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DEV DIARY - March 2016

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Morf
Posts: 1247

Re: DEV DIARY - March 2016

Post#101 » Mon Mar 21, 2016 7:31 pm

Spoiler:
Azarael wrote:What I'm looking at, from the most basic level, is making the game more true to realistic concepts of renown, experience, acquisition and allocation of resources, and siege. I also want to see dead time eliminated.

By renown (and influence), I mean that you should only receive renown for actions which would be worthy of note by a theoretical commanding officer or top brass of your faction. Someone in another thread mentioned a step back Mythic made in this game from DAoC, in which they said that kills were the only action that granted renown. I don't agree with taking such an extreme approach, but I do agree with eliminating renown that was gained for doing nothing - and by this I mean taking undefended BOs and capping empty keeps.

Similarly with experience - you don't improve by sitting at a battlefield objective waiting for it to cap.

On to acquisition and allocation of resources.

This is why I mentioned Savage, Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. All 3 games use the same general concept: by holding locations of value to either your commander (DoW) or yourself (CoH, Savage 2) you generate resources with which you can use to advance your faction and win, which is the underlying driver of the game. Almost every RTS uses the same concept, and why? Because it works. It punishes mass strategies and forces players to split up, or commanders to split their forces. There's no such thing as an insane, arbitrary lock timer which prevents the other faction from threatening the point you've just locked - you have to control it and generally that's accomplished by fortification - an action that occupies players on both sides (one in construction and the other in harassment / attacking the point). This also ensures that the point has hard value - it is meaningful. In the case of CoH, there's even a distinction between types of points, some of which are more valuable than others. Contrast Warhammer's battlefield objectives, which succeed in contributing almost nothing to the campaign outside of free renown and a new destination for the zergs on both sides.

In CoH especially, control of points (and the method of attacking them) creates a natural battlefront through the supply mechanic, which plays into the whole "mass war" concept. I haven't yet decided if this concept is anything I'd want to see included. Another game that made use of this on a larger map scale was UT2004 (in Onslaught mode), where it also helps to split up forces.

As for how resources might be used? S2 maintained separate resource pools - one which could be used by the player and one by the commander. Assigning a global resource pool for the realm, controlled by its leaders (realm captains, or highest renown if they're not present) and used, for example, for major siege units like rams (and in my vision, Orcapults, siege towers and all other kinds of stuff), while allocating lesser resources to other players for individual types of fortification and smaller siege weapons, as well as potentially introducing better mounts with abilities, which would serve as a type of vehicle. The potential for adding content to drive a more strategic experience is there.

Siege and general gameplay direction. At the moment, there's too much emphasis on the keeps. Some people may disagree with me on this (and I'm sure most of them will be supporters of mass AoE) but the game seems basically to resolve to "We're outnumbered, retreat to keep where we can try to farm them" or "We outnumber them, push to their keep". There's no real concept of a middle phase, or indeed any kind of advancement in the engagement. There's no room for any real strategy and the only real tactics I've seen are baiting people from a keep with fake retreats or hiding behind a wall waiting to ambush people who can't see you. As long as the emphasis remains on this type of gameplay, and keeps are kept as enclosed meatgrinders with one attack strategy (the doors), things will remain uninteresting.

The above is why I mentioned siege towers and Orcapults. There should be multiple ways of attacking a keep, and thus defending one should require multiple approaches from the defenders. So there should be slow, vulnerable siege weapons that have to be bought and transported around in order to open up multiple avenues of assault - IF the defenders fail to contest them, either by sending a force to attack the weapon directly or by using their own siege weapons to destroy it.

The other thing about siege weapons is that since they would be requested (requisitioned) from the realm, the leaders of that realm would be able to refuse requests for siege weapons if the engagement was not great enough to demand their use. This would offer a means of keeping empty keeps from being assaulted if there was not enough action in the area to justify progressing to that stage. As more players entered the area, the engagement could advance in a similar way to tiering in RTS games until the point at which siege would be released.

With respect to commanders: in order to implement any kind of reasonable strategy across large battlefields, realistically, someone's got to have a tactical map and the ability to use that to issue orders. That's again something Savage did right. This doesn't need to be extravagant - just give some people the ability to survey the battlefield in more detail and issue orders based on that.

