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Retrograde

PvP changes refined

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I've gone through and removed some of the more negative ones in the OP, and also added bold text explaining a few better, as well as adjusting them compared to the original premise

 

Please bear in mind this is not all the changes. For the sake of structuring I have split the many changes we intend on bringing in into smaller sprints in order to continue to actively improve pvp. Each change or addition will then be monitored.

 

Widespread balancing involving combat, weapons, armour, mounts, spells, priests, meditation, karma, sorcery will take time, the aim of this is to address key long standing mechanics issues, and allow us to then view what needs to balance and plan accordingly.

 

no changes to mechanics will go live without the information being made available prior

Changes

  •     Remove expanded Information minister functions removal of "x enters your territory"
  •     Remove all teleportation forms on PvP servers (including home servers). Cooldown on exiting local of enemy players, crossing servers, disabling teleporting into enemy presence and alerted deeds
  •     Remove archery penalties or scale according to individual armour pieces.
  •     Disable embarking on vehicles or mounts while in combat with an enemy players.5 second timer to embark, disruptable
  •     Addition of Archery keybinds.
  •     Remove stun/throw from valrei mobs.Until throwing/stun mechanics can be addressed
  •     Make nolocate on bodies work similar to jewellery with power determining % blocked. Cooldowns on searching for same person.30 second cooldown when Nolocate is effective, no nolo, no cooldown
  •  
  •     Creation of a “verbose” combat tab option, including extra information such as Area of Effect spells, Direct target spells,     karma and meditation buffs, etc
  •     Scale scenario point rewards according to mission type (sacrifice, drain, traitor, tree) then modified by whether server is friendly, enemy, or elevation (varied scenario points per part of mission, multiplied by .5, 1 or 1.5 according to server, this would mean a hard mission on a home server is still better than an easy mission on an enemy server, move timers may be adjusted accordingly)
  •     Make uniques focus points of missions, or giving kingdom based rewards for slaying Neutral mission to slay x unique in x region, slaying faction receives god move reduction as if they completed a mission for said god
  •     Change battle rank to only be given through kills, not through missions or capping towers/camps
  •     Make chaos and possibly home server merchants tauntable (perhaps require killing of all guards, or a drain similar to disintegration)
  •     Remove speed bonus from logged off alts on boats on  PvP servers (dont want to remove this from pve servers as sailing is slow enough, on pvp it should be vulnerable though)
  •     Have tower guards target whoever is trying to capture the tower. Require killing of guards before tower is captured. Removal of action timer and requiring a certain amount of guards killed within a ten minute timeframe Remove interruptable action timer and be reliant on triggering the capture, then requiring a certain amount of guards required to be slain in order to capture the tower, or simply all guards slain within the timeframe, possible to scale according to local player count

 

SOTG

reduction to 25% DR until time for total meditation balancing is possible. Meditation should add flavour or slight benefits, not allow a path to be the dominant path

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Sounds good, remember to reduce the timer effect friendly homeserver missions has aswell, from 12h to 3h or something

 

Also, valrei abilities needs a looking at, if sotg is nerfed, true strike will kill anyone in 1 hit

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1.png

 

a little thing would be the merch thing, now i am not a guy who sells stuff on homeservers, but maybe enabling putting merchs on starter deeds could be a possible fix, since there is actually a lot of people relying on these. not a big thing to me though, jsut pointing it out.

Edited by Quicktor
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Will the teleportation limit for going into enemy presence of alerted deeds affect twigs/farwalker stones? 

 

While I know SotG is somewhat overpowered, I'm wondering if everyone's base hp could be increased as a lot of current pvp I've seen on chaos involves huge axe pushes to hammer down someone with SotG very quickly especially with things such as true strike. Increasing the base hp coming in with the change to sotg

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Are people still going to get a free change of meditation path with this change ? @Retrograde As well whats the time frame to expect these changes.

Edited by Egard
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17 minutes ago, changer said:

Sounds good, remember to reduce the timer effect friendly homeserver missions has aswell, from 12h to 3h or something

 

Also, valrei abilities needs a looking at, if sotg is nerfed, true strike will kill anyone in 1 hit

This.

The reward AND time reduction for gods should be modified by the multiplier, not just the reward.

Edited by Zekezor
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13 minutes ago, Quicktor said:

1.png

 

a little thing would be the merch thing, now i am not a guy who sells stuff on homeservers, but maybe enabling putting merchs on starter deeds could be a possible fix, since there is actually a lot of people relying on these. not a big thing to me though, jsut pointing it out.

So like.... What ya really want is an auction house at the starter deed eh? lol

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25% DR just makes Hate the better option now.

Should have gone with 30%.

 

Edited to 30%.

Edited by Brunwulf
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1 minute ago, Brunwulf said:

25% DR just makes Hate the better option now.

Should have gone with 35%.

If insanity is still the "better path' it's not really balanced.

