The PVP Talk Thread

Greetings

@Chris @DarkStarr @Lord British I know you're tired of reading flaming thread about PVP, I will do my best to let this not turn into that. I hope this thread can be a hint for the team, and a peaceful and constructive topic for community members.
As PVP Only Player I had the opportunity to meet so many pvpers and I was lucky to discuss them with some aspects of the game, I have sought at the request of many to enclose ideas in a single thread from pvp releated feedbacks collected.
I have engaged in a strong and successful recruitment campaign outside the game with the aim of bringing more European users to the world of Shroud of the Avatar so I want to point out i've collected also feedbacks from new players (Also as hospitaller I had the chance to talk a lot with them).
I love this game and i really care about Portalarium and our great community (best ever seen), i hope this thread can really bring good things.

I am grateful to all those who wish to contribute with further ideas and requests, i'll try to keep the thread updated with your requests.

PS: Please, anyone should avoid personal attacks or flaming attitudes towards other users.



Below some of the ideas and suggestions collected:

Level Requirement to join PVP: New players cannot get ganked from veteran players.

A bigger difference between the various tiers of maps: Reduce the high end player's outflow into maps dedicated to new players.

Freedom of choice and action: Players can attack anyone and conquer exping/farming spots (Bad karma earning and consequently possibility of losing ransoms if you're a Player Killer) , giving birth to skirmishes and confrontation with people of the same level, giving everyone the opportunity to practice and avoid inexperienced high level players. This can also encourages players to invite other players in party.

Players with a neutral or good karma not lose any ransoms: In this way they can pratice and train and avoid to be killed by high levels for profit.

Justice System: Killing neutral or good players will give bad karma, killing evil players will give good karma.

Sort of factions System in one world: Good vs Evil.

Guild Wars of different types: Inciting in this way the fun with more war games (Like capture the flag or domination), but leaving the players the chance to face a field war. (Like we can already do now)

Arena System: Major changes to Ardoris PVP Arena, allowing players to join in even fewer (also 1vs1), and possibly inserting other castle's arenas in the other big npc cities. A score system and a leaderboard would help to add competition and encourage players to participate.

Avoid abuses: No-PvP flagged players can now be attacked but can't lose ransoms or experience (if neutral or good), in this way players can defend themself from abusers who steal attacked enemies or directing hordes of enemies to other players (trying to make them die).

Discourage High end players to farm or abuse new entry zones: drastic reduction to experience gained from green name monsters (lower level monster), and increse experience gained from orange/red monsters.

Karma collected from PVM contents: Killing monster give positive karma points/honor.

PvP Loots Maps: Current PVP zones will be "Ransoms enabled" regardless of Karma. (Players will not be able to collect or lose Karma points in these zones)

Maps designed for more players: Every player in the map increase the spawn rates of monsters. (with a limit to avoid performance problems or abuses)

Limit Solo/Friends mode in some ways: PvP encounter are pretty rare and when happens usually one of two players switch in Solo/Friends before the fight, for many this is killing the pvp in game. A long cooldown to be able to switch Solo/Friends and Multiplayer can help.

Replace Solo/Friends mode: Opinion of most was pretty dry i quote the simplest one: "Solo/Friends mode cut the real population of the game making it look like empty and abandoned. There are a good number of pvpers but bad splitted between Multiplayer and Solo/Friend mode ". (an idea are different multiplayer's channels)

Nearby players changes: Show just one "?" also if more pvp players are in the map, this helps the immersion and use of strategy. Players will have to find out how many pvpers are active in the scene, they just know someone is there. This alert should also exist in PVP zones (instead of the score window, or in addition) to avoid players lose time trying to find opponents that are not really there.

Rewards and PVP: Players earn experience or a prize for killing someone in addition to karma points, for the first time in a day regardless of Karma (Killing the same player more than one time is not prize/experience rewardable).

Hidden PVP Flag and Oracle's protection changes: "PVP flag invisible to anyone but yourself. That would remove the "scarlet letter" scare of some players, would make playing a thief and player hunting much more interesting. Could also bring in the Oracle in on the fun. Are you willing to risk attacking or stealing from a player that may or may not be under the Oracles protection? Would the Oracle point you out to other players if you did try something?" @that_shawn_guy

Prizes and rewards for winner of a Guild War: "This could make them more appealing and push players to declare them." @ziopan

Multiplayer version of solo/party maps: Party/Solo only maps like mines and dungeons (example: ravensmoore) should have a multiplayer version (with improved resources gathering for example).

