f13.net

Well by now the first of the newsletters are being sent out and hopefully folks will receive theirs before the beginning of April. This month's newsletter contains quite a bit of clarifying information and a bunch of new information as well. Also included is the usual assortment of grab bag items, videos, developer diaries and blogs. Some stuff worth reading in this one. Anyway, here's the lineup.

Pauls Video Blogs (http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/behindTheScenes/vidPhoneDiaries/2007march.php)
Sanya's Grab Bag (http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/community/grabBag/grabBag_mar2007.php)
Zone Overview - Troll Country (http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/gameInfo/zoneOverviews/TrollCountry/TrollCountryOverview.php)
Concept Art - Chaos Architecture (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/browseimages.php?c=2)
Screenshots - TONS of new screenshots (http://www.warhammeralliance.com/gallery/browseimages.php?c=4)
Podcast Education - Types of RvR (http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/media/podcast/files/pp_TypesofRvR_bitrate.html)
Bonus Video - What it's like to work on an MMO? (http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/media/video/files/VotM_Bleep.html)
Video of the Month - Loading Screen Video (http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/media/podcast/files/WAR-VotM_2007-03_Login.html)

If that is the video of the month I'd hate to see #2-10.

Good to see they're continuing the DAOC tradition of horse-faced homly women.  :-D

So, um, the flying discs are exactingly like normal movement in every way.  Pointless and retarded. Good show.

That victory point scale thing is no surprise but it should work out well.

Mythic were pretty clear from the start to anyone capable of even the most basic reading-between-lines that this was only a flavour thing. You know, like in Warhammer.


Reading through the bumpf, I'm a little disappointed they didn't give out another 2 career descrpitions. People don't seem to have noticed on 'other' boards, but it looks a lot like the careers are pretty much the same on chaos as on order, and another tank description would have given us a decent idea how they are managing tanking. We already know the dwarfs have a debuff tank and orcs have a cc tank, I'll be surprirsed if these concepts aren't duplicated in opposing realms, and so there is probably only one more unique tank type left.

This also means at least 5 months (ie. August) before they can possibly have described all 12 classes. Who else wants to bet on a 2008 launch?

From the video...

'Scenarios (that is, instanced combat presumably dominated by organised gank groups) will be the most varied, most balanced, most fun form RvR, and so will carry the most victory points'.

Most varied? Only if they are somehow different from anything that has been achieved before in other games?

Most balanced? Only if you have a magical balancing algorithm from fairy land that takes account of your out-of-game-organisation level?

Most fun? I seriously doubt it.

Most victory points? /sigh.

You think somehow overland won't be dominated by zergs and gank groups?

Objective based PvP pretty new to MMO, so I suspect there is plenty of new ground to cover.  But Murderball didn't look particularly inventive.  I am just hoping that they are saving the more complex scenerios for the higher teirs.

It sounds fun it me, but I like instanticed PvP.  And Mythic is betting the MMO market does also contrary to the wailing of the Double Mega Hardcore. 

It's the double mega hardcore that gain the most from sport-pvp instances and were screaming for them in daoc (the casual crowd were keen on them, but mostly as a way to get the double mega hardcore out of their way, so they could play real RvR). If the game is aimed primarily at that double mega hardcore crowd, rather than trying to expand the more casual early-daoc type market, then I guess it does make sense.

But in that case, why bother splitting the community into realms if the 'real end-game' is going to be sport-pvp rather than rvr?

Every man for himself is probably more in keeping with warhammer lore than the current alliances anyway.


One very real problem I do see, is that the details given suggest that by entering an instance each side is effectively 'anteing' a certain amount of realm victory points advantage. As we only have two sides, this looks quite literally like a zero sum game. The problem with a zero sum game, is that every time a team below the median skill and organisation level of the opposition enters an instance, they are driving their realm backwards. It implies the realm would have been better off if that team had never entered the instance. Unless some mechanism can be designed to neutralise that effect, it could well poison internal realm communities. Which is bad, obviously.

At the low levels you can end up with accusations that guild X is an alt guild for someone on the other faction who is losing instances on purpose.

At the high levels you can end up with double mega hardcore guilds asking noob guilds not to take part in instances, and blaming noob guilds for entering instances when the battlefront falls back.


Sport pvp is open to being gamed, and needs a mechanism to ensure there is no way that additional weak players can ever dilute your effort and drag the battlefront backwards.

Not to be confused with Guild X IS an alt guild for someone on the other faction...

Separate sub-topic: I was impressed by those screenshots. It's not as low-end as WoW but not as much a resource-hog as EQ2./VG Seems to be in that comfortable middle-ground between heavily stylized but not too cartoony, and maybe performance-wise scalable to a wider number of computer setups.

It would make sense but it would also be a VERY DEEP hole where to fall. I'm also baffled by this artificial way to push instanced PvP (through points boost). Exactly as they ruined DAoC's RvR by making keeps irrelevant and rewarding instead dedicated 8vs8 ganking groups.

I guess they still don't understand what made DAoC great in the past (where RvR truly built the community, consequently destroyed by total bias toward 8vs8 specialized groups).

They are even contradictory when they hype the game as "it's war", when it's quite obvious the game is about artificial battles close into instances with a "projected"-fake type of PvP progression (grind "x" instances and trigger map switch!).

I understand that (I think), but was there a chance old-style DAoC RvR was ever going to have mass appeal? People can deride the WoW BGs all they want, but until BC launched, that was the easiest way for casual players at the level cap to continue their gear progression. They weren't going to end up with Tier 3 stuff, but they could still make meaningful progress at all. Because it was a point-accrual system that allowed for PUGs.

The WAR system is different of course but still seems based on the same concept of sport-PvP, which some don't like for the lore/immersion reasons, but which I feel is exactly what an IP-based game from EA needs to be. It can be fun for a lot of people in ways that weeks of prep-work and bot-required old-style RvR was never ever going to be (because it was tied to a game that had an accountbase I guarantee EA would consider a "failure" for WAR).

You guys know the WAR system far better than I'm going to anytime soon. But I am interested at the abstract level in the way this seems to be trying to have mass attraction and appeal. Of course, Eldaec's points above would be a problem, but I'm focused mostly on the theory side.

Of course we are going to see gaming, accusations and sabotage.  It always happen any where players care about the outcome.  That's a good thing and Mythic will have to do their do-diligence to minimize their effect.

Key point is that WoW BGs work because they do not matter a whit to the double mega hardcore. If the double mega hardcore cared about them, then random group formation would not be sustainable, since the organised end of the player base would (rightly) complain that winning them would have more to do with lucking out on group formation than anything else. Once the premades are in, how would a casual participate meaningfully? WoW BGs are not a useful comparison.

A more relevant comparison would be with Guild Wars. And there nobody is ever going to suggest that randoms will be able to take part in the high end competition, but surely the point of RvR, and the only reason to bother doing RvR, is if you can use it to get the casuals involved in the meaningful end of pvp play? If you don't have that, why bother splitting your community into realms?

Now, if instances were the 'fun casual' low-impact form of pvp, and didn't count for as much as the real RvR battlefield, then this situation would be reversed, casuals could play instances occasionally to relax, while the double mega hardcore wouldn't feel they had to dominate the instances (like WoW). In fact you'd find the hardcore trying to drag numbers out into meaningful RvR (ie. Building community again), which is better than the probable alternative of the hardcore discouraging the 'unworthy' from joining meaningful sport-pvp. Casual players can have fun in meaningful RvR, even with the hardcore around them, because casuals outnumber the hardcore - and because victory is more about strategy than tactics; OTOH casual players will always tire of meaningful sport pvp, because if it is meaningful, the hardcore will come, and in sport pvp that means the casuals will get stomped on.

Maybe the plan is to parcel casuals off and lock them out of the meaningful section (attract casuals to low-impact RvR, and hardcore to meaningful sport pvp), but it still seems altogether problematic to have the mass of your players fighting on a battlefield where achievements mean less than what happens to an elite out of sight sport pvp competition. Plus Hardcores act as 'content' in open RvR, they provide quests (organising raids) and uber mobs (opposing gank guilds), losing them from daoc RvR would undoubtedly have been popular in the short term with the casual player base, but I'm not so sure they weren't part of what made RvR interesting. /shrug

On the first question, is open RvR ever going to have mass appeal? I don't know. Indications from daoc were that it's worth a try, the casual players genuinely liked 100 v 100 face offs at keeps. The hardcore liked the open aspect of RvR much less, because it diluted their individual advantages. Certainly RvR is the only major thing that is unique to Mythic and WAR - and it's the only mechanism I've seen for having hardcore and casual players interact constructively - so it seems nuts to focus instead on something that is already the focus of games like GW. At the end of the day, what we do know is that meaningful sport pvp is an unlikely premise for a mass appeal game, while RvR is at least unknown.


First off, prep-work. The beauty of RvR prep work was that the double mega hardcore did (and enjoyed) the prep work for the casual masses. Casual players did not have to do prep work for RvR, but double mega hardcore players who wanted to get shit done in RvR had to communicate that prep work to the casuals, it wasn't perfect, but I have yet to see a better MMOG model for getting hardcores to talk to casuals. Plus prep work was only necessary at all for the very largest RvR events, on your average night of RvR you just use the realm war map to go find the action.

Second, bots. Bots are totally irrelevant to the pvp model, both RvR and sport pvp can be designed with or without bots. Mythic have accepted that bots are bad; daoc bots came about because mythic were trying to solve design problems identified in EQ. There is no reason to think any modern game would fall into the same trap that daoc did.



I agree with that, though I'm still a little unconvinced by the effects and animations in the videos we've seen. The animation we've seen looks more daoc era than next gen. Hard to tell on short videos of course.

Well, I agree but I disagree.  Things look great, but as I mentioned their weak point are the faces - not just the female ones.  They had the same problem in DAoC.. they just don't feel "alive."  They're too far on the wrong side of the uncanny divide, while WoW's faces, as cartoony as they, are feel more alive because of it.

That's been the thing making me tip further toward Conan. WAR looks great... except for when it's in action. Then it looks extraordinarily stiff and stationary. Fuck that, I want to move around while I fight.

Here we are saying the same thing.

To be successful PvP MUST be accessible. Sport/specialized PvP is the opposite of accessible. Guild Wars endgame for example is inaccessible for the casual player and exclusive of the hardcore guilds. Which is the main reason why in the long term the hardcore are the only ones who stick with the game.

DAoC's initial RvR WAS accessible because it was a realm thing. DAoC was highly successful for the rather low production value it had. Then it died with the time because of bad direction. The RvR moved from a communal thing to an exclusive thing of specialized 8vs8 gank groups in teamspeak. That slide is what made the game lose appeal progressively.

The more you compartmentalize PvP the more you make it inaccessible.

I'll admit I haven't been reading as much as I should have about WAR, as much of a Warhammer fan I am, so I'm not sure if I'm correct in saying this, but... Aren't they going to have similar early-DAoC style RvR in addition to the sport/instance style PvP? I was talking to a couple of employees at last year's ComicCon and from what I got one realm will be able to assault different map areas held by the other realm. Attacking the main dwarf keep might boot the dwarf players out of their homeland for a while, all outside of an instance. But then there were those scenarios as they were talking about where its a smaller scale. This should allow casual people to go do the big battles were they can contribute and avoid the smaller ones where they are lacking. Now the fact that they are rewarding the smaller scale battles more than the others is another issue, though.

Rithin,

Yes, the open-field is still there.

But Mythic have been pushing the idea that instanced sport-pvp is what you primarily use to push the front line back and forth on that open field, and what you use to sack the city. So you can fight on the open field, but Mythic are suggesting that it won't affect the realm war so much as organised sport-pvp.

Clearly it is a matter of degree, if sport-pvp is much more greatly rewarded than open-field, then open-field will likely be viewed as a novelty gimmick rather than an end game, and casual players will lose their chance to be involved in the end game, and to be on the winning side in RvR from time to time. Sport-pvp will become less accessible as it becomes more meaningful, because hardcore players will then seek to dominate it, which is much easier for them to do in the group v group setting.

If sport-pvp is only slightly better rewarded than open-field it might not be so bad. As you say, the hardcore can play instances, while others stick to RvR.

It is worrying that Mythic seem to view organised meaningful sport-pvp as inherently balanced and fun for casual players though.




I always think people overstate the importance of faces in MMOGs. Most of the time, most of your group can't even see your face, because you tend to all be pointing the same way.

