A Retrospect into the Dumbing Down of PvP

Discussion in 'PvP Gameplay' started by Bambino, Jun 30, 2018.

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  1. Bambino

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    SotA has lost all touch with the initial idea of a player skill based PvP system. Yes, to a degree there is still some, but there can, and use to be so much more. Let me explain.

    I know lvl 90s can kill 120s, and lvl 80s have killed lvl 100s. It happens. I've done it myself. However, this is besides the point, and, I agree, some players are highly skilled.

    The fact remains that players can grind for grueling hours on end to obtain extremely high levels and this results in them hitting harder, and being more effective. Also, players can mash buttons and be just as effective as those that can manage an unlocked deck effectively.

    When I began playing around R10, we worked on a much different advancement system; max level was 100. We did not have experience, but skill points. The core combat system was primarily player skill based. To clarify, when I say player skill, I mean the person behind the computer. When I say avatar skill, I mean your avatars experience/skill levels. Chris called this system spell weaving. When Richard mentions a system where the player doesn't just mash buttons, this is what he is talking about. Although, it is commonly reffered to as stacking & comboing. Compared to locked glyphs, stacking used to allow for more effecient glyph focus cost, increased damage, and, increased crital chance/damage. This system allowed a seasoned level 80 to overcome a clumsy level 100. During this time period, we lacked a lot of game features, but PvP offered a more competitive environment. Imbalanced skill trees, sure, but fair none the less. We had skill caps and had to make crucial decisions about where we allocated skill points. We still had diversity and didn't have to level down every magic tree. PvP wasn't just for high level players. IMO, at any given moment it involved 80% player skill.

    Then it happened... The nerfing of raw player skill started to take place.
    Being able to focus on your deck, avatar, and your surroundings while managing an unlocked deck took player skill and practice. The people I saw complaining about not being coordinated enough to spell weave, move, and focus on their avatar were people that did not PvP much. However, R18 rolled around, and the advantage to not being a button masher was hindered. Level 100s were much more effective due to stacking being hindered. The lower level player could no longer get near the damage output as the level 100; primarily due to adventure level still being equated into PvP damage at that time.

    For several releases, I ranted about adventure level having impact in PvP.

    R20 rolled around, and stacking glyphs became almost obsolete. An unlocked deck became just as effective as a locked deck. The game became button mashers paradise; just like WoW. Big loss for the PvP crowd.
    This was the moment the combat system got a lot less fun for me, and the moment the player skill required to PvP began to nose dive. Just the next month it got a lot worse. When R21 introduced an endless leveling system, I lost all hope in ever getting a player skill based combat system ever again. Furthermore, R23 introduced attunement making the disparities even worse.

    After this, I didn't care to return due to player skill being sucked out of the combat system and being put in the hands of people that can grind for egregious hours and mash their keyboard.

    These changes eventually led to me quitting the game for three years. My intention was to give it a shot when the came went into persistence. When persistence hit, I logged in for a couple of days, but went back into hibernation. Nothing had changed.

    Before release, I was told that adventure level was removed from PvP damage formulas. That level 90 was a good place to be. I was also told that stacking decreased focus cost and increased damage again. It got me worked up and perked my interest in the game again.

    I started playing about a month after the games official release date. I quickly found the new spell charging system giving the exact same benifit as stacking. That was ultra dissapoionting, but I still looked forward to PvPing at level 90. Everyone told me that level 90 was a good level to begin PvPing at. That there wasn't much reason to level beyond 100 due to diminishng returns. But, they would be wrong.

    Players can spend disgusting amounts of time grinding experience, and not all of the PvP damage formulas compensate for that. They reach skill levels that other players would never have the time to reach. Don't even bother telling new players about PvP. It's only a pipe dream for them. No exaggeration. It is seriously ridiculous. Keep listening to all the five super high level players dominating PvP and you may only have them left.

    I put my time in, I leveled my avatar for hours on end, and I am still getting 2-3 shotted. And, it's not just from a back attack or being prone.

    Suggestions
    The R55 negative attunement changes were a start, but it needs to be flattened out even further, and there needs to be a similar pass taken on positive attunement, combat skills, and resist. These changes should be made to PvP alone. Let people that like to kill monsters, kill monsters all day. Let people that like to kill people, kill people.

    Bring player skill back into PvP by making spell weaving more beneficial than charging. This includes more damage and more focus efficiency. Swapping decks takes time, but almost no focus cost. Increase the focus cost dramatically. Also, make it interruptible. Button mashers will think twice about playing with a locked deck, and perhaps opt for a more dynamic unlocked deck.

    Also, deprecated armor crafted prior to a nerfs need to be addressed.

    We do have the capped shardfall area and the tierd EVL tournaments. They make PvP enjoyable. Sadly, the tournaments are once a week, and I can never find anyone in the shardfall; especially that's there for PvP.
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2018
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  2. Stundorn

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    Capped Shardfalls?

    I may have missed something the past 5 Releases.

