Saturday, February 25, 2012

Vlog 1.0 and being a Mercenary.

Sooo what have i been up to?

Well, usually i see reason to blog through my own experience rather than weighing in with my own view on the issue of the day in the blogosphere, (the reason why i'll never been a prolific blogger i guess) and recently there's just not been much to say. I suppose contentment breeds complacency other something...

Having tried and failed to enjoy Sw:ToR, Rift satiated my MMO needs and i've felt no desire to resub.

I've applied, along with 1 million + others to the Guild Wars 2 closed beta. The recent press closed beta and the videos i've seen from it do look amazing and its gone back to the game i'm most looking forward to this year.

I can see a large proportion of Rift's PVP playerbase leaving to play GW2's World v. World, server vs. server pvp system. With its ongoing struggle, actions achieving consequences that last beyond one instanced warfront and sieges, weapons and all the other goodies Rift player's have been asking from Trion, well its enough to turn even me into a hardcore pvper.

Talking of PVP patch 1.7 reorganised Rift's PVP ranks into 1-40 instead of 1-8 (remind anyone of a certain Galaxy far, far away?), pushed the level of the first pvp set up, implemented some bolstering, attempted to group warfronts into brackets where possible and most controversially introduced the 'mercenary' concept.

Now Rift's matchmaking system for warfronts will, if one side lacks players, place some players from one faction on the opposing faction's team. This is not an opt in or out system which is where most of the controversy arises with many forum threads from irate players stating that should they be merced, they would make no effort, would afk or take the deserter debuff rather than play for the filthy Defiant/Guardian (Delete as appropriate) faction scum.

I can see some RP reasons for this, especially on RP servers and for anyone who takes their RP seriously i think they have some valid objections. However i believe Trion have looked at their metrics and concluded that any opt out could become too widespread and would negate the effect of the mercenary system on queue times, which they (and i) believe are what matters to players most.

And queue times have gone down, there is no doubt of that. What's more there is the added bonus, and bonus is the right word i think, of being able to pew pew down players from your own faction. Maybe its just me, but I know no level 50 Guardian players by name. Maybe i don't pvp enough to recognise regular opposition players, but i do know of a fair amount of Defiant players on my server, either by reputation or some interaction and the chance to focus them down has been great fun. This system also of course could find you fighting your own guildies too, bringing added spice to the warfront for sure.

So I think everyone will have their own view on the mercenary system based on what's most important to them. For me, faction RP and lore don't really feature heavily in my enjoyment of Rift. To say the lore is weak is not true, its just simply easily avoidable. Its there if you want to get into it.

In the end, i just want to get straight to throwing fireballs in other players faces and get my daily warfront done and if queues are <1minute, then thats all good for me.