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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Warhammer Online (Moderator: tazelbain)  |  Topic: Consolidated List of Issues with WAR: Read for Moneyhats 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Consolidated List of Issues with WAR: Read for Moneyhats  (Read 43767 times)
Phunked
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Posts: 249


on: October 16, 2008, 08:53:27 AM

First, let me preface by mentioning that I am aware that these forums are probably not intended for this. We're supposed to be bitter and jaded and just hate everything. However, in lieu of real official forums, I'll post here because I know MJ reads this, at least sometimes. On that note: in any future game you run, get some official forums. And/or get your head out of the sand.

Now, WAR can be a really, really, REALLY great PvP game. The PvP is fun, even unbalanced as it is. Hell, all you need to do is let us PvP as much as we want (that means RvR lakes too) and you will get large scale retention. I suggest that you get on this, because WoW 3.0.2 is kicking your ass. I mean, WoW was kicking your ass before you even released, but they added some shinies, made raiding easier and let everyone feel overpowered for a month. For the DIKU completionist whores, this is like crack cocaine. For the PvP crowd (ie. your target market), melting face 2x faster is massively fun. At this rate, they're going to take your ideas, polish them and beat you into the ground a la AoC.

This is a short list of stuff that you can change easily (no ground up rework) to let WAR continue to do well. I have a personal interest in this because I don't want to PVP in WoW anymore, but as it stands now, I don't want to be one of five people per server.

1. This is not a PvE game. If you think you've done PvE better than Blizzard, you are wrong. You will not be able to salvage this for a long, long time. Therefore, make the PvE as easy and as fast as possible.

1a. Increase influence gain from PQs by a lot. Reduce grind required for influence rewards. Make stage 1 shorter. Increase loot rewards to be lucrative.

Easy fixes, all you need to do is change some numbers around. This will help populate the PvE, make it faster and give people more shiny. This is exactly what you want to be doing, because if you constantly give out carrots, people won't bitch so much about them being rotten.

1b. Increase exp from quests by 2x in late t1 and t2 and by like 3-4x in t3 and t4. Make it fast to level. You think people are going to love playing your game to the extent that they're content doing 20 scenario's per level in t3? This is leveling content. I know it's hard to make sure everyone plays a different map instead of MT, TA, etc. So make it so they have to play less, by letting them PvE a bit, RvR a bit and level cap.

1c. Remove/rework the stupid crafting system. I know you threw it in because some people say they like grinding PvE crap for personal gain. The crafting is so poorly done, and with such a lousy UI (please for the love of god let us right click stuff to auto place it into the crafting slots) that it is obviously an after thought. No one wants to be doing this junk. You have 4 gathering skills (salvaging, butchering, scavenging and cultivation) for two production professions? Please to be getting rid of that until you actually bother designing a system that works.

2. Increase exp in RvR lakes by a lot. Increase renown in RvR lakes by a lot.  I saw that you made getting RR50-RR80 take longer. That's the opposite of what you want to be doing. More grind (PvE, RvR levels) isn't going to increase retention. You want to create a fun and dynamic PvP endgame where you can get various epeen rewards for being hardcore but where pretty much everyone has relatively easy access to most of the shinies. If you wanted to, increase RR70-80 or whatever. If the end game is actually fun, the grind doesn't need to be there.

3. Just redo RvR gear itemisation for t3+. That way, we don't need to do the lousy PvE dungeons for real upgrades. Again, you have bad PvE. Making people do a lot o your bad PvE to get their PvP on just reminds them of how bad the PvE is. You do NOT want this, because other games have done PvE much better. I know all PvE is fundamentally the same but EQ2 and WoW (and LotrO even) have much better presentation and implementation. You don't want to be eliciting comparisons with those games on this front, because they are more fun and you will lose.

4. Add a "do all scenarios in your tier quest" to give about 3/4 as much xp as winning all 3-6. would. This makes it meaningful to do them all, instead of just the fastest one. Rebalance them later, this is a bandaid fix, which is what you want at this point.

5.  Allow a teleport/summon to PQ feature and a global open party feature. Also add something like global LFG chat. Trust me, immersion and maintaining the illusion of a large game world isn't going to matter as much as making sure people don't notice how bad some of the game systems are (crafting, PvE, leveling in general) as compared to the games you're competing against. I know I've repeated this over and over again, but if you've actually played them all, and stand back to take an objective look, you see clown shoes. This change will populate the PQs, allow for much faster PQ queues and will make the world seem less empty. Do not make it so that you have to physically have gone to the chapter before teleporting, because that will just add 1 hour of travel grind at every tier.

