Jeff Hickman has posted part 2 of his letter from the producer here. It highlights some of the other good bits about the 1.3 patch, there's certainly more to it than just Land of the Dead. The dungeon lockout changes are a key point for me. Also I was particularly pleased to see this:
...we've already begun assembling focus groups from guild leaders to solo players. We're asking what makes you tick and what you want to see next. The feedback we gather from these groups, the forums, blogs and those of you we play with everyday in-game is very important to us and helps to shape the game every day. I thank everyone who’s taken the time to talk to us – it really is appreciated!
Based heavily on that feedback, our current “Top 5” areas that we are giving significant attention to are:
1) Addressing concerns related to Crowd Control and Area of Effect abilities.
2) Continuing to improve client and server stability and performance.
3) Strengthening and improving the Tier 4 experience.
4) Improving server population distribution – both in terms of overall population and realm balance.
5) Improving itemization and the overall distribution of “carrots” (rewards) throughout the game.
I would say that is exactly right. It goes to show that they are listening and actually do acknowledge the game's problem areas. If they back up that acknowledgement with action, then the future of WAR looks very positive.
And then of course the big news. 1.3 is live in the US! Hopefully us Euros will only be the usual 24 hours behind. I can't wait to get stuck in :)
For my fellow Euro gamers, make sure you check out the pre-patch download GOA are providing. Should save us all some hassle on patch day.
http://www.war-europe.com/#/prepatch/?lang=en
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Monday, 15 June 2009
Chosen + Great Weapon + armour dye =
PIMPED
Not that shields look bad...
I think Chosen are probably the best looking tank class ever. Mythic totally nailed the classic Gamesworkshop chaos style. There's loads of things I love about WAR, but one of my absolute faves is the customisable armour and the way that you can always make sure you have a themed look. None of that clown vomit mixed armour that other games often chuck over us.
Come on you bloggers, show us what you got...
Friday, 12 June 2009
Chosen, great weapon tanks?
Something you can often see being discussed in Chosen class forums is what's better, great weapon or sword and shield. It seems that the majority of players believe that for most situations the great weapon wins. I'd agree too, sort of.
Sure there's loads of situations where you want to be using a shield and there's also plenty of decent specs you can go with, but most of the time (and with the right gear) you'd be better off with a variant of the cookie cutter Dread/Discord mastery spec.
Other than in Fortress or large keep battles (where every extra bit of survivability counts), we're just not really encouraged to use a shield. Unlike the other tanks, Chosen have no abilities that effect block and only have 2 things that even relate to block. Those being an aura with a heal proc on blocks and a tactic that boosts your parry if you block. The Corrupting Retribution aura is so poor it's barely worth having on your action bar, it is truely terrible. The Mixed Defenses tactic is good, but it's boosting parry, not block. Since parry only effects melee, it does not compare with abilities that increase block. Other tank classes all have ways of increasing block chance, which dramatically increases their survivability. Chosen do not have any.
We do however have ways of increasing our parry rate. Supression, a standard trainable ability has a mere 10 sec cooldown and increases our parry rate by 25% for 15 seconds. Also Chosen with great weapons can get very high crit rates, 30+% is easy to reach and with that spec it means you'll be reducing everyone with 30fts damage by 25% with every crit. Since that effect lasts 10 seconds and you'll crit multiple times within that 10 seconds, it's effectively a constant debuff. By stacking strength you can hit very hard for a tank, but you're still able to stack enough toughness and wounds to be difficult to kill. You are squishier of course, by not using a shield you probably missing around 30% block which reduces a lot of damage, but it is nowhere near as bad as people think. With 700-1000 toughness, decent armour value, resists and our parry buffs, a Chosen with a great weapon can still be a tough cookie indeed. BTW you don't need a shield to use the guard ability either.
As such in a lot of situations you might be missing the 30% or so block on frontal attacks, but you've gained a 25% damage reduction on everyone nearby and you're doing a LOT more damage. In this age of bomb groups, that's pretty damn effective.
So why did I only sort of agree?
Maybe I'm a mentalist, but it's a bit dull with a great weapon. Sure you get to see some big numbers, get to actually kill players, are not ignored by enemies, apply an awesome debuff and are generally a very effective uber killing bastard, but... (lol but he says :P ) I like having some of the other abilities that you can't get with a great weapon spec. Things like the silences from Tzeentch reflection (hitting that and hold the line for 85% disrupt and silencing anyone you disrupt is nice...), the stun from Downfall and of course Hold the line. It feels more sort of tanky, if you know what I mean. The problem is at heart we know it's just not as good. I think this is why I change between great weapon and shield specs every single week, like the littlest hobo I just can't settle down.
Perhaps we're meant to be great weapon tanks. After all, Chosen is the only tank without a block buffing ability and our most powerfull damage reducing ability is reliant on critical hits and is from the Dread (great weapon) mastery. Maybe Mythic are telling us something...
