Goblin Squad Member
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You'll get a mechanical benefit as you earn merit badges and gain abilities from actually fighting...
Are you at all concerned about players "actually fighting" their friends and allies in order to gain those mechanical benefits?
Also, will there be a benefit to having hetero- or homogeneous units? That is, will there generally be a "ranged" unit, and a "melee" unit? Or will a single unit generally have mixed ranged and melee in it?
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Practice
You'll certainly be able to practice forming up and following orders. But you won't get any mechanical benefit from that practice. (otherwise it will just get botted). You'll get a mechanical benefit as you earn merit badges and gain abilities from actually fighting, just like you will for doing anything else in the game.
If you provide mechanical benefits (merit badges) for fighting in PvP, then organizations will 'fight' their 'allies' for training purposes. It would be a good idea to recognize that, and allow military training exercises to be performed with allies, rather than rewarding the practice of being nominal enemies with our allies.
I think that there will be a Red and a Blue settlement that exist for the primary purpose of fighting each other in a war that never results in permanent territory gain. Those two factions should draw the entire crowd that wants 'theme park PvP', and will form even if they are disadvantaged by it. I just don't think that there should be a major advantage to training with a declared war versus training exercises in conjunction with a different organization that qualifies for a declared war.
Otherwise you are making "Join Red, earn the merit badges, then come back and fight for us" mechanically better than "Train with us against our ally in an official exercise".
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Goblin Squad Member
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The easy answer to your question is "units in formation are highly resistant to magical attacks".
The more complex answer to your question is "when subjected to a magical attack, a unit may have to perform a cohesive action to degrade the impact of a magical effect, and the amount of that reduction is a function of leadership, unit ability, and player skill."
A functional answer to that question is "if a wizard shows up on a battlefield against cohesive units, the wizard won't last long enough to do much damage". And when acting as a part of a unit, wizards won't have the ability to cast independent spells as if they were acting alone - they'll be taking cohesive actions along with the other characters in the unit, and by their presence in the unit affecting what kinds of actions that unit may be able to take - based on the abilities of the other characters, the unit's leadership, and the skill of the players.
So you'll want characters with like abilities in the same units, then, to maximize their effectiveness? (ie. all archers in one group, all mages/nukers in another, etc.)
The easy answer to your question is "units in formation are highly resistant to magical attacks".
The more complex answer to your question is "when subjected to a magical attack, a unit may have to perform a cohesive action to degrade the impact of a magical effect, and the amount of that reduction is a function of leadership, unit ability, and player skill."
I'll buy that, and thanks for the answer. Wizards cast fireballs, soldiers turtle their shields or something.
A functional answer to that question is "if a wizard shows up on a battlefield against cohesive units, the wizard won't last long enough to do much damage". And when acting as a part of a unit, wizards won't have the ability to cast independent spells as if they were acting alone - they'll be taking cohesive actions along with the other characters in the unit, and by their presence in the unit affecting what kinds of actions that unit may be able to take - based on the abilities of the other characters, the unit's leadership, and the skill of the players.
How many individual abilities might be lost to the effort to maintain cohesion? Would this be dependent on one's level of "soldiering" skill? Or would it be like boarding a siege vehicle, where your entire action bar changes and is replaced by formation abilities?
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is a reason that all those old military formations stopped being used in practical combat and have just become the thing of parade grounds and training exercises.That reason is called rifles and machinguns, and even than its not like they abandond formation it just changed...
If you think that modern armies done use formations you are sadly mistaken, every one from infantry to tanks use formations they just aren't that rigid any more.
Warder
I know they still use movement formations but the practicality of it breaks down once you get into actual combat situations that the game is probably going to end up having. The rigid part is what this system seems to be going for which is what doesn't work out.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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It seems interesting and I would love to have that in a game, that being said I wonder what sort of role would non soldier types will have in a combat, noobs in eve could be tacklers what would noobs in PFO will have?
Warder
Medics, supply runners, messengers, fodder, soldiers.
Presumably it would only take a few minutes or hours to train the first few skills in the 'stand out in front in a line and hit the enemy' or 'make a ranged attack as part of a volley' trees. Further, the 'absorb a blow that would otherwise be directed at a more experienced soldier' or 'Walk around them and harass their supply chain' skill might not even be part of the soldier skill trees at all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also, will there be a benefit to having hetero- or homogeneous units? That is, will there generally be a "ranged" unit, and a "melee" unit? Or will a single unit generally have mixed ranged and melee in it?
