Getting more players into pvp zones

I know this has been discussed before.. tried to find an existing thread to share thoughts but took too long to find one.

Perhaps this is just a matter of "work in progress" but one thing I find confusing is why bother putting high level boss type mobs in some of those zones with crappy loot? A friend and I spent 15 minutes (seemed like an hour) fighting some red elemental.. used a ton of arrows and potions and the stupid thing drops 14 gold and a few obsidian chips. We didn't waste time on the other one. Also the chests were empty. Went to another one today, one of the newly redesigned pvp zones and spent a death and a chunk of time fighting an obsidian troll (orange to us) same thing.. crappy loot. Not worth the effort. The risk vs reward thing is really off with these zones. We're checking them out to see the awesome scenery but judging how abandoned they are.. people are thinking the same thing we are. Reward isn't worth the risk.

Tempted to say what zone/spot I do love to spend time in but I'm actually starting to suspect portal takes notice of the popular fun areas and systematically eliminates them.. crazy... right?

my 2 cents.

 

I am not setting foot in a zone where I will have my equipment looted and/or stolen. Something tells me I'm not alone in that. Getting ganked & spawn camped is one thing but coming out with less than I went in with (and not talking consumables) makes PVP a non-starter. The more the rewards are pushed up the more the cries of mandatory PVP will be heard. Dial down the costs and you might see more people flag.

Regarding your epic fights with no loot, that's standard of the game not something PVP specific. Bad luck you didn't get an artifact.

 

Ehhh..
Ransom system means worst you can loose is small amount of gold.

That being said.. theres nothing stopping you from carrying 20 rusty daggrrs so even if i DID manage to rob you or kill you in pvp.. the chance of it being something you would even bother rebuying is sooo slim.. its part of reason no one bothers from this perspective.
And yours.

Whole PVP system is so poorly done it doesnt satisfy ANY pvp fans..

I dont even bother trying to sugges5 things pvp related anymore. Sota has 0 pvp identity and i see none in the near future.

PVP in this gsme is basically adv level 110+ fighting in the fall the 1 or 2 times a week they see each other.

Or organized dueling.

 

This is well-trodden ground in MMOs. You generally won't get non-pvpers in PvP zones. You can add all the double resources/unique dungeons and bosses/power scrolls/better bounty payouts/way more valuable asteroids and nodes/loot containers filled with valuable golden banana blueprints and such all you want and it still won't work.

What they need to focus on in my opinion is making the zones more attractive to the people who do want to PvP, or might be interested in giving it a try, whether that is by adding things for those players to fight for control of or whatever. Things that drive conflict.

 

Loot would be a start. If they told me the only place "magic weapons/armor" dropped were in PvP zones, yea I'd probably be there. This is of course assuming we're not talking 1/10000 artifact drop rates, but a more UO'esque magic item drop rate where stuff drops all the time, and rarely something is worth keeping.

 

The terrain in the refurbished zones are amazing. They would be a lot of fun with multi group fights or organized events. All kinds of places to hide, sniper camp, set up ambushes.
- Virtue League style guild/group fights across an entire pvp zone.. last one standing wins for the team
- Capture the flag
- Jail break (try to make it out alive)

Absolutely. How about a resource that enables you to raise masterworking or enchanting success probability for the time it takes to make something? I'd be all about the pvp no matter how bad it is.

 

Ransom is an hour or so of gold grind or a couple bucks to buy it. Per item.

I consider the stack splitting to fill inventory an exploit even if the devs don't.

 

A random encounter with a roadside bandit now can net you up to 100 gold, scrolls/magical reagents and gem fragments. I think Port is scaling up the rewards starting with the most basic encounters. Used to get 15 gold, a reagent or two - really hated opening the chest at the old fights.