What daoc (and most MMOGs that aren't City of Heroes) got wrong is letting the really important character image decisions (ie. the colours and shape of your outfit) be dominated by the need to wear efficient gear, espeicially at early levels when efficient gear usually looks like ass.

CoH character design is fantastic because it is not overriden by loot, and the character image decisions affect stuff that other players will actually notice.

In a loot based game it will always be hard to reach the CoH standard of character generation. But things you can do include making armour dyes easily available at level ONE, and focusing on things that add flair and make characters easy to tell apart and which you can see through loot, like hair, Fat/thin sliders, scars, glasses, skin colour etc

Having an item system based on looting components then crafting the item helps too, because then you can transfer some style decisions onto the player at the time of crafting.

Faces are a big part of the first impression of the game. Saying you'll probably have a helm on later misses the point.

Maybe, but what your arse looks like is a much bigger part once you are past the character generator.

That's all I'm saying.

Everyone I know that's looking forward to the game, including myself, wants DAOC v. 2. The interest is in larger scale RVR. That might not be full open realm like DAOC, but it's certainly not preset teams playing "matches" a la WOW or Guild Wars.

Too much time spent on faces and you end up with SWG.

Remember that YATTA! SWG music video? They made Brad Pitt! (he's at 01:42ish in the video)

SWG Yatta Video (http://youtube.com/watch?v=N0Vnv2p9_ww)

I've got nothing against world pvp, I love world pvp, I cried about the BG's before they were even released in WoW.  But making another DAOC with static keeps and some far-off relic buff objective isn't going to cut it this time around.

Here Xilren's Twin illustrates how to address the issue using innovation and new gameplay avenues.


The limp-dick solution is tacking WoW's sport pvp BG-system onto DAOC's keep/relic system and calling it a day.  Big surprise which one they went with.

So at the end of the day, whie I think DAOC is a horribly overrated pile of crap I do agree with what seems to be the general opinion held by DAOC fanboi's.  They better get world pvp right or why should anyone leave the Blizzard-crafted sport-pvp monstrosity that is WoW for what will undoubtedly be a sub-par gameplay clone in WAR?

I am trying hard to like this game, because Warhammer is cool stuff.

It just disappoints me to see everybody clipping through everyone else scrambling around. The guy stopping as he hits tab or whatever to cycle targets until he finds THE RIGHT ONE, then charges ahead. The little refresh "button fill up" animation along with the twinkle when the 4 key is now ready for use again.

I just have had my fill with this style of game.

And yes, whoever made the comment that basically said "war isn't a 12 vs 12 skill matched instance" is totally correct. You couldn't be more correct. It needs to have some kind of controlled, FUN chaos. A damn match making system for the 'highest prize' sanctioned pvp sucks.

This is something that is very dependant on the player.  Some could give a rats ass what they look like, some are very connected to appearance.  I'm one of the latter, to the point I even keep shit in my bank/ bags and wear it around because it looks neat. (Which is why I sitll have my full GS set in WoW)   My wife has deleted 3 different toons because she got bored of the way they look.  She's also sick of the way her druid looks, but keeps it because it's max level.

The avatar is me, in the game.  It's what I connect most of my memories, etc to.  When I take screenshots, I usually pan around to capture my character in them.  It's also what I see most often of other people's characters.  WoW might have a limited number of faces, but you still see more people going around without helmets rather than with them, even if they've got a really nifty looking one. 

See, it is pretty much irrelevant to argue here because we basically all agree. We can have slightly different opinions on the details but I think the large majority here is for what Lum prefectly described as "struggle of nations" compared to "gang wars", for the reasons that eldaec explained in detail.

DaoC was successful because it offered a form of PvP that wasn't available anywhere else. The reason why people stick with it despite it not being a so greatly designed game was essentially because it was "unique", little competition on that front. It's then OVERLY OBVIOUS that Warhammer can succeed if it goes to tap that potential that still no one else went after. There's a HUGE demand for that kind of PvP that is still unanswered. While it won't be successful if it tries to be another slightly different copy of WoW in the hope to borrow some of their subscribers. You have to stand out, and a true RvR has enough potential and exclusiveness to make a game stand out and compete in this market.

It's not rare to read on casual forums people wishing WoW to be WoW with DAoC's RvR.

We want PvP got right. Which means real warfare, territory control, cooperation. While at the same time keep as the very first goal to have it accessible for everyone.

Mythic is stuck repeating how Warhammer isn't a bleached copy of WoW in the exact same way they are stuck repeating that Warhammer isn't DAoC 2. And in both cases they still fail to provide concrete arguments.

I mean, we're still far from the game release, but people still don't know what this game is about and often what Mythic says is completely contradictory. Has this game a clear direction or not? Do they have a precise idea what they want to do with PvP or not?

Yes and yes.

Hrose,

I think you are a little too emphatic on whether there is evidence of a market for open RvR.

Open RvR remains untested in the market since daoc. And that was pretty much a stealth product by recent standards, I don't think you can automatically draw conclusions about how an RvR game would do today.

There is significant evidence that meaningful (as opposed to diversionary) sport pvp is hard to sustain in a typical mmog setting because it dramatically emphasises differences in player skill, at the same time as limiting community size and so forcing the uber up against the noob too often.

But at the same time, the best you can say for RvR is that people who tried it usually liked it.


I don't see what Mythic has said that is contradictory.

When talking about design they have been clear that WAR mechanics focus on ...

sport pvp > open RvR > PvE

...since the start. The flavour side (the Paul Barnett line) has just been about bigging up the Warhammer lore (which sounds more like open RvR only because the warhammer ip is more like open rvr). Regular MMOG watchers should know better than to expect creative and design to be walking in perfect lockstep on a licensed ip.


EDIT

That said, apart from the 'contradictory' thing, I agree with the point you are making.

Hrose, you haven't been paying attention.  No MMOG has every been this straight forward and released so much information about the how the game will function.

I couldn't have said it better.

I want to be a babe.  Why can't I be a babe?

"Hrose,

I think you are a little too emphatic on whether there is evidence of a market for open RvR.

Open RvR remains untested in the market since daoc. And that was pretty much a stealth product by recent standards, I don't think you can automatically draw conclusions about how an RvR game would do today.

There is significant evidence that meaningful (as opposed to diversionary) sport pvp is hard to sustain in a typical mmog setting because it dramatically emphasises differences in player skill, at the same time as limiting community size and so forcing the uber up against the noob too often.

But at the same time, the best you can say for RvR is that people who tried it usually liked it."



No in fact HRose is right, DOAC open RVR or rather large AND small scale and individual PVP in the context of open territories was sucessful early on precisely because you didnt actually "know" what you were going to get the next time you went out on the frontier, it also incorporated large/medium scale organized and spontanious large scale raids in opposing keeps.

And so did SWG faction system, or GCW early on. When it worked

And so does EVE

The fact is instanced PVP is not real PVP, most of the super double hardcore PVP'ers (whove actually experianced open large scale territorial PVP) dont bother with WOW BG's because its strictly for the Jr League, WOW PVP instanced is carebear PVP period, because its careved out of the world, does not effect the enviornment, and relies more on loot than on skill.

And if you enjoy PVP you want it raw and not watered down....OTOH theres porbably not really any room for debating

"sport pvp is hard to sustain in a typical mmog setting because it dramatically emphasises differences in player skill,"

Because I personally think thats a good thing......

There should be opprotunities for casuals and hardcores to PVP, alongside eachother, in persuit of an objective, but saying the playing fieled should be leveld to control for someones shitty skill level is serious weaksauce. And smacks of to much time in a WOW BG.

All those Videos did was bum me out, I was seriously hoping for a game with real open RVR and objectives where strategy and tactics mattered, not some instanced BG contest shit with dynamically spawned NPC's to "level the playing field". Theyve designed this ass backwards from a pvp'er POV IMO, BG's should matter very little, they should be the testing grounds people go to to prepare for real open realm RVR, thats what warhammers about, not some overengineered point system.

Seems like they lost the vision in persuit of the market share.

Or you guys are pissy because their vision isn't the same as yours.  I hope "real" pvpers stick with Eve.

I think HRose misses a bigger point (as do some of the rest of you).  The reason that many of us playing DAoC would like to see some semblence of DAoC v.2 in WAR is because games are becoming so linear that they're losing the sandbox aspect.  In DAoC you'll find a wide array of gaming styles in RvR any given night.  You'll see massive battles, small skirmishes, 1v1, 2v2, keep takes, tower takes, and even duels.  The sport players (8v8) can have their sport matches, they can help the zergs, and they can aid in relic takes.  If you're a particularly well-coordinated group, you can engage in fighting 8 vs A LOT.  As a 8v8 player myself, I find that the draw to DAoC for me is that I can log on and enjoy a wide variety of combat experiences each and every evening and have the ability to somewhat control when and where I engage in them. 

While I understand that it's necessary to encourage the masses to have a more active and enjoyable role in PvP, limiting its scope is a mistake.  You'll be forced to PvP as the game designer intended and have difficulty enjoying what I'd term "player crafted content".  You all clammor for "skill" to be meaningful in MMOG pvp yet you complain when 8 coordinated players are able to outperform large zergs with largely the same gear and realm ranks as the zergs.  Gear means surprisingly little on the DAoC servers, especially since the most recent bounty point item patch.  That leaves the rest to skill and realm rank... and realm rank is pretty easy to obtain.   DAoC is the only pvp game that I've played after UO where I've felt that ability made the player far more than gear.  If even a small portion of this carries over to WAR, I'll play.

Just to add to what Nebu said, one of the best things about the variety you achieve in daoc style rvr, is that it gives you scope to experience far more enjoyable defeats than a GW style match can grant you.

Even if you don't win, playing with a small team and taking a huge chunk out of a zerg is *fun*.

Even if your zerg loses a keep, smashing 2 groups of bad guys with a catapult along the way is *fun*.

Relic keep defences or gate intercepts are fun and give you scope to rack up personal kills no matter who ends up with the flag.

You have much more scope for doing cool things to boast about later in open RvR defeats than in sport PvP defeats, and you always have the uneven nature of the 'real war' as a bit of an excuse to protect your ego. (everyone here might be just that well balanced that you don't need this :roll:, but the weaker casual players certainly do need it)


A big part of what I mean when I say sport pvp overemphasises  player skill is that victory is too black and white, so not only will the better team win more encounters, but the better team will do so in an environment that explicitly says "this was a level playing field and you were the best", it seeks to give the better team all the credit, and explicitly tell the other team that they lost. A few more shades of grey help everyone in the long run.

Sport pvp hasn't ever really given scope for a moral victory in defeat, or a Pyrrhic victory that breaks up your army.

Rose-colored glasses. My time in DAoC was nothing like that.  I remember my first day of GW thinking "WoW, I pvp more than my 3 months in RvR" I remember lots of running, lots of lag, lots of one-sided battles.  Very little fun.  I am sure Mythic has made advances in their RvR, but I doubt the numbers game has changed.

So lets talk about the game they are making, because the Scenarios are worth more than the Battlefields people are going to ignore the Battlefields? Surely most people will choose which ever one suites them best.  We still don't know how xp and items and RvR points are distributed in PvP which I think would be the be the biggest draw to min-maxers.

If Scenarios didn't give the most VP then the team with a massive zerg would always control the zone.  Now with Scenarios giving the most VP, teams with best PvP teams controls the zone.  This is a preferable situation because individual players have a better chance of overcome a teamwork gap than the numbers gap.  If the enemy out numbers you 3000:1000, there is no way for players to find 2000 players to fill the gap.  And even if your enemy out skills you and out numbers you still have a chance to have fun and have a chance ( you might draw their B team) no matter what.  My guess is Mythic is trying to avoid the situation from DAoC where many servers became hopeless and people left in droves.

I tried three times to play DAOC, with different batches of people, but I never really knew any of them and I couldn't ever get groups to level up. Everyone was already maxxed, and they'd poopsock all day and outlevel me in two nights.

I'd like to try it sometime, but I just don't have the means. All of my gamer buddies hate the game. In fact, the most common point they make to not even look at WAR is that it'll be "DAOC 2.0" - this isn't a good thing to ANYbody I game with.

I certainly agree that this was the thing that strangled daoc (even more than ToA).

And once the bulk of the community got out of levels 1-30, and espeicially once they had /level, newbies just couldn't break into the community even if they were willing to sit through the pve grind.

