Feedback of AoE Changes / Future Suggestions

[sotora]

There is a good point in the beggining of OP post, about lack of good definition (at least in patch notes) to what AoE change exactly was supposed to accomplish?

"Breaking up zerg" can mean anything, and it definately means diffrent things to diffrent people. Too broad and too vague. Defining both problem and goal better would be a good thing.

[Tamarlan]

Playing ORVR on a slayer is more boring than ever as it is all about Flurry especially on keep defense. The patch makes tactics and for some classes even full trees useless. Radiant Knights disbanded, Invasion is running around in group size.
Still loving the game but to be honest I dont find anything good about this patch.

[Fractus]

In my humble opinion and i'm quite new at only 8 months playing (although 15 years in MMO's including live) compared to a lot of your community with much longer on the game. Haojin is asking the right question, "Define what was to be fixed" and possibly what is the end game aim play-style. Assuming the "zerg" was the issue to be fixed to reach the ideal end game play-style (your game, your ideal of course, still a private server how you want to play it is king). Assuming that zerg was of 100 players grouping together under 3 warband leaders, on each side and in each fight players getting to choose and press about 5 rotation abilities before the larger of the 2 forces won. Or in keep take/defense staying at a complete stalemate in primetime for 3 hours for example, then overall i think its a successful patch on this criteria, there is now on both sides the equal tools for a more organised/coordination force to spike deal a lot more AOE damage than healers can absorb so the stalemate is broken.

From what i see it you have a number of variables to alter end game content and play, and also i assume an aim for what end game content should be and play like, again i am fairly new and no game designer, so simply trying to translate experience setting up new businesses, processes and their populations culture into - a game, mechanics and community population.

Variables (cause and effect related)
1. Daily Class mechanics

Spoiler:

- changing class AOE damage stats for example

2. Daily Game world mechanics and theme

Spoiler:

- changing keep lord health/damage output, or adding Keg End events to spread player base out and increase engagement (fun).

3. Daily Population (active IP's)

Spoiler:

- Currently EU primetime is equal numbers, but NA is often more destruction players, and in-between is often lower population, different mechanic changes will benefit some timezones and make it more difficult for others, no easy way around that.

4. Average active player retention rate, so how many active days out of the last 60 has the player (IP based) been online, and how long have they been active in total, 2 years? And is there 2 groups of players, long term have fun trying all the content, and hardcore players who focus and burn out?

Spoiler:

- This directly feeds most of the variables below in class skill, tactical skill and game mechanic knowledge via retention, alongside guild membership which also teaches and retains this knowledge. This is often affected by game balance, engagement (fun), events, and also external channels, so social media, phone messaging and of course friends. Higher player (IP) retention = access to challege players with mechanics and understand changes in mechanics better. It's easy to forget that as a new player logging in for the first time excited and 3 days later not knowing what an active zone is, or how supplies work, or how a ram can only spawned at your own keep and the mutitude of knowledge needed to use all of the game content, and the only aid being advice channel or guilds teaching new members.

5. Average player skill level needed with a class, also actual performance

Spoiler:

- If you lower selected CD's to near nothing players can alter rotations which can increase player engagement(therefore fun), however equally if you time CD's you setup an optimum way to play each class, and almost predict how people will play the class making it easier to maintain a balance. The latter would be easier to measure the skill usage of, eg do they use optimum setup or not, if you have the data somewhere, and this knowledge of skill base in the community lets you know how far you push people and challenge them with class mechanics, are we mostly 3 button spammers, or do we for example stance dance as SW's, so do you need to give us more ability access or less per class.

6. Average play tactical skill and game mechanics knowledge level needed, also actual performance

Spoiler:

- This alters the play-style ORVR a lot i feel, for example players in a pick up warband target in different ways and different targets, whereas a voice comm warband will use assist macro's and target a healer first all-together, and somehow Haojin manages to coordinate 4 main assists on voice, which sounds impossible for one voice to speak so many words in such a short time, coordinating positioning of 24 people, listening to scouting info and also calling 4 targets all the time. Another example If people know about positioning and for example healers and ranged positioning on the inner stairs of the lords room in a keep defense rather than the floor of the lords room, and that this increases the chance of living longer and having more fighting time and engagement (fun), as Developers you can use this info to push us with game world design, so more health and damage from keep lords or tougher BO guards. This is difficult to measure i admit, but has to be related to guild membership and player (IP retention).