    I'm still for a hard cap at 100 and tree limitations
     
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  3. Violet Ronso

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    I for one would love all shardfalls to be capped, with different tiers of course! Capped levels from R52 or 53 is what made me look into PvP. I also always thought Spell Weaving still had an advantage over stacking, guess it isnt that great :/.

    I would also like to push again a bit more towards spellweaving with more and better combos! But yeah I am all in eith you on that, with the addition to Capped shardfalls with different tiers (lvl40, lvl 60, lvl80, lvl100 and uncapped) that would make it alot more enjoyable for everyone without hitting any PvE aspects.

    Btw which Shardfall is capped again? I might ge spend more time there.
     
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  4. Violet Ronso

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    Yeah, QA server had it for a test run and they moved it to a shardfall on release. I think its something like skills are lvl 80 capped and AL is capped at 90-95.
     
  5. Bambino

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    Quel Shardfall was suppose to be capped at 80? Maybe I'm wrong.

    Also, I'd like to note that many aspects of PvP & PvE already work on different formulas. For example, Adventure Level is still accounted for when calculating damage in PvE. However, not in PvP.
     
  6. Hornpipe

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    If you want player skill being more important than grind and avatars' skill in a game, you'll need :
    - to remove or restrict every passive effect, because those effects can only be profitable after a lot of grind,
    - to limit the buffs that you can use, and to forbid the cumulation of two same buffs at the same time, because people who can grind a lot will train every buff skill and use them, and everyone will feel compelled to do the same (Shroud of the Clones or one-class effect, also combats would feel much more dynamical),
    - to promote player input with timed skills, like the big dodge bonus, actually, so the people who are good enough can use the proper skills for the proper purposes and get an advantage from that,
    - change all skills so that they won't give a bonus based on statistics for a long time, to avoid that the end of a fight depends mainly on rolls of dices,
    - to ensure that an avatar who wears more protective (heavy) armor can not go as fast and can not be as stealthy as an avatar who takes risks with light armor,
    - to ensure that magic spells do not allow a person who chooses light armor to be as resistant as with heavy armor,
    - to allow an active roll dodge, to delete auto-attack and delete auto-aim (or reduce it to the minimum),
    - to delete unlocked decks, as long as it allow people who trained more skills... to use more skills.

    We would not need any hard caps if all of this was done and we could keep the eternal progression feel with the soft caps we have. Spells such as AOE would no longer be popular because the cost of experience to be effective would be much less, and the players who are accustomed to sleep on their keyboard or mouseclick (and the botters) would be pushed away with such changes and that would not be a bad thing.
     
    Last edited: Jul 1, 2018
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  7. Stundorn

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    If this game for the MP Part would have a system like UO or actually Legends of Aria are creating it would please me.

    Hard cap at 100
    Limited Trees and GM skills.
    Virtue System related to pvp with consequences in PvE NPC Cities

    Simple, but so much more than we have
     
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  8. Tila Tenderfoot

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  9. Beaumaris

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    The good news is that the game has PVP features that can be expanded upon, and the team is working on that with sieges next.

    Maybe PVP skills will get some love as part of what is to come.
     
  10. kaeshiva

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    I agree 100% with this aspect of what you're saying. PvP is where you want "player skill" to be more relevant than player time investment.
    My concern is that in effort to "balance pvp" in a classless game global changes to skill functionality/effectiveness are happening that funnel players into fewer and fewer 'effective playstyles.'

    If I want to run around and kill other players in a system where we're all on more or less "fair" footing - I will boot up any one of a number of pvp-centric games, or survival-type games, and do so. There's no shortage of these available.

    The issue for me becomes about player retention. If you want players to stick around for years you need to make those years meaningful. If you are able to, in a couple of months, "max out" in terms of your character's capability, then, there is no motivation to continue logging in, playing, levelling, growing your character. While there is no hard cap in Sota, there is an extremely effective and punishing softcap beyond which hundreds of millions of experience investment give minimal, MINIMAL benefit. Personally, I think if a player has invested YEARS into their character, they completely deserve to have a 5% "edge" on someone who has spent a couple weeks.

    That's just simple. If you de-value the time investment into your character, then there becomes no reason to continue to invest that time. These recent changes and "flattening" is doing exactly that. Basically the game is telling me, I've played too much and I'm done and there's no further point. That's not a good way to get people to stick around - especially since with specialization and decay I can't diversify into other builds to try something different without shooting myself in the foot.
     
  11. Violet Ronso

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  12. Stundorn

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    I really allways wonder about this argument.
    UO had caps and limits and the Motivation to login and make a living online virtually with a maxed char in the first line is to have fun playing it.
    Why people play Sea of Thieves. I can assure you not because of any progression or cosmetics.
    I allways hoped for sandbox gamemechanics and rich roleplay, where we have the virtue System matters a lot where traderoutes exist, where you need to restock and your stuff wears off quick and can be lost...
    Where moving goods is an adventure, maybe with people to protect the Caravan. Where to restock and prepare for Groupplay pve or pvp is the Motivation .
    But a lot of decisions made for SotA dont allow that and to me endless progression, and to underline it progression grind itself was always a chore, something to keep players away from playing the game ,with and in the environment, interacting with other players cooperative andcompetetive.
    Instead the are guided to tons of timesink features with repetetive tasks.

