Issues with wars and how to improve them? (Full Version)

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megakyle777 -> Issues with wars and how to improve them? (3/19/2015 10:02:26)

Hello.

Now, I know a lot of you like wars. But I think a lot of us can admit that wars have issues. This is a thread to discuss those issues, and how to fix or improve wars.



So FAQed! Good topic of discussion! ~geo




Myra -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 6:21:50)

With the current war, I have one issue: That it was not announced or even hinted at in the Design Notes before it began. Depending on how my weekend goes, I sometimes check the DNs and the release on Sunday evening, or even on Monday. This time fortunately I looked at them on Saturday, so I did not miss much of the war. But in the future I hope that we get at least a hint on Wednesday or so, so we can be better prepared.

I will have more thoughts on wars in general later today, but I have to go now.




Lanxy -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 7:02:54)

have to agree, War in game sometimes doesn't match with DN in their site, other then that I don't see any issues with the war, maybe put some music in catapult, but I use my own so no issues I see




Dornalca -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 7:05:50)

What would really improve wars is if we did them in virtual reality. But that might be a bit more expensive.




NagisaXIkari -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 7:15:33)

Current war as opposed to the last one we had is the rewards.

I'm getting half as much EXP in this war as I did in the previous for the same enemies. Perhaps it's because it's the dragon doing the fighting or someone realized 6k a wave was absurd.

AQ Dragon Wars were usually great for grinding as Dragons often yielded great rewards (I don't remember when I played last, so this likely changed) as well as some of the best rewards, but that is a whole 'nother story.




Flamehead 12 -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 7:42:22)

Wars need to be losable more often. most wars are not.
we need to bring back the 10+ ways to beat a wave, because that made it feel more like a war, when you have cavalry, infantry, ballistics, possible navy, and airforce
furthermore a system of donation of supplies would add to the feel of a war. for instance wood, stone, iron, and food, all being farmed and donated for the cause. creating a wpm sustained by the "other heroes of lore" not just the players




megakyle777 -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 8:01:08)

I like your ideas flamehead, especially the last one. Ways to allow less warmongery people to participate and feel like they make a difference are good ideas. As it is is caters to a small but dedicated amount of the community, a issue I think ALlAE games suffer.




Lanxy -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 8:03:10)

Would be nice to have a war in storyline where we literally wouldn't win, no matter how hard we try and I'm sure we would try really hard, it would get some emotional blows :D




Dornalca -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 8:05:13)

@Lanxy: How exactly would that work? Because if you just set a high number of waves, I'm not betting against us.




Lanxy -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 8:08:31)

You maybe not but others? Maybe, isn't it always boring to have a war where you know that we all will win and in storyline we CAN'T lose at all? In Pirate vs Ninja rewap war, things were more fun, people in last hours were "killing" their Characters and PCs to win, same could somehow happen in a war where you can actually lose and that's a part of the storyline, I already stopped playing in wars, I don't need medals, level 80 so no exp, wars got boring for me, you know we will win and that's all. And in last few wars I was getting annoyed from them, war that holds the storyline




The Hollow Soul -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 8:47:15)

Well, my issue with this current war is more story-based, but that's a discussion for another day.
---
But wars in general,

1. I think wars need to become more diverse in how we can win waves; The fact that every war is the same "Catapults, footwaves, maybe a DA quest. Now go." gets really boring after awhile, especially back when we got 7+ wars a year. So much so that I feel like it caused a burn out for a few players.
Introducing new ways to win a wave like with what the Storm War or Lucky Day event (Rainbow Bridge war) did could make things more interesting again.

2. The amount of waves given should vary between the ways we win waves; The Storm War and the Lucky Day event(more shards for certain quests done) were the only ones to ever use this form of wave counting. I'm not sure if this is still able to be done due to the personal wave counter or any other behind the scenes thing we don't know about, but if it is possible, I'd love to see it re-introduced. The only issue would probably be an increase in wave totals due to the ability to win more waves.

