Thorizdin_LotD

I think we've had this discussion before Mieux, but I hate to tell you that even if your (mythical) 1v1 balance could be achieved it wouldn't stop ganking or the complaints about it.

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...On March 7, 2007, Blizzard announced that the subscriber base for World of Warcraft had reached a new milestone, with 8.5 million players worldwide there are more than 2 million players in North America, 1.5 million players in Europe, and 3.5 million players in China.


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Um... I'm not really in on this part of the argument, but I think you just made a point for the other side. You're saying that of 8.5 million players, only 3.5 are in North America and Europe.....

Don't get me wrong, that's still a nice market share of US subscribers, but by their own admission there are people who have accounts with both WOW and CoX (and others). Being in one stat doesn't exclude someone from being counted in another.

Either way, stick with the 2 Million number. You will probably still make the point you were trying to, but it won't look so much like hyperbole.

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One of the drawbacks of using real information is the fact that sometimes the facts don't support your case as much as you'd like. In this case, I was surprised by the fact that the number of Chinese accounts had actually exceeded the number of American and European. I wasn't intentionally spinning the numbers, they just turned out to be different from what I expected, and I think my earlier post on reflected this in tone if not content.

Having said all of that, I only have one contact who plays WoW on the Asian servers and he has told me that the mix of PvP and PvE servers is roughly equal, but I'd like confirmation of that. Anyone who has data, especially someone patient enough to actually count the servers, would be in my good karma book for a good long while.

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It might not matter Thor. You do realize even on the PVE and RP servers, they can still declare, go hot and pvp. The primary difference being the grind experience from levels 20-70 due to auto flagging.

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True, much of the organized PvP occurring today is actually in the Battlegrounds as is accessible by anyone on any server and allows automated cross server matches. That is something we here in CoX can only drool about....

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...On March 7, 2007, Blizzard announced that the subscriber base for World of Warcraft had reached a new milestone, with 8.5 million players worldwide there are more than 2 million players in North America, 1.5 million players in Europe, and 3.5 million players in China.


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Um... I'm not really in on this part of the argument, but I think you just made a point for the other side. You're saying that of 8.5 million players, only 3.5 are in North America and Europe.....

Don't get me wrong, that's still a nice market share of US subscribers, but by their own admission there are people who have accounts with both WOW and CoX (and others). Being in one stat doesn't exclude someone from being counted in another.

Either way, stick with the 2 Million number. You will probably still make the point you were trying to, but it won't look so much like hyperbole.

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One of the drawbacks of using real information is the fact that sometimes the facts don't support your case as much as you'd like. In this case, I was surprised by the fact that the number of Chinese accounts had actually exceeded the number of American and European. I wasn't intentionally spinning the numbers, they just turned out to be different from what I expected, and I think my earlier post on reflected this in tone if not content.

Having said all of that, I only have one contact who plays WoW on the Asian servers and he has told me that the mix of PvP and PvE servers is roughly equal, but I'd like confirmation of that. Anyone who has data, especially someone patient enough to actually count the servers, would be in my good karma book for a good long while.

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Well done, but be wary of anything from mmogchart. And that last line is classic. No matter what we think of WoW, Blizzard did in fact save MMOs from going the way of the dodo bird, or at least made it look MUCH better for a game publisher to try and develop an MMO.

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Agreed, Sir Bruce's numbers have come under scrutiny and some are more reliable than others (which he freely admits to). Having said that, the Blizzard and NCSoft numbers are going to be very high quality since both companies actually release that information as part of their SEC filings each quarter. Some of the other games are more secretive, and his numbers are less definitive.

His methods, the raw data (in Excel), and the reliability he thinks his data has on each game is available here:

Analysis

I am very aware of how far gone the MMO market was until WoW, despite thinking the game is trash I am appreciative of the fact that it exists.

One side note, its important to note that none of my numbers include Guild Wars, which isn't an MMO. However, I think its impact on MMO players is very real and there is no doubt that a significant portion of the player base bought the game for the PvP. If it were included in the mix it would be bigger than L2 with 2 million in sales.

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Ok, since you want facts...here are some for ya.


1. Well over half of all MMO players worldwide are playing on a server with open non-consensual PvP.

2. Well over 90% of all MMO players are playing a game that allows PvP.

3. There are more players playing pure PvP games (including FPS and RTS games) than all MMO's combined.

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Can you site the source of these 'facts'?

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Yep, still no sources, but I can believe them though. The key word is "worldwide" The U.S. MMORPG market is very different than a lot of the asian markets in what sells. Just another reason like I said you need different "versions" to appeal to different markets.

