Monday, September 29, 2008

The balance



Does WAR do a good job of balancing PvE and it's PvP? Is there enough PvE content to emerse the players in the War story that is taking place around them, or is that story lost in all the PvP action being done?

Would the game be better as a FPS game instead? Completely remove the back ground story of a War going on and just let people battle it out on control point maps. Would this work better?

Is the PvE aspect of the game helping to draw you more into the world that is Warhammer, or is it just a "means to an end" as Keen has suggested? Are we taking a journey into this new exciting virtual world or just hanging out in it while we wait for scenarios or keeps to be attacked?

I honestly don't know the answer. I have enjoyed questing in all the race zones so far, seeing all the sights, finding new PQ's to try out, and frankly, just taking my time through the world. My engineer, Oakstout, who is level 17, is currently adventuring in a chapter that is 2 levels lower than the chapter he should be in to level up properly. Why is that you ask? Because I'm trying not to rush anything and I want the world to be revealed to me slowly, not in a power leveling mad push towards the end.

But am I deluding myself into thinking there is actually a story behind all the questing? Is questing just something I do between Scenario groups and keep sieges? These are the questions I have a hard time answering.

I do know, that I'm having fun with lots of new people, who are also taking their time to experience a whole new virtual world. I don't see any need to rush.

8 comments:

  1. I'm starting to think it has something to do with how much WoW one has played. WoW has trained players to think nothing matters except the "end-game" (a term I thoroughly detest, by the way), and all content before it is just stuff to get through as fast as possible.

    To some extent the categorisation of game worlds into level areas A, B, C and so on up the level progression only reinforces this. Hell, even SWG is like that now, so I guess there's no going back. But I do miss the days of seeing both high and low level mobs in the same area, and not feeling as though I was being decanted from one tadpole pool to the next.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So far it seems to me that the quests for the most part are very good. Combined with the info in the tome, the can build a pretty good story for the world. I haven't felt a need to rush through any content, other than feeling bad about being so far behind the other CoWs.

    I agree that a big issue is indoctrinated mentality. People have come to believe that there is nothing to be found any where but at the cap. I think, but can't at all prove, that this is behind why people are finding scenarios slow to pop and PQs empty. I have a hunch alot of people are skipping them completely because they are rushing to quest to level, and avoiding scenarios when they aren't at the end of a tier level.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree. People think WAR is like every other MMO so they have to rush to see the end game content, only to realize the end game content isn't dungeons or raids, but city sieges, which honestly can only happen when a majority of your population is level capped. They rush, only to discover they are going to be short on content because this game is so player drivin that without others to fight against, you're pretty much stuck waiting on others to reach your level on both sides.

    I don't have an issue with this because I'm going slow, but those that think they have to be the first to level are finding out they are going to be alone and bored.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Stylishcorpse - Actually in the Empire T2 area there are a couple of 20ish level mobs that hang out on the edges, so they do have some high level mobs in a level 16 zone.

    ReplyDelete
  5. It's really so sad to think how far we have come from the time WoW was launched. The lore and the quest stories were initially the ones that created the myth of the greatest MMO ever, which was later served only as the pathway to 'end game'.

    I have never experienced the end game as such. For me the progressing through the content is still 'The Game' instead of the rush and imperative to achieve.

    Sadly I cannot say anything for WAR, though.

    Copra

    ReplyDelete
  6. I just don't understand the need to rush it. When WOTLK comes out in November, there will be groups of people trying to make it to 80 so they can do the new dungeons and raids, then two months later they complain that the content is thin and not very filling. They are the people that just don't get it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The content locusts will never find enough content. They devour it without in any case ever really experiencing it, and I truly wish developers would just stop catering to them.

    Asheron's Call didn't have quest bubbles and only a very loose concept of level, and no endgame whatsoever. And yet I never ran out of things to do, there were plenty of "formal" quests as well as all the other stuff, and the lore seemed, to me, to pervade every aspect of the game. Finding a level 20 mob in a 16 area isn't mixing, it's previewing. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  8. "Finding a level 20 mob in a 16 area isn't mixing, it's previewing"


    Very True. Had not thought of it that way.

    ReplyDelete