Global Agenda early start gameplay videos

This weekend was Global Agenda's early start. Pre-order customers were given the opportunity to get all their characters to level 10. Although there are 4 classes, I only got 3 to level 10 because the Assault class just wasn't that appealing to me. Gameplay videos below.

Recon: sneaky stealth ninja that can spec for melee attacks, long range attacks, or bombs. The best class to take out key enemy support units like turrets and respawn stations.



Robotics: robomaster who can summon force fields, turrets, healing stations & drones. Playing this class reminded me of the board game 'Go' (which I'm not good at).



Medic: healer who shoots out green beams of healing goodness to allies (also has healing bombs and AOEs). A medic can also spec for poisons, debuffs and DOT damage.

"Here comes a new challenger": Global Agenda

Global Agenda (GA) releases on Friday! I hadn't heard about this game until a week or two ago when people started talking about it on our guild forums. A bunch of us pre-ordered and checked out the open Beta last week. In short, the game is a blast and highly addictive. I found myself wanting to play game after game until it was way past my bedtime, and suffered the following days as my gaming had eaten into my working time.

Although it's labelled as a MMOFPS, it's not really an RPG. It's an over-the-shoulder team-centric FPS, with MMO and RTS elements. You can play any of 4 classes (Assault, Recon, Medic, Robotics) and each class is customizable through gear and skill trees. You get skill points to spend in your skill trees and gear options are automatically unlocked by levelling up. As far as I can tell, there aren't any rare gear upgrades that you can grind for to get an advantage. So after getting to max level, everyone is on an equal playing field and player skill is what makes all the difference.

From the website: "Create, customize, and develop multiple agent characters, complementing your FPS skills with accessible RPG-style progression. Unlock weaponry and cuttingedge devices including jetpacks, grenade launchers, mines, deployable turrets, stealth suits, holographic decoys,robotic droids and HUNDREDS of others." One of the fun things about the game is that everyone has Jetpacks. The jetpack "flight" in GA (short bursts, acceleration, deceleration, gravity, seamless integration with combat) feels and plays better than Aion's flight (constant velocity, flight potion chain-chugging, wonky flying class/combat dynamics, freefall distance limit).

The game uses the Unreal engine, so the graphics are pretty shitty by today's standards. I almost feel cheated for paying $40-$50 for something that looks like a 5-year old game. But, they're good enough to get the point across. It was absolutely refreshing to be able to pew pew without having to grind for anything (think Guild Wars), and not get 1-shot by some no-life kid with the best PVE gear in the game.

Everyone plays on the same server. All the fights in the game are instanced, and players fight for control of cells on a grid that represents "the world". However, the cells are not independent of each other, and players will often have to coordinate attacks on multiple cells simultaneously --- an action in one cell can affect another cell. While the instancing sounds weird for anyone used to open-PVP, it can make sense if done right. Consider this: in Warhammer, the people in the front and rear of a Keep do not fight together, although they work toward the same goal. The only thing that's missing in GA is that there is no world to 'roam' around in. It's just non-stop, instance after instance (PVE or PVP) of pewpewing (FPS-style) from level 1 to level 50 (and subsequently, world domination). Gear can be reconfigured at the starting area of each instance, but skills can only be redistributed at the "lobby".

I am probably going to be a Recon and Medic. Heck, what does it matter! You level so fast in GA that everyone will probably have max-level characters in each class. I'm stoked! I haven't played many FPS games lately even though that was what I played a ton of as a kid (Wolf3D, Doom, Quake, Rainbow Six, Half-Life, Counterstrike, America's Army, ...). Ah how I missed the pew pews.

Duoing Spiritmaster & Gladiator

A guildie went rifting to Heiron and I went to join him. I haven't really duelled Gladiators so I didn't know much about how they worked. I imagine it was the same for the Gladiator with Spiritmasters as well, so it was a good learning experience for us. A video with snippets of the trip is below. I edited out the fights where we only ran into 1 opponent, so each encounter should show at least 2 people on the screen. Looking back at it, our synergy was raw. There were many missed opportunities and a couple of deaths that could have been wins. I need to tighten down my CCs on multiple targets and interleave more damage assists with the CCs. We also need to get comfortable with maneuvering an enemy mob around as a duo. There were a couple of stutters and miscommunications that got us rubberbanding between each other, resulting in one of us getting CC'd and killed. But as time goes by, I expect that we'd understand the strengths and limitations of each other's class better, and get a good feel for our individual playstyles. As for duo potential, Gladiator-Spiritmaster seems pretty solid and something I would run again. The Gladiator brings the damage the SM lacks, and the SM fills in all the CC holes in the Gladiator arsenal.

