Warhammer: The Renown System Needs More Work

[gnomad]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

Compared to what? There's no need for comparison. You either have polish or you don't.

The fuck you comparing it to WoW for? You are really setting up your game to fall like a stone if you set your standard by the release history of other MMO's.

Agree totally..

Lets see by the typical fawnboi logic " Well when WoW released 4.5 YEARS AGO it had the same problems as my game that I spunk all over that released 4.5 WEEKS AGO"

That is how a typical gushing moronic sycophant would talk about his game, oh sorry that is most of the WAR fawnbois on here.

[Moontayle]

The moronic thing is thinking, after 10 years of these games, that there won't be issues at release. WAR has done an admirable job overall, but they do have problems. The true test is where they stand at 6 months out.

[Digits]

Originally Posted by Moontayle

The moronic thing is thinking, after 10 years of these games, that there won't be issues at release. WAR has done an admirable job overall, but they do have problems. The true test is where they stand at 6 months out.

So the true test isn't how they released the game, but instead how it stands some arbitrary amount from retail? What changed from beta to 1.0? Their role hasn't changed, our role has in that we are now paying customers instead of volunteer testers. What issues did WoW have that seriously prevented someone from getting from 1 to 60? I take serious issue with how WoW progressed, but at no time did I feel that there was a concerted failure on Blizzard's end to maintain a solid leveling game or provide a stable performance. On stability alone it is right to condemn WAR. I crash and suffer from memory leaks worse than in Vanguard, for christ's sake.

By trying to finish the game post release they are going to fuck it up. They have no time and no room for error and every day that isn't addressing an issue is a string of customers leaving, and now they have to lodge hail mary after hail Mary and hope it's enough. Doubling the experience in open RVR. Schizophrenically increasing PVE quest experience. Repeatable quests (that give shit for exp). Renown Nerf. These are not concerted and intelligent responses to the problems of the game. They are haphazardly doing anything that might make the issues less severe and hoping to luck out. That's the real issue with releasing early. You give yourself no margin of error, and can very easily take your game down a route no one is interested in.

The true test is if people are willing to put up with their failure to deliver a knock-out in terms of game quality and give them time to make amends. With the backing of EA, and honestly fuck WOTLK as an excuse to retail early, they could have held the game in reserve for as long as it took to make something to actually meet basic expectations.

Edit: I dared to upset WAR fan boys =(

[Nerion]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

Compared to what? There's no need for comparison. You either have polish or you don't.

The fuck you comparing it to WoW for? You are really setting up your game to fall like a stone if you set your standard by the release history of other MMO's.

If you scroll up a couple posts I basically said how much I dislike the current system. Polish is not a measurement if a game is good or not, imo. I see it as a rating of how much a game is complete on a technical and mechanical level, not an actual measure of how fun or good a game is.

Anyways I am splitting hairs. What will determine the future of this game and how many people will play it is 1.1. That patch needs to really fix the class balances and offer some major fixes for renown. Ontop of that, it needs to include some raiding content. If it can deliver that then this game will live. AoC had the same chance to improve the problems that the community brought forth to them, and they failed miserably. Hopefully, Mythic will take a clue and realize how important it is to follow-up with strong patching.

[Mist]

Needs to deliver raiding content? Ever think this game might not be aimed at that segment?

The game had a 77% conversion rate in the first month. That's incredibly high. Maybe the game just isn't for this board filled with ex-EQ players. There's certainly hundreds of thousands of people happily playing away.

[Moontayle]

What issues does WAR have that seriously prevents someone from getting from 1 to 40?

Fixed. The answer to both questions is nothing. People like to complain about itemization but as long as you're bringing up WoW, it was shit until, what, the 3rd try at making T2 worthwhile? People like to complain about the leveling but I remember a huge gap in the 50s where you didn't have many options beyond grinding. There was also a bit of a gap in the late 30s. It took until well into their first expansion before Blizzard changed the exp gain from 20-60 to make it both smoother and gapless.

