A Return To The Past

Greetings Pit Masters!

Now that the most recent update is live and running smoothly I'd like to offer a glimpse into what I'll be focusing on next. This isn't a concrete road map per se, however, it should give those interested a good idea on the direction we're going. After countless hours of thought (and I do mean countless) and inner dialogue I've come to the conclusion that Pit of War has strayed from its original goal and design. As the saying goes "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions". Many of the design decisions made over the past few years were done with good intentions and often in response to a changing marketplace and environment. Some of these decisions were great, some of them were bad. It's hard to know what the outcomes will be in advance. The outcome for many of those decisions is now known and the knowledge gained from them will help shape the future of PoW.

I've more or less thrown in the towel and admitted defeat in the battle for "mainstream" adoption. PoW is a thinking man's (or woman's) game and that flies in the face of the "mainstream" mob. Of course I knew PoW was a niche game to begin with and would never enjoy the success of top casual games, but I had always hoped (perhaps a bit too optimistically) that the joy of this niche could be expanded and exposed to others unfamiliar with it. I'm sure it did put a smile on many a new face, but a niche it shall remain. In an effort to attract more players and be attractive to more players PoW veered off course. It has been a learning process. So, while this particular battle is lost, the war is not. I will never be able to compete with the marketing dollars of the larger companies and PoW will never be mainstream, kind of mainstream, or a tiny bit mainstream, ever. And I'm finally ok with this. I will now shift gears (or pivot for those of you familiar with the lingo of The Lean Startup community) and focus on making PoW the best game in its niche. That will be my new focus starting now and this pivot won't be slow and gradual relatively speaking. It will be as swift as I can make it, which will be jarring for some.

I've spent the last few weeks going over old forum posts (years old in some cases) and taking notes on comments left by users and paying close attention to those players who I consider to be "core players" and even more attention to those I consider to be loyal supporters and backers of the game, past and present. I equally looked at comments that praised the game and criticized it in whatever form the game was in at that time. After distilling the posts down to various topics I then started cross referencing them with my todo list and the current game design in general. Many items on my todo list are being removed due to this, some are being promoted and new items with the highest of priorities are being added. Once I am done with this process I will then look at it from a business perspective and see what is possible and for those ideas that don't seem possible, see what I can do so they are.

I don't have a lot of details to offer at this time, however, as the title of this post suggests, "a return to the past" is a good fit. Not everything new will be changed and not everything old will return, however, the original spirit of what Pit of War was will be the focus. During this transformation some areas of the game will be changed, some will be removed and some new ones added. A few in-game prices may change if "game mechanic A" was subsidizing "game mechanic B" and A is removed for example. Some of you will not like the new changes, some of you will love them. I fully expect what I consider the "Core Player Base" to love the new direction and those players are my new laser focus. I'm certainly not turning my back on non-core base players and will do everything I can to keep the game fun for them as well. I'm sure we'll lose some players as change always does. If my hunch is correct though, it may even turn some non-core players into core players and bring back core players from the past.

As to not leave you empty handed, here are some general ideas you can take with you regarding the new direction:

- The core game loop will be more PvP focused, more varied and in general, slower. Quality over quantity.
- The PvE areas of the game will continue to be present and expanded upon for those interested in having more to do, longer play sessions and looking to be rewarded for their time investment.

I hope most of you like the new direction. I am already excited to get to work on it and would like to apologize to the core players for allowing PoW to run off the tracks for as long as it did. An oversight I shall correct posthaste!

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

P.S. Yes, the new school is still on the way. :)

Bravo, Nate! As a newer "core player" and supporter of the game, I wasn't around for the old versions of PoW. But if a truly standout PvP environment is what you're going for, I believe it will reach a bigger niche than you might expect. I know there are a lot of die-hard PvPers out there just waiting for someone to create an online PvP environment that is second to none. And imho, PoW certainly has the potential to be "it". More importantly, I'm glad you're excited about it cuz that tells me you're having fun with it. That, my friend, is indispensable.

Looking forward to whatever changes may come.

