Ward Gear is the worst mistake ever concieved

[waylander]

Bastions, Sigmars, etc is all required to get full sets of anything above annihilator gear. The dungeons are simply too time consuming, not very fun, and the gear drops don't make any sense whatsoever. We spent hours running Sigmars again last night and out of the drops, 50% of the loot that dropped was not usable by a single class in our groups. The time it takes to run these dungeon instances, the utter randomness of the gear that drops there, and the fact that these items are virtually required is just crazy for a game that advertised itself as a "PVP" game while also stating that you could progress your character through PVP only.

Problems:

1. War is still "Nowhere"
You have to find PVP first in order to get 1-2 basic pieces of most sets, and this isn't easy even with the changes. The recent keep changes don't reward defenders, Keep PQ reward rolls make absolutely no sense as random PUG's can win 1st place by wandering in at the last second, and anything short of a gold bag is basically crap. What we see is people playing musical keeps by trying to switch up keep caps for gold bags, and rarely do people stay and fight.

2. PVE is required for full Greater Wards
Forced participation in boring dungeons, loot rewards that don't even reward all the classes in your group, trash mobs that are frustratingly difficult just to make the dungeon run last longer, and stupid lockout timers. I don't think most people will be willing to put up with all the PVE progression required to gear up enough to survive major pushes in end game RVR. After a couple of Sigmar runs, I personally want to go hang myself rather than run through that shit again and see half the loot rewards go to classes that aren't even present in the group.

3. Lockout Timers
As I mentioned in item 2, lockout timers don't really make a lot of sense. Its just a cockblock move to slow people down. Due to the shortage of available healers on Order (because they suck to play while destructo healers are fun), you have to recycle your healers until they are brain dead from boredom in order to be able to outfit any decent sized guild.

4. Bind on Pickup
Hell if someone finds something that could be used by another guild member, they should be able to get the loot and send it to them. I think Bind on Equip (BOE) is fair, but bind on pickup just just another cockblock on top of lock out timers that's on top of the boring dungeon that's on top of loot rewards that don't make sense.

We all talked about the advanced Armor sets earlier, but after having gone through some of the progression to actually get them I don't know why Mythic can't just let lesser ward gear be "good enough" to be competitive in all mob related NPC encounters. I can't imagine leveling an ALT in this game and having to go through this shit twice, and I honestly don't know if I'll even make it through gearing up my first character while facing this massive cockblock train.

WotlK might not have eaten War's lunch as bad, but many people are thinking 1.1 is going to be the savior patch while also solving the grind, gear, pvp rewards issues too. If it under delivers, they should just make plans for 10 live servers because I don't see core PVP audiences continuing to put up with little RVR, shitty rewards, a shitty grind, and then a shitty series of these dungeon runs for greater ward gear. They are better off just playing WoW because the PVE is better, the rewards are more consistent, and there's at least a population there to interact with.

Yes, I'm pretty frustrated with this game right now!

[Hindenburg]

Due to the shortage of available healers on Order (because they suck to play while destructo healers are fun), you have to recycle your healers until they are brain dead from boredom in order to be able to outfit any decent sized guild.

Rest assured, playing a Zealot is ridiculously boring shit. You can stack all the int you want, you won't kill mobs as fast as a blorc, chosen or ib. Great design right there 

[schild]

You had to play it to figure that out?

credibility-- imo,

[waylander]

You had to play it to figure that out?

credibility-- imo,

Even though it sounded horrible as written on that Mythic grab bag, the description doesn't do justice to the horror and tedium that is the real thing as played out in the game. I have never seen an advertised "PVP" game get it this wrong since Arenanet pulled a fast one on the PVP audience shortly before release, and forced people into 600+ hour grinds to get their characters PVP ready. The majority of their PVP population died out over the course of a year, but these days an MMO has a much shorter attention span from customers.

Anyway I was curious why people have been rolling alts once they hit T4, and after seeing this ridiculous grind in action I no longer question the logic. T4 needs to be thrown out, and the game seems to shine best from T1-T4 because it can be played by casuals and hardcores alike without all the cockblocks.

