[AoC] PvP Direction

Tuco · 06-04-2008, 01:38 PM

Currently the PVP system of AoC is reminiscent of WoW when it came out some four years ago. There is no real death penalty, nor reward for PVP. The biggest difference is that, unlike WoW, there is only one zone that you can effectively level to 80 at. This has caused an enomorous amount of PVP in that zone on my server, Deathwhisper, because of the density of hardcore guilds there. The way we are leveling is having all the sub-80s XPing in the zone while the level 80s run around fighting for control. If the opposing guilds mass up their raid, then the sub-80s form up to defend their territory. This is pretty much going on non-stop during primetime.

For many people, who have certain expectations of the direction Funcom will take AoC, view this as the glory days of AoC's PVP. This may, or may not, be true depending on this future direction. Soon, most of us will be level 80 and our focus will instead be to farm resources for our cities. The current strategy is to filter into one of the fifety resource instances (3 zones with 50 or so instances for them) and it looks like we will be able to mine in relative peace. This, of course, means that we who choose AoC for its PVP will be using the 'PVP system' to the best of our abilities by going into a PVE zone, alone, and picking fucking cotton.

At some point we will collect the 30,000 granite and finish Tier 2. Right now Tier 3 is broken, but I imagine it will be a enormous PVE grindfest to get that as well. Then we will finish Tier 3 and move onto whatever requirement is in the borderlands.

It is known that AoC is an unfinished game. I think we are all okay with that. They have not announced exactly how they will 'overhaul' the PVP system. The PVP crowd is intensely interested in the direction of the game because that direction will determine whether we move from AoC to Warhammer or another game when it comes out.

I remember making a thread just like this, directed at Blizzard when they first released Alterac Valley. I said three things: 1. Inter-server fighting. 2. Inter-faction fighting and 3. win/loss ratio based matching. I think they got one of those so far

Anyway, here is my 2 cents of what FunCom should do and AoC needs to make a PVP game that will hold the interest of the PVP crowd:

1. World PVP
Right now woW has the 'sports' team 'mini-game' PVP covered. We are all sick of sticking flags up each others ass and long for a simulation of a real world war. This can be accomplished by the following:

1a. non-instanced zone with the best resources available. Make the borderlands uninstanced (or have limited instances) and put the best resources in it. It doesn't need to be elaborate. Just put a few spots with a few sets of all the Tier3 resources which have are always at 100%, and make them give more than 1 item per harvest so they can be superior to the resource zones in order to motivate people to fight over them.

1b. Implement some kind of land control benefits. Make a 'gold mine' that, when owned and invested in has a constant stream of gold coming into the guild bank. This would give us something to fight over and destroy if a war occurs.

1c. Implement battle keeps as they have been described, but also make mini-objectives(Forts, towers etc) more than just buildings that second/third tier guilds can own instead of a battlekeep.

2. PVP Items
It's been long said that gear gotten in instances will be equivalent to crafted gear. I've seen some of the gear in instances, and I've seen what the top crafters in the game can produce. The gear in the instances is better than anything in the game by an enormous margin, and the gear that the top crafters can produce is worse than gear you buy from a vendor. The game is not finished so that is acceptable.

The big question I have is, "How will you get the mats to make that gear?". The answer should not be "Go into an instance and get it." I hope it is not, "Go into an instance and do mini-game PVP until you get to rank 14". What I would like is the following:
2a. PVP items achieved by controlling resources. Throw a slow recharging mine somewhere near a battlekeep that gives 'adamantium' and make that a component for weapons/armor that is equivalent to raid gear. Make it tradable so the owner of the mine can sell it. Do something similar for other items.
2b. PVP Items achieved by owning a keep. As you own a keep for a longer duration of time, allow bonuses to be made to the items you craft using your city.

3. Rewards not attainable or less attainable in mini-game PVP
If you make it such that the best way to gain PVP rewards is in mini-game PVP, you will effectively kill world PVP and force anyone who wants to PVP in AoC to play 'mini-games' and you'll end up with 'gloves on' style PVP like in WoW. Make PVP points attainable via holding territory in the world, not by planting a flag. Make items attained by winning wars, not instanced battles.

4. Death Penalty
The basis of this is that if someone pisses you off you should be able to make them wish they didn't piss you off. The trick is doing this without making people want to log off and quit. I would recommend that you have the people that die in PVP to drop a certain amount of money depending on their level. This will allow players to loot them and get an instant PVP-reward.

