Wednesday Wishlist

Most people play MMOs because they want a sense of accomplishment. Why else would someone pay monthly for a “never ending” experience that emulates real life in many ways? The means of accomplishment varies for each person, but at the end of the night we all want to feel like we succeeded at something. We finished a craft, earned twenty thousand renown, got our hands on a new armor piece, or what have you.

In Land of the Dead, if I spend an hour doing public quests with 50 other players, and my sense of accomplishment is based upon earning scarabs and/or items from those public quests, what incentive is there for me to do those public quests when my obtaining an item is based upon a predetermined random number and has little to do with my skill or literal contribution?

I completed nearly a dozen public quests in Land of the Dead last night, and received nothing. In fact most of the time I was greeted with “You did not contribute enough to even get your name on this list, bitch.” Not until I took my guild to a Public Quest where we were able to do it by ourselves did we have any yields worth replicating; and only after several more runs through was I personally able to “earn” contribution high enough to roll on a loot bag. So I could get five of the 200 scarabs I need for a single item.

So if I had spent all day doing this with the highest possible yield I would have 10-25 (we’ll say 20 to be generous) scarabs in a four hour session.

That means it will take me 40 hours to get enough scarabs for one armor piece. Forty hours of mindless, unchallenging PvE for one item. This is plainly retarded and perhaps the most absurd implementation I’ve ever experienced. The likelihood of me going through that process for my Tyrant armor set is slim to none. And the talismans for the weapons last mere hours, so I’m expected to repeat these public quests and lairs to infinity? What producer at Mythic came up with that brilliant idea? Did you guys learn nothing from Trials of Atlantis, and leveling artifacts? Are you trying to create violent flashbacks? Because that’s what I’m getting.

However, because these tokens are a guaranteed reward, the average player will do this crap with a shit eating grin. Because even the most terrible player in the world can complete these public quests and get Warlord equivalent items; which in itself is shocking and disturbing.

I have the option of grinding public quests with more-or-less guaranteed loot results (see: sense of accomplishment) or, going to Open RvR and killing players, and hoping that I encounter someone high enough rank that there will be a CHANCE of them dropping an equivalent item. And then hope I roll a high enough random number to get it. Assuming it’s a piece for my class that is.

If I’m a casual player, why should I PvP again?

WE PLAY A PVP GAME FOR THE COMPETITION, NOT THE GEAR LADDER!

DAoC had three forms of itemization for the majority of its lifespan.

1. “Epic” quest armor set.
2. Player crafted items
3. Tuscaran Glacier (and its realm equivalents)

Tuscaran Glacier was some of the most fun I’ve ever had in any dungeon crawl, in any game. It was not instanced; it was not token based. It was not influence based or “key” based. It was simply a gigantic ice cave filled with shit tons of mobs and associated bosses. They weren’t easy to kill for most people, and required quite a lot to do for your average “pug” – but an organized guild raid could clear and farm the dungeon endlessly and walk away with tons of items. TONS. Was it boring; at times, yes, because we had many weekends of staying in that zone for upwards of twelve hours. More than I’ve spent in any other zone in any other game ever. But it was still fun as hell, because we could do it ourselves and not have to rely on or fight with 100 other AFK players hoping to leech just enough that they can roll and get lucky on an item we rightfully earned.

The concept of EVERYONE rolling on randomly dropped items is essentially virtual communism and will not ever work. That’s why you recently added tokens. It’s why you’ll continue to swing away from that method, because serious players will not stand for it. And whether you want to admit it or not, your serious players are the vocal ones that speak on behalf of your entire player base. So you need them to be happy.

The epic armor set in DAOC was a quest reward every player could do to get a full set of armor. It was better than the random greens you’d get from leveling, but not the best gear possible. For the average player though, this was all you needed to dive into PvP. Which as I recall was the point of DAOC.

Player crafted items were the bread and butter of the economy, and the best you could attain (unless your guild could get the top-of-the-line drops from Tuscaran Glacier). They required a SHITLOAD of gold (platinum) and a crafter with high enough skill and patience to make your armor. Once you had your armor pieces you needed a separate crafter to spellcraft (talisman) your armor and custom build each and every piece for the stats and resists you desired.

There was a LOT of time and effort into “building” your gear for your character this way, but once you had that complete, you went out to PvP until your eyes popped out of your head. Because after-all, that was what the game was about! I had logged more than a freakish 400 real life days played in DAOC before moving on to other game. That system worked, and it worked magnificently. As a simulation to war, you prepared your character, got armored up and got weapons, and then went out to battle; over and over.

