The major problems with the combat system.

So everyone needs to go into all magic for resistances in order to be competitive. Isn't that also the same reason why taming is largely useless because they don't want to make something that everyone feels they must take? But here everyone feels the need they have to?

 

oh why didnt I make that connection before, spot on!

 

In my opinion :

- Buffs should not be cumulative : you should not be able to use two different active skills with the same buff (exemple : fortify defense and ice shield or ice shield and douse). As it is now, it is the highway for abusing things.

- You should not be able to buff more than one stat at the same time. You would have to chose wether you want a dexterity, an intelligence or a strength bonus. One buff cancel an other. As it has been stated before, we have to make choices.

- Attunement should not act as a bonus but only as a way to overcome the target's passive/active defenses only. As it is now, people feel forced to train every magic school, and with artifacts giving big attunement bonus, it's even worse.

I read here and there that everything need a counter. But, if I'm correct, we have at least 3 types of active defenses against basic damage, 3 specific elemental damages (air, fire, water), and 3 specific magic damages (moon, sun, death). And it's properly impossible to keep all the defenses active at the same time (with a 30 second timer on some except for those who can use chaotic feedback, maybe), which means that, in open pvp, you should not be able to compete with everyone, even if you are high level. Adding counters will not satisfy those who are begging for more balance. As long as you use ice shield and douse but no celestial blessing in your deck, you will lose against death/air mages. It sounds like a paper/rock/scissor situation to me.

 

I don't know how much a tamed creature would affect PvP?
This is maybe also a good choice to protect oneself and make you stronger/ harder to beat.
Ofcourse it is. Skilling Taming raises your Adv level, what raises the chance to hit, reduce the chance to get hitted, raise hp and focus and give you a pet that fights for you.

Just think of this: one has all skills at 100, but taming.
Another has all skills, including all taming skills at 100.

The one with taming has an advantage, he has higher level, so he has higher HP and focus, he has higher hit chance and higher chance to avoid damage, he also has a pet that does additional damage. Yes he has less focus then, but i think all the boni are more important than the focus reduction.
Or?
I don't have the math, maybe i'm wrong?!?


If Pets were equal strong I would love to tame a Polar Bear , but these spiders just are more efficient, so again something that is only cool if you don't care about Roleplaying and such.

 

That's a good point, but consider this.

One is willing to PvP but not the PK type, only the type of " i'm ok or want that extra thrill while hunting in PvP scenes or everywhere at anytime (allways flagged) , So he goes out and a PK just studies his victim.
All fine that is like it should be.
But the one with the most possibilities , choose the best deck against the elected victim and easily kills him, while the other has no chance , he couldn't prepare and he cannot counter.
I am cool with this as long as it is not possible or the intended goal for EVERYBODY to be that PK guy with max options.
If people were limited the PK would meet people they can kill easily, **** happens, but they will also often do their observations and need to refuse to attack, because they have not the right skills to beat this special avatar or it maybe would work but is way more risky to them.
Here we have again the advantage to skill as much as possible and encourage to do so for PvP.
So PK's just need to level more than their victims , nothing else is needed , they just need to be the strongest with the most options.
That grants them 99% a win, while those who are willing to take a risk have not that big chance to react.
Sure if someone attacks you while you are fighting Mobs and such it's allways the biggest advantage, but this is on top an additional advantage.
As if there aren't enough and natural PvP advantages, like to observate, lurk and ambush for PK's.
So why give them more and more advantages in PvP?
If we play a roleplaygame please make it a roleplaygame and no min max game, where everything is about skill as much as high as possible and you are King of the Hill.
That's no RPG imho.
This all works well for SP offline and maybe also for pve only, but it's very bad for PvP .

Ok a counter argument is maybe groupplay, nobody should go solo to dangerous zones,but these advantages of having as much skills as high as possible just make PvP less attractive and especially to casual gamers imho.
And PK also group up!

 

In a duel situation, you complain that the most experienced one get the better chances. But that's pretty normal. That's always the case in every game, and even in reality.
The 99% chance is not scientificaly observed through.

