cross server BG's

[Roffe]

What will the wait time on instances be?
Very short. We're going to experiment with cross-server queuing to reduce wait times.

Warhammer Info - Warhammer Online at GamesDay Chicago

Reading that almost made me cry

If scenarios are important for the overall campaign to sack the enemy city, then why are they even considering that as an option?
Killing players from other servers to capture the zone on your server- that will probably do wonders for the server community /sigh

 

[SkarIronfist]

If you had played on WoW when they didn't have this cross server queuing for their BGs you would know.

Basically WoW had a serious problem, that people were having to wait for long times ... 45 mins in some cases before there were enough people in an instance for the server to start the instance. Now on servers with large population imbalances this was happening alot.

So they joined servers together. Just like RVR zone for Dyvet is the amglamation of Pyrdwen and Excalibur. This then increased the number of people in the queues. This meant that more games (instances) were running. Which meant that you had sorter wait times. Because of this more people were interested in using the WoW BGs and basically you ended up with a self fulfilling prophecy .... more people less queues, more people shorter turn around.

Now it would be very foolish of Mythic to implement a instance like environment for soloers, fgs, bgs (not sure about that) , which while offering more diverse game modes, could lead them into the same kind of problems that Blizzard experienced. To make the same mistake is stupid, if you are going to make mistakes, at least let them be new ones.

Everything has a reason for it, even if you can't see it or even if you don't agree with it.

 

[Ogrelin Blodig]

Yeah, but clustering pryd/excal totally messed up any sence of realmpride that was left in daoc.

I don't want WAR to be BF2 in fantasysetting. I want to be able to make a diffrence on my server. Now if players from another server comes and meddle in our affairs....that will suck.

Another reason to hate instanced pvp I guess. Open field pvp is the real deal.

 

[SkarIronfist]

Clustering was necessary.

Everything you do will make a difference, regardless of Tier. Each tier contibutes to the war effort. Each aspect contributes to the war effort. Instances have influence. But no one facet of the war effort can be pushed to the the nth degree to distort the balance.

You will have good groups on all servers. But they can only be in 1 place at one time. Population issues will need to be included in the calculation when determing the respective influence of an instance win, when a high population side fights a low population side. High population servers will always win the war.

Instance fights and wins/losses, will need to attribute their proportion of the win to the players and the servers they came from.

So if 3 from server A, 2 from B. Then 60% of the win goes to A and 40% needs to go to B. So if you there and are winning, then you are doing your bit. Though I imagine you will still get an appearance score even if on the losing side. Thereby restricting the maximum swing on a game by game basis.

 

[Roffe]

My worries isn’t that cross server bg’s will be unfair to the underdog or the overpopulated realm on a server- if mythic implements this I’m certain that they will calculate Victory points in a way that’s as fair as possible.
My worries is that realm pride will go down the toilet with this, and the server community has absolutely nothing to gain from this imo.

 

[SkarIronfist]

Realm Pride is very hard to quantify and definitely very very difficult to reproduce. I definitely feel that WoW doesn't have it. But the whole end game of taking the capital city may provide the necessary focus.

Though it will interesting to see how they (Mythic) move the goal posts regarding the city capture to keep it fresh over a number of years. Since that has to have been covered in the initial design document.

 

[Whisperess]

What will the wait time on instances be?
Very short. We're going to experiment with cross-server queuing to reduce wait times.

Biggest opportunity to put a nail in the coffin for realm pride.

Yes, it was necessary in Daoc due to diminishing numbers. (#1 reason why I was hoping they'd look at people that played for a couple of good years straight rather than "right now and a few months back at least").

Yes, it was a good thing in WoW because there is nothing even close to realm pride there anyway - it's not that kind of game. It's also a major reason to people behaving like complete tossers - as reporting people on another server is more or less CSR hell.

Yes, it would be a disaster in WAR unless they pull a pink rabbit with 14 ears out of the hat. I'd rather go up against dogs of war than people on another server.

I want to know that things are going good, or bad for my realm on my server due to our actions - not by people on other servers.

However - I reckon they could pull it through in an "okish" way if clustering is used as a final option in a long chain of events for scenarios.