6. Fix the GUI. Add more options, allow us to change the damn chat window and whatnot. Especially the chat window crap. Other stuff is fine, although you may want to streamline the LUA code, because it doesn't really like working as is.

If you implement this you will see the following:

1. Leveling curve will be much faster, and players will no longer just grind scenarios to level.
2. More people in non instanced game world will probably lead to more RvR, which will now be more lucrative (and another leveling avenue).
3. PQs will be more populated, faster and more rewarding, so people might not notice how uselessly formulaic so many of them are. In fact, getting shinies may make people feel that your PvE isn't totally terrible in the first place. Of course, you'll eventually have to bring it up to par a bit, but I think you already know that,
4. People will level and populate t4, and if they get bored there they'll have a higher chance of rolling alts (which won't be so painful) instead of quitting.
5. People with more characters = more tanks and healers (numerically) = higher chance that those PQs and Scenarios you designed around having a tank and healer will actually work right.

I may have missed some stuff, but these are basically the band aid fixes that I see need to be made in order to actually promote the type of gameplay that Mythic envisioned, which was all RvR all the time.
Righ
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Reply #1 on: October 16, 2008, 09:11:11 AM

This could have gone in another thread where most of this (and other problems and potential solutions) have been discussed, but you felt the need to start a "HAI MJ READ THIS" thread to stroke your ego?

While those are all issues that need addressed, they're not necessarily the best solutions, and there are more pressing problems that they need to work on, specifically population balance and known exploits.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
insouciant
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Reply #2 on: October 16, 2008, 09:21:13 AM

I have been thinking about why I lost patience with WAR so much more quickly than many others, and I tend to agree with Phunked's proposals.  Specifically PvE is weak.

While I realize this is just an opinion, I think it derives from WOW PvE just moving at a faster pace.  Given that in a one-on-one or even one-on-two or three encounter, a player is assured of winning, there is not much suspense.  Therefore there is a huge difference between winning a fight in ten seconds (WoW) or 30 seconds (WAR).  In addition, in WOW PvE the player gets to annihilate the mob with two or three special moves, making an almost comic fun out of the encounter.  WAR by contrast feels much more like sitting here mashing buttons 1,2,3,4,5, 1 again, 3 again, for the same end result.

It is a bit of a problem for WAR that this same mechanic (in effect, slower damage) makes the PvP more fun for most (many posters have pointed out dissatisfaction with the two-shot bunnyhopping PvP of WOW), also makes the PvE feel interminable. 

Further, PvE tactics seldom have much effectiveness in PvP, so the old argument about using PvE to "learn your class" have even less relevance in the WAR setting.
Phunked
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Reply #3 on: October 16, 2008, 09:32:51 AM

This could have gone in another thread where most of this (and other problems and potential solutions) have been discussed, but you felt the need to start a "HAI MJ READ THIS" thread to stroke your ego?

While those are all issues that need addressed, they're not necessarily the best solutions, and there are more pressing problems that they need to work on, specifically population balance and known exploits.

I understand that fixing exploits is something that they're going to do anyways, so I won't bother telling them to do so. Also, population imbalances are hard to fix, because if all the 13yos want to roll naked elf chicks you can't actually stop them.

What I'm proposing are suggestions to make the game ACTUALLY FUN when you get rid of the exploits and population issues. I'd post them on the official forums, but they don't have any of those. Hardly an epeen post, since the rest of f13 discussion gets bogged down in useless posts like yours which address nothing of real value. If you have better solutions, I would genuinely like to hear them.

Afterall, the only thing worse than than an epeen post is a hi2u no epeenposting post.

Righ
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Reply #4 on: October 16, 2008, 09:36:47 AM

While I realize this is just an opinion, I think it derives from WOW PvE just moving at a faster pace.  Given that in a one-on-one or even one-on-two or three encounter, a player is assured of winning, there is not much suspense.  Therefore there is a huge difference between winning a fight in ten seconds (WoW) or 30 seconds (WAR).  In addition, in WOW PvE the player gets to annihilate the mob with two or three special moves, making an almost comic fun out of the encounter.  WAR by contrast feels much more like sitting here mashing buttons 1,2,3,4,5, 1 again, 3 again, for the same end result.

