ESSAY and thoughts on pvp

Discussion in 'PvP Gameplay' started by Necrothaftis, Aug 14, 2020.

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  1. Necrothaftis

    Necrothaftis Avatar

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    Saving pvp an alternative viewpoint

    Shroud of the Avatar has by far the most challenging and stimulating combat "deck" delivery system of any game I have ever played. Its is ingenious in nature and use of a card(glyph) system. Its is worth building a whole new pvp game around this system, simply for this reason. It allows for quick thinking, strategic in-combat decision making, the combination of different glyph to produce new more specialized or advanced glyffs, and of course for stacking of similar glyph to magnify dps results. It only allows however all these things if the player relinquishes full control and introduces the element of randomness, the open "deck" system to shuffle through. Never too sure what card will be available, needing to react to strategize to adapt. The deck/glyff system is the heart of this game, its the moneymaker, the thing that makes you play. Its Pvp gold. But its in an open sandbox pve-centric game that's struggling to find its niche with people being accused, banned, attacked and trolled whichever side they take.

    PVP should not threaten PVE, it should be independent, never the focus of developers, developers should focus of richer and richer pve elements, crafting elements, bug fixes, pve content design, decos. This is primarily an open sandbox MMO PVE game with a complex crafting system, rich role playing and deco play, a passionate community and the ability to created any play style one desires while adventuring across the PVE landscape. However, to make this game exceptional to give it a layer other games do not have, to make this game also a great pvp game with a healthy player base and the ability to grow there must be kick-arse pvp. Here is my solution which Ive been brainstorming for months.

    Firstly the solution must be eloquent. It must reorganize elements available already in the game. It can't demand hours of rewritting-redesigning new systems it must use what's available. It must be implementable with the resources at hand. IT MUST TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE DECK/GLYPH SYSTEM.

    I propose that all pvp damage must be done using chaos spells. Only chaos works on other players or their pets when flagged pvp. Chaos does no damage in pve.
    you cant use chaos to do a Control Point or Upper Tears. You can't pvp another player with a fireball or puncture or rapidfire glyff only with chaos glyffs.

    Chaos will need to work slightly differently.

    Firstly remove chaos specialization and remove the specialization bonuses from spells.
    Most spells can remain the same, these are CONFUSION, CHAOTIC CLONE, TORPID TORMENT, CHAOTIC FEEDBACK, JUXTAPOSE, CHAOTIC STEP. To increase there affect we rank them up. No change from what we do now.
    Secondly when you flag for pvp, you apply a pvp aura buff this buff reduces all red glyph dps by -50% (THIS IS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT ALLOWING FOR MUCH LONGER FIGHTS AND TACTICS (PVP THAT LASTS 3 SEC IS WORTHLESS AS A CONCEPT FIGHTS SHOULD EBB AND FLOW)

    All OTHER SKILLS

    Chaotic Bolt (red glyph skill) can be combined (using the combo system mechanic the same way a douse+juxtapose=evaporate) with any red but also specialized skill in the COMBAT/MAGIC/TACTICS trees.
    For example im specialized in fire and sun. In fire I can use any red attacking glyph to combo with chaos bolt. (5 skills in total) In sun I can combo 2 skills with chaos bolt because there are only 2 red skills.
    How much damage will that do? Chaos Bolt will actually work to do nothing but allow the use of the specialised glyph. It will do whatever the specialized glyph says. So it will act as a conduit to turn that skill on in pvp.
    Example at 380 fire attunement my lvl 140 firearrow does 90-140 fire damage in pve single stacked. Comboed with 140 chaotic arrow (90-140)*(-50%) ----> 45-70 in pvp. Stacking increases dps

    Chaotic Shield remains as it is with one major change All LISTED GREEN BUFFS ARE APPLIED (all 12) There are no negatives they are removed.

    Tabula Rasa - Healing spell only works when flagged (similar healing touch) All green PVE skills turn off when flagged
    This means everyone heals from same skill. Potions should also work in pvp. THATS IT! also Specializing in death disables Tabula Rasa when flagged.

    Summon Deamon - Only works when pvp flagged.

    Remember:
    All (blue/yellow/innate non chaos glyph work in pvp like they work in pve)
    All gear perks work in pvp so having -making- buying gear is important
    EXP grinding sandbox style still important
    PVP damage greatly reduced along with healing so killing is much slower fight longer strategy and tactics come into play
     
  2. Abstrax Phoenix

    Abstrax Phoenix Avatar

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    Cool concept, but it wouldnt really work. So first off, you say that when pvp flagged you want damage to be halved. How would this work with PVP zones that have PVE in them to do? Also, removing chaos specilization and making chaos skills not being able to be used in PVE will kill quite a few builds, I know a lot of people who use chaos skills in PVE (myself included). Next, Chaotic Shield applying every single buff would be game breaking, chaotic shield is unpredictable for a good reason, the resistances you get from it are very huge. I dont think it would be physically possible to kill a person that is good at this game if these changes happened. So damage is halved, dps is also slower because you have to use each of your skills with a chaos bolt, Chaotic shield gives you crazy high resistances to everything. It would probably take 15 seconds of straight dps onto a person to do like 700 damage, but then they can chug one potion and be back to full hp. Anyways, The only 3 viable builds for PVP would be Archer, Polearms, and Earth Mage. Stone Arrow , Piercing Shot, and Puncture would all be a LOT stronger than every other skill in the game because they just go through armor.
    Also, healers and death mages would be practically useless. Healers are only going to be able to heal with tabula rasa, no life skills. And you said tabula rasa would be like healing touch, meaning you would have to be on top of your teammate to heal them. Now onto death mages. When at 1 HP, a Fully built death mage with high end gear, all legendary artifacts, and high skills versus another person with all the magic warding possible (flute of defiance, warding gear, tons of death attunement, death warding and more) hits that person for about 350 with a 6 stacked death ray. They would also take about 50-60 damage from chaotic feedback in return. Now, that same Death Mage can hit for about 2.6k on a training dummy in the same circumstances. Thats nearly 7/8 of the death mages damage negated. So now with this change, death mages would be able to hit for about 175 on the high end with 1 hp and a 6 stack death ray. Not to mention they take another 50-60 damage from chaotic feedback.

