March 30, 2009

@Anon

On my "WAR, what is it good 4?" post, Anonymous asked:
I just started playing the game and I would be curious what fundamental game designs you think it lacks?
Upfront, the performance was my dead horse to beat for the majority of my time in WAR. I have a good PC, a solid connection, and the end game zerg Realm vs. Realm was nigh unplayable. It did get better and last I played, lag and choppiness (outside of Fortresses and City Sieges) was fairly reasonable in most cases.

OK, that really isn't design related, but performance issues make a game's design difficult to evaluate. Here is a list of the fundamental design issues I found with WAR.

1. Another Mythic game with overpowered group crowd control (Rift, Electromagnet, AOE disables, and knockdowns) combined with overpowered AOE damage abilities. Sorry, I hated PBAOE groups in DAoC and I hated the AOE farm groups in WAR. Both were overpowered and both destroyed the fun of venturing out into RvR without 100 of my closest friends..

2. Open-world RvR zones were referred to as lakes, but were more like deserts. They were void of content outside of keeps and zerg RvR. The warcamps were too close together and there was no point to venture out alone. RvR zones should have been like every other zone in the game, but with the addition of keeps and battlefield objectives. Maybe we will see some of this out of the Tomb Kings patch.

3. City sieges needed to last longer and have a bigger impact. Instead they were short, laggy messes that benefited everyone equally. Honestly, players wanted their city to be taken so they could farm the defender Public Quests for fat loot. That is an absolute failure of Mythic's design.

That really sums up my problems with WAR. Three strikes and you're out and all that jazz.

Actually, the only item off my "list" to get fixed was scenario grinding.