MarkJacobsEA - RE: scenarios

[Nevermore]

Jacobs is more than willing to listen to any and all ideas, as long as they agree with his own.

I'm sorry, but this is a cheapshot.  I've had a number of exchanges with Mark over the years and always found him a willing listener.  When he didn't agree, it was usually backed by sound logic.

I realize that many of us would like WAR to be closer to our ideals, but lets not turn this into a personal attack on the man.  Like him or not, he has advanced the genre not only with his first, but second title.   

Yeah it stings, doesn't it?  I'm glad you've had a positive experience with Mark Jacobs but I'm not speaking for you.  I just calls them like I sees them.  In my experience from DAoC, he'd listen (when you could find him) yet despite all the feedback and suggestions, very little came of it.  It wasn't until DAoC started hemorrhaging subs and Jacobs stepped back to play with his Romans in Space that some significant changes on some long outstanding issues finally took place.  That's when the frontiers where redesigned (I left right before that and heard mixed things about how successful the redesign went), the no-TOA/no-buffbot server went in (sound familiar?) and leveling to 50 was made much easier.  With Jacobs at the helm, progress after the first few months was measured in baby steps.  Especially with regard to class balancing.  To this day, did they ever end up doing that comprehensive style review?  They didn't by the time I left.

Reading these threads here is vastly entertaining because it's like a flash back to 2002.  Quick, which game am I talking about?

"Oh, I can't believe the huge XP nerf at the end of beta!" 
"Oh, the grind sucks!"
"What's with the huge population imbalance?"
"Itemization sucks!"
"Crafting sucks!"
"There's no point to RvR!"

Déjà vu. The only difference this time is I haven't seen many class balance complaints, where that was a *huge* problem when DAoC was released.  I don't know if that's because the other problems have been higher profile or not, but I'll give Mythic the benefit of the doubt for now and give them credit for getting that part mostly right straight out of the box this time.  Everything I've heard is the PvP in WAR is very good and a lot of fun.  It's why they'll keep subs even though it sounds like the rest of the game has some serious flaws. 

Mark Jacobs can do a damn fine job with the early design of a game.  They're fun, but flawed.  The trick is getting him to move off of his original designs to fix the flaws.  I wish you every bit of luck with that.  If you can do it, WAR could end up as a well rounded game.  Personally, I wouldn't hold my breath.

[UnSub]

I realize that many of us would like WAR to be closer to our ideals, but lets not turn this into a personal attack on the man.  Like him or not, he has advanced the genre not only with his first, but second title.   

ERROR: Data not found.

or

It's really too soon to tell. The welcome wore out on WAR's 'innovations' pretty quickly and it is a real question as to if Mythic can fix them.

[Azazel]

Jacobs is more than willing to listen to any and all ideas, as long as they agree with his own.

I'm sorry, but this is a cheapshot.  I've had a number of exchanges with Mark over the years and always found him a willing listener.  When he didn't agree, it was usually backed by sound logic.

I realize that many of us would like WAR to be closer to our ideals, but lets not turn this into a personal attack on the man.  Like him or not, he has advanced the genre not only with his first, but second title.   

I don't really have a history with Marky Mark, I played DAoC, but didn't last the trial month (due to the PVE grind, now that I think of it) but I do see shades of Nevermore's point with each post that he reiterates "yeah, but no-scenario servers are still something to consider" instead of just STFU on that point and discussing others.

[Azazel]

Boost world rvr rewards and kick people out of senarios for good at 40.

Scenarios. Not "senarios".

Also, awful idea.

[Nebu]

ERROR: Data not found.

or

It's really too soon to tell. The welcome wore out on WAR's 'innovations' pretty quickly and it is a real question as to if Mythic can fix them.

See what WoW steals and implements better.  WAR did introduce some good frameworks for ideas.  I think this is hard to argue.  If your contention is with implementation of these new ideas, then I agree. 

[Venkman]

See what WoW steals and implements better.

This. That's basically the weak spot right now. The two big things that WoW could take right now (queuing from anywhere and XP in BGs) would drag a lot of players back. But they have a lot of time to work that out. WAR is going to take a long time (like DAoC-years) to get right for the audience that stays. So unfortunately along the way it'd be easy for Blizzard to steal back whatever small percentage of players aren't carrying two accounts through even just queuing from anywhere. There's a lot more people at the cap in WoW than who are leveling up in WAR and while running around the world for Achievements and Hallow's End stuff can be interesting, jumping into a BG occasionally can also.

RvR unto itself can be awesome but I think its relevance to a mass audience has yet to be proven. It requires people care more about a game than most gamers do and be more social with randoms than they're predisposed to be.

[realcyberghost]

exactly !

What the fuck man. No shift key and a space between the exclamation and the word? Seriously, what the fuck. Go away. Also, a one word post? Lol.

