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Retrograde

Upcoming PvP changes

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All sounds good to me except for the easier long-houses to speed up raiding. Seems to me to be brought up by people who just want to show up while no one is home and have it razed by sun-up.

 

I think the best way to bring new PvPers is to make combat exciting. To me it is akin to just standing in-front of each other until one dies. Bells and whistles man! fly out hit markers, crit notices, If I shield bash someone and the text read, dumbdumb falls to the ground, I want to see him fall to the ground! Blood, blood and more blood!

 

Also try balancing other styles of fighting. I hate the cookie cutter, Longsword, Large Metal Shield, SoTG . Why couldn't a magic user in cloth and SoTG have the spells to stand up against a LS/LMS fighter? Variety. Why not a Master Animal tamer use tamed/trained critters. Fighters/Magic Users/Archers/Beast Masters... 

 

PvP here is just too boring and complicated. I like the proposed changes to SoTG. Would help balance other fighting methods.

 

Edited by Gaustyrr

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Epic player here. 

  •    Remove Information minister.
    Removing the 'so and so has entered your territory' messages is a widely-supported change, but keep the office itself.
  •     Remove all teleportation forms on PvP servers (including home servers).
    Very positive change. Do remove all forms of teleportation and do not leave loopholes. The worst abuses of these mechanics are teleporting into deeds to defend, and running out of local of enemy then teleporting to safety. But whenever a player moves between two places, they can be attacked. Having people travelling around the map makes ambushes and other pvp possible - those opportunities disappear when people teleport.
  •     Remove archery penalties or scale according to individual armour pieces.
    Widely-supported and a good change. Just remove the penalties entirely.
  •     Disable embarking on vehicles or mounts while in combat with an enemy players.
    Creates more problems than it fixes. As soon as the captain of the boat dies, all the passengers are dead in the water, as nobody would be able to re-embark as captain. Also, removes the ability to use backup horses.
  •     Addition of Archery keybinds.
    Good change.
  •     Remove stun/throw from valrei mobs.
    Good change.
  •     Make nolocate on bodies work similar to jewellery with power determining % blocked. Cooldowns on searching for same person.
    How long would the cooldown be? Around 2 minutes seems good - enough that you cannot spam locates and defeat the point of nolocate entirely. Whatever number you go with, review the cooldown time once it has been used in play.
  •     Remove disintegration requiring token drain and remove magranon bonus.
    Balance this by increasing the cast timer of the disintegrate spell to three minutes (same as strongwall), and increase the spell difficulty in enemy influence - so defenders have more time to react.
  •     Creation of a “verbose” combat tab option, including extra information such as Area of Effect spells, Direct target spells,     karma and meditation buffs, etc
    Good change.
  •     Raise deed costs on PvP servers to limit expansion by simply placing multiple deeds to conquer towers
    If this is to stop the use of deeds to flip guard towers, then just prevent the flipping of deeds if there are guard towers nearby. If a deed legitimately wants to convert to another kingdom, they can bash the guard towers. Raising deed costs hurts legitimate deeds as much as it does these kind of exploits.
    Separate to this issue, there needs to be a way to conquer deeds. Currently if a kingdom is willing to keep throwing money into upkeep, there is no possible way to disband a deed through game mechanics. This is why deeds are griefed into the ground - the only way to get rid of a deed is to demoralise the mayor so much that they disband their own deed. Allow conquering of deeds through game mechanics and you will see deeds being captured back and forth more, rather than being griefed out of existence. A possible mechanic is that a deed flips to the attacker's kingdom after three consecutive drains.
  •     Scale scenario point rewards according to mission type (sacrifice, drain, traitor, tree) then modified by whether server is friendly, enemy, or elevation
    Good change - the modification by friendly/enemy/elevation should be quite high, not a subtle difference. Something like 100 scenario points for a friendly mission, 1000 on elevation, 2500 on enemy home server. The effect on deity move timers should be similarly scaled.
    Also, remove crafting missions. Even a home server tree-cutting mission involves some risk, as the player must move around off-deed. Crafting missions encourage players to stay on deed and this makes pvp less likely.
  •     Make uniques focus points of missions, or giving kingdom based rewards for slaying
    Uniques already give potions, rare bones, drake/scale. Why do they need to give more?
  •     Change battle rank to only be given through kills, not through missions or capping towers/camps
    Good change, provided rank decay is reduced. Also, reset the current ranks.
  •     Make destruction of longhouses easier, focus on less tedium when raiding and promote faster raids.
    Good change.
  •     Make chaos and possibly home server merchants tauntable
    Very good change. It is important that home server merchants are included in this, as currently they are used as 100% safe banks. Sure, merchants can be moved inside of strong deeds to add extra defence - but any deed can be raided.
    The other problem here is the use of 'log off alts' or 'banking alts' to store items in complete safety. Increase the rate of decay
    on items held by inactive/non-premium characters to mitigate this problem. Otherwise, everything currently held on merchants will simply be moved onto alts.
  •     Remove speed bonus from logged off alts on boats on  PvP servers
    Good change.
  •     Have tower guards target whoever is trying to capture the tower. Require killing of guards before tower is captured.
    Assuming that being hit does not cancel the cap, then this is a good change. Otherwise it makes tower-capping impracticable.
    Also, increase the timer for capturing a guard tower to 20 minutes. More time for defenders to respond and travel to the tower makes pvp more likely.

