A Retrospect into the Dumbing Down of PvP

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

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  1. Stundorn

    Stundorn Avatar

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    @Bambino same for years in the end they hear the people what are satisfied.
    Who believe after Summer 5000 players are coming back, who believe it's about the decksystem and want that even more easy to grind their toons endlessly with a simple Rotation that dont distract then from watching the scenery , because they cannot handle to fight and watch the combatbar simultaneously, those who are fine to skill all, be all and everything to do everything, but completely miss what interdependencies bring to a Sandbox.
    Those who complain over graphics or Ui or Performance. Everything Miniscule.
    The setup of the sandbox or the quality of the SP it is why people dont play!
    Imho it's all about Selective Multiplayer.
    It has failed.
    Go SP or go MP/MMO.

    Btw i yesterday checked how many KS Backers they had .
    Around 22 thousands.
    Where are they and why havent they checked the game at release?

    The answer is they disliked several decisions.

    Some dislike it's focus to MP instead of SP
    Some dislike endless progression
    Some dislike pvp at all and Quest leading to it ,not mentioning there is another way.
    Many dislike the Overworld Map or the Decksystem.

    They should ask their Backers again what need to be changed to get 10% of them back. 2000 players and the world would shape.

    And to me the most easiest switch would be to create a sandbox with interdependencies and limits to the players. And give them all, casuals included the chance to fully partake in all aspects of the game.
    Nothing like 30% Damage bonus for skillnumbers people like me can never obtain.
    Maybe 50 people leave the game, but what if 5000 join in because of it?
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2018
  2. kaeshiva

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    First of all, I never said anything about 100-140 - the extremely cheap base damage passive, applicable to physical weapon users only? Yeah, not what I'm talking about.
    For everything other than the 'easy' passives - that only melee/ranged get, which is completely inapplicable to all magic? yeah, millions and millions of XP usually equates to about 5% more effective. Or less.
    You are drawing a line at GM saying at GM you should be 'done' - and you're specifically citing one of the 'cheapest' skills in terms of XP, and with current tears groups? That takes an hour.

    You mentioned the melee mastery skill though, so let's look at it.

    Blade mastery to level 120 costs 8 million XP - now possible in less than a day.

    To recap Stundorn's data:
    Blade mastery to 100 - takes about an hour - 58.1% damage.
    So 48% damage bonus per million XP spent.

    Blade mastery to 120 - takes 7 more hours (if you're "cheesing" tears/rise/etc. as you say) For this effort, your damage is increased by 14.5%
    Oh no, we're down to 2% damage bonus per million xp spent!

    Blade mastery to 140 - from level 120, this takes another 46 million XP and gives another 14.5% damage. - for 46 hours of grind.
    At this point, we're getting 0.31% damage bonus per million xp spent.

    Wanna go higher? Level 140-160 would cost 314,437,287 experience and give 0.04% damage per million xp spent.

    As we all know and understand, the curve becomes steeper and steeper the higher you go.
    Based on the amounts of XP we are talking about here, you could conceivably get to 140 in a SINGLE WEEKEND of double xp if you pushed it. If you're not mainlining caffeine, lets even say it takes you a week. Or even two.

    Yes, this is a single skill. Other skills are more expensive and give significantly less benefit for the millions of XP spent. When you look at the picture as a whole, someone whose got 120 in everything vs. someone whose got 140 in everything, assuming comparable gear, is not going to notice a massive difference. Particularly not if they are "skilled" as you say - the "benefit" of the additional levels is easily overcome if you're "skilled".

    Have a look at the benefit for pouring 46 million XP into say, one of the cheapest magic skills? That nets you a grand total of 2 attunement and maybe 1-2 base damage on the spell. Absolutely negligible, particularly with the recent attunement nerf.

    My point is and continues to be that if you make any sort of nod in the direction of actually levelling and developing your character, there comes a point in which millions and millions and millions of experience of grind is not going to help you that much.
    This is how the game is designed, this is the system that is in place - already - to curb player power and create an effective softcap.

    All I'm hearing here is you don't want to put in that much effort so you want another, softer cap, for PvP purposes, so you don't have to do the boring task of actually levelling up.
    And all I keep saying is that the game already has things in place to softcap players - just not as low as you would like.