7. Order/Destruction ORVR warband leader population and game mechanic knowledge, tactical skill

Spoiler:

- This has a big effect on ORVR, no leaders = no ORVR, also leaders without game mechanic knowledge = less success, use of content and engagement (fun), this i don't know what data you can access and is logged/flagged, i doubt there is a flag on a character for "was warband leader" with a timestamp on it that could be cross measured with IP retention and guild membership. Knowing this info would help you know how far you can challenge ORVR warbands with mechanics and how quickly they will adapt and take advantage of new changes, e.g. low leader population means don't make the keep lord too hard too kill.

8. Population of Order/Destruction ORVR warband players who coordinate 90% of the time with the warband leader, preferably by voice communication.

Spoiler:

- This has a big effect on ORVR as you can see from Haojin's videos a coordinated 6 man can wipe 30+ players, another example when Luchs, Arthur and Radiant Knights had a warband each in a keep defense and coordinated between each others warbands via voice they could clean an outnumbered keep defense with ease, however if as a community we have few leaders who coordinate via voice we cannot be challenged with game class and world mechanics as much without creating an elite few who drive away the majority as they always win in an unbalanced way, creating a less engaging game play-style.

9. Population of Order/Destruction ORVR warband active characters who are not in a guild, therefore nearly all of them do not coordinate, certainly not via voice, and more importantly do not benefit from retained tactical and game mechanic knowledge.

Spoiler:

- This should probably sit under player retention but i felt needed to be highlighted as this is also a variable you can have some control over as Developers to increase player (IP) retention and therefore skill and game mechanic knowledge, while also making it easier for Warband leaders and increasing in game comms and coordination. If you can reward guild membership, even promote it and perhaps enforce it to an extent, this will give you a more skilled, knowledgeable, coordinated player base to test your mechanics with, it also begins to move toward you taking control to an extent of the average player skill level giving you a player base that is easier to balance with mechanics as they can all be challenged at the same level and learn new changes quicker.

So With the cause and effect variables defined, you can define an end game play-style you'd like to achieve (which you will likely already have years ago, or you may simply like to mix it up every now and then). Also i suspect if it works 24 vs 24 then it equally scales down to 6 vs 6, and if you want to play 1vs1 on a ORVR game use /dual. I would assume the below but again your private server, you set the rules how you want to play, i feel sometimes people may forget this point.

Aims for end game play-style and some ideas how
1. Rewards organisation and coordination, not an OP class or equipment or level of characters.

Spoiler:

- you have this done really well

2. More engagement as a class and as a warband = more fun

Spoiler:

- so longer fights mean more of an ability rotation can be used and more coordination can be applied.

3. Not the same place fighting all the time (Variety)

Spoiler:

- So not just fights at keep take defense, but fights at BO's and ambushes and blocking areas of the map, moving into tactical map/terrain management, perhaps add some basic world design fortification content in zone maps to create tactical choke points for your 6 mans groups to hold against a warband while the other warband takes the other side of the map, make it easier to split forces by the terrain. and not just sit on BO's. (an example of this is the fallen bridge near destruction keep in KV, once up there is only 2 ways to get access up there, you can sit on the bridge and shoot down blocking access to the BO, its not perfect but a good feature that increases engagement(fun), having one access point only increases the ability to use a tank wall and some formation tactics (engagement/fun) rather than zerg, also see Manor in Eataine.

4. Risk vs Reward

Spoiler:

- Adversity creates strength, make it really hard to take a keep and it will be more rewarding when you do, but make sure the reward is worth it (you need to know your player base to know how hard you can make it). Make choke points with game world design fortifications difficult to assault and clear, and it will be more rewarding when you find a way too.

5. Rewards guilds and therefore boost players who coordinate together

Spoiler:

- Reward guild membership and make the tools for communicating between guild members and alliances easier, calendar events are good, alliance channel works very well for getting groups together as an example, friend list helps you keep track of people, these are good tools to boost coordination alongside player(IP) retention. Maybe make a new Realm tier 4 channel that covers the whole game one each side, so your warband leaders can muster people on their T1/2/3 alts to log their T4 character and join some action. Also people like Thorbaddin (order) are trying to coordinate with other warband leaders but its not easy, perhaps an alliance page in the guild tab can display the alliance voice comms channel/s, most of the voice channels I've personally learnt from individuals private messaging me details, not from in game communication tools like guild page, having an alliance voice channel with all the install/login details may help coordination (i'll also add make the game more fun and i laugh more when in voice comms, also you mostly and can just listen but the coordination is x3 better however you use voice). I will also admit the point there is not always the will, but if people are pushed into guilds, this will help grow the will to coordinate and make friends in game as you make it easier and more natural.

