(Mythic) origins of balance

[Tklees]

I like racial WBs, from a thematic point of view, Im under no illusions that mixing it up brings more to the table

Tk were you around when I was running that 24 man WL group on Iron Rock in Praag? That was some clusterf***ing hilarity.

I was. People mass dying to pounce. It was quite hysterical but, as stated, it has a shock and awe value but not longevity. I ran a 12 WH group one time and we could gank whole premades just for the lols, didn't mean we could gank a whole warband.

[TenTonHammer]

Geni, you should have just used your "Did Mark Jacobs fall from the sky on angel wings and whisper that into your ear" thingy...

the only way to defeat a wall of text is with another wall of text



and then make the op pay for it

[footpatrol2]

I'm at work. I can't really even be doing what I'm doing writing this.

Who's responding to me without reading what I put up? You will see that it is in there.

I can respond better after work.

You can't ask me blanket questions. Otherwise I have to tie a bunch of other stuff and I'll hit you with a wall of text which you might not read. Ask me specific questions. This explanation is extremely long. The pieces of the puzzle are in those extreme wall of texts if you don't want to wait. I wish I could just talk to you guys. It would make this process like 100 times faster.

[Shadowgurke]

Simple logic and mathematics tells me that you are wrong. Why? Because limiting yourself to just one race's classes (4), would be just that: A limitation.

You cannot EVER convince me that having a choice between 4 classes, instead of the 12 available on each faction, when making a WB, is in fact better. This simply does not follow.
Now, there might very well be viable racial WBs. I'm not denying that. But why would you ever limit yourself in this way? It simply makes no sense. The ONLY except to this would either be a roleplaying guild (dwarves / greenskins etc), or if someone got so tired of winning with ease, that they would give themselves a handicap. I don't think the 2nd one is very likely to ever happen because of the problem with the random number of playerss in ORvR.

You want to form a blanket statement? This is probably the argument you should focus on

[Sulorie]

Spoiler:

This is god-tier bait, and after 20+ pages I'm finally biting. I am compelled to bite so succulent is the flesh of this bait.

You keep saying, "Mythic wanted this."

Where is your evidence? Do you have an old Grab Bag video stating that racial warbands were an intentional design goal? That the synergy between classes of the same race was supposed to represent anything other than just, "That's how this race operates?" Frankly, I think you're taking a small degree of correlation (Black Orcs have an armor debuff and Choppas do physical damage!), and assuming a large degree of causation. Moreover, there is more evidence that single-race warbands were intended to be crippled in lager play - such as every healer only being able to cleanse 2 out of 3 types of debuffs.

Additionally, you keep saying "Mythic did a good job" regarding anything, and one of those things is specifically "listening to their players." I'd say you were wrong on both accounts, and for evidence I would point to declining subscription numbers every month the game was alive until the company was shut down for what boils down to making a bad game worse. Oh man, remember when they fired their first community manager shortly after she passed the devs a giant list of community suggestions, including "Maybe Engineer spanners shouldn't have strength?" And then they made the change anyway, after the game had been out for a year! Oh boy, what jokers.

Lastly, I find your proselytizing and stance toward the entire community to be somewhat offensive. You can sit there and say that you didn't mean to offend anyone, and that you're "just trying to open our eyes," but let me make clear the assumptions you are implying:
1. Racial warbands synergize so well and are so powerful that they can be better than a diverse warband.
2. This is self-evident to someone who looks for synergy and good warband compositions
3. Nobody else in 7 years - literally over 1 million people - ever realized this.
4. You are the first person to ever have this idea.

The implicit assumption then is that the hordes of min/maxing powergamers that have ever played Warhammer Online in any of its iterations were somehow incapable of seeing these amazing combinations you're raving about. Rather than, you know, taking Occam's Razor to the hypothesis and arriving at the simpler conclusion, "a lot of people have probably thought about this, and dropped it for a good reason."