[ghost]

Uh, yeah.  I won't be getting any of those sets, you can be guaranteed that.

WOTLK will be going on my computer and hopefully fun.  Otherwise, off to EVE again full time in preparation for something else. 

Maybe Fallout 3 will be fun.

[Sophismata]

Maybe Fallout 3 will be fun.

Fallout 3 is fun, but it isn't Fallout.

WAR isn't fun, and also isn't Warhammer. Or WoW. Or anything, really...

[rk47]

Uh huh, my friend joined my guild got his casual play to 35 and wondered can he even get to Bastion stairs. Nope. People are too busy ninja keeping to care. Even those who did demanded he at least farmed his own influence to unlock the instances because they were burned out after 2 weeks of doing it.

And then Bloodwrought & Bilerot came and it became a 6 man ivory tower. I personally had to fight for healers in guild. I used the F word a couple of times in guild chat when my party healer PM me and said 'That other tanks wants me to go Bloodwrought instead, said Bastion sucks'.
They're fucking loot whores and hate WoW cause melee gets owned by magic was their usual defence. It's quite pathetic having to go around people's back in guild chat just to assemble 2 healers, 2 tanks , 2 dps for a nightly run, not that it's fun. But keep exchanging got old real quick. And I'm just running down my subs.

Now half the guild rank 40s non-loot whores are missing cause they can't take the musical keep routines and the static PVE grind. And they still  blamed Lich King for it. 

[Arthur_Parker]

Uh huh, my friend joined my guild got his casual play to 35 and wondered can he even get to Bastion stairs. Nope. People are too busy ninja keeping to care. Even those who did demanded he at least farmed his own influence to unlock the instances because they were burned out after 2 weeks of doing it.

Is that why people kept asking me what my influence currently was when I was in Bastion stairs?  You need a set level to access certain areas?  I kept thinking, "stop asking me that, the purple influence rewards are shit so who cares?".

To respond to Waylander, you guys play on the opposite side to the US Destruction goons right?  If so, you should know that they can't even work up enough energy to troll Hades properly and that's not a good sign, especially if you are expecting a defended city fight once you have geared up.  From looking at the combined goon forums, the US Order goon guild is almost dead & EU Order goons went from over 300 individuals to about 6 online at peak times.

[Jherad]

Is that why people kept asking me what my influence currently was when I was in Bastion stairs?  You need a set level to access certain areas?  I kept thinking, "stop asking me that, the purple influence rewards are shit so who cares?".

In my guild, we're not really running Bastion's at the moment, but I do still hear calls for Gunbad runs from the poor sods still doing tier 3. Same mechanic, and of course it splits the available people, as those who are on the third wing have no real motivation to help those on the first wing, over and above 'be nice to your guildies'. Always with the splitting-people-into-too-many-different-groups problem.

I'm kinda done I guess - I've just hit 40 recently, and been working on RR - it now appears that as I progress, actual player kills contribute less and less RR points, meaning I have to get on the PvE keep-swapping 'avoid engaging other players at all costs' grind if I want to go forward. I guess I was slow to figure that out. I'd be ok with just doing scenarios as a minigame to keep me interested until the next big thing comes along, but no mechanic for full premades (+matching and cross-server scenarios), and the apparent disincentive to PvP at high RR is boring me.

[waylander]

The Goons have pretty much died off as a force, and their vaunted 1,200 members rolled snake eyes for longevity.  I don't know what Mythic is basing their server transfers on, but just because we have a lot of Destruction players on Azazel doesn't mean people are playing them. We did have an influx of Destruction recently since we were a destination server, but basically Destruction on our server simply can't put up a sustained fight.

So we waste all this time getting ward gear, Destruction gives up after we cap a zone, and then we watch our Victory Points decay while we sit in queues or defend keeps that never get sieged.

