Avalanche de nouvelles !

Là où l'on reparle du farming:

Folks,

For what it's worth:

1) I hate professional farming/farmers and companies that make money off the same. We've been presented with numerous opportunities to make money from such groups/companies and have strongly rebuffed every one. I have taken a strong public stance on this issue and will continue to do so.

2) I dislike the need for players to have to farm in order to advance

3) I like game systems that discourage/prohibit (1) and don't require (2).

4) I'm involved with designing the game systems for WAR.

Where do you think we want to go with the game? Smile
Now, keep in mind that I also like rewards for players, loot, treasure, etc., that can be earned by a player's actions whether through questing or RvR or PvP. There is a way to design systems that are less farmable/exploitable and everything is on the table here.

Mark

Morceaux choisis :

Je déteste le phénomène de « farming » et ceux qui en profitent pour s'enrichir. J'ai pris position contre cet aspect des mmo et je m'y tiendrai.

Néanmoins nous conserverons les récompenses aux joueurs. Que ce soit par le biais de quêtes, du RvR ou du PvP. Le farming (accumuler une grande quantité d'objets du même type afin de s'enrichir ou de gagner en puissance) sera limité au maximum par le système de jeu.

 

A propos des déplacements longue distance :

Folks,

Ah, this is another of my favorite subjects. Here are my thoughts:

1) Long travel times, if used as a time sink, are bad.

2) Travel times, if used to enhance immersion (cool scenario, dangerous areas, suprises here and there) and if used judiciously, are good.

3) Long travel times, even if done well, get to be annoying and serve as negative reinforcement once a player has played the game for a long time.

4) Veteran players should have faster means of movement than new players as long as such movement advantages do not distort RvR.

5) In the end (after a year or so of playing, if not sooner), 99.9% of all players hate any system you have in-place for travel that is not instanteous no matter whether it is immersion-breaking or not unless they gain an advantage through that system. Smile

Mark

Morceaux choisis :

1. Les temps de trajet importants sont mauvais pour le jeu si ils représentent une perte de temps.

2. Les temps de trajet importants sont bons si ils contribuent à l'immersion et si ils sont utilisés judicieusement.

3. Pour les joueurs de longue date, les trajets qui s'éternisent deviennent ennuyeux.

4. Les vétérans doivent avoir les moyens de se déplacer plus rapidement que les nouveaux venus tant que cela n'influe pas sur le RvR.

5. Au bout d'un certain temps (plus d'un an de jeu) 99,9% des joueurs en viennent à détester tout système de voyage non instantané.

    

Où nous apprenons que W.A.R. sera un jeu accessible aux adolescents et que des serveurs Roleplay seront de la partie :

Folks,

Well, let's see what trouble I can get myself into here today eh? Okay, first some basic thoughts:

1) As President of Mythic I must separate my wants from what is best for the company and for GW ignoring what (2) thinks, taking into account the laws and customs not only of the US but overseas as well.

2) As Lead Game Designer, I must look at what makes a great game regardless of what (1) thinks.

3) As Mark Jacobs, private citizen, I have my own thoughts on whether and how games should be rated, what games should and should not be created, and sold to the general public.

4) As Mark Jacobs, ex-lawyer, I have great concerns regarding censorship no matter which side of the fence it comes from.

Okay, having said all that, where the heck do I stand on this issue? Well, it's actually quite simple:

1) WAR will have a Teen rating. The reasons for this have to do with all of the above. While a MA game could garner us additional press and potentially another demographic of user, MA games face legal hurdles all over the world. While it is true that there are certainly different types of MA games, my feeling is that if really wanted to do an MA game, we should go all out and really, really do an MA game, why pussyfoot around. However, doing such would engender far too many problems around the world and, from a business perspective, not be a smart move (regardless of the success of games such as GTA).

2) I do not believe that an MA game will attract a "better" audience (in terms of RPing) than a Teen game. From our experience we have just as many brain-dead, rude, vulgar, racist, hate-mongering individuals regardless of age. The Internet, for good or ill, allows people to act anonymously. This results, many times, in people acting like jerks. MMOGs take that to the next level. The amount of bannings that we have gone through in four years due to the type of behavior described above is staggering. Sometimes they are kids, sometimes they are adults. I truly wish this wasn't the case but sadly it is.