 

If it's playerskill I wouldn't complain, but it's only about spent time, wiling to grind as much as possible and renouncing "roles" for roleplayers what usually or mostly don't want to be an generalist about magic, but tend to go an individual route like fire mage, necromancer, icemage, druid (sun, earth e.g.) or whatever.
Sure there will also be roleplayers who want to be an omnipotent mage of all schools, but the game now want you to do so, if you want to PvP you have to or you loose. I think that's just bad and it maybe can be easily balanced. Caps would instantly force everybody to make choices .

I like the idea of having only one stat buff or only one defense buff and not 3 or 5 of them.
Sometimes buffing takes longer than the fight

 

Getting the best equipment is also a question of time. That's THE thing to do in almost every multiplayer game, even the skill based games like fps. SotA is not an exception but Portalarium just made the choice of soft caps on skills to keep the game interesting, even for high level players (and that's a good choice, well done). Balance doesn't mean equality. It does mean that the stronger will have better chances but not all the chances (look at the EVL duels results). Role play means that you have to act like your character would do. And your character can chose to be a warrior using spells but he or she will probably not try to fight the most experienced warrior without preparation.

 

Simple question:

One likes to obtain all styles and skills to build decks and have as many options as possible.
So he is limited by the deck system, but he has all options and the highest level , hp and focus, the highest or most resistancies and the best chances to hit or to avoid damage, right?

Another likes to specialize and doesn't care about all the options, he maybe also dislike some playstyless like beeing a tank or using death magic or whatever, but he likes very much to play this or that role to combine 2 or 3 or even 5 schools of magic with all it's pros and cons (gear support for example).

So , why if we talk about open PvP , not tournaments or duells, this specialist is weaker than the generalist?
The one who renounce to have all the options shouldn't be weaker in a fight , he should be at least equal strong if we just compare the situation and the active decks , both active and alternate.

Of course one deck is better than the other in this situation, but in another situation or with another opponent the "weaker" deck now is maybe the "better choice" and the stronger deck.

What i want to say is, its all fine if having more options and decks is possible , but in a open PvP situation you shouldn't have any profit of these options. This should always be a battle between those two decks and the players skills to use their decks.
But actually having as much skills as high as possible, aka having as much decks and options also grant you in any situation with any deck more power.
That's what I dislike, because it not only encourages everybody who want to PvP to do so, it want you to do so, because else you have a significant disadvantage what you cannot come by with playerskill only.

I understand that, but imo it's bad for the all overall population and open world PvP situation.
And the fact that all the games do so , makes it not good or a proofed point, time to change things and do something better, find something else to reward the players who play more?
Perk system for FPS games are the biggest bs they ever implemented btw , PvP should allways be more about playerskill and not about money (p2w, not here for pvp, just to mention) , time, grind or whatever.
That's maybe the sort of sandbox some people like because they are the sharks and not the herrings, but alloverall it's just bad for a game.
When practicing Aikido we allways say : take care for uke (attacker) when throw him or fix him at the ground, because you want to practice further with him.
To me this is still a game and it should be fun and not be taken so serious about loosing. The strongest need to loose too, or?
And from a players view I think it's the most fun if winning and loosing is near equal on both sides.
If it's allways possible to win, but also to loose, no matter how much you played.
How long do you have fun playing against someone who wins 9 of 10 matches or all the time? And should it be about improving playerskill or be about spent time grinding, willing to skill as much as possible, no matter if you like to use x or y and no matter if you have the time or not?

So the strongest (in this case the nage who beats the uke/ attacker and becomes the "winner") should take care for their victims and to not have them loose the will to fight them.
The only thing what will result from this is stagnation as it was clearly decribed in the thread about Raph Coster (Games must kill their Kings).
In this case it sure discourages a lot of people who are willing to PvP, but not under this cirrcumstances .
All PvPers who want to PvP should be glad for every single player who is willing to partake , so they should be ready to give up some power to make people with less time and or will to grind all the skills to be more competetive and balance the system.
The thing is, they will still be the top players , but their crowns will get more scratches over time and their thrones will be more hard to hold.
Wouldn't that be more challenging? And what PvPer won't have more challenge and ongoing fights?

 

I liked your point of view. Keeping everyone motivated is important. But you can't blame the system for everything.

Personaly, I'm not a shark in pvp. I'm rather a victim,... by choice. I dropped the oracle protection for weeks because I don't trust the machine, but each time I came across a couple of people like me (pvp players), I never attacked them. Sometimes they didn't fight me like @fonsvitae , sometimes, they did.

