Month: October 2008

Ouroboros is the tail-eating snake of legend; which when used as a symbol it usually represents cyclicality.  It should be the symbol for Open RvR in Warhammer Online, especially in regards to Keeps.  In Warhammer Online, I think the developers really wanted the two snakes (Order and Destruction) to fight head on, but I think the players looked at the eternal snake and decided that “the tail tastes better.”

The tail in this case is an undefended Keep in another racial pairing.  There are six Keeps in Tier 2 and 3, two in each racial pairing (I have not yet been to T4 to experience Open RvR, and so refrain from commenting as of yet).  I have yet to see more than two massive zergs, one Order and one Destruction, in a Tier doing open RvR.  So two snakes have their pick of Keeps to devour.  A warband could wait around and defend a Keep when they think an enemy group is coming, but humans (especially MMO players) want to go the path of least resistance.  In this case, that would be an undefended Keep in a sleepy RvR lake.

The other night a two-warband Destruction group decided to sack Keeps in T3.  There were very few defenders at any of them.  An Order group formed up to attack a Keep we had just finished sacking, moving on to greater glory thereafter.  We went back, successfully defended the Keep, and then a small bit of drama formed.  People didn’t want to stay and defend the Keep anymore.  “Why defend, let Order have it, and we can just take it back.  Rewards (renown and loot bags) seem better that way.”  We sacked four Keeps that night before I crashed.  At the very end, we came upon the Order group that was in the process of sacking one of Destruction’s undefended Keeps in another racial pairing with 1-2 warbands.  We didn’t seek them out.  It was more that our snake ate the tail of the other snake faster.

Tobold recently discussed “moving the cheese” in MMOs to get players to move around.  I honestly believe that for T2 and T3 Keeps (can’t comment on how T4 runs yet) the cheese needs to be moved so that eating the other snake’s head is worth more than just eating it’s tail all night.
–Ravious

What gets rewarded gets done. Hence the assorted debates about what is counted or not in Warhammer public quests. How are things like taunting, holding aggro, taking damage, buffing, healing, and dealing damage credited? You want to optimize your Skinner box experience.

What gets observed also tends to get done. 10,000 years of evolution is not much, and your primitive brain still wants to make sure that you look good in public, to improve your reproductive odds and reduce the chance of being clubbed. (FYI, despite your brain’s hardwiring on alpha male status, having the best paladin on the server is unlikely to get you laid.) Monitoring increases other-directed behavior, which you know because of how Internet anonymity affects people. If your primitive brain recognizes that others can see you, it will act accordingly, just as it recognizes when it is easy to freeload.

Warhammer scenarios track a few things, reward a few things, and do not show exact connections between them and other factors. You get experience and renown. The scoreboard (at the end or any time during) shows damage dealt, healing dealt, deaths, and kills. It does not show damage received, damage prevented, resurrections, damage increases due to buffs, flag captures, or whether you were strategically useful at all. That last one is hard to measure consistently, but you might imagine how these other measures (or lack thereof) affect behavior. Healers will compete for their scoreboard, as will damage dealers. No one is rewarded for guarding the flag, unless the enemy is throwing itself against yours, in which case the best rewards are for turtling rather than risking an attack on the enemy flag. I get a better reward for healing you than bubbling you. Sacrificing yourself for the team means that you miss out while you wait to rez. And so on. And no one will know that you did anything that does not appear on the scoreboards.

You can be the greatest fielder in baseball, and it will not show up in your statistics. The pitcher gets credit for that. I hope someone is taking those Sabernomics into account.

: Zubon

The server log-in checks for a different password than the game log-in, but you can’t enter one? That seems like it shouldn’t happen.

: Zubon

Why does a game with “kill collector” NPCs have Kill Ten Rats quests? And why did they add more, repeatable Kill Ten Rats quests as a way to make things less grindy?

Come to think of it, why have the kill collectors? Just increase how much experience you get per kill.

: Zubon

Most of the Order and Destruction classes echo each other. The Rune Priest and Zealot are pretty clearly the same class with different coats of paint. Take a Bright Wizard, substitute “dark magic” for pyromania, and you have a Sorceress.

