Joel Boyles - Advanced PVP Advice

[Prima]

I'd love to see the line between PVE and PVP muddied a bit. For one thing, AoC just has such good lore and it doesn't translate well to generic minigames. More importantly, there's a big practical and psychological gap between PVE and PVP that is hard to cross.

Bori was not a good example. I'm picturing more something like Borderlands (or a new battleground zone) periodically turning into a zone-wide PVE warzone, with NPC armies attacking each other and player battlekeeps. PVE rewards would be available through quests and world bosses that could be spawned in the zone. Then whenever player population in the zone is above a certain minimum number, add PVP rewards (bonus PVP XP, PVP quest givers, etc.)

[Chaman-bourru]

I'd love to see the line between PVE and PVP muddied a bit. For one thing, AoC just has such good lore and it doesn't translate well to generic minigames. More importantly, there's a big practical and psychological gap between PVE and PVP that is hard to cross.

Bori was not a good example. I'm picturing more something like Borderlands (or a new battleground zone) periodically turning into a zone-wide PVE warzone, with NPC armies attacking each other and player battlekeeps. PVE rewards would be available through quests and world bosses that could be spawned in the zone. Then whenever player population in the zone is above a certain minimum number, add PVP rewards (bonus PVP XP, PVP quest givers, etc.)

I like the general idea, going beyond the basic e-peen pvp content of ladders and arena's.

But mixing PvE with PvP is a hard thing. For various reasons, combat with mobs is a pain. Take HoX for example, attack someone with mobs around and nevermind which one of you pulls the mobs the hox will have them all unless attacking a tos. On bigger scale combats you'll have performance issues for a lot of players.

Aside of that, i completly agree that with AoC's lore it's a shame to confine PvP to closed skimpy arena's.

[mardragon7]

Good to see you are reading GD.

I fancy the body part system from Bori be implemented world wide and add pyres 1 or 2 in every zones for world pvp.

I hope you are able to implement the single server tech and then do the following to minigames. Seperate 1-5, 6-9 and 10. At pvp 10 starts the ranked minigames and drown the game in database stats, so we can argue the eff who is the best in anything. Severely decrease time it takes to pvp to 10 and treat it as a training period for the pvp 10 battles. The reasons I want the max lvl players out of the training levels is that they do no longer care to acheive the rewards of playing a game as it is intended, just farm stats. That should be possible only with other equallevel enemies.

Lift all minis 19s,39s,59, 79 and 80 to the 1-5 bracket and players unlock abilities as they level up and make players scale to be basic competetive.

Seperate PvP and PvE stats from items. They should each work in its intended fields.

Consider adding pvp features to abilities already existing to not unbalance a already working pve ability into a unneeded nerf. Example change VoM for PvP, not for PvE.

Bori will stay a place for people to battle for resources to rebuild battlekeeps, maybe build some more on this feature for the guilds fighting over BKs if you have resources for it.

Reconsider guards for PvP server in most places.

Friends must be allowev to sign with eachother. Very important for minis. Add maybe 8 man to minis instead of 6 and allow up to 4 of them to be grouped, 4 must be pug. Allow up to 6 to sign for JS as group. Keep the Ranked for full pvp 10 , 8 man premades and build serious database stats around the achievements of them (12 man in JS ofc).

[K4nnyc]

1. This does not solve gear issues in world PvP or sieges (which I still blindly hope they fix some day). People are already crying about queues. Making wait time even longer is a disastrous idea.

2. Too easy for big guilds to have friend/account alts to constantly farm. From dual logging and simply trade killing on alts with friends... this would simply turn into the 'logging out and in' grind. Horribly flawed. This does not make pvp happen at all.

3. See #2, except this time we're making the gear/stat system in pvp MORE pronounced. Why? The issue right now is gear/AA getting in the way of pvp (skill).

4. Agreed. Sieges should definitely be fixed. They are FUN. Bori's resource gathering aspect needs to be scrapped. Take it out of the game already - it's not fun.

5. Something really must be done about this. I doubt they are in a position to shift around even one GM, but it would be nice. The cheating is part of the reason I haven't mini-ed in months.

6. 'Griefing' would be fixed by removal of guards from Tyranny. Other than that, roll in Set. If you come to a pvp server, be ready to die unfairly - ALL the time. That's what world pvp is about, regardless of any 'justice' daydreaming anyone might have in their heads. The point is that getting revenge on people who grief you is FUN.