[Ossigor]

RvR unto itself can be awesome but I think its relevance to a mass audience has yet to be proven. It requires people care more about a game than most gamers do and be more social with randoms than they're predisposed to be.

Socializing? MMOs have more and more catered to the opposite of this since their birth. Tools which have made life "easier" in mmos like LFG and, ala WAR, open groups. You'd think it would promote it, but it backfired. Open groups allow the anonymous to come and go without having to make any attempt at being social.

You make a good point. In the end, as with DAoC, this will be a Guild vs Guild game not RvR.

[Nebu]

Please to be fixing your quote.  I never said that, Darniaq did.

[Venkman]

@Ossigor: people want to come and go as they please. The mass market comes with their intact friend groups already. MMOs grew when they stopped forcing social interaction and instead recognized the compelling element for what it is: pickup games to have some fun and get some stuff done. Yes, this has meant a "devolution" from social experiments like Underlight into basically a game which has social elements in it. But that's evolution based on consumer feedback of the most important type: money.

[trias_e]

RvR unto itself can be awesome but I think its relevance to a mass audience has yet to be proven.

I say bullshit.  DAOC had around 350k subs at max I believe.  The MMORPG audience was much, much smaller back then.  Of course, players also had less choice.  But undoubtedly, some of the players WoW brought it in will be of the same mindset of the DAOC players back in the day.  I'm sure it's not as much that want sport PvP and sport raiding ala WoW.  But I'm also sure it would mean that a well done modern open RvR focused game would at least end up with double the subs of DAOC back in the day.  It could be much more than that.  It also happens to be a very good way to compete with WoW, giving players a different experience but similar enough not to cause any 'wtf is this shit' issues like Eve does.

WAR right now doesn't feel fresh or interesting because it's too little open RvR, too much scenario grind, too much useless PvE content.  The stuff there's too much of is exactly what people did in WoW albeit with a slightly different purpose.  The stuff there isn't enough of is what sets it apart.

[kaid]

I fear warhammer may be doomed to 500k or so subs just due to when its releasing. A lot of my friends started playing wow for some of the achivement stuff now that the 3.0 patch came out. I myself enjoy both war and wow but my biggest problem about war is I want to play it for RVR but there is not enough RVR at my level on my server which makes me play wow.

[Venkman]

RvR unto itself can be awesome but I think its relevance to a mass audience has yet to be proven.

It could be much more than that.  It also happens to be a very good way to compete with WoW, giving players a different experience but similar enough not to cause any 'wtf is this shit' issues like Eve does.

You're right about the WAR that exists vs the WAR that could compete with WoW. However, the above bold is extremely important when talking about market potential.

It's not our money nor career on the line when we talk about what could work. We are free to sit here and say "SL level of choice with WoW style with COD4 combat with GW henchmen and Spore level of customization" could be awesome too. But to put money against that you need to go by precedent.

My point about RvR is entirely about precedent. No matter how many players DAoC ever had at its peak, nowhere near all of them were playing RvR, and only Mythic knows that percentage and I suspect it wasn't anywhere near 80% since they put PQs and Scenarios in WAR to try and attract more players. DAoC was fine when the whole genre was niche and focused on the U.S. and occasionally Europe with the Far East being ignored. But in this world where registered accounts are measured in the hundreds of millions, and one title commands over 11 million actual paying subscribers, big IP holders and bigger publishers are not looking for a mere 100-200k accounts. That's indie-level stuff there, not something you unlike a $50mil+ warchest to tap into.

[khar08]

What we need is incentive to do realm vs realm, quests and PQ's. Double the bonuses given to the after mentioned points and you'll start seeing LOTS of people again. It's ridiculous to get easier exp and better gear through scenarios.

We don't need new type of servers. We need better carrots dangling on sticks to follow  

[Slayerik]

I haven't even played the game, but what if some way if you complete a PQ you get a 3 hour RVR x 100% buff. You complete a scenario you get a 3 hour RVR x 100% buff. So you triple your RVR XP.

Promotion of PQ use, promotion of only running one or 2 scenarios, and a sizable promotion to doing RvR.

EDITED ABOVE AND ADDED: Seems like you'd log in and go..."Hey, lets knock out a PQ and a scenario and get some RVR on!"

[Venkman]

EDITED ABOVE AND ADDED: Seems like you'd log in and go..."Hey, lets knock out a PQ and a scenario and get some RVR on!"

That's what they were driving for: PQs + Scenarios + RvR all living in harmony and letting players bounce around. But two of those three are PvE-based that WoW does much better (there's no direct analog of PQs which are cool but are really outdoor group-required instances that WoW does have). And all three are affected by two major problems:

1) World size- It's too big and takes too long to canvas to bother taking the chance that nothing's there when you arrive.
2) Population splintering- Racial pairings provide inadequate funneling and therefore a very hit or miss RvR experience, which you found out once you hoofed your way out there.

