Capture the Egg

The Icewind Gorge is a menacing place. A place from which the living do not return. A place where the icy wind chills the breath of the incautious adventurer. Atop the peak of which the Icewind River emerges, Gmaug the Broodwatcher, keeper of the frostwyrm hatchlings, resides. Only during a short period in the winter, when the cold chill even partially freezes a dragon's wings, he returns to Icewind Peak from his flying patrols over the slumbering broodmothers, resting uneasily for a change towards a less chilling howl of the winds.

The moment scouts of the Goblin Henchmen and the Dwarven Merceneries have been waiting for months has come. A short timeframe has opened up to steal frostwyrm eggs from the slumbering Broodmothers, eggs of unmeasurable value to alchemists and nobles. Dispending messengers to the taverns in the south, they place large bountys on every frostwyrm egg being brought to them.

Despite the danger of angering the Broodwatcher, driven by the opportunity of great wealth and celebrity within their country, groups of mighty warriors gather at the Icewing Gorge to fight for the frostwyrm eggs. To bring their hero's journey to completion. To seek a fortunate ending for their adventurous lifes.

Prepare for battle, adventurers! The coldest time of winter in Icewind Gorge will soon have come. Tales will be told about your theft of the frostwyrm eggs. Tales of brave men that escaped the anger of Gmaug the Broodwatcher. Tales of wrathful screams of the Broodmothers, mourning the loss of their hatchlings. Tales of heroes. Heroes that captured an egg.

Capture the Egg - a Warcraft3 map project by Tzirrit and Tjuhl. Release 2008.

crowd control

Crowd control (CC) is always a highly discussed topic in MMORPGs. Crowd control means that certain classes or roles have the opportunity to hinder enemies in their actions to get a strategic advantage over them for a limited amount of time. It is usually annoying for the affected, but simultaneously an opportunity to change the outcome of a fight. It thus increases the fun for all involved players, because it makes overall combat more spicy for all involved players... if done right.

I'd suggest the following approach: give all classes CC according to their role to allow every player to perform according to / consistent with their role.

Thus, we 1st have to determine what exactly the different roles' job is. In MMORPGs, we usually differentiate between Tanks, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, and Healers. The later can be distinguished in ranged healers and melee healers which should greatly affect their overall playstyle.

Tanks are heavily armored melee fighters. Their main purpose is to protect allies by soaking up and/or reducing overall damage. This can be accomplished by two means: single target protection and general protection. Single target protection is achieved by selecting an ally that is in need of protection (e.g. she is taking a heavy blow from enemies) and then performing actions that reduce the damage dealt to her by transfering it to the tank. General protection means giving enemies incentives to focus their attacks on the tank (of which the tank then mitigates a considerable amount through high armor / avoidance). Thus, concerning crowd control, a tank should be able to generally annoy enemies to turn their hatred towards him. How do you generally annoy enemies? 1St, they have to be annoyed, not taken out of combat. They have to actually be able to turn their hatred towards the tank. Consequently, a tank should slow down enemies, reduce damage afflicted to allies, block ranged attacks, and reduce overall enemy stats. This would lead to the following crowd control abilities:

• PBAE and/or cone snare („Come to me!“)
  
• PBAE and/or cone damage reduction to other targets than the tank („Hit me!“)
• interception of ranged attacks („I'm your target!“)
• interception of melee attackers („Stay with me!“)
• damage transfer from a single ally to the tank („I'll take that punch!“)

Melee DPS classes are medium-armored melee fighters. Their main purpose is to inflict high damage to single targets in a short amount of time, close combat. They have to be very agile and able to close distances to enemy targets. When they are close to their target, they also have to be able to stay close to that target until their task is accomplished. For crowd control, that would lead to the following abilities:

• anti-CC abilities to stay agile (desnare, break root) („You'll pay for that!“)
  
• sprint to close distance gaps („Here I come!“)
• short-time knockdowns, stuns („Hold still while I punch you!“)
• interrupts („Don't do that, my turn!“)

Ranged DPS classes are fragile ranged damage dealers. Their role is to inflict high damage to multiple targets from a distance. While performing attacks, they usually have to stay in their current position. Due to their very low armor and fragility, they should try to stay away from enemies and continuously readjust their range. To stay away from threats, they have to be able to readjust the correct distance to them. If they fail to do that, they will die. Thus, the crowd control abilities should be as follows:

• short-time single target root („Stay away from me!“)
  
• short-time single target snare („Slow down there, let me finish that!“)

Healers are different. Their job is to keep allies alive by all means. Because of that ability, they are often the primary target for all enemies. If they are given direct crowd control abilities that put enemies out of combat, they would be too strong since they would have two means to greatly reduce damage: through healing allies and through taking enemies out of combat action. Thus, their crowd control abilities should be focussed on self-protection and recovery. To keep that consistent with their role, we should differentiate between melee healers and ranged healers here.

For ranged healers, the general class mechanics for ranged DPS apply: they need to stay away from enemies to fulfill their job. Concerning crowd control, they would then need the following:

• pushbacks („Back to where you came from!“)
  
• quick recovery from knockdowns, stuns, silence, and interrupts („Let me do my job!“)
• emergency self-heals / self-protection („I'm not done yet!“)

Melee healers are designed for healing in the thick of things. They should not have to flee to stay effective. In general, they need a base mitigation that is similar to the base (!) mitigation of tanks. Similar to them, they need to be able to take a punch or two. This is because they are subject to several kinds of attacks at the same time: ranged and melee DPS focus damage, enemy tank annoyance, general ranged DPS AE damage. In comparison to melee DPS classes, they cannot be as mobile as them since they need to stay in range to many allies to get their heals through. Thus, they need a wide range of self-protection (because, again, direct crowd control would be too overpowered):

• high mitigation / armor („I can take a few!“)
• short-term damage immunity („Not now! Go to that other guy (tank)!“)
• quick recovery from knockdowns, stuns, silence, and interrupts („Let me do my job!“)
• high interruption resistance („That doesn't disturb me.“)
• emergency self-heals / self-protection („I'm not done yet!“)

Why collision detection is NOT enough...