Hail to the past! That sounds really promising. :D I've no doubt that many of the old(er) dogs will return when Shadow & Myst sees light - even those who think that they've left for good :p - but if done right, this is quite likely to speed up the process and keep them here for a long time. And although I suppose relying on a small hardcore player club to sustain the game is not the most profitable business path, it certainly ensures the highest loyalty levels from the players in the long run (including financial loyalty). If that is what you are aiming for, you are certainly heading in the right direction.

That's a pretty huge paradigm shift you've had to work your head around Nate. Props for having the courage to change the direction of your baby.

I have no idea what will be in store for us, or if I'll like it, but as always, I'll give it a go :D I havent been scared off yet ;)

Ah the days of Larhal,Wargh, Prey, Ormgar, Narvalo, Solstice, Eruption, Cainedesolis clashing on the arena sands!
I can't remember warmonger's pole arm glad that kicked ass.

thumbs up :cool:

No idea what's in store for the future, but you seem excited about it, and an excited Nate is a force to be reckoned with, indeed. Gotta say I'm looking forward to whatever it is you manage to come up with next!

That sounds really awesome Nate. I love the game as it is, but I loved it in the beginning as well. I have faith in you that whatever you have up your sleeve is going to be great based on your post. You have my support! It would be awesome to see some of the original players back in action too!

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Originally Posted by Dainoji

That sounds really awesome Nate. I love the game as it is, but I loved it in the beginning as well. I have faith in you that whatever you have up your sleeve is going to be great based on your post. You have my support! It would be awesome to see some of the original players back in action too!

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Some of us came back of our own accord.Mmake it not cost 50 trophies to click 'auto tavern' and I'll be happier. That maintenance is a chore, and not the part of the game I enjoy!

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Originally Posted by Arkham

Some of us came back of our own accord.Mmake it not cost 50 trophies to click 'auto tavern' and I'll be happier. That maintenance is a chore, and not the part of the game I enjoy!

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Would love that, less time for the necessary but unfunny stuff would result oin more active glads in my stable.

Regarding the other announced changes, im eager to see how the game will turn out.

Interesting changes, Nate. I prefer less PvE type stuff (specifically leveling/taverns) and more focus on the PvP. So I like this new direction. I'd suggest a stop to level cap increases; differences in level and therefore gear only contribute to a non-level playing field in the PvP arena.

As for the slower pace and fewer fights, this might be interesting in that we'd have to stop and read through each fight more thoroughly to analyze it. I'm interested to see how this plays out.

I was a bit disheartened to see that there are guides giving advice on how to 'speed straight to blood god' etc, supremely 'meta' in the attitude, as though half the games ranking brackets are just rubbish. I think if the talk of slowing things down addresses that, it would be good :) Its one thing that drives me away from any kind of multiplayer when people lose sight of the point of a game and just try to 'win' at all cost. It's not about the destination, afterall, but the journey! And in my opinion what point is there writing all this content if only to have it passed over?

But I am a newbie to this game so perhaps that is not important.

Regardless I really enjoy the theme and it draws to my mind the Warhammer universe, particularly a story by Ben Counter whereby a Grey Knight gets enslaved and is forced to become a gladiator on a world devoted to the Blood God Khorne. Brilliant story - and a brilliant game this is. So I look forward to seeing these changes come about.

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Originally Posted by abbatoir

regardless i really enjoy the theme and it draws to my mind the warhammer universe, particularly a story by ben counter whereby a grey knight gets enslaved and is forced to become a gladiator on a world devoted to the blood god khorne.

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blood for the blood god!

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Originally Posted by Abbatoir

I was a bit disheartened to see that there are guides giving advice on how to 'speed straight to blood god' etc, supremely 'meta' in the attitude, as though half the games ranking brackets are just rubbish. I think if the talk of slowing things down addresses that, it would be good :) Its one thing that drives me away from any kind of multiplayer when people lose sight of the point of a game and just try to 'win' at all cost. It's not about the destination, afterall, but the journey! And in my opinion what point is there writing all this content if only to have it passed over?

But I am a newbie to this game so perhaps that is not important.