3. The ability to lose wars; This isn't really an issue as we do have the ability to lose a war when it's a story war. I'd just like a continue of this so wars actually feel like they have meaning and not "how long can we drag this out." I don't really think holiday wars or fun wars should have the ability to be lost in the style of "something bad happens" as they normally don't last more than 3 million waves and only take about 7 days to complete. Wars like the Pirate V Ninja war are the only non-story wars that should be able to be lost as it's "group a vs group b"

4. Notable change after winning/losing a war; Things like the destruction of town when we lose a war, maybe a notable change to something when we win a war, or maybe more "what if" cut-scenes for what could have happened if we won/lost a war.




Chewy905 -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 8:48:59)

I think we need an alien invaders style minigame. Wouldn't that be a fun?




Frost Moglin -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 10:25:31)

One thing that would make warring more intresting would be more ways to fight. Challenge waves that give extra waves, but are harder. Something similiar to the bombing quests seen at some places? I'm not sure if they have been used at wars before.




Akecza -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 11:01:39)

Well catapults are still bugged.




Ash -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 11:02:43)

Yay, I get to put on my "lets put things into perspective because some things are out of wack in here" hat again.

quote:

That it was not announced or even hinted at in the Design Notes before it began.

This was more meant to be a surprise. We usually do announce wars well ahead of time but not all wars should be announced well ahead of time. Sometimes you're going to get attacked out of nowhere or your allies are going to dive headfirst into something and you aren't going to know till it's too late. This is one of the things we can try to announce a little better in the future, and this one is a valid complaint, but sometimes we are going to do things that aren't announced.

quote:

I'm getting half as much EXP in this war as I did in the previous for the same enemies. Perhaps it's because it's the dragon doing the fighting or someone realized 6k a wave was absurd.

Exp is based on the health of the thing you're fighting and how long it takes. It's *supposed* to take two hits to kill normal monsters, depending on class. War waves are supposed to take one, have less exp, but you go through more so you earn more in the long run. DF has almost never done this correctly and it's gonna start happening. This also isn't AQ. Comparing that, two monsters there is usually a "wave" where as it can take 5, 7, sometimes 10, monsters here to do a wave. Yes we have "rare" waves but the majority of the waves you fight are non-tank, quick hit, one turn and done monsters. AQ waves take multiple turns, have tank monsters in their waves most times, and the waves can take longer than ours. That's the trade off. Ours are shorter and you get less Exp for them, dragon or not.

quote:

Wars need to be losable more often. most wars are not.

Why? Sometimes the storyline doesn't call for it. Why should something be losable just because? If we're going to start doing things "just because" we'll start deducting money when you die in a quest or purposefully make more bosses unbeatable, even to DmK's by just slapping them with a -2,000,000 Boost nerf, just because we can. Yes it makes for more compelling storytelling and in *some* cases it works, the Void war recently being one. More often than not though if we have to make consequences for losing a war we can't tell the storyline how we want to. We have to do something we may not want to and that puts us in a corner nearly as much as you if you lose. We might start doing "well if you had lost/won" cutscenes since Ashendal can just pull you over to one where you did lose or win, but that takes Tomix actually making both and me setting up a perm area that you can go to to check. Maybe in the future.

quote:

we need to bring back the 10+ ways to beat a wave, because that made it feel more like a war, when you have cavalry, infantry, ballistics, possible navy, and airforce

That takes more work. Yeah, I get how that sounds but just consider how much work a war in itself takes to set up. Usually we have a town, 2-3 normal quests that are unlocked and then a boss quest with heavy cut scenes now for the most part. Yes we do reuse older quest templates but we still have to do the background art, we still have to get the monsters set up in them and working right, we still have to get them linked to the war meter, which as was shown this week WE CAN'T DO ON OUR OWN, and we have to make sure it's going to work. Normally we only do one, maybe two quests, along with rewards in a week. That's all we can usually do with our current staff. You want us to not only do 3 weeks worth of work in one, but now 4, 6 or even 10. Yes I understand more ways is better which is why I pushed and got the supply quest done, on a day off, so I was working when I should have been relaxing. I know you guys don't fully understand the work that goes into doing these but we don't have gobs of free time just to do hundreds of things. We're going to *try* to do multiple ways to quest from now on but if we can't, we can't. There's no changing the fact that we're volunteers for the most part, have a life outside of DF, and do as much as we can.

