War December Newsletter + Looks like it's coming to a console

[eldaec]

I heard the Skaven, being rats under cities and shit, and going to (mostly) reuse existing zones, and come up out of the cities and stuff.

That would be a decent excuse not to give them new pvp zones, and just to give them another entrance to existing pvp zones (you'd still need to do the pve side ofc, but that's probably not a problem).

It would prevent them having a sackable city though.

Also, you'd need to think of a suitable counterpart for the other realm that doesn't need it's own battlefront.

[tazelbain]

I don't like that at all.  I want my own Skaven lands to fight for. Is there another underground race to fight against? 

What would be really neat is if it was Skaven vs some topside race and the lands were organized vertically rather than horizontally with the whole thing taking place in one massive city and the sewers underneath.

[MournelitheCalix]

Oh for fuck's sake. NEWS FLASH: COMPANY SELLS SOMETHING, PEOPLE BUY IT!

It's not incumbent upon him to tell us he's bullshitting but on the consumer to figure out what's hype and what's not. I remember that whole debacle and didn't bat an eye. If he wants to come here and use these forums as a gigantic billboard with 90% bullshit and 10% facts, more power to him; I'll sort out which stuff is fact and make my own conclusions. Seriously... taking advantage of the MMOG community for his nefarious ends. Horseshit. Caveat emptor.

Wow, and here I thought I was in the forum of the "usefully cynnical commentary."  Since I appear to be in the forum of the usefully cynnical and the one sheep, well...

Mr. Sheep I have a bridge I would like to sell you....its a good bridge honestly.
Dont' worry about the asking price just tell me how much is in your  savings account,
I am certain we can find common ground.
 

[Righ]

<nothing original>

Try harder before your next post.

[Ironwood]

Cynnical

Spellcheck.  It's right there.  ____________
                                                             |
                                                             V

[eldaec]

<nothing original>

Try harder before your next post.

And was it really necessary to reply on page 14, to something on page 4, without adding anything worthwhile?

[Modern Angel]

I don't even know what the fuck you were trying to say. I see words and some semblance of syntax but it's just not making the connection in my head. Are you insulting me? Agreeing with me? Offering to make me a sandwich? What is it?

[HRose]

With all these problems about fitting in new races without spreading the PvP to unplayable levels I just wonder why they didn't stick with the most basic idea: you create a no man's land divided into regions that belong to anyone and then let the players conquer them at their will.

Instead of the current "T" model they are using (with the two races one against the other) they would use another where the PvP contested zone is in the middle, and along the perimeter all the PvE "homelands". In this case all the races would converge in the same PvP space, while you can still expand the game and add new races without breaking anything.

[Modern Angel]

I think that just lends itself to tougher numbers balancing. At least with seperate zones you can compartmentalize the NPC spawns or whatever they're doing in smaller chunks. While I never experienced, go check the AA boards for an example of gross imbalance in numbers in a large centralized pvp zone.

[Arthur_Parker]

With all these problems about fitting in new races without spreading the PvP to unplayable levels I just wonder why they didn't stick with the most basic idea: you create a no man's land divided into regions that belong to anyone and then let the players conquer them at their will.

Instead of the current "T" model they are using (with the two races one against the other) they would use another where the PvP contested zone is in the middle, and along the perimeter all the PvE "homelands". In this case all the races would converge in the same PvP space, while you can still expand the game and add new races without breaking anything.

They did that it's called DAoC.  Not being able to enter the home lands in DAoC made the whole keep thing a bit pointless, plus the whole idea seems to be to have pvp and pve in the same zone, I'd guess to try and hook players through grouped pvp grinding instead of grouped pve grinding.  As someone who in the first couple of pages of this thread said there was going to be nothing new in WAR pvp, partly due to the zone design, it's interesting that you are now wondering why they didn't stick to the same formula.

[eldaec]

They are having pve and pvp in what they call the same 'zone' but I don't think it is the same area of their 'zones'.

ie. at any given point you are clearly in a pve or pvp area. You don't expect to run into enemy players when pveing, you don't expect to run into mobs when pvping.


They may call it all one zone, but in terms of game mechanics and from the point-of-view of a random player, I don't think the geographic pvp switch is much different to daoc rvr, or daoc battlegrounds.

