Kagato
Fledgling Freddie
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2003
- Messages
- 3,777
Albion RvR Report, March 2004
Overview:
RvR battles over the past 2 years have steadily moved to a state where players are faced with higher necessities to effectively compete as a single individual along with more stringent requirements for competitive groups. Current RvR is much less forgiving in regards to diverse and unique specs, much more fast-paced and much less a game catering to casual or even regular players. The results observed include an underutilization of many class types to meet 8-person group needs, more one-dimensional speccing, population disparity issues, and continuing core balance problems.
Concern: RvR Group Design and New Major Group Abilities
The issue of Albion’s major group abilities spread across more classes is still a primary concern in this report. The dilution of major group abilities among Albion classes has been thoroughly explained in the past August and November reports and the current situation has not changed. New major group abilities are also being introduced that may further increase the requirements for a specific number of classes/specs to form a competitive group. This would contribute to the frustration felt by many Albion players since Albion groups must already sacrifice one or more major support abilities for more damage output to effectively compete in RvR.
Concern: Realm Abilities
With the upcoming RA review, many Albions feel that an equalized offering of RA’s would be better for overall RvR balance. However, a major concern is the fact that Albion RvR groups tend to rely on their currently powerful group RA’s to compensate for weaker base group design. With a more equal distribution of realm abilities, Albion groups would fare more poorly in RvR than what is currently observed. This relates directly to the primary concern that Albion has the most number of classes with core abilities that are the most spread out.
Concern: RvR Incentive System and Population Control
Unlike PVE, which has multiple types of rewards, RvR only has benefits from realm points (which grant RA’s and higher skills from realm ranks) and Relic bonuses. This incentive system primarily promotes regular and hardcore players to form “gank groups” and operate separately from a main force. Players are hoping that changes will be made to the current incentive system and more types of rewards will be added to promote a “realm-war” atmosphere as oppose to the “group/guild-war” theme that RvR has been shifting towards over the past 2 years. In respect to the Frontiers expansion, the “Emain-farming” effect will only shift to a new area if nothing is done to better reward players for taking/defending keeps, relics and other key structures along with making such battles more fun for both sides. Players would also like to see more active population control methods to better equalize the current population disparities among the realms/servers.
Concern: Class Desirability and Optimal Group Templates
There are many underperforming classes in RvR that are excluded from well-known, optimal group set-ups. This is a major source of frustration for many players when trying to form RvR groups. For Albion, much of this problem has to do with the high number of classes with specific key abilities that are needed in each group. To increase the number of desirable group templates, classes should be balanced more towards the goal where any class can join the group and contribute equally in effectiveness once a core set of necessary abilities is present. The core set of abilities (healing, buffs, speed, suppression etc.) should also be easier to attain across the available classes. This would dramatically reduce the one-dimensional speccing seen in current classes along with addressing the issue of class exclusion that is felt by many players.
Specific Issues: Crowd Control
The lack of instant-ranged AE crowd control is still a major concern for Albion players as outlined in the August and November reports. This type of ability has especially proved effective when combined with PBAE or for regaining the initiative in combat. With the upcoming RA review, key abilities such as range 1500 insta-AE mez/stun/root need to be re-evaluated for availability across the realms to ensure better balance in RvR.
Specific Issues: Identification of Classes in RvR
Specific Albion support classes still tend to be easier to identify in RvR. With the use of TOA artifacts, certain support classes from other realms can now also hide their appearance, while such availability is not granted to the same degree for Albion support classes.
Other Issues:
-TOA items/abilities contributing to lag and server problems with large-scale RvR
-Power Relics viewed as more beneficial than Strength Relics
-Overwriting Resurrection spells
-Radar and other forms of cheats
-Melee Style imbalances
-Albion still has a Double-speccing disadvantage
-Master Abilities still need some more balancing among the different lines
-----signature-----
Kiamar Blackblade
Mercenary Master
Unicorn Knight
GM of Vigilance
Albion RVR TL
--------------------------------------------------------
Agree with him all you like but Mythic wont do sweet FA about it.