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Actually, the US market is _not_ substantially different from the world market. WoW is still a US centric game, despite the influx of Asian gamers (and farmers) the US is still a very significant portion of the population.

On March 7, 2007, Blizzard announced that the subscriber base for World of Warcraft had reached a new milestone, with 8.5 million players worldwide there are more than 2 million players in North America, 1.5 million players in Europe, and 3.5 million players in China.

More importantly for my position is the fact that the realm list I pointed to in my last post doesn't even include the Asian servers. If you want to see a complete list of the servers go here:
World Realm List

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Ok, since you want facts...here are some for ya.


1. Well over half of all MMO players worldwide are playing on a server with open non-consensual PvP.

2. Well over 90% of all MMO players are playing a game that allows PvP.

3. There are more players playing pure PvP games (including FPS and RTS games) than all MMO's combined.

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Can you site the source of these 'facts'?

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Yes I can, and without the single quotes around the word facts as well.

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1. Well over half of all MMO players worldwide are playing on a server with open non-consensual PvP.

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First of, take a look at this chart:

Distribution by MMO

Then consider that all of the Lineage 1 and 2 servers are open PvP and almost half of the WoW servers are.

WoW servers

The actual numbers are 106 (PvP & RPPvP) versus 115 (Normal & RP) however, its interesting to note that the PvP category has twice as many servers that have high populations as non-PvP servers (33 versus 16). The total numbers still work out to about 50 percent, since the non-PvP servers have 19 more medium (64 to 45) population servers. The most interesting statistic I found when doing some digging was that the server type with the highest percentage of high population servers was RPPvP, with 4 of the 6 servers labeled this way with high populations.

For more info on WoW break downs you can look at this chart:

WoW server population and type

Now, the stats on the MMOG Chart graph are from June 06 and since then WoW has grown quite a bit larger, but purely based on those stats we can see that L1, L2, and WoW PvP accounts for 48.85% alone. Add in UO (1.1%) DAOC (1.0%) and EVE (1.0%) and you get to 51.95%.


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2. Well over 90% of all MMO players are playing a game that allows PvP.


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This one is even easier since all WoW servers allow PvP and they are such a large portion of the market. I don't _think_ there are any MMO's with a percentage share greater than 1% that don't allow PvP.

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3. There are more players playing pure PvP games (including FPS and RTS games) than all MMO's combined.

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Based on this data:
Chart here

We can see that there is something less than 14 million MMO players. Its a little harder to garner hard statistics on the number of FPS and RTS gamers online, since they aren't all connecting to same company run servers. However, we know that there are many many people running servers, in fact there is an entire business around building and hosting servers for gaming clans.
Google Search

And we know that significant portions of people who buy games like BF2 (9 million copies sold) bought it exclusively for multiplayer. All told about 14% of all games sold are FPS games and another 12% or so are RTS.

Sales by genre 2005

The data above doesn't separate other "strategy" type games *30.8%) from RTS's so the 12% number is estimated. Given that those number represent more people in one year than have ever played an MMO its pretty obvious where the market is. If you include console numbers in the mix its even more skewed because Xbox Live is heavily FPS (mostly Halo) dominated. All in all MMO's are actually a small part of the gaming, even purely PC gaming, numbers. In fact, in many gaming companies the idea of MMO's was losing favor until Blizzard hit it big with WoW.

Ok, since you want facts...here are some for ya.


1. Well over half of all MMO players worldwide are playing on a server with open non-consensual PvP.

2. Well over 90% of all MMO players are playing a game that allows PvP.

3. There are more players playing pure PvP games (including FPS and RTS games) than all MMO's combined.

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I don't know what Fury is. As for WAR (or WHO, if you prefere), that's kinda my point. Optional. And that's one game heavily slated for PvP anyway. And still it will have plenty PvE content as well that you can do if you want.

When I think of a game without any PvE at all, I kinda think WoW, but with only the battlegrounds. Or CoH/V, but only the arena. They don't sound like huge games to me


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Thats exactly what Fury will be. WHO (and DAOC really achieved the same thing) makes PvE a complete option, since you can level as effectively in PvP as well gaining items. WoW's recent changes to loot drops in PvP are also a step in that (IMO right) direction, but of course you still have to level via PvE there.

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As for FPS/RTSs, that's true! Except we're not talking about those. We're talking MMOs. There's a reason I don't play these games a lot anymore... it's the two genre worst hit by the "let's skip the single-player portion and just make it a glorified multiplayer game. Yay! Infinite content!" phenomenon. I used to be a huge RTS player. Back when those games had stories, plots and didn't just feel like a string of cheap one-shot random maps against the computer.

