Why is AGS so hesitant to change the AWFUL way wars are handled?

General Discussion General Discussion
#1

First things first AGS. Get rid of cross-faction participation in wars.

The overall community will welcome this change with open arms. And we have been asking for it from day one of launch.

I would take it a step further and say only company participation in wars. And you must be in the company for at least 3 days to sign up for your companies war. This would make wars much more personal, competitive and fun.

The point is, its time to start experimenting with how wars are conducted. Because right now, wars are terrible. They are monopolized by a small percentage of people. The fights are always the same without diverse gameplay. And there is no personal accountability for a company or a player.

The community will welcome changes to the war system. You can always change it back if it does not work out.

AGS, if you get this right, this is one system that WILL bring more people into the game. But right now, it is a major reason why people quit.

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#2
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#3

maybe their dumb pride is getting in the way of them admitting they did it wrong.

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#4

Becose thei think everything is okay

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#5

They are more than likely are working on something. It’s 100 percent the biggest thing killing the game. However It’s not something they can just up and change pretty easily. It’s literally what the entire game is built around. But It definitely needs a change. Wars are the best pvp content for sure and when your company owns a spot you get 2-3 wars a week minimum and it’s a blast, but when you lose, the game becomes stale and boring. Then you have to go back to pushing which is the worst part of the game, it’s boring and just not fun and doesn’t even always get you the dec 100 percent the time . I don’t have a problem with the same players doing wars, that’s how it’s going to be as long as territory ownership is the only way your company can make money. I’m sorry but wars are for the top pvpers, war is not like opr, it’s completely different. Typically you have 500-1 million coin a week on the line, you need the best team you can make to be able to win. I mean the teams that slot friends and newer players over the cracked war players lose everytime. Besides everyone I’ve seen cry about this because they never get slotted even in their own companies wars are just typically not very good. Go get better at pvp or advertising your self or both. Adding a war cooldown will not help you get slotted. I do think that their should be some sort of AGS STEP IN preventing one or two company’s from taking over the map, since it negatively affects the game. But it’s going to take time to figure out a good solution that’s not just a band aid fix like a war cooldown timer. This would fix nothing, companies would figure out how to get around it, there would just be less wars since everyone will stagger their wars so all they avoid the timer.

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#6

do you realllllllly expect a reply with actual straight forward response on this subject, if so, you have more faith than I and that’s not just me “hating” either. It’s been proven so many times over and over and over again. Even the devs videos are sugar-coated “Let’s live in Candyland where everything’s sweet”

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#7

First things first AGS. Get rid of cross-faction participation in wars.

And what of factions that are so weak on the server that they cant fill war rosters? They should just play undermanned and die off? I’ve seen this first hand.

I would take it a step further and say only company participation in wars.

Alliances? People across different guilds shouldn’t be allowed to help eachother? Is this really a suggestion that seeks to look after the community, or close it off? I think it’s the latter.

They are monopolized by a small percentage of people.

Wouldn’t be the case if most people were bothered to get good at the game and improve. But they’re not. Can’t be helped. Don’t punish players that aren’t lazy.

The fights are always the same without diverse gameplay.

The meta constantly evolves around counterplay between companies every week. Some changes might be slower to take effect but people are analyising every war and tweaking things. So this point isn’t true.

And there is no personal accountability for a company or a player.

I’m actually not sure what you mean by accountability in this context.

The community will welcome changes to the war system.

Says who? People who are undergeared and underperform and expect such changes will magically get them into wars they have no real business being in, I imagine.

You can always change it back if it does not work out.

Such drastic changes only take a week to make players start quitting. This would be disasterous for player retention.

AGS, if you get this right, this is one system that WILL bring more people into the game.

Where are you getting this? You reckon 20,000 people are just tucked away waiting for the day that companies can’t help eachother in wars? I think that’s kind of a silly assumption.

But right now, it is a major reason why people quit.

Bugs, exploits, instability and lack of content are the major contributors. Players may come back when the game is more stable and has more content for them to chew on.

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#9

Atm to get a war slot over half of the requirement is networking and getting in good with the select few company leads that run all the various shell companies getting the war dec’s.

This is what turns people off towards the mode. The dev’s more than likely will need to remove control over war rosters from players. I thought it was a good idea at first but it became very exclusionary quickly after launch for a host of reasons.

Wars need to be a random pull from a list of all signed up players and of who are online. Faction only. No control to kick by the defending company.

The game caters to a very narrow audience atm and it kills servers. For the game to grow it needs to broaden accessibility to these game modes.

#10

Atm to get a war slot over half of the requirement is networking and getting in good with the select few company leads that run all the various shell companies getting the war dec’s.

So to get involved in an organised war, you have to be a dependable player that they know? Oh no, the horrors. The exact same shit occurs in PVE for raids in MMOs. I am not bringing people that are gonna fuck around and make the run take twice as long. And in the same vein, I’m not gonna bring random people that may not be able or be willing to communicate. This leads to shit shows. You’re owed nothing. Prove yourself.

This is what turns people off towards the mode.

Non-competitive players that don’t want to put in the work to get good, gear themselves or network with people do not belong in wars. End of discussion.

The dev’s more than likely will need to remove control over war rosters from players.

This would alienate entire rosters in guilds. You want a massive amount of people hanging up the towel? This is how you go about it.

Wars need to be a random pull from a list of all signed up players and of who are online.