quote:

furthermore a system of donation of supplies would add to the feel of a war. for instance wood, stone, iron, and food, all being farmed and donated for the cause. creating a wpm sustained by the "other heroes of lore" not just the players

So you want us to bump up the waves incrementally over the course of the war, but at the same time you want wars to be losable? That seems counter to the first point you made. Yes I did see the part about "not just the players" in there. If you want wars to be losable you don't get help. If you want help they won't be losable and we'll consider doing stuff like that. However that's usually met with backlash as "we want to do it on our own" is usually the DF warmonger call and they get upset when we help.

quote:

Would be nice to have a war in storyline where we literally wouldn't win, no matter how hard we try and I'm sure we would try really hard, it would get some emotional blows :D

We wouldn't do that as a war. All wars need to have a chance to win, otherwise there's no point. If we want to do something where you WILL lose it's going to be a pseudo war. No war meter, just a set of quests where you fight and after 15-20 attempts the "meter" moves but you keep getting small cutscenes and notices that you're losing and after 50 or so you just "lose". A war isn't a war in DF if you have no option to win.

quote:

The amount of waves given should vary between the ways we win waves; The Storm War and the Lucky Day event(more shards for certain quests done) were the only ones to ever use this form of wave counting. I'm not sure if this is still able to be done due to the personal wave counter or any other behind the scenes thing we don't know about, but if it is possible, I'd love to see it re-introduced. The only issue would probably be an increase in wave totals due to the ability to win more waves.

I covered your other points earlier in my post but this in one I thought merited a response as it is something different. I honestly don't know if it's possible now. With how character page linking is done it's usually having to track 1-1 win-count and I'm not sure if it's even setup for something like this again. The fact that it was only done in two wars also suggests to me that Rolith had to do some back end muddling to get it to work and it's akin to the avatar's swapping out mid fight, "yeah we can do it but we really shouldn't again." I can check and see if it is possible and we can try and plan accordingly for the future if it is.




Lanxy -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 11:15:05)

Better to say is actually be able to lose easily, to give challenge, in storyline we need to win to continue the story, while we are playing, you're making victory gifts and many more, and we can get less then 100% but there's no point, story needs to go so those % are nothing, just gifts and gj, that's not a war at all,if you don't feel that you can lose, where's the fun playing? Nin vs Pirate war was fun, you could lose and lose what you wanted,here we won't lose anything, because you still will push storyline even if we lose




The Hollow Soul -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 11:31:27)

@Ash, I figured it was for either reasons of not able to be done anymore or required workload wouldn't be worth it in the end. But thank you for checking into it!


@Lanxy, almost all story related wars are able to be "lost". PopSprocket was one where the staff thought we were losing, had the losing cut-scene already made, and were ready to push out but we ended up winning in the last few seconds.

A war that doesn't continue a story because we lose is a waste of time for the staff to create, if we lose storyline wars they normally change the direction of what happens. Like with Popsprocket, if we would have lost, Seppy would have gotten the energy orb instead of us.
If we were to get a holiday/storyline/random war and lost it, the staff saying "Nope, this event is over now because you didn't win." isn't fun for anyone.




