Return of Reckoning

Two servers would be good, but would probably necessitate funding of some sort I'd imagine? :/ (the ':/' being as a result of the rules prohibiting funding/donations)

my experiences in fortresses were pretty much the same, which is what made me stick to soloing. it always eluded me how people could gain any satisfaction when so many numbers were involved - regardless of whether or not the game was 'intended' for such huge battles. to each their own, i guess.

Azarael wrote: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.

While i agree they were horrendous, specially design wise with gear check auras and so on and the fixes to them were even worse, like the cap to 100 people so people were waiting on the border of the map waiting for someone in TS to say they died so we could enter without getting kicked back to the WC, **** you Black Crag and your distances, i cant say there was nothing good about them, furthermore, other games picked things from it and made design changes to how the big fortresses were and were succesful on having such places, namely GW2.

And you know my opìnion about your population and who you are catering to, most people play casually and you need the casuals for the server to function properly for everyone, two servers would be a deathblow in my opinion.

I want alternatives to the current model, getting rid of it its suicide in my opinion, its a niche game that you would make even more niche.

this game is casual enough as it when compared to other PvP games, so the best thing for it would be changes that promote tactics and skill-based pvp. but thats my opinion, of which I'm sure your familiar with.

I think the main difference between our perspective on fortresses Aza is that yours is mostly from a mechanical point of view, being a developer after all, while mine is more from the emotional point of view. Where as you just saw 150 people on top throwing Pit of Shades, I saw 150 enemies from my realm, from my server... people I've played against for months on end, beating us in scenarios, ruining our zone lock attempts, talking smack on forums on how we can never take a fortress outside of 2 a.m. in the morning... to finally be able to crack through their tank line with coordinated morales with my guild who hated our rival guilds as much as me and end up wiping them and going for the city. After 1.4, I never had that sort of experience ever again (or whenever forts were removed). My guild quit shortly after and so did I.

My experience came from being in the top warband guild on the server, being the main guild on Order. If I joined some other guild or maybe even played solo, then I would most likely feel exactly if not more contempt on fortresses than you. I really do understand

@Az

We're all friends here. I know I come across aggressive, but its because I care.

a) The multis cross to what they perceive to be the stronger realm. The current system encourages the ppl with realm pride that never multi to attack, in order to persuade the xrealmers to join them. Peak times never really swing worse than 55/45, and even at worst case scenario, it is possible to defend with 60:40 pop ratio if you're organized. That is the faction balancing system: the psychology/morale of the factions. It is for this reason the last zone of a domination is often the easiest, whereas the 2nd/3rd last are the hardest ones. Its not that order dont attack because they dont have enough people, they dont have enough people because they dont attack.

b) Yes, subtlety increases the smaller you go. But organization and discipline is also more important in larger scale. Depends how you define skill. Also the smaller scale you go the more important gear and classes are. Like I said before, at larger scale you can get away with some weak geared/low leveled/in-optimal classes. You absolutely cannot at 6 man level.

c) Can you explain why this is a bad thing? I played a DAOC clone called regnum online for a while, and it had a problem of not being centralized at keeps enough. The game was fun, but ppl stoped caring about invasions and it died because ppl got bored wandering the lake looking for fights. The biggest problem right now is the ram bugging and making ppl hit door manually, and the party UI bugging within the keep area so you cant see party health.

d) Res exists for a reason. Walking is a penalty because it means that if you kill someone at the keep with the inner down you send them back to their warcamp and not respawning inside the keep. It means the defenders cant be kamikaze rambos and need to actually think. You greatly exaggerate the "action" of scs. Have you played battle of praag recently where its a blowout and one side is inside their camp and the otherside is at the BO waiting for timer to run out? Ye thats "ACTION". Cmon dont joke with me. SCs are plagued by ppl not joining, by going afk, by not having healers or tanks, by ppl not communicating or playing the objective, queue times (in non peak hours) by double premade vs 1 premade and pugs, by class imbalance and by gear imbalance.