All of this is interconnected unfortunately. You have to face a horrid level grind starting in T3, you have to grind for regular gear starting in T3, starting in T4 you have to start grinding for lesser ward gear, then due to a lack of PVP you have to grind dungeons for greater ward gear in T4, face dumb lockouts of those dungeons in T4, spend 3+ hours  a pop running those T4 dungeons where half the drops end up being for classes not even in your group, and at the end of the day you can't gain anyway because the other faction can sit on their ass while Victory Point decay prevents anyone from locking a zone.

No wonder people roll ALT's or quit once they get into T4 and realize the bait and switch that Mythic has pulled.

[Arthur_Parker]

All of this is interconnected unfortunately. You have to face a horrid level grind starting in T3, you have to grind for regular gear starting in T3, starting in T4 you have to start grinding for lesser ward gear, then due to a lack of PVP you have to grind dungeons for greater ward gear in T4, face dumb lockouts of those dungeons in T4, spend 3+ hours  a pop running those T4 dungeons where half the drops end up being for classes not even in your group, and at the end of the day you can't gain anyway because the other faction can sit on their ass while Victory Point decay prevents anyone from locking a zone.

You know better than that, you don't have to.  Quit, it's the only way of showing them it's unacceptable.

[Nebu]

Quit, it's the only way of showing them it's unacceptable.

I have to agree.  This is not the pvp game we were all looking for.  Leaving is the only way to pass that message along. 

[Riggswolfe]

I'm still holding out hope that they drop the ward armor set bs. I really do. I think they're committed now which means I'll probably play very little in T4. Which probably means very little in general eventually. I just don't have the patience for what appears to be a raid in disquise.

Also, they need to figure out a way to reward defenders, both in scenarios and keeps. Rather that is a slow but steady renown point gain while you stay near the objective or what I don't know. Heck, make it a slow but steady renown thing and if you hold off attackers for X amount of time you get a chest, just like attackers do.

[HaemishM]

Adding rewards and incentives for defenders is an easy concept to do. Shit, you can already detect when invaders are in the zone/near the keep/attacking the keep. Detect any defenders within a certain radius of the keep/BO, give them RP just for being in that radius (and not AFK), and give them mad bonus points for any kills/damage on enemy players.

The concept is simple, and had someone thought about it while they were building the RVR lakes, it probably would have been fairly simple to add. Now, who the fuck knows? The way they are asshatting the reward structure of oRVR play, I get the feeling most of the things they'd need to do would require massive changes to the code.

[EWSpider]

Adding rewards and incentives for defenders is an easy concept to do. Shit, you can already detect when invaders are in the zone/near the keep/attacking the keep. Detect any defenders within a certain radius of the keep/BO, give them RP just for being in that radius (and not AFK), and give them mad bonus points for any kills/damage on enemy players.

The concept is simple, and had someone thought about it while they were building the RVR lakes, it probably would have been fairly simple to add. Now, who the fuck knows? The way they are asshatting the reward structure of oRVR play, I get the feeling most of the things they'd need to do would require massive changes to the code.

The sad thing is they already do this in DAoC.  RPs are awarded for defending towers and keeps.

[Lantyssa]

I'm still holding out hope that they drop the ward armor set bs. I really do. I think they're committed now which means I'll probably play very little in T4. Which probably means very little in general eventually. I just don't have the patience for what appears to be a raid in disquise.

How many gamers in how many different games have held out in this hope?

If you're not having fun, don't reward them for something which might happen.  If you are having fun, then it's okay to hope and wait in the mean time.

[Bismallah]

I'm still holding out hope that they drop the ward armor set bs. I really do. I think they're committed now which means I'll probably play very little in T4. Which probably means very little in general eventually. I just don't have the patience for what appears to be a raid in disquise.

How many gamers in how many different games have held out in this hope?

If you're not having fun, don't reward them for something which might happen.  If you are having fun, then it's okay to hope and wait in the mean time.

So true.

[d4rkj3di]

Due to the shortage of available healers on Order (because they suck to play while destructo healers are fun), you have to recycle your healers until they are brain dead from boredom in order to be able to outfit any decent sized guild.

