Saving Scenarios (the endangered species part of WAR)

[Dabbart]

SCs are organized and limited. ORvR is Open by name and definition. Two entirely different things. They're both PvP though.

Maybe what is really wanted here, but not being brought up is a base PvP credit. When you get kills, it's nice to get rewarded. 1-2 repeatable mass kill quest(s) you can complete in SCs/ORvR/ganking for a special color vendor, or appearance fluff could be cool or even go towards Pots/Mats.

I doubt that carrot will be given though. Personally, I don't think it's warranted, but what do I know?

[Ninepaces]

If they are integral why are some classes not competitive in 6v6? (e.g shaman, black guard, witch elf on destro side).

[Penril]

Most SCs are 12v12. We even have a 18v18, and City instances were 24v24. All the classes you mentioned are competitive in those situations. And some of them are definitely competitive in 6v6 as well. Those who aren't... well, you have 2 points of view for this:

a) Claim that SCs are not meant to be an integral part of the game (your position)
b) Assume that Mythic sucked ass at balancing certain classes like Magus, Engi, etc (my position)

Hell... WAR didn't even have 6v6 SCs for a long time until Ironclad (which was then removed). Then we had EC, GoE, CW... and that's it. 3 6v6 SCs when the servers went down. I don't know why "not being competitive in a 6v6" suddenly equals "SCs are not an integral part of WAR".

[Ninepaces]

Alright.

Look Im just worried the devs are going to introduce an orvr system where you cant invade without winning small scale scenario level fights. The reason I dont like this is because:
a) the skill setups, synergies and even gear differ in both systems. For example in orvr at warband level we like to combo choppa "chop fasta" with sorc aoe. It doesnt work vs a 6 man...its eclipsed by (for example) 2 single target mauraders. Now I dont know what the new orvr system is going to entail, but if SCs pop mid orvr assault that we need to win in order to for example lock the zone, the organized wb ppl are going to destroyed in the small scale. They're simply not built for it...are they going to go and spend x gold every time they need to enter an sc while mid fort attack?

b) Even at a basic organizational level, people constantly enter and leave organized wbs. They go walk their dogs, make phone calls, make dinner and so on. In a 6-12 hour invasion push like ours last night, our alliance warband looked entirely different at the end than at the beginning. Sometimes we're short on healers, or tanks, or even dps. Now to compete at 6 man level an imbalanced setup is going to get owned by a good setup on the other side. Even tanks should change gear on entering sc to get a bit more damage and alot of ppl dont have medallions for their alt sets. My point is that a setup that is good at wb level is often trash at small scale. If the orvr system forces the wb to split its just going to encourage small parties that just want to farm. For example there was a BW Svarz yesterday in Kv.. he had at least a tank and 2-3 pocket healers. He just sat south keep KV postern and killed pug destro trying to attack keep in the hundreds (literally). He never gave a **** about a BO, or the other keep or the orvr situation in general. He just wanted to smash that timestamp bw burst into pugs and get that renown. And you know what I'm fine with that.. (svarz is actually a really nice guy I played with at lower tiers on an order alt)... because the wb can (partially) ignore the 6 mans and focus on the large scale campaign...because a 6 man cant hold a BO vs a warband...because they cant kite from a wb or else they lose the BO. That is the beauty of the current system.. you have to fight with numbers or lose key positions. BUT, if you zerg one position you lose the other positions, AND if you spread too thin you cant hold them anyways.

The truth is I'm fine with scs being a part of oRVR at certain stages of the campaign. What I am really against though is forcing small scale fights while in the midst of a large scale attack in the lake. The minimal size level engagement should be warband level. If at the end of the orvr the devs want city sieges to be determined by scs than fine... everyone will have a chance to reskill/swap gear and organize parties within the alliance. Fair game then. But forced break up of the wb in order to cap zones will just play into the hands of the farmers that do not care at all about the realm situation. Dont penalize the small amount of ppl that have realm pride and actively attack zones by forcing them to split.

Before anyone says I'm encouraging zerging... I'm not. 1 wb isnt really a "zerg". The reason why destro have been so successful in invasions recently (even with minimal order aao) is because we coordinate split attacks...the anathema of zerging. And if the pugs werent such idiots all the time and actually listened to us we'd be even better.

It worries the **** out of me when devs say stuff like :

The RvR design has/had numerous flaws that scenarios never did:

- No team/faction balancing combined with lack of third faction
- Zerg reducing skill/gameplay quality
- Overcentralization on keeps
- Mobility problems (taking ages to get back into the fight after dying)
- Saturation problems (trying to force hundreds of players into tiny keeps as it was on live)

Do we even play the same game? Why doesnt az join an alliance wb run before passing judgement?

