Warhammer February Newsletter Thread

[Hoax]

Seriously the difference is, if you have two hands you can "compete" in video game sports. You wont be the best, but this isn't the NBA or the NFL you dont need to be a freak of nature to not get run over.

The very, very best thing you can hope for with it is a niche game as successful as EVE

Probably true but the very, very best thing you can hope for is a game where the pvp is so lame people who care about pvp dont play it so your constituents -players who get their shit shoved in so badly in online pvp that they cry and /quit- can play Hello Kitty Tactics Online in peace.

I feel the majority of people aren't so stupid as to be upset that in a competition between two people the person who has spent more time practicing and who take the competition more seriously will most often win.  As long as the sport itself is fun and they aren't loosing due to exploits, cheats or game balance issues they are ok with loosing to more serious players.  If that wasn't the case WoW wouldn't have the amount of people involved in the BG's, Arenas and pvp servers that it does.

Dont worry though you will get your kid glove treatment, I heard WoW wants to give every item a point value and try to auto-match teams with comparable gear levels accordingly.  Guess what, someone will still win and someone will still loose.  People will still cry about something and many will threaten to quit while a tiny number actually will.  Who fucking cares.  Get over it.  This pity party about casual pvp'er rights is fucking amazingly stupid.

If you care enough to get this bent out of shape about loosing instead of crying about how games should force people to not suck more, you should look at why your getting smashT and correct what I think is a purely personal problem.

[tazelbain]

Seriously the difference is, if you have two hands you can "compete" in video game sports. You wont be the best, but this isn't the NBA or the NFL you dont need to be a freak of nature to not get run over.

My time in PS has convinced me it is still is an issue.  I am sure that I could over the course of a year I could get good enough that I wouldn't be completely worthless.  But it wouldn't be a fun year. 

[eldaec]

I don't understand what you are saying here.  

If I am a tank, and I am trying to protect my support, then that is much easier if the other team is all standing on the same point. Because

a) I can stand in the way.

b) My aoe effects will likely decimate them.

c) My allies aoe effects will likely decimate them.

___________________________________________

Regarding gank groups vs random groups, I really don't think you ever can the change the fact that gank groups will win when these groups meet, and I'm not totally convinced you don't *want* the organised group to win.

All you can do is minimise the number of times that completely mismatched groups run into each other in a straightforward headon battle, and recognise that simply putting 6 players on each side is not the same thing as ensuring a level playing field. The issue isn't that your pub football team gets beaten by Brazil, the issue is that they shouldn't end up playing each other every week.

It mostly takes care of itself in open RvR, because average players outnumber gank groups, and because large, uneven sides swallow up the effect of gank groups, at the same time as emphasising the role of community leaders who bring random players in rather than excluding them.

In instanced group v group RvR it's harder, Mythic have suggested they may take account of RvRxp and relative gear disparities when setting up the NPC support. Tbh, I suspect rules like this will just end up getting gamed, strengthening the organised groups further. On high population servers you can probably try to match similar RvRxp groups; but if you go so far as build groups randomly, then players will feel that the result is being determined by who gets the most balanced group, and you prevent friends and guilds of all skill levels from playing together, which is surely a bad thing. And worse, I can see the realm message boards now full of nonsense about how low RvRxp players/guilds should not join random_team_instance_01 because it 'hurts the realm'. This is not like Alterac Valley where the outcome doesn't really matter.

[angry.bob]

Seriously the difference is, if you have two hands you can "compete" in video game sports. You wont be the best, but this isn't the NBA or the NFL you dont need to be a freak of nature to not get run over.

You’re wrong. Competing at the level of a talented group requires resources that are beyond the means of the overwhelming majority of players. whether those resources are time, a guild, voice, or practice is irrelevant. Without any one of them the process falls apart and game balance with it.

Probably true but the very, very best thing you can hope for is… pointless personal attack that assumes a lot, says nothing, and makes no point whatsoever.

Actually, the very, very best thing I can hope for is a fun, challenging, and rewarding game for players of all skill levels, at all times of the day, and at all server populations. Which is a goal that what I’m saying supports. Saying that large group battles evens things out is fine from 1700-2300, but then you’ve got a broken game for the rest of the day or whenever a particular side dips below XX percentage points of  population below the other ones. And the people you’re talking about don’t care about PvP to begin with. They care about ganking people they know have no chance against them. They’re the CAL players who join a pub Counterstrike server and play until the server is dead. They’re the people who group ganked lone miners in UO. They’re the people who are currently exploiting queue mechanics to cherry-pick BGs against PUGs in WoW. Skilled players, players interested in becoming better, and players interested in the health and growth of a game’s community should have no complaints about fair matching. The players interested only in easy kills to compensate for their own real-life shortcoming always seem to take attempts at removing their sheep as a personal attack and react as such. Pretty much like what you’re doing now.