Its very likely a widely shared opinion. City of Heroes is lauded as having great combat, and I suspect that it is at least partly because you are typically engaging multiple foes and annihilating them in waves every few seconds. There's absolutely no reason why a game couldn't combine extended PvP combat with Diablo-like PvE combat. But it won't be this game.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Phunked
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Reply #5 on: October 16, 2008, 09:56:34 AM

So what you're saying is that they're no longer tying to provide people wit a fun and satisfying PvE experience by not giving people what the want?

Sounds to me like if they want the game to do well, they might want to get back to the whole preference satisfaction part of game design.
Righ
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Reply #6 on: October 16, 2008, 10:15:49 AM

No, what I'm saying is that the game is too far detached from that design to build it. You may wish for that, but its another game - there is no way that the client engine that WAR is using can accommodate Diablo/Titan Quest quantities of mobs being killed by many players in close proximity. Fixing the PvE in this game requires simpler actions - reducing the amount of it (because for most of us, its not why we're here) and increasing the rewards (because frankly, who wants to complete PQs for the awful drop rates of blue and higher rewards - grinding the influence is more satisfying, and that's a problem, because grinding anything is bad).

The XP thing is something they need to address - my solution that I've stated at least twice elsewhere on this forum is for dynamic sliders that change the XP (and renown) rewards based on participation. If there aren't enough Order players in a zone, or if there aren't enough players in an RvR lake, scenario or PQ, the XP rate goes up without intervention. After they hit the acceptable threshold, the rate slowly drops back to normal. Slowly, to prevent flash crowds that chase the the XP around the server without accomplishing the PQ, some RvR, etc.

However, this is a 'world RvR' game and that's what they need to focus on, because even with most of the server population grinding the same scenarios, its patently obvious that its not working now, and its not going to work well without changes. The single most important thing that they need to do is provide us with some bloody information. We know they have timers (they all display incorrectly, but we know they are there) for everything including the victory sliders in zones. When you mouse over the zone control, it should tell which way the progress is going, and how long it will be at the current rate before one side gains control of the zone. At a certain point, say one hour before a zone is captured, send a server-wide message saying that "Destruction will gain control of Ekrund and Mount Bloodthorn in one hour". You're going to see a lot more participation if players know they can change things. As it stands, Order captures all keeps and all battlefield objectives and the zone control remains pegged in Destruction's favor. They defend for a bit, see no change, get bored and piss off to Tor Anroc to level up.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Hawkbit
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Reply #7 on: October 16, 2008, 10:36:20 AM

SIMMAH DOWN NOW

It's almost like you guys should fight this out in a video game instead of on a forum.
Nebu
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Reply #8 on: October 16, 2008, 10:41:35 AM

I had a relatively heated discussion with someone I game regularly with.  Last night I was complaining that the grind in WAR was going to kill the game.  He disagreed completely. 

The point: There still exists a good sized faction of people like this.  They believe that they must suffer before they get to the endgame just to make the endgame seem more rewarding. 

I don't mind if it takes a while to get to the endgame as long as the trip to the endgame contains enough variety of gameplay options to remain fresh and fun.  This just isn't the case with WAR (in my opinion).

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Venkman
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Reply #9 on: October 16, 2008, 10:57:43 AM

Guys, it's not a question of whether WAR will be a success. It's more whether it'll be a big (ie, contend with WoW) success, or whether it'll have a niche appeal while Blizzard rips off the best features.

So basically, everyone is right. PvE in this game is weak compared to WoW. PvE wasn't supposed to be the sole focus anyway, but it wants to be engaging enough between PvP rounds. RvR is too much of a bother for the insta-pewpew generation (of which I am a part). There's a contingent of people who think that grinding is a rite of passage or some crap and got bored with L2 so came here instead. And there's the basic premise of this game offering multiple paths to leveling and fun that is best enjoyed by dabbling in all four.

Right now two of the four tentpoles have issues (RvR because it's inconsistent and PQs because of level spread). So finding the efficiency, players are going to sporty scenarios or weaksauce quests.

