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time to change tactics? warhammer online

01 Sep

Recently, a friend and fellow blogger Going Rancid interviewed Nate from Bioware|Mythic and one of the questions asked was regarding tactics, the response was as follows:


“Our general goal for tactics is that we want players to agonize over their loadouts and have to make tough choices between several desirable options and end up with a loadout that they’re happy with once the choice has been made. Additionally, we want players to be using different loadouts for different situations, and tactics to be less “set and forget” – hence the multiple loadout sets built into the basic UI. It’s pretty common knowledge that there are some tactics which are viewed as “must-haves”, and we see from our metrics that players don’t frequently change tactics. Broadly speaking, our approach to improving tactics is to take one or two of the least-used and consider what improvements can be made to them; in most cases, we’d rather make bring up under-performing tactic options and make them as desirable as the most-used tactics.”

This got me thinking about tactics and how I think Nate is spot on in his thoughts on people picking a load out and just sticking with that.
On my Zealot I have the 4 I feel are the best and unless I go and do some PvE, those tactics do not change.
On my Choppa I actually have 3 tactic sets, each a varying degree on survivability from running solo to being in a solid group with guard. Really though, I would switch tactics maybe once per scenerio at most or just when I join a group.

The biggest thing preventing people from switching tactics based on the situation they are in is the restriction from switching while in combat. If this was lifted, you could further improve smooth transitions by allowing macros/hotkeys for tactic sets and linking tactics to stances/mechanics (eg. the new Zealot/RP mechanic for healing and damage modes). A cooldown may be required however.

This would add some interesting new group vs group dynamics as whole groups could have alternate strategies and flip to them on the fly.

It also just makes sense for ORVR as you often cannot get out of combat and you really do not know what you will encounter next. At the moment it creates an experience that promotes the most generic set it and forget it setup to ensure you will not be hand-cuffed with more specialized tactics.

What do you guys think? Aside from people that complain that there is mystery to their opponents, what other things could go horribly wrong?

Read the full interview by Going Rancid: http://goingrancid.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/war-qa-with-cc-developer-nate-levy/

 
4 Comments

Posted in Bioware, EA, Gaming, Mythic, Other bloggers, Warhammer

 

Character customization great, but needs to be seen by all – warhammer online

13 Aug

I would also like to begin by saying that I really like the way they have implemented appearance altering. I suggested a long while back that they go off the armoury and allow you to set appearances of any item you have unlocked in your tome, but this expands and improves on that in several ways.

However, my focus today is on a pretty big drawback to this addition and that is that it can only be seen by your realm, not your enemies. More directly, this post is aimed at the reason posted today on the items and appearances article. I love all the guys over there at Bioware Mythic, so in a way it pains me to call them out like this, but unfortunately this is part of the reason I created BSD.

A couple years ago, my cell phone company sent me a letter in the mail, saying they were modifying my plan to include some extra charges that were not optional, for my convenience. I got a good laugh out of that because the most convenient thing for me would be to not pay the extra money for the same service.

This snippet from the post today explaining why the enemy realm can not see armour customizations reminded me of that, in part because I feel there is probably a good and valid reason kicking around somewhere why they do not want to implement it as showing to both sides, perhaps a performance issue, but instead we get a reason which seems to imply that players would prefer it this way.

    “In light of the fact that we do not want players to use this system solely to confuse the opposing realm in RvR, the appearance you apply to your equipment can only be seen by players of your own realm. Players of the opposing realm will see the equipment as if no alternate appearance has been applied to it.”

Lets take a look at this from two different perspectives, both the Warhammer tabletop side of it, and the Warhammer Online practicality side of it.

Warhammer Tabletop: While I never played the tabletop version, one of the biggest selling points of the game seemed to be the ability to customize your figurines and paint them as you like. If you were a good artist, you could make them look pretty amazing, if you were not, your army would look pretty rag-tag. Either way, when you played against other people everyone had their customized armies on the board. Would anyone complain that it was unfair that they lost to a poorly painted army because they didn’t expect them to be able to fight as well as an army painted by a professional?