Sure there's loads of situations where you want to be using a shield and there's also plenty of decent specs you can go with, but most of the time (and with the right gear) you'd be better off with a variant of the cookie cutter Dread/Discord mastery spec.
Other than in Fortress or large keep battles (where every extra bit of survivability counts), we're just not really encouraged to use a shield. Unlike the other tanks, Chosen have no abilities that effect block and only have 2 things that even relate to block. Those being an aura with a heal proc on blocks and a tactic that boosts your parry if you block. The Corrupting Retribution aura is so poor it's barely worth having on your action bar, it is truely terrible. The Mixed Defenses tactic is good, but it's boosting parry, not block. Since parry only effects melee, it does not compare with abilities that increase block. Other tank classes all have ways of increasing block chance, which dramatically increases their survivability. Chosen do not have any.
We do however have ways of increasing our parry rate. Supression, a standard trainable ability has a mere 10 sec cooldown and increases our parry rate by 25% for 15 seconds. Also Chosen with great weapons can get very high crit rates, 30+% is easy to reach and with that spec it means you'll be reducing everyone with 30fts damage by 25% with every crit. Since that effect lasts 10 seconds and you'll crit multiple times within that 10 seconds, it's effectively a constant debuff. By stacking strength you can hit very hard for a tank, but you're still able to stack enough toughness and wounds to be difficult to kill. You are squishier of course, by not using a shield you probably missing around 30% block which reduces a lot of damage, but it is nowhere near as bad as people think. With 700-1000 toughness, decent armour value, resists and our parry buffs, a Chosen with a great weapon can still be a tough cookie indeed. BTW you don't need a shield to use the guard ability either.
As such in a lot of situations you might be missing the 30% or so block on frontal attacks, but you've gained a 25% damage reduction on everyone nearby and you're doing a LOT more damage. In this age of bomb groups, that's pretty damn effective.
So why did I only sort of agree?
Maybe I'm a mentalist, but it's a bit dull with a great weapon. Sure you get to see some big numbers, get to actually kill players, are not ignored by enemies, apply an awesome debuff and are generally a very effective uber killing bastard, but... (lol but he says :P ) I like having some of the other abilities that you can't get with a great weapon spec. Things like the silences from Tzeentch reflection (hitting that and hold the line for 85% disrupt and silencing anyone you disrupt is nice...), the stun from Downfall and of course Hold the line. It feels more sort of tanky, if you know what I mean. The problem is at heart we know it's just not as good. I think this is why I change between great weapon and shield specs every single week, like the littlest hobo I just can't settle down.
Perhaps we're meant to be great weapon tanks. After all, Chosen is the only tank without a block buffing ability and our most powerfull damage reducing ability is reliant on critical hits and is from the Dread (great weapon) mastery. Maybe Mythic are telling us something...
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
So where is Mark Jacobs?
It's been ages since we heard a thing from Mark Jacobs (EA Mythic General Manager). A bit strange for Mark to have vanished from the community for this amount of time, when before he was always so publically involved. The last time I saw his name mentioned was in a press release about the upcoming Ultima Online expansion.
And recently instead of a letter from the General Manager, we got one from the Developer, written by Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer...
Anyone know why Mark's gone silent?
Abducted by aliens?
Pulled into the Ultima Underworld?
Being tortured by an angry Edam cheese?
Or did all those forum nerd raging twats with their incessant barrage of personal attacks drive him to say enough already?
And recently instead of a letter from the General Manager, we got one from the Developer, written by Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer...
Anyone know why Mark's gone silent?
Abducted by aliens?
Pulled into the Ultima Underworld?
Being tortured by an angry Edam cheese?
Or did all those forum nerd raging twats with their incessant barrage of personal attacks drive him to say enough already?
Saturday, 6 June 2009
Fortress attack? Hmm nah...
It seems a lot of people didn’t notice this, but a hot fix a few days ago brought in reductions to the population caps in Fortresses. When this was discussed on my guild’s voice comms, the topic was met with groans of frustration and people were quick to voice their irritation at the whole thing. Generally we’re a pretty positive bunch, but in this case negativity was hardly surprising.
I’ve posted before about the problems with Forts and what could be done to improve them, but with this latest change and other recent issues with forts, it’s time to talk about them again.
The population caps were first introduced to stop the zones crashing. Prior to this going live, a reliable (but lame) defensive tactic was to flood the fortress with players of any level and crash the zone. Of course even without purposefully trying to achieve this, zone crashes were extremely probable on almost every fortress attack. The introduction of the level limit (37+) and the population caps (limiting how many players could get into a fort zone) dramatically reduced the frequency of zone crashes, though it didn’t eradicate them by any means. Thankfully the 10-second delay lagfest of the past was gone, but busy fortress attacks remained far from lag free and their playability was debateable. As such whilst things got better, they still hadn’t actually become good enough. Unfortunately the population cap also introduced us to some new problems, problems that this latest hot fix is likely to make worse.
