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Corrections to PvP in a PvP game

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Sathum
Posts: 11

Re: Corrections to PvP in a PvP game

Post#91 » Thu May 21, 2020 3:33 pm

Foofmonger wrote: Thu May 21, 2020 1:42 pm This entire thread is an interesting microcosm of the gaming industry. Love it.

Players having good ideas that are immediately dismissed by devs? Check
Players harassing other devs over the quantity or quality of their work? Check
Fragmented playerbase that has diametrically opposed opinions? Check

Look folks, this is par for the course in this industry. Nobody can please everyone. The devs can't please the entire playerbase, the playerbase can't get their **** together and communicate properly with the devs as to what they want, etc... There is no blame game here and no one person or group is "at fault" these are typical and normal issues.

So let's be fair here, there's a give and take, and the best way to move forward as usual, is to compromise.

Devs: To stick you head into the sand and say "there is no problem and we want it this way", when there very clearly is a problem (regardless if this is the solution), isn't helpful.

Players: To harass the devs about their work or them not making immediate changes to what you want to see happen is disrespectful and delusional. This is a small unpaid private team who do this in their free time, they've done an amazing job and continue to do so. Yes, they aren't perfect (to my point above), but nobody is. We need to work together, not opposed to one another.

To the topic at hand: There is very clearly a middle ground here that can be had, where some progression can happen without being locked into FOMO content (unfortunately a basic game design issue and a legacy of 2008). The reality is, and let's be clear here, that this style of progression engine is outdated, not widely used in the gaming industry, and led to the issues that caused the live WAR to collapse. Simply replicating Mythic's failures will just lead to the same failures happening twice.

Now, to be fair, the devs have already started to do some of this. You can get Royals from gold/purple ORVR bags. To be fair to the players devs, you say "we don't want you to be able to progress in ORVR" well that's just not true based on the system you've already implemented, it's just incredibly slow/tedious.

There is certainly a way to open up ways to achieve royal crests, without simply flooding the playerbase with them and making them extremely easy to get. The issue is not the rate of progression in a vacuum, it's the "access" to that progression. Simply put, it's not about "how fast you can get your end game gear", it's that "if you do not play at the proper times, or 24/7, or discord/sor citywatch, you do not progress". So everyone needs to understand that any response such as "you just want to progress faster" is completely irrelevant and misses the point. It is not about speed, it's about being able to progress at all.

Now, I've seen a lot of posts about motivation, etc.. I want to nip this in the bud right here. There are plenty of different types of people, with different personalities, who play games for different reasons. There is plenty of objective research on this subject if you want to educate yourself (and functionally how modern game design works). Your anecdotal experience of what you want as a person is frankly, irrelevant. You aren't the entirety of the playerbase. Different players play games for different reasons, fact. And some people play games to feel a sense of "progression", fact. Gear grind games fill that itch, fact. Now from my subjective viewpoint, I like playing the game regardless of having BIS gear, but I much prefer to pay the game with BIS gear. You say "if I don't want to play without BIS slot gear, why would I play with it", and I can tell you, because then I can play the game on an even playing field. Why do I want to try and go do ranked 6v6 vs people in full BIS slot gear when I don't have it? Why do I want to go try to solo roam and gank people when I'm gonna find people who I can't beat due to gear discrepancies? Etc... (for the record, I do still play, and I don't have BIS slot gear, but I'm giving hypothetical examples).

Regardless and to wrap this up, there is a way to free up progression from FOMO events, without flooding the market with royals. Devs, you do not need to speed up the progression, but if you want to keep your playerbase healthy you need to figure out some ways to allow people to progress that doesn't involve them quitting their jobs to play this game 24/7, or waking up at 3 AM just to log on and do a city. Ignoring this issue is going to lead to a dwindling playerbase and eventually, a dead server. I'm not saying this to "threaten you" or to be hyperbolic. I've seen more MMO communities rise and die than most people can count. I've seen all of this happen before, and I'll see it all happen again. I highly suggest you take this issue seriously and not be flippant about "what you think is best", if you think locking progression behind FOMO events is best, you are wrong, and the entire gaming industry as a whole will tell you that.

