R
Roo Stercogburn
Guest
Coffee time. For those with short attention spans... you've probably already stopped reading 
Its partly Yerk's post about the nature of the game that started me thinking about this because though not specifically mentioned, it touches on the state of the end-game
In amongst the silliness on the thread, there are some interesting points.
Anyway.
Last night I was in drill sergeant mode with my fellow Feds for some skirmishing RvR. Note I say skirmishing, and not keep take or raid. I warned peeps before we went hunting that while not Dark Roo, it was certainly not going not going to be the light amiable banter that typifies most of the activities we get up to. Peeps with newly made 50s and some peeps with lower level toons. This is fairly typical of the average Fedaykin uber gank fotm team - if you're online, you can join us. Yes you can bring your Thane but please remove mjol from quickbar. Occasionally we have a sober player but we discourage this. So off we trundle with 2 groups of 6 players each, more or less balanced classes between the 2 with each group having a healer and a shammy and an SB. The rest of the slots being filled by Thane, SM (your truly), skald, 2 bonedancers and another shammy. Not all chars were level 50 though all were at least in high 40s. Filled up to 2FG briefly later on in Hadrians (where we didn't even get past the MMG), but thats not important for this.
As you can see, you don't get much more fotm than a Fed team
(Quality moment: Zarffs in Svasud saying to us while we were gathering "Don't listen to a guy who still wears epic armour after all this time." - I know I'm slightly misquoting as don't have it logged, but you get the idea)
The drill sergeant bit is because my fellow guildmates were asked to cut the chatter (WAH!) and focus on practising some RvR stuff. Experienced players will know that while you're typing in that killer anecdote you're not watching for enemies and you typically have 1-2 seconds reaction time when skirmishing after a period of having nothing happen. We've got some experienced players that had to suffer while I droned through some basics. Fedaykin tend to be a bit like Kelly's Heroes only not as disiplined. This doesn't really work for RvR where you have to keep it as tight as possible and understandably some people don't really like this.
So off we trot from Svasud. Check our keeps and patrol a bit then gradually make our way to Odins (at healer speed, the more observant will notice). CG was banter til Nottmoor, then (mostly) shut down except for RvR stuff after that.
And into some fun fights. There were 3 main fights over the course of the evening in Odin's. First fight we lost, though we took out quite a good number of enemies and I was happy because everyone did what they were supposed to when the action started. Second fight we got trampled and deservedly so as it was like a mass removal of heads in a chicken farm. The third fight we kicked asses all over the snowy slopes of Odins.
Each one of these fights we faced equal or greater numbers.
So where's this all going?
Well its about the state of RvR and the fact that a lot of peeps seem to be very disillusioned with it.
You see, I don't think its quite as bad as a lot of people make out, though I have to admit I get depressed at times (Saturday night I was reviewing the system log of a tank's damage output compared to mine and it wasn't pretty reading).
Highlight of the evening for me was when an NS popped on Rimn (healer) while we were at AMGO and started thwacking away at him. I was still on the battlements after checking them for enemies and when the fight started and I was just emerging from the gateroom door just as he had popped. I gleefully nuked the snot out of him while he possibly wondered where the hell that was that coming from. Hey, be happy for me. I'm a Dark SM. I don't have many of these stories to tell
Hopefully my fellow guildmates have a few moments like this and though they are obviously the hated enemy and must die painfully etc our counterparts in Alb and Hib will have a few of these too.
I watched with a lot of satisfaction as gradually people need to be told less and less what needs doing.
Look at the lineup we had. Look at the results of the fights.
Now I know the first thing people are going to say is You can't take that lineup to Emain, you'd get eaten. Well now, here's a thing: we knew that. You play to your strengths, not your ego.
We could probably have gone Emain and hooked up with some zergers or so but why? We wanted to practice skirmishing techniques for our guildpeeps.
Joe Average Guild went to the frontiers not even with 2FG, came home with RP and a few wins under our belts. If we can do it, anyone can do it. We didn't win every fight, but then, we didn't deserve to. The thing is, we just kept going back and even in the space of that short time, I could see improvement in the teamplay. There were some cockups that nearly made me cry (some mine) but at least I could laugh at them afterwards.