Yep, that sounds like a grand old time. Might be able to communicate with my DPS. Might have three healers in my group. Might have none. Who knows. But at least undergeared underperforming players get to have their welfare spots and make attacks or defenses a matter of luck rather than skill and coordination. No. Terrible suggestion. It’s half the reason Invasions are dead content. The other half is them not being difficult and dragging on for too long.

The game caters to a very narrow audience atm and it kills servers.

You have arenas, you have OPR. You’re not locked out of PVP, you’re locked out of a competitive game mode with high stakes where people do not want to play with people that cannot be relied upon. If you want to get involved, become a person that can be relied upon.

#11

Changes that need to be made
Can not declare unless your company is X amount of days old
and has X amount of members

So Simple

#12

I wasn’t comparing wars to pve. I’m a pvp player. The problem is that only 50-100 players per server on a faction participate in all of the wars. So shortly after launch even with server pops with 2k-5k players (not concurrent) only 150-300 were being slotted.

This is inaccessible for the large majority of the population hence you see the decline in active players because the most enjoyable pvp mode is restricted in access. People that like to pvp but don’t want the hassle have left to play games you can instantly load up and be in the action.

I’ve been in around 100 wars. Way less then some and way more than most. The average war participation count of all players who hit level 60 and have been in more than 3-5 wars is probably a small fraction of 1%.

There are a lot of issues with server populations declining in this game. To defend these systems as being in the best interest of the game’s growth long-term is a tough sell Khanzy. Theyre designed for close knit communities, not for the masses. This is an mmo.

Its fine for small scale 5v5 gvg type objectives to be so selective and predetermined but the large scale pinnacle mode of the game being so restrictive is one of the key reasons the games population has been on a steady decline since launch. The system is indefensible.

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#13

yeah this was called out long before main launch - they didn’t listen or didn’t care → i would go with they didn’t care and probably still don’t.

#14

Why don’t people look at the whole thing when they make an argument? The OP is targeting only what supports their agenda.

Overall, what I see is they approach things when they have the rotation and only if they find a viable solution. This whole development since Alpha 1 has followed this pattern.

Sorry if a live service is not fixing things at your pace. I see a development team doing much more than your average live service would provide.

Enjoy creating your own crutch.

#15

at your own pace → what are you even on about? - i guess you missed the massive calls to delay the game because it wasn’t ready or anything so there was no excuse for releasing when they did and even more came out later about it. - you also missed the massive mismanagement and internal problems.

#16

The reason invasions are not seeing more sign ups is because at the root this is a pvp community and pvp players by and large aren’t interested. I haven’t signed up for an invasion in weeks. I don’t enjoy them especially since they take too long with too much sitting around time in between waves.

If they took 10 minutes instead of 30 I would sign up more.

I do agree with your statement on players requiring to be decent, have an overall positive war reputation, and networking. But again that’s part of the issue. Once companies find their core group they aren’t really looking for more until they have players drop the game.

You can share war result screenshots until you’re blue in the face with many of the leads as well. They’ll still slot their buddies who do half the output in all categories except deaths.

Wars feel pretty close to hopping into a private server of a game and trying to get in with people. Most don’t have the time for it or care to bother.

My main argument is that most of the content in this game is lacking and there’s not much of it. Wars need to pop off more often and allow more of the server population to participate if the game wants to grow.

They could also just introduce actual open-world pvp objectives and content with the next zone and that would be good too. Atm the only large scale pvp that isn’t scuffed is wars.

Btw I am a person that ‘can be relied upon’. Doesn’t matter. You have to network and become buddies to get a slot. Your war boards don’t matter much. They used to. Not anymore. Its who you know which is bad design for an mmo.

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#17

You mean the same things that happen with every live service when they start a new venture? No live service ever released without errors in management, bugs, or hiccups in service. That is the truth, and I find it funny that most of you think this is the worst one. I know many who have screwed up worse than AGS. WAR and AC2 are two that come to mind, but many over look AC2 due to AC1 being subjectively good. Then you have companies like AeriaGames who managed their game launches worse than any other company.

As I said, nothing new, but everyone thinks it is.

#18

This wasn’t the case on Dry Tree and isn’t the case on Abaton. Unfortunate it is elsewhere.

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#19

I don’t understand your point if there is one -

There are loads who screwed up worse → you never even mentioned soe or trion or noewiz and many more

There loads who haven’t screwed up but what does it matter, we are on about whether or not ags will do something to save the ip before the ship sinks or drown with it?

#20

I think it’s a problem of short sightedness within those companies. Companies with a future look to develop players beyond their core and rotate people around to give new people chances to play. That’s how my guild operates and I think it’s the healthiest way to approach it. We also refuse to do proxy guilds so server health is better.

You can share war result screenshots until you’re blue in the face with many of the leads as well. They’ll still slot their buddies who do half the output in all categories except deaths.

Yeah unfortunately some guilds have senseless rostering and more promising players can sometimes be left in the dark. Hard to beat nepotism. But I feel as though the more competitive guilds don’t tend to have this problem that much so my experience has been different. Whenever I’ve joined more casual wars for ‘fun’ I’ve seen this issue though. Same terrible players in their war roster for months. Best tip I could give for wars. ‘Fun’ wars are never fun.

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#21

The whole system just works against new players and new players and casuals are what keep mmos afloat