PVP Balance

Discussion in 'PvP Gameplay' started by Soryu, May 25, 2018.

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  1. Bambino

    Bambino Avatar

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    Tbh, I didn't catch the whole PvP zone thing in the OP. @Lord Tachys al`Fahn: Appreciate you pointing that out. I was talking about flagging PvP. PvP zones have nothing to do with flagging. Everyone is PvP. Also, quit directing you wording toward me as if you know my play-style.
     
  2. Ristra

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    If the shoe fits, wear it. If not, don't. The proverbial "you" applies.

    This is open PvP. No matter where you flag. If you are wishing to be left alone to PvE then you are forgetting that PvP will always come first.

    The cost of PvP (insurance AKA ransom) is a stand alone issue.

    Again, "you" is anyone that wishes to PvE while flagged PvP.
     
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  3. Fungus

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    The PvP debate has been around ever since we got multiplayer gaming be it in Meridian 59, UO or Diablo on Battlenet (in town griefers anyone?) through to modern day and it still causes much debate on what should and shouldn't be allowed and associated penalties based on different types of PvP'r let alone ramifications on the PvE and RP communities.

    If it ever gets solved within a game then who ever patents it will be worth squillions!

    TBH in SotA it's straight forward as I see it; you know the risks v rewards, you decide to go in or not, if you die to any kind of PvP'r you lose stuff. If you HAVE to go in to do a quest, wear cheap throw away gear, leave good stuff in your chest / bank and go complete that section of the quest if possible or come back another day with friends or at a different time, you may be luckier then. if you want to PvE in a PvP area you gonna be rolling the dice, thats your own choice just like standing in the middle of the motorway (freeway) at rush hour, at some point you're gonna get hit.

    Is this a waste of your time if you only want to PvE / complete a quest? Yes it sure is, but as a counter argument, so is running to a a specific bank to retrieve an item you 'need' when a player who's sole interest is PvP and doesn't give a monkeys chestnut about 'roleplayers immersion' factor has to take time out to deal with said situation, it's different to being griefed but it's comparable in annoyance factor to either party. Therefore it's all give and take, from all sides of the player spectrum within SotA, complaining about griefers is no different to the old days in UO when people complained about pickpockets until they made it safe round the city banks as you macro'd guard guards into your open and shut bank box (global bank box).

    Will there be a thread similar to this next week? oh for sure and for my two penneth both sides of the argument whinge at each other with little care for the others opinion which is why it'll always be a thorny subject
     
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  4. Stundorn

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    PvP games need no vertical progression.
    Best pvp sandboxes are like Sea of Thieves with only horizontal progression system an no benefits for playing time except player practice and skill.
     
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  5. Kpopgurl

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    Only if it is no RPG. An RPG needs to develop a character... Also games like EvE which is currently undoubtely King of the Sandbox genre. The problems of vertical progression are solved by implementing game systems that give roles to players they can fullfil. In a Corp a bunch of new players can become as important as the high level pilot. SotA lacks mechanics like that, and overall guilds are meaningless and there is nothing beyond having a guild chat.
     
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  6. Soryu

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    Your point is absolutely correct and I do not disagree. However, is there EVER anything truly new in the forums? The "economy is broken", the "crafting is too hard", "there are not enough drops" or my favorite "this class is overpowered".

    I think the point of the forums is to bring legitimate issues to the attention of the developers. I feel quite certain there are many unique ideas implemented which came from some casual forum poster. My entire point has to do with BALANCE and OVERPOWERED position of PVP attacker. No one has said the attacker is NOT OVERPOWERED in the described circumstances. And if there were some practical steps which could be implemented to even the playing field, wouldn't that be an game improvement?

    If everything posted in the forums had to be new, we would certainly do away with a lot of clutter.

    Here is the purpose of my post. I have been killed PVP over and over and over. I am not good at PVP and probably did not select the optimum PVP class. I accept the responsibility and the fact that I will likely continue to die. In addition, I have made some nice acquaintances from PVPers and grouped with them. Many are just looking for a good battle and a challenge. The really good PVPers would not hide to attack only when the target is engaged with PVE. I have nothing but respect for those players.

    However, there are also cowards and predators who run from fair interactions and simply want to fight with impunity. The manner in which they attack is totally OVERPOWERED and lacks the kind of game BALANCE developers seek in PVE encounters. Why should PVP encounters be immune to game balance? I think there are some reasonable changes which could be taken to better level the playing field. I fail to understand why it is not a reasonable position and positive changes would improve the game for at least 1/2 of the players in PVP encounters.
     