Warhammer Online: Imo, any person that is running into a battle, evaluating the equipment level of the people they are fighting, then adjusting the effort and concentration they put into winning the battle based on that equipment evaluation, deserves whatever outcome they get. Fight the player, not his gear.

Adding the customization should be a patch that adds the tabletop feature of making yourself look how you envision with the different pieces in the game and dye jobs available, but I feel it is important to reflect that appearance to your enemies as well for the full effect of taking pride in doing that to come through.

I really enjoyed the old way of doing things. In DAOC you knew very little about your opponent beyond his race. You had to fight your hardest no matter what and you had to expect the unexpected. With the gear sets and weapon restrictions/itemization in this game and the looks of the characters, most classes are easily distinguished. A bright wizard can not really be mistaken for a warrior priest etc, no matter how you customize it.

In conclusion, I would just say that if the reason posted is the actual real reason and it is being restricted to help the players out, toss up a poll for players and see how it turns out. I know how I would vote and I -think- I know how it would turn out, but I can’t say for sure. What do you guys think out there?

Read all about the appearance changes here: http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=1218

 
6 Comments

Posted in Bioware, EA, Gaming, Online Gaming, Warhammer

 

Want to transfer? Stop paying for 3 months? -Warhammer Online

11 Aug

It seems like many people I know are unhappy with their current server and attempts to move to a different server are all receiving the same response from customer server, “unsubscribe for 3 months and you will be granted a free transfer to any server”. They then incorrectly lash out at the service/support people who are just enforcing the policy. Everyone has a reason why they should be the exception to the rule, but it even one person gets around the policies in place, you can easily imagine the chaos that would come of that.

Obviously a company having a policy where people need to stop paying them for a period of time in order to solve their problem is mind boggling, but there is a reason for it and it does solve potential problems that can arise, I just think it solves it in a crude way that could have improvements or additional options.

If character transfers were allowed for everyone that wanted them, Bioware-Mythic would have no control over server populations and would not even be able to “attempt” to monitor and regulate the gaming experience they want to provide on their servers. Even if it was time restricted, you would still immediately have a lot of high end guilds decide to pile on one server, which snowballs to include alliance/following guilds as well. Even if they detect at some point that people are piling onto a particular server, how can they stop it or cut it off? They would ophan people from their friends/guilds and that would be even worse of a situation.

Any solution to transfers that could be considered by Bioware-Mythic would have to include something that shows a serious comittment by the player that they are not just server bouncing. The demand for a solution to this is definately out there so I hope that ideas and options are being explored.

A few ideas I would kick around:

Allow players to purchase ($$) an unlock for their account for 24hrs, allowing them to move characters between servers in that timeframe.

Pros: -You do not lose a sub for 3 months, and with people dead set on transfering you would end up making what amounts to more then a full boxed product in revenue.
-Most people would happily pay a fee to transfer to get back with friends etc..

Cons:-You lose some control, because assuming you have a lot of players with a bunch of extra money, they could immediately start moving around. The fee amount would need to be carefully chosen.
-You also have an issue with how some players would perceive this. In times like now, where many players feel their servers are unplayable, announcing a transfering fee just seems like the server issues were not solved so that they could grab at money for transfers. I honestly feel for them for this situation, as it would be an amazing solution, but only once servers do another round of population balancing.

Require a player to level a character up to level 25? 40? on their intended destination server and side, which would unlock 1 – single use transfer to that server. Possibly even overwrite/replace the character they leveled up?

Pros:
-You dont lose a sub for 3 months.
-You have the player show a commitment to their intended server.
-Population stats for servers -may- remain more reliable/predictable due to having to roll and level up a character on that server.

Cons:
-None really at this point. It would seem a bit meaningless to some players, but I think most players set on transfering would choose this before unsubbing for 3 months.

 
2 Comments

Posted in Bioware, Gaming, Mythic, Online Gaming, Warhammer

 

High level dropped and repairable items – Warhammer Online

09 Aug

My Warrior Priest on Badlands hit 40 this weekend and I started looking at gear options to try to get him in something somewhat good before working up my RR.

I did a bit of research and searching on the AH to try to find the different search keywords for decent gear and repairable items, for those interested, here are some good keywords to search to try to find some good bridging gear to the dungeon/rvr sets.

