State of The Game - Mark Jacobs

[Geki]

As it stands, it's like fighting a 12 front war with 200 people

That is the most accurate description of the current state of the game and all of it's problems that I've seen.  I don't think you could break it down to anything more simple than that.  It's one hell of a nut to crack as well.  I don't know that the servers could handle enough population on one server to fill "all 12 fronts" which is really a problem.

[Mrbloodworth]

I get the feeling that mythic servers hold less than average concurrent users. Where other games support about 2500, its seems like mythic hold about 500 (split by 2).

I have no facts, other than when the cues were prevalent, i would wait, get in, and well...really sparse population, compared to others.

[Hawkbit]

I get the feeling that mythic servers hold less than average concurrent users. Where other games support about 2500, its seems like mythic hold about 500 (split by 2).

I have no facts, other than when the cues were prevalent, i would wait, get in, and well...really sparse population, compared to others.

That wouldn't surprise me.  When I was playing, the worlds were dead empty when I'd be questing/leveling.  If I decided to run a few scenarios, quite often I'd be running into the same people in matches, over and over.  It got to a point where in the rare times in orvr that actually occured, I'd instantly recognize the person I was fighting. 

They created a world large enough for thousands of players to connect, but only allow hundreds.  Hell, they could shut down the dwarf and elf campaigns and leave only Empire open, and then it finally might feel balanced.... maybe.

[Vinadil]

Not sure really... in beta our server hit 1800 a few times.  1800 people all with level 31 templates in T4.  Man, that was constant action.  PQs were full, scenarios insta-popping, huge PvP fights across all major pairings.  Maybe you can see why people said it was "fun".  Even now remembering it that sounds like fun to me, I just don't know when/if it will happen on my server.  Maybe if they just had some event that came into the world and some people were magically levelled to 31.  I know those of us sitting in T4 waiting for people to show up would love it.

[Nebu]

If they allowed people to reach level 40 in a reasonable span, you could see action at the endgame like that.  Unfortunately, levels 21-38 are such a barrel of suck that people are giving up before they have a chance to reach that potential.  Yes, I know that the endgame is broken at the moment.  Just having a critical mass of people at the same level could buy this game enough time to correct itself slightly... well... assuming some good decisions were made.

[Maladee]

I have been following this discussion and while I agree with an awful lot of the complaints, I have a question to put to you folks:  How many of you are level 40?  Have any of us experienced the endgame yet?

I'm not asking to be argumentative, but from an original (pre-SI) DAoC player's POV, we all know that Mythic's version of PvE sucks.  It was a pretty good storyline, but c'mon guys!  Before insta-fins or redcaps, the grind was hellish.  Anyone who was "serious" about the game (especially after ToA) had a buffbot account with a druid or a bard, so you could always get a PL for your nubcake if you had FoP or a chanter or even an OOG rezzer, so the "legit" method of leveling was sort of pushed under the rug and forgotten.  I leveled a bard mostly solo/duo before SI was released and THAT was a sunuvabitch.

Anyhow, my point is that people seem to be shocked and appalled about how hard and mind-numbing grind-y it is to level.  Sure, it sucks ass compared to WoW's ultra-fast leveling...but Mythic has NEVER been any good at PvE.  Mythic's claim to fame is the PvP/RvR.  I'm not saying it's right, but more that I can't bring myself to be shocked that the PvE sucks, ya know?

So of all of us hanging around bitching about how terrible the game is (notice how I have included myself here.), how many have actually seen the endgame?  The grind sucks, but the open RvR has been pretty amusing.  The bigger problem that I see is that there isn't really a place to gather to look for groups.  How many zones are there for T4?  Even if you assume that the central zone is where to start, that still leaves 3 entire zones to wander around looking for people and you know that an embarrassingly large amount of gamers won't check the war map to see where the zones that need defending are (or the zones with the flames and swords)...and those people will just queue for a scenario and then tab out to bitch about how much the game sucks blah blah blah.