[Dabbart]

I don't see any of your concerns in what you quoted.

1, Has to do with 3rd faction
2, Is his opinion, and one shared by myself and from what I read/hear the bast majority
3, You disagree ORvR focus' on keeps too much? Nothing to do with your point.
4, Do you disagree with the basic mobility issues ORvR suffers?
5, This is the only point that is relevant to what you wrote, in that you guys like to run large AoE.

You talk about wanting to run a specific build/type/system and also say that your WB looks nothing like the way it did to begin with. Your warband should be able to do more than walk as 1 and bomb anything in a 60ft radius of it. Otherwise you will get kited by smaller groups.

And... Where are you getting that you will be forced to compete in 6v6 SCs for ORvR? The same basic strats will work. Have 1-2 WBs cover BOs, the rest on Keep, pulling off if they are needed. If you are trying to take a zone with only 1-2wbs, it will always be easier to defend against...

[Penril]

Why don't you wait until changes are made and actually test things before passing judgement? That RvR design you so dreadfully fear... is not even implemented yet. Maybe it will NEVER be implemented. Maybe what they have in mind is something completely different than what you thought it would be.

And even if we end up with a terrible RvR system that everyone hates, keep in mind that it can be reverted immediately. I see no harm in trying out different things (remember that in the end we are all testers and this is still an Alpha).

Worst case scenario? New RvR system sucks, we give our feedback, devs make changes, and we try again. Best case scenario? New RvR system is amazing. BUT! We will never find out until we try things out.

[Azarael]

And I stand by every single one of those points.

- No team/faction balancing and no third faction renders the design vulnerable to overpopulation of a single realm. This flaw was widely acknowledged by commentators shortly after release and is not up for discussion. Thank you.

- Zergs do reduce the skill and gameplay quality because the dynamics of the game change as you add more players into the mix. AoE becomes more important, which results in ST classes being marginalized, raw damage/healing become more important, subtlety matters less. As a popular webcomic artist put it, there is a level of force against which no tactics can defend. Zerg is that force.

- The current RvR IS overcentralized on keeps to the point that we have a thread about it, which is a shame because all this leads to is a huge amount of crashing (as multiple players in one place exacerbate our crash issues), funneling/meatgrinding and player versus door.

- Taking ages to get back into the fight after dying is a real problem. You think it's a penalty. You can think that way, but realize this. If I can go play an arena game and have constant action, why the hell do you think I'm going to trudge around a huge RvR map to get some brief action that's not even guaranteed to be numerically balanced and in which I run the risk of having to release and spend 5 minutes running back? What motivation are you giving me to value this type of gameplay over scenarios or arena games?

It's bad enough that MMOs make you blow time and effort in gearing up and grinding resources as a replacement for skill. If you're going to stick a huge death penalty and massive maps on top of that, you cannot expect to hold interest.

- Saturation problems. Please tell me. Did you enjoy fortresses? Did you enjoy the sight of seeing hundreds of people packed into a fortress, with a single tiny ramp that was under constant AoE and whose top was blocked by a wall of tanks? Did you see strategy, tactics or skill of any kind in that laggy mess in which you could barely move because you were packed in like sardines?

Being a part of that, all those years ago, made me feel absolutely worthless. It made me feel like I'd sunk so low in my life that I'd resorted to playing utter garbage. There are few games that have ever made me feel such a huge sense of self-disgust, but I tell you - Fortresses did that for me.

[magter3001]

And I stand by every single one of those points.

- No team/faction balancing and no third faction renders the design vulnerable to overpopulation of a single realm. This flaw was widely acknowledged by commentators shortly after release and is not up for discussion. Thank you.

- Zergs do reduce the skill and gameplay quality because the dynamics of the game change as you add more players into the mix. AoE becomes more important, raw damage/healing become more important, subtlety matters less. As a popular webcomic artist put it, there is a level of force against which no tactics can defend. Zerg is that force.

- The current RvR IS overcentralized on keeps to the point that we have a thread about it, which is a shame because all this leads to is a huge amount of crashing (as multiple players in one place exacerbate our crash issues), funneling/meatgrinding and player versus door.

- Taking ages to get back into the fight after dying is a real problem. You think it's a penalty. You can think that way, but realize this. If I can go play an arena game and have constant action, why the hell do you think I'm going to trudge around a huge RvR map to get some brief action that's not even guaranteed to be numerically balanced and in which I run the risk of having to release and spend 5 minutes running back? What motivation are you giving me to value this type of gameplay over scenarios or arena games?