It would be awesome to see combined arms in the game. Combined arms puts the enemy "on the horns of a dilemma"--whatever course of action they take makes things worse, hence the dilemma. A very simple example modern example at the fire team level is direct fire combined with indirect fire: my SAW gunner can put down lots of fire that pins the enemy down. My 203 grenade launcher makes the enemy want to get up and run. Hopefully we've given the enemy two bad choices: hunker down and get blowed up, or run away and get cut down.
A Napoleonic example might be combining cavalry with artillery. If I attack an infantry unit with cavalary, they want to defend by boxing up in a square. But if they square up they are more vulnerable to artilery fires. And if they disperse into a skirmishers formation, they are ready to be cut down by cav: you have been put on the horns of a dilemma.
I think that latter example could be adapted to an MMO: packing together makes you less vulnerable to cavalry charges (or really any melee unit), but more vulnerable to AoE damage spells from magic users, and vice versa.
This would allow for task organizing--the smaller force that has task organized properly for combined arms may have a sizable comparative advantage against a larger by less combined arms force.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Generally, the best place for skirmishers is in your opponent's back field. This is sometimes called a Rabbit group. The general idea is that while the main forces are formed up against each other, the skirmishers sneak in the back and start to foul up the lines of communication as well as stabbing people in the back. If you hear the order to charge or fall back coming from behind, your instinct is to believe that it's your own officers giving that order. It could be the skirmishers instead.
The reason this is successful is that the formations aren't able to face two opponents at once and if they have to break off a couple fighters to deal with that group of skirmishers, then the line itself has been weakened.
In essence, skirmishers mess up the ability of the enemy formations to function properly.
The other good place for a skirmisher group is in your own back field to kill any skirmishers your opponents send against you.
The other advantage of these groups is that if the line is starting to fall, the skirmisher group can be cannibalized to reinforce the line.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Very cool blog post.
It opens up some very interesting new considerations for combat in an MMO environment. For example, one of the things I'm sure combatants are going to want to concentrate on rather then just simply killing the enemy is to disrupt thier formations....because that has an effect on degrading thier combat power that may rival or even exceed outright infliction of casualties.
Opens up some interesting new possibilities for effects like traps, stuns and snares.
I wonder if there will be any way to simulate the effects of Morale. In a game like PFO where death is expected to be a common occurance and won't have a huge sting associated....how would you simulate the kind of effects Morale has on unit discipline and formation in other mass combat systems?
Obviously, the player won't be overly convcerned with personal safety...
I wonder if one way to represent it might be by varying the difficulty required to perform successfull cohesion manuvers (less forgiving timer for making moves or more severe degredation of combat power) based on the units situation? So things that would normaly cause Morale problems (feared enemy, friendly casualties, outnumbered, flanked) make it tougher for the unit to maintain cohesion (or have greater penalties when they fail). Converesely you could have other things like training, merit badges, Unit Standards, Bagpipes ( "Piper Down!" ;) ) that act in reverse...helping to make cohesion easier or counter-act the effects of things that would stress Morale.
In that way....even though players might not be concerned about thier personaly safety....you can add gameplay elements that mimic the effects Morale would have.... it would also add another dimension to combat on this scale as well. As players could concern themselves with things that bolster or break morale as part of the preperations (and resources) that go into mass combat. Just a thought.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... the smaller force that has task organized properly for combined arms may have a sizable comparative advantage against a larger by less combined arms force.
It's fascinating to me how quickly the community has taken a fundamentally new idea (to us, in relation to PFO) and evolved it so thoroughly. I hope GW has enough "Innovation Points" to spend on this :)
The other good place for a skirmisher group is in your own back field to kill any skirmishers your opponents send against you.
The other advantage of these groups is that if the line is starting to fall, the skirmisher group can be cannibalized to reinforce the line.
I wonder if the "skirmisher group" will actually be a "skirmisher unit", with the same benefit to fighting a "mob" that larger units have...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Blackwarder, please get over trying to assume what I know by what I posted. For starters it is hard to explain many of the concepts for this topic without having all the information on the complete method of how it works. So we can only go with what we assume to be within the bounds of actually working in a game setting that includes individuals who throughout similar games in the past expect as much freedom while despising any lose of character control. This is why many games have lowered crowd control methods from the extreme lengths they were in DAoC to what you see in a game like GW2.
