Why the Underdog system is already being abused

Well it's only been what, a week since 1.3.3? And already realms are working out how to break the Underdog system and bend it to an unitended advantage. Certainly on Karak-Norn the most effective Order guilds are letting Destruction push the campaign during the day and logging the big guns on when it hits Altdorf and bomb the crap out of a couple of instances giving them enough VP's to prevent the city being locked and logging off again. Doing this it builds up Orders underdog points nicely.

Rinse and repeat a couple of times and when it comes to 2-3am, said Order guilds will properly logon, and push the campaign easily towards IC due to :
1) Lack of opposition to worry about and...
2) Easier to lock the zones (and city I think) due to the underdog points

Then, down goes the Destruction King for the 40th time, because you know.. Order is an Underdog with the multiple RR80 players in full Sovereign that are killing the king up to 8 times a night (sadly I kid ye not) while Destruction have killed Mr Franz... Once.

And then the cycle begins again as Destruction wake up, try to push the campaign only for one or two instances to be bombed which means it's impossible to lock the city down in the time given (you halve the city timers and PQ points, but keep the Generals on full hit points and the PQ reset timers the same as the two hour version....)

So basically Mythic there's two things here... You need to make a king kill count as a large number of underdog points for a longer duration than 24 hours or you need to stop having pushes to a city count as an underdog point, at least wait until it's locked to stage 2 first.

Or you know.. Nerf bombing (from both sides).

Looking over the next few weeks

Things in WAR will no doubt slow down over the inevitable winter festivities. Mythic will be heading home for some well deserved rest. Guilds will go quiet as people remember the little Snotlings they need to pay attention to and all those Dwarfs get fatter as they gorge themselves on Turkey and beer (mmmmm) and can't move off the sofa.

So what do we have to look forward to in WAR over the next month or so?

Will the most important thing is KEG END our traditional winter festivities (and I must have a gobbo bar back) It went down a storm last year, partly I believe due to the grindy nature of the event so that when the war front was quiet, there was plenty to do.

Looking further ahead we should be expecting 1.3.4 (unless they shift it to 1.4 if it's fairly major changes) I'd guess around the end of February. If this comes with the expected class balances (amusingly we had a scenario last night where 4 classes represented all 12 Order. Slayer, Warrior Priest, Bright Wizard and Knight, which also seems to represent the vast majority of classes in an order warband as well. I'm hoping to Gork as well that they add in the extra influence rewards or other weapon drops etc as well to RvR to give a bit more drive to get to the lakes.

Somewhere floating around Keg End and the Night of Murder live events we should find Scurvy Dogs as well, I'd expect it to be after the Night of Murder but if it's between and with a possibility of 1.3.4 in the first couple of months we could have a VERY busy new year !

Of course, my predictions aren't exactly known to be very accurate

WAR Chri...Gorkmas List

Over at Werits lovely little blog he posted his WAR Christmas List, so since it's the season of smushing and all, I figured I'd jump onto a good idea and post my WAR Gorkmas List. As with Werits, this will be fairly reasonable list.


Oi Gork,

Dis year, I been gud at smushin Stunties, Oomies and dem Pointy Earz. I set fires all over dat big city place and went to the big dusty place an' also wrote lots of wurdz to say how gud you are. So wud yer be a gud Gork and gies me dis stuff? Or do I 'ave to bash yer 'ead in and go 'n' yell at Mork instead?

1) Nemesis System: Quite a bit was mentioned about this a while ago but nothing ever came of it. Having a few nemesis players (almost like an enemy list instead of friends list) which would give you rewards and what not upon helping to defeat them on the field of battle. Guessing it's one of those things that was shelved due to being difficult to implement but I was really looking forward to it.

2) Expanded ORvR Influence Rewards: Give us a reason to fight in Thundercrap Mountain (this zone is always ignored on Norn, only Elf and Human pairings are ever pushed unless both are capped). The high end renown tokens drop so rarely that it's more luck than effort to get them, give us an expanded system reaching into high renown ranks so we have more to aim for.