5. Fix the lag during PVP and the clipping issues. In the raid PVP I've been in (2-3 groups per side), the players will dissapear from 10ish yards away and my ping will skyrocket. My machine has no problem rendering all the stuff going on.

Vehn · 06-04-2008, 01:44 PM

yeah I really hate when people are 10 feet away from you but you can't see them (especially in instances). Hopefully that prison system that punishes some forms of PvP'ing isn't implemented on the ffa PVP servers as well

Goliath · 06-04-2008, 01:51 PM

Sounds cool, all good ideas.

Zehn - Vhex · 06-04-2008, 02:32 PM

You're such an apologist Tuco.

Pyros · 06-04-2008, 03:01 PM

I sure hope they won't make minigames pvp give any kind of rewards, considering how fucking TERRIBLE they are. They make the 3years old wow bg maps look like awesome and cool. Well they were ok back then, but damn.

I played one game of deathmatch around lvl 60 and I don't want to do it ever again, it's stupid. Maybe team vs team, but not sure if you can get setup guild "duels", if it's random queuing as in wow, it blows.

Currently Keshatta, and Atzel before, were nice PvP zones though. It might become shitty when they add pvp restrictions or whatever, but I like the fights. It's fast and furious, even though that's probably not a good word association since it refers to a crappy movie. Lots of burst, positionning, active shield/dodging, AEing, CCing, and more burst. It's like, fun.

Kreugen · 06-04-2008, 03:06 PM

Building a keep sounds almost as awesome as opening the AQ gates.

Almost.

CnCGOD · 06-04-2008, 03:08 PM

Yea Kesh pvp is golden atm. Some memorable battles (/dance on darph's dead body)

Lost Ranger · 06-04-2008, 03:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kreugen

Building a keep sounds almost as awesome as opening the AQ gates.

Almost.

It is not that bad really. Getting a tier 1 city built is not difficult if you have a guild that works together and not just 2-3 people doing all the work. I found getting the stone/wood/metal required for tier one was not the real problem it was getting the gold without everyone being 80. I can see gold being less of a problem soon and resources bring the time sink for higher tiers though.

My guild has 32 people in it currently and when we do a harvest night we pull in a shit ton of materials. I honestly find it really fun and putting up a new building is exciting. Watching the Keep go up was a really neat experience.

Nerion · 06-04-2008, 03:44 PM

I'm gonna /wrist if we are forced to grind out in some arenas for gear. Nothing is more fucking boring and heartbreaking than taking pvp in an MMO and converting it into a rinse and repeat grind. This type of gameplay has been over-covered in WoW, Guildwars, and a variety of other MMO's. Give us some grand battles and large scale sieges that were promised in the fucking interviews you did with me.

Agraza · 06-04-2008, 03:47 PM

I'm surprised the grind isn't decapitating 1,000,000 foes and elaborately skullfucking each one. That's the vibe I was getting from my friends that play. Picking cotton, solo, in a dozen instances sounds...lame.

Cybsled · 06-04-2008, 03:50 PM

Quote:

I would recommend that you have the people that die in PVP to drop a certain amount of money depending on their level. This will allow players to loot them and get an instant PVP-reward.

Not just level, the level DIFFERENCE of who is killing them based on dmg. Otherwise some douchebag 80 could farm cash by slaughtering lvl 20s wholesale. Hell, lvl 80s killing lvl 40s, etc.

Lost Ranger · 06-04-2008, 03:53 PM

Well they are adding in some system that will make killing noobs a bad thing I guess. So if they ever did add money drops noobs for sure wouldn't drop anything.

Grumpy Old Fart · 06-04-2008, 05:15 PM

I agree with some of your points, but this game is still far too buggy and unfinished to be planning on most of that crap happening any time in the next year or so. Hell, FunCom has been working on this game for FIVE YEARS and they can't even keep normal XP zones from crashing ten times per night.

As for your final point (#5), not only does AoC have those problems, but another really biggie as regards PvP is guild names not showing up for 1-60 seconds after you see somebody. Last night, I was casually killing this asshat that has tried - unsuccessfully - to gank me 30-40 times in the past few weeks (*cough* nerf ToS *cough*), and his guild tag didn't show up under his name until a solid minute after I'd first spotted him. That shit makes it damn hard to enforce your guild's KoS policies.