Regardless I really enjoy the theme and it draws to my mind the Warhammer universe, particularly a story by Ben Counter whereby a Grey Knight gets enslaved and is forced to become a gladiator on a world devoted to the Blood God Khorne. Brilliant story - and a brilliant game this is. So I look forward to seeing these changes come about.

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I couldn't agree more with you on the end game rush thing. We must be in the vast minority on this though since you see the same thing with every new MMO that comes out....50 levels of content and all peeps want to do is race to the cap so that they can do the same content over and over. Obviously this game isn't a true MMORPG so the comparisons are kinda off, but as someone that has taken a VERY slow approach to playing I can tell you with certainty your better off blasting to blood gods asap. There is simply nothing to be gained pre blood god, other than the thrill of gaining skills and swapping out gear as you level.

The daily "top 10" battle for each class is neat for a while, but even though i win an average of 2 of those per day, my team as a whole is losing trophies steadily, and its not like your name goes up in lights for winning it, nor is there a skill or gear award to go with it.

Racking up Pit Fight wins WAS very meaningful, the gear for winning those can be sweet, but steps were taken to discourage pre level 50 warriors from actively targeting the pits. If I were a betting man, and I am, I’d lay cash those changes were made because the top end warriors couldn’t win in the pits.

Currently, Blood Games is the first real meaningful event new players will be able to take part in, once their warriors get a warrior to ~ 40th level, however, your chances of winning it are less than zero without a max level + geared Blood God. Even so, it’s somewhat fun to see your warriors get crushed by smaller margins as you grow in power.

It would seem to me since new players do not start with Blood God level warriors, that you would want to add some excitement to the lower end of the game. To this end, here would be some of my suggestions:

When a manager gets a warrior inducted to Blood Gods they immediately do NOT count as one of their 5 warriors, and they get a HoL slave. We need ALL of our managers active in ALL parts of the game 1-55, and since a forced retirement of warriors would go over like a lead balloon, you must allow teams to grow beyond 5 or you’ll get stagnation at the top of the game. The win-loss records of teams are already meaningless and warped, so there shouldn’t be any hard feelings in regards to the above change.

The Brackets should be much slower, or there should be much less of them. Additionally, there should be 1v1 tournaments that managers can enter their warriors in on some time interval, with meaningful prizes, for all brackets, not just blood gods. These should be broken up by bracket, skill level, or whatever is deemed fair.

Make the first page you see upon logging in a summary of current accomplishments. Up in lights should be the names of the current Blood Games Winner, Top Warrior of each class, tournament winners, etc. Remind people that they aren’t just grinding to oblivion, and that there are small victories along the way to be had, and a day in the sun.

Remove the skill governors that have been added recently, and allow managers to sink or swim on their own merit. All those skill requirements only serve to reduce diversity among warriors and if a newbie doesn’t put points in weapon skill first, they will figure it out soon enough. If someone wants to put 1 skill point everywhere, why not let them, stop being the skill police.

Lastly, if the game is going to be a mixture of PVP & PVE, then in terms of game mechanics they MUST be linked in linear fashion, or managers will figure out ways to gain “unfair” advantage. Sandbagging still is very doable, and if tournaments and such are added in the future it will again become a major problem. Why not just remove the tavern from the game entirely and give more skill points for arena wins and clean that up once and for all? At the very least, Tavern fights should yield the same amount of experience per skill train than a arena fight would.

Thanks for the time…

Avengelyn, Manager of Lethal Formula

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Originally Posted by Avengelyn

Remove the skill governors that have been added recently, and allow managers to sink or swim on their own merit. All those skill requirements only serve to reduce diversity among warriors and if a newbie doesn’t put points in weapon skill first, they will figure it out soon enough. If someone wants to put 1 skill point everywhere, why not let them, stop being the skill police.

Lastly, if the game is going to be a mixture of PVP & PVE, then in terms of game mechanics they MUST be linked in linear fashion, or managers will figure out ways to gain “unfair” advantage. Sandbagging still is very doable, and if tournaments and such are added in the future it will again become a major problem. Why not just remove the tavern from the game entirely and give more skill points for arena wins and clean that up once and for all? At the very least, Tavern fights should yield the same amount of experience per skill train than a arena fight would.

