As the series rolls along, issue 5 is now out and has hit the Herald. And for the first time, I didn’t really read anything that I didn’t already seem to know (or at least assumed would be the case). So I’m a bit disappointed, but I know the team must be focused much more on re-opening the beta than providing lots of nuggets via these updates at the moment. And I know there are a lot of details they don’t want to reveal until later, so by the fifth one of these, they might be hurting for material.
Here’s the basic nutshell:
* Very brief blurb on and two art shots of cities
* UI Team - Character creation is finally in the game - people will have choices - looking unique is good
* RvR - People had questions on our beta boards about keeps - essentially like DAoC keeps (from what they are willing to tell you in this update)
* Career Mastery - People had (more) questions on our beta boards about this - and you basically learn nothing you didn’t already know.
So despite the fact that this was probably the most “ho hum” beta update released to date, there were at least a couple of things that caught my eye when I read through it.
Before I dive into that, there is one other change to RvR. We have changed the Renown splitting from its old contribution based system. Renown for killing players is now awarded to each member of a group if one or more members participated in the kill. The amount of renown given to the group is a percentage based on participation in the kill.
I don’t really have the proper context to understand this statement or what this type of changes means, having never been in beta to observe the old system. When they say “contribution” based, I’m assuming that means that if I did 50% of the damage to an enemy that died, I got 50% of the renown value of that enemy. So it sounds like it was a very individual accomplishment. The new system sounds like, regardless of whether you damage the enemy or not, as long as someone in your group does, you will get some % of the renown for the kill. This could potentially be a HUGE change depending on how these systems work, and could certainly influence a person’s choice of career. If your renown gain is based on how much you personally do to an enemy, that might slant you a certain direction. If you can gain renown in a group, regardless of how much you personally do (but rather, as an entire group), this might slant you in other directions. So although I can’t say that I understand this statement as written, I would certainly like to see more information on this particular subject in the next update as it will determine how people RvR and progress up through the ranks.
The C&C team is actually making strong efforts to avoid “CC Mastery”. Crowd control is a powerful, necessary, and key part of gameplay, but it’s also very delicate - if you’re unable to control your character for an entire fight, that’s horribly frustrating and simply not fun.
We already knew this and I’ve quoted WAR devs a couple of other times making similar statements, but I just can’t help but highlight this every time I see it. A no brainer really, but good to see them reiterate it just the same.
And that’s really it, much to my dismay. I was excited to see another update and then as I read through there wasn’t a lot “new” to really sink my teeth into. Mainly clarifications to people based on information they’ve released the last few weeks. Oh well - here’s to update 6 being better!
Tags: EA/Mythic, Warhammer
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December 6th, 2007 at 11:35 pm - Edit
I’m hoping that it doesn’t evolve into a “you do more damage, you get more points” system. It favors individuality and does not promote group play. It promotes frontload damage classes.
December 7th, 2007 at 7:21 am - Edit
I can’t imagine they’d make it so that someone like a Choppa would get 50% of the renown while two Shamans were in the background keeping him alive more than fighting. That would cause a lot of griping.
I’m very much looking forward to how they do their Keeps. Like Keen said on his blog, I was hoping we’d see some fantastic settings for them, and perhaps we will in time, but I’m more excited just to partake in ACTUAL meaningful PvP again.
December 7th, 2007 at 12:22 pm - Edit
I agree - it sounds like that’s maybe what it used to be, and they’ve changed it to a more group friendly way of allocating renown. Otherwise people healing for the majority of the fight would be left out in the cold.
Yeah they said there would be more keep details, but it sounds like they are starting from the very familiar DAoC template on that. Hopefully they will have some unique customizations up their sleeve for WAR.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:15 pm - Edit
Just keep in mind, that damage has to come in somwhere. Because does that guy that jumped in at the last second on your kill, deserve a straight up 50% split of the renown? That would be even worse than basing it off of damage as people would just look to hit everything they can see at least once.
December 9th, 2007 at 9:49 am - Edit
well I’m sure they are looking at peoples complaints and other games. As someone who generally likes to play support classes, If they base it on damage then they’ll alway be short support classes in PVP. Nothing more aggravating in PVP to see the guy you kept up for 10 minutes get 10 times the reward you do. If they do actually give everybody in the group the same renown you might actually see groups of people working together instead of just focusing on topping the damage meters.
December 28th, 2007 at 4:32 pm - Edit
Heh…Mythic was the CHAMPION of “CC Mastery” in DAOC. I mean they had an area of effect mesmerize that lasted OVER ONE MINUTE. And they gave Hibernian casters baseline ranged 9 second stun.
I once logged a bunch of battles with Hibs…the average time it took the casters to stun and nuke someone down was four seconds - since the logs also showed other players they were attacking and I was able to verify the durations from the timestamps. I tabulated them up and 4 second survival after the initial stun was what I came up with.
That pretty much made their 5 second delayed use Purge I useless in those encounters. ROFL
So caveat emptor on Warhammer.
Fiala