and gained some PvP hotness.
As a result, I had a chat with Biggsie and we decided that we would go exploring, taking nothing but our heavily armoured (or mutated in his case) arses and a camera (AKA printscreen) across the Tier 4 landscape on a journey of visual stimulation. As we travel the lands, we’re going to post our findings between our two blogs with a series of articles showing some of the cool scenery and potential for RvR goodness that we encounter. This includes sneaking around the Order PvE zones, so certainly for me I’ve found things I’d never seen before. Didn’t find any players in the PvE zones mind you! :P
I’m starting off with the Chaos Wastes and Biggsie is visiting Reikland which he'll be posting very soon, so keep an eye on his blog. The Chaos Wastes are a mutated and rather freaky land, that’s also very, very blue. In fact it’s safe to say that this is a landscape that went down to the Crossroads and fell down on its knees.
As a result, I had a chat with Biggsie and we decided that we would go exploring, taking nothing but our heavily armoured (or mutated in his case) arses and a camera (AKA printscreen) across the Tier 4 landscape on a journey of visual stimulation. As we travel the lands, we’re going to post our findings between our two blogs with a series of articles showing some of the cool scenery and potential for RvR goodness that we encounter. This includes sneaking around the Order PvE zones, so certainly for me I’ve found things I’d never seen before. Didn’t find any players in the PvE zones mind you! :P
I’m starting off with the Chaos Wastes and Biggsie is visiting Reikland which he'll be posting very soon, so keep an eye on his blog. The Chaos Wastes are a mutated and rather freaky land, that’s also very, very blue. In fact it’s safe to say that this is a landscape that went down to the Crossroads and fell down on its knees.
This is how RvR is limited at the moment. Note it's a very open zone, so within the red boundary you are able to roam all over.
And this.. is what it could be like.. A huge zone with an incredible amount of freedom. I've marked the roads, but they're really not very restrictive in the Chaos Wastes. Unlike my first post I've not marked where I think other objectives should be, simply because there are just so many options. Basically anything marked with a Public Quest marker, camp or scenery will do!
Click images for the full size screenshot.
There are load sof strange looking castles, towers and ruins scattered around. They could be used for something like the keeps we get in RvR, standard objectives, or for RvR driven events akin to the new city siege. Imagination is the only limit. Posh door on this one below.
The Wastes are covered in these thorn bushes gone mad, they're a real wasted opportunity. You could have some crazy fighting amongst them, with line of sight being broken and chasing people through a forest of thorns.
I love the look of these towers. What a waste of a great bit of scenery! By the way, check out the snowflakes... Chaos Stars! Very cool.
All over the Chaos Wastes you'll find this huge metal circles, I'm not sure if they're meant to be man made or if it's the Chaos Gods chucking weirdness around. Not got any PvP use springing to mind, but they look great. ;)
This temple (?) is on the Order side, but you can see it for miles around. It is absolutely huge, and... uhm empty?
Yup, empty! Well apart from like 3 NPCs. Surely we should be fighting in there no?
It's worth a third screenshot, check out all the detail in the walls. All this effort and most people will probably never go in there,
I found this like field of frozen or petrified bodies. I've no idea what it's about, but it was a pain to move through. Perhaps getting stuck here would be too much of a headache in PvP. Or maybe it could be the point of it...
Looks like the Maw of Madness scenario. Like the thorn forests, this is another bit of terrain that could be fun to fight in. We just need a reason to do so.
Strange looking tunnel...
Teeth???
No idea what this once was, it's dead now anyway. I suspect it was angry when alive.
Another of those great looking towers. Another opportunity.
This one is the first of the towers I pictured above, obviously from a distance. The water you can see, some of it is frozen, some not, but I swear it changes. Either that or I just got confused. Imagine that though, fighting in a zone where the water is sometimes solid...
And here concludes my little tour of the Chaos Wastes. I'm sure some people will have seen all of these areas before. However if you're started the game after Land of the Dead was launched then it's quite likely you leveled from 25-40 there and/or the RvR lakes, in which case you had no reason to visit any of these places. Which I think is a shame.
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Changing Tier 4 zones from OK to awesome
A common topic for my ramblings is the small size of the oRvR lakes and how so much of the tier 4 zones are completely wasted, empty and utterly devoid of life. Admittedly I originally wanted to play on a full PvP server, but there was a lot of scaremongering about the chicken system and we decided not to risk it being a disaster. To be honest the difference turned out to negligible, since even on full PvP servers the oRvR lake is no bigger and Land of the Dead emptied the PvE quest areas anyway. Today I think that regardless of my old bias WAR desperately needs to expand it's Tier 4 oRVR lakes.
