Patch 1.0.6 - Highlights and more

[ashrik]

Why are all the 3 FACTIONS FIX EVERYTHING    people only citing things that can easily (and do) happen in a 2 faction system?

[Arthur_Parker]

Game update 1.1a tomorrow.

Last roll of the dice before forced server merges?

Edit to add.

We are continuing to work on adjustments to what each stat does to make sure some of the less attractive stats become more attractive. We would be doing ourselves a disservice if we turned around and put Int and Wou on every peice of bright wizard gear for example (What the players want) right before we turned around and added some additional benifit to Willpower or Initiative etc...We will continue to look atissues like Wou being favored over Tou, and Int being favored over Wiletc. And strive to give each of these stats a meaningful purpouse for the various careers.
Another item everyone has to realize is we are working 1 to 2 patches ahead of what you are seeing and all of our changes push with a long view. We never intended a career to only need 2 stats to work, we wanted a number of stats to do diffrent things so players would push to obtain various stats for diffrent reasons.

Above is meant to be a dev post from the test forums, apparently if the above is accurate, fixing itemisation to not suck got them sidetracked into messing around with stats.  Good luck getting people to focus on anything other than the stat that helps you kill people faster and the stat that lets you live longer.

[Bismallah]

I am really looking forward to seeing how they word and handle those mergers. It's gonna be a hoot.

[Arthur_Parker]

Well if the stat thing indicates the whole combat system getting a make over, they might hold off on more merges now, until it's all finished.

[ghost]

Well if the stat thing indicates the whole combat system getting a make over, they might hold off on more merges now, until it's all finished.

How much does it cost to keep 35 or so servers up and running basically empty?

[Arthur_Parker]

They can only switch each server off once.  When they merge more servers they get a couple of weeks of people having more fun, if the game is still mostly broken at that point, the couple of weeks come to an end.  I'm not sure I'd like to be in the position of deciding when the game is in a good enough state to do it, leave it too long and people quit anyway due to the scenario queue times getting longer and longer.

[HaemishM]

We are continuing to work on adjustments to what each stat does to make sure some of the less attractive stats become more attractive. We would be doing ourselves a disservice if we turned around and put Int and Wou on every peice of bright wizard gear for example (What the players want) right before we turned around and added some additional benifit to Willpower or Initiative etc...We will continue to look atissues like Wou being favored over Tou, and Int being favored over Wiletc. And strive to give each of these stats a meaningful purpouse for the various careers.
Another item everyone has to realize is we are working 1 to 2 patches ahead of what you are seeing and all of our changes push with a long view. We never intended a career to only need 2 stats to work, we wanted a number of stats to do diffrent things so players would push to obtain various stats for diffrent reasons.

On that bolded part... God Forbid you give the players what they want, especially if it makes sense.

Why would you try to make secondary stats more important? Most classes have 2-3 important stats and the rest just AREN'T and that's OK. It's a PVP game - people want what makes them able to kill others faster and survive longer, like Arthur said. In the Rock-Paper-Scissors design philosophy, that's what you want. What you shouldn't be doing is keeping stupid stats like Willpower on Witch Hunter gear, because altering what Willpower does for everyone will likely have more balance issues than just taking the fucking useless stats off the WH gear.

It's like they see exactly what needs to be done, and cannot fathom that doing the exact opposite is the wrong choice.

[Murgos]

*sigh* I only learn about this thread after Grim went back through and deleted all his responses.

it's interesting how there are a subset of really prolific posters who will show up, post TONS, like HUEG-WALL-O-TEXT and then when they find they can't bully their way through just go and try and erase all evidence of their monumental hubris.

There was at least one guy in the Eve forums who did this also.  I wonder if it's embarrassment?

