[Poll] If there were substantial changes would you do it?

I'm just suggesting that we fix systems both PvP'ers AND PVE'ers use on the regular. Anything that is used by everyone should happen first. That's imho, of course. And they've said they're working on the things I suggested anyway. So, they seem to think they can handle it.

 

@Beaumaris

Maybe the problem isn't that they're PvP zones but that the PvP system in the game as it currently exists really isn't sufficient to be fun for most people. That we need a bunch of different stuff like bounty mechanics with consequences, actual unique rewards in Shardfalls so there's a reason to PvP there, etc...

Also, I think the more regional gameplay and local interaction in the game breaks down, the less likely that "escort" groups can form in the first place. People just teleporting to Upper Tears.

In general, I think a lot of the original design of the game has been undermined, not because it couldn't be made to work if the devs sat down and hammered out workable mechanics, is because there has been so much frickin' player politics pulling the devs in every direction.

@Helvig Ingvildsdottir

And yea, most of the game mechanics were originally interwoven with lore and RP elements, too. Moon towers were originally meant to protect from sieges, not just be deco objects. They were supposed to provide power, too, right?

But a lot of the RP aspects of the original design have been undermined over time, and its a shame, because I think that's what a big chunk of the people at Kickstarter pledged for. Its unclear to me that if the game as it exists today were presented at Kickstarter as "the plan" that it would have hit all the same funding goals.

 

@Antrax Artek You may want to update the totals again.

 

The thread title is on purpose phrased as "If... would you"? I think the majority of players agree that the current game mechanics make PvP a thing for only a very dedicated bunch of elite players. Because incentive is lacking, because the possible losses by far outweigh the possible rewards for most of us. Because critical damages are too high and one-hit-kills are no fun. Because the power gap between different skill levels and builds is too wide.

I don't know why the same thing has to be repeated over and over again. Wannabe-PvPer: "PvP in SotA is not fun". Anti-PvPer: "There are places for PvP, why don't you go there? Nobody goes there.". Wannabe-PvPer: "Because PvP in SotA is not fun the way it currently works?". Anti-PvPer: "I think nobody wants to PvP in SotA, the numbers clearly show this.".

Again, why should anyone that's not a passionate PvP zealot go into scenes that give subpar XP and subpar loot but to make up for that carry the risk that they lose their equipment or have to ransom it? And those passionate PvP zealots therefore don't regularly find people there that they could fight, because less passionate people don't go there. In order to get anything out of it other than the sheer fun one must be very confident to win the majority of fights and be able to get the ransom. Which I am not. I suck, skill-wise and tactics-wise. And I'm poor.

I would totally love it if these scenes got more quests and more hints to discover about the former civilisation and the history of the towns and so on, mutated lifeforms that one can interact with in other ways than just kill them... That would be so great! Would give people a reason to go into ruins other than to do the shroud quest or to gather chaos plant pollen. Even greater if the PvP aspect remained throughout this. And a major overhaul of game mechanics when it comes to PvP so everyone but the most adamant anti-PvPers can enjoy it.

 

Monster fish.

Seriously, the idea that anything special in a PvP area would be "forced PvP" was always annoying to me, even as someone who generally speaking is a non-PvPer.

The PvP mechanics currently in the game are like as if it were designed by a group of half hardcore-PKers and half anti-PvPers, each of which hated each other and couldn't come to any agreement, leaving everyone else out.

 

Well I guess it is more a problem of adjoining game aspects that do not work that well together.
If gear would be unimportant it wouldn’t be a problem to lose it you would just grab some scattered chestplate and continue but in SotA gear is difficult to create as you need the right materials and the right enhancements to create a more or less unique item fitting your playstyle. Losing your gear basically means you are out of combat as you are instantly downgraded and it is even worse if you are not able to get the lost item back as this might mean the loss of dozens of hours to either earn the money or to gather the resources with the need of some kind of transitory gear while you do that.

I think crafting should be complex and difficult to master and I think being killed in PvP should have the possibility to lose something but I’m not sure if losing gear is the right choice in our environment.
E.g. instead of losing the complete item there could be attached “curse marks” on a PvP death if the slayer chose to loot your body. Each curse mark is reducing one random stat by -1 to -3 points.
Like currently you could open the ransom window to pay some gold to remove a chosen curse mark but until that happen you could still continue to use the gear with just a minor disadvantage.

If that is not tough enough maybe the curse could have the possibility to get permanent. E.g. during the first hour it is 1000 gold per curse mark to get most certainly rid of it (99%).
After the first hour the price to remove the curse is decreasing but in the same way the chance to get rid of the curse. E.g. each minute after the first hour it is getting 1 gold cheaper to remove the curse but it is also getting 0,098% more likely to get a permanent curse on your item. After some time the price to remove the curse mark would be 0 gold (= no gold for your murder) but there would be a 99% chance that you will not be able to remove the curse and the -1 to -3 stat will stays forever.

 

Verified Poll Results Updated [June 27 2019 04:21 AM CST]

(Please note: In order to be truthful, votes of users with less than 10 messages on forum are not counted in the verified result but the general result is still visible and available in the header of the thread)

 

You don't lose gear in sota, your gear will be ransomed and you can Pay back for it.
If you are not wearing artifacts or you don't have lot of resources stacked in 1 stack, your ransom wont be higher than 1-2k.
You pay 1k regardless if it is gear sold for 1k in shop of sold for 200k.
Also this is one of the reason why here ppl don't do pvp a lot like in "full loot" games, getting 1k money for 1 kill ( or 100-300 gold, like it happens most of the time ) it's stupid and doesn't worth cause you earn much more doing pve, that's why doing pvp seems a waste of time.

