Since I don't have much longer playing WAR I thought it only fair to post here now that there are developer forums where supposedly suggestions are being at the very least considered or listened to.  I have to say that this game has so much potential to be better than all the others, if only certain things were changed or done differently.  I thought I would post my laundry list of things that I find unfair or poorly designed in the hopes that a dev, ANY dev will at least comment on the likelihood of any of them being addressed in the near future.

1.  City Siege PvP:  Why must I PVE to achieve the PVP endgame objective?  The PQs for stage one are used as a farming ground for gear, I can either go into one alone with 48 of the other side inside farming and get destroyed, or I can go into one where my side is farming and there is nobody to fight.  To me the best facet of this game was the prosect of open RvR/city seige meaning something, and being the best PVP game around.  Instead it is a PVE farmfest

2.  Fort/keep design:  Why not borrow from one of the coolest things in DAOC and allow seige to blow holes in keeps or raze them to the ground?  Even with the addition of one extra ramp, the "logjam" effect in a fortress or keep take not only makes it at times impossible to even get into the fight, it lends itself to the nasty AoE problems that so many complain about.  Why even make it mandatory to fight the lord? If we raze the fort to the ground, we win.  Make siege worth purchsasing.  As of now oil is the only seige that does any damage whatsoever, the rest is ineffective to say the least.

3.  Zone locking/VPs:  Why even have this at all?  I feel this system should be entirely discarded.  How do you make people take BOs, keeps and forts?  Make each keep or BO or fort you take weaken the opposing capital city guards.  Make the capitals attackable at any time, the REAL capital, afk bank toons standing around and all.  It is attackable at any point but nearly impossible without lowering the city's defense by taking the outlying objectives and keeps.  Assign each objective a value that lowers the strength and/or number of city guards.  Once one side has capped several objectives, they can attempt to city seige and roll up to the capital city itself.  The amount of guards that spawn will raise or lower based on the amount of player defenders inside and take into account their relative level.  

4.  Loot/contribution system:   Utterly broken system.  I can be afk and get 1st place, or main tank and get 56th.  The same people get the same item over and over, and most of us, especially healing classes, end up with nothing to show for their efforts, despite having taken 20, 30 or in some cases 50 keeps.  A token system would go a long way in this effort and if you want people to keep playing for "loot" just add some new and fun gear once in awhile that people can buy for tokens, rare crafting items, special dyes and potions, etc.

5.  Crafting system:  One of the coolest things about DAOC was that player crafted goods were king.  Why is this not the case here?  I want to be able to armorcraft, weaponcraft, etc and make some cool looking and uber gear unique to crafting alone.  

6.  Class balance/class issues:  This is such a huge and widely discussed area, I just thought I would point out some things that make no sense to me.  

         *WPs get a passive tactic that cleanses defensive target of one curse per cast.  Group heal = whole group cured of one curse per cast = sorc DoTs ineffective as a DoK has no access to this talent

        *Both human based races get the same racial tactic which is a self bubble effect, activates every 2 secs and absorbs 146ish damage.  The imbalance lies in the fact that the highest DPS caster class for Order is human and gets to take advantage of this racial tactic, while the sorc class is dark elf and does not have access to the same.  The argument may be "well the magus then gets to take advantage because a dwarf cannot have this tactic" but an engi wears heavier armor, has more HP and is overall more survivable than a magus, so the fact that the magus has access to this talent really doesn't give the magus an edge over its mirror class whereas a BW is automatically harder to kill than a comparable sorc just by having this one tactic.

       * Zealots/RPs:  Please please for the love of god fix these classes.  Just admit that DoKs and WPs are the "main" healers for their realms, buff  the DPS for both of these classes to 75% that of the sorc/BW and give them some more survivability here.  These classes are pretty much useless and about as fun to level as a brain bleed.  They really don't do much of anything well except die and I find it boggling that Mythic's position on these classes is that they are fine and don't need a buff.

