Ward Gear is the worst mistake ever concieved

[GoodIdea]

1. War is still "Nowhere"

On Azazel no. Well, most servers.

It's hard to get set pieces because Destro is doing absolutely nothing on our server. They need more server consolidations because I was running open rvr and scenarios the other night and I kept seeing the same 12 destro players only... like they were the only ones on the entire server. Sad. Lich King kicked the s*** out of our server population. Or at least it's helping.

The contribution system is borked btw. It's done by random number generation when you login. It's already been proven on Warhammeralliance. After capturing maybe 40 keeps in one day, we proved it as well and observed the same thing.

2. PVE is required for full Greater Wards

I don't mind the wards, but they should have made it either easier (or possible) to attack fortresses and get conqueror's gear. I don't know anyone with more than the boots and often not even then.

You're right though, lesser wards should do something...

I haven't done warpblade or sigmars, to be honest I have the problem of no tanks being available. I'm a healer and I can't find a group for either. Sigh.


3. Lockout Timers
Lockout timers are fine, if it weren't there it would make grinding gear from pve much easier than rvr. Well, getting gear from pve IS much better because no one has Conquerors right now because fort sieges and zone control is broken beyond words.


4. Bind on Pickup
This is fine as well, the problem is not being able to get the gear through rvr.


I've created an alt, do you know why? Because T1 and T2 are fun. The RVR zones are still way too big (runs are too long... 10 minute runs??) and there are too many, but it is still fun. Plus, zone control of T2 and T3 factors far too much into zone control for T4, it's almost a requirement.

I really want this game to work, because I think the premise of the game is great, the artwork is great, a lot of core features are also really good. But I'm only going to wait another month and if it's not fixed in the new year I'm leaving. Hope they make it fun by then.

[waffel]

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.

Oh, I remember some crazy things. People getting mad, people refusing to defend, people crying on the forums. Its like that with every game.

Hell, I remember being in IRC a lot with people from all over our server (pellinor) and at about 3am a mid PM'd me (I was playing hib) and said to come out to alb land because they had knocked down the relic keep doors but couldn't pick up the relic because they didn't have their own (or something to that effect, my memory is fuzzy) so they needed me to show up, pick up the relic, and die with it so they could then pick it up. Long story short, I ran out there, mids didn't attack me, I picked up the relic and died with it and they were able to pick it up and take it. Had they not had a skald with them, I would have taken it and ran with my chanter.

Regardless, it was fun and caused quite an uproar in the forums with nobody knowing how mids got it without having their own. The beans were spilled, people yelled at hibs helping mids, mids claimed it was BS in the first place and albs should have defended, albs said "whatever" and ended up getting their relics back within a week. It was awesome because people were banded together, FOR THEIR REALM, fighting the other realms NOT BECAUSE OF GOLD BAGS, OR FAT LOOT, or any of that. Getting RPs and simply killing the enemy was enough. Its a shame no gamers are about that anymore.

[BitWarrior]

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.

Well sure, that's the obvious "throw at the wall" answer, but it doesn't address the challenge of how to provide a ladder of difficulty to allow for additional content and an ongoing progression system. Players only ever get so tough, and you can't exactly add "new" players with an update that pose a different challenge (like you would add more raids in PvE games, or potentially different king encounters eventually here). Are you saying basically something akin to a timesink-like FPS ladder would simply be the best system?

Overall, on the topic of relics its certainly simple to bash, but if we don't have any other good ideas, who are we to judge? I'm still looking for a response to the problem which is better than Mythic's.

[Kail]

One would be focused on PvE and would be the generic "raid4loot" instance progression style game. 

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.

I'm not suggesting that they shift focus from PvP to PvE, but that they keep the playstyles segregated.  The big problem I have with ward gear is not that it's in the game, but that it essentially is the endgame, or is required to participate in it.  That's basically all you do when you get to 40.  The existance of grindy PvE doesn't bug me; the requirement to do it to PvP does.

To be clear, I'm not cheering for a WoW style progression, where higher tier gear is universally better than anything a more casual player could ever get.  The nice thing about ward gear (and that's a phrase I don't get to use much) as I understand it is that you can have a raid style progression without the people at the top being more powerful in PvP than the people at the bottom.  Keep the actual stats similar and just give them better "wards" or whatever.  That way, you can keep the PvP playfield level while still giving players "better" gear to aim for.

