I think the resource NPC's were a great idea. It gives players another target to try and defend or attack. I don't think it was to alleviate population woes, but instead to make fighting in the lakes have another layer.
It did add another layer to keep-capping dynamics true (even in lower tiers) but it was a layer that wasn't necessary to make it continuously engaging and fun when there were healthy pops across all tiers back at the start. And it does make the open work strategic pvp more workable when there are bugger-all people online (or subbed) so it seems likely to me that it was introduced at least partially for that reason imo.
/Offtopic - Lo-and-behold they have exactly the same resource system in GW2 but in this degenerate case, it barely has a saliable point like everything else in GW2 - beautiful and amazingly well coded and stable an edifice though it is.
I think the resource NPC's were a great idea. It gives players another target to try and defend or attack. I don't think it was to alleviate population woes, but instead to make fighting in the lakes have another layer.
It did add another layer to keep-capping dynamics true (even in lower tiers) but it was a layer that wasn't necessary to make it continuously engaging and fun when there were healthy pops across all tiers back at the start. And it does make the open work strategic pvp more workable when there are bugger-all people online (or subbed) so it seems likely to me that it was introduced at least partially for that reason imo.
/Offtopic - Lo-and-behold they have exactly the same resource system in GW2 but in this degenerate case, it barely has a saliable point like everything else in GW2 - beautiful and amazingly well coded and stable an edifice though it is.
Again slightly offtopic - I think it was a noble choice to dispense with healers/tanks/dps in GW2. I take my hat off to their effort to shake things up and offer something new on a shiny silver, well-programmed platter. But all I could think while playing it was how it fell short from what I felt its wvwvw was trying to emulate most - WAR's RvR (forgive my ignorance of anything else similar I haven't played). And, consequently, I was continuously reminded about how beautifully concise the balance brought by a healer/tank/dps dynamic worked for me in WAR at its best.
For me, WAR's RVR felt like:
a) you were making an impact on events no matter what role you were playing in a huge group
b) the fights felt like they were finely balanced and dependant on your role even in this mass of players
c) winning a fight for a keep could shift and alter in a moment if even one healer afk'd or d/c'd or if even a single player thought up a new tactic or flanked the zerg.
Now that is what I call good, on the edge mass pvp gaming and none of these things I can say for GW2. Shame WAR had it's own issues that turned the mass market off over time :-(
This also translates to a lot of new games - like old Planetside versus planetside 2. In PS2 fights almost feel predetermined. You attack a base, everything is shifted in your sides favour that you'll cap it bar a miracle or brute force. In the original PS, the a/b/c of above were in play and one player could shift things. Food for thought in newer lines of thought in game design.
If WAR is so bad which RvR/Open world PvP are you currently playing that is more satisfying???
GW2: you were killed by an anonymous invader...
DaoC: 2 seconds spell animation..
Planetside 2: Rush rinse repeat..
Come up with the goods please, until TESO or CU there may not be anything better around
you are missing the point entirely , the reason people here are complaining is because war was that good in pvp and realm vs realm . There is a void for a lot of old DAOC and WAR vets that games like GW2 cannot fill because lets face it unless guild wars 2 makes new maps that are not all concentrated zerge GW2 wvw just plain out sucks compared to WAR and DAOC. A lot of the people here commenting on WAR in general are pissed off , like myself that mythic jacked the game up after release and put it on life support instead . Blame EA or mythic either way its mythics problem now and they are the only ones that can bring life to it. This game had about ZERO updates after about 6 months of it being out , the last ditch effort to save it was the land of the dead patch. The rest of the patches after that were garbage like adding relics in and forts back and the new realm vs realm campaign. Those were not made to get players back at all , just to try and keep the already bleeding subs from going elsewhere. Hell Ill even take WOW or GW2 right now over mythic and warhammer just because there seems to be zero hope at all of them ever making the game better and adding more content.
If WAR is so bad which RvR/Open world PvP are you currently playing that is more satisfying???
GW2: you were killed by an anonymous invader...
DaoC: 2 seconds spell animation..
Planetside 2: Rush rinse repeat..
