Warmaster Event Changes in Defiance 2.1

[Scaly]

That makes sense, I didn't think of it that way. Wasn't thinking of the 'instances' part. However, wouldn't 'like in the co-op maps' holding the queue until x number of players fill it before the 'instance' begins help ? I think I said that right

[Three Dog]

If they really wanted to fix this issue and have it vanish forever, Make it so failing the instance grants no loot. Only victory grants rewards. People are there for loot and that becomes the common goal of everyone to win when second place gets nothing. You will be amazed of how many people will buck up and start cooperating once that happens.

[samuelsinn]

This letter's intent was not to polarize or antagonize any of our players. I can say that definitively. As a developer designing a feature, this birds-eye view of the game's audience can be dehumanizing as is sets players in camps based on gameplay style and behavior. These labels appeared in the article and came across as offensive when that was not the intent. Additionally, the article should have been branded as a "Developer Blog" of sorts as it was written from a development standpoint, communicating the rationale for a feature change using direct reasoning.

Having read most if not all of the forum activity, this appears to have been the core frustration about the post, even more so than the game change. To again be fully transparent, both myself and PhantasieTrion reviewed, edited, and signed off on the article before I published it last night. The notion was that the change may be received better if communicated using an honest, if blunt, voice. In retrospect, we should have put the article through another round of revisions to temper it better and soften some of the language used.

I encourage everyone to look past the directness of the original article which was as much my fault as anyone else's and focus on the feature change itself which we are interested to hear feedback about.

thank you for saying sorry but i do not lay the insult on your hands or any other devs then tricks he was the one that came of rude disrespectfull and insulting it was not yours or anyother devs fault that he said what he said it was only your guyds job to pass it on to us. but i do thank you for steping up and saying sorry. that is a step in the right derection

[Kershoc]

I encourage everyone to look past the directness of the original article which was as much my fault as anyone else's and focus on the feature change itself which we are interested to hear feedback about.

I'm all for this feature change Scapes. I'm one of the vet players. Been here since Alpha. Day one Season Pass holder. Had Warmaster on farm shortly after its release. One of the early members of the Million Damage Club. First one to speak up inside the warmaster chamber with what weapons to use, which ones not to, focus tatics, etc. Ask people to wait for 24 till breaking the locks.

I also understand exactly what problem this patch is correcting. I'm all for waiting till you get a full 24 till the locks get broke. I am fully against exploiting a game bug to exceed the player limit. Even more against forcing others to wait half hour to an hour to cram as many people in there as possible.

Personally I would of love to have seen the development team just fix the exploit. However I can see the value in the way this was fixed. Let the people who want to exploit the bug, continue to do so. Just force them to have their **** together ahead of time.

Lock Keeper right up till you got 24 players in the room. Lock Breaker after that.

[Deunan]

Well, not killing the Volge in the upper chamber could be a new thing. The timers dont start until the Volge are killed. If people lay off of them when they enter the Arkfall it could give you time to organize and get people inside.

The same mentality that causes players to break the locks as soon as they enter the chamber even after they know why that's poor strategy for killing the Warmaster will cause those players to rush to the back of the room to shoot the lone Volge Trooper that triggers the rest dropping into the room. Once that happens there will be no opportunity for the players to organize until all or most of the Volge are dead.

The best you can do is what Atra suggested which is to group up before hand in 6 groups of 4 and then have the ones in the instance where the most of them end up in tell the rest of the group in Clan chat to accept group invites from them and use the go to leader function to teleport to the same instance. With enough practice it might be able to get done inside the 3.5 minute mark with some consistency for PC platforms. I don't think either game console platform will be able to do the same however because of the stability issues that are associated with doing this for the Warmaster. 3.5 minutes is unnecessarily brief in general. If they doubled it most of the players that don't want to wait would probably be willing to wait for that brief amount of time.

[satirized]

Hey where can I get the lock keeper sig?

[milwrob]

