Game Update 1.0.4b

[tolakram]

Why is the end game flawed?

Cities, in my opinion, are the equivalent to relics in DAoC.  I never considered the relic mechanic flawed.  Relics would change hands quite often, no big deal, so what's the big deal with cities being easier to take?

The flaw is not the overall design to take a city, it's how hard the city is supposed to be to take.  They can turn that crap on and off on a whim.

No, I don't see a fundamental design flaw, just some questionable slow downs.

[HaemishM]

The fundamental flaw in city taking is that from all accounts, it doesn't work right reliably. Also, it's yet another huge series of PVE in a supposedly PVP-focused game that requires the cockblock of PVE raids to even attempt.

[tazelbain]

Why is the end game flawed?

Cities, in my opinion, are the equivalent to relics in DAoC.  I never considered the relic mechanic flawed.  Relics would change hands quite often, no big deal, so what's the big deal with cities being easier to take?

The flaw is not the overall design to take a city, it's how hard the city is supposed to be to take.  They can turn that crap on and off on a whim.

No, I don't see a fundamental design flaw, just some questionable slow downs.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15259.0 covers the issue nicely. 

[Arthur_Parker]

Why is the end game flawed?

Why restrict your focus to just the end game?  At this point in time it should be fairly obvious that the start, middle and end games are all seriously flawed.  As a small example, the PQ's (one of the unique selling points of the game) are empty at all tiers.

I can't think of a game that would have benefited more from having a Psychologist on staff during the design process.  Maybe considering the sums involved in making the games nowadays, there should be a subset of Psychology just for on-line games.  Griefologists/Grindologists should be able to point out the major flaws early on.

[Vash]

Why is the end game flawed?

Cities, in my opinion, are the equivalent to relics in DAoC.  I never considered the relic mechanic flawed.  Relics would change hands quite often, no big deal, so what's the big deal with cities being easier to take?

The flaw is not the overall design to take a city, it's how hard the city is supposed to be to take.  They can turn that crap on and off on a whim.

No, I don't see a fundamental design flaw, just some questionable slow downs.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15259.0 covers the issue nicely. 

I don't think that really covers what tolakram was trying to say. 

When the game initially launched gear sets didn't have wards and T4 zones were able to flip relatively fast (by design or bug I was never really sure, less than 30 min was possible).  Due to this and other bugs(enemies using backdoors to bypass main gates and front doors to Forts) there were reports of people already pushing to Altdorf 1.5 - 2 weeks in and mass QQ'ing hit the forums for a variety of reasons.  Mythic basically went oh crap and a few hotfixes and a patch later you have wards on T4 gear sets and T4 zones are now much much harder to flip (changes/"fixes" to VP system).  Now most people that are still playing the game are in T4 or close to it, if they haven't resigned themselves to playing alts till 1.1 hits, and are experiencing the tedious grind the endgame has become thanks to those early "oh crap" cockblocks that were thrown in the game weeks ago to put all the QQ'ing on the forums to bed.

Tolakram is saying remove that stupid crap, let zones be capped in 30 min to an hour, and let people push to a major city in a single night if they want.  At least that way there's some type of strong push going on every night with the possibility of a city battle instead of beating your head against a wall spending a whole night trying to cap 1 zone and usually failing with the most recent system.  I'm in total agreement with him on this.  Not only would there be something to do and you actually feel like your progressing and making a difference, but it would encourage less keep/BO trading and more clashes.  I think a main reason people are happy to keep trade and avoid the enemy atm is because nothing will happen if you let the enemy completely take over the RvR lake.  People see a RvR lake completely controlled by the enemy and go "Well it looks like we can go get some easy renown and gold bags if anyone feels like getting a group together".  Nobody is worried that "Oh crap! They have all the keeps and BO's, the zone could flip any minute now, lets go fight/take stuff back".

[tolakram]

Why restrict your focus to just the end game?

I'm not going to design a new game, or argue about it.

WAR is what it is with added crap.  While that may be foolishly simply it seems to me the fix mainly involves turning stupid stuff off and switching rewards to be based on pvp participation.  Quite simply I think this is influence gained via pvp that rewards gear, just like pq influence rewards gear.

But regardless of the details of that idea the fundamental design, take keeps, take city, rape and pillage, seems sound enough.  All the pieces of the puzzle are there, the rewards structure is just wrong.

On the issue of empty pq's, again I think this is because influence is needlessly blocked.  Not a design flaw but an adjustments that someone needs to make that will make them reward more influence.  Who the hell likes to grind. 

That's the real frustration I have.  It's dumb shit that can be fixed easily that's wrong, nothing giant, yet Mythic seems to be afraid to throw some switches.  The only large design issue that I think requires coding is the RP reward system for RvR participation.

[gamerjock]

So, if Keeps are a late addition, what were they planning to do in those big lakes?  Up through T3, other than the camp guards I have only seen like 6 token mobs.  Its not like DAoC where you could actually play the game out in the rvr areas and get better XP and unique drops.  The more I think about it, the less I understand this Lake concept thing.  They are really small compared to the rest of the game.  They are completely empty.  Were they just planning to have some sort of random MMO deathmatch thing?

