What's good about large scale battles is the part where you are on the skilled side and your alliance holds off and rout a zerg three times your size or more , L2 sieges could provide that in the past for instance , I believe there are some nice fights in EvE nowadays aswell , in any case if you think it's just about "running around spamming skills" you will probably never be on the winning side of such an event anyway .
Massive battles are more about leadership and common strategy than individual game play. In such battles leaders gives orders to his squad while synchronizing complete battle strategy with other leaders. Its more like strategy game where you play single unit as RPG game while leaders command his units as in WC3 as example. The feeling is really amazing and even considerable lag is difficult to ruin the experience. Its really epic when there is no lag and your leaders know to give correct orders - when to retire, when to attack and win the battle against outnumbered enemy.
Where themepark games try to hide that they are copying WOW, games like Mortal Online and Darkfall make no attempt to hide their inspiration ______\m/_____ LordOfDarkDesire
I remember in Vanilla WoW days we camped out Azuregos and there were 4 raids forming and just as many coming in from Alliance side. 200 people fighting + a huge dragon in the midst - the greatest moments in my gaming history by far.
Massive battles are more about leadership and common strategy than individual game play. In such battles leaders gives orders to his squad while synchronizing complete battle strategy with other leaders. Its more like strategy game where you play single unit as RPG game while leaders command his units as in WC3 as example. The feeling is really amazing and even considerable lag is difficult to ruin the experience. Its really epic when there is no lag and your leaders know to give correct orders - when to retire, when to attack and win the battle against outnumbered enemy.
Maybe on the history channel. I've never seen a large scale battle in any MMO that had any semblance of organization, if it did, not much more than a glorified zergfest.
Planetside did this right. Massive battles, little lag. Lots of fun back in the day when SOE actually cared about it. From soloers to a vehicle driving duo or trio to a thirty person outfit platoon, you could find fun doing pretty much anything.
Planetside did this right. Massive battles, little lag. Lots of fun back in the day when SOE actually cared about it. From soloers to a vehicle driving duo or trio to a thirty person outfit platoon, you could find fun doing pretty much anything.
QFT!!!!
Although a MMOFPS more than a MMORPG, PS was a ton of fun in it's prime.
The only reason we don't play it or hear of it anymore is because SOE gave up on it years ago. But, it had a lot going for it, and a lot of potential.
Massive battles can be fun and excited or totally horrible. Depends if large scale tactics and stragey is a factor or is it a mindless free for all while holding hands. Some Shadowbane battles I had were amazingly fun but they only got about 70 v 70ish. Warhammer battles were total retard newb zergs. Really depends on the game. I can see Eve having good large fleet fights because of the game's complexity.
Wow, Warhhamer, Darkfall ect. I can totally see large fights like 300 v. 300 as being silly and stupid. 5v5 I personally dont care for because 10 v 10 requires more teamwork and more skill and abilities. Imo depending on the game anything 8 to 20 is fun.
Massive battles that last many hours are way more EPIC than winning a wow battleground over and over.
DAoC PvP battles were Epic as hell. Sure it was laggy, and class balance wasn't that good, but the days of massive 10 hour castle sieges and relic raids are long gone sadly.
Someone needs to get rid of the dumbed down games and make something massive again, not everyone wants to spend time waiting for a queue to play the same played out vesion of a 30 minute bg for the 100000000th time.
Your post is completely true too the players playing on normal computers, not gaming, or even entertainment computers. But if you play on a good computer with no lag, then its fun as hell. Another thing is that the game server its self has to not lag, which many do and ruin the fun. Like in PS3, if the game host has bad internet then everyone playing the game with him online lags.
If you don't know how people can like 300vs300 battles, then you either A) have never been in one, have no interest in one, and therefore have no room to talk about it, or C) you just plain suck in pvp.
A large force of people is not always a zerg, and can actually do well if everyone has the ability to listen and willingness to cooperate. I've been in multiple larger scale Lineage 2 sieges, and epic pvp battles... and never had a problem listening. Most times people break into teams, and we assist off the team leader. It's not too hard. It's just like smaller scale pvp, but with more units working with you to achieve the same goal.