     
  •     Shield of the gone changes
    It needs a nerf, but the suggestions are messy. A flat numerical nerf is a simpler and better option. Reduce the damage reduction to 35%.
Edited by CaptainFightyPants

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I could hit on all your points, but most people have already said what I believe. There are some positives and negatives, but you missed on a major issue with pvp ---- gear. specifically armor.

I’ve been an advocate for making all armor types beneficial on the battlefield. A change to armor bonuses is a must, in my opinion.

PVP right now is a set of plate, shield and weapon. Not much change is needed, there are only negatives to switching from the standard.

I'm sure I don't have the greatest ideas, but something like decreasing swing timers for heavier armor might be beneficial. There are plenty of ideas that could be thrown around, I think a separate thread would be required to gather some suggestions on it.

#leatherarmormatters

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You can't remove points on homeservers or scale the rewards until the whole system in balanced first.

I'd rather you not touch it until you figure out what you're doing with Valrei as a whole.

Edited by Brunwulf

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- Make nolocate on bodies work similar to jewellery with power determining % blocked. Cooldowns on searching for same person.

 

Jesus... part I is cool. I don't think anyone should be able to hide. Part  II is just awful depending on the cooldown. 

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30 minutes ago, Egard said:

Before I do any kind of reply, @Retrograde When can we expect these changes ?

 

These are not changes in the pipeline right now, meaning that nothing has been started. These are up for discussion, so no estimate can even be given until the discussion comes to a close. That will be determined by the activity here and feedback given.

 

This isn't a "Here's what's coming, get ready for it!" thread. This is a "Here's what was thought up to address issues, what do you think?" thread.

 

As for band-aids vs actual fixes - To really fix and balance PvP, we're probably looking at a year at least. So in this case, "quick" changes that have a positive impact on the game are a must.

 

NOTE! This is how I would do it. This is not an official plan in the works!

Where do I get a year from?

  1. Even with all the feedback, we haven't even begin to near completion on research needed to see where the balancing is needed and what sort of balancing is needed. Obvious things like "combat" are easy to say, but when you dive into that system, where exactly do you make changes? 1 - 2 months, possibly less
  2. Actual redesign and balance design. This is where the research is used to formulate the actual changes. I include mock testing and prototyping here. 1-2 months
  3. Community feedback period. This is where the full meat and potatoes of the changes are discussed. This should not be a quick conversation. 1 month
  4. Implementation - Taking the designs and prototypes and actually getting the code to work as intended. 1-2 months easy
  5. Testing - The best testing would be via a Challenge round. 1 month
  6. Redesign, Tweaks, Fixing - Taking what tests taught us and making changes as needed. 1 month
  7. Discussion - Opening the conversation again. 1 month
  8. Final Testing - Another Challenge round to test redesigns. 1 month
  9. Final implementation - Getting the code on Live + Testing and QA 1 month

One more edit, in case I wasn't clear enough: This is not an actual Code Club time table. This is a realistic outline from someone who has a new respect for project management. :)

 

(too late, got skinned. Thanks Josh and Zeke :( <-- you caused the sadface)

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hahahaha.... 2 rounds of challenge and a year of testing eh?

yea ###### that.

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2 minutes ago, Zekezor said:

hahahaha.... 2 rounds of challenge and a year of testing eh?

yea ###### that.

 

1 minute ago, Josh said:

a year before changes...? aight see ya

 

See the above. I'm using a professional project time table. This is what the AAA companies do, only... you don't see it as players.