The long grind is no longer an issue in modern daoc, but even today the leveling process doesn't give longstanding players any reason to interact with newbies.

The RvR-from-level-one aspect might help this a little (assuming regular players don't spend their alt-lowbie RvR time saying "sorry we're running guild pre-made team instances, you can't come with us").

I'm interested in what games you've played that make you think this?

The evidence of games like guild wars suggests it is unlikely.

I'm trying to think of a game where casual players are realistically able to overcome the teamwork gap on a consistently level playing field? Do we even think players *should* be able to overcome the teamwork gap when on a level playing field?

The numbers gap on the other hand is partly mitigated by the fact that large realms were typically the most disorganised. And partly mitigated by the fact that the alb zerg can't all be in the same place at the same time. That said, I definitely agree that Mythic need to do more to help balance populations than they did in daoc (and I don't pretend to have easy answers).

Numerical imbalance can also be substantially mitigated by a system where the front line gets harder and harder to push forward as you reach your goal, so eventually you reach an equilibrium point.



By the way, I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea on instanced sport pvp being in a game like this as a training setup, or as an area to go pvping when you haven't got all night, or if you want to prove out your individual group rather than take part in the realm war this evening, or if you somewhere to go when the real frontier is just too zergy for you right now. It's all good. I just don't think that sport pvp should be the game's ultimate end.

If there is a large competitve team gap it would mean that burden of holding dominace would fall on the shoulders of the top guilds to have reliable victories.  Guild wars suggests that a highly competitive teams rise and fall very rapidly.  These top guilds can only hold out so long before people move on and they fall.  Just like NFL teams.  The fortunes of teams elbe and flow at greater rate than the change of populations.

It's a given that the elites are going to cream the scrubs.  But when my elites beat your scrubs and your elites beat my scubs, it's a wash.  It's when our elites fight and when our scrubs fight that'll determine the outcome.

Why do you conclude this will lead to intantized PvP as the ultimate end?  Why can't there be multiple ends and people play what they like?

Unrelated, why are they telling which things are worth more or lesss victory points?  It seems unwise like annoucing which of your child you love the most.

Rewatching the video: it says you get VP for skermishes.  So if Scenarios = Battlefield + Skermishes in VP, it would balance out.  Would that make you guys feel better?

Nope because this is exclusive PvP. And exclusive PvP means that it's selective. And selective means that some players get in while other players are left out.

A successful mmorpg must promote inclusion, not exclusion. Battles, the real medieval battles were about inclusion and numbers. Grab a pitchfork and join to fight. But we all also just saw "300". And we know that a good team CAN overcome numbers. Or at least that's the myth that games should make us live, because that's what makes games feel cool and involving. Giving us myths.

The problem of zerg vs zerg must be solved elsewhere. I always said that the game must provide paths (through directed/objective based PvP) so that the game is fun and exciting even and IN PARTICULAR when you are outnumbered, because there's the potential for something truly "heroic" that the players would love (see 300 again). While it's dead boring if you know you are winning and the victory doesn't require any effort.

How to achieve this? Instead of locking the number of players who participate in a defense/attack (which negates the immersion and the WHOLE POINT of the warfare), you give teams different objectives that are balanced for that specific situation.

A concrete example for a taste of what I mean: the team with the large zerg will have the objective (and related victory points) to conquer a castle. The outnumbered defenders will have the objective to defend it *as long as possible*. The more they resist, the more points they earn, and the more they are outnumbered the more the points they earn over time scale up.

Asymmetric/immersive warfare is the whole point of RvR. You just need to make it correspond adaptive/reactive objectives that are balanced to the current status of the realm.

And to precise better: are the game rules to lead the players around and determine what they'll do and what they'll avoid. Carrots on a stick, goals, power-ups. That's what the game is about and what the players chase. They simply go where the best points to be made are.

What's bad in PvP when you are outnumbered is that you only waste time feeding enemies points without getting anything back. So it's often better to just /quit.

If this is seen as a problem then you can use the rules to encourage and motivate players to defend. What I mean is that this is ENTIRELY a problem of game rules.

It's about time that game design starts to "legislate" on this, start working on models, interactions. Because till now RvR was just a big zone with a keep in the middle, with some bleached, gimmick features tacked on it. Not much development went into the actual RvR and warfare, and that's the main reason why all that potential is untapped.

Just think to what we could have now if RvR had received in the years the same focus and numbers of reiterations that went into PvE.

That's what I'm saying. RvR is still a closed door. The first step.

And since I'm at it, let me finish.

Where's Mark Jacobs now? Where is his interest in the discussion and desire to participate?

I'm not saying this as a provocation, I'm saying this for two reasons:
1- I don't care about this because I want to convince Mythic to do what I want, but I'm fairly convinced that these discussions are actually important for the type of game they are making. They are useful.
2- More than hearing myself speaking and my ideas once again (which I know quite well already), I'd really like to know what Mythic (or whoever within) thinks about this. What are their goals, their focus. What they think about the various form of PvP and where will be their bias.

Maybe it's to early because all these things are still super-secret as they fear everyone else stealing their great ideas, but my own fear is that these discussions will never happen and we'll still repeat the exact same things for years. Till another Blizzard arrives and owns the market again by doing very simple and obvious moves while everyone else is left staring baffled.

Elite vs Casual:

The real stumbling block is how tough you make one player, or one group of players, who play well.  Is it Bruce Lee tough,  where one player can take out a horde of guys that are just below his skill level?  Is it professional boxing or fighting tough,  where the champ can take out two guys,  but he has to work at it?

DAoC swung way too far where preset group builds,  which generally included 2 or 4 bottleneck classes,  could take out large numbers.  What this did long term,  was kill the casual PUG.

Note on bottleneck classes:  classes you needed a skilled an experienced player on,  but were curdled misery to play with casual.  Every set group needed one geat healer,  one great driver/mezzer,  one good/great MA, and one great interupter.  I've built PUGs with outstanding members,  all except either no bard/shitty bard.   No interrupts/mezzes/good back up heals & rezzes, GG.

It was fairly common in old frontiers to see the Gank Guilds sit at the portal keep for up to an hour or two waiting for a good bard and main healer to log on.  It was pointless for them to go without,  or pickup an average player, since they'd go down to the first gank group they ran into.  And forget it if your only mistake was rolling a sub-par class.


The big problem with sport PvP it is a zero sum game.  Who gives a shit if my elitest gank guilds are creaming another realm,  if by consequence it doesn't benefit me or have any effect on the game world where I PvP.

In a single rvr realm game,  if the opposing side decides to zerg,  then most times the gank guilds and more serious players are forced into cooperation.  I'd like to see Mythic delving into a

I don't mind if the "Bruce Lee" approach is taken, as long as it consists of a rock/paper/scissor dynamic.  For instance:  my guild this winter ran bombing groups of 5 or 6 (chanters, ES spec Bainshees, druid, bard) that could eat zergs alive if he caught them with their pants down.  We dropped like pansies to the first tank 8 man we ran acoss though,  or if we lost the surprise we'd run.  Fast.

The "Bruce Lee" approach without checks and balances leads to a depletion of your PUGs and casual guild pvpers.  Then it hits the hardcore groups who lose more,  and don't have even the ego boost of taking out PUGs or hitting another 8 man from behind.  Then the hardcores dwindle, because they population of oppenents is depleted.


I can respect the tack Mythic is taking....  maybe they will suck out the hardcore into the sport world,  leaving the frontier as casual nirvana.  Maybe make ladder standings entirely contingent on sport pvp participation?

I think I'd prefer a system that either handicaps groups like golf (buff hits, magic resist, mana/whatever pools, for those with poor records?) based on standing in sport pvp,  or seeks to do some dynamic balancing in the greater frontier.

Examples off the top of my head: 

- Series of choke points that are easy to defend for the defenders, but hard on the side which conquered it.  Minor keeps or towers that are easy to take but not onerous, defending the choke points, as you get further in.

If the defenders lose a choke point, they can reassemble at a slightly more strategic, better defended chokepoint further in.

- Make travel time a big factor.  It's easy to port/fly/ride up to supply checkpoints,  but checkpoints don't extend into opposing realms beginning line of battle.  As the aggressor pushes in,  it takes longer for the dead and reinforcements to catch up.  Yet, if action stays in the "frontlines" everyone gets an easy passage up to the action.

MAKE IT EASIER FOR PEOPLE ON THE DEFENSIVE TO PUSH UP FROM PVE AND FRIENDLY ZONES.  DAoC proved the carebears WILL fight for intangibles like relics or their realm.  Hell, the turnout the first 2 years of the game every time /alliance spammed "150 on bolg.  Relic raid!" was amazing.  Guys I never saw out of the pve zones would run out to get to the relics for dee.

Even the hardcore usually volunteered their services to take back undefendend friendly keeps,  or cut off reinforcements at the Milegate choke offs.

- NPC henchmen that only will serve at certain areas.  The aggressor pushes up,  and all of a sudden the defender can draft the local millitia, or cards, or whatever.

Well absolutely, my concerns are based on the assumption that sport pvp rewards are significantly larger than open RvR - which I'm guessing is why the videos are stressing the greater number of VPs for sport pvp so often and so early. I'm sure the two could coexist with the right reward ratios.

In fact, I'm all in favour of WoW style diversionary sport pvp for easygoing, casual, short-session pvp. I just worry that the more meaningful it gets, the less fun it will be from a casual perspective; which is much less true for RvR.


I don't think bottleneck classes are related to the pvp model - bottleneck classes are a problem steadily being fixed everywhere.

With a few obvious exceptions (WoW, VG) MMOG designers have always been moving away from bottleneck classes, and at least toward an Archetype system (EQ2, CoH) which dramatically reduces the reliance on botlenecks. I've no doubt MMOG designers will continue to refine the pattern further to even remove bottleneck archetypes - but either way, this is an issue of general character design and applies in pve as much as pvp.

WAR has the EQ2 style archetype system in all but name (fighter, rogue, mage, priest). The simple act of putting an equal number of classes in each category will probably help bottlenecking enormously.


Seriously, read that other thread again. If I were him I wouldn't even contemplate posting again after that fiasco.

Because purposes overlap and things get mudflated out of the game when there are more efficient paths available.

There's NO game right now that has enough population to keep a bunch of PvP systems and multiple maps always active. If you look at current lessons about PvP in other games you'd notice that it's FUNDAMENTAL for the action and the players to converge, because while PvE can be viable if there aren't many players around, in PvP it is a game-breaker.

The game must be alive all the time, on a server with max 3k of players. And it must be alive and playable even during the off-peaks. Warhammer has already a problem of having multiple fronts and multiple maps. There's already WAY TOO MUCH space to realistically keep the PvP well alive.

In general the problem of PvP has been an excessive numbers of zones or modes that just spread the population thin and prolong dead-times.

You have to direct the players toward a type of PvP/RvR and then work your ass off to make it exceptional. You cannot expect to win by implementing a bunch of half-assed modes in the hope to make everyone happy. That's just an opt-out.

If a game genuinely has enough pvp focus for pvp to be the a big part of the levelling and loot gathering process then I think you can stretch beyond the usual single type of pvp.

But you are of course right that there is a limit. Particularly since Mythic still want server communities to top out around 2-3k simultaneous logons.

For example, if you can structure sport pvp to appeal to the not-quite-finished levelling characters, and the people-who-could-not-play-open-RvR-tonight-anyway segment then I think it could work in parallel.

Again, it's easier to see this working if open RvR is the 'real endgame' and sport pvp is 'practice'; rather than the other way around.

I agree that maintaining two equal-but-different meangingful pvp endgames with only 2500 players at a time would be hard, but if any diku can do it, I think it would be this one.

*sigh*  I really can't believe I'm posting this.

tazelbain is so right, and you DAOC fanboi's really need to wake up already...   :|

If the sport pvp is top tier, but the zerg pvp still contributes then everyone can have fun.  Like Tazel said all sides will have top tier pvp guilds that will wtfpwn all scrub/pug groups in the sport pvp dept.  But for the most part the sport pvp stuff should be a wash because all sides will have top tier guilds.   I'm not impressed by their system at all mind you, but I do think its the best we're going to get when Mythic's plan is: WoW BG's + DAOC open pvp = profit!

I envision people cussing out any scrub groups that try to participate in the sport pvp.  Because they will be loosing points for their side by getting destroyed by the other side's top teams.  That is a problem, if they invest all this time/effort into the sport pvp side of things yet it is in everyone's best interest if only the hardcore top tier pvp'ers get involved in that setting.

