Organization - the key to WAR's RvR lock
Posted by: Snafzg
On: Jul 16, 2009 at 05:27pm
It sounds completely obvious, right? That's because it is! The problem is that a big part of WAR's casual design goes against the grain of organization.
WAR really is designed so that you can log in for a short 15-30 minute session and actually participate in RvR. That doesn't sound bad, right? The problem is, when you have a bunch of casual people logging in, joining a warband, and then logging out shortly afterward, it's pretty difficult to get things done in an organized fashion.
I'm not saying it's impossible, because I've seen people take charge in pickup warbands and actually manage to accomplish something a few times in my WAR career, but it is (or at least, was) rare.
Werit brings up an interesting point about WAR that some people have been talking about since beta. A balanced playing field is good. Unfortunately, that leads to stalemate in WAR because of the two-realm system. I don't think a city has ever been taken on Phoenix Throne and the game has been out for nearly a year. Isn't that strange? How many North American servers have had a city taken? One? Two? Three?
By no means are the server populations perfectly balanced either. I'm sure so few cities have been taken also comes down to the fact that defending cities is easy-mode compared to attacking in a big way.
Another big issue is the length of the overall campaigns taking way too long for the majority of WAR's casual audience. How many people can really put in 6-10 hours to capture all the zones via the domination system and then sack a city for two more hours? This leads to apathy. Most casual people will log in, check in on the scope of the battle before them. Unless there's only one or two fortresses to take, players let campaign apathy overtake them.
I believe this is another major design oversight in WAR. You target much of your game toward folks who are after short bursts of entertainment and then make your bread and butter the equivalent of Mount Everest.
There are a few ways this issue could be solved, but it would require some work.
My favorite option would be to get rid of the entire zone locking mechanic and allow people to siege whatever they want whenever they want, including cities. Give some sort of realm bonus to the side who owns the Keeps and BOs. Add some sort of balancing equation so that BOs and Keeps leading up to the city will either strenghten it or weaken it so that there's additional motivation to control those. Basically, don't force people into your mould -- let them go freestyle and work it out themselves.
WAR really is designed so that you can log in for a short 15-30 minute session and actually participate in RvR. That doesn't sound bad, right? The problem is, when you have a bunch of casual people logging in, joining a warband, and then logging out shortly afterward, it's pretty difficult to get things done in an organized fashion.
I'm not saying it's impossible, because I've seen people take charge in pickup warbands and actually manage to accomplish something a few times in my WAR career, but it is (or at least, was) rare.
Werit brings up an interesting point about WAR that some people have been talking about since beta. A balanced playing field is good. Unfortunately, that leads to stalemate in WAR because of the two-realm system. I don't think a city has ever been taken on Phoenix Throne and the game has been out for nearly a year. Isn't that strange? How many North American servers have had a city taken? One? Two? Three?
By no means are the server populations perfectly balanced either. I'm sure so few cities have been taken also comes down to the fact that defending cities is easy-mode compared to attacking in a big way.
Another big issue is the length of the overall campaigns taking way too long for the majority of WAR's casual audience. How many people can really put in 6-10 hours to capture all the zones via the domination system and then sack a city for two more hours? This leads to apathy. Most casual people will log in, check in on the scope of the battle before them. Unless there's only one or two fortresses to take, players let campaign apathy overtake them.
I believe this is another major design oversight in WAR. You target much of your game toward folks who are after short bursts of entertainment and then make your bread and butter the equivalent of Mount Everest.
There are a few ways this issue could be solved, but it would require some work.
My favorite option would be to get rid of the entire zone locking mechanic and allow people to siege whatever they want whenever they want, including cities. Give some sort of realm bonus to the side who owns the Keeps and BOs. Add some sort of balancing equation so that BOs and Keeps leading up to the city will either strenghten it or weaken it so that there's additional motivation to control those. Basically, don't force people into your mould -- let them go freestyle and work it out themselves.
Unfortunately, it wouldn't help much with realm and class balance issues, and I think those are bigger contributors to campaign apathy. Watching order roll us in T4 almost nightly on PT is like watching a movie that we've seen a million times before. We already know how it ends.
But yeah Snafgz, thats a great point. Forcing players into the playstyle that is T4, makes you feel like a rat running to the cheese. And endgame city sieges, besides being ridiculously long like you pointed out, are totally unepic since once again, we are forced into mini-games. I know Mythics heart was in the right place, trying to right some inbalances from DAOC, and its fine in T1-T3, but home invasion should be bloody, smoky, with destructable walls and gates. The keep sieges in DAOC felt right - need to recapture that action.
DAoC, Eve, Darkfall all have something in common. Ownership of the keeps is the game. In WAR you just lease them.
A very good point.