You do really great with this server, i have no idea how you manage the balance and the community is really well managed, i truly thank you so much for bringing this wonderful game back, and i'm sure many Warhammer fans, who have the board game etc greatly appreciate it. I've personally via this server joined a guild with a whatsapp group that keeps me very entertained with some nice folks i enjoy playing with on a regular basis.

I would be more than happy to donate 3/4 hours a week if you can send me some raw data to analyse and produce some basic summary reports for you on player retention, skill levels, guild membership etc if there is any data and if anything useful can be done to help give you more information with which to make decisions on any change and also analyse the differences over 2 weeks from any previous changes.

Again thank you for the great game and your personal time to make a lot of people laugh and have fun.

[Glorian]

Hmm. More of a 3 person plus Bitterstone Thunderers discussion.

So I'm surprised I have to agree here with Haojun. (Or how he is spelled)

If the idea is to break the Zerg and not the blob I would also suggest to revert the AoE changes and remove the damage from m1-m3 and convert them.

Morals are an integral part of RoR and AoR. But personally just bombing a whole group/wb with damage they can't advert is not what I define as a good fight.

And As some others have said. Complete career AoE masterys are now useless.
Just go Slayer and Flurry spam.

[Aurandilaz]

What I notice mostly is Maras getting kills in numbers that only were possible for sorc/BW in past and it feels weird.
Some classes really benefited from AoE change, others less so. Causing even more imbalance, as some mdps get it even easier, and others stay further behind. (compare the ratio of Witch Hunters wreaking havoc with AoE versus Marauders doing same)

[Mcgotrek]

Everything that I find critical has already been stated in this thread, so I'd just like to show my support to Haojin.

[Penril]

Hmm. More of a 3 person plus Bitterstone Thunderers discussion.

Roleplayers don't count.











(kidding )

[lastalien]

The main problem, which completely shifted the balance in RVR. Now the success is enough to have a couple of mele group AoE no limit characters and pug's WB for meet shield. You dont need a brain. Only spam 1 skill, guard, 2 healers, and def morals.

[roadkillrobin]

I edited my post at Page 1 and added a list my proposed morale changes.

[Azarael]

It's interesting to see people asking what the aim of this change was when it's been explained already.

Purpose

The purpose of this was twofold:

• To make a start on punishing lack of diffusion (aka blobbing) with an aim to spreading out engagements over a larger area, in a way that didn't require new mechanics

• To ensure that the AoE system serves smaller groups against larger ones, instead of larger groups against smaller ones, in an effort to lower the optimal formation size.

Definition of zerg

Zerg and blob are the same thing. You can quote whatever definition of zerg you want, but if your formation is comparable to this, and your tactical and strategic choices boil down to roughly the same as one of those units has (damage out, heal out, etc) then you're a zerg. This holds true whether you're 24 or whether you're 96. Zerg / blob is the point at which most of the game's strategy, tactics and abilities become useless. I've already stated that I believe that point begins at about the 18v18 mark and is fully realized at about 36v36. You will undoubtedly disagree.

The OP's videos

You demonstrate two situations:

• Keep defense. Yes, that is a problem. It's a problem caused by the original shitty design forcing chokepoints, which you've acknowledged.

• Zerg on Sanctuary of Dreams a few days ago, at the event. If you were involved in that battle and you didn't think that was a zerg, you need your eyes checked.

Where my opinion differs from yours is that I see people apparently unable to avoid this forced check for diffusion and instead of railing upon AoEs for making me play differently, I put it down to 1 of 3 things:

• Refusal to adapt
• RvR system failure (it needs to FORCE splitting all over the map)
• Map failure (keeps/BO design)

That simply tells me that I need to work on more measures for diffusion. However, with one thing or another, it's actually very hard for me to want to do anything here any more. Noticed the lack of patchnotes? It's related to not being able to solve this zerg problem. If I can't solve it, the game has no interest for me, and I've been on the verge of quitting a number of times in the past few months. This is why I will not back down.

More detailed reasoning on RvR

Unfortunately, something a lot of you don't seem to understand is that this game presents incredible challenges to anyone trying to fix its RvR systems. Let's look at what we've got:

• Reward-driven game, not fun-driven game - players will play to maximise rewards rather than fun, and it is close to impossible to implement a good reward system that can't be abused without using a human judge or an AI from two hundred years in the future
• Two-realm system - not self balancing
• Crossrealming capability - no ability to reward a realm as a whole because of no permanent lock without incentivising crossrealm
• No ability to change maps (will always have chokepoints / bad map design / bad keep design)
• No ability to change fundamentals of RvR system (will always have BOs and keeps)
• No ability to balance individual engagements or factions, so game can be ruined by ambient population factors (this was part of what I was attempting to do in making small groups able to destroy large blobs)
• Lack of adaptations to large scale combat in the combat system (MMO design focusing on small scale, many abilities and even entire classes become weak to useless at warband scale as aoe/bomb setups and increased mass become king)
• Lack of adaptations to large scale combat in the gameplay. Example: other games use vehicles and varied unit types to create tactical and strategic depth - Warhammer by contrast has very low to no strategic depth in large scale and low tactical depth there too. The closest Warhammer gets to implementing different unit types is siege and people hate it
• Poor flow due to travel times across the lake, low action-to-travel ratio compared to almost every other game
• Anthropic principle - the players remaining in Warhammer are the ones who could tolerate and thrive with the flaws. Attempts to break up zerg and bombing fail partly because so many of the players left want to zerg and bomb

Then you wonder why I attempt measures like this. The above represent a horrific set of constraints on any attempt to fix the RvR system. While I do have something planned, it's still subject to all of the merciless constraints above and so I don't have much faith in my own solutions any more.

The key problems

Now, you want a definition of the key problems as I see them, I'll give you one.

• The game's combat goes to **** in large scale, defined as warband versus warband and above. Because the game resolves to a state where blobbing and mass are king, this kills any kind of tactics based around splitting and maneuvering beyond the most basic flank attack. This was what the AoE change attempted to resolve.
• There is nothing in the game which puts a soft cap on your maximum effective force size. The more players you have, the better off you are. Any measure designed to threaten this idea (artillery, cannons, melee cleaving) is complained about and the players continue to play in the exact same fashion until enough pressure is applied to remove the change. This leads to zerg.
• It's almost impossible to make people split up, even when using brute force macro mechanics, because they naturally gravitate to large fights in a single location.

The various suggestions proposed

You've made numerous suggestions:

• Nerfing M1-3

Might stop morale cheese. Won't make large scale combat any more deep or interesting, because the problem is one of scale. There comes a certain point at which there are so many elements in play in a battle that it becomes impossible to consider them all at once, and this is a state that I would define as "chaotic". It goes without saying that as the number of players increases, the number of events increases as well, and this quickly crosses the chaos threshold. When this threshold is hit, usually the tactical focus shifts, such that we consider a unit as a group, or a warband, rather than a single player.

Increase in scale also places more emphasis on pure damage/heal and affecting many targets at once, and less emphasis on more subtle effects, resolving each individual down into something as basic as the average RTS soldier. You've noticed that even when splitting is forced to weaken AoE, mass ST is the result, and the effectiveness of mass ST naturally increases with the number of attackers.

Thus, the problem with WAR is that its interplay between groups and warbands in large scale is far weaker than its interplay between the individual units of a group and the group as a whole in small scale. Changing morale won't change this.

• Addressing CC

This has potential in terms of reduction of large combats to multiple smaller ones... but it also has pitfalls. The classic example for CC breaking up large scale combat is high duration AoE stagger, and it was something that I confess I'd considered as a tactic for KotBS and Chosen for use against zergs (extend stagger range, lower duration, duration increases with more targets hit). However, I don't think you mean this. You spoke about AoE punts, which trigger immunity. I could lift the cap and increase the radius of all the AoE punts and I don't think it would suddenly make large scale more interesting.

• Addressing AoE snaring

I don't have a problem with nerfing AoE snaring. A large scale system should work to reward use of tactics. This is very difficult with restricted unit types already, because synergy between different types of highly distinct unit in large scale, as in strategy games, is a HUGE part of what enables this to work, and Warhammer does not have that at all. Throwing around AoE snares everywhere to limit mobility doesn't help that **** at all, especially when increases in density cause ranged units to become increasingly more effective compared to melee ones.

The problem is this: How do you do it? AoE snares, in particular Slice Through and Big Brawlin', are staples in small scale as well as large scale. Even if you made every AoE snare have a 30 second cooldown, you face the problem of density - there will be enough classes capable of AoE snaring in the average composition to ensure that AoE snaring is still a constant. How do you handle this?

A final note

It's quite annoying to see it repeatedly stated that Flurry or any of the other limit-breaking, scaling attacks has become king, as if the base damage is 3k. These attacks reach very high numbers only if enough targets are hit, which is either your fault or the fault of the map design. I feel that that should actually be acknowledged. If you are not forced to blob, then don't. If you are forced to blob, then we need to look at what is forcing blobbing and how that should be resolved. This change was only ever intended to act as a check - a kind of singing canary in a cage - which would draw attention to situations where zerging is forced.

@Tesq

Spoiler:

This is how you structure a wall of text. Please try it like this.