Slashdot Mirror
Warhammer Online Producer Discusses Game Features
BigDownload.com has a great interview with Jeff Hickman, Senior Producer for Warhammer online, that offers a great preview of many of the game's features. The interview spends quite a bit of time discussing the "RvR" (Realm vs. Realm) style of gameplay and what that will mean for players. "We generally start everything in our game with a thought toward PvP. PvP isn't the first thing we think of, but it's one of the first things. We think of Warhammer Online as a PvP game that also has monster and PvE content. So, when we balance our careers, we balance the content around player verses player, not fighting monsters. We balance the classes against each other. Then, instead of balancing those classes against the monsters, we balance the monsters against the classes. Our philosophy is to make the best PvP game in the world and build the PvE content around it. We know how much damage each class can do and take, plus all the utility each class can provide. So, instead of balancing each ability, we just need to modify the overall damage output and absorption of each career."
Basically, the support classes will sit there on autoattack until something dies five minutes later, as opposed to the mage/berserker class who will kill in three hits and move on. Brilliant!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
More like World of Warhammer. Online. Craft...
"We like to think about PvP first...sometimes...usually. We like PvP, and it's important...usually first."
So... what happens when the people who are there for lore and whacking monsters run out of content and start to complain or quit? Don't think that it isn't going to happen, or that they're going to be a tiny contingent-- just look at how Guild Wars has changed since Prophecies launched.
Penny Arcade
Sounds pretty good. I am intrigued by how cities can rise or fall. I'm not big into PvP, but I'll probably try it out for that game -- if it comes out for Mac, of course.
The graphics look pretty detailed, and the breadth of costume choice looks good, but maybe too much uncanny valley there.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
If they include Night Goblin Fanatics as a class, I'm in. Those little buggers would be awesome in PvP!
Leeeeroy Jenkins's got nuttin on them!
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
How does he expect to sell this game to players who long for the old days of Ultima Online, which by the way had/has mounted combat, when his game sounds a lot like WoW. 2 sides? Sounds lame to me. And the description of the "balanced" classes sounds sure as hell pretty close to WoW. Healers will hate being healers! What are they innovating exactly? I don't really understand... Why can't you make every class capable of healing? Hell why even have classes and arch types when a much better system has existed for a long time. Why not make a system based on skills and allow the player to pick which skills his character posses? And why not allow him to unlearn and train new skills, so he is not "stuck" in one character for his entire Warhammer life?
This game innovates nothing! How can he claim balance and then say some character arch types will be better against some types... that's the opposite of balance...
I hope the PvP in WAR is more than just making sure you have one of the two "blessed" classes (the two classes the lead devs play as faves in WoW, whom all others are made lesser).
So far, other than having one of the two PvP classes, all of WoW's PvP is how much res you have on your stats (i.e. how many months you ran your 10 arena games to get your points to buy your season pieces, only to do it again next season), and if that didn't decide the issue at once, how fast you flicked the mouse and batted the spacebar while hoping to get rage, combo points or do something with them, and to keep behind the other person while the person did the same.
I know I'll get a Blizz fanboi who says the usual "l2p", but I can easily point to the number of HKs of both my chars who have full S3 sets where one of them is one of the classes the lead dev plays, and the other isn't. Even with the same gear and both with similar arena standings, their kill/death ratio are totally different in one versus one PvP. Its fairly obvious that there are classes who win in PvP, and those who just plain cannot survive even with 400+ res unless paired up with someone else as a partner for healing or melee DPS. Blizz calls it "rock, scissors, paper" balancing, however when your scissors will encounter statically 2-3 times as many rocks as paper, this balancing gets old.
I'm glad WAR and AoC are coming. If either of them delivers on what they promise with solid playability, they will start eroding Blizz's player base until they get a critical mass, similar to how WoW shredded EQ. Maybe then, Blizz will work on cycles faster than 24 months for major content additions.
