WAR is coming, but for now, the beta updates keep coming to tide us over.  Beta Update 4  is now out now and with it, some brand spanking new information on the “Career Mastery” system.  As always, there is more information in the notes than what I choose to highlight, so make sure to read them in their entirety.  The two key things I wanted to focus in on were a bit more about this new master system and a further look at world RvR (something near and dear to my heart as you probably know by now).

“So what the heck is the Mastery system??” you ask?  Good question.  If you’ve played WoW you understand the Talent system.  If you’ve played EQII, you know about the Achievement Abilities.  Well, in WAR the Master system is very similar.  It’s the chief way in which you can start to differentiate your character from others of your same career.

Career Mastery will allow players focus on different facets of their career giving them the opportunity to differentiate themselves from others, while still making sure that every character, no matter how they’re specialized, can still perform the basic and fundamental purpose of their career. For example, every Sword Master will be an able tank, capable of absorbing much more damage then a lighter fighter. However someone who specializes in the Sword Master’s defensive path will find that they are generally more durable, able to hold aggro better in PvE and able to defend their friends more efficiently in an RvR scenario. Meanwhile a Sword Master who chooses to go a more offensive route will still be able to take a hit, but may find themselves hard pressed to defend & protect as well as their counterpart, admittedly they will be hitting quite a bit harder as a trade off.

O.k., so far so good.  Pretty basic fundamental system that will be familiar to anyone who’s played MMOs in the last five years or so.  So is that it??  Well, each career will have Core skills that are your fundamental career skills (for example all tanks would have things like taunt and guard).  You gain these core abilities as you level and they improve with level.  They are the automatic, set and it and forget it skills that you get.  Beyond that is where you get into the three different Mastery paths that emphasize different facets of your career, and this is where your choice as a player really enters into things.

Each Mastery contains Base skills, Supplemental skills, and also has its own Mastery level. Base skills are the Actions, Tactics & Morale a player is granted as a reward for achieving a specific level.  Every character of that Career will always be able to purchase these skills, however their total effectiveness is intimately tied to the player’s level of Mastery. Supplemental Skills are the Actions, Tactics, and Morale that a player can only unlock by increasing their Mastery of a given path.  Like Base skills, Supplemental skills continue to increase in effectiveness as you’re Mastery level increases. The Mastery level itself is the current amount of Mastery a player has in a particular path.  Players will be able to choose just how much Mastery they desire in each of the three paths available to them.

Essentially, the Base skills become unlocked as you level, and you simply need to visit a trainer and train them.  Supplemental skills however must be unlocked by increasing your Mastery level.  The trick is, the points (Specialization Points) used to raise your Mastery level are the same points you need to spend on the Supplemental skills that each new Mastery level offers access to. 

These points are referred to as specialization points, and are earned every rank.  A player will never have enough Specialization points to completely Master multiple paths while purchasing Supplemental skills. It is a tough choice b/c every point of Mastery earned improves EVERY action in that mastery line by a small amount this includes the Base Skills you automatically get. One level of Mastery can seem trivial.  However, they add up and 5 or 10 points of Mastery makes a significant difference!

There is some amount of automatic leveling of power for skills in the paths outside of their Mastery. This is done to make sure the ability is not completely useless to the player.  In fact, many abilities may still be useful for secondary effects such as Stun even if they have horrible damage/healing values b/c their Mastery level is lower. When comparing the general power of an ability of a path with 100% Mastery and one with 0% Mastery you will see around a 30 – 35% difference in power. Remember this number can be improved (or widened) further depending on which Tactics and Stats you focus on as well.

So obviously, there is a huge power differential to be gained if you choose to really pump up the Mastery in a certain line and focus on a core set of tactics and abilities versus trying to be a jack-of-all-trades.  Common sense really, as most MMOs tend to favor that kind of focus, so it’s not entirely unexpected.  The real trick will be to see how well all these various skills and mastery paths are balanced.  Will there be true choices to make which can all be viable, or will there end up being “templates” that everyone feels like they have to follow to be most effective?  Confuzzled yet?  If so, head on over to the original article as they give two examples of what they are talking about.

Next, the RvR team has given us some further juicy tidbits, and continues to head in the right direction with RvR as far as this gamer is concerned:

Now for the part that has been the top-secret project the RvR team has been hard at work on: Keeps. Yes, you read that right – we are adding Keeps. Keep warfare, namely protecting your keep and capturing your enemy’s, will play a significant role in open world RvR and the campaign.

The first pairing to have keeps on Beta will be Empire and Chaos. The art for the keeps will not be polished when Beta reopens, but this is very intentional. Our primary goal at this stage is to make sure the game play and functionality of the keeps are very solid and you can expect to see a lot of “focus discussion” posts from members of the RvR Team as we request targeted feedback.

What about Siege? There will indeed be siege in WAR. However, siege will not be ready when Beta reopens. I will have more information for you as we get closer to having it ready for release to Beta.

I can already hear the DAoC veterans cheering in the distance.  RvR was a lot of fun, and keep/siege warfare was a big part of that.  I think this is excellent news and I’m glad they shared this with the player base.  I really feel like the beta tester feedback has really shifted RvR away from scenarios to some degree and back to the open, world RvR.  Scenarios can be good and all, but I think this certainly is the right direction to head in.

Good stuff.  Can’t wait to get back behind the keyboard on this game.  I’m hoping that when the beta re-opens in December that my GenCon priority beta key will kick in (*wink wink*!).  Stay tuned true believers….there’s much more on the way.

Share This

This entry was posted on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.