d) I love fortresses. First of all, I dont lag. A decent machine goes a long way.
Second, everyone has a role to play, and execution and communication is key. When to push, when to b, when to morale dump, staying near your party members while in the combat soup, mobilizing fast to bos or to posterns. Pressing the right buttons in the right order has value, but is not the only thing. That being said a healer that knows how to heal is better than a healer that just spams aoe. Like I said in the other thread, if the guild master allows you should really join us in one or two wb runs at peak time to see what goes on.

e) Look is this really a problem about fortresses or a depression/psychological thing? I mean this in a polite non-aggressive way. It just sounds like you've made your mind up based on an impression you had in the past instead of looking at the positives. Maybe oRVR isnt for you and a more action packed game is better suited for you. But ffs dont ruin it for the rest of us. Edit: nevermind this was addressed above

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.

I'm very happy to read this and look forward to future changes.

Ninepaces wrote:c) Can you explain why this is a bad thing? I played a DAOC clone called regnum online for a while, and it had a problem of not being centralized at keeps enough. The game was fun, but ppl stoped caring about invasions and it died because ppl got bored wandering the lake looking for fights..

Oh boy, no, regnum died because its balance was atrocious, the developers didnt have a clue what they were doing and the only one who did, abandoned the project and started a yoga place. Poor Megrim, god bless him.

I could write a book about Regnum and what it was going going to be and how it turned out, i wasted a lot of time in that game and hell, had a lot of fun in it but the last issue it had was that people didnt want to invade enough.

Ninepaces wrote:@Az

We're all friends here. I know I come across aggressive, but its because I care.

a) The multis cross to what they perceive to be the stronger realm. The current system encourages the ppl with realm pride that never multi to attack, in order to persuade the xrealmers to join them. Peak times never really swing worse than 55/45, and even at worst case scenario, it is possible to defend with 60:40 pop ratio if you're organized. That is the faction balancing system: the psychology/morale of the factions. It is for this reason the last zone of a domination is often the easiest, whereas the 2nd/3rd last are the hardest ones. Its not that order dont attack because they dont have enough people, they dont have enough people because they dont attack.

The reason this isn't a major problem is because we have avoided anything that would cause it to become one. Remember T2, and the great Devastator Apocalypse? As soon as it starts seriously mattering (i.e. as soon as you try to institute any measures that make the game less about PvP and more about Realm versus Realm), having two factions becomes a serious problem, especially if (as is necessary for a realm versus realm game) you add a faction lock.

Ninepaces wrote: Yes, subtlety increases the smaller you go. But organization and discipline is also more important in larger scale. Depends how you define skill. Also the smaller scale you go the more important gear and classes are. Like I said before, at larger scale you can get away with some weak geared/low leveled/in-optimal classes. You absolutely cannot at 6 man level.

I believe Gachimuchi addressed this in the other thread. Organization and discipline are logistics, not skill. If you essentially have some people slaved to you and following your commands, and those people do not have to make fine judgments or really use their initiative outside of that, then there is no real skill involved.

Ninepaces wrote:c) Can you explain why this is a bad thing? I played a DAOC clone called regnum online for a while, and it had a problem of not being centralized at keeps enough. The game was fun, but ppl stoped caring about invasions and it died because ppl got bored wandering the lake looking for fights. The biggest problem right now is the ram bugging and making ppl hit door manually, and the party UI bugging within the keep area so you cant see party health.