So yeah, they need to put a bunch of work into the world zerg v. zerg side of things.  I guarantee you though that Mythic will not get around to that.  In which case there will be next to no reason to play WAR over WoW.

I think people are out of their mind for liking WoW too... who's to say what's fun?  As for the fanboi comment, that's a bit much.  I could write a 10 page post on what's wrong with the PvP in DAoC, but after playing nearly every pvp mmog, I still find it to be the most engaging.  We just have different taste when it comes to PvP.  I prefer a much more coordinated, strategy-based PvP experience.  That's very different from the console feel of WoW or the build/instanced aspects of GW. 

I do agree with you that WAR is likely to be some combination of GW, WoW, and DAoC and I find that to be disappointing.  My hopes for the direction that WAR would take have gone out the wndow.  I'm looking most closely at AoC and PotBS but know that Funcom is likely to let me down. 

We really don't know enough to know to make an educated guess as to what is going to happen.  There has got to be a clever algorithm to handle this so that it is not exclusive or zergy.  Something that encouraged Elites to group with scrubs. Or least at very least minimize the scrubs affecting the ally elites.
- give out xp/rp for every match but only vp for the "fair' matches.
- limit the amount vp individuals can win pre-day individuals can contribute.
- vp are zero-sum for an individual, top X count for the zone control.

Not sure if any of these ideas will work, but it seems critical to the game and worth some serious development time.

@Nebu:  I dunno how many more ways/times to say this but I AGREE MOAR WORLD PEEVEEPEE PLZKTHX!

I don't like sport pvp, that is what fps/rts and other games where there is no lewt, world, leveling w/e involved.  I think sport pvp is fucking ass backwards retarded in MMO's.  I said earlier in the thread, I cried about BG's in WoW before they even came out.  I haven't played my own character in WoW since about the fifth month of release...

But that doesn't mean shit about DAOC, you and others continue to hold DAOC up as an example of good world pvp, and I fucking find that so laughable.  The last thing I want to see is another WoW where the pvp takes place in little instances and is  completely disconnected from the rest of the world.  But the other thing I dont want is DAOCv2, that would suck.

SB/EvE = true attempts at world pvp.

DAOC/PS = CTF w/out score

WoW/GW = Sport pvp in MMO's

That is the hierarchy to me, there is the disconnect between what I think we both want (less sport pvp in MMO's) and what you keep saying (more DAOC).

@tazel:
You're right I am not sure how exactly the BG's will work in WoW.  But if BG's > world pvp in VP gain which = zone conquest...

Well I can see where this is headed.  Best case scenario nobody will be able to tell what scrub groups from their realm are taking part in the BG's and giving away hella VP's by getting their shit pushed in.  In that case people will only talk shit on official forums or somewhere so it doesn't matter too much.  That is until some realm gets the level of organization needed to peer-pressure most of their scrubs to stay the fuck out of the BG so their top tier groups can just steamroll2victory.  Then the other realm will realize what is happening and really start to bitch in general chat or w/e about the dumb newbs getting rolled and loosing the zone blahblah.

Either way I am positive that Mythic will not even consider this problem because I've never met a  game dev that didn't seem to be utterly clueless to how pvp works...

Because it is fun to ask this sort of thing, how would you work out a fair match?

It's worth remembering....

 - Levels, gear and RP are not good indicators of power. Player skill developed through guild organisation >> all in this sort of thing.
 - The community is limited to one server, and so very small compared to GW or CS or whatever. A limited number of groups will be available at any one time.


On the first one, I don't see how that changes anything, non-ubers are still anteing up VPs and are still better off not entering. And whomever has the most players gets a big advantage, because that realm has a higher total cap.
On the second, you've designed a system where casuals can give away points to enemy ubers, but can't even theoretically earn any for their own realm.



How would you do that without just encouraging ubers to group exclusively with alts of ubers? And remembering it is harder in sport pvp, because every scrub is displacing an uber.




Meaningful realm reward based Sport pvp in an rvr game is like Liverpool and Everton FC announcing that any 11 random fans can roll up and play for each side in the next match between the clubs. And that match will count for real league points.

How happy do you think that the rest of the fans of one club are going to be when some random fat bastard concedes a goal to a mediocre amateur on the other side?

DAoC isn't a good example but it is the ONLY example that is meaningful on this context (so no Shadowbane or Eve-Online can really be taken seriously here).

Take the "Battlegrounds". You could say that Mythic is going to copy Blizzard. But then no, Mythic comes and says: "Hey, we had battlegrounds years before WoW, they copied us". Okay. It's true. But there's a fundamental difference, in DAoC battlegrounds were still RvR, because they were divided by level and they were PERSISTENT. Warfare. All the players went into one of them.

There weren't multiple copies of them so to render world-based PvP completely stupid.

So yes, Mythic made the Battlegrounds, but what is interesting to notice is that in Warhammer Mythic won't use its own version of battlegrounds, but WoW's version. With multiple copies of the same zone called "scenario".

We all say that the few parts that were fun and unmatched in DAoC were about the PvP. And Mythic instead systematically removes all those unique traits in their form of PvP to be more like WoW (like making battlegrounds instanced).

I ask all of you a question: do you think Mythic is currently busy developing and polishing the RvR or do you think they are wasting most of their time to script lame events and triggers in each of the battlegrounds because they have penis envy of WoW?

We all know that to make PvP right it must be your main focus from the very beginning, and not tacked on in the last few months as an afterthought. I just wonder on what Mythic is working more and putting most of their resources. World PvP, or lame CTFs?

As a counterpoint to what Mythic's doing what do we know about Conan's pvp? I know you can get into a bar brawl and you can lay siege to player run cities. Do we know anything beyond those two points?

We know Conan will try to do something new and probably fail but at least that is admirable, WAR is going to fail because my left nut has more "vision" then anyone at Mythic.  Its a fucking shame that GW didn't just give the money and the IP goods to somebody that would go balls out and try to make a Warhammer game.  Instead of letting Mythic reskin DAOC with their art and give the old bitch a Blizzard inspired boob job...

Copying Lineage 2 doesn't sound orginal.  But whatever.  At least I am not going to sit around the Conan thread and whine about how Funcom isn't making the instatized PvP game I want to play.

There's the stupid cockwad Tazelbain I love to ignore!

Copying L2?  I'm whining?  God you are such a fucking clown.

I suspect if you could hit max level in less than a month, the only complaint about L2 would be the stupid dark elf run animation and the number of them named Drizztttttt.

If I may interrupt the nutswinging for a second, what, precisely, is Conan doing that's new? Is it open pvp? Limited to certain zones? Wide open across all zones?

Decapitations!

I do like decapitations...

You are not doing a very good job at it.

I have no problems AoC PvP or anthing AoC, except wondering if my machine can run it, just disputing the originality claim.  Having a frontier PvP area were guilds claiming towns and sieging each other sounds perfectly reasonable. I wonder about how the more actiony combat will fare in siege lag, but that's a problem everyone has.

They are trying to make the combat mechanics more like a console hack and slash than simply another variant on the d20 system.

Nobody seems to know much about the pvp setting though. I've seen people explaining the flavour concepts (claiming towns and sieging) but not so much the mechanics (ie. is it SB/EvE style guild based freeform pvp, daoc style open world fixed sides rvr, or guild wars style artificially "level" playing field even numbers sport pvp). Others probably know more than I do about AoC mind you.

I just hope they have a free for all server with a couple protected towns. Like Shadowbane without the client or the devs.

I'd say its fairly clear that Funcom has no fucking idea what features the game will actually have when it is released.  I will be amazed if bar fights actually make it in at this stage.


That's from the FAQ

But remember gameplay video or it doesn't fucking exist.

Yeah, that's what I was asking. I've seen all the videos of directional combat, etc, etc but nothing about what they actually plan to DO with it as far as pvp. I need a framework.

Ya, I was thinking about it in the wrong way.  It's not about numbers.  It's about social engineering.  There are two reasons scrubs would avoid the the Scenarios.  One is out of frustration because they keep losing.  So you have convince the scrubs that it is in their interest to continue to fight even if the mostly lose.  So really it will be determined be what happens when you lose.  No penalties and meager rewards should keep the scrubs, and as long as there are enemy scrubs are playing they have a chance at winning.

And the other reason is because they feel their participation hurts their team.  But I think we over estimating how much the average player will care.  It not like losing is cripple them.  It'll be the same as relics in DAoC, winning the campaign will nice to have but not essential to be able to play the game.  Really the whole RvR is sport PvP and these little matches are just another aspect of it.  This line of thinking still relies on the idea that some one else can shoulder the burden of defending.  But really expecting the elites to field dozens of top notch teams 24/7 to cover all the tier 4 Scenarios is impractical.  Expecting majority scrubs to defer to elites (I won't) is impractical as long still get some reward out of playing.

The key question is what happens when team signs up for a completely undefended Scenario with no opposing team.  But even if an undefended Scenario is locked, it would only a few scrubs to unlock it and undo the elites effort.  Personally  I am hoping that undefended Scenarios will deny both teams the VP and tip the VP balance back towards RvR.  That way no elite team even with prefect collusion with the rest of the realm will be able dominate the scenarios.

Thing I'm most worried about here is that it puts the realm community at risk.

In daoc, assuming you survive to level 50 rr4 or so (ie. rvr viable, and yes, that needs to come sooner in WAR), your realm is, in effect, a form of guild.

But in a normal guild, the guild community can form around social links, and so it is naturally cohesive. In a realm on the other hand, the game has to build a community around the arbitary membership of the realm.

If people (scrubs included) don't care that scrub participation in sport pvp hurts the realm, that means you didn't set up an environment which builds the community right, and as such you already failed the most important precondition to make RvR work.





This is really key, if you make everyone believe they are involved in a genuinely realm versus realm competition, and believe that they can contribute, and believe that the rest of the realm is on their side; then tbh most other stuff falls into place by itself. DAOC was built entirely on that principle, in that game pve was ostensibly about building community, and open-RvR was how the community entertained itself on an open-ended basis.

You can argue about how to do it better, and about whether the early-daoc pve grind was really ideal, but the same principle applies to WAR.

It is about one number at least, population. One thing that demoralized realms/players more then anything else in DaoC, was the horrible population imbalances. Being on the 'loser' realm just sucked so damn much. The best times I had in DaoC were the 100vs100 zerg fights over keeps/towers/mile gates/randomtreestump etc... It didn't matter if you weren't the 100% optimized super fotm build or if you didn't have the best gear, as long as you were marginally competent you were a welcome addition to your realm.

The worst fights I had in DaoC were the opposite, the 100vs20 zerg fights and being nothing more then a speed bump at best. Being the 20 realm, the frustration just builds, people splinter off into their own groups and any kind of team/realm you had just evaporates. People would bitch about class balance or realm balance, or how grindy PvE is etc, but the only thing that *broke* people in DaoC on a regular basis was population imbalance. If your realm couldn't/wouldn't zerg, you had to be part of the elite hardcore teams, if you weren't part of those teams you had to be a buffbotted stealther with every trick grind-ed out, if you weren't either of those things you didn't get to RvR. If you can't RvR, you generally don't stay subbed to DaoC.


All the other bullshit in DaoC is bad, but completely secondary to the pop issues. If you were on the wrong side of a pop imbalance, you were not only excluded from your realm, but from RvR itself. Definitely not the way to keep people playing.

Yes, but as I wrote above and what people fail to understand is that population IS PART of this type gameplay. Those unbalances are part of the system because they ARE the system. We are simulating the "struggle of nations" and even in real history those unbalances existed. History would SUCK if every battle was fought by the exact number of people. Taking all your people into RvR to defend your real was THE game. This social aspect was THE game.

The second you have EXACT numbers on either side, this kind of real RvR is over.

So look at this from the other perspective: instead of locking numbers to erase this unbalance (that I think is the heart of gameplay and not something to fight against), why instead not trying to make the game fun and exciting when you are outnumbered?

As I wrote above this can be done by making correspond to asymmetric numbers also asymmetric objectives. So that these objectives (and victory points you earn) are measured on your *current* condition, and not on the unfair premise that everyone has an equal chance. We *know* that it's improbable to have equal footing in real persistent PvP so we don't make a game assuming that, we make a game anticipating those problems and around those conditions.