3) An MA game would do very little to ensure that the players who joined us would be "better" players. My gut is that it would actually be the reverse. That players would come in expecting that they could get away with more than they could in a Teen or Everyone game.

4) Being a Warhammer game doesn't require that everything is over-the-top bloody, gruesome or that everything is dark, dank and depressing. While there are aspects of the WH IP that embraces that, it is not the entire IP. WAR will not be cartoony (nor sunshine and light everywhere) but it won't be the 3Ds.

5) We will run RP servers, just as we have in the past, for players for whom RP is more important than some. We will not require every person on every server to RP for three simple reasons: 1) It would require so much staff to enforce that we would have to charge double or triple the normal price; 2) Not everyone is capable (due to age, lack of experience, ability) to RP well. I'm not about to tell a 10-year old (who is trying to play the game and is not acting like a jerk) that he has to RP as well as a 30-year who has been a LARPer for 20 years; 3) We want all our users to enjoy our game as long as they follow the rules (in terms of vulgarity, abuse, harassement, etc.) or on the specialize servers, the rules of those servers.

Believe me, I would love a world where everybody was a good or great RPer, where I would be free of the Leet Spk (or however it's written) and guys playing out of character (begging for free stuff, talking about sports on main chat, etc.). We can do some things to make it less instrusive (chat and all that). We can create customized servers (RP) and we might be able to go farther. However, at the end of the day, WAR is a game and a MMORPG at that. Given the differences we see even in our small community already on such subjects as Magic in WAR, I can't imagine the differences we would see if we tried to implement a RP-Only system throughout all our servers.

Mark

Morceaux choisis :

W.A.R. sera un jeu classé « douze ans et plus ». Je ne pense pas qu'un jeu « seize ans et plus » soit un gage de joueurs de qualités. Je suis convaincu qu'il y a de mauvais (et de bons) joueurs dans toutes les tranches d'âge. W.A.R. ne sera pas un univers guilleret et coloré mais ce ne sera pas non plus un bain de sang perpétuel. Conformément à la propriété intellectuelle que nous nous sommes engagés à respecter. S'ajoute à tout cela l'aspect juridique. Un jeu pour adulte est soumis à de nombreux points de loi de part le monde et ce ne serait pas sans créer de nouveux problèmes.

Nous hébergerons des serveurs à vocation Roleplay, comme nous l'avons fait par le passé, pour les joueurs qui accordent une importance particulière à cet aspect. Nous ne rendrons pas le RP obligatoire sur tous les serveurs pour plusieurs raisons :

1. Le personnel requis pour une telle mesure doublerait ou triplerait le coût de l'abonnement.

2. Tout le monde n'a pas les même capacités (connaissance du monde) ou les même envies/attentes en ce qui concerne le RP.

3. Nous tenons à ce que tous nos joueurs apprécient le jeu tant qu'ils respectent les règles. Si ils jouent sur un serveur spécialisé ils devront respecter les règles en vigueur sur ce serveur.

J'aimerais, moi aussi, un monde ou tous les joueurs sont de bons roleplayers mais il ne faut pas sombrer dans l'utopie. Nous pouvons mettre en place des solutions pour préserver le roleplay (des chats, des serveurs spécifiques ...) Cela dit, W.A.R. est un jeu et doit en rester un. On ne peut imposer un mode de pensée aux joueurs et chacun doit rester libre de jouer comme il l'entend.

 

De la puissance comparée des joueurs et de l'accès au RvR :

You make some good points, some of which I agree with and some of which are already part of the game. There are some things I do disagree with, and I'll explain two of them at least:

>>>>and the power spread between a new character and a veteran has to be fairly small. Will Warhammer lose the level 60 vs level 1 paradigm?
Here's a point that I will always disagree with, whether it is WAR, DAoC or any RPG. If the goal is to create a game where point spread between a totally tricked out veteran and a newbie is small or non-existent, then that runs counter to what we are doing here. Quake, DOOM, Unreal, etc. are those types of games and not RPGs. I can't think of a single RPG (MMO or standalone), where a totally tricked out character (by the end of the game) couldn't kick the snot out of a new character. This is something that has run through the RPG genre for decades and it is practice which I support 100%. It's also one that is 100% supported by the WH material and by GW. 1 on 1, a fully tricked out veteran will always be able to kill a newbie (assuming that both actually know how to play the game and didn't buy their characters) without too much difficulty. WAR is, a MMORPG and as such, will have levels/progressions/etc. (I'm being vague on purpose) that are closer to RPGs (and to the WH material) than an FPS. I'm truly sorry if you feel that we are looking toward EQ when we do stuff like that but it's actually based on the RPG paradigm and not the MMORPG paradigm (also keep in mind I created my first MUD about 20 years ago) and especially not the EQ paradigm. It's one I like and that is core to this game. However, if you are afraid that the game will be like other games, including DAoC, in its level progression, it will not be.

