Malanthris's page

Yeah there seems to be a lot of really personal feelings involved in this. Slammy may very well pay more attention to things than I do but I'll be honest I don't normally pay that much attention to my buff/debuff icons in the heat of battle so much that I'd know in a fight that I wasn't provoking opportunity. I know what effects I'm under through deduction by looking at the abilities thrown my way by others and by their more obvious effects on my character (ie a slow). I say that knowing that while I'm not the greatest of PvPers I'm at least halfway competent.

A little background: before this all blew up we were discussing this in TS. The comments about Slammy being abnormally hard to target had people looking at the video to determine why and saying yeah it looked like he was not provoking opportunity and perhaps he had de synced. I know I've had the spell desync hit me even while not at a hex boundary. It happens when I'm traveling and spamming my speed boost. Slammy hadn't noticed it; another player had while watching the video. Slammy's a pretty good actor if he'd been aware of it and was exploiting it prior to being called out for being hard to target.

I hope this issue can be resolved quickly for the betterment of all!

Actually the comment wasn't about a lack of customization, it was about a lack of nameplates. I want names and company affiliation hovering over people's heads. I know there's not a lot of support for that but it's something I throw my full support behind.

Last night was fun but also very frustrating. The lag within the game for me was pretty terrible and I have a fairly powerful machine (3 gb video and 12 gb memory). The lag got progressively worse until the game basically became a slideshow for me. I had to restart the game in order to respawn after death before the end. I could target people but attacks weren't launching.

I won't beat the targeting dead horse too much but it needs work. I'd like an option for nameplates as well. There aren't really enough character or armor customizations in the game, in my opinion, that having to use target recognition is a valid defense of not having nameplates. Names also don't appear for a target until much too close, again in my opinion.

I'm not a party to the political undertones in the thread. I do see that this NAP could very well funnel rabid PvP forces in specific directions (those that don't sign for example). Personally I'd rather see no NAP in the War of Towers at all. Whether I was in a small/large or good/evil guild it wouldn't matter. I'd want to test the logistics and ability of my PvP forces to have what we hold prior to OE. It will build necessary experience at a reduced cost. Getting this experience in settlement warfare has a much higher potential cost.

In alpha I tried a rogue long/short bow user, a wizard and a cleric. I gravitated more toward the bow user (without using the perma-sprint crutch) as it ended combat vastly more quickly and enabled me to explore.

1. Find monsters and take their stuff.

So yeah, this is in game but I found the reaction speed, animations and overall game responsiveness to be low/clunky. That's being nice. Combat wasn't much fun. I use a g13 gamepad with mouse turning for MMOs. It worked fine with the game. When I hit a button I'd like something to happen, given no latency issues. That being said I had no troubles and died once only due to lag, so the lack of responsiveness isn't a game breaker.

The drop rates were a little on the low side for what I wanted but high for what I didn't, but that's RNG for you. I had to make my first short bow which I don't mind.

The escalations I tried were solo so maybe the group experience is more fun, but these were pretty uninspiring. There's no farmer telling me the bandits stole his stuff so I pretty much know by osmosis what's going on in Sherwood Forest.

The leashing of groups of mobs is highly exploitable (they yo-yo back and forth) making the combat a lot easier. Taking out groups of six or seven solo with a bow was simple. I expect this will change with updated bow mechanics but you could do the same thing as a wizard or ranged cleric.

Tooltips, yeah I'm going to beat that dead horse. Deafening vs sickening critical. I can somewhat deduce what it is but who knows if I'm right or not.

2. Find resources and use resources to make stuff.

It's there. I'd like to see a greater variety of nodes honestly. Are we going to be able to chop down trees for wood eventually? Greater node variety (split up flowers and wood for example) and less material RNG would be nice but I do like that you can use more than one thing to make the crafted good sub-component. Finding things off PvE mobs is a nice touch as well. I will admit I could have tested this out more but I was more interested in playing around with the character and combat mechanics.

3. Stuff is good. Get better stuff and kill monsters harder.

I never really got better stuff. I crafted a t1 hunter's short bow. I killed things faster with the t0 mob dropped hunter's long bow. I liked the short bow play style better, however, so I stuck with it.

4. Kill another player and take their stuff.

More like kill someone that tries to kill me and take their stuff but obviously this isn't in game yet.

Overall opinion:

-Need companies and social mechanics.
-Optimize combat to make it fluid/responsive and fun
-Class balance but most important range vs melee balance
-Red wizard needs PvP badly. I'm fine with the reputation where it is but there needs to be something voluntary if you want people to play.
-Animations and combat/spell effects please!

All that being said I'm hoping for more alpha-ing so I can mess around with a heavily armored melee.

