1.3.2 is here, but will it save the day?

First off I want to say thanks to everyone who showed up during this PTS cycle. Each night we had a good amount of players participating. Each night the performance seemed to get better, and there were some crazy fights, some lasting almsot 2 hours.

Now if we get the same effect going live from PTS? We won’t know until tomorrow. It is going to be an interesting event if it does.

Mythic seems to be moving in the right direction especially when stability is involved.

So if you are on the fence and did not participate in the PTS events, then check it out tomorrow. If you are gone and looking to come back, use your 10 day freebie to check it out.

later on.

Our Second Skin

So 1:30 am comes around and I am about to go to bed.  It was a busy day getting things ready in Order to help with the Public Test Event, and so now it was time to sleep before I had to go back out and do it again later on tonight.  Like most people I go to do some final catchups before bed, and when I go to Twitter, I see an update for a movie called Second Skin.  I heard about this movie and was looking forward to watching it.

The movie itself was based around MMO’s and the players that play them.  These players are all gamers, we can see it in there eyes, their expressions, and their attitudes.  Each one has a story to tell.  A different journey for each one that playing an MMO has taken them on.  Whether it be for love, personal gain, status, or even wanting to belong.  We familiarize with each one of these people, because we all know someone that has shared the same trials and tribulations.

The movie opens us up to some serious questions though.  How much is enough?  How far is one willing to fall, before one comes to the reality that there is a problem? And I guess the most important question is being,  the question Why?

Watch it, and pay attention.  Whether it is a good aspect or a bad aspect each one of us can familiarize with one of them.

Peace

M

Post patch review

Well it has been enough time I think that I can give my thoughts on how the last patch played out for WAR and the player base.

Over all I feel that the AoE reduction and the changes to CC were a step in the right direction.  Scenarios seem to be more enjoyable for most players, and we seem to be seeing more RvR in the lakes(Iron Rock Server).  With this patch many players seemed upset at the beginning because of the heavy emphasis on AoE in everything we did.  Players had relied so much on AoE to remain competative that they were hesitant to switch their spec and go single target.  Players took the chance and some were happy, some were placated, and some were still not satisfied.  This is understandable.  What is interesting though is the fact that players are once again utilizing assist trains and team work to accomplish things where everyone in the group provides some sort of support, compared to before where it was just who could bring the most AoE’s.

Players are moving forward waiting for the sister patch to be released.  We all want to see if Mythic can deliver a second time.  We all want to see productivity.  We want to see progress.  Mythics new approach that Josh Drecher mentioned in his interview with Gaarawar over at Gaarwar Gabs show us as players that they are working to provide a solid and enjoyable gaming experience for all those involved.  The interviews with Gaarwar show the beginning of progress and productivity that players want.  Not all changes are going to be desirable, but that are changes that are needed.

Honestly I am having more fun in game right now that I have in a long time.  I say this not because of reduction in AoE and changes to CC, I say this because players are out fighting.  I am seeing many names that I have not seen in months.  This is a good sign.  Players are slowly returning, and by slowly, I mean very slowly, but they are returning.

Until the next patch.

Peace

Risk v Reward

There was a discussion between the Core testers about Risk V Reward in WAR and other MMO’s.  I want to state upfront this was not a proposed topic by Mythic, but rather a discussion brought up by one person.  In todays MMO’s the phrase “Risk v Reward” is tossed around heavily like it is a political buzzword like “grassroots”.  MMO’s are currently and will always be seperated into the older generation and the newer generation.  Keep in mind the older generaion should not be based around age, but yet around MMO experience, to where the newer generation is based around little MMO experience.  The easy way to figure out which generation you fall into is this.  If WoW or any MMO after it was your first, then you are part of the newer generation.  If you predate WoW then odds are you are the Older generation.

Lets take a trip back in time

Ultima Online often referred to as UO is pretty much the grand father of the Modern MMO.  Some players might disagree with this statement, but it was the first to offer a 3d world, available to the masses.  Crafting skills with the ability to sell to other players, mounts for faster movment, and the first incarnation for PvP combat.  Unknowingly many aspects that are alive today in MMO’s derive soley from aspects of UO.  There were no factions, sides, or class archtypes.  It was just Players in their purest form.

Everyone was on an even playing field from the begining.  Every ability (although not actual abilities) in game, every piece of armor, and every weapon was available to each and every player out of the box.  There were roughly 50 different skills, and each player had 700% points available to them to spend on these abilities.  Players could train these skills to the desired amount with a maximum being 100%, but doing so would limit a player to only 7 skills if they trained 7 of them to max level.  Players decided what they wanted and moved forward.

