New Players RIP

Went to a shardfall today, came across another player who attacked and killed me with one shot while I was halfway dead from fighting a golem. That costed me 2k to get my equipment back from the ransom system. Not a big deal for me as I've built up some gold through the many releases. .So I then tried to take this player head on after I resurrected, (because I always have to know if I could win in an actual fair situation or not). . and died in 2 spells this time. Lost another 1k getting my items back from the ransom system. I've been playing off and on since R13, I'm adventurer level 72. If I'm getting one shotted and two shotted like this. . wow. .New players have absolutely no hope in a PVP situation ever. like it's already over before it's even begun bad. Before you say I'm crying about losing in PVP. . I'm not. . and if you think my problem is being defeated then you miss the whole point. I have no concern over that, but the health of the game concerns me. I just don't understand why anyone thought it would be a good idea to create such a giant gap between players at the time of launch. I think not having a final wipe is a bad idea overall. Some will disagree and that's fine!

 

While yes that will happen. And it does seem unfair, you have to be aware there are those strong players out there. Gaining Intel is really important for your level since a lot of players can kill you.

I would have gotten ganked payed the 2k gold and then check combat log and inspect that player to see if I could fight back and have it worth it.

If you inspect them and they have 1oo+ str 80 dex and 100+ int, good luck. But if you see them around 50-80 in their stats it's more manageable.

Intel is key, especially at your level. They are killable though. Can't run blindly into PvP in shrouds unless your one of those 100+ stats players.

 

I will say though, that this is the first time I've even seen another player in a Shardfall zone since like release 30 or something. .. . . so . . .that's good right? LOL It was my hope that launch would bring in some newer pvp oriented players. . but at this time I'm afraid new players will be put off by experiences like the one I had this morning.

 

I feel ya. I've been 1 hit killed before via sneak attack with a sword.. didn't even know what happened. I had 640 life when it happened. Not complaining either, it is what it is. But there are some serious balance issues, and being an archer.. There's no competition..I can only hope to get a Disable Shot off and then run, hide and recall away.

 

What types of attacks did the person use? Did they use the same attacks in both instances? Did you use anything that would generally counter that? Like OxNull stated, I just think more intel on the attacker is key. Do you PvP a lot?

Also, I disagree that the new comers will never catch up. That is obviously very false. In a few months, anyone can get to very high level in the game and learn the ins and outs of PvP. The higher level player has likely reached the area in skill development in which they have to spend tens of millions of XP to gain a very small amount of overall effectiveness. If you spend an hour a day playing the game it will obviously take a very long time. It is not realistic to assume you'll be there in short time, if you play very casually. If you spend the time, learn what PvP is about, and that is what you want to do, then anyone can get there in a few months.

 

At the end of the day, even with a wipe, the problem presented will repeat. Some people have the ability to grind xp for their character 12 hours a day 7 days a week or more. A new player doing that will surpass most of the 18+ month player base in only a couple of months. The only ones they won't be able to catch are the 18+ month players who have and still do play like that.

The majority of players are going to be laughably behind the top tier. All a wipe does is temporarily resolve that for a couple of months while simultaneously getting a lot of casual players to give up the game rather than try and start from scratch again. The hard cap system would help a little, but not as much as people think because then you start playing round robin with the resists because you can't keep them all trained all the time and the hardcore folks will just rotate around to the least resisted skills and still be nuking most of the people most of the time.

There really is no good fix for the problem. It is intrinsic to the nature of the system. Over time, the diminishing returns for combat skill advancement helps pull away how broken a top tier player can be over a moderate player, but the casual player is just never going to stand a chance.

 

There was a large drop off of players each release due to having to restart each time so by entering a persistent state early the health of the game was improved by an increase in player testing. Personally I've only been testing crafting aspects of the game as I wanted to play the story through fresh without spoiling with incomplete quests and thus my adventure level is a lowly 35 mostly from non-combat skills so I won't be running blindly into (consensual) PVP. I'll play through the story improve my skills against mobs, perhaps join a guild and practice PVP in relative safety, there's dueling other players one on one for practice also.

Whenever I see talk of head starts it confuses me somewhat. There's been plenty of games that I've learnt about long after their launch and never thought it as a deterrent to joining in and having fun including Ultima Online, WoW & EVE. Think of it this way, if there's a huge influx of players when episode two is launched do you think your time invested and the progress you've made should be reset out of some misguided fairness to those new players?

