Please Balance PVP Loots To Prevent PVP Parasite From Being A Viable Playstyle

one very simple reply to this the OP is in a PvP zone you are talking about a whole other issue which as oyu say is being fixed, that is why I was not talking about Insta flagging but the simple PvP mentality.

If you are in a PvP area there is no ista flagging but . . . . .

 

Really? So in your mind balancing bounty prices is not an option, and banning PVP entirely is the only possible solution....

Yep very true Despothes, lots of players who do not currently PVP are put off by the fact that they might loose more than they can gain in hours of grinding in a single death.

 

Ah the you never played UO elitist... actually curious if you've ever played Haven & Hearth which is permadeath not just full loot and respawn aka a year of progress can be gone in a second, oh and you have a sleeper in game even when you're logged off so you're at risk 24/7 if you want to go the "mine's bigger" or "I'm more hardcore" route of PvP. I'd prefer PvP was more like UO where if you're going to partake you're directly at risk so it's all or nothing, high risk, high reward.

What I'm griping about is people who never flag PvP being able to instantly flag to it while doing all their stacks etc if they come across someone who is flagged PvP knowing the risk and getting in what potentially could be a kill shot before the PvP flagged player even has an option to react, while that PvE player is protected until they decide to get in essentially a sucker punch on someone with their hands tied behind their back.
PvE flagged players should have no part in PvP outside of the PvP zones where they are forced flagged period.

Oh and for the record you'll never see me at one of those dance parties.

 

sure it is an option but will do nothing to change what you are talking about, since they do not do it for whatever they get in rewards.

So you are asking for them to "fix" something using a tool, will not fix the problem. It is almost as bad as all the other "fixes" that are (as players are calling it) breaking the game. It is a waste of time and effort.

The problem is not driven by loot or anything that a simple mechanics can or will fix.

You are asking them to try and fix something they cannot - therefore if it really is a problem for you then do not PvP. If you want to take the risk you will have to deal with who you are at risk from.

Or they take PvP out completely since that is the only way to eliminate something driven buy nothing that can be fixed thru game mechanics.

 

You are actually describing a PK..........I don't see the issue.

 

It's all the same issue to me if the ransom is so profitable that you can make the equivalent of a few hours grinding in one easy kill.

Its incentives for the top level players to "farm" low level players... sure you can chose not to participate, but that does not improve game design.

Also it would be a good start to let us SOMETIMES detect thieves who are stealing from us... having them remain completely invisible is an incentive to abuse the function.

There lies another problem, afaik we have no data on how the calculation is made... so we can't argue about a mechanic that was never explained to us.

Sure maybe if I get a real fight (say a range of levels around mine) then there could be full ransom, in fact there could be full loot for all I care. But as it is right now... its just an embarrassment.

 

Yeah right... the solution to PKs was a pvp flag... so obviously that repealed the griefer PKs and left us with jolly lovable honorable PvPers...

Wrong, I never seen so much griefers in my entire life... I grind this game and often it feels like a full time job, only to reward other players that kill me simply because their level is higher.

In fact, logically with such a big imbalance, we actually pushed away all the honorable pvpers and attracted the parasites.

It's even worse that the worse prediction we had about this mechanic...

I am actually a sheep not because I act like one or cannot handle the game... I became a sheep that wolves feed on with 0 difficulty because thats where the game wants me, in fact they laugh and I get insulted "another noob" its the worse of the worse situation I ever had in any MMO.

"you pks only want sheep" oh we heard that sooo often...

Well here we are, trying to have some fun... yet I'm only an ant, a worker that amasses resources only to be plucked by undetectable thieves and to be one shotted.

Thats where the game wants me, because thats when I figure out the only effiscient way to progress to that level is to RMT.

And even if I don't RMT, I still feed the machine because all the time I invest ends up 90% in the pockets of opportunists.

I'm where I should be, a peon, a pleb like I was often called here.

I'm a ressource node.

 

A nice fix would be a reputation system. If a parasite goes around ganking people, they will become known as a ganker.

There is a certain overpriced COTO vendor in most major shopping districts who seems to think ganking people while they fight mobs won't be noticed. Unfortunately people know if you want to be a titania of ganksteria we will stop buying your COTOs. That Titan of PVP cost me nearly 100k and no more COTO purchases from them. No game reputation currently, but players sure can implement one.

@Titania Xylia

 

Don't really get your point. Without the PvP flag there is no PvP. PK is simply a style of play.......in fact I would go so far as to say its a profession. The whole "griefer" thing is so subjective, of course you don't like being killed, of course you don't like being killed again after rez.......the answer is, simply don't play the victim.....it's a choice.

 

We suggested that one so much I have lost all hope of it ever being implemented... but then again Chris is talking about maybe next release pushing a fix we been asking for more than 20 releases.

So I'm unsure how this stuff gets prioritized... we ignore critical feedback until most players have left in frustration and then announce a fix when people resigned on it and don't even expect it anymore ?

What kind of strategy is that...

Also there is absolutely no incentive for players to build a reputation system... most of my guildmates who I know are 100% pvp in other games have completely abandoned the idea here.

They won't flag pvp anymore, and if we go in a high tier zone its party mode or nothing... which completely ruins the point.

So I said the flag system would be divisive... nobody listened to me.

 

Agree, good reply (finally)... its subjective.

