Last on the list, official forums.

Once again I think another step in the wrong direction. Why? Ive always been for official forums. First to receive support and not talk to each player individually (as, usually, when problems exist they are experienced by many), second to quickly gather up to date infos that don’t fit on a web page (servers going down, problems to connect etc..). Then obviously to get feedback from developers and discuss meaningfully the game.

I’ve explained the way I’d moderate it. Not tolerating spam and trolling. Not looking for manners or good disposition, but rewarding arguments, motivations.

There are two aspects that make obvious what Mythic’s forums will really be.
1- Account levels that will allow Mythic to pick their favorite posters/friends/supporters and rail them as champions of the community
2- Developer feedback is a privilege, not a right

There all that is wrong. In order to discuss things and read what developers think, you have to be a privileged person who’s passed Mythic’s rite of initiation.

Mythic’s dev feedback is too precious to be shared among customers. It is of a so high complexity and depth that enlightened players with access to it will have to sign yet another NDA that will forbid them to divulge the Sacred Words.

I hope you’ll do nicely, with your fist of sand.

P.S.

I still also remain convinced that having official forums are not a guarantee of success for an MMO.

…Do you know where he may have possibly heard that official forums guarantee success for a MMO? In his head, you say?

P.P.S.
I laughed (but look at the screenshot down that thread if you think nothing could surprise you anymore). Developing a forum grind is some form of misunderstood genius.

Every time I spend some time looking at what’s happening with Warhammer I find more and more proofs of game design incompetence.

Beside the latest, blatant, “People who really want to do Open RvR, though, were falling behind PvE and scenario players in terms of gear” and Mark Jacobs’ “avoiding other factions in a RvR/PvP game are always tough to solve even if you could only level through RvR/Pvp since many players/groups tend to always want to have an edge on the other group”, now we have this upcoming change to BOs and keeps that mirrors exactly what I was saying: they do not get it, and so keep making things WORSE.

Since players loved to swap BOs and keeps quickly to get points, you know what will happen next patch?

That you’ll have to SIT in a BO for half an hour, and a keep for TWO HOURS in order to get the points/loot. Awesome. I’m sure players will love this.

The REAL problem here is that they are handing points for PvE (NPC guards) objectives. Players learn this and learn that if points come from killing NPCs then fighting real players is just an hindrance. So they go killing NPCs and avoid fighting each other since this maximizes the reward.

Instead of fixing this system and link the ORVR rewards to RVR activity (as is reasonable to do if they had a clue) they double all the timers in the game, so that it’s not possible anymore to swap quickly the objectives. But, since the rewards STILL come from PvE, the only effect is that now you’ll sit idle waiting for a timer to run to zero and the bag of loot to open to you.

If you are a kind of player who enjoys this kind of gameplay then I’m glad for you.

This game isn’t flawed in production value or because Mythic isn’t working hard enough. This game is flawed because they don’t get the basics of game design, and four months down the road they still haven’t understood problems that the majority of players noticed all along.

You can work as hard you can, but if the direction is all wrong nothing good will ever come out of it. That’s Mythic’s path.

P.S.
And to demonstrate that I base my critics on concrete motivations and not bias, I’ll also say that making ORvR authoritative over Scenarios is a step in the right direction (meaning that if you control a zone in ORvR you’ll control the zone in the campaign as well, no matter the results in the Scenarios).

When I thought I was done being surprised I find this.

Mark Jacobs answers a player who brings up the same complaint I’ve been reading for the last four months: players avoid the fights and run in a circle around the maps.

– Tier 4: problems with everyone farming renown and inf by avoiding each other faction, instead of that “War is everywhere” that all we want.

This is Mark’s comment to this long standing problem:

avoiding other factions in a RvR/PvP game are always tough to solve even if you could only level through RvR/Pvp since many players/groups tend to always want to have an edge on the other group

I’m honestly baffled.

He doesn’t have even a VAGUE idea of how the game works. He thinks that players run in circles and avoid fighting because THEY ARE SCARED TO LOSE.

Could he be more out of touch? The problem is game design giving out RvR rewards (exp, gear, renown) for PvE action. The system TRAINS players to realize that it’s faster and more convenient to bypass the enemy than to put on a fight because the rewards don’t come from PvP itself. Players avoid fighting because the system can be exploited, not because the players don’t want to PvP because they are cowards.

For all the time Mark Jacobs wastes justifying his work, for once he should stop and actually listen what others are saying. BECAUSE HE IS CLUELESS.

I’m strongly against this new habit across game companies of announcing the announcement. Hype should be built on the merit of things, not on false expectations or projections. I say this not as a personal preference, but because I believe that hype built without a foundation is hype that will hurt in ALL cases, even the best ones.

Mythic will announce something next week. Dunno if it’s a free expansion, a patch or whatever, but these are the small expectations Mark Jacobs is building:

While our patch notes for the next version are certainly worth reading, I think the new content is pretty good as well. Now, whether players consider them totally over-the-top, mega brilliance or simply, kewl, interesting, next generation stuff will be interesting to see. There are other options of course, but I’ll stick with those for now.

Imho, things should be talked about in two cases. Before the fact, if devs want to participate in a discussion and and confront and integrate players feedback. After the fact, to discuss the merit of things.

But announcing and hyping the announce, without anything concrete and objective to say. Why? What for? It’s since release that MJ hypes patch notes, only to have real patch notes out deluding players and him ready to hype the next. This policy operates at a loss, every time it’s a little worse. You’re training customers to not trust you.

Especially when your customers have a critical eye for what you do and you keep going with blind self-praise. It creates a disconnection with the players that won’t bode well at all. There isn’t anything worse than self-praise in the face of your customers.