f13.net

I've tried, really tried.

Joined a warband both yesterday and today. In both cases my experience bar didn't move. I'm at level 15, tier 2, did most of the PQs, completely bored about doing the same scenarios over and over.

What are the alternatives? There are none. It's just scenarios or scenarios.

The +50% to experience in RvR lakes did help. In the sense that players are trying, experimenting and then go back doing scenarios because the change is meaningless. As someone else said here: +50% to nothing is still nothing.

Conquering Battlefield Objectives yields ZERO experience. One wonders why bother. Really, why?

In order to even try to attack a keep you need two warbands, and once you have two warbands the direct kills are worthless. They could put the bonus at 500% and it still wouldn't be worth the time wasted compared to a scenario. It's the objectives that need to be fixed.

Days ago the zones were just deserted, so willingly or not, you couldn't do anything. Now there are some players sporadically trying to do something, and then disband shortly after they realize it's utterly pointless.

I promised myself to not waste any more time. The day I see in patch notes that something concrete is being done I'll try again and see if it's worth it. Till then this is Scenarios Online and nothing else.

And the grind is awful already at level 15, on a server with a +20% bonus on top of everything. I don't even want to know how it feels later.

This is a great opportunity to post some solutions.  I know that you get hammered pretty hard around here for your opinions, but I'm still interested in hearing your views on what would fix the problems as you see them. 

EDIT: You may want to rethink the thread title. 

I've read the title 5 times now and can only come up with "Wait... what?"

That's our Viklas!  :awesome_for_real:

To get your xp bar to move in you have to defend a keep that is being attacked.  But so far my best defense generated xp at 1/4th the rate as scenarios.

Potential idea that's partially implemented:   Always spawn a Keep Lord loot bag with a really nice armor set item (purple? gold? bag).  If you make lake RvR the best place to get the rarest of equipment, it will become popular.

Idea that's not yet implemented: Loot bag for keep defense.  Or possibly just a better drop rate when you kill an enemy player while in a keep you control.

Summary: Make world RvR give the best equipment at all levels.

He means "until Mythic does something substantial". I'd like them to be worth more XP and more renown, and if they were to make them so, there would be more of the sort of PvP that the game is apparently aimed at. However, I'm still okay with playing in the RvR lakes and keeps because I enjoy it. It doesn't have to level me up.

As it stands, I can usually find a decent warband at prime time if I'm looking for some RvR fun. I suspect that if they were to make it the best way to gain XP and renown, the RvR lakes would become choked up lag pits and we'd be complaining about slideshow performance instead.

RvR should be more important/vital/influential than sport pvp yet the reverse seems to be true in WAR.  I'd love to see this shift, but the masses seem to prefer sport over world.  Perhaps my issue is more with the desires of the average gamer than with Mythic.

I think you'd get better mileage for participation with the loot angle.  The sporadic nature of open pvp can't compete with someone grinding out scenarios.  It should be competitive, but you'd be hard pressed to make it as predictable and instantly accessable.  Loot is an incentive that crosses boundries of convenience as other games have shown.

ITS ALL GOOD GUYS THEY FIXED OPEN WORLD RvR!!!












(http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/1614/awesomedance2qz8.gif)

Up the power of the buffs received from the mini-bosses at the battlefield objectives so they actually feel worthwhile, drop the later-tier battlefiend objective difficulty from hero&champions to tier one's champion&basic, and remove the "protected" time period for battlefield objectives entirely. Every player who is defending when the objective caps automatically receives an 60 minute version of the objective buff.

With a single champion and quickly respawning basic mobs, one or two players can solo an objective if nobody's defending... BUT any defenders have an enormous advantage and must be removed or disabled prior to cap. Advantageous buffs should inspire players to explore the "lake" if they're nearby (and without the 15 minute no-NPC period, they have a realistic expectation of receiving them)... and potentially risk a few caps if their side doesn't have them. These small numbers of order and destruction players will run across eachother and skirmish.

Drop the power of the current keep lord, and more directly tie his power and the number of NPC keep guards (and champions) to the number of objectives controlled, so that a Keep assault depends more heavily upon maintaining objective control. If objective skirmishes are successful, the groups that form during them should be able to dream of capturing a keep, and the side the acontrols the keep should be nervous.

I get the feeling this is what Mythic had in mind, but I'm not seeing that they've implemented it.

I have been talking about this with several of my guildies, and this is what I have come up with.

1) Make BOs and Keeps give a BIG BIG chunk of EXP, say 10k for BO and 25 to 50k for a keep.
2) Put Keeps on a 30 - 60 minute lock out, like BOs. To stop keep trading.
3) Add in the "no exp" buff thing from scenarios in a radius around the keeps, then up the renown earned to 500 per minute for attackers and defeners.
4) Major increase to amount of Epic and Massive loot bags to keeps.
5) Add PQ loot bags to BOs. Green only.
6) Put in some sort of "Defense Bonus", some thing like, if the outer door is breached, and the attacking force doesnt kill the keep lord in 30 to 60 minutes, the defending team gets a bonus of like 10k exp.

What this does it make people want to take and hold, and also defend keeps. That brings them out of the Scenarios, in to the world, and also invigorates the RVR which is a fucking ghost town.

My opinion is that this game is going to succeed or sink on their ability to get people in to RVR, which is the real meat of the game.

I do not agree.

Loot is an issue when you are at the level cap. When you are leveling up, especially with the current grinding, the most sought currency is XP.

RvR lakes need to hand out experience comparable to the one achieved in scenarios. Including the downtimes.

I have my own ideas about how to fix this, but I also read PLENTY of good ideas on random forums. The average player seems to have a better idea than Mythic and their 50% bonus.

