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WAR: Jeff Hickman Interview Part Two - Communication, Scenarios and More
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood sat down last week with Mythic Entertainment's Jeff Hickman to talk a little bit more about WAR. In this second part of the interview, Jeff and Jon talk about communication in-game, scenarios and more.
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Jon's Question:
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Have you thought about using a voice service in scenarios (and elsewhere) in the game? |
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Jeff's Answer:
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“The answer to your question is yes,” he said, “there has been a lot of thought about it. We were walking down the road firmly about two years ago of putting voice into our game and we stepped back from that because as we started to analyze what it would mean for our game and the problems that could come from that, we actually backtracked.” “That doesn’t mean we won’t do it,” he continued. “We do talk about it. It’s something that has a lot of interest to me, but I’m not sure if we’re ever going to do it, we’ll just have to see.” He went on to tell me not to worry, that it’s on his list of things to do. |
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Jon's Question:
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How are you planning to address communication issues in both scenarios and open world RvR play? When asking the question, I referenced the Battlefield series which makes use of quick-choice orders and phrases that help in communication). |
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Jeff's Answer:
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Jeff told me that putting in RvR Strategic Messaging or Strategic Commands is something that they’ve been thinking about. He actually told me that this idea is higher up on his list of things to do (which he told me are actually on a white board in his office) than the voice chat that we talked about previously. “We talk about a lot of different ways of doing that, whether we give it to everybody or we give it to warband leaders, or you earn it and have to unlock it. We talk about all sorts of different stuff. We talk about things like quick chat options like you’re talking about. We talk about being able to place waypoints on your map so other players can see them… We talk about a lot of things.” “Will we ever do that? I don’t know. I think it’s pretty important for our game, seeing as how it’s centered around RvR and communication in RvR is just hard sometimes. It’s so frantic and there are so many people out there.” “So,” he said to conclude the question, “the answer to your question is yes. It’s something we’ve been thinking about for a while. It’s just not one of those things that made it in.” |
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Jon's Question:
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Turning to PQs: I find that even on a high population server, I’ll often come across PQs that are empty. Is there any thought to how that is going to be resolved, if at all? |
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Jeff's Answer:
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“We’ve been talking about this since we invented PQs two years ago. The way I look at it is that our implementation of PQs is truly a new invention for MMOs and as we invented them, we looked at them and said, ‘ok we think this is the right way’. No one has done this before, we’re not building off of something someone else has done and so we’re kind of experimenting.”
“I think we did a really great experiment,” he continued. “I think it really is awesome and foundational to the game. I can tell you a number of things: We watch them very closely. We can modify PQs… In fact, we’ve already done modifications to PQs just before we went live to make sure they were rewarding enough to the number of players that were going to go through them. We’ll modify them if the population gets too low. We talk about things like if there’s no one around… We talk about all this stuff.” “We never actually intended for PQs to be hugely populated and overrun with people. We actually intended them to be destination points as much as places you can wander into. It’s like: you walk into a chapter. There are three PQs. In general, during peak play times, you go into a chapter, there’s going to be people in one of those PQs.” “What we found,” he continued, “in Dark Age of Camelot and Ultima Online (these are games that are old, old, old games) there are still people in the low level areas. New people, people re-rolling, people coming through the game, so for months and years to come, we will have a constant stream of players rolling and going up through the ranks. What you’ll find is that you go into an area and there’ll be some people there… multiple people generally, doing PQs. Yes, some of the time you’re going to run into a PQ and there won’t be anyone there. Run to another one.” “That’s one of the reasons we put the open grouping system in; so you can immediately from a chapter hub pull open your open party window, see who’s in PQs and get to that PQ so you can hook up with other people right away.” “The game,” he said, “is about community, the game is about guilds, the game is about friends. PQs are an opportunity for you to decide you’re going to go to a destination.” “I see people picking at that [the original question], and I understand, I know exactly where you’re coming from and it’s not that I disagree. I just think that there are a lot of different ways to experience PQs. It’s like; Why did we make the first stage of PQs so easy? Why did we do that? Because we intended it to be there for solo players. We never intended the solo player to be able to go all the way though from stage one to stage three in a PQ. The loot chest at the end of the PQ is a special reward. The standard reward is your influence reward.” “Having said all of that,” he continued by way of conclusion, “of course we’re looking at this. In the future we’ve talked about advanced types of PQs that do different things depending on how many people are there and that kind of stuff, but we’ll see how that comes out in the future? |
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Jon's Question:
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Are you finding that there are a large number of players who aren’t understanding that there are types of advancement (influence, renown, etc) that go beyond simple leveling from rank to rank? |
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Jeff's Answer:
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By way of answering this question, Jeff told me that this, like any new game, is going to take players a while to learn. As people move through they game, they’re learning this and he expects that as the game begins to age, it will all become just natural to the players. Jeff gave me the example of how Ranking vs. Renown Ranking plays into armor sets. This has resulted in players complaining that RvR Renown gear is too weak. When the team went to investigate this issue closely, they noticed that there was a bit of a mis-interpretation of the design.