Also re: #5, that lag and crap gets really, really old. I've been in multi-group PvP many times (keeping our other guild groups well away from me, since my fully-talented Storm Field and other AEs rip the shit out of the bad guys) and the graphics lag, server lag, hotkey lag, mouse lag, etc. is beyond stupid. My PC is damn good, so there's no excuse for that crap.

I know many here were in Closed Beta. I was continually astounded how few characters over level 40 there were. Sure, you read the beta forums posts from those that got to 80, but the simple fact is that pretty much *NONE* of the 40+ content in this game was tested at all.

Nerion · 06-04-2008, 05:33 PM

It was tested primarily before the whipes and the massive change to the XP curve.

Pyros · 06-04-2008, 05:34 PM

I don't lag at all when we get into 3way fights or whatever with 18-20 people+mob on screen. My pc does slowdown when I fraps it, down to like 15-20fps, but actual lag, not so much. I'm a melee too, so I'm probably more prone to suffer lag since I have to land combos, but haven't had any issues landing stuff in the middle of a fuck fest, besides AE CC rotation and stuff like that(root/repulse/fear/stun yay)

The zones seem to crash once they get empty from the other instance emptying and as such all new people being put in it. After a certain low number, everyone lags out and gets kicked out to login, and when you relog the additional instance has disapeared. Not always, but this happens often, especially when we've been rezkilling everyone who came near atzel fortress for a night.

I totally agree with guild tag, it's annoying as shit, it's not out of control for us because, 1) we're pk so we kill everyone anyway and 2) there's not THAT many ppl in keshatta atm, so we know almost everyone.

I see a lot of people compailning, but me and my friends, after playing UO AC and WoW(along with some other stuff inbetween), everyone seems to be enjoying it, even the damn grind and all. We're annoyed at all the other guilds being so carebearish, and doing massive alliances to come and steamroll us because they can't handle 5vs6 at equal level, so they call their lvl 80 roaming team AND some allied roaming 80 team to come kick us out of the spot. But nothing much about the game.

The most annoying bug currently is the damn debuffs not wearing off, especially CC. Especially annoying for me since even if the debuffs wear off fine, I can't purge myself after one fight because I keep the root immunity icon, which prevent purging.