Waves survival: More multiplayer contents like Hilt Fortress, Kobold's camp R46, Chillblain's Compendium and Control Points. High end pvp players will love fighting others surrounded by hordes of monsters.


List updated: November 10, 2017

Thanks to all those who have contributed and will continue to do so, we player are the most important part of this game!

Feel free to contact me for any info,help, or requests with: forum's pm, discord (@Antrax#1555) or in game.

 

I'd be happier with the existing system if the PVP flag was invisible to anyone but yourself.

That would remove the "scarlet letter" scare of some players, would make playing a thief and player hunting much more interesting. Could also bring in the Oracle in on the fun. Are you willing to risk attacking or stealing from a player that may or may not be under the Oracles protection? Would the Oracle point you out to other players if you did try something? would near by players retaliate?

 

What's about valuable rewards to the winner of a guild wars? This could make them more appealing and push players to declare them. From what I understand it is possible to do it, but in spite of that I heard only about one war fought with the official feature.

 

I don't understand the point of this. I'm not here to be an involuntary pincushion to anyone. It exists only to pester and grief.

If there was every a 1st Law of PVP Discussions, it would be the immediate insistence on the dissolution of consensual PVP. Because apparently allowing people to just mind their own business, without being victimized by others, just cannot stand.

 

In Star Wars Galaxies the PVP flag was backed up with a faction system.
So you always knew as a flagged player, that there might be Imperials or Rebel covert players around...

So you never 100% knew if they were on your side or not, and sometimes they dropped their covert status and ambushed you, just like in SotA.
In SotA it is just what it is, in SWG it war part of the lore.

That maybe explains why people liked it in SWG and hate it here?

 

I agree with a few points of the post above, and think there are very good ideas in this.

The one thing that I think is most needed in order to make PvP fun for everyone is to avoid high-level players from ganking low-level players. For this I think an entry requirement is necessary in order to be PvP flagged. In addition, there should be no reward for killing lower level characters, a small reward for killing characters of about equal level and a high reward for killing characters that are of higher level, possibly more XP the greater the difference in adventurer level is. The better reward in gear to be ransomed is already in place, as the lower a character is in level the worse gear they usually have uness they're an alt. Actually, perhaps the thing about the XP gains from PvP are already in place as well, I honestly didn't have much chance to make experiences yet. At any rate, for killing characters that are of very much lower level, there should even be a penalty. Also, the XP gain decreases and the XP loss increases the more people are in your party. And ransoms should be able to be collected only from characters that are your level or higher (because even their crappy gear is very valuable to a low-level player, and absolutely meaningless to a high-level player). This should make it pretty unattractive for three level 90 players to gank a level 60 player.

Probably then it would help to also color-code characters depending on their relative adventuer levels compared to yours. Killing blue characters is impossible, killing greens is stupid and you'll be punished, killing yellows is fun and moderately profitable, killing oranges is your path to glory. For parties of mixed adventurer levels, a solution would have to be found, so you're not punished for killing the orange player's green friend that's fighting by his side.

Another idea that might help in avoid griefing: If a character was killed by someone once, they should have the option to make themselves invulnerable to that same character for 24 hours. This should of course not apply for guild wars. In order to prevent the defeated from trash-talking to the one who killed them without being able to be attacked again, I think we could make it so that if you opt for being invulnerable to someone that just killed you for the next 24 hours, you are "dead" to them. They don't see you, hear you, cannot interact with you in any way. Again, this should not apply to guildwars. Especially in RP guild wars you want the option to interact after a defeat in order to e.g. take hostages.

That's actually another feature that I would consider cool for RPvP: To be able to ransom the character instead of an item, making them automatically follow your character for a certain time (until e.g. you can take them to your guild's prison). Probably this is unattractive to non-RP PvPers, but for RPers this would help in making guild wars that much more meaningful. To be able to capture the enemy leader by fighting your way through to him/her and "killing" them/knocking them out to then take them hostage. For me that'd be a dream come true.

In the end, I think we all have an interest in not griefing any fellow players. Someone who is fed up with how things work will quit the game, or quit PvPing if there is an option. Which gives us all fewer people to play with, and thus less fun.

 

Other games make guild leaders or officers special type characters that are capturable... But we haven't even got a reason to fight on SotA other than to annoy people. So don't take the last straw away before you provide something else

 

Don't get me wrong, a lot of the items sound interesting. It just irks me that someone always slips in some amendment to try to force me into PVP against my will.

 

Damsel in distress <----(EvE players)......i like it....please make sure its a warm dungeon I'm kept in