I feel the majority of people aren't so stupid as to be upset that in a competition between two people the person who has spent more time practicing and who take the competition more seriously will most often win.  As long as the sport itself is fun and they aren't loosing due to exploits, cheats or game balance issues they are ok with loosing to more serious players.

Players don’t need to be upset to decide that it’s just not fun or worth it and hit a cancel button. You’d be better off if they got upset about it, as it would mean they had some sort of investment in the process, as opposed to getting rolled on day one of release by SUPERGUILDPREMADERGROUP simply because they’ve played together since EQ and were in the beta for WAR. It great they’ve been together that long and all, and that they play together with such precision. But so what? Mythic isn’t developing MySpace Online, and letting guilds trample over people on day one isn’t going to help retention or word of mouth. I can see the scene in the office the next Monday: “Man, I got endlessly r4p3d this weekend in this new MMO that came out! I couldn’t stay alive long enough with 20 of them using vent to focus fire on me, but it’s cool because they’ve played together as a group for eight years, had a year headstart in the beta, and  play as a group 8 hours each night. I’m going to keep playing because I know in a couple of years I’ll be able to step foot outside a safe zone and survive long enough in a group to get better.” Who wouldn’t want to play that?

If that wasn't the case WoW wouldn't have the amount of people involved in the BG's, Arenas and pvp servers that it does.

I know you won’t remember this because you’re a community n00b and all, but I’m the guy here who argued constantly during WoW’s beta that they were wrong in focusing exclusively on PvE and tacking on weak PvP as an afterthought, and that PvP was going to end up being the bulk of their player’s end-game activity so it’s what they should balance for. That being said, WoW PvP is sad, even in it’s current state. Any of the battlegrounds you choose to name has one side playing almost exclusively because they need the marks fro it for gear, then they’ll never return to it. I find it odd that the least universally despised BG is the one that doesn’t allow joining as a group, and the ones that people universally avoid except to get marks are the ones dominated by premades queue surfing. Also, winning or losing a WoW BG is irrelevant to the rest of the game, as opposed to WAR where it directly affects everyone playing each and every time.

Dont worry though you will get your kid glove treatment, I heard WoW wants to give every item a point value and try to auto-match teams with comparable gear levels blah, blah, blah more pointless attacks… you should look at why your getting smashT and correct what I think is a purely personal problem.

See, here’s the part where you’re really missing the point. I don’t want even playing grounds because I suck. I don’t – I’ve excelled at every game I’ve played and have the records with the various clans I’ve been in and the servers I play on to prove it. I’m happy with my PUG performance in WoW, even against premades. And I’m not even going to bother going into The Bobs and what they were about since you’d obviously draw the completely wrong conclusions anyways. I have confidence in myself as a person and confidence in my skill and my ability to learn and grow as a player. I don’t need a real-life ego boost from “shoving the sh** in” of someone who couldn’t beat me 1 on 1, let alone 1 on me and 7 people I play with every night.  I want level playing fields for the challenge. It’s the same reason why I stopped plying TFC on pub servers, then CS, then DoD, and why when I play NS I’ll only play as a gorge and still get more kills than half my team just using web and spit. I want the challenge of throwing myself against a human opponent of roughly equal skill, maybe more, maybe less. What’s the point of PvP if the people you’re fighting aren’t even as challenging as the AI?  It’s not fun for them on the receiving end and it’s not for the person giving it if they’ve matured emotionally past age 8. Rather than me going of to play Hello Kitty Tactics Adventure, why don’t you go set up some green army men an blow them up with firecrackers. You’d totally wtfpwncakes and have a really great K/D ratio.

[Hoax]

Oh goodie lets play the Sr. Bruce game!  Hey bob, fuck you but I'll play...

Just pretend that "***" represents a bunch of nested annoying quotes for each section of bob's and my posts.

