All Posts by afoaa

Originally posted by Meridion

About as long as last time, when about 6-10 weeks after release many achievers quit, followed by the killers. For the last year or so the game was crowded with RP/socialize/explorer type players, I don't think this will have changed when you take a look into the game around Feb.

M

That is probably true but not necessarily a bad thing. I dont believe games should cater to every type of player since people have so different taste.

Lotro is for the explorers and socializers and delivers for that kind of gamer better than any other current mmo and its good that it caters to its core fans and keep on doing that.

Its actually a failure of many new MMOs that they are not honest about what their core audience is so they leave many many angry people in their wake. Like WaR that was hyped as a RvR game but it really wasnt.

At first the population didnt rise much, but now the numbers are increasing big time.

Probably word of mouth spreading that there is new fun to be had here and this game has never created the ill feelings most other MMOs create in people who leave. So people come back when they hear this.

Today I made a warden, when I entered Archet there were 31 people there.

At the first hub in Moria there were so many people that I lagged badly, I counted between 50 and 60 and there werent even an AH there. A guildie of mine said that it was much worse at the AH.

So yes many have returned to try out the expansion. No one knows how long it will last though.

Well its a game that is very relaxed and casual friendly compared to most other products on the market.

It has serious time sinks but most of them you can easily do solo. The casual player also more or less have access to the same gear and content as the hard core player.

The crafting system is massive. It takes a LOOONG time to master and its hard to get the stuff needed to make good items. OTOH (until the expansion) crafted gear was as good as any drops. With the expansion weaponcrafters have become a bit obsolete.

The game has one thing going for it. STORY. Its so full of stories and I have had many "Whoa!" moments while playing it. The game is very much a ROLE playing game. The ability to have several set of appearances setup for your toon independent of the gear you actually use is a very nice feature.

The PvP is decent but the engine is not really made for it. For example you cannot move and do melee attacks at the same time, this makes melees almost useless in PvP since a ranged class can kite them forever. That being said the PvP has goals and action that puts it above the mindless PvP killing you see in most games. For example the side that control the most objectives gain access to a nice dungeon (similar to the darkness fall system in daoc).

Its not really a game for raiders. There are several raid dungeons but its not the focus of the game and it shows.

The expansion has 2 major features. First is moria itself. It difficult to describe just how big this dungeon is, its about 6 x 4 km big but i has so many layers over and under that everyone get lots in there, its BIIIG.

Secondly the expansion has introduced legendary items. These are items you partly design yourself as you use them. As you use them, they level up and as they level you can choose what abilities they become better at, sort of like mini characters. And the way its done then everyone can have access to these fun items but not everyone can get them to the same level of power. Its so far a really good system even though it made my grandmaster weaponsmith jobless.

I returned a few days ago to the game after a 6 month break and I have seriously enjoyed it.

Two pieces of info to the OP.

Two of the 3 healing classes in order need to attack in order to be able to efficiently heal, the archmage and the warrior priest.

Secondly if you dont like how your healers heal you then make one yourself and play them like you want a healer to heal. Else you really have no right to complain about healers.

*mumble* *grumble* I think the bug in AoC where female toons did less damage than male toons was a greater bug than this one.

Originally posted by Redleicester

Afoaa said:

"The Knight otoh is a weak mirror of the chosen, he only buff but dont debuff enemies."

 

To be fair, the difference in the mechanic of buffing yourself or debuffing an enemy doesn't really exist. If your buff makes you 5% stronger then the lack of a debuff to make your enemy 5% weaker isn't really necessary, if it's done properly.

Yes but the chosen is debuffing AND buffing. The KotbS only buffs.

Originally posted by Warmaker 

These changes would be absolutely devastating for Order.  Ironbreakers are the ONLY Order tanks that you could find in some sort of quantity and geared for it, and the total number of Order tanks are miniscule compared to Destruction tanks.

I'm not sure WTH Mythic is thinking.  They want to Nerf the ONLY worthwhile Order tank, and let me be blunt... Swordmasters are horrible tanks for PvP compared to IB's.

As if Order doesn't have things hard enough as it is.

Freakin' Morons.

It gets even worse, after November 17 we will see two new tanks, the blackguard and the knight of the blazing sun.

The blackguard use the same mechanics as the IB except he gets his grudge from attacking enemies, not being attacked making him without question the most powerful tank in the game even compared to the current prenerf IB.

No one hits on a tank anyway until the fight is already over and decided so a defense grudge system is useless in PvP except for the oathfriend which was the mechanics that is broken now.

The Knight otoh is a weak mirror of the chosen, he only buff but dont debuff enemies.

So order gets its only good tank nerfed into the ground. Destruction gets another cool looking tank that is stronger than the prenerf IB and order gets a weaker version of the already worst tank in the game. . . .

I wonder what they are smoking at mythic? :D

Unless your target is a lonely sorc or sh then dont go solo against them in the middle of a fight. No one can really solo kill anything grouped in this game as it should be.

Where you see WHs be REALLY good is as support dps for tank rolls. The second a tank begin to hit on anything the WH pops into the fight and actually finish it. Its extremely efficient and you actually contribute towards getting your team to win.

WHs that go on solo runs in scenarios just give free pts to the enemy side every time they die.

People who say no skill and no penalty are just ignorant.

This game player skill is EVERYTHING. Its the guys that can think fast and play right that win. Tactics is soo incredible important here. This is why that soon you will begin to see elite gank group form up that will tear through zergs of noobs just like in daoc.

Atm people are experimeting with what group setups are the most efficient. You see people try with bomb groups, with tank groups, nuker groups and so on.

We have found out that controlled timed agression is a winner, but then again we are all old mids from daoc who lived and died by the ability to press the enemy in a controlled way.

