http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=pts_ff&thread.id=19474
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Background
I discovered WAR last year, got all excited, and have been playing the game with my gf since Open Beta. Today, my T4 Zealot is semi-retired, and I have a T3 WE and a T2 Shaman. I have become increasingly disappointed with WAR, mainly because this game has so much promise but keeps falling a little short at delivering. I have had some extremely fun moments playing this game, but unfortunately those moments were few and far between. I'll try to express my thoughts on the game below to highlight the key reasons why I am no longer having fun, and offer a few suggestions on how to make things better.
Note: I may edit this post at any time.
Graphics
If I have my settings for fastest framerate and draw distance to nearest, I don't want to see waffleing inefficient implementions tree leaves in the horizon swaying in the wind. You don't need to waste all those polygons on things so far away that I don't care about. I'm sorry, this is Intro to Computer Graphics stuff, and an unnecessary framerate sink. I had to run around the T2 Chaos zone with my camera tilted to the ground to protect my framerate from the horrible tree leaves. My computer has the recommended system requirements but yet the game doesnt play smoothly at the fastest framerate settings, with everything turned off.
Spell animations are badly implemented. My instacast heal has a lingering animation. The group heals have lingering animations. If a spell is instant, make animations snappy and concise. Don't waste my CPU, memory or GPU rendering all that long drawn-out waffle, ESPECIALLY WHEN I HAVE FASTEST FRAMERATE SET. Also, think about how those animations look in chaotic, large-scale ORVR! Sure, it looks fancy and all if you view each model in isolation. But with 200 people spamming group heals and AOE, waffle.
Server performance
It's sad that the game advertises for large scale RVR, but yet fortress encounters are population capped. REALLY? The code can only handle 250 players? Even then, we have morales (still) not firing, spell cast lag, AP not regenerating, etc. If you can't get a monolothic model to work, find a distributed solution. Designing an MMORPG backend is hard. It's not something any engineer can do. Understand this and hire the right people for the job.
Bad server-client performance also kills the experience for melee classes. It's incredibly frustrating to see your target 1 ft from you, but yet have your screen spammed with the "TARGET IS OUT OF RANGE" error.
Further, I don't understand how some serious problems are discovered only after being "tested" by paying customers. For example, fortresses crashing and population caps introduced. What happened to testing? If the game is supposed to support large-scale fights, at least test it internally to make sure it works. Stress test a fort encounter with bots. Keep adding bots and make them cast random abilities and chat with each other and observe what happens.
Besides, population caps are not the solution! Eventually (if people stay subscribed long enough), everyone will be in T4, and a single Keep can see the same population numbers as what had crashed the Forts. What will you do then? Have pop caps for each Zone?
Bad testing/evaluation methodology
The first sign was multiple patch notes proclaiming that "chat windows will not move when locked". If it was fixed, TEST IT, and make sure it's fixed. How can you fix something 3 times and yet it's still broken? Guess what, my locked chat window still moves today. If you can't test something as simple as moving chat windows, I don't know how you can test the complexities of class balance or things like RVR performance. No wonder so many game-breaking and player-estranging changes make it live (e.g., AOE bullwaffle in 1.2 and the BUG EXTRAVAGANZA of 1.2.1).
Testing cannot be an afterthought. Testing is not optional. If resources are limited, scale back on new content and manage projects better to maintain good testing coverage. You simply cannot release broken waffle.
Also, remember: you can't optimize what you don't measure.
Combat
Fact: No one likes losing control over their character, and not being able to do anything about it.
Counters - every attack should have a counter. Every CC should have a counter (even if each individual does not have a counter, give the counter to another career in the faction).
Otherwise, "I WIN" scenarios will always exist and frustrate the players.
A result of this is gimmick groups, where a group can employ gimmicks to win easily, without needing much effort or skill.
Example: (Electromagnet/Rift) -> Disable -> AOE (First step is optional).
Note that there is no counter for being Disabled.
Having alot of CC is okay, as long as there are counters (and immunities work correctly).
Corrollary: every action by the player must produce sufficient feedback to the player (the user should never have to think, "did that work?").
Example: the AOE stacking issue had to be addressed, but "fixing" it by nullifying one player's actions (without user feedback) because another player casted the same ability is unacceptable.
Endgame is not fun and not well thought out
"Fighting everyone all the time just for the sake of fighting" may sound good on a whiteboard. But is it really fun? There is no endgame in WAR. RVDoor is boring. RVE is boring. Fortresses and Cities are boring.
But let's scale back a little. Even RVRing in warband vs warband fights are boring and monotonous.
Zerg vs zerg fights go like one of the following:
- one zerg steamrolls other zerg
- back and forth fighting until people get bored
- one side retreats and fight ends up in a Keep, where more zzz ensues
- losing zerg moves to another zone to RVE, winning zerg finishes capping everything in the zone, then with nothing to fight, moves to another zone to either RVE or repeat one of the above
I PVP-ed exclusively in WoW. Probably only stepped into an endgame dungeon 10 times. But somehow, as much as I love PVP-ing, all I look forward to each week in T4 is Lost Vale, even though WAR is supposedly an RVR game.