Some of Phunked's ideas could help, but the world layout itself is against the proper player funneling needed to truly make all four activities equally palpable for all players that want variety. #5 from the list is critical (teleporting). You can't just lead the horse with the promise of water. You need to help it get there too.
Soln
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Reply #10 on: October 16, 2008, 11:31:44 AM

What Darn said.  I'm waiting for the game to stabilize and rationalize its leveling curve before joining.  I luv me some PvP but having my leveling progression needing to depend on other players -- even as fodder -- really makes me squirm.  Particularly when the game is not alt friendly (true?).  And the bulk of the population is all trying to cap.  So I'll wait some more.
Goreschach
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Reply #11 on: October 16, 2008, 12:28:09 PM

Guys, it's not a question of whether WAR will be a success. It's more whether it'll be a big (ie, contend with WoW) success, or whether it'll have a niche appeal while Blizzard rips off the best features.

I'm pretty sure that anyone asking that question has been spending the past four years huffing paint.
Righ
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Reply #12 on: October 16, 2008, 01:06:46 PM

Indeed, WAR may be bigger than most of the games that preceded WoW, but it probably won't even be a tenth of the size of WoW, not matter what they do. The next game that is going to have the sort of sales figures that WoW has will be the next MMO that Blizzard releases, provided they can do so before the b.net generation starts sprogging in earnest.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Phunked
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Reply #13 on: October 16, 2008, 01:08:13 PM

Guys, it's not a question of whether WAR will be a success. It's more whether it'll be a big (ie, contend with WoW) success, or whether it'll have a niche appeal while Blizzard rips off the best features.

I'm pretty sure that anyone asking that question has been spending the past four years huffing paint.

Well my hope was to tell them what needs to be done, largely because I; 1. am apparently an egomaniacal asshat who thinks he knows how to build a game better than people who actual build games and 2. Because so far, they're showing that they have no idea how to apply the right kinds of bandaid fixes. They're undershooting everything with the understanding that some time in the future they can add another fix, whereas they really need to be overshooting their solutions because WotLK is almost here and they really need to cement their player base.  The fact of the matter is, with a MMO a large part of it is getting the start right. If your grindy, imbalanced, life-sucking game gets a bad rep (ala Vanguard) no one will want anything to do with it. The key for WAR is to be clearly better than WoW at some stuff (which it is, RvR) and not much worse than WoW at other stuff (everything else, which sadly it isn't).  Otherwise your game gets a clownshoes rep, a la AoC. Who of us is playing that one atm? Hmm?

Is it going to be a financial success? Yeah, but damn near any product pushed by the EA marketing machine will be. That's why EA succeeds as a corporation while publishing large amounts of utter shit. The whole point is to figure out what needs to be done to make WAR a game actually worth competing with WoW, instead of ultra niche a la LotRO.
Venkman
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Reply #14 on: October 16, 2008, 02:06:55 PM

The next sales figure is going to be the tell-all. Is the story here that WAR with all its hype and IP sold barely more than a game nobody asked for set in an IP most people couldn't care any less about? Or will this be the first post-WoW game to actually break the million-subs mark and not have to make up some wierd "million characters" type analogy just to get a press release?

Guys, it's not a question of whether WAR will be a success. It's more whether it'll be a big (ie, contend with WoW) success, or whether it'll have a niche appeal while Blizzard rips off the best features.

I'm pretty sure that anyone asking that question has been spending the past four years huffing paint.

Err, huh? What part of what question?
Tarami
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Reply #15 on: October 16, 2008, 02:07:55 PM

Well my hope was to tell them what needs to be done, largely because I; 1. am apparently an egomaniacal asshat who thinks he knows how to build a game better than people who actual build games and 2. Because so far, they're showing that they have no idea how to apply the right kinds of bandaid fixes. They're undershooting everything with the understanding that some time in the future they can add another fix, whereas they really need to be overshooting their solutions because WotLK is almost here and they really need to cement their player base.  The fact of the matter is, with a MMO a large part of it is getting the start right. If your grindy, imbalanced, life-sucking game gets a bad rep (ala Vanguard) no one will want anything to do with it. The key for WAR is to be clearly better than WoW at some stuff (which it is, RvR) and not much worse than WoW at other stuff (everything else, which sadly it isn't).  Otherwise your game gets a clownshoes rep, a la AoC. Who of us is playing that one atm? Hmm?

