Originally posted by daelnor

Something irked me about WAR's controls, and I never realized what it was until I got into a fight with a Knight of the Blazing Sun while on my Disciple of Khaine.

The friggin fight lasted for like 2 minutes.  That isn't what bothered me though...it was the 1,2,3,4...run back a bit, heal, 1,2,3,4..rinse repeat.

It was hella boring.  I remember thinking...why didn't I feel this irritation in DAOC?

There weren't any brainless global cooldowns ala WoW.  But that isn't what made it cool.  What made it cool was reactionary styles, positionals...being able to queue up moves.....i.e.   you hit your parry reactional, but you could also hit your anytime style immediately after.  What this did was beautiful.   If you parried...you would use the parry style.  If you didn't parry, it would move onto the anytime style.  Whichever style actually hit, then you'd move into the style chain for either the parry style or the anytime style.

Yeah, you basically just re-described why WAR's combat was shallow.  Very little forces you to change from the repetitive 1,2,3-1,2,3 ability rotation, and that's the crux of why WAR's combat is shallow.

Has nothing to do with global cooldowns.

DAOC had a global cooldown.  I only played a month or two, but I'm positive you couldn't mash 1+2+3+4+5 and have five abilities go off at once.

WOW has command queueing nowadays, it just doesn't have it for reactionary abilities like your parry style.   And I just realized why when I re-read your description:  being able to queue up reactionary abilities turns the game into the same sort of repetitive 1,2,3-1,2,3 situation we're both bashing.

As for seeing less games work off an armor stat, and more on actual dodging?  Personally I'm fine with that: I enjoy twitch-skill-heavy games and I enjoy strategy/tactics-skill-heavy games.  But it will be a step towards appealing to a different audience, and it has all sorts of little repurcussions (like removing one of the ways loot/gear can be interesting.)

Bring out Origins!

*ahem* -

Originally posted by aesperus

Yes, Guild Wars did have anti-spiking mechanics...<snip>

<snip>...There is rarely much dynamics when it comes to CC. It's almost always root / snare / stun / disable. Unlike with GW when it's a lot of partials (disable x type of magic, or if target casts in y seconds all similar attacks fail, etc.) most modern MMOs tend to do the vanilla all inclusive CC setup (roots are all treated the same, as are snares / stuns / etc.)

Ah, so it was probably just one specific ability I heard mentioned.  I initially thought it was just an always-on mechanic (like the other two games I mentioned), but I suppose having it as active abilities works too (and adds depth to combat, especially since there was so much variety in how you countered the incoming spike damage.)

GW's CC abilities were definitely some of the better ones.  I enjoyed the Mesmer a lot during the early days of the game.

Just wish GW would've been designed for a larger "deck" of skills.  Playing Battleforge (an RTS, but just like GW heavily inspired by Magic: the Gathering) I was reminded that that was one of my bigger complaints about GW (because BF gives you decks of 15+ cards.)

I understand why the constraints are there, but your options mid-fight are so limited when there's only like 10 total things you can do (move, attack, use an ability).  Even if you didn't get more than 8 slots but each spell had an alternate cast effect (so essentially you equip 8 things, but get 16 different abilities to use.)

GW always felt a little too pre-loaded in terms of decision-making. :/

 Now you're stretching, just because WoW does not offer a viable world PvP option. If it did, you'd be singing a different tune.

 should only have one zone to rvr and the rest zones for training and adventuring , that way there would be always people to participate war between factions.

RvR isn't a dead horse.  It has worked before and can work again.  Unfortunately the people developing these titles don't think past the lemming fest part.

There is no real way I can conceive of to avoid large masses of people at a keep siege...but the keep siege doesn't have to be the end all be all every day event.  I agree with something like smaller multiple objectives...or simply give reasons for people to scout their frontiers and take out intruders. Hell...maybe scale up the defenses if there are too many people present at one keep on the offense, unless several smaller keeps are taken out first.  Discourage mobs of hundreds from sacking one random keep.  Give them a reason to split objectives and take out multiple locations simultaneously.

