Thursday, April 15, 2010

Entitlement

Is everyone entitled to the end game gear in the game?  Are the casual players entitled to it?  In my opinion no casual gamers should not be able to get end game gear from any online game.  This is true for most MMOs.  WOW, FFXI, and Aion only the hardcore gamers get the end game gear and not the causals.  WAR is different and I don't know if that is a good thing or not.  Causal gamers in WAR can easily obtain Sov. Gear supposedly the best gear in the game.  They can experience the endgame content very easily especially with this new patch coming out and the new city instance.  From what I read every instance will get to stage 3 no matter what.  They are making the end game not very hard at all.

When I first came to WAR and MMOs in general I thought end game is only for the hardcore players and WAR was no exception in the beginning.  When the King was first killed I think it was 6 or so months after release and it took like 12 hours of playing just to kill him.  Now I think 12 hours is a little rough and it needed to be lowered down, but nowadays it is to accessible to all in my opinion.  I want it to feel like an accomplishment when we down the endgame instead now it is just whoever can get a warband together will down him.  I don't feel this is right and shouldn't be right.  Casuals are not entitle to easy gear but that is what they have right now.  Anyway just my 2 cents.

Oh and I was wrong in my other post about city changes.  You can bring in you warband I was just reading wrong.

3 comments:

  1. I'd agree in general, but because WAR is a realm-based PVP game I think you need to make the gear available, or at least the encounters, available to all. Your warband of rr70+ may down the king, but it was all those rr40 causal players who were out fighting in orvr just as much as the high renknown/hardcore players, and they still have to fight against the hardcore guilds/players. Its a bit different from the end-game raids in WoW or whatever, where your group/guilds ability to go and do that instance isn't tied to outside groups and players actions.

    That said, I think it would be entirely reasonable to put renown checks on the PQ rewards in the new instance- maybe you have to be >= rr40 to roll on for a bag in the stage 1 (so rr40ish players can get onslaught items), > rr60 for stage two, and >= rr70 for stage 3. If not, you get crests automatically.

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  2. Blaze,

    Very few of those games actually cater to the hardcore when it comes to gear. For instance, in Aion it’s about time put in. This time doesn’t have to be “hardcore” time though. Eventually, in most games, everyone will put in the time. Take Fenris sets (Daevonian Armor for level 50’s) in Aion. It took me about 40 hours to get it. This time could have been lowered if I was more hardcore and did it with a group. This time though would have been the same whether I did it over 2 weeks like I did or over 2 months.

    In WAR it is pretty much the same and has been whether or not the king was on farm. Compare last Septemberish to now. Last September you still received a random royal crest for killing a player in PVP if they were over RR70. Now the same still holds true only, because the king is basically on farm, the crests flow much easier. If you also look at the RR of people out there fighting you will see that there are a lot of them over that 70 point.

    What’s the answer? Do you limit instances to only getting gear if they are opposed? What if the instance I am in gets unlucky and gets a bunch of RR30 people in it? Do we not get the same opportunities as the guys who are going up against RR65+ people? How does it balance out?

    If you make it so no new instances form after some arbitrary number (say 3) unless there is opposition then that means that the defenders just won’t show so you can’t progress.

    Whose time inside the same encounter is more important or hardcore then someone else’s? Just like all MMO’s (except WOW I think) you will have a better and easier time getting the gear then anyone else. Let’s take an example using the new city instance system. Let’s say that Run Like Hell gets put into an instance against Arsenal. There is a good chance that either team could do well. Run Like Hell has a decent chance of getting gear, if it’s a stalemate they will still receive crests for two of the objectives. Now lets say that same Arsenal team was going up against 24 random people who entered the city solo and were thrown into a PUG warband. Those people will gain the bottom tier of crests as they get farmed over and over again and never progress once inside the city. They get something but no where near what the stalemate or winning instances are.

    What happens if Run Like Hell goes into the city and gets an empty instance? They are hardcore right? Should they not receive anything because they weren’t opposed?

    Now, the way I understand the lock out timers is that you can still enter the instance and still win crests just not PQ bags. What’s this mean? Hardcore players will gain crests and thus gear at a much higher rate then the guy who goes once per week.

    In a PVP based game how do you really tell who is better or who should get better gear? It has been proven time and time again that time played does not equal skill. It has also been proven that skill will grant you an easier time at getting that gear faster then those without it no matter how often those without it play.

    From my understanding of how the new system works I think that, last September, you would have seen guilds like Run Like Hell in full Sovereign where you would not have seen many of the other guilds. The main problem stems from the fact that Realm Rank 80 now is common place.

    Since you don’t think this system is good because of the fact that casuals can get the best gear, what would you do? (just curious, not callin you out)

    Jestor

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  3. I'm happy I can now get gear.

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