My current proposal, since Nebu asked:
- Players take a Battlefield Objective and cap it (worth nothing for now). Guilds can put a banner on the BO and stack benefits.
- For the time the BO is being actively defended (meaning there are real players in its proximity) it "blinks" on the map for both factions. So that all players know that there's activity there.
- All the kills (both defenders and attackers) that happen within a decently wide radius from the BO starts to be worth more points (XP, renown). A bonus that should be slightly higher for defenders, to encourage defense.
- For all the kills that defenders manage, some points go into a "bounty pool" in the BO. The more kills, the more this pool increases. I'd also make the BO generate some of these points even if no one is around, so that if left untouched for a lot of hours it actually start to be worth something anyway.
- This means that the longer it takes to conquer the BO, the biggest is going to be the reward, as it increases with the time and makes the prize progressively juicier.
- In order to "collect" these points the attackers need to conquer the objective themselves.

This achieves mainly two effects. The first is that the BO works like a magnet, like a natural convergence since the direct kills are worth a lot more when they are closer to it. The second is that the reward increases over time, so growing to a level that will likely force the other faction to take action.

This time out doesn't resolve the problem.

If you put the lock out at 30 minutes, then they'll trade them every 30 minutes. If you it at 60, every 60.

There is nothing that encourages defense, or that justifies the interference with the other faction. If the big reward is about the objective, then players will avoid each other and just get the objective.

This is why I was suggesting to tie the rewards for capping an objective with the activity around it. You focus the activity, then reward the activity itself. Without activity = the BO is worth little.

My idea instead is alike to setting up a beacon. Players cap an objective and it's like telling "we're here" to the whole zone. Enemy players see that, and go grab those points. It's like if players had a portable scenario bag to set up wherever they like. Sending a "come play here" signal to the whole zone.

Its hard for me imagine how to fix this without starting over from scratch.  The keeps are almost okay but the BOs are just horrible.  I have yet to see any significant PvP happen around the the BOs.  Either they are something we take before or after we take the keeps.

That's likely a product of
1.  how vast the world is and/or how underpopulated the servers are, and
2.  The relative ease of taking a BO. 

Hell, as a 26 Swordmaster I can nearly solo one of the 27 Champs that are defending a BO.  If I get a few more good players, we could likely take one as a trio. 

Vastness of world is a big flaw. Was in DAoC and proof they don't learn a darn thing.

But a beacon would partially solve that. If players know where to find the action, then the empty space isn't anymore as vast. If you played Planetside you know what I mean.

If there is a beacon, it should be the standards.

Oh, and just one map for a lake. Duh.

You can solo T3 keeps as a SM at 40.

Unfortunately, you can't loot all 7 bags if you're the only one on the contribution list.

From the herald.


I am going to go ahead and say, not good enough. Part 3 better be damn good.

only in open rvr. you'll turn to chicken in core.

What a terrible can't see the forest for the trees solution.

Christ, what is with Mythic and wanting to keep people from hitting 40. 1-39 should've just been a fast tutorial in combat. Dumb dumb dumb.

Yeah, Mythic needs to turn this shit around quickly. I already have people dropping from my guild to go back to WoW, or just to play random flash games. If it is happening with some fairly hardcore people already, I can bet it is happening all over the game.

YES YES YES.  EXACTLY!


Now I just hope you were being serious. 

People are reporting it's less than 2k xp at level 30 for a successful keep conquest.

I really would like to speak with Mythic's designer to understand what the hell they are thinking.

Why wouldn't I be serious about that?

It's true, 1-39 should've taken 24 hours total or less.

:heart:

(http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m20/r3dknight/veryfair.jpg)

    Ulthuan sucks. RvR sucks on Ulthuan. Scenarios suck on Ulthuan. PQ's suck on Ulthuan.
    Since release on Ulthuan, there has been an utter lack of team work by the general Order population on Ulthuan.
    This is a team based game and we don't have a team.
    Of course its not fun or enjoyable.

    Im not even guilded on my other server(i play order there too) and...

    Ive been in more RvR lake combat(solo and grouped with PUG's) in the last few days than I could find in the last month on Ulthuan.
    I can count the number of unfinished PQ's on one hand.
    The chat is sparse in scenarios because peaple know what to do and who to do it too.
    I am in no hurry to get to 40.
    I'm having a blast.


   
     
     
   

I can't believe Mythic is stupid enough not to bump the rewards of RvR open world fighting.  What the fuck?

I should be able to hit top Rank in about 24-48 hours of play time.  The real grind should be renown ranks 40-80.

It's pretty bad.  Mark Jacobs needs to do something.

Tier 2 should take 1.5-2 times the amount of time Tier 1 takes, and the scale that ratio linearly all the way up.

lol, 3k exp for capturing the inevitable city

that's awesome

It has to be shopped, right?  The end-goal of the game nets you 3000 XP?   :uhrr:

Really? You've been around as long as most of us. They think the leveling part is more important to retention than the action at 40. Many parts seemed to be designed under the pre-WoW definition of success in the genre. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it does seem pretty obvious.

The more important question is why is the end-goal of a PvP game PvE content?

Everybody still confident that they're not going to rush-rush slap up some kind of endgame catassery or drop some uber-gear in the game, folks? This is why those kind of things happen, because you didn't plan a lasting, vigorous game around your central design concepts and because you used your beta test mostly as a marketing tool and therefore tried to keep people from seeing how poor your long-term plan really was. Panic Plan B is to create some ubergear as part of the endgame objectives, make the endgame objectives 5000% more grindy, and hope that keeps enough people busy for you to figure out how to patch in the fun in the rest of the game.

Just because I've been around doesn't mean I have to assume that companies won't Figure Shit Out.

