The Grind

I was pretty happy gettign 2 kills in an all out brawl the other day. Im satisfied with that

 

You can get the strength doing that, and story missions are also a grind.

 

I have fallen asleep at the key board so many times while grinding in SOTA. I often will find myself fighting a skeleton and wondering, was I asleep for the last 10 minutes, how am I not dead yet? The grind is a yawn fest.

 

I'm happy for you. I'm glad your satisfied with that.

 

You wouldnt be? What's competitive to you?

 

I don't think you know what grinding is then.

 

Being able to kill anyone at any time based on player skill, not the level of your character. That's not to say that someone just starting the game should easily be able to kill someone that's been around the block. It's just to say that the gap between being powerful and not is reasonable and success in PVP is all about the choices you make while fighting, not the time you spent killing bad AI.

 

As far as i can tell the decisions you make reguarding your skills and your choice of target (if your targeting people) are the biggest factor in PvP at the moment.

You're talking about dueling someone and being able to win. It's easy to control who you're targets are if you're only into 1v1. Adventure levels do not take anything into account in PvP at the moment, your skill levels do. And those are very quick to get up.

If you're talking about non-tournament PvP (open world) then it is entirley possible to beat someone double your level.

If you're level 1 you shouldnt expect to be competative.
It takes very little tiem to get skills to 20 or 30, at which point you are competitive to some degree, even agaisnt a level 80.

 

even a level 5 guy can turn the tide of a fight for someone else for better or worse.

before i was 50, i faught themo, and dished some real damage out on him, and he was genuinly tryign to kill me.
I amde the mistake of not brignign enough ammo for an important skill i was using and he finally caught me. But he was 80ish to my 40ish

that was a 1 v 1 as well. So it's possible to be competitive. You jsut have to think abotu what you're doing. It's alot mroe than just DPS

 

Really? You don't think having a 100 skill is better than having a 20 skill?

It depends on what skills you're leveling. There are some that are relatively quick to get up, yes. There are others that are very difficult in comparison. But just looking at one or two skills in a vacuum is not being honest about how this system works.

The idea that one person can have 700 hit pionts and have a 100 skill in 10 other categories is well beyond what someone at level 30 (for example) can do. So levels make a huge difference in pvp, which is not really an argument I hope you continue much longer.

Theoretically that's true. In practice it's irrelevant. If you'd like to give me your level 50 character and I'll give you a level 25 character, I would be interested to see how you'd beat me in pvp. I haven't seen that happen in any release unless the person was AFK. I'm sure it occasionally occurs as an outlier, but realistically this is not how the combat system works.

No, at level 30 you're not even somewhat competitive against a level 80 character. At level 30 your hitpoints might be around 200 and your level 80 person is about 600. Forget about all the other imbalances, you're showing up a few hours too late for a basketball game where the other team is ahead 250 to nothing.

 

It happens every release, frequently. Bambino dominated as a level 50 vs opponents ranging from his own level up into the 90's, Mimner does the same, and Turin, and Bobby ..actually its a pretty sizable list.

 

TL;DR - You don't need to read this if you don't want to.

DISCLAIMER/EDIT: I think Baron Drocis stimulates plenty of interesting conversations. He drives me nuts sometimes. But I like him. This is a good conversation. I just don't think I stand on the same side

You seem to want:

1) Prevent new players from being able to easily kill players who have been here awhile. Requires Skill Progression.
2) You want success in PVP to be all about the choices you make while fighting, not the time spent killing "bad" AI. Requires not having Skill Progression.

It is important to note that your GRIND is another person's PLAYING. They cannot tailor perfectly to every viewpoint - but they can balance with those viewpoints in mind. @DarkStarr said he wants players to be competitive after 40-80 hours of playing. The story line is supposed to be 40+ hours of playing. One might expect a decent amount of experience from following the story-line itself.

I expect, given one has earned the requisite experience, that at some point one can purchase training in skills or buffs to training the skills - I hope. I personally enjoy earning skills over time and usage of those skills (actually I preferred leveling up and applying points to skills but that's not the direction they went. I personally preferred applying skill points because I like to be able to carry "stuff" and I find the initial carrying weights to be abysmally low). I like character progression. I have certain expectations about how long it takes to "progress" that may be incompatible on both ends of the spectrum. I don't expect to log-on in day 1 and VAS KAL AN MANI IN CORP HUR TYM.

Although hopefully nobody reaches that level of skill for many many years

When you argue it seems you are arguing against character progression here... What I would like to see is the ability to have a balancing buff/debuff in particular arenas to help balance pvp'ers of different levels in things like a tournament. Or maybe apply them in towns --- so nobody gets "killed in two hits" as you stated in an earlier post


I'm not sure if you are arguing the system is wrong or if you are saying the balancing is wrong. I think it's fairly safe to say you will never get rock, paper, scissors here. We had skill trees and leveling skill trees from day 1 and if you want to play rock, paper, scissors - in my opinion you won't get it. It's not turn-based and there's no way to really see a blow coming and block it. But hey, a sideborg (is that the word?) or two would be cool right? Then you can work in some counters to some things and have them available but not in your regular rotation!

If you want to discuss balancing, I don't think it's too early to do. If I were arguing about balancing I would avoid sweeping statements, but try to discuss what "competitive" means and at what level people should be balanced.