    The people who play for PvP are already on board. They're gonna PvP - either here or elsewhere.. If you want to bring in people for whom that isn't their primary mode, its a poor first step to say "Ok, you've put all this time into the game and to your character, but none of that counts for anything. You don't get to use those skills you've built up and worked on because it wouldn't be fair to the people who can't be bothered with it." Yeah, that does nothing whatsoever to entice me, sorry.

    They might as well have us all start naked and give us all the same exact stick to beat each other with.

    This isn't a matter of "appealing to players who grind all the time." Grinding won't do much for you after a certain point, and the yes, VERY MINOR improvement you see is easily overcome by a player who is a skilled PvPer, as we've seen demonstrated repeatedly.

    I 100% agree with you that level shouldn't be the only factor, or even the main factor - and it isn't, not by a wise margin. I just don't think that investing in your character should be completely irrelevant. Otherwise why do it?


    I'm not just trying to be hostile here @Bambino just trying to present the other side of it.

    Your notion that PvP has been 'dumbed' down because whoever grinds the most wins, is valid only if you assume that party A has not made a minimal investment in their character.

    Where we are drawing the line at minimal investment, understandably, differs - Getting core important skills to 120 doesn't take that long. Not anymore. Not with million-xp-per-hour and the amount of double-time we've been getting.

    There are people who started at launch a few months ago that have achieved this and beyond. Is a few months too much grind to be competitive?
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2018
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  3. Dhanas

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    Who are these people with skill 140+ good at pvp @Bambino ? Honestly I have most of my skills lvl 100 and a couple of skills 110, and I can compete with almost all the ppl of this server. Dunno if I have ever meet someone with skill 140+ but I have never had any problem in PVP, if not related to determinate builds that are the counter of mine build or groups of people (3+v 1 it's not easy ).
    Almost every build here have a counter, the ability is also find the correct counter for every build and adapt your deck and gameplay based on the opponent you have front of you.

    P.S. me and other pvpers are doing an experiment, lvling some character to lvl 80 and leveling skills to lvl 80 ( hard to have skills 100+ at lvl 80). Let's see what happens, I keep you updated.
     
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  4. Dhanas

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    Do you all know you can counter an ice arrow 140 for example, just using skills of shield lvl 80? Deflect is best way to counter magic arrows, also at low level.
     
  5. MrBlight

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    Yes.

    Simply put.. i dont call a buddy and say * hey man lets grind on this game for 6 months so we can hopefully compete with the average player in pvp!* instead of * hey lets play literally any other game and play competitively against players tonight *

    Over a year ago, people in my guild were hitting high 140s.. i can imagine that the bar to even being * competitive * is raised since then.
     
  6. Crazy Phil

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    I love Sea of Thieves. So much fun.

    I hesitate to PVP in SotA again because I feel like I am way behind on grinding to have any sort of chance. Gear, skill, all of it. It feels like a second job when I log in, much like how World of Warcraft made me feel. I absolutely abhor grinding. So much so that I typically ignore the desire to eventually do okay in PVP and just spend time decorating my house till I need to log off.

    Now, whether or not I still need to grind more isn't very well communicated through the interface. How do we know when our avatar is prepared to go against other avatars besides just "giving it a shot"? How can we show where on "the ramp" an avatar is, @Chris ? Maybe visible "tiers" similar to scene tiers? Here comes a 5-star avatar? Oh look, I'm 5-star too? EverQuest con system for avatars? Something like that might help. Might help PVE players as well when trying to find the right scene to explore or challenge themselves with.

    Until some sort of feedback like that is present or I randomly decide to "give it a shot" again and end up optimistic after the outcome, I look forward to fighting folks in PVP areas that are capped.
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2018
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  7. 2112Starman

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    Its more of say a adv lvl 80 vs adv lvl 120 thing. The lvl 120 has what 1 billion more xp, significantly more GM's and primary skills up to 140. The simple fact is that if you have 2 equal players, the adv lvl 120 has vastly more stats... period. People keep saying "ya, Im adv lvl 90 and I kill adv lvl 120's" and to me that just tells me the adv lvl 120 has no concept how to PvP and the adv lvl 90 is absolutely fantastic at PvP. But statistically if you had 100 people at adv lvl 120, 98% of them would kill any adv lvl 90 (largely without much skill).

