It’s so boring and unexciting when you see the mistakes coming from 100 miles away.

This is what I said:

2 October: So let me state this bluntly: the game, in particular endgame big objectives, risks to become “hide and seek” events where Destruction and Order take turns at the bag of loot. Without any incentive for defense the game risks to be more rewarding for avoiding each other than to fight.

Shortcut to victory.

15 October: Handing out a lot of points for just conquering a keep, instead, encourages the factions to just trade the objective instead of fighting for it. It teaches them to AVOID the fight to maximize the reward.

24 October: I’ve read players in Tier 4 reporting that the factions are avoiding each other in order to farm Keep Lords and have a chance at very rare drops. If Mythic executes their plan of rewarding more and more the objectives and not the fight, this problem will worsen considerably and we are looking at a future patch that will break the game even more than how it is now. That’s the next step.

That was indeed the next step (not just one case, I’ve read similar complaints on F13 as well) and I guess we aren’t even done yet.
Quick edit: more threads are starting to appear.

Mythic is doing baby steps in regard to open RvR. Baby steps that go in the wrong direction and are encouraging enemy players to avoid each other. So much for “war everywhere”.

Since I’m filled with deja-vu, I’ll be quick: PvP design should reward activity, not avoidance. This means that “the carrot” should be where the fun is: in the fight. In order to obtain this you need to provide a convergence, build a critical mass of players, and then put the carrot right there. The carrot should be proportional to the activity. No activity = no carrot.

I’ll repost my proposal adapted for Warhammer that achieves exactly that:

– Players take a Battlefield Objective (or keep) and cap it (worth nothing for now). Guilds can put a banner on the BO and stack benefits.
– For the time the BO is being actively defended (meaning there are real players in its proximity) it “blinks” on the map for all the players in the zone, for both factions. So that all players know that there’s activity there.
– All the kills (both defenders and attackers) that happen within a decently wide radius from the BO starts to be worth more points (XP, renown). A bonus that should be slightly higher for defenders, to encourage defense.
– For all the kills that defenders manage, some points go into a “bounty pool” in the BO. The more kills, the more this pool increases. I’d also make the BO generate some of these points even if no one is around, so that if left untouched for a lot of hours it actually start to be worth something anyway.
– This means that the longer it takes to conquer the BO, the biggest is going to be the reward, as it increases with the time and makes the prize progressively juicier.
– In order to “collect” these points the attackers need to conquer the objective themselves and “cash” the reward.

This has mainly three effects:
1- The BO works like a magnet, like a natural convergence since the direct kills are worth a lot more when they are closer to the objective. This makes the players know where to go and the action is focused on a smaller area (those who played Planetside know what I mean). This reduces the problem of RvR lakes being too dispersive.
2- The bounty points increase over time, so growing to a level that will likely motivate the other faction to take action. It will also move the “hot” RvR area around instead of repeating what happened with “Emain” in DAoC. It puts variety in the system.
3- It avoids exploits and disruptive behaviors. Points in this system come from direct kills. Handing out a lot of points for just conquering a keep, instead, encourages the factions to just trade the objective instead of fighting for it. It teaches them to AVOID the fight to maximize the reward (we saw some of this in WoW). My system instead focuses on the fight itself. It motivates it and makes sure it is rewarding since it promotes and rewards the activity.

—
That was my proposal and is still valid today. To make it work, though, there are two important prerequisites that should be patched NOW:
1- Add flight masters between ALL warcamps and ALL chapter PvE hubs. If this takes time to implement, add temporary teleports.
2- Reduce the diminishing returns in open RvR from the actual ten minutes to TWO.

What I think is that Keep Lords should NEVER drop gear. There are already renown gear vendors whose purpose is exactly that. Warhammer RvR design is already a convoluted patchwork of elements, it doesn’t need more complication.

I still wish Warhammer would be enormously successful. I still think that a lot can be done to improve it and make it great. But the reason why this *won’t* happen (and we’ve seen plenty of demonstrations of this) is because of its cockblock, and that cockblock is too egocentric to step back for the good of the game:

Tomorrow WotLK launches. I care zero and won’t play it, but if Warhammer loses players it deserves it.

One quick comment on the latest Grab Bag and the zone control mechanic (I’m trying to divert my attention away from the game).