Other classes are clearly the same but sure feel a lot different. Take the Engineer and the Magus. You get it when I tell you that the turrets and the summoned demons are the same; the graphics are different, but you see how a “flamer demon” and a “flame turret” line up. Except that the flamer demons lines up with the grenade turret, and we’re just getting started.

My Engineer throws Acid Bomb: they burn and take away your Corporeal resistance. “Glean Magic” is a soul drain, doing exactly the same thing with Spirit damage and resistance, but getting your spirit sucked by a demon summoner seems a fair ways from an acid burst. You get the same switch between a Sticky Bomb and infecting the enemy with a Seed of Chaos: either way, boom. Does Surge of Insanity feel like a Flashbang Grenade?

The Greenskin and High Elf classes tend to mirror each other, but no one is mistaking a Swordmaster for a Black Orc, a White Lion for a Squig Herder, or an Archmage for a Shaman. Well, until the last two pull out their death rays, then they start to look a bit alike.

: Zubon

See the Rune Priest. Some differences appear at later levels, but they are almost the same class at level 10. Instead of a big stick, the Zealot has a dagger before him along with poor Yorick.

Zealots seem rare and/or difficult to kill. They are the only class for which my Engineer does not have “kill 25” completed. I assume the other options win out. If you want a healer, you can be a Disciple of Khaine (redefining overpowered) or a Shaman (great flavor, green death ray). If you want to play Chaos, you can summon demons from your hoverboard, turn your arm into blades and tentacles while shouting “Tetsuo!” or play the only armored knight-looking class in the game. “Slavering cultist” is less cool, as is the special mechanic “a buff.” They do have the advantage of being nearly invisible on the battlefield except for the characteristic slouch and dagger slash.

As a healer, the experience differs because the number of tanks does. Destruction has too many tanks while Order has too many ranged DPS. My Rune Priest ran a scenario in which the allied team was all Bright Wizards and Witch Hunters (one of them above level 5). My Chosen ran a scenario in which his team was five other meleers. These are only slightly unusual. As a healer, I prefer teammates who can survive the few seconds I need to notice damage, switch targets, and cast a spell. The Bright Wizard is blowing himself up even before two Marauders start mutilating him. The slavering cultist likes hiding behind meat shields.

: Zubon

Over at Hardcore Casual, Syncaine writes about the need (mostly aimed at WAR players) to slow down and enjoy the game.  One of the best points, hidden in the middle of the post, is how to “correctly” do Public Quests (“PQ’s”).  Oh allow me to remember those days when I kept up with the hardcore pack, and PQs were constantly rolling over so that one could merely stand in one place and rack up the glorious influence.  Now, I see ghost towns.

The key to completing PQs is to achieve a critical mass of players. This takes time, and it is very hard not to take the immediate satisfaction/rewards of scenarios. However finishing PQs can pay off. Your best bet to start the petri dish growth is to call out and party up with guild or alliance members. A simple tank/healer combo can deal with most of the early parts of the PQ easily, and if you add in a DPS-type player, Stage II will be nothing. When other players see three (oh my gosh) players hitting a PQ in the open groups panel, the decision is easy. There is now instant gratification.  The PQ population will start gravitating players on its own.  I have seen this time and time again playing as the initial spore for the PQ.

The best part of being the initial player to call to arms at a PQ is you can choose which PQ you want to play. In the nearly bygone days of the rampaging hardcore it was nearly impossible to snatch players away from the PQ that was closest to the rez point.

There are still a few problems with PQs. First, they are unforgiving with class balance.  Not having a tank is the worst when standing against hard-hitting Hero mobs, and life is never easy without a healbot.  Second, the open grouping system still needs tweaks.  I think for PQ open groups, the group should be location-based (ala Meeting Stone) rather than following a free-roaming person.  Many times I have searched out PQ groups only to find they were not anywhere near the PQ that the system claimed. I feel that within the year’s end we will get an update for them, but Mythic has to see what a “stable” population is doing with them.
–Ravious

Never seen that one before. It looks like everyone got full experience.

: Zubon