Well it’s all good and well saying that and go on about how they could be better, even bashing Mythic for it, but I figured I should also post to demonstrate this more clearly and give some examples of how I think they could be improved. As I’ve said before, I think the Tier 4 zones should become fully oRvR active, it would give us a lot more to fight over and there is absolutely nobody using the zones for PvE anyway, since levelling in Land of the Dead (a fully oRvR zone) is a much more efficient way to get XP. While thinking and preparing for this article I scouted various Tier 4 zones to make sure this is not just my assumption. On my travels scouting multiple zones in detail and at a range of difference times and days, I have seen ONE Choppa in the PvE areas. This is on Karak Norn which is a very busy server. So I can say with confidence that there is barely anyone doing any Tier 4 zone PvE or their PQs (Public Quests).
I decided I’d use Kadrin Valley for this example.
It’s a great looking and very well themed zone with some mark out moments for the Warhammer lore whore in me, but it’s oRvR lake is somewhat flawed. I've highlighted it below:
Basically it’s a big circle and that’s about it. There are a wide range of ways you can travel through the zone as a whole, yet it's only the yellow roads below that are RvR enabled.
You can take alternative routes through the PvE areas, but it is rare anybody bothers. I think this is because they are PvE; people don’t bother learning their way around in the first place, there is no sense of threat when in them, there are no RvR objectives in the PvE area annnnnnnd as alternative routes... they just don’t work very well. You can sneak across to get behind the enemy, but with all the objectives on the big circle oRvR lake, the enemy will just zerg around to you in no time anyway.
So what would happen to our possible paths of travel if we made the entire zone oRvR enabled?
Bloody hell! That's suddenly become a much more complex zone, with a massive array of places to go, but as of yet no reason to do so. It still leaves all the oRvR objectives around the circle and the other routes are still of no use. So what we need to do is add a few more objectives (in a general sense of the word) to what was once the PvE area. I'm just going to add 4 for now, though I think we'd want to add more to the left side of the zone.
You will notice I've used the keep symbol. The reason being is the zone already has loads of keeps and fortified buildings in it. They're PQs mainly, empty of course, but with more character than the ones in the oRvR lake. It's actually a bit of a travesty that they're not being used and that so many players probably never even see them.
1) Tucked away in the south east is this castle with a classic dwarven style keep and other buildings. It doesn't have to work exactly as the old keeps, perhaps it would have multiple keep Lords spread around that need to die within a certain amount of time between each other. Or something...
2) Here we have yet another keep, but with a different awesome look and interestingly it's at one of the highest points in the entire zone, which is a loooong way up. I really like the giant statues and clouds that drift around.
3) The Slayer Keep. A massive fortress, which should be so awesome, but is just another empty PQ. It's gagging for something cool, not just another keep or fortress. Perhaps it could be turned into some kind of RvR enabled PQ, inspired by the City Sieges? A big RvR PQ of some kind...
4) A dwarven brewery... Stunties take their drink very, very seriously. As such these places are heavily fortified. Perhaps it could just be like one of the normal battle objectives or could be turned into something more akin to a Dark Age of Camelot tower?
I found loads of other things I could have used here. And I mean LOADS.
By adding these (and more) extra objectives, using the existing excellent terrain, we now have reasons to fight all over the zone and not just zerg round a bloody great circle all day. There's room for zergs, warband and small group play, all with choices in what to do. I’m sure whoever designed the PQs may have a tang of sorrow at my suggestion to remove them, but sorry chaps, they simply do not get played. You’ve given us really cool looking stuff, but the system that uses them does not give us any motivation to go there. Change them from PvE to PvP and not only do you give reason to your high quality graphics, but you also reinvigorate an entire zone and oRvR itself.
Most Tier 4 Warhammer zones are like this. The terrain is awesome, but we get forced away from so much of it and spend our game time ignorant of the amazing art and design in vast swathes of WAR's game-world. If we want XP we do land of the Dead, if at 40 we want PvE we do instances, we don't ever do PQs. WAR's existing landscape could be the most amazing RvR zones ever, they just need a little tweaking and the decision to really make WAR's Tier 4 about PvP.
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About Me
- Bootae
- Half man half pixel. Music obsessive, likes a drink, occasional bastard.