Instead of the current "T" model they are using (with the two races one against the other) they would use another where the PvP contested zone is in the middle, and along the perimeter all the PvE "homelands". In this case all the races would converge in the same PvP space, while you can still expand the game and add new races without breaking anything.

If you do this it is almost impossible to have a meaningful front line.

I presume daoc taught them that a front line is desirable, firstly to encourage play in all the available areas, secondly to provide meaningful realm objectives in rvr that don't require massive relic-raid level planning.

[Arthur_Parker]

Yes, but I expect you will be able to see pvp battles from the pve parts of the zone.   In DAoC it was a pain to get to the pvp areas they really were separate and you had to make the decision to go.  I suspect in WAR they are going to try to nudge people towards pvp and attract them in gradualy.

[Hoax]

Necro'ing a thread I have only read the last 3 pages of?  Fuck yeah I am.  I'm going to toss a quick rundown on the Orc classes here because well I wrote it and I decided I wanted to put it somewhere.  Hopefully Eld or someone will stop by and comment or perhaps I'll just sit here theorycrafting by myself.

Or I may get around to reading the other 10 pages of this thing and see if there is anything interesting.  Honestly though, skill systems versus class systems haven't we done this to death already? 

Re: Classes using info taken from here http://warhammer.tentonhammer.com/

"Orc Tank" aka Black Orc

So here is our tank class, except that tanking is a pve construct.  IT DOES NOT EXIST IN PVP, really Mythic needs to take tank and make it a banned word from the mind of all their devs.  If you are thinking in terms of tanking you are a fucking retard who has never pvp'd and your game is a pve game.

The Black Orc  sounds like he's going to use a bunch of DAOC's positional and chain skills.  Not every class mentions them so obviously although I'm guessing most will have some.  Sounds like DAOC players will be able to relate to this class it seems right off the bat.  So the question here is how will this:

disable his primary opponent with jarring blows and unexpected attacks, and then exploit the openings that creates to reduce the enemy’s ability to fight back

be accomplished?

If the Black Orc just stun/root/snare/dot's his target ala DAOC then we've gone nowhere this is just a DAOC hvy melee class.  Yawn.  If they have learned anything from the games that have come out since DAOC they will rip a big page from A.net's book and make the status effects stack in nifty interesting ways ala GW.  If they have any pvp players on their staff they will make sure that the Black Orc has ways, preferably lots of ways, to force someone to stay in combat with him or make anyone who tries to run away or run past REALLY fucking pay for it.  Of course with positionals you really worry about bunny hopping pvp.  All sorts of issues arise in terms of what kind of pacing are we looking at.  Are we at the point where a diku combat game will be using accuracy/dmg debuffs for running/jumping/moving during attacks?  I doubt they will do it, but it seems like perhaps they should since they are still convinced that positional skill chains are where it is at.  We've all pvp'd versus rogues in WoW would you want an entire game where everyone was moving like that in melee?

So Black Orc  = DAOC rip off, we'll see how smart they have gotten.  I refuse to call it a tank because if its a tank its a pve game's class in a pvp game.  Which means off the bat that either Black Orcs or Choppas will be worthless.  You can't have a tank and a light tank in a pvp game and have both be worth playing.  Because either the tank does so little damage nobody cares about it in pvp or the light tank's added damage is so small or situational that it is rendered worthless.  Basically for the black orc and choppa to both be pvp viable they are going to have to not only test the fuck out of things, but also listen to their testers.  Good luck with that.

My analysis from that small section of paragraphs is this black orc design lends itself to a huge host of problems and we have no info atm about how they are dealing with them.

"Orc melee dps" aka Choppa

This class is where I get excited, this is a good sounding light tank design.  From the guys who brought you the Blademaster and the terrible Alb lt. tank whose name escapes me which makes it all the more surprising.  The entire morale system is a great idea imo, which will add some interesting tactical elements to pvp.  It sounds like for this class they are going the route of WoW warriors and the rage bar but trying to make it much more complex and tactical.  Which I like, WoW warriors work really well at times in pvp.  The WoW warrior's issue has always been that as a hard target they are always last to die and therefore get very little help gaining rage.  Giving rage to a light tank who might actually be a called target early in a fight instead of during mop up, is a much more sound choice pvp-wise.  I also really like that just keeping your rage will give a passive series of buffs (?) this is a better system then WoW's.  Taking a good WoW class and making it more interesting.  Good stuff.