Mythic's big mistake was to design RvR assuming the ideal condition that the three realms were always symmetric. They are not. The game rules should anticipate and be based on this.

I don't see any possible scenario where being outnumbered 5:1 can be made fun (outside of making the 1 into a tiny E-God in power and ability), no matter how many bonus points you give them. You are never going to get exact balance in a RvR style pvp world, but you need to have some semblance of it. Pop imbalance reaches a point where the small side has no options outside of be slaughtered and not play.


This isn't an issue of getting people to come out and fight, it's an issue of 'the people' not existing at all.


RealmGuard reports 147 attackers at RealmKeep

/who 50 returns 23 results.


That is pretty much a bend over and take it scenario. That was(is?) the norm for at least one realm per server. I'm not talking about the 2:1 keep defense scenario, or the 1.5:1 group vs group scenario, or the 100 vs 75 zerg scenario. You can work around those mechanically through game play, but the 100+ vs 2 groups and some assbots in tow... those people are fucked outside of divine intervention.

Need more "single server" games that instance it like EQ2/AO did.

I mean, yeah it'll suck the first few times you pick 'Ironforge 63' instead of 'Ironforge 64' - which is where your friends are setting up the raid, but you'll get over it eventually.

Tie character names to account names and the ablity to add aliases to people. Click 'em, bring up info, 'add to buddy list as ...' NIJA. So if you do /tell nija HI it'll show up on my character named MASTERSTROKE, who I'm playing at that moment.

Or you and your guildies can talk to each other in vent, "manually add me, account name is blahblah" - then just require a 5 digit PIN key along with your account password to change any account details.


Basically I hate seeing stuff like EQ2 where you have 10,000 people playing at any given time spread across 10 servers, when each one is made to "support" 4k or something. I bring up the name problem because everyone wants to have their nickname, and if you had 8 million people on the same single "wow server" then they obviously couldn't. I don't want to be Nniijjaa!

As far as outnumbered go, they want to give people NPC AI groupmates, but they could go a little further. Outnumbered defense squads get defensive things with a little bit more HP. Outnumbered attackers shouldn't get any bonus, ever, since they are attacking! If that doesn't seem fair, give them extra siege equipment or something. A couple NPC pets randomly given to people to control. I don't know. There are tons of things that could make being outnumbered more fun.

'Yeah man were you out at XXXX keep? We got steamrolled, they had like 10x more people than we did!' 'Yeah but i was on the west side and I had some ice wyvern that I could control, I wasted like 60 people before he finally went down, it was rad as shit.'

Edit: You don't shoot for "balance" when you're looking at being outnumbered 5:1. You're looking at trying to make it fun for the super outnumbered people. Fun up until they die. Without all the 300-style gay sex.

What i mean is that locking the numbers isn't a solution, because it means erasing the RvR and replacing it with something else. And we want RvR for reasons that eldaec explained perfectly along all the thread.,

Once we get that point we pass to the other: how to minimize the number unbalance and keep the game more fun and less frustrating?

My answer to this was: build the game rules not assuming always symmetric factions, but assuming that the unbalance will be there. So, from a side making PvP objective-based (and less direct kill-based). from the other working on an "adaptable" objective based system.

So instead of feeding points to the enemy while defending a doomed keep, you would earn victory points the moment the keep falls in the hand of the enemy, and proportional to how long your defense kept up. This is already a very simple rule but that would have a HUGE impact in the game.

1- It would make the players defend the keep till the very end, because it's once the keep falls that you get the points.
2- It would make the players defend the best they can because their performance matters in the context.

I can assure you that once you are rewarded in a proportional way to your efforts, then also the actual game becomes more "fun". Surely less frustrating. Taking from the other thread, but illustrating a similar point in psychology:
If the game rewards you when you "try" and not just when you "win", then you obtain a situation where "trying is fun". And even losing is fun if the battle was kickass. Even when it was desperate.

I once proposed that DAoC used a system for keep upgrades that was fixed. You had a fixed pool of points to distribute to your keeps. This meant that the more keeps you have, the weaker they will be (spreading your upgrades), while the less you have the strongest they are. This would create a situation where you can go out and conquer your enemy territory, but this would also correspond to expose vulnerabilities and offer the enemy the occasion for an effective counterattack.

Another similar idea was about having realistic supply lines and so on.

These are just examples only to demonstrate that there are ways to give continuity to a war and offer even the losing side accessible and fun objectives. But this requires that you design RvR not assuming the ideal balance, but assuming that the RvR WILL BE asymmetric.

On the other side it's OBVIOUS that while you contemplate asymmetric RvR you still care about making the sides as balanced as possible. If I was designing a game based on RvR you would be sure that I'd start to poll and test players VERY EARLY. And then adapt the factions and game design so that at release the factions are as balanced in numbers as possible.

You surely wouldn't see me the day of release going "Oh shit. Alliance outnumbers Horde 4 to 1".

These are things that HAVE TO be anticipated early, so that you can properly address the problem when you still have time to do so. And not when it's too late. But, again, locking numbers isn't the solution.

Btw:

- Develop a system alike Lucasarts' iMuse. The zerg approaches and you are outnumbered, and a special epic badass music starts to play.

It would be cool :)

Fun idea number 2:

- A "Braveheart" skill. When you are outnumbered at a keep your commander will be able to play "the horn" and make it resound around the valley. This activates a general morale bonus and the "braveheart" skill on all defending players. The morale bonus and the new skill work in tandem. While you are engaged in combat and deal damage your morale meter goes down, so you could have it depleted after one or two kills. And that's when you would activate your "braveheart". When used your character would rise one fist in the air and SCREAM THE HELL OUT OF HIS LUNGS. While screaming the morale would fill up again, ready for the next kill.

:)

EDIT: A tweak to make it more fun, instead of making "the horn" build up the initial morale boost you make it so it just activates the "braveheart" skill. Your commander plays the horn, the sound travels through the whole zone, you hear it, it's a calling! Your "braveheart" skill lights up and you can use it. This would bring to a situation where the commander plays "the horn" and then all the defenders start screaming at unison, shaking their fists.

Much more epic :)

Wasn't one of the reasons DAoC had 3 realms so the 2 underpopulated ones could gang up on the overpopulated one? I think this could work if players had a way of communicating with their enemies, which I don't believe DAoC allowed.

I think it would be pretty cool anyway if underpopulated team b could team up with underpopulated team c and whip the crap out of overpopulated team a, then after that they turn on each other. Enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that.

It was in theory, in practice it just meant two realms would gang up on the smaller realm.

Does that work better now that there is a central zone to fight over?

People already hate the idea that 8 skilled players can wipe out a zerg of 40... you really think this is a great idea?  I think not. 

Depends on what kind of skill we are taking about...

...and If I am good at it. :)

In this case then there needs to be some kind of game mechanic where the people who are out manned get some kind of equalizer. I know there are some people out there though that like fighting on uneven terms (I am one of them). I would chose the underpopulated realm just to have more enemies, but I am probably weird like that.

I think one of the ways you could have an equalizer for the underpopulated realms would be terrain. If the underpopulated realm got a keep that had a choke point, or a moat, or some other terrain advantage this would make it easier to defend. When my guild used to pvp near Tarren Mill in WoW we used to go inside the tower that was between south shore, and tarren mill and bait people to attack us and they would run in like a big conga line to try and kill us and we would just mow them down as they came through. We would do the same thing at other choke points and it was a great equalizer going up against the ally zerg. Eventually we would get over run, but it was fun even when we lost.

I think the primary issue with what WAR sound's like its about atm is that the integration of world and sport pvp will not really work well the way they currently are describing the relationship.  But then again I haven't been reading all the WAR vapo-hype so perhaps I've missed something somewhere.  Have they even gone into detail about where the sport pvp instance entrances are going to be located at this point?  I know I read about the auto-balance w/ npc's (laugh) stuff, but I wonder how one enters the WAR BG's.

As for population stuff, that is always a huge issue in a game with world pvp and hardcoded faction choice.  I'm just not sure what they can do at this point.  If they haven't already come up with a plan to prevent gross imbalances at this stage, they are stupid and fucked.

  

Okay,

Why is population important in a game where the primary goal objectives (victory points), takes place mostly in balanced instanced combat? I'm not saying it's not important, but why can people see why population is less important than it was before.

Also a quick clarification. Scenario's are the instanced PvP objectives. Battlegrounds, are the persistant world PvP areas with secondary objectives in them. In the Battlegrounds you find both secondary objectives and Scenarios.

Pretty much all of this stuff is or was in DaoC at one point or another. Just band aids in the end. Only so many times you can have a blast getting rolled. The constellation prize of bonus points only keeps folks around for so long when the game is primarily about land and objectives. I'm not sure if you played DaoC, but if you haven't, I can not stress how horrible the pop imbalances actually were (probably still are). There was simply no way to make it fun for the smaller side outside of giving them super powers.

Going back a post or three:


The pop imbalance got so bad, the loser realm wasn't even able to "try" anymore. Not even enough people to cause a speed bump.

Seems like we're brainstorming ways to fix it so that you don't have to rely on balanced, instanced combat. Because that stuff sucks.

Pretty much :)

Once you go with fixed numbers the RvR is over. It's not anymore the "war" they like to publicize. Mythic has been contradictory on this, they send a message but then their game design goes in the opposite direction.

Mythic likes to do the same stuff, and then give it a different name to make it sound new (see for example the confusion with Battlegrounds and Scenarios).

But you cannot call this RvR or "war" and then close it in a instance. That's something else. And you can play with names all you want, the outcome doesn't change. Players aren't stupid, especially when the game is out and has to stand on its own legs.

I continue to dislike see things from that perspective.

If you try to compensate the number unbalance through an artificial bonus then you pretty much validate what Mythic is doing. Because it's better then to just lock number if the other solution is to compensate the unbalance anyway.

This way of thinking PERPETUATES the mistake. And the mistake is considering that unbalance something to cut off the game. It's not.

The way to "give the losing side a chance" isn't by trying to make them compete anyway, but it is by adapting the OBJECTIVES to your current situation.

Your objective cannot be "grab the enemy relic" if you are outnumbered and closed in a corner of your realm territory. The mistake here is again having the game rules assuming an ideal balance that doesn't exist. Give instead the players goals and victory points that are adapted to their position in the game. Or: proportionally to their efforts.

I think my idea above about the "morale buff" was misread. I didn't want to compensate the defenders so that they could overcome the biggest sieging army at a keep. My idea was, yes, to give them a 10-15% boost to make them resist better. But the whole point of that idea wasn't focused on the practical mechanic, but on its "feel". So that it makes you feel satisfying defending the keep as long as possible. Those skills could be completely purpose-less. In the sense that you could let players play the horn, and then scream. Sounds and animations are the essential part of that mechanic. The actual buff is optional. I added it just so that the players are motivated to trigger those skills.

Often in games the "mechanic" is the point, and the "metaphor" is the excuse. I reverted that. The "metaphor" is the point, the "mechanic" the excuse.

And my point, is that there is no objective to give once the imbalance is to great, that will be fun for the small side. Hold out as long as you can becomes, just get into the keep becomes, just see the keep on the horizon becomes, just enter the RvR zone etc...


I think we are debating in a circle, so I'll leave it at that.

But since you played DAoC you know that it's very hard to conquer all the enemy keeps and HOLD them indefinitely.

The model of RvR is a "rubberbanding" one. The war front is in the middle and can be pushed forwards or backwards. But once you reached a point, you cannot pass it. There's always a limit to how far you can go.

So you can push it from +1 till a maximum of +10. And the more you push it the harder you can hold it there. This because this model is designed to "oscillate" perpetually to keep refreshing the game indefinitely.

Now the point is that this model is finite. And it's totally possible to set gameplay patterns that open up in the worst case and that grant players the possibility to fight back and have fun. And this again because the RvR has already a safenet that prevents a faction to lose permanently.

Create some neutral races and have the devs swap them to whatever team is that far down.

Interesting... a mercenary class.  Problem is that most people might prefer realm bouncing and play that class.

I was posting on another forum a similar idea.

In my old concept I used Order Vs Chaos, with a Balance faction made of merchants and mercenaries and encouraged to join the weaker faction in the attempt to maintain that balance.

There are various fun twists related to this, like the fact that Order needs resources that only Chaos can produce, and Balance can buy/sell them. And also Orcer cannot understand what Chaos say, but Balance can understand both.