I am only using loose examples to compare formations to what could and could not work in a game where players expect to have this bigger range of freedom than what the current military allows. I have used the tactics myself in games that do not include a mechanic to allow them, Warhammer to be specific. My guild used them to our advantage over far larger enemy forces that just zerged but ended up getting themselves killed due to it. Flanking is more of a tactic than an actual formation as it can work with 1 person to a much larger group to similar effect sometimes based on the abilities of each. A single person flanking with the proper spells can cause the same bit of chaos as 6 melee charging in from nowhere. Terrain plays a big part in what tactics are being used no matter what formation you employ. You also have to take into effect how hit and run tactics have become more common in PvP since they can work to great effect as opposed to the stand off which only works in specific locations such as bottlenecks and keep defense, to varied degrees of success based once again more due to skills and tactics than formation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So things that would normaly cause Morale problems (feared enemy, friendly casualties, outnumbered, flanked) make it tougher for the unit to maintain cohesion...
That's a great idea, but I'd add that one of the teachings of Sun Tzu talked about how much more effectively an army fought if you put it "on death's door" - that is, in a situation where they knew defeat meant death because there was no room to retreat, etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... individuals who... expect as much freedom while despising any lose of character control...
I agree that most players (myself included, in spades) truly despise having their character stunned or otherwise taken away from their control while some effect or story line plays out (I'm looking at you, LOTRO!). I just think it's a totally different situation when the player retains the freedom to move around, but knows they're supposed to be in a certain place doing a particular thing.
I've done enough raiding to have seen situations where the players were expected to stand right here, on this very spot... not 2 steps over that way, but right here!. I think the players generally accept that kind of thing as long is they are actually putting their characters there.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Morale could work but we would have to have an actual understand of how the group/army system works overall in relation to buffs/debuffs. I gave an example above that would work if the system used a per group and in range group stacking similar buffs given from their group leaders. You could base morale effects, both when alive and dead, on the leaders skills.
A player with no leadership skills/perks would give no bonus to his group while alive and places a timed demoralize debuff on the rest of the group if that leader dies.
A player with many leadership skills/perks would have abilities that bolsters the group and places a timed rally effect that comes into play when the leader is killed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... individuals who... expect as much freedom while despising any lose of character control...I agree that most players (myself included, in spades) truly despise having their character stunned or otherwise taken away from their control while some effect or story line plays out (I'm looking at you, LOTRO!). I just think it's a totally different situation when the player retains the freedom to move around, but knows they're supposed to be in a certain place doing a particular thing.
I've done enough raiding to have seen situations where the players were expected to stand right here, on this very spot... not 2 steps over that way, but right here!. I think the players generally accept that kind of thing as long is they are actually putting their characters there.
I used to be in a server first raiding guild and did more than my share of that. Dedicated players have more tolerance for doing that type of exacting movement. There is a reason that full strength raid content clearing guilds were in the extreme minority though, it just wasn't that much fun for the average player let alone casual ones.
This proposed system seems to take it a step further by limiting your personal options even more to keep the bonus effects in play. WoW was more of an inconvenience type of effect but there were ways to still contribute to varied success based on your class and you were never beholden to another player to control your actions except gimmick fights like Flame Leviathan. Using that as an example: imagine if you could only decide to jump between positions for the whole fight, the driver got to control primary movement and all the abilities but he couldn't do that unless you jumped from seat to seat every so many seconds. Not fun at all except if you are the driver.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I wonder if the "skirmisher group" will actually be a "skirmisher unit", with the same benefit to fighting a "mob" that larger units have...
Not the same benefits versus mob that a line formation would have, but the same -kinds- of benefits and drawbacks that other formations have.
It should never be the case that each 'level' of formation is always better than the lower formations, given equal mastery of each. Adding another dimension to the game is always interesting, but provides new challenges to game development.
I hope that the development team is at least as interested in games theory as I am, because the potential I see is enormous, including commitment costs, communication, misdirection, &etc.
For example, I can arrange my troops in one set of equipment and formation, knowing or suspecting that the enemy has scouts observing be and choosing their equipment and formation to counter me. Figuring that my opponent will use this to select equipment and formations most effective versus what I am showing, I then change at the last moment to the equipment and formation most effective versus what I think they have chosen to counter what I was showing them. From there follows the double-bluff, meta-bluff, and 'surprise attack while they are changing their equipment and formation'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Snap
My point is that formations don't need to exist when you can just put it on the group leadership skill/buff level which gives group players a reason to stay within range of each other but does not penalize them for moving out of some silly formation dance zone is all. My extension of stacking 2 similar group buffs, or heck even allowing 2 varied types depending on how you include raid style grouping options, just seems to allow more freedom while having the same effect. Sure it might not look as fancy from a birds eye view as a screenshot of Total War or one of those games but it should not have to.
