f13.net

Ok, so I made a post saying I understand it. Ok, I don't

I'm not going to set the server type IN STONE until I get a LIST of what each one means. Not a pro/con. I just want something like this.

Core
-
1.
2.
3.

Open
-
1.
2.
3.

I don't understand the fucking rules. No one discuss here, there's a thread for that. I just want it explained. Goddamn Mythic.

They keep changing the rules so it's kind of hard to answer your question properly at this point in time.

Core:
1. You are unflagged in the PVE areas, if you attack or heal some one who is PVP flagged, you will also be flagged.
2. When you go in a RVR area, or in a Scenario you will be boosted up in level to 2/3rd max of your current tier.
3. When you level out of a tier, you may go back to the PVE parts of the zone just fine, but if you flag for PVP, or enter a RVR area, you will be turned in to a chicken, which basically makes you a 1 hit kill.

Open:
1. Like Core but you are ALWAYS flagged for PVP.
2. There is no level boost in open world RVR, only in scenarios.
3. If you return to a lower tier zone, since you are always flagged, you will always be a chicken, so you are unable to explore or help a lower level friend with anything.

Oh wow. These rulesets suck ass.

Neither one is good.

Supposedly as well in Open a character of any level entering the opposing side's Chapter 1 area (not Tier 1 area) will be turned into a Chicken.

I don't understand how these design decisions came to be. It is, in fact, the biggest set of flaws in the game.

It all seems to be an extreme anti-ganking mindset gone wrong.  Open just allows you to go into others PvE zones when you are at the correct level, but penalizes you for not being able to help out your lowbie friends whatsoever.  In the end, the anti-ganking concept remains untouched....except for those level 20s camping level 12s in their PvE areas of couse.

Open seems like epic fail at this point IMO.  I'm absolutely sure things will change however.  Mythic is going to have half of the population join open servers, not because of any information about WAR itself, but just because of WoW's PvP/PvE server ruleset split.  Then, when customers get pissed about the ridiculousness of open servers, things will certainly have to change.

Instead of doing the hard work of making a game that let's players move up *and* down in level/ability so they can compete "fairly" in all the Tiers they came up with this bizarre chicken mechanic to make sure the lower levels aren't simply steamrolled by the higher levels. Doing it the hard way would also make all the RvR areas "meaningful" all the time unlike the way it is now where the lower levels ones will mostly empty in a few months except for alts and a slow trickle of incoming new players.

Well put.  These rulesets will change shortly or WAR will fail.  Honestly, it's not that hard to see coming, and it's not that hard to fix.  It's a very big deal, so I wouldn't decide whether one wants to play open vs. core at the moment.

WAR is harsh. I was leaning toward Open because of the complete Tome of Knowledge it provides but... I'm also the guy who enjoys learning about a game and helping out the newer players. Sounds like the system will depend on a constant flow of new characters starting out in the beginner areas.

Core, OTOH, reads as being restrictive at every level. I must be missing something, since I haven't been a part of beta.

edit: I'm sure this will all change before official launch anyhow.

You're not missing anything. As Trippy said, they're changing the rules. Right now they simply make no sense.

Reading the forums some more I now don't think they are going to change things. There's confusion from the players but the responses from Mythic people have been consistent.

Maybe I'll try and get Mark on the phone today to explain it.

The Core ruleset seems reasonable to me, although ideally you would only chickenize if you actually attacked a player or buffed a flagged player or something.  It does sort of suck how you can't explore the old zones (fully) without becoming a chicken.

That is exactly how it does work on Core.

It's pretty much the same as the WoW PvP & Normal servers, with the added twist that if you go pvp flagged in a zone below your level you turn into a chicken.
As such, there's no real point to the Open servers at all.

If the masses understand that the Core server provides a ton of option for PvP as well as PvE than there is no problem.  If they get the idea that Core = PvE and Open = PvP than they could be a problem. 

In my opinion OpenRvR should be the RP server. Because once you subtract griefing (which I don't think their will be much of given the layout of the zones), the only other reason for it to exist is because meeting enemy that you can't kill upsets "WAR is everywhere" purests. Which is fine. I am glad they will have a place.

Yea, so far that is the only meaningful difference from what we have seen... some people just cannot stand seeing an "unflagged" enemy.  Personally I think it will be a non-issue for 90% of the time you play the game if you last more than 2 months, because at the end game everyone is flagged almost all of the time.

No it's not. You can't wander around in the lower Tier RvR areas if you are too high level without turning into a chicken, even if you just wanted to look around and not attack anybody.

I think you guys are confusing Open and Core. Open is flagged for RvR all the time, thus unable to back to lower tiers. Core is where you can go back to lower levels, but if you get flagged for PvP you turn into aq chicken. The beta servers are all Core. I may have misread this thread, since I am browsing on a Blackberry, but it seems to me there was some confusion about which was which.

Entering an RvR area in Core auto-flags you for RvR.

You'd think that RP purists would be upset by this "you turn into a chicken for OOC / game balance reasons" mechanic.

Simple.  Have GW some lore for the chickens.   :drill:

When I started MMOG's I would have thought RP purists would be upset by any limitation on attacking anyone, anywhere, except for reasonable in-character consequences.  It still occasionally makes me boggle when I see some so-called hardcore RPer in one of these games that runs screaming at the very concept that HE MIGHT POSSIBLY BE HURT by a character that is supposed to be his enemy.

Conclusion: There aren't many real RP purists in MMOG's.

