Gear won't matter anymore?

[Mellaus]

Fun in PvP :

Doing good -
It does not matter if you win or lose, many times the player/team you fight is just better, but as long as you did what you could and put up an actual fight, then it's fine.

Fatality -
Doing a fatality right in the middle of the opposite team.

Duel situation -
In those rare cases where you end up on 1vs1 situation in a minigame.

Sieges -
Crushing a whole raid force trying to rush trough a breach and seeing them burn under the casters fire.
Sneaking behind a wall of casters in SW and KB them all off a wall and watch the carnage of the sins/barbs jumping on them like sharks on free food.

Minis -
Knock backing someone into the lava.
Sneaking behind the enemy, ninja their flag, and sprint back while being chased, crossing fingers for your team to show up and cover your back.
Raping a necro spellweaving on his respad.
Making an KD whore leave the game because he's afraid to get 1 death.
Releasing a massive crit on the entire enemy team, like hox pilars, conq ww, etc.


The list could go on. AoC combat system allows so many thrilling opportunities.

[Cromathaar]

Of course it's not fun to get rezpad farmed and such. But there are tons of ways to avoid that and it's not what happens most of the time. Hence the advice since you don't seem to be able to avoid or deal with the few bad situations that can occur.

Whoa whoa whoa! How's that? Losing is also "the genuine pleasure of fighting against other players", isn't it? So not every fight is fun, eh? So maybe you've formulated it wrong, did you?

[kalston]

Whoa whoa whoa! How's that? Losing is also "the genuine pleasure of fighting against other players", isn't it? So not every fight is fun, eh? So maybe you've formalated it wrong, did you?

So what? Not every fight can be fun - but gear and AA are things that can make many fights NOT fun. It's fun to beat someone who has better gear than you - but so is beating someone who has the same gear.

Losing to someone who has better gear is on the other hand not fun in the slightest - and for the guy winning it's not even rewarding because unless he's retarded he knows that he has a gear advantage and it's probably not just his skills (if speaking of t4 vs fresh 80 then skill has really NOTHING to do with it) that triumphed.

[Cromathaar]

So what? Not every fight can be fun - but gear and AA are things that can make many fights NOT fun.

Not a single fight is fare - that's the thing you don't take in notice. People instinctively try to find the reason why they are losing and themselves is the last place they are looking into. There were lots of reasons before: battlekeep invuls, premades, bad class balance, etc. People always try to find the external reason why they are losing. Someone's always guilty.

And what's the result of all this? Removing invuls reduced number of sieges and the meaning of battlekeeps greatly. But who was whining? Those who haven't got those invuls. Then people had to find another reason. Premades, of course! To hell with them. Now you can't play minis with friends in a MMO game. Even if you'd like to you need to spent lost of time to find another group that would agree to play tournament mode with you.

Not to mention tons of small tiny things that happen on almost every-day basis. There were lots of revamps because people tried to find the reason even with their own character. The class is too weak, of course! Funcom, we need to overpower it.

Bring people unchained mode they'll find another reason to whine. You'll see. And after they can't find the reason that fits them enough they just leave for another game.

And just to remind you, this "unbalanced" and "not fare" PvP gear and PvP experience was introduces on summer 2008 JUST BECAUSE fighting each other without any reason was NOT ENOUGH and people were leaving massively. Try to surf the forums for old posts. You'll find plenty of them with people whining that PvP in the game is meaningless and therefore it becomes boring after a week or so.

When Unchained mode is released the circle will close.

[Rathothis]

Not a single fight is fare - that's the thing you don't take in notice. People instinctively try to find the reason why they are losing and themselves is the last place they are looking into. There were lots of reasons before: battlekeep invuls, premades, bad class balance, etc. People always try to find the external reason why they are losing. Someone's always guilty.

And what's the result of all this? Removing invuls reduced number of sieges and the meaning of battlekeeps greatly. But who was whining? Those who haven't got those invuls. Then people had to find another reason. Premades, of course! To hell with them. Now you can't play minis with friends in a MMO game. Even if you'd like to you need to spent lost of time to find another group that would agree to play tournament mode with you.