This isn't just an Order specific problem. Our Destruction healers are dropping fast. One re-rolled a Chosen after hitting the 30's as a DoK, if that's any indication of how broken DoK is at higher levels. The proposed HoT changes are also causing a great number of our healers to rethink their class choice. Destruction healers are not any more fun to play at T4 than Order healers. Several of our Lost Vale runs have been canceled due to having zero healers available.

[eldaec]

Is ward gear significantly more stupid than the eternal benchmark : pistol damage not stacking with rifle damage? No.

In fact, is ward gear more stupid than gear which you have to level, and levelling it takes about the same time as the last 5 actual levels of the game, and you can only level the gear by killing one specific mob? I think not.


Ward gear is pretty damn stupid, but it is not even the most stupid thing Mythic have ever done. MMOG designers are idiots, film at eleven.

[BitWarrior]

Although most are quick to blast the ward system, and also being that I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of video games, I have to ask what would have been a better response to the problem wards attempt to solve: how do you create a challenge/end game in a PvP environment which cannot be trivialized by simply bringing along more and more players?

From what I gather, things like King and sub-bosses (the best name I can garnish at the moment for them) are open PQ's once a city is successfully invaded (accessed sequentially I would imagine). If that is the case, what would a "good" system look like that would still allow for a challenge to be created which cannot be alleviated by simply zerging the boss(es)? Is making these encounters entirely instanced the appropriate response? Instancing seems like a simple response, until you add the requirement of "public battles without the need to be in an end-game guild to experience everything."

I'm not attempting to challenge anyone or what has been said here, but I'd like to know what other people were perhaps expecting for an end-game ladder mechanic.

[Grim]

Although most are quick to blast the ward system, and also being that I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of video games, I have to ask what would have been a better response to the problem wards attempt to solve: how do you create a challenge/end game in a PvP environment which cannot be trivialized by simply bringing along more and more players?

From what I gather, things like King and sub-bosses (the best name I can garnish at the moment for them) are open PQ's once a city is successfully invaded (accessed sequentially I would imagine). If that is the case, what would a "good" system look like that would still allow for a challenge to be created which cannot be alleviated by simply zerging the boss(es)? Is making these encounters entirely instanced the appropriate response? Instancing seems like a simple response, until you add the requirement of "public battles without the need to be in an end-game guild to experience everything."

I'm not attempting to challenge anyone or what has been said here, but I'd like to know what other people were perhaps expecting for an end-game ladder mechanic.

Nothing to see.

[Trippy]

One re-rolled a Chosen after hitting the 30's as a DoK, if that's any indication of how broken DoK is at higher levels.

LOL at melee healers in PvP.

[Bismallah]

If there are no players to defend, it should be a cakewalk in standard gear. Defenders should get a buff where their abilities are increased in scale with the amount they are outnumbered, or vice versa. Want to roll over 12 players with 40? Go for it, but be ready to meet the nastiest group of 12 players you've ever encountered as a result.

I wished they would have had something like this in place in DAOC. We tried to get them to figure out a way so the relic guards would scale in difficulty based on the number of defenders versus attackers, but... in the end it worked out fairly well because Relics swapped hands fairly regularly (on most servers).

It would be nice in WAR, but probably very difficult to implement.

[Jherad]

If there are no players to defend, it should be a cakewalk in standard gear. Defenders should get a buff where their abilities are increased in scale with the amount they are outnumbered, or vice versa. Want to roll over 12 players with 40? Go for it, but be ready to meet the nastiest group of 12 players you've ever encountered as a result.

Just, no.

As this is Realm vs Realm, you're going to get groups fighting against groups. The last thing you want is a warband of 12 getting wiped by a group of 6, just because more of their side happened to be logged on, or in the zone. People would quit just as fast over that shit.

Solve the reasons for realm imbalances, and motivate the underdog with extra rewards, sure.

But don't fuck with the PvP. Consistency or nothing.

[Grim]

If there are no players to defend, it should be a cakewalk in standard gear. Defenders should get a buff where their abilities are increased in scale with the amount they are outnumbered, or vice versa. Want to roll over 12 players with 40? Go for it, but be ready to meet the nastiest group of 12 players you've ever encountered as a result.