Goblin nuker/dps-pets  --its really hard to guess what this will be like.  But it sounds interesting with language that makes me think of multiple pets, the ability to control the pet directly, pet customization etc.  This is bound to a be a dream class for pet people if they make it work.

Goblin nuker/healer "aka" Shaman

This should be interesting, the way Waagh works in WH is the more greenskins around the caster the more power they have.  But too much power can cause negative effects.  The spells should be very over the top, unpredictable and crazy.  If you have any backround in GW games, this is exciting because if they use any of the material goblin casters should be fucking hilarious.  Hopefully they dont pussy out and just give them standard dd/dot's.  If they really wanted to get away from the paradigms which I think they should in this case, the shaman wouldn't have direct heals.  more like pbaoe buffs/heals/+effects he could activate.  In that way he is support but not in the conventional lifebar watcher sort of sense.  How they will deal with the fact that many instances are for 6v6 or 12v12 should be interesting.  I guess 5 allies = fully powered shaman?  If there is no way to be around too many other orcs/goblins I'm going to be pretty dissapointed tbh.

So after reading back through the info and putting thoughts to paper, I'm more worried then excited.  But I like the overall aggressive feel of the classes I do think that is a step in the right direction for a pvp game.  They are trying a few new sounding things but mostly it seems lie they are just trying to improve on the current status quo.  Which still means they are trying to out blizzard-blizzard which sounds like a loosing proposition.  But for real, this game lives or dies on how well the pvp systems operate and what endgame pve/pvp looks like not on how innovative the classes are.  It is probably a good thing they aren't trying anything too crazy-new with their classes.

[eldaec]

Couple of points...

Regarding tanks, every race has a tank, so they'll have to find some role for them. The game does have collision detection at the moment, and the scenarios shown so far seem big on choke points, so a simple way to give tanks a role might be to give tank classes a bigger collision radius vs enemy realms than melee dps has. Daoc also gave tanks anti-escape abilities, such as a snare proc on any attack made on an enemy facing away.

On Shaman and WAAARGH power, Mythic have stated that they are not giving bonuses to single race groups, so I suspect you'll find that shaman WAAARGH comes from their own attacks and the attacks of anyone nearby they are grouped with. I suspect the reason the early documentation called out greenskins specifically was that at the time Orcs and Dwarfs were the only races that had been designed.

[tazelbain]

Tanks can work in PvP.  Taunt is a PvE contruct.  For a PvP, you need replace taunt with an ability that causes trouble but isn't fatal like interrupts, silence or slow.  If that ability is strong enough, he's draw player-aggro just as surely as a taunt.  Black Orc seems to be going in that direction.

[Nonentity]

Have the standard PvE taunt, first off. Or don't. Either way.

But I think taunt in PvP could be done in one of two ways.

One way could be to have anyone within a small radius of you force to face your direction and target you (think a Rogue's Distract from WoW). Or not even the targeting element, just have it be a point-blank Distract like ability.

My other thought would be that the warrior using taunt in PvP gains a massive +to hit, or +damage, something along those lines, until they are targeted for X amount of time.

Or you could do some combination of the first one plus the second one, but tone down the massiveness and tweak it a bit.

It could be done.

I think the second one is a little more fair on a PvP scale - you're trying to get that heal off, and instead of breaking the heal on detargeting, you would have a small window in which to finish the heal before the Black Orc tears your head off with his improved damage.

[Johny Cee]

Have the standard PvE taunt, first off. Or don't. Either way.

But I think taunt in PvP could be done in one of two ways.

One way could be to have anyone within a small radius of you force to face your direction and target you (think a Rogue's Distract from WoW). Or not even the targeting element, just have it be a point-blank Distract like ability.

My other thought would be that the warrior using taunt in PvP gains a massive +to hit, or +damage, something along those lines, until they are targeted for X amount of time.

Or you could do some combination of the first one plus the second one, but tone down the massiveness and tweak it a bit.

It could be done.

I think the second one is a little more fair on a PvP scale - you're trying to get that heal off, and instead of breaking the heal on detargeting, you would have a small window in which to finish the heal before the Black Orc tears your head off with his improved damage.

