Friday, February 20, 2009

This Is How I Want to Play! My Dream BG Fix

Over the course of the weekend, a certain Hunter, from some random backwater server, happened to be in the same BG's that I was in. Everyone here knows the type: argumentative, loud and generally mean spirited. I'm alot like that guy, but since I play to win, my commentary is usually either a) directions to other random pug players to do something strategically (no, cancelling your subscription is not strategy) or b) sarcastically lamenting the fact that the people who are playing with me need to learn how to play the various BG's.

I'll let y'all know right now that I'm not the kindest of BG participants and I have harsh criticism for people who really make grievous errors like to the Rogues who watch me get steamrolled, only to come out of Stealth after I die, to attack my attacker. I do report players who swear up a storm and are general eThugs in BG's, but knowing that karma can be a bitch, I don't swear or give anyone any opportunities to leverage any actionable behavior because of my slip ups.

So, anyways, this Hunter responds very negatively with everything I'm saying, and to be clear, my /bg chat was mostly comprised of (In SotA) "Alliance is pushing Green!", "Protect the Graveyards!", and the ever wonderful "Get off the beach and up to Yellow!". I'd personally think that these directions are helpful, especially if there are people who aren't looking at the minimap to see the flow of the match. In fact, communication of this type is critical for BG's as it gives people an idea on how to respond or take initiative.

His loudest and most frequent comment is:
Look! Another know it all. Let people play how they want to
play and STFU!

Which only got me into an ePissing match with him, which, to save your collective sanities, will not be printed here.

Naturally, this got me into thinking. Theoretically, Mr. Hunter is right. People CAN do whatever the hell they want to do in a BG. They can repeatedly drown themselves in the water by Stables for 20 minutes straight if they wanted to. However, functionally, to do something contrary to the goals of the bg weakens everybody's chances of attaining better rewards.

Pinning your chances of success to someone who doesn't care, doesn't want to win, and/or doesn't know how to complete objectives to increase their own chances of success is a dreadfully bad investment of time, and as such, is the reason why so many top PvPers just AFK BG's.

Sooooooo... What can game designers do to enforce collective movement towards a goal.

Here's my idea:
  • Build into the game, the ability to detect combat in a 40 yd radius for each person.
  • Give each person an Activity Rating (AR).
  • Grant Honor based off of AR. No AR = no honor.
  • AR is calculated through active participation, but with various boundaries: Each additional person pursuing the same 'node', up to a determined value, which is different for each node for each BG, grants additional AR. This encourages group effort. Each person beyond the set value lowers the rating, thus discouraging zerging or turtling. The game will grant AR if it detects offensive abilities being used as well as if heals/buffs are being distributed. One heal every 30 seconds = little to no AR. Buffing people who need buffs count towards AR if people are in combat. Long duration buffs do not count (Fortitude, Wisdom, etc). The game will grant bonus AR if the combat is within 40 yards of a capturable node. The game will also grant no AR if it detects combat within 40 yds from the player and that player is not participating in combat.
  • (Optional) Keep a tally of average AR for the past 5 BG's of each type. If it is of a certain value or higher in a specific BG, grant a small multipler bonus on subsequent BG's of that type until the 5 game average drops below the threshold. If it is of a certain value or lower, grant a multiplier penalty on subsequent BG's until the value is brought past the threshold.
  • (Optional) Each person below a certain threshold in a BG will grant a bonus AR multiplier to people who are above that threshold. This is designed to give those who are dealing with AFK'ers on their team an incentive to keep playing

For AB:

  • Set all capturable nodes to have a clickable 'capture' flag and an AR value of 5 players/faction. The ownership of the node depends on how far the slider (a la EotS) is to either the Alliance or Horde side. If there is no combat going on nearby, the clickable 'capture' flag's ownership slowly reverts to neutral over time .
  • If there is no combat nearby, a player may actively channel (click) to move the ownership to their faction's side. Players may move while channeling (think Fire Festival dance poles) up to 40 yards from the flag, but must refresh the channel every several seconds. This will contribute to their AR. Each additional person channeling will dilute the AR. Beyond 3 people, the channel effect will not grant AR to anyone, encouraging people to move to another node.
  • If there is combat going on nearby, ownership of the node is calculated as it currently is in EotS (proximity instead of channeling)

For EOTS:

  • Set all capturable towers to have a clickable 'capture' flag and an AR value of 5 players/faction. The ownership of the node depends on how far the slider (a la EotS) is to either the Alliance or Horde side. If there is no combat going on nearby, the clickable 'capture' flag's ownership slowly reverts to neutral over time .
  • If there is no combat nearby, a player may actively channel (click) to move the ownership to their faction's side. Players may move while channeling (think Fire Festival dance poles) up to 40 yards from the flag, but must refresh the channel every several seconds. This will contribute to their AR. Each additional person channeling will dilute the AR. Beyond 3 people, the channel effect will not grant AR to anyone, encouraging people to move to another node.
  • If there is combat going on nearby, ownership of the node is calculated as it currently is in EotS (proximity instead of channeling)
  • The Flag is a mobile node with an AR limit of 3 players/faction, regardless of combat status.