Comments: at the end of the video, the Gladiator received the debuff that reveals his location to every Elyos in the zone. We were eventually chased by a mob of Elyos, which we tried to evade by slipping into an elite area. The idea is that the elite NPCs would weed out or discourage lower-level players from following us. This worked, and the Elyos mob thinned out to 2 people. We killed the Chanter, but I was a little lax on the CCs and the Templar managed to escape back to his camp, which my Gladiator guildie bloodlusted into :)

Spiritmaster vs Ranger tactics callibration (videos)

Consumables were not used in the following videos (one of the Rangers requested this and I wanted to see what effect it had). Also, for some reason the Rangers did not start most of the duels stealthed (must be some honor thing!). However, I included a video that shows the advantage they get from stealth.

Bread and butter: dispel buffs, regain control:



Spirit Substitution: I started a few fights without the Stone Skin shield, to play around with Spirit Substitution:



The following video shows how much a Spiritmaster's damage drops when the pet is taken out of combat. I could not kill one Ranger even with a chain of 2 Fears. The video also demonstrates how a Ranger can use Sleep Arrow during Stun → Fear to neutralize the Fear chain, therby creating an opportunity to recover:



Next, Stealth. In the first fight, I tried a trick of casting an AOE DOT on my spirit. The second fight shows the ridiculous burst damage potential of a Ranger from a string of crits. I tried to recover using my instant fear, but I missed the 2nd Fear and was killed before Spirit Substitution took effect.



Bonus vid: a Chanter mis-timing his abilities, allowing for easy counters: Dispel, Dispel, DOT, DOT, Dispel Recovery Spell, wait for Soul Strike, Stun → Fear:

Spiritmaster vs Ranger tactics callibration

     

The potential of the Ranger class at end-game has been a mystery to me for a while now. I finally got around to getting a guildie Ranger to help me understand the class better. I caught him late at night, so his reaction times were not the best in the videos. But I just wanted to figure out what Rangers could or could not do, to be able to tell what they're thinking when they engage an enemy target. While we were duelling, another Ranger spectator got interested in duelling too so I had the chance to callibrate my tactics against two different Rangers.

Rangers rely heavily on crits to do damage. When rangers don't crit, they struggle to even break through a Spiritmaster's Stoneskin shield. On the other hand, a string of crits can drop my HP down to 20% in seconds. Since they have to stack extreme amounts of crit for their damage, they often have to sacrifice HP. It will usually not be until they soft cap their crit % that they stack more HP. This makes them the lowest HP class in the game, and extremely gear dependent to be able to get their nasty crit damage, while still having a decent amount of HP.

Because of these factors, fights with Rangers are very quick. Chain fears are neither necessary, nor natural to set up. Rangers have a tremendous amount of burst damage but low HP. So, from the SM point of view, the fight is won or lost depending on whether or not the SM has his instant fear up, or if the SM can regain control after being jumped and chain-CCed by the Ranger. If the SM can regain control, the SM does not have to go through many rotations to empty the Ranger's HP bar.

From the point of view of the Ranger, the fight requires a lot of effort. The Ranger can always quickly drop the SM's life into the danger zone from the initial burst and CCs from stealth. However, the Ranger's success hinges on countering all the SM's attempts to regain control after the intial burst. Unfortunately, the SM has many tricks. If the Ranger thinks that he can't kill the SM after the initial burst, it's probably best to make an exit, med up (dispel, shield, heal), restealth, and try again.