I wondered the exact same thing. 

[Gurney]

Why restrict your focus to just the end game?

I'm not going to design a new game, or argue about it.

WAR is what it is with added crap.  While that may be foolishly simply it seems to me the fix mainly involves turning stupid stuff off and switching rewards to be based on pvp participation.  Quite simply I think this is influence gained via pvp that rewards gear, just like pq influence rewards gear.

But regardless of the details of that idea the fundamental design, take keeps, take city, rape and pillage, seems sound enough.  All the pieces of the puzzle are there, the rewards structure is just wrong.

On the issue of empty pq's, again I think this is because influence is needlessly blocked.  Not a design flaw but an adjustments that someone needs to make that will make them reward more influence.  Who the hell likes to grind. 

That's the real frustration I have.  It's dumb shit that can be fixed easily that's wrong, nothing giant, yet Mythic seems to be afraid to throw some switches.  The only large design issue that I think requires coding is the RP reward system for RvR participation.

Are they sound enough?  Some of the transfer servers are now at a 2 to 1 ratio for factions.  Can a WAR server really work well in the campaign with this going on considering the that balance mechanic is never hit (ie. a capped server) any longer?

Doesn't seem very solid to me really when placed into its proper context.  Seems like it is falling apart on those servers actually.

[Gurney]

So, if Keeps are a late addition, what were they planning to do in those big lakes?  Up through T3, other than the camp guards I have only seen like 6 token mobs.  Its not like DAoC where you could actually play the game out in the rvr areas and get better XP and unique drops.  The more I think about it, the less I understand this Lake concept thing.  They are really small compared to the rest of the game.  They are completely empty.  Were they just planning to have some sort of random MMO deathmatch thing?

I wondered the exact same thing. 

Me too.  I initially assumed they did not want NPC trains to be part of the PvP.

[Ard]

Mythic basically went oh crap and a few hotfixes and a patch later you have wards on T4 gear sets and T4 zones are now much much harder to flip (changes/"fixes" to VP system). 

Just to clear this up, the wards were always there.  They weren't patched in.  I remember reading about them before the grab bag brought it up, because people found out about it through the strategy guide.  The only thing they did to patch them was make it worse a week ago, which they've since decided was a bad idea.

[Sophismata]

Mythic basically went oh crap and a few hotfixes and a patch later you have wards on T4 gear sets and T4 zones are now much much harder to flip (changes/"fixes" to VP system). 

Just to clear this up, the wards were always there.  They weren't patched in.  I remember reading about them before the grab bag brought it up, because people found out about it through the strategy guide.  The only thing they did to patch them was make it worse a week ago, which they've since decided was a bad idea.

They weren't working on release. Mythic used the first 2 patches or so to fix them.

[ghost]

Why is the end game flawed?

Why restrict your focus to just the end game?  At this point in time it should be fairly obvious that the start, middle and end games are all seriously flawed.  As a small example, the PQ's (one of the unique selling points of the game) are empty at all tiers.

I can't think of a game that would have benefited more from having a Psychologist on staff during the design process.  Maybe considering the sums involved in making the games nowadays, there should be a subset of Psychology just for on-line games.  Griefologists/Grindologists should be able to point out the major flaws early on.

I would bet a testicle that WOW had (or most certainly now has) a staff pscyhologist evaluating their game. 

[Bismallah]

Are they sound enough?  Some of the transfer servers are now at a 2 to 1 ratio for factions.  Can a WAR server really work well in the campaign with this going on considering the that balance mechanic is never hit (ie. a capped server) any longer?

Doesn't seem very solid to me really when placed into its proper context.  Seems like it is falling apart on those servers actually.

Look at Monolith, Destruction poured in from multiple servers and all transferred there, tada! Huge imbalances. So what happens? Order leaves or grinds PvE until they fix it, end result = no WAR.

Of those that played DAOC from release, remember when Mythic was talking about the city captures/invasion servers? This is what I think of when I think of WAR. Basically the opposite factions were supposed to be able to invade the homelands of the other factions through some of the far off zones then fight their way through the zones until they reached the main city. Hell you could log into DAOC right now and still see the remnants of that idea, multiple guard towers/small citadels sparsely dropped throughout the country side that defenders would have holed up in to fight off invaders. They had the idea/concept 7 years ago and yet they still couldn't figure it out... that's what amazes me.

Now, DAOC is going to come out with an Origins server (which will be another kick in the balls for WAR and I am sure EA is trying to push that release back) that takes DAOC back to the Shrouded Isles expansion time frame pre-ToA where folks had fun. You know that's saying something when your player base is totally jazzed about taking your game back in time to play when everyone supposedly "had more fun".

There is your focal point, or at least it would be mine if I was president/CEO of a gaming company. Your player base wants you to go back in time to where they all had massive amounts of fun and your subscription rate was peak. Now they are just flailing wildly, patch this, oh crap patch that back. Almost like there is no end goal state in their minds to focus on, just fix the immediate and deal with the consequences.