Now, I'm not saying "this proposal is the way", or that "players should drop Royals". I make no stance on what I believe the solution to be (frankly because I haven't thought it through and I don't have one currently, I'm not going to propose a half-assed solution), but I want to ensure that we have a shared understanding of what the actual issue is. It's hard to solve problems if we can't all agree on what the root cause is. I'm sure the devs or someone else can come up with some neat and inventive solutions that solve this issue and satisfy both the devs desires for their vision and growth of the server and the playerbases wishes.

For just a rough brainstorm on the topic:
Royals from X activity but are capped at Y per day/week
Royals from Ranked 6v6 (maybe capped)
Royals from player kills, not capped, but reduce the royals you get in cities by the same amount per week. If you get the royals from the cities, then the royals you get from player kills count towards this total (I'm not wording this well, but basically, imagine if you can get 20 royals a week from player kills, however, this total is not "additional" to cities, so for instance, lets say you get 20 royals from kills, the first 20 royals you get in that same week from cities give you 0 royals, you already got them from kills, you only get any additional royals from getting 21 or more from cities.
etc...

I'm sure there's like 50 "solution ideas" people could come up with on this topic. Just want to get peoples brain juices flowing here!
I agree with every single word you said man 💯.

I propose solution to Weekly quests or quest. This will give a lot of people flexibility not login for every city or specific hour. On 7th page here or I started the post called "This is suggestion" it explains everything....
I'm not saying it's best solution to 24/7 grind and login in at specific time for city and so on... However it's a step towards it...

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Foofmonger
Posts: 524

Re: Corrections to PvP in a PvP game

Post#92 » Thu May 21, 2020 4:12 pm

Telen wrote: Thu May 21, 2020 2:17 pm I do agree that the problem isnt the devs creation. We all had a great time with the pick up and play orvr aspects of the main game. Now were starting to see why end game was such a failure at launch. Mythics legacy of locked off progression behind triggered content. I mean how couldnt Mythic see the problem with that in an mmo. Imagine if you could have only done molten core at 3am.
To be fair it wasn't just a specific Mythic issue, a lot of MMO's in the 2000's tried this approach and it failed every time (Shadowbane is a good example). Persistent worlds are great, persistently losing your progress or items or cities (or whatever it is), while you are offline because the game is designed around a 24/7 persistent worlds are not great. That's why when we look at new wave open PvP MMOs like Albion, or Crowfall for instance (heck even Archeage), they have mechanisms in place to prevent these issues. They may put timers as to when sieges/attacks can happen, or even schedules (they happen at X intervals if you trigger Y event). Games like crowfall try to solve the issue by having the campaign itself not being persistent, etc..

I don't think it's realistic to ask the devs to completely re-design the end game content of WAR here, so a much easier solution is just to free up the only avenue of progression being time locked FOMO content. If the devs really wanted to just re-design the end game content, then they could just do that too of course. Cities could happen X times per week at pre-determined times, but that would require a complete reworking (and probably bastardization) of this game, so I probably wouldn't suggest this as a viable option.

HvpE
Posts: 5

Re: Corrections to PvP in a PvP game

Post#93 » Thu May 21, 2020 4:38 pm

I agree wholeheartedly what OP said and was amazingly put to words. Wargrim has once again proven he has no ear for it. The game has increased the level gap with making sov gear the grind it is. While the sets themselves don't have amazing stat differences the set bonuses make the ~45 city grind worth it.

Listen to your community. Don't bend to your community...listen to your community.

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Aurandilaz
Posts: 1896

Re: Corrections to PvP in a PvP game

Post#94 » Thu May 21, 2020 4:45 pm

I think some devs in past (maybe it was Natherul) said that they expected cities to happen maybe once per week, after some coordinated realm wide push through multiple fort zones. Pretty sure no one expected the first players to be full Sov within 3 weeks of city launch, nor the current "rare" event of 5-10 cities per week.
With that in mind, the current city grind is quite fast vs what was "expected".