I stand by my comment. If you expect any MMO to come out of the gates without issues, even basic ones like itemization (which might not be so basic) and leveling curve, you're delusional. WAR six months from now will be a more solid game but just like WoW at release, it's playable and, to me at least, it's fun. Are there issues? Yes. Are they fixable? Yes. And I'm sure they will be fixed.

[Drajakur]

Just as a kind of curiosity - does anyone have an example of an MMO that did 'get it wrong somehow' by releasing early and then manage NOT to completely fuck it up in the long-run?

1. AoC failed utterly in this regard.
2. VG was so completely fucked at the start than even if they did fix it no one would have known.
3. EQ2? Maybe? I played it at release and then years after. It was much better but still somehow not good enough to play. WAR was much more enjoyable at release, but its PVP + PVE pedigree suggests it will have a harder time of making things work.
4. WoW? Pretty hard to say that WoW at release = WAR at release, even if you claim that there was no end-game content in WoW at release. I played WoW since final beta right through release and had fun all the way to 60. I was not particularly hardcore for WoW, however, so maybe I just didn't hit the content gaps before they patched them in.

Anyone have a shining example WAR should follow?

[Nerion]

I think having some raiding content is always good for an MMO, in order to keep things fresh/addictive.

[Mkopec1]

Originally Posted by Nerion

I think having some raiding content is always good for an MMO, in order to keep things fresh/addictive.

They do have raids, they are called keep sieges and city sieges.

[Mist]

There's actually quite a bit already, it's just super cock-blocky. We're still trying to beat the last boss in Bastion Stair. Finally started going to farm the first 2 bosses once per day for extra set pieces.

[Nerion]

I heard they had nothing more than 6 man content, atm.

As to what Drajakur said, the biggest problem I see with this industry is how it handles cash and manages time. I read all these stories and talk to people about how the show is run at many of these companies. Incredibly poor management of money, constant bickering among employees, weird hours to meet completely unplanned for or badly planned deadlines, and leadership that has no clue on how to motivate people. These problems are directly linked to leadership/management. The people running these companies, in many cases, are people who have never run a business in their life but are incredibly artistic, not practical. They can not make an effective schedule, lack problem solving skills, and most importantly can not manage money. All this combined leads to the unfinished and early releases you see now.

[Tolanin]

Originally Posted by Mkopec1

They do have raids, they are called keep sieges and city sieges.

to hard to get to city sieges. Its nearly impossible to actually cap zones and keep sieges are shitty because the rewards just arent there yet.

One of the saving graces of wow at release was the fact that we spent a ton of time farming the group zones as a raid until they added more content, in WAR atm we either have to do keep stuff which generally is just going around capping undefended shit while order does the same in the next zone over (repeat for 4 hours with maybe 1 actual player kill per hour) or saying fuck you to 2/3rds of the guild and going to do city dungeons/lost vale (all of which are short/unimaginative and on long lockouts)

The game desperately needs to start rewarding actual rvr fights, i dont think the answer is more pve. They need to make killing players in rvr something you actually want to do(and make defending worthwhile) instead of killing players being just a waste of time since most of them give 1 renown and get in the way or those 500 objectives.. which luckily are never defended because defending is worthless.

I also think that to much of the grind is visible right now... people look at rr80 and get depressed (atleast i do) its so far away and so much grinding from here to there that it just saps the will to play in the same way korean games do. A much better mark would have been rr60 and then add the other 20 in increments after a certain percentage of people hit the last cap.

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by Nerion

What will determine the future of this game and how many people will play it is 1.1. .

1.1 doesn't even matter. The game's outdoor PvP system is fundamentally flawed. It's already over. The World maps are fucked up by forcing a separtion between PvE/PvP. There's no way you can fix that shit without throwing away 1-2 years of designed content.