      * Bugged classes:  I have to say, playing a white lion showed me the pain that is bugs.  That class is so bug ridden, the pet paths like a schizo, loses its target if the target goes behind a flagpole, pack hunting seems to be broken, along with pretty much almost every other pet based ability.  Why have changes not been made with how this pet functions?  There seems to be no reason to play a WL these days, whose entire class is centered on a pet that doesn't function properly 9 times out of 10. I am sure there are other bugged classes as well but I am basing this post off my experiences alone and I have to say WL sticks out in my mind as the most bugged out class.

That's the whole enchilada for me.  I am still trying to hold out hope for this game but after seeing the State of the Game address, I was a bit disheartened.  Hopefully a dev reads this, prints it and does more than crumple it up and throw it into the circular file.

Good suggestions, Flurrie. I never understood why we must PvE in order to RvR. I was stoked when I first started playing and realized that I could level almost exclusively on scenarios. And I could just purchase reknown gear to stay competitive. Then you get to Tier 4 and realize that in order to take Fortress Lords and eventually fight the Kings, you have to do instanced dungeons for gear. Taking over the enemy city should have its rewards, of course, but it is supposed to be the ultimate RvR experience. Not just another instanced PvE loot-fest.

Main thing that I just don't get is why after all this time are they so f'ing determined to stick with the contribution system that so many people despise. I swear that some designer's ego is getting in the way of them finally scraping this system. It is unpredictable, unfair, and frustrating the vast majority of the players. Any system that does that should've been thrown out a long time ago. I've powerleveled characters on PQs with my DoK. The low-level guys just stood there out of harm's way and they still managed to land top contribution some times. LOLWUT? Why hasn't it changed if not because of someone being stubborn?

We don't want EASY rewards, we just want stuff to be fair and reasonably predictable. I don't want to be handed my Sentinel gear, but I should be able to estimate that if I go on 10 runs of a dungeon that I would at least have made some progress on my gear. Nope. You might get lucky in the first 3 runs, or you could be like some people sitting at 40+ runs without their stuff. That isn't "challenging" gameplay, it's frustratingly unfair.

Sorry for the rant, Flurrie. I think a lot of us are just pulling our eyeballs out trying to figure out what Mythic has been thinking for the last three weeks. I like your ideas though. Especially with getting some more useful crafting in the game. And I also agree that taking over a keep/fort shouldn't just be about killing one Hero-class mob. I'd much rather see Keeps and Fortresses work more like some of the objectives in scenarios. Killing the Keep Lord would be one of a few things needed to actually secure the premises, but you would also have to hold various rooms (i.e. flag captures in scenarios) for X amount of time. Anything other than having everything hinging on one mob's health bar and buggy AI.

Vlaros- Thanks for replying and no worries on the rant, it wasn't really a rant, just commiserating with me is all LOL.  I am a PvP focused player and wanted this game to show better PvP than WoW which is what I had played previously after DAOC but so far the massively cool city siege that I had looked so forward to is proving to be a PVE farmfest instead. 

One more addition I thought of, why have dungeons on a CD with BOP gear?  If it is BOP you don't need a lockout timer to prevent farming and selling of the loot since it is BOP, the only person that player can sell it to if they don't need it is a vendor for about 33 silver...as well, the bubble tactic analysis carries on to the WP class as well, so basically Order has its biggest DPS and main healer with a self bubble ability that NEITHER destro mirror class can access.  Flip the talent on the destro side from humans to dark elves and let's call it square 

I see a great condensed version of some of the most important things that need attention to and you did good here by posting them with clarity. From the forums i read through and your comments, I too hope these things are changed.

Lastly, I am like you:

This game is full of potential and it can become great! I have issues with T4 and I avoid that forum as much as I can now simply because it has all been said alot. SO while I play, I just like to add new things and hope the crucial ones like yours as cleary indicated are take care of.

All said has my support. 

Why do they chose to keep the cont. system? WTW is with the need to end game PvE so much?  Where's all the good PvP loot drops?  Why no real crafting classes?  Who dropped acid and thought a cleanse tactic would be fair and balanced?  Why am I running an instance 50 times to get "the best" gear to go to the city and kill a mob so I can be uber?

