WoW is bloody ace!

[willowywicca]

Time = ranks, its so in DAoC, in WoW, and basicly any game. Even if there are no ranks in games like Quake (if you want), you as a casual gamer have no chance against someone who plays 8 hours a day...

What we need is a game where everyone is equal regardless of how long they play! We can call it a MMORNG, where each time you fight you randomly get a number between 1 and 100, and so does your oponent and you win if yours is larger than their number. Would be completely balanced across all classes! And also nobody would play because people want the capacity to be able to be better than others in a pvp environment, ranks/rewards/realm ranks or whatever are a needed measure to let people compare their performance to others, and by their nature they *must* exclude certain people from reaching the higher tiers, otherwise they would not be serving their purpose at all.

[Venoid]

"Time = ranks"

Thats not the problem, obviously it goes without saying, that the longer you play, the higher youll get. The problem is there is a limit on how many people can be upper end ranks at one time.

For example, say they set the limit at Rank 14 for 200 people. That means 200 characters on the entire server...so thats across 10000 odd people can ever be Rank14 at any one point in time. This puts a serious gap between people that play for 30+ hours a week compared to those that play 4hours every 3 nights. And thats wrong...regardless of whether the items are necessary, people should NOT be denied the ability to acheive or obtain items ingame purely on the time they invest over a weekly basis.

If you play a game for 300 hours over the course of 1 year, you should technically be able to acheive the same level as someone that plays 300 hours over the course of 2 months, regardless that it took you 6 times as long over real life time, the Honor system simply does not allow that to happen, and thats the seriously problem it has.

This isnt anything like in DAOC, in DAOC, even if you RvR 1 hour a week, feasably come 20 years time you could technically reach RR10. In WoW thats not possible, because you will get capped out because only the people that have put in the most amount of time...and thats not the problem, you cannot devise a skill based system, it will always be about time, but the people that put in the most amount of time, will get exclusive access to parts of the game.

Its not about having the items, its about being locked out of parts of the game, simply because you cant invest the same amounts of time into it...and thats whats severely wrong with the game.

There is a difference between a timesink, and between a system that requires you to put in x amount of hours performing a certain task just to have access to it. And that is what is seriously wrong with the Honor System.

[Argyleyn]

Well, that's really mostly theory as problems like that will occur after a few years and they will propably raise the number then...The biggest problem is playing as a -60 at a pvp server atm imo. You can't get anything done.

[Ovi]

I actually think that the honor system is a step in the right direction after DAoC. It allows people to play a few weeks and get high ranks, rather than having to play for months on end.

It also stops people coming back to the game after a few months break with high ranks, they have to earn them again.

The items aren't anything really special, so by not having a high rank you don't suffer a huge disadvantage... certainly nowhere near as much as the disadvantage a rr3 facing a rr8+.

Without knowing exact details it is hard to know if they have got the balance right, but anything is better than the DAOC system which unbalances the game way too much towards those who spend the time.

[Venoid]

" It allows people to play a few weeks and get high ranks, rather than having to play for months on end."

It doesnt allow this tho. Your not reading how its set up. Only a certain amount of people at any one time can hold higher ranks.

Its not a case of gradually build up over a few months and then maintain it, and if you have a break then you lose it. The higher end tiers are limited to the amount of people that can at any one time hold them. This means even if you put in 1 hour a day, every day of the week for a whole 2 months, someone that has put in 30 hours a week over the course of 2 weeks can essentially acheive a higher rank and potentially prevent you from getting a higher rank.

And again...only a limited number of people can be the higher ranks at any one time. If you put in 20 hours a week, and you just scrap into the Rank14 tier, the following week if one other player puts 21 hours in...even tho you still put in your 20 hours again, you will go down and the 21hour player will go up in your place!

Because points are tallied up over a weekly basis, and split into players according to how much they participated in that week on a % basis. And depending on how many characters are involved, people that do not put in large amounts of time start going down, while the people that devoted their whole week to PvP go up.

So if your group goes around and kills a person, then the points they gain from killing that person goes into the overall pool. If you didnt participate in any way in killing that player, at the end of the week when it calculates how much you did and gives you your reward....you get NOTHING. All your work, goes into someone else. This also brings up serious issues seeing as mages that have aoe and are damaging everyone will get a much greater share than the poor cleric whos group is so powerful they never even have to cast a single heal.

The Honor system is not a static system like rps, you dont keep everything you do, and even if you do some PvP in the week, it does not guarantee you will even go upwards with the honor system as it stands, in fact you could very well still go down, even if you did do a couple of hours in that week.