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  7. Fungus

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    @Soryu sir I don't disagree but again you will never do away with griefers and trying to do so only leads to the slippery slope of further calls for the next step in sanitizing X Y or Z problem. I've a friend who role plays *shudder* and she plays an assassin character, she doesn't actively go out to grief people but within her 'character' that's an accepted practice of her perceived traits, can she one shot you? probably not most the time but it's part of her 'game'. Others love to PvP purely by dueling, for other players this isn't what PvP is about but griefing is but neither is wrong, it's just the latter means they've caught you unaware exp'ing in a PvP area and tbh why should you get a safety net that means you get the advantage over their skill set? Should the same happen when PvE'ing that if a mob spawns on you as you are mid kill it cannot attack you? I appreciate that's stretching the debate but again that kills me far more than a griefer personally.

    In short I doubt Portalarium will affect the current format too much if at all re griefing as its part of the game however overpowered it may seem.
     
  8. Soryu

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    While I agree I doubt the developers will do anything, I will point out one perceived flaw in your response. There is NO SAFETY NET if the attacking player attacks one on one and the player being attacked is not engaged with a mob. The attacking player still has the element of surprise and full advantage of his skill set.

    However, there is now some risk of the unknown to the attacker. The player he attacks may be better prepared than he suspects and certainly is in a better position to defend himself and likely full health. It is simply not the OVERPOWERED situation described by my post.

    In addition, I am not saying griefing is "technically" wrong, but I will say it is a cowardly method of play. And it unfairly rewards the griefer when balanced on a risk reward scale. There simply is no meaningful rebuttal for the player being attacked by the griefer. Pointing out these game flaws to the developers is the purpose of the forums.
     
  9. Fungus

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    @Soryu To be fair, griefing is subjective, people with a high virtue and polished crown will always look down with disdain on the practise where as fellow negative virtue and rusty old dagger type players will see them as potential role models to emulate and learn from.

    Young Vallo for instance, an expert in his field of choice must spend an inordinate amount of time looking for targets and then planning his moves therefore there is skill involved however much the intended victim may be upset at his actions whether its caught napping or engaged with a mob, it's a risk you take exp'ing with a pvp tag on. Personally I really enjoy watching his exploits in video's he releases.

    Easiest solution is to exp without PvP tag on as it doesn't really detract from you own enjoyment if you prefer to be safe from as you say said 'cowards'
     
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  10. Duke William of Serenite

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    I think bounties and the amount paid should be a set price. Perhaps 1000 for ea piece. Paying 30k for a artifact is too much; and sometimes I dont even have that much gold on me. So this is whats keeping others from PVPing, the price of dying.
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2018
  11. Violet Ronso

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    Back once again wil a real life example that you will all call me stupid for, but hey let's go!

    You call "waiting for the enemy to engage a monster before attacking him" briefing/a cowards methods, I'll correct you and call it smart. You are in a PvP zone, you should be expecting these things to happen, it is called "ganking" in most games. League of legends : people engage a huge monster called the baron which can slay a team of ill-prepared legends, if the other team notices, they will wait for them to get weakened by it and then jump in to secure kills. PuBG, famous Battle Royale game, people will hide with camo gear and wait for their adversaries to engage combat before engaging the weakened winner of the previous battle. ESO, 3 factions wage a war in the imperial sewers. Throughout the sewers, multiple bosses which drop rares and uniques, and are not instanced, so at any time teams of the opposite factions can jump in, kill your team and secure the kill on the boss.

    Real life wars have been won by dividing up their forces, engaging the enemy from one side while the remaining of their forces "Flanked" from the other sides, this isn't something new, it is war strategy!

    What I see when I see these threads is that OP would love to play single player in a multiplayer game, and I mean, the devs have drawn out a VERY OBVIOUS solution... Single player, offline mode! It actually exists! If you can't accept the risk of being engaged in an unfair but strategic manner while you are clearly in a state where you should be accepting these risks (Flagged or simply in a PvP zone) then go back to being unflagged in PvE zones.

    I am not a PvPer in Shroud, and yet I am 100% against what you are saying, because you are not asking fairness, you are simply not aware enough to understand all the risks and strategic factors which come into play, and you want a holy blessing protecting you instead of planning ahead for those risks...
     
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  12. E n v y

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    The developers are working very hard on PvP balance and "griefing"is very subjective

    When you flag as PvP you are actually consenting to open world PvP combat. That means you should by default have your eyes in the back of your head and to always expect the unexpected. In open world PvP you should never even expect "fairness". What you have described is more tactics than griefing...........you are the sheep and the wolf has come out to play.

