Witching Night

[runagate]

I'm assuming that's the case.  This is the first thing they've done even marginally right to encourage oRvR.  It would take a level of ineptitude yet undisplayed by the Devs to shit all over the first positive addition to the game thusfar.

That being said, I'd be wholly unsurprised if it were hotfixed (with the rampant ctds and agonizing load times introduced by the same patch remaining).

[vos]

I played it tonight, logged on around 7 and just missed it, camped destro till 930 (CST) when it started again, good fight for exactly 7 minutes (time to kill 100 players) then run to the hero mob, which only half of the warband made it to, killed the 'boss' in less than 90 seconds.

So to sum up, wait 2 and a half hours for 8 minutes of fun. repeat

It feels as if they said "oh no, everyone would have fun and enjoy this too much if we had it pop every 15 minutes, how can we make it so people won't like it or have fun?"

[Warskull]

They failed hard with the special PQ.

1) It requires the losing team to keep coming out and die.  On my server they just quit and hide in their base so no one can complete it.
2) NPCs and heroes killing players in the zone count.  So destruction is just camping by their NPCs when they do come out.
3) It takes forever to reset.

[Pringles]

They respawn in 1 minute 30 seconds.  We took 6 straight wins before I logged out, it moves very quickly.

So to sum up, wait 2 and a half hours for 8 minutes of fun. repeat

3) It takes forever to reset.

I take it, it was hot fixed?

It was too good to be true. 

So is the verdict another failed attempt to bolster open RVR?

[runagate]

If it was indeed hotfixed that goes down as the single most fucking retarded hotfix in the history of MMO gaming, hands fucking down.  I'm just glad I got my Gold bag when the event was till, you know, fun.  Maybe it'll add .1 cents value to my eventual attempt to sell a dead account from a dying game.

[UnSub]

They failed hard with the special PQ.

1) It requires the losing team to keep coming out and die.  On my server they just quit and hide in their base so no one can complete it.
2) NPCs and heroes killing players in the zone count.  So destruction is just camping by their NPCs when they do come out.
3) It takes forever to reset.

Having just looked at the Alliance topics on Witching Night, a lot of players are having the same issues.

Also, if you do manage to win, the 'losing' side's tactic is to kill players (which means they will have to run back, which will probably take more than 2 minutes) and just generally block the chest so players can't get their loot bags. And then there are low population servers where it is very difficult to get enough players into the RvR zone to even try for the PQ.

... I'm seeing a lot of design decisions that seem to exist because all the heretics were burned and only those who didn't rock the vision got to work on the title. Did no-one question how people would play this kind of RvR experience?

[Jerrith]

Disappointing, at least on my server in tier 2.  It's being totally ignored.  Went to the spot and ran around for awhile, nobody there...  Came back at various points during the night, and the progress was still at the exact same numbers.  If they'd setup a little camp of NPCs from each side fighting each other that you could also kill to advance it, things might be ok, but as it was there was nothing I could do. :(

[Beltaine]

I attempted this in T2 on my server last night.

The problem I saw was that PQ was only triggered in the very middle of the RvR lake. Destruction would only fight us right outside their warcamp, or from one of the BO's where they had NPC's backing them up. When we captured the BO's and Keep they just stopped coming out to fight. and because none of it was in the area where the PQ triggers, we never got the chance to advance it.

So, PQ in RvR lake brings people out, and because the other side denies them advancement, they take BO's and Keeps instead.

It half-ass works.

[Zzulo]

I don't know, I had a good time yesterday in the PQ area

We squared off against Order, won, then they came back and pushed us back, and later we returned the favour and completed the PQ. Also, you can loot the chest from any distance as long as you can see it so no one should be able to "block" it from you

They should have made the entire RvR zone the PQ area though, otherwise I have no complaints.

[Ossigor]

I love how everyone's judging this event as if it were being officially added to the game as a "oRvR fix."

It's nothing but a glorified beta test for whats to come. Don't like it? Express some constructive criticism.

The T1 area was dead until 3-4PM central on Phoenix Throne. I would say it was a pretty good success. We had scouts calling out enemy positions (reminded me of DAoC quite a bit) and overall was fun. I could see it being a lot more addicting if the influence rewards were changed along the lines of normal PQs -- except better.