Consider - you sign up for a scenario. There's opponents on your server wanting to fight as well - maybe with an extra 1 or 2 dogs of war to even things out. You go fight people on your own server. (High priority on fighting people on your own server, with a couple of dogs of war to even things out)

If there's absolutely nobody on your server wanting to fight at the moment, not even with a few added dogs of war - you still get to fight, but this time people on another server - but the VP gain for that fight is going to be minimal if anything at all.

It could work - but I'd rather just have a real realm versus realm war. Not a battlegroup-cluster vs battlegroup-cluster war.

 

[Ogrelin Blodig]

Those of you that played DAoC in the first years know what realmpride is.

The feeling of contempt I felt when I heard that Nolby Pride on Mid/excal had rolled characters on Hib/prydwen can't be described, you just didn't do that back then.

Nowdays theres whining of the other realm classes beeing OP ect ect, back in the old days, NONE would admit that an albclass was better than your own realms...the other realm simply SUCKED.. and I'm sure he other realms feelt the same way about us.

Nowdays everyone changes realm ... just like daoc was another BF2-clone with Autobalance.

 

[Talivar]

The problem is tho its a balancing act, everyone says cross server sooks and they want normal like old daoc ect but when the time comes and u would be forced to wait maybe hours for a fight, would you be happy then?. For every one person who is happy another or more would tire of the waiting and prob go back to other MMOs. No one wants an empty WAR Besides its just an excuse to learn names of ppl from more than one server

 

[Flimgoblin]

absolutely no need for it at release.

Maybe 5 years down the line... but clustering killed any sense of realm on excalibur or prydwen (and wasn't by any means necessary at the time - a year later it would probably have been unavoidable but I think the clustering accelerated the population decrease on both servers)

 

[SkarIronfist]

absolutely no need for it at release.

Build it in from the start that way its not something that people can argue about when it arrives. Good turn around times on instance fights is going to be important. Especially if instances provide a valuable proportion of the points in the War Effort.

Also too much queuing will be something people will moan about (Negative PR). It was a serious source of annoyance in WoW and effectively killed the instances on some servers in WoW until they addressed it.

I would point out that when this game starts we are going to have alot of lowbies, now we will not all hit the instances at the same time AND there are higher number of instance variations than WoW has. So imagine what will happen if you are having to wait for 20 mins for your 12 vs 12 instance. You will quite quickly get pissed off and go and do something else.

If its not carefully managed then instances could be a dead weight. Therefore to keep them vibrant you will need high rate of turn around on the instance games. So to ignore the lessons of WoW would be criminal. Go in with the right setup from the start and keep the instances full and churning over nicely. Remember that Warhammer will have the added distraction of Tier 5 .... full and open battles, which WoW doesn't have.

At this time we don't know how match selection is going to happen. How multi groups are going to be combined. So we can speculate, but really this is highend content, of which nothing has been published. Hell there is shitloads that we don't know about. I think we can trust Mythic to have learnt alot from DAOC and WoW, so Realm Pride may well be addressed as a concept.

MMORPGs are about managing peoples expectations as well and active instances will be important. To join servers together at later date, will be acknowledging a problem with how the instances are managed. This can be avoided from the outset and the general population will meander past it oblivous.

 

[Ogrelin Blodig]

The problem is tho its a balancing act, everyone says cross server sooks and they want normal like old daoc ect but when the time comes and u would be forced to wait maybe hours for a fight, would you be happy then?. For every one person who is happy another or more would tire of the waiting and prob go back to other MMOs. No one wants an empty WAR Besides its just an excuse to learn names of ppl from more than one server

Why wait for an instance when there's open field pvp?

 

[Talivar]

Because there will be a core group of ppl who deep down dont really care for rvr and just want to match there group against other groups. Having these groups wander the open field rvr slowly has a negative effect as they QQ over zergs and keeps. So instances are good for them. I know an instant reaction by many would be why cater at all for them but we have to remeber WAR is designed to cater for all styles of play and + it would be a very poor buisness move to shun this group of players
At end of day i dont see why people get upset about cross server instances, the ppl who care about realm pride will be the ones involevd in the open field rvr mostly i imagine. Having instances aswell just adds more variety and thats always a good thing. Imagine how much happier ppl would have been in daoc if all the optimal setgroups had gone to special instances to fight each other and left all the rest to rvr vs each other. No QQ add threads, no QQ zerg threads ect ect. Ofc human nature means im sure they would have found new things to QQ at but human nature is the one enmy we cant beat

 

[SkarIronfist]

Why wait for an instance when there's open field pvp?

