WAR - another newsletter - more RvR, less sport PvP

[Simond]

Did they ever fix the scaling with Ripper (level 50 Critical Strike style) or does it still do less damage than Leaper?

The game was just too complicated.  The virtues of DAoC you mentioned before left out the single most important virtue it had, though:

1) PvP mattered.

Man, the more I read shit like this the more I start wanting WAR to fucking burn and die.  Just to spite you people.  Just, no, you are wrong.  Pvp mattered more in fucking SWG@release and AC1:DT then it ever did in DAOC.  Fuck me.  PvP was the only thing that didn't suck 100% fucking crusty nutsack maybe is what you were trying to say?

A big part of the PvP in DAoC mattering was outside of game mechanics- depending on your specific server, a lot of them were small enough that you could really build a community where all the regulars knew all the other regulars, and that relationship fostered a LOT of competition.  Who knows if they'll stick with smaller server sizes or not.  Probably not, because nobody else does that and there are disadvantages- LFG!!!! LFG!!!!! LFG!!!!!!

But a big part of it was that you didn't just kill a faceless Mid.  That was Alviss.  Or Hjos.  Or Leylie.  Or any number of dozens of people I could name from Midgard alone with whom I had a competitive relationship.  Give me that and something persistent to fight for and I will fight hard.

This also happened on Vallon Zek, therefore EQ was also a good PvP game. 

[Koyasha]

Used to happen in WoW too, before world PvP went the way of the dodo and battlegroups killed recognition in battlegrounds.  When it was just your server fighting on battlegrounds, both sides' regulars became well known to each other, and I can remember a good number of people from back then that I regularly went up against in battlegrounds.  I think it did add something, and I do hope that sort of thing happens again in WAR or Age of Conan.

[murdoc]

You definitely got to know the PVP community on your server in DAoC and would recognize guild crests from opposing factions fairly easily. I can name one other guild we've fought against with any regularity in WoW and only because one of their members is a goddamn idiot on the forums.

[Llava]

This also happened on Vallon Zek, therefore EQ was also a good PvP game. 

I would go far enough to say that any game that makes you care about PvP offers a superior PvP experience to any game that doesn't make you care.

DAoC made me care.  WoW didn't.  CoH didn't.  Hell, even Guild Wars didn't.  It was fun by itself, but I think we can all agree it lacked any significance.

[Merusk]

To that end, though, it becomes personal preference.  I couldn't get into GW enough to care about the PVP.. fuck I didn't make it to the level cap.  I didn't care about DAoC either, and found SB "meh" worthy at best and EVEs puts me to sleep because it's all determined up-front or makes me feel bad about ganking folks 10:1.  However, I enjoy WOW's pvp a lot.

[HaemishM]

All this talk about DAoC's RVR makes me want to try that game again. Goddamn you. Goddamn you all to hell.

I won't do it. I cannot take that grind yet again.

[Fordel]

Never mind the grind, you probably wouldn't get past how clunky the interface feels compared to modern MMOs. There is this 'lag' to everything in DaoC, movement, abilities, even stopping. Without a /face macro, you might as well be trying to run on ice.

But a big part of it was that you didn't just kill a faceless Mid.  That was Alviss.  Or Hjos.  Or Leylie.  Or any number of dozens of people I could name from Midgard alone with whom I had a competitive relationship.  Give me that and something persistent to fight for and I will fight hard.

One of the simplest things games can do to promote this kind of intimacy with their enemies is kill spam. I never knew how much I would missed it till WoW didn't have it. Seeing things like:

RandomNoob1 was killed by InfamousRogue

Made me go "ahh hah! That asshole is back at it again."

Things like guilds being able to claim keeps/towers, having the guild banner fly on all the guards/flags in the keep. Even being able to colour coordinate your armor with dye's and all the extra emblem slots on shields and cloaks, gave a greater sense of your enemies being a specific foe, while also giving people the illusion of ownership. More then once did my guild specifically go after a harder to capture keep, bypassing the easier ones, simply because the hard one was owned by a 'rival' guild.