Some of this has been stated. But areas that need improvement:
- Can't progress PQ from BOs etc
- Need to extend PQ to both sides of the Tier
- Upgrade the loot, make stage 2 boss harder?
- Add more repeatable quests

[deadlyanteater]

i just hate where it is.

it's just these narrow pathes with narrow bridges for a shit ton of people.....

[Lantyssa]

Also, if you do manage to win, the 'losing' side's tactic is to kill players (which means they will have to run back, which will probably take more than 2 minutes) and just generally block the chest so players can't get their loot bags. And then there are low population servers where it is very difficult to get enough players into the RvR zone to even try for the PQ.

Awesome.  So all my bitching about losing a purple bag in Gunbad because we wiped after finishing the PQ, but loot isn't automatically rewarded, was relavent.

[HaemishM]

Clownshoes. Really.

So I got involved in the T3 version of this last night. Great big 4-group warband against probably an equal amount of Destro. Here's what happened.

NPC kills on players affect the score - so the order players just stay outside their warcamp and lure the Destro within range of the warcamp's NPC's and cannons. The enging chokes like a Tijuana hooker on a donkey cock when this many people are around throwing out GOBBOODLYASSTONS of particle effects. Seriously, the particle effects? TOO FUCKING MUCH. You need to be able to selectively shut that shit off. Even on fastest framerate, there are still too goddamn many sparklies. And the only way to cut down the performance lag is to turn them all off, at which point you really don't have any clue if you are damaging your opponent or not. Don't forget that all that texture swapping and loading causes a fantastically bad memory leak. 2 hours into playing, and my framerate is a slidedshow even in the warcamp away from other players. FIX THE FUCKING ENGINE.

Kill 100 players, then run to a spot beside Bugman's Brewery where the Festering Great Unclean One (big giant booger with claws and teeth and eyes) spawns. He drops in less than 2 minutes. Seriously. He's a Lord level, and it's harder to kill a fucking Hero Keep Lord than it is this walking nose goblin. Oh, don't worry about getting any loot if you aren't RDPS because you probably won't win. And if you do win but die? Forget about it, Destro will camp the chest and kill you on the way back if you can manage to get there in the INSANELY SHORT time frame.

So the PQ is over after 2 stages (YAY?) and it doesn't reset for about an hour. WHY? I guess to incentivize us to do RVR and take objectives and keeps in the meantime. So we do. We take all the BO's and assault the Keep. We succeed in the keep assault, kill the Lord and I die. All our healers are dead too, BTW, so I can't get a rez. I now have THIRTY FUCKING SECONDS to run like a bat out of hell out of the warcamp to the keep to try to claim my reward by slamming my dick on the chest. /facepalm What the fuck were you thinking? I just pissed away the only tangible reward out of the whole keep thing (the exp. and renown were pretty subpar for the amount I need to level) because you had to make me click on the fucking chest. Why do I have to click on the chest, for flavor? NO, YOU JACKASSES, GIVE ME MY SHINEY. I cannot imagine in what fevered dream this was a good idea.

Oh and the Keep Lord fight? FUCKING SLIDESHOW. Your engine cannot handle it, PERIOD. Too many particle effects, too many idiotic NPC's running around and resetting themselves to keep people from single-pulling mobs. During the keep takes, we fought maybe 5 PC's tops. The rest is a fucking PVE raid. Keep Lords are not the solution to the 3AM Solo raid problem. They are a horrible horrible kludge.

Then the PQ resets and it's back to luring Destro players into NPC cannon fire.

The only kudos you get is for attracting people into the RVR areas finally. See what happens when you put tangible rewards out there? Now just up the oRVR experience gain about 4-5 times, make renown gear drops that are bought in keeps actually worth a shit and FIX THE FUCKING ENGINE. You might then have a decent RVR game.

[khaine]

They really , REALLY need an option to turn off graphics/options to a lower setting on the fly -

Lineage 2 had a hotkey that you could use as you approached packed towns or a castle siege that let you shift to a lower res/effects options on the fly

It didn't crash or take anytime to reload , just a quick half second catch maybe as it reset to all the lower options , you could then change back on the fly

[EWSpider]

There's an option you can set so that you only see spell effects on your Warband, Group, or only your Self.  There was a similar option in DAoC.  I'm not saying their engine doesn't suck, but taking advantage of this option should help a ton.