>>>>RvR has to be available in some capacity (other than battlegrounds!)
WAR, at its heart, is an RvR game and it would serve no purpose if the player couldn't get involved in RvR very, very early. Keep in mind that the last thing you would want though is the guys who have never played WAR (let alone an MMO), charging through areas and messing things up. We must allow the player time to get comfortable with the game and actually understand what he is doing before he must interact with other players, otherwise you could end up driving away a lot of prospective subscribers. If people leave WAR because they don't like RvR or PvE or WAR at all, we can accept that. What we shouldn't do though is put them in a position where they really can't judge what RvR is about and then decide to quite because they were thrown into a situation which they couldn't handle. Now, does this mean that every player will have to PvE 100 hours before they have the opportunity to RvR? No, that would be absurd for WAR (which is why I threw out such a large number). Does that mean you will be able to RvR, very, very quickly. Well, that's one of the things we are working on now. All I can tell you is that it will be very early in your career and the types of RvR action we will have is varied, challenging and different from what we have done in the past.

Mark

Morceaux choisis :

Un joueur de longue date sera capable de venir à bout d'un débutant avec une relative facilité, comme dans la majorité des MMO. C'est, pour moi, un des principes de base de ce type de jeu.

W.A.R. sera un MMORPG ce qui implique un système de niveaux/progression/etc (je reste vague a dessein) qui est plus proche d'un jeu de rôle que d'un FPS. Je peux, par contre, affirmer que ce jeu sera différent des autres (DaoC y compris) quant à son système de progression.

Le RvR ne se limitera pas à des « battlegrounds ». W.A.R. est un jeu fondamentalement RvR et les joueurs pourront participer au conflit très tôt dans la vie de leur personnage. Bien entendu, nous ne pouvons permettre à un débutant total d'interagir avec les autres joueur dans un contexte RvR. Il faut préserver un temps d'adaptation pour que les joueurs maîtrisent un minimum leur personnage et les mécanismes du jeu. Nous pouvons accepter que les joueurs quittent W.A.R. parce qu'il n'aiment pas le RvR, le PvE ou le jeu dans son ensemble mais nous ne voulons pas dégoutter les joueurs en les mettant d'entrée de jeu dans une situation qu'ils ne pourront contrôler.

Vous n'aurez pas à passer une centaine d'heures en PvE pour vous lancer dans le RvR. Vous y aurez accès très tôt dans votre carrière et les divers actes RvR que nous prévoyons seront variés et différents de ce que nous avons proposé par le passé.

Où l'on reparle des serveurs RP :

Regarding RP servers, Mythic has always been very attentive to the RP servers that we have run. So much so I can attest that my CSRs have been harrased, insulted and attacked publicly for their actions in support of the RP servers. Smile Now, as always, nobody is perfect and things, especially in a MMOG can fall through the cracks at times but that we have been diligent in maintaining our RP servers. The amount of bannings that we have done on these servers is, quite frankly, ridiculous (in terms of their numbers) but necessary to maintain a good server. Again, we are not perfect but we try really hard and are always trying to improve. GIven the importance of WAR to Mythic, I think it is a safe bet that any RP servers we launch will be well-maintained and monitored as necessary to ensure a good experience as long as the players are realistic about things like response times. There is always a balance and while we would love to have enough CSRs that we could answer 100 complaints a minute per RP server, that is not realistic. We also have to balance the type of complaint based on severity (somebody is stuck in the geometry versus somebody who heard somebody else talk about the New York Yankees) of the complaint. This is especially true at launch when no matter how solid the launch, the first couple weeks are quite difficult. And as far as chat logs go, we keep very, very good logs. Smile

Mark

Morceaux choisis :

Mythic a toujours été très attentif quant à la qualité de ses serveurs RP. Nous avons du bannir plusieurs comptes (très peu) afin de maintenir une ambiance de qualité. Nous ne sommes pas parfait mais nous faisons beaucoup d'efforts pour être performants. Etant donné l'importance de W.A.R. pour Mythic je peux affirmer que les serveurs roleplay proposés seront suffisamment surveillés pour assurer aux joueurs une expérience de jeu satisfaisante. Bien sûr, il faut rester réaliste. Nous aimerions disposer de suffisamment de personnel pour répondre simultanément à cent requêtes différentes par serveur mais c'est impossible. Il nous faudra adapter nos actions à la gravité des situations qui se présentent. Il est plus urgent de débloquer un joueur coincé dans le décor que de rappeler à l'ordre un joueur qui parle des new york yankees sur le chat.