"Flagging" for pvp is retarded. I think WoW already proved that. Either no world pvp or full world pvp. Those are the options.

What I'd like is a ruleset as follows:

Always PvP flagged (with inability to attack friendlies, only opposing factions)

Chickened if you enter RvR zones where you are X level above the specified range (7? 10? 15? I dunno)

Chickened if you enter the PvE area of the opposing faction where you are X level above the range. Might only apply to Chapter 1 areas.

Never chickened in your own faction's PvE areas, regardless of level.

Respawn in enemy PvE zones is at distant point, preventing zerging.

=====

The goal here is: allow large groups of level-appropriate warbands to enter the PvE zones of the rival faction and attack opposing players, but give the "native" faction a big advantage in that they can recruit very high-level defenders to come and ward off the invasion.  It's total fun to allow players to attack each other in PvE zones as long as you make it relatively easy to repel the invasion, and don't allow a permanent zerg to form.

I wouldn't mind to debuff to people who attack noobs X number of levels below them. Something that stacks and increases damage taken and decreases damage output. That would help a bit on the griefing, perhaps. The whole 1 shot kill thing is a bit over the top though.

Chickening shouldn't exist. End of story. Delevel to max of that area. Done. Not complicated.

People will whine about the gear, but just put a scaling debuff that counteracts the gear or something.

Delevelling/descaling of gear is also fine. The big thing if you've got world PvP is to prevent high-level gankery, because that kills the game.

Not complicated to say maybe.  Programming it is probably a whole different problem. 

The item system wasn't designed with "leveling" an item in mind.  As such, you can't "DE-Level" an item.  If things were designed on a % based system instead of straight numbers (like CoH did) then it would be easily accomplished.

  Of course, that does away with the "lootz" aspect of things (as a weapon that does x% and adds y% of a stat will do that at ANY level) but that doesn't belong in a PVP-centric game anyway.

Deleveling works in COH because it doesn't have gear.

Anyway, deleveling in WAR wouldn't be *that* difficult - they'd just need to set (not scale, set.. higher levels have access to better gear in more slots, so scaling it back would be a nightmare) stats to a tierX template, and disallow all skills/morale abilities/tactics that were obtained after that level. Every damage ability scales with level and has no ranks [unlike wow], so that part is not a problem.


-- Z.

Yes. I don't know why that's such a hard concept to understand. Same goes with the gear - surely there is a max level standard everything can be dropped down to in order to compensate. Or maybe it's the deleveling makes level-restricted gear not work thing - which is pretty simple to get around in the design phase if you care to think about it.

You just hit the problem.

They level you up in scenarios and RVR because that's easy.  You get X HPs at Y level based on your stats.  Your abilites will now do Z damage.  You don't get the abilities you would have gained actually leveling up and your weapon still does shit damage.  (As a level 3 Ranked to 8, my Ironbreaker could wail on an actual 8 or 9 for a good time and do almost NO damage.. so yea I was useless.)

Items and weapons weren't considered for part of the leveling-up at the design stage. As a result they're not going to be able to de-level them using whatever mystical coefficients you all seem to think they can apply.  Particularly since deleveling was something they DIDN'T want to do. (MJ has a few quotes about that somewhere.) Adding any of it in now would create even more headaches in regards to gear.



Enhancements are your gear.  They work on percentages rather than straight number buffs.  You don't get a SO that does "+1000 to damage" it does "+25%" so deleveling means it's the same power increase, just that your base damage is lower because of your lower level.

Here is where I feel the problem with deleveling lies. How far do you delevel some one? Do you put them at the max level for that tier? If so, at worst they are going to be on par with the most powerful players of that tier, making the pvp even less fun for people who are not 11, 21, 31. Or do you drop them to 2/3rds, the same level lowbies get bumped up to.

If so that kind of makes it hard for the deleveled people to pvp if there are a bunch of tier maxed people.

I think the second option is the only viable one, and it is a better idea than the chicken.

Why? Seems like a no-brainer solution to me.

Also, why is it that you when you "level" out of a Tier, the game saves a copy of your character's stats and equpiment. If you return to that Tier's content, your stats are switched with the stats of that copy, including gear, look, etc. It isn't like that information isn't being written to a DB at some point.

The rules are too complex. It needs to be made simpler. I should be able to understand the rule set of the game in one sentence, with one paragraph being used to expound upon said set. Then again, perhaps I'm just getting old and crazy.  :why_so_serious:

I will help you

OPEN:  IF YOU WNAT TO PLAY WiTH  THE GANGSTA PKS, THIS IS YOUR SERVER

CORE: CAREBEARS GO HERE

It's not hard folks.

Both seem shit, and needlessly confusing.

I'll be picking up 3x the CE when it comes out in a couple of weeks. One for myself, one for my wife, and one because it was kind of an accident, but I can just sell it later. I won't actually even attempt to play the game until about Christmas, give or take a couple of days. I'm pretty much buying it because of the art book and such, as I'm an old-time Warhammererer. I found the beta underwhelming and not worth my time to log in for the most part, especially as each time I logged in seemed to require a new giant patch, and the little PVP I managed to take part in was solidly underwhelming.

So, Christmas it is then. Unless WotLK is out, in which case, I might not play WAR for a good 6 months after release. Like next June/July. Hopefully it'll be playable by then.

See. Now that is how Mythic should state it. Much better.

Too bad the "gangsta PKs" in Open get chickened. So it's not exactly how they should state it. It's far more complicated.

Doesn't change anything.  That's where the groups will go.