[HaemishM]

There's an option you can set so that you only see spell effects on your Warband, Group, or only your Self.  There was a similar option in DAoC.  I'm not saying their engine doesn't suck, but taking advantage of this option should help a ton.

Only problem is those options are useless for me. As a Witch Hunter I need to see effects on 2 things - myself and my target. Everyone else can go fuck off. As a healer, I'm sure you'd need to see effects on warband/party and yourself, and that's it. I really really need the option to see the effects that I put on my target, but not on my warband. The engine doesn't let me do that. Hell, even if it was just self and enemy, that'd be fine.

[Pendan]

I love how everyone's judging this event as if it were being officially added to the game as a "oRvR fix."

It's nothing but a glorified beta test for whats to come. Don't like it? Express some constructive criticism.

The T1 area was dead until 3-4PM central on Phoenix Throne. I would say it was a pretty good success. We had scouts calling out enemy positions (reminded me of DAoC quite a bit) and overall was fun. I could see it being a lot more addicting if the influence rewards were changed along the lines of normal PQs -- except better.

Some of this has been stated. But areas that need improvement:
- Can't progress PQ from BOs etc
- Need to extend PQ to both sides of the Tier
- Upgrade the loot, make stage 2 boss harder?
- Add more repeatable quests

I had a great time last night in both t2 and t3. Wanted to quote this reply because I agree strongly. The event might not have worked for everyone and definitely needs some changes but I like the direction.

My suggestions which I am sure need more refining:
-Instead of one area of the RvR zone that is often messed up because it is either close to a zone boundary, close to a warcamp, or giving an advantage to one side or the other because of location, make it the entire RvR zone.
-Don't confine it to just one of the RvR zones for the tier (unless going to get rid of the other ones because they will not be used). I suggest constantly rotating it between the RvR zones. Instead of it being a timed event the trigger would be the PQ ending in other zone of the same tier. This and first suggestion will also help with the lag.
-Make the boss scale dependant on the number of people either that did the first step or are in the RvR zone when boss spawns. Boss was not lasting more than 20 seconds (which made it pretty hard to also get the other things that only spawn in the RvR zone when boss is alive). However if this was a permanent feature then should be completable when have only 10 people instead of 100. Should be done for all PQs.
-As with all PQs the number of bags and level of bags need to adjust with the number of participants.

[UnSub]

Also, you can loot the chest from any distance as long as you can see it so no one should be able to "block" it from you

I don't think this mechanic was well known prior to this event.

Also, it can be hard to click on the chest with knock backs / attacks coming your way or clicking on it accurately among a horde of opponents who are all sending things your way. Especially if lag kicks in.

An unknown proportion of players are doing this event for the loot bags. Winning the event, but being denied the loot bag because you got zerg rushed by oppoents just looking to deny your spoils is a frustrating thing.

[runagate]

That's kinda the point of it being an RvR event rathe than a PvE event though.

The mentality is "You may have taken our city, but we already burned the houses and killed the women: enjoy!"

[squirrel]

Oh and the Keep Lord fight? FUCKING SLIDESHOW. Your engine cannot handle it, PERIOD. Too many particle effects, too many idiotic NPC's running around and resetting themselves to keep people from single-pulling mobs. During the keep takes, we fought maybe 5 PC's tops. The rest is a fucking PVE raid. Keep Lords are not the solution to the 3AM Solo raid problem. They are a horrible horrible kludge.

Yeah I was a tank in this keep raid, good fucking luck being useful at all with the framerate and the mass amount of KB/KD.

Still, I had fun for the most part. Can't fucking believe they hotfixed the respawn though, that's just massively idiotic.

[khaine]

I now see the beauty of no official boards for Mythic

If they had them there would be paying customers asking why they decided to stupidly but in a timer to make sure you dont have too much fun

Without them they can simply never have to give an answer to a direct question


Just logged in to my server and where last night before the hotfix there was tons of constant action around the PQ area , ghost town again now

[Ard]

Ah ha, here it is, straight from the Herald:

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=418

The Witching Hour: Instances of this Public Quest will no longer reset instantly following a successful completion.

