Games Day Baltimore - Interview with Nate Levy

[PhoenixRed]

So, with all this Games Day Baltimore coverage, I'm sure some people have been waiting for this interview in particular. That's right, we cornered someone from Combat and Careers and asked some questions regarding some of the balance, abilities, and plans for the future for WAR's classes. Check out all the parts below.

Part 1:



Part 2:

[Rok]

Is Part 2 not avaliable yet?

[Duncan SM]

He seems like a nice enough guy but in the tank section when he was talking about taunt I had to roll my eyes a little bit.

First of all most of your targets won't know when they are taunted by you.

Second, any competent healer's group heal spam + occasional hots will heal through a tanks damage with taunt up or not on a single target.

Third, most classes have detaunts they will throw up if they are worried about a tank on them that will negate the taunt.

Finally, no good healer, rdps, mdps, or anybody else is going to stop what they are doing in group combat and hit a tank because they are taunted. They have more important things to do and they aren't worried about the 30% damage boost, and they shouldn't be.

Its a nice damage boost but c'mon, lets be real here.

[Jinsei]

Lol, BG soloing better than an IB.

[Grondoth]

Gaining grudge/hate. And he's right, IBs require a OF to get the grudge gain up. Rising Anger or even Dwarfen Riposte may change this a bit, especially because BGs don't get any reliable boosts to their mechanic generation.

[Gofr]

Originally Posted by Jinsei

Lol, BG soloing better than an IB.

I think he's just trying to sugar coat the situation when he said that. He did say in the interview that the BW/Sorc and IB/BG imbalances were the severe cases and that the other mirros are more or less on par. I think that's a good sign on our part.

[ThadeDrakshon]

Sigh, this guy seems like he's all numbers and not enough solid game play experience. Design on paper and design in action are completely different beasts. It's hard to know what’s wrong with the game if you only play it casually.

The IB/BG breakdown is going to make a lot of stomachs turn. I know everyone in After World got a laugh out of the absurdity of it. I’d love to see him show some people what a nice advantage BG have 1 v 1. Not that that’s even relevant.

I’m personally quite disappointed about the CC stuff as well. At least another few months of being chain CC'ed. yay!

Not inspiring much confidence…

-Thade

[Biffd]

Originally Posted by Duncan SM

He seems like a nice enough guy but in the tank section when he was talking about taunt I had to roll my eyes a little bit.

First of all most of your targets won't know when they are taunted by you.

Second, any competent healer's group heal spam + occasional hots will heal through a tanks damage with taunt up or not on a single target.

Third, most classes have detaunts they will throw up if they are worried about a tank on them that will negate the taunt.

Finally, no good healer, rdps, mdps, or anybody else is going to stop what they are doing in group combat and hit a tank because they are taunted. They have more important things to do and they aren't worried about the 30% damage boost, and they shouldn't be.

Its a nice damage boost but c'mon, lets be real here.

Lol qft. I honestly did not know that tanks taunt gave a dmg boost in RvR until watching this video. Being a rr50 Engineer, I'm never going to bother trying to take down a tank while he has heals on him; taking down the best tanks on our server with multiple people with no heals on them takes long enough.

Go for the squishies, take the tanks down afterwards, and don't worry about them killing you.

The tanks role in RvR is what it should be imo: push the battleline, and set up tank-walls.

I also thought it was a little funny that he said that almost everyone is equal, except the IB/BG. I know a Magus or two who might disagree with that...

[PhoenixRed]

Originally Posted by ThadeDrakshon

Sigh, this guy seems like he's all numbers and not enough solid game play experience. Design on paper and design in action are completely different beasts. It's hard to know what’s wrong with the game if you only play it casually.

I hear the C and C team actually plays pretty high hours. Your assumption is wrong in this regard.

I think either way, there are going to be people who will judge what someone from Combat and Careers team has to say regardless of whether it is true or not. You'll notice I press Nate for a few answers beyond explaining the mechanics of something, and challenge him to talk more about how player perception. In the end, I don't think they would be taking player feedback if they were sure about being right about the theory behind a class all the time.

That being said, there are several things in the video that I would call statements which players will either agree or disagree with. It's really everyone's call in terms of what they think of what Nate says about certain things - which is why I chose the questions that I did. The discussion, however, should be civil, and I hope it stays that way, because C and C is such a hotbutton topic for people.

[Babymagus]

would someone be so kind to post the major things he talks about? ... i can´t watch the videos.. -.-

[Azhul]

Originally Posted by Duncan SM

He seems like a nice enough guy but in the tank section when he was talking about taunt I had to roll my eyes a little bit.

First of all most of your targets won't know when they are taunted by you.

Second, any competent healer's group heal spam + occasional hots will heal through a tanks damage with taunt up or not on a single target.

Third, most classes have detaunts they will throw up if they are worried about a tank on them that will negate the taunt.

Finally, no good healer, rdps, mdps, or anybody else is going to stop what they are doing in group combat and hit a tank because they are taunted. They have more important things to do and they aren't worried about the 30% damage boost, and they shouldn't be.