I’m not opposed to PvE content. I think it’s very important to balance a game. I think it’s equally important to simulate the act of building your character and not simply having items fall from the sky. However, the PvE needs to be focused around eventually going to PvP endlessly. It shouldn’t circle back to more PvE and then back again to PvP. That’s confusing as shit and goes against the core of the damn game. Destruction and Chaos aren’t at war over Lost Vale, they want to fucking kill each other.

So reward us when we do DAMNIT.

What we need is Paul Barnett and his team to get a damn clue. I’d be happy to help, because you I play your game, and it has potential to be bigger and better and more immersive than our beloved DAOC, as long as you get further and further from the Blizzard model.

Here is my genius:

1. Remove renown for taking objectives and keeps. Increase renown from killing players by a factor of three.

2. Remove the ward requirement to fight the King. There’s a renown rank requirement to zone into the King’s “room” – that’s sufficient. Having to farm those godawful Warlord PQs is obnoxious. The warlord sets suck too.

3. Change the city instances to be 24 v 24.

4. Add a minimum level of 40 to the city instances.

5. Change the city scenario to be the only available scenario for all T4 players only.

6. With changes 4 and 5 in place, allow T1, T2, and T3 players to contribute to the city defense/offense by completing PvP quests that yield enormous amounts of experience AND renown when completed. Perhaps caravans of supplies are traveling through the PvP zones of each tier, and defending/attacking (depending on your side) these caravans assists your side. The EXP and Renown should be slightly higher for defenders, to actively encourage the act of defense, whereas offensive success should yield more victory points.

7. Defending a keep or fortress should yield a defensive “bonus” equal to the renown earned from all the players killed. This bonus should not be split up amongst the players present; resulting in often times tens of thousands of renown as a bonus. This will also act as a means of balancing a server’s population as constantly defending is demoralizing; but far less so if you’re earning renown at ridiculous rates by defending consistently. This WILL balance populations; you can quote me. If your guild owned the keep that was just successfully defended, your guild should receive a gigantic experience bonus.

8. At a fortress; reward all players within a 100 ft spherical radius of the lord (dead or alive) with a “talisman token.” These tokens can be “cashed in” for PvP talismans (see #9).

9. Add a new PvP talisman system. These tokens are earned by capturing a fortress, 300 kills at a fortress (by your entire realm), 750 kills in a city instance (by your entire team), completing a city PQ, successfully defending your city, pushing the city to stage 2, etc, etc.

These talismans go in a separate talisman slot (one per item), which only appears when a player achieves renown rank 50 and talks to a “special” NPC that lives in each of the RvR lakes.

The Elf pairing NPC would have the 2% renown talismans that can only go on gloves or belts, The Empire pairing NPC would have the +20 melee/spell/healing power that can only go on weapons, and the Dwarf pairing would have the 2% crit/parry/block that can only go on chest pieces (as an example). All three would have the option for the resist talismans. Each piece of gear only has ONE slot for these PvP talismans. You can pick and chose them however you want.

a. +100 resist (5 talisman tokens)
b. 2% crit, parry, block, dodge, healing crit (5 talisman tokens)
c. +20 melee power, healing power, ranged power, damage absorb (3 talisman tokens)
d. +2% renown for killing players (2 talisman tokens)

10. The best “regular” talisman fragments/curios (wounds, strength, intelligence, etc) should be looted from dead enemies; not PvE mobs. A 200 scavenger should have a 10% chance of looting a maximum quality fragment/curio from a dead player renown rank 40 or above.

11. If Destruction owns every objective/keep in a particular RvR lake, Order players should earn double renown for all kills, and vice versa, until one objective or keep is taken.

12. Players not in range of a keep or objective should receive 0 (ZERO) renown when a zone flips.

13. Give standards a 60% speed bonus (instead of 45%) to increase their usage in scenarios/open rvr. Or allow standard bearers to get on their mount.

14. Any member of a guild whose standard is planted (and in range) should have a 5% damage/healing boost.

15. Standards should have “health” and be able to be “killed” (direct damage only) in addition to being taken. A “killed” standard causes all guild members in range to lose all their action points and morale instantly. Players in range that “kill” the standard should be given maximum action points and morale, and a 60 second buff that increases their damage/healing by 10%.

16. You should not be ported to a warcamp if you take a scenario while in an objective or keep. This is very, very dumb.

17. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO QUEUE FOR SCENARIOS AS A WARBAND!