The renown gear isn’t meant to be the strongest equipment in the game (as many of those players were supposing). It’s there to make sure that players who advance solely through RvR and don’t do quests have access to gear that is similar to what a PvE player would get. That being said, at the top of each tier in the game there is an RvR armor set of those players that just haven’t really been discovered yet. This armor is actually the most powerful stuff you can get for the tier. In Tier One, for example, it’s a pair of boots and a breastplate. The boots, it seems, drop from enemy players in open world RvR areas, while the breastplate drops from Battlefield Objective sergeants. Putting those together gives you the best set in Tier One. In Teir Two, boots drop from enemy players, gloves are bought from a Renown Merchant and breastplates drop from Keep Lords. Jeff told me that in the end, this really comes down to players not yet having discovered en masse that these things exist (in fact, knowing this, it actually somewhat addresses the issue of fewer people participating in open world RvR thinking that the rewards aren’t great enough). |
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Jon's Question:
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In scenario play, do you plan to make it more clear as to how players specifically gain renown points during scenarios and how points are gained toward the 500 win point? |
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Jeff's Answer:
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“In general there are two ways that you earn renown. You earn it from killing enemy players or participating in kills, and you earn it from healing. The renown is gained, whether from killing people or healing people, is shared within your group (a certain split of it) so participating with your group earns you renown. It really is that straightforward.” In PvE, Jeff told me, they lock the Mob (whoever tags it gets the XP) in RvR, not so much. In terms of gaining points toward the win in scenarios, they are different in every scenario. In almost every scenario, killing enemy payers earns you points. They are then modified by other things (flags, murder balls, etc). Jeff and I also talked a little bit about the idea of making the specific objectives a little bit more clear. While right now, you can look at a small overview of the way that a scenario works, it doesn’t cover the specifics and players are often left wondering about how specifically their points are earned. Jeff told me that while they hadn’t thought about doing that in the past, it’s something that they were going to look into. |
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Jon's Question:
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What do you say to people who say that WAR is “graphically inferior?” |
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Jeff's Answer:
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“The art style on our game, and the things that we chose to do, we chose on purpose, and we chose for a number of different reasons. Some have to do with how Warhammer looks. Games Workshop looks like this and we had to. It’s not that we didn’t want to, it’s what Warhammer is.” We talked about those folks out there who say that the game doesn’t look “real” enough. Jeff told me that that wasn’t what they were going for. They were going for a fantasy look. “If you don’t like it,” he said in an honest and genuine sounding tone of voice (and not in the snarky tone that the words COULD be interpreted in, “then sorry, you don’t like it. Go play a photo-realistic game.” “Other decisions,” he said, going back to the original question,“ had to do with the number of polygons we wanted to have on the screen. This was a big deal for us. We think about RvR in everything that we do. When we start thinking about putting a hundred players or two hundred players on the screen at the same time, we have to think a lot about that stuff.” Moving on to yet another aspect of the question: “Our priority was performance, RvR, and giving you a good look. We know that you can turn on Anti-Aliasing and AF on your video card and I know that a lot of people don’t want to do that. They want to leave it application sensitive and so we’re looking into that. We’re looking at being able to turn it on and off within the product itself, but I think the game looks great.” He also told me that they are also looking at making gamma a choice in-game. |
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Lots of good answers that people have been asking about. Pretty much everything makes sense. :)
dont know when this was conducted but there is no answer to the area/chapter chat being too small to be adequate. i wonder if this simply wasnt an issue when he was interviewed or whether he just avoided it. maybe mmorpg failed at asking, please, stradden, can you pester him about this issue, i think we'd all love an answer on that subject.
overall a pretty darn good interview tho :) good to see and i hope more come along soon!
dont know when this was conducted but there is no answer to the area/chapter chat being too small to be adequate. i wonder if this simply wasnt an issue when he was interviewed or whether he just avoided it. maybe mmorpg failed at asking, please, stradden, can you pester him about this issue, i think we'd all love an answer on that subject.
overall a pretty darn good interview tho :) good to see and i hope more come along soon!
hahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha
Ahum..
AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
Anyways, good interview. I was also hoping for a awnser about the regional chat thingy. To bad it isn't in ;)
PQ's are awesome. My only problem with them is when I started headstart there were tons of people doing them. But my server was decidedly more Destro than Order to the point that Order was getting smashed consistently. So I rerolled on a more even server, and now after having missed the initial wave of players I often find myself alone at the pq's. It's kind of a bummer because I do enjoy the pq's quite a bit.