Questions that run through my head while I contemplate re-activating my UO account...

Edit: LOL at WTW - I guess what the waffle   At least this forum makes censorship humorous.

Here's one thing about PVE Dungeons & Orvr

You do not "Need" to do pve to be able to do orvr, you can get invader gear with roughly 54 renown & etc. Just depends on server pop on both side.

Although.... The thing is...

It's much more easier to get pve gear than orvr gear that's equivalent with wards (also why is the orvr stats sometimes better for pve? vice-versa? shouldn't they be about even or exactly equal , sides maybe some of the set bonuses?)

 I personally love pve bosses that are hard to do, atm ...there isn't really any "strategic" bosses, unless you count having to learn how to exploit the buggy ones "yay". Last boss of LV is kind've hard, but the boss fight itself isnt as annoying as the full run back which is a different story...

Mythic needs to make PVE/ORVR Gear - Able to retrieve as easy as its equivalent (ward-wise). But i do beleive pve bosses should still be added onto, i mean , comon, atleast mythic can effectively even out a boss and not have it being based on whos facing who in orvr. I like the fact i can't really complain what's fair or not, and just based purely on skill & strategy rather than unfair advantages like stated above.

[It's a lot harder to get invader gear than dark promise - why? : because 6 ppl vs 50 is a HUGE difference. Specially since you'd have a 16.7% chance to get your gear in a dungeon, and a 8.3% chance of getting it in city raids, even less defending which is a 2% chance, since defendnig gives 1 gold bag, and attacking gives 6]

Although that's not counting the fact that gear drops for ppl not in the grp for dungeons and ppl that already have gear that drops. (choppa gear dropping when no choppa is in the grp)

We just want a response. Something. The State of the Game does nothing to address these concerns. Does anyone know of a post by Mythic where Jacobs or anyone else actually seems to recognize that the game is so very broken right now? The only time Flurrie and I have fun in this game really is rolling alts and leveling up through T1 and 2.

She covered mostly everything but did leave out is overall stability/ lag.  It seems wrong to have become aclimated to such shoddy performance, but somehow we have enough to keep playing even with all the CTD's, 4 fps, frozen animation nonsense.

I agree totally Flurrie.. mindu i don't mind pve but in a game that is supposed to be pvp based i am dissapointed in it as it stands.

I have gotten bored with the same old bugged or op'd classes and environment.

Not to mention the fact that the game makes it very tuff and un rewarding to play any class that is actually fun to play. Unless u spend alot of time and effert to do nothing but farm pve areas and hope u get the good "roll"

IMO get rid of the whole roll system and fix the issues that actually need fixing .

Flurrie thank you for the post and hope they listen to ur ideas.

I'd add more but we've all talked about it in vent so much that it hurts now and pretty much everything Flurrie said is what I'd say were issues.

Just because I want to be fair I want to correct 1 thing Flurrie.  Engineers don't wear heavier armor, or have more hps than a magus.  They both wear light armor (albeit engineer's armor DOES appear at times to be plate... I assure you it is only a "paper" plate if you will :smileytongue and the hps are very in line. 

Honestly, I would actually leave out class imbalance (as there are ALWAYS going to be class imbalance in MMO's unless you give identical skills/spells to mirrored classes, which then leads no real uniqueness).  But since it's already been listed I would say the main some of the greater class imbalances are:

WP cleansing light which the DoK (nor ANY healer in the game aside from WP) do not get access to.

BW get a tatic in the AE line that reduces the cooldown of Flame breath & Rain of fire as the 2nd spec'd tatic.  Sorc's equivalent is the 3rd (and final) spec'd tatic meaning they must spend AT MINIMUM 4 more poits in the AE line than a BW.

BW's get WIldfire which makes it so anytime they cast a spell in the conflag (ae line) theres a 25% chance to ignite the person to take more damage, there is no sorc equivalent.

BW's recieve as a baseline tatic (no spec required) a tatic that increases the radii of detonate & rain of fire by 50%, which again Sorcs do not get at all. 