 

this will take time to work on, it will not be the first change coming, just something that needs longer term looking at and to put the 'nerf sotg" arguments to rest

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Me likes this, good job going trough the feedback, and then kinda adapt to that.

 

 

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34 minutes ago, Brunwulf said:

25% DR just makes Hate the better option now.

Should have gone with 35%.

I get the feeling even with 25% people will prefer their own survival. (especially since its perma rather than a shorter duration).

But arguably it could have been scaled to 30% i guess, but 35% isnt needed.

 

But it will be interesting to see if people start to pick power, knowledge and hate a bit more now... (But not love cuz healing hands from love simply isnt a good enough bonus... add a firstaid multiplier of 300%, a lifetransfer multiplier of 200%, a regen multiplier of 200% and finally a 50% time reduction for firstaid/healing cover actions... then people would start using it. a proper "medic" path... ESPECIALLY if healing spells get nerfed.)

Edited by Zekezor
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With this sotg nerf i think we will see alot of ppl at least think about what path to take, can be interesting

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5 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

If insanity is still the "better path' it's not really balanced.

 

this will take time to work on, it will not be the first change coming, just something that needs longer term looking at and to put the 'nerf sotg" arguments to rest

 

You are comparing a level 11 with level 9 ability, they shouldn't necessarily be equal. Else what's the point of higher levels/skills? You unlock better things as time progresses, 30/35% would be nicer IMO 

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I still consider a passive damage reduction in a game that offers very little offensive debuff abilities (to try counter it) very silly. Others have mentioned certain weapon combos, ability stacking and the addition of critical hits (well, an ability that guarantees a critical hit) means newer players are still going to get dunked on.

 

I agree hate would be more favourable as any path looks slightly better when a nerf is involved but you seriously think 15 minutes of damage bonus will appeal to people? In a world of gate hopping and playing safe your 15 minute bonus will likely have little impact unless it's open field combat.

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True strike has been something raised and is being looked at, I havent spoken with the dev team about it yet but I feel a cooldown at the very least is in order

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2 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

True strike has been something raised and is being looked at, I havent spoken with the dev team about it yet but I feel a cooldown at the very least is in order

What about just adding offensive CR instead?

Rather than a 1crit-wonderboy-ability it will be an accuracy boost over a period of time which would result in plenty of damage dependant on how strong that CR boost is.

not to mention it "fits" with the name "truestrike", cuz it makes you strike more accurately.

Edited by Zekezor
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In light of the clarifications and trimming down of the original prompt, I've revised and updated my replies, though largely similar to the previous thread.  Once again, spoiler used due to length.  Direct copy-paste from previous thread are in quotes, whereas updated feedback is not.

 

Spoiler

Remove expanded Information minister functions removal of "x enters your territory"

Doesn't really apply/impact me in any way on home server, seems the consensus from the thread is to remove the ability but not the office, no opinion from me.

 


Remove all teleportation forms on PvP servers (including home servers). Cooldown on exiting local of enemy players, crossing servers, disabling teleporting into enemy presence and alerted deeds

Sounds sensible, though obviously will depend on the cooldown amount and such.

 


Remove archery penalties or scale according to individual armour pieces.

Prompt unchanged, therefore copied and pasted my reply from previous thread below.

 

Quote

While I'm in favor personally of removing the penalties as all the mechanics stand now, because I always wear plate like most other sensible people - I believe this was a move toward providing some usefulness for other armor types, among other things.  I think this comes back to a question that was asked around page 7 about the overall goals/vision for the Epic and Chaos servers (and to a lesser extent the Freedom cluster)...what is the vision of the different armor types?  Because as it stands, there has not been any meaningful reason to wear cloth, leather, or chain in almost all circumstances for a long, long time.  If the intent is to, at some point in the next year, make other armor choices viable for different playstyles in some real way (and not just - well, you can move a bit faster or shoot a bit stronger), then that will largely govern my opinion on removing or not removing the penalties.  If it's just token gestures like as have occurred, and the de facto standard will remain a minimum of steel plate, and that's OK with the vision for the game, then yea, remove the penalties.  If not, then it may be unpopular, but leave them in if this is part 1 of a multi-part effort to balance armor with meaningful pros and cons a part of a larger vision.

 


Disable embarking on vehicles or mounts while in combat with an enemy players.  5 second timer to embark, disruptable

Once again, I would argue against this for, at a minimum, creatures.  If vehicles or boats are to be treated differently, and there's a reason for it vis a vis boat PvP, then so be it, but this renders fights even more of a "dismount them/kill their primary mount and it's game over" situation, renders backup horses more or less useless, and makes the PvP engagements even more, in a sense, boring and stale IMO.  I vote leave as is on mounts, vehicles ideally too, change if necessary for boats, but really need to understand what the perceived problem is here that is prompting the topic.  Re-stating my position from the other thread below.