    The adv lvl 120 also probably has 10,000 more hour sin the game with vastly more wealth and vastly better equipment specifically targeted to their build (and they can switch 10 different builds on the fly).

    I was GREAT at virtue league, I even placed 3rd on season as an adv lvl 95. But I could only field one build all the higher level people learned that and could table a counter build in seconds to kill my build.
     
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  8. Bambino

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    Yes.
    No need for names, but I think there are a few high level players that are good at PvP. Yes, you can kill other avatars that have higher skills than you. A lvl 80 can kill a lvl 100, a lvl 100 can kill a lvl 140. It happens. That's besides the point. The point is that they have more effective skills, and flat out hit harder than you due to extremely leveled skills. This is becoming the norm with places like UT. Not saying it isn't great place to get a new avatar leveled with the quickness, but the same folks that were playing 6+ months ago are doing the same thing.
     
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  9. Floors

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    This is really true. You can really feel this after about 5 or 600 hours. Especially if you know, you have a life outside MMORPGs.

    I do think there needs to be more of a mid game but the player population is mostly hardcore fans atm that are actually still playing (and doing silly Upper Tears grinding for days and weeks at a time)
    so obviously they're gonna be catered to.

    Whenever I see newbies or [Visitors] I just feel so bad for what lies ahead that they don't realize yet....

    Actually the vast majority of starter gear looking folks I saw at R52 are gone so...
     
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  10. Pounce

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    I think the problem is that Sota was thought out as an game you play for years (and grow in for loong time)
    Not an arena style game you hop into an do a quick one on one fight.

    It is literally impossible to make it so you can pvp from hour zero AND make an game that promotes character growth over years.

    And even so, I do like to grind and make skills awesome but i ave no illusions that i will ever be near the top of the foodchain, I have way to many RL interests for that, focusing for month on one game and make it into the ten percent at the top is not something i would ever be able to.

    If i am better today than i was last week it is ok for me.

    So I could argue the exact same regarding PVE "It is not fair that i can not go for dragons after one week playing Sota!"
     
  11. Floors

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    You need at least 7 or 800 hours before you can even compete at all in PVP in this game and to me, that's a bit of an issue. It prevents open PVP, it prevents more people wanting to do PVP and mid level PVP, and it stops newbies that might enjoy SoTA as a PVP experience from enjoying it. Not that that matters a whit to those with level 140 blades tho, they're all good, they've done their time hunting obsidian wolves and patriarch bears and liches and whatnot for who knows how long, months on end probably.

    This is just about what's healthy for an MMO to survive, I already know this from playing the hours I have.
     
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  12. kaeshiva

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    Is a few months grind too much to be competitive?

    Okay then...I ask you both, what do you think IS an acceptable amount of time you should have to spend building your character before you can jump right into PvP and have it be 'fair' ?

    I mean like, character creation and BAM, to the battlegrounds all levelled and geared up ready to go?

    A day ? A week ? A month ?

    And speaking of gear.... it can take well over a month just to gather materials to make a high end gear set. Until the recent cheeseball-xp zones and double xp events were added ( presumably, precisely because so many people were complaining they'd never catch up ) - Sota has always been more of a marathon than a sprint.

    I can only assume that if you don't want to take the time to level for PvP, you aren't going to want to take the time to gather materials for gear either.

    If you can be competitive without doing either it starts to blur the goals of the game a bit.

    I'm not just trying to be devil's advocate here, I'm honestly trying to understand what it is you're asking for. What's the threshold you're willing to invest? Level 80? Is there to be no benefit whatsoever to investing beyond that? Are we going to ask for stat caps on gear too, at level 80 crafting skill?

    Such a system seems to me that the best course of action would be to roll up an alt, get all relevant skills to 80 in like, a few days, a week maybe if you want to level all the magic trees to 80 too - with the new XP bonanza it shouldn't take longer than that. And then use said alt for PvP. I'd see no incentive whatsoever to bring my main, invested character to such a zone, for any reason, if all the effort I've put into building my main character is negated. I've seen this exact thing happen in other games that used such a capping mechanism, "PvP" was battle of the twinked-out alts. I suppose that would be better than the ghost towns the PvP zones are at the moment.
     