Green Quality: Antiquated, Staunch, fallen explorer
Blue Quality: Favorable, Relic, Remnant, Desert Storm, warden
Epic Quality: Priceless, Sandstorm, watcher, primeval, overlord, ancient

Hope this helps out!

 
3 Comments

Posted in Bioware, Gaming, Mythic, Online Gaming, Warhammer

 

1.3.6 Patch Notes – warhammer online

22 Jul

Some definite hits and misses in my first impressions of the latest patch to hit the test servers.

Lets start with the great stuff:
-Item appearances can now be set seperately from the item. Not really sure if this will be tomb unlock driven as I posted, but either way, thumbs up!

-Zealot changes: An ancestors echo added, a way to flip to some damage occasionally and temporarily + more. Excellent stuff and both of those are items I have pushed hard for.

-Stuff to farm for exp in the lakes, bringing more people there. Excellent idea!

Now on to some negatives
-Quitter debuff just stops you from requeueing to scenerios, it is losing its overall effect of reducing renown/exp. This could mean more people bailing from scens, leaving people in horrible scenerio instances.

-No more tovl leveling before level 32. Not sure how I feel on this one. Hopefully the stuff in the lakes makes this irrelevant, but then if all your friends are higher level, they cant really help you catch up in a lake. Could bring back a disconnect between people trying to jump in with some friends.

-Now for the biggest negative. Plans are to nerf the 5pc tyrant buff that gives 50% faster cast speed. For me, this is kind of a deal breaker. I have a long history (check ideas forum) of posting that pvp gear needs to be better or at least on track with PvE obtained gear. This is especially true from a healer perspective where you simply cant outfit to your full potential without doing a crap ton of PvE. I played their game. I didn’t ask for a 5 pc bonus that changes the zealot class to something a lot more fun to be put in a frustrating as hell and INCREDIBLY time consuming dungeon like TOVL, but I went with what Mythic designed and put in to be a good bonus for those that put in the effort and time. To nerf it now just shows that they do not know how to make pvp gear attractive, so instead they make the Tyrant set less attractive and in essence piss on people that sacrificed a lot of time and effort to get it. Anyone that thinks I enjoyed 1 minute in TOVL and wouldn’t have rather been doing pvp for my gear is sorely mistaken. This is going to be a bitter change for me if it doesn’t get handled properly and overturned, at least for healers. I realize Mythic’s -choice- to change close quarters now puts this buff in conflict with it for RDPS classes. Honestly, that is something they should figure out seperate from healers.

Full Notes: http://herald.warhammeronline.com/patchnotes/index.php?id=2010_1-3-6

 
6 Comments

Posted in Bioware, Gaming, Mythic, Online Gaming, Warhammer

 

Thumbs down for Real ID

07 Jul

Just to summarize, Blizzard forums starting in August are planning to have the posters name be their full real name (First + Last), with an optional display of their character name beside it.

I gave myself some time to process this instead of snap judging it. I am still of the same opinion though, this seems like more of a joke announcement then anything real or objectively thought out.

Here are several thoughts I have had on this changes they are hoping to put in:

1) It will reduce posts drastically, which may include a reduction in trolling type posts.

1.1) This will reduce forum bloat, possibly keep people more constructive and require less forum moderation.

2) Trolls/Forum bullys may not be reduced much at all. In my opinion, these types of people would be more protective of their character names in the game then their real names. Unless the point is they should fear reprecussions in real life. In that case, you have to almost say, wtf.

3) Harassment and very serious personal breaches will go up by many times. Just yesterday I was talking to a guild member who in past games had people track down his information and start calling his work, one time with bomb threats, another time accusing him of sending threatening emails with his work account. It is not that this stuff is impossible to find out without it being displayed, but handing them to the information ensures they dont even need to work at it to do it.

4) Privacy concerned people will simply no longer post. This means that in a base of millions of people, they will not be asking little questions and such on the forums, instead using CSR’s and other direct contact methods that won’t put their name out there.

4.1) Privacy concerned people may not understand that how exactly their name gets released, and avoid the games attached to real id altogether, just to be safe.

