Levels are killing this game

Adventure levels not mattering much in PVP is a direct quote from Chris. I won't even bother with the rest of you post since we went down this path before and you flatly refuse to even log in when i wait for you to be higher level and arguing with each other will just get us both banned from the forum again lol.

 

I think there's some residual math left over that counts adventure levels in PVE. In PVP, if you have more levels you have more skill points, so who cares if the actual LVL isn't in the math? That's like saying the candy you're eating is 100% fat free so it's not going to make you fat.

You let me know when I get to have the higher level, I'll be happy to show you how much it matters.

Maybe someday I'll be retired or unemployed or hire an overseas gold farmer to level for me 24/7, then I'll be a pvp pro.

@Chris
If you really think the pvp population is low because there are not enough rewards, give this a try. For R24, make anyone that goes into a PVP POT or PVP Scene the same level as anyone else in the scene. Flat line the whole scene (yes of course including skill points). So a level 1 might raise up to level 30, and a level 60 would go down to level 30. Let people respec before entering the scene. And shut down single player mode in PVP areas.

Then tell me if that's not the most populated and played pvp release we've ever had. I'd be shocked if it wasn't. Because I'm convinced that people don't PVP because they know that they're going to get owned. And you can't have PVP without players. It's not a long term solution, but I think it would be a powerful statement about why pvp population is always low.

I have yet to even see a single person flagged for PVP in R23.

 

never a moment of self doubt

 

There is no "residual math" for PvE. We were flat out told adventurer level is still used in hit calculations for PvE, and not at all in PvP.

 

Meh.
I am really not sure if this forced-same-level-pvp is better. A lot of mmos tried it and in my opinion it still s***s.

 

The problem as I see it:
Imagine I am....myself. I am sitting in a pub and for some unknown reason I think it would be a nice idea to pick a fight with a delta forces guy.
If he sees it coming, he will tear me to pieces. Doesn't matter that there is a good chance that I am taller and physically stronger than him. He just has the skills to tear me apart.
Who's fault is it? His because he is just better in close combat as i am? Or mine because I picked the wrong fight?

But if he isn't looking and I smash a chair on his head it wouldn't matter how well trained he is. He would go down.

That's the kind of pvp I would like to see. Because if you act clever (or just evil ^^) it will even out your chances.

 

Have you tried sap yet? cos thats how i am thinking that skill is going to play out hehe

 

In the combat/skill chat video it was mentioned that the adventure level affects stats in two ways:
- Health and Focus used multiplier of x (1 + level / 20). This is the one that will be significant for the PvP (Lvl 100 avatar has twice the health/focus of a Lvl 40 avatar).
- For PvE, if the level difference is greater than 20, for each 2 level beyond 20 you get -1% less chance to hit (this is around at 23 minutes into the video).

One of the known method we can use to solve level difference is to allow an avatar to artificially reduce his/her level. You do this like following:

• Disallow experience sharing if the level difference between party members are too great.
• Make it so that high level players can artificially reduce levels to match party members (this will adjust their health/focus/hit rate).
• You will still have high level advantages by having more skills. The grandmaster skill teaching bonus will work as well.
• This allows you to fight side-by-side with a newbie on the newbie-centric maps, allowing you to guide them through the normal level progression (no more fast-growing noobs by dragging them through high level maps).
• This extends the game longevity by allowing high level players to return to low level maps and contents.

If you are going to do a mediated PvP, you can just ask all participants to reduce level to 40 (or make that a PvP town rule), and this will place them on somewhat level field.

 

Honestly I didn't. Running a sword/shild and sun combo at the moment.
But it's worth a try! Would be nice if you are right. Though I can already see the problems this skill is likely to create.
The biggest problem is that I can't come up with a valid solution for my wish ^^

 

Played swtor? They did this now. I am still eating every mobgroup alive because the skills are too strong.
That's btw the same problem the forced same lvl pvp has.

 

I'm sure it will need additional tweakings.

 

Sure. But how? That's the problem I see.
Every incarnation I saw so far in an mmo wasn't even remotely good. Nor did it really achieve the goal it was created to meet.

 

I should acknowledge that the amount of information i have from how things works for real in the game is very limited... but that has a good side being that i can focus on just how i feel while playing. And even when i don't mind grinding, i wasn't expecting to feel gated and restricted on SotA. And this feeling comes not only because of levels factoring in game math and the way the progression system is designed, but also many little things that pile up into making what could be a great a-la-UO PVE experience a more-WoW-ish PVE experience. I'll skip the many little things and give my personal experience about the ones discussed in this thread.

If i'm fighting an enemy and i see that managing him is within the limits of my gameplay skill (combining while moving & using the skills in what i think it's the best order & keeping buffs up on me and debuffs on the enemy & etc) so i stand its attacks using my character abilities and the scenario AND i'm also able to release offensive skills, why i'm not able to bring it down? Just because it has an insane amount of health and i keep missing my attacks? That's what i had on WoW, while in UO, if you could stand you had a chance. That was the kind of experience i was hoping to find here, but many times in SotA i find myself walking away from combat because after minutes fighting the same mob he still has 60% of his health left and my resources are worn off... and i'm tired of free-attacking him hile using my focus to defend.

So in the end he don't kill me it's just that i can't kill him. I find that incredibly frustrating and the only explanation i find for that lies in the difference between my stats and monster's (to me stats are like other skill even when they play a major role into how our character works out in the field), and because it has an increased health pool just because it's of a higher level. I'd like to find challenging enemies, not smaller and harder punching balls.