History would disagree, no?  :awesome_for_real:

Hey, eventually someone has to get it right and it's best for me if it ends up being a game I enjoy.

The reasons scenarios are far more attractive is that you as a player dictate how you want to play (as long as queue times aren't too long).  RVR is situational, you are either attacking which is mostly pve with the risk of some pvp or you are defending, which means you have to wait/hunt for attackers, its dictated too much by things you can't control.  Increasing experience doesn't help that as scenarios are still so much easier to access.  In the least they need to add in travel options between keeps to help people get to the action.

Personally, I think they need to make the rvr more 'scenario-like'  what if, you could queue for BO's and warp to them like a scenario but keep the whole worldly stickiness, and even further increase their importance in keep attacks and defence.  It needs some tweaking obviously but I think making keep attacks include a series of scenario like encounters which actively promote defence then as well would greatly improve participation.

It's not shopped. Oh, you also get 30 silvers.  :awesome_for_real:

This reminds me of EQ where the end game content in each expansion was never itemized properly because the developers always thought they would have enough time to patch in the proper stuff after release and inevitably they would be proven wrong (at least when I played).

WAR is fine in a way because it does try some interesting things. It's just that in a few key areas, it feels like their point of reference was DAoC and that was it. That, too, is fine if that is the market you want. But then, you didn't need this IP to do that.

Even putting aside some of the wholesale changes some people would like, I do wonder how and why they prioritize certain things. Was RvR intended to be the game, or just some sideline alongside sporty/grindy Scenarios (which are fun but pointless except for a vague zone ownership thing)?

Given how WAR is meant to be everywhere, I have to think RvR was going to be the focus and scenarios were more the training sideline in quick'n'fun PvP. However, because the WAR world is so freaking huge, everyone is spread out everywhere. Scenarios work because the pop everyone who is interested into a small area to fight. In RvR, you are left wandering the area, hoping to bump into someone else.

If RvR had an option to teleport people into the area when there was some action, it would be a lot more used by players.

What if, god forbid, they made the Scenarios like DAOC, where it is just mini-rvr.

I'd say just give players XP for being in an RvR area on top of the killing/capturing XP.  Take the average amount of XP you get for winning a scenario, divide it by ten, and give that much to a player every minute they're in an RvR lake.  Make hanging out in RvR areas the easiest way to gain XP, and people will do it.  And, while they're there, there's enemies hanging around, too, so they may as well fight, right?  Population density (or lack therof) is the biggest problem with finding fun open RvR, so you have to encourage players to hang out in RvR areas even if they're empty.

Naturally, some people will instead find some corner somewhere and AFK, so maybe trim down the unkillable NPC patrols that hang around the spawns so that opposing faction players can kill AFK players (sending them back out of the lake to respawn).  Just make sure there's nowhere that you can get XP while being protected by invincible NPC patrols, and you can let enemy players hunt down AFKers for easy points. 

Pure gold. The longer I'm out of this game, the more time I have to look back on what I was putting up with for the sake of PvP. It doesn't make any sense. People are forgiving crappy stability, bad PvE, and lackluster rewards for the CHANCE at meaningful PvP. It says a lot about the need for a good PvP game. This isn't it until they can fix the laundry list of issues, which they probably won't in any time frame that will draw players back in.

Hey, you can get a lot done (http://bible.cc/matthew/27-3.htm) for 30 pieces of silver.

Linky (http://vnboards.ign.com/Message.aspx?topic=108994041&brd=22997&start=108998104)

There are three main ways to advance in WAR, Open RVR, Questing & Scenarios.  Although I agree that open RVR needs a serious boost to make it more attractive to players, you have to remember that doing that is going to affect people questing or doing scenarios.

Also T4 is different to T2 & T3, at T4, exp just isn't as important anymore, the quest rewards pick up and you get boosted to rank 36 (or something) in PVP so, I personally, don't feel the mad rush to level up as much.  If they give too much exp and realm points for open RVR at T2/T3, they throw whatever formula they have for T4 out, while in my opinion T4 probably doesn't suffer from same lack of open RVR.  So I guess they could boost exp/realm points more, just for T2/T3 open RVR and leave T4 as is, but that's going to seem like a major nerf to T4 when new people level up that far using the new T2/T3 bonus.

I think their current thoughtful approach is good, but that doesn't negate the fact that all of this should all have been fixed in beta and it all comes back to population levels.

I'm very interested in what the sub numbers will be on nov 1st as that little comment from jacobs sounds, unusually negative or perhaps adversarial?

it came off as 'we know the problem but we can't rush changes' to me.

Getting people to bother with RvR is simply a matter of giving them better tools to get there (ie, teleporting) and ensuring they get rewarded for being there (ie, rebalance XP distribution, balance pass on BOs, Champs, etc). They don't need to really affect Quests nor Scenarios to do that, unless you were talking about how there'd be less people doing PQs and Scenarios because they'd be in RvR?

Right now, RvR is where you maybe can find some action whereas Scenarios are where the action is going to be at. Given the size of the world, it's often too much of a hassle to take a chance on RvR unless you're in a coordinated alliance dedicated to it. This early on in a new game, that can be changed easily enough. In three to four months or so though, the culture of the game will have evolved to whatever systems are in place today that don't get radical changes.

I'll copy my reply on another post to here since we're discussing solutions. This is my 2 cents.

MJ,
1)  Shouldn't you have a better answer than vote with your wallet?  You are a for-profit organization.  What about the beta surveys; why not start those up again?
2)  It's not a few vocal people.  We all can see it.  The need for a grind in PvP game coupled with a sever population issues is driving people away.
3)  You first impression window is closing very rapidly.  Once people decide to write you off, it's incredibly hard to get them to look again.