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  13. Rook Strife

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    Level advantage is just another reason to implement locked glyph / cooldown.


    Drawn decks with 20-30+ glyphs utilize the benefits of virtually every skill tree in the game at the same time.


    10 locked skills mean your skill choices matter more and you can concentrate on getting just a small set of skills up to par.


    While a player with 150 in each of their 10 skills will be more powerful than a casual with 100, the numbers can be adjusted to keep it reasonable.


    Drawn decks are either the main cause or greatly contribute to a large portion of whats wrong with combat in this game.
     
  14. Floors

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    Well right now, there is basically this issue where the game was designed so that after a period of time, it is more and more expensive to level skills up. and they mater less and less. The effect in real life is that now, there are certain scenes that give the most xp, and players just go to those, abandoning all the other scenes.

    Now, that would be fine if there was that sort of high level play and everyone knew that was for high level players, but there really is no PVP until you get there, which is what. adventurer level 80, 90, or whatever it is ?

    I don't actualy know what the solution to the issue is. But it would be better if like, level 20 players could do their own pvping, level 40 players could, level 60 players could, etc.

    WOW implemented level gating for this same reason.

    I tried to PVP flag early on and stay in lower level scense to see if I could pvp with some players around my average level and abilities at the time, and it didn't work, you just got one-shotted or you know, a couple shots ranged by someone bad ass, I know who the players are, they're the ONLY players that PVP now. Literally got hunted down in Tier 1 and 2 scenes by 100+ players.

    Seems broken to me in some way. I'm just gonna do what everyone else is doing, not PvPing until I get to you know, 10 GMs and all the resistances and then take my luck.
     
  15. Mimner

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    This hits the nail square on the head. Damage output has gotten way to out of control when it comes to pvp. It needs to be reigned in or the only strategy that wins will be whoever has the biggest cannon.

    The current benefits to spell weaving vs. charging a locked glyph are already substantial.

    1) Spell woven glyphs are not lost upon fizzling as charged glyphs are.

    2) Spell woven glyphs are not lost when stunned as charged glyphs are. In fact, one may continue to spell weave glyphs while stunned, being knocked down, casting, etc. none of which apply to charging a glyph.

    3) With spell weaving it is possible to have multiple stacks of glyphs prepared, while charging can only have one. These multiple stacks can be maintained indefinitely with Mind Lock.

    4) Stacks of glyphs can be maintained when switching decks.

    The fact that a fully charged glyph is equivalent in power to a fully stacked glyph has made locked glyphs much more convenient in pve. However, the benefits of spell weaving vs. stacking are significant, and I would imagine would provide an advantage in pvp. That is, if one didn't die from a fully charged glyph followed up by one or two single shots, i.e. 2-3 shotted by 140+ player (see above).
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2018
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  16. Aeryk

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    I would like to think about ways to make PvP fun at all levels, not just "endgame".
     
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  17. Floors

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    I feel like all they have to do is gate Pvp Zones. Create like, tiered PvP Areas... This is only for up to level 40, this is only up to level 60, level 80, etc.

    It would at least encourage more PvP players to play
     
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  18. Aeryk

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    Yes, i think this works. Make those zones rewarding (without making the PvE only people feel like they have to participate -- perhaps by expanding on the PvP rewards thoughts they have expressed). Having in-character goals is important to folk that mix RP with their PvP, but i think it helps everyone to give those zones purpose.
     
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  19. Vrenmar Bloodborn

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    There isn't enough of a PvP community to justify further fragmenting with tiers. Scale everyone up or down to a certain threshold and balance pvp around there.
     
  20. disorder

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    In every game I've ever played, I've primarily been a PVP player. It's normally my main interest. This game has such a harsh entry barrier that even after 500 hours played, I'm still reluctant to dip my toes in the water. I have no guild, info is scarce, how many ransoms do I have to give before I have any clue how to build a competent PVP deck so I just don't get smashed by one of you guys and offer no challenge.

    Tiered PVP zones is a good idea I think so people like me can dip there toes in and feel like they stand a chance at all.

    Just my 2 cents. I will still continue to sneak in The Fall for a cheeky White Dragon, hoping no one notices.. until I feel ready ;)
     
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