Key Spiritmaster factors:

• Enough HP to survive the initial burst
• Save healing potion for Silence. It's okay to be rooted or snared. While it's advantageous for a Ranger to snare the SM in range, it is imperative that the SM pots out of Silence. Otherwise, the Ranger can easily lock down and kill the SM with stuns/sleep/silence.
• Stone Shock → Fear is bread and butter for regaining control
• The Ranger's self-buffs boost Ranger damage tremendously and must be dispelled. Also, watch out for Nature's Resolve and Run Speed buffs.
• Wind pet's stun is useful, although it's easier to disable a melee pet
• Shackle of Vulnerability, Body Root (melee disarm) and Silence
• If instant fear is up, it will be sad times for the Ranger. Erosion DOT (to eat the resist buff) → instant fear → root → 2 fears.
• Spirit Substitution (transfer damage to pet)
• Stack DOTs and maintain pet pressure

Key Ranger factors:

• Pop Nature's Resolve (resist 1 magical attack) while dealing the stun/silence chain.
  Th SM will probably pot out of Silence. Regardless, SMs will desperately try to regain control with CCs after the initial burst and chain CCs. Having Nature's Resolve waiting for the SM after he comes out of CCs will absorb a trigger happy noob's instant fear.
• Stay out of range of Fear Shriek (15m). Don't give the SM a free Fear Shriek. Force him to Stone Shock → Fear.
• Save Sleep Arrow to hit the SM between Stone Shock → Fear (just like Chanters and Soul Strike). This prevents the SM from being able to chain Fears. If the Ranger survives the DOTs while Feared, he can break away, recollect himself and hit the SM again later.
• Interrupt the 2.5s Fear
• Always take advantage of the initial burst from Stealth
• Keep consumables handy (shield, HP pot, dispel DOTs pot).
  BUT, do not use them all in the beginning --- they can be easily dispelled. Instead, use them to recover from Fear, or during tactical retreats.
• If the SM pops Spirit Substitution, separate the SM and the pet by 10m or wait it out.
• Take the pet out of the picture if possible (with the 1 min root, or kill it)

Gotchas:

• Rangers cannot counter Stone Shock → Fear with Nature's Resolve. The Fear will register as completed and hit the Ranger, and the buff will only resist the next attack.
• The SM cannot break the root on the pet by using Spirit Absorption.

PVE: a look at the failure of game design and how to make it better

  

If you think that PVE is more fun than PVP, feel free to stop reading now. But for everyone else who is a PVP fan and thinks that PVE sucks in comparison, it's not your fault. It's the fault of the game designers. I believe that PVE can be fun, provided the game designers gave a shit and actually put in an honest effort for once.

The typical path of PVE combat design failure:

1. The single "Boss" paradigm is the single most destructive concept to PVE in MMORPGs.
   This automatically makes a "Boss" fight a many-vs-one fight --- the "many" being the group, and the "one" being the PVE boss. For the sake of discussion, let's say that the group consists of 6 human players.
2. Boss fights are required to be challenging. But in order to be challenging in a many-vs-one fight, the "one" must be much stronger than each individual human player. Consider what the group brings to the fight: 6 players who can do damage, take damage, heal and/or CC. How can one "boss" counter the damage of the group? Or the healing? How can it prevent being chain-CC'd? To address these issues, game designers continue making bad decisions and travel further down the path of failure:
3. Silly game design decision: "We can't have the boss chain-CC'd the entire fight. That'd be too easy. So let's make the boss immune to all CCs."
   CCs are the spice of tactical combat, and opens up a gameplay of interactive attacking, defending, timing and counterattacking. CCs also serve to provide some balance between classes. When game designers decide to make an NPC immune to all CCs, that is a cop-out that nullifies a significant chunk of every class' abilities. This means that every healer will only mash heal/defense abilities and every damage-dealer will mash damage abilities. The secondary effect is that no one has to move. In PVP, squishies kite with CCs and non-squishies chase with counter-CCs. By removing CCs from the equation, everyone simply stands still and mashes buttons. Designers: if your attempt to make a fight 'epic' includes removing CCs from the fight, you are doing it wrong.
4. Another silly game design decision: "With 6 people nuking the boss, he will take alot of damage. But yet, we can't let him go down quick since it's a boss fight. So, let's give the boss a billion hitpoints, and perhaps toss in some uninterruptable heals or defensive buffs to unnecessarily draw out the fight even more.
   In PVP, the direct counter to damage is healing. However, the boss cannot be given the same healing abilities as regular players, since the designers already made the boss immune to CCs. If the boss could chain heal but not be uninterruptable, the boss will never die. So the typical scenario is to give the boss a billion HP to draw the facerolling encounter out.
5. "Aggro", "Enmity" or "Hate"
   What happens in a PVE encounter? A tank runs up to the boss, and "tanks" it. He then holds "hate", and the boss focuses on the tank the entire fight, and no one else.
   What happens in PVP? The complete opposite. Everyone runs by and ignores the tank and goes for higher-priority targets. The tank is not able to get someone's attention by simply spamming "taunt" abilities. Instead, the tank is always running, using positioning, infiltrating the enemy lines, using tactical retreats, and using timely CC abilities to be a threat to the opposing group... all while supporting his own group defensively. The concept of "Aggro", along with CC immunity nullifies everything that's interesting about being a "tank" class. Like everyone else, the tank just stands there in front of the boss, "tanking" it.