[Jherad]

Didn't they say, going back a bit, that the best gear in the game would be obtained through killing the King?

Edit:

Not sure how much stock to put into a prima games guide, but:

http://www.primagames.com/catalog/promo_image/9780761559276_1123.pdf

The best weapons available for each career are the Mythic Weapons. These powerful weapons are only rarely available to those players who can defeat either Order's Karl Franz or Destruction's Tchar'zanek.

[eldaec]

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?

How about dragons that scale their massive aoe blasts according to the number of people in the room, so they can only be killed by relatively small numbers of people able to follow basic instructions?

They could even be the only regular source of items that allow you to respec your character, the dragon could drop say, 30 of the buggers and Dragon raiders could start a whole respec economy.



Thank you for playing "Solve WAR Design Problems by Taking a Quick Glance at what DAoC Did". Please come again soon.



Practically all MMOGs have plenty of examples of raid mobs killed by strategy rather than numbers.

[Riggswolfe]

I'm not suggesting that they shift focus from PvP to PvE, but that they keep the playstyles segregated.  The big problem I have with ward gear is not that it's in the game, but that it essentially is the endgame, or is required to participate in it.  That's basically all you do when you get to 40.  The existance of grindy PvE doesn't bug me; the requirement to do it to PvP does.

I'm a bit confused. If you added true raids it'd quickly become all about the gear, even more than with raid gear and so, once again, you'd have to pve grind to do pvp since everyone else would be getting this gear. It'd become an arms race.

[HaemishM]

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.

Well sure, that's the obvious "throw at the wall" answer, but it doesn't address the challenge of how to provide a ladder of difficulty to allow for additional content and an ongoing progression system. Players only ever get so tough, and you can't exactly add "new" players with an update that pose a different challenge (like you would add more raids in PvE games, or potentially different king encounters eventually here). Are you saying basically something akin to a timesink-like FPS ladder would simply be the best system?

Yes, actually. See the problem with games like this is that they feel the need to add an infinite progression system onto games that should be based on people bashing the shit out of other people. They (in this case, Mythic) think players won't play for long periods if there isn't a treadmill to climb. Only the large number of successful FPS games completely disprove that theory. Not only are those games PVP-only games (thinking of things like Battlefield 2/2142) that have a progression system, they still have players playing years after release. Yes, those games are free to play (but hey, they still somehow made money).

Additional content? How about all the bajillion other races Games Workshop has in the lore. How about new maps/scenarios, new battlegrounds, new weapons and gear to unlock?

PVP MMOG's have for too long taken their cues from single-player RPG's. They are nothing more than glorified versions of old Gold Box D&D games with other players thrown in the mix. Guild Wars managed to sell 2 million copies without a subscription fee, and they obviously made enough of a profit to create a sequel. Maybe Warhammer should have gone the same route.

As for fixing what's wrong with the game as it is... it's going to require a complete redesign or it's going to require Mythic to let go of the grind. Nothing else will fix it.

[Nebu]

As for fixing what's wrong with the game as it is... it's going to require a complete redesign or it's going to require Mythic to let go of the grind. Nothing else will fix it.

I agree.  I think the best thing that Mythic could do would be remove the grind ASAP.  Playing level 1-20 is fun as hell and retention may be best served by allowing players to reroll multiple classes to the endgame.  If nothing else, this may buy Mythic the time it needs to redesign the endgame system.  DAoC bought itself a year or two by introducing the classic servers and making the 1-50 trip painless.  Never underestimate the value of rerolls.  It gives players the opportunity to play several different classes at the drop of a hat and minimizes the effect of server population problems to a degree.  If players have multiple level 40 toons, then they have the flexibility to play whichever is needed by groups.  Your ironbreaker not needed?  Bring out the archmage. 

[Arthur_Parker]

In addition to what Haemish said, Mythic is also trapped in the thinking that there has to be winners and losers.  See Witching Event.  Instead they should have winners and "didn't win quite as much'ers".