It seems to me that the instanced combat is a core part of the games design. Short of a huge delay and a huge redesign, I think it's there to stay. I'm all for discussion on the issue, but I'm not sure it's the area that would be constructive to try and illicit a change away from instancing. I think a better discussion would be trying to create more of balance of victory points between the various other methods of their aquisition. PvP in battlefields, PvE, Battlefield Objectives and PvP in Scenarios.

Yeah I would rather see them try to balance the world pvp instead of this instanced approach. Their idea to have the underpopulated realm get npcs to help out is going to be a failure unless they have some really good AI (which they probably won't, and will become predictable like all npcs).

The idea of having a neutral side sounds like a good one, but it would probably be easy to abuse and lead to the problem mentioned earlier where people will only want to play for the side that consistently wins.

Yep. Hrose is responding to a core system that's probably been in place two years. The ideas discussed here are nice, but the more fundamental they get, the less chance they have of happening in AoC, which is la

Therefore, the question isn't "how should AoC PvP work". It's: "how can you make it better".

Unfortunately, nobody's actually experienced what's there yet, so for now it's idle speculation on a few paragraphs of text.

The merit of a product is ALWAYS actual. And it will become even more actual AFTER release. In particular because Warhammer focuses on PvP as it's main appeal, a form of PvP that is publicized in a way and will likely be delivered in another way. This along the fact that the demand of the players is for something they aren't going to offer.

Being constructive is relative. Think to Vanguard, it would have never been constructive discussing hardware requirements and basic game design decisions and overall approach. But what actually matters more than those? What people discuss today in EVERY forum if not those? What else is the real point? And what are they patching (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=34482&highlight=vanguard) even if it's an heresy for The Vision?

Hiding dirt under the carpet, ignoring what matters. That's what's really not constructive. Till you head straight to the point you are always constructive, you even spare time.

Another example that comes to my mind was "Wish" and point & click movement. It was there to stay, so arguing against it wasn't constructive. And yet EVERY SINGLE PLAYER was turned off by it above all else. Constructive is who does all that is possible to not make you go crash against a wall, not the one who leads you there because you are heading there anyway.

Think about DAoC's ToA. It would have never been constructive going against it, ranting against it. And yet for three years Mythic just worked to remove all the damage that the expansion did. Think about SWG's NGE.

There are plenty of examples where it was way more constructive to tell them in their face. Instead of playing along and being nice. If you don't do that, then you share some responsibility of failure.

Do you pull the brake and annoy the hell out of everyone, risking to be criticized and even be derided, or do you watch the trainwreck just because it's not your own problem? You probably know my answer ;)

Using terms like "hiding dirt under the carpet" is a fair amount of hubris. You're arguing paper theory against paper theory from a condescending altitude against a bunch of people no more or less capable of having it implemented than you are. It's academic, which makes for a good read as always (you generally have good ideas) and worth discussing. Just manage expectations of followthrough.

No, it was the norm on a minority of servers. Most servers were within bounds that were workable.

That doesn't mean it isn't a valid criticism or that something doesn't have to be done for the people who land on those servers.

As well as Hrose's point about designing for uneven numbers (based on Daoc experience I reckon you can make it work up to around 2 or even 3 to 1), you also need to find a way to counter the crazy 4, 5, or 6 to 1 imbalances.

You need that for sport pvp as well though. Population does matter if your end game is sport pvp because you need enough players to set the damn matches up, and to ensure you have a big enough pool of ubers to make decent groups with sensible class/spec combinations (remember, only ubers qualify for meaningful sport pvp).

Even sport-pvp-for-fun in WoW is broken on 5:1 servers because of the queues.

Any pvp-endgame mmog with fixed sides needs to actively manage population. I'd argue that both open RvR and sport PvP become unsustainable and potentially unfun at any ratio much above 3:1.


I don't think anyone here has serious illusions that this forum has that sort of influence on anyone at any stage of development.

The discussion is interesting because many of us would still like to play an RvR game, and if mythic aren't making one after all, then that's a shame - because they probably have a greater chance of getting it right that anyone; but if nobody is making us an RvR game, this is as good a chance as any to discuss it.


At the end of the day it's easy to do. It's all about which is the fun practice form of pvp, and which is the competitive 'real end-game'. And that is driven entirely by VP distribution.


If sport pvp is a low impact fun form of pvp then it becomes a diversion and an opportunity for casuals try stuff out. Like WoW.

If sport pvp is a world impacting competitive form of pvp then it becomes the domain of the ubers and locks casuals out to the top-table game. Like GW.

OTOH

If RvR is a low impact fun form of pvp you lose realm leaders who piss off to sport pvp, and the extra time required to play open RvR makes it unattractive to pretty much everyone (as the travel and organisational overhead is not compensated in the low impact world, and the set piece epic battles just don't really happen due to lack of numbers). Like WoW.

If RvR is the world impacting competitive form of RvR, then you create an engine that drives ubers to communicate with and lead casuals, that builds community, that gives casuals opportunities to be involved in world impacting events, and generates a much wider variety of genuinely different events than sport pvp can. Like DAoC.


Mythic like to work in evolutionary fashion.

Part of why daoc worked in it's time is that it applied the lessons of EQ, UO etc.

Beats me why they don't wish to apply the lessons of WoW, GW, and DAoC here.

Unless of course, the marketing focus on sport pvp is not about providing a totally accurate picture of the game and is really about trying to attract WoW players who don't understand what the impact would be of WoW BGs becoming a meaningful and world impacting part of that game....


Which leads to a question for WoW players, what do you think would happen to your server if victories in the BGs impacted your realm in ways such as granting access to the raiding dungeons, or gave your realm % damage and % xp bonuses (these first two are the actual rewards that daoc rvr gave to realms), or just directly gave better-than-raid gear as rewards?

I don't think we are discussing for Mythic, we are just discussing between ourselves. So what expectations?

I also don't think that Warhammer will be a "trainwreck" (see the thread where we "predict" numbers), I wrote that the game will do so-so at launch and a lot will depend on how they move from there. But there's still nothing more important than discussing the RvR structure. And also the part of a mmorpg I always liked to discuss more.

Warhammer is nothing more than another opportunity to discuss those points.

It depends on the era of WoW. A year ago, I suspect truly relevant PvP that unlocked access to PvE content would have compelled a good chunk of Horde players to roll Alliance or quit. The balance across the whole game was, I think, 70/30. Not all servers were like this, but more than enough were to convince people who didn't know better into thinking the all servers were like this. I look at the "world PvP" of WoW today and it's the same  now as it was when they did it in Silithus and EPL: Alliance controls it all, 100% of the time. Hellfire, Zangar, pretty much Nagrand. Maybe it'll change when the casual Blood Elves hit 70, but I doubt it because after level 20, Blood Elves hit the same relative lack of content all Horde before them did.

I also need to ask something about DAoC in 2005 on forward: Can it really be said that a "casual" player in a game years old is really the same as a "casual" in WoW? I think this is important. I've been assured that characters could be PL'd to 50 in 24 hours or less, that there's all this engaging stuff with the right guild, that RvR was fantastic. However, in no description, convincing or otherwise, have I seen anything approaching truly casual. DAoC is still an old school game. Rewards don't come as fast, distances take longer to cover, all the stuff we liked because it was better than EQ1, but which is still lightyears behind WoW except for alts of dedicated veterans.

Take someone off the street and toss tham at DAoC. Alone, with no or few friends who are similarly newbie, would they find a home? Would they survive DAoC as their first MMO with GW and WoW out there?

The reason I think this is important is because I really wonder if DAoC RvR could ever be applied to a game that appealed to a much looser type of player I'd call "WoW Casual".

To me, WAR is targeting WoW PvPers, not people who want a truly immersive longterm-rewarding experience. This is because immersion itself requires more of the average gamer than they have proven to want to invest. Level of immersion seems to be inversely proportional to appeal, and I don't think a game with a licensor royalty can afford to be too narrowly focused in that appeal lest they end up like SWG.

No, they wouldn't. But surely not because of the RvR. I was reading on another forum an impression of a player who started playing and while clicking on stuff he was ported somewhere and didn't know how to go back. Just an example of what are the problems, but still far from RvR implications.

Also, today DAoC's RvR is much more hardcore than years ago and mostly because they left behind many of those principles we discussed here. It is much more focused on specialized 8vs8 gank groups because it's there that Mythic put the best rewards, moving the game away from keeps and territorial conquest.

I'm a True Believer of this. Eldaec explained very well why the RvR provides concrete elements that can work to bring in casual players instead of outcasting them. So the RvR as a model has qualities that go down that path. The final result isn't a matter of the model itself but, rather, its implementation.

I strongly disagree that immersion is inversely proportional to appeal. And SWG is one of the least immersive games I've played.

Maybe you have this distorted idea of "immersion" like real-world boring tasks. There's really no link between the two.

Daoc went through 3 distinct phases.

Pre-Toa : RvR was fun for random 50s. PUGs could join the frontier chatgroup, find action appropriate to their skill level. Fun was had by all. Some valid complaints existed around the fact that objectives were either extremely trivial and transient (keeps) or required massive planning (relics) - there was no in between state.

Toa-era : Casuals players felt they faced an all new grind - started to leave. Artifacts gave players a perception that they could not beat uber guilds under any circumstances.

Post-Toa : Reduced population of non-ubers (because of ToA, WoW, game age and increasing focus on 8v8) leads to remaining casuals being pushed out because every group they face is uber, balanced casual groups are harder and harder to form, game effectively descends into 8v8 sport pvp only on an open landscape, as such casuals are increasingly unable to contribute even if they find a group. By this time /level and the lack of boxes-on-retail shelves has decimated the newbie community, new players have nobody to level with and therefore no way to gain social contacts.


Yes. Absolutely. Pre-toa daoc was fun for pugs and casuals. No, post 2005, it's not fun. But the reasons it is not fun for casuals are fixable in a new game, and don't relate to the concept of open RvR. they actually have more to do with daoc becoming a sport pvp game by stealth.

The fun-for-pugs phase was despite the pve grind (which was still revolutionary in its shortness at the time) gating rvr content (less of a problem in WAR's design).

One other thing, you asked would they survive their first month with WoW or GW out there.

A casual player certainly wouldn't survive his first month in GW either. For exactly the same reasons they don't survive in modern daoc. Ubers have no reason to talk to noobs.

If you completely ignore PvP servers, sure. I recently transfered my NE Druid over to a release-day PvE server (from a PvP server) to play with some friends and with the exception of Terrokar, all the World PvP objectives are Alliance-controlled 99% of the time. On my main server though (PvP, Horde side) it is always up in the air. They'll rarely be actually fought over, but the time controlled is even between Horde and Alliance.

To answer eldaec's question: Pre cross-server battlegrounds, then yes, I would like it for the impact my guild makes in PvP to effect our PvE just as getting awesome gear in PvE made you very powerful in PvP. Now that the gear crossover is basically non-existent, then no, I wouldn't really care that my arena team's success helped our server's PvE (nice from a server-pride standpoint but that's not worth a whole lot).

The biggest problem with WoW wasn't that its PvP was isolated from the rest of the (PvE) world, but quite the opposite: that PvE impacted the PvP world a whole lot, but PvP could hardly impact PvE. You either isolate the two (the GW model and now the WoW model for the most part) or you allow them to impact each other strongly. Both options are about the same in my eyes although I'd prefer the later, simply because I don't have to do twice as much work if I enjoy both PvE and PvP.

I like this idea. I have a casual idea too on that.
Let's say there's a building somewhere on the battlefield/warzone that has this Braveheart horn in it, or let's say something like a big huge gathering bell.
When things start going down the drain, the outnumbered faction (and ONLY the outnumbered faction, and ONLY if this faction is outnumbered say 2:1 or something like that) can try to get to the horn/bell building (which as I said shouldn't be a quest or too hard in itself or it would get take even more players out of the outnumbered faction just to reach it) which could be placed on a very high cliff guarded by a few mobs just to "steal time".
Once the losing faction finally blow the horns or play the bell then every player online in the game at that time (and I mean EVERY) which is same level or higher than the hornblower and who didn't switched off this option in his/her personal preferences menu, will get a pop up window asking if he/her wants to answer the call to arms and be immediately summoned to the warzone. Immediately and wherever they are when the horn is blown.