It's bad enough that MMOs make you blow time and effort in gearing up and grinding resources as a replacement for skill. If you're going to stick a huge death penalty and massive maps on top of that, you cannot expect to hold interest.

- Saturation problems. Please tell me. Did you enjoy fortresses? Did you enjoy the sight of seeing hundreds of people packed into a fortress, with a single tiny ramp that was under constant AoE and whose top was blocked by a wall of tanks? Did you see strategy, tactics or skill of any kind in that laggy mess in which you could barely move because you were packed in like sardines?

Being a part of that, all those years ago, made me feel absolutely worthless. It made me feel like I'd sunk so low in my life that I'd resorted to playing utter garbage. There are few games that have ever made me feel such a huge sense of self-disgust, but I tell you - Fortresses did that for me.

It doesn't take ages to get back into the fight if you die... just get a rez. If anything... gear grind takes ages and should be made less time consuming. People have jobs and families and don't have time to grind months on end to get gear just to be competitive in-game. I never liked the gear grind in the game... I did however enjoy the pvp and it was the pvp that kept me playing the game. I can't count the times I quit RoR because the dev's direction is to put an ungodly amount of time to acquire gear. With every tier release or level increase, my desire to play dropped like a rock. How long should it take to get a full set of BiS specifically? 40hrs? 100hrs? Or is there no real limit on it?

I also understand your take on Fortresses but I don't agree with it. I've had different varying experiences with them. Some were good, some were amazing and best hours of my life, and other moments sucked. Back then at least taking a fortress meant something than what it became later in the game's life. Getting 48+ people into ventrilo and giving them directions in this huge battle was amazing and something I don't ever want to forget. I'm sorry Fortresses were disgusting for you, and I'm sure there are a lot of people who hated them too. But please don't act like they were the worst thing ever... I certainly hope the rest of the dev team don't feel the same way about them as you do.

The moments that did suck were those laggy, screensaver style gameplay. I understand there is no way to fix that on RoR... no **** way... which is why Mythic removed the damn things to begin with. Personally I don't care if fortresses come back or not... I've already had my fun with them. I can't imagine experiencing more of anything than what I've already experienced with them. Take this as mere feedback.

[bloodi]

Being a part of that, all those years ago, made me feel absolutely worthless. It made me feel like I'd sunk so low in my life that I'd resorted to playing utter garbage. There are few games that have ever made me feel such a huge sense of self-disgust, but I tell you - Fortresses did that for me.

Well that is a bit overdramatic dont you think?

And i would welcome alternatives to it but i think what a lot of people fears is that you are going to get rid of things like that because of your opinion about them, if people enjoys it, why not have them for those people?

[Azarael]

To respond to some points I missed earlier:

Involving SCs with the RvR campaign is not, as of yet, a future plan.

Reducing engagements to sizes below warband vs warband is not part of a future plan.

Making sure that moving in a massive blob of 75% of your active RvR force is punished IS a part of a future plan.

Just because I disdain the idea of having 300 people in one place does not mean that I consider 6v6 or 12v12 to be the proper engagement size of ORvR.

@magter3001: I have no idea what size of engagement you had at fortresses in the latter days of the game. My knowledge of fortresses comes from 2009, and I speak with such vitriol about them because they were utterly beyond redemption at that point. If Mythic changed them for the better, I'll be interested to know how - but what I remember was about 150 Destruction on the top level of the fortress, maybe 200 Order on the bottom level, miscellaneous stragglers pushing from below, a tiny ramp whose middle level was covered in Pits of Shades, and nothing much of anything actually happening.

As for the gear grind? I've made my opinion on that clear. As a player, I disdain grind. That much should be obvious from my previous post. I think having the outcome of combat determined by anything other than skill is garbage. As a developer, however... I feel that it's necessary, because this is still a MMO. That said, I am not a driving force in determining the extent of the grind in this game, as it's outside of my interests.

Well that is a bit overdramatic dont you think?

And i would welcome alternatives to it but i think what a lot of people fears is that you are going to get rid of things like that because of your opinion about them, if people enjoys it, why not have them for those people?

I was not in a great place at the time and had what you might call a negative epiphany. I'm just trying to communicate aptly just how horrendous I found it. I have something of a passion for game design and balance and I can find nothing good to say about what I saw in the fortress sieges in 2009.

For the record, my opinion when it comes to any deviations between our direction and the original one is that these should be resolved by running two servers. That is the only solution I've ever found to this kind of problem in the past. You cannot argue with someone's enjoyment of a concept - you can point out the flaws in it all day, but if they enjoy it anyway, you're wasting your time, so the only way to deal with that is to satisfy their wishes somehow.