People bashing on giving up graphics for better performance... do you stop driving fast in the snow, so you don't get in a wreck and die? Yes? Magical. Same thing with people turning down their graphics, so they don't get wrecked and die. Pretty simple, really.
Originally posted by steamtank Originally posted by IlvaldyrNot a big fan of RvR, myself. Even less so when such high numbers are involved. Nothing to do with the concept; I like the idea of faction vs faction combat .. but the implementation in all of the games that I've seen amount to huge spammy zergfest where everyone just AOEs the crap out of the opposing side. The nearest approximation of tactical thinking amounts to:"We're winning! CHARGE!"or"We're losing! RUN AWAY!" Utterly bereft of enjoyment as far as I'm concerned.
i've always gotten in with guilds that play tactics over anything else. Usually these guilds are more "hardcore" i think of them as simply being less lienent towards asshattery. Alot of people are not willing to sacrifice the "i want to do this" to be part of a team exersize, if you get in with a large guild that has fun by functioning as a large unit the beauty of epic battles unfolds. Thats when you see flanking, ambushing, proper terrain use, proper seige and seige defenses, chokepoints used the right way, ect.
pug battles are the ones that result in the senerio you posted, i refuse to fight in those, its guild or nothing. I totally understand not liking the huge scale battles though, since i have seen the senerio you posted, i just learned to avoid those groups of players, not the size of the fight.
ps to everyone being negative: read the thread.... its asking why people LIKE massive battles, not why they DONT.
While I tend to prefer games with 15 or fewer players per side, Planetside's 200v200 (sometimes 200v200v200) fights were amazing. I suppose if I could sum up the 3 things which are necessary to make large-scale combat fun, they'd be:
Fun Combat System
Planetside's combat did an excellent job of providing a large variety of weapons, and rewarding player skill. This allowed the game to remain fun, even in particularly grindy battles where neither side made much progress. Obviously things like having a variety of avenues of attack (level design) also factor into combat being fun.
Balanced Population
With uneven teams, battles have predestined outcomes: you win or lose based on whether you're on the team with more players. With even teams, every single kill you make contributes to your team's winning; your skill and decisions matter.
Skill-rewarding
It's also very important to be rewarded for each thing you do, because even with balanced population one side is going to lose and it would be demoralizing to perform very well and still lose -- so to offset that you need rewards. Planetside had XP from kills, but it really could've done better achievement/leaderboard-style rewards than it did. Sort of like "Your faction lost this base, but here were the top 20 players who really tried to hold back the enemy."
I always sort of wondered whether Darkfall was worth trying out. An early PVP video I watched really turned away my interest because it seemed to have very uneven teams, and very uninteresting combat (AOE abilities spammed at a single choke point.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
one thing is clear,game company should auto-detect computer connection etc before game start like guild wars if your connection is too slow or not set-up properlly they should have a site suggestion to help them .
hell often only one player make the whole raid lag if all game pre-tested it would lessen lot of problem
One of my best MMORPG memories comes from a large-scale battle in DAoC. Not long after launch -- three or four months maybe -- several guild leaders on Albion coordinated an attack on Mid that resulted in every Mid frontier keep falling within a 20 second window. It took 100+ people from many different guilds to make it happen. Several large groups had to travel through the Mid frontier and coordinate the pulling of the guards, destruction of doors and finally the taking of the keeps, all while other coordinated skirmish groups fended off Mid defenders, NPCs and a few wandering Hibs. When those keep messages hit the Mids, they flowed like a river out of their home gate and sent most of us packing back to Albion. Our victory was short-lived, but man, the Mid frontier was on fire that night.
Although they were not perfect (one-shotting archers, lag, horrific stun, and Thane "lag hammers" come to mind), large-scale battles in DAoC were some of the best times I ever had in an MMO and an experience I have not been able to find again.
Sadly, I'm not even sure if such a thing could happen today. If you have 100+ people together now, 15 of them are AFK, 10 are running ahead or messing around fighting mobs, 8 are dueling, 6 are /shouting in public channels, 12 fall behind or get lost, 6 die in the middle of nowhere and spam channels for a rez, and 3 have logged on their cross-faction toons and warned the opposite side.