The above issues are what I think the key failures of current PVE design are. They are responsible for boring, stationary button-mashing fights, as well as the dichotomy of PVE and PVP gear. Why can't it be better? Why won't game designers try harder?

For instance:

• Allow CCs back in the boss encounter.
• Lower the HP of the NPCs.
• Give the boss some helpers. Give him a healer, a nuker, etc. Allow them to be CC'd.
• Have the healer heal and require the players to counter the heals.
• Allow the NPCs to CC the players too.
• Have every class use every ability in his arsenal to win.
• Then, remove the concept of "aggro" or "hate". The biggest threat to the "boss" should be the one who gets hate.
• If the healer is healing so well that the "boss" can't do any damage, the "boss" should go after the healer.
• The tank should not be able to "taunt" the boss back. CCs are required since they are now back in the picture, just like in PVP.
• If a nuker is hurting the "boss" badly, the "boss" should target the nuker.
• Allow the "boss" to perform "tactical retreats". If he's hurt, he should CC the players and kite away, to buy some time to heal up. It is up to the players to counter him.

PVE doesn't have to be boring, and it does not have to suck. Come on designers! Try harder! The door is wide open for you to deliver the world's first engaging PVE experience.

Recollections of a battle for Thunder Mountain: Part 3

Checkmate... and a revelation of where WAR's "RVR" fails.

We now had a positional advantage. With the Order defense committed to the west keep, the defense at BOs *should* be much lighter. But we didn't have much time left now. We only had a few minutes before the zone was captured. As we were grouping up at the south warcamp, we noticed some Destro flying in. REINFORCEMENTS! Apparently most of the Destro were in other zones, waiting for them to lock. That was why we were outnumbered here in Thunder Mountain. We spammed region chat to tell everyone to hit C. We didn't have much time left to try anything fancy.

With about 1 minute left on Zone Domination, we managed to take and hold C.

It looked like the Order force was demoralized --- BO after BO was taken easily, followed by the Keeps. Dv was nowhere to be seen, and there was little Order resistance left in the zone. As expected, Dv probably took his zerglings to PVE elsewhere.

After all that fighting, we congratulated everyone and thanked them for their support while they PVE'd the rest of the zone. It would probably be one of the most epic battles we would have experienced in WAR, from the scrappy fighting to the winning against the odds and the final push with a minute left on the clock. But that got a few of us thinking. What did we get from the few hours of fighting? What were we hustling for? To chase f***ing timers! We spent a few hours trying to stop some silly "timers" from handing the zone over to Order. One of my buddies commented that it would have been more beneficial to not defend the zone and let the zone flip so that we could work on a fresh zone. He was right. And even if we lost the next zone and Order unlocked our Fortress, Fortress defense was much easier than offense, and it would have been free RP and gear for us if we let Order flip the zones to a Fortress. We virtually got nothing for working so hard to defend the zone. Just piddly honor from the few player kills we got, and the measly 500 RP for the 2 or 3 times we flipped a BO.

The people who got rewarded more were the Destro in the other zones, who PVE'd the other zones with little resistance, then received rewards for locking the zone. On the other hand the Destro who were furiously fighting to prevent Thunder Mountain from being locked got little, compared to the effort that was put in. Those who were rewarded were also the Order warbands that we demoralized at Thunder Mountain, who went to PVE in a fresh unlocked Zone instead of staying where the action was and fighting to retake Thunder Mountain.