Enter PvP

UO honestly offered the best PvP expeirience in any MMO to date.  When a player killed enough of his fellow players his name would turn red.  These players preyed on the other gamers, and it was quite funny looking back when there would be a group of players mining for ore, and a Red name would appear.  It became every man for themselves as they struggled to get out alive.  Watch the discovery channel when a lion is hunting a herd of animals.  It was pretty much the same thing.  If you were lucky then you got out alive, you may have lost your stash of Ore, but you made it out.  These PvP players trained themselves to be efficient killing machines.  They all became Armor wearing spellcasters wielding a Kryss (fencing, it was fast).  A group of players got fed up with this, and began strategizing on the best way to counter the PvP players.  They decided that they would need a minimum of a certain percentage in some skill, while other skills would be needed to be maxed out.  This act by the players for the sole purpose of defense gave birth to the Min/Max player that is still around today.  In order to be good, you would ned A, B, and C.

The War

Previously there would be only one PvP flagged player maybe 2 showing up to attack players, but since the player base began to adapt and have friendly players guard them, most of the PvP players assault seemed to fail.  Due to the player base allied together forming groups for defense, protection and to game with, it was only a matter of time before the PvP players did the same thing.  The players now had two factions in game.  Those who wish to destroy all other players, and those who chose to keep it from happening.  the fighting was immense, but it was not staged in a single area.  It was more reaction based combat than anything else.  This turned into it’s own Subgame after awhile.  Players did what they could by spying and trailing each other to find the base of operations for both sides, in attempts to stop the other team at it’s source.  When these bases of operation were discovered, premade strike teams were put together for the assault.  Keep in mind though that since it was an MMO, ultimatly these fights would end, but the War would not.

Loss

Players could lose a lot of what the worked for, and so the price of death and not being able to retrieve your gear was immense.  The risk of losing everything had to be wieghed against the fact that if you won, your opponent would be set back.  This was true Risk  v Reward.

Back to our time

Many game companies saw what happened in UO, and thus began cutting through the red tape.  They game us factions to fight against, Guilds to group with and eventually scenario’s and battleground to fight in.  They began basing content on Min/Max factoring for gear and items.  They developed different classes and careers to be chosen from, depending on what your role was to be in game.  They made an attempt to level the playing field, but in the end taken something that was pure in form and bastardized it.  They are so worried about what role someone fills, that they forgot the most important factor, that being Player choice.  Instead of players having to adapt to challenges, they file complaints about something being to overpowered for them to fight against.

In UO players would decide that if they wanted to survive then they needed to change, in modern MMO’s if a player wants to survive, then it is the game that needs to change not themselves.  In UO if you sucked as a player then your worked on your skill as a player got better or you quit the lifstyle of fighting.  In Modern day MMO’s if you suck as a player then your opponents will be reduced in effectivness, never forcing players to develop their gaming skills.

Risk V Reward

Modern MMO’s took what was once a great thing, and reworked the idea of what Risk v Reward is.  In effect there is no Risk in games anymore.  And the Reward is that the weak player will never have to become better to remain competative.

Destructive feedback

So many times, we get to read opinionated post like this one here.  Once person giving their thoughts on a certain subject and posting it for the world to see.  Right now there is a thread on the Warhammer Aliiance Hotplate found here.  Once again we get a divine opinion from a content lead that bashes Mythic (who is not perfect in any way), and then says it is constructive feedback.  The problem with these types of posts is that it does nothing to help the community or the game, in fact it generally get more people to gripe and complain about aspects they truthfully know nothing about.

Yes everyone knows that there are issues in game, and at the same time Mythic has stated what players need to do, and that is provide feedback on the official forums and let them know.  Instead the OP decides once again to take it upon himself and make a post contradicting himself many times in an attempt to bash Mythic.  Andy from Mythic even replied, and the OP sort of gave a BS reason still second guessing the whole basis of the PTS and Mythic testing events.

It is good though to see some of the readers who are tired of the biased Content Lead complain for the sake of complaining.  They struck back, and honestly I would not be suprised if they are banned in the next day.  Warhammer Alliance follows the rules of Do as I say and not do as I do.  We have all seen posts edited, delted, and members banned for less.

1 2 3…

1.  Already players have mixed feeling about the upcoming LoTD.  This is understandable to an extent.  Not every player will be happy and that is just how it goes.

2.  Players are getting ready to jump in, get gear, and hopefully cause more RvR activity with it’s implementation.  We will have to wait and see

3.  People are coming back.  Some servers are seeing it, and others are not.  Either way, I have a feeling that populations may stable somewhat after the gain loss of players is factored in.