I haven't tried PVP since a long time ago so i don't think my opinion about the status of PVP is worth sharing since it's not based on actual experience... but i can tell that i'm not trying PVP because i foresee my incompetence. If i'm not able to bring down the medium-lower monsters how could i face a player that go against hordes of them without even sweating? Of course the one preventing me to do PVP it's myself, but what's making me taking that stand is the way the game is developing, evaluated from the point of view that previous pvp experience in SotA gave me.

I think that a game where what i do and when i do it matters more than the numbers is more engaging than what we have now. I also wonder what happened with that design goal where our characters didn't need to be maxed to be competitive, because atm i don't feel like we're achieving it at all.

I'd like to be clear on something; i don't want to remove progression at all, i'm just saying that as it stands it's not fulfilling my expectations. For example I agree that forced same level pvp is not the way to go and i fail to see what that kind of experiement my achieve.

It seems i rambled enough... to sum up, i expected SotA progression to behave like the first image but i keep perceiving it like the second one (x axis representing time, y axis representing power gained).

Spoiler

And to add more kindle to the fire, after exposing why levels factoring in math and why stats being part of the skill tree (biggest problem with the progression system imo) are bad from my point of view, i keep wondering what's the good they do.

 

I have no issue whatsoever with the way the game mechanics are now set up over levels/skill progression. I remember my first character in UO......it took me 6 months to go 7x GM.....I actually want that feeling again. I can't wait for the game to launch so that journey can begin.

My only really issue with the alpha/beta is the the grind/wipe.......I would like to see players able to set the skills themselves so they can actually test the game better and have more fun in the process.

 

I agree with this. If Delta Force guy is sitting at a bar and someone pulls out a gun and shoots him...it doesn't really matter if he's Delta force guy, he's dead. Likewise, if you stab someone in the back, it doesn't (shouldn't) really matter if they are level 100 or not, they should be dead.

But what's happening here in the game is that people that are high level have over 500 hit points and every innate skill you can have up to about 30 or so. And if you're significantly lower level you have ZERO chance of winning that battle. But unlike our Delta Force example, the people at higher level didn't train and aren't skilled, they're just people with a lot of time on their hands. That's why counters are so important. That's why the innate skills like DEX, STR, and INT should be zero sum and the higher you get in one the lower you should be in the others. That way, everyone has weaknesses that can be exploited. People at higher levels can still have advantages, just not mindless Super Tank Mage stand around advantages built on the amount of time they grinded out killing the same thing over and over again.

 

It doesn't really matter why it's there, it's not good.

 

Horrible horrible horrible...............

You really do know how to make PvP truly meaningless don't you.

If that was ever implemented I think I would just quit and sell off my accounts bit by bit after launch. It's a tough enough sell as things are to get PvPers to join the game (but believe it or not I am starting to have a little success)......... put that in place then it's just game over.

Owned by who?

If your that concerned about it, set the example..... go flag yourself........and you know what......play the damn game, level up......go to the shardfalls to gather. But don't complain about the mechanics, setting yourself out as a PvP guru because "you own the largest PvP town in Novia", when you firstly don't PvP anyway and secondly don't bother training up a character to the point where you ever could.

Rant over

 

I don't think asking avatars to reduce their levels is in the spirit of pvp. I think making the game so that all players are on the same playing field is a better solution. I don't have a problem with people being more or less powerful in pvp to some degree. But as you correctly pointed out, a level 100 vs. a level 40 character is a BIG difference at the moment. And that's not good for pvp because that level 100 (or high level character) can destroy 75% of the population at will, there's no "if" in the equation, and in my mind that player hasn't earned it, he or she has simply gone into single player mode and spawn camped a few monsters for a ridiculous amount of time. That's just a horrible way to "get good" at pvp.

 

It's not a long term solution, it's a short term test.

I'm just going to be very blunt about this Envy. I don't think you want fair fights. I think you want to wait until launch, get to max level, and then find people you can grief using your max levels to ensure you can't be beaten. If someone is bigger or tougher than you, you'll just run or call in guild mates to "even the odds". That's not good pvp for anyone but you and that playingstyle. I have nothing against what you're doing there, and I hope you have fun. But I don't want the overall mechanics of the game to support ONLY that style of play because it's not going to produce good results for the game or for pvp populations long term.

 

This is going downhill again...

Imagining we're on release and everything's working out the way i'd like things to work out, if a character raised his skills up to the maximum attainable skill set I, the average leveled moderately skilled Joe, can't possibly expect to kill them. They invested more time than me in the game and they've earned their right to power... even assuming we're both equally skilled, they deserve that advantage; it's the reward for their dedication. What i don't think is fair is for "top level characters" to be able to handle many characters at once... even the most skilled player should be killed if choose to pick a fight while overnumbered (let's say 4 characters) unless having a tanky build (going down a bit slowly but eventually falling without support).

This expectations are both for PVE and PVP; the number of enemies in battle should matter more than the level of each player/monster. Atm i can clear almost entirely the bandit camp in North Celestial Wetlands because i know how to move and my level is enough to beat those poor bandits one by one while they chase me in circles. I'd like to point out that when taking the previous example into PVP, players involved are supposed to know what they're doing. Top leveled high skilled players should be able to face many more average leveled low skilled players.

Equality may be a form of balance... but that doesn't mean that the only way to balance things is equality.