Without starting a minithread we've beaten to death, the consensus around these parts has been that being able to negatively affect how other players control/use thier characters is a no-no.  (I.E.: long duration CC, repeated stuns, polymorphs,  being able to switch their targets repeatedly, etc)

Hell, any game where you prevent the opposing player from playing is inherently unfun.  (See land destruction and heavy permission/stassis style decks in Magic)

[pxib]

It could be done.

I agree. Rather than having the tank do more damage though, have the tank's taunts (and attacks?) progressively lower the armor class or resistances of whomever is being taunted. The tauntee can get that resistance and armor flowing back by targeting the tank. That way it's not OMG TANKS ARE OVERPWRD and you're not FORCED to target the tank... it's just something you have to consider if you want to keep yourself alive.

[Johny Cee]

"Orc Tank" aka Black Orc

So here is our tank class, except that tanking is a pve construct.  IT DOES NOT EXIST IN PVP, really Mythic needs to take tank and make it a banned word from the mind of all their devs.  If you are thinking in terms of tanking you are a fucking retard who has never pvp'd and your game is a pve game.

The Black Orc  sounds like he's going to use a bunch of DAOC's positional and chain skills.  Not every class mentions them so obviously although I'm guessing most will have some.  Sounds like DAOC players will be able to relate to this class it seems right off the bat.  So the question here is how will this:

disable his primary opponent with jarring blows and unexpected attacks, and then exploit the openings that creates to reduce the enemy’s ability to fight back

be accomplished?

If the Black Orc just stun/root/snare/dot's his target ala DAOC then we've gone nowhere this is just a DAOC hvy melee class.  Yawn.  If they have learned anything from the games that have come out since DAOC they will rip a big page from A.net's book and make the status effects stack in nifty interesting ways ala GW.  If they have any pvp players on their staff they will make sure that the Black Orc has ways, preferably lots of ways, to force someone to stay in combat with him or make anyone who tries to run away or run past REALLY fucking pay for it.  Of course with positionals you really worry about bunny hopping pvp.  All sorts of issues arise in terms of what kind of pacing are we looking at.  Are we at the point where a diku combat game will be using accuracy/dmg debuffs for running/jumping/moving during attacks?  I doubt they will do it, but it seems like perhaps they should since they are still convinced that positional skill chains are where it is at.  We've all pvp'd versus rogues in WoW would you want an entire game where everyone was moving like that in melee?

So Black Orc  = DAOC rip off, we'll see how smart they have gotten.  I refuse to call it a tank because if its a tank its a pve game's class in a pvp game.  Which means off the bat that either Black Orcs or Choppas will be worthless.  You can't have a tank and a light tank in a pvp game and have both be worth playing.  Because either the tank does so little damage nobody cares about it in pvp or the light tank's added damage is so small or situational that it is rendered worthless.  Basically for the black orc and choppa to both be pvp viable they are going to have to not only test the fuck out of things, but also listen to their testers.  Good luck with that.

My analysis from that small section of paragraphs is this black orc design lends itself to a huge host of problems and we have no info atm about how they are dealing with them.

On the PvP and tank:

Tanks work fine in PvP.  Instead of aggro drawers/taunters, they become high defense-high survivability classes with close range dps and a selection of hinder effects (short duration stuns, snares, etc.)  Mythic has moved into a bunch of different usable abilities in DAoC that would be interesting here, like fumble debuffs and end drain (or morale drain?) that work to limit opposing toons DPS.  

Tank is just Mythic-speak for a high-survivability melee toon without any real ranged ability.

Mythic has been heavy into moving melee DPS classes into alternate ways of impairing opponents as well.  In DAoC,  there are end drains, fumble debuffs, etc. that allow one melee to inhibit without destroying an opposing players ability to play their toon.

So called light tanks can also work pretty well.  Keep damage similar to heavy,  but increase mobility and ability to pierce through defenses.  If you do go with a DPS increase,  make it conditional on some factor to limit the burst damage (maulers, vampiirs in present DAoC).

We're going to see a class in WAR that's a ripoff of either vamp or mauler...  that is, powering up by either dealing or receiving damage.