I mention these things, because these seem to be what many players are conversing about at the moment.  These are not exact quetes, but just generalized statments.  There are still issues that need to be worked on, but I think some aspects should be fixed.  The difference between being worked on and fixed are night and day.  Some mechanics are broken plain and simple.  Others need some tweeks.  I hope after the release of LoTD, Mythic will invest as much time and resources as are needed in order to fix the items that are broken, as tweeking small issues can wait.

Peace

-M

Sands run Red test event

Event

Well Mythic is now running the Sands Run Red Live event on the PTS please login in and test.  PROVIDE FEEDBACK.  Testing and providing feedback will allow them to push out a better product to live when the time comes.

So get out there and get ready, and enjoy a preview of some of the things to come.

Damn technology

So I was having issues with the audio, and so there for, no one will be able to here the leetness that is the P-O-D-C-A-S-T the Webcast opening, so here it is.

done

for the full song (it is on a boat) for the contest

done

Nerfed Buttons

Hello,

I’m Raggok a.k.a Oggar a.k.a Oozo.  For my first post I decided to go easy and tackle a totally non-controversial topic:  Nerfed Buttons.

Nerfed Buttons is a popular Warhammer add-on that you can find on www.curse.com.  As to what Nerfed Buttons does, I’ll let one the creators handle that:

”’NerfedButtons”’ lets you define ”’prioritised”’ and ”’conditional”’ abilitiy lists for your hotbar slots. NerfedButtons will automatically ensure that the highest priority ability that passes its conditions is bound to the hotbar slot at any time.”

This is a very powerful tool.  You can prioritize a hotkey bind to do a back positional with a fallback of doing a nonpositional attack, for example.  You could priortize an ability like Sever Blessing and have it backed up with your standard attack.  Whenever your target acquires a blessing, you will automatically sever it without having to notice it, think about it, or react to it as long as you are spamming your main attack.  The add-on provides a scripting language which offers many (too many?) possibilities.  It will monitor stacking,  so you don’t overstack a debuff.  It will monitor whether your target has CC immunities, so you don’t waste a CC.  It will perform actions based upon your target’s health; based upon how much hate or grudge you have built up; based upon reactionary abilities that work off of parry or block; etc. etc.  The list goes on.  You could literally sit down and write a script that allows you to play using a single button.

But, is doing that in your best interest as a player?  Should add-ons like Nerfed Buttons (and Twister for Chosen/KoTBS) be disabled and banned?  I’d like to explore these questions in this article and give my own personal opinion.  Let’s look at a thread on Warhammer Alliance as it contains the most common opinions and arguments with regards to add-ons like NB.

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=288692

Someone asks for help setting up an attack sequence for an ironbreaker using NB and gets this response.

“First:
Make sure you have the latest and greatest NerfedButtons.

Second:
Try these changes. I am typing them by hand, so hopefully I have not injected any syntax errors:

/nb add 2[Axe Toss]
[Shield of Reprisal]
[Binding Grudge];st:1:s:e:
[Stone Breaker];st:1:s:e:
[Inspiring Attack];st:1:s:p:
[Stubborn as Stone];cd:20;cm:45:+
[Guarded Attack];st:1:s:p:
[Vengeful Strike];st:1:s:p;cm:75:+

As I understand it, this *should* translate to:
1) Hit with Axe Toss if you are out of melee range.
2) Hit with Shield of Reprisal whenever it is active.
3) Hit with Binding Grudge and allow it to be applied once per enemy. If you switch targets and the enemy is not afflicted with Binding Grudge by *you*, you will hit them with this ability. If you switch back to your first target and this effect is still on the enemy, you will not hit them again with it.
4) Hit with Stone Breaker and allow it to be applied once per enemy.
5) Hit with Inspiring Attack, allow it to be self applied once.
6) Hit with Stubborn Blow if you are at or above 45 grudge. Since this ability lasts for 20 seconds, I put it on a forced 20 second cooldown.
7) Hit with Guarded Attack, allow it to be self applied once.
8 ) Hit with Vengeful Strike if you are at or above 75 grudge. Allow it to be self applied once.
9) Spam Heavy Blow until any conditions are met that will trigger the abilities in steps 1-8.

Third:
You may want to consider adding Juggernaut and Sever Blessing to the line up as well (similar to Shield of Reprisal).

I hope this helps, and happy hunting!”  – Raggnarok

The negative reaction is, of course, predictable.

