Why PVP will never work in SOTA

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Schulz, Nov 7, 2020.

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  1. Cora Cuz'avich

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    And that's not to say if such a massive re-balancing occurred, it wouldn't improve the game for everyone, and make staying desirable. But the reality is, a quick band-aid nerf is far more likely, which is unlikely to fix anything in the long term. I mean look at last time, did it really stop archers from dominating PvP? Clearly not, or this thread wouldn't be happening.
     
  2. Violet Ronso

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    That is because Chris added even more unbalanced things. That nerf happened before Bard skills that shifted the balance in an insane manner, about the same time as Bandit gear was added, that gave even more power, and now there are Epics. Those things, and many others, result in giving the archers even more powerful than they had before.

    A warrior has to reach the archer, which can use Disabling Shot to slow him down, and then lock him down and try to do as much damage as possible to kill the Archer, forget using any bard skills during that period, the archer will simply jump out of the CC, and Usain Bolt his way out of the Bard songs range anyways. Meanwhile, the archer can lay down his Sonata and start plucking away at the warrior until he reaches him. This means that although they can both benefit from the Bard skills, but the archer has a lot more opportunities meaning these will help him far more and is an advantage for him over the warrior.

    Now I did mention, all these things that render the archer so OP, well at least most of them, are not archer specific, but the bonuses they give archers are exponentially stronger than for warriors, and the problem is, Chris never considers these things when adding items, he has an idea, makes it work, but never stops to consider what else could happen, like this new belt that has increased my max hits by like 200-300 points of damage, can't imagine Archers new max hits with this.
     
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  3. Cora Cuz'avich

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    THERE ARE NO UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES IN SOTA, STOP YOUR FILTHY LIES
     
  4. Sara Dreygon

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    Next is a light armor glove that only has a middle finger, only works if you have a bow equipped, and increases crit damage by 200%.

    Edit: also adds 200 magic resist so the middle finger of pew pew works against more players.
     
  5. Cora Cuz'avich

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    But it'll have -10 DA. You know, for balance.
     
  6. Barugon

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  7. Sara Dreygon

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  8. Greyfox

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    All of the hours WASTED on PVP balance and development would have been better spent on fixing quests, maps, adding content, etc, you know the things a functional and thriving MMO require.

    The last dozen remaining players can run around play fighting each other soon enough.
     
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  9. Violet Ronso

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    When is the last PvP balance and development that happened?

    Have you been reporting these? Cause Anpu the great quester seems to say that quests are pretty much working well nowadays, so if you are encountering bugs I would hope you are helping the bug brigade reproduce them so they can be fixed...

    Haven't Maps been being added to the game at a steady pace for the past 2 or 3 releases now? Why are you complaining, you said it, they have low manpower, but they are doing it...

    Uhhh... adding content? Don't they do that every release, and every single release I complain that they just release even more bugs? I don't think releasing new content is the way to go when there are so many bugs...

    You know, the most popular MMOs I know have a very good and balanced PvP environment, meaning once the players grow tired of the current content, they can challenge themselves together, PvP is one of the ways that the community can generate content on their own, because every single fight is different. Do you know how different most fights against mobs are? For me, they are exactly the same : Charge body slam, Use my big hitter (rend or puncture), spam my dynamic slot containing my defensive buffs and my offhand attack with an attack in between (Puncture if CD is back, Push/Pull otherwise), drop my Sonata when I stacked it 5x, rinse and repeat every time the mob I fight stops being stunned. This is true for any mob that has more than 1k health, and you know what? I did the Breach last night, all new scene with a super challenge. I'll admit, the challenge was there, but my combat style did not change a bit.

    Meanwhile when I fight players, I actually try to see who and what my opponent is, I try to maneuver my way to a location that I can use to my advantage, and then I try to outplay someone who is outplaying me! I fought Sorgin a few times last week due to his event, and he caught me off guard with a little trick he used with Chaotic Clone, and you know what, if his stealth didn't drop a second too early, he would have probably had me eating dirt beside his clone, and my god did I feel a rush of adrenaline that I never feel in PvE.