 

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This seems unrealistic and a bit foolish.  IMO, you should always be able to mount ANY horse/other mount animal in combat (barring being stunned or the usual).  So then we have to look at vehicles.  I don't know of people PvPing with wagons (lol), but wagons/large carts - I still don't see why you couldn't hop on in combat, or how that helps/hurts.  There are tradeoffs like everything...if someone is one hit from death but hops on a large cart driven by a buddy, who is alive, and the horses aren't dead somehow, and they can drive out of there, more power to them.  The opposition can archer the horses, the driver, or finish off the player - chase on their own horses if not dead - or the player escapes because the opposition failed to remove that large cart and its horses as a get away vehicle, etc. etc.  Lots of possible permutations there that, either way, don't seem to be overpowered or underpowered or somehow game-breaking.  

 

Boat PvP is, again, one of those things we need to talk about vision and overall plans.  It makes up a big part of the (admittedly only ~30 or so) engagements I've been in in my last 3 or 4 years with the game.  What the intent is (and yes, I know it's a sandbox and emergent behaviors are hard to predict/control) governs a lot of what, if any, tweaks should be made to embarking/fighting on/from/escaping in boats.  As it stands right now, without an explanation of vision or intent, I'd say tweaks need to be made to boat embarking/PvP (I'm sure there are plenty of ideas for specifics regarding timers, embark range, etc.), but leave mounts and vehicles alone.

 


Addition of Archery keybinds.

Unchanged from previous prompt, copy and pasted reply below.

 

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I think is pretty much universally seen as a QoL improvement without anyone shooting it down, pardon the horrible pun.

 


Remove stun/throw from valrei mobs.  Until throwing/stun mechanics can be addressed

I still remain in favor of leaving the stun, and removing the throw mechanic only, until such time as it can be modified to prevent people being thrown into enclosed areas or the middle of lakes.  Stun doesn't do that, it's rough but understandable from high-end mobs.  I've re-stated my original position below, though updated to reflect the new information "until throwing/stun mechanics can be addressed".

 

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If there's no code way to make sure they only throw you into non-enclosed areas (admittedly that might be a hard thing to do), then remove the throw.  

 

Stuns, I think, are realistic - these are supposedly creatures who come from or are summoned by the gods on Valrei, they should be pretty powerful and tough to fight - especially given the chance of seryll and potions.  Perhaps look at the durations in respect to other high-end creatures, champs, and uniques, and scale accordingly.


 

Make nolocate on bodies work similar to jewellery with power determining % blocked. Cooldowns on searching for same person. 30 second cooldown when Nolocate is effective, no nolo, no cooldown
The first part of the prompt here is unchanged, and still needs addressing, so I've copied the lion's share of my original reply over to here, then added a modified reply below based on the cooldown information.

 

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While I agree a change needs to be made (a raid group running with priest NoLo right now, at least in my experience, is pretty damn near hard to get any locate hits on despite several high-end priests trying - it just becomes a massive favor sink), I don't think making it exactly the same as jewelry makes sense, either.  There should be something in between what we have now and what the jewelry currently offers.  After all, it takes a priest with the skill to cast, the favor to cast, and keeping it up on everyone in a group, it should offer some additional protection over a passively-cast piece of jewelry.  But it shouldn't be this impenetrable thing, or something that requires 1000s of favor to break through.  On an equal-for-equal basis, for example, if I have a 90 faith 90 channeling priest, let's say vs. a 90 faith 90 channeling priest who noloed his group of people...and assume both my locate cast and his nolocate casts are equal strength...I should have to expend some effort to break them, at a rate higher than the effort he expended to cast it.  What that exact ratio is, I'm not sure.  Somewhere more than 1 cast and less than 20 or 30, I'm sure there would be variable opinion on exactly what is right.  For me, I'd say 5-10 is realistic for me to break through - again, assuming equal strengths and forgetting about the RNG lottery for a minute here.  How this is accomplished with the code and the strengths of the casts, etc., those details would need to be fleshed out further.  I'm talking about the mechanic itself and the resources/protection offered vs. a jewellry-cast NoLo, and how it can (or can't) be countered, and what the effort and resources are involved in countering that.  Balance, but balance that gives the protected some protection and requires those seeking to locate someone to expend some effort and resources, without making it this impossible, several-hours-of-favor-mats making task, because then it's just OP.

 

Alternatively, removing priest NoLo entirely might be a valid option, though I would think something would have to be added to replace the lost spell or it further devalues priests.