[Beltaine]

Quote from: Mythic Dev
We are continuing to work on adjustments to what each stat does to make sure some of the less attractive stats become more attractive. We would be doing ourselves a disservice if we turned around and put Int and Wou on every peice of bright wizard gear for example (What the players want) right before we turned around and added some additional benifit to Willpower or Initiative etc...We will continue to look atissues like Wou being favored over Tou, and Int being favored over Wiletc. And strive to give each of these stats a meaningful purpouse for the various careers.
Another item everyone has to realize is we are working 1 to 2 patches ahead of what you are seeing and all of our changes push with a long view. We never intended a career to only need 2 stats to work, we wanted a number of stats to do diffrent things so players would push to obtain various stats for diffrent reasons.

So, in other words, they really haven't fixed itemization issues, but are now trying to decide how to rig stats that make the crappy itemization work, and don't get all pissy about it because we're working 2 patches ahead of what you're playing so trust us.

So what if a career only needs 2 stats? Tanks need lots of health and lots of defense. DPS needs to kill faster and stay alive longer. Healers need to Heal better and stay alive longer. What else is there?

It's like they're trying to add a false sense of depth to a game that's about killing the other guy before they kill you. Adding more depth to stats only means the min/max stat whores will still win over the all-rounders. Just make everybody a min/maxer by default and stop with this cryptic bullshit.

[rk47]

yep that's how i felt about it. Toughness is a really crappy stat to stack on, not a bad debuff, but a really terrible buff stat with poor returns.

seeing all those new rvr influence give 0 wounds kinda hurt too.

[ghost]

So, in other words, they really haven't fixed itemization issues, but are now trying to decide how to rig stats that make the crappy itemization work, and don't get all pissy about it because we're working 2 patches ahead of what you're playing so trust us.

So what if a career only needs 2 stats? Tanks need lots of health and lots of defense. DPS needs to kill faster and stay alive longer. Healers need to Heal better and stay alive longer. What else is there?

It's like they're trying to add a false sense of depth to a game that's about killing the other guy before they kill you. Adding more depth to stats only means the min/max stat whores will still win over the all-rounders. Just make everybody a min/maxer by default and stop with this cryptic bullshit.

All this stuff is just a clear indication that Mythic has absolutely no idea what is wrong with their game.  They need some outside consultants to come in and de-crappify it.  Unfortunately, that might mean do over, which probably wouldn't fly with EA.

[Arthur_Parker]

Test server forums also mention large price increases on flight masters, also changes to vendors, seems like an attempt to have a real economy.  Can't see it working with such a poor crafting system and a largely useless auction house due in large part to BOP.

[Beltaine]

Great, now it costs me even more to fly between the 3 zones and see which one has something going on in Open RVR.

I wonder:

If a server could somehow come together and agree to play only in one front (say, Dwarfs v Greenskins) for T1-T3 if it would make the game more enjoyable. Obviously the population would swell on the 1 front. But you'd have 2 empty fronts. But then again, if it made enough population to make playing the game fun, why worry about the abandoned fronts?

[ghost]

Speculation that EA might be bought out by Disney..........

Wonder what this would do to Mythic?

Is Walt Disney Co. preparing a bid for Electronic Arts Inc.? Disney Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs appeared to leave the door open Tuesday. When asked about Disney's focus ...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122887767234893907.html

Additionally, EA's earnings have really sucked. 

After five straight quarters of losses, the pity party was consummated yesterday with a massive sell-off as EA dropped guidance for its Fiscal 2009 (ending March 31), citing poor sales of its holiday lineup and general market malaise. (Eric Savitz had a nice post up on the mass analyst exodus over at his Tech Trader Blog, yesterday). The prior guidance was for revenues of $4.9 to $5.1 billion, and non-GAAP EPS of between $1.00 and $1.40 per share. 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/110283-electronic-arts-sell-siders-flee-on-lowered-2009-guidance

Good reads.  EA sounds like it isn't quite circling the bowl, but someone has their hand on the flush handle.


Edit:  modified for quote-tardedness.

[BitWarrior]

yep that's how i felt about it. Toughness is a really crappy stat to stack on, not a bad debuff, but a really terrible buff stat with poor returns.

Toughness is probably the best defensive stat to stack. It's applied first before anything, and works to neutralize an enemies primary offensive stat bonus (strength, intelligence or ballistic) (which is later multiplied by the WPDS or Spell DPS; it's good to get that number down).