Oh and I forgot. Lag is the just itching to cause headaches in this game already and I can just imagine how a constricting system of even somewhat loose formation placement would cause havoc.
P.S. The flag idea was used once again in my Warhammer example to great effect with the Champion class. I just think a similar system that doesn't paint a big target on your actual leadership buffer makes more sense. Maybe Ryan's historian fetish is just trying to push too much in here for the sake of once again treading "new territory" so it does not draw comparisons to a past game, when a system that worked fine in another game would work if tweaked a bit to work within the skill system. Which would be funny if that is the case since so much is being drawn off of EVE for instance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is a reason that full strength raid content clearing guilds were in the extreme minority though, it just wasn't that much fun for the average player let alone casual ones.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, really! I'm enjoying the conversation.
In my experience, though, there were a lot more "average" / "casual" players who had the desire to raid than there were who had the opportunity to do so. I blame fixed raid sizes and separate servers.
Mass Combat in PFO will "almost certainly" (I got in trouble the last time I said that, but we'll see) not have fixed sizes, and we already know the intention is a single server. That, to me, makes it much more likely that "average" / "casual" players will have a much greater opportunity to participate.
I'm still hoping Ryan responds to my question about the relative utility of an inexperienced/unskilled character participating in a Unit.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hate to keep bring up Warhammer but it was the last good fantasy game for PvP that I played. I played on the most populated server up until the decline of the game due to 3 or so gigantic zerg guilds flooding the server happened. Even at that point our guild of 20-40 people still held our own due to the fact that the zerg only relied on the zerg tactic. what we did was use other smaller sized guilds to strategic advantage for flanking and so on. I would say that those guilds had far more casual players than a guild like mine did and our superiority with a lack of numbers only reinforced that. GW2 is trying to stress the skill over numbers aspect of PvP which I hope they pull off and that it is anywhere close to how Warhammer was for the visceral feeling that real mass PvP brings.
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Goblin Squad Member
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PvP is completely different than what the PvE/Crafting part of a game has to do with so no reason to even make that comparison which I have not done. I am solely comparing known PvP systems that I believe worked and could be expanded on to better effect than the original version especially in comparison to this proposed formation system which I think is not the way to go. I played EVE for a long time myself and I avoid comparing that combat to what could be in PFO since that is like apples and oranges. While Warhammer had levels, the PvP I took part in was hundreds of maxed level players. With how items played so little into how the effect on PvP was, it was more of a skill/tactics based playing field than strictly numbers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm deeply confused as to why people continue to make the assertion that "people won't care about dying". When you sit down to play a game, regardless of the stakes, are you interested in failing? Of course not. Sure, your unit might win an encounter, even if you take a dirt nap, but you're not gonna be sitting at your computer rejoicing the fall of your character (or if you do, you're in a very narrow minority).
Just because there isn't a draconian mechanical penalty for death, particularly in a large scale battle, doesn't mean there is a flippant approach to accepting it. Everyone that follows the soldier's path is going to know the value of keeping their unit as close to full strength as possible. Any Commander worth a pound of salt is going to know who is or isn't pulling thier weight. If you've got a bunch of slackers sliding through every battle, you're gonna have a bad time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mm, the question of individual player volition is important. I'm already planning my excuses to shirk rank and file duties (off rangering). That said, if the formations idea produces a sense of a steamroller cohesion (in a mass battle) that's a great experience and will appeal to a subset of people, I'm sure it will create a 'high' if synchronised successfully.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you've got a bunch of slackers sliding through every battle, you're gonna have a bad time.
That reminds me, I should check memebase.com...
... if the formations idea produces a sense of a steamroller cohesion... that's a great experience... I'm sure it will create a 'high' if synchronised successfully.
That's a great way to visualize it: A tight unit simply "steamrolling" over a much larger, but disorganized, force. Yeah, I could see myself really geeking out if I were a part of that unit :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
A couple of responses:
New characters in combat
Yes, we want to have an explicit reason to bring new characters to the fight. The first of these is probably "dying first" - send a unit of low skill characters out to test the enemy's abilities, or feint, or create a diversion, what have you.
Second, I envision a system of gaining leadership merit badges that is based on matching leadership ability with troop ability. If you want to earn the "Sergeant" merit badge you have to do it by leading Privates. A General could lead a batch of Privates but wouldn't get any meaningful benefit from doing so (although that unit would be really well lead!)
This should create a constant drive to recruit new players to an armed force so that more experienced characters can move up the leadership chain.