--- I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.
Not a big fan of RvR, myself. Even less so when such high numbers are involved. Nothing to do with the concept; I like the idea of faction vs faction combat .. but the implementation in all of the games that I've seen amount to huge spammy zergfest where everyone just AOEs the crap out of the opposing side. The nearest approximation of tactical thinking amounts to:
"We're winning! CHARGE!"or"We're losing! RUN AWAY!" Utterly bereft of enjoyment as far as I'm concerned.
i've always gotten in with guilds that play tactics over anything else. Usually these guilds are more "hardcore" i think of them as simply being less lienent towards asshattery.
Alot of people are not willing to sacrifice the "i want to do this" to be part of a team exersize, if you get in with a large guild that has fun by functioning as a large unit the beauty of epic battles unfolds.
Thats when you see flanking, ambushing, proper terrain use, proper seige and seige defenses, chokepoints used the right way, ect.
pug battles are the ones that result in the senerio you posted, i refuse to fight in those, its guild or nothing.
I totally understand not liking the huge scale battles though, since i have seen the senerio you posted, i just learned to avoid those groups of players, not the size of the fight.
ps to everyone being negative:
read the thread.... its asking why people LIKE massive battles, not why they DONT.
What game are you playing that offers what you like so much? I've been around since 2002, and DAoC was my first MMO. I was raised in MMO's as a RvR player, but I haven't found one game worth my time since WoW came out, and believe me, I've tried them all. They're usually of low quality, high in bugs, and low in population. I'd be delighted to know what game you found to fill that niche.
300 vs 300 is not for every game - but it works for some games.
It has been around for a while and if you like this sort of thing...and one big world (no instancing) ....and PvP ...and RvR... and 'hardcore' (What ever TF that means?) then you can actually play it right now.
Note that this game is now quite old. Which is why newer games that claim they ahve made a breakthrough and have large battles and a huge world just make me laugh.
Edit: and to answer the OP: why do I like this? In the context of WWII it works. Anything less just wouldn't feel right (BF1942 shoeboxes for example).
In our particular game (EvE) huge fleet battles of 300vs300 or more ships involve a lot of coordination among the fleet and squad commanders. As a grunt piloting a particular ship you will be targeting, applying a variety of ECM stuff, shooting at your assigned targets, and maneuvering to get out of range of the most obvious threats like massive bombs or killer drones. As a squad commander you will listen the info of your scouts, listen to your fleet commander and then react to the info and direct the fire of your squad to a particular ship or group of enemy ships.
For a well coordinated fleet with competent fleet commanders a massive battle is NOT a random affair. Of course, you can be baited into a trap and may have to fight against odds too high to win, but if the commander and the fleet does not panic, a small fleet can inflict heavy damage before being anihilated. The fleet actions prior to the battle (scouting, positioning, assigning particular roles to each squad and pilot...) are crucial and specially while roaming or hunting down an enemy fleet, it can be nerve breaking too.
What you don't see during the battle is 600 ships fully rendered with their hulls glitering, the shields glowing and explosions everywhere. What you see is a zoom out look of the battlefield where each ship is color coded into a small square and a list of ships on your right that you use to target, get close to, avoid, shoot, or whatever it is that you have to do.
There may be guys with übercomputers able to fight these massive battles and see the actual battle close up with all effects on. I sadly cannot.
Huge battles require a lot of skill, concentration, discipline and coordination. The give you a huge adrenaline rush, and above all, they are fun. Sadly I usually end up with my costly ships reduced to unsightly wrecks...
If you want huge battles, go play the Total War games. Like the OP said, 300+ vs 300+ or some other ridiculous number is not needed. I enjoy the feeling of large, epic battles (which is one reason why I love RvR and I love DAoC), but something like 100 vs 100 is fine for me. I don't want it to the point where things start to lag and you get killed by what seems to be an orbital cannon of death but in reality is just hundreds of people spamming AoEs.