Hence, Scenarios in between quest grinding. Both are readily available and fun, but the things that make them better in WAR than WoW are the two easiest things to steal back (XP for PvP and anywhere queueing).

WAR is best served as a WoW competitor when all three elements work together. The major hole is the biggest competitive advantage, thus all the talk about how to improve RvR for the audience that wants it and which will likely never get served it in this form in WoW. But I suspect it's going to end up like "better combat" in SWG: big difference betwee what the players asked for and ultimately what they got.

[Plagio]

Boost world rvr rewards and kick people out of senarios for good at 40.

Scenarios. Not "senarios".

Also, awful idea.

This is exactly what DAoC does at 50.  It hands you your big boy pants at level 50 and shoves you into rvr.

Notice how I mentioned RvR in that last sentence.  I'm assuming you know fuck all about it because of statement like this :

I don't really have a history with Marky Mark, I played DAoC, but didn't last the trial month (due to the PVE grind, now that I think of it) but I do see shades of Nevermore's point with each post that he reiterates "yeah, but no-scenario servers are still something to consider" instead of just STFU on that point and discussing others.

But no, please tell me why your opinion is valid when you didn't even play the ONLY rvr game before WAR.  DAoC's RvR is still to this day the best system implemented and you would think that Mythic would have used what worked.

I left some spelling and gramatical errors in this post so you will have something useful to add to your reply instead of just the usual drivel that type.

[Goreschach]

But no, please tell me why your opinion is valid when you didn't even play the ONLY rvr game before WAR.  DAoC's RvR is still to this day the best system implemented and you would think that Mythic would have used what worked.

I left some spelling and gramatical errors in this post so you will have something useful to add to your reply instead of just the usual drivel that type.

Because he represents over 90% of the mmo player base, and when fuckwits like you manage to drive them all off WAR will end up as an AOC redux?

[Kirth]

Bitchy I'm uber cause I played DOAC stuff.

I sense a disturbance in the force.

[Venkman]

I left some spelling and gramatical errors in this post so you will have something useful to add to your reply instead of just the usual drivel that type.

Because he represents over 90% of the mmo player base, and when fuckwits like you manage to drive them all off WAR will end up as an AOC redux?

There's nothing wrong with wanting a good RvR game. It's only wrong to expect it at any pace you define, and to expect its final delivery to appeal to everyone.

[Lantyssa]

Worrying about whether scenarios are playable or not at 40 is pointless if most people won't reach that rank due to burnout from scenarios being the only viable way to level.

[Nebu]

Didn't you see?  They doubled RvR xp.  That's almost twice as much!

[wuzzman]

Open RvR hasn't been a proven to appeal to the masses, nor more than Open Sandbox PvP is. But as much as we all like to debate that the base issue is grind. If this game was strictly pve than sure the grind would be remotely forgivable but for a game with a "pvp" focus it sure has funny ways to show it. Why my friends WAR a pvp game, insist you grind scenarios still your sick of them in order for you to reach level 40 in a sane manner? Here some mmo design logic;

The amount of content your game has is directly proportional to the amount of things to do once you reach the end game.

From that statement I can say WAR wasted a lot of development time.

[tolakram]

Hang with me here.

Why are scenarios viewed so poorly?

Scenarios reduce (but don't eliminate) population imbalances and guarantee a quick fight.  Open RvR people want more rewards and don't like waiting around for a fight so they want more people to  do it.

Is the answer perhaps instanced keep fights (like they do city fights)?  No traveling required.  If you see that your keep is taken queue up to take it back, once the queue is filled then off you go.

Yea, lame idea, but I'm throwing it out there.

[Atris]

The appeal of scenarios starts to wear off after awhile. The only reason to do scenarios, currently, is because they offer the best return on XP gain. You do scenarios to gain levels. But you can only do Tor Anroc so many times before you're ready to shoot yourself in the head. Once you're finished, you didn't actually accomplish anything worthwhile. You're just grinding to get ranks so that you can level cap and start having fun, which is doing keep sieges. And your only downtime in between grinding scenarios is running PvE quests to get some gear so you don't fall behind the curve and remain semi-useful.

I don't think the problem is as dire as others make it out to be and I think with the right amount of tweaking, they should be able to get things turned around. I'm still enjoying myself, but Mythic is going to need to do some work to keep me coming back long term.

[Lantyssa]

In and of themselves, scenarios are fine.  There may be problems with individual ones, but on a whole, good stuff.

When they are the only realistic way to advance, it causes both burnout and shows how lacking the other aspects of the game are.  Their 'popularity' isn't a problem, it's a symptom of a much larger flaw.

[Venkman]

Hang with me here.

Why are scenarios viewed so poorly?

Repetition mostly. But also because WoW already has them. If WAR only had viable PvP in the form of Scenarios, there's no reason to leave the far more polished and older (so players are more invested) WoW.