Third, there needs to be a number of simple things that relatively unskilled recruits can do that are beneficial to the unit. For example, let's say that we have a squad of 8 soldiers. 6 of them are pretty good at what they do, but with only 6 people in the squad the squad isn't as powerful as it would be if full. So you add 2 rookies and all they have to do is basically stay in formation and face the right way to give the unit cohesion and let the other 6 soldiers generate Combat Power. As a unit loses soldiers, you'll want to keep replacing them to keep the strength close to maximum so having recruits around to fill in will be really useful in longer engagements.
Finally we have the idea of a fatigue system. The longer one fights in a cohesive formation the more fatigued one becomes. Eventually due to fatigue that character can no longer maintain cohesion. You'll need to rotate that character out of the fight and put in a fresh trooper. If you get killed while in a cohesive unit you might carry a particularly large fatigue penalty which means that even after you come running back to the battle you may not be of much use for a while. That creates a "Death Penalty" that doesn't hurt the player as much as it hurts the player's friends. Dying means you let down you buddies. The more characters die the harder it is to keep units in cohesion and the less Combat Power they generate.
Of course this also implies a whole subsystem for refreshing fatigue. Requires balancing and testing.
Unit Composition
What a unit can do is a function of its leader, the abilities of its members, and the formation it has assumed. A squad in file (i.e. walking in a line) is in a great formation to move quickly in between friendly units. But it cannot project much Combat Power forward or behind itself. A unit in a defensive square is able to project Combat Power in any direction but can't easily move without losing cohesion.
Typically what I envision is that a unit's leader gets a menu of options that unit can perform. That list is generated based on a matrix of things like trooper abilities and formation. As the troops in a unit change that menu changes. As the formation changes, that menu changes.
Having all the troops in a unit able to contribute the same kind of ability (like a ranged attack, or a shield wall, or what have you) should make that unit better at doing that than if they have some people who can do a ranged attack, some who can do a shield wall and some who can do other things. Sometimes what you want is dedicated units and sometimes you want units with flexibility. That's a commander's decision.
Solo vs. Team Play
The idea of being a soldier isn't for everyone and the game certainly isn't being built around that assumption. Playing as a part of a team where you have to follow someone else's directions and perform a seemingly monotonous series of actions is not what many people want out of an MMO. For them we have a whole world of adventure! But for people who care about territorial control and the armies that will take it and break it, I think the esprit de corps that will come from mass combat will be very fulfilling.
It's all about choices. If you don't choose to be a soldier, no harm, no foul.
What will be the purpose of being a caster in a unit? Should casters avoid being soldiers?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Now more stuff tossed into an already cumbersome system. I am starting to dislike this more and more which sucks since PvP is one of my main things I enjoy in mmorpgs. I think you might be underestimating how large or zerg guilds (Goon loves doing this and did so to great effect in EVE and WAR) can probably skip this whole system and still get territory. Now if an artificial block is put in to avoid that it just pushes player options further to the railroad method. While I like having options for how my guild can benefit from fighting as a whole I just can't get behind what sounds like a philosophy of "be a soldier for mass PvP or we have some other stuff over here for you to do". If it is all about choices, why does it come off as not being a choice? Your final line is just a slap in the face of what should be done with PvP.
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Goblin Squad Member
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-snip-"be a soldier for mass PvP or we have some other stuff over here for you to do". If it is all about choices, why does it come off as not being a choice? Your final line is just a slap in the face of what should be done with PvP.
I think this is the logical approach to mass combat/battles vs zergs, where let's remember you're surrounded by buckets of players and effects going off on-screen: Usually it's a mess in my experience? Eg in World vs World PvP in GW2 it looks like a lot of fun (2< factions finally!) but still looks like a mess with random players doing their own thing. Not like a battle choreographed as it were in LOTRs movies?
And I think soldiering is one career. Maybe banditry is more ambush/smaller combats-scale that is interesting pvp just as much? As said, I prefer smaller combats from my previous mmorpg experiences, but perhaps PfO will change my mind from the bandit career?!
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Goblin Squad Member
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And I think soldiering is one career. Maybe banditry is more ambush/smaller combats-scale that is interesting pvp just as much? As said, I prefer smaller combats from my previous mmorpg experiences, but perhaps PfO will change my mind from the bandit career?!
Yeah either way could be fun. That's kind of why my company is trying to focus on both, IE mercenaries to join large scale battles, while permitting banditry etc... for members on any targets that are not under any contract of protection from our forces. Being able to participate in one form, does not exclude you from participating in the other.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nukruh. Stating you may not be all that interested in this kind of gameplay is one thing, but you might wanna look into Ryan Dancey's resume when you cite things like Goon squads and how they work. He might already know a thing or two...
