Warhammer and Melee Range Compensation

First, foremost, and of the utmost importance:

Go Blackhawks!

I was kinda-sorta hoping for a loss, so we could trounce the Flyers on home ice, and have an epic game 7, but Lord Stanley’s Cup, is Lord Stanley’s Cup, and there is never any complaining when it comes to winning it.

Onto the subject at hand:

This is a major issue, and it’s one that’s been affecting the game for a long, LONG time. If somehow, you’re not aware of it, let me give you a bit of a breakdown of what’s going on. If you want to skip this post, and read about it on the forums, or see it in video, I’ll try to hunt down, and leave a host of links at the bottom of this for you to follow.

Essentially, what has been happening in WAR for a long time, is that the melee range of abilities have been getting a fudge factor. When a melee character is attacking a target, the server and host have to communicate with each other, relaying both the position of each player in regards to each other. The game engine will then determine the viability of the attempted skill-use based on that position. Obviously, this becomes an issue if there is a disagreement between the two players computers. Who is correct?

The result from this confusion early on, was a lot of “target out of range” messages for melee careers. Players would complain of being right on top of an enemy, and being unable to hit them. Around the same time, ranged players and casters in general, were complaining of cast bars not filling properly, or skipping around. A change was enacted, and that was the infamous “Mythic Second“. Mythic was averaging in latency issues into the cast times for abilities, this was in March of ’09. Not long after, you started to see the complaints of melee.

I believe, if memory servers me correctly, it was 1.3.0 on 06.18.09, and then further tweaked a month later in 1.3.0b on 07.22.09.

The problem since then, has been the exact opposite of where it started, but without as huge of an outcry. I think in large part, this is due to the lack of giant bold text that spams your screen telling you the person standing 30′ away is ripping chunks of your life away like a beaver on a tree. I’ve asked the question before during the Q&A sessions, and sadly, there was no answer. The reply was that it was an engineering issue, and no one in the vent could respond appropriately.

Without getting too technical, the synopsis seems to be that the compensation is increased as movement speed increases. The base problem is how the server seems to determine positioning. If you’ve ever been riding around on any mount other than a griffon, and been keeping pace with someone who is, you probably noticed that person intermittently leaping ahead of you, as if they were warping. The faster a character is moving, the more difficult the server has keeping track of relative positions. It’s a big reasons why classes with charge (MDPS) gain the most advantage out of this situation. Ranged players often end up on the receiving end of what appears to them to be 30′ melee attacks, which is a 2-3s lag in display (that’s 2000-3000 ms lag, mines a tenth of that on a bad day).

I’ve believed, almost since the day I started playing, that positioning and battlefield awareness is one of, if not the most important skills a player can learn in WAR. Being able to read a battlefield, and adjust and adapt to it leads to a world of difference in performance. It was one of the reasons I was drawn to the Shadow Warrior, which was supposed to thrive by doing just that. When this change took place, it ruined and killed our ability to do so.

So, if you play a RDPS, keep your eyes out in the days to come. Keep your combat log open, and your positioning noted to that MDPS or Tank. Tell me what you find, and spread the word if you see the same.

Links:

• My suggestion thread.
• Video
• Video
• Video
• Complaint thread.
• Video