Being that there is evidence to suggest that crits ignore armor/resistances for the additional crit damage portion, it strengthens its case. Additionally, being that it mitigates ALL sources of damage, both physical and magic, while you might be able to say Armor calculates in a stronger fashion, overall stacking toughness is going to reduce overall damage applied against you in an average setting more than any other stat.

And with that, I conclude my snipe rant.

[HaemishM]

Perhaps all those overpriced acquisitions EA pulled off in the last year are finally coming back to bite them in the ass? While I think the Bioware purchase was a smart one, I think they overpayed for the amount of product Bioware puts out.

[IainC]

Can't read the WSJ article due to not being a subscriber. Any chance of a quote of the stuff below the jump?

[BitWarrior]

Can't read the WSJ article due to not being a subscriber. Any chance of a quote of the stuff below the jump?

I think it might be a very, very short article. Here's a link to a site discussing it which quotes WSJ, but mentions it's only a "short" item. This link is probably more informative than WSJ's article:

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2008/12/10/electronic-arts-widespread-downgrades-is-it-a-target/

[ghost]

Can't read the WSJ article due to not being a subscriber. Any chance of a quote of the stuff below the jump?

Here is a better version.

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2008/12/10/electronic-arts-widespread-downgrades-is-it-a-target/

Is Walt Disney Co. preparing a bid for Electronic Arts Inc.? Disney Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs appeared to leave the door open Tuesday. When asked about Disney’s focus on developing games in house versus buying another company, he told an investor, “I don’t want you to conclude that those are in the long term mutually exclusive.” Moments later he noted a “strategic and attractive” opportunity would be “a possibility.”

[ashrik]

For the record, my Marauder set items have been updated to be awesome now.

[waffel]

Great, now it costs me even more to fly between the 3 zones and see which one has something going on in Open RVR.

I wonder:

If a server could somehow come together and agree to play only in one front (say, Dwarfs v Greenskins) for T1-T3 if it would make the game more enjoyable. Obviously the population would swell on the 1 front. But you'd have 2 empty fronts. But then again, if it made enough population to make playing the game fun, why worry about the abandoned fronts?

Good concept, but you'll have the dick-jacking items whores that will go to the off-zones to take the keeps for phat loots, which will piss of the other realm, and the whole idea fails.

And I hate to keep bring up DaoC, but: The stat system worked in DAoC. A hib caster didn't give a piss about quickness, or empathy, or piety, or charisma. They cared about Con (health), Dex (casting speed), Int (damage) and resists, and armor to an extent.
Why are they trying something impossibly stupid and difficult with War? Who knows.

[eldaec]

Screw you guys.  I liked having three factions.  It gave variety in gameplay (realm hopping when boredom set in) and I loved playing the underdog... it made for a target-rich environment. 

This.

And I have yet to see anyone mount a meaningful defence of two factions beyond 'it worked for WoW'.

Three factions give a small but significant boost to realm politics, a small but significant boost to balance, and a small but significant boost to variety and replayability; with no downside whatsoever.

The only reason Mythic didn't take that route for WAR was the asinine 'let's not repeat daoc' bullshit.

[UnSub]

We are continuing to work on adjustments to what each stat does to make sure some of the less attractive stats become more attractive. We would be doing ourselves a disservice if we turned around and put Int and Wou on every peice of bright wizard gear for example (What the players want) right before we turned around and added some additional benifit to Willpower or Initiative etc...We will continue to look atissues like Wou being favored over Tou, and Int being favored over Wiletc. And strive to give each of these stats a meaningful purpouse for the various careers.
Another item everyone has to realize is we are working 1 to 2 patches ahead of what you are seeing and all of our changes push with a long view. We never intended a career to only need 2 stats to work, we wanted a number of stats to do diffrent things so players would push to obtain various stats for diffrent reasons.

On that bolded part... God Forbid you give the players what they want, especially if it makes sense.