One idea that I can't seem to find addressed is this:
Lets say that on one server, the greenskins conquer the dwarfs, and get lots of shiny loot doing so. Eventually they get pushed back and the RvR thing restarts, but then the greenskins are given a slight advantage with better gear - wouldn't they continue to dominate?
Say that on one server, the greenskins conquer the dwarfs. Then, they conquer the dwarfs. Then, they conquer the dwarfs. And then, they conquer the... what do you mean that all the dwarfs have rerolled on "more fun" servers?
People don't play MMORPGs to have fun losing.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Try playing Dark Age of Camelot first, then flame. None of the healing classes in the game complained, and the game was totally group oriented(it was easier to level, farm etc). This game is being produced by the same company, same team who produced DAoC. Don't forget the fact that DAoC had one of the best(the best in my opinion) PvP systems out there, with more than 26 classes(can't exactly remember), all different spells on 3 sides and abilities. The class/faction balance was nowhere to be seen from time to time, but hey that happens to every game. And PvP in a game like DAoC never got repetitive. There was always a different conflict(one side assaulting the relic keep or couple of archers assaulting a tower and terrorizing the area) in motion, so you always found a different action. Realm abilities were a rewarding process too.
PLEASE PLEASE, make a single Realm where each players only have one life. And when he dies he dies. (The user can the ofcause then create a new player).
My arguments for this:
It will make it posible for users that don't play so much time to get player charactors that are within the 10% best, because a characters power will be the amount of time played since he last died, not the total amount of time played.
It will make the player levels a bell curve, meaning that there are only a few really powerfull players. There is nothing fun about reaching $MAX level if >25% of all the other players are also max level.
This does mean that one team may have a player that can beat any player on the opposite time, but he still can't beat any team of other players.
It will also make guilds much more usefull. Just imagine that the guild leader is the person with the highest level, and the other members of the guild funciton as kind of "support troops" for the leader. This will be extra cool if the instances insted of limiting the number of players within a group, limit the total number of levels within a group. So if a instance is rated to level 100, you can bring either 2 level 50 players, or a single level 50 player, and 5 support players each at level 10.
The motivation for beeing a "support troop" in a guild is that a: It might be safer then beeing the front fighter, and b: At a time the front fighter and leader will die, and then the highest level support troop, will be the new leader. (This will be extra cool, if high level players get the ability to give bonuses to a limited number of players within their group).
(And yes, this system might mean that the xp that users get for killing monsters and players might need to be raised, so that there are top level players at all).
Giving each player one life, also have the effect that you don't have to limit the number of levels/classes/extras that each player can have.
Just imagine a d&d mmorpg where a player can be dual class. So imagine he is both a fighter and a mage. The existing mmorpg games can't allow this because when that player reach $MAX level, he will have all the powers of both the mage and the fighter, thus owerpowering any single class player. But with unlimited levels and only one life that will not be a problem, because the player will newer really reach a max level where he can't be better, so for any amount of XP, a dual class fighter/mage might have both classes at level 35, while a single class mage with the same amount of xp, might be at level 50, thus preserving the game balance while allowing interesting combinations. (Dual class players advance slower, because they split their xp between their classes).
Martin
How would that be fun? I am perfectly happy to hit the max level and share that accomplishment with other people. You want a server full of griefers and jerks (sounds like you would like Eve). Most people playing new characters are going to be killed immediately by the people who are unemployed or kids and people will just hide and power level. There will be no balance as the highest level will be able to decimate the lower levels. You might say...but how cool would it be to be that high level. Guess what, if you go to school, work, have a social life, that person won't be you.
It sounds like a horrible idea that most people would hate. But I am sure there are a few people who would enjoy it so I am not saying it shouldn't be done on a small percentage of the servers. Just if they care about subscribers and making money, they are going to end up following the WoW model. The fact that they think they are going to perfectly blend a large number of classes in PvP is pretty much a joke. I have yet to see any company do better at balancing things than Blizzard.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Now I don't know what the map looks like in Warhammer, but I would imagine that the low level instances were located behind the main city, and thus imposible to reach for the other teams unless they walk throu the enemy main city.