Come up with the goods please, until TESO or CU there may not be anything better around
you are missing the point entirely , the reason people here are complaining is because war was that good in pvp and realm vs realm . There is a void for a lot of old DAOC and WAR vets that games like GW2 cannot fill because lets face it unless guild wars 2 makes new maps that are not all concentrated zerge GW2 wvw just plain out sucks compared to WAR and DAOC. A lot of the people here commenting on WAR in general are pissed off , like myself that mythic jacked the game up after release and put it on life support instead . Blame EA or mythic either way its mythics problem now and they are the only ones that can bring life to it. This game had about ZERO updates after about 6 months of it being out , the last ditch effort to save it was the land of the dead patch. The rest of the patches after that were garbage like adding relics in and forts back and the new realm vs realm campaign. Those were not made to get players back at all , just to try and keep the already bleeding subs from going elsewhere. Hell Ill even take WOW or GW2 right now over mythic and warhammer just because there seems to be zero hope at all of them ever making the game better and adding more content.
All very well. ( Btw, I loved the fact that you just couldn't ransack the enemy capital 3 times daily and that it took ages to get to the capital, good on you guys for bringing fortresses back)
Still the question remains unanswered: What do you play currently that fulfills your RvR / Open world PvP needs ?
Originally posted by Soki123 DAOC is still the best pvp on ground.
Agreed. And let me take from what the dev said, "If I had it to do all over again, and I was in a position to affect some influence, I would have to say three realms. Don’t get me wrong, I in no way believe 3-Realms is the “magic bullet” that would solve all of WAR’s balance issues. It would, however, add a player-correcting element that helps keep the battlefield engaging and dynamic. Even with all the other issues WAR may have had, that would have helped prevent players feeling they were painted into a corner, rage quitting, and subsequently emptying the battlefield of bodies (I will point back to the population issue from earlier)."
And that about sums it up.
I cannot speak for everyone, of course, but I cannot possibly describe how many folks on a few servers before and after mergers - all claimed that 3 realms would at least add enough value to the game for them to stay on. The classes were, in my opinion, just not what they could have been. After seeing the variety of what DAoC has, 3 realms, 44 classes, 24 races, and so forth, it's just hard to see something that could have been in many ways the next Dark Age, but for some corporate misshap, became the very opposite of that ideal, and yet kept a few buzzwords to keep some of us on, i.e., RvR, and so forth.
I hope they do well, I honetly do...I just wish they would have listened to what so many of us screamed and argued out over the forums. But I guess that's how it works.
Call it hubrus, or just developers that had no choice or say in the matter, but the folks in authority at EA? forgot that these games are made for the players, not just the people who make the game ala programming and so forth. If we, the players, consistently point out that we wanted much of what we missed in Dark Age, then by God they should have given that to us.
Considering that even Dark Age's team was unable to give us ORIGINS, and considering how tiny a reward that was after so many years of loyalty..well...heh.
Heres an Idea. How about NEW F*CKING CONTENT? I have played 5 classes to max level and I am so god damn bored of this game now. Give us new areas to explore, new races, a new faction. Give us MORE FRIGGIN CONTENT. A Live Expansion that introduces Vampire Counts or something. I don't care, just make the game FUN again.
Needing is Wanting... Wanting is Coveting... Coveting is Sinning... I am SO going to Hell.
I really can't stomach anything anyone at Mythic/Bioware has to say these days. Truthfully I did not read past the first few questions before I was eye rolling. This game isn't going anywhere, but it will never again be significally on the rise either.
After playing Warhammer and being super pumped about it (bought the CE the day it was announced, I was very disappointed and learned some things from my experience:
1)Its okay to get excited about a title - but never assume a game is going to be 'bad' or 'good'. Play it first then decide.
2)Mythic's developers might make interesting systems for pvp - but they suck at basic mechanics (character control, ability syncing, ect.)
3)If the culture of the company is okay with cutting corners and pushing something to live that really shouldn't be pushed to live - its an indication that that company is okay with releasing half-assed work and as a result, the players will have a miserable time because of it. /uninstall ASAP and do not support that company again with your money.
