Joel Bylos Interview 4/25/13

[Milkshakess]

this is an mmo playing with other people should be reinforced not disabled as it is with current absolute random minigame setups.

i am not afraid to encounter multiple people 2 manned in oposite teams in minigames i welcome it with open arms no matter how strong they are and only hope that funcom finaly lets us play with friends in minigames again.

your defense of current system is absurdly weak and only shows how much you disdain actual oposition in minigames.

Nothing against playing with friends, but under the current system it would be broken and imbalanced.

Step 1 - balance teams properly using the current system. Should be based primarily on w/l ratio but gear/aa's should have some impact. Once this is done properly then..

Step 2 - Add the ability to sign up with friends. Another thing to consider is to not let a mini pop if one team isn't going to get a healer.


In the meantime you should either use the premade queue, sign up with three friends so two of you will at least be together, or deal with the fact that you won't always have a buddy to hold your hand in a mini. Nothing wrong with friendly competition against friends.

[Milkshakess]

the efects of removing team sign ups where devastating it was a huge impact hit.
a lot of people i played with left game because its no fun to sign up for minigames and never play with your friends.
you can call me a bad player all you want, this is an mmo i want to be able to play minigames with friends again.

Nice revisionist history. Those that actually played know that the rate of minis popping probably tripled or better the moment they implemented pug queues. Premades stomping pugs was a waste of time, not competitive, and not even true pvp.

[Anubium]

I agree that we need more stats, and healers deserve their share of glory for healing so they dont go mental and turn into kd wh...s. But i see one problem with revarding healers based on healing done on team mates. basically they could just spam blue heals non stop even if not needed and get rewarded for it.

That's why I qualified that they have to get credit for healing their teammates. Unless they have people sitting around the healer letting the healer get pvp exp, which is unlikely, then spamming blue heals wont work if they don't heal their team.

Green heals help out their team anyway.

The heals on themselves should not count towards healing pvp percentages.

[Oduda]

so your denying that especialy american pvp servers are empty as well as the ever decreasing eu pvp servers?
didnt you notice correlation people leaving game because they couldnt play with friends in minigames?

You mean when they evened out the playing field a bit everyone cried and ran away. Yes, that is true. Once they made mini games far more competitive all of the "hardcore pvper" left.

lack of open world.....
the fact that any person can reach pvp10 farming bori and avoiding any pvp of any sort

Lack of open world pvp is caused more to the GvP mentality. That is Group vs Player. That is the single largest killer of pvp in this game. When gank squads of 6 or 12 people run around zones killing solo players it is going to drive away those solo players. Then you have no one left to kill. So no, there is no longer any "open world" pvp going on.

As for Bori.... why would you, an obvious pvper, ALLOW someone to farm Bori to reach pvp 10 without killing them endlessly and running them out of the zone? That defeats the whole purpose of Bori.

[Hollastar]

I think its great some of thise proposed future plans for AOC. The server one will be well recieved with no more lag spikes hopefully however this idea about no gear requirement for pvp minigames, i think Funcom should tread carefully with this one.

When i played GW2 they have a similar setup as of now for its equivelent mini games that kinda feels pointless and meaningless and tbh less fun without any gear or reward for ur PVP efforts and progression. I love working for gear, call me sad but i sometimes look forward to recieving my new piece of gear after a nights PVPing. If that is taken away there wont be nothing to look forward to and probably kill the mini pvp in AOC. Unless.........

They introduce a rating, ranking system similar to that of rated BGs and Arena in WOW and bring back a premade system. Seriously if this game had an competive season, so to speak, it would be simply awesome in this game. That would indeed give us something to work for :-). Promote the pvp comunity and effectively add better teamplay in Mini games. As it is now with pvp ranks its just a rank of progression, not skill.

[Anubium]

If they gave the 'regular' minis twice the pvp and tokens of the 'unchained' ones, then people would have a reason to do the 'regular' ones and new players who don't like going up against pvp 10s could start up and join in when they learn the ropes.

Having skill based minis sounds like a good way to open up more pvp for the game. I dont think they are taking away the old ones

[Deathsader]

I think its great some of thise proposed future plans for AOC. The server one will be well recieved with no more lag spikes hopefully however this idea about no gear requirement for pvp minigames, i think Funcom should tread carefully with this one.

When i played GW2 they have a similar setup as of now for its equivelent mini games that kinda feels pointless and meaningless and tbh less fun without any gear or reward for ur PVP efforts and progression. I love working for gear, call me sad but i sometimes look forward to recieving my new piece of gear after a nights PVPing. If that is taken away there wont be nothing to look forward to and probably kill the mini pvp in AOC. Unless.........

They introduce a rating, ranking system similar to that of rated BGs and Arena in WOW and bring back a premade system. Seriously if this game had an competive season, so to speak, it would be simply awesome in this game. That would indeed give us something to work for :-). Promote the pvp comunity and effectively add better teamplay in Mini games. As it is now with pvp ranks its just a rank of progression, not skill.

That's just the point, when Guild Wars 2 came out, our guild which usually has anywhere between 20-50 people online at any given point in the day, felt like a ghost town. But then everyone came back, and all said the same thing. The PVP was fun for a while, but it got old real quick.

The fact of the matter is, Funcom doesn't realize the disruption in balance this will cause, not just from a PVP perspective, but also PVE. For instance, I am not a supporter of T4 gear in mini games. I think it is bogus for anyone who doesn't get to do T4 (I even made a posting about this topic a while back). However there are a lot of players who get T4 gear simply to use in PVP. So in other words, Unchained comes out, regular minis stop popping and all of a sudden, T4 becomes something less people want to go to. Now granted I am not a supporter of T4 gear being superior to PVP gear, on the contrary I have been a firm supporter of Funcom addressing this issue by modifying our PVP gear. But like it or not, there is a large player base who support the play style of getting ultra rare gear to use in PVP (T3 crafted, Amra's Pride, T4 weapons, ect). The train of thought is, you PVE so you can PVP.