Give people a reason to farm/level in the high risk areas.  Better loot, better XP...bonuses near guild controlled keeps, etc.

This keeps the area's alive and interesting..there is someone there for the ganker to gank...if the players who would be victims think the risk of getting ganked is worth the rewards.  Then you have reason to have people out hunting the gankers so their guildmates etc can level.

Don't make it a requirement though...just better risk for the reward.

Bah...ah hell....gimme old frontiers in a new game already.

 I suppose DAoC, Planeside and Lineage 2 were myths then?

These games did not have the popularity of WoW, but they certainly did have working RvR. Therefore a working RvR is definitely not a myth. 

What would you say if the next Blizzard game is a three way RvR game between humans, zerg and protoss (yea, yea, I know, now I'm the one stretching). Personally, I would be drooling over the mere idea of such a game.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by tvalentine

RvR kinda sucks imo. I would perfer a more open world where people make their own decisions on who their enemies are. Adding politics and guildvsguild or clanvsclan wars adds much more depth then a RvR war that never ends.

 

Any examples of games where player politics and clan/clan fights were particularly good?

While I dig politics in games, I haven't seen a game with particularly freeform player factions.

Maybe Shadowbane had freeform player factions?  I lost interest so quick I never reached those rumored good parts of the game.  Reminded me of L2 - a game who supposedly has alright PVP but whose designers insanely decided to hide it behind the worst PVE they could create.

Sure. Lineage 2, Shadowbane, EVE online, and AOC off the top of my head. And what exactly is the point of pvp if you are going to be PVEing? RVR is a stupid feature to have in a mmorpg. It seperates 2(or more) halves of the community, most of the time by a language barrier. What good can come from having 2 seperate communities? RVR limits freedoms and gives me the thought of a generic storyline/feature in any mmorpg that has it.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Xasapis

 I suppose DAoC, Planeside and Lineage 2 were myths then?

These games did not have the popularity of WoW, but they certainly did have working RvR. Therefore a working RvR is definitely not a myth. 

What would you say if the next Blizzard game is a three way RvR game between humans, zerg and protoss (yea, yea, I know, now I'm the one stretching). Personally, I would be drooling over the mere idea of such a game.

 

 Lineage 2 has around 60K western subs....

i'm sure he was referring to the past. Where Lineage 2 had somewhere around 2+ Million subscribers at one point.

EDIT: it actually had the record number of subscribers before WoW http://news.softpedia.com/news/World-of-Warcraft-Has-2-million-Subscribers-3220.shtml

 WAR issues certainly do not stem from RvR, quite the opposite actually. The main issues (for me) were the unresponsive combat, the fixation on scenarios (aka battlegrounds) and the underdeveloped end game open world PvP.

A good portion of the people that initially joined WAR did so for the RvR as their primary reason (please correct me if I'm mistaken). Even if that's nowhere near WoW's numbers, that is still a considerable amount of people looking for an RvR game.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by tvalentine

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Xasapis

 I suppose DAoC, Planeside and Lineage 2 were myths then?

These games did not have the popularity of WoW, but they certainly did have working RvR. Therefore a working RvR is definitely not a myth. 

What would you say if the next Blizzard game is a three way RvR game between humans, zerg and protoss (yea, yea, I know, now I'm the one stretching). Personally, I would be drooling over the mere idea of such a game.

 

 Lineage 2 has around 60K western subs....

 

i'm sure he was referring to the past. Where Lineage 2 had somewhere around 2+ Million subscribers at one point.

 

Nope they never had. I referred to the WESTERN players. You know the one sub where you have to pay 180 hard dollars each year just to play it, not the eastern "free internet café counts".

 

read my edit. They had the record before WoW when WoW was at 2 million. I dont know how many people used internet cafes and neither do you, so the point is moot. The real point is that there was more then 2 million unique users logging on all over the world.

Originally posted by Wolfenpride

Instances/battlegrounds have no place in rvr whatsoever

WAR is proof of that.

Beyond that, everything about DAoC's RvR system was perfect as far as im concerned.

That is, during the SI-era, it was near perfect.