City capture is broken at the minute as a Fortress siege crashes the server and resets the zones.  When they get it working and someone successfully attacks a city, the city loses rank and shuts off part of the high end PVE advancement.  Nothing like annoying losers even more, I'm looking forward to the threads on that if they manage to fix the PVE dungeons at around the same time Cities start to fall and they start telling people they can't enter them for a while. 

Instead they should have an extra zone open for the losing city (quick shit has hit the fan, explore the dangerous forgotten temple of Fred's aunt, use relics you find there to beat back the Chaos horde from the city, or something).

[ghost]

As for fixing what's wrong with the game as it is... it's going to require a complete redesign or it's going to require Mythic to let go of the grind. Nothing else will fix it.

I agree.  I think the best thing that Mythic could do would be remove the grind ASAP.  Playing level 1-20 is fun as hell and retention may be best served by allowing players to reroll multiple classes to the endgame.  If nothing else, this may buy Mythic the time it needs to redesign the endgame system.  DAoC bought itself a year or two by introducing the classic servers and making the 1-50 trip painless.  Never underestimate the value of rerolls.  It gives players the opportunity to play several different classes at the drop of a hat and minimizes the effect of server population problems to a degree.  If players have multiple level 40 toons, then they have the flexibility to play whichever is needed by groups.  Your ironbreaker not needed?  Bring out the archmage. 

See, here is the rub on this game:  As far as I understand it, getting enough VPs to get to the city siege requires multiple zones to be under control.  So there needs to be a constant flow of progression from 1-40 at all times during the game's life, otherwise the end-game sieges will be crap or unable to be done.  So everybody is going to have to have alts if this is to happen, thus introducing extra grindiness.

[Kail]

I'm a bit confused. If you added true raids it'd quickly become all about the gear, even more than with raid gear and so, once again, you'd have to pve grind to do pvp since everyone else would be getting this gear. It'd become an arms race.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the impact of Ward gear... I was under the impression that Ward gear was really unimpressive stats-wise, and that the main benefit from equipping it was that PvE mobs deal less damage to you.  Unless fighting against the mobs that require the wards, ward gear isn't that much (if any) better than a casual's gear.  If that's the case, then the arms race becomes limited to the PvE content only, which is fine with me.  The problem with the current setup is that the PvE content is interwoven with the high end PvP content so that you need the ward gear to participate.  Keep the PvE content out there as a carrot for the players to chase after, and that would be good at retaining subs, as long as it doesn't get in the way of the PvP, which it currently does.

But I'm not at the endgame yet, so maybe I'm making some bad assumptions.

[waylander]

Ward gear provides resists vs certain bosses and sub-bosses. As you progress into RVR beyond the Fortress Lord, you get tougher bosses and NPC's who help bolster the other sides defenses. Without the ward gear they will wtfpwn you.

Honestly, lesser ward gear isn't that bad to get. Its the greater ward stuff that shuts out the casuals and frustrates the pure PVP folks because you have to do a lot of PVE do get it, you face lockout timers, and the loot rewards always have stuff for classes not even in the party so someone always gets fucked.

The only thing RR should do for you in this game is open up beef up skills/tactics. After RR30 you should be able to wear anything in the game, renown gear should be GOOD and ITEMIZED properly, and the focus should be on pushing zones instead of grinding mobs. Make shit like sigmars and warpblade for the PVE whores, but the PVP gear should be comparable to anything found there and wearable by RR30.

[Arthur_Parker]

The only thing RR should do for you in this game is open up beef up skills/tactics. After RR30 you should be able to wear anything in the game, renown gear should be GOOD and ITEMIZED properly, and the focus should be on pushing zones instead of grinding mobs. Make shit like sigmars and warpblade for the PVE whores, but the PVP gear should be comparable to anything found there and wearable by RR30.

Yeah, I quit at level 39 (Realm Rank 29 or 30), just couldn't face grinding scenarios to level up realm rank, just to wear pvp boots with a realm rank of 45.  Pity, because if they killed the pve grind, the increase in population would mean I'll be quite happy playing alts in pvp for 6 months till they fixed the later stuff.

[Gurney]

In addition to what Haemish said, Mythic is also trapped in the thinking that there has to be winners and losers.  See Witching Event.  Instead they should have winners and "didn't win quite as much'ers".