It's high time that Tyranny be merged with Deathwish, keeping the blood n gory system in place while removing the offline level and one character restrictions.

Gear imbalance can be fixed. The idea of seperating minis by level tries to do that - in sieges and OW pvp you got to suck it up - its a tough world.

As to your suggestion about removing guards - that does NOT work at all, look at the blood n glory servers, absolute total fail after 3 months. What they need is a full revamp of the consequence system.

Edited by Arishanya to remove comments that are against forum rules as per the Social Guidelines.

[kandreas]

First off you don't want to separate the players into tiers based on gear and pvp level. This game does not have enough players to do that anymore. It's hard enough to get into a mini without that. I'd rather try my chances against bad twinks.

In saying that, part of what will fix pvp is reducing the disparity between pve t4 raid gear and group gear in pvp. Reduce the effectiveness of all gear in pvp, simple as that. Adding gear to pvp has made pvp gear dependent which is counter intuitive to the design of a good pvp system. But this an old argument so I am done beating a dead horse. Or increase the rewards for good pvp, such as more experience, and more tokens per win.

What will really fix pvp, however is what two people have already alluded to in this thread....
Incorporate it into the pve game. This will make it a fundamental part of the game. Obviously Set won't get this and it will only be level 80 because that's where you join factions in RotGS. An example.... You get a quest from a faction. The quest is similar to other faction quests, in that it sends you to an area to complete it, whether it be a kill quest or a collection quest, who cares? An optional part of the quest will be to kill rival faction members.
(Optional) Bring the heads of any rivals that get in your way.

The quest will have a counter. During the quest, if you kill numKills number of players in rival factions, you get (basePvpXp * numKills * f(numKills)) - (numDeaths * deathPvpXp) >= 0 where f(x) is a diminishing returns formula with respect to number of kills. You get this pvp xp upon quest turn in. So you can't sit there and wrack up the pvp xp and if you die you also don't get much out of it, there will be diminishing returns on pvp xp as a bonus reward after turn in.

So what this alludes to is you will get bonus pvp xp for killing rival players within the scope of the quest, and you might win a level appropriate pvp item if you did really really well. It's really that simple of a concept although I am not naive enough to think it's easy to implement since it will require some significant changes to how you deal with quests maybe.

Another method is to have contested dungeons be a staple of the game. Contested dungeons reward you with pvpxp bonuses and pvp items in chests should you beat a boss after or during a pvp skirmish. You engage boss, someone attacks you, you either win or lose. If you lose you lose the boss obviously. So you're cruising around a dungeon looking for a fight and hoping to get a boss kill in in the meantime, or you can be a ganker and pick of stragglers. Either way, there is fighting to be had. The problem here is this can be a farming hazard. Guilds, alts, whatever can create farming strategies to milk the system.

Stuff like that. None of this Shrines of Bori crap.

Also yes. No guards. No guards is not what makes Deathwish suck. Deathwish sucks because Pvp sucks in this game.

[Djeneral]

Jou pppl need tu realy understnd more of how pvp works.jou know? get btter at it and evetuanlly jou will understand what game is need and what director do for the aoc.

[Sarcopthes]

If I would be GD:

I. POWER GAP CHANGES pvp and pve are totally different gameplay experiences: both are about RPG but while pve wise huge gap between characters is ok, for pvp it is gamebreaking and it is a reason of frustration for many of players, even those who have their characters already developed to maximum. This is the reason why there should be not only pvp stats but also pve stats, same regarding AA (if it would be possible).

1. AA changes:

3 different option to choose in regard to resources available:

a): enable all bronze perks working in pvp I was asking Sillirion about it one day and he told that it may be demanding quite a lot resources as far as I remember
b)or other option, even better imo, but also probably impossible to introduce (?) because of loads of work needed to implement it: at 1 point bronze perk ivested should be working in pvp as 4 points invested atm. I will use an example:

AA perk which is today improving internal bleed 1% per rank

after change: 1 point invested: +1% pve dmg, +4% pvp dmg per rank

2 points invested: +2% pve dmg, 4.3% pvp dmg per rank

3 points invested: +3% pve dmg, 4.5% pvp dmg

4 points invested +4% pve dmg, 4.8% pvp dmg

5 points invested +5% pve dmg, 5% pvp dmg

c), least difficultjust improve pvp(only pvp)AA gain 10x so it would be as fast as making KK runs. Pve wise AA gap isnt making gameplay imbalance, pvpers need it much more to have balanced gameplay, skill based. Some might say that it is just opposite to the situation which is current nowadays- it would force pveers to play pvp to get AA. Not really - if AA gain per hour would be same as AA gain per hour for KK runs (calculate as 50% minis won) - players would choose what they prefer to do.

