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Archive for the ‘World of Warcraft’ Category

“freeblemers” – Warhammer Online

10 Mar

Mythic recently added emblems, or scenerio currency used for powerful weapons and eventually more items in Warhammer. The emblems are given out for being present at the end of a scenerio. This has actually helped alleviate one of the biggest issues people have with the game, which is the number of premade groups that run. With the scenerio currency being given out for just being in scenerios, a lot more people are solo queueing for slightly faster emblem gain over waiting for group pops. However, this added a new problem in the game, people not participating in the scenerio and just collecting there free emblem(s).

Many are calling for Mythic to take steps to correct this immediately, but the situation really is kinda sticky. Technically people that participate little and are not afk are not really breaking any rules, they are just asshats. I asked Mythic for comment and I was told they are exploring their options. I would imagine they would not want CSRs being bogged down with these types of issues, the CSRs are still busy looking for my TOVL boss 8 bag from 3 weeks ago, so I am not certain they would be the answer anyways. :)

WoW handles the issue of people trying to afk in Battlegrounds by allowing people to easily report a person. When a person gets reported by a certain amount of people, they are flagged and will not make honour points until they go participate in the battle again. This works for WoW and would work to stop people trying to not participate and get renown, but they would still be able to get the emblem at the end of the scenerio fairly easily and at the moment, that is the primary goal of the people abusing the system.

Having a vote to kick would never work because people are jerks and groups would just kick people they didn’t like. Stats are also hard to go by, because who is to say what is more valuable, charging to the front of a scenerio with a group and racking up numbers, or guarding a point and looking intimidating enough that people do not even try to take it back.

Making emblems drop off player kills sounds like a good idea, until you realize that it will undo the progress for solo queueing that this latest patch has made. Giving more emblems for winning and a single emblem for participating will still not foil people from just idling and collecting the 1 emblem.

You know what, this is a tough one. I don’t know what I would do in this situation if I was Mythic. I would probably look to implement something that would allow players to take care of players that tried to grief them by not participating, but due to the reasons above, I am not sure how it would be best implemented.

What do you guys think?

 
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Posted in Gaming, Mythic, Online Gaming, Warhammer, World of Warcraft

 

“rng” – Warhammer PvE Loot System

02 Mar

When new games come out they are expected to have learned from previous generations of games. Looking briefly at WoW (one of the largest and most prominent MMO in North America), they started out with a random loot chance against a loot table and evolved into the token/progression based system. I am sure people exist that dislike this system, but I haven’t met them.

WAR releases years afterwards on a system of random chance for item drops, but adds even more need for these items by implementing a WARDS system whereby you can’t even progress in content until you ”get lucky” with drops and get the items you need for WARDS. The problems with WARDS were eventually corrected by implementing alternate ways to earn your WARDS through unlocking achievements, but this came late. The Tome would track the amount of times you killed a particular boss, and unlock the WARD if you still had not gotten your class drop. You could also earn WARDS from various tasks in RvR as well. This was a great step to help fix their unique progression system.

The loot system however, is still based on an antiquated loot systems and is as frustrating as ever. The people in charge need to find some middle ground between what they want to do and what players have been progressing gaming towards for the past 5-10 years. Obviously the random chance for good luck in PvE is liked by developers and players, but no one likes to be on the bad luck end of things, and I can’t imagine developers like that kind of thing happening either.

What I would propose is actually a hybrid system. WaR already has a great system in place with the Tome of Knowledge. Using the Tome, you could put a cap on someones bad luck.

You could keep the random chance at loot table items in place which enables people to always wonder if they are going to get lucky, but have you Tome keep track of how many times you have killed a particular boss that drops the item you need. I am sure most decision makers have some sort of plan for the average amount they would like someone to do a  particular instance/boss before obtaining their loot. Set the cap above that, or even double that. If someone hits that cap, it unlocks the item in their tome and they can pull it into their inventory. (the system for pulling gear out of your tome and into your inventory is already in place in the game, and can be done for various pieces of armor and accessories based on unlocks)

I lost great people from the guild/game due to this poorly designed loot system and the frustration they had trying to get drops for their classes, with no end in sight. Count me still amongst the disapointed in how far Warhammer has come in PvE item systems.

Thoughts?

If you play Warhammer, you can view my feedback suggestion on the official forums, here:

http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=pts_ff&thread.id=68847

 
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Posted in Blizzard, Gaming, Mythic, Warhammer, World of Warcraft