    PvPers aren't asking for new content, they are asking for balances to the combat system which would actually benefit PvE (hey if an archer can't crit for 10k no more, maybe he will want to party up now, guess what, partying helps make a functional and thriving MMO, not single player content!) as well as maybe a little update to the PvP scenes as about 90% of them are completely pointless, they give no exp, no loot, nothing.

    Combat balance isn't a PvP thing, its a combat thing, and affects every party, but somehow we want a "Thriving MMO" as long as we can clear the whole game single player, so let's be honest here, there's a bunch of hypocrites here if this sentence is actually what they think, and we know that many do think this "Make sota a Great MMO, as long as I can solo"
     
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  10. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

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    perhaps make it so that Airsheild and berserker stance overwrite each other. that would change a lot of dynamic's for archers they can have the crazy hits but not with air shield or the protection but not the big dmg and speed from berserk. not sure if that would work with out testing the difference in dps. lol just a thought nothing more.
     
  11. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Hm. I'm not sure that's a good idea. I'd have to try playing for a bit using one or the other instead of both. Air shield is the only thing that gives survivability to a dodge/dex build, otherwise I'd be getting one-shotted in PvE all the time. OTOH, my average crit is around 500. Dropping that down to 150-250 pretty much means back to T5 zones for another year. That's why I dislike talk about nerfing ranged; my build is not the one causing problems, but nerfs are almost certainly going to hit me hard. I'm not against bringing the top end down, but the odds that it wouldn't bring the middle down too are slim.
     
  12. necronut

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    If you have an hour, Jemma, Alphaine, Mimner, and myself had a long conversation about deck theory including our archery and bard builds, the strengths and weaknesses of stacking vs. charging, mind lock vs. not using mind lock, and the ups and downs of both. There's a nice spot where we head to the Breach and you see these two schools of thought work together.

    I'm not at all an expert and very much consider myself a student.

    Apologies for discord audio cutting in and out, I'm sorta working on things. Also, be warned that there is a significant amount of low brow language... kinda my thing. :)

    https://www.twitch.tv/videos/798366573
     
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  13. Sara Dreygon

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    Yes, they never work on those things and spend countless hours on PVP. The next release is all PVP and none of all of those things.

    As Chris mentioned, new players joining a lot lately. I get messages and friend requests almost daily from new players asking for help, questions about my blades guide, help killing things, etc. I have no idea who they are until I chat with them. They end up being new and excited.

    Correct. PVP can be very fun. Just wish I didn't have to switch to bow to kill archers and then apologize for not using swords or poles. Pure melee fights are a blast but once someone takes out a bow it's back to doing something else.
     
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  14. Lazlo

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    Just because it's not really possible to have perfectly balanced PvE and PvP doesn't mean that it couldn't easily be a whole lot better. This is one area where players are a lot more knowledgeable than devs. There's no shame in just listening to them instead of always doing your own thing. Even huge games with huge budgets do this.
     
  15. Cora Cuz'avich

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  16. Violet Ronso

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    Saw that, pretty happy about it, but now I really need to make myself plate armor since I can no longer cast spells, like at all!

    @Time Lord Gotta be close to harvest season? :p
     
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  17. Vladamir Begemot

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    Like Tesla Autopilot, SotA combat has reached its local maximum. Fiddle all you want, it won't get much better, and probably over time will slowly degrade. It is adequate and that is all it ever will be unless it is completely ripped out and replaced by a new system.
     
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  18. Time Lord

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    Most all dissatisfaction with pvp balance in SOTA comes from insisting that class or skill sets be balanced between each other, "in a classless game". In my view, "pvp balance" has been the single most wasteful development demand that has caused our game to lack in all other development.

    What we balance today, will surely need to be rebalanced later, and again, and again, and again. Such balance complaints will also never end, because players will always insist on skill sets competing with each other. Skill Class set preference is an issue that players will always insist on as a force of nature. The ideas of separate, different, equal in competition between each other, seems to be inset into our real life human psyche and will never change, even when every skill is made available for all players to use. The ideas of "I and my kind, and you and your kind" are insisted on within competing, such as pvp.