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.  Making RVR a lot more attractive will directly affect people questing (reduces the number of players nearby for PQ's, help finish a quest etc) and will also directly affect queueing times for scenarios.  This thread is about how empty open field RVR is in T2/T3, everybody is coming up with solutions that make it more attractive, that's great, lets say they fix it, what do you then say when someone starts a thread about lack of people doing PQ's or scenarios?

They missed the boat with open RVR in T2/T3, it was very active on my server (I remember a 12+ hour battle just for one T2 keep), then everyone figured out scenarios are massively better, the exp and realm points sucked.  Now scenarios are still going to be better, even if they up the open RVR bonus to 5x realm/exp current values.

What's the correct way to play?  Because that's what they are deciding with the bonuses.  Is it RVR > Scenarios > Questing?  Anything they do now to try and change the way people play will piss some people off. 

It also doesn't help that there isn't really a FFA type server, all the pvp guilds I know chose the core ruleset because the other ruleset is retarded.  Thanks to that they have hardcore pvp guilds mixed in with the general population, the hardcore isn't going to be pissing about in T2/T3 keep sieges, as with all pvp games they are hell bent on reaching max level by the fastest route possible.

Instead of fucking about with half measures, they should just give 5 times exp and 5 times renown to everyone of rank level 12-30 taking part in open RVR for a week.  The following week remove that bonus and add it to all the scenarios instead, the following week change it to apply purely for questing.  Instead of saying, "hey this part of the game is best", say "hey, this week, this part of the game is best".

That actually sounds a lot like the same old Mythic that hasn't figured out it's not 2001 anymore. They don't have the luxury of farting around and analyzing data points or going with the whole fix a class, put it on the bottom of the deck for the next 18 months and evaluate stuff. They're going to get slaughtered a month from now if it didn't happen yesterday.

It reads more to me like they think these problems are new instead of having been known for awhile. I can understand that spin for the VGN crowd, but I also wonder how many people today weren't around in beta when a number of these things came up. There were a LOT of people in beta, and it's not like the number of people who activated a launch account was triple or quadruple that amount.

They're dealing with a pretty large group of people who know what's what here. That cannot be easy.

They were fiddling with exp/renown gains from just about every source all the way through the end of the closed and open beta.  I would say this is why people have to go pair-jumping and one pairing can not support one person through Tier 3

Tier 1 is perfect.  Tier 2 only slows down the last 2 levels.  Tier 3 is a mess.  Didn't get to Tier 4 yet.

I see mythic's problem being that they didn't have time (or desire) to fully test and tweak what they put in, not that they don't have ideas.

Mark Jacobs contradicts himself there. One day he says that we should only play if we think the game is fun and don't believe in promises, now he says that we have to play and not cancel because we need to believe in his promises about open RvR.

We have all the reasons to complain. The issues that are popping up now aren't consequence to some new system that needed extensive testing. These issues were predictable and known by everyone who had experience with DAoC.

Game design can't be figured out in a day, and while it can be figured out post-release I still wonder what the hell they did all this time.

This isn't a matter of producing content, art, or stability issues. These are plain game design issues that are resolved by just sitting down at a table, thinking and discussing. Something that, obviously, Mythic isn't accustomed doing.

So those who want open RvR or can't do PQs because there are no players are a "vocal minority". Those who think the game becomes a grind are a "vocal minority".

This is not 2001, but I remember clearly when after ToA was released they thought we were a "vocal minority". Only too late they noticed that the vocal minority spoke in regards of the majority. As it is too late now to make the RvR lakes one per tier, for example.

For now I register that Mark Jacobs thinks that these complaints about open RvR are due to "loud voices or a few wrong-headed individuals".

On what did you overreact in 2001? On class issues, maybe. Doing nothing in regards to huge unbalances for a long time, keeping specs completely broken. And then suddenly turning things on their heads. This happened. And right now it looks the same since class issues are unaddressed and no one knows if when they'll arrive they'll be searing.

Class issues aside, what I remember from Mythic is not overreacting, but doing very little, too late and never at the root of the problem. How is this different today? As with ToA, you risk to fix things when it's too late.

Pragmatically, what were the risk if the rewards for conquering the keeps were much higher? What are the concrete reasons that made Mythic's designers going conservative? What they do not want to break?

I really do not see any valid reason about why they are so scared about open RvR. Or maybe not. There's only one reason that is plausible, and if this is true, I wish they were honest.

They are scared because more players in open RvR may as well make the server very unstable, as in beta. They are used to pack all these players in private rooms, but they never tested extensively open RvR. So they are scared of stability.

Mark, either be honest about the real reasons, or explain why you are SO SCARED of encouraging open RvR. It's not like you are nerfing Scenarios or PvE. You only offer another possibility. So, WHY?

There must be a logic motivation.

Super-fucking-retarded. Why? I applaud giving the bonus. But WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU RESTRICTING IT TO ONLY PEOPLE OF A CERTAIN LEVEL? What the fuck? Are you just telling the level 12-14's that "Sorry, you aren't big enough for the fun?" Really? I'm utterly gobsmacked at the logic that says players shouldn't get any bonus even though they contributed. Are you trying to funnel them into scenarios exclusively? If so, just restrict scenarios to only those levels and leave RVR for the higher levesl of each tier.

I just don't have any idea why you'd want to further segment the player population this way. What purpose does that serve?

Here's my thought:  If Mythic is so worried about rate of advancement, then they must also have concerns about retention in the endgame.  Getting to the endgame is one carrot.  Advancing/playing at the endgame is another.  If the endgame is well made, then the trip to the endgame becomes significantly less important with regard to retention.  I'd further argue that fun in the endgame with an easy trip to it enhances retention.  Players enjoy a varied endgame experience.  This can be provided through alts.  Being able to enjoy a solid endgame easily through a variety fo characters will ensure endgame success. 