Engineers get 3 tatics (all spec'd) first increases raidus of acid & frag grenades (the 2 main ae grens they get), second increases grenades range by 50%, and the third reduces the cost of all path of grenadier skills by 35%.  So the engineer can throw grenades 98 ft (instead of 65, almost as long as a regular range attack), have a radius of 35 (instead of 20, so almost double), and costs less to do!  Magus do not recieve ANY of those.

These are just some of the inconsistencies I see between the 2 realms classes, and while I do note there are definately classes on destro that are superior to their mirrors, we all know that mythic has turned this into an AE game and thus AE is king with the 2 primary AE classes of Order having SUCH an advantage in raidus for ae's, length to deploy ae's, etc it makes it very hard to compete. 

I've played both sides to 40 (on the same server actually, I was REM order and rerolled as REM destro which has now since combined to Iron Rock), and I was there when the BW's were gimped into the ground and all bw's on our server quit or rerolled other chars.  I'm not saying put them back into the dark ages but there does need to be SOME balance.

I love this game (even with how flawed it is) but I've already have 5 outside of game friends quit due to things flurries listed above and while I would stay forever if I have no one to play with it makes it very hard to continue.

I too must agree with it all. My account runs out in April, and I am opting not to renew it. There is simply nothing to look forward to after you hit 40, other than a bugged end-game city siege every now and again.

I have absolutely enjoyed many aspects of WAR. The scenarios are exciting - when they pop, which is about twice a day, max - and the ORvR can be fun, too, but I totally agree that keep sieges need to be less of a grind than they are.

And that crafting needs to improve. Talk about useless. I'd love to see player-made armor (with some NEW VISUALS - I play on a low-pop server, so we will NEVER see the RR75+ armor), player-made weapons, etc. I can't stress enough that we need some aesthetic diversity in this game. It feels like everyone in each tier looks like every other member of their class in that tier. Mythic hung their hat on player customization pre-release, and I have yet to see any of it. Except dying armor, which isn't all that neat. Oh, and trophies? Give me a magnifying glass so I can see some of those things.

I like the idea of blowing holes in walls, like DAoC. I thought that was very clever, and added some extra intensity. It's much harder to defend against 2 or 3 breaches than 1. Maybe this would help cannons/guns actually have some use in this game. That's how real sieges were done back in the day, anyway. Knock their walls down. Don't just knock on their door and hope you don't get burned.

Contribution: enough has been said on this topic. I feel the same way as essentially everyone else - it sucks and needs to be revamped. I was in a keep siege earlier today in which I ran to the top of the ramp and hit the lord once, and got the second best contribution.

I hope these issues are addressed. I would certainly renew my subscription if they fixed what was missing now, instead of adding another 2 classes to try to re-attract subscribers who left because of the poor existing content.

Couldn't agree more.  We'll see what Mythic has in store for the next couple patches, but they need to take some of these suggestions to heart, and they need to do it now.  Small tweaks aren't what's needed to fix this game, it needs an overhaul and they need to understand that.

I want very much for this game to be "my game" for the next 6 years like DAoC was, but I have to say the game as it stands just won't keep me interested.  The potential is there, but until Mythic starts listening to their players it's just going to die a slow, painful death unfortunately.  

The irony is that you can never get a gaming community to agree on a single minor change, yet I'd have to say just from reading various boards that people tend to agree unanimously on the fact that end-game needs to be reworked entirely.

The thought of blasting a keep apart with siege weapons and having destro crushed and burned by falling blocks of masonary  would be kind of fun. I wish they would ditch siege pads and just let you place X number of siege weapons within a certain distance of hte keep.

Flurrie we have heard most of these ideas for a while now. Some of them would be easier to implement than others. They have a lot of city changes coming and keep changes as well.

I think class balance will always be an issue since if you get stomped by the same class 3 times then it just has to be overpowered.....

The contribution system is a complete mystery to many of us.  In the last 20 keep takes I participated in I have only won 1 bag...I think many people have this problem

At least the rvr influence rewards mean you will get something provided you spend enough time in the zone in RVR.  I think a bonus to INF would be nice that builds for each keep take you are a part of but dont receive a reward for OR make players drop better items when killed...