 

Very, VERY few gamers want to experience actual loss. Proof? Very, VERY few games actually feature it. Those that do, with the exception of Eve Online, generally don't have populations last in the MMORPG genre to any meaningful degree. Just look at what some older games experience when they launch new fresh-start servers (or equivalent for that game). The PvE servers have a population that makes it beyond the honeymoon period (a week or two). The PVP servers become ghost towns almost instantly.

PVPers in MMORPG's are a dying breed. They've shifted to MOBA's or one of the mass produced zombie serial killer simulators.

This game lacks what I think most would label hardcore pvpers. Or honestly even casual pvpers. I really think, for now, PVP needs to be shelved or left where it is (as it impacts basically nobody relative to the population of the game) and picked back up once they have combat balanced, decay sorted, etc. Attempting to juggle too many features is going to result in some being dropped - it makes sense to choose which one you let go of while you can still make that choice.

 

You sir make entirely too much sense. As such, this fundamentally can't be where we go from here =(.

 

Reason I don't PVP right there. Why would I want to spend time unstacking all my resources adding a bunch of crap to my pack. Takes to long just to lower the chance you won't get hit harder from a randomized crap ransom system. It's funny how the defense of this is that it's only a little gold so it shouldn't matter, great it's only a little gold it shouldn't matter to take it out. Add drops for half resources, half pots, half food and anything collected while in that scene.

Now you have people going there for resources, you have people going their to hunt resources. And a main objective of getting the resources out of the scene, so you have a chance of rezing and recovering your resources, or a partner recovering them before they get to an exit.

 

This game has a very very vocal and agressive anti pvp crowd.
That's pretty much the answer to everything you might ask or suggest.

 

I think the main problem is the first part, "Getting more players". Until we get the expected release player base, PvP is a niche in the niche that is SotA. Face it, most people don't want to be the sheep, which for some PvPers is really all they want out of it. That's not even the interesting part of PvP, but also there is no negative for playing that way, since we don't have virtue penalty or red-tagging for it.

At least those with Dev+ access can see those cool areas "safely" once a month during QA.

I think one of the problems there is that item stacks are all-or-nothing with the current loot system, which doesn't work well with a reagent system. When Blood Bay as new, I had harvested about 200 black pearls, then someone pickpocketed them from me. If there had been 1000 in that stack, he would have gotten them all at once just the same, never mind how big the pile was. Loot would have worked the same way. There needs to be a somewhat random limit for looting big stacks.

 

I dont mind about loot or decay, slow progress and such.

About PvP i mind:

1. Scenes are Lore relevant to Roleplayers and very beautiful and "interesting to explore" at least for roleplayers.
And i dont say they need to be PVE Scenes, although i wont dislike it atm because...

2. PvP is unbalanced and specialisation comes in too late or after having a lot of Skills at 80-100 already. If thats the measure pvp is for people who powergrind to be "ready" or after 2 years constantly playing.

3. Gear is to important

4. Consensual PvP means to me PvP is an option. Actually it's an Option, but there are a lot of baits to entice PvE players into pvp scenes, not prepared to compete with a PK who has higher level, better gear and a fotm build.
Xp Bonus and Mainquestlines are the baits. To Circumvent it, you need the Info and disregard the Quest Text.
And to renounce a xp Bonus you need to make a bad experience or dont care about progress, whats the most difficult to do in life - to dont care about progress anymore.

Until pvp isnt balanced, until we have no real softcap (to balance), until we have people with all main and important skills gm'd, until we have no Limits that need us to make decisions while building an Archetype, a class out of the classless system, until we have gear very important for pvp (what means grind to hell to get it the one or the other way) and until there is nothing to fight about and i need to unstack tons of crap to Circumvent loosing stuff or had to pay random etc..

In short until i need to prepare to be PvP ready is a mess and takes tons of time and artificial handling ... until all that PvP is nothing for me and i am really annoyed about to not visit these unique and lore relevant scenes and see baits to entice me in things i dont want to do and were anounced to be consensual.
The most disappointment is about Main Quests. Not only the Path if Love, but also the Oracle Quest who want us to visit all Ruins Scenes.