When people quote the high/high in middle september and compare them to medium/medium now and say the game is dying then its because they dont know their facts.

Mythic started out with a very low population cap on the servers to spread out people and to prevent a too fast growth of the population on one side on the servers.

Today the servers have 3 times the population cap of what they had in the first week or two. Meaning that a full server on september 23 will now show as a low to medium server with the same number of people playing on it.

If you take a look inside the game then there is NO drop in population in the past month. The difference is that you see almost no one out in the PvE areas. No one will do the boring PvE then its much much more efficient and fun to lvl you toon via RvR and Scenarios.

Keeps are changing sides every hour now, zones are locked down as a part of the overall campaign and things are actually working!

Now its time to see if mythic can do something about the things that are still not so good in the game, but since its some of the same things that never ever got fixed in daoc then I am not THAT hopeful about it.

They have an ilogical fear of ranged procs and a severe hatred of anything that wields a bow, pets are a joke and there is always some game element that completely breaks the fun for a majority of players when used, in this case the rift/magnet, in daoc it was shrooms.

Listen, this is mythic, they HATE anything with a bow and like it when they are so useless that only a few fanatics will want to play them.

I stopped playing my SW at lvl 31 because after an argument about healing I swore I would make my own healer and made a WP.

The WP at lvl 25 does more damage than the 31 SW while also buffing his group and healing for 3 to 5 times the damage the SW did. And with as many kills as the SW.

Thats dps/support. I am sorry to say this but as the SW is atm then any group is better off bringing ANYTHING else with them. They do not provide dps, their support is pitiful compared to real support classes and they have less surviveability than a BW.

But you also see it already, as I am moving through T3 now with the WP then its extremely rare to see any SWs anymore.

Originally posted by bluegoo2

Notice all of the flameposts made by people with >50 posts.

I am willing to bet they work for Blizz so they don't lose any more subs.

Naa they dont need to do that. Popular new games always hurt other older games by hurting the social network players in that game have because contacts, friends, guildies leave for the other game.

The hurt people then try to downtalk the new game in the hope that they wont lose more friends/guildies/contacts and in the hope that they might return if the other game can be hurt enough.

Its human nature to attack things that hurt you and new MMOs does that to players who dont join the new MMO.

Originally posted by Euthorus

I see what you are describing here and I was trying hard to stick to Scout stance...which seems to equal FAIL at this time. Guess I will respec and give it another shot, as is the most I am able to do in full scout spec for my level and maxed out Balistic gear is around 200-300 per shot with long ass prep time and that lovely orc on me in 1-2 shots.

Ok here is what you do:

Spec fully scout and get the Festering Arrow and the Enchanted Arrows technique and equip it. Then you now have an attack that does double the damage you had before and it ignores armor and resistance.

Then go for gear that give you wounds, initiative, balistic and toughness only, all other stats are pointless for you.

At lvl 31 I have 5430 hits unbuffed, 541 balistic, and around 750/1500 armor.

Open with the festering arrow then use the acid shot armor debuff and follow up with the rapid fire. If you hit the double damage morale ability then shooting those 3 attacks will usually be enough to kill a caster and it might also kill a healer. It takes 8 seconds to complete the attack cycle and at the end of it you will have done 2000-2500 damage or 4000-5000 if you hit your morale ability. The key is that you can do the damage so fast that if you see a wounded target then you can often kill them before their healers can react.

Its fairly clear that those SWs that are really unhappy are the ones in the early 20s. That lvl range is the terrible time for a SW, you fall very very far behind other classes.

But things change at lvl 25 and later on. At lvl 30 I can crit people for 2600 pts of damage. I have hit orcs for 1900 pts of damage. You just need to spec fully scout and get the right techniques and morale abilities.

You then use your push, ranged knockdown (vengance + ranged snare = knockdown), instant PBAE root and disarm to prevent the enemy from hurting your healers and your healers keep you alive long enough for you to be able to stand still and do the mega damage shots.

Originally posted by obamaphony

I leveled to 24 on my SW and frankly I'm tired of not being to escape melee pummeling my butt. We need an escape and some additional DPS. Just a weak overall class. We should get speed at the least. I'm sure the devs will respond as they have already. Good start but let's have some balance. Squig Herder too.

Gain 1 more lvl and spec 100% scout and get festering arrow. . . . then you wont complain about damage anymore. :)

The SW is only weak at lower levels, after lvl 25 things begin to be better and after 30 it becomes fun. At 30 I can crit enemies for 2200 hits and that was before I got the technique where I ignore their magic resistance permanently.

The SW is a burst damage class, we dont get overall huge damage but we can do so much damage in so short time (at least as a scout) that we can take out key targets before they can get heals. That is a nice role. But you need to be lvl 30+ before it really works and thats is why you see so much talk about weak SWs.

Its vital for the games health that mythic does NOT introduce another cool destruction class.

Mythic should add the hamere and the human knight asap but no new dest classes. So there could not only be more population balance but also a better balance in classes.

Atm its clear mythic spend way too much time making destruction cool and completely ignored most of what made the order side cool in Warhammer and the game is suffering badly from it atm.

If the dest/order population cannot be fixed fast then it will kill the game.

AoC has far better PvE lvling (until the content problems lvl 55+) but that doesnt matter because in war you mostly lvl by doing pvp anyway.

WaR also have a functioning endgame from the start. The game is designed around the endgame and not the lvling game (typical of mythic) and therefore has far better longivity.

So war wins my vote.

Otoh I really hope that AoC becomes a succss in the long term, the game is just so beautiful and I am a lifetime ReH fan. It just need content content content, and then an endgame that actually have a purpose and makes sense.