The "old" system that allowed up to 5 points in a skill (and capped points in str/dex/int) was inherently more balanced - you had less variety in your skills, and fewer to pull on - but could specialize and still compete to some degree. The new system, in your experience, has you slaughtered at level 40 when facing someone at level 80. (Perhaps my version of balancing would have you competitive at level 65 against their level 80).

I think though that based on your self-stated amount of time to play that if you can hit level 80 in a month (is your experience buff used up?) when another hits level 80 in that same time, that is not really an issue if a month later it's 60 and 90 and then 70 and 100 and then 80 and 105. You approach a leveling curve after time where, yes, someone's character could be slightly better than yours, but maybe it's 5% better. Even if it's 10% I would say you are "competitive". If I can go toe to toe against the grindiest toughest player in the game and take out half their hitpoints based on how much time I intend to put in, then I would have thought -I- was competitive. Don't forget that a good bit of pvp is likely to take part in groups, if two level 40s can take out a level 70 then maybe I'd say it's balanced as well.

Regardless, as I said, I do not think it is too early to discuss balancing. BUT BUT BUT. I do think it is too early to EXPECT balancing. The big push from devs seems to be at this time (in my opinion) to moving to alpha for Q1. That means, sure, tweaking things, but it primarily means, as I understand it - by the definition of sota, is feature-complete. Get in all the pledge rewards that were promised, get in all the systems from kickstarter that were promised, get in all the towns that are expected, etc.

I'm not going to spout TL;DR "too bad, it's alpha" at you (did I just do that?), the discussions hold merit in my opinion. But it sounds like you're saying pvp isn't yet balanced and the devs are probably there saying "Yep, it's not balanced."

Level 100 is better than level 20. If level 100 were not better than level 20 then character progression would be useless.

I expect any time someone is twice your level they will win. But hopefully a 25 level gap when it is 50 and 25 is not so significant when it is 110 and 85.

I would never expect someone who is level 30 to beat someone at level 100. I do not think that is seeking balancing but is seeking a game that requires a different type of skill - perhaps one that is more twitch-based. If earned skills and earned equipment do nothing then you are going to see the other side saying - "What is the point of crafting? Adventuring? Slaying? Practicing?."

"Competitive" and "exactly equal" are not the same. I have never played a computer game where you are as powerful on day 1 as you are on day 30 and day 60 and day 90. Maybe after 90 days the "spread" should be much tighter between 90 days and 180 days.

It would be interesting if they allowed skill setting on the QA server or rapid experience gain that let you test yourself as level 60 against someone else who is level 80 and then switch. It may be that those who are putting in the grindy hours to those higher levels are ALSO very understanding of how skills (and their imbalances because we all know pvp is not "balanced") and that getting slaughtered is in part levels and in part skill selection. But ultimately if someone is DOUBLE your level they're probably going to win, and this still does not say the game is not balanced. For me, you should be competitive in a range of levels. If someone has 20% more levels than you they shouldn't be 100% more powerful - maybe they should be 5-10% more powerful, but that's all balancing and tweaking and at a stage that we have not yet hit.

 

You guys should probably have a 50 vs. 80 tournament with no handicap, I'm sure it would be very popular with the over 80 crowd.

 

Not by any sane definition of the term. That's like saying a shoe is a hat because both have cloth and cover something.

 

I think, come alpha and further balancing, that being able to set skills on the QA server would be an excellent way of testing future balancing and finding appropriate level spreads that still allow one to be "competitive."

 

I don't expect balance, I expect the goal to actually be about balance. So far I us rewarding one playstyle over others. I see this combat leveling system making the achievement of higher levels the deciding factor in who wins pvp and I think that's a bad way to design the game because it forces anyone that likes pvp to grind their way to pvp competitiveness.

 

Pfft tournaments, if you want a tournament try hosting one. I'm sure it would very... oh wait.

 

Yes, of course. But if the path to gain those skills is still through grinding then you're favoring a playing style that is in direct opposition to what some people (me) find fun.

 

We are just at odds here because the high levels should be "a" factor in the pvp here. I have actually never played a game that did not have levels and equipment have a factor in the game. You yourself stated that new players should not be able to jump in and kill higher level players in a few hits. I am a fan of character progression, I do not want to feel that I am "forced" to grind to stay "competitive" but I do expect that someone who plays 100 hours a week to my 5 is going to have a "better" character than me. I think it just falls under how much better should they be? And maybe once I've hit 100 hours total in the game they're only 5% better than me?

I'm with you on not wanting time invested to be the only component. I'm just not with you on taking it completely out of the equation

As I said, I enjoy progression as well as competition - I want to be able to progress relatively easily (aka gaining as I adventure and quest, having areas of more difficulty but also providing more experience - I never want to sit and kill 1000 skeletons) but I still want to have character progression in the game.

 

For anyone that missed it pages ago...

This is really what this entire post is about. There are four major playing styles in MMO's. It's well documented. It's science.
http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm

The combat system we have favors Achievers, it's an achievers dream world. The only thing that would make it more fun for achieves is if levels meant even more than they currently do. It's a killer's nightmare. It's forced labor performing boring repetitive gameplay that prevents killers from doing what they most want to do, interact with other people (usually by killing them).

It's not intuitive, but to have a successful MMO world you really need a balance of all the playstyles. if you start to get heavy in any one area it hurts the game.