Why would you try to make secondary stats more important? Most classes have 2-3 important stats and the rest just AREN'T and that's OK. It's a PVP game - people want what makes them able to kill others faster and survive longer, like Arthur said. In the Rock-Paper-Scissors design philosophy, that's what you want. What you shouldn't be doing is keeping stupid stats like Willpower on Witch Hunter gear, because altering what Willpower does for everyone will likely have more balance issues than just taking the fucking useless stats off the WH gear.

It's like they see exactly what needs to be done, and cannot fathom that doing the exact opposite is the wrong choice.

I've been watching a long, long argument on another forums (mainly between two guys who SirBruce each others' posts) about stats. The pro-stats guy thinks that you can build a perfect stats system where putting points into one stat is a 1-to-1 trade off in value for not putting them in another stat i.e. all stats are equally valuable. Mythic appears to be of this school of thought.

Which, imo, is a load of crap. I can't think of a game where all stats were equally valuable, especially as you add more stats to simulate more character functions / capabilities and ESPECIALLY if they are directly linked to things like damage or HP. There are always stats that make your class / role better at that role, so that is what players focus on building. Secondary stats - those that help but aren't as vital - and dump stats are always going to be part of a stats-based game. The Bright Wizard doesn't want more Weapon Skills or extra Toughness because it doesn't help them enough.

[Trippy]

Screw you guys.  I liked having three factions.  It gave variety in gameplay (realm hopping when boredom set in) and I loved playing the underdog... it made for a target-rich environment. 

This.

And I have yet to see anyone mount a meaningful defence of two factions beyond 'it worked for WoW'.

Three factions give a small but significant boost to realm politics, a small but significant boost to balance, and a small but significant boost to variety and replayability; with no downside whatsoever.

The only reason Mythic didn't take that route for WAR was the asinine 'let's not repeat daoc' bullshit.

Actually there are IP reasons for not doing that. As I mentioned elsewhere, in the tabletop game GW divides all the armies up into only two sides when doing the big summer campaigns and that's how they did the card game as well.

And splitting things into three sides has IP issues as well. On the surface it might make sense to put the Greenskins by themselves but that would unbalance the races and classes (3 v 2 v 1) and you would really need at least 2 races on each side so the Dwarfs would get the shaft (cause you can't get rid of the Elves and Humans) and you would have to pair somebody up with the Greenskins but that doesn't make IP sense either (at least not if you consider this a long-term thing). And then everytime you wanted to add races you would have to add three instead of just two, which means extra work, and again you have the problem of who to stick with the Greenskins.

[Megrim]

I don't really know that much about Warhammer Fantasy, but going by 40k, wouldn't something like Humans+Elves / Dwarfs + Lizardmen (they're good, aren't they?) / Chaos+Skaven / Greenskins+Emo Elves (basically, the elves are just using them as shock troops or something), work? I mean, sure, the fat lore nerds might die of apoplexy, but really, who cares?

[ghost]

Screw you guys.  I liked having three factions.  It gave variety in gameplay (realm hopping when boredom set in) and I loved playing the underdog... it made for a target-rich environment. 

This.

And I have yet to see anyone mount a meaningful defence of two factions beyond 'it worked for WoW'.

Three factions give a small but significant boost to realm politics, a small but significant boost to balance, and a small but significant boost to variety and replayability; with no downside whatsoever.

The only reason Mythic didn't take that route for WAR was the asinine 'let's not repeat daoc' bullshit.

Actually there are IP reasons for not doing that. As I mentioned elsewhere, in the tabletop game GW divides all the armies up into only two sides when doing the big summer campaigns and that's how they did the card game as well.

And splitting things into three sides has IP issues as well. On the surface it might make sense to put the Greenskins by themselves but that would unbalance the races and classes (3 v 2 v 1) and you would really need at least 2 races on each side so the Dwarfs would get the shaft (cause you can't get rid of the Elves and Humans) and you would have to pair somebody up with the Greenskins but that doesn't make IP sense either (at least not if you consider this a long-term thing). And then everytime you wanted to add races you would have to add three instead of just two, which means extra work, and again you have the problem of who to stick with the Greenskins.