Also in the last week the number of players I have seen has dropped dramatically. I'm not sure what this means, if anything. I'm playing at the same time as I was before....
Hopefully they will have free transfers if server pops get too low. I know this is probably early to be talking about this, but playing by yourself is kinda boring and you can't fully participate in all the game has to offer.
Also I wish he would have talked a bit on the gold spammer issue. A guy I reported yesterday morning around 7 am pacific time was spamming me when I came home from work around midnight, so someone either isn't doing his job or the system of reporting is not working as intended.
Renown Gear is freaking terrible. The stats on the gear sets are all messed up, and they tried to compensate by allowing Talisman slots. The bottom line is that if you want decent gear in this game, forget the renown gear trash. Instead plan on grinding PQ's, PVE questing, and the rare win you might get in an RVR keep raid.
PQ's are ghost towns because usually there are only 1-5 people playing them, and they can't defeat the champion or boss mobs in Stage II/III. Instead they grind the Kill 50, 125, 300, etc mobs for Stage I and then let the PQ reset. Making the PQ mobs in stage II/III champion levels was a mistake IMHO.
This guy is out of touch with his playerbase, and it shows in this interview. If people want grinds, there's no reason to leave WOW.
PQs are awesome. They're obviously the best when in a group but at least one of the three is ususally soloable so I don't know why people would complain about that. Plus you get influence so even if i'm doing a PQ by myself or even if I can't get to the final stage it's still fun and worth it.... people just like to complain but i think there is little wrong with it.
The renown gear isn’t meant to be the strongest equipment in the game (as many of those players were supposing). It’s there to make sure that players who advance solely through RvR and don’t do quests have access to gear that is similar to what a PvE player would get.
This seems to be an incorrect statement. For tier 1 there are several pieces of equipment not attainable with renown rank. These pieces include a cloak, a helm, main armor, shoulders etc. There items are attainable for tier 1 from PvE.
So, for people like me, who want to level solely through RvR, wouldnt it be nice to have such gear made attainable from renown and RvR mobs/players?
That being said, at the top of each tier in the game there is an RvR armor set of those players that just haven’t really been discovered yet. This armor is actually the most powerful stuff you can get for the tier.
This seems to be another incorrect statement. My main (a black orc named kruunk) had far superior equipment to this gear at level 11. You can do a character search on him now, he is level 13 with mostly level 11 gear. Kruunk, black orc, red eye mountain. This shows that PvE gear is far superior to renown gear.
Another problem with renown gear is how it is attained and the requirements to wear it. Mostly my characters are 1 level apart when comparing level to renown rank. Most renown gear requires several levels higher in level than renown gear to wear. Experience gain from world RvR is slow. This forces you to run scenarios to advance. In tier 2 this isnt so bad. In tier 1, having a bunch of no geared level 1-6s pretty much guarantees a loss. This is mainly because there is no real renown gear for tier 1 and the starting gear is nonexistent.
In closing, all i ask for is three things.
1. Equivalent gear for RvR players who do not want to quest or grind PQs.
If you force me to PvE to gain gear, your defeating my reason for playing the game.
2. Decent rate of advancement for RvR players in World RvR.
Now I am not asking for equivalence with PvE. I just want a decent ammount of XP gain.
3. A method of turning your experience gain off.
I would like to hit to cap for each tier, then sit there for a bit and enjoy the RvR before advancing beyond the tier.
Sure has been a lot of interviews with them...not that i think they are trying to spin things or whatever.
Maybe someday they will have some useful information, instead of the attitude they keep putting out. Really if they can't handle people saying things they don't like, they need to find a new line of work.
Attitude? I don't see an attitude.
I think the problem comes down to not having a central forum that they pay attention to. I know about Warhammer Alliance but do they watch this constantly? Are forums a good way to stay in touch with the community? Or is it a place for people to whine and complain?
Maybe a document with requests for fixes and/or ideas from the community at log-in. That way you get something from the whole community. Just some ideas.
I myself like to RvR and PVE. All the good armor I have found has come from PVE drops or from the Auction. PQ's are a challenge at part 2 and impossible at part 3 when alone. JMHO.
Well the funny thing is that at the moment almost the entire playerbase is camping inside warcamps like mindless zombies waiting for their next scenario to pop-up!
After chapter 6 all PQ's are deserted. Hardly anyone is doing them anymore.
RvR lakes are deserted. Hardly anyone botheres to do any largescale RvR, because there isn't any incentive.
Regular quests are hardly being done anymore. Especially from end Tier2 and up. Because the XP rewards of these quests are the exact same as the Rank1 and Rank10 quests. So questing becomes a boring, unfeasable grind.
So what you got at the moment isn't Warhammer Online, but Scenarios Online.
I would love to hear someone from Mythic about what they going to do about this? I hardly think they intended for people to perma camp warcamps and doing scenarios only! Day after day after day!