Regarding dead time: Warhammer has a lot of it. No good game should have any period where you are basically sitting and doing nothing, but that's exactly what the current battlefield objective concept promotes - idling around while you wait for it to lock. A player should always have something positive to be doing.

This is just a general overview of the direction in which I'm thinking, from the top of my head. I'm sure there are flaws in it, but the bottom line for me is that WAR suffers badly from directionless RvR, zerging and chokepoints / AoE, even to the point where some classes that are mostly single target are left out in the cold.
Tnx Aza taking the time to explian this and without having much knowledge of the strategy games you speak of i certainly like the direction you are taking and look forward to how the rvr campaign will work when you get to it.
I also have no doubt it will be very difficult, alot of trial and error and urge the playerbase to have faith, we have to remember we are all basically testers here even though we treat it like any other mmo it is still alpha stage of development.
Morfee - Shaman / Mynnos - Kotbs / Grubod - Black Orc / Snubz - Squig Herder

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Jaycub
Posts: 3130

Re: DEV DIARY - March 2016

Post#102 » Mon Mar 21, 2016 11:46 pm

Zanilos wrote:The only part that surprises me is that you guys want forts? The true concept of meat grind.
Forts where awesome, the lag was not :^)

They would of been even better if there was enough people on both sides to make use of the 3 entrances, and a server that could handle that many people in one area.
<Lords of the Locker Room> <Old School>

R1ven
Posts: 2

Re: DEV DIARY - March 2016

Post#103 » Tue Mar 22, 2016 1:27 am

Great video and heaps of info. So glad the WAR reigns were picked up by a group of people interested in really making it work.
I also really liked the PQ's in live so if there is some way you could increase the rewards to encourage players to participate in them more often then I'd be a happy Dwarf :)

P.S: Keg End backpack from the Keg End event would be an awesome inclusion as it was not redemption through code but an in game drop from the event mobs: Drunken Gnoblar & Ogres.

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Tklees
Posts: 675

Re: DEV DIARY - March 2016

Post#104 » Tue Mar 22, 2016 1:47 am

bloodi wrote:Look, i hate Gw2 as much as a sane person can hate it, from the skill design to gear itemization passing throughh the whole implementation of pve in it.

But one thing they got right is the logistics part of RvR, maybe the only thing they got right in RvR, i cant say i participated much on the organization aspect, i just roamed around on my necro/thief but people seemed to really enjoy it and as someone who never was really into the whole lets play for the campaign in Retail War it made me realize the aspects those kind of players seek in a game.

The aspect of having limited resources, getting a hold of recource generators to increase your income, use that increased income to take control of keeps so you can get a hhold of more resource generators and so on is imo, the aspect a lot of people enjoy, organizing groups to defend, attack, patrol around and designing tactics to not lose that control and/or seize what the other faction controls is, at least i think so, what let Gw2 rvr surivive for so long considering how **** terrible it was.

So seeing no mention of it while its similar to the concepts you want to implement, i suggest taking a look at it for things to "steal".
I sincerely agree that gw2 was awful the entire year I played it but the WvWvW was fantastic from a logistic and objective based stand point. Someone already mentioned players running resources, and Geno has mentioned something along this line of being able to use them on siege, just like in gw2. BOs having a significance is what makes RvR possible for the small scale guilds. I understand the maps were much larger and much more complex but there were some great ideas in that system that I think could apply nicely to this game.
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Gnash
Posts: 206

Re: DEV DIARY - March 2016

Post#105 » Tue Mar 22, 2016 2:12 am

From Dontdie, and myself
On behalf of Joker and LoL,

We are all eternally grateful for your continued endeavors on this project.
Even though we may not have the chance to log in as often as in the past, this is the first game we log into if we have the time, and since time is of the essence lately, this is one of the only games we log into at all.
We're pretty fortunate to have our home away from home resurrected from the ashes of dEAth and nursed to better health than the originators (save a decent few) ever intended. Your transparency and willingness to openly communicate are infectious. The continued dialogue between dev and player is a thing of beauty. We commend your choices of community members to add to the dev team. RoR will be a better project as a whole for their involvement. In the same magnitude, we're grateful as well for the many devs who've become 'regular community members'.

Never thought I'd use "refreshing" to describe this game, past or present.

Here's to the Dev Team's continued success, in this project and whatever comes your way(s) in the future.