Bug officially stomped... go team...  er... wait... no...

[UnSub]

I like how that was the last patch note.

Also: there isn't an big enough for how awesome that decision is.

Here's what I've learned from CoH/V events: rolling, limited time events work. Players will hang around in the area waiting for things to happen if they know it is a short wait. If it's a long wait, then stuff it, there are other things to do and I'll wait until someone else tells me about it happening.

Witching Night is only up for 5 days and apparently lasts for less than 10 minutes when the first stage pops, then has a cool down of an hour (or more). People won't be happy in hanging around in an RvR area for an hour or more waiting for a PQ to pop, especially on low population servers. If the idea is to encourage players to RvR constantly, then have the PQ up, with its extra rewards, on a very regular basis. Let a player log in, make their way to the area and find the battle raging, not both sides hanging out the warcamp doing scenarios while the odd scout checks to see if the PQ is up or not.

Also: while it might be RvR, it doesn't excuse the design decision that lets players block the rare-ish, limited time rewards from players who have earned them. It's a dumb idea like corpse looting would be a dumb idea - the player has earned the item, so let them have it. Especially since death can pop a player too far away to get the reward before it resets, so if you die during the PQ, there is a good chance you are going to miss out on the rewards too.

[Lantyssa]

That's kinda the point of it being an RvR event rathe than a PvE event though.

The mentality is "You may have taken our city, but we already burned the houses and killed the women: enjoy!"

And that is why this is more Fail on their part.  Getting people to enjoy RvR is great.  Stealing their golden loot bag out from under them is going to make customers tell them to piss off.

[Mrbloodworth]

I have to say, that the event last night in troll country, PISSED ME OFF. And i can usually find the bright side of anything (Ask schild), Congrats mythic.

Why would you place a PQ in the middle of the two war camps just STEPS away? Why IN GODS NAME (Choose one) Would you place said PQ, right there, Next to a BATTLE OBJECTIVE WHERE THE BATTLE OBJECTIVES SOI (sphere of influence) CANCELS OUT THE PUBLIC QUESTS?

We must have killed about 300 people last night (on both sides) but guess what, THEY DIDN'T COUNT COCKFAGS!

Suck ma balls.




I spent about two hours of my life on this last night, and won absolutely nothing, NOTHING.



I feel better.

Other than that, Performance was good on high (with atleast30 per side and environment), lag was not there, other than that god dam server line being right in the middle of the RvR lake.

[Ard]

I like how that was the last patch note.

Also: there isn't an big enough for how awesome that decision is.

The really sad part is, all this does is encourage the "exploit early, exploit often" crowd.  The only people who actually realistically had a shot at finishing this event, had to do it before they fixed this.  Now that it's done and over with, most people's window for actually getting the kills they need is nearly non-existant.  It's back to being right place, right time, with the right number of people again.

And I won't even get into how retarded the influence grind is, and how group unfriendly it is.

[tolakram]

I've played this on two servers now, both tier 2.

BACK THE FUCK UP!

Sorry but this is a player issue, we had idiots fighting them as they came out of the warcamp, even aggroing the guards.  How the hell can you be expected to make a decent game when players are this fucking stupid?

Please excuse my french.

[Nebu]

Sorry but this is a player issue, we had idiots fighting them as they came out of the warcamp, even aggroing the guards.  How the hell can you be expected to make a decent game when players are this fucking stupid?

Blaming players for poor implementation?  Please to be explaining. 


The playerbase is made from your PAYING CUSTOMERS.  If you don't want them doing stupid shit, out think them and design your game in a way that the opportunity to do something stupid is small.

[tolakram]

Blaming players for poor implementation?  Please to be explaining. 

I don't see the design issue.  You have a blue bar for influence, you get blue scrolly things when you get influence for killing a player in the zone.  Each warcamp is out of the zone and there is a dead area in front of the warcamp that appears to be equal to the aggro range of the guards, maybe a little bigger.  It's a public quest, a public quest has a zone of 'influence'.