 

I voted yes. So in an unlimited world with unlimited dev resources if PvP could be greatly improved I would do it.

The problem is that world doesn't exist. And the amount of effort likely needed to effectively improve PvP would impede on all of the other systems and content that need help asap. The dev team really needs to buckle down and ask of everything they work on "will this be a positive improvement for the highest amount of remaining and new players?". So while a lot of players may dip their toe into PvP if it is improved, the more relevant poll question might be "what is your priority order for improvements?". I would hazard a guess PvP is not anywhere near the top of that list.

Let's be real - look at Starr's Q2 planning post and all of the features that did not make it in. Even taking into account that some delays happen, the ratio of material new features making it versus delayed is pretty high this time (first Ep. 2 lands, raids, fertilizer, paintable homes, crafting spec, empty row lots, new GM crafting effects, customer NPC dialogue). To take another huge stab at PvP improvement, is everyone good with even longer for other improvements that are already moving at a glacial pace?

 

@AlmostGivenUp assuming that everything you said is right - why more than a year was spent between fishing and custom dungeon и social event? )

 

I don't have a definitive answer on that, but just have to go with that the devs felt fishing and dungeons would be positive to the highest number of people.

 

Just as you said if you pay the ransom and that contains at least 2 or 3 options why that is not happening.

A – you are too slow
In my example of the PvP event in Aerie I could see the items and their ransom pricing in the beginning but ignored that and continued with my attempts to get close the plot as I had nothing to lose anymore. Taking a look on the same day and the half of the items were already gone and sometime later they all were gone. I guess there must be or there was at least in 2018 a defined timeframe within that you had to pay the ransom or the item was going to the looting avatar. If it was a rule set just for this event and nothing that normally happens...bad luck for me.

B – you don’t have the gold
If you are wealthy some thousands are no big deal. But at the time my avatar lived from hand to mouth as I was spending the gold as I got it. (well...not that much different today )
I wouldn’t have been able to pay the maybe 7k or 8k gold for all items...maybe for some but to get them all back I would have needed time to get more money but as I already said I did not had that time.
Of course you can always ask other for some money but the ups and downs in the wallet are part of the RP at least for my avatar.

C - Whatever
If you are wearing crap gear from the start...and as far as I heard there are quite some avatars doing that in PvP situations...they are simply not willing to pay any ransom and instead they are "gifting" the crap item the looting avatar.

 

We have Hospitaliers, perhaps SOTA needs Devetaliers that provide conceptual feedback and focus group time to help orchestrate more effective use of Devs time, following the one touch one time mantra of getting it right the first time...

 

I voted no.

As a heavy armor melee, I really don't see myself doing anything against speedy ranged/magic users except dying. This is even assuming I would have roughly equivalent investment in skills/equipment, which I definitely will not.

Note that this doesn't mean I don't think PvP systems should be improved -- they should.

 

If there was no ransom I would probably do much more pvp, I dont wanna bank my artifacts and clean my inventory, or even have to pay 2k-20k for an item back.

Losing only body parts would be great, and a reduction on crits in pvp.

The one time i tried pvp, i was killed in UT on the last wave.. Sure, but then the jerk kept spawn killing me each time I rezed and even followed me outside to the other ankhs..

Never had time to buff up to have a chance of trying. After 4 times i switched to private and unflagged myself.

Wasnt much fun.

I sure would love no ransom pvp battlegrounds.

 

There should be maybe a better system that explain how ransom works before to join pvp. No need to be wealthy for pay ransom:
1 you can load your inventory with lot of garbage so you have more chance to drop this in a ransom than equipped gear ( ransom choose one equippable item + one other item, combine the value, multiply for 4 and then you have your value to pay back).
2 if you don't wear artifacts and you just wear crafted gear, ransom for every crafted gear is from 1k to 2k max, even if your gear is the best around, it means 10 death is 20k max, no need to be wealthy for pay 20k.
3 not always you have to pay for your ransom, you can recover it for 2 min ( if none already looted it), if no one claim it for 2 minuts, it comes back to your price of the Oracle window and you can get it back for free; it might be confusing sometimes cause the price of the Oracle has a bad UI.
I think it's just bad information between people new to pvp, the limit for new players to make pvp is not ransom, which is cheap and easly affordable, but Many other things.

 

That UT thing is stupid, if you get killed into the Cave you can use just the Ankh into the Cave, because spirits can't cross doors so you will probably be spawn killed. I already reported it like 1 year ago but nothing happened.
Usualy in pvp zone there are chaos Ankh, which spawn you in a random Ankh, this reduces a lot chance to get spawn killed and allow people to escape, if it doesn't worth to fight.

 

Ive never enjoyed pvp, as I always feel like the 5yr old being picked on by 12yr olds.. they push you over easy, take your stuff and.. you didnt stand a chance..

 

Among with body parts, some kind of tokens could be won, then used on some token item vendors, but this will be hard to prevent abuse in the open world, but could be awesome for completing battlegrounds.

Really loved WoW pvp and dungeon system.

 

This was the plan when they first added obsidian trial, they added skull coins ( reward when you kill a player in OT ) and medallion ( reward if you win the OT).
The only problem is you can buy just emoticon and titles with those medallions, and you get some consumable with skull coins, which are weaker than normal potions.
We already have currency and no ransom system, they have just to work on it better, giving ppl better rewards and making it less exploitable.
With obsidian trial and currency system ( we already have in game) they could do loot of cool things with little effort and little dev time, but well, still hasn't added queue system which was promised 1 month after OT came in ( i personaly asked it during a live stream to darkstarr and He said me Yes it will be on soon, that was more than 1 y ago).