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Originally Posted by Avengelyn

Lastly, if the game is going to be a mixture of PVP & PVE, then in terms of game mechanics they MUST be linked in linear fashion, or managers will figure out ways to gain “unfair” advantage. Sandbagging still is very doable, and if tournaments and such are added in the future it will again become a major problem.

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I disagree muchly in this regard.

It isn't acceptable behaviour to twink in any form and it is the sarcasm equivalent to humour as it is to skill/strategy. It's a cheap and dirty method to gaining an advantage that just makes the person involved better off but for no real show of skill. The game wouldn't be what it is if everything was linear and I suspect that the developer wants it to stay a thinking man's game rather than a twinking man's game. Or a linear, one size fits all, click button mess.

I like that one little change can severely screw up my success. With my second gladiator I have been losing recently and I'm trying to figure out, on my own, by studying my fight form what I did different. What fun is there snarkily finding the cure-all method that uses the games mechanics in a way it was never intended? What skill is there if everything is made more linear?

With regards to the Tavern and the other PVE content, its not so much that I think the Tavern is a vital part of the game - I think it adds to the depth of the game, but perhaps the current incarnation is not interesting enough so people just use it as a resource rather than what it could be. I think that I skip reading most of the Tavern missions because they're basically low threat npc battles. What I would love to see is more of a sideline story, like in those old nutty WWF games, where you make a choice and it affects the drama of the inter-stable politics, or it breaks out into a fight. I don't know what it would be based on, but I think something like that would achieve more. I'd even contribute to helping with writing if it was needed.

But in terms of moving more into a PVP direction, the emphasis should always be on players ACTUALLY using the mechanics to create GENUINE skill based performances (as in player skill, not skill points) and I think thats what the Dev wants and is working towards.

I also seem to remember you were advocating that twinking method?

If PvP focus means more strat and more thinking, I'm all for it.
For PvE content that would remain, however, we can still use it to add more story depth to the background of the great realms. I'm sure most of us being strategy and/or fantasy fans would love to have some background to the great realms too, just for fluff.

I've been thinking to suggest to reduce the Tavern quests to 5 at most - which was their number some... 3 years ago or so - and make them MUCH more challenging, with greater rewards of course. Kind of like mini-Conquests. Then again, there are seemingly quite some managers who spend trophies on the daily Tavern runs and that counts as financial gain of sorts for Nate. I am very economical (sorry Nate, my pockets aren't very deep), even in the end game where some people throw hundreds of $ each month to maintain the performance of their pets, but I can see how these things are necessary for the game's survival... so that's why some such suggestions never leave my head. :)

I don't think there is any "rush" for Blood Gods, there is rather a common strategy among the more experienced managers to preserve resources for the meta game and put most of their efforts there. Right now fighting in Blood Gods is either very expensive or means many months of losing and losing and losing... The Conquests and the Gauntlet are one way to acquire Legendary items faster than just waiting for your fighter to achieve the rating requirements (even though it's quite a gamble for certain builds) so the grinding comes naturally (I'm certainly not a fan of any form of grinding, mind you). PoW has always been pretty much like that - you either pay cash to create the desired fighter quickly or pay time to achieve the same. I'm content with that formula, it's certainly more friendly to the casual player than what the vast majority of the "free" on-line games offer. As long as we don't have situations like pre-Conquests where it took roughly an year to equip your fighter for Blood Gods without spending money - that was too rough indeed - I'm OK.

That said, I'd certainly welcome more diversity outside of Blood Gods. Nate mentioned that the Blood Games can be expanded toward the less experienced gladiators and if done, that will add another dimension to the early game. Team tournaments where players construct the teams on their own in parallel with the regular arena duels will also spice up the game all around. I guess there could also be team Arena Challenges. And whatnot. But at the end of the day, we have just one dev here and trying to do several things at once results in a half-baked mess in the best case scenario. Let's see what will the next batch of changes bring around. I can assure you that nowadays PoW is getting updated far more frequently than during its "golden days". :)

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Originally Posted by Abbatoir

I disagree muchly in this regard.