A real battle is always thrilling, win or loose, if your guild actually knows how to manuver as a whole. Flank left, get those catapults up, mind the wizards/archers on the walls, move your stealth team in from the south and take them off the walls... ect ect... its like living a war out of the history books, or one for the history books...
QFT!!! The first two years in Shadowbane had epic banes, beautiful to be a part of. When the onslaught of kiddies that refuse to follow a leader hit MMO's that is when great large scale battles died.
Comments
What's good about large scale battles is the part where you are on the skilled side and your alliance holds off and rout a zerg three times your size or more , L2 sieges could provide that in the past for instance , I believe there are some nice fights in EvE nowadays aswell , in any case if you think it's just about "running around spamming skills" you will probably never be on the winning side of such an event anyway .
Massive battles are more about leadership and common strategy than individual game play. In such battles leaders gives orders to his squad while synchronizing complete battle strategy with other leaders. Its more like strategy game where you play single unit as RPG game while leaders command his units as in WC3 as example. The feeling is really amazing and even considerable lag is difficult to ruin the experience. Its really epic when there is no lag and your leaders know to give correct orders - when to retire, when to attack and win the battle against outnumbered enemy.
Where themepark games try to hide that they are copying WOW, games like Mortal Online and Darkfall make no attempt to hide their inspiration
______\m/_____
LordOfDarkDesire
I remember in Vanilla WoW days we camped out Azuregos and there were 4 raids forming and just as many coming in from Alliance side. 200 people fighting + a huge dragon in the midst - the greatest moments in my gaming history by far.
Maybe on the history channel. I've never seen a large scale battle in any MMO that had any semblance of organization, if it did, not much more than a glorified zergfest.
Planetside did this right. Massive battles, little lag. Lots of fun back in the day when SOE actually cared about it. From soloers to a vehicle driving duo or trio to a thirty person outfit platoon, you could find fun doing pretty much anything.
QFT!!!!
Although a MMOFPS more than a MMORPG, PS was a ton of fun in it's prime.
The only reason we don't play it or hear of it anymore is because SOE gave up on it years ago. But, it had a lot going for it, and a lot of potential.
LotRO: Meneldor: Riders of the Riddermark
Massive battles can be fun and excited or totally horrible. Depends if large scale tactics and stragey is a factor or is it a mindless free for all while holding hands. Some Shadowbane battles I had were amazingly fun but they only got about 70 v 70ish. Warhammer battles were total retard newb zergs. Really depends on the game. I can see Eve having good large fleet fights because of the game's complexity.
Wow, Warhhamer, Darkfall ect. I can totally see large fights like 300 v. 300 as being silly and stupid. 5v5 I personally dont care for because 10 v 10 requires more teamwork and more skill and abilities. Imo depending on the game anything 8 to 20 is fun.
You dont see names in Darkfall Online battles. No tag over your head, so you can actually hide behind a tree.
Ohh, and some of the battles go over the 300 vs 300 limit, but the most fun is the 3 vs 3 fights. All random, no instances.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
Massive battles that last many hours are way more EPIC than winning a wow battleground over and over.
DAoC PvP battles were Epic as hell. Sure it was laggy, and class balance wasn't that good, but the days of massive 10 hour castle sieges and relic raids are long gone sadly.
Someone needs to get rid of the dumbed down games and make something massive again, not everyone wants to spend time waiting for a queue to play the same played out vesion of a 30 minute bg for the 100000000th time.
Your post is completely true too the players playing on normal computers, not gaming, or even entertainment computers. But if you play on a good computer with no lag, then its fun as hell. Another thing is that the game server its self has to not lag, which many do and ruin the fun. Like in PS3, if the game host has bad internet then everyone playing the game with him online lags.
Didn't read the whole post.
If you don't know how people can like 300vs300 battles, then you either A) have never been in one,
have no interest in one, and therefore have no room to talk about it, or C) you just plain suck in pvp.
A large force of people is not always a zerg, and can actually do well if everyone has the ability to listen and willingness to cooperate. I've been in multiple larger scale Lineage 2 sieges, and epic pvp battles... and never had a problem listening. Most times people break into teams, and we assist off the team leader. It's not too hard. It's just like smaller scale pvp, but with more units working with you to achieve the same goal.