I seriously think your offbase with alot of your Black Orc/tank analysis.  Mostly, you just seem stuck on the term.  At various times,  especially because of abilities granted,  most tank gank groups/8 mans in DAoC have run with a variety of both heavy and light tanks to get access to different effects or abilities (heavy tanks usually have long stuns,  heavier frontloaded damage;  light tanks have greater mobility,  higher DPS (lower burst damage), hinder effects)

On hybrid support:

DAoC has moved to having a shitload of semi-efficient hybrid support classes.  Valkyries, Wardens, and Friars all have various insta PBAOE heals and group castable hots that are usuable in combat,  not to mention buffs/procs that transmute damage done to heals, timered resist buffs, melee or magic ablatives, etc.

If not for the fact DAoC has "pure" support that are massively more efficient then the hybrids,  they'd actually be somewhat effective.  (Specialization bad!!)
Also:

You can't make status effects stack in nifty and interesting ways if you have more then group on group.  In zerg on zerg,  those things become nightmares to play through and balance.

[Seldaren]

The PvP Taunt system in WAR has already been talked about, somewhat.

The Dwarf Ironbreaker has a Grudge System, where he can put a Grudge on an opposing player. That player is debuffed against everyone except the Ironbreaker who Grudge'd him.
So if the opposing player wants to do max damage, he has to attack the Ironbreaker.

If you watch the RvR vids that have been released, you'll see Greenskins with little runic symbols over their heads. That's a Grudge.

There's also a wacky instant-Grudge that is applied for killing any Ironbreaker.

Seldaren

[Nonentity]

The PvP Taunt system in WAR has already been talked about, somewhat.

The Dwarf Ironbreaker has a Grudge System, where he can put a Grudge on an opposing player. That player is debuffed against everyone except the Ironbreaker who Grudge'd him.
So if the opposing player wants to do max damage, he has to attack the Ironbreaker.

If you watch the RvR vids that have been released, you'll see Greenskins with little runic symbols over their heads. That's a Grudge.

There's also a wacky instant-Grudge that is applied for killing any Ironbreaker.

Seldaren

Quite a first post. But an interesting system, it kind of goes along with the idea I posed above of the taunt that pxib got as well.

I think that would be the best way to do it in PvP. Don't actually force another player to target you, just make it kind of necessary to do so, unless you wanna get beat on pretty hard.

[Riggswolfe]

The PvP Taunt system in WAR has already been talked about, somewhat.

The Dwarf Ironbreaker has a Grudge System, where he can put a Grudge on an opposing player. That player is debuffed against everyone except the Ironbreaker who Grudge'd him.
So if the opposing player wants to do max damage, he has to attack the Ironbreaker.

If you watch the RvR vids that have been released, you'll see Greenskins with little runic symbols over their heads. That's a Grudge.

There's also a wacky instant-Grudge that is applied for killing any Ironbreaker.

Seldaren

I wonder if it's generic "you've been grudged, kill a drawf ironbreaker" or if you have to kill that specific one, and if so, how do you know which dwarf put the grudge on you? I could see a party of iron breakers being a nightmare because of this. Also, they shouldn't stack, make them like hunter's marks in WoW. If a new one gets put on, the old one goes away.

[HRose]

I wonder if it's generic "you've been grudged, kill a drawf ironbreaker" or if you have to kill that specific one, and if so, how do you know which dwarf put the grudge on you? I could see a party of iron breakers being a nightmare because of this. Also, they shouldn't stack, make them like hunter's marks in WoW. If a new one gets put on, the old one goes away.

Well, if there's an icon hovering then you just turn it a different color.

And you would also need to add at least a cooldown to the effect so that different iron breakers cannot constantly trade taunts.

[Morfiend]

We're going to see a class in WAR that's a ripoff of either vamp or mauler...  that is, powering up by either dealing or receiving damage.

Oh, you mean like their ripoff of WoWs warriors and rage.

[eldaec]

We're going to see a class in WAR that's a ripoff of either vamp or mauler...  that is, powering up by either dealing or receiving damage.

Oh, you mean like their ripoff of WoWs warriors and rage.

Yes, WoW was the first game ever in any context that had a resource which increases throughout a battle rather than decreases.

Seriously, can we give this a rest now. Because the way things are going pretty soon someone is going to complain that WAR has hit points - just like WoW.

Answering Johny's post, WAR seems to be set up so that every class has abilities that use a resource that builds throughout a battle. It's a sensible system for avoiding alpha strikes and ensuring that battles aren't always determined in a few seconds. You wouldn't script a movie with the most dramatic moves and attacks at the start of a fight - its always seemed faintly ridiculous that so many games work the opposite way.