06-04-2008, 01:38 PM	#1 (permalink)
Tuco Santa Join Date: May 2002 Location: Detroit Posts: 8,845 +24 Internets	[AoC] PvP Direction Currently the PVP system of AoC is reminiscent of WoW when it came out some four years ago. There is no real death penalty, nor reward for PVP. The biggest difference is that, unlike WoW, there is only one zone that you can effectively level to 80 at. This has caused an enomorous amount of PVP in that zone on my server, Deathwhisper, because of the density of hardcore guilds there. The way we are leveling is having all the sub-80s XPing in the zone while the level 80s run around fighting for control. If the opposing guilds mass up their raid, then the sub-80s form up to defend their territory. This is pretty much going on non-stop during primetime. For many people, who have certain expectations of the direction Funcom will take AoC, view this as the glory days of AoC's PVP. This may, or may not, be true depending on this future direction. Soon, most of us will be level 80 and our focus will instead be to farm resources for our cities. The current strategy is to filter into one of the fifety resource instances (3 zones with 50 or so instances for them) and it looks like we will be able to mine in relative peace. This, of course, means that we who choose AoC for its PVP will be using the 'PVP system' to the best of our abilities by going into a PVE zone, alone, and picking fucking cotton. At some point we will collect the 30,000 granite and finish Tier 2. Right now Tier 3 is broken, but I imagine it will be a enormous PVE grindfest to get that as well. Then we will finish Tier 3 and move onto whatever requirement is in the borderlands. It is known that AoC is an unfinished game. I think we are all okay with that. They have not announced exactly how they will 'overhaul' the PVP system. The PVP crowd is intensely interested in the direction of the game because that direction will determine whether we move from AoC to Warhammer or another game when it comes out. I remember making a thread just like this, directed at Blizzard when they first released Alterac Valley. I said three things: 1. Inter-server fighting. 2. Inter-faction fighting and 3. win/loss ratio based matching. I think they got one of those so far Anyway, here is my 2 cents of what FunCom should do and AoC needs to make a PVP game that will hold the interest of the PVP crowd: 1. World PVP Right now woW has the 'sports' team 'mini-game' PVP covered. We are all sick of sticking flags up each others ass and long for a simulation of a real world war. This can be accomplished by the following: 1a. non-instanced zone with the best resources available. Make the borderlands uninstanced (or have limited instances) and put the best resources in it. It doesn't need to be elaborate. Just put a few spots with a few sets of all the Tier3 resources which have are always at 100%, and make them give more than 1 item per harvest so they can be superior to the resource zones in order to motivate people to fight over them. 1b. Implement some kind of land control benefits. Make a 'gold mine' that, when owned and invested in has a constant stream of gold coming into the guild bank. This would give us something to fight over and destroy if a war occurs. 1c. Implement battle keeps as they have been described, but also make mini-objectives(Forts, towers etc) more than just buildings that second/third tier guilds can own instead of a battlekeep. 2. PVP Items It's been long said that gear gotten in instances will be equivalent to crafted gear. I've seen some of the gear in instances, and I've seen what the top crafters in the game can produce. The gear in the instances is better than anything in the game by an enormous margin, and the gear that the top crafters can produce is worse than gear you buy from a vendor. The game is not finished so that is acceptable. The big question I have is, "How will you get the mats to make that gear?". The answer should not be "Go into an instance and get it." I hope it is not, "Go into an instance and do mini-game PVP until you get to rank 14". What I would like is the following: 2a. PVP items achieved by controlling resources. Throw a slow recharging mine somewhere near a battlekeep that gives 'adamantium' and make that a component for weapons/armor that is equivalent to raid gear. Make it tradable so the owner of the mine can sell it. Do something similar for other items. 2b. PVP Items achieved by owning a keep. As you own a keep for a longer duration of time, allow bonuses to be made to the items you craft using your city. 3. Rewards not attainable or less attainable in mini-game PVP If you make it such that the best way to gain PVP rewards is in mini-game PVP, you will effectively kill world PVP and force anyone who wants to PVP in AoC to play 'mini-games' and you'll end up with 'gloves on' style PVP like in WoW. Make PVP points attainable via holding territory in the world, not by planting a flag. Make items attained by winning wars, not instanced battles. 4. Death Penalty The basis of this is that if someone pisses you off you should be able to make them wish they didn't piss you off. The trick is doing this without making people want to log off and quit. I would recommend that you have the people that die in PVP to drop a certain amount of money depending on their level. This will allow players to loot them and get an instant PVP-reward. 5. Fix the lag during PVP and the clipping issues. In the raid PVP I've been in (2-3 groups per side), the players will dissapear from 10ish yards away and my ping will skyrocket. My machine has no problem rendering all the stuff going on. __________________

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06-04-2008, 01:44 PM	#2 (permalink)
Vehn Hurm... Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 1,563 +2 Internets	yeah I really hate when people are 10 feet away from you but you can't see them (especially in instances). Hopefully that prison system that punishes some forms of PvP'ing isn't implemented on the ffa PVP servers as well

06-04-2008, 02:32 PM	#4 (permalink)
Zehn - Vhex Lord of the Dance Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 6,728 +66 Internets	You're such an apologist Tuco.

06-04-2008, 03:01 PM	#5 (permalink)
Pyros Registered User Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 1,631 +24 Internets	I sure hope they won't make minigames pvp give any kind of rewards, considering how fucking TERRIBLE they are. They make the 3years old wow bg maps look like awesome and cool. Well they were ok back then, but damn. I played one game of deathmatch around lvl 60 and I don't want to do it ever again, it's stupid. Maybe team vs team, but not sure if you can get setup guild "duels", if it's random queuing as in wow, it blows. Currently Keshatta, and Atzel before, were nice PvP zones though. It might become shitty when they add pvp restrictions or whatever, but I like the fights. It's fast and furious, even though that's probably not a good word association since it refers to a crappy movie. Lots of burst, positionning, active shield/dodging, AEing, CCing, and more burst. It's like, fun.

06-04-2008, 03:06 PM	#6 (permalink)
Kreugen Fires of Heaven Ancient Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 2,777 +44 Internets	Building a keep sounds almost as awesome as opening the AQ gates. Almost.

