1.4.6 Detailed

With Warhammer Online's 1.4.5a patch due out next week, Mythic went ahead and posted their plan for the 1.4.6 patch.  If you remember, this patch will be focused on bug fixing.  While that may sound a bit boring, their plan shows some very important changes in the mix.

You can check out the full list here.  Here are a few of the changes which stand out to me...

Change Tier 4 lakes to bolster to 45

This one is a pretty big change.  The levels above 40 are considered hidden, in that only the combat formulas know about them.  By increasing the bolster, you will put all Tier 4 players on an even playing field as far as these levels are concerned.  Gear and renown points will still matter, but this should bring a closer balance.

Change scenarios to bracket by RR rather than CR

This is another interesting change.  By using RR to determine who fights who, it could bring a lot better balance to scenarios.  It's not clear how this will affect queue times yet, but it is definitely something worth looking in to.  

Player-damageable Keep/Fortress doors

This is always an interesting topic.  Before the RvR overhaul players did not really like whacking on the door.  Now that it is gone, a lot of them want it back.  I guess Cinderella was right (the band).

Change the way decay timers function on talismans

I was never a big fan of decay timers, but they do serve an important purpose when use on powerful items.  There are some bugs with LoTD talismans which this should address.

Change the way rams get repaired

The ram is an important part of RvR and has been known to get a little buggy when a lot of people are beating on it.  Personally, I don't like that the ram and siege equipment can repair itself (with player interaction).  I'd much rather see heals come from player abilities or consumables.

Remove flight animations when using Flight Masters

Turns out, these cut scenes are just fluff.  they never really bothered me, but I won't be sorry to see them go either.

This is just a small sample of what was in the list, so do go read the rest.

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Tip of the Spear

My time in League of Legends has been going pretty well lately.  In my last 10 matches I am 8 - 2 with Soraka.  I know that mentioning it will send me on a losing streak of epic proportions, but losses can be a good learning experience.

Generally, Soraka ends up in the bottom lane with a carry champion.  It's my job to keep us alive and the carry fed with last hits. Depending on who your opponents are, that is easier said than done.  This was especially true in one of my recent games.

My lane mate ended up being Nasus, which is a bit unusual. Our opponents were Shyvana and Nidalee.  It was actually one of the most challenging lanes I have been in.  The challenge came almost completely from Nidalee's Javelin Toss attack.  This long ranges spear throw does a good bit of damage when the game starts.

The Javelin Toss is a skill shot, so it can be avoided.  The problem was my lane mate did not get that memo and liked to stand still.  As a result, I had to spend a lot of mana to keep him at a reasonable health, and every so often I'd take a spear (to the knee) as well.  Pretty quickly we were pushed back to our tower.

One of Nidalee's favorite tactics was to throw spears while hidden in the bottom bush, and it was effective.  When we did manage to push them back a little, I took the opportunity to ward the bottom bush.  This let us know where she was at all times.

More importantly, it let our jungler know where she was at all times.  Thankfully, he was alert and came to gank our lane.  With the ward in place, Nidalee really did not have a chance.  A couple of successful ganks put an end to their control of the lane.

Lesson learned:  Use wards and have someone gank your aggressive opponents.  Luckily ours did it on his own.

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1.4.5a Update

On Friday, Warhammer Online developer Keaven Freeman hit the forums with an update on the upcoming 1.4.5a patch.  If you remember, 1.4.5 brought us Relics and the revamped Fortresses.  This next patch improves upon what was added and fixes some bugs.

The ETA for 1.4.5 is currently next week (week of March 5th).  You can check out the full post here.  Here are some of the changes we can expect...

“Augment Alliance,” fortress buff indicator, detailing which buffs are active on you and which point they came from

Glad to see this addition.  Feedback is an import part of any game system.

Chance to earn Insignia Clusters of player kills when your realm controls both GvD relics

Better stuff from player kills?  Sign me up!

Barriers have been added to the top of the fortresses, preventing access to the relic(s). These barriers are linked to the Relic Guardian, who must be killed in order to bring the barriers down

This will effectively end the ability to ninja relics.  That's both good and bad, but I'm satisfied with this solution.

A new UI window, allowing you to track: who owns a fortress and its various sub points; for the pairing you’re in, a relic tracker to show you which zone the relic is in right now (for the two pairings you’re not in, the relic tracker simply reports the relic’s location is “distant”); which relics are under your realms control and which are under the enemies control

Yay!  The UI will make the relics much more visible to the player-base and should increase the action.