Its a nice damage boost but c'mon, lets be real here.

Yes. I completely agree. In PvP, Taunt is a DPS ability, not a tanking one. It would have been better to reduce the target's damage (and by more than 30%) rather than boosting the tank's. Doing that to a BW or Choppa would certainly have an effect.

[Earlydawn]

Originally Posted by Azhul

Yes. I completely agree. In PvP, Taunt is a DPS ability, not a tanking one. It would have been better to reduce the target's damage (and by more than 30%) rather than boosting the tank's. Doing that to a BW or Choppa would certainly have an effect.

This exists, called Challenge.

I'm honestly a little irritated with this interview. I like his blunt approach to the topic of AoE, but he's way off the mark with the tank question. At the risk of being inflammatory, he seems almost arrogant in his repetition of my abilities - yes, thanks Nate, I know I can Taunt and I know I can Challenge, but I can't say I've ever "wrecked" anybody because of them. It's also alarming that he singles out Taunt, considering that it is offensive, which is not the problem, and does not have the appropriate UI features to make it effective in pulling off enemy players in the least. I think the multi-page posts on the official archetype board about tank issues should make it clear that there is a disconnect between tank theory and how its playing out.

I also fundamentally disagree about Nate's view on the issue of "career lobby tunnel-vision". If I've learned anything throughout my years of MMOs, its that the career knows when it isn't working. Do they whine? Yep. Do they have unbalanced, pet viewpoints on certain topics? Of course. However, when you have a complete *career archetype* complaining - I'm channeling tanks as an example here, but MDPS has also been vocal - there's a clear sign something is broken. Nate does address this, to be fair. However, there's clearly some misunderstandings between Combat & Careers and the players in terms of what we see as overpowered and / or broken.

We need a Ghostcrawler. Blizzard has a regular, ongoing dialogue with their players to communicate problems and upcoming changes. The reason they learned to keep the dialogue open, however, was to communicate design theory. Once it started, understanding the way forward with seemingly lost classes became much easier. Mythic obviously has the helm for each and every career in the game, but we need an active C&C presence. I completely disagree with the attitude of allowing the Community Team to moderate the majority of balance issue discussion so the careers team can "get work done". If you're telephoning the overwhelming majority of your qualitative information to your team, you're going to get misunderstandings on both the developer and player end. Several careers still have no idea of what their standing role in the game is invisioned to be - Magus, Shadow Warriors, White Lions, and I'd even argue both flex healers.

Next time, please send Gershowitz.

[PhoenixRed]

Originally Posted by Earlydawn

Next time, please send Gershowitz.

That wasn't an option. Adam had the weekend off and was enjoying it with his family. I really had no choice but to respect that, and would have even if I did have a choice. Besides, I think the scope of Adam's responsibilities has expanded, so Combat and Careers should be able to stand on their own.

I didn't get arrogance from Nate's answer - in fact he seemed one of the most non-arrogant people I'd met. But I did sense an "educating" answer rather than an "acknowledgment" one, which is why I pressed him on the topic. I guess I needed to do a better job of it.

[Lunitari]

I didn't mind most of the stuff he talked about. Although I do believe they need to look at the IB/BG but when he really got into tank and he was asked about new tank stuff I got excited and was totally shot down. He pretty much said you got taunt even though I am sure we know and it doesn't let us tank in RvR. We the players have put this out and yet we are told hey you got taunt.

[radishlaw]

I respect what he is doing, and really, everyone understands combat and career team is one of the most underappreciated teams in any mmo. Still, there are a few points that I personally disagree with.

The question on resists is from me, and I have to admit my word choice is not great. But I don't see any reason that resist have such a steep diminishing return compared to other stats, or even to armor, which don't even have any diminishing return at all. All tanks can easily get to hard cap, and then some. On the other hand, because of the extreme (yes it is extreme) nerf to talisman resist, the best resist you can do don't approach 2000, and nowhere near hardcap. That means it IS impossible to reach hard cap at all. Surely there is some problem with that?

On class balance, I think he got a bit defensive there. From other interviews with him, the C&C team are looking at some classes, like SW, Mara or Runepriests.

It does seem their focus is not on tanks though. I'd like to point out one thing to the devs and other players: tank wall doesn't work that well, because there are no LOS problems. A RDPS can easily finish off anyone at the backlines, because tanks can not block line of sight, so the best a tank wall can do is raise a little bit disrupt/dodge - something that does not trouble stat-stacking RDPS at all. In my opinion, this is the major problem of a tank: they don't function as good against RDPS, and currently RDPS contribute a lot to damage in RvR. Guard, Taunt and Challenge are good abilities, but they doesn't work that well in the chaos of large scale fights, and it isn't easy for tanks to reach the RDPS. I would hope the C&C team can look into this problem tanks are facing in current RvR.

On a lighter note, he did mention "small changes" to all careers in 1.3, and I welcome this. One of the problems that plague Class balance is they overdid some things, instead of tweaking numbers a bit at a time. Of course, we won't be able to judge until the patch notes are out, but I remain cautiously optimistic to the upcoming class balance.