Monday, September 22, 2008

WAR has solved the twinking problem?

One of the issues that I have always been on the fence about is 'twinking' in PVP. Some people love them and others despise them to the ends of the universe. A 'twink' is a low level char that has been geared up with the best available armour and weapons for their level, giving them a significant advantage over others in PvP. Twinking is not an easy process and often requires enormous amounts of time and gold to achieve. The players that put in the effort to twink are rewarded with the feeling of total PvP domination (it's a good feeling), but it comes at the expense of the enjoyment of other players. This was always a big problem with WoW and often turned people off playing low level PvP. Guild Wars solved the twinking problem with max level armour and weapons, and I was interested to see if WAR had managed to solve the problem given that their item system followed suit with WoW. It turns out they have... almost...

The solution was not to prevent twinking, but to make it less rewarding for the effort involved. WAR's PvP system rewards players with XP based on their contribution to the scenario. The more they contribute (ie. Twinkers), the more XP they receive and the faster they level. A level 11 twink in WAR is likely only able to play 10 PvP scenarios (or less) before they reach level 12, thus moving them up into the next tier of PvP scenarios. This means that for all the work involved in twinking a WAR char, the twinker only gets 10 games (or less) of PvP before they have to move on.

Some player's may think it's still worth the effort, others not so much. Either way, if you encounter a twink in WAR PvP scenarios, rest assured you wont be seeing much more of them.

3 comments:

Elementalistly said...

I am enjoying my games with the "Zero gear dependence" though.

Now with AoC, Guild Wars, and Spellborn, which is also a non-gear twinking game.

More skill, less about the goods.
Glad to see Mythic has made changes to this issue.

Crimson Starfire said...

One of the things I loved most about Guild Wars was that the game wasn't designed to be gear dependent. All PvP was skill based and not who had the biggest sword or the largest shoulder pads.

I was a little worried that WAR would follow suit with WoW, making PvP gear dependent. It still is, but to a lesser degree. WAR PvP relies a lot on group tactics and strategies, which makes it a lot more enjoyable than WoW PvP. It doesn't have the depth that GW PvP has, but it has bigger battles and a lot more PvP going on.

Melf_Himself said...

But for those 10 games, the twinked out character does manage to own pretty hard.

We lost track of the number of times that we got pwnt unexpectedly by some level 11 black orc wearing crazy looking armor and a giant cape.

Which is why we went on an epic marathon run through enemy populated territory to move like 3 chapters ahead of where we were supposed to be, so we could get a bunch of uber gear from the PQ's. It was all req 10/11 in level though, so as Crimson said, you don't get too much time to dominate with it.