Meter
07-23-2004, 05:06 PM
Posted by Saradin (mailto:saradin@darkenbane.com)
The Universal Guild Charter is complete and has been reinstated. Thanks to all that helped with it and thanks to Meter for making it easier to edit along with the nice drop down menu to see what games are supported by Darkenbane. The CS charter is in the works and the WoW charter won't be complete until close to retail. For now, they can be viewed here: http://www.darkenbane.com/charter.php
As for World of Warcraft, this post is somewhat old from the private boards but I figured it is newsworthy due to the responses from the devs. This was written by myself and some others at the start of the push and deals more with pvp risks vs rewards and ruleset than it does actual class balance. Some of my thoughts have changed over time but the message I believe is still clear and was emailed directly to the devs.
"While I do realize that the current form of pvp is in no way the final product, I still believe it is necessary to get ideas and problems out in the open early as to avoid making the same mistake other companies have made. I am not going to talk about class balancing here but rather just make suggestions to make the game more pvp oriented and concentrate on the rule set. The fact of the matter is, the evolution of a pvp server is so delicate that the rule set can make or break it alone. With that in mind, I’d like to touch upon the following topics:
1) Zone Travel and Aggro
2) Friendly, Hostile, and Contested Zones
3) PvP Oriented Quests
4) Risk vs Reward and Penalties
Zone Travel and Aggro
Problem: The factions are segregated a little too much. Geographically it is fine but the great pains you take to travel to enemy territory is not. Matters become worse when you figure out that once you get into enemy territory you can’t even attack your enemy unless they consent to it. You are effectively limiting pvp to only the higher tier players and levels 1-x now become a leveling race and nothing more.
Suggestion: Reduce the hostile aggro radius of mobs so that it is actually feasible to travel to enemy lands quite early without getting stomped by upper level 20 things jumping out of the bushes from 100 miles away and killing you. I understand that this was implemented to keep lower levels out of high level areas but honestly who cares? Low levels can’t do anything productive in those zones anyway. Either that or implement some type of war machines that can transport me closer to my enemies. Suggestions for being able to attack my enemy in their territory but still limit griefing will follow shortly.
Friendly, Hostile, and Contested Zones
Problem: The zone coloring is fine, but the fact that you cannot attack someone in their own environment is not. I can see that you are trying to prevent high levels from griefing lower level players here but in reality you really aren’t – you are just pushing it back some. So instead of running through newbie areas and slaughtering low levels, you will now have the pass lines in redridge and wetlands camped by high level pvpers waiting for unlucky travelers to take one step over the line.
Suggestion #1: Allow a faction to attack another faction in their friendly environment but still limit griefing. To do this, institute a level limit in green areas. For example, if a horde enters alliance lands he is only allowed to attack people within 2 levels of himself. Any out of range player can still attack him to rout him from their zone at their own risk. Also note that for the horde player, it would be an annoyance to have a low level hang around and be untouchable until they decided to make the first move. Maybe the /pvp flag should have a 30 second timer before it is enabled so that a level 5 mage won’t finally decide to grow a pair and initiate with an ice bolt when I’m low hp and trying to flee from a higher level.
To sum up:
1. the horde player entering an Alliance-controlled zone can attack anyone within two levels
2. alliance members can attack the horde player at any time they please unless they are more than 2 levels below him
3. if the alliance member is > 2 levels below the horde invader, they have to initiate through /pvp
This will still allow me to go into their lands and pick fair fights without griefing. As for the last part I really couldn’t think of a better way to solve the obvious problem. I’d still rather just have full fledged pvp but I feel a compromise is in order to keep a steady and healthy playerbase.
Suggestion #2: There needs to be more quests for both factions in enemy zones. You need to have more incentive ( rewards? ) to go to a zone other than just pking. Example: no reason for horde to ever go to redridge. Some of the best pvp experiences are centered around contested spawns or areas of interest.
PvP Oriented Quests
I’d love to see quests that are pvp oriented. Unfortunately, a lot of these could be exploitable like ( collect 5 dwarf heads ) so I could only come up with one for now. It would be awesome to have a Bounty Hunter NPC that gave random quests in a +/- 5 level limit to assassinate someone.