As that's what is basically going on right now. The XP and Renown you get through Scenarios is just insane, compared to the rest of the game.
Cheers
I haven't seen any issues with population, aside from the basic spreading out of players.
As for people complaining about PQs, I think what many haven't come to realize just from trying out the different PQs in each chapter is that of the three, there is always one that is much easier than the other two during Phase 2/3 (you can complete these with 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 dpsing). Generally, that's the one everyone is doing because they realize it's easier and stick with it. Location is also a factor... the PQs right next to a town tend to be the most run, even if they're harder than others in the same chapter.
Also, if you are having trouble finding people, have you tried traveling between the different pairings to see which ones are popular?
I think WAR, more than any other game, tends to be a bit more divided. Not only are there three different areas to level/PQ in, you move on from one area to the next fairly quickly, so people get spread out. It definitely can be a problem if you don't keep up with the pack (or level beyond it), but there's nothing stopping you from grabbing friends to help with the PQs.
Good interview. I wish he would have addressed the chat interface and memory leakage problems. Otherwise, it was a good interview.
"In general there are two ways that you earn renown. You earn it from killing enemy players or participating in kills, and you earn it from healing. The renown is gained, whether from killing people or healing people, is shared within your group (a certain split of it) so participating with your group earns you renown. It really is that straightforward."
So essentially in the T2 scenarios (I haven't played any T3 yet), there is absolutely no point in flag capturing or carrying the thing (except for the renown points gained for killing the dude in order to take the thing). Yet, these acts are the keys to winning those scenarios!
Well, at least his comment is consistent with my play experience (no matter how much I disagree with it). I had a half dozen Phoenix Gate scenarios Monday night where I was the only person successful in taking the Destro flag (unaccompanied) and was generally responsible for 250+ points per round. And I consistently placed in the bottom 3 for renown earned.
So I guess I'll let someone else be the team player... just so I can try to catch up with my guildmates who are already a couple of renown ranks higher. Does that seem wrong to anyone?
dont know when this was conducted but there is no answer to the area/chapter chat being too small to be adequate. i wonder if this simply wasnt an issue when he was interviewed or whether he just avoided it. maybe mmorpg failed at asking, please, stradden, can you pester him about this issue, i think we'd all love an answer on that subject.
overall a pretty darn good interview tho :) good to see and i hope more come along soon!
Whats nice is our guild just uses Vent. So chat is no problems with us. :)
My guild has vent too, but what about PUGs in scenarios etc?
What the heck is he talking about with regard to potential problems that in-game voicechat would introduce?
In LOTRO, which I still play (prepaid life), the in-game voicechat is a GODSEND for PUGs, even if some folks in the group or raid can only listen-in with no mic.
In LOTRO PvP in the Ettenmoors, it was a MUST in the 24-player raids, and toggling it on was required of all participants. The raid leader could usually enforce no-chatty discipline without a problem. It was great.
I really dislike how WAR does not have this feature, and it really gimps your ability to be effective in a PUG!
Also, I got to know people a little better via PUGs because we could actually converse.
I hope they introduce it in the game.
I see some important things from this enterview (english is not my first language, sorry in advance):
- First, they seem to follow what the community demands or point out as problems. Lets keep sending feedback.
- They are evaluating in-voice system. Which is a good thing. At least, they are considering it. I think it will help a lot to PUGs and such.
- They know they need to improve the chat system.
- They admit they are experimenting with something new: PQs. They point out something important thing too: while low tiers will have few players, it will have some. It will be their responsible (the players) to look around for others to complete PQs. And if there is no one else around, PQs werent though to be finished by soloers. Which makes sense to me. I know many wont agree. Anyway, in time, I think we will see that T1, T2 and T3 PQs are non important... nothing that they give you, prevails during more than a few ranks.
But even when this was the initial conecption for PQs and the way tehy understand it will work... they are looking into this and considering advanced PQs that do different things depending on how many people are there and that kind of stuff. This may be a very good solution... PQs adjusting themselves depending how many people participate in them... nice.
But they dont say things like "we will fix all tomorrow"... I think Mythic keep trying to not mislead us.
attitude rofl?
For your first section, I agree it would be nice, but it would enable it so that players don't have to go out and see the rest of the world. While I know they want the playerbase to be happy, I'm fairly certain a large number of designers want the players to see what they did.
On that second section, I believe the Armor Set he is referring to is one of those sets the Tome of Knowledge set unlocks. You get the piece of armor, it has a set (usually 1-2-3 pieces that go with it) and by collecting them all you get titles and other rewards.
This armor is actually the most powerful stuff you can get for the tier.
I'm interpreting here, but I think it was "these armor pieces are the most powerful you can get for that tier" those two just happen to be a set, so he uses the term Armor.
