Changing attitude towards PVP...

My one and only time I was flagged pvp was when I went and entered a pvp zone to collect chaos pollen to update a missing recipe on the wiki.

I proceeded to kill the various plant creatures at which at one point while in the battle with one, I was suddenly getting hit with lightning. At first I thought it was a Kobold Caster then realized it was a player. Knowing how terrible my skills were and my low level at the time, I then just stood there and waited till they were done killing me.

I then resurrected and then left the scene as I had collected enough pollen to verify and confirm the recipe for the the wiki.

Was I even shocked I was killed. Not at all. In fact I was a bit surprised I was able to kill quite a few of the plant creatures before someone rushed in and immediately spotted and then started to kill me.

And that was the one and only time I have or ever will pvp. It just doesn’t appeal to me (at least for now). But I will always 100000% support the players who like and enjoy pvp.

 

Rends can be removed yes, but not the healing debuffs, so relentless rends mixed in help, one downside of blades surprisingly is it's lack of range, an extra bit of reach was added to bludgeon not long ago, and the same would help with blades. Nearly none of that really matters at first if you're competing with people who haven't pvped much either.

 

Yea I agree with about all of your post, though I'd have to point out even by what you're saying its not not either/or, its both of the above. Incentives can be part of the purpose and fun of RP. One of the things I've been trying to communicate is that a big part of the players avoiding PvP are RPers, who would enjoy incentives, because it gives the PvP more purpose.

But, again, and this is also a point both of us are making, if the actual PvP sucks for them, the incentives aren't going to make up for PvP sucking.

We need a formal bounty system in the game.

 

Tldr, but nope; regarding no open pvp

 

A bounty system sounds great.

 

Technically, there is no "open" PVP since one has to voluntarily flag or enter a PVP zone. There is nothing keeping people from grouping up to take on PVPers. Many just don't do it and prefer to avoid it completely. Why can they avoid it completely? Because there is no "open" PVP. There is nothing wrong with the current PVP system. The focus of the current system just isn't palatable to everyone (including me until recently). But that doesn't mean it should be eliminated and another system put in. For instance, Leave the Fall to the chest pounders. Obsidian Trials is for lower level people to practice. And even the Ardoris Arena is being worked on to have teams.

 

In case you haven't seen this, a couple of years ago I did a thread suggesting a kind of sketchy outline for a justice system in the game that I think both RPers and PvPers would like (which I think is important, I think its important to create mechanics that bring everyone together, especially including the RP side of things), Creating a justice system .

 

The SWG model for bounty is ideal, There was some apprehension it could be exploited some how

 

How did that system work?

 

Creating a fully fledged justice system would be a lot of dev work and tbh there are probably more pressing matters needing attention. What was suggested isn't far removed from the system in ArcheAge - which was entertaining at first at least but didn't do much in the way of modifying any behaviours as it was billed as doing.

Eve online showed us how a simple bounty system just gets exploited - people would just get their friends or an alt to kill them and the bounty just ended up as free money. (They tried to fix it with some tweaks but its been removed from the game for now for unrelated performance reasons.)

 

It all depends on how it can be exploited, and what's the end result.

Old school runescape created a "Bounty Hunter"System that seems to work just fine : you kill your bounty target, you obtain a relic. If you already had a relic in your inventory, it gets upgraded. This relic is dropped on death, and bounty targets were selected at random from anyone in the PvP environment.

This generated currency out of nowhere, but at a rate which was inferior to PvE, but still rewarding. Boss mobs in the PvE environment had a change to drop these relics so even the PvE crowd could loot these relics if there were willing to risk being in the PvP zone.

Is the system exploitable, yes, but it's not generating gold as fast as the best PvE sources, so where is the issue?

I feel like no matter the PvP rewards system they implement, if the outcome is similar to Grinding a T8-T10 scene, then there really isn't any issue with exploiting/farming it.

 

There are other reasons to Guild, beyond PvP. Still, I agree for the need for something that create incentive for Guild Wars. I remember seeing guilds battle in the middle of towns in UO, but after 2 years in SotA, I have not seen any sign of a single guild war. I think bringing back the Order/Chaos Factions as a basis for guild wars is a good idea.

 

Greetings Avatars!

I'm Winfield, an old man who played UO in Felucca long ago. I don't play PVP in SotA (yet!) and I am very much enjoying this topic conversation!

Somewhat aside, I want to share a short REAL story about my PVP experience, even though it was in UO. I hope to have or see similar PVP Quests in SotA too! Do ya think we can?

SCENE: UO Chesapeake - Felucca - Yew Moongate - Open PVP area.
Date: July 18, 2005 - this really happened!