This way:

a) Losing factions would always have a chance to even numbers.
b) Losing factions have to choose: stand grounds relying on /tells and /friendlists to call for reinforcements or send a couple of runners to the high cliff to TRY and blow the horns before ze germans come. Eventual buffs or debuffs can be applied to the hornblowing.

- Limitations:

- a) The pop up window (with a big "Your faction is losing a Stronghold and needs you! Teleport to warzone? yes/no") will stay open just for 10 seconds, in the lower left corner of every enabled player's screen, so it shouldn't be invasive at all, and can be turned off in the options anyway.
- b) When the horn is blown the game checks for the number of players in the warzone. If the attacker has say 40 fighters on it, and the defender has 12, then the pop up window will open for every enabled and of the right level online at that time BUT it will actually teleport ONLY the first ones to click it up to the number of the attackers less 2. So in the above situation the defenders are 28 men short, so the system will allow only the first 26 reinforcements to click on "yes".

So basically you get a fun decisional situation who requires a team to act and think fast
AND a way to involve more players into important PvP battles without even have to look for it
AND a way to almost get even numbers in a matter of seconds (I say "almost" cause you can't actually "summon" enough players to even the numbers, and it can be adjusted even further as I said "number of attacking units minus 2 but it could be minus 5 or whatever.. and on top of that there are the two or more bell runners which need to get back and are out of the fight for a while anyway). Buff, debuff, timer and restrictions of any kind can be applied or attached to the hornblowing thing anyway.

Caladien,

My question wasn't really about whether you would enjoy meaningfgul WoW BGs. Clearly people in guilds designed for BGing 24/7 would love it (and I'd recommend you try Guild Wars if that sounds like your guild).

My question was really asking, "Do you not realise that BGs would quickly become unplayable to all but the uber under these circumstances; further, do you realise how much wailing and gnashing of teeth would ensue when an Onyxia (or whatever) raid had to be canacelled because some dumbass scrub had entered the BG and given away too many points to the other gang? And if you disagree, if you don't think this will happen, what do you think makes WoW special and unlike other MMOGs in this regard?"

So much revisionist history in this thread...

@caladein:  Population issues in WoW were nowhere near that bad on every PvP original pvp server and the servers they were split off into from what I've heard/seen.

@eldaec:  Because making pvp content success = keying for a pve raid is the only way pvp could influence pve content?   :roll:

Population problems weren't bad on WOW PVP servers? Archimonde was down 4 out of the first 7 days of release! More than half of the people who "signed up" (forums) to play on Archi ended up leaving because they started "alts" on other servers who quickly outleveled their "mains", and they never went back!

 :roll:
Well, apart from, for instance, the other three examples of ways to to do it that I listed in the same sentence of the post that my exchange with Caladien refers to - plus whatever way you want to add of your own. Nobody is trying to be exclusive here. Anyway, the point is about the scale of impact, and all indications are that Mythic wants to retain the same scale of impact as in DAoC, which is why I listed examples from, you know, DAoC.

No, actually, I’m looking at the numbers. Eve, SL, ATiTD, pre-CU SWG, SB, Underlight, when we measured “big” by the low hundreds of thousands, whatever, whenever. Go down the list. I know some people immediately point to “executional issues” as a main reasons for nichification. And they are right in doing so. But I also believe the average gamer is not as interested as some of the veterans here in a completely immersive experience that requires they set aside their life in large chunks.

So why aren’t we seeing more immersive games? I think it’s precedence.

It almost doesn’t matter to businesses why certain games didn’t cut it with the masses. The more than don’t, the harder it is to justify the next attempt. So even if I’m wrong and there’s millions of people who would play, say, SB if the code didn’t suck, nobody seems really interested in delivering it. It’s a catch-22. Nobody’s interested in building it because they don’t think anyone will come when there’s no way of knowing who’ll come without building it.

I don’t know man. There was SO much BG activity in WoW once they linked servers into larger Battlegroups that the chances of being wiped twice in a row by the same set group of ubers was fairly rare, at least for me. For months before BC, there was no less than 20-35 copies of each BG going on.

If there was less population or less activity (as there probably was, say, mid-2006) then I think we’d see what you’re talking about.

And again, I agree with the ideas you and Hrose have had throughout this thread. I’m actually not even interested in debating them on paper. I’m more interested in understanding why nobody’s thinking along those lines, and whether the players really wanted them anyway.

I'm starting to hate this fucking thread almost as much I as I hate the UO thread..

@Eldaec, I'm sorry I dunno when you posted that I was going off this post.  You must have posted that other one somewhere in the middle of HRose's useless Braveheart idea, I was skimming that part, sorry.


The way I read Caladien's posts was PvP should influence a player's power in PvE as much as PvE influences a player's power in PvP.  Clearly though I missed part of the discussion my bad.

@Nija:  We were talking about population balance, not too many people too many of one side or the other.  Your bad there.



@Darniaq:  I dont think those numbers prove shit tbh.  I would say 90% of the wet behind the ears, never touched a MMO (most may not even be RPG fan's) do not want to play anything immersive.  They dont want a virtual world, because that sounds lame.  But you can't go three threads on the WoW boards right now without finding some mention of WAR or AoC it seems like.  But to be fair I really only read the Battlegroup and PvP forums regularly.  I know I've seen a ton of sig's mentioning WAR though...

As MMO gamers gain experience I think its natural for them to start to wonder why they have month(s) /played on their character but the world still seems exactly like it was when they first signed up.  Because there is no immersion.  Hell in WoW once you hit 70 the world might as well not exist if it wasn't for mat farming.  If they had a lobby like b.net and you just tell the game what instance you want you wouldn't loose any content.  That is starting to get on the "WoW is my first game" crowd's nerves.  Or at least some of them.

That is my theory.  No proof but w/e this is the internet I dont need no stinkin proof.

I just don't see immersion related in any way to time requirements. Meaning that you can make a casual game that is also immersive.

So, "requirement of large chunks of time" goes against a large commercial success. I agree. But that's not my idea when I talk about the immersion.

Nor time requirements are related to the RvR. If they are then the model is broken. But it isn't broken because it's RvR, it's broken because badly designed, and you can design badly anything. RvR, PvE or whatever.

There's only one reason why RvR is more risky: because no one went down that path, so we've seen a small number of reiterations. As opposed to PvE that went through much more work and testing.

A couple of examples about my idea of "immersion", to avoid misunderstandings.

The diplomacy system in Vanguard. I consider it immersion-breaking. In general every puzzle-based game tends to be anti-immersive. Every game where you "abstact" what goes on to another level. Playing cards simulating a diplomacy is anti-immersive because it works on abstractions. It's not what you expect from that kind of world. The natural game flow pauses for the diplomacy game to happen, and then resumes.

Immersive is also the environment. If I start to walk in a direction and then hit an invisible wall because I reached the zone border, that's anti-immersive. The same if I see a floating tree or rock.

These are simple examples that have nothing to share with "time requirements" or either casual or hardcore gameplay.

Of course you can also make a game tedious or frustrating in the name of realism or immersiveness. But that's not obligatory, nor unavoidable if you still want to make an immersive game.

On the micro level, that's exactly what I said. On the macro (battlegroup) level, I can't help but see the folly of trying to coordinate a subset ~50k people (concurrent) into one action or another. Enough of them are going to not give a shit that the outcome wouldn't be affected by whatever benefits the uber-guilds. It becomes a classical example of an economic coordination failure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_failure). The same is true of a single WAR server with ~2-3k concurrent players, it's simply too many people who wouldn't care/know about the downsides to change it from whatever equilibrium the mechanics and population would naturally come to.

It takes actual direct punishment to get players to do things in double-digit groups, the "gnashing of teeth" is so irrelevant given the size of the communities you'd be dealing with that there is no real reinforcement to not play even if you suck.

On the first thing, what do you see as immersiveness?

I think the point hrose is making is that sometimes people confuse realism and to an extent sandboxyness with immersiveness.

I see immersiveness being about a design that seems coherent within its own universe, and about avoiding arbitary rules that don't seem natural in the presentation of the game, also about providing a varied and sustainable experience as well as a way to see your character as impacting the game world (impacting it through social links, or by adding unique/rare dongles to your character is often enough!), this all usually means including ways to encourage community building. SWG has never been immersive, imo, because it was full of counter-intuitive design theory and rules-lawyering, plus the design discouraged community and grouping in the combat system. HAM was not immersive, rifle damage not stacking with pistol damage was not immersive.

WoW on the other hand is reasonably immersive, rules are inutitive, people have reasons to form groups and guilds, people have a reasonable variety of things to do with those groups; impact on the game world is very limited, but the game still gives space for guild based social structures to provide that. However, Mythic have ruled out this approach because from the outset they say they want a pvp game.

GW is not immersive from a casual point of view. The pve plays out like a roadblock, and the pvp feels very arbitary at the low levels. Highly organised guild play can be immersive, because the high level game is much deeper and richer, and because a great guild can impact the meta game and the guild ladder; plus the high end competitive game has a much more coherent structure to it. Immersiveness-for-ubers-only in GW is a great example of why sport pvp is flawed at a casual player level. I suspect this is why GW has a rabid following amougst the regular players, but attracts a great deal of indifference on the part of people who try it fresh.

Clearly things like EVE can be very immersive, becaused EVE gets immersion almost for free with it's sandbox nature and high impact pvp. The problem is that for most people the sandbox and the high impact pvp outweighs the immersion.

The point is immersion itself is attractive to players, the trick is to deliver it without making the game unplayable on a casual timescale in the process. (and ofc to avoid the executional issues you already mentioned)

Well designed RvR allows you to bring in immersion at the same time as safety mechanisms in a ways that sport pvp or open guild v guild don't really give you design room for. RvR has the advantage of fewer arbitary rules being imposed than sport pvp and more opportunities for casuals to impact the game world. Wheras compared to guild v guild FFA, RvR has the simple advantage that casuals can play at all.


On the second thing, I think you hit on something really important around clustering of servers. That was something that helped give daoc a last hurrah when they did the same with the frontiers. In fact, it's the only truly successful population imbalance countermeasure I've seen.

I agree of course. But in this case we're not even talking about rvr against pve, it's rvr or small group pvp.

And small group pvp *has* been tried in persistent mmog type games. But failed to attract large audiences.

There are couple of different meanings that seem to come up when people talk about immersion. One is what I would refer to as “engagement”. That is, the game keeps me, as a player, paying attention and interested. When you are engaged in a game though, you can still be very aware you are sitting in a chair playing a game.

I’d reserve “immersion” more for the sense of being in a world, doing stuff.  A lot of the points eldeac talks about contribute to that. I think there is a pretty easy test for if a game world is “immersive”. Check general chat. If people are mostly talking about what it happening in the game world, the game is “immersive”. If they are talking about  most everything else, it isn’t.

The only games I have seen pass that test in live tend to be niche ones, like ATiTD and WURM. I’ve also seen it in the big games in Beta, when the world is new and unexplored. My conclusion is the mass market doesn’t want immersion. They want to sit with one foot in the world, and half an eye watching TV.

That may be because PVE (interaction with the game's world) is generally immersive in most games, but interaction between players isn't designed to be, from the artificial way that we must communicate (via chat channels) to the huge advantages that out-of-game websites and voice-comms give.

Take WoW, make it a single player game, would it be immersive?  I think yes, very.  Go back to MMO, and it is no longer.

If we remove PvP was the equation I still think there's a lot of attraction to immersion, and do think every game has this to a degree. What can make players MORE invested in a game though are the typical things that give developers aneurisms, like dynamic world content, player-buildable structures, relevant craftable goods, full-on PvP, structured PvP battles with short and long term relevance, all the stuff that requires more money and time and therefore the need to convince VC/Publisher that doing more than "WoW, with aliens!!".

A bunch of people looking longingly at their second MMO ever does not a measure of immersion make. I avoid the oboards like root canal these days, but they seem populated by just about the same folks at UO.com and EQ.stratics circa 2000 in the dawn of AO and then DAoC. ANYTHING is better than WoW to these semi-bored players who are e-peening their knowledge of the "next best MMO evar!". It could be any game really, and for any reason. I would fully expect people to talk about "more immersive" games on WoW forums because I entirely agree there just isn't much immersive about WoW beyond core achievements for one's character. The world is largely unaffected by the player.

But most of the record-busting MMOs don't have it either and haven't since (and including) EQ1. That's part of the reason I think as I do about what players truly want. There's a difference between stating how you'll vote and what you end up actually doing. And in the case of deeper immersion with a game, I have long wondered just how many people want to be that invested in a game when it means setting aside their real life to do it.