In regards to a cooldown, I don't quite understand the point, and/or it seems like an unnecessary mechanic that will be counter-productive.  I assume this is in reference to the Locate spell, rather than the NoLocate spell, based on the context in the prompt, so I'm responding accordingly.  There are existing cooldowns - on success or failure - called the spell cast timer.  Add in time to sac more saccables for favor, or eat gems - there are already delays roughly equivalent to 30 seconds.  Or is this saying a 30 second timer on the located victim, i.e. so if 3 priests are casting to try to find him, he's "immune" for 30 seconds after a positive hit from being hit again?  Either way, seems like an additional mechanic or limitation that doesn't solve the underlying problem of priest nolo, as it stands, being effectively impenetrable, which is the main problem  The casting/finding vs. jewelry mechanics seem to work fine IMO, so modify the priest-casted NoLo buff (I suggest as per my reply above though obviously people will have different ideas).  Don't see the point/purpose/usefulness/balance need for any cooldown on casting the Locate spell.  Fix the underlying mechanics, don't add more complexity on top.  Balance the effort vs. the reward on both sides of the equation and problems will be solved.

 

 

Creation of a “verbose” combat tab option, including extra information such as Area of Effect spells, Direct target spells, karma and meditation buffs, etc

Unchanged from original prompt, hence copy and paste reply.

 

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A revamp of the combat reporting system would be most welcome as a major QoL improvement.  The details are important, of course, but there has to be a better way to get real-time information on everything going on, without you needing to read at the speed of light, and/or infer a lot of information that isn't posted.  Not saying you need to reinvent the wheel here - when in doubt, imitate the success of others.  Look at other games that use text-based reporting and mirror/improve on that.  Utilize the new uh, for lack of a better term, center-of-screen large text reporting, utilize color, look at what the players need to know in regards to combat and ways to communicate all of that information succinctly and in ways that provide instant feedback.  There's a reason aircraft have tons and tons of gauges and buttons and not just scrolling text reports.  Not saying change the whole UI, but learn the usability lessons of HUD design and user feedback as to what they need to know, when they need to know it, and how the brain receives, interprets, and processes that information.  Verbosity is not necessarily the answer, either.  Maybe for after-the-fact analysis but not in realtime - adding more scrolling text in a melee is not going to help, exactly.  A lot can be conveyed with sound, color, image, etc. quicker and in a less cluttered manner, and even the long wall of text can be better presented and summarized...kind of like this paragraph, if I just said TL:DR improve combat tab.

 


Scale scenario point rewards according to mission type (sacrifice, drain, traitor, tree) then modified by whether server is friendly, enemy, or elevation (varied scenario points per part of mission, multiplied by .5, 1 or 1.5 according to server, this would mean a hard mission on a home server is still better than an easy mission on an enemy server, move timers may be adjusted accordingly)

This gets into a very complex area of determining mission difficulty, which can be a matter of opinion and greatly differ based on who is making that determination.  Upon reflection from the other thread and my post yesterday, I think a more streamlined 2x reward for Ele and enemy home servers, 1x (existing) reward for home servers is the easiest from a player understanding standpoint (and probably a coding standpoint).  Though I would still like to see all the other changes mentioned yesterday, and so will re-state that rather lengthy section of my reply (with one a few strikeouts) in its entirety below.

 

I also think it's worth pointing out, for those who continue to insist that home server missions be abolished - that without a few key players on home servers running missions a large percentage of their game time every day, the number of times Fo would have won in the last few years, and thus awarded JK players on Elevation OR home servers tomes, would be DRASTICALLY reduced.  So be careful what you wish for - I am obviously NOT in favor of restricting missions to Elevation only, as discussed in my original reply below, but this recurring theme from a small group of vocal players/forum contributors deserved a response.

 

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Brace yourselves, as this is probably going to be the longest section of my reply yet.

 

There's a lot that needs to be looked at with Valrei/scenarios/missions, and I think that's been said here and elsewhere time and time again.  I am reminded again of trying to fix things piecemeal vs. fundamental overhauls, and the practical considerations of reality usually being a mix of the two.  Nevertheless, I think there are few key points with the changes as proposed/mentioned in the prompt, as well as common themes from groups or factions of people, that deserve to be addressed in the short-term, rather than as part of a longer-term overhaul of what, admittedly, is supposed to be part of the "goal" or "end-game" of Epic.

 