The user and all related content has been deleted.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Originally posted by Mtibbs1989 I only came to read and see if they're finally changing it to a F2P title. These guys at Mythic are the most ignorant people I've ever seen. They're killing their title and proceed to do so while trying to blindly lead their dwindling masses.
Mythic doesn't get to decide if the game goes F2P. Even the interview says it has been proposed, previous leadership has also hinted that they have tried. I suspect EA doesn't want to shell out the resources necessary for a conversion.
Another semi-scripted, softball-questions exercise in which any sort of gain is more than likely realized solely by this site and the game. When will a lead developer come before a knowledgeable panel (such as our forum membership) and directly answer real questions that are not self-promotional?
I really find Keaven's opening repsonse disturbing. WAR population didnt need to be this low. It was a good game, released to soon like most EA games, but ultimately fell victim to themed mega patches and it seems like they are still doing them.
When you do a patch for a specific theme it set's high expectations that can rarely be met. You are better off doing small changes to all themes every patch, inching things in the right direction. Sure sometimes you have a big thing that has to come in as a lump, but class balance is not one of those items. Long delays in any movement in career balance killed the game, specially when they shelved it in order to put out Land of the Dead. Everyone wanted Darkness Falls epic zone, we got something stupid instead and no class balance on many classes for another year after that.
Stop with the themed patches, your fans will thank you.
I really find Keaven's opening repsonse disturbing. WAR population didnt need to be this low. It was a good game, released to soon like most EA games, but ultimately fell victim to themed mega patches and it seems like they are still doing them.
When you do a patch for a specific theme it set's high expectations that can rarely be met. You are better off doing small changes to all themes every patch, inching things in the right direction. Sure sometimes you have a big thing that has to come in as a lump, but class balance is not one of those items. Long delays in any movement in career balance killed the game, specially when they shelved it in order to put out Land of the Dead. Everyone wanted Darkness Falls epic zone, we got something stupid instead and no class balance on many classes for another year after that.
Stop with the themed patches, your fans will thank you.
Interesting that you point this out, CCP (makers of EVE) recently stated their intention to do the same thing, after disliking how themed patches were progressing the game.
On the rest of the topic:
Keaven's point about horizontal progression hit the nail on the head. As good of an idea as it seemed at the time to have characters level up to 40 across different tiers and then progress through renown ranks, it just cuts up your population too damn much. Until devs either figure a way to have drastically larger servers or let everyone play together, they need to get out of the habit of faction-splitting and having a vertical focus on progression.
Another issue I have with vertical progression is how much content it renders obsolete. I want my games to expand, but when devs keep adding higher sets of gear or more levels to go through, all it really ends up doing is shrinking the game down to only the latest available content. Want to do old stuff? Hope you enjoy playing areas alone and with irrelevant drops.
I loved that game on launch and came back a year later and still enjoyed it a lot. The only MMO so far that got me hooked on PvP. Great in concept, but back then very abandoned. I would like to give it a shot for fun and nostalgia if it would go F2P. But otherwise, to little time and to many good games out right now to play stuff for nostalgia reasons...
Originally posted by -Zeno- Can't wait until WAR is F2P!!!
I have a feeling the reason why it hasn't happened yet and probably won't any time soon is a very obvious one - it's simply not worth it from a financial standpoint given how much you'd have to invest in F2P conversion and marketing to actually get the people to find out about it. I'm also pretty sure WAR is currently maintained by a skeleton crew in the first place.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
"KEAVEN: For me, the number one problem with PvP-oriented games is Population. Unlike in PvE, there is no magic button we can press to create people on the battlefield."
There is a magic button to press, F2P!
Wake up, WAR is a dead title, the only way to make ppl play it again, is the F2P option.....
eveonline best pvpin space- warhammer best pvp on ground!
last i played a few months back population was solid- rvr was active and battles were EPIC!- excellent pvp game! for those who love warhammer franchise and table top combat playing games!
great read!
Years ago when i still enjoyed rvr (but no longer pvp appeal to me for years, could not care less now) I remember had same identical problem as ANY pvp oriented game out there: very rarely enough players online at all times. And this is a must. Only at peak hours when one must be fortunate not to have different job schedule.