    If players have nothing to do than to progress and min max, when they define playing as grinding as much xp as possible per hour - and that seems to be the feature no.1 of SotA than i'm really sad about it, because it feels very flat to me compared to real rpg sandbox gameplay.
    That's also something i never understanded and accepted .

    Investments is the right term for it, but has nothing to do with playing games for me.
    I practice my playerskill maybe, but i spent time and dont invest time, like i donated money and didnt invest in this game.

    This is like the SP and MMO part is one of the major issues of the game.

    To try to bring that together will allways fail imho.

    The one likes Apples and the other one Bananas.
    There are Games for both.
    To create a game i would decide whether i want to please the SP , the Mmo , the "for fun" or the effort =reward people .

    Some like playing for fun others "work" for achievements, reward and the bonus to be stronger than those who havent "put the effort in it".

    Some wanted a good SP Game with maybe MP Options
    Others wanted a modern UO Iteration.

    SotA wanted to please all and only pleases 300-500 players actually and they are becoming less and less .

    Things need to change.

    I dont care of the direction , if SP or MMO if full pvp or no PvP at all, but they need to change something or they will die.

    I am the "for fun" MMO/ MP player
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2018
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  13. redfish

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    Sorry to bring this a little off topic.

    But I've thought skill should be more important than grind even in PvE. I think PvP and PvE share the same issues here.

    Its not really a fun game to me to grind a certain tier scene where you can handily defeat enemies, then graduate to the next tier scene, then to the next, then to the next; because the tiers higher than you are too hard, and the tiers lower than you are too easy. Eventually 90% of the game becomes obsoleted content to you, except for monotonous, boring grinding and farming of mats.

    I don't like the notion that "progress" in a game has to be measured by how much you've grinded your numbers, and keeping your numbers up by doing grindy gameplay is a poor motive to stay in the game over the long term.
     
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  14. Stundorn

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    Have edited above, cant agree more @redfish
     
  15. Hornpipe

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    [​IMG]
     
  16. FrostII

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    I agree 100% with that statement, @Bambino !

    However, that would require - in essence - two radically different systems (rule-sets) for PvP & PvE, which makes development infinitely more complex than it currently is.
    Which is why Port is STILL trying to balance skills, which should have been mostly complete prior to official launch.
    Balancing skills for both PvE and PvP is a never ending battle and a lost cause (for Port) - because you need two vastly different systems based on being flagged or not flagged at any given moment in time, and Port has shown zero inclination to do that.
    And the end result has shown to be (most unfortunately) a dwindling population........
     
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  17. parkinglot

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    I agree
     
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  18. Pounce

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    The problem is not so much "no more levelling after x" but "what else beside levelling".
    Even for people who fancy PvP, because i doubt they want/can pvp all day
    So the whole question of soft/hard cap, limited/unlimited skill choices is academic, so or so there are limits some one reaches sooner or later.

    Factions, karma systhems, player controlled powerstruggles and so on are the classic tools to make it worth playing after maxxing out.

    Plenty of people with bright ideas here for that.
     
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  19. parallelogram

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    Bam, I offer you to let me play your character and fight anyone of your choosing. I think this would be a great experiment. I am fairly confident that if I put the right gear on your character and make the right decks that I can kill every single person in the game. I also welcome you to practice with me so that I can get you up to speed on PvP. I am about to be playing a level 80 and a level 90 character that I am making because I miss the challenge. I urge you to rethink your above feelings, you're level 95+ now. You don't have to grind anymore. Wandering Healer, Erdnuss, Asger are all shining examples. I can help you with gear, so can many people. It really is not expensive
     
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  20. Rook Strife

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    You want to make PVP more skillful? Start with this

    Take the glyph stacking / heat mechanism and throw it in the trash. Thanks.


    Then you might see elements of combat like:

    #1. Stun / Interrupt an opponent effectively and appropriately.
    One or two stuns on a cooldown that:

    1. Are a guaranteed stun
    2. You can only use once or twice per fight.
    3. Must be used at an appropriate time (like when someone is casting a big heal)
    4. Allow you to pre-plan a tactic and implement it

    Vastly superior to having a deck full of % based, semi-reliable, spammable, exploitable, stuns that may or may not allow you to accomplish 1,2, 3 and 4 for skill based combat.


    #1b. Stun Removal
    One or two Stun removal skills that

    1. You can only use once per fight
    2. Must be used tactically

    Vastly superior to having drawn/heat glyphs that are spammable, allow you to be immune to stuns and trivialize tactical use of skills.



    Could go through all the other basic combat mechanics that are broken but if there is not intention of removing the drawn glyph/heat, why bother?
     
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