It isn't acceptable behaviour to twink in any form and it is the sarcasm equivalent to humour as it is to skill/strategy. It's a cheap and dirty method to gaining an advantage that just makes the person involved better off but for no real show of skill. The game wouldn't be what it is if everything was linear and I suspect that the developer wants it to stay a thinking man's game rather than a twinking man's game. Or a linear, one size fits all, click button mess.

I like that one little change can severely screw up my success. With my second gladiator I have been losing recently and I'm trying to figure out, on my own, by studying my fight form what I did different. What fun is there snarkily finding the cure-all method that uses the games mechanics in a way it was never intended? What skill is there if everything is made more linear?

With regards to the Tavern and the other PVE content, its not so much that I think the Tavern is a vital part of the game - I think it adds to the depth of the game, but perhaps the current incarnation is not interesting enough so people just use it as a resource rather than what it could be. I think that I skip reading most of the Tavern missions because they're basically low threat npc battles. What I would love to see is more of a sideline story, like in those old nutty WWF games, where you make a choice and it affects the drama of the inter-stable politics, or it breaks out into a fight. I don't know what it would be based on, but I think something like that would achieve more. I'd even contribute to helping with writing if it was needed.

But in terms of moving more into a PVP direction, the emphasis should always be on players ACTUALLY using the mechanics to create GENUINE skill based performances (as in player skill, not skill points) and I think thats what the Dev wants and is working towards.

I also seem to remember you were advocating that twinking method?

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Perplexed by this post...

The only place i suggested linear was the relationship between the PVP and the PVE elements, so that peeps like me couldn't find a way to exploit it. I never said the game as a whole should be linear, in fact I argued that more variance be added by removing crutches and limits etc.

Also, i didn't advocate sandbagging, but it was used against me when i started so i sure as hell used it on my HoL batch of warriors to great results for me. What i was mad about, was that the dev changed the rules on my turn instead of theirs, without warning. My selfish viewpoint was "hey, they got their licks in, but now your breaking up the fight". Looking back at that, i think a good rule change is a good rule change.

I've had personal dialogue with Nate regarding the Tavern and how to fix it and obviously he feels it's not a huge issue since he hasn't changed it to date.


Avengelyn, Manager of Lethal Formula

Nice to see the passion for the game here:)

I've made similar suggestions to Nate about spicing up the basic game as Avengelyn detailed here. I'm inclined to think Nate has a clear idea of where he is taking this thing and we'll all be impressed by how much better his implementation ends up being than our suggestions would warrant. Let's give him some time and space to work his magic ;)

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Originally Posted by Adoede

Nice to see the passion for the game here:)

I've made similar suggestions to Nate about spicing up the basic game as Avengelyn detailed here. I'm inclined to think Nate has a clear idea of where he is taking this thing and we'll all be impressed by how much better his implementation ends up being than our suggestions would warrant. Let's give him some time and space to work his magic ;)

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Absolutely. And I think that is the bottom line. The man puts his blood, sweat, and tears into making PoW what it is, from the very conception to the delivery, so all we can really do is speculate and brainstorm.

And that extends to all games, really. It kinds of annoys me when I'm on forums of Steam for example and there is all this self-entitled angst. You don't see that in Asda. 'Oh you didn't two for one my favourite chocolate bars. Is your gross net profit reliant on Snickers, I think if you spent more time selling Mars, you'd not suck as a supermarket.' Etc.

But I would offer to help and put my hands where my mouth is if he ever hovered by and went 'That IS pretty cool, Abbatoir but alas I am too busy.' Maybe it is worth thinking about if people have ideas that are of substance and not just self-serving? I am new to this community but I am sure there are talented people who spend a lot of time in the game.

Love the announcement, Nate. You seem passionate and that may be the most important factor here. And I totally agree with Adeoede, you will come up with something we did not even think off.

Along with GGG, you are the one developper (/team^^) I respect the most for their passion, their communication and their execution. Keep it up and PoW will fill out this niche entirely.