I will agre that the crafting in WAR is less than stellar.  But if good player made gear were to be introduced into the game would there be any incentive for people to rvr any longer? (Or do pve dungeons?).  Make the rvr fun enough and gear will not matter it will be the icing on the cake.

I think it is safe to say most of us have issues with the game. For me (so far) the positives outweigh the negatives so I will remain playing.

The only one I agree with is #5.

The logjam effect in keeps and forts is deliberate.  If you have 100 people trying to go up a 5 foot ramp at the same time, you're gonna have some problems.  Those ramps make lord rooms legitimately defendable because you can tank the choke points.  Do NOT take away the strategy of the game by making tanks obsolete, the whole rock paper scissors system falls apart as mdps becomes unbeatable in this scenario.

How is taking a fort going to weaken a city!?!?!  Makes no sense to me.

The loot system is designed to prevent a snowballing effect.  You win a keep siege, getting good gear makes it easier for you to win another keep siege, etc, so weaker players never have a chance to get up.  My philosophy on contribution is, "If you got 1st place out of 50 people, there are others who need that gear alot more than you".  Besides, that gear is probably too weak for you anyways.  HOWEVER there does need to be some recognition for constantly scoring high in contributions, like a tier of really awesome titles for more contributions.

contributed 500 pts = The Sieger

         "         1000 pts = The Destroyer, or whatever.

If these are the things keeping you from enjoying the game, I'm not sure if you'll stay.  You seem to hate all the limitations, but the limitations are what make any game interesting.  If you could move any chess piece however you like, the game would be pointless.

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Thrundflint wrote:

 

If these are the things keeping you from enjoying the game, I'm not sure if you'll stay.  You seem to hate all the limitations, but the limitations are what make any game interesting.  If you could move any chess piece however you like, the game would be pointless.

 

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There is the gem in this thread, well said.

I don't disagree with the Original Post, but I don't find myself agreeing with many parts of it either.

Also, tacos > enchiladas.

The failure in design is a result of the fact there was supposed to be 3 cities seigeable not 1. The resulting design elements are a result of there being only one front to the war.

I agree on all points and would add the following:

Part of the success of DAOC's ORvR and frontiers was the fact the zones were self-bootstrapping. There was PvE content worth farming that brought people to an area. Chicken and Egg is what plagues Warhammer. No one in the realm, not one goes there. No one goes there, no one to kill... War is the result of escalation but with no entry point there is no reason to go. You need PvE content in the RvR lakes to bootstrap ORvR.

Players are 75% of the game but have less then 5% of the tools. We need to be able to build stuff. User contributed content is now king, be it Little Big Planet stages or rampaging around in space ships building corporate empires WE, the players, need the tools to make the game successful. We need to be able to build guild fortresses, seige camps, etc and shape the field of battle. We wanted to play WARhammer not SKIRMISHammer. We need to be able to drop seige where we want, none of this pad crap. Get rid of BOs. They are nothing but INF farms. Useless. Junk.

Here is a solution:

Convert all the Keeps in RvR lakes into alliance claimable locations with 5 guild towers surrounding it (or however many can be in an alliance). In the center keep besides the keep lord add a entrance to the new Darkness Falls that can be used exclusively by the alliance claiming the keep as well as bolstering guard at the capital city.

Alliances can upgrade the keep while they hold the keep. Drop the 5 guild towers then the Lord in the keep is nearly defenseless. Flip the alliance keep and get fat loot for all alliance members (auto green bags in the mail) plus the usual bag rewards per tower and per keep.

Eliminate the Fortress turning it into just another keep.

Also each Keep should have a specific buff for the alliance holding it and a realm-wide buff. I suggest a resist realm-wide and +5% blah blah for alliance members (random perhaps when claimed...)

To fuel the PvE in the lakes the keeps should be randomly seiged by an NPC faction to fuel PvE bootstrapping for ORvR.

