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...

Decoding Aion videos

I just realized that the people who do not play Aion may not be familiar with what's going on in an Aion video. I know I definitely felt that way when I was looking at Korean Aion videos a few months ago. In this post, I'm going to try to provide some info to help non-Aion players decode Aion videos.

The pic on the left shows the class symbols/icons that appear beside a target's HP bar.

A1 - Spiritmaster, B1 - Sorcerer
A2 - Assassin, B2 - Ranger
A3 - Gladiator, B3 - Templar
A4 - Chanter, B4 - Cleric

Below is a labelled screenshot of my UI. In general, what I do in my videos is: strip my target's buffs, apply debuffs, CC (silence, disarm, root, fear, etc), and use pet commands. The only chain skill that I use is a "snare → short stun". Everytime I hit the "snare" ability, my "short stun" indicator pops up to the right of my character.

Bonus vid: another rift adventure in Heiron before dinner yesterday. This time, I popped out at location E on the map in my previous post. The action in the video happened as I was moving from E to F along the north edge of the map. Hopefully the videos make more sense now :)

Exploring Heiron, enemy territory

Yesterday, I hopped on some rifts to explore the enemy zone, Heiron. I decided I needed more PVP in my life, now that I was at max level. However, I was Rank 4 in terms of "PVP rank". At this rank, I would start to lose Abyss Points every time I was killed. Going into unfamiliar territory and not having PVP'ed in a while, I anticipated many deaths. So instead of potentially wasting my Abyss Points, I spent them purchasing the advanced stigma Infernal Pain. That deranked me to Rank 6. Sweet. The next thing I packed with me for my trip was a resurrection kisk. This allows me to set up a resurrection point anywhere in the zone. However, it is visible to the enemy and can be destroyed.

Then, it was time to find an open rift that allowed Lvl 50s to enter. Rifts appear every ~20 minutes at random locations, and have level restrictions for entry. There are only 2 "usable" rifts for me to enter into Heiron from Beluslan. My first rift was short-lived. I had trouble orienting myself and finding a safe spot to drop my Kisk. Consequently, I got zerged and my Kisk was destroyed. I spent some time after that restocking my "rifting picnic bag" and running around Beluslan to try to find the next open rift, since the first rift had closed. It was annoying that there was no way to "run" to Heiron, and the only way to enter enemy territory was via a rift.

Eventually, a rift opens. The rift spits me out at location F in the map above. Just like before, my first order of business was to orient myself, and find a safe spot to set down my Kisk. Since this was an unfamiliar enemy zone, initially everything seemed dangerous. For great success, I knew I had to sort the zone out. I needed to figure out where my safe zones are, where the danger zones are, what the enemy traffic patterns are, what level NPCs each area has, etc --- just like when I decided to roam around solo on my Zealot in WAR. I needed to figure out what was actually dangerous, and what was not. I would also benefit from figuring if anything in the zone was advantageous to me.

My plan of action was to first spiral out from F, and to lower-level areas to get my feet wet. Get some easy kills, work up some confidence, and maybe get some 1 vs many fights. I started out circling around locations F and C. Eventually I had a good idea where the low-level areas are and I'd try to up the challenge and move to locations B, D and E; to run myself into higher-level players. With this approach, I have a better feeling of where the "safer" areas are, I have more control over my surroundings and I could consciously put myself in less or more danger. Videos below.

Out-levelled players who bravely put up a fight:



Some noteworthy encounters, including me being a jerk and playing with the prey. I didn't notice that there was a level 50 sorceror in the mix, or I would have been a little more careful.



If you have been following my Spiritmaster-Chanter posts, you may notice the key moment in the fight where the 1st Chanter in the following video gave the fight away. He almost had me killed for goofing around too much. But, he gave me too much space to med up and when he finally closed the distance, he was too trigger happy with his ranged stun, Soul Strike. That allowed me to hit "stun → fear" unchallenged and take control of the fight.



And finally, moments of fail below. The first one was me trying to mess with a few groups that were getting ready for an instance. I bit off a little more than I could chew and got gangbanged. The second was me stumbling onto a bunch of Lvl 50s waiting outside a rift from Heiron to Beluslan! I saw a whole bunch of red dots pop up on my radar, and got curious so I took a closer look. Then I noticed a rift, and my first thought was that they were waiting for my friends to jump through it and ambush them. But then I hovered over the rift and discovered that I could click it --- they were getting ready to infiltrate Beluslan! While I was being distracted, they noticed me and I was hunted down.



My kisk had expired and I was sent back to Beluslan. Shortly after, there were reports that Elyos groups were rifting into Beluslan.