I just always imagined a map, where there are 2 'main cities' one for each team. And between them a lot of smaller cities, and other structures that the teams would want to capture. (They each start with half of them) Theese should be located between the 2 main cities, thus forming a kind of border. Thus the entire map would be part of a 'world conquest' quest.
Theese would provide some kind of attack/damage/magic/healing bonuses to nerby troops for the team that hold them, so that the farther you were from your cities, the more trouble you would be in.
That way, almost all pvp fighting would be located at the border between the 2 teams. The border could then move, if cities near the border were captured or destroyed.
And players whould would not want to be directly involved in pvp could then take quests, that would help their team by taking resources, that could be used to build/maintain defense structures.
So if you want to attace the other teams main city, you really have to take many of the smaller cities and structures first, so you can use them for some kind of support.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
If you want to look at a better balanced PvP game, look at Dark Age of Camelot, designed by Mythic before they made this game. They had very balanced PvP and took PvP balance seriously.
Another game that has really good PvP balance is Guild Wars.
WoW is a pathetic joke at balance. The developers made a choice to make the game completely gear-dependent, so it's very possible that if 2 level 70s duel each other, one of them might not be able to win just because his gear isn't good enough. That isn't balance; that's carebear PvP for little kids that need an "I Win" button.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
I would not lose anything. If I spendt thousands of hours building my character it would be because doing so were fun, and I don't lose that fun time I had, just because my character died.
If I had spendt thousands of hours building my virtual character, and I thought that time was wasted, when he died, then I would also feel I hand wasted thousands of hours building my virtual character, even if he newer died.
Remember: It's a game. If it feels like work playing it, don't do it.
The planet that Warhammer is on has the same continent layout as Earth, save a crescent shaped landmass in the atlantic, Ulthuan, that is home to the high elves.
Once you load your save game in Nethack, it goes away by default, no need to delete it. Unless you're a shitty save scummer, in which case you can go fuck yourself.
The problem is that people got so caught up with dueling in WoW that at some point before TBC some of the big wigs over at Blizzard thought it would be a good idea to oblige to the duelers. And once it went mainstream with arena, the masses started to complain that all the other classes that they did not play themselves, were overpowered.
Even just taking a glance over at the pvp forums, you could find a "OMG NERG _OTHERCLASS_ SO OP LOL" for almost every class. People griped at stunlock rogues. People griped at MS warriors. People griped at slsl locks. People griped at disc priests. People griped at holy pallys. Resto druids. Ele shamans. Frost mages. Marksman hunters. Every class has a group of people that they think is overpowered against their class.
What brought this on was simply the fact that the gameplay has taken a major shift from massive Braveheart style battles, to 2-on-2, 3-on-3, 5-on-5 skirmishes and duels. Why? Because the Blizzard sanctioned massive Braveheart style battles never came. (tarren mill doesn't count). The closest they have gotten to that was the 40-on-40 pvp instance Alterac Valley, where they screwed with it so much that I'm pretty positive that it was the end result of an original game designer that was in charge of working on AV being either fired or dismissed in some other fashion before finishing his/her job, leaving it in honor-point-per-hour farming shambles.
To exacerbate matters with dueling was an overemphasis on crowd control - classes who could remove the ability for other players to control their characters brought on a whole slew of dueling gameplay imbalances - sheep, cheapshot/kidneyshot, fear, deathcoil, root, mind control, scattershot, frost trap - you name it. Nevermind that certain spells and abilities are completely useless for pvp - like taunt. Or shackle.
IMO arena-style pvp really took the character balance away from what we all wanted from the very beginning - the epic, massive battles we've witnessed in the Warcraft RTS games. But Blizzard decided to take it in that direction, and it brought them 10 million players, so why should they change anything?
It's really a shame.