3) Fixing Stupid Terrain: Starting to get annoying getting stuck on fences, falling into inescapable holes and riding down Dragonwake towards Ember only to lose 75% health because of THAT STUPID GRADIENT OF THE RAMP WHICH SENDS YOU FLYING TO YOUR NEAR DEATH EVERY BLOODY TIME

4) State of the Class: Lets do a state of each class and it's mirror, speak with the players about concerns over the class, bugs, broken mechanics and what the devs think of the class currently. Invite players to submit feedback on the classes and sit down and speak with them, there's a great community forming for WAR, it's time to tap into that knowledge

5) Revisit the land of the dead: Because it's almost a dead zone already. 6 months or so down the line and barring the odd venture in to check on a Colossus spawn or to venture into Tomb of the Bug Lord. I'd actually love to see the high end RvR influence rewards be in this zone, get more high renown players to fight here, bonus influence for purging and defending of course! But it's time to see what can be done to stop the place being a PvE and levelling zone.

Thunks!

Lokax

Whatever happened to sieges?

From the towering Wilhelms Fist to the underground Badmoon Hole, keeps are impressive pieces in the lakes, surrounded by the battlefield objectives and are central to taking control of the zone. So what happened to them? Where did the siege warfare go? I cannot speak for each server, but certainly over in Karak Norn (EU) the keeps are simply a time sink for the attacking force. Very little actual warfare takes place over them now. Before the addition of the extra ramp you could defend a keep at the lords room with a wall of tanks, now with the addition of an extra huge ramp up to the key, vital, heart of the keep (yeah, because it makes sense to have your local architects design that) a tank wall is all but useless due to it being stretched so thin and a mass of players will just rip through a keep without the chance of a smaller force being able to hold back the mass tide the keeps fall quickly now and without much incident.

Siege weapons have remained an absolute joke for the last year. Sod all damage, too expensive and completely ineffective at contributing anything meaningful to a siege (rams not included). The guards, even as champions are nothing more than a passing thought as they disappear in the aoe. Rewards for defending the keeps are pretty much pointless as you gain more tokens from general RvR than a slim chance of defending a keep and getting a reward bag, not to mention getting the part you actually need.

The battling over a keep which would have me on the edge of my seat as I sat in the tank wall waiting for the surge, or the breaking down of the final door to charge in to meet my fate or find my glory has gone, keeps right now seem to be nothing more than a time sink. What once was a possibility of a small force holding out against massed ranks has now descended into a glorified battlefield objective.

It's not about rewarding people for taking or defending keeps. It's about making the sieges enjoyable yet tense, defendable with smaller numbers but takable with the correct tactics and having players feel they are contributing to the siege on an impressive structure rather than standing about in a flimsy cardboard box.

1.3.3 Notes and a look beyond to 1.3.4

Well first of all, we're still waiting on the server going live in Europe so this is only a look over the notes without any first hand experience.

1.3.3...

Underdog System: Looks good so far, might need a bit of tweaking but I think it's all but impossible to tell how it will pan out until it's on unbalanced servers. Only point I would like to see is that it seems to favour sides who can push to stage one of the city no problems but never lock it down. Does that make a server unbalanced enough to warrant being included in an underdog system?

Ooooh Shiny: One for those who have imba PC's, I'm sure mine can run it nicely, but not in mass scale RvR, but with a new PC on it's way in the summer (saving my shinies up) I'll be looking forward to trying this out a lot. (Will be sure to take some nice screenshots in full on shiny mode)

WAR Report: Ooooh nice idea, brilliant for those who are looking for some instant action as it saves the (not all that much really) hassle of getting to the war front when you first log in. I can actually see a variance of this being implemented in other games as I think it's a cracking idea. Though I have to admit, I'm not sure how much I'll use it for the simple reason that where there is a lot of action I'll be going with the guild, so wont be instantly as I log in, where I would instantly go for some quick smushin' I'd go to a quieter area to roam about on my own. Still, love the idea

Balance Changes: Meh, nothing here or there of any use much past bug fixes, but as I said before, I wasn't expecting any major class changes this patch (and this close to the winter holidays), there is still a lot of work to be done on classes (NO class should do more close combat damage than close combat characters for example *cough* bomb *cough*)

Sovereign Jewel Drops: Mmmm, more shinies to collect, sell and eventually chuck out my backpack when I have no more room. Still at least they're dropping again.