  • Missions
    • Further tweaking needs to be done to mission generation.  Not saying some shouldn't be harder than others, but they should all be doable.  If the mission is going to request 40 anaconda be slain, for example, there damn well better be some figure in excess of 40 anaconda alive on the server at that time.  Personally, based on other figures we've inferred from things like valrei mission item sacrifice missions, I'd say a 2-3x ratio of alive vs. needed as a minimum requirement.
    • A lot of progress was made in the last year removing bogus items that could not be created, items that should not be part of missions (such as saccing seryll lumps), etc.  I'd like to see that pruning and tweaking continue, and it being about a lot more than just numbers - about the difficulty, skill, and time/resource investment needed to complete a mission, and some normalization based on that.
    • Would also like to see some more mission variety added in at some point, perhaps rotations over time that get rid of some of the same tired things and add in new types, though that's more of a variety/retention thing than anything critical
  • Interface
    • The in-game map interface was a nice addition, but it still is buggy a LOT of the time vs. outside tools like Strikelimit.  It should be the other way around, if anything.  Needs tweaking to work at least as well as third party interfaces based on the same data set.
  • Griefing
    • There have been some incidents of griefing, using the commune function to intentionally mis-path dieties to the wrong hexes.  While I generally don't support this, I don't know how it could be addressed, and seems valid inasmuch as those people obviously have the points to be able to do the commune, they should have the right to spend them how they want.  The problem seems to mostly arise from PMKs and, to a lesser extent, enemy same-kingdom alts.  Don't know what should or could be done, if anything, but I think worth noting here.
  • PMGs
    • Player-made-god missions - don't quite know how, but this needs to be tweaked, such that with the changes in kingdom favoring for these gods, impossible missions don't stick around (or simply aren't part of the rotation for PMGs).  "Drain a settlement token" is fine when it favors an enemy, but when it's your own home server and friendly, it's not doable, and the PMGs stagnate on Valrei as a result.  Either the PMGs should have always-neutral-type-missions that enemies (with a bit more work of course) or friendlies could accomplish, or some other tweaks.
  • Points
    • Despite being a home server player, I'm going to agree that there should be some scaling for Elevation to get more points for missions that inherently present greater risk or hardship.
      • Ideally, I'd like this to be based on mission types - i.e. cutting a tree, building a shrine, etc. should give more points on Elevation, but saccing some crafted items, in my opinion, should not, for example.  Would have to go through the various types and this isn't all-inclusive, but if we're truly talking risk vs. reward, let's make sure we keep that as the overriding goal.  2k points for traitors, trees, mission structures, rituals/towers, drains, killing things, etc., 1k (same as home servers) on saccing crafted things or crafting/making things as 1) they can be made on home servers and brought over, 2) they can and likely are made from the safety of within a deed/capitol.  Some argument could be made that there was greater risk in setting up that deed or capitol, or obtaining the materials on Elevation, though I would counter all that can be boated/portalled in as well.  Could go either way on the saccing Valrei mission items, as they are in theory riskier to get on Elevation - but while it remains that the items are interchangable from mission to mission, and between home servers and Elevation, I would be wary of changing that.  If they're made mission-specific, yes, 2k for Ele 1k for home servers. 
      • Not the end of the world if you just want to make it a blanket 2x on Elevation for all missions to keep it simple in code and player understanding IMO. 
    • For enemy home server missions, I think it's reasonable to award 2x points here as well.  It's an enemy home server, you have a CR nerf, you had to travel there - there's risk involved, even if the current population trends make that a more theoretical risk than a practical one at present.  In theory this should encourage more travel to enemy home servers, thus more PvP encounters and incidental raiding/destruction/fun.
    • I'd also like to see something that has long been discussed - for building epic structures, and similar missions in that style - please, for the love of Valrei, reward all players who participated.  YOU ALREADY TRACK their participation %s, visible on the final structure when examined (sidebar:  though there's a decimal off in there, %s add up to 1.00%, not 100.00% - also, can we remove/drop all names from this that are 0% so it's not a long ass list of every person who ever played and their 0% contribution?  Seems like that's taking up a lot of database space unnecessarily - space that could be freed up to track things that are useful, such as that discussed in my next bullet point below), so there's no reason the person who added the last piece should get all the points, leaving everyone else out in the cold.  I realize it's kind of pointless in the current iteration for most home servers as all structures are done as far as I know - well at least JKH and MRH - but the principle is valid and would hold for future servers/resets/remaining structures on BLH or Ele, and similar type missions in the future.
      • That same principle SHOULD be brought into play if at all possible for other large build missions, such as a Colossus, ship(s), etc., things that take multiple people a lot of time to build...I would just expect it to be far easier with the structures since the information is already clearly tracked in the database vs. requiring new tracking, possibly new methodologies (such as for boats) that are far different than the structures (which more closely mirror the Colossus analogue).
  • Home Server vs. Elevation
    • In no case do I think missions, scenario points, karma, Valrei terraforming events, or anything else in the current system should be removed from home servers - you'll simply further drive people either to Freedom, away from the game, or to Elevation, and in all cases, if the "away from the game" percentage of that equation is >0%, it's a losing proposition. 
    • With tweaks to make Elevation, a higher risk situation, offer higher scenario point rewards, this further solidifies the case for keeping home server Valrei participation as is.
      • Without getting into a flame war or anything too controversial, I can't help but notice a lot of the people who are always clamoring for home server missions to be removed are one of two groups:
        • Those who have no home server - the PMKs.  While I can understand wanting to benefit oneself, that was kind of a known quantity when becoming part of a PMK, and the solution should not be to negatively penalize other players for their own decision to be part of a PMK.
        • Those who play almost exclusively on Elevation, and don't like being in the lottery with the home server "carebears" who won't "use" the reward items to the satisfaction or "benefit" of the PvP kingdom, as they see it.
      • Both of these stances marginalize the home server populations for the benefit of those two groups of people, rather than being part of some larger balance or game play issue, and as such, I don't believe deserve a great deal of change or tweaking, since there is no underlying game problem but rather personal enrichment at issue.
      • Both of these groups should, however, be somewhat mollified if true effort vs. reward is more accurately reflected in how things work, both in terms of point awards as per this section, and the overall reward lottery as per the next section.
  • Rewards
    • While it may be true that the lottery for the scenario rewards, based on points, utilizes the same RNG as everywhere else (with some exceptions, such as the minimum 300 point barrier to entry, etc.), it still SEEMS to most of us (at least on Epic) who spend a lot of time doing missions and accruing points, that it disproportionately rewards people with a small number of points in a scenario vs. those with the larger amounts of points.  I'm not convinced there isn't some bug in the code algorithms that determine the rewards.  But even if there isn't, some meaningful changes need to be made - not a "he who has the most points wins QQ more" system, that would be equally bad, but some balance that doesn't seem like it's always the people with 300 or 1000 points from doing 1 mission or killing a few critters for one mission who win the reward vs. someone with 12k, 15k, 20k points who did nothing but run missions for weeks.
      • For example, I know for a fact one of the recent scenarios rewarded two people of the three who received the items, who had only 1k points in that scenario, while at least 3 others had between 3k and 12k points each and did not receive items.  While in truly random systems, this can and does happen, the odds of it happening AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN and enough people noticing this trend means there's definitely something fishy going on.  I don't know if it's 300 points then all points are tickets, or if it's 300 points per ticket, or what precisely is in the code, as I haven't bought WU or spent time decompiling it to figure that out, but I and others know there's something wrong.
      • Players who only can play occasionally or put forth a small amount of effort SHOULD be eligible for a reward, but those who spend tons of time and effort for days/weeks on end should be FAR MORE LIKELY to get the reward, and the current system is not reflecting that properly in the results, whether or not the code and math say it should be.