1.  Dwarves, Humies, Elvises
2.  Skaven, Orcs
3.  Chaos, Dark Elvises
expansion-
4.  Vampire Counts

Regardless of faction have the same number of careers per faction then it doesn't matter how many races there are.  

[Trippy]

Screw you guys.  I liked having three factions.  It gave variety in gameplay (realm hopping when boredom set in) and I loved playing the underdog... it made for a target-rich environment. 

This.

And I have yet to see anyone mount a meaningful defence of two factions beyond 'it worked for WoW'.

Three factions give a small but significant boost to realm politics, a small but significant boost to balance, and a small but significant boost to variety and replayability; with no downside whatsoever.

The only reason Mythic didn't take that route for WAR was the asinine 'let's not repeat daoc' bullshit.

Actually there are IP reasons for not doing that. As I mentioned elsewhere, in the tabletop game GW divides all the armies up into only two sides when doing the big summer campaigns and that's how they did the card game as well.

And splitting things into three sides has IP issues as well. On the surface it might make sense to put the Greenskins by themselves but that would unbalance the races and classes (3 v 2 v 1) and you would really need at least 2 races on each side so the Dwarfs would get the shaft (cause you can't get rid of the Elves and Humans) and you would have to pair somebody up with the Greenskins but that doesn't make IP sense either (at least not if you consider this a long-term thing). And then everytime you wanted to add races you would have to add three instead of just two, which means extra work, and again you have the problem of who to stick with the Greenskins.

1.  Dwarves, Humies, Elvises
2.  Skaven, Orcs
3.  Chaos, Dark Elvises
expansion-
4.  Vampire Counts

Regardless of faction have the same number of careers per faction then it doesn't matter how many races there are.  

Pairing Skaven with Greenskins makes as much sense as pairing them with Chaos or Dark Elves, as in it doesn't make sense as a long term thing. Adding an entirely new side with an expansion is not going to happen cause of the exponentially increasing amount of work each time you add a new side. Also Vampire Counts is a horrible choice.

And it does matter how many races there are per side cause the classes aren't identical between any two races -- they are balanced per side, so if one side has fewer races that means they may need additional classes to offset that deficiency. More importantly it'll cause a population imbalance if the expansion adds races to only some of the sides. People will flock to the new races, at least temporarily, causing a population shift if one of more sides is lacking in the new shiney.

[ghost]

Screw you guys.  I liked having three factions.  It gave variety in gameplay (realm hopping when boredom set in) and I loved playing the underdog... it made for a target-rich environment. 

This.

And I have yet to see anyone mount a meaningful defence of two factions beyond 'it worked for WoW'.

Three factions give a small but significant boost to realm politics, a small but significant boost to balance, and a small but significant boost to variety and replayability; with no downside whatsoever.

The only reason Mythic didn't take that route for WAR was the asinine 'let's not repeat daoc' bullshit.

Actually there are IP reasons for not doing that. As I mentioned elsewhere, in the tabletop game GW divides all the armies up into only two sides when doing the big summer campaigns and that's how they did the card game as well.

And splitting things into three sides has IP issues as well. On the surface it might make sense to put the Greenskins by themselves but that would unbalance the races and classes (3 v 2 v 1) and you would really need at least 2 races on each side so the Dwarfs would get the shaft (cause you can't get rid of the Elves and Humans) and you would have to pair somebody up with the Greenskins but that doesn't make IP sense either (at least not if you consider this a long-term thing). And then everytime you wanted to add races you would have to add three instead of just two, which means extra work, and again you have the problem of who to stick with the Greenskins.

1.  Dwarves, Humies, Elvises
2.  Skaven, Orcs
3.  Chaos, Dark Elvises
expansion-
4.  Vampire Counts

Regardless of faction have the same number of careers per faction then it doesn't matter how many races there are.  