I’ll avoid to waste time to post some kind of armchair designer proposal but I want to point out what’s wrong in the overall approach. If you want the RvR to pivot around zone control, then the players need to be able to parse it correctly. It needs to be a transparent mechanic that players can use and plan strategy upon (in DAoC the relic raids involved strategy because a realm had to guess the way the other realm would react and where it would be).

This problem is not dissimilar to Mythic’s bad habit with slash commands. In order to know and use slash commands you need to read guides and memorize them. They aren’t intuitive. In the same way a player who wants to engage in RvR should NOT be required to read a page of text on the Herald to understand the way zone control works. This knowledge needs to be delivered in the game, not outside of it.

The second mistake is that these mechanics need to be simpler and easy to parse, so that they can be evaluated and “used”. Here Mythic is repeating a similar mistake Blizzard did with its PvP. First with the Honor system, then the Arena rating, the rules are too opaque, too convoluted. Zone control in Warhammer needs to follow simple rules. The progress bar needs to deliver all the infos and the players’ actions need to be reflected tangibly.

Show numbers. The zone control bar is useless if its interpretation is arbitrary. Show how many points are fixed and relying on oRvR, shows how many points go in the scenarios, show how many in PvE. The only reason to keep these numbers hidden would bee because Mythic isn’t convinced of the mechanic and so doesn’t want to disclose it to the players.

Simplify the mechanics so that they aren’t convoluted, show the numbers so that the players can see how they are contributing and change the zone control bar so that it shows usable data and not just some arbitrary value open to interpretation.

EDIT:
Some spontaneous proofs.
Further proofs.

Okay, this last one, then I’ll try to mind my own business. But it’s just too easy and fun to not do it.

Mark Jacobs: However, to say that we are not paying attention, don’t care or the ever-popular “I quit now” simply makes it less likely that we will continue to post and interact here.

GOOD RIDDANCE!

I wonder where he wants to bring his bag of candies next. F13 already slapped his face (and his ego) too many times for him to have the courage to go back there. Warhammer Alliance is a cesspool alike the Vault. Where will he go, I wonder? He must feel so unloved right now, poor boy.

In other news the “Combat n Careers” patch buffed Bright Wizard damage (especially DoTs) and nerfed healing. My class, Ironbreaker, was also hit with the nerfbat.

“Love to all classes” is the stupidest myth in game design. When you boost damage across the board the result is that the fights are over in less time. When you then also nerf healing the result is obviously much worse. Especially since healing needed a boost instead of a nerf from tier 2 onward as healers couldn’t keep anyone alive. Add the fact they they also nerfed root abilities, that, while usually a good idea, is another nerf to a defensive skill, and you can imagine that the whole system has been shoved heavily toward the offensive side, making combat more deadly and sudden, and removing that little bit of strategy there was. If you think this is what was necessary, good for you.

Just a glance at those patch notes and even one like me, who usually restrains to comment class balance, can see that they aren’t even in the right direction. Not only they are doing too much, all at once, late and prioritizing the wrong things, but they even move in the wrong direction.

Just to be clear and demonstrate that I don’t simply criticize no matter what, this is what I wrote a month and half ago in regard to class balance:

For the first time in many years I felt powerful in PvP. Yesterday I tanked two other players that outleveled me, alone. I didn’t even use all the aces in my sleeve. Is this the way it should be or should I expect the nerfbat coming? I play in scenarios and have the time to ACTUALLY SEE WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. I can REACT TO COMBAT. It’s paced perfectly. This opposed to, say, WoW. Where the combat is fucking ridiculous and I can be dead in a matter of seconds in a cloud of stupid graphic effects while I can’t even control my character because of CC, with my tank. Here fighting takes time and is not too twitchy.

In Warhammer, from the little experience I have, it seems they got the “feel” right. Now I hope that while they work to also have the “numbers” right, they won’t fuck the rest.

Even in my first preview of the game I praised the combat system because it got right one of the most important aspect: the pacing. The classes were unbalanced, but the “feel” and pacing was right (and this was also the reason why I don’t think class balance is a priority). They needed to tweak numbers, tone down some ridiculous skills that were overused and exploited, and boost some classes (like pet classes) that lacked a real role and efficiency.

Now, do you know what happens when you boost the damage and nerf healing of all classes across the board? That you fuck the pacing. Exactly what they did.