 


Make uniques focus points of missions, or giving kingdom based rewards for slaying Neutral mission to slay x unique in x region, slaying faction receives god move reduction as if they completed a mission for said god

No real change in my opinion, I don't think uniques belong as part of the mission architecture.

 

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Aside from their existing role as potential traitors, etc., I don't see a need to involve uniques any further in the mission architecture.  Certainly not without a much more dynamic point tracking and assignment system that would award those involved (rather than just whomever gets the killing blow), and on a larger scale than the same amount of points for cutting a tree or killing a regular traitor creature.

 

However, it would be nice if there could be some meaningful changes to uniques.  Not necessarily making them easier but - given current population, even if, for example, those actively playing from JKE and JKH banded together (which rarely if ever happens due to internal politics), it would be very unlikely enough players would be fielded to take down a dragon, for example.  Not true a month or two ago, but now, it is.  Again, I don't have a specific suggestion here, I'd just like to see uniques being more accessible and not the provenance of the truly veteran groups only, nor requiring a miracle of the active population to kill.  Obviously this becomes less of an issue if population numbers are back up in the 100-200 range routinely, but as it stands now, they're not.

 

Finally, I'd like to see more variety in the loot/rewards aside from some blood and hide or whatever.  A skull, rare bone, etc. are nice, but, I don't know, potions, seryll, everybody who landed a blow gets a roll at a rare coin, whatever, something to make it more rewarding aside from titles and honor

 


Change battle rank to only be given through kills, not through missions or capping towers/camps

 

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Agreed with most in this thread, missions should have nothing to do with battle rank, should not award rank, and the various discussions on decay and resetting ranks should be played in further detail.

 


Make chaos and possibly home server merchants tauntable (perhaps require killing of all guards, or a drain similar to disintegration)

I am still vehemently opposed to this with regards to home servers.  Once again, it will cause a decrease in the already waning trade and commerce, or result in people having to conduct sales through outside websites or other means - which disproportionately hurts newbies and younger players, anyway, as veterans tend to be able to craft/obtain more of their own stuff from themselves or villages/alliance members already.  This hurts people with legitimate merchants, for no particular reason or stated purpose.

 

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I don't want to speak for Chaos, though from a game mechanic perspective, paralleling Elevation, it would make sense.  For home servers, however, this gets a big no from me.  It further hurts the game economy as legitimate trade hubs will dry up further than they already have with the lower population we've been seeing.  Plus, if people want to use them to store their own high-end items and set prices crazy high, etc. - they'll just store on alts if this mechanic comes in, and then you have a bunch more F2P alts for people to manage so long as they've been premmed once, they're good.  Does nothing positive IMO for home server merchants to be tauntable.