2. Pvp weapons
- I expect that with crafting revap - you would be able to craft pvp weapon only from pvp resources, so you wont be pushed to play both if you dont have fun from pve side.
- even though current pvp weapons should be adjusted properly so that currently highest tier of pvp weapon should be on pair with currently highest tier of pve weapons. Right now even pve T2 weapons are slightly better than pvp t3. Again concept of pushing player to play both pve and pvp to be on pair pvp wise with other players is a fail. Let player to choose his playstyle.
Some would say that making highest tier of pvp weapons as powerful as T3.5 for example would stop ppl from pvp crafting. I dont agree because crafting has also economic aspect and possibility to gear your alts as well as prolly get even better stuff. I am not going to write anything about another pvp tiers with different stats and similar power but I believe that with pvp crafting we will get a lot of new options for pvp gear , and we will be able to choose something suitable for certain playstyle - another reason to be interested in pvp crafting even if you have top pvp tier gear.

3. PVE/PVP balance and gear gap

As far as I am convinced pve players would often like to have more power gap , more challenging raids and more and more better loot dropping, while for pvp it is just increasing gear gap only. I would like to add specific pve stats for the next raid tiers - so you could have T5 with much better rewards dropping than T4, what would motivate many pveers to do it, while it wouldnt affect pvp gameplay as T4 is affecting nowadays.

II. PVP GUILD CONTENT

The best thing is to fix those mechanics we already have and they have great potential. Make tournament mode minigames guild based content - worth participating.

1. Every guild participating at least 10 times per week in premade mini gets pvp buffs. There is a premade ranking. For beating guild you get 50 points. For playing a game you get 25 points. For beating same guild second time - guild gets 25 points. For playing premade vs same guild second time - guild gets 10 points, for beating same guild third time - guild gets 15 points, for playing vs same guild third time guild gets 5 points etc(lowering rewards to 0 for both win and lost in fourth time). Guild which gets the most points in the end of the week gets the best pvp buffs. First 3 spots have slightly better buffs than others. Every guild which is participating at least 10 games per week gets pvp buffs. Guild which dont participate in tournament mode - get no pvp buffs - it is a punishment Every guild can easily get these buffs. You dont have to be pro to get them.

2. There are tournament mode tokens for win and new social pvp armors to buy for pvp tokens for every class. You can wear social pvp armor from tournament mode in pvp instances like pug or premade minigames and border kingdoms.

3. With crafted system there should come a chance to loot rare tournament mode materials from dead players. These materials can be used for crafting pvp gear.




III. BALANCE TANKS.
Everyone , maybe except few hipocrits playing tanks claim that tanks are too OP pvp wise. I suggest to give them even higher penalty in defensive stance and dps penalty in neutral stance or remove neutral stance. Tanks shouldnt be dealing such a high dps while being very hard to kill due to their high survivability in defensive stance. Good tanks will be still deadly, while it will make impossible to get top spot in kills in minis staying mostly in defensive stance.

IV. Double tap changes+ stagger effect

Change double tapping- increase double tap effect by 1-2 more seconds(preferably 2 seconds for light armor melees like hox, sin , barb, but it not maybe essential, should be kept in mind and adjusted). Remove stagger effect from game.
This would make double tapping more important, make game faster, but change it after nerfing tanks. Adding such a mechanics without tank nerf would make guardian, dt and conq just unstoppable.



This is what I would do, but I dont know if it is possible resources wise. I believe that those are systems which would make pvp in this game much more balanced and much more interesting. It is more like fixing a base with systems than adding new minigame maps. You can add more content when you will fix existing one.
I only wonder if there is enough resources to do something like this, I also wonder what new Game Director thinks about such a direction of changes, Silirion appreciated some of them (premade conception) but I hardly believe he would find time to implement them, he was more pve concerned.
Discuss plz.

[barbaricwildcat2]

make a new thread bro, lets sticky it

[Sarcopthes]

make a new thread bro, lets sticky it

isnt this thread about pvp advice?

[Loaf-of-Evil]

It's high time that Tyranny be merged with Deathwish, keeping the blood n gory system in place while removing the offline level and one character restrictions.

Amen brother!