A curious exchange on the forums (no links because linking to the Vault sucks. Just look at Mark’s account and all his posts):

Mark Jacobs: And yes, this is the patch that pretty much everyone has been asking for and talking about here and elsewhere. Brought in from 1.1 to 1.05 as I hoped we could do.

random guy: Mark, is there anything in this particular patch to buff up RvR?

Mark Jacobs: No, not a lot. This is the Combat and Careers patch and it took priority over everything else.

Imho, their priorities are all wrong and their procedures even worse.

Priorities are wrong because what I would have done is:
1- Boosting PvE experience in Tier 3 and 4 and smooth the leveling curve.
2- Add teleports/flight masters to the warcamps and the chapter PvE hubs to ease travel between PvE and RvR.
3- Rework the RvR system to use a hotspot system where players activity gravitates around BOs and keeps (details here).
THAT, maybe, would be the patch people have been asking. Or at least that’s my perception.

The procedures are wrong because class balance is one aspect where baby steps are the best approach. Refine and test over and over. Reiterate as much as possible.

Instead? Mythic goes for the big sweeping changes for all classes at once. No wonder balance is hard.

You know. Balance. The word says it. It’s something that requires very, very slight adjustment till it’s perfect. With big shoves all over the place things won’t be exactly easier.

Mark Jacobs: The 1.05 patch is the anxiously awaited “Combat and Careers” patch. As I mentioned already, it is over 17 pages long and still growing and it includes, among other things, adjustments to every career in the game. It is, by far, the largest WAR patch yet and is by its very nature, full of far-reaching and sweeping changes.

Big sweeping changes to all classes.
Baby steps or nothing for RvR.
Right on track.

Your commander takes the helm:

Over the last week or so I have been playing the game continually focusing on RvR from a solo player’s (though I have joined a guild for one of my toons) perspective. I’ll talk about some of the changes/additions that have come from that experience in the coming weeks. The first result of that is a 7 page document that I’ve delivered to the team and I’m working on a second document that might be even longer.

Holy cow!

He’s written seven pages to explain his dev team the problems of open RvR. Seven fucking pages. And here I thought I was logorrheic.

He’s explaining his team the problems of open RvR, a game whose major feature is RvR, a game that was just released and whose design is only examined now.

What the fuck have you done in the last 2+ years?

For the first time since… my early Ultima Online days I’m not subscribed to any MMOs, nor I plan to buy WotLK when it launches.

I guess I can’t be surprised things went this way, but I have once again the regret. I had already decided long ago that I wasn’t going to play Warhammer, no matter how good or bad it was. Now I regret having undone that promise I made to myself. I regret having decided this summer to try the beta and then get lured in. I don’t regret having spent the money. It’s not about the money, it’s about time and passion. I wish I could go back undo things, and stay far, far away from the game.

Mythic decided that they want to copy Blizzard on every aspect, including very slow patch cycles every three or six months. Class balance will see a similar pattern, so no matter if classes are unbalanced or the game’s broken, they’ll only act when the time comes. It seems that learning from past experiences simply means ignoring problems till the slow patch cycle comes. A matter of form and not substance.

They continue this dick-measuring with WoW, assuming that Warhammer launched in the same state and that what is appropriate for WoW will be appropriate even for their game.

Mark Jacobs vanished from the forums. If you wonder why, a possible reason is that he had one big meeting with EA overlords these last days of October. He also has in his hands the “real” subscription numbers for the first time.

Warhammer, after one month, has already entered the same maintenance mode that DAoC has seen in these last few years. It feels pretty hopeless. The big patch planned for December adds more content on a broken structure. It’s not a matter of just rewards, but also of direction.

The real question is why they did nothing to address these problems long ago. Every single one of the structural problems that cripple the game now were largely predictable (and known from similar games who presented the same issues). When absolutely nothing is being done throughout the whole development cycle, then it’s rather pointless to hope Mythic will do something in the next few months.

They do not understand game design, especially the RvR.

1- DAoC first phase – Each of the three realms had a number of RvR zones. Players just mostly used one: Emain.
2- DAoC new frontiers – Mythic redesigns all the frontier zones without reducing their number. It’s once again a wasteland where players’ activity only focuses on a small spot and still is too dispersive.
3- DAoC Agramon – Mythic add ANOTHER zone to the already oversized RvR space. A central island to reproduce the gameplay that was found in the old Emain.
4- DAoC Labyrinth expansion – Mythic adds another huge RvR area to the game.
5- Warhammer – Lesson learned? Nope. They add RvR areas to all tiers and maps. All content and space wasted.