People bashing on giving up graphics for better performance... do you stop driving fast in the snow, so you don't get in a wreck and die? Yes? Magical. Same thing with people turning down their graphics, so they don't get wrecked and die. Pretty simple, really.
Exactly!!!! and 299 vs 299 just doesn't do it for me!
OP, you have obviously never played Planetside.
i've always gotten in with guilds that play tactics over anything else. Usually these guilds are more "hardcore" i think of them as simply being less lienent towards asshattery.
Alot of people are not willing to sacrifice the "i want to do this" to be part of a team exersize, if you get in with a large guild that has fun by functioning as a large unit the beauty of epic battles unfolds.
Thats when you see flanking, ambushing, proper terrain use, proper seige and seige defenses, chokepoints used the right way, ect.
pug battles are the ones that result in the senerio you posted, i refuse to fight in those, its guild or nothing.
I totally understand not liking the huge scale battles though, since i have seen the senerio you posted, i just learned to avoid those groups of players, not the size of the fight.
ps to everyone being negative:
read the thread.... its asking why people LIKE massive battles, not why they DONT.
Your doing this in Darkfall?
While I tend to prefer games with 15 or fewer players per side, Planetside's 200v200 (sometimes 200v200v200) fights were amazing. I suppose if I could sum up the 3 things which are necessary to make large-scale combat fun, they'd be:
Fun Combat System
Planetside's combat did an excellent job of providing a large variety of weapons, and rewarding player skill. This allowed the game to remain fun, even in particularly grindy battles where neither side made much progress. Obviously things like having a variety of avenues of attack (level design) also factor into combat being fun.
Balanced Population
With uneven teams, battles have predestined outcomes: you win or lose based on whether you're on the team with more players. With even teams, every single kill you make contributes to your team's winning; your skill and decisions matter.
Skill-rewarding
It's also very important to be rewarded for each thing you do, because even with balanced population one side is going to lose and it would be demoralizing to perform very well and still lose -- so to offset that you need rewards. Planetside had XP from kills, but it really could've done better achievement/leaderboard-style rewards than it did. Sort of like "Your faction lost this base, but here were the top 20 players who really tried to hold back the enemy."
I always sort of wondered whether Darkfall was worth trying out. An early PVP video I watched really turned away my interest because it seemed to have very uneven teams, and very uninteresting combat (AOE abilities spammed at a single choke point.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
one thing is clear,game company should auto-detect computer connection etc before game start like guild wars if your connection is too slow or not set-up properlly they should have a site suggestion to help them .
hell often only one player make the whole raid lag if all game pre-tested it would lessen lot of problem
One of my best MMORPG memories comes from a large-scale battle in DAoC. Not long after launch -- three or four months maybe -- several guild leaders on Albion coordinated an attack on Mid that resulted in every Mid frontier keep falling within a 20 second window. It took 100+ people from many different guilds to make it happen. Several large groups had to travel through the Mid frontier and coordinate the pulling of the guards, destruction of doors and finally the taking of the keeps, all while other coordinated skirmish groups fended off Mid defenders, NPCs and a few wandering Hibs. When those keep messages hit the Mids, they flowed like a river out of their home gate and sent most of us packing back to Albion. Our victory was short-lived, but man, the Mid frontier was on fire that night.
Although they were not perfect (one-shotting archers, lag, horrific stun, and Thane "lag hammers" come to mind), large-scale battles in DAoC were some of the best times I ever had in an MMO and an experience I have not been able to find again.
Sadly, I'm not even sure if such a thing could happen today. If you have 100+ people together now, 15 of them are AFK, 10 are running ahead or messing around fighting mobs, 8 are dueling, 6 are /shouting in public channels, 12 fall behind or get lost, 6 die in the middle of nowhere and spam channels for a rez, and 3 have logged on their cross-faction toons and warned the opposite side.
---
I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.
i've always gotten in with guilds that play tactics over anything else. Usually these guilds are more "hardcore" i think of them as simply being less lienent towards asshattery.