And when they did, while I was alone, I got killed numerous times. To be honest, I didn't even try to fight back quite often (that way, I discovered what type of murderer was @Mac2 really). I only tried to defend myself once against one other archer but I lost. And that's pretty normal :
- because I never wear the best equipment (simple tiara are beautiful, cat's grace ring was fun, bone gauntlets need phoenix talon to be crafted),
- because I prefer to put my artifacts in a showcase (I don't want any scratch on them ),
- because I don't use potions when I should do (did you see how much it cost to use those ??!!),
- because I sometimes forgot the food and (always) the devotionals (I'm a lazy girl),
- because sometimes I forgot the buffs and especialy celestial blessing (I'm a stupid girl).

Each one of those mistakes could make a difference in a duel. I just don't pay attention or want to optimize because *insert stupid excuse here*.

I can't blame the "sharks" about that. I lose because I'm not ready to fight. My fault. My own responsibility. I only have to open my log after closing the game, to see what was wrong. Even if the game surely has balance issues (like that time, one release ago, when each of my rapid fire shot was reduced to 1 damage), I AM the first issue.

When talking about my biography, yes, I still tried some serious duels here and there against various friends. Those duels helped me to see what was missing in my logic.

Few times after the last wipe, I met one of the heavier melee warrior (a guy who is not here anymore, alas, but who was really impressive at that time), who taught to me how to build a deck. We tested the light armor archer against the heavy armor swordman with many tries. Sometimes the bow won. Sometimes the sword won. Everytime, good tactics won. Blink against root. Speed against melee fight. etc...

I also made some duels with an other archer, @Morgoth redbeard , who was clearly less experienced than I am but won quite often and taught me the importance of the active defensive skills.

What I try to say here is that duels and "pvp" are not as simple as "he has better skills than me, so he will win and I will die". Everything is about using the right skill or item at the right time. If you want to kill a dangerous target, you will simply need preparation, a cold mind and a bit of luck. You must be prepared to die a "few" times. Or you will need friends who take part in the fight. To me, there is nothing to complain about that. Everything seems perfectly normal.

...Also, it would be great to have a color code for pvp names, like in PVE, to see if a target is an easy one or a hard one. Then, the oracle "could" probably decide to give smaller ransoms and a virtue sanction to those who kill weaker players (when not in duels). I asked about that for long and it does not seem that hard to do while I'm sure that it could help pvp a lot. @Chris

 

.-) i am not a pvper but i do like pve allot
also i am an earth archer so not realy a optimiced archer i dont mind i have fun so all that matters

 

One can't say that earth is not a good optimization for an archer in my opinion. If my memory is correct, your stone arrow was hurtful for me. Also, having good earth spells doesn't prevent you from having a good dexterity as well, does it, Morgoth ?

 

well if i am not mistaken atos told in a tex intervue that only good thing for an archer was air so i dont know it works for me and i guess atos dont even play the game so what do he know

 

So what you're telling my mage character is that he has to train in Blades all the way up to Knights Grace to avoid being spam tripped?

I understand that there may be a bug involved, but you'd think a real mage would have some kind of magic that would counter stuff like that.

But you've already been tripped. For a spell caster, that's a second or two where you're not casting spells. Not good. In a DPS war type combat system like we have, any second that you're not doing damage is a second your DPS is zero. Not good.

 

I'm all for stuff being nerfed, especially when players can use all of it together. The problem with Dodge, Acrobatics, etc... is that while people like you and I would just use those and be very happy, other people with 200 GM's are using those combined with whatever shield spell's and extra buffs they can get away with. Again, everyone's a tank mage in this game, and that's very VERY hard to balance let alone roleplay.

 

Knight grace is an heavy armor skill, not a blade one. And even mages need to know how to use their armor. After all, that's what they have on their shoulder, even if it's not magic. But you'll have to deal with fizzle chance (at least for the chest piece).

 

See, I'm a mage, I don't know these things!

No real mage wears heavy armor, btw.

 

You two should have a discussion

 

I think it would go a lot like this...

"I am the great mage, Armor All! Behold my awesome power!"

Fizzle, *poof*, Fizzle...

 

That's precisely the point ! Armor have their own tree. Resistances don't. Then you have to practice fire fist to train fire resistance while you don't have to train ranged skill to get the acrobatics skill.