They do not learn even the most obvious lessons. They do not even understand that PvP needs convergence and focal points. This can only be solved in two ways. Either you reduce the space so that players converge to one point, or you implement some form of rotation system (like Planetside or WoW’s BG weekends) where you swap the “background” while all players still fight together in the same space.

From F13:

As it stands, it’s like fighting a 12 front war with 200 people and that’s a goddamn joke.

There’s no back-pedaling here. Mythic’s been stumbling around with the design from the beginning. Simple example. We discussed the lack of incentives to do zone RvR and to capture and hold BOs back in April and I’m sure others that were in the Beta earlier than us brought it up as well. What did they do to try and fix that problem in the 5 months before launch? Diddly squat. They just don’t get it.

Now the more they are scared of losing those players they have, the least willingly to address the problems. I expect a long list of ineffectual band-aids as it happened with DAoC.

I confirm everything I wrote, though. Mythic did a very good work with that “beta preview” in late August and September. Twice they wiped the characters and only showed the public the very best of their game: levels 1 to 10, with zones vibrant of activity. But since I have some experience with these games, I gave warnings that the basic design had holes and the “fun” was too dependent on a optimal balance that would be rare to find in the real game and at all times, once players started to spread out in the tiers and zones. Where I was wrong was in thinking these issues would become glaring after the initial months, when instead they became glaring in a matter of weeks.

It’s what makes a game full of potential but with a bad execution and design flaws that undermine that potential. So I waited to see in what direction Mythic decided to move. Initially they seemed reactive and willingly to engage in a discussion. Now instead it appears that they have already closed the doors and entered the “hands off” phase.

I was on the brink of leaving for two weeks. I have waited to have a better idea of where Mythic was heading but kept getting deluded. The last patch notes (1.0.4) just confirmed that it’s not the same direction I think would lead to a better game, so I canceled. The RvR system is a mess, completely undocumented. The few times they reveal pieces of it, like in the last Grab Bag, or these patch notes we see more about how fucked it is and how out of touch Mythic is with their own game.

Sadly, because I really believe there’s a lot of potential and so many things I love in the game. From the art direction to some of the quests it shows how a lot of passion and love was poured into the game. But it’s all fucked due to poor game design and structure. A pity.

Maybe EA granted Mythic a lot of money to push out a quality product, with polish and good production value. Apparently, though, a lot of money doesn’t grant good game design.

Remember the 2004 omen I recently re-linked? Well, it’s now renewed. Mark Jacobs likes to engage in a discussion when his audience loves, admires and praises him endlessly. That feels good and he loves it. But when the times come to deal with critics beside the praises, with flying tomatoes and whistles instead of just applause and boasts, then it doesn’t feel anymore as good. He closes the door and goes away.

It’s too easy to be there on the stage under the spotlight only when things go well.

When things start to go wrong? Oh, he’ll let “the team” deal with that.

However, honestly, good luck to Mythic anyway. I’m sure you’ll do nicely even without me ;)

Instead of Mark Jacobs turning his back to F13, as in my 2006 omen, it’s F13 turning its back to Mark Jacobs. (P.S. Proper thread here or, well, any forum of your choice)

Or so it appears to be?

EDIT1: The reason of the outrage seems to be the latest Grab Bag (that I completely missed, note to Mythic: show more than three news on that Herald page), where they explain/reveal what appears to be a PvE cockblock to RvR content.

Players on various forums are already taking this as the sign of what are Mythic’s real priorities. Confirming my doubts about not “reading” their own game correctly, being on the wrong path and announcing new content while the core of the game is broken and unaddressed.

At the same time I’ve read players in Tier 4 reporting that the factions are avoiding each other in order to farm Keep Lords and have a chance at very rare drops. If Mythic executes their plan of rewarding more and more the objectives and not the fight, this problem will worsen considerably and we are looking at a future patch that will break the game even more than how it is now. That’s the next step.

On the other side Mythic is going to offer next week sever transfer from low populated servers to medium populated ones. One wonders: what is going to happen to those low populated servers that will see even less activity? Are unaware players who decide to start there be welcomed by a warning pop-up? Or will the servers be left there, agonizing, like relics testifying Mythic’s wrong expectations and plans?

