Plane of War - Failure or diamond in the rough

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by shimazuul, Jun 4, 2014.

  1. Langya Augur

    Honestly, the animosity towards "casual" players is almost comedic. Akin to accusing someone who is a responsible law abiding citizen doing what is expected of them as being something negative. Its the majority of the market as far as gamers goes these days. The truth is that people still enjoy games like EQ but are regimented by the usual adult burdens of family and career while the younger crowd lack the attention span for anything that requires a commitment of more than a few minutes. Where does that leave game development? It leaves it in a state where the hard core players are not the money makers. It is amazing that computer games even still make money in our society which is dominated by zombies fussing with their smart phones.

    Zones like Plane of War don't have to exist. Extremely difficult raids don't have to exist. Mostly because they just cater to a select few who represent the last hold outs of the so called "Hard Core" players and are not market defining as such. The strategy of releasing some hard content should continue but tempered by structuring it in such a way that has proven effective as of late. Release the content so that only the top guilds and players can conquer it and then dumb it down once guilds such as RoI beat it. Perhaps Plane of War needs that dumb down now so as to make it be a zone that fits in with the majority of the players who have a need for shorter time commitments. That way everyone gets what they want, as most people just want to log on and waste some free time where as the hard core players have to distinguish themselves.
  2. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    Honestly, the animosity towards "hardcore" players is *equally* comedic.

    I'm a hardcore player and am in the camp that the zone is tuned to be too difficult, though that not necessarily being a bad thing. But to read this thread you would think that group geared folks succeeding in PoWar is statistically impossible, and that's not the case.

    The reality is the timing and RvR aren't in line enough for the masses to want to work at it, regardless of which camp they're in, and can't really blame them. It'll be interesting to see at lvl 105 imo. The constant implication by the vocal anti-war camp is that this directly equates to failure. If you want to define failure that way, most of the zones in EQ are failures. What made it worse is that SOE marketing hyped it up, got folks excited, and then released a zone drastically different from what people expected. Some folks said hey good for a change, and others said this isn't what you promised me! Varied reactions to a differing concept seem only logical.

    I was in ToRot last night on Drinal alone for about 4 hours of "prime time", is that zone a complete and utter failure as well? I've never seen more than 3-4 groups there even on release, and after couple of weeks never more than 1-2. Yet there is a small army at Gribble in DH 24/7. Is *that* zone success?
  3. Romance Augur

    It's a permanent zone, as the game progresses it's [powar] content will become more viable to players/guilds less willing or able to struggle through it.
  4. Jordis Augur

    If the idea was to generate group play by making it necessary to group to finish anything, then it's a bust. Even if you want to finish some more of the content there's no one interested in going on with it. Even the most die-hard over-achievers that I know have given up on finishing it.

    Frankly, my favorite part was the "pet can't hold aggro." I just loved being able to say, "Welcome to the club, our class tanking "pet" got nerfed so it wouldn't hold aggro a long time ago." I used pets charmed and otherwise in the zone and didn't even notice anything different from normal play. What I did notice was a lot of other things that didn't work like mez, stun, and even tash.

    The zone was not just challenging, it came quite close to being sadistic with the original bottleneck in PoEarth right down to the endless collection of items to hand in for faction.
  5. zohawn New Member

    the way to fix war....make the reward worth being there.

    make augs for every niche. 10 hwis and hagi aug with 40 ac and 300hp/mana. 10 hint 10hagi ac mana. make a shiled aug with 60ac and 10 hstr dex and agi...my point is people go where the rewards are greatest, damn the difficulty. look at the most used dungeons. they all have 1 thing in common...rewards. thats why the grounds is so packed, thats why old seb was so packed. it paid to be there!

    give u a reason to go to war or tor and i guarentee you people will be figthing each other to group there
  6. zohawn New Member

    and dont marginalize entire classes...mez immuntey...wtf. you dont make mobs immune to mez...you make mez a Fing requirement!
  7. Saellaven New Member

    Since it was pretty much ignored a few weeks ago, I reiterate that the biggest issue keeping casuals out of PoWar is lack of access to player healers. They're damn hard to find if you aren't in a raid guild and, in group gear, you're going to have a hell of a time with merc healers keeping the tank up.
  8. drew0987654 Augur

    um... "animosity"? "animosity" that is almost "comedic"? first of all, even if you had only used the word "hatred," I doubt you could find an example of that towards casuals in this thread. secondly, "animosity," towards anything, surely isn't something that is "almost comedic," ever. the only emotion here is bewilderment, and it could only be considered even close to funny from the perspective of the bewildered, trying to figure out how the existence of the only zone for hc players is something to get upset over and post about in the forums.

    powar is the only zone for this admittedly small group of players released in a long time (this is also the reason that this group of ppl has dwindled). 1 zone comes out and so many casuals have to complain about its existence? the casuals, whom everything for this game is released for (excepting, apparently) this 1 zone. it's "bewilderment," not "animosity." your solution of, "release content for the hc players temporarily and then dumb it down for the rest of time" is awful. just wait for the lvl cap to reach 105, it'll be easy at that point.
    IDotPeople likes this.
  9. IDotPeople Augur


    You make a good point there, new goal for me. Complete hunter in PoWar before level 105 is attainable.
  10. Langya Augur

    Whoa. Ok. Let me address the vitriol here.