5) For many, games are a fantasy experience. They act and roleplay in ways that is outside of how they would act irl. Men play female characters, females play males, married people flirt with others and it is all hidden behind a seperate online persona from their personal life.

6) A lot of people do not want their gaming lives attached to their real lives. Professionals in many industries may not want to have a google of their name come up with gaming posts and opinions. Job searchers nowadays WILL google your name and look into your social networking. Looking just from a forum perspective, I assume a lot of these adult/professional people are providing the bulk of the -useful- information on forums.

6.1) Kids may not want other kids to know what games they play or how often. Their online hidden lives are now fodder for bullies.

7) While I think both males and females will have a pretty big dislike for this, I think women will tend to dislike this even more for obvious reasons.

It will be interesting to see if it ends up going through. There are already reports that there are ways to hack peoples full names from the Real ID system. With all the hate I have read so far, it must put some pressure on Blizzard to re-think this. However, if one company could just blatently ignore everyone and just stay their own course, it would probably be Blizzard.

What would be interesting is if Blizzard posted the real name of the champion of this idea. This should give them a pretty good idea of what it could be like for others that are no longer anonymous in an anonymous fantasy world.

 
2 Comments

Posted in Blizzard, Business, Gaming, Online Gaming

 

how much games can I get for this watch – Steam

29 Jun

Steam has recently launched a “stay inside for summer sale”. The timing could not be more perfect as hundreds of thousands of gamers are bouncing around games trying to find something that appeals to them..

Steam has deeply discounted over 200 games and most are 50-75% off with some as high as 90% off. They also have daily deals that change at 10am PST which typically includes some newer release type games.

If you have a lot of money, head to Steam today and load up. If you have no money, do not follow the link in this post. If you can find a dollar, go buy Puzzle Kingdoms which is 90% off and costs $1. It is the most entertaining game you will find for a dollar!

The only thing missing from Steam’s Summer Sale is financing options and a way to hock your belongings for games.

The sale ends July 4th.
Link: Steam Sale

So far this sale I have purchased: Puzzle Kingoms, Altitude, Age of Booty, Avencast, Introversion Pack. Looking to grab Killing Floors and Champions Online soon.

 
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Posted in Gaming, Online Gaming, Software Deals, Steam

 

timing for an expansion – Warhammer Online

22 Jun

People all around Warhammer are pushing for some sort of expansion, asap. New content, fresh things to do, something to bring people back. Start on it now, release it last week.

Is the timing right though? From a business perspective I started thinking about it and I am not so sure. This post will of course be filled with assumptions and theories.

Assuming an expansion is in the works, first off, there is information out there suggesting that no box expansion can be released before the middle of next year. That does not mean there is even one in the works, it is just a note. More likely is a free expansion similar to TOVL, which could come out at any time. If a free expansion was close to being released, I am sure Mythic and/or Bioware would already be hyping it for a fall release. This would put it just before the release of the new Star Wars MMO.

If I was Mythic Bioware, I would make the assumption that regardless of what you release before SWTOR, your going to have a large number of people at least try SWTOR. Meaning if you release an expansion this fall/winter, you will bring some people back, and then take a large dip in subscribers when SWTOR comes out.

If you plan for something ~3-6 months after SWTOR then you would, assumably, have a solid update on a very solid game to draw people to that are not enjoying SWTOR. GW is also scheduled for release early on as well, so if you come out just past both of those, you can possibly grab a lot of players and in a strong marketting campaign that almost acts as a re-release of WAR, it could do very well.

Obviously there is a pretty big risk waiting almost a year to release a large expansion. The biggest risk being keeping minimal subs and profits on a game that many would argue is dying fast due to the lack of growth in the content section. I can only imagine this must be somewhat difficult for Mythic, who are still pouring their heart and souls into this game, but in the broad company scheme, the rate in which it is shrinking and with Bioware releasing its MMO soon, Warhammer is quickly becoming unimportant.

 
8 Comments

Posted in Business, Gaming, Mythic, Online Gaming, Warhammer

 

all points bulletin systems applied to Warhammer Online

18 Jun

I just finished my review of All Points Bulletin, which you can find on the post just before this, but now I want to speculate on what systems Warhammer developers could take a look at from APB.