 

If the concern is use of untouchable merchants to store things at insane prices as a personal 50 slot "bank", you could do something like a maintenance fee based on the stated price of the items on the merchant on a monthly basis or something taken from the owner's bank, perhaps in lieu of the transactional sales cut that is currently taken - but again, that will either just drive people to super-secure their storage merchants in safe mines or elaborate forts and set more reasonable prices (50s instead of 50g), or stop using them and use alts, or both, while proving more problems/expenses/etc. for legitimate merchants.  So it's pretty much a losing proposition no matter what you do here, I would just leave it alone.  Unless there's another concern I'm not aware of that you're trying to solve with this change..

 

 

Remove speed bonus from logged off alts on boats on  PvP servers (dont want to remove this from pve servers as sailing is slow enough, on pvp it should be vulnerable though)

 

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This seems like a bug fix to me and shouldn't even be up for debate, though I do understand including it in the PvP changes thread, but yea, bug fix.


 

Have tower guards target whoever is trying to capture the tower. Require killing of guards before tower is captured. Removal of action timer and requiring a certain amount of guards killed within a ten minute timeframe. Remove interruptable action timer and be reliant on triggering the capture, then requiring a certain amount of guards required to be slain in order to capture the tower, or simply all guards slain within the timeframe, possible to scale according to local player count
I'll copy my original reply below, but this seems to be growing with more and more mechanics or elements to it when on the surface, and from a realism perspective, it seems rather simple.  Kill the guards, tap the tower, it's yours.  Yes I understand kiting and interruption and all that, so for sure, tweak and dig into details, but maybe come at it from a top-down approach rather than bottom-up here IMO.  What's the ideal sequence that's trying to be replicated, what are the defenders (NPC guards alone, NPC guards + enemy kingdom, or enemy kingdom only) able to do to stop a tower cap, is it balanced, and if not, tweak those variables.  I am just not in favor of ever adding in more and more mechanics (it seems from the prompt revision, anyway) than necessary because things get unwieldy.  But, as I said in my original reply, this is one of the areas I am least-versed in, having only been a part of a few captures in my time, so take it with a grain of salt or just as a point of perspective here.

 

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I'll leave this to the Ele/Chaos folks to talk through in detail, as I haven't been involved in many tower caps.  From the few I have, though, and just common sense - would seem to support that in a real situation, all guards should be dead, and then you own the tower...like, kill all guards, tap the tower/1-3s action timer/something nearly instant, and you're good.  FWIW.

 


SOTG reduction to 25% DR until time for total meditation balancing is possible. Meditation should add flavour or slight benefits, not allow a path to be the dominant path

While the specifics of the amounts and all the various possible options have been bandied about in the previous thread, I wholeheartedly support the viewpoint of the second sentence in the revised prompt, exactly on target.

 

Thank you for your continued indulgence of my verbosity.  Happy Easter to those who celebrate it!

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45 minutes ago, MetalDragon said:

I still consider a passive damage reduction in a game that offers very little offensive debuff abilities (to try counter it) very silly. Others have mentioned certain weapon combos, ability stacking and the addition of critical hits (well, an ability that guarantees a critical hit) means newer players are still going to get dunked on.

 

I agree hate would be more favourable as any path looks slightly better when a nerf is involved but you seriously think 15 minutes of damage bonus will appeal to people? In a world of gate hopping and playing safe your 15 minute bonus will likely have little impact unless it's open field combat.

 

on epic it usually is open field combat so this might be how epic and chaos view it differently

 

also hate's fear effect gives you +2 cr for the duration which isnt bad, and can save your ass if you're being attacked with no stam (such as by templars and your opponents take advantage of it to rush you)

 

also @Mirax i feel like rendering backup horses useless wouldnt be a bad thing because it's kind of a silly tactic (a wurm only thing) and has never been done in real world battle.  goodluck getting a horse to keep up behind you while charging into battle leading it with a rope without the rope getting tangled in its legs and breaking them or yanking you off your main horse before you get into combat. single horse pvp would make people think and plan more carefully about when to engage or not, and make it easier to initiate combat by dehorsing people.  this might also lead to people bringing pets into battle instead of backup mounts as the pet would help you fight and not need to be mounted

Edited by Alexgopen
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9 minutes ago, Alexgopen said:

also @Mirax i feel like rendering backup horses useless wouldnt be a bad thing because it's kind of a silly tactic (a wurm only thing) and has never been done in real world battle.  goodluck getting a horse to keep up behind you while charging into battle leading it with a rope without the rope getting tangled in its legs and breaking them or yanking you off your main horse before you get into combat. single horse pvp would make people think and plan more carefully about when to engage or not, and make it easier to initiate combat by dehorsing people.  this might also lead to people bringing pets into battle instead of backup mounts as the pet would help you fight and not need to be mounted

 

Agreed on the above, fair points, though it does change tactics on the whole hell horse/backup barded regular.  Just a realism thing too, though - hopping on a horse vs. not being able to, kinda irks me though there are points on both sides...I dunno, I'm always leery of things that kinda "strand" you, whether that's preventing you from remounting, mounting a backup, a cart, or a boat.  

