Honourable combat: pixels at dawn

I got a message on WHA the other day from a well known Order player, he was thanking me for how I handled a little situation we’d got into and mentioned it was rare to see such sportmanship. I’d been walking through a quiet area in Praag when the infamous Ironbreaker attacked me and we instantly went at it one on one. I think I was going to lose the fight, but I wasn’t getting horrifically spanked or anything, it was a good fight. Anyway, a passing Destruction player randomly charged in and so I backed out and let the Ironbreaker deal with him, rather than have it turn into a ganking and tarnish what had been a fair fight.
 
His post about it has got me wondering; is it really that rare for people to show sportsmanship in WAR?
 
I guess it depends on your own standards, people will have different expectations of what is fair or not, their own definition of sportsmanship. You could say we all write our own Bushido code of honourable pixel based combat. I suppose by my own personal code it is pretty rare. I will always take people on 1v1, will tell guildies to “leave them to me” and in general will make a choice over whether I join in other people’s fights based upon how fair I think the fight is. Unless of course the enemy is well known for being a twat or merciless ganker, they can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. So that backing out when others pile in wasn’t an unusual moment for me. I know I’m possibly a bit odd, playing a computer game against faceless opposition and giving a toss about being fair, but for me it adds to the game experience. This whole honour lark is not because I’m a roleplayer or anything (nothing against them, I’m just too lazy), but I love the atmosphere of it in MMOs. Two enemy warriors roaming the land looking for challenges, randomly meeting in some desolated battlefield and going at it in some testosterone fuelled duel. I think my MMO baptism in Ultima Online and the “Eternal Knights of the Circle” guild made a long-term impression, it was a brilliant guild with a very strict code of conduct and was a bit of a roleplaying chivalric type affair.
 
However I’m very aware most people don’t give a rats arse about fair fights, certainly when solo it’s not often other people don’t take the opportunity to try and gank me. And actually I don’t care at all, they are under no obligation to play by my rules and it just gives me a chance to try and embarrass them by killing all of them at once. I remember a fight in Reikland recently where a Witch Hunter who jumped me was losing badly, so his 3 guild mates (that at first were just watching) decided to join in and gank me. Unfortunately (for them) a combination of my stagger, other crowd control, sword & shield set up and their being… well… not great, it led to them all respawning hopefully rather red faced. Moments like that make the many times I get brutally ganked worth it.
 
Not that I’m saying playing with honour makes you a better player or person. There is an argument about your in-game actions reflecting your real life personality, but I don’t entirely buy that. The anonymity of the internet, plus the fact we’re talking about games and the death of pixels, twists people’s behaviour and I don’t think its as straight-forward as saying all gankers are wankers in real life. Though readers of Karak Norn’s WHA server forum have seen the line crossed recently, with online behaviour (thankfully not in game) that I’ll make no such excuses for. Utterly despicable behaviour and anyone justifying it is either a child or morally deficient. I’ll not link it; people will know what I’m talking about.
 
So how do you play? Is it pure red is dead and nothing else matters? Are there situations you will let play out? Or are you as anally retentive about playing fair as I am?

Fight Club continued

OK my first night's 3 to1 win/loss ratio hasn't lasted :P I'm probably at about 40/60% win/loss now, though to be fair I am repeatedly fighting the people I can't beat to work out how what I need to do. A slow, painfull, but interesting process that. Plus of course lots of these duellers are bloody good, so it would be arrogant as hell to assume I can show up and instantly get consistently good results.

Duelling is too addictive. I really must get some sleep.


© 2008 - Bootae's Bloody Blog

Fight Club

A couple of days ago I found myself at a bit of a loss for things to do. It was late and it seemed everyone was rammed into a zerg fest fortress thing, something I can rarely be bothered with. I noticed my guild’s infamous duelling Sorcerer “Infexion” was off in Etaine. On Karak-Norn Etaine has become the server’s sort of official duelling zone (when not unlocked for RvR of course), it’s generally acknowledged that you leave the duellers to it, unless you want to join in. So with nothing else to do, I figured I’d take my Chosen over to Etaine and try out this duelling lark.

It was an interesting change of pace. I’m pretty handy with my Chosen in group/warband oRvR, on even terms my guild groups are a tough prospect and losing is not something we do that often. Also whilst in scenarios and roaming generally, I fairly often get in 1v1 situations and it’s a very rare occasion that I lose, so I was fairly confident about duelling. This was probably a bit naïve, as I’ve now realised there is one huge difference between random 1v1s and the organised duels. That difference being: preparation.

When I’m scrubbing about Tier 4 or in scenarios I’m using equipment and tactics that will put me in a good stead for any situation and opponent. I’m using an all round, cope with anything set up and due to how suddenly combat can start, normally I won’t have time to switch tactics or gear. The same applies to my opponents. Duelling however is totally different. Prior to the fight starting people are selecting the optimum tactics and equipment set up for that particular opponent. This is something I totally failed to get my head round and I just went in with my standard set up. I've no idea what the best set ups for 1v1 fights are, I've had to just wing it so far... So how did it go?

Actually it has gone pretty well. I’ve won more than I lost (over 27 fights I had a roughly 3-1 wins/loss ratio), but I have found myself consistently losing to one class; Swordmasters using shields. There are also some classes I’ve not yet duelled (KotBS & Runepriest), so I don’t know how I will fair against them. I’ve had a chat with a couple of the big name duelling Chosen about my Swordmaster problem and they initially put it down to my gear. I’m using Invader & Darkpromise armour (I can’t equip my Warlord yet, the price of having too many alts…), which means I’m running (with my aura on) at about 800 strength. These guys are in the 900+ region, which certainly makes a difference and I could see them hitting harder, but I now suspect the main thing is actually tactic choice rather than that 100 strength difference. After further discussion with one of the guys I discovered (amongst things) he was using a tactic that boosts our DPS by 15%, but reduces our armour by 33%. This is something I wouldn’t normally even consider using, it’s too risky for my normal group play. But this isn’t group play, this is duelling and the environment is totally different. People are using different tactics for different opponents, which I suppose is obvious really, but having not duelled before, I hadn’t considered it... It’s got me wondering how many different tactic set-ups I actually need to for fighting different classes.

After a year of WAR it’s fascinating to discover I’ve got a whole new style of play to learn. Though I'm also preparing myself for some brutal spankings as I go up against more of the seasoned pros... :P

That and I need to pull my finger out and instead of having multiple RR5x characters, lots of nice LV gear on them and a bazillion other alts, I need to become a renown whore and get my Chosen’s RR up big time...