Come to Verdantis Shardfall!

@Chris @DarkStarr

Verdantis Shardfall is on the other side of Pre-alpha existence. There's not much there. My POT, Rat's Nest, our fellow pvp enthusiasts The Horned Society and Corvus Peak. But beyond that we don't have a lot going on out here on the Western shores of Novia.

But that doesn't mean it's not profitable! Take a look at all the resources I was able to collect in 4 hours. Note that during this time I didn't see anyone else let alone have to fight anyone (or anything).


So the point I'm making here is not that Shardfall's are easy pickins. I'm sure that will change over time, especially once the looting and ransom system gets put into place. Instead, what I'd like to do is identify a number of changes I'd like to see in Shardfalls as we go forward with development.

REQUESTED CHANGE #1: Why are there monsters in a PVP area? Players are going to be far superior and more balanced than any AI will ever be. So why not get rid of them altogether in Shardfalls?

• Currently you can get the Obsidian Guardians to fight the Flesh Flayers and then pick up the remains. I know this is a bug, but really it's more of a design flaw in my opinion. It's a PVP zone, so why are these things here? What are they guarding? What is their purpose in the context of PVP? Nothing.
• If a mob is guarding a resource, players will simply find a resource that the mob is not guarding. So if the solution is to have mobs guard all resources, then the zone becomes more about PVE and less about PVP.

I'm requesting that we take out all mobs from Shardfalls, and instead have more environmental obstacles. Quick sand, extreme weather, swampy water that slows players down, rock slides, and other unstable areas that create difficult tactical travel and defenses.

REQUESTED CHANGE #2: Make resources based off of something meaningful to PVP. Don't just put high yield resources out there, make the resources more available BECAUSE PVP is occurring!

• Currently the Shardfall simply has a higher resource yield percentage - just because. There's nothing that links the area to PVP other than the fact that players can have PVP there.

What I think would be a great change would be to require some type of PVP sacrifice to get the Shardfall to churn out more resources. It shouldn't matter where this happened at, it could be on the other side of the world. PVP simply needs to be happening and the Shardfall's will respond with a higher resource yield. So if PVP isn't happening, the Shardfalls will go dormant like a volcano! But if PVP is happening a lot (and the closer to the Shardfall the better), then it could erupt with super high resource yield.

I also think that PVP by individuals should be helpful, and that if a player brings trophies of those he or she has killed, that should increase resource yield as well. Kind of like you're putting fertilizer into the Shardfall so you can have a better crop.

REQUESTED CHANGE #3: There has to be a way to keep players from standing around farming Shardfalls. As I stated before, I don't think PVE Mobs is a good way to manage this. So instead what I'd like to see is players encouraged to fight one another based not on guild or town affiliation, but on a much simpler base level.

• Shardfall's in their current state look like they'd be pretty easy for a large guild to dominate. Large group of players kills bad AI mobs, farms everything under the sun, and kills every player that attempts to take a cut of their treasure.

What I'd request is that Shardfall's being corrupt at the core, work against the traditional player models of strength (i.e. larger guilds and groups). To accomplish this, I think that the longer a player stays in the Shardfall without killing another player, the weaker they become.

Large guilds and groups standing around camping the Shardfall would find that they are slowly getting weaker and weaker, so weak that they can't defend themselves and they actually become severely encumbered. (due to the corrupting influence of the Shardfall)

So that guilds and groups don't kill each other on purpose in an effort to abstract large amount of resources that they can divide up later. Shardfall's would require some form of payment for every resource taken from it. Shardfall's would be a zero sum game.

Here's an example: 5 guild members walk into a Shardfall. They are otherwise alone. They begin to gather rare resources, but slowly they become weaker. Eventually they're all loaded up and ready to go. Some of them are extra weak and can't even move. So the guild members kill off the weakest ones and take their resources. The three remaining survivors are now much better off (not weak) having just killed someone.

But now they have tons of resources that they need to get out of the Shardfall with. They can carry it all, but the Shardfall requires payment. So if the guild members pay for the resources with their own money, the guild can have the resources and the Shardfall will allow them to leave.

The trick would be to not show up with a ton of guild members, and instead show up by yourself or with a friend or two tops. You would then want to kill off other players and use what you take from them (ransom) to pay the Shardfall to exit with resources. This would severely limit the amount of large guild activity in Shardfalls and allow solo players an opportunity to compete.

 

Nerf the shard falls !!