A Relic Bonus indicator on the character portrait to alert you to what bonuses you have due to relic control

Much like the 1st change, it is import for players to know what is affecting them.

There are a bunch of other good changes coming up in this 'mini' patch, including a number of Tome of Knowledge unlock fixes.  Looking forward to seeing this live next week!

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Dominus Stress Test

The game formerly known as Prime Battle for Dominus, now just Dominus, held a stress test event last night.  This was the first time I, and many other people got to check out this upcoming PvP focused MMO.  It wasn't a beta (yet) as it was tightly focused on stressing their servers.

The screenshots below are just for fun and should not be taken as the state of the game.  As I mentioned, this doesn't even qualify as a beta session and we were using stripped down clients.

Here is a picture of one of the first loading screens, some nice concept art.  Please let us be that big battle mech as some sort of Play as monster or Session Play.

Out of the 3 factions, I chose Humans.  The Salient and Rodon seem sorta uppity to me and need to be put in their place.  Speaking of Rodon, I better see a guild named the Ro-Don Armada. In another shocking move, I chose the Engineer class.  Crazy right?

From what I can tell, the stress test was successful.  The Dominus login server went down a number of times and they managed to fix it.  Hopefully the true beta will start up soon, I could use some 3 faction PvP.

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WAR Rank Plans

For the last week or so, I have been working on the next version of WAR Rank.  The previous version was pretty basic, and just concentrated on the ELO scoring.  The new version will have a lot of bells and whistles.  here is a bit of what I am planning.

More Rankings. Top 25 for each career, weekly/monthly rankings, stat rankings.

Career and Server Rankings. For several stats, players will be able to view where they rank on their server and also for their career on the server.

Flags. Used to make a scenario standout, so maybe if it is a High-Elo match, or big upset or some other criteria.  This will let you check out matches from the front page or search.

Bonuses. For example, if an underdog team puts up a good fight they could get a few bonus rating points.  other bonuses might be career specific.  Bonus rating points could be awarded to an Engineer who gets 10 DB's, or a Bright Wizard who gets 20.  Careers in WAR are generally capable of different things, so they'd get their own specific bonuses.

Friends and Enemies. An automatically generated list of common teammates or enemies with some stats.

Trophy System. Sort of like an achievment system, players can get a trophy for winning a weekly contests or or other feats.

Teaming. I'd like for players to be able to group themselves together as a team.  This would be aimed at pre-made competitions.

So far, I've got a lot of work done on the rankings and bonuses.  I'm hoping to move it over to the live system soon.

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GW2 and WAR

With an NDA drop this week, a ton of Guild Wars 2 information has become public knowledge.  I am, of course, only really interested in one thing and that's PvP.  There are 2 types:  Structured PvP (scenarios) and World vs World vs World (WvWvW or 3W) which is similar to Open RvR.

First, let me say that GW2 and WAR are fundamentally different games.  There is no campaign or city siege as a goal in GW2, among other major differences.  This post is to highlight some of the ways that they are similar.

Attacking the Door.  The keep siege videos I watched mostly consisted of players trying to beat on a door.  They also used siege weapons on the door.  It was very reminiscent of pre-1.4 WAR.  I've been told that there are destructible walls, but they were not shown in the videos.  Also, some keeps don't have walls.  Instead, they use geographic obstacles like cliffs.

Golems.  In one of the videos, a GW2 player became a Golem and went to attack the door.  This is pretty much the same thing as WAR's Play as Monster system where you can become a Skaven Rat Ogre.  What I did like was that this Golem was built in the field.  Can I get a Steam Tank?

Supplies.  In GW2, small objectives, when captured, generate supplies which are then transported to the keep via NPC (Supply Caravans).  Once there, they are used to build siege weapons, strengthen defenses and repair things like the door.  This is how WAR works right now with objectives and resource carriers.  GW2 does seem to take it a bit further and allow players to carry supplies as well.

Area Buffs.  Guilds can claim keeps and provide buffs to friendly forces in the area.  This is similiar to how Fortresses work in WAR at present.  It also reminds me of how keep claiming and banners worked in WAR prior to 1.4.

Guards.  Keeps in GW2 are defended by NPC guards, very much like they were in pre-1.4 WAR.  One complaint often heard was about having PvE in PvP, so those guards were eventually laid off.