Bounty Hunter tells you, “Please go assassinate -random player within 5-level range- currently in -random non-instanced zone->”
You could then take your group and set out to kill this guy ( you’d also have to know his location at all times ) and if anyone got a killing blow in the group on him then you would succeed. Once 20 or so of these have been complete a likely reward could be an artifact/epic type item that reflects the difficulty of the quest. Because of the dynamics of the game, instances, and problems with people logging off, being too high, or in huge groups, these would be hard to complete and the rewards should pay off. Besides, it’s an incentive to pvp rather than first grinding to the level cap and it helps close the gap (in terms of PvP viability/gear) between those that spend time PvPing and those that simply wait till they are max level before engaging in PvP.
Note: If you abandon a bounty hunter quest b/c it is too high of a target or the location is too inconvenient, you must wait another full hour before taking the quest again.
Risk vs Reward and Penalties
With any system, this would also have to be balanced. If I am hunting in the opposing faction’s territory, I’d expect to get bonus experience from quests involved there and killing things. Likewise, if I die in enemy territory or anywhere with the pvp flag enabled, I expect the penalties to be more harsh than the soft pve deaths currently.
Possible Rewards in Enemy Territory:
· 35% exp bonus to killing npc’s
· larger exp bonus from quests
· points for reputation (this would affect merchant buy/sell, and perhaps have other implications such as opening reputation level based quests) if you kill someone of the opposing faction
Possible penalties:
· Rez effects on PvP death always for 5 minutes after you get your corpse
· Dying with rez effects on gives you another –10% to stats on your next rez effects ( this prevents bind rushing over and over again )
· Reputation demerits
The scenario I want to eliminate is: “Wow I killed you and your friend and you came back. I then killed you again and your friend and yet you came back again! Okay you got me this time but who cares as nothing happened. Fun times ( not really ).”
"
I can't post the words directly but the feedback I got was along the lines that we are totally right and pvp isn't fully implemented. A large segment of what was suggested will be done and once they get the majority of the content out of the way to let them know if they missed any holes. Thanks to Carnivorous ( editing ) and a few others for helping me collect and organize these ideas. The conversation then swung to resists and to simple game mechanics and instant cast spells. While instant casts will never truly be removed from the game ( still a mistake imo ), the number of them will be severely cut down especially the priest in particular. Unfortunately, I cannot post the intimate details of the conversations but I wanted to let you know that they do listen ; the only question is how well will it be implemented. We've seen games with great concepts and ideas ( Shadowbane ? ) fall due to poor implementation. World of Warcraft has awesome potential but they have a long way to go as far as pvp is concerned. Only time will tell.
The Universal Guild Charter is complete and has been reinstated. Thanks to all that helped with it and thanks to Meter for making it easier to edit along with the nice drop down menu to see what games are supported by Darkenbane. The CS charter is in the works and the WoW charter won't be complete until close to retail. For now, they can be viewed here: http://www.darkenbane.com/charter.php
As for World of Warcraft, this post is somewhat old from the private boards but I figured it is newsworthy due to the responses from the devs. This was written by myself and some others at the start of the push and deals more with pvp risks vs rewards and ruleset than it does actual class balance. Some of my thoughts have changed over time but the message I believe is still clear and was emailed directly to the devs.
"While I do realize that the current form of pvp is in no way the final product, I still believe it is necessary to get ideas and problems out in the open early as to avoid making the same mistake other companies have made. I am not going to talk about class balancing here but rather just make suggestions to make the game more pvp oriented and concentrate on the rule set. The fact of the matter is, the evolution of a pvp server is so delicate that the rule set can make or break it alone. With that in mind, I’d like to touch upon the following topics:
1) Zone Travel and Aggro
2) Friendly, Hostile, and Contested Zones
3) PvP Oriented Quests
4) Risk vs Reward and Penalties
Zone Travel and Aggro
Problem: The factions are segregated a little too much. Geographically it is fine but the great pains you take to travel to enemy territory is not. Matters become worse when you figure out that once you get into enemy territory you can’t even attack your enemy unless they consent to it. You are effectively limiting pvp to only the higher tier players and levels 1-x now become a leveling race and nothing more.
Suggestion: Reduce the hostile aggro radius of mobs so that it is actually feasible to travel to enemy lands quite early without getting stomped by upper level 20 things jumping out of the bushes from 100 miles away and killing you. I understand that this was implemented to keep lower levels out of high level areas but honestly who cares? Low levels can’t do anything productive in those zones anyway. Either that or implement some type of war machines that can transport me closer to my enemies. Suggestions for being able to attack my enemy in their territory but still limit griefing will follow shortly.
