AP Regen and You!

From the Herald:

"AP should be a pool, not an ocean." - Gett of Dark Crag

Action Points are something that effects everyone who plays WAR.Healers, Damage Dealers and Tanks all use Action Points, so it is onlynatural that when something changes about the way the system works,there is going to be concern, discussion and possibly confusion.

Tohelp better explain what's going on with the current state of ActionPoints in WAR, the Community team reached out to the Combat &Careers Team Lead, Nate Levy, for insight into the recent bug fixesaffecting AP Regeneration.

For more information, read on!



So Nate, something seems different with the way my Action Points Regenerate since 1.3.2.

Nate:As most of you know, we fixed some bugs relating to Action Pointregeneration recently, correcting a problem which had temporarily ledto many people having "infinite AP." Action Points are a core combatmechanic in WAR, and the bugs which prevented a character's AP frombeing correctly paced lead to undesirable reductions in kill times,making combat less about tactics, timing, and coordination, and moreabout simply slamming a single ability as fast as possible. These bugfixes will create a much better game-play experience for everyone, andwe realize that many of you have concerns and questions, so we wantedto take a moment and address some of them.

What were the bugs that we fixed, and how did they affect game-play?

Nate:Since 1.3.1 went live, we discovered two major bugs relating to ActionPoint regeneration. The first was causing Action Points to regenerateduring the Global Cooldown in certain situations, but unfortunately, itwas very difficult to detect because the second issue masked thefirst. This second issue was a bug which caused server performance andload to drastically impact AP regeneration rates—so, while ActionPoints would sometimes be regenerating when they weren't supposed to,the AP-regen rates were also slower all-around, especially inhigh-stress situations such as Keep captures. The combination of thesetwo factors essentially resulted in a wash, with AP on the whole beingno faster or slower than intended overall.

However, patch 1.3.1brought significant performance improvements to the game, and we begangetting reports of players with "infinite AP"; it was the investigationof these reports which resulted in the discovery of both issues. Dueto the severity of the issues, we wanted to get them corrected asquickly as possible, which meant that we aimed to get the fixes pushedto the Live game as soon as they passed internal testing. Thatultimately corresponded with patch 1.3.2. It is important to note thatthese bugs were largely affecting players who were constantly withinthe Global Cooldown, while players who were primarily using abilitieswith buildup times or channel times were not affected, since AP regenwas properly paused at those times.

How does Action Point recovery work in version 1.3.2?

Nate:Right now, Action Point recovery works exactly as it was designed: Yougain 25 AP per second (and we fixed the issue which heavily tied APrates to server performance, so that fixes the second bug and means APwill be more consistent), and you do not gain AP while you're in themiddle of a combat action (which fixes the first bug). Specifically,"combat actions" include building up abilities, channeling abilities,and being within the Global Cooldown. In essence, if you're usingabilities back-to-back without pause, then your AP will go down, whileif you stop for a brief moment, your AP will go up.

How does this affect my game experience?

Nate:Fundamentally, these fixes affect everyone, since nearly every actionthat you can perform uses AP. However, the biggest personal impactwill be felt by anyone who strongly relied on constantly usinginstant-cast abilities without pause, which put them constantly withinthe Global Cooldown. This is because those players were previouslygaining the most from the occasional recovery of Action Points duringthe Global Cooldown. Since AP regeneration was already correctlypausing during buildup and channel times, anyone who was primarilyusing those types of abilities should see minimal-to-no impact.

How does this impact the overall game balance?

Nate:These changes touch on several aspects of the game, and many of whichare very positive! The areas of impact include the following:

• Increasingthe amount of time that you survive in RvR, since some enemy attackerswere previously churning through instant-cast attacks virtually withoutend. These bug-fixes mean that someone who "bursts" a rapid string ofinstant-cast attacks will bottom out their AP correspondingly quickly.
• Increasingthe value of Action Point-modifying abilities and Tactics, bothbeneficial and hostile. Managing your own Action Points is a moreimportant issue to pay attention to, and effects which deny AP to yourenemies will once again be impactful and worthwhile.
• Making APefficiency a factor in ability decisions. A high-cost ability shouldbe, literally, exactly that - the cost to use it should be noticeablyhigh, and the choice of when to consume a larger chunk of AP is animportant decision to make. Previously, these bugs resulted insomewhat of a "cost doesn't matter" feeling for some players, whereasin truth, an ability's damage is simply one aspect, and its AP cost,cooldown time, etc. are also all factors which can not simply beignored.

So, where will we go from here?

Nate:These fixes allow us to get the game back on track where we expect itto be, letting us move forward with continued adjustment and balance.In particular, the fixes will let us take a good overall look atAP-related abilities, which were otherwise very difficult to tune whenthe underlying system was not working correctly. As with every facetof an MMO, remember that nothing is set in stone. We're going to bemonitoring the results of all of our 1.3.2 adjustments, including thecorrected AP regeneration, and if anything needs to be adjusted, we'llwork those tweaks into future patches.

As always, your constructive feedback is welcomed and appreciated!

Note: Please keep feedback on topic and civil. We will be heavily moderating this thread.


Andy Belford
Community Coordinator
Mythic Entertainment

Source

[Andy_Mythic]

So for the last few weeks we've been in "observation mode" so to speak. Right now we're gathering metrics and player feedback concerning the City experience and other aspects of the T4 campaign all the while discussing alternatives and actually figuring out their feasibility internally.There's many things to consider, the implementation of an underdog system being one such thing.

We want to be able to give the community some news regarding what we're planning soon, I just can't give you an exact date for that just yet.


Andy Belford
Community Coordinator
Mythic Entertainment

Source