WAR - another newsletter - more RvR, less sport PvP

[shiznitz]

Agreed. It isn't hard to add a mentoring feature these days. Hell, EQ2 pulled theirs off beautifully. It lets the level 80 half of my guild raid level 60 content with the other half of the guild.  Fun for everyone.

[Mrbloodworth]

No idea about that.  But even on the open RvR servers as I understand the system, you can only fight those around the same level as you.  If you venture into a low level zone you are turned into a chicken

I have no words to describe how stupid that chicken idea is.

This is literally the dumbest idea I have ever seen in an MMO, ever.  All they would have to do is reduce a character's effective level to the maximum allowable in that particular RvR zone, a la CoH's exemplar system.  But no, it's so much cooler to turn them into chickens! 

Unless a link is provided, i don't believe this.

[eldaec]

I understand you only get turned into a chicken if you initiate combat on a lowbie in a lowbie zone.

But yeah, I have no idea why they are trying to implement half assed solutions to problems that have already been solved properly by CoX.




Not that it is unusual amoungst MMOG devs.

[HRose]

But yeah, I have no idea why they are trying to implement half assed solutions to problems that have already been solved properly by CoX.

See that quote I pasted from Mark Jacobs.

He says that mentoring systems decrease the possibilities to group of low level players.

It's stupid, but it's why they made that choice.

[Mrbloodworth]

I still want a link.

I'm shocked, not only do i not agree with the rational, i cant believe mark hasn't heard of the mentor system in eq2, or CoX.


The chicken thing is funny however.

[Nevermore]

He says that mentoring systems decrease the possibilities to group of low level players.

As someone who's played both DAoC and CoX I can say with 100% certainty that Mark Jacobs is wrong.

As for the chicken thing, it's referenced in the wiki entry too.

[eldaec]

I can say with 100% certainty that Mark Jacobs is wrong.

Obv.

I *think* what he is failing to understand is that the issue is not finding a group, so much as finding a viable group (ie. one with a cleric).

I also have issues with any design that prevents friends playing in the same group. Anything that doesn't have one of sidekicking-up, mentoring-down, or an alternative better method for playing with friends, just seems wrong.

[HRose]

I still want a link.

I'm shocked, not only do i not agree with the rational, i cant believe mark hasn't heard of the mentor system in eq2, or CoX.

Link is here.

He KNOWS the mentor systems. He just thinks they are detrimental.

It seems I was the only one to rant about this when he said that. So I wasn't wrong thinking he was out of his mind on that argument?

[Lantyssa]

So what happens when a zerg of chickens kicks a lowbie's bum?

Or people start betting on cock fights for fun?

[Fraeg]

the chicken thing is a pain in the arse.  humorous at first then once you realize anything will one shot you and you can't do anything at all it becomes very annoying.  it is hardly an NDA violation to say that in your average MMO people will have legit reasons to return to lowbie zones.

[HRose]

Kind of fun that we discuss this and a new vaporware (just saying) comes out bragging exactly that.

- PvP servers only, PvE inside PvP, shared
- Open PvP world controlled by players
- No instances
- Skill/twitch system
- No levels nor restrictions, you can go everywhere

... Coming from Sweden.

trailer

[Mrbloodworth]

the chicken thing is a pain in the arse.  humorous at first then once you realize anything will one shot you and you can't do anything at all it becomes very annoying. 

To counter this, so is a level 70 picking on 20's and below, for the same reasons. Not that i agree with the chicken thing.

Again, thats why i think most players do not want "meaningful" PvP, they just want to win, and get the most joy out of stomping people that have no chance, proof? WoW overland PvP (not structured engagements, like battlegrounds).

[Fordel]

DaoC already fixed the max level player ganking lowbie issue years ago. You simply do not allow enemy high levels in friendly noob areas. It's such a mistake to mix the 'pvp' zones the way WoW does, or the way WAR seemingly will.


These are the PVE zones, these are the PVP zones, the two shall never meet. The PVP zones may also have desirably PVE content, but it won't be the 'best/required/mandatory' PVE content.

[Venkman]

trailer

That video showed nothing. Seriously, except for a LoTRO-feel with 300% bloom effect, it was 3/4 through the video before you even saw two characters on the screen. And then when you finally thought you'd see combat that maybe wasn't just floating numbers, the dragon comes in and negates even that one false hope.

Anyway, it took me longer to write that paragraph than I'll ever again think about Mortal Online

But it did remind me of something:

Do you (or anyone) have a list of titles that promised the same but never launched?

I feel like this sort of uber veteran throwback overpromise crap is only going to ever actually launch if a real company with a real publisher with some real pedigree decides it's time to take it on again. Blame Blizzard, or even SOE, or even CCP. Whatever. Tiny developers with a second mortgage and a dream don't really seem capable of delivering the panacea even the big ass houses don't want to touch.