Are they planning on fixing the server issues b4 they put this into effect. Being constructively critical here: a 3.5 minute time limit is ridiculous for 1 reason above the others in particular. Out of about 200 that ive run, ive tried to enter the gates about a quarter of that and guess how many ive ever made it into that way.... 1. And that was under perfect circumstances where i just signed in and was a short walk away...
If you travel to friend and try to enter, forget even trion (yes its intentional).
If youve been playing for longer than 30 minutes or fast travel youre hud goes all wonky and entering instances is risky at best. Its like the servers are always at max cap and they have someone sitting there kicking any1 thats been on for more than a half hour... and i know for a fact its not my internet... that ish is flawless.
Now back to my point... the majors can be done w/ 24... but the same problem always happens... 10 clanmates outside.... maybe... maybe 5 get in... the other five now have to race against the clock to quit game, resign in, relog, and hope the gates havent closed, or that one of the people made it inside to group them so they can go to leader (the only reliable way to get in btw) and if you are newer, dont have a ton of ppl on ur friend list, or lack a clan/active clan, you essentially just wasted 10 minutes outside for a pitance of a reward (2 keys and handful of scrip if i remember right.)
PS: lock keepers are the minority??? Hahaha.. when in the average 30 person instance and you have 20 ppl trying to get the maybe 3ish ppl to stop how does that make keepers a munority. Makes me wonder if any devs have played the game outside thier little dev server bubble. Please get out and play the game with the common folk and tell me how mamy WMs you beat with 24 (or inside 3.5 minutes) when half the players are under 2k ego or dont thoroughly understand the mechanics.

[RAGEFIGHTER]

From Creative Lead Trick Dempsey:

Ark hunters,

We’re releasing an update to the Warmaster instance to address social dynamics inside the event. Feedback from players fell into two broad categories: those that break locks and those that do not.

Lock breakers break the Warmaster locks at the first opportunity, valuing their play time, entertainment, and the moment-to-moment rewards that come from constant action. They are playing Defiance for a limited time each day and they are guided by which events are active in the game. Every part of the user interface supports this play method. Indicators and EGO instructions push these players forward, and they reap great rewards during their time. Lock breakers constitute a vast majority of players.

Lock keepers seek to prolong the lock-breaking step until the number of players inside the Warmaster event meets or exceeds 24 players, often using chat and weapon intimidation to dissuade others in the instance. These players value resources over time and aim to earn the legendary weapon drops from the Warmaster at all costs. Additionally, these players tend to have an extremely limited scope for value on items; anything that is not part of a predetermined list is deemed entirely worthless. These players are extremely active on the forums and in-game, but still constitute a small minority of players.

Here is how we are updating the event: When the last Volge in the upper level of the arkbreak is killed, the objective to open the vents appears. That objective now has a 30-second countdown. At that point, the vents will open themselves and the cage will appear in the room below. When the cage spawns, it begins a 3-minute countdown. During this countdown, the locks may be destroyed as normal. However, when the countdown completes, the locks shatter and the Warmaster is released. To be clear, from the moment the last Volge is killed in the lobby, there is a maximum of 3.5 minutes before the Warmaster fight starts.

This puts the game’s mechanics in line with the interface indicators in the game and the instructions from EGO. Once inside the Warmaster event, players will proceed to its end in 10 to 15 minutes, thus freeing them to pursue their next adventure in a timely manner. Players aiming to maximize their chances to earn legendary gear or Warmaster kills now have the onus put on them to organize their teams before entering the event. They need to prepare their plans, leader designations, and group/friend invites such that they can execute them quickly. We are not, at this time, removing the exploit that allows players to exceed the event’s 24-player maximum, but we are requiring teams that wish to do so to achieve this in a timely fashion.

While lock keepers are not necessarily playing the Warmaster instance incorrectly, this is not how the event was designed to be played. This change prevents them from holding an in-progress event hostage and allows the instance to progress as designed. Players who progress the Warmaster fight are not and have not been “griefers” as they are doing what the game has literally told them to do. We’ll continue to monitor feedback about the Warmaster event and this latest change, so please share your constructive experience-based insights with us on the forums.

Good hunting,

Creative Lead Trick Dempsey

---

Please Note: This letter's intent was not to polarize or antagonize any of our players. I can say that definitively. As a developer designing a feature, this birds-eye view of the game's audience can be dehumanizing as is sets players in camps based on gameplay style and behavior. These labels appeared in the article and came across as offensive when that was not the intent. Additionally, the article should have been branded as a "Developer Blog" of sorts as it was written from a development standpoint, communicating the rationale for a feature change using direct reasoning.

Having read most if not all of the forum activity, this appears to have been the core frustration about the post, even more so than the game change. To again be fully transparent, both myself and PhantasieTrion reviewed, edited, and signed off on the article before I published it last night. The notion was that the change may be received better if communicated using an honest, if blunt, voice. In retrospect, we should have put the article through another round of revisions to temper it better and soften some of the language used.