With WoW, there could be a 40vs40 battle happening in a zone, and I Wouldn't know of it unless someone accidentally killed a NPC.

[Signe]

All this talk about DAoC's RVR makes me want to try that game again. Goddamn you. Goddamn you all to hell.

I won't do it. I cannot take that grind yet again.

Quick!  Hug a kitten!

[Ratman_tf]

RandomNoob1 was killed by InfamousRogue

Wow. I forgot about killspam. 

[HaemishM]

All this talk about DAoC's RVR makes me want to try that game again. Goddamn you. Goddamn you all to hell.

I won't do it. I cannot take that grind yet again.

Quick!  Hug a kitten!

... to death.

[Nebu]

DAoC is done.  It's sad to say, but the game really is done.  There are a few hardcore folks hanging onto it for dear life, but when I went back to it recently it was obvious that it was never going to be what I remembered it to be.  Even with a steady group of 8 dedicated players, we all got bored in about 2 months. 

That should help you out, Haem.

[Mrbloodworth]

PvP that matters.

What does that mean? I have a feeling it means someone else is not enjoying the game. Correct me if i am wrong/jaded here.

[Kirth]

PvP that matters.

What does that mean? I have a feeling it means someone else is not enjoying the game. Correct me if i am wrong/jaded here.

I think it means that pvp has a effect on the "World" you are playing in, a meaningful objective that you side can rally around. I'm not so sure it is about always winning. Makes me think about something however, I know WAR has been covering attacking keeps, cities etc... but is there or will there be any benefit to defending?

[Xuri]

DAoC is done.  It's sad to say, but the game really is done.  There are a few hardcore folks hanging onto it for dear life, but when I went back to it recently it was obvious that it was never going to be what I remembered it to be.

Are they ever?

[Koyasha]

If there's no benefit for defending - and not only for successfully defending, but for simply standing and fighting to the last - I imagine defense is going to be highly unpopular.  Defense is very open-ended, which means in these games, defend until the enemy gets bored of attacking.  There are no supply lines to cut off or any of the other potential tactical methods to stop an offensive, so the only way to successfully defend is to fight until the enemy is no longer interested in attacking for now.  Without some really great rewards for it, people aren't going to do it that often.  That, at least, is what I've seen in all the PvP games that don't have item loss or some other way to prevent attackers from going at it until they're bored or they win.

[Simond]

The benefit to defending is not having your city razed to the ground and living out of a shanty-town until it's rebuilt.
This is the oft-mentioned flipside to "PvP that matters" - for it to matter in the sense people keep talking about, someone has to lose and have the loss significantly impact on their gameplay. Lose enough times (by, say, being on the outnumbered/underpowered/whatever team on a server) and why bother logging back on?

[Dash]

Yeah the city levels up and unlocks encounters for your realm.  If it gets sacked you lose ... something.  I dont know if you lose everything or a portion or what.  But I dont see that as a benefit so much as trying to avoid a punishment.  Ideally they will be able to track and give you something for actively defending the city against invasion.

[tazelbain]

No game will ever matter.  This is a futile path to go down. All it does is encourage overly punitive game mechanics.  People looking for meaninful activities should look to real life.

[Nebu]

DAoC is done.  It's sad to say, but the game really is done.  There are a few hardcore folks hanging onto it for dear life, but when I went back to it recently it was obvious that it was never going to be what I remembered it to be.

Are they ever?

EQ2 was MUCH better going back a year or two later than it was at release. So, yeah... there are times when going back is a better experience. 

[Koyasha]

No game will ever matter.  This is a futile path to go down. All it does is encourage overly punitive game mechanics.  People looking for meaninful activities should look to real life.

There are no 'meaningful' activities beyond ones own definition, so this line of argument has no purpose other than the dismissal of someone's choice of what matters.