I just tried to sign up for the free account... really sounds like they revamped PVP for playability and not CC's and I was happy to hear it...
However their registration for free play has a Bot Checker that no matter how many times you do it will not register as correct. As such you get a NO vote until you fix it. If I cannot get it to work then many others cannot either. Then trying to contact your customer support to solve the problem was in itself problematic. So no you do not get my money and I am still gameless.
To quote one of the answersfrom Keaven Freeman and give my own suggestion here ? :
"For me, the number one problem with PvP-oriented games is Population. Unlike in PvE, there is no magic button we can press to create people on the battlefield."
...why not ?
If there's something I -loved- in games like Unreal Tournament it's those games where I wasn't -just- fighting other players ,but clever bots.
It's something I sorely missed (and requested) in -every- Halo game , being able to add some CPU controlled nasties into the fray. Having fun with both bots (or sims as they called them in Perfect Dark) was -really-really-really fun!
Why people are opposed to the idea I'll never understand.
In Warhammer Online ? Bolster the ranks of severely undermanned forts in the open pvp areas. I recall that, more often than not there were rowing warbands attacking and taking objectives where only a few scattered defenders sat there.
A system (either automated) or dm controlled where they could -actively- toss in a couple of archmages, or chaos warriors to make things more interesting in battles would be a great addition (and I imagine, no more difficult to implement than people make it)
This game had a few major problems within the first year of launch that just hurt it so much, nobody really wants to try it again.
First, you had performance issues for many players. Exceptional lag, disconnects, game crashes, etc.
Second, you had gross imbalance of classes such as Bright Wizards. It was stupid overpowered and the other side would just quit. And when you have a 2-sided faction war, and one side quits, the server dies, they merge it with another, then it dies, and merge it again, and again.
I played both empire and chaos, and it was simply overwhelming to see the differences when you played on both sides. When they announced Land of the Dead, another gear grind for a PvP game, me and most of my guild finally gave up on the game. Looks like most everyone has given up on this game.
I suppose had they done it right at the start with more balanced classes and had true 3-way PvP battles, combined with less performance problems, the game might have done a lot better.
Comments
I am one of those who would gladly jump back into WAR if it went f2p
I am freaking clueless why they dont do it
"It has potential"
-Second most used phrase on existence
"It sucks"
-Most used phrase on existence
It did add another layer to keep-capping dynamics true (even in lower tiers) but it was a layer that wasn't necessary to make it continuously engaging and fun when there were healthy pops across all tiers back at the start. And it does make the open work strategic pvp more workable when there are bugger-all people online (or subbed) so it seems likely to me that it was introduced at least partially for that reason imo.
/Offtopic - Lo-and-behold they have exactly the same resource system in GW2 but in this degenerate case, it barely has a saliable point like everything else in GW2 - beautiful and amazingly well coded and stable an edifice though it is.
I see your point, and I agree.
Again slightly offtopic - I think it was a noble choice to dispense with healers/tanks/dps in GW2. I take my hat off to their effort to shake things up and offer something new on a shiny silver, well-programmed platter. But all I could think while playing it was how it fell short from what I felt its wvwvw was trying to emulate most - WAR's RvR (forgive my ignorance of anything else similar I haven't played). And, consequently, I was continuously reminded about how beautifully concise the balance brought by a healer/tank/dps dynamic worked for me in WAR at its best.
For me, WAR's RVR felt like:
a) you were making an impact on events no matter what role you were playing in a huge group
b) the fights felt like they were finely balanced and dependant on your role even in this mass of players
c) winning a fight for a keep could shift and alter in a moment if even one healer afk'd or d/c'd or if even a single player thought up a new tactic or flanked the zerg.
