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Warhammer Online: Discussion on 6v6 RvR
MMORPG.com's new Warhammer Online Correspondent Charles Kinkel writes this article bringing up the debate and the emrits of small group RvR combat in Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.
I've been participating in, and enjoying, Player versus Player, or PvP, combat in games since the text MUD days over Telnet. Ever since I had my first encounter with this system of battling other players for loot, fame, and glory I was hooked on this concept as being superior to any Player versus Environment or PvE style content because players could learn and adapt, NPCs could not. And like any tactician who's seeking to "one up" his opponent, we would form alliances of players for protection. With a focus on using our individual skills in the most efficient method to defeat our enemies.
Fast forward throughout the years, as the rise of MMOs happened and these tactical mindsets came right along with them. As warfare evolved in the modern gaming space, the player demand for larger and more complex options to customize their tactical choices has risen until games such as Dark Age of Camelot, Guild Wars and even World of Warcraft took this concept to a new level. Now enter Mythic's newest creation, Warhammer Online, and it's no surprise players from that background are looking into new ways to take this concept into this current generation of MMOs.
The debate over whether or not this style of combat is even viable in Warhammer Online is still a hot topic around various forums and fansites devoted to the game. Some claim that this style is not viable in WAR because there is not enough ability for a smaller group to take on a larger one with any kind of dependable success. Some reasons why this is typically thrown out is because there are no speed classes that promote roaming, or that the style of crowd control in the game isn't conducive to succeeding against larger numbers of opponents.
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Although, at a higher level, guilds can achieve up to a 65% speed increase on their banners. That could be substituted for a lack of a natural speed class. At the time of this article's writing however, no guild has reached that high of a level, so it remains to be seen how this will effect small group battles in the future. Also with the changes to such skills as "rift" still settling, it's a bit unclear on how the future of group crowd control will proceed as Mythic works toward finding it's groove after it's October release.
Some, however, believe that even if you won't find roaming groups of six players taking on whole warbands in the current iteration of class balance, focusing on a six man group with a focus on a perfect balance of tactics is still important to the overall war effort. With WAR's focus on Open RVR in order to lock zones and siege cities, it certainly is reasonable to say the deciding factor in a relatively even battle will be whoever makes better use of their resources. One way to accomplish this goal is to focus on a smaller scale and organize your warband into specialized six man groups who can operate independently to achieve a goal.
You can liken this type of tactical layout to even modern military training. A large majority of training focuses on squad level tactics even though battles are often fought by large groups of personnel. Each person in a squad learns his job, and then learns his job within the squad and how to operate as a team. From there they know when they are called upon to perform their tasks, what they need to be focusing on without knowing what each squad around them is doing. This type of small scale organization is what allows complex mission objectives to be handed down in stages and broken down into more simple objectives.
In my own experiences, I have seen how a superiorly organized guild that sets up proper group balance, along with effective main target assists, can easily overcome a larger group of players that consists primarily of PUG players and smaller, less organized guilds. However, this does have a limit, as you can reach a point where pure numbers will overwhelm your tactical advantage and your lines will begin to collapse. However, it does make a difference in the number of your opponents you can take down before you fall, perhaps leaving them weak enough for the other PUG warbands to finish them off. Or, in a more complex situation, such as a keep siege, increase the chances you have of success.
What is the future of small scale Open RVR in Warhammer? Does Mythic even want to support this style of play? Or is a focus on large scale battles and city sieges their primary goal? Some argue Mythic may be intentionally not inputting systems that made this style possible in Dark Age of Camelot for this very reason. That it would detract away from their goals with the game in the form of large sized city captures and zone battles. Others want to see this style become more of a reality due to problems currently associated with fortresses in WAR and server crashes. Whatever your stance, one thing we all share is a common interest in seeing how WAR will grow from here and what decisions Mythic will make based on what it learned from Dark Age.
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WAR was a huge disappointment in the Group vs. Group aspect this article talks about. I was a huge fan of 8v8 in DAoC and was hoping to recreate some of those fond memories of taking on up to 10x our numbers just due to being more organized. But this is simply impossible in WAR and never will be.
Unfortunately the successful button spamming 'skills' we see from games like WoW are useful in WAR. I believe the lack of 100% interrupts is what WoWified WAR. My point is that needed player skill is much lower to be successful in WAR over DAoC.
Lets face it, people want easy games and not a challenge. People that played 8v8 or even hardcore WoW arena (I know, it even hurts me to say it) are not the average player. The average player is one of the people that were in the zerg we farmed in our 8 mans. Lol, with that said it makes sense why DAoC's population is so low now eh?
8v8 and you taking 10x more players does not make any sense whatsoever, but apart from that I agree with WAR feeling very "wowified". Personally I had hoped WAR would support smaller more organized forms of PvP rather than big zergs where, in oRvR, the biggest team will win, almost regardless of team-setup, or, as in scenarios, it's all about the healers. In the end the game is focusing too much on mindlessness and too little on organization to appeal to me.
Too much of their game design tends towards zerging.
1) Tier 4 zones are too small and just seem to be mostly tunnels for herding one zerg into another.