I figure MJ ought to go whole hog "fixing" T4 and making sure that the endgame has enough draw to keep us motivated.  I'd forgive an awful lot if the endgame comes close to comparing to old emain.  Or maybe I'm just an optimist. 

[Righ]

Ideally at the 6 month point it would of been us helping them test class balance issues between the two realms and helping them make RvR actually fun and balanced.

Ideally that would have been sorted 18 months before the game launched. At the 6 month point we should have been completely drooling at all small details they were adding and giving them suggestions for things to add into the first expansion pack. It wasn't ever going to have the 'polish' of WoW, nor was it even going to be close to finished given how much attention rather critical client issues required late in the day. However, I agree with schild - the game was in a passable state up until they started making exceptionally bad post-launch decisions. They know where their flaws are - they don't need the angry mob at f13 to tell them that they have issues with large populations in PvP and small populations in the hugely unfinished PvE zones. The problem appears to be that they are attached to a model of the game that they envisioned before they started stumbling over technical issues, and rather than realign the game around the reality of today, they seem to be trying to nurse it and buy time to patch in some of the content that they've designed but haven't had a chance to complete.

There's a good game in there. They just need to swallow some pride and pare back some of the grand ideas so that we can play it.

[Modern Angel]

The grind sucks,

See, this is where your post should've stopped. I do not grind anymore. I do not fight non-social mobs over and over and over, where each one is the same as the next one. It could be raining ice cream and strippers at 40. I will never know.

[waffel]

One of the more humorous changes Mythic ever did was back in March-ish of beta.

Their idea was to do their chaos/empire phase, where you could level up 1-22. That is the phase I started in. It was actually a lot of fun. I remember doing the PQs with people to level up originally (there was no scenarios yet) You could do most PQs with about a group and it was THE WAY people leveled up. There was always people at them, and if you were not near them and needed to know which ones people were doing you could ask in the CHAOS WIDE/ORDER WIDE CHAT that everyone joined. Finding groups for stuff was awesome.

Then, once you got bored of PQs you would ask if there was any RvR going on (usually was) and you'd run to the RvR pool and find all kinds of people duking it out and fighting over the BOs. It was awesome. Granted, a lot of the time it turned into one side outnumbering the other and camping the RvR town exit (if you ever played DAoC, it was just like people camping a PK waiting for people to run out) but still you had your open-field skirmishes. Unfortunately, BO rewards sucked balls back then, and despite the constant feedback, were never fixed. Oh, and BWs back then were pretty damn powerful too.

Anyway, at the end of that phase Mythic decided they were sick of players leveling up in the PQs with a group (trust me, it wasn't that fast, it was just nice being in a group of people getting constant EXP while chatting and such, reminded me of DAoC. I loved it.) SO! They decided to nerf PQs right in the asshole and  make it so you could solo phase 1, needed about a group for phase 2, and needed 2 groups for phase 3. Also, if you didn't kill the last PQ guy in time (a few minutes) he would rage out and hit people got 5k.

Yeah, that was the first time me and a lot of other players realized Mythic had no fucking clue what they were doing and learned jack shit from DAoC. Obviously they changed PQs back to the way they were, but once they made the change which required 2 groups to finish it, they were pretty hell-bent that they had made the right decision and that players would have to deal with it.

Also, Mythic removing the tier-wide chat was at release was fucking stupid too. So much for finding groups, seeing if any open RvR is going on, inquiring about PQs and so on, ect.

I'm sure Mythic did a lot of other stupid shit in beta, most of which I can't remember, but most I probably wasn't around for. Beta-testing the game was boring as fuck. Having your character wiped every 2 weeks and watching none of the changes you and other people suggested put into place really puts a damper on wanting to test for them.

[Jherad]

There's a good game in there. They just need to swallow some pride and pare back some of the grand ideas so that we can play it.

I remember in beta people were screaming for a fix to global cooldown and lag problems, and ultimately wanted a simple single ability, short duration queue. Mythic said time and time again that no, there would be no queue, you'd just have to get used to it.

In the end, we got a 'slop timer'.