 

Alternative. "Screw it! Let's see if this sticks." *commits*

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When both clusters and both major chaos kingdoms are agreeing on 90% of the points made in a thread and most of that is saying "these are not good ideas" You gotta take that serious xD I'm just holding onto hope that our feedback stops this silliness, there's some hope in some of these ideas and some horror in the rest.

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Just now, Nadroj said:

When both clusters and both major chaos kingdoms are agreeing on 90% of the points made in a thread and most of that is saying "these are not good ideas" You gotta take that serious xD I'm just holding onto hope that our feedback stops this silliness, there's some hope in some of these ideas and some horror in the rest.

 

Actually... a lot of the main ideas seem to be good ones from the feedback I've been reading. There's only a few that have been noted to be 'wtf' ideas - SotG, disintegrate, and disabling mounting being three I can think of.

 

There's a baby in this bath water. Just sayin'

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Some of the major changes ( that should have been pushed for probably over a year ago?? sotg, hello? ) seem like they're very simple additions, expecting a year for anything to happen - I should probably just stop wasting my time and sell my account right now like all the longtime pvpers did.

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4 hours ago, Retrograde said:
  •     Remove Information minister.  -1 to normal office functions, +1 to "player entered..."
  •     Remove all teleportation forms on PvP servers (including home servers). -1 to blanket removal.  I support the more modified approaches others suggested.
  •     Remove archery penalties or scale according to individual armour pieces. +1
  •     Disable embarking on vehicles or mounts while in combat with an enemy players. -1.  Just a bad idea in general.  Ruins boat combat, doesn't really solve any problem.
  •     Addition of Archery keybinds. +1
  •     Remove stun/throw from valrei mobs.  +0
  •     Make nolocate on bodies work similar to jewellery with power determining % blocked. Cooldowns on searching for same person.  Scaling I like, I don't understand the cooldown thing.
  •     Remove disintegration requiring token drain and remove magranon bonus.  -1 in general.  I think this just forces people to move stuff to freedom or put on alts.
  •     Creation of a “verbose” combat tab option, including extra information such as Area of Effect spells, Direct target spells,     karma and meditation buffs, etc.  +1
  •     Raise deed costs on PvP servers to limit expansion by simply placing multiple deeds to conquer towers.  -999.  This idea is just bad.  It serves no clear purpose.  Don't allow changing kingdoms in tower influence if that is what you want to fix.  Make the towers be bashed first.  I want to someday be able to place a deed, and I'm not rich.  Stop making this game more and more pay-to-win.
  •     Scale scenario point rewards according to mission type (sacrifice, drain, traitor, tree) then modified by whether server is friendly, enemy, or elevation.  No idea what this about.
  •     Make uniques focus points of missions, or giving kingdom based rewards for slaying.  No idea what this is about.
  •     Change battle rank to only be given through kills, not through missions or capping towers/camps. +0.  Others more knowledgeable than me have weighed in.
  •     Make destruction of longhouses easier, focus on less tedium when raiding and promote faster raids.  -1 for the most part.  I like sieges and sieges should take a long time.  I don't want an easy button.  On the other hand, I cannot stand see these multistory, unfinished structures with nothing but floors.  Those things should not prevent raiding/sieging once the floors are carved/catapulted.  If you want multistory defense, then the buildings should be complete.  There are also structures on chaos that are impossible to remove as mentioned by others on this thread.  Fix that stuff!
  •     Make chaos and possibly home server merchants tauntable.  +0.  Others more knowledgeable than me have weighed in.
  •     Remove speed bonus from logged off alts on boats on  PvP servers.  +1
  •     Have tower guards target whoever is trying to capture the tower. Require killing of guards before tower is captured.  -1.  This isn't well thought out.  If you don't want your towers capped, get your butt over to the capping group and fight!  If they are "exploiting" by kiting, then it should be easy for your kingdom to defend since there are only a couple capping.  I would rather see the devs fix the mechanics of tower guards to target the capping group more randomly.

Shield of the Gone

-999 <elided crazy alternatives that simply nuke the skill and replace it with something worthless>.  Many others have chimed in already.

 

F2P Spam Abuse:  I have no idea how to fix this but smarter people in this thread have already chimed up.  Make Chaos prem only, make free players give up fight skill/affinities, etc.  But this crap of running them around all over the place is just silly.  I also don't like them being used to store items.  Chaos should be dangerous, if you don't want dangerous, get your butt back over to freedom where you belong.

 

 

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I'd rather they take their time and get it right than release more flawed ######.