Now that is what I call good, on the edge mass pvp gaming and none of these things I can say for GW2. Shame WAR had it's own issues that turned the mass market off over time :-(
This also translates to a lot of new games - like old Planetside versus planetside 2. In PS2 fights almost feel predetermined. You attack a base, everything is shifted in your sides favour that you'll cap it bar a miracle or brute force. In the original PS, the a/b/c of above were in play and one player could shift things. Food for thought in newer lines of thought in game design.
you are missing the point entirely , the reason people here are complaining is because war was that good in pvp and realm vs realm . There is a void for a lot of old DAOC and WAR vets that games like GW2 cannot fill because lets face it unless guild wars 2 makes new maps that are not all concentrated zerge GW2 wvw just plain out sucks compared to WAR and DAOC. A lot of the people here commenting on WAR in general are pissed off , like myself that mythic jacked the game up after release and put it on life support instead . Blame EA or mythic either way its mythics problem now and they are the only ones that can bring life to it. This game had about ZERO updates after about 6 months of it being out , the last ditch effort to save it was the land of the dead patch. The rest of the patches after that were garbage like adding relics in and forts back and the new realm vs realm campaign. Those were not made to get players back at all , just to try and keep the already bleeding subs from going elsewhere. Hell Ill even take WOW or GW2 right now over mythic and warhammer just because there seems to be zero hope at all of them ever making the game better and adding more content.
All very well. ( Btw, I loved the fact that you just couldn't ransack the enemy capital 3 times daily and that it took ages to get to the capital, good on you guys for bringing fortresses back)
Still the question remains unanswered: What do you play currently that fulfills your RvR / Open world PvP needs ?
Agreed. And let me take from what the dev said, "If I had it to do all over again, and I was in a position to affect some influence, I would have to say three realms. Don’t get me wrong, I in no way believe 3-Realms is the “magic bullet” that would solve all of WAR’s balance issues. It would, however, add a player-correcting element that helps keep the battlefield engaging and dynamic. Even with all the other issues WAR may have had, that would have helped prevent players feeling they were painted into a corner, rage quitting, and subsequently emptying the battlefield of bodies (I will point back to the population issue from earlier)."
And that about sums it up.
I cannot speak for everyone, of course, but I cannot possibly describe how many folks on a few servers before and after mergers - all claimed that 3 realms would at least add enough value to the game for them to stay on. The classes were, in my opinion, just not what they could have been. After seeing the variety of what DAoC has, 3 realms, 44 classes, 24 races, and so forth, it's just hard to see something that could have been in many ways the next Dark Age, but for some corporate misshap, became the very opposite of that ideal, and yet kept a few buzzwords to keep some of us on, i.e., RvR, and so forth.
I hope they do well, I honetly do...I just wish they would have listened to what so many of us screamed and argued out over the forums. But I guess that's how it works.
Call it hubrus, or just developers that had no choice or say in the matter, but the folks in authority at EA? forgot that these games are made for the players, not just the people who make the game ala programming and so forth. If we, the players, consistently point out that we wanted much of what we missed in Dark Age, then by God they should have given that to us.
Considering that even Dark Age's team was unable to give us ORIGINS, and considering how tiny a reward that was after so many years of loyalty..well...heh.
Needing is Wanting...
Wanting is Coveting...
Coveting is Sinning...
I am SO going to Hell.
After playing Warhammer and being super pumped about it (bought the CE the day it was announced, I was very disappointed and learned some things from my experience:
1)Its okay to get excited about a title - but never assume a game is going to be 'bad' or 'good'. Play it first then decide.
2)Mythic's developers might make interesting systems for pvp - but they suck at basic mechanics (character control, ability syncing, ect.)
3)If the culture of the company is okay with cutting corners and pushing something to live that really shouldn't be pushed to live - its an indication that that company is okay with releasing half-assed work and as a result, the players will have a miserable time because of it. /uninstall ASAP and do not support that company again with your money.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Mythic doesn't get to decide if the game goes F2P. Even the interview says it has been proposed, previous leadership has also hinted that they have tried. I suspect EA doesn't want to shell out the resources necessary for a conversion.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
I really find Keaven's opening repsonse disturbing. WAR population didnt need to be this low. It was a good game, released to soon like most EA games, but ultimately fell victim to themed mega patches and it seems like they are still doing them.