I mean, you're aware that we have had single-race roleplaying guilds on every server since launch, right? And you're aware that in the world of "competitive" RvR, that these guilds are mostly considered a joke? Don't get me wrong, I love what Bitterstone and all the others do as much as everyone else here - they form a solid backbone of our community, and we would be worse without them - but they do it for roleplaying and for fun. It's not an issue of communication, these guys use voicechat and run together frequently. Yet everyone know they're a themepark. Do you perhaps think it might be because their warband composition is underpowered and their players just prefer the challenge and the roleplaying aspect? That camaraderie of taking the hard road together, where every victory feels even more rewarding for being hard-won?

If your hypothesis were correct, any one of these 6+ guilds would be a much more worrying force in the lakes than they are.

Now if you wanted to have a conversation about what the design direction of Return of Reckoning should be, that's a different question. If that were the topic at hand, you would have a much wider acceptance, much more room to talk, and you would probably catch quite a few minds. Some people would still disagree, and your suggestions might not make it into the game, but we would all generally have more respect for you for pitching some original ideas and trying to add more flavor to the game. This kind of discussion would be the kind of valuable contribution that I and the other devs would love to see our community making toward this game, even if the majority disagrees with the proposition.

But if you're going to insist that this is some secret design principle that Mythic intended and everyone missed the memo on, and that the performance of the Vented, coordinated racial warbands that we already have is just inexplicable... then I'm going to join the overwhelming chorus of people saying you're wrong, and you should be embarrassed for the magnitude of your wrongness.

But will the OP actually read this....

I don't think so, is might be too much text.

[mursie]

Ask me specific questions.

Considering the terrain of Saphery, with its lush landscapes of trees and grass and some rivers with undulating hills, what race would give the best tactical advantage (assuming a full 24 man racial warband of course) to defend each of the two existing BO's. I'd like for you to dive really deep into all elements of the response. Specifically addressing how the architecture of the BO background, along with the terrain itself, would likely favor one specific racial composition over others. No detail should be spared here. If lore is necessary to fully convey the answer, then so be it. At the end of the day, if I'm to be convinced that this theory holds weight, I feel it requires a thorough vetting that can withstand even the most minutia of details for a particular setting.

[footpatrol2]

Since I'm at work and I can't give a detailed response. I'll say this.

The game from tier 1 through 3 was never suppose to be mixed. It was a bad call by the designers to allow it. They were rushed and probably prided themselves on being good with player interaction and listened. They felt the playerbase would just catch on to the synergy and when the sub's are up they are all padding each other on the back. And when the sub's started to drop due to blizzards timed release of wotlk done tactically and players not understanding the synergy.

Its similar to spilling milk in water. Try and get the water out. We are a herd species. Mmo's are a completely fragile animal. How are you going too tell players after 6 months of playing that you have to get rid of your characters that you built up and still think you can keep subscribers while trying to hold players from blizzard.

This game has raid like coordination within the racials. Buts its not done against pve. Its done in pvp. This game had no immunities or AoE limits by design. Look at my wall of texts guys. I'm sad. Noyone read my posts. This game is a gold mine.

KING of PVP.

[Razid1987]

The game from tier 1 through 3 was never suppose to be mixed.

Unsupported assumptions. Source. Now.

It was a bad call by the designers to allow it. They were rushed and probably prided themselves on being good with player interaction.

Unsupported assumptions. Source. Now.

players not understanding the synergy.

And now you are accusing us of not understanding it, and after 20 pages, you're still rambling on about how this is somehow obvious and we just don't get it. I don't mean to be rude, but you're really starting to make me doubt, if you're even for real.

This game has raid like coordination within the racials. Buts its not done against pve. Its done in pvp. This game had no immunities or AoE limits by design. I'll repost a post i provided earlier since noyone read it. This game is a gold mine.

Okay. That's it. I don't believe you anymore, lol. I can't even read what you're writing with a straight face anymore. I just don't even... I don't know if I should laugh, or be offended by this, lol.

[footpatrol2]

LOOK at my posts. Its stupid overwhelming. If your unwilling to look...

I put a incredible amount of time in those posts and noyone even looked.

[footpatrol2]

I'm using logic/synergy/knowledge from memory thats how I figured it out. No sources.

Most of the synergy is still there...