    PVP in this game used to be balanced. This was before Warding Skills, Bandit Armor, and Bard was added. Once all of those started getting added, this games combat has gotten worse IMO.
     
  3. Joe Zhudarak

    Joe Zhudarak Avatar

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    Nothing skill related need to change in pvp, we only need some balance specially in gear and some meaninfull pvp systems... starting with a pvp queue, and a decent ranking system.... maybe a faction warfare in the future.
     
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  4. Abstrax Phoenix

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    I disagree. I think bard, puncture, and piercing shot all need to be nerfed.
     
  5. A'chelata

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    along with death mage
     
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  6. kaeshiva

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    Thing is, this month something will get nerfed and next month it will be something else. We've been seeing this pendulum go back and forth for a while now. And nobody agrees on what should be getting nerfed. Meanwhile, the rest of the game systems don't get finished cause we're just having to nerf and nerf and nerf to prevent unintended skill synergies, and quite often when you 'adjust' something for PvP it has considerable impacts to the PvE. What we really need is a separate system for PvP stats as many games do that adjusts how skills function vs. a player or vs. monsters so they can be adjusted without screwing everything up. I like the idea of integrating this with chaos magic in some way.
     
  7. Ancev

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    Would prefer there are 2 scales of damage.. one for PvE, one for PvP.. and a capped skill system similar to UO for PvP. Maybe something where PvP players can still sink xp into the skills but it constricts the caps of other skill trees, possibly handled by specializations. The skill tree specialization would raise the cap for those skills. This way you can make adjustments and balance PvP skills, and the PvE skills will still be powerful and unaffected. This is helpful because the PvE mobs can continue to have 100's of thousands of hp, and the PvE skills only get checked when you're fighting mobs.

    Then if you introduce 'Skill Scrolls' or 'Skill Glyphs' that you find in the loot system, you'd find the PvE version of the skills in PvE zones, and PvP versions in the PvP zones. You'd access the PvE and PvP skills through a tab in the Skills menu (K) and perhaps a way to filter the PvP skills from the skills menu for players who have no desire to PvP.

    The 'PvP skills' (any skill that would give an advantage in PvP) can only gain skill in PvP zones and have accelerated skill gain so players can work up their 'PvP versions' of the skills again. It would make housing more meaningful in Blood Bay, and all this being said, all of the PvP zones need to be reviewed/reworked and the loot tables and nodes should be adjusted to reflect the unique characteristics of the Shardfall and Ruins in the game. PvP shouldn't be about endlessly grinding mobs (although, PvP players would still be required to do so to get into higher level PvE areas) it should be more about end-game content.. factions, guild wars, territorial control, etc.

    Yes, it's essentially a skill wipe for PvP.

    Disable or restrict PvE artifacts in PvP zones? Probably.

    I'm thinking in the PvP zones you have different sets of wood, ore, cotton etc and you use those resources to make different PvP-specific tiered crafting components and they make the PvP versions of the base crafting recipes. But the crafting skills in the PvP tab can only be raised in PvP zones and they are capped at 100 (?) This would prevent high level crafters from creating overpowered gear to some extent and it would be more balanced in PvP. Maybe there are different ways to handle this.

    So you would have 2 sets of gear that you use, one set for PvE one set for PvP. When a mob attacks you, the PvE gear is checked, when a player attacks you the PvP gear is checked.

    I've thought about how things might be if skill and adventure level was capped in all PvP zones but you'd still be dealing with the problem of making PvP adjustments and affecting the behavior of gameplay for PvE.

    Oh yeah and maybe no XP pool for the PvP skills.. just a pure use based system.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2020
  8. Restless

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    Careful what you ask for. These days “nerfs” are effectively buffs.
     
  9. Greyfox

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    I said from day 1 PVP wouldn't work in Shroud because of balancing issues. You can't have PVP in a PVE game unless totally separated like WoW. SOTA says, yeah we can, but it's ****.
     
  10. Violet Ronso

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    Funny thing is, these exact things Abstrax mentionned have been demanded for more than just a few months, they have been OP since the introduction of and bandit gear, warding skills. Prior to this, PvP was pretty balanced... Honestly, it's been the artifacts that have had the biggest role in unbalancing this game.

    Elder Scrolls Online has a great PvP system, yet it includes many things that most people say is impossible : Questing in PvP areas, PvE in PvP areas, Sieges and what not, actually ESO managed to have me play 80% of my game time in PvP zones, the 20% left was doing my daily dungeons and actually doing the story line once, but once I was done with the story line and managed to get the boss gear I needed, whew, I would be 100% of my time in the PvP areas. It's possible, you either have to balance around PvP and then implement PvE following that same balance, or inflate stats in PvP areas, not only to mobs but to players as well.
     
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