The PvP Thread

@Helicon Yes, numpad typo 1999, left in 2003 from what i saw in my emails and then rejoined 2007 and 2012. It's been too long..

About the recalling/marking: There are several areas that can be recalled from, but you cannot mark/gate there, like Illshenar. Also champ spawns cannot be recalled from. And also places like Heartwood (Yew) cannot be recalled from. I guess it's fine. As long as the majority of places can be recalled/gated/marked.

 

@Zzyzx- Well if you were a skilled player then you just disturbed his recall with fast casting spells and then killed the pray. Was especially easy if you were 2. Recall should be in the game since it give the pray an option to get away against less skilled PK:s.
@AndiZ275 - It was never a problem. Well it was a problem for the less skilled players, but i want a skilled PvP system where the prey get away cause the PK just dont know how to prevent it. If you have no countermeasure towards recall then you should loose the prey and his loot.

 

@Acrylic 300:

<blockquote>Single player has no effect on the world so its not a bother. Still there may be things that are different</blockquote>

Actually, Single Player Online is meant to influence the persistent world; those players can, at least, purchase deeds, claim lots, buy and sell from other players through player vendors and the bazaars, etc.

Also, the character in all online modes is shared, so a player can, say, evolve his character, earn gear, etc, in single player online, and then take that character to open play online, even PvP.

@PrimeRib:

<blockquote>If the castles don?t control some unique resource, why do they exist? Why do people fight and die for them?</blockquote>

WoW's $25 sparkly pony didn't give the player any advantage (apart from the cosmetic appeal and saving new characters an insignificant amount of gold); it still sold in absurdly high numbers. Why do you think this happened?

Rewards don't have to increase character (or guild) power to be desirable. In fact, I really hope SotA tries to reign in the kind of uncontrollable power inflation that most MMOs experience due to uninspired devs that seem to think the only way to inspire players to play is to offer more character raw power as the reward.

As for castles: a guild "house", a message to the other players that they are powerful enough to claim and keep the castle, the convenience of having a base of operations, etc might already be enough, even without granting anything that outright increased the power of the guild members.

@Lord_Darkmoon:

<blockquote>Sure the reward for participating in PvP should be higher.</blockquote>

I'm more in line with Andi in this: IMHO, the reward for participating in CHALLENGING content should be higher, no matter if that content is PvP or PvE (or even solo or group). By the same token, participating in non-challenging content - for example, an experienced PvPer killing less geared and experienced players - should offer little, if any, reward.

 

I created a new thread that reflect on player skills -

I would really like to see PvP as skillful as possibly available. Some might argue that PvP have different skill layers but as i see it there have to be a twitch command thats add speed to PvP. Just look at pre AoS twitch combat ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXzDE5Hhv9k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zhtjDhZQgc

Well my sons have performed alot better in their duels over the years and some other might find better duels but i hope you find what im looking for.

Ok, this is autotarget but i still have to find a MMO game that is as skilldemanding as oldschool UO magic system. UO magic system had 64 spells in it?s spellbook and that really created so many variables that a duel between skilled players was amazingly skill demanding, the one that control this 64 spellbook and the speed and all variables dominated the world in PvP.

This is what i am looking for. Ok there have been alot of improvements to graphics and what you can do online and ingame but honestly Richard Garriott if you read this, there havent been an improvement to skill performance in MMO PvP from UO pre AoS (feb 2003) magic combat system uptil now, everyting presented in new games (2023) is less skill demanding.

So, Richard, demand a very, very skilldemanding system from your programmers and you will have a winner.=)

Players need to have a goal to reach. And skills in PvP and same time PvE is a easily reachable goals. It also add to the game in so many levels, skill performance in PvP and trashtalks, LOL, and also PvE performance. It never hurts to create a skillful PvP/PvE game.

What is you guys view on this maybe kinda elite approach to PvP?

 

@ara:
the only way to do this is make the game non-item-based.

the original had some magic weapons but that was it. and they dropped on death, so it was high risk to carry. people didnt do it often. even then the advantage wasn't huge. on a naked mage i could take out tanks with pretty awesome gear.