... and why you, imho, ALSO need (rudimentary) line of sight.

let's talk about the tactical purpose of melee characters. They basically build a front line that

• constructs a mobile wall for enemy players
• lures the enemys attention to them
• enables wounded players to back up a little bit to (get) heal(ed)

the later two are only possible when, in addition to collision detection, a line of sight mechanism is implemented.

by collision, you only hinder enemy movement and thus melee characters. to provide opportunities for retreat, you also need to encumber ranged characters. that's what line of sight would be for then: if there's an obstacle b/w the ranged damage dealer / source and the target, the effectiveness of ranged damage sources should be reduced according to the degree of encumbrance. e.g. if a melee character / obstacle is very close to (quite far away from) a ranged damage dealer, his/her damage and/or chance to hit is significantly (slightly) decreased. to simplify, this may only be applied to player-controlled enemy (non-friendly) players.

implementation of line of sight AND collision detection would, imho, open up lots of interesting and highly enjoyable opportunities concerning tactics and overall gameplay:

• searching for weak spots in the enemy lines
  
• setting up traps or "feints"
• flanked attacks and other maneuvers (to break through to the injured / ranged etc.)
• give incentives for melee players to move the front line closer to the enemy artillery :)
• provide a more realistic feel of combat
• etc.

line of sight would only apply to ranged attacks, since melee are already hindered in several ways:

• they have to be within melee / weapon range
  
• they have to overcome additional defense (parry, block) at frontal attacks
• they need to find a way to attack from the side / from behind to unleash their fury... ;)
• ... while, simultaneously, trying to avoid turning their back / side to enemy players

also posted on the WarhammerAlliance forums.

WoW Burning Crusade

You shouldn't talk badly about something unless you have a certain knowledge about it, right? Thus, I played World of Warcraft again for a while. In the end, I quit for the same reasons as some time ago – just with 10 levels more than before. Here's the story to it.

The plan was to level up a character for already existing battleground twinks (see previous post) to be able to farm the required ressources and get easy access to gold (daily quests) and ressources (especially dust, essences and shards for enchanting). I leveled up my melee shaman, Wûtz. And I was eager to get to know the new Burning Crusade content.

Well, I liked the design of the new dungeon bosses. After a few times however, you know the fights and strategies – and if at all, you only go there again to get a specific item. I liked the daily quests, but not due to their design but rather because it was a nice place to find alliance players to gank err... fight against. I liked the introduction of a token-based loot-table: you get tokens for killing bosses and may exchange them for ph4t l00t at a vendor. However for my playstyle there were actually only very few items I really needed: a totem, a trinket, and a cloak. For all other equipment slots, better gear could be obtained elsewhere and in a more fun way (which is PvP). The token system is a positive side effect to regular dungeon crawls. Concerning dungeon crawls: there is a heroic mode for every BC instance, where all mobs are lv70 and deal more damage / have more hp and sometimes even one or two other spells. Which sadly leads to the consequence that you need a certain group setup with a lot of crowd control to finish an instance in heroic mode. If you can't CC like me, you'll sometimes have a hard time to find a group...

Each new dungeon is linked to a specific fraction. The concept: continue killing monsters within the fraction's dungeons to get access to cool items and crafting recipes – or even to get acces to the heroic mode instances. In short: I haven't used a single item accessible through the fraction vendors and farming reputation for recipes or head/shoulder enchants very quickly gets annoying. Especially when you'd like to push your crafting skill but HAVE to farm fraction X to gain access to new recipes. After skill-level 350ish or so, you can only skill up by finding random world drop recipes (unlikely) or buy them in the auction house (expensive) or grind reputation (annoying over time). New fraction content: failed.

PvP introduced another battleground, Eye of the Storm, and the Arenas. Eye of the Storm is a mixture of the Warsong Gulch and the Arathi Basin. Basic strategy: capture three of four towers to get a regular point income, then go get the flag. Not a lot of difference to the other battlegrounds: mostly zerg-fests with uncooperative players – unless you brought a few friends with you.

The rather interesting BC addition I was eager to get to know was the Arena system. And that's where the hamster wheel begins again. When you found a team, your initial rating is 1500. If you want to get above that number, all team members need a minimum amount of resilience which can be found on PvP items. If you get into an arena with almost no resilience on, you are cannon fodder and in a clear competitive disadvantage to PvP-equipped players. You wanna get above 1500? Go farm the PvP arena season 1 set and the vindicator items which can be bought for honor points at PvP vendors. That hamsterwheel restarts at a rating of 1750. You wanna get above 1750? Get you ass kicked between 1650 to 1750 for 1-2 months to get your season (max) set, then try again. Oh and don't forget to farm gold in between to be able to afford the blue gems to socket your items with. Oh and don't even try to get above 1750 as a melee shaman in a 2on2 or 3on3 team – you'll spend most of your time within arenas watching you die without being able to do anything at all due to continuous crowd control. New PvP content: failed.

What made me quit playing WoW? Realizing I'd have to get my ass kicked for roughly two months to be competitive in PvP Arena again. And realizing I'd need to either farm 2,000 gold for my epic flight mount by grinding or or by completing quests to get the gold reward. No, thank you.

A new wave of Warhammer Online beta keys for Europe is approaching...