 

Nice piece, but I don't PvP... Besides the Tin, I do about the same in the Vale... My mining is still low, so the Tin is sparce (57% chance), once I get to Graff mine I'm sure it will turn around... Thanks for the offer though....

 

I'm sure other people do this amount by fighting "stuff". But this is just the first iteration of Shardfalls. There's all kinds of space plants and rocks in there that haven't been turned on yet.

 

Along the similar lines of the Shardfalls acting like volcanoes of resources, I had posted this thread in the PVP forum about Progressive Spawns in Shardfalls similar to Champion Spawns like Ultima Online or Rifts in RIFT that players could either cooperate or fight over that eventually unlock the resources. The thread goes into a lot more detail. Just a thought.

 

If they feel a need to have mobs in Shardfalls then I think that's a good way to do it - similar to how Control Points work (that's happening now). But I don't see a need to have mobs in a PVP area, I think it's a distraction that takes away from the PVP experience.

 

#1
No thank you.
a)
PvP becomes so much more exciting when you have to take local terrain and dangers into consideration.

Like drawing in that mage within range of a flesh flayer and see them get rooted, then run up to them and crush them as a melee. Then laugh like a maniac...
b)
Its also a balance issue visavi running in with your no-good alt with no gear except some gathering tools and almost no combat skills.
c)
Do I need to mention bots as a variant on b)...

#2
I love this but it has already been considered and rejected by Chris because it is simply too exploitable.
You simply again use alts and guild alliances to get human sacrifice lined up for the slaughter making the scene give out higher pay without any actual added risk.

#3
I really like this concept although the details need some more consideration. You should really start a new topic only on this specific concept just to flesh it out. I just might steal parts of this concept and add it to the old idea of the Grand Ticking Drop. (Watch out for a post later today or tomorrow).
A couple of thoughts:
a)
How about the 'shardrot' would tick as a proximity to the actual shards, where also the extra nice resources are. Like in the crater area within the shardfall.
This so that one can still have those mega-fights and whatnot in the outskirts of the PvP scene without the 'shardrot' affecting you.
Also so that one might rush like mad for the center to try to quickly gather something, then delay tactics could get involved to try to keep you within the proximity.
b)
How about the 'shardrot' would tick faster the more players there are within the rot proximity.
c)
How about the 'shardrot' would be part of the gained resource from the shard. So if I stay and gather more I get both shardrot from the zone and from my inventory.
Then one has to perform an action on a crafting station or similar to make it safe.
That way if you have gathered a lot and we hunt you down, you will still have the shardrot debuff going.
d)
How about the 'shardrot' being a %age of STR/INT/DEX so that everyone is proportionally equally affected?

 

Monsters/animals belong in the Shardfalls because it would make no sense if they didn't. I would even say it shouldn't be out of the question for there to be NPC's there. Just because is enabled doesn't meant there can't be anything else there.

 

I find them to act more as a level gate, and another unneeded determent to solo play. They just sit there, in the case of Flesh Flayers serving very little purpose other than to annoy people. Obsidian Golems act the same way for the most part but are awkwardly mobile and stronger than Flesh Flayers. The best and most fun you can have in a Shardfall is wherever these things don't exist. Case in point, no one is there killing these things, even though they give a lot of EXP and have rare resources attached to them. This could be for a variety of reasons, players don't want to worry about being killed by another player, the PVE is boring, the shardfalls are too far away from the main traffic areas of the vale. Who knows?

But having PVE mobs in PVP areas doesn't enhance the PVP in any way. It distracts from it.

It's not like the mobs shoots at everything near them, they only shoot at the FIRST thing they lock on to. So the trick in PVP is not to be the first thing the mob locks on to. Not a very sophisticated game environment. I wouldn't even call this an environmental hazard, it's more like a misuse of assets.

 

On all your "Alt" arguments, they are going to cost a lot of money to add character slots. SOTA is actually trying to discourage having an alt just for crafting. Also with crafting/combat skills completely separate, there's no reason to have a crafting only alt.

 

What is a lot to you?
Buying a second account on release will probably be <$20. Definately <$40.
Getting an Alt on an existing account from the addon store will probably be less than that.

But the reference is really for PvP guilds who will routinely get extra accounts for obvious reasons.

 

I would like to voice my support for the ideas of a "shardrot" associated with lengthy stays in Shardfalls. Although I don't know if simply killing another player should reduce or stave off the shardrot, but I bet it could be balanced so that it's not easily exploitable.