 

@lordrex - Yeah, PvP should'nt be about getting overpowered weapons, it should be about playerskills. Best weapon in UO was vanquishing weapons and they added damage but a good naked mage won against a less skilled dexer (melee-guy).
So i hope they dont add overpowered weapons as the WoW ones.

 

A mix of people is a must yes. But catering to the players that couldn't hack it, killed the very essence of Ultima Online.

I definitely think Risk vs Reward is valid. Playing safe will only get you so far. If you want it ALL you had better learn to defend yourself.

 

But still, creating a 'PvE'-server is pretty simple. Since we only see relevant people you can filter everyone with PvP enabled. Its just an extra mode. Or you could create a purely PvP-server as well of course which you can only enter if you have PvP enabled and if you turn it off you're warped back to the PvE-server. And you could created a mixed-mode with PvE- and PvP-players in one world.

Should be that hard to implement if the features are already there.

 

@Propagandhi

<blockquote>I definitely think Risk vs Reward is valid. Playing safe will only get you so far. If you want it ALL you had better learn to defend yourself.</blockquote>

This should work in multiple ways, though:

- There should be PvE content that is as challenging as PvP can be, with the same quality or amount of rewards.

- PvP where your enemy is inferior enough to not present a threat - be it due to skill, gear, numbers, etc - should have little to no rewards. After all, if there was no risk, the winners should get no rewards

 

There are no separate servers. There is one server, one land. The people in that land are separated by play styles, whether single player, small group play, PvE, or PvP.

This has been covered pretty definitively, so when people talk about separate servers, are they making suggestions to the dev's, or are they just not understanding how the game architecture at this time is supposed to work?

 

@Silent Strider - Problem with your reasoning is that it is not risk vs reward since PvE never can be as challenging as the most skillful PvP. PvE only should never give as good rewards as exactly the same PvE with the risk of entering PvP. That would be totally unlogical.

And how should the game grade a PvP encounter as less skilled and how do the game decrease the reward?

 

<i>" Problem with your reasoning is that it is not risk vs reward since PvE never can be as challenging as the most skillful PvP./../"

The problem with PvP is it's never as challenging with the most skillful PvP.

As for how a game grades a PvP encounter. It doesn't, it sorts players based on perceived skill and intent. Because, if not, too many players will migrate over to the easy kill and not the challenge.

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=can-i-build-a-better-pvpmouse-trap

I wanted to point out my suggestion I made a while ago. In that thread I suggest a PvP activity tracker (hidden)

This tracker could be used for grading a PvP encounter. Attacking players that PvP often vs Attacking players that never PvP might a good way of assigning more reward for PvP.

 

I think the reward for surviving a PvP encounter is surviving a PvP encounter. But then, I'm old fashioned that way. I'm not looking for a gold star on my forehead.

 

I am right there with you Owain but I think the context of the survival is what is being addressed. Without the challenge, surviving just isn't the same.

Methods of inspiring players to seek out that challenge and not corralling them into arenas and PvP zones.

- PK vs Anti-PK was a great one.
After reading these forums since Kickstarter I have come to appreciate the PK role much more. I lumped PKs in as griefers. Now I see that many used the victim as the catalyst to draw out what could be considered the best PvP available. It was spontaneous and heated. (which can be easily mistaken as griefing and just as easily turned into griefing)

Several things are changing from the UO model. Crafters will now be able to have combat skills and the filter system are the major ones I can think of off the top of my head. What we need is methods of recreating that spontaneity that take these changes into account.

I know that the PK vs anti-PK dynamic required that victim to start the call for PvP and many did not want to be that target. Specially when it could mean that you could end up being that target for a while. So what can replace this victim, or at least add a diversity of targets? Resources, story content, ???, profit?

 

@Owain:

I think I agree. I always find PvP better when the reward is just the fun I had in playing.

For a more elaborate answer, rewards for PvP bring players that are not really interested in playing PvP, but merely in getting those rewards. The players that are just after the rewards are the ones most likely to just exploit the mechanics to get rewards faster, to abandon the fight as soon as it starts going against them, to do things that make the whole fight less fun for everyone if it means they increase their efficiency in getting the rewards by 1%.

Meanwhile, PvP that is played just for the sake of PvP is the one where most, perhaps all, players are there to have fun, so they are far less likely to do things that ruin the fun for them or everyone else.