What I think will end up happening is they will either

A) Refine their PvP scenarios. They'll polish up their broken, shitty scenarios into playable elements. RVR will no longer be open world, but instead will be converted into scenarios akin to the old/original Alterac Valley (where PvE and PvP are intertwined)

They'll maintain/balance populations with battlegroups, and allow wins to determine to which scenarios/rvrinstances are played (i.e. if destruction's net wins > orders net wins, the war will shift closer to Altdorf in the Emp/Chaos pairing the week after, where the pref scenarios are those for Reikland)

The game will become an MMO focused on instance PvP. I think if done well, it can survive in this niche.

B) Feverishly try to apply patches and fixes to the open RVR system to attempt to salvage quite possibly the shittiest implementation of RVR yet. Crash and burn will follow within 1-3 months.

[Tolanin]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

1.1 doesn't even matter. The game's outdoor PvP system is fundamentally flawed. It's already over. The World maps are fucked up by forcing a separtion between PvE/PvP. There's no way you can fix that shit without throwing away 1-2 years of designed content.

What I think will end up happening is they will either

A) Refine their PvP scenarios. They'll polish up their broken, shitty scenarios into playable elements. RVR will no longer be open world, but instead will be converted into scenarios akin to the old/original Alterac Valley (where PvE and PvP are intertwined)

They'll maintain/balance populations with battlegroups, and allow wins to determine to which scenarios/rvrinstances are played (i.e. if destruction's net wins > orders net wins, the war will shift closer to Altdorf in the Emp/Chaos pairing the week after, where the pref scenarios are those for Reikland)

The game will become an MMO focused on instance PvP. I think if done well, it can survive in this niche.

B) Feverishly try to apply patches and fixes to the open RVR system to attempt to salvage quite possibly the shittiest implementation of RVR yet. Crash and burn will follow within 1-3 months.

They woulda been better off having only one T4 set of zones that were set up like cascading open world AV maps, with some pve and lots of npcs. The RVR zones arent THAT bad tho, mainly the game lacks reward and the capping of zones in prime time is way to slow.

Fortresses should only be takable between 3pm est-2am est and the zones should cap relatively quickly during those times (1hr per zone if you hold the objectives+keeps).. if they did that and increased rewards for killing players and defending objectives/keeps then i could see rvr being fun, it would be a constant battle shifting between zones then the game would be pretty fun, i could bear playing it for a few months while they make the zones better and add cooler rvr elements.

The best part about the original AV was you were basically forced to fight players, AV become stupidly gay after it jsut became a race to end with no fighting except vs npcs, thats what WAR is now and its painfully boring because they dont even have good rewards to show for the boring grind like AV did.

[Horse]

Polish is relative.

WoW's launch polish was in directly addressing EQ and EQ2. Accessibility and smoothness issues were fixed. "Questing" was fixed. Having a linear storyline was fixed. Giving the player direction was fixed. Good, customizable interface was fixed.

WAR's launch polish was *supposed to be* directly addressing WoW's lack of focus on PVP in group play. Levelling up as a group in PVP. Gearing up through PVP. Having interaction between world PVP and battleground PVP.


So when people find a poorly itemized and not-too-well-thought-out PVP levelling system, they can easily wonder where the fucking polish is. Fuck the "smoothness of combat" and "vanilla wow 1.0 interface issues." The relevant place, the place that needed to be self sustaining and needing no patch was the PVP mechanics.


People are confusing loot lag, server code and all that typical MMO bullshit with the relevant polish: PVP SYSTEMS. All that matters is how robust the backbone of the game system is and everyone can see the potential WAR has along those lines. The polish is simply not there, yet. The hit or miss way the community is handled isn't helping this out any.


You can easily find things people bitched about in the first few months of WoW's launch that were directly related to the conflict of how EQ did it better at that point. Lag, LFG, "scheduled downtime" were the big few.

Most of the bitching that I've seen or done is regarding to how they can fuck up the system and make it too grind oriented, how the rewards don't make sense, and how a lot of the gameplay options are meaningless because the most efficient path presents itself and that's what people do.


Because really, as long as there's polish on that core game system the rest of it gets the "well, give it some time to work itself out" allowances. But hey, they're simply not there and so it turns into a complaint that NEITHER of those ends are polished. Who cares how long it took WoW to fix this or that, the core of it was solid.