This is exactly what everyone has been asking for the Dev team to do since day one. and now you're going to give them ###### about it?

Guess you can't please everyone.

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9 minutes ago, SkirmishesThreadOnly said:

Some of the major changes ( that should have been pushed for probably over a year ago?? sotg, hello? ) seem like they're very simple additions, expecting a year for anything to happen - I should probably just stop wasting my time and sell my account right now like all the longtime pvpers did.

 

If you're replying to the idea that any changes should wait for a proper revamp, disregard. If you're replying to me and thinking I'm saying it'll take a year for changes suggested here to go into effect, then you read me wrong. :)

 

I'm also not saying that these changes, whatever their final form happens to be, aren't on the right path to a proper balancing. I'm just saying that we can't wait for a proper one, PvP players have waited too long. So some well-thought (that's where you guys come in) changes now will help.

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  •     Remove Information minister. +1
  •     Remove all teleportation forms on PvP servers (including home servers). -1 (Find a better fix for this to stop enemies teleporting in to reinforce)
  •     Remove archery penalties or scale according to individual armour pieces. +1
  •     Disable embarking on vehicles or mounts while in combat with an enemy players. -1
  •     Addition of Archery keybinds. +1
  •     Remove stun/throw from valrei mobs. +1
  •     Make nolocate on bodies work similar to jewellery with power determining % blocked. Cooldowns on searching for same person. +1
  •     Remove disintegration requiring token drain and remove magranon bonus. -1
  •     Creation of a “verbose” combat tab option, including extra information such as Area of Effect spells, Direct target spells, karma and meditation buffs, etc. +1
  •     Raise deed costs on PvP servers to limit expansion by simply placing multiple deeds to conquer towers. -1 (Find a better solution)
  •     Scale scenario point rewards according to mission type (sacrifice, drain, traitor, tree) then modified by whether server is friendly, enemy, or elevation. +1
  •     Make uniques focus points of missions, or giving kingdom based rewards for slaying. +1
  •     Change battle rank to only be given through kills, not through missions or capping towers/camps. +1
  •     Make destruction of longhouses easier, focus on less tedium when raiding and promote faster raids. +1
  •     Make chaos and possibly home server merchants tauntable. -/+ (Undecided on this one, there are a lot of legit merchants on the home servers)
  •     Remove speed bonus from logged off alts on boats on  PvP servers. +1
  •     Have tower guards target whoever is trying to capture the tower. Require killing of guards before tower is captured. -1 (Find a better solution)

 

Shield of the Gone

SotG has been a long term issue with PvPers, and it is quite clear that it is too powerful in its current state.We currently have two proposed changes, which are listed below:

  • Reworking SotG to only work with Cloth or Leather armour, moving a SotG character to being lighter without sacrificing protection (being slightly more than steel plate, but lower than scale/moon plate) yet not be the current tank that it is. -1

 

  • Alternatively, remove the ability to heal from Life Transfer and all healing spells. This moves the SotG character into a strong fighter in a short melee, but in drawn out conflicts becomes very fragile. +1 The better of the 2 idea's, however just make it 25%. If you change this drastically you have to buff the other insanity abilities because they are crap.)

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46 minutes ago, Keenan said:

 

These are not changes in the pipeline right now, meaning that nothing has been started. These are up for discussion, so no estimate can even be given until the discussion comes to a close. That will be determined by the activity here and feedback given.

 

This isn't a "Here's what's coming, get ready for it!" thread. This is a "Here's what was thought up to address issues, what do you think?" thread.

 

As for band-aids vs actual fixes - To really fix and balance PvP, we're probably looking at a year at least. So in this case, "quick" changes that have a positive impact on the game are a must.

 

NOTE! This is how I would do it. This is not an official plan in the works!

Where do I get a year from?