Overview:
RvR battles over the past 2 years have steadily moved to a state where players are faced with higher necessities to effectively compete as a single individual along with more stringent requirements for competitive groups. Current RvR is much less forgiving in regards to diverse and unique specs, much more fast-paced and much less a game catering to casual or even regular players. The results observed include an underutilization of many class types to meet 8-person group needs, more one-dimensional speccing, population disparity issues, and continuing core balance problems.
Concern: RvR Group Design and New Major Group Abilities
The issue of Albion’s major group abilities spread across more classes is still a primary concern in this report. The dilution of major group abilities among Albion classes has been thoroughly explained in the past August and November reports and the current situation has not changed. New major group abilities are also being introduced that may further increase the requirements for a specific number of classes/specs to form a competitive group. This would contribute to the frustration felt by many Albion players since Albion groups must already sacrifice one or more major support abilities for more damage output to effectively compete in RvR.
Concern: Realm Abilities
With the upcoming RA review, many Albions feel that an equalized offering of RA’s would be better for overall RvR balance. However, a major concern is the fact that Albion RvR groups tend to rely on their currently powerful group RA’s to compensate for weaker base group design. With a more equal distribution of realm abilities, Albion groups would fare more poorly in RvR than what is currently observed. This relates directly to the primary concern that Albion has the most number of classes with core abilities that are the most spread out.
Concern: RvR Incentive System and Population Control
Unlike PVE, which has multiple types of rewards, RvR only has benefits from realm points (which grant RA’s and higher skills from realm ranks) and Relic bonuses. This incentive system primarily promotes regular and hardcore players to form “gank groups” and operate separately from a main force. Players are hoping that changes will be made to the current incentive system and more types of rewards will be added to promote a “realm-war” atmosphere as oppose to the “group/guild-war” theme that RvR has been shifting towards over the past 2 years. In respect to the Frontiers expansion, the “Emain-farming” effect will only shift to a new area if nothing is done to better reward players for taking/defending keeps, relics and other key structures along with making such battles more fun for both sides. Players would also like to see more active population control methods to better equalize the current population disparities among the realms/servers.
Concern: Class Desirability and Optimal Group Templates
There are many underperforming classes in RvR that are excluded from well-known, optimal group set-ups. This is a major source of frustration for many players when trying to form RvR groups. For Albion, much of this problem has to do with the high number of classes with specific key abilities that are needed in each group. To increase the number of desirable group templates, classes should be balanced more towards the goal where any class can join the group and contribute equally in effectiveness once a core set of necessary abilities is present. The core set of abilities (healing, buffs, speed, suppression etc.) should also be easier to attain across the available classes. This would dramatically reduce the one-dimensional speccing seen in current classes along with addressing the issue of class exclusion that is felt by many players.
Specific Issues: Crowd Control
The lack of instant-ranged AE crowd control is still a major concern for Albion players as outlined in the August and November reports. This type of ability has especially proved effective when combined with PBAE or for regaining the initiative in combat. With the upcoming RA review, key abilities such as range 1500 insta-AE mez/stun/root need to be re-evaluated for availability across the realms to ensure better balance in RvR.
Specific Issues: Identification of Classes in RvR
Specific Albion support classes still tend to be easier to identify in RvR. With the use of TOA artifacts, certain support classes from other realms can now also hide their appearance, while such availability is not granted to the same degree for Albion support classes.
Other Issues:
-TOA items/abilities contributing to lag and server problems with large-scale RvR
-Power Relics viewed as more beneficial than Strength Relics
-Overwriting Resurrection spells
-Radar and other forms of cheats
-Melee Style imbalances
-Albion still has a Double-speccing disadvantage
-Master Abilities still need some more balancing among the different lines
-----signature-----
Kiamar Blackblade
Mercenary Master
Unicorn Knight
GM of Vigilance
Albion RVR TL
--------------------------------------------------------
Agree with him all you like but Mythic wont do sweet FA about it.