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For FPS games and RTS games the jump to multiplayer was the best thing that could have happened. People still play Counterstrike and StarCraft in droves and the vast majority of that time is spent in multiplayer online matches.

I understand that you may personally not like it, but that doesn't invalidate the concept that PvP is immensely popular and well worth including (and even focusing on) in MMO's. That's not to say that every MMO has to include PvP, but its hard to imagine a publisher not including it at this point. The difference between FPS, RTS, and MMO players is not a large gap, in fact most people cross genre's at least occasionally so ignoring the popularity of PvP in the other genre's because they aren't MMO's isn't particularly wise IMO.

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I'm simply looking for the existing rules to actually be enforced... which they aren't at this time, as you yourself have pointed out in the past.

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I am all for vigorous enforcement of the in game rules.

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Yes.

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Okay, fair statement. How is it hypocrisy? This feels akin to your saying "Calling a man who has robbed a bank a bank robber is wrong" to me, and that makes no sense. As Herodotus said, it is no insult to a dead man to say that he is dead. If someone is acting like an [censored]-hat, and everyone recognizes that he is acting like an [censored]-hat, how is pointing out that fact hypocrisy?

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Because dead is a well defined term. Whereas [censored]-hat is not only censoered it is also highly subjective. Your use of the word is engageing in the same activity that is provokeing you to call them a [censored]-hat. I dunno about hypocracy but it certainly a good case of becoming what you behold.

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Nonsense.

There is no comparison between my calling someone an [censored]-hat and hounding someone so badly they flee the game. No comparison at all.

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I don't understand how you can posit that since the degree of negative impact in both cases is dependent on the reaction of the recipient. Someone could conceivably take great offense to being labeled that way or just seeing those words and leave the forums, how is that any different from someone who sees text in broadcast they don't like and leaving the zone?

Jack, I understand what you're trying to do but the reality is that the "cure" you're proposing is worse than the disease you're trying to address. There isn't wide spread, and won't be, agreement on what items (over and above the official rules) should invoke a community sanction. Because you won't get a consensus all you really accomplish is creating a vigilante group, with all of the problems that such groups always create. (Favoritism, lack of due process, inconsistent enforcement, witch hunts, etc).

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But the fact that most games are being build with PvP in mind doesn't prove anything. How many of these games have no PvE content? How many successful MMOs can you name that have no PvE content at all? So... is it right to conclude that all these games (including WoW) owe their success to PvE? Well, apparently!


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Fury will have no PvE content and in WHO you can level and get gear completely via PvP. Now, both of these games are still in development/testing and so haven't yet demonstrated success. However, arguably the entire FPS/RTS online community is a pure PvP experience and still attracts more gamers than all of the MMO's combined.

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Now, if you have a real solution to dealing with "poo monkeys" I'm all ears.

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Shutting them down within the limits of the game seems to work. There is nothing a bully fears more than a united front willing to fight back.

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Ok, lets go back to the three things I identified as hurdles. To have a united front, we as the PvP community, must agree with at least a majority on a code on conduct that covers more situations than the "official" code of conduct and the EULA. That, IMO is impossible since we have no method of determining a majority nor do we have a method of determining when and if changes should occur. Even the most popular third party sites attract a small fraction of the over all population, so how are we (the community) going to debate? Until that is done, there is no such thing a united front, just some groups imposing their own point of view and others complaining about it.

Are there legit griefers? Absolutely, but only the game's official rules identify them and there is already a mechanism to handle them.

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No, its up to us to police our own community. The problem is people who either a) see nothing wrong with the jerks, or b) see it all as an attitude problem on the part of the PvE'ers rather than as a problem on both sides.


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Amazing, it seems the same arguments are still going on in here.

First, if we are going "police our own community", we have to agree to a certain code of conduct that is over and above what the EULA and other official rules lay out.

Second, we would have to create a mechanism to communicate the agreed on rules and probably create a method for updating or changing them later.

Third, we would have to develop some means of actually taking action against an "offender" who breaks the unofficial community rules.

Now, I don't believe that any of these steps are actually feasible since trying to get a consensus for point 1 would be an exercise in futility, no such method exists nor can be created for point 2, and no method of handling point 3 is feasible. I do believe there are cases where players should report griefing behavior, and I know it does occur, but I believe that the official rules and mechanism for dealing with offenders are quite sufficient.