Pairing Skaven with Greenskins makes as much sense as pairing them with Chaos or Dark Elves, as in it doesn't make sense as a long term thing. Adding an entirely new side with an expansion is not going to happen cause of the exponentially increasing amount of work each time you add a new side. Also Vampire Counts is a horrible choice.

And it does matter how many races there are per side cause the classes aren't identical between any two races -- they are balanced per side, so if one side has fewer races that means they may need additional classes to offset that deficiency. More importantly it'll cause a population imbalance if the expansion adds races to only some of the sides. People will flock to the new races, at least temporarily, causing a population shift if one of more sides is lacking in the new shiney.

It was just an example.  I don't really care what the factions are.  You have to work within the IP and War has already taken a few liberties, methinks, so why not skaven/orcs?  They are both either bumpy or ratlike, so what the hell?  I'm not sure what you mean by "it won't work as a long term thing".  If they've already raped the IP who cares?

The way WAR is set up it doesn't matter how many races there are, it matters how many classes there are (professions) per faction.  Therefore, you could have one race with 10 profession vs. 10 races with 1 profession each.  This would be easily balanced. 

Oh, about the Vampires...... I know you might not like the idea but it seems Jacobs does .

Still, Mythic’s boss, Mark Jacobs, said that the rumored expansion could take some time to develop and test. He stated in a forum thread that "Just so you know, we haven't begun work on an XPack yet and aren't going to until we get a lot more done in WAR. The expansion can wait a little longer but the main game can't. And once we begin work on an XPack, it's going to take us quite a while to do it”.

He dropped one hint on the possible content in the expansion, mentioning that he was personally a big fan of the Vampire Counts appearing in the Warhammer fantasy lore.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Expansion-for-Warhammer-Online-Not-in-Development-Yet-99748.shtml

[Trippy]

Oh, about the Vampires...... I know you might not like the idea but it seems Jacobs does .

Still, Mythic’s boss, Mark Jacobs, said that the rumored expansion could take some time to develop and test. He stated in a forum thread that "Just so you know, we haven't begun work on an XPack yet and aren't going to until we get a lot more done in WAR. The expansion can wait a little longer but the main game can't. And once we begin work on an XPack, it's going to take us quite a while to do it”.

He dropped one hint on the possible content in the expansion, mentioning that he was personally a big fan of the Vampire Counts appearing in the Warhammer fantasy lore.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Expansion-for-Warhammer-Online-Not-in-Development-Yet-99748.shtml

/facepalm

[Sophismata]

I love the Strigoi Vampire Counts, but I don't see how much sense adding VC to WAR would make. Especially considering how powerful Warhammer's vampires are.

Being that there is evidence to suggest that crits ignore armor/resistances for the additional crit damage portion, it strengthens its case. Additionally, being that it mitigates ALL sources of damage, both physical and magic, while you might be able to say Armor calculates in a stronger fashion, overall stacking toughness is going to reduce overall damage applied against you in an average setting more than any other stat.

Crits are resisted by armour and magic resistance properly. The people who claim otherwise have trouble with basic math. Toughness is good if you have a lot of wounds and gear that lets you stack toughness - that means tanks. For everyone else, it's better to get wounds first, toughness second.


On another note, can anyone tell me what 'Sir Brucing' is?

[Arthur_Parker]

On another note,

It's not really another note is it?  That's part of your post.

can anyone

You mean anyone reading don't you?  So it's not really anyone, as in the entire population of the planet, is it?

tell me

Well considering you asked a question, were you expecting an answer given to someone else?

what 'Sir Brucing' is?

Sir Bruce would break your post up into parts, responding to groupings of words that he picked, just to be a twat.  I'm sure there's other things he used to do as part of it, but I generally just skipped his posts.

[Sophismata]

My God, I already hate you, and I liked you not 10 minutes ago.

Thanks  .

[Nebu]

That may be the best example of a "Sir Brucing" I've seen.  Well played, Arthur. 

[Morfiend]

My God, I already hate you, and I liked you not 10 minutes ago.

Thanks  .

Congratulations. You have now met AP.