Andrew
1802
Attacking capital cities is a novelty, but I don’t think getting the “best loot” really matters any more than getting more levels. Less, even, as what really matters in PvP is relative loot quality.
It is true though that if everybody thinks that world PvP is terrible in Tiers 1-3, then world PvP will be terrible in Tiers 1-3!
HRose, a lot fewer people would make fun of you if you just omitted the “I thought of this years ago!” parts of your posts. The banner-magnet-thing idea makes perfect sense.
It’s not that it’s terrible, but if you run around looking for world RvR in tiers 1-3, you often don’t find much of it. Your time is better spent doing scenarios and questing while you are in queue for a scenario.
Andrew
1805
There needs to be some way to queue for world RvR. Maybe you add yourself, and when a threshold of players has been reached, you are all wisked into a warband located in the war camp for your Tier.
Lurb
1806
I’ve seen plenty of T2 open RvR in Ostermark. I’ve been part of 30 vs 30 slap fests in the Marsh or Barak Varr at least twice in the last week, and I have missed as many.
Usually if 15 or 20 guildies show up at prime time someone will start hitting the guards and taunt the rest on guild chat to come and help. We then get a few hangers on in the warcamp, and by the time we have the doors down lots of Order start showing up.
Other than that I’m leveling mostly through scenarios and loving it.
IIRC in DAoC people had a good reason to be in RvR areas: looking for better hunting spots and drops, so roaming around there at any time looking for people to fight wasn’t pointless. I have mostly ignored those “scout” quests, maybe if they were more involved and gave significantly better rewards I’d be inclined to do them/look for people doing them. Maybe make some juicy PQs happen in the RvR areas.
z22
1807
There’s a wealth of great suggestions here, but are they all for naught? I know many of us are game nerds somehow connected to the biz, but does anyone here have connections or ties to Mythic or EA? I’m sure they have thought of most of these ideas, or should have, but who knows?
I really think it’s a rewards vs time issue and how the game experience trains players. Scenarios are good returns for your time in terms of XP and renown. World RvR doesn’t match it in those terms.
Lurb
1809
Mark Jacobs himself has an account here and posted more than a few times in the “creditgate” thread, wouldn’t be that strange if he checked this one here and there. I bet Lum still knows a guy or two at Mythic too.
Historically I’d say Mythic is quite inclined to implement stuff people say they want (Ok we know that’s not guaranteed to give them what they really wanted, but they try).
There’s probably a few Mythic people who at least read these boards, and I know at least some people have ties to Mythic folks (Hello, Lum!). On the other hand, anyone who’s not working at Mythic and knows people who are woudl be pretty full of themselves to say “Hey, guys, here’s how you should fix the game which you know all the stuff about and know all of the design specs for. We figured it out by bitching about what we didn’t like. We’re sure you didn’t think of this.”
I’m pretty sure they have some ideas as to what/how to do stuff to address the issue. I think the real issue is population. Open RvR isn’t stellar on Phoenix Throne most weeknights, but I’ve had no complaints on the weekends really. Given that you need decent sized warbands to take keeps, and it takes a while for those things to reach critical mass, I’m not particularly surprised. I just do scenarios until things are going, personally. I do wish there was a way to set XP gain thresholds for scenarios, though. I enjoy the RvR, I like being able to get experience from them, but it’s hard to continue playing and really perfect your strategies in a scenario when you keep having to worry about outlevelling them. Being able to set the amount of XP I actually get from 0-100% in a scenario would be nice. Hell, being able to set it from 30-100% would be okay, and would at least somewhat ameliorate worries about twinking and the like. (Not that twinking isn’t already happening I’m sure.)
It’s a player issue. Why is the primary concern “XP, Renown, then fun”. People are broken. I’d be fine with zero XP, zero renown if I was just having fun. But there’s enough history in the MMO space at this point in time that 95% of the populous is convinced that if you’re not advancing, you’re not having fun! (Guild Wars would beg to differ.)
Personally, I’d be interested in a thread discussing how to overcome that particular metric. Nothing both amuses and disheartens me more than people complaining at level X that stuff is the same old grind that it was at level X-alot, so therefore they feel compelled to grind even harder to get to level X+some so that magically things won’t be the same. There’s a huge cognitive blindspot going on there and I just don’t get where it comes from at all.
Aeon221
1812
Right now it’s sorted by groups and ignores individuals. What I’d like is an interface that is sorted by PQs and shows the exact number of individuals involved, not just the groups.
