Powergrinding RPs via cross-faction coordination

I don’t intend for this blog to turn into the “sploits and more!” blog, but as I think of potential problems with the system, I figure I’ll post them so that Mythic can know how people might abuse it.  It’s much better for stuff like this to get out early so that Mythic can clamp down on any loophole mechanics before they start being abused.  So, with that intro out of the way…

Steps:

1) Coordinate order/destruction groups over vent, easiest in late night by choosing the least popular T4 open-rvr area or scenario to meet each other.

2) Bring along a couple AoE’rs for damage – 1 in each group.

3) Bring along a couple of AoE healers for heals – 1 in each group.

4) Each faction stands in a clump and deals slow methodical AoE damage to the other clump.  The AoE Healers in the clumps heal up the AoE damage.  They can also rez if anyone gets too ambitious on the dmg :p

I’m pretty sure this would blow most other methods for RP gain out of the water (in terms of strict RP/Hour).  The reason is this:  With a spell like Martyr’s Blessing , you can be healing all 12 (or 18! or more!) people simultaneously, regardless of whether they’re in your group or not.  That’s a hella lot of RPs / second. While one group’s healer takes a break to supplicate and fill their healing-source (RF, SE, or AP), the other one would take over.

As long as people have the self-control not to over-dps and kill anyone in the opposite faction, the two clumps could AoE dmg and AoE heal for hours and watch the purple numbers just stream in.

Maybe this sploit wouldn’t work, but I think it would.  In any case, I think Mythic should ensure that a loophole like this for coordinated opposition groups wouldn’t suck the life out of open RvR while people powerlevel full groups to RR80.

Also, to pre-empt the statements that it’s no different from kill-trading, It’s sure be a hell of a lot quicker than kill trading since kills give you less RP per kill with each successive kill.  With healing (as far as I know) there are no diminishing returns.

Fast leveling done better – what WAR can learn

Both WoW and DAoC have had to deal with an aging game population.  One of the issues faced by their faithful players is that leveling an alt can be a painful process.

In WoW, Blizzard has dealt with this  by making the doldrums levels (20 through 50) a faster grind via quests giving more experience.  In DAoC, this has been done by giving people with a max level character the ability to use a /level command to automatically level their toon to 20 (or 30 in the cases of some underpopulated factions on some servers).

Both of these solutions have problems.

• In the case of WoW, you’re still doing the same grind and the same quests, and you still have to level twice to get new abilities (barring talent-based ones).  Also, the people playing WoW for the first time do not have the curse/blessing to go through the same leveling experience that others did, which brings with it more gold by the time they reach 70 and a better feel for their character class.
• In the case of DAoC, the issue was that the starter zones were extremely inhospitable to new players to the game.  When old players that could offer a sense of community and game-based-wisdom would simply /level past the starting zone, new players got none of the enjoyment that the original players had.

One proposal to deal with this, which WAR might also employ, would be to let a limited form of /level exist.  This /level would become available after “ding”ing any level.  Once you hit level two, you could /level which would also propel you to level 3.  You would not be able to store these levels, so you couldn’t skip past the leveling experience in which you would interact with new players to the game.

Also, WAR alt-rollers would benefit in that they would get a talent point for every level they attained in addition to any skills that become available with the 2 character levels they gain if they choose to use /level.  Finally, in WAR, a significant potential problem is not feeling like you can enjoy scenarios for the full leveling experience if you become RP capped before you ding a new character level.  In this system, it would be rare to have capped your RP even if you leveled exclusively through world-pvp or scenarios.

In conclusion, there are better ways to reward your player base for level’ing to max and rolling an alt than simply reducing the experience per level or granting a /level to 20.  This is but one of many solutions.

Rockband Drums – video on how to remove the heads

Someone asked in the Scorehero forums how to take the heads of Rockband 1 drum sets.  Since I’ve done this way too many times, I took a quick video of the process and posted it to flickr.  I’m guessing this will void your warranty, so if you value your right to RMA the set, you probably shouldn’t do this…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30159800@N02/2877525089/