City capture is broken at the minute as a Fortress siege crashes the server and resets the zones.  When they get it working and someone successfully attacks a city, the city loses rank and shuts off part of the high end PVE advancement.  Nothing like annoying losers even more, I'm looking forward to the threads on that if they manage to fix the PVE dungeons at around the same time Cities start to fall and they start telling people they can't enter them for a while. 

Instead they should have an extra zone open for the losing city (quick shit has hit the fan, explore the dangerous forgotten temple of Fred's aunt, use relics you find there to beat back the Chaos horde from the city, or something).

But but real PvPers are only happy when making other people miserable.  Everything else is carebear.  If you aren't a sadist you are a wimp.

[Kageru]

Ward gear is pretty much inevitable given their design. They know their engine limitations and the population imbalance were going to force them to use instances. Having put progression on one "line" stretching between the two cities with only two end-points (the two named mobs) and nothing in the pipe to extend the game once they're on farm status they needed a really aggressive brake. And they needed it to be PvE because they can control and regulate the challenge / reward there which they cannot do when the players actually have full control.

In short their core design doesn't actually seem remotely well suited to their stated goal and it's little surprise players are reacting negatively. Ward armor is more a symptom of their design failure than a cause.

[Arthur_Parker]

But but real PvPers are only happy when making other people miserable.  Everything else is carebear.  If you aren't a sadist you are a wimp.

WAR doesn't have any "real PvPers", RVR with no cross realm communication, no item drop on death, no death penalty, chicken mechanic, 17,340 PVE quests, character levels, inability to kill people on your own "side".  All the "real PvPers" are posting about how hardcore they will be in DArkfall.

[Hindenburg]

All the "real PvPers" are posting about how hardcore they will be in Darkfall leveling their Death Knights.

Fix'd 

[Fordel]

One of the biggest selling points of DaoC RvR, was the fact you didn't have to ever interact with "Real PvP'ers". People really do enjoy killing other players without actually making their play experience miserable.

[khaine]

But but real PvPers are only happy when making other people miserable.  Everything else is carebear.  If you aren't a sadist you are a wimp.

WAR doesn't have any "real PvPers", RVR with no cross realm communication, no item drop on death, no death penalty, chicken mechanic, 17,340 PVE quests, character levels, inability to kill people on your own "side".  All the "real PvPers" are posting about how hardcore they will be in DArkfall.

I'll be interested to see if they get rid of the chicken mechanic entirely for the Asian version , I cannot see Lineage style gamers putting up with that mechanic

[Bismallah]

I'll be interested to see if they get rid of the chicken mechanic entirely for the Asian version , I cannot see Lineage style gamers putting up with that mechanic

Ah good point.

[raydeen]

I'll be interested to see if they get rid of the chicken mechanic entirely for the Asian version , I cannot see Lineage style gamers putting up with that mechanic

Ah good point.

I honestly wish they'd get rid of it completely. Would it be so impossible to replace it with either a damage scaler (i.e. a 40 can't one-shot a 1 but a group of 1's could possibly take down a 40) or just use a level restriction a la original EQ? And get rid of Tiers. With a damage scaler, your population wouldn't be so segregated and there might be hope of some fun RvR.

[Lantyssa]

No, they can't, because that would make some semblance of sense.  It might get players playing together.  Think of the horrors that would create!

[Fordel]

Anyone remember the bonehead justification Mythic had for not putting side kicking in? 

[tazelbain]

Fuck that, just cut the xp to level by 70% and let everyone into 4th tier. Scaling takes too much programming time.

[Mrbloodworth]

Anyone remember the bonehead justification Mythic had for not putting side kicking in? 

No, what was it?

[eldaec]

No mmog development team has ever explained why they didn't put sidekicking in.

But they don't have to explain, because wow doesn't have it either.

[Grim]

Fuck that, just cut the xp to level by 70% and let everyone into 4th tier. Scaling takes too much programming time.

Nothing to see.