I encourage everyone to look past the directness of the original article which was as much my fault as anyone else's and focus on the feature change itself which we are interested to hear feedback about.

exelent the realy killed wm please my friends doo not invite mee in wm again trion messed it up once again

[Kane Fraiser]

Looks like I'll never be able to beat the WM again, mostly because all of the noobs that don't know how to play will be entering the WM at will, and not knowing how to beat him, they'll also be filling the lobbies with noobs and not allowing veteran players in to actually beat him. We don't break the locks at the beginning because 90% of the time, only 10 people maximum get into the WM top floor, and then we start inviting people. How does that look when only 3 people break the locks? that's not "Lock Breakers", that's just dumb. Honestly, I don't even know why this is a big deal. There are plenty of other things to be done to improve the game and not actually make it worse.

And this is a bad idea also because even though you can beat him with 24 people, that doesn't account for the time outs, the laggers, the people that just sit around, or what we like to call the "sunbathers" the people that go down and just wait around for someone to pick them up. Those people count for about half of the lobby, each and every time, so that limits the people that are actually fighting to 50%, that's why we wait for 30-40 people each time, not because we want the legendaries. In fact, we don't even care about the legendaries since we can just make them ourselves now.

still needs to be heard

[turk1820]

From Creative Lead Trick Dempsey:

Ark hunters,

We’re releasing an update to the Warmaster instance to address social dynamics inside the event. Feedback from players fell into two broad categories: those that break locks and those that do not.

Lock breakers break the Warmaster locks at the first opportunity, valuing their play time, entertainment, and the moment-to-moment rewards that come from constant action. They are playing Defiance for a limited time each day and they are guided by which events are active in the game. Every part of the user interface supports this play method. Indicators and EGO instructions push these players forward, and they reap great rewards during their time. Lock breakers constitute a vast majority of players.

Lock keepers seek to prolong the lock-breaking step until the number of players inside the Warmaster event meets or exceeds 24 players, often using chat and weapon intimidation to dissuade others in the instance. These players value resources over time and aim to earn the legendary weapon drops from the Warmaster at all costs. Additionally, these players tend to have an extremely limited scope for value on items; anything that is not part of a predetermined list is deemed entirely worthless. These players are extremely active on the forums and in-game, but still constitute a small minority of players.

Here is how we are updating the event: When the last Volge in the upper level of the arkbreak is killed, the objective to open the vents appears. That objective now has a 30-second countdown. At that point, the vents will open themselves and the cage will appear in the room below. When the cage spawns, it begins a 3-minute countdown. During this countdown, the locks may be destroyed as normal. However, when the countdown completes, the locks shatter and the Warmaster is released. To be clear, from the moment the last Volge is killed in the lobby, there is a maximum of 3.5 minutes before the Warmaster fight starts.

This puts the game’s mechanics in line with the interface indicators in the game and the instructions from EGO. Once inside the Warmaster event, players will proceed to its end in 10 to 15 minutes, thus freeing them to pursue their next adventure in a timely manner. Players aiming to maximize their chances to earn legendary gear or Warmaster kills now have the onus put on them to organize their teams before entering the event. They need to prepare their plans, leader designations, and group/friend invites such that they can execute them quickly. We are not, at this time, removing the exploit that allows players to exceed the event’s 24-player maximum, but we are requiring teams that wish to do so to achieve this in a timely fashion.

While lock keepers are not necessarily playing the Warmaster instance incorrectly, this is not how the event was designed to be played. This change prevents them from holding an in-progress event hostage and allows the instance to progress as designed. Players who progress the Warmaster fight are not and have not been “griefers” as they are doing what the game has literally told them to do. We’ll continue to monitor feedback about the Warmaster event and this latest change, so please share your constructive experience-based insights with us on the forums.

Good hunting,

Creative Lead Trick Dempsey

---

Please Note: This letter's intent was not to polarize or antagonize any of our players. I can say that definitively. As a developer designing a feature, this birds-eye view of the game's audience can be dehumanizing as is sets players in camps based on gameplay style and behavior. These labels appeared in the article and came across as offensive when that was not the intent. Additionally, the article should have been branded as a "Developer Blog" of sorts as it was written from a development standpoint, communicating the rationale for a feature change using direct reasoning.

Having read most if not all of the forum activity, this appears to have been the core frustration about the post, even more so than the game change. To again be fully transparent, both myself and PhantasieTrion reviewed, edited, and signed off on the article before I published it last night. The notion was that the change may be received better if communicated using an honest, if blunt, voice. In retrospect, we should have put the article through another round of revisions to temper it better and soften some of the language used.

I encourage everyone to look past the directness of the original article which was as much my fault as anyone else's and focus on the feature change itself which we are interested to hear feedback about.

all well and good but have you fixed the issue of server crashes when trying to get into the ark fall and the issue of loosing all your points when you do enter