Lanxy -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 15:18:49)

seconds? hm :/




The Hollow Soul -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 15:22:57)

Might have been minutes, but it was close enough in the final hour before release time that they really thought we weren't going to pull off the last 12%, so much so nothing was prepared for the winning cut-scene. But this was in the time before hourly wave counts, DF had a bigger player base, and the like, so sadly it never got documented like the Plushie war was, which was also a war we got really close to not finishing in time.
So the ability to lose a war is always there, we almost always (Storm War not included) win them. [;)]




Myra -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 18:12:15)

It's true, surprise attacks happen ... but I would be really sad if I found out I had missed half a war just because I was busy and did not check the DNs in time. Of course, I could prevent that by making sure I check them more frequently. [:)]

Still, if a war is announced a couple of days before it starts, I feel that it builds more excitement and we get of to a better start. We started really slow in the Dragon Rider War, and I think that was caused in part by the surprise.

Also in this specific war, I don't think the surprise nature was really necessary for storyline reasons. The quest where Mritha and the elves talked about a plan to attack was released a couple of weeks before (or even months? not sure), so we did know a war was going to happen in this storyline, we just didn't know this particular update was happening this week. [:)]

Other thoughts on wars in general - these are not so much issues I have, because I'm actually pretty happy with how wars work, and "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". :D
It's mostly observations on what I think has worked well for previous wars.

  • Deadlines/challenges are really important. Even a small war can last for a long time if people get the impression that it doesn't matter when it's finished.
  • Variety is important. In the Dragon Rider War, I thought at first this could become a problem, because unlike most other wars you couldn't switch to a different class to use another fighting style. But it really helped that there were different quests - if one got boring, you could do another one for a while. I'm always happy if new minigames are added to a war. There is one I would like to see actually that to my knowledge was never used in a war so far - the memory game (the one that you do at the start of the Dragesvard quest chain for example). The excuse for it could be that you are decoding enemy messages or something like that. :D But maybe that's just me, I like that minigame a lot. I don't think that we need ten different types of quest for every war - that would be too much work for the staff - but normal waves + catapult + something else + special DA mission is a pretty good way to handle it in my opinion.
  • I think wars are the most fun if you level up - and on the other hand, wars make me feel it the most when I am stuck at the level cap and this great pile of XP I just earned is going to waste. I know raising the level cap requires a ton of work, and eventually we will get to a point where it's permanent and then we will be stuck at it forever, but I thought I'd just point that out. :)
  • Lots of stuff that you can spend your Defender Medals on is really helpful. On that front I think we are doing great, I love the fact that the stack size has increased and that the cannon trinket has such a gigantic prize tag. That will be a motivation for many wars to come. :D





  • Dragonman -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/26/2015 20:33:52)

    Off of Myra's point, the tedium of only being able to use one class in this war was a problem for me. I gave up a few waves in. I probably would have come back more if I was less busy though.




    Rio3678 -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/31/2015 9:13:02)

    quote:

    It's true, surprise attacks happen ... but I would be really sad if I found out I had missed half a war just because I was busy and did not check the DNs in time. Of course, I could prevent that by making sure I check them more frequently.


    that can be resolved by taking into account the fact that DF updates every week unless a war is going very slowly. Like this Dragon rider war for instance. The first 1% took 24 hours. *face palms*

    I just came up with an idea for wars. Suggest a prize if they get to a certain point at a certain time at the beginning of the war.




    David the Wanderer -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/31/2015 9:18:12)

    @Rio3678: The staff already does that when they throw a war challenge (Get to X% at Y time to get Z item/shop) at us.




    Xyrie -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/31/2015 13:47:13)

    Maybe ad individual challenges? I know AQW had small shops that only opened up when you had cleared a certain amount of waves, and rather than waiting for others to unlock it for you, you had to do the waves yourself if you wanted access to that shop. It would probably motivate some people, but I don't honestly even know if its possible due to how little attention the older games get.




    Christophoses -> RE: Issues with wars and how to improve them? (1/31/2015 19:42:06)

    What really bothers me about wars is that when they are over you can no longer get defender medals. There are some items that require 500 defender medals to merge and the previous level versions of the item, which also cost more defender medals. If this problem can be solved I would have no problems with wars.




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