18. Create a new scenario: Name it Emain Macha. Make it a gigantic green grassy field. Throw in some trees here and there, and put a giant wall right down the middle with three doorways spread evenly apart. On opposite sides of the wall are two elegant towers. Put a prominent war general in each. Make it a twenty minute death-match with no objective other than to kill each other. The side with the most kills at the end is winner. The winners do not get a renown bonus for the victory like a regular scenario (although they do get renown for all the kills within it), but instead they get a token of some kind from the observing general. These tokens can be used to buy special titles from the city King(s). Players with these titles cannot be “kicked out” of fortress defenses if the “supply lines” are full, because the generals have recognized that you know how to play the game, and don’t kick this guy he’s good, instead KICK THE LEVEL 37 JACKASS. Also, if a warband leader has one of these titles, his/her ENTIRE warband gets in the same city instance at once.

19. Players renown rank causes their weapons to glow. 40 = blue, 50 = yellow, 60 = orange, 70 = red, 80 = something so badass we can’t put it in words.

20. Rank 80 players should have 5 tactic slots.

21. Add new abilities that can be purchased with rank points (X per rank). Add a renown rank requirement to the “better” ones. Some examples (most stolen shamelessly from DAOC):
a. -20 seconds on morale cooldown (tactic) (All)
b. Purge – break out of all CC abilities and cause immunity for 90 seconds. 10 minute cooldown. (All)
c. AoE Root (Shaman, Archmage) – 20-30 sec duration AoE root. Causes immunity, breakable on ANYTHING. Curable by Shaman/Archmage.
d. AoE Mez (Zealot, Runepriest) – 10-15 sec duration AoE Mesmerize. Causes immunity, breakable on ANYTHING. Curable by Zealot/Runepriest.
e. Single target 7 second disable (Black Orc, Blackguard, Ironbreaker, Swordmaster) – Shield Required, 7 second no cooldown, no pre-req SLAM causes seven second disable to SINGLE target. Exhausts 50% of the tanks health in the process. Not curable.
f. Kamikaze – (Destruction) Suicide yourself dealing 50% of the health of all players within ten feet of you, INCLUDING friendly players. The same player cannot be hit by this more than once within 60 seconds. 5 min cooldown.
g. Sacrifice – (Order) Kills yourself and heals all groupmates to full health. 5 min cooldown.
h. Lifestealer (melee dps) – Steal 10% of SINGLE TARGET (excludes DoTs) damage dealt back as health (tactic).
i. Concentration (Sorc, BW) – Ten seconds of no “backlash” on all SINGLE TARGET ABILITIES. 1 min cooldown.
j. Medic! (All) – Heal yourself for 2,000 hit points. (5 min cooldown)
k. +100 to all resists (3 “levels” for a max of +250) (Passive, All)
l. Quickmount – Instantly get on your horse. (Passive, All)
m. Climb Walls (Witch Elf, Witch Hunter – Climb walls whenever the hell you feel like it at a keep. No cooldown, cannot be stealthed.
n. Disc Thrower (Magus) – Throw your disk at your target disabling them for 5 seconds at the cost of half your life. 2 min cooldown
o. Heat Seeker (Engineer) – Single gunshot that has no range limit and will instantly kill your target. Requires target be 25% or less health. 2 min cooldown.

I could go on forever, why has Mythic not added anything like this? Bypass defenses, Siege Wrecker, buff siege engine, etc, are pathetic attempts.

22. Make your warband leader’s “dot” on the map a different color.

23. STOP ADDING PVE CONTENT TO YOUR PVP GAME IDIOTS!

Sometimes it takes perspective to meet in the middle in games like this. Often times the screams for nerf are due to ignorance and frustration. The average player gains very little from WarDB or similar aggregating websites that simply dump data for review, whereas actually playing on both sides of the fence gives an immeasurable perspective into the depths of the game.

We were successful on Magnus because very few guilds are able to work together as well as we do. The cohesion and class balance we achieve are simply part of our process where most guilds struggle indefinitely because their philosophies simply don’t accommodate competition. Or because they are just for some unknown reason incapable of making a /assist macro, or simple cognitive thought.

I have in the past refused offers for 6v6 cock size fights because deep down I knew the combination capable for Order would be vastly superior to Destruction. Virtually every group oriented class is vastly superior on Order. The White Lion is leaps and bounds above the Marauder, the Bright Wizard has endless utility compared to a Sorcerer, and a Knight of the Blazing Sun is simply overpowered when compared to anything. We could go on and on with this, but the end result is simply that Order classes are abundant in their potential, and I am deeply aroused at the thought of PvP'ing when the dust of leveling has settled.