It's a bad thing because:

- You encourage zerg and lag, as everyone clusters in a single area of the map
- You encourage PvDoor, because there has to be a speed bump to getting in otherwise it's all over too quickly
- You encourage deaths which are not a result of skill but are a result of terrain (e.g. inevitable deaths to door funnel tactics, which we saw mentioned in many topics as a means of dealing with a zerg)
- You waste the rest of the map

Ninepaces wrote:d) Res exists for a reason. Walking is a penalty because it means that if you kill someone at the keep with the inner down you send them back to their warcamp and not respawning inside the keep. It means the defenders cant be kamikaze rambos and need to actually think. You greatly exaggerate the "action" of scs. Have you played battle of praag recently where its a blowout and one side is inside their camp and the otherside is at the BO waiting for timer to run out? Ye thats "ACTION". Cmon dont joke with me. SCs are plagued by ppl not joining, by going afk, by not having healers or tanks, by ppl not communicating or playing the objective, queue times (in non peak hours) by double premade vs 1 premade and pugs, by class imbalance and by gear imbalance.

SCs have their own problems, that's certainly true, but they are by no means destroyed by them. People usually AFK if the battle is already lost and they're far more interested in killing in general than they are in playing for the objectives, I'll admit. I will run SCs simply because I can compensate for gear imbalance and class imbalance and deal with the other problems, and I find that the game simply plays better and accomodates a greater number of classes at SC level.

I should have explicitly addressed rez. My original post is aimed at the cases where a rez is not coming, because either you wiped or the front pushed over your corpse making it unsafe. In these cases you're getting kicked back to the WC or to the keep.

Ninepaces wrote:d) I love fortresses. First of all, I dont lag. A decent machine goes a long way.
Second, everyone has a role to play, and execution and communication is key. When to push, when to b, when to morale dump, staying near your party members while in the combat soup, mobilizing fast to bos or to posterns. Pressing the right buttons in the right order has value, but is not the only thing. That being said a healer that knows how to heal is better than a healer that just spams aoe. Like I said in the other thread, if the guild master allows you should really join us in one or two wb runs at peak time to see what goes on.

My PC isn't bad. RoR, for its own reasons, is laggy (suspected related to packets) and fortresses were laggy for whatever Mythic's reasons were at the time at which I played.

Now, please tell me again how any of the qualities you listed apply to sardine-mode fortresses. If there were any strategy, tactics or interest I would not even bother to complain, but there's just nothing to justify here. It seems almost as if you're talking about how the game in terms of what RvR should be rather than what Fortresses actually were.

I don't view RvR as inherently irredeemable or anything, but you're talking about strategy and tactics in the context of RvR as if they're something big and meaningful in the current system (or more accurately, talking about Fortresses in terms of RvR.)

Ninepaces wrote: Look is this really a problem about fortresses or a depression/psychological thing? I mean this in a polite non-aggressive way. It just sounds like you've made your mind up based on an impression you had in the past instead of looking at the positives. Maybe oRVR isnt for you and a more action packed game is better suited for you. But ffs dont ruin it for the rest of us. Edit: nevermind this was addressed above

Yeah it's got nothing to do with whatever I may have been feeling at the time. If I hated the game I wouldn't be here, if my path were set I wouldn't bother spending my time attempting to justify my position, and if I were wildly off base, the rest of the team as well as the core testers would long have stopped me by now.

Anyone saying they didn't lag during the first iterations of Fortress takes is a Liar. Sorry, but that's just the god's honest truth. It had nothing to do with PC ability.

Personally, I REALLY LIKE there being an upside to wiping your opponent. Having that same damn zerg return 30s later can be a detriment. However, seeing as there are multiple battle objectives, and if the system works as intended, it shouldn't be an issue, as "getting back to combat/action" doesn't necessarily entail WB/keep blob fests. That just seems to be Player Nature.

Btw, thanks for taking the time to answer the questions Az. It's good to read the thoughts, rational and gritty parts of how the game is being developed at times.

Azarael wrote: Now, please tell me again how any of the qualities you listed apply to sardine-mode fortresses. If there were any strategy, tactics or interest I would not even bother to complain, but there's just nothing to justify here. It seems almost as if you're talking about how the game in terms of what RvR should be rather than what Fortresses actually were.

I'm not going to spend the time to teach you how to play the game you're developing. I've spent too much time here already. Stand in the right place and press the right buttons at the right time.