Now, if you have a real solution to dealing with "poo monkeys" I'm all ears.

While its true that PvP is my main concern, the reason I said all facets of the game is that Blasters bring more to a PvE team than Doms do. Lacking the buff/debuff secondary of Controllers and stricken with a Jekyl and Hyde concept the Dominator is a slower starter than Controllers and never reaches the same levels of power. I have an Ice/En at 38 and I deleted a level 29 Mind/Ice a couple months ago my 44'ish Fire/Fire was my favorite character in the CoV beta. Only the Fire/Fire came close to what my Blasters can do in PvE and then only if he avoided AV's.

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Wow, Domination got status protection and now it builds faster. Pretty nice. I mean, as far as inherents go I always said "Hooray for inherents that don't suck!" after using it. And this was before the status protection.

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You ought to go talk to the Dominator community before holding them up as a success. Blasters are far more effective at every facet of the game than Dom's and the most recent change isn't going to change that. I held off on deleting my Ice/Em to see what they came up with, but it looks like I am gonna get that slot back.

Defiance < Domination
Blasters >>>> Dominators.

Its not all about the inherent, how the AT performs is far more important.

Impale indeed has exactly 80 feet of range for its base and Focus has exactly 40 feet. This is both well documented and can be easily tested, which we did.

Both Claws and Spines can be used effectively, but claiming that Focus is better than Impale in PvP is about as unbelievable as seeing lots of squishies without KB protection. Maybe it happens that way on Pinnacle, but it certainly doesn't on Freedom.

Yes it is, and the damage is a good bit less well. All in all Spines is a better set than Claws, but that doesn't mean that you can't be succesful in SC or WB. If those zones are your focus then it won't matter much, one of our members racked up over 100k bounty in SC on a Claws/SR several months ago.

Too bad the devs only seem to use mass statistics to measure performance. Having the dummy killer AT marked as best performing is very discouraging.

I'm actually debating this right now myself. I'm trying to figure out if I should pick up TP instead of Phase Shift and save myself a power I won't use. As for AP, no worries, its a power tool and as such you can cut your toes if you aren't careful but it will let you do things that you otherwise couldn't.

Not taking the best heal in the game isn't a good path way to success. Learning to deal with the consequences of AP is.

The other term for that strategy is turtling, and as of yet no one has created a turtle that couldn't be broken. Lots of auto-hit AoE debuffs make having everyone stand in one place a very bad idea. I won't say you guys havn't found the magic combination, but I doubt it Come over to Test server sometime and you'll see why turtle strategies haven't worked yet.

Balance must be based around what is possible, not what is most common. We want Doms to be fun and able to scale from high skill purpose built teams down to casual PuG's. We don't want to create tank mages, since as soon as we do the nerf bat will swing start swinging our way.

While you can say that most players aren't min/maxers and probably be right, how many Tank players were running 8 man, max diffilculty missions basically solo? Certainly not all or even most of them, but enough that they contributed to some of the largest nerfs ever seen in the game.

To your specific example, if an SR takes a pool defense, he raises his overall defense by about 5% after slotting. If Doms are given an inherent mez protection of 2 or 3 then the additional protection from Acrobatics would double or nearly double the total protection.

Absolutely, the challenge is to make Doms better in non-optimal teams without making them unstoppable on good teams.

Perhaps mild mez resistance wouldn't be too outrageous, since in the greater scheme of things most resistance will still come from buffs. The problem is if you give Doms 2-3 mags of mez protection your average min-maxer is gonna combine that with Acrobatics and I don't know if its a good idea for Doms to have that much protection solo. A mild HP boost, say to Blaster level, would probably be ok. Increasing the ranged attacks to .7 would also be fine IMO. I probably wouldn't do more than 1 or at most 2 of these.

Any other ideas?

/em shakes his head in amazement

I don't know what you guys are doing, but our results are and have been completely different. The only time our Doms die is when the get too cocky and run off to solo 3+ heroes in a fit of "Domlock". IMO, more changes are not only not needed, but begin to have serious balance implications. We won 2 instances last night, 19 and 22 before ending the night despite having people playing characters they weren't used to. (Me on a Kin is not a pretty sight )

Defenders and Dominators I'd go along with, I don't know that Stalkers and Blasters need toggle drops to be valuable in PvP. Defenders are almost always interchangeable with Controllers and adding something else to their mix might mean we see more than just Emp and the occasional Storm Defender in organized PvP. Doms already have the highest (reliable) toggle drops post I7, which is good, but it could probably go up to ~75% (from 64%) for one toggle without being balance threatening.