Good Hunting! :D
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MrHoot
Posts: 22

Re: DEV DIARY - March 2016

Post#106 » Tue Mar 22, 2016 1:27 pm

Azarael wrote:
Spoiler:
What I'm looking at, from the most basic level, is making the game more true to realistic concepts of renown, experience, acquisition and allocation of resources, and siege. I also want to see dead time eliminated.

By renown (and influence), I mean that you should only receive renown for actions which would be worthy of note by a theoretical commanding officer or top brass of your faction. Someone in another thread mentioned a step back Mythic made in this game from DAoC, in which they said that kills were the only action that granted renown. I don't agree with taking such an extreme approach, but I do agree with eliminating renown that was gained for doing nothing - and by this I mean taking undefended BOs and capping empty keeps.

Similarly with experience - you don't improve by sitting at a battlefield objective waiting for it to cap.

On to acquisition and allocation of resources.

This is why I mentioned Savage, Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. All 3 games use the same general concept: by holding locations of value to either your commander (DoW) or yourself (CoH, Savage 2) you generate resources with which you can use to advance your faction and win, which is the underlying driver of the game. Almost every RTS uses the same concept, and why? Because it works. It punishes mass strategies and forces players to split up, or commanders to split their forces. There's no such thing as an insane, arbitrary lock timer which prevents the other faction from threatening the point you've just locked - you have to control it and generally that's accomplished by fortification - an action that occupies players on both sides (one in construction and the other in harassment / attacking the point). This also ensures that the point has hard value - it is meaningful. In the case of CoH, there's even a distinction between types of points, some of which are more valuable than others. Contrast Warhammer's battlefield objectives, which succeed in contributing almost nothing to the campaign outside of free renown and a new destination for the zergs on both sides.

In CoH especially, control of points (and the method of attacking them) creates a natural battlefront through the supply mechanic, which plays into the whole "mass war" concept. I haven't yet decided if this concept is anything I'd want to see included. Another game that made use of this on a larger map scale was UT2004 (in Onslaught mode), where it also helps to split up forces.

As for how resources might be used? S2 maintained separate resource pools - one which could be used by the player and one by the commander. Assigning a global resource pool for the realm, controlled by its leaders (realm captains, or highest renown if they're not present) and used, for example, for major siege units like rams (and in my vision, Orcapults, siege towers and all other kinds of stuff), while allocating lesser resources to other players for individual types of fortification and smaller siege weapons, as well as potentially introducing better mounts with abilities, which would serve as a type of vehicle. The potential for adding content to drive a more strategic experience is there.

Siege and general gameplay direction. At the moment, there's too much emphasis on the keeps. Some people may disagree with me on this (and I'm sure most of them will be supporters of mass AoE) but the game seems basically to resolve to "We're outnumbered, retreat to keep where we can try to farm them" or "We outnumber them, push to their keep". There's no real concept of a middle phase, or indeed any kind of advancement in the engagement. There's no room for any real strategy and the only real tactics I've seen are baiting people from a keep with fake retreats or hiding behind a wall waiting to ambush people who can't see you. As long as the emphasis remains on this type of gameplay, and keeps are kept as enclosed meatgrinders with one attack strategy (the doors), things will remain uninteresting.

The above is why I mentioned siege towers and Orcapults. There should be multiple ways of attacking a keep, and thus defending one should require multiple approaches from the defenders. So there should be slow, vulnerable siege weapons that have to be bought and transported around in order to open up multiple avenues of assault - IF the defenders fail to contest them, either by sending a force to attack the weapon directly or by using their own siege weapons to destroy it.

The other thing about siege weapons is that since they would be requested (requisitioned) from the realm, the leaders of that realm would be able to refuse requests for siege weapons if the engagement was not great enough to demand their use. This would offer a means of keeping empty keeps from being assaulted if there was not enough action in the area to justify progressing to that stage. As more players entered the area, the engagement could advance in a similar way to tiering in RTS games until the point at which siege would be released.

With respect to commanders: in order to implement any kind of reasonable strategy across large battlefields, realistically, someone's got to have a tactical map and the ability to use that to issue orders. That's again something Savage did right. This doesn't need to be extravagant - just give some people the ability to survey the battlefield in more detail and issue orders based on that.