  1. Even with all the feedback, we haven't even begin to near completion on research needed to see where the balancing is needed and what sort of balancing is needed. Obvious things like "combat" are easy to say, but when you dive into that system, where exactly do you make changes? 1 - 2 months, possibly less
  2. Actual redesign and balance design. This is where the research is used to formulate the actual changes. I include mock testing and prototyping here. 1-2 months
  3. Community feedback period. This is where the full meat and potatoes of the changes are discussed. This should not be a quick conversation. 1 month
  4. Implementation - Taking the designs and prototypes and actually getting the code to work as intended. 1-2 months easy
  5. Testing - The best testing would be via a Challenge round. 1 month
  6. Redesign, Tweaks, Fixing - Taking what tests taught us and making changes as needed. 1 month
  7. Discussion - Opening the conversation again. 1 month
  8. Final Testing - Another Challenge round to test redesigns. 1 month
  9. Final implementation - Getting the code on Live + Testing and QA 1 month

One more edit, in case I wasn't clear enough: This is not an actual Code Club time table. This is a realistic outline from someone who has a new respect for project management. :)

 

(too late, got skinned. Thanks Josh and Zeke :( <-- you caused the sadface)

Suggestion:

 

Instead of doing traditional project management, use Lean/Kanban or even Agile. Both methodologies would allow you to roll out change faster and in smaller pieces with emphasis on prioritization of what's important and/or easier to implement.

 

With all the feedback being received the next step would be to list out the universally positively received ideas and ask people to rank them in priority. That gives you the customer facing priority. Rank those by technical difficulty/dependencies etc. Plot them into a loose timeline at two week deliverable intervals and all of a sudden you have achieved project and risk management as well as improving customer satisifaction so that the few remaining PVPers don't quit before any of this gets implemented.

 

Implement some automated testing as part of this as well and quality should improve too.

 

As a professional project manager proficient in all three project management techniques mentioned here I hope this suggestion is received in the friendly spirit it is issued in.

 

~Nappy

Edited by Nappy

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  •     Remove Information minister. +1
  •     Remove all teleportation forms on PvP servers (including home servers). Guess
  •     Remove archery penalties or scale according to individual armour pieces. +1
  •     Disable embarking on vehicles or mounts while in combat with an enemy players +1.
  •     Addition of Archery keybinds. +1
  •     Remove stun/throw from valrei mobs. +1
  •     Make nolocate on bodies work similar to jewellery with power determining % blocked. Cooldowns on searching for same person. Nah
  •     Remove disintegration requiring token drain and remove magranon bonus. Big NO -1
  •     Creation of a “verbose” combat tab option, including extra information such as Area of Effect spells, Direct target spells,     karma and meditation buffs, etc Sure
  •     Raise deed costs on PvP servers to limit expansion by simply placing multiple deeds to conquer Towers. Ofc but not upkeep
  •     Scale scenario point rewards according to mission type (sacrifice, drain, traitor, tree) then modified by whether server is friendly, enemy, or elevation. Dont care 
  •     Make uniques focus points of missions, or giving kingdom based rewards for slaying. Sure
  •     Change battle rank to only be given through kills, not through missions or capping towers/camps +1
  •     Make destruction of longhouses easier, focus on less tedium when raiding and promote faster raids. NO
  •     Make chaos and possibly home server merchants tauntable Dont care
  •     Remove speed bonus from logged off alts on boats on  PvP servers +1
  •     Have tower guards target whoever is trying to capture the tower. Require killing of guards before tower is captured. what

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51 minutes ago, Keenan said:

 

 

See the above. I'm using a professional project time table. This is what the AAA companies do, only... you don't see it as players.

 

Alternative. "Screw it! Let's see if this sticks." *commits*

We aren't asking ya to fix every single change and release it at once.

We are asking that you fix parts of the issues at a time.

Complete redesign of combat as a whole can take its time, but there is a lot of diffrent categories that can be adressed individually.

Capping of towers / deeds influence over territory is ONE part.

Raiding / deed defenses and stuff is a SECOND part.

Actual ingame Mace2TheFace balance is a THIRD part.

ETC.

 

You dont need to delay it for a whole year and release a single update...

Edited by Zekezor

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To get an initial idea of the support for these changes rather then having to read through all the feed back make a poll with a yes/no or (Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree etc) option for each dot point suggestion. If the forums can't do it use a 3rd party survey tool? 

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Challenge server is dead atm. If you want to test some specific changes before implementing them, open this server and let us test them during short 3-4 days long scenarios.

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4 minutes ago, Mormo said:

Challenge server is dead atm. If you want to test some specific changes before implementing them, open this server and let us test them during short 3-4 days long scenarios.

none of these changes are even significant enough for a challenge test though

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9 minutes ago, Josh said:

none of these changes are even significant enough for a challenge test though

SotG players in leather against no SotG players in plates, 1 day long scenario "conquer/defend X". Of course that makes Challenge quite close to the test server but that`s another story.

Edited by Mormo

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Make destruction of longhouses easier, focus on less tedium when raiding and promote faster raids. -1 I don't find this a good idea at all

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