So there you go. More mindless rambling, but hopefully a few of you that are upset because of RvR will instead set up a session or two in advance and take a team out again if you haven't for a while
Its partly Yerk's post about the nature of the game that started me thinking about this because though not specifically mentioned, it touches on the state of the end-game
In amongst the silliness on the thread, there are some interesting points.
Anyway.
Last night I was in drill sergeant mode with my fellow Feds for some skirmishing RvR. Note I say skirmishing, and not keep take or raid. I warned peeps before we went hunting that while not Dark Roo, it was certainly not going not going to be the light amiable banter that typifies most of the activities we get up to. Peeps with newly made 50s and some peeps with lower level toons. This is fairly typical of the average Fedaykin uber gank fotm team - if you're online, you can join us. Yes you can bring your Thane but please remove mjol from quickbar. Occasionally we have a sober player but we discourage this. So off we trundle with 2 groups of 6 players each, more or less balanced classes between the 2 with each group having a healer and a shammy and an SB. The rest of the slots being filled by Thane, SM (your truly), skald, 2 bonedancers and another shammy. Not all chars were level 50 though all were at least in high 40s. Filled up to 2FG briefly later on in Hadrians (where we didn't even get past the MMG), but thats not important for this.
As you can see, you don't get much more fotm than a Fed team
(Quality moment: Zarffs in Svasud saying to us while we were gathering "Don't listen to a guy who still wears epic armour after all this time." - I know I'm slightly misquoting as don't have it logged, but you get the idea
)The drill sergeant bit is because my fellow guildmates were asked to cut the chatter (WAH!) and focus on practising some RvR stuff. Experienced players will know that while you're typing in that killer anecdote you're not watching for enemies and you typically have 1-2 seconds reaction time when skirmishing after a period of having nothing happen. We've got some experienced players that had to suffer while I droned through some basics. Fedaykin tend to be a bit like Kelly's Heroes only not as disiplined. This doesn't really work for RvR where you have to keep it as tight as possible and understandably some people don't really like this.
So off we trot from Svasud. Check our keeps and patrol a bit then gradually make our way to Odins (at healer speed, the more observant will notice). CG was banter til Nottmoor, then (mostly) shut down except for RvR stuff after that.
And into some fun fights. There were 3 main fights over the course of the evening in Odin's. First fight we lost, though we took out quite a good number of enemies and I was happy because everyone did what they were supposed to when the action started. Second fight we got trampled and deservedly so as it was like a mass removal of heads in a chicken farm. The third fight we kicked asses all over the snowy slopes of Odins.
Each one of these fights we faced equal or greater numbers.
So where's this all going?
Well its about the state of RvR and the fact that a lot of peeps seem to be very disillusioned with it.
You see, I don't think its quite as bad as a lot of people make out, though I have to admit I get depressed at times (Saturday night I was reviewing the system log of a tank's damage output compared to mine and it wasn't pretty reading).
Highlight of the evening for me was when an NS popped on Rimn (healer) while we were at AMGO and started thwacking away at him. I was still on the battlements after checking them for enemies and when the fight started and I was just emerging from the gateroom door just as he had popped. I gleefully nuked the snot out of him while he possibly wondered where the hell that was that coming from. Hey, be happy for me. I'm a Dark SM. I don't have many of these stories to tell
Hopefully my fellow guildmates have a few moments like this and though they are obviously the hated enemy and must die painfully etc our counterparts in Alb and Hib will have a few of these too.
I watched with a lot of satisfaction as gradually people need to be told less and less what needs doing.
Look at the lineup we had. Look at the results of the fights.
Now I know the first thing people are going to say is You can't take that lineup to Emain, you'd get eaten. Well now, here's a thing: we knew that. You play to your strengths, not your ego.
We could probably have gone Emain and hooked up with some zergers or so but why? We wanted to practice skirmishing techniques for our guildpeeps.
Joe Average Guild went to the frontiers not even with 2FG, came home with RP and a few wins under our belts. If we can do it, anyone can do it. We didn't win every fight, but then, we didn't deserve to. The thing is, we just kept going back and even in the space of that short time, I could see improvement in the teamplay. There were some cockups that nearly made me cry (some mine) but at least I could laugh at them afterwards.
So there you go. More mindless rambling, but hopefully a few of you that are upset because of RvR will instead set up a session or two in advance and take a team out again if you haven't for a while
