I'm done with RvR lakes until Mythic does something substantial

[Mrbloodworth]

How the fuck does that even work in Core server where people just unflag and zerg the quests where they have population advantage? Eat a dick, Mythic. AND STOP FUCKING ADVERTISING ULTHUAN U COCKFAGS I ALREADY HAVE A TOON THERE

Now you see why i chose open. I still say, if you are on a core server, you are missing out.

i'm listening  which faction n wut server

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

[Righ]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Nebu]

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

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

[Draegan]

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

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

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

[Lantyssa]

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

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

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

[HRose]

Folks,

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

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

[Venkman]

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

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

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

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

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

[Paelos]

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

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

See how easy that is?

[Trippy]

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

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

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

[HRose]

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

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

See how easy that is?

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

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

[UnSub]

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

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

(Expanded names at Lantyssa's request)

[Paelos]

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

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

See how easy that is?

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

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

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

[Kail]

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

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

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

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

[Paelos]

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

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

[veredus]

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

[Venkman]

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

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

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

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

[veredus]

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

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

[eldaec]

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

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


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

[Vinadil]

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

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

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

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

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

[Beign]

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

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

[Khaldun]

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

[Morfiend]

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

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

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

[tazelbain]

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

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

[Fordel]

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

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

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

[Maegril]

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

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

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

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

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

[Venkman]

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

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

[Ingmar]

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

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

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

[Venkman]

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

[pxib]

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

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

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

[Fordel]

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

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


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

[Venkman]

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

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

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

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

[Fordel]

Forever?


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

[Venkman]

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

[Fordel]

Clearly you're a noob to be pwned.   


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