    The kind of PvP you appear to be seeking is more arena/duel ........... there is nothing wrong in that, but you have to accept that the spectrum of PvP is very wide and you are just describing a part of the spectrum you don't particularly like.

    I'm sure PvP will expand in future releases.
     
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  13. StrangerDiamond

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    You're right, I don't think with the current FFA model we have amongst players (which I think is shallow and lacks lore related incursions, this is not war, and because of instance it is kind of arena style with list of players and high score) that the devs should find a solution to ganking.

    Forgive my syntax I mean that the devs should not find individual solutions for players, but rather encourage the game to "make sense" through laying down a base structure for interactions.

    But there lies the problem :

    Because anyone is free to leave a scene, change modes, press ignore... then there is no PvP continuity. A griefer can only prey on the weak and move around as soon as he's overpowered, this is no game its an invitation for the worse kind of community players, and god knows we need community players to boost our numbers.

    Lemme tell you a very short story about Siege Perilous circa 1999... we didn't only EXPECT fair PvP, we ENFORCED it :)

    In fact our community became so strong that at one point, PKs and Thieves asked us to join our community before hand and we laid down on them a list of 10 commandments including not attacking the defenseless and the NEW guild. Any PK that tried it any other way was intimidated from the whole server usually in a day or two.

    In my 10+ years of playing there... I have only seen ONE person "go crazy" on a rampage and after he did (it was his ragequit show) he showered the community with gifts and gold as a thank you.

    Yup the worse PK of the server ever was thankful of our enforced ruleset.

    It was the most fun experience of my life, building this community... brought me to tears more than once to see the PKs show up at our fake RPG events (we didn't have any event moderators because they couldn't "handle" us *too wild lol*...) so we made up those events by hand with NPCs and disguise kits...

    So fun.

    Point it, we made our game, without any dev help... and SOTA although it allows lots of game modes and options, does not allow a mode of play that is conductive to roleplaying (even if its only RPvP)... because it artificially divides the playerbase every corner.

    So ironically, while playing SOTA, I was griefed AND ignored (very rudely) by more people than my whole time in UO since beta.

    Nobody cares about me here, period. I can talk about the honor of a fair fight all day if I want, people will throw rocks on me and the game will not in any way punish them through the oracle or their reputation or their karma even.

    Yeah I was flagged... cause its the only option of the game without option, without modes.

    I have been asking for a "serious pvp" mode since the very beginning. Still waiting.

    Right now, its only childish and immature arena type pvp to me, shallow strategy and twitch gameplay. As others have said, theres many games that deliver if thats what I wanted in my "spiritual successor" to Ultimas. That is not what brought me here.

    @Marcus Deadshot @E n v y
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2018
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  14. Nog

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    In one of the handful of times I was exploring one the game's Ruins areas, which of course are PvP zones in addition to quest-based entrances for PvE, I was instakilled from stealth by a toon for 500+ HP damage.

    Having played rogues and rangers in other games, I was aware that a stealth attack can hurt a lot but usually don't encounter attack power so out of whack in PvP games that a player can 1-shot another player target who has started to reach 'end game' level (~70). Now that I have learned this is the dichotomy in SotA - toons being able to stealth 1-shot other seasoned toons - this pretty much snuffs out my interest in exploring all of those Ruins regions.

    As for ransoms, a basic tool that sells for 80g was being ransomed at 2000g. I obviously did not pay the ransom but this made me wonder how much a half way decent item would ransom for! I have greatly enjoyed level-balanced PvP zones in many mmorpgs, but both the 1-shotting and ransoming make it unappealing in SotA. This is why there probably shouldn't be a world-PvP element to those quest area Ruins.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2018
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  15. parkinglot

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    UO had the greatest pvp, there was no changing it. It was completely mapped out - there was 8 circle of spells, 64 spells, 5 or so different melee classes, a hundred weapons. It was all balanced to perfection. It was the FPS of the RPGs. Try to change it.

    If they can't balance the game, to where your crafting the best arrows outside of your tower through normal chicken spawns, and the forest around their chests, of course there will never be good pvp. Who the **** wants to sit outside their town, placing campfires, and playing lutes? **** sounds god awful. No one wants to see how gay you can get, everyone's playing on PCs with high speed internet. Learn to adapt, and play a good game everyone can get along in.

    Let's be real here, PvP will never be the same on a game, like this one.