Guilt is never something I’ve experienced when playing a MMO before, but I find myself experiencing twinges of guilt as I train my character and realize the tools I have available. The feelings are shared amongst my guildmates as they level and laugh out loud in ventrilo as they read off their latest ability or tactic.

It’s enlightening and also quite disturbing because it sheds even more light on just how absolutely unbelievably terrible the players on Magnus are. Magnus is essentially a Gaheris for Warhammer. Were it not for the renown bonus for flipping Tier 4 zones, the average rank on Magnus would be embarrassingly low.

However, I doubt seriously many guilds or players find themselves as excited as we have been to find premade Destruction groups here on Badlands completely dominating and beating scenarios we are in (in between leveling) into absolute submission.

It has renewed a feverish interest in this game that is amazing to experience amongst a guild that had all but given up hope for ever finding legitimate PvP.

Perspective is key, as the saying goes. After just under a year of running in circles on Magnus, the boredom had become overwhelming. The competition is pitiful, and the mentality of the players (generally speaking) is at best, childish.

I’ve defended Magnus feverishly in the past because I am passionate about the decision we made as a guild to set up home on the server. In retrospect I am still very pleased we chose Magnus over Volkmar given the rampant cheating and general asshattery that occurs on Volkmar.

However, the general mentality of the players on Magnus is worse than Counter-Strike five plus years ago. There are guilds that pride themselves on being the assholes of the server, spending more time posting on Warhammer Alliance about how awesome they are, than actually playing the game. Guilds of hundreds of people that cannot accomplish even a simple keep assault or defense. How is this possible? It would be a dizzying exercise to recall the number of times Sacrifice has destroyed a warband of Order that is mostly AFK trying to take a keep. Or worse yet, the number of times we have defended a keep against five or more times the number of people we have.

I have begged countless times for Order to assimilate into smaller, more focused guilds so as to offer competition, but the best we have seen is Wananuka’s Annihilate train with Balmungx and Gobe, and Corky’s “6man” group.

I suspect Wananuka’s keyboard is visibly strained with two particular keys where he has his Annihilate and AoE disable bound. Yet the amount of kills he gets from farming the cattle guilds of Magnus like Crimson Shroud, Viral, Dawn of Demise and Chaotica, is absolutely staggering. It’s a monumental embarrassment and a testament to just how atrocious the players on Magnus really are.

I have an insatiable distaste for alts, yet that has appealed to me far greater than the relentless slaughter of Lords of War in Altdorf. Many of us had forgotten the level of enjoyment you can attain from this game when the enemy’s strategy is more advanced than “don’t leave the warcamp and bore them to death.”

And thus here we are. One week after Sacrifice mysteriously stops showing up in the RvR lakes, and Order is routinely running around with nearly 100 players. The irony is monumental.

In the past, servers like Dark Crag were appealing to PvE guilds like The Black Watch because of the promise of “end game” content and instant queue scenarios. I have made my opinion well known on the subject of “end game” but the promise of scenarios is perhaps more appealing than the most forbidden of fruits. The trouble with Dark Crag, is the average level of skill is even lower than Magnus. But it attracts more people because even a one armed retarded donkey can get a few kills while ganking a level 28 trying to complete a quest. And guilds like Crimson Shroud could even push Tier 3 zones for renown while their genitals swelled with excitement.

On Magnus, when the best fight you can get is Wananuka AoE spamming the bomb in Howling Gorge for fifteen minutes while Balmungx holds his nutsac and Gobe exploits terrain to spam group heal with immunity, it’s very difficult not to look longingly at the lush green grass just over the hill.

I spent thousands of hours playing on Magnus, and yet I find myself enjoying the competition of Tier 3 on our new endeavor more than even the best days on Magnus. Although admittedly there is a large twinge of guilt in playing Order as it is abundantly clear in the shear dominance the classes offer compared to their Destruction counterparts. I find it even more disturbing how terrible the players on Magnus really are. The astounding imbalance is countered only by the Shadow Warrior in its infinite glory.

For now, Magnus is dead to me. I see no point in wasting countless hours continuing to chase Order around and beg for a fight and continue to insist the mechanics and health of the game are of no concern. On the contrary, the intelligence of the average player on Magnus needs serious evaluation.

So, at least for now, Lords of War is free to roam the RvR lakes and farm the everlasting shit out of the banner-wielding Destruction posse, because we have grown very tired of beating up on the mentally handicapped players on Magnus and letting shitbags ride our coattails in anonymity.

But rest assured, we will periodically come by for a booty call to remind you who’s king.