Player Armour Parts: Sadly I don't think this means I'll be able to make armour from dead stunties :(

Armour Set Changes: Nice to see some fixes to the warlord set but a shame the Borc Warlord set is still absolutely pish past the 5% extra block.

1.3.4...

Ooooh well, for who haven't seen. There was a chat on the US PTS from the devs about some aspects of the game but all I'm focused of right now is a little bit of text...

"More high-end weapons and trinkets are on their way and will be achievable via RvR. They may potentially make it in the 1.3.4 patch notes.

Andy clarifies with: "More to the point we're listening to the feedback provided by players who want more RvR item rewards and are looking at the ways we can deliver those. Aside from that, we're not divulging any specifics regarding this, however we are hearing what the players are saying regarding this loud and clear.""

Yuuuuuuuuuusssssssss!!!! *does the Waaaagh dance!*

Ok, so no patch notes last week...

But with the PTS event tomorrow on the US to test out the Bloom and HDR (seriously, you need an event to test someones graphic settings?) there's a good chance we'll see the notes today. I don't expect anything for the careers other than minor bug fixes so I think this will be a fairly low key patch release. But still gives us something to moan about right?

Now where's our nemesis system, increased RvR influence rewards and Black Orcs getting bigger as they progress in renown....

And now time to make Lokax

It's something that's been brewing in the dark, stinky and fungsy recesses of my mind for a while.. A Warhammer model of Lokax. Now back in my younger days I loved Warhammer and enjoyed painting. Although I never played the tabletop game more than a couple of times with a friend I loved Blood Bowl and played and painted a lot of models for it so i still have the odd paint and bits and pieces from left over projects stashed in my cupboards which have moved house with me.

So it was back in the summer I noticed a hobby store opening near me and picked up a pack of plastic Black Orcs (who knew that moulded plastic could be so expensive) and it's now that I've actually decided to do something with it. So to force me along this project I'll try and get an update to it every week, if not for anyone else, then for me.

So the idea is to turn these:Into this...


Wish me luck!

1.3.3 Patch notes are a coming!

Another one of these posts you find on that Twitter malarky. This time from Andy at Mythic (he's the guy that does the stuff... you know.. stuff... posts.. n stuff.. I dunno, I'm a European we don't get Mythic interaction) Anyway, he just posted this last night so (I'm guessing) we should see the patch notes by the end of the week: Andy_Mythic's Twitter:

"Just finished my first edit of the 1.3.3 WAR Patch Notes. "

Oooh.. stuff!

"Secret Stuff"

Found this on Josh Dreschers twitter

"Over the past few weeks, I've been writing 10+ pages of STUFF* nearly every day. My hands are tired. *"Stuff" is code for "secret goodies". 2:11 PM Nov 20th"

Now I'm not one for following Twitters, I don't have an account and don't have the time to check them as well as blogs etc but with the recent EA layoffs and news about Mythic losing some of the staff I had been doing some digging about to try and find anything to report. Not a lot came of it (and some of it was subsequently removed by the authors so I honored that and did not re post) but Josh has left this up for a few days now and whether it's just me getting desperate for news or reading too much into it (it could be that national novel writing month thing...) I hope it's 'stuff' for WAR... make of it as you will...

Get to da Choppette ?

This was a piece of artwork (well texture and possibly model) of a Female Choppa done by one of the recently laid off artists by EA in his spare time at Mythic (good luck, and best wishes in the future). Always love seeing the little extras and creativity that never make it into a game.