These are some of the ways GW2 3W is similar to WAR RvR.  There are a number of ways in which it is different too, but that deserves its own post.

I think it goes without saying:  I'll buy and give GW2 a shot as soon as I can :)

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Scenario Mechanics

Last week, a new Developer Discussion thread was created.  This time, it was to discuss ideas for new scenario mechanics.  The original reason for the thread was previous talks about shortening some scenarios like 6 vs 6 Caledor Woods.   The only topic that wasn't on the table was separate queues for pugs vs premades.

Other than the separation of premades and pickups, what other suggestions and ideas do you guys have to help make scenarios a more fast-paced, exciting experience?

As much as I hate to say it, my idea would be for a Surrender mechanic.  I hate to surrender and would much rather fight to the death but sometimes it just makes sense.  If you are out-geared, out-renowned and out-teamworked there really is not much you can do.  That way, everyone can move on with their lives and do something more enjoyable other than being camped.

It should work similar to how it does in League of legends.  No option to surrender for X amount of time ( 5 minutes ).  When you can surrender, it will take maybe 75% of the players to approve it.  The losers should get next to nothing as far as rewards go.  The winners should get a max-point award ( 500 usually ).

How feasible is this suggestion?  I'm not sure.  I have a feeling it would be a pretty big change since it would involve a voting mechanic which I don't think exists in the game.

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LoL Support

I've been playing a bit of League of Legends lately, I guess the competitive mood has taken over for the time being.  Currently, I'm midway through level 21 and inching closer to the cap of 30.  Even with XP boosts, it is quite a climb.  Nearly all of my time has been playing a support Champion, Soraka.

She is pretty much the heal bot Champion of LoL.  I have 3 heals, 1 mana heal, and and 1 silence.  Not many people fear an offensive Soraka, but it has happened.  My job is really just to keep my lane mate alive and fed, then try to keep my team alive and silence people when I can.  It's pretty relaxing.

I ended up having a good weekend in LoL.  Twice I had players want me to play with them the next game.  Here is a screenshot from one of my games yesterday.  I think it went pretty well.  By the end of the match, I was pretty much a tank.

As much as I like Soraka, I really need to branch out into other support characters.  If I ever do get to ranked matches, there is a chance Soraka will either be picked by someone else or banned.  in that case, I need a backup.

The problem is, I really dislike the theme of the other support Characters.  Sona, Janna and Taric to be precise.  Alistar isn't too bad, I just don't really like melee support.  If only Riot would make a support Champion that was kind of cool.  I may have to just bite the bullet and play some Sona though, she seems pretty powerful.

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Help Wanted

This one goes out to my international readers.  I am in need of some assistance in order to test the WAR Rank Add-On.

1)  If you are using a non-English client, what kind of special characters can you place in a player name?  For example:  À, Ä and so on.

2)  If you have any special characters in your name, or can make a character who does, I'd love to get some add-on results.  This also goes for WAR Russia, since I can't even make a character on that server.  If interested, please send me an e-mail.  Address is on the right hand side of the page.

Thanks!

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The 2800 Let Down

Featured Episodes are my favorite aspect of Star Trek Online.  In the past, they have provided high quality content in small chunks over a period of several weeks.  In addition to great storytelling, they included some interesting effects and rewards.  Sadly, the latest Featured Episode, The 2800, did not continue that trend.

There will be some minor spoilers, but really, there is not much to spoil.

Voice Acting.  The quality of the voice acting in the 2800 was sub-par, especially compared to previous episodes.  It sounded like they used people from around the office, which just did not work well.  There is one exception, the Gorn voice over was very well done.  Overall, it had a negative impact on immersion for me.

Tasks.  This episode mostly consisted of me running errands for delegates.  I mean actual errands, "Can you go reserve me a holodeck time slot?", "Can you get me a bottle of wine?" and so on.  Do you think Kirk or Picard would be doing any of that?  I don't.

Combat.  Maybe it was just me, but the ground combat seemed glitchy.  I think I had phantom Jem-Hedar running around.  Took me a while to finish that part of the mission, as my science officer is not really a ground power-house on his own.  The space combat portion was decent enough, nothing to really praise though.

I really hope the rest of the episodes are an improvement over this one.  It just didn't feel like it had the same quality of the others.

In other STO news, they will likely make my wallet a little lighter this week.  A DS9 Bundle goes on sale today, which includes a new bridge, ship interior, special duty officers, a shuttle, weapons and costumes.  I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff, so it will be mine.

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