I don't know why they insist on having a barrier to entry that is so steep.  Are they really afraid of losing folks once they hit 40?

Yes. You need to be able to see a blinking icon on the map that says "Hey, shit's kicking off over here" and be allowed the option to teleport to the nearest warcamp and automatically put into a warband.

That would be brilliant, but i'm not sure of the side affects.

I'm not sure that's the ideal solution, but travel issues were in the top 5 of things that bothered me about the RvR game. Some of the warcamps are in horribly stupid places, and they are the only ones with flightmasters. Is there any reason why we can't fly between major towns and warcamps instead of slog the whole way over land to get there? Why can't I see what's going on in the other areas and their RvR battlemaps?

The game needs more ways to travel from each town. Even a simple teleport to the nearest warcamp function would be good, although I think overpowered. You don't need to be teleported right to the action, but having the ability to instantly get a flightmaster is very key if you want to participate in open RvR.

This is a line from Mark Jacobs that makes more sense:

1- You still had to figure out these things long ago, instead of coding them now. Most of these issues were easily predictable.
2- If it's true that you are "working on it" in a substantial way, then TALK WITH THE PLAYERS. Don't just push these ridiculous fixes that fix nothing at all and just (legitimately) sour the players. Giving 2000 xp for taking a keep isn't an "improvement", it's a joke. If you are REALLY doing something more radical that needs coding then YOU HAVE to talk to the players, explain what you are doing and opening a discussion so that players can actually see where you are going and even anticipate the shortcomings (since it seems you alone can't figure them out).

Bring those goddamned designers out. Make them explain what they are doing and why. Make them explain what they AREN'T doing, and why.

Something my girl noticed, is war camps do not seem to have trainers, and others camps have no flight masters. Seems to be an intended travel time sink. Its odd, because of mounts at 20, and a mail box in every camp. Its like they killed some of the "Chore related" (Mail, AH, Bank) times sinks, but added others.

I still really liked that in AOC, your bank, mail, and auctions were all one window in one location, in contrast to say WoW, or LOTRO ETC..

Very true.

I really wonder why they don't put everything needed in every camp. That's an easy "patch" that would make ALL players much rejoice.

Even here I can't fathom the reasons to NOT do this.

meh, they want me to vote with my wallet, so be it. I'm not playing WoW either. Fuck it. I was stupid to expect something new or revolutionary World RvR.
They still drown themselves in grind shit that made people frustrated. If PVE cockblock isn't enough, they still made PVE MATTERS on the larger scale such as zone controls. Wtf? I understand sieging keep part, but doing npc quests and shit to take zone control? How the fuck does that even work in Core server where people just unflag and zerg the quests where they have population advantage? Eat a dick, Mythic. AND STOP FUCKING ADVERTISING ULTHUAN U COCKFAGS I ALREADY HAVE A TOON THERE

Now you see why i chose open. I still say, if you are on a core server, you are missing out. Quite a few PQ's and the like are completely diffrent animals when you can attack the other side trying to compete.

i'm listening  :pedobear: which faction n wut server

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=14839.msg523901#msg523901

They know that people won't want to play level 40 forever, and they know that once a server population is level 40, nobody will want to grind through the levels solo to get to where everybody else is playing. Its absurd because if they lose enough people on the way to the end-game, they lose the end-game. The end-game is Soylent Green people.

In the same way that the system of giving more XP and renown to the underpopulated side should be dynamic, so should the experience offered by under-utilized mechanics in the game, or underpopulated areas. Start a new character on a server where everybody is playing level 40s, and you can race through the levels at 100 times the speed because you're virtually alone. That way people can join whenever they want, you can deal with player churn at the 'end game' because there is no prohibitive barrier to entry.

Right now, the scenario we may be facing could be that some people are going to quit in T3 from the requirement to do more PVE (or iterations of the same scenario) than they anticipated while some people who did that PVE rapidly are going to quit in T4 waiting for other people to catch up. The bulk of the more tolerant people on the server are going to arrive at T4, and if their server has seen enough players give up, are going to find it to be almost as unrewarding as the catass-to-T4 players did. Then they face several weeks with their thumbs up their asses while hey wait for Mythic to consolidate servers so that they have enough people to play with.

None of the dynamic scaling stuff is hard to do. A consultant could build it for them in days.

People play the endgame of WoW for a long time.  When they get bored, they roll an alt and experience the endgame from another perspective.  I did this for 6 years in DAoC in an industry where 6 year retention is approaching forever.  I'm just saying that the focus of a pvp MMO is really the endgame.  Making the trip to the endgame fun is a HUGE plus.  Were they to speed up the leveling significantly and add in commands to turn xp and renown off for those wanting to stay in a tier longer, they would create a more enjoyable system. 

My leveling speed is killing my enjoyment of the game.  Last night I played a few scenarios and then said, well I just did 3 got 10% of my level so I need to do like 30-35 more depending on my win/loss ratio.  I logged and watched the last episode of Heroes.  Running scenario's is fun but I won't do it for hours on end. 

Not as a Warrior Priest running around the absurdly large TA.

Also the thought of rolling an alt is disheartening because I remember the grind I did to get here.

I would venture to say you, we even, are not the norm.  The norms will make alts and try some different things, but if they cannot have fun with their main, they're gone.  And right now, I question if all but the most hardcore can even make it to the endgame for their level of boredom or excitement to be a factor.

What I don't understand is that currently the game emphasizes questing or scenarios over PvP and RvR to level.  It does the latter well, when you can find it.  The former can be gotten elsewhere and in better supply from WoW or other games which have had the time to create and polish it, so if people want that, they'll go to those games.  They really, really need to de-emphasize those.  They're good distractions, and having variety is healthy for a game, but they should really want people experiencing the part of the game which theyre best at.

