Games Day Baltimore - Interview with Jeff Skalski (RvR System)

[PhoenixRed]

Our interviews continue with yet another interview with Jeff Skalski. This time, he puts on his RvR system hat and takes questions from the community about Realm vs. Realm, keeps, ORvR, and the possibilities for the system in the future.

Part 1:

Part 2:

[Pakanohida]

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME PUT IN RESPAWN AT THE FORT LIKE YOU AND THE REST OF US WANT.

[PhoenixRed]

Haha - no need to use the sized font.

But yeah, to hear the designers experience the same frustrations as is a little heartening, if for nothing else to see that they might be looking at something to fix it in the near future.

[Gerd]

YES to orcapaults. Just put a longish cd on the orcapaults and a debuff on the "paulted" player that doesn't allow them to rez other players for a bit. And of course have like a 50% chance for them to just fly into the wall and die.

Would make keep sieges much more dynamic.


This may be inappropriate but does anyone else think Skalski looks a bit like Heinrich Himmler? O.o

Just sayin'.

[Monkeyboyen]

I was looking forward to this video and was kinda disapointed, now I didn't hear so well everything he said but it seems to me that they don't have any noticble city, orvr or fortress changes coming up soon. Seems they have ide's but are all on the planing stage and from planing stage to live it will take forever.

[PhoenixRed]

Originally Posted by Monkeyboyen

I was looking forward to this video and was kinda disapointed, now I didn't hear so well everything he said but it seems to me that they don't have any noticble city, orvr or fortress changes coming up soon. Seems they have ide's but are all on the planing stage and from planing stage to live it will take forever.

Like I said before when you asked, we didn't have a Cities person, so they may have been able to provide more specifics.

[Hadrune]

Shame he only answered that he wanted to see something for rr 80s and then went on about the focus of the team lying at the city sieges. However glad the (my) question was brought under attention . Thanks Frank!

[KatzenKratzen]

Originally Posted by Pakanohida

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME PUT IN RESPAWN AT THE FORT LIKE YOU AND THE REST OF US WANT.

Respawns in the fort zone for both teams would change the dynamic of the encounter dramatically! DO WANT!

[Monkeyboyen]

I understand that but what I tried to say is they seem to have many ide's for what they should do, but it takes along time before ide's become reality. They have talked about this second ramp for the keeps and fortress for months and i assume it will take months before it comes live as well.

For pve people land of the dead looks like a good thing, but for myself as a pvp person I don't see this a great addition to the game. from my experince in daoc land of the dead zone will give some pvp possibilites, but it will mostly be a pve zone with some short pvp action when the other teams come in.

My biggest problem with oRvR or closed RvR as I want to call it, is that the actualy pvp playing field so so little and narrow. If you take thunder moutain, take away the pve area, your are left with less the half the zone and when you take away the keeps, bo's and other obsticales you are left with a very small precent of playing field, and there is only two paths you could follow so everyone tends to go the same way henze making it zergy. The worst thing is when both sides take one fort each and there is only one zone open and everyone runs into the one open small zone. I assume they made it in that way so people would easiler find each other, but in my opion they need to redo it.

btw Sorry for my bad english and thank you for doing a great job covering the games day PhoenixRed

[Shadowkin]

urk... they're still only at the 'ideas' stages for more high RR rewards.

rest sounds ok though. can't wait to see the two ramp seiges.

[akalukz]

Well, I don't understand his reasoning for not going with instances at the Forts. I mean they do it for the city sieges. So just copy that dynamic down to the fort. That way everyone can participate....

What currently happens.

Let's use Reikland as an example. Destro is locking it down to push into the fort. So what happens when there is like 5 mins to go is... Most people rush down to the South BO with the hopes of getting into the fort before the "supply lines" are full. So those that are up at the Northern BO are pretty much left out of getting into the fort for the first push.

What generally happens is those that went in first start to get killed/release out and slowly the second wave of players start to work thier way into the Fort, thereby giving another group of players a chance at taking the fort.


BUT if you put a rez point at the fort you are going to exclude everyone else from the realm except for those 100 or so people that were rushing to the Southern BO before the zone even capped..

I think a great thing to add with the current system is a warning type of window. Instead of it automatically transporting you back to the WC, it should give a 10 second window for you to leave the zone. It is extremely frustrating to be waiting for the call for reinforcements to come in because of a wipe or heavy losses only to be transported back to the WC with no way to know the population of the fort when you are trying to get there....so it is a crap shoot on whether you make it or not.

Or you could even put in a special Scenario (one for each pairing) where winning the scenario would give a buff/debuff to the lord depending on who wins the scenario. This atleast would give those sitting on the outside something to do instead of hoping that those inside wipe so you can get in and give it a shot and try to win some phat lootz.

[chiryuu]

I like your scenario idea.
It could be like a fight over supplylines or something similiar, something that will either boost the keep defense or help the invaders. Not a boss or anything like a ordinary PQ with loads of npcs you have to fight, just dang hard pvp over "resources", whatever those resources may be.

[Mendoras]

Just put fortresses in a seperated zone - now we have these huge performance issues, because all T4 Zones stick together. When a fortress is under attack you can forget all PvE (leveling, grind, PQ) in that pairing.

I think a sperate fortress zone could handle 600 or more players in one fortress - currently you have the ~300 players at the fortress and the XXX players camping outside or zoning into the pairing.
I think we need no instances - instances suck

[Azhul]

Originally Posted by Mendoras

I think a sperate fortress zone could handle 600 or more players in one fortress - currently you have the ~300 players at the fortress and the XXX players camping outside or zoning into the pairing.
I think we need no instances - instances suck

No, they don't. Instancing would solve a lot of this game's problems.

Whatever number the zone has - you have to plan for them to all be in one spot from time to time. That's the problem.

[Kregar]

So, the Baltimore Games Day Coverage and the news we got from there made me finally sign up so I can leave a short comment.

At first thanks to the Warhammer alliance crew for providing us with these awesome interviews!

Although I am really really excited about Land of the Dead I still am concerned about other things in the game and especially city siege. The feedback on it has been bad ever since beta and although it did not bother me until just a few weeks ago (because it was really hard to get into the city on our server) I am really disappointed with the end content city siege having been there 4 times now.

Completing the PQs is too hard with enemies around if you don't have two warbands in teamspeak working together. So after a few tries of completing the PQ and failing in doing so the whole city sieging ends in a big zerg, similar to Tarrens Mill (WoW), with both sides struggling back and fort between the spawning points. This is so simple, there is no other scenario in the game, that is that boring. I could imagine that a scenario somehow similar to Alterac Valley would be a lot more fun. With different checkpoints in the city to conquer and at each checkpoint a boss who drops one piece of invader gear or something like that.

So for now, my subscription ended today and I will not renew for a while as the current system is, at least for me, not entertaining enough to play. I will be back for sure, as WHO is really fun and has so much potential, but in the current state (AOE damage/ healing, fortress player cap, city sieges) simply does not offer enough incentive for me to play.

I put my feedback in this thread since my main concern at the moment is the current RVR system.