Friendly, Hostile, and Contested Zones
Problem: The zone coloring is fine, but the fact that you cannot attack someone in their own environment is not. I can see that you are trying to prevent high levels from griefing lower level players here but in reality you really aren’t – you are just pushing it back some. So instead of running through newbie areas and slaughtering low levels, you will now have the pass lines in redridge and wetlands camped by high level pvpers waiting for unlucky travelers to take one step over the line.
Suggestion #1: Allow a faction to attack another faction in their friendly environment but still limit griefing. To do this, institute a level limit in green areas. For example, if a horde enters alliance lands he is only allowed to attack people within 2 levels of himself. Any out of range player can still attack him to rout him from their zone at their own risk. Also note that for the horde player, it would be an annoyance to have a low level hang around and be untouchable until they decided to make the first move. Maybe the /pvp flag should have a 30 second timer before it is enabled so that a level 5 mage won’t finally decide to grow a pair and initiate with an ice bolt when I’m low hp and trying to flee from a higher level.
To sum up:
1. the horde player entering an Alliance-controlled zone can attack anyone within two levels
2. alliance members can attack the horde player at any time they please unless they are more than 2 levels below him
3. if the alliance member is > 2 levels below the horde invader, they have to initiate through /pvp
This will still allow me to go into their lands and pick fair fights without griefing. As for the last part I really couldn’t think of a better way to solve the obvious problem. I’d still rather just have full fledged pvp but I feel a compromise is in order to keep a steady and healthy playerbase.
Suggestion #2: There needs to be more quests for both factions in enemy zones. You need to have more incentive ( rewards? ) to go to a zone other than just pking. Example: no reason for horde to ever go to redridge. Some of the best pvp experiences are centered around contested spawns or areas of interest.
PvP Oriented Quests
I’d love to see quests that are pvp oriented. Unfortunately, a lot of these could be exploitable like ( collect 5 dwarf heads ) so I could only come up with one for now. It would be awesome to have a Bounty Hunter NPC that gave random quests in a +/- 5 level limit to assassinate someone.
Bounty Hunter tells you, “Please go assassinate -random player within 5-level range- currently in -random non-instanced zone->”
You could then take your group and set out to kill this guy ( you’d also have to know his location at all times ) and if anyone got a killing blow in the group on him then you would succeed. Once 20 or so of these have been complete a likely reward could be an artifact/epic type item that reflects the difficulty of the quest. Because of the dynamics of the game, instances, and problems with people logging off, being too high, or in huge groups, these would be hard to complete and the rewards should pay off. Besides, it’s an incentive to pvp rather than first grinding to the level cap and it helps close the gap (in terms of PvP viability/gear) between those that spend time PvPing and those that simply wait till they are max level before engaging in PvP.
Note: If you abandon a bounty hunter quest b/c it is too high of a target or the location is too inconvenient, you must wait another full hour before taking the quest again.
Risk vs Reward and Penalties
With any system, this would also have to be balanced. If I am hunting in the opposing faction’s territory, I’d expect to get bonus experience from quests involved there and killing things. Likewise, if I die in enemy territory or anywhere with the pvp flag enabled, I expect the penalties to be more harsh than the soft pve deaths currently.
Possible Rewards in Enemy Territory:
· 35% exp bonus to killing npc’s
· larger exp bonus from quests
· points for reputation (this would affect merchant buy/sell, and perhaps have other implications such as opening reputation level based quests) if you kill someone of the opposing faction
Possible penalties:
· Rez effects on PvP death always for 5 minutes after you get your corpse
· Dying with rez effects on gives you another –10% to stats on your next rez effects ( this prevents bind rushing over and over again )
· Reputation demerits
The scenario I want to eliminate is: “Wow I killed you and your friend and you came back. I then killed you again and your friend and yet you came back again! Okay you got me this time but who cares as nothing happened. Fun times ( not really ).”
"
I can't post the words directly but the feedback I got was along the lines that we are totally right and pvp isn't fully implemented. A large segment of what was suggested will be done and once they get the majority of the content out of the way to let them know if they missed any holes. Thanks to Carnivorous ( editing ) and a few others for helping me collect and organize these ideas. The conversation then swung to resists and to simple game mechanics and instant cast spells. While instant casts will never truly be removed from the game ( still a mistake imo ), the number of them will be severely cut down especially the priest in particular. Unfortunately, I cannot post the intimate details of the conversations but I wanted to let you know that they do listen ; the only question is how well will it be implemented. We've seen games with great concepts and ideas ( Shadowbane ? ) fall due to poor implementation. World of Warcraft has awesome potential but they have a long way to go as far as pvp is concerned. Only time will tell.