Executive Producer's Letter - Part 1

[Garthilk]

From the From the Dev Team category we have: Executive Producer's Letter - Part 1

Hello Everyone,

The first half of 2009 has proved to be an exciting time for WAR! With hundreds of pages of patch notes it's hard to remember everything that's gone live, four careers have joined the front lines, you've experienced our live events which we plan to only make better, and we've made amazing progress in improving performance allowing for larger battles and more stable servers. Additionally we've improved the UI and opened it up even more to our modding community, introduced the RvR Token System, implemented keep upgrades, and we continue to fix bugs and improve the quality of the game every day. To say we've been busy is an understatement and there's no sign of slowing down in sight, we hope you enjoy the ride.

With the release of Patch 1.3 we'll complete the Call to Arms Live Expansion. You will finally have the chance to explore the Lands of the Dead, an exciting new addition with a vast new area to explore, new rewards to earn, and the most challenging content yet!

I'll be discussing this and more over the course of the next several weeks in a three-part Executive Producer's Letter. We want you to have a first hand look at what's new in WAR and what's to come and give you a chance to share your feedback about what you would like to see come to WAR.

Source

[Plutonium]

amazing progress in improving performance? wow.

[Reaver330]

Originally Posted by Plutonium

amazing progress in improving performance? wow.

Amazing is an overstatement. It's better, but not by much. That is ofcourse unless the 1.3 patch that I experienced that was super smooth wasn't just because the PTS server was barren.

[Azhul]

Since mass PvP and city sieges were the prime selling points of the game, performance in those areas should be the determining factor in rating the game's 'improvement'.

[slymie]

Rehashed propaganda. The core game we were all sold is broken and now they are trying to spin this "expansion" as a phenomenal addition to the game. The reality is that this is nothing more than a distraction from the broken aspects of the game so that they have time to fix them before another server merge is warranted.

Mythic being unable to provide even the slightest of class balances with this expansion simply shows how unprepared they were to release this game, and how understaffed they are to support it.

As sad as it makes me, I do not think this game will regain the subscriber base it had on release. What we have here is another Vanguard. Great promises. Great ideas. Great IP. All of it ruined due to a premature launch, lack of commitment to core design concepts, and an unwillingness to push changes out in smaller & quicker patches.

[akalukz]

The thing that bothers me most about this "letter" isnt' the fact that it is just rehashing old news. Or that they will get to the future of War in later letters. But rather the fact that it isn't Mark Jacobs making this post. Before/During and After all previous large patches Mark was a pivotal character and source of information. From my knowledge I haven't even heard Mark comment about LoTD or 1.3 since it was introduced back in January timeframe.

To me and many I know this more than anything else is making us questions wether or not to stay with WAR. When the Head dude won't even comment on his game (as he has always done in the past) and with the Head PR guy is out Hyping some other game.... it starts to make you wonder what is going on with the company and wether or not it is safe to continue to invest in the game with 3/6 month subs.

[Monkeyboyen]

does anyone know what happend to Mark Jacobs ? the last thing I heard was that he was going on a vacationover 2 motnhs ago..or is it a special long "vacation" from EA ? :P

[Banetek]

wait, does this mean its going to be 3 weeks before patch is released?

[stiltskin]

Mythic are at the NGE ( swg) and BFR (planetside ) moment . You can reel off any statistic and make them sound progressive if put in a certain way.

But, games need the foundation to be in order to build on them successfully. Only wow and eve seem to have a decent foundation with which to build upon.

Mythic could change this around in time, but I believe its a case of not seeing the wood for the trees. Glaringly obvious class and archetype inbalances , a broken rvr system with more pve that rvr in it , are just 2 that come to mind for nearly anyone who plays, yet repeatedly go under the radar every time by the powers that be.

It's almost as if game developers and gamers are on 2 opposite wavelengths of what they each perceive to be 'good' . A bit like a Shop-keeper trying to promote Pork Chops , when all his customers are vegetarian.

[Rer]

Being fully honest, the game has improved significantly. Hence, I can see why this letter was created. Not going to bash or anything, but if I don't see significant C&C/Server Stability improvements within a few months, I'm probably not going to stick around much longer.

[Azhul]

Originally Posted by Rer

Being fully honest, the game has improved significantly.

Being fully honest, the game is still significantly flawed. I see no good evidence that those flaws will be fixed any time soon, if at all.

This 'letter' was a feel-good propaganda exercise.

[orthgar]

Here's my favorite part of the letter ...

"We want you to have a first hand look at what's new in WAR and what's to come and give you a chance to share your feedback about what you would like to see come to WAR."

Honestly Mythic ... how much more feedback can you possibly get?

[Schadebeast]

Originally Posted by Plutonium

amazing progress in improving performance? wow.

Don't confuse client side performance with server side performance.

Originally Posted by Azhul

Being fully honest, the game is still significantly flawed. I see no good evidence that those flaws will be fixed any time soon, if at all.

This 'letter' was a feel-good propaganda exercise.

The game is still flawed sure, it wish they'd fix the horrendous shield clipping that my S&S chosen suffers from graphically. I wonder if they'll ever address that? I care about that almost as much as anything else because i see that graphical problem every second i'm logged in. I wish they'd fix that already though, but i don't expect they will anytime soon (because it's such a non-prority compared to other problems that exist).

[Azhul]

Originally Posted by Schadebeast

Don't confuse client side performance with server side performance.

Mythic is responsible for both parts. It doesn't help the paying customers if the game runs perfectly on Mythic's uber-PCs in Virginia.

[Schadebeast]

Originally Posted by Azhul

Mythic is responsible for both parts. It doesn't help the paying customers if the game runs perfectly on Mythic's uber-PCs in Virginia.

Yes but don't take what they say out of context, he was referring to server side changes. I'm not even going to get into a discussion about client performance because i play the game in 1080p and i run fine in all but the biggest of battles (easily 100+ players). Even the IC defense isn't all that bad and i've participated in in at least half a dozen times now; I get some nice frame stuttering but it's still 25-35+ fps (that's the lowest i've seen it dip so far). It seems a lot of people have far worse performance than I even with comparable systems. Considering the 100000 variables that affect client performance, it still doesn't hurt for Mythic to try and optimize the clients further (i'd like to have no frame stuttering too, smooth as butter 100% of the time). No matter how you slice it though, there's still going to be a pool of people who just need to simply turn down their settings (but that's common across all games so that's just advice in general).