1.01 Discussion

[Lakov_Sanite]

You only need a warband to slay the King.  That's about it.

How many people are in a warband?

[Draegan]

You only need a warband to slay the King.  That's about it.

How many people are in a warband?

4 groups why?

[amiable]

It is quite obviously not a bug.  It's a piss-poor design decision, but it's not a bug.  Unless you really do think the "leave party" button just, whoops, slipped in there somehow.
I am exploiting a poor design choice, not a *bug*.  Pretty big difference.

OK, we are just going to have to agree to disagree on this point.  While I'm sure the ability to leave a party was intended, I'm also relatively sure that Mythic did not intend for folks doing so to make vastly more XP/reknown than those who don't.

[Khaldun]

I'm sure they didn't intend it. I'm equally sure that they're basically stupid for having not thought about it and fixed it.

A lot of WAR feels like a violent disconnect between extremely clear design documents, a clear understanding of their market niche, and the actual programmers, who basically seem to have coded a kind of vanilla what-EVER design at the level of everyday mechanics. Some of the missing functionality even after this patch is kind of eye-bugging unbelievable, but the persistent inability to figure out how to incentive people to play (consistently all the way up) with strangers in groups is really bad. The technical crap I can actually forgive (for a while), the mechanics, when they reward people for being anti-group misanthropes, are pretty unforgivable.

[Simond]

You only need a warband to slay the King.  That's about it.

How many people are in a warband?

4 groups why?

So it's a raid, then? 

[Evildrider]

You only need a warband to slay the King.  That's about it.

How many people are in a warband?

4 groups why?

So it's a raid, then? 

Then that makes PQ's raids too.   

[tkinnun0]

Yes, it does. From the sounds of it a raid that can be zerged, but a raid nonetheless.

[schild]

Look, there's a key difference between raids and all of the "can zerg" things in WAR. That is, the way loot is distributed, it's highly advantageous to do any PQ or Keep-Taking with the smallest number of people you can, whereas other games have content that simply requires an ass-ton of people. If you can take a keep in Tier 3 with 6 level 31s (and you probably can maybe, if you're AWESOME), you should do so. If you can finish a PQ with 3 people in a reasonable amount of time, it's worth doing so.

You can not - CAN NOT - do that in other games. I think that's where the "raid" part gets thrown out the window.

[trias_e]

Insert Quote
Yes, it does. From the sounds of it a raid that can be zerged, but a raid nonetheless.

Schild points out that you don't need to 'raid' (total misnomer for this game if you understand what the concept means in EQ/WoW) anything in WAR except for perhaps the king.  There's another significant difference, and that is you don't have to schedule 3-6 nights a week of your time and coordinate with the same 23 players every night to do what you want to do in WAR at the end game.

At 40, when open RvR will become a big focus, players basically create your content and shape your gameplay experience (for good or bad).  You could say you are raiding a keep vs the enemy team, but this is a redefinition of the word raid as it is used in EQ or WoW, where it means 'you and your guild of merry men (likely asshats) fight the same mob for a week until you learn not to fuck up long enough to kill it, or you learn whatever dumb trick the developer wanted you to learn, so you can move to the next mob and do the same thing'.  That is what I'm saying is not in WAR.  And it's not.  That's the end game of WoW, well that and e-sports, which also aren't in WAR.

When you get into the city, there are big alterac valley style instances where you fight other players for control of areas of the city.  There are city only scenarios.  And there are PQs you try to accomplish while battling the other player.  This is most of the city content.  If you 'win', you get a small amount of PvE reward in exclusive dungeon/king battle.  Based on what Mythic's said, this content seems like it's going to be a very small amount of your overall gameplay at level 40.  And you sure don't have any 'progression' ala WoW.  It's just icing on the cake, not the point of the game.  I could be wrong, I haven't been there.  I'm just taking them for their word. 

Just because you have alot of people doing something doesn't make it similar to raiding in WoW. 

[tkinnun0]

in EQ

If I remember the history correctly, in EQ there were no caps on raid size in the beginning, so the more people you brought the lesser the chance of anyone getting loot. In regards to PvE PQs it sounds like we've come a full circle.

[zubey]

I know I'm like 2 pages too late, but what's the Squig Herder ability where my pet can snare?  I wasn't aware one existed.  (R18 SH here)

[veredus]

Across the board, SH skills deal less damage than the exact same SW skill.

Why? Because the pet makes up for it!

While sane on paper, it makes them shitty.

White Lions were a bit better back when the lion had no cooldown on death, he was used the same way squigs are: harassment of a healer. They added the cooldown because White Lions should totally not be using their pet as a suicide distraction. 

Magus seems to more be the opposite of a SW then a SH is.

[zubey]

Magus seems to more be the opposite of a SW then a SH is.

Magus is the Engineer mirror.

SH is definitely the SW mirror.  Compare the mastery trees and you'll see.  Especially the bonuses the pets give versus the stances.

[Evildrider]

Across the board, SH skills deal less damage than the exact same SW skill.

Why? Because the pet makes up for it!

While sane on paper, it makes them shitty.

White Lions were a bit better back when the lion had no cooldown on death, he was used the same way squigs are: harassment of a healer. They added the cooldown because White Lions should totally not be using their pet as a suicide distraction. 

Magus seems to more be the opposite of a SW then a SH is.

They are actually the Engineer counterpart.

[Cadaverine]

SW is the mirror of the Marauder, IMO.  Even though one is ranged, and one is melee, they have the stances in common, or whatever they want to label Marauders mutations.
Which makes Squig Herder, and White Lion the Pet mirrors, as well as reversing the Ranged - Melee dichotomy.   I suppose WL and Marauder could have similar Talent trees, but I don't use that as a mirror point as all the archetypes have pretty much the same talent trees, frankly.

[rk47]

SW is the mirror of the Marauder, IMO.  Even though one is ranged, and one is melee, they have the stances in common, or whatever they want to label Marauders mutations.
Which makes Squig Herder, and White Lion the Pet mirrors, as well as reversing the Ranged - Melee dichotomy.   I suppose WL and Marauder could have similar Talent trees, but I don't use that as a mirror point as all the archetypes have pretty much the same talent trees, frankly.

this is a very good observation on his part, and I actually agree. Since it brings both to similiar level of awesome and suckageness. I see no error in his logic.

[kildorn]

SWs and Marauders share a mechanic (stances/mutations)

SWs and SH's share a class archetype (archers/melee RDPS)

WLs and Marauders share a class archetype (medium melee dps)

It gets confusing, and some of the skills are on the wrong classes, but that's the basic breakdown. The pets fuck up the balance.

Squig herders deal less damage across the board than SW's, on a skill basis.

WL's deal less damage across the board than Marauders, on a skill basis.

If the pets didn't suck, it might make up for it.

[schild]

Too bad marauders are like absolutely shitty witch elves in PvP.

[kildorn]

Marauders can fuck up a lot if they really want to. It's mostly tied up in their AEs. Adding a 1s buildup as an AE is pretty brutal for anything in melee range of the destro front lines., throw in a passive 50% armor ignore and cook until done.

Marauders have all the mdps issues (soft, issues closing, vulnerable to ranged behind lines), but add in a base 25% more damage than a white lion, and a completely decked out melee AE tree.

Witch Elves kill casters, Marauders kill semi armored melees.

[Zetor]

Marauder mortal strike is also 75% (if specced), witch elf mortal strike is only 50% and dispellable, iirc.


-- Z.