06-04-2008, 03:08 PM	#7 (permalink)
CnCGOD Registered User Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 534 -24 Internets	Yea Kesh pvp is golden atm. Some memorable battles (/dance on darph's dead body)

06-04-2008, 03:44 PM	#9 (permalink)
Nerion likes to hear himself talk Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 386	I'm gonna /wrist if we are forced to grind out in some arenas for gear. Nothing is more fucking boring and heartbreaking than taking pvp in an MMO and converting it into a rinse and repeat grind. This type of gameplay has been over-covered in WoW, Guildwars, and a variety of other MMO's. Give us some grand battles and large scale sieges that were promised in the fucking interviews you did with me.

06-04-2008, 03:47 PM	#10 (permalink)
Agraza Full Retard Join Date: May 2005 Location: Florida Posts: 1,489	I'm surprised the grind isn't decapitating 1,000,000 foes and elaborately skullfucking each one. That's the vibe I was getting from my friends that play. Picking cotton, solo, in a dozen instances sounds...lame.

06-04-2008, 03:53 PM	#12 (permalink)
Lost Ranger Still Lost Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 2,325 -12 Internets	Well they are adding in some system that will make killing noobs a bad thing I guess. So if they ever did add money drops noobs for sure wouldn't drop anything.

06-04-2008, 05:15 PM	#13 (permalink)
Grumpy Old Fart You fucking kids get off my lawn! Join Date: May 2007 Location: North Dakota Posts: 515 -13 Internets	I agree with some of your points, but this game is still far too buggy and unfinished to be planning on most of that crap happening any time in the next year or so. Hell, FunCom has been working on this game for FIVE YEARS and they can't even keep normal XP zones from crashing ten times per night. As for your final point (#5), not only does AoC have those problems, but another really biggie as regards PvP is guild names not showing up for 1-60 seconds after you see somebody. Last night, I was casually killing this asshat that has tried - unsuccessfully - to gank me 30-40 times in the past few weeks (cough nerf ToS cough), and his guild tag didn't show up under his name until a solid minute after I'd first spotted him. That shit makes it damn hard to enforce your guild's KoS policies. Also re: #5, that lag and crap gets really, really old. I've been in multi-group PvP many times (keeping our other guild groups well away from me, since my fully-talented Storm Field and other AEs rip the shit out of the bad guys) and the graphics lag, server lag, hotkey lag, mouse lag, etc. is beyond stupid. My PC is damn good, so there's no excuse for that crap. I know many here were in Closed Beta. I was continually astounded how few characters over level 40 there were. Sure, you read the beta forums posts from those that got to 80, but the simple fact is that pretty much NONE of the 40+ content in this game was tested at all.

06-04-2008, 05:33 PM	#14 (permalink)
Nerion likes to hear himself talk Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 386	It was tested primarily before the whipes and the massive change to the XP curve.

06-04-2008, 05:34 PM	#15 (permalink)
Pyros Registered User Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 1,631 +24 Internets	I don't lag at all when we get into 3way fights or whatever with 18-20 people+mob on screen. My pc does slowdown when I fraps it, down to like 15-20fps, but actual lag, not so much. I'm a melee too, so I'm probably more prone to suffer lag since I have to land combos, but haven't had any issues landing stuff in the middle of a fuck fest, besides AE CC rotation and stuff like that(root/repulse/fear/stun yay) The zones seem to crash once they get empty from the other instance emptying and as such all new people being put in it. After a certain low number, everyone lags out and gets kicked out to login, and when you relog the additional instance has disapeared. Not always, but this happens often, especially when we've been rezkilling everyone who came near atzel fortress for a night. I totally agree with guild tag, it's annoying as shit, it's not out of control for us because, 1) we're pk so we kill everyone anyway and 2) there's not THAT many ppl in keshatta atm, so we know almost everyone. I see a lot of people compailning, but me and my friends, after playing UO AC and WoW(along with some other stuff inbetween), everyone seems to be enjoying it, even the damn grind and all. We're annoyed at all the other guilds being so carebearish, and doing massive alliances to come and steamroll us because they can't handle 5vs6 at equal level, so they call their lvl 80 roaming team AND some allied roaming 80 team to come kick us out of the spot. But nothing much about the game. The most annoying bug currently is the damn debuffs not wearing off, especially CC. Especially annoying for me since even if the debuffs wear off fine, I can't purge myself after one fight because I keep the root immunity icon, which prevent purging.