Is it going to be a financial success? Yeah, but damn near any product pushed by the EA marketing machine will be. That's why EA succeeds as a corporation while publishing large amounts of utter shit. The whole point is to figure out what needs to be done to make WAR a game actually worth competing with WoW, instead of ultra niche a la LotRO.
Urr, no. AoC didn't really get anything of what was promised into the game - WAR has all the things it promised but they've been prioritized and implemented somewhat badly. It doesn't really matter how much worse it is at PvE, that it IS worse is enough not to attract that many PvErs from WoW to play (and stay with) WAR. Thus is, or I'm imagining things, the popular belief that WAR would be better off by making all the stuff that it's doing worse than other games (PvE mainly) extremely easy so that the shitty bits don't taint the actually awesome bits (RvR). It doesn't need magic fixes to the PvE, it needs to get people to play the parts of it that are already fun and in the game.

Yarr.

In short - Let us play the damn bits that we like instead of choking us with inferior content that never has been marketed as the strong point of the game.

- I'm giving you this one for free.
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Arthur_Parker
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Reply #16 on: October 16, 2008, 02:15:07 PM

Apart from raids, why is PVE in WoW so much better than WAR.  I'm not disputing it is, let me repeat that, I'm not disputing it is.  But for leveling up why is WoW PVE so much better?  From my memory of WoW, EU release to +6 months, WAR PVE seems mostly the same to me.
Tarami
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Reply #17 on: October 16, 2008, 02:19:42 PM

I will refer to Khaldun:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=14912.msg528931#msg528931

I largely agree, even if I think the sore spots are elsewhere, but in general, I agree.

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- Nothing's free in the waterworld.
Lakov_Sanite
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Reply #18 on: October 16, 2008, 02:25:00 PM

For me the big thing is variety of mobs/quests and different settings.

Now granted you can say wow just re-skins a lot of stuff but levelling 1-70 you always feel like you're advancing, exploring new areas meeting new races and killing new things.

 In warhammer if you play an elf, you are going to be killing other elves until you hit 40, the lands are more realistic but at the same time you don't really feel like you're going anywhere or doing anything epic(barak varr however is one of the few awesome zones i'd seen) and while fighting high/dark elves your entire career is supposed to promote the feeling of being at war, it does get old. I unlocked the time kill 1k elves before i was even level 20, so that tells you something about the game right there.

Quests, sure there's always gather 10x, kill 20y but in wow they do a better job of masking it and in every zone there's at least one quest that seems to stand out as different.(the thousand needles jumping off the cliff test comes to mind) In warhammer I don't think I've seen any attemp at interesting quests and the rewards for the quests are much lower so you end up doing twice as many per level.

One more thing about quests that many may disagree with, is that I feel marking exactly where to go with a big red splotch or X actually ruins the experience, it turns your game into a chore. Yes some wow quests i look up cause they're hard but i do try to figure them out for myself. it's the same reason i dont play console games with a strategy guide in my lap, it takes away from the experience.

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Tarami
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Reply #19 on: October 16, 2008, 02:31:22 PM

Now granted you can say wow just re-skins a lot of stuff but levelling 1-70 you always feel like you're advancing, exploring new areas meeting new races and killing new things.
Sneaky reference awesome, for real

One more thing about quests that many may disagree with, is that I feel marking exactly where to go with a big red splotch or X actually ruins the experience, it turns your game into a chore. Yes some wow quests i look up cause they're hard but i do try to figure them out for myself. it's the same reason i dont play console games with a strategy guide in my lap, it takes away from the experience.
You're not alone, it was a major reason why I found Conan's questing unbearable.

And before someone plays the "but all diku PvE sucks and they're therefore equally sucky" card, just STOP. It's hammertime.

Damn I need to stop posting junk.

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tazelbain
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tazelbain


Reply #20 on: October 16, 2008, 02:33:26 PM

I just keep waiting for your avatar to pop out of her dress.  Ummm, you posted something?

"Me am play gods"
Kail
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Reply #21 on: October 16, 2008, 04:00:41 PM

Quests, sure there's always gather 10x, kill 20y but in wow they do a better job of masking it and in every zone there's at least one quest that seems to stand out as different.(the thousand needles jumping off the cliff test comes to mind) In warhammer I don't think I've seen any attemp at interesting quests and the rewards for the quests are much lower so you end up doing twice as many per level.

I've seen a number of interesting quests in WAR (most races, for example, have a "kill five guys with this huge damn cannon" quest in their newbie area), but one of the nice things I think it does is that these "Kill X goobers" quests seem a lot less grindy than in WoW.  There is none of Nesingwary's motherfucking "Kill thirty young moose, now kill thirty middle aged moose..." style of thing.  Mostly, they want you to kill maybe five, ten guys.  And it's not "get me a wolf eye which has a 10% chance of dropping but I'm not going to mention that", if they want you to kill ten wolves they'll say "kill ten wolves."  And they don't do that annoying "Quick, do these three solo quests at the beginning of the chain, then try to get a full group together to do the elite mob at the end which has the only worthwhile reward" thing very often, either.