Ultimately i've found "best" gear happens to be dependent on what the player wants to do.
my armor is different from the other swordmasters in my guild, and we all seem to do just fine in RvR. Not once have I run up to an enemy player and gone: "oh, he has that gear, I can't kill him"
I'm not sure why they wouldn't introduce voice chat in WAR, but they should have. In DAoC, you usually could issue commands on the battlefield. In WAR, the combat is too frantic to type. If you're typing, you're not giving 100% to the fight, wich is needed most of the time to win. As for battlefield commands, I could care less about them. I usually am against voice chat, because I am a fast typer and an older gamer who believes chat is sufficient. However, WAR is slowly changing my opinion on the necessity of voice communication in modern day RvR. Battlefield commands are just another button to push that should be an ability instead.
As for PQ's, he is wrong. There isn't always a group somewhere in your Tier doing a PQ. There are usually stragglers grinding influence in various PQ's, but never enough to actually beat the Hero. I've been playing since release, in all 3 zones and on mutliple characters. He just isn't getting it with PQ's. PQ's really need to scale to the amount of people and levels in the area. For example, in DAoC there are instant dungeons that scale according to how many people are in the group and their levels. I understand that PQ's are new to the genre and when things are new, you make mistakes. Perhaps there is a reason for instances in other games; maybe I am starting to see their value. Of course, PQ's couldn't have the same loot available to a smaller group as to a larger group, because the reward would be greather than the risk.
As for RvR, he is underestimating what players find rewarding. A small chance of getting a nice piece of loot isn't rewarding for most people anymore. People want xp and reknown experience as well. The xp is dependant on fighting other players, as it should be, but players aren't really playing in those areas. In my experience on Phoenix Throne, Order side, when we do manage to get an Order warband together, Destruction soon joins the fray with more people and we end up not getting any xp anyways, just farmed. You need to kill an oponent in RvR to get reknown, which may or may not happen depending on numbers and the skill of the players involved. You get reknown for taking and defending an objective, but not enough to compete with scenarios. The key to bringing RvR to our servers is by 1) making the RvR lakes accessible from any Rally Master; and 2) Increase the reknown gain by taking objectives.
Lastly, we have the graphics debate. I appreciate the artistic value of the graphics and I like it. The technical value of the graphics is subpar for this day and age, but that's what the developer was aiming for and I am actually okay with this. What I am not okay with is the lag that I get in some scenarios that the subpar graphics is supposed to prevent. I believe it is lag that is making our Morale abilities not work, sending the message "Abiility Not Ready," even though it is lit up and actually ready.
About Me: I love WAR, even in its current state and will be a recurring subscriber. However, I can be objective and can point out flaws as I see them. WAR is the first game in years to actually grab me, third only to SWG and DAoC.
I personally want more of an incentive to engage in RvR that goes way beyond trivial crap like gaining exp, renown points or loot. Why is everyone so bloody obsessed with gaining levels? What about actually having a decent reason to fight over an objective. Everyone is so utterly obsessed with "leveling up their toon" that no-one gives a shit about the actual war in Warhammer. Who cares if I get more or less exp for doing something? The little rewards we get are just side effects of our actions. Everyone goes up levels anyway and it doesnt make the game more fun to play. All that happens is that you just gain access to the next area.
I really dont think the whole level-chasing mentality is ever going to change in this game because essentially thats all this game seems to be about. Its all about rewards in the form of level progression. Everything in the game is just a themepark ride where everyone can watch their own character climb the inevitable ladder along with everyone else. It doesnt matter if you win or lose in this game because you will ALWAYS go up levels no matter what.
Hopefully when the chat system gets fixed so everyone in their respective realm can talk to each other we might start seeing the RvR areas getting used more. Hopefully each realm might actually start acting more like a realm rather than a gibbering horde of narcisistic level grinding phat loot farmers.
Just letting you know that those reasons to RvR (excluding exp, renown points, loot) are already there, you just havn't discovered them. Investigate more, you will see what you are contributing to besides yourself.
I agree with what most poeple said here. PQs are a bit of failure. The first few were ok since they were new and I was able to find people to do them but later on they are all deserted...although I am on a low/low server. But thats the point they require a Full/Full server to even be possible. On top of that they are all the same. Kill 200 regular mobs. kill 50 champions. Kill 1+ heros. And these numbers just keep growing and growing. Not engaging at all.
I'd like to comment on the graphics part though. I don't know I think the art direction and art is fairly bland. Most notable the lighting and particle effects. Tkae this WOW screenshot of fire from an old engine
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/15/view/screens/house/4/display/11706
Now WAR's version of fire
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/239/view/screens/house/6/display/8364
WOW simply blows it away. Granted that is fire from the new expansion but WOW is still not even close to as taxing as WAR and it's lighting/particle/shader system blow it out of the water. I think WAR graphics are passable but everything is so flat and dull and it still lags on my just built 2000$ PC.