Nobody in their right mind misses the old BK buffs. However, when Funcom removed them, they failed to compensate players with something else for the loss (well, except a new, less powerful passive buff). Titles, rankings, stats, all of that stuff has been requested by the community over and over again, and it would provide at least as significant incentives as vertical progression does.

Also, I fail to see what the removal of premade groups has to do with the discussion in this thread. What people were complaining of back then were cases of people exploiting the old queue in order to farm tokens after Bori went live. You should note in this regard that the whining about premades was rather limited until Bori - but it got much worse after the vertical progression you enjoy so much was introduced. Why? Not because people were annoyed about being steamrolled, which they already were before. But because people got fed up with certain exploits like guilds signing with 9 people, so the 6 person group could farm minigame tokens in peace.

So the removal of premades (which undoubtedly was a bad decision which really hurt the PvP community) is directly related to the introduction of vertical progression into the game. Duh!

[Chaman-bourru]

Whoa whoa whoa! How's that? Losing is also "the genuine pleasure of fighting against other players", isn't it? So not every fight is fun, eh? So maybe you've formulated it wrong, did you?

Losing isn't an issue. That happens. And the times when losing is 'painful' (rezpad gank) is excessively rare. Thus, if i join minis it's not to grind gear but because overall i find it fun, i enjoy fighting other player nevermind if i win or lose.

When PvP gear was first introduce it was meaningless. People didn't PvP to get that gear. They PvPed for fun and recived the gear as a kind of recognition of their time spent in PvP. At least the people i know.

[kalston]

Not a single fight is fare - that's the thing you don't take in notice. People instinctively try to find the reason why they are losing and themselves is the last place they are looking into. There were lots of reasons before: battlekeep invuls, premades, bad class balance, etc. People always try to find the external reason why they are losing. Someone's always guilty.

And what's the result of all this? Removing invuls reduced number of sieges and the meaning of battlekeeps greatly. But who was whining? Those who haven't got those invuls. Then people had to find another reason. Premades, of course! To hell with them. Now you can't play minis with friends in a MMO game. Even if you'd like to you need to spent lost of time to find another group that would agree to play tournament mode with you.

Not to mention tons of small tiny things that happen on almost every-day basis. There were lots of revamps because people tried to find the reason even with their own character. The class is too weak, of course! Funcom, we need to overpower it.

Bring people unchained mode they'll find another reason to whine. You'll see. And after they can't find the reason that fits them enough they just leave for another game.

And just to remind you, this "unbalanced" and "not fare" PvP gear and PvP experience was introduces on summer 2008 JUST BECAUSE fighting each other without any reason was NOT ENOUGH and people were leaving massively. Try to surf the forums for old posts. You'll find plenty of them with people whining that PvP in the game is meaningless and therefore it becomes boring after a week or so.

When Unchained mode is released the circle will close.

So because not every fight is fair we should add factors to make it worse, BK buffs, AA, gear?

And excuse me but sieges are still happening on Fury and it was not better at all in the BK buffs days (do you have any idea how much protection tanks had back then?). Sieges are not popular content but how could it be when the performance is so abysmal as soon as you got more than 24v24 and a certain number of casters? Most people don't even have a PC that can run sieges smoothly and get 10-15fps at best, coupled with lags it makes melee combat proper impossible. And melee combat is the best thing AoC has to offer. Can't you see? It doesn't even have anything to do with rewards - sieges are simply too often unplayable and can be buggy/unstable too. If it were properly working content, THEN we could talk about rewards (but not stupid OP things like massive, passive, protection buffs, please).

[Roargathor]

Why? Difference in gear makes any PvP harder for lower-geared person thus he improves faster since he must not make mistakes and has to do right things at the right time. Besides a level of satisfation from killing lvl 10 person with lvl 3 one is much higher that killing an equal opponent.

So how equal gear help the "fun-based" PvP motivation that you've described in your post above?

Hahha!! Yeah, getting one/two/three shotted by a pvp 10 is NOT going to make you a better player. It's more often than not going to piss you off and deter new 80's from participating in PvP alltogether.