Folks,

the reason why they are scared to reduce leveling speed is that they fear that the lower tier will depopulate too fast. That would make all the problems with PQs even worse.

They need players swamped in the tiers so that those tiers stay active for as long as possible. So that the Scenarios pop frequently. Right now they can't afford to push everyone to the end and leave those who buy the game now a world completely empty.

The lower tier has already depopulated too fast. This was a problem we've known for a year, and is only to become newly apparent to whatever mere percentage of post-live players weren't also in the beta. PQs are impossible without luck or a dedicated group and we're only a month in. RvR is similar in lower tiers. Another month and people have either quit or are in their 20s, with everyone else trickling solo through T1 and T2 quests and scenarios, which while fun can get old right quick.

That they haven't addressed this yet means they don't think it's a problem, they don't know the solution, don't have the resources to implement the solution at the speed players would want,or are constraint by licensor restrictions.

I would guess they have little confidence in the endgame, probably because it's untested as a retention mechanism (what's the progressive repetitive grind raid analog that keeps people city raiding?). There's also the unfinished aspects of T3 and T4 as exposed by the vast difference in "feel", which really do merit review before anything else (given the next-month factor). And finally there's the world size itself at odds with the player funneling that's basically a strict requirement in a game theoretically focused on PvP.

They still get props for trying all these different things, but now the most important task is tweaking everything so it lines up better. That'd normally something you'd do in beta, but there's no going back.

Finally, relying just on your hardcore DAoC audience for a game you were hoping would draft off of something with proven mass appeal is kinda like SOE inviting their hardest hardcore players to help them design the "casual for everyone else" EQ2. Complete mismatch. RvR does not need to be a fundamentally hardcore only experience, but it could easily end up that way and so far seems to be sliding that way.

If I could turn off xp gain on my character, the lower tiers would never depopulate. I'd simply make a toon for each Tier, max it out on that particular level, and just sit it there.

Guildee: "Hey Paelos, can you help me in T2 RvR?"
Me: "Yeah, let me log on my T2 alt, one sec."

See how easy that is?

They had to cut out a ton of end game content to make the September release. Testing of what end game content they had was also a bit...odd. They also slowed down levelling late in the Beta for Release, presumably to give them some extra time to add in the end game content they couldn't include initially.

True, but at the current power differential between low levels and top tier, the game would feel way too frustrating. Right now it's manageable because you quickly outlevel the tier when you start having fun for being overpowered. An increase in number of top tier players would worsen the experience for all other "normal" players.

I was a strong supported of a delevelling system, but the way the game works it's not viable to have it.

In my off-peak play times where I'm soloing everything and PQs / teams are practically non-existent, I'm finding Tier 2 a bit of a grind. It might just be playing a ShaWar, but I don't want to restart the grind just to try a WitHunt.

(Expanded names at Lantyssa's request)

No, if it's meaningful to capture the tiers, people will have alts. If I can makes a difference to my team by making sure every level is Destro, I will. So will other people. It goes back to if the devs were lying about the earlier tiers having an effect on the later tiers.

It's not about having alts, it's about PvP as a means of leveling up versus PvP as "what you do once you've already leveled up".  I really don't think that turning WAR into another iteration of WoW's twink BGs (where tier capped players in the best loot their high level alts can buy will shred everyone else) will have a positive effect on making the PvP accessible. 

Yes, you can make your own alt and lock him at that level, but in order to get there in the first place, you're going to have to either get spanked up and down by overgeared elevens over and over again with no chance to fight back, or you're going to have to PvE.  Neither of these seem as much fun as the current mechanic, to me.

I don't think twinks are bad in this case. It's just another "max level" toon in the game at that particular tier. At 40 there will be plenty of people with good gear steamrolling things. Why should it be different in the middle?

Granted I'm not talking about "getting there." I'm talking about making RvR at all tiers important a year from now. The answer to the leveling problem is to simply go back to the xp gains in the beta before Mythic nerfed the everloving shit out of it.

I agree that a bunch of twinked 11's, 21's etc would suck for the lower players.  A team full of 11's would wipe the floor with a team of mixed levels. Same would happen in t2 with 21s(not in t3 yet so *shrug* on anything higher then t2). A good solution I think would be to just have specific levels where you can "lock" your experience. Maybe make it one level past the boost for the tier. So t1 you can lock your expierence once you hit level 9. Definitely useful in scenarios and ORvR but woud limit the gear/skills etc for the tier at least.

Twinks are one of the things that i hate about Wow. They also kill the noob experience. No, i'm am glad they  level by PvP in War, if they did that in Wow, perhaps the PvP in that game wouldn't be so pointless-to-even-try (Besides everything else that makes PvP in wow stupid). I have no idea why anyone would think Twinks would make PvP "accessible", when it shuns a huge portion of your would be clients. PvP in war is already accessible. Its ORvR that needs some love.

I'd be curious to see if twinks in WoW actually impacts casual PvP seekers, or if it's more a matter of twinks rolling over people who'd otherwise like to think they are twinks  :grin:

I've also always wondered if many people really bother with BGs in WoW before the endgame. I personally never have, but more because I hit the cap by the time they started adding them, and I'm not much of an alt player ever. To me, PvP in WoW is what you do when you've run out of PvE. Otherwise it's just the stress of people getting in the way of your leveling up and questing. Some people like that, the trepidation of going around the corner, or entering a room. That's what I have COD4 for, but everyone's different. On my server, it surprised me not at all that the few Outland "contestable" zones and their "world PvP" were largely ignored after the new shine war off. But even that was easier to get to for everyone than the "casual friendly" RvR of a game specifically intended to have casual friendly RvR.