And these are some reasons why WAR's RVR system fails. The reward/motivation system is screwed up. PVEers are rewarded; people who run away from the fight are rewarded. Players are not rewarded for confronting each other in the battlefield and fighting. And I shall refrain myself from going on a rant about the silly "Zone Domination timer" bandaid.

That was the last time I led a warband, or joined one for that matter. That was also when I started giving up on WAR's rubbish PVE endgame and decided to look for PVP fun elsewhere. It was just too zergy, and everyone's motivations and the game's reward system were all messed up. Although I had fun leading a guerilla warband against the zerg, when it comes down to PVP, what I really want to do is fight. I didn't want to spam heals in a zerg. I didn't want to PVE, or try to motivate zerglings who would rather PVE objectives because it was the most rewarding thing to do. I didn't want to PVE in order to unlock even more PVE: more doors to destroy and more horrendously laggy/crashy, population-capped PVE encounters. NO THANKS!

Anyway, possibly to come in the distant future: commentaries on each RVR zone, based on my roaming experiences. This will include my favorite hunting spots, and my opinion on the unique features of each zone from a RVR perspective. It'll be chance for me to relive some of my fondest moments in Failhammer, when I had to break away from what the game was designed for to find some fun for myself.

Memories like these remind me that no one really leaves Warhammer because they do not like it. I feel that the majority of the people who left the game saw tremendous potential in the game and really wanted to like it, despite all its shortcomings. It's a shame that for whatever reason, the Mythic team kept making bad management and design decisions, and could not deliver or turn things around.

Recollections of a battle for Thunder Mountain: Part 2

A and C are easily defendable by one force, since there's a speedy route connecting the two. B on the other hand, would not be defended unless a defensive force was explicitly placed there. We rode north around the west road as sneakily as we could, and tried to hit B. There was a warband just sitting in the cave waiting for us! It was incredibly hard to cap a BO with a choke point separating us, since our people were not able to get past the choke point effectively enough, and the defenders were continuously getting rezzed. Despite some intense fighting, we could not make any progress. Even when we could get through, we could not take the BO NPCs down. Furthermore, the people who died inside were out of range for a rez. Damn, the number of Order in the zone kept climbing.

The order zerg would have been cautious by then. They knew what kind of numbers we had and they knew we were trying hard to stop them. So we needed to try something different. Something sneaky. We decided to send 3 groups to A, and my original Scenario group would try to take D. The groups sent to A would be the distraction and they would try to catch as much attention as they could, for as long as they could. This was to try to drain their numbers toward the west. and hopefully leave D weak. We waited on the PVE road by D as long as we could, until we saw that the rest of our warband was struggling. Then, we charged at D. To our surprise, we found a warband sitting outside the BO, waiting. They looked like they had no intention to react to anything --- they were just content to sit there at the BO until the zone locked. Our group hit the Order wall and died. I asked for a report of how many people reacted to their attack on A. They said that they were close to getting it, but the numbers were even greater now.

Our estimates now were about 1 Order warband at each BO, vs our 1 Destro warband. Time was running out.

Change of plans. Since the warbands of Order were just going to sit at the BOs, we had to do something else. No sense hitting them head on where they have the advantage. Our final attempt to save the zone was to hit the west keep. Keeps take longer to capture than BOs, but with a warband we could at least take the outer door down, and pressure the Order zergs. If the outer door was down, Order would be forced to divert their numbers to defend the keep, or we could easily bust down the inner and kill the Keep Lord. This would also tie up some Order at the Keep since the outer door would stay down for a few minutes after it is destroyed.

When we arrived at the west Keep, there were a few defenders. They looked mostly like AFK'ers and scouts. Good. We wanted all the Order in the zone to know that we were slamming the Keep hard. Our top priority was to bring the outer door down. We burned through it quick. People in our warband kept screaming that more Order was coming to defend. GOOD! Our next priority was to repel the Order as long as we could, and we tried our best to take the Keep. Or at least, make Order think that we really wanted the keep. We killed many who were trying to enter the Keep by defending all the outer Keep entrances, while focusing most of our firepower on the inner door. Throughout the fight, I tried to keep motivating the warband, and telling them that this is a win-win situation for us.