Did you even read the interview.. PQ's are designed ...DESIGNED with group content in mind. He stated they know some of them can be and will be empty....and you admit you are on a new low/low server.
What do you want the PQs to be? Give us an example.
{ Mod Edit }
I like how as far as graphics go he says they went for performance and optimization. WAR is hands down the most unoptimized game in existence. It looked like crap on my computer and played like crap.
The "most unoptimized game in existence" is hyperbole. Your retired from WAR? So you bought a retail copy, then retired in less then 2 weeks of launch? And did not even bother to finish the free month? I'm just curious...
It's not often you see a developer admit 'This is an experiment. We don't know, we're figuring it out as we go." Most of the time it's just hype and more hype about how great their new innovations are, I like how Mythic says that they're working on stuff. They've shown in the past that they mean it when they saw they're working on things, so I believe them when they say they're working on chat and PQ balance and such. They earned that.
I actually wish Mr. Hickman actually read these forums. He kinda fudged the truth a little bit in the talk about the upper tier rvr gear. I was actually one of the first to unlock the full set in t2, boots, breastplate and gloves I think it was, you can find it on wardb. The set, for level 21 is absolutely pathetic. It has stats that chosen can not use and much lower stats than any green random drop item for that level. Not to mention comparing it to the gear that can be gotten from grinding pqs. For a game that is supposed to be all about the war they sure want to force you out of the war so you can be competitive which is a sad sad thing and the only bad thing about war in general.
Are the sets nice? meh, the best part of the sets is that they give you a tome unlock and a title, other than that pure vendor trash.
Now, the RVR gear USED to be on par with the PVE gear but that is no longer the case. What happened was Mythic did a kneejerk reaction to a problem. This being that at the end of t1 players at rank 11 were running to t2 keeps to buy gear meant for t2 and using it in t1. This Mythic promised to fix. By fixing it was an all around nerf to all the rvr gear through all the tiers (at least that I have seen 1,2, and 3) Rank 28 renown rank 28 here I have enough renown to buy rank 35 gear. Desperately needs a fix if therei s going to be any longevity to this game.
hmm is there actually anyone that would aim to collect a set of tier1 items when the leveling speed is so fast and easy most wont even bother to look at t3 stuff ?
I agree with guillermo197 regarding over valuated scenarios. Ok, a lot of times I like them, they are fun, ... but they get insanely lot xp so I ended many times doing scenarios also only for xp (even if I would prefer doing questing), because I wanted next level much faster.
Basically, he just explianed why pugs in scenarios suck so bad. People complain about order always getting rolled. Well im here to tell you, on ironrock, its dead even, cause destruction are a bunch of selfish bastards who only care about their kill count and cant work together.
In mourkains temple(spelling is prob wrong), if we dont have a group of players who are guilded, or in my case, a group of me and 4 friends on skype, we lose. Because what you have is people running in by themselves, just randomly killing people. Noone even attempts to try to work together to klill the guy with the artifact. And the reason is, u get no renown from taking the artifact, or from capturing the flag, or from capping a spot. Now if people stopped and realized that the winner of the scenario gets 600 friggin renown, at least in tier 2, and thats more than u get from killing the whole damn time, they might try to be a team player.
But regardless, people will never be team players unless they think they are getting rewarded. So i say make the objectives give renown bonuses. When you cap something give a bonus to that player.
And as far as open field RVR, there has got to be an xp bonus added into capturing BOs. The renown bonus is nice, but the xp i shit. Im getting 8k-11k xp for a win in a scenario. I get only what i get from killing the guards even if i take ever friggin BO on the map. Also, there is no incentive to hold BOs as u dont get any renown for holding them or XP. What the hell were the devs thinking. it makes more sense to let the enemy turn the BOs, so in 15 mins, u have a chance to turn them. Sure, u get the contribution tot he campaign, but again, people are selfish, they want xp.
Simple fixes to the dead open field RVR:
add xp for defedning BOs and keeps
add renown for defending keeps and BOs
fix the god aweful chat system that is all white
Raise the drop rate of items, i may run 2 scenarios without seeing a single drop, and i almost never see them in open RVR, prob cause noone wants to group cause the renown is so much better solo.
Did you even read the interview.. PQ's are designed ...DESIGNED with group content in mind. He stated they know some of them can be and will be empty....and you admit you are on a new low/low server.
What do you want the PQs to be? Give us an example.
{ Mod Edit }
When did I say they shouldn't be group content? The problem is they are boring and they are a major part of all the PVE content. I would much rather have a keep capture/ dungeon crawl of some sort than the grind fest kill 1000s of mobs that PQs are now. And they should be just a cool diversion here and there not a major part of the PvE experience, similar to something like a WOW dungeon.