*cough*queue*cough*

They can do the right thing, but seem to feel the need to save face.

[waffel]

Mythic also claimed the global cooldown was hard-coded that there was no way to fix it or change it when people asked for chosen's auras to not be on a GCD.

I never played a chosen after that, but I think a few months later they FINALLY figured out to make the aura's not subject to GCD. 

[squirrel]

As it stands, it's like fighting a 12 front war with 200 people and that's a goddamn joke.

This is exactly the problem. Unfortunately for Mythic, it's also very very difficult to resolve. Small things will help, but really each Tier should only have ONE oRVR area that all racial pairings feed into.

[Ashmodai]

I have been following this discussion and while I agree with an awful lot of the complaints, I have a question to put to you folks:  How many of you are level 40?  Have any of us experienced the endgame yet?

The endgame, T4, is horrible, and that's part of the problem.  If we had to wtf grind our asses off to get to 40, but the PvP was awesome and fun there (like it is from 1-20), there might not be as many complaints as we see now.  As it is, you work your ass off, get to 40, and it's so shitty that you just want to reroll alts.  Case in point, my main is level 39, has been for 2 weeks now.  I just couldn't be arsed to get to 40 even just to say I did it, and my alts have seen a ton of playtime since, I have about 4 characters in T2 now and one in T3, and those are actually fun to PLAY.  My "main" is not.

For me, I actually enjoy 1-20.  It's fun as hell, I really like the PvP, I even enjoy the scenarios there.  T3 is a bit less fun, mainly because it's so long - I have no problem with Tor Anroc, but that doesn't mean I want to run it 750 times or whatever it will take to get out of the tier, and there's no better alternative (lol pve).  And, well, T4, nah, I plan on rerolling another alt well before I'll play there again with the current mechanics.

[runagate]

As it stands, it's like fighting a 12 front war with 200 people and that's a goddamn joke.

This is exactly the problem. Unfortunately for Mythic, it's also very very difficult to resolve. Small things will help, but really each Tier should only have ONE oRVR area that all racial pairings feed into.

I like the idea of one oRvR area, but only if that one oRvR area isn't split down the fucking middle by a zone line that causes massive HD crunch, punishing you for crossing the terminus fucking est of invisible lines.

My 6 man guild group actually found ourselves getting into skirmish combat between a Destro warcamp and a keep that was under siege, it would've been really fun but unfortunately every single one of these strategic passes so carefully placed in the game also seems to contain a non-visible cockblock of a zone line.

[Sjofn]

Mythic also claimed the global cooldown was hard-coded that there was no way to fix it or change it when people asked for chosen's auras to not be on a GCD.

I never played a chosen after that, but I think a few months later they FINALLY figured out to make the aura's not subject to GCD. 

Mythic LOVES the "it's hard coded, waaaaah" excuse. LOVES IT.

[Arthur_Parker]

I have been following this discussion and while I agree with an awful lot of the complaints, I have a question to put to you folks:  How many of you are level 40?  Have any of us experienced the endgame yet?

Level 36, I spent a while in Bastion stair, we cleared a couple of wings, then some guy with two floating skull pets wiped both our groups.  The skulls didn't despawn so we wiped again in about 3 seconds on the next attempt. 

I'm sure I'd have seen more of the end game PVE content if there wasn't a general feeling in the guild, stated by our level 40's, that most, if not all, of the high end dungeons have some sort of issue that needs fixing.

[Nevermore]

Mythic also claimed the global cooldown was hard-coded that there was no way to fix it or change it when people asked for chosen's auras to not be on a GCD.

I never played a chosen after that, but I think a few months later they FINALLY figured out to make the aura's not subject to GCD. 

Mythic LOVES the "it's hard coded, waaaaah" excuse. LOVES IT.

Apparently Mythic codes on stone tablets, given the difficulty of changing the code.

[Lantyssa]

Do most game studios hire two programmers and all the rest just make scripts?  At times I think we had more people coding our MUD than are devoted to coding these things.  Maybe some things never change.

[Azazel]

I really, at this point, don't think any of them play their game.