[tazelbain]

No game will ever matter.  This is a futile path to go down. All it does is encourage overly punitive game mechanics.  People looking for meaninful activities should look to real life.

There are no 'meaningful' activities beyond ones own definition, so this line of argument has no purpose other than the dismissal of someone's choice of what matters.

I am dismissing people who want punitive pvp and hide behind meaningful/matters language instead coming out saying what they want.

[Ratman_tf]

No game will ever matter.  This is a futile path to go down. All it does is encourage overly punitive game mechanics.  People looking for meaninful activities should look to real life.

There are no 'meaningful' activities beyond ones own definition, so this line of argument has no purpose other than the dismissal of someone's choice of what matters.

I am dismissing people who want punitive pvp and hide behind meaningful/matters language instead coming out saying what they want.

Permadeath!

Srsly. You can slide the goalposts all around on that subject. Eve has player owned territory and destroyable stations. Are the people playing it having badwrongfun?

Personally, I'd like to see PvP objectives that are more than just "capture the flag". But a little less than Play2Crush!

[Llava]

DAoC is done.  It's sad to say, but the game really is done.

 


But to jump back into the "PvP that matters" thing, maybe my standards on "matters" aren't that high, but I just want persistence and a slight benefit to the victor.  For instance, claiming a keep in DAoC cost your guild points, but your guild showed up on the website as owning that keep.  Have enough points and you can keep that thing forever.  Then it becomes staking out territory and daring people to try and take it.  And if they DID take it.... you went and took it back.  That's all.  It was a matter of pride, and really not punitive at all.  I don't need to crush people.  I just want to be more invested than, "Well, we lose this one.  Might as well go make a sandwich and wait for the next queue to pop up."

Hell, they could make killing faction leaders in WoW important, but they don't want raids on capital cities to be common (which is fair enough).  Wouldn't take much to offer a title to people who participated in kills of all the enemy faction's leaders.  It'd be trickier to offer something to defenders, but given a little time I'm sure I could come up with something- Blizzard certainly could.

One fun trick they could toss in would be to leave graffiti behind.  Have the game record the raid leader (easy enough, the game knows which group got the kill and the raid leader is marked in that group) and brand the ground/wall/ceiling/whatever near the defeated faction leader with the raid leader's guild symbol for... say, a week.  Maybe make it look burned into the ground.  Or marked in blood.  Or whatever.  Just let them leave a mark that says to the defeated faction, "Nya nya!"  I bet something as simple as that would suddenly raise a lot more interest in world PvP.

But as it is, for me, PvP of any sort in WoW is just too transitory.  Anything I accomplish is undone in the next 10 minutes.  Makes it hard to really care, because it feels like I have no impact on anything.

[Merusk]

But as it is, for me, PvP of any sort in WoW is just too transitory.  Anything I accomplish is undone in the next 10 minutes.  Makes it hard to really care, because it feels like I have no impact on anything.

Which is why it's so casually popular.  Anything with "meaning" will always have a huge time cost associated with it.  Be it the fighting itself, or the resource gathering/ building process.  Normal people have other shit to deal with besides staying on 5 minutes longer than the other guy so they can win.

[waylander]

But as it is, for me, PvP of any sort in WoW is just too transitory.  Anything I accomplish is undone in the next 10 minutes.  Makes it hard to really care, because it feels like I have no impact on anything.

Which is why it's so casually popular.  Anything with "meaning" will always have a huge time cost associated with it.  Be it the fighting itself, or the resource gathering/ building process.  Normal people have other shit to deal with besides staying on 5 minutes longer than the other guy so they can win.

Actually the new Sunwell Isle is pretty fun. They put a lot of easy to do and very rewarding daily quests smack in the middle of an open PVP zone. I can make 100 gold in an hour doing these things, and even if you toss in some PVP action during the quests it doesn't take longer than 90 minutes.

So on Sunwell you have alliance and horde ganking each other so they can have access to mob drops to complete their quests. It tosses in a little excitement, sometimes the fights get big, and if you die you're not too far from your corpse.