 

He killed me the first time using 1 chain lightning spell. Could have been stacked 5x though. The second time he killed me he used one chain lightning and one death ray spell also both could have been stacked 5x here too. The chain lightning stunned me, and even though I had knights grace, by the time I used it, I was dead from the death ray already. Honestly, no amount of intel would give me any sort of chance in this fight. Only closing the skill level and stats gap would I have a chance against this guy.

 

I'm a bit curious of the circumstances of the 2 or 3 shotted as well. I got really cocky and just ran right into superstition canyon one day during a control point in progress. A group was playing. The creatues were orange to me. I was not prepared at all. I had no buffs on, had eaten no food, did not have blessings on. All of which imo would have helped me run through this situation safely. I am adv level 88, bludgeons gm, healing proficincy chosen. I had no health potions readied. I'm curious of the details too from the op. I'm not disagreeing with that PvP will have a gap for new players and perhaps there could be tooltips for new players that advise in some way or something else.

 

While i agree with you.. lv 72 is low.
I wss 92 .. and getting 2 tapped by certain players.

Its okay tho because it was my fault for not taking my attunement up and every magic skill to 100 for the base resist. That way it takes 4 shots to kill unless i run s specific stancr style.

Lol your experiance sumartizes most peoples pvp experiences in sota... this is nothing new.

Apparently specialties r supposrd to force weaknrsses a lil more.. but cant say ive tested em.

Pvp in sota is bad. You should know this wj3n mosy people refer3nce organized dueling as Good Pvp lol

Side note.. if it takes 5-6 months of pure 8PVe grinding just to get * relatively competetitive in PvP.. thats a bad system.

 

There will always be players who are new and behind the curve @Jordizzle . A one time wipe won't help any.

Personally, I still feel level should matter a lot less than it does and the game should lean more towards tactics over both stats and twitch.

Aside from that, I don't think we'll solve any real problems with PvP until we have a Justice system + meaningful PvP scenarios.

But as things stand now, I'd probably tell new players that though 2k gold sounds like a lot, you can earn it in maybe 10 min, not to carry stuff they don't want to lose if they're not confident in their abilities, etc. New players could use a lot of practical advice that should soften the blow for them should they choose to go into PvP areas (which is entirely their choice).

 

I know this is cheesy, but there is a way to beat the RNG of death in PvP:

• Don't stack multiple items. Split them up, either in 1's (consumables), 5's (scrolls/consumables/reagents) or 10's (reagents).

• Carry a full bag of arrows and split the arrow to stacks of ONE

• Carry a full bag of crapy wands (or whatever you craft)

Basically, if you have 10 things on you and you have a 1 in 10 chance of losing one item, you are going to suffer. But if you have 1,000 items on you, your odds just improved. Yes, every once in a while you will get that 2,000-3,000 ransom, but that's once in a while as opposed to all the time.

Edit
This was changed in R50 (as pointed out by @Browncoat Jayson ) and no longer works this way. My mistake.

 

Isn’t that excessive weight to be carrying all of that stuff?

 

Um... this changed a couple releases ago, and ransom ignores all of that now. You do realize that, yes?

Edit: Release 50 Instructions:

 

ok for the one item that comes from you inventory but since the game take One from your hands, one from your inventory and then a body part??

And Browncoat covered the other part

 

Had not realized that. Woops. Thanks for correcting.

 

I am level 109 and can be killed by one spell from a player who is a friend of mine. I had time to buff up and was ready. One spell and I was dead. Not even a pork related spell. To those with such skills I say bravo!

 

Rest in pieces new players! Better learn to group up if you want to stay alive!!

CUZ IM COMING FOR YOUR SOULSSSS

 

Well, I agree that level shouldn’t matter so much. A while back we had a full party of 75-85s get completely smoked by two very skilled players. I’m hoping that this power difference gap closes up a little in the 90s.

 

isnt everyone going to be reset to starting over when the live release happens? If so then all the newbies will have a chance to catch up to what we have now in pvp land. the seasoned PVPrs will also have to work to where they are now, and the newbs will have a chance to catch up as well! If we dont go completely to level 0 again then there will be hardly any hope for new people in the pvp realm.

I hope everyone starts out at 0 level again, to make the game a bit more fair. if not i still have my alt

*side note- just start at level 0, but able to keep all our stuff in bank or on properties.