I imagine that Mythic has quite a few employees who essentially agree with what we've been saying here at f13, as well as in the Vault, WHA, etc. Unfortunately, these people who may be programmers, designers, etc, clearly have no say in the matter as Jacobs and possibly Barnett and whoever else is actually in charge tell them what to do, and these employees who can see what's happened do what the fuck they're told because they probably want to hold onto their jobs through Christmas.

[rk47]

State of the game at 40:
Scenario: 6 BW = Cannot be dealt with
Open RvR: 10 BW = Cannot be dealt with.
Keep Siege: Magnet pull through door. If undefended, Free RP. If defended, don't bother.
Bastion Stairs: Two instance wings bosses done. Last instance bosses got stuck multiple times, range dps had free shots for full minute, one time he didn't even move while everyone just ranged dps him down to 20%. Why bother meleeing if he just get stuck at a stairs? After 20 runs of doing the same shit and getting no set pieces, I asked if there's any other instance to do? Oh, you need the set pc from here if you want to. *cry*

I think this is it. 

[Arthur_Parker]

Paul Barnett 4th November

Mostly just talking about the Russian release, Paul does jokingly mention pushing for a skink career in the new expansion.  Which might mean Lizardmen are in, or maybe not.

Skinks are the artisans of the Lizardmen. Gregarious and talkative, they do jobs like metalworking and temple organization in addition to being the personal adjutants of the Slann. Some Skinks can use magic, though not so effectively as their ancient masters. In times of war, the skinks take up weapons such as blowpipes and javelins and march to battle with their warrior cousins, lead by stronger Skink War Chiefs.
There is also a sub-species of skinks, the chameleon skinks. They are slightly more aggressive creatures, and resemble Chameleons in the way they have bulging eyes that can look independently. They can also change skin color to blend in with their surroundings, and are patient hunters, sitting unmoving for hours waiting for an opportunity to strike.

[JWIV]

I fucking hate skinks and their poison attacks. 

[rk47]

well at the current state i the capital city siege is not an 'endgame' is not engaging enough, people will quit. I already have some guildies burned out from the gear farming. And frankly, so do I. I farmed like 5-10k RP a night in mix of scen and keep taking, but overall zone control is not really a realistic goal at the moment. Faction unity is a problem and population dwindles. Nothing gets done.

[waffel]

I just did some Praag open RvR on my new server which I transfered too. It was a good 60+ people vs 100+ people and the servers flat out couldn't handle it. Casting any spell with a casting bar took 4x the listed cast time to cast, instant spells were pretty much all you could do.

There was so many people the clip plane automatically dropped to about 10 feet for players regardless of your settings in options, so there was tons of times you had no idea what was hitting you.
Setting spell effects to party showed everyone in the zerg's spells, only fix is to set effects to self.
Taking keeps was simply everyone range the door for 5-10 minutes because using a ram or meleeing = insta-death from magnet.
Keep lord died in about 10 seconds with the loot being 2 blue bags and a few green bags. For 100+ people. WTF?

Overall, huge waste of time. Could have just done scenarios and actually been able to play my character, cast spells, get decent renown and experience, and probably a decent item off a player.

[Bismallah]

Yuck waffel.

Sounds like my experience as well on Ostermark over the weekend. I could barely play, heals were so lagged out I just spammed my AE.

[Mrbloodworth]

I am on Pragg, and i too, encountered such battles, but i had none of the performance/lag issues. I do think some people confuses Performance with Lag. As for the rest, yeah, they need to tweak some things, such as adding more bags of loot depending on how many people are in the SOI of the keep/PQ ETC..

[rk47]

I am on Pragg, and i too, encountered such battles, but i had none of the performance/lag issues. I do think some people confuses Performance with Lag. As for the rest, yeah, they need to tweak some things, such as adding more bags of loot depending on how many people are in the SOI of the keep/PQ ETC..

dude there was 100 v 50 order.

i ran in front and saw 5-10 orders. I thought 'huh, they're not that many'. Suddenly I got lag spiked and 30-40 of them appeared like a ghost. And disappeared again.
I'm not imagining it, even my warband said the same thing, they couldn't see beyond 50 ft.