    The impetus of my "animosity towards casuals" comment was directed at how they seem to get the blame as to why the game is so easy. Perhaps that is true but whatever. Look. SoE will produce what they feel will sell. Just like someone thought that Netflix was a better idea than Blockbuster Video. Companies adapt to their core customer base and the times or they die.

    This thread was about PoWar and what it is NOW as opposed to later. Later, well some of the rewards might not be worth the effort at lvl 105. If you want PoWAR active now, than dumb it down or add some other incentive for it to be used more than it is. If my idea is dumb to you than...oh well. Such as life. I really don't care. Come up with some other idea to get that zone bustling or accept that its probably going to be a ghost town. Blaming causal players for that is not going to change the status-quo. I personally like the idea of hard zones and think they are fine how they are. Still, there is my own opinion and the big picture and they do not agree.
  11. drew0987654 Augur

    I'm not sure you get the point yet. powar is content for a niche group of ppl and what you're doing amounts to arguing that there should be absolutely no content for this niche. most everything else in this game is for you, enjoy it.
  12. Melanippe Augur

    Two full paragraphs touting the "make it mediocre for everyone" line. :rolleyes:
  13. Melanippe Augur

    Funny now isn't it; the complaints about the lack of player healers when, for years, certain players complained like mad about clerics. When the mercenaries were introduced, the cheers and applause about no longer having to have a "real" cleric in a group were deafening. Group geared clerics are around, they are just more discerning now with whom they choose to group. ;)
  14. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    And with the limited content we get these days you are correct in that no content should be for a niche group of players.
  15. Langya Augur

    You have any better ideas for getting people into this zone other than "F_U_ Langya?" Or would it be better if it just laid fallow but hold true to its concept of inception? You all are not presenting much as far as ideas, but I am glad you are so quick to ration out some bull and labels. Maybe channel some of that negativity into some bright ideas.

    Otherwise if the zone is still relevant at lvl 105 than great. Leave it be. It can have the tumbleweeds blow past until then. I don't care at all. This is just throwing crappola against the wall and seeing if it sticks. The thing is though, what with Mudflation and all, there might not be any reason to visit that zone at lvl 105. Yes there is the clickie and the augs but who knows. That caliber gear could be on a vendor at lvl 105.

    Then it would be reasonable to say that the zone was some what of a failure, at least on some servers. As far as throwing a bone to the " I demand challenge" crowd then it did succeed in that but it certainly had a short life span as far as relevance goes. Last time I was in there on The Rathe there was full guilds in there farming away but that was when it was still new. I have no idea if that has all shifted to Rot. Perhaps everyone got what they wanted from PoWar and moved on since part of being an elitist is being efficient. I don't always keep up with current events. Too busy being "mediocre" due to a busy RL schedule.
  16. Agrippa Augur

    Granted, there were only 400 people in Firiona Vie's general chat each night, but I've put messages out to get interested players to join a small group of us working on PoW progression and named hunting to get zero replies. Between yesterday and today, in the six hours we spent there, my group was the only group there. Our bard said there were three named up, too, one of which can drop a nice melee aug, but, as some of us weren't flagged to reach them, they just sat there.

    In my limited experience there, I've enjoyed the content and found it a very pleasant change from steamrolling everything. That said, at least three of us are in raid gear and we still wiped a couple times. I don't necessarily think that it's overtuned, but it's definitely hard enough that most players won't even consider going there. Without changing the difficulty, at first, I'd suggest making a few tweaks to make the overall experience more rewarding and less annoying, such as turning on the experience meter and not making our corpses pop in the mines.
  17. Necromonious Augur

    Bingo. What I have been saying from the start, and the reason I quit. The funny thing is, from how hard everyone makes it sound, allowing "normal" class mechanics wouldn't trivialize PoW, probably wouldn't even make it "easy", especially not for boxers. I'd still burn out long b4 flagging anyway :(
  18. Booger Elder

    pretty simple fix is to tune down the trash mobs in the zone alot. And leave the named 3-4 groupable.
  19. Qest T. Silverclaw Augur

    Why? The XP rate will still be terrible, so all that would do is make the factioning easier.

    I haven't been all the way through, but my impression so far is that the named are 1-2 groupable, not 3-4. The folks that defeated the Grandmaster did so with 8, albeit top-geared raiders.
  20. Shadva Del`Shai Augur

    My only problems with PoWar are the insane amount of factioning required and the almost non-existent amount of experience. Heck, if the amount of experience was increased, I probably wouldn't mind the mind numbing faction stuff as much.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.