I know his track record but that still doesn't mean that he is always right or that even if he has been mostly right in the past that it would continue in the future. I just see too many flaws in this system to make it actually work. I could go on about all the little things that compose the cogs of the mass PvP wheel but at this point it might seem pointless as he seems to have this system set in stone. It is one thing to sound good on paper but another to actually work in practice. That is is where I think these concepts will fail to be able to be executed no matter how well the intention was.
By the way how much input does a Chief Marketing Officer really have in relation to how EVE was designed or implemented?
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Goblin Squad Member
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-snip-"be a soldier for mass PvP or we have some other stuff over here for you to do". If it is all about choices, why does it come off as not being a choice? Your final line is just a slap in the face of what should be done with PvP.I think this is the logical approach to mass combat/battles vs zergs, where let's remember you're surrounded by buckets of players and effects going off on-screen: Usually it's a mess in my experience? Eg in World vs World PvP in GW2 it looks like a lot of fun (2< factions finally!) but still looks like a mess with random players doing their own thing. Not like a battle choreographed as it were in LOTRs movies?
And I think soldiering is one career. Maybe banditry is more ambush/smaller combats-scale that is interesting pvp just as much? As said, I prefer smaller combats from my previous mmorpg experiences, but perhaps PfO will change my mind from the bandit career?!
That is the thing though, there is a world of difference comparing how something was scripted for a movie and how the acceptable computer world PvP experience works when you toss things into the mix: internet connections on both client and server side, varied numbers of players, particle effects, server/database load, etc. The more complex you make an underlying system the more those basic things have a chance to just make that unravel and become just another mire of people running into each other as the best method available to your average player.
So the short answer is: More complex systems are never the answer to offset an acceptable play experience.
Using EVE as an example, go ask Jita players how well that beast of a server handled player loads in the past and that isn't even touching on areas that had similar numbers in blob warfare in the middle of 0.0 space. They may have fixed it since I played but it was still an issue for such a long time and I doubt GW will have similar servers from the start as EVE did.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you [Ryan] might be underestimating how large or zerg guilds... can probably skip this whole system and still get territory.
It seems more like you [Nukruh] are underestimating GW's ability to make the game work exactly the way they want it to. If Ryan decides that an 8 person squad with Cohesion can easily overpower 200 individual characters, do you think he won't be able to make that happen?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you [Ryan] might be underestimating how large or zerg guilds... can probably skip this whole system and still get territory.It seems more like you [Nukruh] are underestimating GW's ability to make the game work exactly the way they want it to. If Ryan decides that an 8 person squad with Cohesion can easily overpower 200 individual characters, do you think he won't be able to make that happen?
They can do that but it sort of defeats the purpose of balancing PvP. Making a game work how you want it to on a mechanical level is one thing, that game actually being an acceptable play experience once you drop in thousands of players is another. You can only code in so much expectation before reality of how the game performs kicks in.
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Goblin Squad Member
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They can do that but it sort of defeats the purpose of balancing PvP. Making a game work how you want it to on a mechanical level is one thing, that game actually being an acceptable play experience once you drop in thousands of players is another. You can only code in so much expectation before reality of how the game performs kicks in.I think you [Ryan] might be underestimating how large or zerg guilds... can probably skip this whole system and still get territory.It seems more like you [Nukruh] are underestimating GW's ability to make the game work exactly the way they want it to. If Ryan decides that an 8 person squad with Cohesion can easily overpower 200 individual characters, do you think he won't be able to make that happen?
A couple of tidbits to assuage the fears/assumptions that there will be performance issues. With a limited number of seats at launch, performance concerns at launch will be moderated and the amount of hardware requirements will be well understood. You wont see 1 million subscribers in the first week crash every server, because that's not the model proposed. Even if the initial 4500 subscribers decide to all at once dive into a single valley in an unlikely effort to trash the connectivity of everyone at once, then basically they'll get what they expect, a server reset. Then everyone goes back to playing the game. As the subscriber base increases, so will the cash flow, and so will the capacity of the hardware. Now, of course this can be defeated (eg. server crashed) by some mythical mass grouping of people with the single goal of doing so, but eventually even arguments of pure theory have to give way to reasonable expectations.
I know his track record but that still doesn't mean that he is always right or that even if he has been mostly right in the past that it would continue in the future. I just see too many flaws in this system to make it actually work. I could go on about all the little things that compose the cogs of the mass PvP wheel but at this point it might seem pointless as he seems to have this system set in stone. It is one thing to sound good on paper but another to actually work in practice. That is is where I think these concepts will fail to be able to be executed no matter how well the intention was.