Ussually if I'm not RvRing or doing scenarios I just want to go and solo some PvE content. If I can get a group to do something all the better. The problem is that finsihing PQs seems to be taken into account when setting the XP curves and most of the PVE content is PQs. Its almost like Mythic expected you to do all the PQs all the time and finish off all your influnce all the time for all 3 match ups. So now I'm forced to solo kill 100s of mobs over and over and over if I can't get a group.
Good interview, good answers.
Another thing i thought of today is the complaint of how bad the RVR gear is, especially the set pieces. I agree, and whats crazy is that in beta(started in aug of 07)u used to get the best loot in the game from RVR. Hell people frequently dropped purple loot in teir 1 RVR.
Also, the RVR gear you got took a little more effort, but it was purple in tier 1, and it was a whole set, not just a few pieces. there was also alot more gold and blue bags from PQs. Maybe 1 in 30 drop a gold bag in tier 2, and an 1 in 15 drop a blue. Used to be they all droped a blue in tier 2.
Also, there was no useless white rewards, esp not from tier 2 quests. But back then, the PVE quests didnt give as much xp, and the RVR quests gave like 4k even in tier 1, lol.
Anyway, i just dont understand why in an RVR game, the best RVR gear is not a reward for rank. Why its a random chance drop is beyond me, and on top of that, it sucks. Yeah some of teh bonuses are very nice, like raising an abilty by 2 lvls, but i have done almost nothing but RVR on all 3 of my toons(20, 18, 15) and havent gotten a single piece excpet the purchased renown reward from tier 2. I guess the fact that keeps rarley turn has something to do with it. but still. What good is it if noone sees it.
Grinding out those renown ranks, which starts to take much longer in tier 2, should be worth something on its own. I personally have grown to hate PQs, they take far to long to max out for being so low. I can understand grinding for hours on end at the max lvl, but not at this lvl.
All this complaining and i actually like the game.....just imagine what the people on the fence feel.
Have to agree here, very definitely needs a look at the rewards for scenarios vs the rewards for open world RVR...the whole idea behind Warhammer...Realm vs Realm is trademarked if I recall. Scenario dwelling is not. :P
I was hoping for some large epic battles out in the game world not....being cooped up in a game instance.. running flags all day.
Cend
Unfortunately..the mindthink that...the endgame is the only fun part..seems to be here to stay. Highly doubt the Mythic Devs can do anything about that.
That comes from other games that encourage that sort of thinking...and now its ingrained. "beat the game in 4 days" "beat the game in 24 hours"...etc. Game Devs might as well not spend all that time putting content in ..these sorts of players just bypass it in the great race to the end.
Thats how folks play today...not gonna change now.
Cend
******talking about the above post*******
U are absolutly right, i hate it, but your right. I for one havent done this in WAR. Ive got 3 characters im playing and have been taking my time. Got a good group of about 4 of us that havent guilded up and we are just playing whatever is needed at the time. We have been doing PQs, RVR, and regular quests, been alot of fun. But with only 4 of us, were getting to the point that PQs cant be finished due to lord bosses, or just having to kill to many champs and running out of time.
Maybe we'll get lucky and find a guild who enjoys this too. I will say this, right now the order owns both keeps in the chaos pairing and im looking forward to getting home tonight and trying to rally enouhg people together to take it back........its doubtful i can pull enough out of from scenario grinding, but capturing keeps is alot of fun, even if it dosnt award that much xp and renown compared to scenarios.
Lol if the Renown Set items are good or "powerfull" then i am Jesus. Sorry but 5 points from all stats ain't good.
Graphics ..one, two hunderds of players? This will never happen. They should have up'ed the graphics. Lol then telling PLAYERS that DONT like the way the game looks.. instead of saying ANYTHING else to at least TELL you what OTHER great things War has.. he just says .. then LEAVE! Go play another MMO..
Sorry Jeff your NOT World of Warcraft that can afford to tell players if you dont like it leave. Servers are getting less and less. Its a nice game just dont have the .. thing to keep you in it.. RVR dont just read about .. log on to the HIGHEST server and go look for your self. EMPTY. NO one NO ONE talk in the game even on the highest pop server. Just log in at see for your self. I really wish it was like in beta. RVR was PACKED scenariors were a after thought .. man it was a blast. no RVR is like 4-8 people just empty..
And I think it was how Mythic assumed things were going: RvR anywhere (they say WAR is everywhere), with the occasional scenario for fun. Today, however, Warhammer reminds me so much of running the same BGs over and over and over again in WoW. This makes me so sad, because Warhammer has so much to offer. Yet all players care about is getting max RP/XP per minute. Then again Mythic should have forseen it. And take proper action. Thus as making RvR and PQs equally rewarding. Every sphere (PQ, scenario, RvR, questing) should be EQUALLY rewarding.