I've been rolled in BGs before, by twinks on VoIP. But there's enough people that were doing it that this was a rare occurence.

Eh, I'm all over the place and without a point. Move along...

That's what PvP in WoW was for me. Something to do once the PvE started to become boring. Unfortunately that hit at level 37. BG's sucked. Hard. Wearing nothing but green gear was rolled repeatedly. Felt like could hardly put a dent in other people and was not uncommon for a rogue to make me his bitch very quickly. Also since frankly am only so so at PvP, arenas with small teams hold no interest to me. Let me hide in the zerg and pretend I'm awesome.

Granted I have very limited experience in WoW PvP but even if/when they rip off WH's ideas for PvP I think it will still suck to those that right now think it sucks.

PvP and collective PvE will only work with highly populated lower tiers. The only game that has ever ever kept lower tiers populated was CoH.

Their solution was to not have an end game and have awesome character generation.


I'm not convinced /xpoff is a good idea on it's own, if you have a character for each tier everyone will just gravitate to top tier because that is where everyone else is.

After a couple of weeks of T3 and a bit of T4 RVR... I have come to realize that I can only take so much of Keep sieging.

Keep defense is a BLAST, and I would do it almost every night.  Playing the offense, though inevitably ends in one of two outcomes.  Either a) We so outnumber the defenders that we just roll through as if they were not there, and it is mostly a PvE affair, or b) The defenders = our numbers and we break through both walls only to hit our heads on an unbreakable wall of Lag, crashing, and AoE wonderfulness.  If the Lag and Crashes get fixed it might be fun to come up with strategies to beat the AoEs.  But, nothing like a final charge to the Keep Lord and having half your warband crash or lag while the others run to their death.

So, one option that was mentioned (have not seen it yet, though I am sure it is mentioned elsewhere too), was to change the whole mess and take the Keep Lord outside, like a BO.  The Keep Lord would then occupy a spot in the Courtyard (Between the outter walls and the Keep) for T3/4 keeps.  Taking the keep would then involve both killing the keep Lord, and then "taking the flag" in the keep (similar to the various scenarios that allow for flag capture).

This would do a couple of things.  It would move the PvE/PvP outdoors where it gets a bit more tactical and hopefully a lot less laggy.  And, it would make the indoor battle between Players, not NPCs.  It would also give the defenders a couple of points to defend and perhaps open things up a bit.

As it stands our guild is thinking about reinstating the old school Tournament warfare.  We plant our banner on THIS hill, you plant your banner on THAT hill.  Whoever gets the other sides banner gets the keep, we just let you walk in and take it and Vice Versa.  This is mainly because Open field RVR is just that much more fun, and claiming/owning keeps seems to be nothing more than +RP.

I dont think lower tiers will ever be empty. Look at DAoC, the lower areas were never empty (until the introduced /level 20) you will always have people creating alts, the tiers might be less populated but in no way deserted.

Hell even WoW (where it takes much longer to level up) always has a steady stream of new characters being created. I think the trick is consolidating servers. 11ty millions servers that are less than half full? Mash em up into 15 semi-crowded servers and let the games begin.

Levelling up an alt in WoW (especially with the invite-a-friend thing) is easy, and if you like WoW, generally still fun. Alts in DAOC once people were well past the first wave of character development were pretty painful by comparison. I think in WAR they'll be even worse. To some extent, I think WAR's PvE is even less enjoyable than DAOC's.

DAoC now, where leveling is easy and alts are not a big deal to make. With the current mind numbing PVE/Scenario grind to level, its really going to cut down on the amount of alts people make.

Battle Objective are just horrible.  Flaws include:
Reward is pitiful.
Announces your position.
Provides no help in taking keeps.
Worthless PvE in PvP.
PvP never happens there
Too hard for casual players, too easy for a Warband
Most of the time you are just standing around.
VP are points are worthless since it just be flipped hour latter.
No defensive posture.  So if you were bored enough to actually defend one, you'd be immediately overrun.

Battle Objectives need to totally be rethought.  Nordenwatch flags might be a good starting point.

It certainly does. What happens is a true newbie, fresh out of the box see's the BG rewards for WSG or AB, and thinks "I just have to play a few games and I'll have some nice upgrades for awhile." Then they actually enter the BG, get berated for not being that BG brackets level cap and/or for not being twinked. They already feel alienated and they haven't even STARTED the match. Then once the match begins, it becomes PAINFULLY obvious that they aren't even a speed bump. Running into people who have two, three, four, FIVE times the normal amount of HP at that level, running around with 50% Crit rates and enchants that have procs balanced around 60+.

They last maybe 2 games at most, before going "Fuck this" and going back to leveling.

If there were viable reasons to want to capture/flip the lower tiers this would be less of an issue.  However, even then having an /xpoff command seems sub-optimal.

A reverse bolster would seem to solve most of these problems.  Want to PvP in T2 as a R40 character?  Fine, but stepping into the T2 lake loses you any abilities above the bolster level for T2 (18), and item stats are suitably degraded.

Couple this with a true reason for caring who owns T2 and T1, and you go a lot farther towards solving the "previous tier" population issues, at least for RvR.  (Reverse bolstering people all the way down for PvE seems feasible as well.)

At that point, you simply make alts of the characters you want and only have to sweat the climb to 40 on each one.  Hell, allow XP/Renown for these players to accumulate to a general pool at some scaled value of the earned equivalent, and you can even smooth out some of the "I want to roll a healer but I can't stomach the grind again" issues.

Sorry, meant at the level cap. Unless BG PvP yields XP, I never really got BGs before the level cap anyway.

I think you misunderstand what we mean by BG twinks then. There are no twinks at level cap.