2) In any type of RL warfare you need to hold and maintain supply lines to be able to push the battle front forwards. Battle objectives should have to be held to attack keeps/fortresses and have no 15 minute lockout. This would mean you have to break up a zerg to defend these BO's so you can attack a keep. Say make holding 1 BO makes keep attackable while holding 2 BO's makes door half strength.
3) A single ramp up to a keep/fortress lord. What else are people going to do but zerg. Makes defense fun and attack not so much. I've defended a keep with 3 groups and single healer against approx 3 warbands.
Too late to change 1.......shouldn't be too difficult to change 2........................Possible to change 3 but needs a total redesigning of keeps which aint gonna happen quickly.
The problem with RvR in WAR goes far deeper than just people zerging everywhere. It runs deep into scenarios and the retarded reward system they have in place for keeps, as well as the overall limited space to have these battles since they decided to chunk everything up into little zones with two keeps per area. You could go on for hours/pages with everything that was done wrong, WoW-Like combat amongst it. I'm not against the scale itself, WAR has always been about huge battles, and the last thing I would want to see in WAR would be more of that "Arena is all about da skillz lulz!" BS that WoW has. But the way they went about it was totally backwards considering their experience with DAoC.
I agree but this discussion is about 6v6 and was just saying the game is more zerg than small group at the moment. My biggest gripe is the most renown/influence should come from killing players in RvR not from scenarios or PvE'ing keeps and battlefield objectives. Too many people avoid fighting altogether if they can.
Player 1: "Oh look Order/Destruction are in Reikland taking keeps"
Player 2: "Lets to to Dragonwake then and take the keep. We can head to Reikland when Order/Destruction are finished"
The reason the keep system is kinda borked is because it wasn't part of the original design. Evidently Mythic devs were busy huffing paint when they came up with the original content and weren't going to have keep sieges at all.
Then they sniffed glue by trying to move AWAY from DAOC's realm warfare system. I don't know what they were thinking. So now, they are belatedly patching DAOC mechanics back into the game, and it's not going all that smoothly. Hmm, I wonder why?
Anyway, Things that are missing from small group rvr: (other than small groups)
Fast movement.
Large enough terrain to manuever and have small scale combat.
Skills that require, well...skills. (Nothing leet here...but there are not really any reactionaries, not many positionals..no real sense of timing required, etc. It's all just GCD and WoW timers.) DAOC UI was waaay cooler...except most people didn't realize it. Well..the UI kinda sucked, but the combat system was better and more in depth.
Those that play...have you ever really been in a 1v1 fight? It's boring as hell. 2v1 fights and small groups are a little better, but they designed this game from the ground up as zerg vs. zerg, and it shows.
That in itself is not that bad, but WTF....Siege pads? No destroyable walls? Siege damage is pitiful at best? A 4 foot tall dwarf can punt me 100 yards, but a ballista bolt to the face at point blank range does nothing?
No real benefits for claiming a keep for defense? No higher walls, extra obstacles, hero guards? anything?
No mobs in rvr zones? Just an empty field to funnel people at each other?
Yeah, there's lots to work on, which, ironically, they would have hit right on the head if they wouldn't have run away from daoc so much.
As much as a rant as that sounds like, I'm still enjoying the game, but shaking my head in confusion at all the things they missed badly with the initial implementation.
I agree, and I'm sure the failures of WAR extend even further from your examples. But this article is specifically about 6v6.
The lack of small scale fighting is what killed the game for me. Oh well, atleast WAR gave me something to do for a few months.
Good article that will appeal to the niche base of players who want smaller combat. Thank the MMO gods no "arena" was mentioned. there's a big difference between a set up match and the variables associated with cresting a hill or copse of trees to pounce on an enemy.
What I find lacking isn't so much the skills required to play the game detracting from it's "fun factor". If this were a niche game, I'm sure many of us would be rolling around in 6's on the 10 available servers and having the time of our lives. Unfortunately Mythic/EA were shooting for mass appeal. What appeals to the masses?
Rewards.
We saw it in oRvR (RvE?) with inf rewards added because the xp/rr wasn't enough. My problem from before influence is that this system never supported small scale combat through the use of pool'd rewards per objective that split depending on the number of people present. Instead everyone gets the same reward whether 3 players accomplish a feat or 90 players accomplish the feat.
Recently they announced Fortress lords scale due to the attacking population but do Keeps? Bo's? No. That is where Mythic fails those of us who want to run in 6's but can't find anyone but a 32-96 player group running around RvE's keeps most of the time.
It's been mentioned on both VN and WHA but Mythic likes to ignore us.
Glad to see you guys are mostly in agreement on the article. I didn't want to paint it out like 6v6 was alive and well in WAR but simply present some facts on the status of it so that perhaps maybe some people would be enlightened. Maybe even Mythic.
Being also a big fan of smaller scale fighting and obviously skill overcoming zerg in an ideal situation I had high hopes for the ability to form a small guild with friends and select few skilled players and still be able to tackle the games offering based on RVR. Obviously that hasn't worked out so well since the focus has been put so hugely on large numbers. So I feel alot of your pain as well, even though I still enjoy WAR for what it is. It's just not DAoC or even UO.
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