Meaningful PVP doesn't always mean you have to change the world, it just means you can have an impact on it.

[Koyasha]

The annoying irony is I usually feel WoW world PvP takes place in the most inappropriate of places (such as the Isle of Quel'danas).  Being that it's, y'know, a place where all the people of Azeroth are supposed to be fighting the Burning Legion together to stop Kil'jaeden from coming through.  I like world PvP, but almost all the damn places where it actually happens seem to be similar - someplace where it's entirely inappropriate for us to be fighting.

And Sunwell Isle PvP is pretty much as meaningless as any other WoW PvP.  The old (1.0) AV felt like it mattered because it felt like a real battle, and occasionally there's a personal thing that arises between two or more players that feels like it matters, but for the most part it's definitely just 'meh, whatever, next time' or something.

I'm glad it seems like WAR won't have ANY reason for the factions to be working together, so there's no ridiculously inappropriate PvP locations like there are in WoW.  I don't really know enough about Warhammer - or whatever spin WAR is going to have on it - to know for sure, as my attitude has so far been only mild interest whenever something pops up worth looking at, but it certainly sounds like cooperation is right out.

[Merusk]

But as it is, for me, PvP of any sort in WoW is just too transitory.  Anything I accomplish is undone in the next 10 minutes.  Makes it hard to really care, because it feels like I have no impact on anything.

Which is why it's so casually popular.  Anything with "meaning" will always have a huge time cost associated with it.  Be it the fighting itself, or the resource gathering/ building process.  Normal people have other shit to deal with besides staying on 5 minutes longer than the other guy so they can win.

Actually the new Sunwell Isle is pretty fun. They put a lot of easy to do and very rewarding daily quests smack in the middle of an open PVP zone. I can make 100 gold in an hour doing these things, and even if you toss in some PVP action during the quests it doesn't take longer than 90 minutes.

So on Sunwell you have alliance and horde ganking each other so they can have access to mob drops to complete their quests. It tosses in a little excitement, sometimes the fights get big, and if you die you're not too far from your corpse.

Meaningful PVP doesn't always mean you have to change the world, it just means you can have an impact on it.

I don't disagree with you, Hades.  But Llava was talking about things that impact the world beyond "the next 10 minutes."   That's not really happening on Quel'Danas, is it? Sure, it's "meaningful" in so far as you're denying the opposite side resources for a few minutes, but it's not a lasting impact.   The theme of WOW-pvp is, "If you get ganked/ camped, just come back later."  That seems to be his point of frustration, but it's something that I think needs to  happen more often, not less.  Again, "World" vs "Game"

[Nebu]

Meaningful pvp is a slippery slope.  If pvp outcome is too meaningful, the winning side will gain an advantage that may be discouraging to players on the losing side. If pvp isn't meaningful enough, the result is WoW-type FPS style pvp where people sell points for so that they can buy phat gearz.  Where's the middle ground?  How do you create a pvp with a lasting outcome that doesn't negatively impact the bandwagon hoppers?  If the outcome is decreased in meaning to a point that the losing side doesn't feel the impact as much, then your back to a sense of meaningless pvp. 

I don't see a system where the compromise exists.  You either appease the casual (little to no penalty) or you appease the hardcore (harsh penalties).  Of course, Blizzard found that it's much better to appease the casual when it comes to pvp.  Any other system will result in a niche product. 

[apocrypha]

My favourite part of the "PvP that matters" in DaoC was Darkness Falls. DF was a dungeon with 3 entrances, one in each realm, and which ever realm had control of the most keeps had their entrance open.

When you were down in DF and control switched, giving open access to an enemy realm it was awesome waiting for the zerg to arrive to try and clear you out of the dungeon and you knew there were gonna be some fights soon. Stealthers used to have great fun hiding in DF until the enemies considered it clear and safe and then popping out and ganking some unsuspecting noob happily levelling.