[Bismallah]

...There will be 3 good US servers and 1 ok US server by the end of January. Skull Throne, Phoenix Gate, Red Eye Mountain + Volkmar. The rest will be hollow shells. I could be wrong, they could pull their collective head out of their collective ass and cater to the market that doesn't plan on living in WotLK for the next six months, but so far I see a stubborn streak that would make a brick wall proud.

You're probably not that far off. If they don't merge, the die-hards will talk to their guilds and just re-roll on those servers that are at least Med/Med during peak to salvage whatever they have left of a guild before they go too far down the path of no return. Seriously, it's not like they put more then a couple months work into anything and by MMO standards that's nothing. And who knows, maybe folks wait for reduction in XP patches or some other wild incentives for folks to re-sub and use that opportunity to move servers for good.

[waylander]

Yeah but when you take into consideration that you've got to level yourself, your guild, and farm up to greater ward gear all over again the prospect of rerolling is very unappealing. Its easier just to cancel, and play an FPS or something until the next game.

[JWIV]

I flat out asked them about sidekicking at the Baltimore Games Day during a Q&A session and they ducked the question.

[Sheepherder]

Yes, actually. See the problem with games like this is that they feel the need to add an infinite progression system onto games that should be based on people bashing the shit out of other people.

PVP MMOG's have for too long taken their cues from single-player RPG's. They are nothing more than glorified versions of old Gold Box D&D games with other players thrown in the mix.

At some point in time the developers at Mythic should all have been sitting around the table chatting about creative direction and came to the startling conclusion that they need neither levels nor gear for the type of gameplay they want to encourage.  Except possibly as a way of slowly introducing the character into the game (gating advanced content via levels) and customizing characters (career path type stuff and gear).  Evidently this never happened, which is why I'm quite pleased with my decision to wait until the jury returned with a verdict on the state of the game.

Also, encouraging alts is the way to go for any future game developer, as it effectively multiplies the amount of content in your game world.  Subsequently, actively rewarding your players for deciding to make another character may be a prudent decision.  Especially if you do so in a manner that encourages players to roll an alt early in the game so that the player can sample multiple classes and find something they will become attached to, and/or give them incentive to roll an alt when they reach max level and thus break up their plunge into "end-game" content with some of the less grindy early content.

Lastly, gear treadmills tend to ruin games where people are supposed to be on a relatively equal footing.  This point should be self-evident and need no further elaboration.

EDIT: To make this not such a massive fucking derail I'd like to tie this in with the theme of the thread and say that Mythic had no clue how to build a game that had enough player concentration to make pvp a natural order of things.

[eldaec]

Also, encouraging alts is the way to go for any future game developer, as it effectively multiplies the amount of content in your game world.  

You are assuming content must be gated by level.

There is no obvious reason for this to be so.


But even if you do gate by level, you can easily sidekick around the problem.

[Sheepherder]

You are assuming content must be gated by level.

There is no obvious reason for this to be so.

But even if you do gate by level, you can easily sidekick around the problem.

Players need time and direction to learn what their buttons do, especially if it isn't something that comes intuitively (tanking, for instance).  Levels provide a decent mechanic to pace characters so that they stick to easy tasks in more forgiving locations and have time to add new abilities to their repertoire.  It doesn't necessarily have to be levels, but they are the standard MMO fare and people accept them.

Ideally for a pvp game you would want the level grind to be short, we're talking two days short here (maybe less, maybe more, depends on how many buttons you give each class).  You would want to lavish a lot of attention on these zones so that the players get a proper impression of how things work, then you would want to shuffle them off to the main game, perhaps with an interlude in a highly protected pvp sandbox so that they could test out their stuff without being at serious risk from other players.  Then you would shunt them off to the 90% of the rest of the game world.

[khaine]

Simple question ,

Has any mmorpg dev every said what the negative is behind having a fast xps curve that would allow casuals to have two or three max level classes and hardcore pretty much all of them ?

In a game like this especially , with so many classes and two sides where you could play each side on different servers , what is the logical reason behind not making xps requirements low enough where you could continually reroll and progress through the tiers and try out a lot of the classes ?

How does a heavy grind/curve help in any way ? Why would it be "bad" if by doing just the quests in your own racial area that you could get to  40 relatively easy ?

Seems like it would help solve part of the problem of having people in all the tiers and also just make it more fun overall