@Ristra:

Yeah, from the info available RG seems to want to replace the victims with story, resources, guild conflicts, and other similar (and optional) things. If that works it should make the game pleasant for those that are not forced to be victims anymore while keeping things interesting for those looking for a fight. The only losers would be players that get their high from preventing other players from having fun.

 

@Ara

<blockquote>@Silent Strider ? Problem with your reasoning is that it is not risk vs reward since PvE never can be as challenging as the most skillful PvP. PvE only should never give as good rewards as exactly the same PvE with the risk of entering PvP. That would be totally unlogical.</blockquote>

Wrong. PvE can easily be made more challenging than the average PvP fight, or as challenging as facing one of the 10% better players in the game, or any other such challenge level.

The difficulty is not in making PvE challenging, but in making the challenging PvE actually fun. For every game like Dark Souls that manage that, there's a whole bunch of games that completely ruin the fun of PvE when they attempt to make it more challenging.

<blockquote>And how should the game grade a PvP encounter as less skilled and how do the game decrease the reward?</blockquote>

By keeping tabs on how well the player performs. Keep a hidden PvP rating for the player, updated whenever the player engages in PvP, and use the opponent's rating to determine the reward.

Some games are using a simpler, but still effective, system, BTW: simple add how much time the player has spent with PvP enabled since he was last killed and use that to determine the reward for killing him (with a cap, obviously). Someone that can't effectively defend himself, and is thus killed all the time, is worth almost nothing, while someone that is good enough to emerge the victor in most of his fights is worth a lot. This also has the nice side-effect of making kill trading far less effective.

 

@SilentStrider - Wrong again. NPC with same health, speed and skills is predictable, humans are not. I never played a game where NPC perform better the the human mind, im surpriced you actually belive that.

If you on the other hand take a NPC that have 100 times the life, 100 times the speed and hit damage that kill you in 2 hits then the NPC can be hard but that is not comparable. Give a player same hp, speed and life and it will perform even better if well played. Humans are more unpredictable and perform out of patterns.

It's actually easy to understand why PvP players should have the best rewards in a game that reward risk vs reward-

PvE - a risk and a reward

PvP - a risk and a reward

PvE+PvP - double the risk and double the reward

A good balance could be half the reward for the PvE players since they put in half the risk. And it's good to read that developers of SotA also see PvP as the highrisk areas with better rewards.

So instead of full loot some want a developer created predetermend loot that have nothing to do with what the player actually had in his backpack and a reward that comes not from the dead player but from a developer created skilllist? Is that right?

If so, it's just an amazing suggestion to get away from full loot.=) PvP should as in UO give the reward the player had on him nothing more, nothing less.

 

PvE - risk and reward are easily controlled and scalable
PvP - risk and reward are controllable and scalable but not as easily as PvE (IMO)
PvE + PvP - not so cut and dry as doubling the risk.

PvE + PvP controls and scaling is what I have been talking about recently. How is the risk assigned. What reason does a PvPer have to attack one player over another.

Is the reward just as high for someone that is a 1 shot kill with no chance of fighting back as someone that nearly kills you for trying?

 

@Ara why would they make an NPC with the same health/skills/speed as a PC? you make the different and more fun, stronger if need be.

You clearly have a very narrow view of PVE combat, maybe you haven't played a game that implemented it well.

certain boss fights are very fun the first time you go to them in WoW... after you learn their tricks they get boring, but it's the initial fun that counts, plus they can always release more, or change them, which is what they normally do, although usually in the name of balance to make it either more challenging or easier.. there were some fights that you had to be well geared and be flawless in your execution or you lost, most of those got changed.. i didn't do any raiding in MoP, i don't know if they went back to old "hardcore mode"

PvP in many ways can be easier, you have more pvp oriented skills, or you have more experience, or the other player makes a mistake, and for any challenge you have to find someone also with pvp oriented skills, with equal or more experience, and hope they make a mistake before you do, and sometimes their tactics will be better than yours.

Finding a fair and fun fight in my experience in PVP is rare.. generally it's a slaughter, and you remember those times that you go back and forth and have a good fight with someone where you take as good as you give.