Remember I come from UO Siege Perilous where I played for over 10 years... I am USED to bandits and thieves all around and to lose ALL my loot.

Yet it does not feel bad like it does here, is the reason so obscure we can't pinpoint it ? I don't think so...

So sure its fine to leave the playstyle open, people can be pirates, bandits and thieves... and will only play so with people who flag and open themselves, that sounds all dandy right ?

But as much as my CHOICE is to play the victim (in fact my true choice is to play the game as intended, and I love PvP so there I am pvp flagged)... its also as much a CHOICE for the bandits to actually leave the scene when you bring your friends for a revenge, even if its a fair fight they will run.

So sure, that is also their subjective choice... but don't you see how the dynamics make the "energy" involved into a one way street ?

I can get one shot killed, then res killed, then I can call my only available friend in the scene and even if I know we have NO chance of killing the uber elite player, he will run because theres two of us, and there is NO way to catch them back.

Unlike UO I cannot setup a dungeon defense team, they will change zones with no way of tracking them. EVEN WORSE : they can meta and push themselves into another instance of the same scene !

I dunno about you but my experience in UO siege perilous was completely different, I have not met ONE single PK who didn't give me 10 fold the resources I would have lost if I died.

Why ? Because they didn't want siege to become a ghost town... one PK once gave me 10 million gold after he killed me because I did manage to defend myself well. You can be sure I bought another house and was even more attached to the game and its community.

Also there were untold rules, like never PK the NEW guild, which ALL pks honored...

So you see ? Sure its subjective, sure it should be player run... but only if the game system supports said player-run balance system.

On siege if we knew a PK was abusing people in a dungeon, we could call guilds there, and occupy, and send 2-3 scouts in all the other dungeons to track the pks... there was no way they could escape if we chose to track them down, so they would calm down and accept temporary defeat to reorganize.

Is that clearer ?

 

I would surely support this.

As @Ferohir pointed out, there are balance issues with magic. But the hit and run thing is inherent to PvP. Some fight with honor. Some other just want to win to show how close they are to Fastus. There are no rules in such a fight.

 

Thats for the support Milady.

As I was trying to explain... its not even the imbalance which is the worse... its that there is no way for a lower level player to feel implicated in anything.

On siege what made the experience so great is that I could implicate myself even when I was weak... in a RPG way, I could organize the resistance, create ambushes, be a diplomat.

Because both PKs and Anti-PKs didn't want to push players away and end up in a ghost server, the diplomacy was important and made everything smoother.

The Siege community won against every single truely evil PK guild that joined along the years. 10 low level players who really had a motivation to hunt the evil players were really powerful.

Here what would happen to those 10 players would be *fireworks, lightning bolts* all dead... the one high level player would laugh haha, git gud, work on your deck you noob...

They have NO reason, not a single one, to actually feel like such behavior is going to push people away... since its the victim's fault ? You see the huge dichotomy ?

As long as that nuance isn't honored, there is no dynamic world where your choices make a difference.

 

I have decades of playing MMOs as so have many in here. Combining PVP and PVE without significant separation in an MMO never works. An MMO must focus on either PVP or PVE to be successful or provide strict separation between the two play styles.

Guild Wars is a perfect example of a separation system that works. Eve Online, LOTRO, DAOC, and even WoW are perfect examples of functional PVP within a successful PVE environment. Each of those games focus primarily on PVE but provide very divided PVP content.

What we have in SOTA is the absolute worst. Balance will never be achieved and either PVPers or PVEers will be angry and end up leaving the game in disgust. Try playing a "healer" or really any build outside the ganker flavor of the month. Endless, never ending, cyclical nerfing/buffing/tweaking wastes a load of Developer time and pisses off the play base equally thoughout the never ending cycle.

I caution the Devs. Typically hard core PVPers don't have the cash or spend it as freely as PVE players. EXCEPT in a Pay-to-Win game where PVPers will spend a LOAD of cash. I caution the PVPers. No respected, skilled, ranked PVPer would waste a minute in a game like SOTA now or ever.

Why so many PVP zones? We have enough PVP areas in SOTA to populate a WoW server. Why are so many of the "best" zones becoming PVP zones? PVP players are NOT going to "pay the bills" for SOTA, now or ever.

PVP is cheap content on the surface but VERY costly with player retention and Developers hours in a feeble attempt to achieve balance. Give us the tools, as promised, to make our OWN PVE content with monster spawns, etc. Let us create the content.

 

Balance is definitely going to pose a big challenge with pve and pvp decks and loadouts being so different, i do think that some sort of "PVP insurance" would be an awesome move towards making PVP more attractive to the masses though. Imagine if you could pay 10k to the oracle, and have her pay your bounties for you for a whole day. A limit on how many times per day a player can claim a bounty from the same avatar would prevent exploiting of this mechanic.

 

L o L.

 

you have it pay the ransom or don't

Eazy Peazy

Sorry my last reply here, My opinion is known and I understand yours, never going to meet sorry, good luck

 

Yeah fire+air is very strong in open world encounters, but if you are not be able to counter it, you shouldn`t focus on it, because it extremely easy to counter.

 

Anyone see a pattern yet on how people dodge the discussion on the true cause of parasitism/slavery to the top of the pyramidal foodchain ?

Common even @Earl Atogrim von Draken is laughing at the irony here.

 

I like the idea but let's make it fair low levels should pay less than 10k.