The flaws you "see" in a system incompletely described should be formed as questions, in the spirit of providing the developer's useful feedback. Flatly stating this that or the other won't work is somewhat disingenuous. Backing out of your arguments by saying you don't think you'll be listened to is also a bit strange. Many of us have been arguing our points back and forth for a while, and although we often have many different viewpoints, and logical conclusions, no one is served in this process by censoring themselves.
By the way how much input does a Chief Marketing Officer really have in relation to how EVE was designed or implemented?
easy answer: By walking from one cubicle to another to ask the designer what formed the ideas behind what his goals were.
I played on the most populated server up until the decline of the game due to 3 or so gigantic zerg guilds flooding the server happened. Even at that point our guild of 20-40 people still held our own due to the fact that the zerg only relied on the zerg tactic. what we did was use other smaller sized guilds to strategic advantage for flanking and so on. I would say that those guilds had far more casual players than a guild like mine did and our superiority with a lack of numbers only reinforced that. GW2 is trying to stress the skill over numbers aspect of PvP which I hope they pull off and that it is anywhere close to how Warhammer was for the visceral feeling that real mass PvP brings.
To an extent you're describing the type of gameplay these Unit mechanics are aiming for, but at the same time complaining that "complicated systems will break under load"? Is it perhaps that you're being presented with a new thing, that doesn't fit into a previous experience, or a narrow expectation? So far, i've seen no indication that mechanical advantages for Unit Cohesion can't be utilized, displayed, managed and successful (in terms of games mechanics). I also haven't seen any blanket statements backed by Developer's that THIS IS HOW YOU MUST PLAY. To be clear, its been quite the opposite. If you want your barbarian zerg, independent operator style of gameplay, you'll be happy to know you'll be able to gather as many people to your banner as you can, and still play the game the way you want. You might not be victorious in the face of Cohesive Units, but then again, you might. At this point, we can only guess, and do what we can to provide logical and reasonable feedback on what they propose.
...Your final line is just a slap in the face of what should be done with PvP.
This type of rhetoric is just silly. A slap in the face is a violent measure of disdain and an assault. That they're proposing something that doesn't meet your expectations is not that. No one said "you must do this to hold territory" or that zerg tactics won't be useful for grabbing territory. If the dev's decide it won't be the most efficient, that doesn't mean it won't be effective. Absolutism just doesn't apply to this type of sandbox gaming.
And at the end of the day, If there's a system in place that can further expand the number of niches players can have, isn't that a good thing? More successful niches equals more happy players, more money, and a successful MMO with longevity. This is what we're looking for, and something that has proven to be very rare in the current market.
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Will there be a set, static amount of formations and tactics, or will players be able to invent their own strategies and tactics?
Will armies be forced to contend with each other - each in formation - one force on one force? Will formations work a bit like rock-paper-scissors in terms of what formations beat which other formations?
Could a commander break off his army into smaller chunks for more advanced battle tactics, IE hammer and anvil, surprise flanking, etc?
Playing as a part of a team where you have to follow someone else's directions and perform a seemingly monotonous series of actions is not what many people want out of an MMO. For them we have a whole world of adventure!
I think the logical solution here would be to either have the soldering either A) not be based on a monotonous series of actions or B) INVOLVE a monotonous series of actions, but also involve an element that is a bit more active, reactionary, and/or skill-based.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I understand the ramped up subscription method. I have issues with that but this thread is hardly the place for why. I am going off the long term effects. As for hardware, with a free to play basis there is no guarantee that upgrades will follow a timely enough manner but that is also another topic for down the road and other people to worry about.
I never assume that something won't work, I merely give an opinion on something that GW might not have thought out in relation to the given system. Someone has to be the devil's advocate to possibly bring to light such things. My comments are based on past experience in both light and heavy PvP area encounters going back to UO. It is known from past games that one of the most common places issues come up that effect the play experience is within PvP. The ability of an underlying system to avoid showing cracks in the surface is usually based on how many systems are involved in any given situation. Walking around town is far less demanding than all the server calls that are required even on a basic small group PvP situation.
I did not expand on ALL the factors I could think of, for the same reason I stopped looking too deep into the latest Ultimate Equipment preview for errors - I just don't get paid enough to consider all those things.That and I have other things I have to tend to in all my free time.
I would think that a CMO has nothing whatsoever to do with how EVE was designed/implemented as the game was well established way before Ryan started working there. From my limited understanding, usually marketing has little to do with the design process beyond possibly asking some simple questions on what is already in place. I could be wrong but only Ryan could answer that question.