Aion's aerial gameplay issues

At first glance, flight in Aion seems like a good idea. But the more I experience it, the more I start to see areas that don't seem to be as well thought out or nailed down. In general, they've designed combat and classes to work a certain way. However, these combat mechanics and classes have to work both on the ground and while flying. While they work for the most part on the ground, they do not completely translate to a similar visceral experience in the air. I thought about it for a little yesterday, and the following are what I believe some of the reasons are:

Flight speed is faster than running speed
While not instantly obvious, this has very significant implications for combat and mechanics. All abilities in the game are tuned for run speed and do not readily work in the air without mechanic adjustments. E.g., how a 3s ability works on the ground is not the same as 3s in the air. Even quick melee abilities suffer, since quick on the ground often translates to "target is out of range" in the air. To have combat feel as good in the air as it does on the ground, they should have done something like shorten cast times by the % difference of run speed vs flight speed. Then, reducing defense stats while flying should keep it balanced.

Animation root
Many abilities have an ending animation root. While it is annoying enough on the ground, it is exacerbated in the air because more distance can be covered over the time that someone spends being rooted by animations. E.g., get caught in an animation snare in the air and your opponent can be long gone. They should shorten or remove animation root when flying.

The factors above are reasons for aerial class disparities, and why some classes appear to have a significant advantage over other classes when in the air. The classes that benefit from fighting in the air are the classes that have low/instant cast times and short/no animation snares. 

Area effects are 2-dimensional
Many AE abilities (e.g., buffs, mantras, fear, heals) only work in 2-D. If a target is on a different z- coordinate, they will not be affected.

Flight as transportation
I believe that this is a bad idea. It implies that long flight times are necessary and goes against original intent that flight should not be overused. When players roam around in a typical 'grounded' or 'no-fly' zone, they can run around indefinitely. They can run up hills, down hills, glide across vallies, into caves, around rocks, sit, hide, etc. However, this is not the case in the Abyss. Once you're in the air, your flight timer starts to tick down.

The Abyss is mostly empty space
In fact, too much empty space. Each layer of the Abyss is a large zone, sparsely populated by islands that only have 1 or 2 levels of flat land (but typically only 1). While this is fine if flight combat was not clunky or if Aion was a space/flight simulator where you could actually have fun fights in open space, this is not the case in Aion and battles in open space are clunky. It's also easier to run away from a fight in the air than it is in the ground, and lame strategies such as running someone's 5-10 minute flight timer down are common. As vast as the Abyss is, there's a lot of wasted or practically unusable space. They should have scattered more platforms or large asteroids all over the place to make things more interesting. They could also have added more features to the Abyss islands' terrain. E.g., caves, tunnels (think Star Wars), and more levels.

Flight time
Everyone can easily consume flight time potions to stay in the air for a long time. Why not just allow everyone to fly for 5 minutes if that's the kind of combat they are trying to encourage? Right now, the zone layout and flight mechanics require that people chain-chug flight time potions like water in the Abyss.

No special flight abilities
This is especially disappointing for me. Flying in Aion is pretty much like running in 3-D. You don't get any acceleration from diving toward the ground or any variation in speed at any time. You are just an object that moves at a constant speed in 3-dimensional space and there are no special aerial attacks or maneuvers. There's also a lame limitation that prevents you from falling too far. If you tried to fold your wings and dive, the game won't let you go very far before crashing you into some invisible plane. Basically, being in flight dumbs down each class and renders many abilities virtually ineffective.

Despite these gripes I have, flight can still a good idea, provided that the developers make an effort to tune and clean up the mechanics, and rework the flying zones. Being able to fly is still great, along with being able to fight in 3-D. But the developers really need to get off their thumbs and put more thought into their flight system (combat, mechanics, zones) if they want a winning product. Just allowing people to move (like they were running) in 3-D and passing that as 'flying' does not cut it.

Currently, aerial combat is a dumbed-down, more restrictive, and more broken version of ground combat; with the exception that you can move in the vertical direction as well.

Spiritmaster-Chanter update (video)

The video starts with me having a Wind Spirit. The Wind Spirit does pretty decent melee-range damage, and can cast a short stun with a low cooldown. I was trying to win the fight without chaining Fears, but using control and dispel abilities instead. The next couple of fights are with a Water Spirit, which has very low HP and does ranged attacks but does not have a stun. We moved to a less laggy location for the last couple of fights, but the location that the Chanter picked was disadvantageous for him because it was surrounded by walls. Toward the end, I settled into the sequence of: dispelling buffs and HOTs, waiting for Soul Strike, and then leading Fears with stuns. I revealed what I was doing to him after our duels --- his gears started turning and he exclaimed that he had discovered the "Achilles heel" of Spiritmasters. I expect more interesting counters from him in the future!