Most of that does happen in the PQs, though, which bothers me.
Arthur_Parker
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Reply #22 on: October 16, 2008, 04:16:20 PM

I will refer to Khaldun:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=14912.msg528931#msg528931

I largely agree, even if I think the sore spots are elsewhere, but in general, I agree.

Thanks, I missed that post.
Phunked
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Reply #23 on: October 16, 2008, 05:24:19 PM

Well my hope was to tell them what needs to be done, largely because I; 1. am apparently an egomaniacal asshat who thinks he knows how to build a game better than people who actual build games and 2. Because so far, they're showing that they have no idea how to apply the right kinds of bandaid fixes. They're undershooting everything with the understanding that some time in the future they can add another fix, whereas they really need to be overshooting their solutions because WotLK is almost here and they really need to cement their player base.  The fact of the matter is, with a MMO a large part of it is getting the start right. If your grindy, imbalanced, life-sucking game gets a bad rep (ala Vanguard) no one will want anything to do with it. The key for WAR is to be clearly better than WoW at some stuff (which it is, RvR) and not much worse than WoW at other stuff (everything else, which sadly it isn't).  Otherwise your game gets a clownshoes rep, a la AoC. Who of us is playing that one atm? Hmm?

Is it going to be a financial success? Yeah, but damn near any product pushed by the EA marketing machine will be. That's why EA succeeds as a corporation while publishing large amounts of utter shit. The whole point is to figure out what needs to be done to make WAR a game actually worth competing with WoW, instead of ultra niche a la LotRO.
Urr, no. AoC didn't really get anything of what was promised into the game - WAR has all the things it promised but they've been prioritized and implemented somewhat badly. It doesn't really matter how much worse it is at PvE, that it IS worse is enough not to attract that many PvErs from WoW to play (and stay with) WAR. Thus is, or I'm imagining things, the popular belief that WAR would be better off by making all the stuff that it's doing worse than other games (PvE mainly) extremely easy so that the shitty bits don't taint the actually awesome bits (RvR). It doesn't need magic fixes to the PvE, it needs to get people to play the parts of it that are already fun and in the game.

Yarr.

In short - Let us play the damn bits that we like instead of choking us with inferior content that never has been marketed as the strong point of the game.

You do realize that this is EXACTLY what the point of my original post was?
rk47
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Reply #24 on: October 16, 2008, 10:28:22 PM

Maybe they need to add more side things to do, I didn't think this through but why not implement an arena fight for those who really wanted to do so? I mean it's basically begging for it. The /duel command is disabled. People get bored in between scenario queues can just challenge each other for Renown (You wager max of 200 RP per fight) or Gold (Max 5G) . You can only do this to the same players three times daily to prevent people giving away renown when they're quitting.

Set up a nice arena fight in capital city. A cage match if you will. But hang on, no teams. A 20 man Free for all. Last man standing wins. It's all in the name of good fun. Inevitable city has an area zone that is populated with NPC just killing each other, why not put players in there, have others watch from the top? There's no need for a rating system since this is just side content, surely it will add more 'fun into the game' just to see 20 people going at each others throats?

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Tarami
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Reply #25 on: October 17, 2008, 04:32:38 AM

You do realize that this is EXACTLY what the point of my original post was?
I didn't realize that because it didn't read that way to me. It seems to me that you want to make it fun, but I think it's beyond salvaging for something very fun and just want it "removed" in the most gentle way possible. If that was your point, then we agree and I apologize for any confusion.

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Sunbury
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Reply #26 on: October 17, 2008, 04:51:46 AM

I assume in the Warhammer Miniature rules, there is no leveling, crafting, etc, just set up and fight a battle?

I also assume, due to the relative failures of Planetside and WW2OL that WAR was afraid to go the route of:
   No leveling, except maybe some kind of 'widening' of skills, or equipment.
   A big world with areas to win/lose with a kind of a front-line moving back and forth, no scenarios in some alternate dimension.
Trippy
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Reply #27 on: October 17, 2008, 05:10:49 AM

The miniatures game has no leveling but the WH PnP RPG does.