I agree with the others on this thread. PvP has NEVER been about gear for me. It's always been about the challenge, helping my team win an objective.(even if I end up with the highest death count at the end) and the satisfaction of getting a fatality on someone. The gear is a means to an end. The ends being able to compete. New 80s are not competitive. I feel terrible when I see a fresh 80 in blues on the enemy team. They die in 2 combos. It's not fun for them, it's not satisfying for me, and the overall experience of the battle is less than it should be.

I've always been in favor of cosmetic upgrades and titles as a "reward" for PvP. Leave vertical progression in PvE where it belongs. In my opinion, there should NOT be separate pvp gear from PvE. Just make all PVE gear have the same PvP stats regardless of what PvE tier it's from. That way, new 80s can get a decent set of competitive gear from the start and remain competitive vs even the most die hard PvE raiders no matter how advanced they are in the endgame. The only players who oppose this are the ones who seek a passive advantage over other players. You know who you are. They want to say they "Worked hard" to get their gear, and that everyone else should work as hard to get it, but they really just want to one shot fresh 80's and feel tough. It's those players who are making the biggest stink about an even playing field. To them I say Get over yourselves.

[Roargathor]

And just to remind you, this "unbalanced" and "not fare" PvP gear and PvP experience was introduces on summer 2008 JUST BECAUSE fighting each other without any reason was NOT ENOUGH and people were leaving massively. Try to surf the forums for old posts. You'll find plenty of them with people whining that PvP in the game is meaningless and therefore it becomes boring after a week or so.

When Unchained mode is released the circle will close.

Yes, go back and notice that the majority of those who whined about PvP not having meaning were not PvPers... They were not accustomed to the fact that AOC was not an Item centric vertical progression MMO like WOW, and they bitched about their hard earned T1 raid gear not meaning **** vs a fresh 80 wearing greens. The BIGGEST exodus of the PvPers was AFTER 1.05 was introduced, and the game became WoW with fatalities. I know, I was there. Don't try to back up your argument by spreading lies. I AM ROARGATHOR of LEGION IN FLAMES. Ask any Vet about LIF and they will tell you that we were the dominant PvP force on Cimmeria, then on Tyranny after the merge.

I agree with you that unchained minis wont be enough to make a significant lasting impact on the game, but it's a step in the right direction. Any step FC takes in reducing the gap between new and vet players is Good, as long as they don't dumb down the combat system any further.

[Cromathaar]

I agree with you that unchained minis wont be enough to make a significant lasting impact on the game, but it's a step in the right direction. Any step FC takes in reducing the gap between new and vet players is Good, as long as they don't dumb down the combat system any further.

That's good we are coming at some sort of agreement finally. Removing "The Gap" is nice, every MMO game practices that at some point by nerfing previous update's items/skills/whatever when new update comes out. AoC did it too by nerfing Khitan grindfest, reducing requirements for T2/T3 raids AND reducing the amount of PvP experience needed for all PvP levels remember? And that was the RIGHT way to reduce "The Gap". Nowadays you can farm a brand new Khitan set pretty fast and it's enough for most classes to enter competetive PvP. If it's not then T1/T2/T3 pug raids are at your service. Getting PvP level 4 is pretty easy too with all those quests and increased PvP experience for minis (compared to old times). So what's the problem? And I KNOW what I'm talking about since I did it quite recently - got PvP level 2 on low lvl minis while leveling up to 80, got myself a basic blue Khitan set by doing quests, improved it with Khitan dungeon items a bit, got myself PvP lvl 3 in the process by PvPing with people around Khitai and added some PvP T1 items. And voila - I'm pretty ready for minis, I'm not one-, two- or three-shotted and it's pretty competitive. Right now my barb (which is not an OP class at all as you know) is PvP level 4 and has 2:1 KD. Isn't it enough for any yesterday's "fresh 80"? If it's not then FC could always reduce amout of gold/tokens/experince needed for this or that. That would be a good solution. Introducing "all-equal" GW2-like minis is NOT because it literally tells any new PvP-oriented player "no, no, no, maaaan, don't play the game any further on lvl 80, just join minis".