Why have Keeps/Fortresses at all?
Honestly, what did you guys have in mind? Let's have a building, doors, ramp, and the "boss" of the building. Wow it'll be fun for people to defend it and hole up in there, pouring oil and AOEing. It'll be so fun for the attackers too, trying to break down the door and then funneling in through narrow chokepoints. Okay now repeat this ad infinitum and that's end game for you.
Is it really supposed to be fun? I don't think so! With people attacking/defending a building and being separated by a door, there is no real "fun" fighting that goes on. Everyone is limited in what they can do. There aren't really fun action or tactics. It's the same thing, every single time. If I had to rank the Keep/Fort experience with respect to every thing else in ORVR, it would definitely be at the bottom of my list.
Why it's not fun for Melee: crammed into a small area makes them fish in a barrel for RDPS. Collision detection = traffic jam, and limited usefulness other than being meat shields to hold/break the tank wall.
Why it's not fun for RDPS: RDPS have to sit back since they are squishy. With the layout of Keeps, RDPS have limited LOS, meaning the only available targets are through the cracks of the ramp, or all the melee fish packed in the barrel. Either way, RDPS invariably resort to spamming AOE.
Why it's not fun for healers: same reason as RDPS; squishy and LOS problems, so only thing left to do is... spam group heals til the cows come home.
Keeps are no fun if the building and the encounter don't allow players to go toe-to-toe with each other. No, using seige weapons isn't as much fun as you think it is. No, beating on a door for 30 minutes is not fun (keep upgrades... brilliant).
Powerful AOEs
Powerful AOEs are unnecessary and do not encourage teamwork. Focused-fire is enough. There is also a strong correlation between the use of AOE damage, and group heals. The more powerful the AOEs are, the more healing classes are forced to have and spam group heals.
If AOEs stay powerful, fine, but don't let a player chain-channel those AOE spells indefinitely. What happened to the backlash mechanic? Don't they have some mechanic that is supposed to prevent them from being insanely powerful all the time?
Oh yea...
Poor class design
E.g.: Backlash mechanic for Sorcs/BW. Do the designers realize that everyone runs around at 100 Combustion/DM all the time? If everyone is at 100 all the time, what's the point of the mechanic? Why not just remove it completely, cut to the chase, let everyone backlash just as if they were at 100 and give everyone the corresponding 100 combustion/DM damage/crit.
<insert top issues from class forums here>
What happened to the gospel of there being no namby-pamby healing-only classes? Show me a DoK/AM/Zealot who is MORE valuable to his team by doing damage.
Hybrid classes but no good way to be hybrids
Right now, the hybrid mechanic is just a handicap. There are no good way to heal while doing damage (and vice versa). Almost every hybrid class specs to either focus on thing or the other, but mostly "the other", since half of each hybrid just doesn't work in practice, whether it be because of mechanics, or because of gear.
Despite the new mechanics for hybrids like Shamans/AMs, unless there's a global change across all classes, healing classes will still be forced to heal to keep up with the damage.
And then there's gear. True hybrids have to find weird combinations of gear to stack mutually exclusive stats. This often results in gimping one role or the other. WoW addressed this with Spell Power. Being stuck with having to optimize mutex stats just gimps a hybrid in the end.
Tactics
I only have: {PVE tactics}, {RVE tactics}, and {duelling tactics}.
It takes so long to get out of combat that there isn't really a sense of "switching tactics" for a fight.
E.g., hybrids can have a "DPS tactic set" and a "healing tactic set". But there's no good way to switch back and forth in combat. Every class is forced to play within the confines of his tactic set until death. Or until the fight is over, at which point changing tactics is irrelevant. So really, the only time you change your tactics is before a fight. I'd like to see this being more dynamic.
Suggestion: allow tactic sets to be changed every 60 seconds, or allow tactics to be switched any time but requires 200AP.
Zone Domination
The person who sleeps last should not be the person who gets the easy pass to ORVR endgame. Zone Domination kills the game off-peak hours, when players exploit it to PVE their way to victory. How else would a King be able to be killed, despite the AOE bullwaffle from 1.2? Neither faction on Phoenix Throne has managed to take a single Fortress post-1.2 whenever the opposition was serious about defending it and there were equal numbers. Every such encounter has been driven away by AOEs, or bugs. How did K8P manage to take down multiple Fortresses, all the way to the King, despite crazy stacking AOE power? This baffles me.
Population balance
The game relies too heavily on population balance with no way to address population imbalances, other than a hope and prayer that things stay balanced.
Scenarios and ORVR cohesiveness
With Zone Domination, everyone became obsessed with chasing timers to lock or defend a zone. This meant that people queued for scenarios less because they were busy chasing timers. They also queued less because it is typically easier to lock a zone through ZD than grinding VPs.
Scenarios should contribute more than just VPs to the zone. E.g., scenarios could purchase a wave of NPC attackers, or mobile artillery. Integrate scenarios better. You could even have special scenarios for Fortresses or Cities when zones are locked and regular scenarios are disabled for the locked zones.