Just, no.

As this is Realm vs Realm, you're going to get groups fighting against groups. The last thing you want is a warband of 12 getting wiped by a group of 6, just because more of their side happened to be logged on, or in the zone. People would quit just as fast over that shit.

Solve the reasons for realm imbalances, and motivate the underdog with extra rewards, sure.

But don't fuck with the PvP. Consistency or nothing.

Nothing to see.

[waffel]

So a side is outnumbered and their city gets taken. That's how it WORKS in war (sorry for the cheese but its true)

There are so many things in place to make everything fair that its sickening. Part of DAoC was having a massive force come and take your relics. Oh well, it sucks but everyone dealt with it. Everyone died/left, you rebuilt your door and formulated how you would get your relic back.

In warhammer, there is SUCH a focus on cities (dungeons, quests, leveling them up, PQs, ect ect.) that Mythic is FORCED to highly control how you take them. Players (I guess, I wouldn't really care if the other side organized and took my city) were in such a massive uproar on the forums when their city got attacked a month after release that they had to put some highly controlling method to attacking cities in place. That is how it works and it is never going to change. Mythic put way too much work in cities and everything in them that they simply can't have anyone show up and help out (like DAoC relics), only the most dedicated zerg guilds that farmed armor sets will ever see it.

Unless Mythic fixes their buggy dungeons and make the armor sets about 10x easier to get and do something about the dumbfuck zone control, causal players are never going to see anything other than serpents passage and open RvR skirmishes. Players are going to get fucking sick of that and quit.

Their end-game plans and over emphasis on the cities have made sure causal players get fucked the hardest. Frankly. Mythic has created such a huge issue with the game that I don't see them fixing it without changing shit around in a huge way. How do they fix scenarios, make people do open RvR for fun and enjoyment, not for gold bags? How do they fix itemization? Class balance? Weapon/Armor crafting? Empty PQs? Level grind? broken PvE dungeons? Ect. ect. ect.

[Hindenburg]

From what I gather, things like King and sub-bosses (the best name I can garnish at the moment for them) are open PQ's

The King is an instanced fight. 24 players max.

[Kail]

Although most are quick to blast the ward system, and also being that I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of video games, I have to ask what would have been a better response to the problem wards attempt to solve: how do you create a challenge/end game in a PvP environment which cannot be trivialized by simply bringing along more and more players?
(snip)
I'm not attempting to challenge anyone or what has been said here, but I'd like to know what other people were perhaps expecting for an end-game ladder mechanic.

Well, it's not what I was expecting exactly (they explained roughly how it was going to work before the game launched), but my "ideal setup" for a game like this would be to have three seperate "endgames".  One would be focused on PvE and would be the generic "raid4loot" instance progression style game.  One would maybe be a "scenario" endgame, something like WoWs arena system (though you'd need to allow premade groups for that to be viable).  And the stuff with cities and territorial control would be the "open RvR" endgame.  But you wouldn't have to do raiding to get gear to city raid, and you wouldn't have to do scenarios to flip zones, that kind of thing.

Ideally, for me, the whole "city raiding" aspect of the game would have been like the falling action.  In short, it wouldn't be much of a challenge.  You've already won, already broken their defenders, now it's time to run in, burn their houses and take their shit.  The challenge would be in getting there, but once you've arrived, you've basically won.  More "rampaging and pillaging," less "now we have to fight the really strong guys".

[tolakram]

There are so many things in place to make everything fair that its sickening. Part of DAoC was having a massive force come and take your relics. Oh well, it sucks but everyone dealt with it. Everyone died/left, you rebuilt your door and formulated how you would get your relic back.

Your memory might be a bit altered.  You forgot to use words like boycott, re-roll, and broken.   You are also apparently forgetting all the 2AM raids used to take back relics and the uproar that caused.  On Galahad (Alb) I led a raid of 25 people that took every hib keep during prime time Friday night because the hibs were boycotting due to population issues (and something about bad mushrooms).