For WSG

  • Each Flag is a mobile node with an AR limit of 5 players/faction

For SotA

  • Each Demolisher is a mobile node with an AR limit of 3 players/faction
  • Passengers on a Demolisher must be actively participating or will not obtain AR.
  • Each Graveyard is a node for the Defending team with with an AR limit of 5 players.

For AV

  • Each Tower has an AR limit of 5 players/faction
  • Each Opposing tower burned grants a bonus AR multiplier
  • Each Graveyard has an AR limit of 5 players/faction

So, thoughts? Comments?

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Mana Regen Changes

I could strangle the Blizzard dev who came up with this gem of an idea.

Both hands. Thumbs on the windpipe.

I could care less about the actual mechanic change, but I'm definitively not happy about the Hill Politician-esque flip flopping from Blizzard.

Flip flopping?

Let me explain.

The core idea behind the change is the notion that Healing is too easy.

Forget about the details of what Blizzard wants Healers to multitask: managing mana, picking the right heals to use at the right time or usage of cooldowns and understand that from Blizzard's point of view, current Healing methodologies are all about mashing your most effective heal over and over until you win. And they're completely right. Why do they see it as such a mindless task? Because they created this monster.

Yep. Blizzard created this situation over the course of the 6 months.

Really? What did they do?
  • Removal of Downranking. Downranking was the single most complicated healer skill out there because it by itself created decision making. If you have no clue what downranking was, to explain briefly: casters could elect to use a lower rank of a spell to create a smaller effect at a reduced mana cost, often with a faster cast time. If someone needed a small heal but didnt want to blow a ton of mana for alot of overheal, a healer could use a midrank heal instead of a max rank heal. Overhealing meters (for non-Druids) actually meant something because it showed mana efficiency and skill, especially on bosses where damage was predictable and burst damage was not expected.
  • 3.0 TBC Boss Nerf. With the release of 3.0, a few of major things happened. The first was the sweeping nerf to all of TBC's 25 man raid bosses. This change allowed less progressed guilds (who were ridiculously undergeared) access to high level content and complete it due to lowered boss HP totals. When a fight is made trivial due to a much shorter encounter duration, healing gets sloppy. Healers were encouraged to dump their mana whenever they wanted because the fights would invariably end before they could run dry. The mentality of blowing your mana pool became a bad habit and with the natural ePeen measuring contests a la Healing Meters, bad healers with no concept of resource management were often regarded as 'good healers'. This was made all the worse by the next point.
  • 3.0 WotLK AoE Healing Talents/Glyphs. WotLK talent trees and glyphs brought out alot of new and interesting abilities and skill synergies for healing classes at the end of TBC's run. Some skills such as Wild Growth were so overpowered that they were eventually nerfed, but for several months, they were allowed to exist in an overpowered state. Much like the previous point, this created 'good healers' out of bad healers simply because they could repeatedly press an iwin button and be rewarded for it. I remember running a post boss nerf pug Hyjal on my Resto Druid, who was both geared and specced for PvP (no Wild Growth), and was made fun of by a Druid in blues/epics because we had just about tied in healing done. I like to think that my witty response of "Because pressing one button means you have skill, right?" shut him up, but in reality, it didn't. I distinctly remember being pissed off at how skill-less healing had become.
  • 3.0 Replenishment. This one actually took a while to become abused, because for a long time people didn't understand the actual impact, but I'd be lying if it wasn't being ridiculously abused by healers today. By stacking Intellect, a caster can expect to get a constant 300 mp5, just for having a raid buffed 24,000 mana pool. If this doesn't scream "cast to your heart's content because mana isn't an issue", then I dont know what would. Understandably, casters are doing just that. The crazy/cool thing is that by stacking Intellect, Spirit based healers are improving their Spirit based regen and all healers are adding a bit of Crit, which seems to proc efficiency or throughput for every healing class. There is NO penalty for stacking Int because everything is healable with just 1900-2000 Spellpower.

So there we have it. The culprits behind why healing is so incredibly easy these days.

So why am I not happy?

Because Blizzard has lured many innocent players into their van with promises of sweet sweet candy and easy gear, only to dash their dreams of being the next raid savior with the classic bait and switch pedastery. I don't quite care about the established and skilled healers, but when looking at the average population out there, healing is about to get a bit more difficult. Healers who have minimal gems, poor enchants, and take gear without any direction/focus are going to get a rude awakening. Same for those who run with guilds who have players who want to raid with their spec, even if swapping to a Replenishment spec would benefit the entire group.

The final questions are: why should healers have something else to think about just to do their job effectively and why should there be yet another barrier to a role that is already suffering from a dearth of active participants?

It's hard enough to even find enough healers anyways