WAR was doomed from it's core set up.  You CAN'T have a game like that without having an odd faction to offset the inevitible conclusion of one side getting stronger than the others.

Also...their RvR was poorly thought out because it was patched in rather than being built in from the core.

Another mistake is making it so that you HAVE to RvR to play the game.  Before newer games came out and before the devs lost their minds and catered to the "I want it now without effort" crowd DAOC had a good mix of PVE and RvR...though their PvE would never cut it in todays market.

RvR with a decent faction set up and less focus on making 200 people gang up to take a keep by lag force can go a long way.  Especially if there is plenty of pve stuff to do also (that doesn't suck.)

I think someone said it well earlier when they said something along the lines of focusing on smaller battles that all together created the war.  Do you want an epic mass scale all out war once in awhile? Sure.  Do you want it so that if you didn't bring 200+ with you every single day that you should go home? Nah.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Xasapis

 WAR issues certainly do not stem from RvR, quite the opposite actually. The main issues (for me) were the unresponsive combat, the fixation on scenarios (aka battlegrounds) and the underdeveloped end game open world PvP.

A good portion of the people that initially joined WAR did so for the RvR as their primary reason (please correct me if I'm mistaken). Even if that's nowhere near WoW's numbers, that is still a considerable amount of people looking for an RvR game.

 

While I would agree that the main issue was the unresponsive combat and RvR mechanics, most forums have zillion of complaints about the faction imbalance in the game.

Like I said: world pvp  = biggest healed up DPS group wins...

Whether that comes from levels, gear, sheer number or overpowered classes or ... just "joining the winning side faction"....

It is an uncontrolled mess without ANY tools to view the much needed data to do something about it.

Now we get into different subject matter.  I had no idea this thread would still be around a couple days later.  And no one has flamed each other into Mod-bans yet!

Anyway..broaching this newer area of conversation...what kinds of alterations to the typical group make up/skill combos could help alleviate some of this?  You can never completely get rid of that..I mean, if you come to a fight with 3 friends and some slingshot, and I bring hand grenades, AR15's and a tank...you're not gonna win.

But..what if there weren't things like massive group heals?  What if heals were only line of sight single target...maybe some aoe heals that healed EVERYTHING in its radius? things like that.  Would that change the dynamics much?  Pro's? Con's?

Originally posted by tvalentine

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by tvalentine

RvR kinda sucks imo. I would perfer a more open world where people make their own decisions on who their enemies are. Adding politics and guildvsguild or clanvsclan wars adds much more depth then a RvR war that never ends.

 

Any examples of games where player politics and clan/clan fights were particularly good?

While I dig politics in games, I haven't seen a game with particularly freeform player factions.

Maybe Shadowbane had freeform player factions?  I lost interest so quick I never reached those rumored good parts of the game.  Reminded me of L2 - a game who supposedly has alright PVP but whose designers insanely decided to hide it behind the worst PVE they could create.

 

Sure. Lineage 2, Shadowbane, EVE online, and AOC off the top of my head. And what exactly is the point of pvp if you are going to be PVEing? RVR is a stupid feature to have in a mmorpg. It seperates 2(or more) halves of the community, most of the time by a language barrier. What good can come from having 2 seperate communities? RVR limits freedoms and gives me the thought of a generic storyline/feature in any mmorpg that has it.

Okay so you don't like RvR, however the RvR that I played during DAoC-SI was the best gaming experience I ever had. ( including any single player, multiplayer or mmo game )

People would start roleplaying without realising it, the enemy had invaded, we would stop our PVE raid halfway, to go defend our keeps and our relic, those filthy mids or hibs were trying to steal our relic, death to them all ! ( yah I played albion, on Bors, the only server where albs were outnumbered :p )

We formed bonds, to this day many of us still keep in touch with our guild from DAoC ( hey Ara Veritas :p ).

ToA and NF killed it, together with WoW ( little did we know that WoW would become a raid game, many of us thought it would be similar to DAoC with Horde vs Alliance, we were mistaken ).

But hey, to each their own.