By all means criticize WAR but don't pretend the fix is easy.

[Riggswolfe]

Well, it's not what I was expecting exactly (they explained roughly how it was going to work before the game launched), but my "ideal setup" for a game like this would be to have three seperate "endgames".  One would be focused on PvE and would be the generic "raid4loot" instance progression style game.  One would maybe be a "scenario" endgame, something like WoWs arena system (though you'd need to allow premade groups for that to be viable).  And the stuff with cities and territorial control would be the "open RvR" endgame.  But you wouldn't have to do raiding to get gear to city raid, and you wouldn't have to do scenarios to flip zones, that kind of thing.

That sentence I bolded? No. Just no. Ward gear is already raid style loot bs and it's caused an uproar. If they do what you suggest here I'd believe they have essentially lied about this being an rvr game.

[ghost]

That sentence I bolded? No. Just no. Ward gear is already raid style loot bs and it's caused an uproar. If they do what you suggest here I'd believe they have essentially lied about this being an rvr game.

They didn't necessarily lie, it is simply that Mythic's vision of RvR is a little different than simply PvP.  The way I understand it RvR encompasses everything that you can do, ie it all contributes to the Victory Points.  They should have simply made a PVP focused game, instead of trying to balance in some PVE action.  In fact, they could have gotten rid of PVE altogether, since this apparently will be a niche game.

[schild]

it is simply that Mythic's vision of RvR is a little different than simply PvP. 

RvR isn't PvP. PvP is but a part of it.

I agree about getting rid of PvE, but at this point it's fairly evident they have no clue how populations scale and how to balance against proper coordination. It's fairly obvious that the QA team wasn't equippeed and the design team is running around like a chicken freshly beheaded. Not to mention the entire company seems to have it's priorities entirely out of wack. Sure, they may have pioneered the whole "RvR" thing, but they're not gonna be the ones to take it to the next level. Shame, really, because right now the game is suffering from flaws we simply should not be seeing in 2008.

Also, it shouldn't have been a niche game. Period.

[ghost]

it is simply that Mythic's vision of RvR is a little different than simply PvP. 

RvR isn't PvP. PvP is but a part of it.

I agree about getting rid of PvE, but at this point it's fairly evident they have no clue how populations scale and how to balance against proper coordination. It's fairly obvious that the QA team wasn't equippeed and the design team is running around like a chicken freshly beheaded. Not to mention the entire company seems to have it's priorities entirely out of wack. Sure, they may have pioneered the whole "RvR" thing, but they're not gonna be the ones to take it to the next level. Shame, really, because right now the game is suffering from flaws we simply should not be seeing in 2008.

Also, it shouldn't have been a niche game. Period.

I'm not going to wall-of-text here (although the game deserves it), but this game just sucks all the way around.  Most of the reasons it sucks are due to the moronically simply combat system which is overlaid onto a zone control system that even Stephen Hawking couldn't understand. 

Even the PvP sucks for some reason.  To really and truly fix this game I am afraid they would have to have a "redo" and completely start over. 

[HaemishM]

Although most are quick to blast the ward system, and also being that I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of video games, I have to ask what would have been a better response to the problem wards attempt to solve: how do you create a challenge/end game in a PvP environment which cannot be trivialized by simply bringing along more and more players?

You don't make your end game encounters based on NPC's in a PVP game. If players aren't around or willing to defend their home city, suck it up under the thumb of oppression. For fuck's sake, make the end game encounter involving captuing a goddamn relic, just don't make it killing an NPC.

[Nebu]

You don't make your end game encounters based on NPC's in a PVP game. If players aren't around or willing to defend their home city, suck it up under the thumb of oppression. For fuck's sake, make the end game encounter involving captuing a goddamn relic, just don't make it killing an NPC.

The key to capturing relics in DAoC was partly to keep up with the rate of NPC spawns while simultaneously killing enemies.  The NPC's were added to make the attackers slightly disadvantaged during the encounter.  The same was true of keep takes.  I'm guessing the WAR mechanics are founded on those old holdovers.