Now lets address everyones opinion on Funcom's Unchained PVP event. What will happen? Hmm this is pretty obvious for anyone who actually PVP's. First off, Casters will = crap. Soldiers will = God and Sins PVP gear = terribad. So your Unchained dream will turn into a Carnage Conq, Polearm Guard and DT nightmare. The PVP Weapons are terrible, but for classes that are naturally strong, like Soldiers, this Unchained thing is going to be just stupid, and people will realize how stupid it is once they get what they want. Then your going to hear all these people arguing on how awesome this news is, crying about class balance being broken more so then ever, just watch. They are going to take to these very same forums going on about how Soldiers are the most OP thing since IDDQD in Doom, and how they should nerf all Soldiers, since the PVP Gear for every non-Soldier class doesn't scale anywhere remotely close to how good Soldier armor does.

[Milkshakess]

so your denying that especialy american pvp servers are empty as well as the ever decreasing eu pvp servers?
didnt you notice correlation people leaving game because they couldnt play with friends in minigames?

not saying its prime cause of of pvp servers but its a key reason as well.

lack of open world/guild pvp systems
not possible to sign up with friends for minigames
massive aa-gear imbalace
class imbalances(although this part has stabily been improving over time)
the fact that any person can reach pvp10 farming bori and avoiding any pvp of any sort

all of these are reasons wich aoc fails at pvp.

You said it yourself. The population for the US servers was ever decreasing. The decreasing started long before pug minis came out. Please look up the term "correlation vs causation".

I played on a pvp server since launch and actively pvp'ed the whole time. The pug mini patch did not cause a mass exodus as you would lead people to believe. The number of minis drastically increased with that patch. Before the patch people would gravitate to larger pvp-centric guilds so they would have a better chance to pug stomp. People in small guilds or pve guilds hardly signed up for minis with a few exceptions. Once the pug patch came out, it opened doors to a much larger percentage of the community. We no longer had to wait till evening when the right players logged in. Minis started popping all time time.

Your last statement is also misleading . It is not possible to obtain good pvp gear through Bori alone. You still need 400+ mini tokens.

[Suctum]

That's just the point, when Guild Wars 2 came out, our guild which usually has anywhere between 20-50 people online at any given point in the day, felt like a ghost town. But then everyone came back, and all said the same thing. The PVP was fun for a while, but it got old real quick.

The fact of the matter is, Funcom doesn't realize the disruption in balance this will cause, not just from a PVP perspective, but also PVE. For instance, I am not a supporter of T4 gear in mini games. I think it is bogus for anyone who doesn't get to do T4 (I even made a posting about this topic a while back). However there are a lot of players who get T4 gear simply to use in PVP. So in other words, Unchained comes out, regular minis stop popping and all of a sudden, T4 becomes something less people want to go to. Now granted I am not a supporter of T4 gear being superior to PVP gear, on the contrary I have been a firm supporter of Funcom addressing this issue by modifying our PVP gear. But like it or not, there is a large player base who support the play style of getting ultra rare gear to use in PVP (T3 crafted, Amra's Pride, T4 weapons, ect). The train of thought is, you PVE so you can PVP.

Now lets address everyones opinion on Funcom's Unchained PVP event. What will happen? Hmm this is pretty obvious for anyone who actually PVP's. First off, Casters will = crap. Soldiers will = God and Sins PVP gear = terribad. So your Unchained dream will turn into a Carnage Conq, Polearm Guard and DT nightmare. The PVP Weapons are terrible, but for classes that are naturally strong, like Soldiers, this Unchained thing is going to be just stupid, and people will realize how stupid it is once they get what they want. Then your going to hear all these people arguing on how awesome this news is, crying about class balance being broken more so then ever, just watch. They are going to take to these very same forums going on about how Soldiers are the most OP thing since IDDQD in Doom, and how they should nerf all Soldiers, since the PVP Gear for every non-Soldier class doesn't scale anywhere remotely close to how good Soldier armor does.

What's your point, all that's in minis now is soldiers anyways...and most can't land combos, so what.

[Suctum]

You said it yourself. The population for the US servers was ever decreasing. The decreasing started long before pug minis came out. Please look up the term "correlation vs causation".

I played on a pvp server since launch and actively pvp'ed the whole time. The pug mini patch did not cause a mass exodus as you would lead people to believe. The number of minis drastically increased with that patch. Before the patch people would gravitate to larger pvp-centric guilds so they would have a better chance to pug stomp. People in small guilds or pve guilds hardly signed up for minis with a few exceptions. Once the pug patch came out, it opened doors to a much larger percentage of the community. We no longer had to wait till evening when the right players logged in. Minis started popping all time time.

Your last statement is also misleading . It is not possible to obtain good pvp gear through Bori alone. You still need 400+ mini tokens.

Very true. You think premades would go for each other. Most old ques I remember there always being 2 pug stomping teams avoiding each other but talking major trash that it was not happening. Mini game ques on Tyranny were terribly slow after 1.6. Most of the PvPers were consumed by one guild and mini games were just various versions of the same pug stomp team at different skill levels. Some you could beat with a pug some not.

Even when I went over to Cimmeria 2.0 very few times would a real premade actually fight another one. I can count on one hand how many times it happened. Being able to instantly PvP with the pug que is not a bad thing, as back then after a few pug stompers played out those willing to sign minis would not pop for several hours. Now minis pop all day.

We still have the tournament que so if you want to play with friends you can, but I find just as much entertainment playing against them as well. Eliminating the pug que will not encourage people to sign up for minis other than the few players left from release.