[Bismallah]

So was it performance based off player's computers or server side?

I know my box is middle of the road and could use some upgrades but if even the top notch systems are having lagdar type issues then it's not just me.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm not saying that people are not having performance issues, but I bet it’s a per machine basis, because I had none, and my view distance stayed the same. The engine and server can handle it, individual computers, maybe not.

This is not me saying i have the "l33t rigz". It’s an observation, and I still stand by the fact that MANY people confuse performance with lag and vice versa, some of the more middle of the road machines perhaps cant take it, and considering the engine scales by its self, always, it may have been trying to compensate. The engine does have some sort of automatic LOD and seems to cut things to achieve a steady frame rate at all times, there is nothing the end user can set to affect this.

[Hoth]

I'm not saying that people are not having performance issues, but I bet it's a per machine basis, because I had none, and my view distance stayed the same. The engine and server can handle it, individual computers, maybe not.
[...]

Sorry for exhuming, but this statement seems to be wrong. The Servers clearly can't handle large siegebattles. Yesterday the Chaos marched towards Altdorf and it seemed like nothing could stop them. They were around 150 and order had ~90 defenders. We already saw our capital in the hands of chaos. then an unexpected ally turned up. Starting with a bit of lag, 2 second casts took around 10 seconds and every once in a while an instantheal found it's target. 5 Minutes later the zone crashed and sent us back to Altdorf, unable to enter Reikswald for the next few minutes. After the zone was back again the siegetimer was reset to 1 hour and the doors that were already destroyed had been restored. The second try to take the zone was ended by a complete servercrash and some kind of rollback that only affected T4, Praag was contested again and all the progress Chaos made in the last hours was gone.

I don't shed a tear for chaos, but I think for a feature that was advertised as "teh buyingargument - It's got capitalsieges man!". It all felt rather unfinished to a point were it is entire impossible to use the mainfeature that made the majority of the players I know buy this game. If they fix that WAR could be fun, this whole "omg our capital is under siege, come all and defend it" was really nice. Players of all levelranges entered the Zone just to contribute their little bit to stop or just slow down the hordes of chaos.

Damn, it's like they say....I really want to love this game but it's so damn frustrating some times..

  - Smiley unrelated, just added for plain awesomeness.

p.s.: So much text...my english clearly sucks when I can't say what I want to say in a few clear words. Please forgive me my europeanness.

[Shatter]

Red Eye Mountain last night had a major battle in Praag as well and the server was struggling.  There were easily 70+ people on both sides going at it for quite some time. 

[Megrim]

It must be something to do with the Tier 4 zones. I've had about 150 vs near-100 in Tier 2 (during the Witching Night), and it ran fine despite my pc not being top of the line.

[khaine]

It's more likely due to the fact they weren't even considering keeps/fortresses until basically Jan of this year

I remember when the beta shut down (late Oct wasnt it ?) that keeps/fortresses weren't even in and was up in the air if they even were going to have them

So throwing those in without being ready to handle 100vs100 packed into the small area of a fortress server side wasn't going to have a good outcome

On that note , I cannot fathom the game without keeps/fortresses , and the fact it took closed beta players screaming for them to get them even considered should have been a big warning flag for me

[Arthur_Parker]

With hindsight the fact that Mythic wanted to release this after DAoC should have been a warning sign to everyone.

Unlike Dark Age of Camelot, Imperator is a Player versus Environment (PvE) game. However, given that much of the game is set in the Roman Republic, there will be plenty of opportunities to players to test themselves against other players within the game. If you have seen our E3 demo movie, there is a reason that the Flavian Amphitheater (known as the Coliseum in our world) occupies a central part.

[schild]

Shortly after they bought Warhammer, I'm fairly sure I or someone as cynical as me said something to the tune of "Oh, they're going to reskin Imperator."

>_> That's quite the quote you've dug up.