Ofc it sucks that playing the campaign doesn't really progress your character, but ehh, it was progressing your char last 5 years, maybe eventually it will be changed to provide more progression again.
You can keep gearing alts when its normal campaign and log "mains" for city fights if you insist on keeping progress going. Maybe eventually being rr80+ also gives some gains, instead of access to random overpriced dyes. Cosmetics, unique skins, or next weapons require rr85 (invader?) and the tier after it would require rr90 (warlord tier weap?) and then finally rr100 for "Sovereign" weapons. You wouldnt "need" them, but players would keep doing all forms of RVR just to get the renown needed to equip that weapon with +2 dps stat and +1 more crit.

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Ramlaen
Posts: 201

Re: Corrections to PvP in a PvP game

Post#95 » Thu May 21, 2020 5:10 pm

Aurandilaz wrote: Thu May 21, 2020 4:45 pmnor the current "rare" event of 5-10 cities per week
Up to three in one day.
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Alfa1986
Posts: 542

Re: Corrections to PvP in a PvP game

Post#96 » Thu May 21, 2020 5:35 pm

Yaliskah wrote: Thu May 21, 2020 12:35 pm Checks all my post if you got some time. Have probably explained a billion time that team members are not commutable.

The one who focus on cities is not the one who focus in scenario or dungeons, or gear, or balance, because they have no clue, because they are not convinced, because they are not interested at a personnal level.
Again :
Point is they are working on their own agenda, it is the least they deserve according the fortune they are not paid for.
Accusing us to ignore community suggestions and propositions is absolutely unfair. There are many examples. Some suggested to reward in a better way last defense before fort. It has been done. Some suggested to rescale conq and vanq prices, it has been done, Some are asking to change everything, and it is not, because even the idea would be good, it is a crazy amount of work, for an uncertain result in the end.

My point Alfa, without any offense or condescension is that it is always easier to tell a story than making it real when someone else is doing it while the others are having fun.

XX concern is Gear, YY concern is RvR, yours is Scenario. Ours are all parts of the project.

How 20 ppl are supposed to please thousand of ppl, who -and this is the crucial point- don't even share the same opinion on a precise proposition ?

Just read this whole thread. Some agree the OP ( i showed i partially share it, with a small condition), some don't. Who is right (and who is sufficiently imbued with his person to decide who is right) ? anything we do, whatever we do, i suppose those who are against the way we will follow -whatever the way- will come here and will say the same thing as you do : " You don't listen to your community" even we would have listened a part of it.

So what ? Do we give a coin and start over ? I'm not trying to divide community, the community is obviously divided on each part of this project, each detail, each change made), i just point a fact, our purpose in our miserable life is not to make everyone miserable, and no one in team feels more intelligent than anyone. The only real difference is that we are judged on the result. No one judge you on your propositions.

This is why is tell you you are unfair. It is demoralizing that you (:a part of the community) don't understand that. :(
Please note that I do not blame anyone for anything, it is better to use the word "argue" in this case, this will be a more accurate interpretation. You (devs) say that do not ignore opinions, and if I signed up yesterday I would believe you, but I’ve been reading the forum for more than a year now. Of course, not all opinions of the community are rejected, but the main, the most basic ones, yes. You say about 4 inv meds for protecting the pre-fort zone, to be honest, I don’t really understand what the point was, it’s obvious to me that if you give players a chance to get the same reward they will use it, but well.