When trying to lock a zone prior to a Fortress, lots of people will camp on the very edge of the zone so that they can be sure of claiming one of the limited spaces before the cap is reached. Likewise some people on the defending side will not bother trying to stop the zone lock and will just camp inside the Fort, which of course stops other players on the defensive side getting in. You could of course argue that both are valid strategies if you want to launch a quick attack or a solid defence. Alas, with conqueror crests, loot and renown up for grabs, it’s an argument that in some cases isn’t always convincing. Then of course there’s the argument that you want your best guilds/alliance in the defence/attack, but however correct that might be it just leads to accusations of elitism and forum shit-storms. Plus there’s no guarantee it won’t be them getting shut out anyway. End result is always a truckload of people being left out with little to do for a while.
The other big problem is it’s delivered a steaming box of apathy, something that I myself have suffered from. Why bother going to a fortress? We probably won’t all get in and our warband will get split up. Which if you’re a guild that likes to play together, well, that buggers things up good and proper. If you do get inside what do you get? A laggy, dull experience that is nothing more than a keep with a bigger wall. Ok so what about the loot? With the game having been out 10 months or so it seems most of us have at the very least full Sentinel, so Conqueror is just a novelty for a lot of people. And that lot of geared up people are often the ones you want in the fight...
Yea gawds you negative git Bootae! What about the renown?!?!
I can get more renown from 1 scenario in 15mins. Or a whopping 2 scenarios if they’re bad ones. Check out this screenshot from a friends scenario:
Ok that’s an extreme example and I’ve not seen renown that high before, but I regularly see 3-6k, for a mere 15 minutes work. Add that and the previous together and we see that fighting in a Fortress is a bloody uneconomical way of progressing with your character.
Of course if you don’t take Forts you don’t get to siege Cities, but it’s an issue of motivation there. Do you want to spend up to an hour not having fun in a fort with the only carrot being that IF you win, you’ve now got to go through the whole crap again (and the zone locks before hand) and still could fail at the end of that? I sure as hell don’t. I think like most people, I don’t mind losing in a game as long as the game itself is enjoyable.
So what has lowering the population cap done? Well, it HAS made fortresses more playable. I’m now running with full spell effects on and for once it’s actually just about playable, but (as I’ve already seen today) people just aren’t bothered. Yes it will run better but we’re now less likely to get in, the rewards are mediocre and it’s still AoE hell, so why not just let someone else go through the tedium? And what about when Land of the Dead arrives, will anyone attack a defended fort again?
Attacking a fortress is just a waste of time.
Update: I've been on 2 fort takes today where the attackers were outnumbered by the defenders, despite there being plenty of Destruction around. People just aren't interested in Forts.
The last attack was a total classic. We were hitting the inner door when one of our guys on comms says something like "uhm, look behind us, everyone is running away". I turn and... yup, after basically just looking at the door everyone simply left. It wasn't even a wipe, people just couldn't be arsed with it. I don't blame them either.
I’ve posted before about the problems with Forts and what could be done to improve them, but with this latest change and other recent issues with forts, it’s time to talk about them again.
The population caps were first introduced to stop the zones crashing. Prior to this going live, a reliable (but lame) defensive tactic was to flood the fortress with players of any level and crash the zone. Of course even without purposefully trying to achieve this, zone crashes were extremely probable on almost every fortress attack. The introduction of the level limit (37+) and the population caps (limiting how many players could get into a fort zone) dramatically reduced the frequency of zone crashes, though it didn’t eradicate them by any means. Thankfully the 10-second delay lagfest of the past was gone, but busy fortress attacks remained far from lag free and their playability was debateable. As such whilst things got better, they still hadn’t actually become good enough. Unfortunately the population cap also introduced us to some new problems, problems that this latest hot fix is likely to make worse.
When trying to lock a zone prior to a Fortress, lots of people will camp on the very edge of the zone so that they can be sure of claiming one of the limited spaces before the cap is reached. Likewise some people on the defending side will not bother trying to stop the zone lock and will just camp inside the Fort, which of course stops other players on the defensive side getting in. You could of course argue that both are valid strategies if you want to launch a quick attack or a solid defence. Alas, with conqueror crests, loot and renown up for grabs, it’s an argument that in some cases isn’t always convincing. Then of course there’s the argument that you want your best guilds/alliance in the defence/attack, but however correct that might be it just leads to accusations of elitism and forum shit-storms. Plus there’s no guarantee it won’t be them getting shut out anyway. End result is always a truckload of people being left out with little to do for a while.