[Mrbloodworth]

trailer

That video showed nothing. Seriously, except for a LoTRO-feel with 300% bloom effect, it was 3/4 through the video before you even saw two characters on the screen. And then when you finally thought you'd see combat that maybe wasn't just floating numbers, the dragon comes in and negates even that one false hope.

Anyway, it took me longer to write that paragraph than I'll ever again think about Mortal Online

But it did remind me of something:

Do you (or anyone) have a list of titles that promised the same but never launched?

I feel like this sort of uber veteran throwback overpromise crap is only going to ever actually launch if a real company with a real publisher with some real pedigree decides it's time to take it on again. Blame Blizzard, or even SOE, or even CCP. Whatever. Tiny developers with a second mortgage and a dream don't really seem capable of delivering the panacea even the big ass houses don't want to touch.

Depends on what your goals are.

[Venkman]

LOL! Who are you, me?!

Yes yes, small companies scale to small business goals and attract just enough subscribers/xtrans-folks to keep the servers running.

But we're not talking Fury 24hr/fulltime/only-PvP here. That was a realistic promise. We're talking pre-Trammel open dynamic semi-twitch post-AoC 3D graphics gaming. Even taking away the graphics part, you're talking about a total system that needs a lot of people in order to even begin to justify the costs of what they barely even promise with their all of one-paragraph description.

We're way beyond vapor here...

But to be fair, I should be ranting here. I just took one look at the site linked there and didn't take a second look until Hrose linked the movie here.

So blame him 

[Ratman_tf]

Gawd. It seems like the current philosophy of MMORPG game design goes like this:

Step 1. Let's have levels and huge power disparities!

Step 2. Now how do we solve all the problems that our level based game creates?

Step 3. Fucking fail.

[sidereal]

Gawd. It seems like the current philosophy of MMORPG game design goes like this:

Step 1. Let's have levels and huge power disparities!

Step 2. Now how do we solve all the problems that our level based game creates?

Step 3. Fucking fail.

Hmm.

Step 0.1: We need revenue
Step 0.2: We need long subscriptions
Step 0.3: We need addiction
Step 0.4: We need a grind
Step 0.5: We need something to grind for
Step 0.6: We need the next ding to grind for
Step 1: Let's have levels

etc.

[Triforcer]

Oh, cmon.  The penchant for levels isn't because of some bizarre, stubborn religious view of game developers.  Its 100x harder to balance a game where any of 50/100 whatever skills are mixed and matched with each other than a level-based game.  Its amazing to me how little business sense people who say "MMO W/NO GRIND WOULD B MOST POPULAR EVAR!!!" have.  Hint:  you need people to have a reason to pay beyond the first week. 

[Venkman]

Levels are fine. Until you get to PvP. But even then you only need to bracket competitors into environments where levels themselves matter less or not at all.

[Nevermore]

No levels worked out quite nicely in Eve.

[schild]

Your ship (by proxy its equipment) and skills trained can easily be thought of as being a certain level.

[tazelbain]

Oh, there are levels...

[Venkman]

No levels worked out quite nicely in Eve.

And UO.

And ATiTD.

And both of those are as different from Eve as all three of those are from the standard DIKUs having PvP strapped to them.

Oh, and none of those inspire the sort of success stories big companies licensing big IP want to talk about.

Edit: and yes, Eve (and UO and ATiTD) have levels with a lowercase L, which is just the "(level) of separation measured by some metrics". That being time.

[Nevermore]

Your ship (by proxy its equipment) and skills trained can easily be thought of as being a certain level.

Only in the sense of 'you have a giant mass of skill points you direct as you please' and different ships and actions have different prerequisite skills.  It's certainly different from standard diku levels.

[HRose]

That you need increments and rewards, sure.

But there are better ways to have than than levels.

[sidereal]

It depends on how broad your definition of levels is.  If you make it a proxy for '/played = stats = character power' then Eve certainly has levels.  And UO.  ATiTD mostly didn't.  Guild Wars barely did, last I played.  Shooters mostly don't.  It's certainly not logically necessary.

[HRose]

I think here "levels" means a way to segregate and divide players.

The difference with skills systems is that players in a skill system still play together at ease, players on a level system instead need to be of proper level.

[Venkman]

The "levels" being used here is pure "I am Level X" vs "You are Level Y", as noted by that number next to the word "Level". Everything else is sophistry, of which I too am guilty 

Skills systems have the potential of allowing players to balance themselves better. But here you've gotta decide between infinite-skill-levels like Eve (yes, Eve has levels, as noted by the word "level" there) or finite skill points of UO (or the attempted middle-area that was old SWG).

And it's no easier to achieve balance there than it is anywhere else. You're just dealing with it differently.

Which is why "levels" can simply be referred to that by which players are segregated numerically.