Now i try to analyze the situation in detail. What happened? why it was complete failure? Because of x-realmers who changed characters and arranged a zerg in the middle zone, then they switched to the other side and quickly captured the pre-fort zone, thereby do farming medals. This is a very interesting situation since personally I am not so naive as to think that it is spontaneous in itself, one hundred two hundred players simultaneously changed teire accounts.
Lets say, when y introduced 1 inv medallion for def the pre-fort zone, the same idea worked perfectly.
So there was some sort of organized work. Draw your own conclusions. who can control 100-200 players can control the gameplay.
Yes, I completely agree with you that the one who offers the idea does not bear any responsibility, unlike the one who undertakes to implement it, and there is an example with the same scenarios (piterpen's suggestions if you remember). But here you really need to be very careful and be able to weed out healthy ideas from slag. I don’t know how to do it perfectly and I won’t advise anything. There is only one real way: to listen, read, think, analyze various opinions.

Yes, if one person expresses some idea, then his opinions are insignificant and mean nothing, but if 100-300 people already support this idea, you will agree that this is a completely different situation, and this idea takes on a completely different weight. Although they, too, may be wrong. I do not really understand what it means to seek a compromise. A compromise is sought by people in the equal weight category, the developer and the player cannot initially be equal, respectively, any compromises here will not ever be found.

Now I would like to say a few words about the content and the number of players who want to play it. Let's say 90% of the players play in the RVR, in the scenario 50-60%, in the pve -30%, in the ranked 10-15%. Which priority would I choose? Obviously one that is interesting to more people.
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kmark101
Posts: 482

Re: Corrections to PvP in a PvP game

Post#97 » Thu May 21, 2020 6:34 pm

It's an interesting topic how to take game-wide progression campaign to a personal level. Fortunately for us, there is the scenario system which can be the answer to lots of things. Without sharing wise words about "how it should have been", I'd focus around how to harness this system. Keyword here is what is doable with limited time volunteer dev team. Just like with a new medicine, much easier to do from previously developed and tested ingredients.

I think the following solution is certainly doable as every elements of it are already in the game:
  • People would receive a special "city token" upon participating in the campaign for the week. Participation can be measured in several ways, for the simplicity let's say how many times they have been to fort or how many times they have pushed/defended an end zone. Every part of this system is already in game: participation calculation, weekly token distribution (for rankeds). Every "city token" would be valid for a week, again, this is also in game as part of the weekend warfront rewards only valid for 7 days now.
  • People could use their city tokens for 7 days at anytime, the city queue would be available for them when they have a city token in their inventory. They could queue the exact same way, as either solo or wb/group. This is how people queue for cities now, zero change. When a city is finished, one city token is used and gone. This would also happen if people play the city in a "normal way", so there would be no additional city sieges than intended for a player (ie. you could decide to either go when the actual siege happens or later with your friends, see last line of this post!)
  • With these you would be able to play the city sieges anytime, but still gated behind the progression content, but without changing any part of the basic design (ie. no royal drops from orvr, etc..) and the progression with royal crests. Since city sieges would be more accessible on a weekly basis for everyone who contributed to the campaign, I'd lower the amount of crests in bags from cities, but that's just fine tuning the system.

Advantage: doable, fair, all parts are already in the game for different reasons
Disadvantage: any?

Additional bonus: we could see a pretty cool competitive schene as top guilds who want to fight each other could field their best 24vs24 men to a scheduled time, which means there would be less pug farming and more elite level play to watch! Achieving this goal again without big changes.
Last edited by kmark101 on Thu May 21, 2020 6:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Greywolfamakir
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Re: Corrections to PvP in a PvP game

Post#98 » Thu May 21, 2020 6:46 pm

I 100% agree with OP.

Devs are the owners of ROR, they can do whatever they want. If they want Invader/Royals drop just from Fort/City its ok. They can ignore or listen ROR's community. They work for free, they do what they do because they want. People thinks that feedback is good to keep a healthy game, but what if they aren't searching any kind of healthy game? like i said, they can do whatever they want.

I play WH, I dont enjoy city sieges, City Sieges ARE NOT FUN like WH at all, but i want to get my Sovereign gear even if i have to play something boring for my since i enjoy other parts of the game like ganking, roaming and SCs.

I agree 100% with OP since i would enjoy an alternative viable way to obtain Royal Crests.