Ideally that interface would also include info on the various bag drops, because better information is an essential part of making an informed decision. Right now, I skip a lot of PQs because I figure they won’t help me out much. If I knew that I could get, say, gloves with +3 to beatdown from a bag that are better than the +2 to beatdown gloves I can get through RR, I’d immediately go do that PQ.
There’s also the idea that later tier stuff will be more fun than the early tier stuff (which for me and WoW was absolutely true). More powers, higher concentration of people, capital cities to raid, etc.
Yeah I know where it comes from. I’m just not particularly convinced that having more powers and capital cities to raid is so much better than having keeps or even just battlefield objectives at lower levels. The concentration of people thing is a real issue, but it’s also what I’m talking about. The reason the concentration is higher at 40 supposedly is because that’s where you’re forced to stop. People push to 40 because it’s supposed to be “better” and they tend to ignore the other stuff. I just don’t get that. Tier 2 keep taking is plenty fun. I’m not sure why people aren’t stopping to dominate the roses, y’know? Seems much of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Because it’s an RPG and getting to max level is a clearly-defined goal. When all the tools in the game revolve around attaining that goal, many players are going to strive to find the most efficient path toward it.
BlakeD
1816
As for the Tier 2 keep taking and RvR: I did a ton of that, personally. I slowed down my leveling to join groups looking to raid a keep and it is fun, it’s just when you balance that in with scenarios and public/quests you reach Rank 22 at some point and then you’re thrust into Tier 3 where you’re getting ganked more often than not. So I leveled up to 24 so I could pose a little more of a threat and there are no people raiding keeps or battlefield objectives. It’s just scenario play so I’m kind of roped into that for my PvP fix.
Another issue I’m noticing that is particularly worrisome for melee DPS is the “TARGET IS NOT IN RANGE” issue that I assume is due to lag and maybe insufficient netcode. I’m definitely in arm’s reach when I use my melee abilities.
As a witch hunter I constantly have to spam the key for my Morale ability. Even if it makes the sound of going off and the colored icon becomes gray it doesn’t mean that it has worked. It sometimes lights right back up and becomes colored again. I have no idea if that is bugged or it’s just not reading the ability as going off or even if my Morale ability is back for some reason due to teammates’ actions (morale spike).
This also affects abilities like Silence the Heretic which prevents casters from, well, casting for 3 seconds. It will light right back up again making me wonder if it worked. Or even path specced abilities like Van Horstmann’s Speculum (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8114) - I have no idea if it’s gone off at a quick glance. Sure, it’s a buff and I can look in the upper left under my health bar, but as a WH I need to be constantly maneuvering around my target. I can’t do that if I’m always glancing back and forth all the time. Probably need to move the UI so that my health bar and my target’s are closer to my avatar.
Basically, it’s just frustating in PvP and makes fighting very difficult when I’m wasting time trying to find if an ability has gone off instead of continuing my attack. This is especially true for classes that have low armor and need to take a target down quickly or else it won’t happen at all.
Anyone else experiencing this sort of thing?
The morale ability thing is an overall bug I think; I get it on my Witch Elf but also on my Magus; my wife gets it on her Zealot and our friend on his Black Orc. Methinks something is stinky in their code somewhere.
AlanC
1818
Yes! I play a swordmaster and get this constantly. It happens most frequently when both my target and I are on the move. The problem is that the client shows that your ability goes off, but 1 second later it decides that whoops, you really weren’t in range after all. Very frustrating. It’s made doubly annoying because my attacks (as a swordmaster) must be chained, so half the time I don’t know if I switched balances or not.
The game is still a lot of fun despite this and other significant issues.
Down for a bit to fix some stuff that crept in with the latest patch, it seems. Apparently the “join all” queuing didn’t actually work when under heavy load, or something. Overall though they seem to be pretty aggressive in fixing stuff.
Now if they’d just get some better gerbils for their abysmal mail system. Oy vey, but what a disaster that is. It’s not like mail is a new feature in an MMO, either.
It’s not just pushing to 40 though – it’s a competitive game with the RvR. You want to outlevel/not be outleveled by the opponents.
I find even in the scenarios, which auto level us, the higher level players are tougher. That spurs me on to level so I can compete.
In a sense each tier has a level cap, but you can level past each cap except for the one in tier 4. There might be players who would be happy to stop at level 11 and do RvR if there was a way to turn off XP.