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Flurrie wrote:
Thank you for your thoughts gentlemen, I appreciate seeing and hearing different points of view on the issues that I see as a problem in this game.  Thrundflint, I agree that players who really make that extra effort to contribute should be rewarded for their efforts above those who stand around and do very little or nothing at all.  I just wish the contriubtion system made sense in that regard.  I have healed my bootie off in many many a keep take to never place higher than in the 20s.  I have tried different strategies on my DoK, such as even respeccing for DPS and putting on my DPS gear and pounding on the lord as much as possible with similar results.  I guess my point is, if they are going to stay with a contribution system, can they implement something that makes healing count as much as DPS?  How about a way to track set pieces, so if a person who scores high who already has the set piece in the gold bag cannot roll for that same piece again?  Overall, a token system seems to make the most sense here.  This way, those who are the "toppers" often will get rewarded by doing so with more tokens and the people who contribute less will get a corresponding lesser amount.  At least with that system, I can feel like progress is being made towards an overall goal to get my set together instead of an overwhelming frustration that none of my efforts are worth anything.

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You, me, and everyone else ingame.

Nice post Flurrie, there are some other macro-issues i have with the game but you stayed with the ones that Mythic can actually do something about. Before i go further, I have to say they did a good job so far at fixing a lot of the small issues i had, and if the game had launched at 1.1 it would have been a glorious launch indeed.

# 1 is supposedly getting addressed soon, if i must trust one of Mark's posts. But i might have misread

# 2 and Idgarad's suggestions all sound good to my gut, but that's because we all have 6+ years of DAOC's incremental improvements as a reference, and want it mirrored here.
  Not that it would be a bad thing, but i'm willing for them to find a way for WAR to have its own thing. There really needs to be more ways to break the tie at keeps though, and not only T4 but even from T2; ; half of the classes don't havce much to do in lord room standoffs these days
 I've seen guild banners being used to mess with the tank wall; that's nice but we need more.
Admittedly, holes were a bit overused in DAOC to bypass oil, but with a bit of adjustment they would be viable here i expect.
 I do think that populating the RvR lakes with mobs and seed-war (think slayer/choppa during the event) would be a critical improvement.

# 3 makes total sense even though i've never been in T4 raids. Never understood the complexity of the original system, especially the zone-by-zone lock effect. I would probably keep the 3 pairings as separate options to enter the city, so focusing on one would be easier but make an easier target. And letting lower tiers contribute, as well.

# 4 i kinda agree with both sides of the discussion here, one consensus being that the comtribution rewad rarely makes any sense.
There are some good ideas there from Flurrie, but even a simple "persistence bonus" like you get in PQs would help. Or just a way to be opted out if you got your loot already.

# 5 i doubt that will be the case as people need something to look forward to, and EA decided Gear Was It for WAR. If all you need is a few plats to get the best gear, noone with bother with the end game and be equally frustrated with the lack of one.
Although more ideas for useful crafting would be good - at least for people who like crafting.

# 6 like Niuban I wouldn't consider it a breaker, there's always going to be imbalances and innovative ways to exploit ability combinations (%cough% reaverbomb). I do however completely agree with WP/DoK being out of whack compared to zealots/RP. And a bit about WPs being out of whack period.

And a big nod to all the zealots and RPs that i still see playing these days. I gave up a while ago myself.

Finally, WAR-Addict says it best: http://www.camelotaddict.com/Archives2009/2009/FullSetQuest04.jpg

Gloobs-

Thanks for the reply and kudo!  In your post you stated #1 was going to be fixed? Where oh where is that post?  That would make me jump for joy   As for the RP/Zealot comment you made, sadly I am one of those who has shelved the zealot for now if and when changes are made to the class.

/signed.

If they would change even one of these things in the next few weeks, I'd probably re-up for at least another month. I like others am letting my sub run out in April. Haven't even logged on for almost 2 weeks now.

Even with the big population boost to Iron Rock, the T4 mechanics are not enjoyable for me. It was better back when I only got to do it once and it was new. Now we get raided so frequently that I avoid T4, not because we have to defend, but because T4 is so PvE dependent in various ways.

And the lower tiers aren't so great that I am still having fun leveling now my 4th alt up through T3.