“sad as hell that what in effect because of addons comes down to mashing one button or another..
hope they stop this crap in the future, its pathetic.” – Toza

“This add on is nothing but a crutch for bad players and should be removed asap.” -  Mikos

“It just too much of a macro for many players tastes. It goes beyond a crutch or a mod, to almost a cheat. It removes any skill or decision making.” - lysico

Yes, it can be used to remove decision making.  That is very accurate, but is that necessarily a good thing that needs to be banned because it gives someone an unfair advantage?  Someone who writes a long complicated script as given above is seriously handicapping themselves.  They will not be able to react to non-scripted events.  Nerfed Buttons is a very powerful tool, but someone who overuses it just ends up shooting themselves in the foot.  Take Witch Hunters, for example.  I fraps a lot of my fights and I’m amazed at how many WH screw themselves because they prioritize Confess! (disarm) on their main attack button.  They remove the decision-making process from themselves and end up disarming automatically whenever they parry.  Bad, bad, bad.  And here is an example why taken from a T3 frapsed combat log:

***** parried your [Slasha].

*****’s [Confess!] hits you for 215 damage. (108 mitigated)

*****’s [Repel Blasphemy] hits you for 151 damage. (76 mitigated)

Okay, so now all my attacks are going to be parried BUT, hey… I’m disarmed anyway.  This WH was using the Riposte tactic for added comedic value.  They totally screwed themselves by relying too much on Nerfed Buttons.  Now, does Nerfed Buttons give an advantage to someone who uses it wisely (which is to say: doesn’t overuse it) against someone who doesn’t use it at all.  Hell yes, you bet it does.  I am currently using Nerfed Buttons on my Choppa for two basic functions.  First, to make my keybinds more accessible and efficient.  Second, to perform standard repeated combinations so I can concentrate more on the fight than on my keyboard.  It changes as I try different things out, but I typically have an NB button that does my snare, bleed, armor debuff, and main attack.  I have another NB button that I use for my AoE attacks.  And, I have an NB button that I use for burst damage.  At the moment, it does Keep on Choppin followed by Weakling Killa.  Control and healing abilities like Sit Down!, Shrug It Off, and Furious Choppin are far too important to sequence with anything else.  From my point of view, Nerfed Buttons allows me to keep track of more important things such as my movement, my positioning, and what is going on around me.

 

Choppa is a pretty simple career when it comes to the number of abilities we have to juggle.  If Mythic decides to ban NB, I will adjust accordingly.  However, some tanks have to use 20+ abilities just to play at an acceptable level of effectiveness.  It’s a career like this where an add-on like Nerfed Buttons has more benefit to the player and the functionality it provides becomes more important to them.   It’s not uncommon to see a tank say that they will stop playing Warhammer if NB gets taken away from them.  The reason being is that managing so many abilities is not fun for them.  I have a 40 Chosen, so I understand where they are coming from.  Using all the abilities you should be using while trying to manually twist auras would only be fun to a masochist. 

“NB has been around since WAR beta (longer than most players) and to date is not considered to break any addon rules according to Mythic (don’t get Mythic mixed up with GOA here BTW…).

A GOA representative has made it clear they would like to ban it, but the last post on the jeaux online forums by GOA got quickly removed when players questioned the GOA community lead comments (probably due to voicing a non official opinion… you’ll may get the same in-game).

Yes, Mythic may decide to change their view on letting addons change abilities bound to hotbuttons and stop NB, Twister, DECA and other addons from working in future via a simple API change (back to playing whack-a-mole with 40+ buttons, what fun!). This may happen in 1.3 or it may not…

Either way there are people who like it and some that don’t. Obviously only the ones who don’t like it complain, but each to their own, all depends how you prefer to play the game. Fortunately most people in the past (including players from Mythic and WA) have quickly come to love the addon once they’ve tried it, realising it increases their enjoyment of the game.

Good luck all. We may be around post 1.3, we may not…. “  – URFUBAR, NB creator

Is Nerfed Buttons legal to use now?  Yes, it is.  Also, it’s free and anyone can use it.  However, there are many people out there who refuse to use third-party addons.  World of Warcraft went through a similar situation.  There were mods and macros which were far too powerful.  So, Blizzard took control and restricted how you could build your macros.  I think that Mythic should do the same (however they might not have the resources to do so).  I do think that some of the things you can do currently with Nerfed Buttons cross the line.  However, I also believe that there should be a way to script basic sequences to help manage keybinds and perform basic combinations.  WoW allows this, and IIRC DAoC even had a “backup ability” feature built into it’s UI.

Until a final decision is made, I will continue to use Nerfed Buttons in a limited fashion.

- Raggok/Oggar/Oozo

Videos

I just wanted to say whats up, and let everyone know that we will begin hosting tutorial videos for player on our site.  Keep fighting the good fight.

Peace

-M