There's no gear disparity at the cap and no way to overcome that by applying money to the equation? What server are you on?

I'm going to assume you mean before the level cap of the battleground. Perhaps folks are bored of PvE and want to give PvP a try, or they've seen the battleground rewards and been tempted to try to 'earn' them. Either way twinks have a major effect in discouraging folks who play for kills and glory, as getting into a fight with one is almost always suicidal. Players willing to sacrifice personal glory for tactical, objective-based advantage can do all sorts of good whether they're twinked or not. That the first sort is common and the second sort is rare leads to the anger at non-twinks that most twinks feel, along with the loathing the floats the other way.

If, on the other hand, you're unsure why BGs are open to anybody who isn't at the level cap... that's the sort of valid question that led to the upgrade-to-level system in WAR.

If you mean BG cap, they just level past to end game is what I mean. You can walk into WSG at level 19/29 untwinked and be as useless as a level 12 etc.


If you mean EndGame level cap, no, no amount of money will give you the proper gear for PvP in WoW.

That. I was at the cap when BGs went in though, so am more a niave observer than anything else. PvP is fun in WoW though pointless unto itself. While good for gear, it won't get you levels, and I'd always assumed that in general, levels trumps all eventually. I mean, for how long can someone leave their character at 19 just for the pew pew? Eventually you'll cap even what gear you can get and get back to wondering about those 20-70 abilities.

However, this is the long way of me saying I hope Blizzard does actually eventually add XP for PvP. That would be pure win. WoW doesn't need "world relevant RvR". Rather, having a completely separate advancement track would go a long way to alt'ing. Everyone's got alts, but after the second one hits 20, it's all really the exact same game you're grinding through because you're either real bored with the first one but not bored enough to leave, or your guild needs a class at the cap. Allowing a person to level up on PvP could be huge for a game that already has good enough PvE.

Forever?


People make alts specifically to keep at X9 level range for WoW BGs. It's the easiest way to "pwn noobs" in WoW. They did this in DaoC as well, complete with BG Buff bots to boot.  :oh_i_see:

Shit really? Why? Even single and narcissistic I could never muster the justification for that sort of time waste.

Clearly you're a noob to be pwned.   :oh_i_see:


It's basically cheating, but sanctioned unenforced cheating. People love to fucking cheat if they can get away with it. None of this should surprise  you!

I'm pretty sure I read recently that Mark had stated, rather forcefully and with some hostility, that they'd never let people turn off xp.  Things change all the time and what might've been a decision based on the noblest of intentions may have to give way to other realities so you never know.  Still seems unlikely.

But I think a better way to be noob friendly for low levels would be to reduce the grind.  It seems counter-intuitive, but with the game set up the way it is I can't see many people wanting to roll alts with the game currently in the state it's in.  And they could also add in mentor systems or something as well, though that could be pretty complicated.

The Rule of 11. If the MMOG Knob goes to 11, 10 will never ever do.

It's functionally like wasting time playing a slow-motion multiplayer FPS, except instead of requiring years of honed reflexes (or the weeks required for competitive level-cap PvP) it requires hours of research and grinding cash. Fight at top level (or as Haemish points out, slightly higher than top level) without, y'know, leveling. Low-rent pwnership.

Some people have fun playing BGs. I had a twinked level 60 holy specced priest that I would use just for 51-60 AV. I had a holy pali main but 51-60 AV was more fun. I would follow tanks around and heal. I'd spend hours pwning health bars.  :awesome_for_real: 

It was fun for me...I may be sick though.

I like Scenarios.   It just hilarious that Mythic never bothered to balance Scenarios from a minmax perceptive.

I like Scenarios too, the first thirty times.  Then it's a bowl of shit smothered in shit. 

After three solid days trying to avoid them myself and play the game "as intended" I have concluded that there are only about 4 classes per side worth a damn in a keep siege.  Oh and dont you dare try and think of any kind of inventive strategy to take a keep. Hell no bang on that door monkey the walls are indestructable and nope no climb walls or ladders either. 

Scenarios will be fun for many... the same way FPS maps are fun.  I don't really get it either, as I am not a huge FPS fan.  But, repetition of map is not the big thing.  Repetition of competition would be.  If there was ONE strategy that ALWAYS won on any one map, well then that map just got very boring, even if I know the winning strategy.  As long as the competition varies, the map can stay the same.  IT works in WoW, it works in TF2, it will work here.

As to keep sieges, fix the lag and crashing and I can gauruntee you there are more than 4 good classes... well unless you are considering the 3 dwarf classes and one other.

Basically mdps and tanks (minues their oil protections and guard) are about worthless while the doors are up.  So standing around for fifteen minutes as a WH gets old.  I am a FPS player as well but push maps would be nice. 

I had a lot of fun in WAR's RvR lakes during the closed beta, but since then they only seem marginally more populated than DAoC's battlegrounds (with the exception of Thidranki, Molvik & Leirvik of course).

In the case of DAoC's battlegrounds it was because nost people would rather either (power)level their characters to 50 (PvE level grinding was so boring - plus ca change) or /level 20 and hit Thidranki.

If your Melee have nothing to do during sieges, well then either you are doing it wrong or the enemy is.  Melee should be guarding all entrances to the keep knocking people back when they try to get in.  And, they should be defending the squishies from the Exit Parties that the keep sends out to kill your siege weapons.  I suppose if you attack undefended keeps then yea... not much to do until the doors come down.  But, our melee is never bored during an active siege.

And this I would agree with except the last couple nights the defenders had so many sorcs and magus on the walls they didnt send any melee teams out to harry our siege engines.  I agree in DAoC you would see this because the tanks could tether to the keep lord but I have yet to see this in WAR.  I hope it gets better and they review the mdps role in sieges.