Competing at the level of a talented group requires too much resources point:
-time:  I'm sorry people who play more will often play better, time to some extent does equal skill.  Welcome to life it isn't fair?
-guild:  If you can't get a guild that is a personal problem, dont cry to the game devs.
-voice: Installing and understanding simple freeware is hard mommy!?  In the words of people fed up with whiny anonymous bitches everywhere "cry more n00b"
-practice:  Again, people who put more time into being good at something, will usually be better.  Wtf...

This is not game balance, you are distorting game balance so badly to prove your "omg hardcore players r teh suq" argument its fucking disgusting.

***

Actually the open pvp argument is Eldaec's point and its the only good one raised in this thread.  Like Eldaec I dont see open pvp as a solution as much as an alleviation or alternative to "sport pvp".  The problem with sport pvp is that you are going to get your ass handed to you by the people who play it like a sport.  If you are some weekend warrior who plays the MMO 10hrs a week and only spends two of those pvp'ing.  Reality paging bob: this is not a balance issue, this is called the way competition works.  I've been trying to make that point sorry it didn't get through to you.

At least I've made some points using WoW to illustrate player trends, people everywhere are playing WoW where org. groups DOMINATE all pvp but the sporadic to nonexistent world pvp that nobody cares about enough to try to dominate and possibly AV which is such a shite BG that most pvp'ers never touch it.

Go read my post in the WoW forum about the armory for my thoughts on how WoW proves that many pvp'ers seem to care quite a bit about higher levels of competition using early Arena competition trends as a model.

Also thanks for not actually calling me a griefer there bud I appreciate it.

***   

Here's one I got from f13 for this third diatribe.  Show me on the doll where the bad pvp men touched you.

***

Well I may be a forum noob but I also dont give enough of a fuck about you to track your posting habits I guess I'm not a hardcore f13 poster or something... 

***

Look, I like competition too and I'm sure you are le awesome at every game you play.  Good for you.  But your suggestions and demands suck.  Its not that I disagree with your goals.  Native voice will not change shit, or at least I've yet to hear a good set of implementation ideas for it.  If you want to advocate for increased competition you can only ask for stronger player/groups to be matched with each other more.  You can't pull up bad players by their boostraps.  Some people will always be the bottom of the totem poll.  They dont care enough not to be and as long as they are having fun playing that isn't a problem.

*added an "enough of"*

[Riggswolfe]

Well at least this thread gave me an idea for where Bob got his name from.

[Typhon]

As long as the sport itself is fun and they aren't loosing due to exploits, cheats or game balance issues they are ok with loosing to more serious players.

But without some new game mechanic to tell you who the higher ranked people are, only people who take the game more seriously actually learn who are the more serious players.  For everyone who takes pvp as something fun to do now and then, getting stomped by groups without any clear understanding of why you got stomped isn't fun.

Blizzard got the WoW money hats because for a large number of people WoW plays like a game, not like a job.  WAR will generate the WoW money hats only if WAR PvP plays like a game (not like a job) for a large number of people.

Using FPS as an example, think about how FPS game makers put in the "random assign" option.  If they could, they probably put in a "make sides even" option, which would attempt to distribute players between the teams based upon player ability so that the match-ups would be optimally challenging.  Of course servers can be setup to not have those options enabled.  With MMO FPS there currently is no "random assign" option.

I think bob is saying that to reach a broader audience, some sort of segregation between casual and hardcore needs to be built into the game.  If it isn't, then the game becomes hardcore by default, and the money hats never come.

So I guess I'm having a hard time figuring out why you think bob is a douche-bag?

[eldaec]

Using FPS as an example, think about how FPS game makers put in the "random assign" option.  If they could, they probably put in a "make sides even" option, which would attempt to distribute players between the teams based upon player ability so that the match-ups would be optimally challenging.  Of course servers can be setup to not have those options enabled.  With MMO FPS there currently is no "random assign" option.

This is great in an FPS where sides are flexible, and each match has no consequence outside of that match. In RvR you can't transfer an Orc to the Dwarf side.

That said I don't think anyone is actively arguing against a mechanism that attempts to match by RvRxp or even gear.

But I don't think it will have much effect. RvRxp and gear isn't nearly as good an indicator of team organisation as people might think. And on typical MMOG size servers I'm not convinced you have sufficient population to support much matching anyway (also Mark Jacobs has come out and said he thinks dramatic increases in server sizes would be innappropriate for community reasons).

On top of that, people will find ways to game the rules. You'll see high end guilds consistently submitting teams with a certain proportion of low RvRxp alts etc.