Ideas:
- get enough Fortress scenario wins and a hole is punched through the wall
- scenario wins award damage buffs or the dead are rezzed. Or extra catapults or rams.
- win a scenario, and you get a "ladder" to scale the wall. Lose the scenario, and a ladder gets tipped over
I know it sucks to instance stuff, but let's face it. Mythic devs can't make large encounters work. So why not expand on the Scenario idea, but make Scenarios seamless so that no one can even tell that they're in a Scenario? An advantage of having Fortress scenarios is that people who are locked out of the zone can still contribute to the fight.
Poor reward system and poor rewards
You've won a Gold bag!
You and your allies are dying from the remaining defenders' attacks.
Defenders cleared!
(You are dead!)
Now find the chest!
Click. "Opening chest..."
Click. "Openi..." Click. Click. "Opening chest..."
Click. "Opening chest..."
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
Time's up, you've lost your Gold bag!
Then there's the problem of giving everyone their share of the pie.
Example:
Six warbands push a zone to a lock, then divide and conquer the offense. This includes interrupting reinforcements from the warcamp, guarding the postern, etc. Then comes the push all the way up to the Fort Lord. Front lines sacrifice themselves, bust out their R4 Morales, take tons of damage and basically suicide to give people behind them a chance to push up. Many of these people die with no chance to get ressurected, so they respawn and run back. Some of these brave people get locked out of the zone.
My point is that every single person may play a significant role in contributing to the Fortress seige, but only a handful of lucky people get the "grand prize". I think everyone should be rewarded equally.
Another example: 5 warbands fight for 6 hours to push zones on Sunday. The opposing realm puts up a good defense, so the zones don't manage to get locked. People start logging off because it's getting late on Sunday and they have to work on Monday. Later, the graveyard shift guys take over and pick up where they left off, lock the zones through Zone Domination, and get Fort Gold Bags. The warbands of people who worked hard for zone control earlier get NOTHING. Is that fair?
And now, Fort defenders get rewarded too! That means you can watch TV or play on your alt while you let the other faction run over all the zones. Then, when the time comes, stroll into the Fort for defense, farm attackers for renown/gear/crests/medallions, and finally roll for Gold Bags when the Fort defense is done. Phew that was hard work!
If the Fort falls, no matter! Ride on to the City PQs where there's equal chance for Invader gear for both the attacker AND the defender. Except, when both teams are equal, the PQs can never be completed because one side has to fight both the human players AND the (buggy) NPC boss and his bodyguards. In this case, no one gets anything.
I'm not going to even talk much about gear itemization. It's horrible, and even worse for hybrids.
Renown Ranks are meaningless
It doesn't matter if there's an RR80, if everyone gets to it eventually. This also means that the people who grind harder will get it sooner. RR should be a representation of someone's significance in his realm, relative to his peers. It shouldn't matter how much someone plays.
Right now, all renown means is someone has "played alot". You can farm BOs/Keeps 24/7 to get RR80. There's something wrong with that. RR should be an indication of how dangerous someone is on the battlefield.
It is RENOWN after all. A high RR should also command respect, and the game should facilitate that. Make it so that people take pride in being a certain rank in the army. As it is, the only reason anyone goes for RR is for the training, the mastery points, and the gear.
Make it so that when someone speaks in chat, a symbol of their rank shows up beside their name. Or some trinket that they can put on their armor. A high RR should unlock RVR abilities.
Lack of depth of play in ORVR
Give high RR people additional ways to influence the fight in the battlefield. E.g., battle formations: a high RR tank can call a battle formation to nearby tanks, and if the tanks stand in the squares on the ground to make up the formation, you get the equivalent of "hold the line" for example. Or healers can huddle to mitigate damage.
Making RVR objective and Keep-centric is just bad design. What's the point? If the PROCESS of getting to the King ITSELF is not fun, the carrot of gear rewards and RVE along the way is not enough motivation for warbands to run around all day over and over and over and over again to defend/attack zones. The running around the zone ITSELF must be fun, or people will just get bored and tired eventually.
Why is it not fun? Because the game doesn't encourage people to truly engage into a fight with each other. The objectives to lock the zone are the Keeps and BOs. That means, ultimately, the fight will end up at a Keep. And we all know how exciting that is. Then when the campaign finally reaches the City, holy waffle. A 6-year old could have imagined a more fun/interesting encounter.
Give people a fun fight. Give them rewards for fighting in the open field, not holing up like wusses inside a keep! Imagine if there were no Keeps! How fun would that be? It would be like one massive scenario of capture the flag with awesome fighting and no wussy boring bunkering in keeps, RVDooring, and 1-ability button-mashing.
Conclusion
I spend most of my time on my alts now. But they are lvling up and approaching T4, and I do not look forward to it. I am just drawing things out, hoping that WAR ends up being the game that it should be. But I don't know what I'll do when my alts reach T4. The fun is waning and patience fading...
Thanks for reading :)
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