[tmp]

Hmm.

Step 0.1: We need revenue
Step 0.2: We need long subscriptions
Step 0.3: We need addiction
Step 0.4: We need a grind
Step 0.5: We need something to grind for
Step 0.6: We need the next ding to grind for
Step 1: Let's have levels

etc.

Having levels in itself isn't a fail. Having "levels and huge power disparities!" on the other hand can be good start for pretty stupid results.

EVE skill levels amount to 25% difference between zero skill and fully skilled character, plus similar amount from the gear difference. So it's not like there has to be huge grow in power attached to levels to keep people interested long-term.

[Johny Cee]

I still want a link.

I'm shocked, not only do i not agree with the rational, i cant believe mark hasn't heard of the mentor system in eq2, or CoX.

Link is here.

He KNOWS the mentor systems. He just thinks they are detrimental.

It seems I was the only one to rant about this when he said that. So I wasn't wrong thinking he was out of his mind on that argument?

I actually think a mentoring/deleveling process would be detrimental to low-level PvP:

The major factor in success is going to be:

1. Min-maxed level and gear.
2. Group makeup.  You need the right mix of classes and players playing the right roles.
3. Skill, coordination, and experience playing with the other folks in your group.

If just by stepping into a lower tier zone,  my group only delevels to the appropriate max level?  We're going to own any "real" noob/lowbie out there pvping because my group is balanced and used to working together. 

It just doesn't matter that the level/gear disparaty is reduced if the other team is a PUG,  or can't find a healer.  We'll whip them every day of the week.


Forcing higher levels out of low level PvP is a necessary means of issolating those at the top of the food chain from the people just learning the ropes.  Make it easy for the sharks to pop in and whomp the noobs,  and it will murder any real chance of fun lower level PvP.

[Johny Cee]

It's not that hard to come up with good ways to prevent players to chase their tale.

- Knockback skills on Tank.
- Only a side without a shield should be vulnerable.
- More chance to score a melee critical hit on running targets.
- Narrow the angle that actually count has the back.
- etc.

This is good shit,  that would help the game whether or not you had collision detection in.  Leave the traditional tank damage mitigation in,  leave them with low DPS,  and make them masters of disruption and crowd control with the ability to slow, peel, and disrupt the enemy DPS and support.

[Nevermore]

I actually think a mentoring/deleveling process would be detrimental to low-level PvP:

The major factor in success is going to be:

1. Min-maxed level and gear.
2. Group makeup.  You need the right mix of classes and players playing the right roles.
3. Skill, coordination, and experience playing with the other folks in your group.

If just by stepping into a lower tier zone,  my group only delevels to the appropriate max level?  We're going to own any "real" noob/lowbie out there pvping because my group is balanced and used to working together. 

It just doesn't matter that the level/gear disparaty is reduced if the other team is a PUG,  or can't find a healer.  We'll whip them every day of the week.

Forcing higher levels out of low level PvP is a necessary means of issolating those at the top of the food chain from the people just learning the ropes.  Make it easy for the sharks to pop in and whomp the noobs,  and it will murder any real chance of fun lower level PvP.

And all that is different from the same group making a bunch of twink alts how?  Look what the battlegrounds in DAoC eventually degenerated into and tell me there's a big difference between twinked out alts and deleveled mains.

[Venkman]

Either we fix the various issues of deleveling, or you write off low level PvP zones as ghost-town fodder for the occasional solo straggler looking to set aside the PvE grind for a bit.

I'd rather go with the former

Everything's based on formula. Drop the gear to stats equivalent to max gear one can achieve within that level block. If your system is good, abilities are not separated by gear that much anyway, at least in the low levels.

Further, you don't "need" perfect anything in PvP because you can't guarantee you'll be up against perfect anything. Show up with 10 casters against 10 melee. 5 on 5 healers. Could be anything and there's no way you're going to ever control it.

Finally, this isn't really about balance anyway. It's about having a way for latecomers to join the PvP promised to them in the non-endgame levels. Otherwise you end up with the DAoC problem before /level and level-bracketed RvR where you've got people playing a semi-ok PvE game until they run out of patience.

[Sjofn]

I have to agree with Nevermore here, twinks like in DAoC (and even moreso in WoW) are going to cover the "kicking the ass of a PUG any day" anyway. Hell, at max level that's going to happen too. A pre-made group of friends is generally going to beat the ass of a group of PuGs, that's how these things go. I don't think it's a compelling reason to not have a system to at least even out the thing your game can control, be it levels or gear or whatever.

I would definitely rather the way it was set up in DAoC, where your lowbies can level in peace (or go out into the frontier if they WANT), I'm not sure why they elected to "fix" what wasn't broken. No matter what consequences you add to PvP, people are going to complain it isn't "meaningful."