Any system that gets presented have something to do with my expectations of what I expect in a game. Otherwise, why would I even be posting in the first place?
Solo vs. Team Play
The idea of being a soldier isn't for everyone and the game certainly isn't being built around that assumption. Playing as a part of a team where you have to follow someone else's directions and perform a seemingly monotonous series of actions is not what many people want out of an MMO. For them we have a whole world of adventure! But for people who care about territorial control and the armies that will take it and break it, I think the esprit de corps that will come from mass combat will be very fulfilling.
It's all about choices. If you don't choose to be a soldier, no harm, no foul.
Ryan does sort of point out that for mass combat this is the way you should play or go find something else to do, adventuring in his exact words. Perhaps it is his use of words that just doesn't come off right to me. The final line seems to reinforce his statement in the main paragraph but in a somewhat dismissive manner with the use of "no harm, no foul". I tend to read things a bit literally so that might be a shortcoming of my own, or I might be right and the wording is just not the best that he could have chosen. *shrugs*
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Goblin Squad Member
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The easy answer to your question is "units in formation are highly resistant to magical attacks".
The more complex answer to your question is "when subjected to a magical attack, a unit may have to perform a cohesive action to degrade the impact of a magical effect, and the amount of that reduction is a function of leadership, unit ability, and player skill."
A functional answer to that question is "if a wizard shows up on a battlefield against cohesive units, the wizard won't last long enough to do much damage". And when acting as a part of a unit, wizards won't have the ability to cast independent spells as if they were acting alone - they'll be taking cohesive actions along with the other characters in the unit, and by their presence in the unit affecting what kinds of actions that unit may be able to take - based on the abilities of the other characters, the unit's leadership, and the skill of the players.
With respect, Mr. Dancey - that's lame. A bunch of fighters shouldn't have an advantage against a fireball spell because they have great choreography. The Chinese tried that in the Boxer Rebellion - it didn't work there either.
Please consider the rules that are already in place - you can equip the troops with fire-resistant armor, you can have anti-magic fields. There can be snipers with extra long range bows and spell casters can have their casting interrupted when they get an arrow in the face. And then there's always invisibility spells and the dagger in the back. There's a lot of ways to get around the battlefield mage. Let us come up with the tactics, bloody our noses trying and become the stuff of legends when we succeed.Because a blanket "troops are resistant to magic because they are" sounds like a cop-out. And that really goes against everything good that I've read about what you're trying to do here. And I really do want PFO to succeed.
Thanks :)
John
Note: I really do mean this respectfully and as an honest criticism. I could never do what you're trying to coordinate. I apologize if I sound blunt here, but I think that something this crucial warrants speaking plainly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A bunch of fighters shouldn't have an advantage against a fireball spell because they have great choreography.
Should a lone fighter be able to resist a dragon's fire breath because he's hiding behind a fireproof shield? If so, then it seems obvious that the same kind of technique we saw the Spartans use in 300 should be reasonably effective against a magical fireball, shouldn't it?
Also, I'd like to briefly mention that everyone saying anything regarding the useless nature of formations are sadly uninformed on the subject.
I would imagine everyone is thinking of The Revolutionary War, where the British soldiers marched in tight formations and through the US's superior tactics managed to win against a significantly larger force.
However, formations means a lot more than just getting into a big square and marching forward. First of all, it should be noted that formations are STILL IN USE TODAY! They are not quite as rigid or as large, but any tactical squad moves in formation, and even large scale armies must consider the positioning of their troops and the way their forces work together. Look at World War 2 - the invasion of Normandy and the push into Europe depending heavily on the positioning of the armies, the various units within them, and where and how forces were used. No, these weren't big square formations, but they were still formations. When SEAL Team 10 stormed Osama bin Laden's complex, they definitely went in in a pre-trained, precisely chosen formation.
Moreover, ESPECIALLY on a medieval sword-and-shield level, formations are very relevant and significant. A well-trained army in formation doesn't just mean they stand in a box and march forward. It means the pikemen on the frontline know how to position their shield so as to provide themselves and their neighbors maximum defense. It means the cavalry knows the best time in which to charge into the opponent, in conjunction with their allies, to maximize enemy casualties and to minimize friendly losses. It means knowing when your force should split into smaller forces, perhaps at the sight of a large, single charge by your enemies, so that you can surround them and pick them off in greater succession.
TL;DR: Armies in formation are not just armies marching in big square blocks like the British during the Revolutionary war. Formation has been a critical element of armies working together from the middle ages up through even modern warfare today.