    In UO, everyone knew what a second level spell was going to do. Everyone knew there was a balance of potions and a balance of skill to counter it. The numbers all made sense in every aspect. This was the reason there was 20 players consistently pvping in the Jhelom farms... - just waiting for a guild of 20 to show up and slaughter every single one of them. Same reason a dungeon could be raided by 10 PKs clearing every corner of the dungeon, and the blues would be at the bank spamming PKs! Come help, through this gate! And no one wanted to hear what level the PKs were, all they wanted was to loot that +9 VANQ Warfork from ho chi minh. And be gone.

    You can look at West Brit, look at Bucs Den, look at the GY, look at Shame, dropping the best gold rate and magic weapons in the game. Look at anywhere else and it's just how it is. Obviously they don't want good PvP in this kiddie game. Get over it, and just go pet your brown bear.
     
    Last edited: Jun 1, 2018
  16. Soryu

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    Perhaps you should read all of posts. I obviously stated I understand it is a PVP zone and accept the risks for playing in the zone. Nevertheless, it does not change the fact that the current system is UNBALANCED and OVERPOWERED.

    As for understanding "strategic factors" which come into play, I have likely been playing online strategy games since you were in diapers. In my opinion, game mechanics which consistently allow solo players to kill other solo players with impunity is close to an exploit. Nevertheless, it is an unfair advantage and regardless of what prior posters have said, it takes no skill other than waiting for a player to engage a mob. Repeatedly ganking or griefing, call it whatever you want is a a perverse and cowardly method of play style which appeals to a very small percentage of the overall community. The historic problem is the developers have yet to be able to come up with meaningful BALANCE to the counter balance that style of play. If the player being attacked by the coward tries to turn the tables, the coward only needs to run away to return another day. Therefore, again there is UNBALANCE and IMPUNITY. The is simply no meaningful SOTA game mechanics available to level the playing field.

    While there are those who say PVP should be open and anything goes, I fully comprehend the concept. Nevertheless, it simply sets up a totally UNBALANCED scenario. I simply fail to understand what goal is served to allow a PVP player to basically be guaranteed a win against another player and also a potential windfall bounty. However, one tool open to the developers to at least even the playing field is to implement some kind of mitigation when a player is engaged with or low health after PVE engagement. Allowing one player to have a "I WIN" trump card is just wrong in my opinion. And no one has provided any rationale which validates the current mechanics in my opinion.

    And Marcus, your comment about "planning ahead for risks" is totally laughable. What plan are you suggesting? Bring your entire clan to guard you while engaging a PVE MOB? There is no "planning ahead for those risks". If you are not engaging a mob the other player may simply decide to not attack, unless of course he is 20 levels higher which fits his modus operandi. Now of course, if you have some strategy for "planning ahead for those risks" please do share them with the gaming community. I am certain there are many who would benefit from your wisdom.
     
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  17. StrangerDiamond

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    We've been driving those points home for years now... still can't get through to the other side.
     
  18. Arkah EMPstrike

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    I think it could be as easy as adding a skill that simply tells you (reliably or not) that somone is around. Leave the finding of people and vigilance up to the person being stalked, but at least let them have the opportunity to find footprints and/or hear twigs breaking or soemthing. Make footprints really loud on cluttered terrain with twigs and leaves and stuff so the sleather has to walk slowly to lessen the sound.

    Thats actually probably an easyish thing to do to make footsteps alot louder when you run than when you walk. That would also give better benifit to the duration bonus on silent movment.

    Used to be able to see the distortion effect aroudn stealthers especially while they were moving, and that was nice because you could actually spot somone running carlessly around you and throw soemthign at them
     
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  19. Aeryk

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    deflect != reflect -- i believe the OP is asking for damage immunity while already engaged in PvE, *not* to have damage reflected back to the initiator, nor to have the immunity applied if already engaged in PvP. This may not be too unreasonable, though the duration need not be fixed, the mechanic could be tied to the character being at full health/mana after a PvE fight.

    The question is, do the designers desire PvP to be a seperate experience from PvE? There is precedence for PvEvP environments, but as others pointed out those are mostly dominated by zergs and/or vastly overgeared players preying on weak ones. Neither of those experiences are interesting to me. Instanced or special event PvEvP environments that work do exist (Aion did a good job with a theirs), but i've not experienced any open world ones that are not grief-fests for low ego types. Development time should not be spent on rewarding those types of players either.
     
  20. Aeryk

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    I like this. It helps deal with the stealing too. Don't get me started on that one. Is that thief really so good they can remove a character's pants without being seen or otherwise detected? As funny as that scenario may be to a still adolescent mind, it is abysmal mechanics.
     
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2018
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