I'm with those saying that you can try to have someone attempt to be politically neutral. It would have to be backed by a strong enough coalition of force to enforce. It doesn't have to be all the other settlements, just enough to put the fear of destruction into the minds of those thinking to cause mischief. I'm also pretty sure ("cynic" that I am) that someone will come along and test that force's will/power.

Treaties, kingdoms and empires, oh my!

Are there MMOs with forums more rife with drama? Yeah. Sometimes I'd prefer the outright drama to the veiled passive aggressive. I agree with Papaver's sentiment. Usually the pre game release forum community is in the best state you'll see in an mmo's life cycle. From what I've seen they start off fairly well with a few outliers and get steadily worse as time goes on and a game is released and then ages. Just because they are worse doesn't mean I'd wouldn't like to see this one better.

Group self regulation is certainly something I'd hope all community and self-image minded groups would take upon themselves. Unfortunately, despite what I feel is the right attitude toward the game by GW this being a pretty open pvp game is going to draw in people and groups that care little about such a thing. I'm very interested in seeing which mechanical systems are put in place to try and solve this issue; and moreover, how it evolves over time as players find loopholes and exploits.

I don't know if you could factor moderation handed out into some form of feedback into companies and settlements to make groups care more about such regulation. That can be a slippery slope into too heavy handed methodology however.

With the influence system perhaps some negative hit to influence could be used to discourage behaviors GW deems unwanted and encourage group peer pressure to enforce certain standards - set by GW.

I've lurked these forums for a while and in the interest of actually posting on topic I'll share some of my "pvp" experiences.

I've played most of the major MMOs since SWGs in some way shape or form and have pvp'd in most of them. My experience in the hardcore pvp games is somewhat limited I will admit, but I'll also put forth the opinion that most of them haven't really been worthwhile games. I would have loved to pvp in EVE (despite it not being twitch) but the things one has to do to gather the money as a new and friendless player were entirely too boring to make it worth my while.

So on to two stories who's major themes have always served me well in pvp.

Stay calm under fire:

This is a vanilla WoW story (yeah, yeah, I know...). A group of us were wanting to kill the boss in the Dire Maul arena (free for all pit!). The boss itself would have been a joke for us (two were hardcore raiders and the other three of us were pretty competent) but there were a gaggle of Horde people milling about watching. The two raiders were anti-pvp and were very skeptical about jumping in as they were afraid of getting attacked. Eventually we were able to talk them into it with the advice: "Whatever happens, you two stay on the boss and stay alive. We'll deal with the Hordies."

When it was obvious we were going to kill the boss with ease, the five or so Hordies attacked. The three of us that were pvpers turned and instantly focus fired them all down systematically. They weren't pushovers but I don't think they were really expecting the concerted and calm reaction to their attack. We'd talked through the scenario before hand and basically had a plan for "what can possibly go wrong". When the poo came flying we reacted per the plan and remained calm.

The best part was the exhilaration of the PVEers from the adrenaline rush of the fight. We didn't quite make pvpers out of them, but they saw at least a little bit of the draw for it.

Make use of your environment:

This second story isn't about computer games. It's actually about a NATO wargame, but these canned scenarios are often very similar to video games in a manner of speaking (plus I can talk about them without violating any classification rules). I was the officer of the deck of a fast attack submarine with the goal of "destorying" a high value unit. They have us go to point with a plus/minus distance and a certain time and then start the scenario. Basically this actually gives them a fighting chance because honestly, other than the canned scenario noone really ever knows we're there.

The Captain and Engineer had this new "tactic" they like to use to get a better battlefield picture, which I was against based on having been brainwashed that stealth was everything. They would broach the sail of the sub just long enough to rotate the radar a few turns and get a clear picture of where everything was located. Other than the annoying procedures to carry out this evolution it wasn't all that big a deal, but this time there was a ship in the line up that had a spy-1 radar (know your enemies), which can see a car moving down a road at 200 miles. Needless to say it wasn't very long before a P-3 was up in the air looking for us and dropping active sonar buoys.

From a previous scenario I knew that the standard operating procedure for getting away from these things once detected wasn't really going to work (the same Engineer had made me pull out the book and use the SOP). After telling the Engineer "I told you so" and being told to "Shut the F up." (I had told him it was a bad idea prior) I told him I'd like to try something different. I knew the water conditions and how they affected sound propogation in the water and I knew where the other ships in the area were due to sonar and I had good firing solutions on every one of them. I figured out where to put the sub to basically shield us from the active pulses of the sonar buoys before they could really pinpoint us and go for a kill. It wasn't long after that, that we "destroyed" the high value unit.