Sure they are very different, but use your imagination.

Mission System: This is perhaps the neatest and imo, has the most potential to be awesome in any MMO. It is a bit tricky to apply to WAR because of the combination of killable/non-killable targets. WAR does have pvp flags implemented though, so maybe it is not that far off.

Imagine a current pve zone. You group heads over there and a NPC shouts at you saying that scouts have seen a dirty bunch of Order heading for a farm on the other side of the map. You accept and start heading there. Of course the Order group had a similar start only their NPC asked them to burn down a farm house. Both groups receive buffs where other people cannot interfere with them while they are on this quest. No outside heals, no outside attacking etc..

You get to the farm and Order is completing the clickable objectives to burn it down. You attack them and clear them out. You now need to hold the farm for 5min to complete the quest etc..

You quest complete, get X rewards and the farmer asks you to escort his wife to a certain location. Your group is now charged with protecting her. Meanwhile an Order group gets dispatched to kill her. Because your group won their last 5 quests, they have a higher hidden skill ranking, and higher skill ranking order groups are paired against you for the quest.

Maybe a mix of these kind of quests and open PvP would be a great way to get people into the lakes. In between actual quests, general pvp and general objectives could be fought over. These special quests could add value to the campaign as well. Towers and question objective objects could be placed around the lakes.

I admit, I am a bit all over the map with some of these ideas, but just thinking about it brings up a lot of cool, creative ways you could use some of the systems in APB in a MMO like warhammer. The two above were the mission system and the skill matching system.

Cheers,
Tyanon

 
1 Comment

Posted in Gaming, Mythic, Online Gaming, Warhammer

 

All Points Bulletin – Review

18 Jun

This week I jumped in the beta event for All Points Bulletin.

If you just imagine an online version of Grand Theft Auto, you will be pretty close to imagining this game. The game runs as instances of zones. 40 people from both Enforcers (loose moral police) and Criminals on each side in an instance.

The game graphics do not impress, but they are not too bad. Everything about your character, its clothes and its vehicles is customizable and the customization is actually quite impressive.

The gameplay is fun, especially when you have a few friends. Grouping with them is easy and missions get applied to your group. Level difference doesn’t matter, anyone can combine for groups. So you get your buddies in a group, jump in a car or two (1 driver, the rest in the car or hanging out the windows with their guns ready).

The mission system is great! Everything has stages and missions tie together. For example, a dispatcher comes up and it is a request for backup. You accept and you and your friends are suddenly brought in on another Enforcers mission. He is on stage 4 and needs to protect a building, but on the Criminal side, 4 criminals have been assigned to try to burn that building down. You get there, but the criminals wipe you. It flips to the next stage and the criminals are trying to escape. Now all the enforcers are trying to take them out before they escape.

It sounds complicated because in a way, it sort of is. People and groups get pulled into missions at various stages and both Enforcers and Criminals cross-paths almost the entire mission. There is almost no PvE aspects. When your playing, the complexity is not visible, you are just responding to dispatches and it is clear what you need to do.

The game does have some cons. At the very essence of the game, it is a fps. Unfortunately, it lacks the smoothness of a fps. After playing Battlefield BC2, it is frustrating to go to the clunkier GTA type interface for trying to fight players.

The other con is cost. From what I hear, it is $50 to purchase this game, $10 a month to play and you also buy currency from their website. Everyone I spoke to that tried the beta, enjoyed the beta and would love to try this game out for a month or so with friends, but the cost seemed wrong. It seems more like a free client type game where you pay per month or whatever. I would be surprised if the payment model does not turn into that within 6 months.

Gameplay seems like it would get old fast. Perhaps it was just the beta, but there seemed to only be a couple different mission types. The game just seems like it would have a limited replay amount compared to MMOs.

Summary: I don’t see me jumping in on this game at release, simply because of the cost. My assumption is that it will drop drastically in cost and at that point, if I can find some friends to ride shotgun while I rid the city of crime, I will consider it.

Cheers,
Tyanon.

 
1 Comment

Posted in Gaming, Online Gaming

 
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