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Foofmonger
Posts: 524

Re: Corrections to PvP in a PvP game

Post#99 » Thu May 21, 2020 7:36 pm

Aurandilaz wrote: Thu May 21, 2020 4:45 pm
You can keep gearing alts when its normal campaign and log "mains" for city fights if you insist on keeping progress going.
The problem with this is that while some people will do this, most will not. Most will simply "play other games", and "do other activities".

I agree with the rest of your post, there are a variety of ways to "keep progress" going (also devs thinking city wasn't gonna happen more then once a week is what we call delusional, there was plenty of data from live on that topic).

But you also bring up a good point that I didn't touch upon, the early city launch and the quick changes. This is actually one of the hearts of the current problem. Basically, when City launched, it allowed for gear to drop from gold bags, for however long it was in City. The devs changed this, but only after a good amount of players made significant progress with their Sov sets (some of them being devs, leds not kid ourselves here, this isn't a secret, but it is a pun), so there is a group of players with characters that got an immense amount of progression ins a short amount of time. Now the ladder was pulled up behind them and everyone else is stuck in the current system.

So, why is this an issue? Because it's causing the basic imbalance. The community isn't on an even playing field, and the people who got the early city boost have had a many months long advantage over everyone else on this server. Now, other people want to be able to compete with them on an even playing field (i.e. having the same level of gear), and they can't get the gear anywhere nearly as quickly. This is what we call "pulling the ladder up behind you". Let's not kid ourselves here guys, some of you got 3-4-5 pieces of soverign in a few weeks from getting them dropping from bags, and you are generally the same players who don't want to "speed up progression". Reading between the lines, it's simply "you want to maintain your advantage and not fight equally geared players".

Now if that never happened, and city was always giving out end game gear at the same rate from launch of city until now, this issue would be much more minute. The playing field would be more even. You wouldn't have "full sov chars who got their gear in 3 weeks" talking down to regular players on the forum who didn't play during that time period telling them that "the system is fine". You wouldn't have anyone else to have to "catch up to" beyond the other players who "earned" their gear at the same rate.

Now I understand why the change was made, the progression was too fast! Nobody should have their full sov sets in a few weeks, I 100% agree with that. It's just a shame that "some" players were allowed EZmode sov grind, and the rest of us aren't. In a single server MMO, this was an economically disastorous decision that split the playerbase between "those who got the ezmode grind", and "those who are stuck in the hardmode grind", and has effectively created a schism in the community (of which this entire thread is a microcosm of). There's no easy solution likely, and probably none coming, but there is a lesson to be learned about MMO economies, and that's not to launch progression systems that are too easy, and then change them after a bunch of players in your community got the end game gear, locking the rest of your playerbase into "slow mode". This creates a division in your playerbase, where one faction wants to desperately keep their unfair advantage, and the other faction wants to level out the unfair advantage by getting access to the faster progression.

For further context as well on this post and my others: I'm ok with the current system, it's not great, but it will work. I still play this game, and I still intend to play this game regardless of progression changes. I myself am about halfway done with my Warlord set, and I am able to progress (although I have to do some things I don't want to, like shuffling around work meetings or waking up in the middle of the night). It has room for improvement though.

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wargrimnir
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Re: Corrections to PvP in a PvP game

Post#100 » Thu May 21, 2020 10:25 pm

This is, and always has been, a development server first and foremost.

Early testers on new features and game modes are inevitably going to benefit when something happens in their favor, for a vast majority of implementations, as we are very relaxed when it comes to any kind of wipes with a grand total of maybe three? Two of which were over very specific circumstances?

The dev you're alluding to benefiting from the gear dropping in bags had no impact on the decision for gear to drop from bags. The fact that we did not hit our targets of how often cities would be available is more a factor of the community who perhaps predictably managed to make the best of their potential looting. The two conversations between "what drops from where and how much" and "how often will this occur under these factors" were at very different stages of development. The implementation did not fit with the reward structure, and the easier of the two were modified to fit.
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