Because this will offer an outlet for pure fg vs fgs (With no adds ), unless of course you want opted full groups romping all over the place. It also is an area which contributes to the Realm War total. You have to keep in mind that every area of Warhammer is meant to contribute to the War Effort. I would love to see huge pitched battles (call them a zerg if you like), and this is an area which could well be magnificant in Warhammer (still wish we could have a 3rd side).

So say for instance the open field contributes upto 40%, instance RVR 40% and 40% from the Tiers (yes I know that its 120%, but you will need overlap). Now each one has a maximum and can provide a substantial proportion of the total, but you will need at least 3 parts of your War Effort to succeed to allow your realm to push the swing o meter over far enough to sack the enemy city.

Also you need to remember that open field RVR will get boring for alot of people if there are no alternates. Instance RVR provides that.

It has been stated in a number of interviews that at this time, instance RVR will provide a significant total to the war effort.

This is not DAOC it is Warhammer, and so issues that were apparent in DAOC, need to be resolved.

 

[Mastade]

What Whisperess said..

The whole realm pride thing was great in DAoC, atleast in the early years of the game. I really hope they do their best to ensure its gonna be like that in WAR aswell.

For when you wanna do grp vs grp fights, i could see nothing wrong with having the option to fight against grps from other servers. Its something we really missed in DAoC. Even so much that "we" rerolled to different servers, even the none-english servers, just so you could fight those other groups. I just dont hope it will have any impact on the War Effort on the servers. I still believe that the end game should be similar to DAoC, just better ofcourse. Getting hundreds of people from different guilds and alliances to cooperate and doing different tasks, be it crafting, sieging, camping, roaming, zerging, scouting and so on, is what i found great about DAoC and hope i will find great about WAR aswell.

Numbers in DAoC meant alot, but if you came prepared and organized you could beat an army much bigger than yours and when you succeed it gives you that feeling of realm pride.

All in all, the realm with the guilds/alliances that cooperates the best should be the realm that beats the other to the ground.

But im insanely tired about talking about the game.. lemme play it fgs!!

 

[Ogrelin Blodig]

I agree with Mastade, if your goning to fight people from other servers, don't let it effect the status of the War-effort.

 

[SkarIronfist]

If they merge server queues for instances then they must contribute towards the overall war on the your particular server.

Since otherwise you are asking for instance matches with players from different servers to be voided in regards to the war effort. Now that is hardly going to make people feel they are contributing, now is it ? I mean if all the players on your side are from the same server then your match is "War Effort" afflilated, otherwise its a non event, based on the randomness of who is in the queue So realistically given Mythic have stated instance matches help your sides war effort, then what some people are asking for is unreasonable.

I personally would allocate points based on the server split of the players involved in that instance match. So if you win your match you add those points to your realms total and if you lose then you will add less.

Its always a good idea to consider the mechanics of what you are suggesting, since you always need to provide a complete 360 solution.

 

[GReaper]

Isn't instanced constant just an additional thing compared to the main WAR effort? From what I remember they said it was just for those who wanted some quick action instead of joining the main RvR battles.

Clustering instances is probably a good thing anyway, unless you want to wait for hours because nobody on the other side from your server wants to play in the instance!

 

[SkarIronfist]

Isn't instanced constant just an additional thing compared to the main WAR effort? From what I remember they said it was just for those who wanted some quick action instead of joining the main RvR battles.

I thought it was the other way around... maybe Requiel can clarify either way, based upon what has been commented on by Mythic.

If I am labouring under an misaprehension, then I am happy to acknowledge that.

 

[Whisperess]

Isn't instanced constant just an additional thing compared to the main WAR effort? From what I remember they said it was just for those who wanted some quick action instead of joining the main RvR battles.

Clustering instances is probably a good thing anyway, unless you want to wait for hours because nobody on the other side from your server wants to play in the instance!

They've said that scenarios (the instances) contribute the most to the WAR effort. They've also said that you can't win zones on scenarios alone.

It's probably something like 5, 10, 15, 30, 40 distribution between prior control, skirmishes, quests, battlefields and scenarios. (numbers pulled out of my imaginary hat, to state an example).