If they didn't try to stop us, we'd have the Keep within minutes. Capturing the Keep would put 2 hours back on the clock. If they did try to stop us, I reminded everyone that it's okay if we wiped. We just had to take the front door down. If we wiped, it was actually a good thing because our whole warband would deathwarp to our warcamp, and we'd have a positional advantage. I felt that it was important for the whole warband to be in the same mindset for this, and to not have a morale hit after wiping at the keep. I knew I had a core of good people who understood this, so for the most part we should still have a substantial warband --- even if the zerglings got demoralized by the loss, or if they got tired of running around and left the warband.

We kept wiping packs of zerglings who tried to come defend the keep. Eventually the Order zergs started to feel the heat --- they responded with full force and wiped us at the west keep. We tried to get everyone to suicide as fast as they could, to regroup at the warcamp.

Continue to Part 3...

Recollections of a battle for Thunder Mountain: Part 1

Nostalgia time! This is the story of the battle of one Destruction warband vs over three Order warbands in Thunder Mountain; once upon a time in Warhammer...

After some Scenarios, my group noticed that Thunder Mountain was completely owned by Order and the Zone Domination Timer was ticking down. I believe we started with a group of 1 Chosen, 2 Sorcs and 1 Zealot (myself). We decided to go check it out --- maybe flip a BO to reset the timer or try to help retake the zone, BO by BO. We arrived at the Destro warcamp in the South.

C is the closest to the warcamp, so we decided to go have a quick look to see what we were going up against. There were a couple of groups defending. This is the typical situation when a zone is close to locking, since C is closest to the warcamp, and it is the most susceptible to attacks from people flying in to defend the zone. I usually estimate the numbers at C to represent 80% of the people in the zone. 

So, we decided to hit A, assuming that our group could take 20% of whatever was left in the zone. We were right. We met them with even numbers, but out-PVP'ed them and capped the BO despite having to fight the players and the BO NPCs. This put 30 minutes back up on the Zone Domination timer. Now we waited to see if we could fend off attackers long enough for the BO to lock. Unfortunately, the groups at A came to defend it, along with the people we killed and sent back to their warcamp. Our small group was wiped.

There is a quick direct route via bridges from C to A, but even so, the response from C to A was surprisingly quick. That suggested that there was some organization here by the Order in the zone. I noticed a familiar name from the last fight: Dv (full name omitted). That instantly gave me an idea of what we were going to be up against. Dv tends to lead a bunch of nobodies to PVE zones. His warbands are always zergy, and they always overcommit their resources. He also shies away from confrontation and relies on numbers rather than skill. Dv also always tries to be 'smart' by attacking what appears to be the weakest target. And thus, he is always predictable.

But it was clear now that we needed more numbers. We needed more than 4 people to be able to be more of a threat and to capture/defend objectives more effectively. By now, our group started to refer their friends. They wanted to join in the fight. We expanded the group to a private warband. I wanted to keep it private because I wanted to have a bunch of solid people we could count on. I didn't have the patience to motivate zerglings who would start whining if we started running around too much, or who would rather sit at a BO to get the extra 500 RP.

We barely filled 2 groups, and we hit C from our warcamp. As expected, the greedy Order zerglings were waiting for A to flip for their 500 RP and C was lightly defended. We flipped C, put 30 minutes back on the clock, but we were wiped by a bigger zerg than what we had seen before. This meant that more Order PVE zerglings were trickling into the zone to try to collect their zone lock rewards. Despite the loss, this confirmed that we had an advantage. The warbands we were facing were very zergy. It looked like they would have communication problems for complicated directions, and we could easily out-maneuver them. It helped that our warband had good players and that all they needed to know was the plan, and they would each know how to execute it to each of their class' best abilities. From all our fights with the zerg, we also knew we could out-PVP them.

People in region chat were asking if there was any Destro organization in the zone. Someone mentioned my warband. I guessed that at that point we could use more numbers. If the new additions could keep up it'd be great, but otherwise it's ok if they left the warband to go PVE elsewhere. I reluctantly opened my warband to the public and assigned assistants to help arrange groups.

Continue to Part 2...