When you do a patch for a specific theme it set's high expectations that can rarely be met. You are better off doing small changes to all themes every patch, inching things in the right direction. Sure sometimes you have a big thing that has to come in as a lump, but class balance is not one of those items. Long delays in any movement in career balance killed the game, specially when they shelved it in order to put out Land of the Dead. Everyone wanted Darkness Falls epic zone, we got something stupid instead and no class balance on many classes for another year after that.
Stop with the themed patches, your fans will thank you.
Interesting that you point this out, CCP (makers of EVE) recently stated their intention to do the same thing, after disliking how themed patches were progressing the game.
On the rest of the topic:
Keaven's point about horizontal progression hit the nail on the head. As good of an idea as it seemed at the time to have characters level up to 40 across different tiers and then progress through renown ranks, it just cuts up your population too damn much. Until devs either figure a way to have drastically larger servers or let everyone play together, they need to get out of the habit of faction-splitting and having a vertical focus on progression.
Another issue I have with vertical progression is how much content it renders obsolete. I want my games to expand, but when devs keep adding higher sets of gear or more levels to go through, all it really ends up doing is shrinking the game down to only the latest available content. Want to do old stuff? Hope you enjoy playing areas alone and with irrelevant drops.
I have a feeling the reason why it hasn't happened yet and probably won't any time soon is a very obvious one - it's simply not worth it from a financial standpoint given how much you'd have to invest in F2P conversion and marketing to actually get the people to find out about it. I'm also pretty sure WAR is currently maintained by a skeleton crew in the first place.
"KEAVEN: For me, the number one problem with PvP-oriented games is Population. Unlike in PvE, there is no magic button we can press to create people on the battlefield."
There is a magic button to press, F2P!
Wake up, WAR is a dead title, the only way to make ppl play it again, is the F2P option.....
Years ago when i still enjoyed rvr (but no longer pvp appeal to me for years, could not care less now) I remember had same identical problem as ANY pvp oriented game out there: very rarely enough players online at all times. And this is a must. Only at peak hours when one must be fortunate not to have different job schedule.
Anyone?
I just tried to sign up for the free account... really sounds like they revamped PVP for playability and not CC's and I was happy to hear it...
However their registration for free play has a Bot Checker that no matter how many times you do it will not register as correct. As such you get a NO vote until you fix it. If I cannot get it to work then many others cannot either. Then trying to contact your customer support to solve the problem was in itself problematic. So no you do not get my money and I am still gameless.
blah
To quote one of the answersfrom Keaven Freeman and give my own suggestion here ? :
"For me, the number one problem with PvP-oriented games is Population. Unlike in PvE, there is no magic button we can press to create people on the battlefield."
...why not ?
If there's something I -loved- in games like Unreal Tournament it's those games where I wasn't -just- fighting other players ,but clever bots.
It's something I sorely missed (and requested) in -every- Halo game , being able to add some CPU controlled nasties into the fray. Having fun with both bots (or sims as they called them in Perfect Dark) was -really-really-really fun!
Why people are opposed to the idea I'll never understand.
In Warhammer Online ? Bolster the ranks of severely undermanned forts in the open pvp areas. I recall that, more often than not there were rowing warbands attacking and taking objectives where only a few scattered defenders sat there.
A system (either automated) or dm controlled where they could -actively- toss in a couple of archmages, or chaos warriors to make things more interesting in battles would be a great addition (and I imagine, no more difficult to implement than people make it)
Yes to add a "more bots/fighters button!"
This game had a few major problems within the first year of launch that just hurt it so much, nobody really wants to try it again.
First, you had performance issues for many players. Exceptional lag, disconnects, game crashes, etc.
Second, you had gross imbalance of classes such as Bright Wizards. It was stupid overpowered and the other side would just quit. And when you have a 2-sided faction war, and one side quits, the server dies, they merge it with another, then it dies, and merge it again, and again.
I played both empire and chaos, and it was simply overwhelming to see the differences when you played on both sides. When they announced Land of the Dead, another gear grind for a PvP game, me and most of my guild finally gave up on the game. Looks like most everyone has given up on this game.
I suppose had they done it right at the start with more balanced classes and had true 3-way PvP battles, combined with less performance problems, the game might have done a lot better.