A propos de la mort permanente :

Folks,

For me, I'm looking forward to playing a Dark Elf. (Ruh uh, now the wails and lamentations will start, "The DORK ELFS WL RCK If Mithc PLAYS THM!!!!" Smile

Also, no perma-death (no surprise there) and players will absolutely be able to have more than one character per server (once again, knowing Mythic, should be no surprise).

Mark

Morceaux choisis :

Je projette de jouer un elfe noir. La mort permanente (perma-death) ne sera pas de la partie. Les joueurs seront à même de jouer plusieurs personnages par serveur. Cela ne surprendra pas les habitués des jeux Mythic.

Pas de chat vocal intégré pour W.A.R. :

I love, love this subject. Today I was cited as "an outspoken critic of sales of in-game items for real world money" in a MMO periodical. I've actually been a critic longer of voice chat (when run by the developer/publisher). My dislike has always boiled down to the following reaons:

1) Bandwidth usage - If your VC solution consumed a lot more of the developer's bandwidth, that would cause the game to cost more per month or the developer cuts back in other areas.

2) CPU processing - Just as our servers process each message that is sent by the players to each other, if our servers would also have to process the messages, what does that do in terms of cost and/or game performance.

3) Potential negative effect on RPing/immersion - As you guys have already pointed out, a lot of the enjoyment that comes from looking and conversing with a good-looking member of your preferred gender is spoiled when that hottie Dark Elf female sounds like your old high school principal.

4) Negative impact on gaming outside a small group - While voice chat can work great with a small group (especially if they are used to working with each other), the chaos that could ensue from trying to interact with a group even twice your size with VC is even worse.

5) Negative impact in large scale interactions - This would be a nightmare.

6) Legal and technical issues regarding the recording/monitoring of a Mythic VC system. As anyone who has ever run a MMOG can attest, there are all sorts of bad people out there and all of the companies have to deal with them. VC, if run by the game company, just makes it that much worse.

Now, we will not prevent people using it themselves if they want to but Mythic will have no part/control of it at the present time.
Mark

Morceaux choisis :

1. Le problème de bande passante. Si le chat vocal augmente la bande passante consommée par le développeur cela augmente le coût d'exploitation d'autant. A partir de là, soit l'abonnement augmente soit l'exploitant se voit contraint d'économiser sur d'autres aspects.

2. La charge de nos serveurs. Chaque message envoyé/réceptionné par les joueurs augmente la charge de nos serveurs. Ce qui aura fatalement des répercutions sur le reste du jeu.

3. L'aspect négatif sur l'immersion. Entendre cette jolie petite elfe noire parler avec la voix de votre ancien proviseur de lycée n'est pas considéré comme immersif.

4. La complexité du chat vocal pour les groupes de grande envergure. Si cela peut s'avérer pratique pour les groupes de taille limitée (surtout si les joueurs ont l'habitude de jouer ensemble) les choses se compliquent rapidement pour les groupes de taille importante.

5. L'impact négatif sur les interactions à très grande échelle.

6. Les problèmes légaux et techniques quant à l'enregistrement et la surveillance des chats vocaux.

Bien entendu, nous n'empêcherons pas les joueurs d'utiliser un système tiers.

 

Plusieurs informations inédites et quelques confirmations de ce que nous savions déjà.

Nous apprenons donc que les voyages seront rapides, que le jeu sera accessible à un public adolescent, que des serveurs « roleplay » seront proposés, qu'il n'y aura pas de mort permanente dans W.A.R. pas plus que de chat vocal intégré au client.

On nous confirme que le farming sera découragé dans la mesure du possible et que la progression se fera en partie par un système de niveaux. On nous promet, cela dit, que la progression incluera certains aspects inédits.