And just because the concern atm is primarily levelling, doesnt mean to say you cant acknowledge fatal problems in the system as it is, afterall the sooner problems are established, the sooner they can be fixed, and the longer they are around and in action, the harder it becomes to change them.

[Ovi]

I don't think you understood my point.

The system does allow for exactly what I said, it is possible for someone to play for a few weeks (40+ hours per week or whatever) and achieve the highest ranks.

It means that to maintain the highest ranks you need to be actively playing your character, spend time on an alt and you drop etc...

This means that those PvPing, get the higher ranks. Those that PvE don't. Because the difference in ability/equipment etc between rank 14 and rank 1 is not considerable those that are limited in their playtime although will be limited to lower ranks will not be at a severe disadvantage.

As I said, wihtout knowing the exact details, and having tried the system for any length of time, it is difficult to know if the balance is right.

The important rank for me to see is rank 6. This is the seperator between officer barrack access or not. If this rank is "achieveable" for most (80 - 90%) people then I think the balance is about right.

By Achieveable I mean that people should be able to achieve the rank with their normal play hours, as long as they are actively seeking PvP and dedicated to one character. I don't expect 80-90% of people to attain the levels for one reason or another. (Too many Alts in my case...)

As long as everyone has a chance to achieve rank 6 anything above that I think the honor system will work well.

As to your point on the healers not getting their dues ...

"That honor would then have a group honor bonus applied to it before being divided amongst the group. Rest assured that even players that did not engage the enemy player (perhaps because they were healing instead of fighting) will get honor points; as long as you are in a group that helped kill an opposing player, you'll get honor."

If they are grouped they get exactly the same as everyone else in their group.

I don't see your arguments as providing the evidence that this is a fatal flaw. My biggest concern, and one that seems to be shared by most people, is the way that it affects gameplay, and questing etc.

Hopefully once things settle down it will again be possible to XP, but the fact that there is never a disincentive to kill someone seems to make less savoury aspects of PvP more favourable, such as corpse camping, and grey ganking.

The system as a whole still seems much better than the RA system in DAOC though, which was probably my least favourite part of the game.... including ToA!

[HappyG]

This isnt anything like in DAOC, in DAOC, even if you RvR 1 hour a week, feasably come 20 years time you could technically reach RR10. In WoW thats not possible, because you will get capped out because only the people that have put in the most amount of time...

Well... Im sure that fact seriously ruins WoW pleasure for those 3 casual gamers who will still play it after 20 years

I know where are you aiming at Venoid, but the only statement Blizzard made sofar is that they are aiming at 0.1% people with rank 14, which is perfectly fine and much bigger % at final rank that DAoC will have with RR13 system. I agree there shouldnt be to many limitations at lower ranks, and who knows, maybe there aren't any... I guess we'll have to wait and see... Blizz learned a lot of things from other MMOs, and I'm sure they know very well people do not want to be nerfed, they don't want to loose things, so I doubt they dare to set strict rank population limitations, because customer who looses something in the game is unhappy customer, and those tend to cancel subscriptions...

PS: Male, I didn't say I want system where everyone is on the same base, I just said that time=rank is same in all games, and no matter if you like it or not, casual gamers can never be on top.

[alemain]

Hello male nice to see ya at Southshore today wanted you to meet kitty :noangel: .Sorry for the off topic only way to say Hello to the dodgy bull .Tell evita and rambo i said hi .

[Cryn]

The new honor system hasgot people motivated to PvP, but I think WoW PvP is gonna turn out to be funamentally flawed.

We thought we had issues with zerging in DAoC, and how it spoiled things for some, but in WoW PvP raids it takes almost all the fun out of it for me. You've got one crowd of people running in a mob at another crowd. No skill, only basic tactical considerations (eg drag enemy near your guards) and as has been pointed out, people get credit for kills just for turning up.

I've seen people during the last day or so boasting about "600 honourable kills" but been grouped with them in PVP and seen them run about ineffectually with no conception of important things like staying in heal range, using CC, etc.

Blizzard seem to be assuming that if people get out into PvP and kill enemies, they will enjoy it, but that's only going to interest people for a while. After a fairly short time the only people doing it are gonna be people grinding to get PvP ranks.

I've got no problem at all with a rank structure. I think league tables, ranks, measurements, etc are a great motivator for gaming. But it should be based on some kind of skill, rather than JUST time spent. Otherwise your ranks might as well be renamed "Unemployed", "Uni Student", "School Kid" and right at the bottom you could have a loser rank called "Productive Healthy Adult"

[Hoonius]

Otherwise your ranks might as well be renamed "Unemployed", "Uni Student", "School Kid" and right at the bottom you could have a loser rank called "Productive Healthy Adult"

Quality, exactly how it is