Alot of people are not willing to sacrifice the "i want to do this" to be part of a team exersize, if you get in with a large guild that has fun by functioning as a large unit the beauty of epic battles unfolds.
Thats when you see flanking, ambushing, proper terrain use, proper seige and seige defenses, chokepoints used the right way, ect.
pug battles are the ones that result in the senerio you posted, i refuse to fight in those, its guild or nothing.
I totally understand not liking the huge scale battles though, since i have seen the senerio you posted, i just learned to avoid those groups of players, not the size of the fight.
ps to everyone being negative:
read the thread.... its asking why people LIKE massive battles, not why they DONT.
What game are you playing that offers what you like so much? I've been around since 2002, and DAoC was my first MMO. I was raised in MMO's as a RvR player, but I haven't found one game worth my time since WoW came out, and believe me, I've tried them all. They're usually of low quality, high in bugs, and low in population. I'd be delighted to know what game you found to fill that niche.
Because I like massive multiplayer games. The only point of them being massive now is so they can charge a sub fee.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
300 vs 300 is not for every game - but it works for some games.
It has been around for a while and if you like this sort of thing...and one big world (no instancing) ....and PvP ...and RvR... and 'hardcore' (What ever TF that means?) then you can actually play it right now.
http://kfsone.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/roermond-part-1/
http://kfsone.wordpress.com/2007/10/25/roermond-part-2/
http://kfsone.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/ruins-of-vianden-video/
http://kfsone.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/its-on/#more-2133
http://kfsone.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/it-fell/
Note that this game is now quite old. Which is why newer games that claim they ahve made a breakthrough and have large battles and a huge world just make me laugh.
Edit: and to answer the OP: why do I like this? In the context of WWII it works. Anything less just wouldn't feel right (BF1942 shoeboxes for example).
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
In our particular game (EvE) huge fleet battles of 300vs300 or more ships involve a lot of coordination among the fleet and squad commanders. As a grunt piloting a particular ship you will be targeting, applying a variety of ECM stuff, shooting at your assigned targets, and maneuvering to get out of range of the most obvious threats like massive bombs or killer drones. As a squad commander you will listen the info of your scouts, listen to your fleet commander and then react to the info and direct the fire of your squad to a particular ship or group of enemy ships.
For a well coordinated fleet with competent fleet commanders a massive battle is NOT a random affair. Of course, you can be baited into a trap and may have to fight against odds too high to win, but if the commander and the fleet does not panic, a small fleet can inflict heavy damage before being anihilated. The fleet actions prior to the battle (scouting, positioning, assigning particular roles to each squad and pilot...) are crucial and specially while roaming or hunting down an enemy fleet, it can be nerve breaking too.
What you don't see during the battle is 600 ships fully rendered with their hulls glitering, the shields glowing and explosions everywhere. What you see is a zoom out look of the battlefield where each ship is color coded into a small square and a list of ships on your right that you use to target, get close to, avoid, shoot, or whatever it is that you have to do.
There may be guys with übercomputers able to fight these massive battles and see the actual battle close up with all effects on. I sadly cannot.
Huge battles require a lot of skill, concentration, discipline and coordination. The give you a huge adrenaline rush, and above all, they are fun. Sadly I usually end up with my costly ships reduced to unsightly wrecks...
Played: UO, SWG, TR, WoW, AoC, EvE
Playing:
Interested in: JGE, LotR, TSW
Actually, the way I read the OP, it's asking how in the world can anyone like these things?
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
If you want huge battles, go play the Total War games. Like the OP said, 300+ vs 300+ or some other ridiculous number is not needed. I enjoy the feeling of large, epic battles (which is one reason why I love RvR and I love DAoC), but something like 100 vs 100 is fine for me. I don't want it to the point where things start to lag and you get killed by what seems to be an orbital cannon of death but in reality is just hundreds of people spamming AoEs.
Edit: EVE is an exception because EVE is kickass.
QFT!!! The first two years in Shadowbane had epic banes, beautiful to be a part of. When the onslaught of kiddies that refuse to follow a leader hit MMO's that is when great large scale battles died.
The more, the merrier.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.