For how much Mark Jacobs surely hopes things stabilize and calm down for the game, they are instead in a flow now more than ever. I see this as a very good thing for the game. Mythic isn’t allowed to downplay what is going on. Either something changes *radically* in the perception and attitude, or they’ll have to face the consequences.

The fact that Warhammer is here to stay in the longer term as a relevant competitor will be determined NOW. And has to be renewed every day, till the game wades out this impasse.

(I wonder, am I the cynic or the hopeless optimist?)

EDIT2: There’s also this nice gem. But then it’s stuff I already knew.

EDIT3: About the previous link I want to specify what is the “stuff I already knew” so that it’s not misunderstood.

From my point of view all that is written there is unconfirmed, but plausible. There’s nothing surprising, nor anything that I consider so important.

GOLD FARMERS – This is the part that was somewhat already known. You are a FOOL if you thought gold farmers were spending $50 for a copy of the game just so they could spam some links and get banned. I don’t have the time to go find the link on the Vault, but I remember Mark Jacobs himself voicing the suspect that these spammers were generating CD-Keys, so basically having unlimited access to new accounts and without risking anything.

IP BANNING – Oh, I’m sure they can ban an IP if they want. Problem that it’s not this simple. If the spammers are using public and dynamic IPs then you can’t block them without blocking the whole provider. So it’s not as easy as it appears to be. Mythic has no way to identify a particular someone since a valid credit card is not required to make an account. And if they make the credit card required then they’ll surely upset a larger group of players. Pretty much as accepting the EULA every time is annoying for all of us.

So for as much I believe that Mark’s crusade against gold spammers was “felt”, it likely had no effect in practice and was just propaganda. This should be no surprise.

MYTHIC FIRING PEOPLE OR MAKING NEW GAME – Well, here there’s nothing that can be taken as sure truth, but it was known that Mythic borrowed a number of devs directly from EA whenever they needed them. It’s likely that with the game’s launch these guys returned to EA. It’s possible that they are reducing their CSR if they overestimated their subs count (likely, even if that post came BEFORE Mythic could see their subs numbers). It’s also very plausible that a number of devs are being moved between projects. Despite Mark Jacobs himself said that all the team was currently focused on the live game and “not yet” working on a expansion, some other guy in the team (I think the producer) confirmed that they had already a small team that was playing with concepts to use in a expansion. A new game? Sure. Mark never denied that he still wants to do “romans in space”. I seriously doubt that they’re doing anything concrete right now, but they said more than once that Warhammer wasn’t going to be their last game. Mark Jacobs himself again, expressed more than once the desire to move off Warhammer shortly after launch. It doesn’t mean that the team will be affected, but it is likely that after the launch the resources poured on the game will be only proportional to what the game can afford, cutting the costs as much as possible. If you are a cynic you could interpret this as the only way you can run a commercial company.

It’s a fact that they want (and expect) the game to stabilize and live on its own. Jeff Hickman said their target is to make one patch every three to six months. That’s what they expect the game will need, and it can surely be done (and it is the case of pretty much every MMO outside Eve-Online and WoW) with a smaller team compared to the one that worked in the game till now.

CLIENT STUTTERING – I didn’t test in the last week, but none of the patches did anything to remove or reduce the stuttering. Or at least nothing I could perceive. This isn’t anything new from Mythic since they are using a licensed engine and the engineering side of the job has NEVER been something where they excelled. They do content, systems, but the hard engine is not done by them and has always been shit. There’s not much you can done here beside allocating more resources. Clearly most of the work goes in other parts of the game where they feel more competent. It’s easier to say “we are always working to improve performance” even if no progress is concretely being made.

BOTTING AND SCENARIOS – He was a CSR and what he says seems plausible. All those problems are, imho, almost irrelevant. If they are relevant they are also easily fixed. Customer Support won’t make or break a game, when it comes into play it means things already aren’t working smoothly. Those issues are for the great majority of players IRRELEVANT, so I don’t give them any weight. Maybe CSRs don’t have great tools to do their job, but making better tools for them isn’t a priority. There’s no urgency and, in case, those tools will be improved.

So, again, that post is plausible for the most part, and a bit of a stretch in some other. I pasted it just to hear “another” perspective, but, true or not, it’s not so noteworthy. If not in that typical MMO drama that fuels the pages of blogs and message boards.

We luv drama.