The median age for MMO players is 29 these days, and in fact I just read that's considered the median age for all PC gamers (which I guess makes sense but I don't accept that at face value). 29 is not just outta school with disposable time and money. That's getting closer to career>marriage>house>kids.

Granted, WAR and AoC seem to be trying to target that 18-24 male gamer. But then the argument could be made that WoW was too.

I don't have any way to substantiate this. It's just something of a gut feel I have, and mostly when we talk about PvP and immersion in the same topic. I think there is no greater way to be immersed in a world than when a player is full PvP all the time. However, the cockblockery of level-based/class-based systems largely makes me agree with some who think the best way for full PvP to work is to either flatten all level-based calculations in a fight, or ditch that noise and go skill-based.

Point of order, people in Norrath gazing longingly at world-impacting-RvR in DAoC is part of what made DAoC successful on a scale comparable to EQ.

If WAR has the same relationship with WoW as daoc has with EQ, I'm sure there will be money hats all round at Mythic.


I don't disagree with this, I just remain unconvinced that this is an argument for sport pvp.

And I think it does demonstrate that the immersion discussion was really about different definitions of immersion.

I certainly agree that a successful-on-a-scale-with-WoW mmog cannot demand excessive commitment from its whole player base.

Now. The trick is working out how systems can exist to make low-commitment gamers involved to some degree in the meaningful 'war' endgame?

Warhammer seems more alike to WoW than how DAoC ever was to EQ. The most interesting aspect is that DAoC was successful for those parts that weren't EQ, without those it would have failed badly.

With the time Mythic got worse in game design and ambition but much better in art, they even seem inversely proportional. We'll see what will pay off.

That doesn't make sense. Maybe you didn't like the design choices the team made but that is different than competence in implemenation. I could be wrong, though. Never played a second of DAoC.

No really, they got worse with time. They reached a high point with the Darkness Falls dungeon and really didn't do anything past then other than copy other games. EQ did a flag restricted high end grind, DAOC did a flag restricted high end grind. EQ did instanced missions, DAOC did instanced missions. I think they have epic armor sets now nipped from WOW?

In a sense it shows the danger of copying the popular kids. Planes of Power was very popular for EQ. Everyone copied it. TOA was not only not popular, it was devastating to the population. AO: Shadowlands ran aground on the same rocks as TOA. The problem was if you wanted to play EQ: POP, you were playing EQ. If you weren't playing EQ, the big popular game that was, well, easy to play cause so many of your friends were playing it and it was such a focus of gaming culture, it's probably because you didn't like that playstyle. By copying it, they irritated their own players and attracted none of EQs.

DAoC had epic armour sets several years before WoW was even concieved. As far as I can tell there is literally nothing other than production values that WoW did first, though I stand ready to be corrected.

I think ToA shows the danger of copying the cool kids when it isn't appropriate to your game. PoP was intended to extend the pve game, which was the right thing for EQ, but obviously innappropriate for daoc. Copying LDoN was probably a good idea, copying sidekicking (albeit in a very limited way) was a decent idea. Being a fast follower is a positive trait, you just have to look before you leap, and always ensure that whatever you do supports your own unique thing (in this case RvR).

If you want to credit Mythic with something, the two areas I'd point to are:

1) Reduction of the PvE grind to trivial levels.  People Play DAoC almost exclusively for the PvP endgame (the exception being the low population Gaheris server).  You can now a) level to the endgame in record times (as low as 7 hours in a competent group and significantly faster on the open PvP server) and b) obtain decent gear through crafting, questing, and bounty point purchase (bounty points are obtained from PvP).  They have also made the ToA hurdles trivial by allowing players to purchase artifact and ML credit with bounty points as well.  The amount of time investment required to participate in the endgame is smaller than just about any other title available.  This was a welcome move. 

2) Diversification of RvR through the New Frontiers changes.  New realm abilities, terrain diversification (towers, bridges, water, keeps), and clas defining rank 5 abilities.  While I'm still undecided about the benefits and advantages of the new frontiers over the old frontiers, they took some bold steps to make PvP more of a diverse experience.  The PvP area is large, varied, and offers players the ability to somewhat control the type of pvp they engage in. 

I cannot fathom why any game doesn't have this included.

Cockblockery. Sidekicking to make levels irrelevant makes it harder to wave an e-peen or set up goals for newbies. It's stupid but tradition. How could you possibly identify people to respect if just anyone could group with just anyone?

Monkey trial counselor. DAoC RvR was irrelevant for quite a long time after DAoC already attracted the majority of the people they were going to get from EQ1, which continued to grow very well after DAoC. An RvR endgame achievable only after a score of levels sans content turned off quite a few people. Today DAoC is RvR, but back in the first year? Before DF? Before all the good stuff that came since?

However, I do agree with you on the potential of WAR. To PvPers, WAR may deliver what WoW does not. The difference from DAoC/EQ is that the endgame goals were not for the same person.

Interestly, one could compare Maplestory with Habbo and come up with "proof" that both sides (directed-play and immersion, respectively) can be successful. It's just that while both games together have over 11 times the active accounts as WoW, all those accounts are free and I believe each game makes less money per anum than WoW (which is fine because both cost about 11 times less to make ;) ).

It's an open question. Habbo is immersion without time sinks. Eve is exactly the opposite. There's a lot that separate the target demographics though, and this too can't be ignored.

All I'm hypothesizing about is why companies that have a bottomless warchest don't do anything more than rip a 20 year old game system.

Interestingly RvR was relevant almost immeadiately after launch.

The first time I went RvR in Daoc was 3 weeks after buying the game, at level 20.

The key point was of course that level 50s basically didn't exist and most RvR battles were zerg standoffs.

Obviously that wasn't sustainable in daoc without the level limited BGs.

Between BGs and the early days of a tiny lvl 50 population, daoc RvR showed just enough leg to keep the Norrathian refugees who came for RvR interested until they qualified properly by levelling up.

I'll be intrigued to see if WARs tier structure can really make RvR at-all-levels viable. I suspect it might turn out the same way as daoc BGs; where you would tend to pve grind up to near the top of a tier level range, then to finish off each tier, you go play RvR, or in WAR you might possibly go sport pvp if you are an uber in a well organised guild.

Same here and it was one of the most incredible experiences I ever had in gaming. It was the 2nd weekend and something like a quarter of the entire server population was in emain fighting over the milegate. Until then the largest groups of people I'd ever seen in a game was 20 or 30 at a UO tavern or the tunnel in EQ. This was 20 times that. It was incredible.

DAOC's design intent was to have you in the frontiers all the time starting around 15 or 20. The quests led you to the gate and there were prime levelling spots available for the 20-50s. That worked for a few weeks. I remember levelling outside the gates in Midgard and occasionally a raiding party would come and you'd have a little fight out by the lake. It was great. But once you had a few stealth archers at 50, they grey ganking drove everyone out.

But really at launch, both PVP and PVE were pretty viable for at least a month or two. Then PVP became off limits except for a few ubers. Then PVP became the game and PVE was useless unless you had a bot or someone to PL you.

dup

Deja Vu. Quite literally too. That pretty much mirrors my experiences. Other then my friends and I flipped realms like 4 times during the leveling up process, which really slowed us down.

I think it shows the RvR was never really tested in DAoC Beta, beyond the very basic mechanics.
I doubt organized guilds are going to give a crap about tier 1-3, except to power level through to tier 4.
It also depends on how xp/loot you get for losing in Scenarios and how much control people have over the make up of the teams in Scenarios.  Still too many open question that will have a large affect on how it all plays.

My gut tells me that the whole "scenario" thing is a recipe for disaster.  I hope that I'll get a chance to play in beta.  After playing DAoC for the past 5 years, I'm keenly aware of the pitfalls that could happen with WAR.  I'm hopeful, but not optimistic.

Sidekicking works in City of Heroes because that game is designed for it. Your character's powers scale up when you level up. To do this in a more traditional swords-and-sorcery type setting, the fireball spell you learn at level 1 would be the same spell you'd use at level 50; of course it would do more damage at 50. The sword you use at level 1 would have the same (relative) effectiveness at level 50.

Of course, if you could use the same sword at level 50 you had at level 1, and be just as effective in combat, that changes your game significantly. Level limits on items, for example, would cease to make sense. Indeed, they would make your sidekicking system more complex.

So the gear (weapons, armor, spells) systems, and any associated systems (loot, crafting, auction, etc) have to change significantly to accomodate sidekicking.

So your game would have to be designed from the ground up with sidekicking in mind. Coming up with ideas for changing or replacing the more traditional gear systems would be quite challenging, and I'd guess this is why it hasn't been done more.

EQ 2 does it.  It's not as complicated as you make it seem.

I'm not familiar with EQ2.

EQ2 does "it". EQ2 does what, exactly? Has a sidekicking system? Has a sidekicking system that accomodates level limits on spells and gear? However they do it, was sidekicking in from day one of retail? Or did it get added in by the current live team?

EQ2 original mentoring system:

1) Exp bonus for the mentoree per mentor, 5 mentors max. Bonus was 5% for the first, 4% for the second...down to 1% for the 5th.
2) Gear was adjusted automatically.
3) Spells were not. The mentor had to have either change spells to lower level versions or keep a separate hotbar.

It worked but was cumbersone due to 3).

Then they improved it so a level 70 spell would get adjusted down to level 50 power when you mentor a level 50. This adjustment would still account for whether your spell as an Adept 1 or Master in strength. So now it is simple. In practice, a reasonbaly well-equipped mentor is a bit more powerful than an equivalent level character.

Thanks for the info.
Maybe I should learn more about EQ2 at some point. I guess it's been working its kinks out for a couple years now :)

Down is easy. Up is hard.

What you described is CoH's exemplar/malefactor system.

The sidekick/lackey system lets a level 25 hang with the big boys and take down the level 50 endgame villains. As far as I know EQ2 had nothing like that.

--GF

Yeah. That's true.  EQ2 is designed more traditionally where the focus is getting to the end game and that the farther you progress the 'better' it gets so it didn't even occur to me that boosting the lowbie would be an option.

I like EQ2 but it's still a cockblocking Diku.

To answer Nebu's question:  Mythic still believes RvR can work.  Instatized PvP is hughly popular. So they incorporated it into their RvR.  I don't see what the mystery is.

I wouldn't go that far, it's just a recipe for a niche game. As demonstrated by GW.

It might also be a recipe for lots of depressed ex-daoc players. But, in all probability they'll be drowned out by ex-WoWzers wondering why they don't often win GW style sport pvp.

In that case the mystery is what the hell RvR means. Because if RvR is two or more factions fighting over volatile objectives in a private instance, then also WoW is RvR.

Earlier in this thread people agreed that the RvR is something else at its core. A system that goes deeper than just the superficial division into two or more groups.

The key difference between regular old PvP and RvR is inclusion. Anyone can join in the RvR fun. WoW does have RvR, it is just limited, poorly planned and secondary to everything else in the game. It is there, it just isn't very good  :-) .

I think half of my deep rooted hatred for DAOC and by proxy, Mythic is the term RvR.  It doesn't mean anything.  It is some stupid marketing speak that people refuse to drop.  The other half is there inability to have anything even resembling class balance for the first six months after launch.

Huh? I don't get it. How does it exclude people? If a game supports PvP and you want to PvP you can PvP. RvR is just a fancy term for team-based PvP.

I don't really agree with the distinction so much, but I can sort of understand the argument: in your usual guild-on-guild PvP, you can be excluded simply because you're not in a certain uber-guild. Multi-side RvR though you're all lumped together as your side so the uber-guild can wind up playing next to Random Guy #1561 as they're all on the same side.

You might not wind up working together at all, and when the ubers pull out you'll be left to rot... but at least you could gleam off some of fun... I guess.

In RvR ubers have no reason to exclude noobs. Because noobs do not dilute the effect of ubers or take up a valuable resource (team slots). Further, concepts like keep sieges provide a opportunity for noobs to contribute to realm performance in a context that does not require twitch skills and a shittonne of practice coordinating tactics with your guild. Yes. I said twitch skills.

In Instanced Sport PvP ubers have every reason to exclude noobs, you get uber teams and noob teams, the uber teams don't give a rats ass about the noob teams in their realm, and frankly, they would prefer that the noob teams stay the hell out of 'their' sport pvp system because all they are doing is giving away victory points to the other mob.