(see actual 2005 screenshots in the spoiler below)

ACT 1: Hiding at the Yew Moongate (open PVP area on Felucca) - Watching!

I appeared at the Yew Moongate (hidden) in "newbie clothes", the kind that when you die you don't lose. Why? I was not there to fight. I was there to watch some PVP fights because I never really saw it "in the wild" outside of PVP tournaments.

Two guilds/groups battled each other around the Yew Moongate; one red and one blue. It looked like fun, but was just random hack and slash, not a force-on-force scenario. They were having fun I guess.

I stayed at the Moongate (still hidden) and did not move; I just watched.

I got bored after about 20 minutes of this random killing between their groups. (Yawn!) I thought, "Is that it? Just random killing?"

So I decided to step out of hiding to see what would happen. Oh my!​

ACT 2: Un-hiding at the Yew Moongate - Instantly killed, then not so much.

I stepped out of hiding into the unprotected area of the Moongate still in newbie clothes while only carrying un-lootable/blessed items.

I was immediately killed by any red nearby (I was blue) and the blue guild did not care! The reds went to loot me -- there was nothing to loot.

I rezzed and got killed a few times until this seemed to bore them. They stopped killing me instantly and I could walk around a little before taking the random shot.​

ACT 3: A Quest! Time to Sell Some Fish!

Since I liked creating random player-quests back in those days, I thought about this for a few moments.

"Fish!" I said to myself. "There must be a fish quest somewhere to be had! Indeed!" I went and got some fish and tables out of the bank.

I stepped out of the moongate again and they did not kill me -- they were already bored with me.

I set up a table in the open area and put down a candelabra and some fish. Still they ignored me, and some stood a moment looking at me with some comments like "wtf".

Then the red's surrounded me, did not kill me, and kept all blues away from me like Capture the Flag!

The blues attacked the reds to get near me. The reds attacked back. No one attacked me.

The tables turned, and the blues took over and defended me. The reds attacked the blues to surround me again.

This went on for about 30 minutes back and forth. Reds attacked, blues attacked, blues chased, reds chased, control changed hands! Rinse-repeat.​

Spoiler: IMAGES - Screenshots

"Fish!" I said to myself. "There must be a fish quest somewhere to be had! Indeed!"

I went and got some fish and tables out of the bank. I set up a table in the open area and put down a candelabra and some fish.

Still they ignored me, and some stood a moment looking at me with some comments like "wtf".




Reds beat off the blues and "captured me". Like capture the flag. They stopped killing me.



Blues beat back the reds and "protected me".



Mayhem! Lots of fun!

Later, I bowed, packed up my things, said goodbye, and stepped back into the Moongate.

/end quest

EPILOGUE: The Noble Exit.

After a while I had to go. It was great fun!

I said goodbye to the blue team that was currently "in control". I recall some reds came up too for a moment, almost like they had a "ceasefire" and I said goodbye to them too.

Then they all started randomly killing each other again while I packed up my table, candelabra and fish and stepped back into the Moongate.​

Huzzah!

 

A fine story indeed!!!
Lord British

 

Too bad such story just couldn't take place in SotA's systems.
There's no red or blue. There's no order, it's pure chaos.

 

Just a reminder here that one of the little-remembered problems of SotA has an effect on a lack of fun: there are simply too many scenes for the player population. The game was clearly designed for 10x-1000x the number of players, and they simply did not appear. This limits and dilutes the number of players that can occupy all those PvP zones, or can create a PKK posse. (I still think there will be more people "sticking" once enough content has been added over time. There really was little chance when being compared against games with 10 years of content and a lot more publicity, and nostalgia too.)

And I know that Chris wants to add a "castle defense" type thing. That should be interesting, and I continue to wait for it.

 

Everyone died a lot but had a great time! Dreaze Zabrone, a non pvper was brave enough to enter the zone, fish, and won the contest! I think she only died once because the veteran PVPers were more interested in fighting each other. So thank you to Vesper, Sara Dreygon, Kinetic Fed, Jemma Starr, Revenant, and Deltalok (I hope I didn't forget anyone) for making the whole impromptu event fun for everyone. There was no griefing, no res killing, or chest pounding. Thanks also to Cowboy Bill, Strider Green, Archibald Leatherneck, and Drease Zabrone for joining in on the fun! Thanks to Asmodi M'hul for starting the impromptu fishing contest.

 

Superb! Very impressive to see such in a combat zone. I'm almost compelled to get my fishing pole right now and head to The Brave Coast!

Of course ... Congrats to Dreaze Zabrone, the fisher, and Asmodi M'hul for the contest (quest)!

 

I see new faces every PvP Fishing contest I run and that's why I do it