PlanetSide has leveling. In fact it's exactly because it *does* have leveling that people didn't play to "win" (capturing the bases on each map) when I was playing and instead just zerged to wherever the action was to rack up the experience points (gee that sounds oddly familiar). It was so bad that commanders on your side would get made at you if you did things to capture bases quicker (like turning off the power in the base) cause that reduced the number of commander experience points they would gain. It's probably different now that the only people playing have presumably maxed their experience, but it's part of the reason why I stopped playing.
Righ
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Reply #28 on: October 17, 2008, 06:42:01 AM

I would just like to say that you can blame 'levels' on the popularity Dungeons and Dragons. The very best pencil and paper RPG ever made - Traveller - had no levels and was perfectly fine without them. However, as I've recently mentioned, levels are fine in a mediated game where the game master can ensure that anybody who misses a play session remains at parity. They are not fine in a cooperative or competitive online game.

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Khaldun
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Reply #29 on: October 17, 2008, 06:43:41 AM

Champions also didn't really have levels.

The thing is, if characters don't progress, the world has to. MMOG designers are afraid of trying to tackle that as a design objective, so levels it is. Even if you got rid of 'levels' per se, you'd still have some kind of accumulative progression.
Jimbo
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Reply #30 on: October 17, 2008, 07:57:30 AM

I assume in the Warhammer Miniature rules, there is no leveling, crafting, etc, just set up and fight a battle?

I also assume, due to the relative failures of Planetside and WW2OL that WAR was afraid to go the route of:
   No leveling, except maybe some kind of 'widening' of skills, or equipment.
   A big world with areas to win/lose with a kind of a front-line moving back and forth, no scenarios in some alternate dimension.
WWIIOnline and Planetside have had a hard time going, since they were bastardizing two games and putting it on a persistant MMOG.  Planetside mixed up a futuristic FPS with RPG elements and neither side really found it attractive, FPS crowd would go to games with advancements like Battlefield 2 or CoD4 (which are doing great and they have lots of ranks to do).  WWIIOL was to be a military historical simulation game, which made it realistic but unfun and frustrating as hell with the crappy coding (plus military reinactors can be a wonky crazy bunch).

But I must say, I've had some incredible battles in both games that were just spur of the moment where both sides were not backing down.  Both times was as a defender that held the line against a larger force, because the side I was on played smarter.

Those games didn't suck because a brand newbie could kill a veteran of the highest rank, it sucked because of bugs (crashes, cheats, network code, "taxi to victory"), the way they made it unfun and unfamiliar with the FPS crowds, and the lack of making it easy to find fights.

Many FPS are now including leveling up features that make it more fun for the person playing the game, but it still holds fast, that a level 1 can shoot and kill someone who is max level.  Games like Call of Duty 4 (wow levels and goodies and stuff to put on your weapon), Battlefield 2 and all the other BF series, TF2 is adding advancement stuff, etc..., all making it fun to grind (yeah I have no problem in a FPS doing that...can't stand EQ or DAoC for it though).
rk47
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Reply #31 on: October 17, 2008, 08:20:33 AM

Oh, here's a situation
in destro dominated server 5 order PCs ninja'ed 4 BOs for 800 RP each. They in total made 3200 RP.
Destro came in hordes. 50 of them and take it. 50 of them gets 800 RP per cap.

GG balance.

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Righ
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Reply #32 on: October 17, 2008, 09:33:31 AM

I was actually wondering whether the slider problem with WAR (Order captures all keeps and BOs in a zone, and the control pin hardly moves for the next few hours, Destro recaptures and control pin moves suddenly and Destro gains zone control in minutes) had something to do with population. If everybody who is getting the renown is also adding that to the victory points for zone control, a small group that does big things will have little impact whereas a mighty zerg that sweeps the map will instantly be rewarded.

Some rich bastard (Curt Schilling, we could use your help here) should buy 200 copies of WAR and multibox using follow macros. We'll cap the objectives, you just bring your hundreds of characters along for the renown ride. Then we'll know if that's true. Of course Mythic could just look at the logs and tell us. Then fix it.

The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
Sjofn
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Reply #33 on: October 17, 2008, 03:42:21 PM

Oh God, I hope that isn't the case. It makes the population imbalance even shittier.  swamp poop

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rattran
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Reply #34 on: October 17, 2008, 03:59:45 PM

Played around a bit on one of the 20% bonus destro servers, people were complaining about the same thing, but the other direction.

So yeah, looks like Numbers > everything
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