The other big problem is it’s delivered a steaming box of apathy, something that I myself have suffered from. Why bother going to a fortress? We probably won’t all get in and our warband will get split up. Which if you’re a guild that likes to play together, well, that buggers things up good and proper. If you do get inside what do you get? A laggy, dull experience that is nothing more than a keep with a bigger wall. Ok so what about the loot? With the game having been out 10 months or so it seems most of us have at the very least full Sentinel, so Conqueror is just a novelty for a lot of people. And that lot of geared up people are often the ones you want in the fight...
Yea gawds you negative git Bootae! What about the renown?!?!
I can get more renown from 1 scenario in 15mins. Or a whopping 2 scenarios if they’re bad ones. Check out this screenshot from a friends scenario:
Ok that’s an extreme example and I’ve not seen renown that high before, but I regularly see 3-6k, for a mere 15 minutes work. Add that and the previous together and we see that fighting in a Fortress is a bloody uneconomical way of progressing with your character.
Of course if you don’t take Forts you don’t get to siege Cities, but it’s an issue of motivation there. Do you want to spend up to an hour not having fun in a fort with the only carrot being that IF you win, you’ve now got to go through the whole crap again (and the zone locks before hand) and still could fail at the end of that? I sure as hell don’t. I think like most people, I don’t mind losing in a game as long as the game itself is enjoyable.
So what has lowering the population cap done? Well, it HAS made fortresses more playable. I’m now running with full spell effects on and for once it’s actually just about playable, but (as I’ve already seen today) people just aren’t bothered. Yes it will run better but we’re now less likely to get in, the rewards are mediocre and it’s still AoE hell, so why not just let someone else go through the tedium? And what about when Land of the Dead arrives, will anyone attack a defended fort again?
Attacking a fortress is just a waste of time.
Update: I've been on 2 fort takes today where the attackers were outnumbered by the defenders, despite there being plenty of Destruction around. People just aren't interested in Forts.
The last attack was a total classic. We were hitting the inner door when one of our guys on comms says something like "uhm, look behind us, everyone is running away". I turn and... yup, after basically just looking at the door everyone simply left. It wasn't even a wipe, people just couldn't be arsed with it. I don't blame them either.
Thursday, 4 June 2009
Character changes removed from 1.3
Yup read it here: http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=pts_announcements&message.id=53#M53
Sensible move, should have been done that way in the first place instead of one monster patch. Unfortunately now that we've all been built up to having some freedom from AoE of Doom, a lot of people are going to be feeling rather let down. Hopefully people will be distracted enough by Land of the Dead, but I'd advise Mythic to get their tin hats on! I can smell the forum rage quitters from here...
Edit: I've heard that some of the AoE changes WILL be going in with 1.3. I've not yet found any official post confirming this, but I'll link soon as (or if...) I find one. In the meantime, here's a pyramid and cool sky effects..
Sensible move, should have been done that way in the first place instead of one monster patch. Unfortunately now that we've all been built up to having some freedom from AoE of Doom, a lot of people are going to be feeling rather let down. Hopefully people will be distracted enough by Land of the Dead, but I'd advise Mythic to get their tin hats on! I can smell the forum rage quitters from here...
Edit: I've heard that some of the AoE changes WILL be going in with 1.3. I've not yet found any official post confirming this, but I'll link soon as (or if...) I find one. In the meantime, here's a pyramid and cool sky effects..
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Big mountain, big missed opportunity
A while back I posted about how Land of the Dead does not replace the main campaign. In that post I put up an image of the Thunder Mountain zone to show how little of the map is actually available for RvR. Earlier today while I was gazing up at the big mountain in that zone I realised my map was inaccurate and a guildie reminded me of this image from my blog. So I present the updated version:
Other than looking pretty in a blurry ash covered kinda of way, what is the point of it? We can't go up there at all and it just puts further emphasis on the limited movement options in Thunder Mountain. It's just a GIANT waste of space in the middle of the zone.
Wouldn't it be better if we could fight up the mountain itself? Chuck an objective of some potent form up there and have us scrapping up winding paths to reach the summit. Then we could battle around the rim of the volcano, with extra tension added by the fiery pool of lava death below...
Or is there a good reason to keep massive chunks of terrain you can't enter?
How many other zones suffer from this?
Other than looking pretty in a blurry ash covered kinda of way, what is the point of it? We can't go up there at all and it just puts further emphasis on the limited movement options in Thunder Mountain. It's just a GIANT waste of space in the middle of the zone.
Wouldn't it be better if we could fight up the mountain itself? Chuck an objective of some potent form up there and have us scrapping up winding paths to reach the summit. Then we could battle around the rim of the volcano, with extra tension added by the fiery pool of lava death below...
Or is there a good reason to keep massive chunks of terrain you can't enter?
How many other zones suffer from this?
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About Me
- Bootae
- Half man half pixel. Music obsessive, likes a drink, occasional bastard.