    SOTA is a classless game, with players that insist on class wars.

    It's not right or wrong it just is, but waists one hell of allot of gaming development time having such a wheel spinning round and round in the mud.

    Ranged attacks will always be better than melee in real life warfare, which is reflected in our game when it comes to balancing melee vs range attacks. Standoff warfare rules all battlefields all over our real world, while the power of armor or shielding always diminishes the closer such an armored attack comes to it's opponents. Our game has many such issues yet in a fantasy dynamic where some real world issues can be wiped away through programing, but then don't seem natural, because they're not. Our taming is a simi-resent development which has enabled the player to use pets as infantry/melee units, while the player takes advantage of stand off attacks. Such new introductions in any and all forms then become a subject within this false balance programing money sink, as all pvp players will always point to what they do not have or are reluctant to have or will never have through personal choice not to have and insist that their personal skill set must be balanced with the new arrival.

    The further our game develops, with every inch or centimeter of progress, comes the demand of balance for pvp within it, which then sucks up miles or kilometers from our game's development funding, due to it being arbitrary to the forces of nature. The forces of real life nature dictate that a bunny is a bunny and a bear is a bear, but the forces of fantasy have all players equal, yet insisting that a bunny equals a bear, or a bear is too strong. All skills being made available to our players here in our SOTA, balance should never be such an important immediate issue with each small change, yet it is, because of player's insistence that our game's skills be equal to each other, no matter it bunny or bear.

    Our SOTA pvp is the duel, because our instancing will never be satisfactory for spontaneous mass battle. There are no masses, therefore pvp in SOTA is just our game's development ball and chain, and bottomless gaming development money pit, from which we can never and will never escape from.

    PvP Balance is the bane, the ball and chain, the cancer, the plague, the malaria, and the leprosy which will forever hold back our game's better development as it throws our funding into it's own privy garderobes :( and it's issues will always be inescapable o_O~TL~

    [​IMG]

    You are so right!
     
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  19. Virsago2099

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    I really hate to see the argument "pvp can never be balanced, so the devs shouldn't waste their time". There are lots of games that have done a good enough job of it to toss that lazy argument right out the window. Look at any mmo that has achieved even moderate success, and you'll see a game that has put in the work to build a healthy pvp environment. Whether you enjoy that aspect of gaming or not, I would hope you could see the importance of it.
    If the over-all goal for SotA is to draw in more players and expand the game, then i would say making pvp fun and accessible should be a top priority. Pvp in SotA right now is neither of those things. And it's gonna take a lot of work to get them there. But all the work they've done in pve and housing over these last few years has done very little to work towards that goal. Not that I haven't enjoyed the work they've done lately, I've been all too happy to sing their praises. But at some point, the pvp needs to be fun, active, and accessible. It is an essential aspect of any online game (especially mmo's) and should not be ignored.
     
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  20. King Robert

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    I gave up on PvP because 1) air shield can be removed with a simple, low level spell and 2) my stun can be shed with simply spamming the space bar. Imagine if I could hit the space bar or cast a low level spell and render physical damage mitigated and have my opponents armor removed? It would be silly, but alas that is the game dynamic. Since giving up on PvP (which I enjoy save for the aforementioned fundamental flaw in the air tree) I have found renewed joy in the game. In PvE my billions of XP in my air tree and solid air gear allow me to enjoy challenging content solo. I cannot solo everything and most stuff is still a challenge even at a decent level (143). I would think once a still gets above like 150 it would get PvP bonus abilities to reward specialists (like air shield above 150 does not vanish when one of two low level spells are cast on you ....... hint hint ....) but I confess I am biased. PvP was great when we had tournaments and teams (teams make setting up an anti-air deck less fruitful since teams won’t be made up of just air mages).

    If PvP was fixed, I would be a big proponent. But with my tree being fundamentally flawed (no other tree is so easily made useless) I cannot enjoy it anymore sadly. Torpid plus Chaotic cast on me, one stun and I die. Despite air attunement in the mid 400’s. That is not balanced. Thankfully PvE is fun, but I would love to PvP after air is fixed.
     
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