Regarding dead time: Warhammer has a lot of it. No good game should have any period where you are basically sitting and doing nothing, but that's exactly what the current battlefield objective concept promotes - idling around while you wait for it to lock. A player should always have something positive to be doing.

This is just a general overview of the direction in which I'm thinking, from the top of my head. I'm sure there are flaws in it, but the bottom line for me is that WAR suffers badly from directionless RvR, zerging and chokepoints / AoE, even to the point where some classes that are mostly single target are left out in the cold
.
That's a really interesting post. Honestly i'm kind of baffled at how much potential control you guys have over the RvR mechanics if you can actually change it to something ressembling that.

A lot I can agree on, at least on analyzing the problem: Is that too much time in ORvR is spent on "taking" and downtimes, and not enough on keeping and maintaining strategic positions, apart from when it's just to keep people from reinforcing a keep really. Most of RvR can be summed by a series of blitzkrieg tactics. And the system itself is rigged towards almost avoiding confrontation even at a slight disadvantage, but rewarding very inane actions like taking undefended BOs.

Some suggestions I find interesting. The most one is actually "feeding"/supplying ressources to your realm and objectives and having to hold these regardless of timers, which would encourage splitting forces (in theory). I have to add tho I have not played CoH or Savage so my appreciation and understanding of these mechanics is more muddied.

The one thing I might be iffy about is giving separate ressource management to players and one to a realm captain or high RR because I have trouble to see how it would be determined and how it would not be just broken most of the time due to not a lot of people wanting to endorse that sort of role. Either it would fall on an unwilling player, or it would fall constantly on the same ones (if they're willing that's great but it's also a lot of pressure and "work" almost on a long term).

That and well, yes humans can adapt but it's a dangerous line to tread sometimes. Some will adapt by just quitting outright. I think the system proposed are sound but some might need incentive, either as part of repeatable quests like the ones we have now for kill counts (in fact repeatable, or "dailies" in other modern mmos helps a lot to incentivize and automatize certain behaviours you could potentially use to push these mechanics) or a system that could potentially help disadvantaged realms at least slightly. We do have a reality where people can jump from a realm to another and if they're being absolutely demolished, there's little motivation to actually push forward if you can just jump to the winning side
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Opheiel - Shadow Warrior 10/15. Likes naps
Skafork - IronBreaker 5/8. Talisman slave

ElMosquito
Posts: 8

Re: DEV DIARY - March 2016

Post#107 » Thu Mar 24, 2016 2:41 pm

If doomflayer and warpforged are never going to be implemented, will their specific appearances be used for something else or will everything related to these armour sets be deleted?
The appearances for most classes were not specifically good for either doomflayer or warpforged, but they were still somewhat unique in comparison to all the other armour sets in the game, since a lot of the appearances from the ordinary sets can also be found on one or more random loot items or influence rewards.

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Genisaurus
Former Staff
Posts: 1054

Re: DEV DIARY - March 2016

Post#108 » Thu Mar 24, 2016 2:47 pm

ElMosquito wrote:If doomflayer and warpforged are never going to be implemented, will their specific appearances be used for something else or will everything related to these armour sets be deleted?
The appearances for most classes were not specifically good for either doomflayer or warpforged, but they were still somewhat unique in comparison to all the other armour sets in the game, since a lot of the appearances from the ordinary sets can also be found on one or more random loot items or influence rewards.
My usual statement on the question is below. I don't expect everyone to have dug through the thread to find it:
Genisaurus wrote:We definitely could bring those sets back as alternate appearances. We might also bring them back as "sidegrades" to Sovereign or something, we have lots of ideas but no real plans there. What we will not be doing is bringing back the power gap those sets and RR100 introduced.

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Bozzax
Posts: 2627

Re: DEV DIARY - March 2016

Post#109 » Thu Mar 24, 2016 3:34 pm

Thx for the update
A reasonable RvR system that could make the majority happy http://imgur.com/HL6cgl7

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dragosh
Posts: 10

Re: DEV DIARY - March 2016

Post#110 » Thu Mar 24, 2016 9:55 pm

[quote="Genisaurus"][/quote]

Hai,

I got a question,
what are your plans and ideas for the launcher that will allow you to add/modify client data ?

Will it allow you to add more things, and if so what things ?
How will it change the future of war ?

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