Unfortunately..the mindthink that...the endgame is the only fun part..seems to be here to stay. Highly doubt the Mythic Devs can do anything about that.
That comes from other games that encourage that sort of thinking...and now its ingrained. "beat the game in 4 days" "beat the game in 24 hours"...etc. Game Devs might as well not spend all that time putting content in ..these sorts of players just bypass it in the great race to the end.
Thats how folks play today...not gonna change now.
Cend
Yeah you're right actually. The devs really shouldnt have wasted their time putting all of that content into the game because its ALL A LOAD OF BORING SHIT! I've killed a billion dull unimpressive mobs with zero AI before in every other mmo and it was the same in all of them too. Get a crappy meaningless quest, grind the numbers up by repeating the same action over and over again and then move onto the next crappy quest. Its all been done before and WAR doesnt make it any more interesting......in fact if anything its more boring.
Fighting with other players however IS fun because they dont repeat the same actions all the time. I wish Mythic had ditched the whole EQ/WoW-style questing bollocks and simply integrated npcs into the open RvR maps (ie the ENTIRE game should be open RvR). The only "quests" should be ones to conquer other areas that open up when certain control points have been taken.
Instead Mythic has tried to cater to everyones style of play and has ended up being average at all of them when instead they could have made an awesome pure RvR game which is what Warhammer is meant to be about.
The reason beta was so fun was because through most of it, the lvl was capped, so when you got to a certain lvl cap, there was no point in grinding scenarios, so people went for the open RVR. And at 40, i got a feeling that will happen again, unfortunatly, a lot of people wont make it to 40, cause they dont want to go through the grind of lvling through scenarios to get there.
I like to mix it up with scenarios, PQs, and questing, mixin in open field RVR when its going on, but i have a tight group of friends i play with so we are able to knock this stuff out together. If i was solo, id hate it right about now. people play way to selfishly. Noone heals, tanks dont guard anyone, its rediculous. WOW ruined MMOs. And i liked wow. But, people still have the mind set that they have to get to max lvl as fast as possible to have fun, and thats not true. Rush to 20, get your mount, then start sieging keeps was my plan, and thankfully, my server does have some RVR action. the keeps flip pretty regularly in tier 2 at least. But its nothing like beta where all we did was fight over keeps.
Im going to stick it out till 40, because i know how much fun the game can be. I hope other will too.
He didn't mention the biggest problem WAR got, namely a poor chat system. No one chats in the game. I've played whole sessions without seeing even 1 player say anything. What the hell is that? Game lacks alteast a tier-wide chat. Don't think a server-wide chat is a good idea, but each tier should be able to chat with eachother.
It brings a shitload to the feel of being in a community, which I don't feel like when I play WAR now. Game feels like a singleplayer game with a lot of bots running around. The guild I'm in saves the community feel a little, but it's still too little. Chatting with random people builds community's, and building community's is one of the things we, as humans, do best and actually thrive in. So what if you risk another Barrens chat? That's what ignore is for(and don't limit the ignore list to like 30 ignores or some other idiot number ffs...and if you do, make sure it's big enough. 500 should be a good start).
I never understood the logic with the chat system Mythic went for. Stinks of poor planning and stupid ideas, both in execution and looks.
Edit: While Mythic got a little sense and added regional chat I still find it too little, and maybe too late. Tier wide chat is highly needed, so the entire faction can co-ordinate defenses for rvr and chat with another.
The worst thing about the chat, is that it was nerfed right before the headstart, with no announcement or communication about why it was done, and still there has been no word from the devs on why they made this decision or if they are ever going to fix it. For how open and community oriented the devs have been on most things, they have been totally private regarding tier-wide chat. The first preview weekend had chat and felt alive, and it was the funnest time I had ever had playing an mmo. It was my new favorite game ever at that point. Without chat, with the nerfed rewards, dead open rvr, it has dropped considerably. How can just a few weeks of "fixes" totally ruin a game? It's insane.
I know exactly what happened. They got worried about what numbers would do and tried to rebalance things to handle the numbers. But with so little time left, they should have focused on technical issues and not changed the game balance. The rebalancing was sloppy. Besides, it's very hard to balance for numbers that aren't there. You will have to rebalance it later anyway, so wait until you have numbers before you go in with a scalpel cutting things that have been a certain way for so long during beta, without any hard information that you are cutting in the right place.
Give me tier wide chat and I'll think about extending my account, otherwise I think I'm bust. I really believe in this game too, it's just not right for a brand new mmo with the numbers WAR has to feel so freaking DEAD.
EDIT: Props to mythic, they added regional chat! Yesterdays patch notes: "We're pleased to announce the addition of a new regional chat system. This item has been one of our most requested features, and you can find the details below."
Going to play again for a few days and see if anything else has changed. Thanks Mythic for listening!