 

And this is why MOBAs will be the better way to PvP, they are much more inherently balanced because you're not grinding a PvE character for PvP. It's just inherently hard to balance for both.

Except for the gankers that is, and guess who we will have left if "regular" PvPers are going somewhere more appropriate for dueling and team-v-team fights?

Meanwhile, people like me who like "players-as-a-team vs mobs-as-a-team" (or almost any sort of collective jump-right-in FvF where you don't have to fuss with making a party) are still left out.

 

Considering ive has +13 gear.. bows and armoe go up in ransom.. snd im yet too see anything over 2k..
( honestly highest ransom ive had was my pile of obsid chips at 4k )
Guess it depends on what gear you got.. but generally ewuipped stuff is 1200 to 1700 g. From my experiance.

I dont consider it an exploit if the devs have acknowledged it for a year and said its working as intended.. its then just a shitty mechanic. Lol

 

im lvl 80ish, im openly flagged almost constantly unless im crafting in town because well valor will find you. i frequent the fall and drw and some other fun zones for pvp and i fight and die plenty. the cost of pvping is negligable. i dont split my stacks and i dont carry a bunch of extra weight because im lazy and already carrying 4000 arrows around. my highest random was a stack of sulfuric ash for like 3 or 4k, ive lost artis, my +12 bow random armor pieces all the time they dont cost more than 300-400 gold.

i'd love to see the pvp zones used more, libras ruins or however its spelt is a cool zone, blood bays pretty interesting. right now everyone just farms the high end bosses either solo or in groups and if there already someone at the dragon they go friends online and farm it there. this is causing massive amounts of artis to be on the market which portal will probably just nerf the drop rate so no one wins. really they need to make it so friends mode has a much longer respawn and in multi fighting bosses should flag pvp.

 

I may well be off in costs because quite frankly I'm not going to test it on a live server. Was of the impression it was 2-4k per ransom.

If the loot mechanic is (legitimately) easily avoided if you know and driving people away from PVP, WHY THE HELL IS IT STILL IN THE GAME? Annoyances for no purpose might have worked in 2002 but don't today.

 

See what i am talking about.

 

SotA isn't designed for PvP to be enjoyable in any way:

• You lose more than you gain (equipment, gold, resources, etc). The price for ransom is really high when you consider how often you die vs how much you gain per loot (player or mob). I wouldn't mind so much but when you start losing stuff you had equipped (you know, what's vital for you to participate in PvP) and you have to pay off the ransom and re-equip all your stuff, it's a hassle I don't want to deal with. even if you loot items off of mobs and players, won't get the gold until you leave PvP and sell the items to get the gold to pay off your ransomed items... so you better hope that whoever you kill (assuming you can) pays off his ransom(s).
• There are no factions for individuals to be part of... and the targeting system can't accommodate (archers accidentally shooting allies that aren't in party).
• It takes place in 5-skull rating areas... which a lot of people can't survive through much less fight other players. So participation is low.

... And that's just for PvP Zones where it fixes the most glaring issue of all: not being able to preemptively strike down a non-flagged player even when you know he's chasing after you.

I'm a huge PvPer. I play Shooters (even MMO shooters like Planetside), MOBAs, used to do arenas, battlegrounds and world PvP in WoW, 4v4 and 8v8 arenas and tournaments in GuildWars, duel and PKK in Diablo. I log in Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy 14 specifically to do PvP.

@Chris I avoid SotA's PvP like a plague.

Last time I decided to hang out in Blood Bay, I ended up being broke because I kept losing my pants and my +1 dagger each time I'd die. The cost for participation was 900g per death. Which is roughly the amount of gold I'd earn if I was doing a full "kill stuff until I'm over-encumbered and sell everything" run.

You only come out on top if you actually win fights; this is not a reality for most people... especially those who are learning how to play/fight.

Any suggestions you might have to circumvent the numerous issues just highlights how pathetic this all is.