I believe the quest is placed where it is to make it easily accessible because of all the damn bitching about the time it takes to get anywhere.

Sorry but we could bitch about every damn thing, but in my opinion some just aren't valid.

Regardless of a design change, do you really think moving it further away from warcamps would help?  You'd still have kills outside the PQ area because people would continue to rush forward.   /shrug

[GoodIdea]

Maybe the concept for witching night was good, but the implementation (on my server) is failsauce. Before making special events etc, fix your game.

People were killing people before they could even make it into the area of influence (Order was camping the destro warcamp). And when Order had more guys, Destruction didn't even want to attempt to rvr (and I don't blame them). So you have 20-40 guys just sitting around for hours, lol. Well, I didn't sit around, but a lot of people did, and it's completely killed open rvr, PQs, and even scenarios somewhat on my server. So the last few nights, NOTHING was happenning on the entire server.

I'm glad this event helped on some servers but it definitely didn't on mine, and probably not on other servers with an imbalanced T4 population.

I was excited when I first heard about the event, but now I just wish they spent their time... I don't know... maybe fixing all of the broken stats on our Annihilator and Conqueror gear? How long would it take to fix it? How pathetic is having weapon skill and a +50 initiative bonus on my Archmage's PVP set? They don't have to fix every stat on every piece of gear, but the least they should do is fix our PVP gear sets.

/rant

[Kail]

Sorry but we could bitch about every damn thing, but in my opinion some just aren't valid.

Regardless of a design change, do you really think moving it further away from warcamps would help?  You'd still have kills outside the PQ area because people would continue to rush forward.   /shrug

So make the PQ area larger, or make some kind of visible border around it.  I was leading a warband in Troll Country on Wednesday, after we putzed around doing keeps for about an hour or so, I asked if anyone wanted to do the holiday PQ.  At least a half dozen people responded with something like "sure, where is it" despite the fact that we'd been running in and out of it all day.  You can't see this thing unless you're staring at your influence bar.  There's no clear delineation of where the borders of the thing are, it's scrunched right up against the damn zone line, and there's all kinds of stupid "That one doesn't count" areas which make no sense (like the nearby BO).  We ended up getting maybe two "valid" kills, because (understandably) Order didn't want to charge a zerg, and any time we tried to lure them out by attacking something that mattered (a Keep or a BO) the kills we got didn't count.

[Sophismata]

I was excited when I first heard about the event, but now I just wish they spent their time... I don't know... maybe fixing all of the broken stats on our Annihilator and Conqueror gear? How long would it take to fix it?

As long as it takes to delete the shit and implement something better.

[UnSub]

Like a lot of things in WAR, the idea of the Witching Night PQ was great. It's the implementation that seemed to ignore any knowledge of how players will behave or what they want from such an event.

I really think it is a big turn off for players to potentially win the rarely-occurring WN PQ, only to lose out on getting a loot bag because the other side camps the loot drop process. Imagine that, for the first time, you get a gold bag, only for you to be dotted or killed or otherwise status-effected out of getting it. And then being several hours away from even possibly getting another one. Yeah, frustration.

Some people think that since the event is RvR then the players involved should accept this as part of the game. But it was just a stupid design idea to put the reward chest that you have to click on and can be interrupted when doing so in the middle of a large battlefield.

Aside: oh, awesome, you can get a WN PQ loot bag when you are a chicken. Excellent.

[tolakram]

We have one Halloween hot fix for everyone tonight:

Quests & Public Quests

    * The Witching Hour: The loot chest that appears when players complete this Live Event Public Quest will now appear in the victors’ warcamp, and will remain there for ten minutes. This ensures that all victorious players who have a right to claim loot from the chest will be able to do so.

[UnSub]

We have one Halloween hot fix for everyone tonight:

Quests & Public Quests

    * The Witching Hour: The loot chest that appears when players complete this Live Event Public Quest will now appear in the victors’ warcamp, and will remain there for ten minutes. This ensures that all victorious players who have a right to claim loot from the chest will be able to do so.

...

This is the first one of these changes I can't find an obvious flaw in. 10 minutes should be plenty of time to get back, or you could take the death express to get there quicker.

Sooo... Mythic gets this right with about a day to go before they plan to pull the event?