Awesome mechanic. It encouraged people to go and PvP to try and regain access to the dungeon, it encouraged fun PvP encounters tied into a PvE element and it didn't overdo the reward/punish side of things either way.

[Nebu]

DF was popular for a few months... maybe a year.  Compare this to the Labyrinth expansion where most consider the Laby to have ruined some of the pvp fun of the game.  Similar systems; the first fun initially and the repeat years later met with less enthusiasm.

[Venkman]

I loved DF as well. And left DAoC shortly thereafter.

I agree with everyone who says "meaningful PvP is a slippery slope". Because it is.

Immersion is a gray area. The darkest gray end of that is SB imho. As soon as you leave newbie land, you better have friends or you're just a speedbump. Even Eve shepherds newbies and PvEers better.

But SB with WoW graphics, WoW IP, WoW size and WoW stability would never be even a tenth the size of the WoW playerbase in the West, and as such would never get the sort of funding that WoW got to achieve those things. That level of constant permanent immersion is not what the average gamer is seeking.

I don't think people asking for that level of meaningful PvP only want it because they can make others cry. I do think they want it because in the right context, it can be very engaging, usually resulting in fun even after a string of losses. But it's just not the style of game that is going to get AAA caliber resources put against it, because that market isn't big enough. As a result, even those who try the most hafta make some steep compromises to deliver it.

Which is a shame, because I do think it can work, if a company with the right funds and vision were to try.

[WayAbvPar]

For a small world, SB still felt like there was more 1 v 1 encounters. Perhaps because it wasn't quest-based to drive players from one theme park attraction to the next, but I remember multiple small scale PvP encounters. That is exceedingly rare in most current MMOGs. It is either group v group, or rabble v zerg attempt.

A PvP+ game would do well to allow players to spread all over the map. UO did this, but the map was so damned small that it really didn't matter.

[Grimwell]

Meaningful PvP for me has always been as simple as AC Darktide. If you had the force to claim a plot of land (town, dungeon, spawn, whatever) as your own -- it was. Until someone came along who could take it away. There were many issues with the PvP in AC (level disparity, etc.) but the base equation was FFA and the only reward to winning was that you had that location for as long as you could hold it.

Rules on PvP are like cooks in the kitchen, too many and you spoil it.

[Cadaverine]

Maybe I'm way outside of the norm, but I really don't care a whit about the rewards for pvp.  Yeah, I loved that I could level solely through pvping in DAoC, and it's nice to see that that will be even more the case in WAR from what they've said.  I enjoy that I can get geared up by pvping in WoW, and not just by grinding instance runs with random fuckwits.

But, at the end of the day, the only real important thing to me, with regards to pvp, is "did I have fun?".  I've played WSG games were we lost 3-0, but I had a total blast from start to finish, because even though the allies stomped us, a random pug of non-twinks forced a group of twinks into an hour long stand off.  And I've had matches where we won 3-0, and I was bored to tears.  Same in EQ, DAoC, SWG, and so on.  I don't get the overwhelming need to have every thing I do have a lasting impact in a video game.  Hell, after I complete quest #1498652, I know damn well the bad guy will be back within a few minutes, so what the hell do I care if my pvp accomplishments mean anything in the overall scheme of things.

[Venkman]

For a small world, SB still felt like there was more 1 v 1 encounters. Perhaps because it wasn't quest-based to drive players from one theme park attraction to the next, but I remember multiple small scale PvP encounters. That is exceedingly rare in most current MMOGs. It is either group v group, or rabble v zerg attempt.

We may have played at different times. I went there well after many got tired of SB.exe. For the, err, six months (?) I played it was a few series of big huge bane/sieges with at least 75 v 75, and beyond. There was generally that third force that came outta nowhere, or some spy, or something that just made the whole thing cool.

Sure, between those fights was the grindfest to R5 with occasional chasing-off of someone who scouted our grind spots. But that was tickets one won at the carnival to board the rides.