Lower Tier RVR

[lilsabin]

F*** RVR , do SC , thats it

[Genisaurus]

Not the first, nor last time, we will deal with a player like this.

Do it, I double dare you.

I have no respect for authoritarian megalomaniacs.

Grimnir is a GM, not Public Relations. That would be me, because I'm the prettiest.

And our public relations policy has pretty much always been, "If you don't like it, then you're not the intended audience." To put it another way, We're not competing with GW2 or ESO or WoW. Those games have gigantic staffs and the luxury of getting to charge money. We don't complete with other private servers, because we don't accept donations of any kind. Instead, our mission is just to create the game Warhammer Online could have been, had it been given a real chance and perhaps taken a different design direction. We all work in our off hours to do this project for ourselves, for our own enjoyment. If all 2500 active players quit overnight, we'd still be here doing our thing. We'd probably be a lot more efficient at it too.

You mistakenly view yourself as a customer of a free product. You view the game as a service we are offering, and thus expect a certain degree of professionalism and customer service. Were that actually the model here, that would be fair and reasonable. But that's not the case. It would be a more apt metaphor to say that we are a group of sculptors working on a sculpture in a studio. The players are fans coming by to watch the sculpture progress, and to enjoy its progress with the understanding that it is still progressing. Occasionally, we expect that these observers will point out flaws in the sculpture, so we can correct them. We also appreciate it when these observers give suggestions ("I think this section could be improved by smoother lines and a more dynamic pose"), with the understanding that their suggestions are not demands, and while they will be listened to, might not be honored. Note how that's different from, "This section looks like **** now, it used to be a lot better. Tear down everything you've worked on since this point, and fix that section."

Grimnir's job, and the job of all GMs, is to police this metaphorical studio for people unable to voice their criticism in a helpful way, or whom try to abuse the access we grant to our studio. His suggestion, which amounts to, "If you don't like how the sculpture looks now, you're welcome to check back later once it's more complete," is absolutely appropriate for his position. Because again, we're not doing this for you, we're doing this for us. Anyone who disagrees with us and our direction is welcome to take our foundation and go work on their own sculpture. This has always been our stance.

This is the nice PR way of saying, "You're wrong, your reasons for being here are wrong, your reasons for thinking we might care are wrong, and your attitude over your wrongness is not really appreciated or likely to earn you any friends." I know it hurts and is frustrating to be told that something this cool and awesome is not actually a gift for you. Just remember: "If you don't like it, you're not the intended audience."

Stupid everyone else, beating me to the punch.

[notagain]

Jesus Christ. I really didn't intend for this thread to turn into a bitch-fest headache for the devs. I was just asking a question about the possibility of easing the leveling in the lower tiers so as to not turn off newer players. As far as I'm concerned the question I asked has been answered. I understand the reasoning and since the current state is just temporary anyway, and considering their limited resources, it doesn't make sense to take attention off the goal to revert a few things to a previous state if it would require any more effort than flipping a switch.

Sorry about all the mess in here guys. You're doing a great job. Keep up the good work, and thanks for the tremendous amount of time you put into this project.

[Druin]

Good time to lock it I guess.

[Genisaurus]

Jesus Christ. I really didn't intend for this thread to turn into a bitch-fest headache for the devs. I was just asking a question about the possibility of easing the leveling in the lower tiers so as to not turn off newer players. As far as I'm concerned the question I asked has been answered. I understand the reasoning and since the current state is just temporary anyway, and considering their limited resources, it doesn't make sense to take attention off the goal to revert a few things to a previous state if it would require any more effort than flipping a switch.

Sorry about all the mess in here guys. You're doing a great job. Keep up the good work, and thanks for the tremendous amount of time you put into this project.

No worries, this is the equivalent of a smoke-break for us. Grimnir said it best, we're in the process of looking at the leveling experience and the relative rates of progression granted by different activities. In other words, boosting quest experience in a way that doesn't drain what little population we have from the lakes.

One of the goals of the RvR system is also to bring people back into the RvR lakes of those lower tiers, particularly by using the debolster system. The RvR in T2 and T3 suffers because those tiers were always designed and treated as an extended tutorial for new users. It's our hope that we can find a way to redesign those tiers to keep them relevant to all players.

This is a big ask though, and progress will be slow. We spend a lot of time "discussing" the best way to go about this, while working on small pieces of the larger design (Aza, Londo and Nal), or working on temporary gameplay to keep people entertained in the meantime (me). It's a silver lining, but the more people hate the work I do, the more they'll love what's coming. Probably.