 

[SkarIronfist]

I mentioned match matching for instances in some other threads. But watch this interview about 4 mins in.

WHA Games Day Chicago Coverage | Warhammer Online @ Curse

Basically when doing instance match making Realm Rank and Equipment will be used to find suitable opposition. So unless no one available you will be fighting people of suitable "Skill" levels.

Also briefly covers differences between instance and open field RVR.

 

[BloodOmen]

My worries isn’t that cross server bg’s will be unfair to the underdog or the overpopulated realm on a server- if mythic implements this I’m certain that they will calculate Victory points in a way that’s as fair as possible.
My worries is that realm pride will go down the toilet with this, and the server community has absolutely nothing to gain from this imo.

Well, in World of Warcraf there was a limit per team/faction. If this is the same it will work like 32 players vs 32 players, regardless of what server they come from the hard cap would be 32... I haven't read up a great deal on Warhammer (i like having the odd surprise) in short it will tie up the loose ends in BG's and the teams will always be even (usually between 12 at night and 8 in the morning BG's used to be uneven for obvious reasons) otherwise fair.

 

[Urme the Legend]

Clustered PvP Battlegrounds was necessary in WoW, because the wait times could be 2-4+ hours. Sure it was nice with fast queues, but playing with and against total strangers every Battleground was boring. You don't recognize anyone.

I hope WAR won't do this, but if that's the only solution to reduce the queue times I guess it's necessary.

Personally I prefer open RvR, the instanced PvP in WoW gets boring extremely fast.

 

[GReaper]

Sorry for the old thread bump. After seeing the recent DAoC poll it reminded me of this. Did Mythic consider this?

I'm assuming they're focusing more on real RvR instead of instanced gameplay?

 

[IainC]

Nothing new has been announced since although there's a lot of testing to be done on the RvR changes that were recently revealed.

Expect to hear more when the focus tests are over and some better data is in.

 

[Oskorei]

I guess we might get more news in the feb grab bag.

 

[rynnor]

Sorry for the old thread bump. After seeing the recent DAoC poll it reminded me of this. Did Mythic consider this?

I'm assuming they're focusing more on real RvR instead of instanced gameplay?

If you watch the podcast on rvr changes it mentions that they re-balanced the input into war effort from scenarios - basically they lowered contribution from scenarios and upped contribution from open rvr.

 

[Deathsprit]

if they do Clustered battlegroups, lets say 12 of my Destruction friends go in to scenarios Que and all 12 go in to different ones against different severs, and at the same time 12 ppl on the side of order go Que up and there all in the same scenario, my friends will have gotten more points for Destruction as the order side gets.

now that would b an imbalance.

y not have a 2 buttons 1 for no points just for fun of new challenges across severs, and the second 1 for realm pride and points.

but that could b imbalanced as well depending on how meny ppl go to which one, so realy ur damed if u do and damed if u dont.

 

[Night_Stalker]

y not have a 2 buttons 1 for no points just for fun of new challenges across severs, and the second 1 for realm pride and points.

but that could b imbalanced as well depending on how meny ppl go to which one, so realy ur damed if u do and damed if u dont.

I can jsut imagine the Elitist part of the server to try to force newbies into never picking the one where you gain poins towarsd the war effort. Why not choose the part where the wareffort its value upon individual preformance, so crappy players don't gather so much war effort at as good players. But with a small bonus for winning.

so that the 12players playing togeth will likly have a good lvl of play and theyrby have good "ratings" aswell as the 12 split up guys but the 12 playing together will have a far higher chance of winning, and that be fast winnings. Besides no one like to lose, if they got a chance for winning.

 

[Kremlik]

I too was all conserned over the 'bg' issue as it was more then likly leading to what Blizzard are having with WoW's system, long ques, organised groups vs 'headless chickens', fixed matches for shared points. However now that counts for a small amount towards the RVR compeared to open world stuff, it's just good for instant action now which is fair dos..

My only consern with that is with players beleaving in 'same old same old, everything the same, cuz everything must clone WoW' (<beep!>), that players will think 'bg' = 'best pvp', I think more enfisis (god i can't spell in the morning) on open world world RVR being 'better' and 'important' so we don't get all those fleeing from their first mmo (ie WoW) sitting about all day waiting in ques.