 

But if it changes so be it, I just don't particularly like that change...perhaps if I understood more specifically what they are trying to accomplish/allow/prevent, if it's all about boat PvP or what, which is why I keep stressing - understanding the vision makes stomaching changes you may not 100% agree with a lot easier than in a void.

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SOTG

reduction to 25% DR until time for total meditation balancing is possible. Meditation should add flavour or slight benefits, not allow a path to be the dominant path


Are you still going to offer free transfers to other paths? 
There will always be a dominant and a favorite path which ever way you cut it. Its called "the meta" for a reason. 

[08:48:38] You bury the corpse of young easter bunny.


 

The revised changes seem more realistic. +1

 

Edited by Dyson

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Can someone clearly explain how teleporting into a deed on Chaos to defend that deed is bad for player vs player combat?  Is the goal of this potential rule change to ensure defenders from other deeds do not help because they most likely not be able to enter the deed once they get there and open the way for the attackers to raid empty deeds?  What is the point of that?

 

This has never been a problem in the three years I have played and there is usually fighting as a result which is the very definition of pvp.  Chaos is a 24 hour a day persistent world on relatively large pvp server, teleporting in to defend deeds encourages actual player vs player interaction.  There are counters and tactics you can employ to control who and how many teleport into a deed.  There are risks to teleporting in, if the deed is compromised and you teleport in you might die to the attackers anyway or if you teleport in to a deed and the attackers move on to their actual target you can't join another village for 24 hours.  Raiding is not supposed to be easy with small forces on a server that requires 25 players to make a kingdom.  If you want this on Epic, go for it, but please do not change the current rules on Chaos.   

Edited by madnezz

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14 minutes ago, madnezz said:

Can someone clearly explain how teleporting into a deed on Chaos to defend that deed is bad for player vs player combat?  Is the goal of this potential rule change to ensure defenders from other deeds do not help because they most likely not be able to enter the deed once they get there and open the way for the attackers to raid empty deeds?  What is the point of that?

 

I'll be happy to explain it for you.  You see, when you coordinate a group to attack a deed, and no one is in local, then there's a non-premium alt that logs on, starts inviting people to the village and all of a sudden there's 20 defenders... yeah, that's a problem.  The attackers rode to the site, the defenders should too.  If you happen to be a member of THAT village, you can teleport too, but the majority of the players believe it to be unreasonable (and unrealistic) that an entire kingdom can magically appear to defend any deed, anywhere, anytime they want to.  It is, in my opinion, the reason why the Chaos map doesn't seem to change much at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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There are counters to that and you are choosing to raid a deed, there doesn't need to be a change.  The defenders don't get to choose when you raid, the attackers do.  

 

Do you even play on Chaos?  The Chaos map has changed a lot in the last 3 years and teleporting hasn't prevented it in the slightest. Each deed we have defeated the defenders could have teleported in and we would have not complained one bit.  We go to your deed's for pvp.

Edited by madnezz

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26 minutes ago, madnezz said:

Can someone clearly explain how teleporting into a deed on Chaos to defend that deed is bad for player vs player combat?  Is the goal of this potential rule change to ensure defenders from other deeds do not help because they most likely not be able to enter the deed once they get there and open the way for the attackers to raid empty deeds?  What is the point of that?

 

This has never been a problem in the three years I have played and there is usually fighting as a result which is the very definition of pvp.  Chaos is a 24 hour a day persistent world on relatively large pvp server, teleporting in to defend deeds encourages actual player vs player interaction.  There are counters and tactics you can employ to control who and how many teleport into a deed.  There are risks to teleporting in, if the deed is compromised and you teleport in you might die to the attackers anyway or if you teleport in to a deed and the attackers move on to their actual target you can't join another village for 24 hours.  Raiding is not supposed to be easy with small forces on a server that requires 25 players to make a kingdom.  If you want this on Epic, go for it, but please do not change the current rules on Chaos.   

Considering you haven't played in the past far enough to experience the old days which people preferred to pvp in, the reason it sucks people can tp in is that you can bypass traps and cut off to the entrances of deeds that the enemy have done. This was a major part in the past and much more fun and balanced instead of the magical method of tping in everyone at the same time to for a defense zerg. If you have to come on foot it is obvious who will be coming in 80 tiles out. With teleport if you're near the token that gap is much less than 80 tiles.

Edited by bloodmaster

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2 hours ago, Fooligun said:

 

You are comparing a level 11 with level 9 ability, they shouldn't necessarily be equal. Else what's the point of higher levels/skills? You unlock better things as time progresses, 30/35% would be nicer IMO 

 

 

You are comparing a permanent upgrade to a 15min buff. its not like hates lvl 7 ability is nearly as good as sotg even if it would be 25%. Although it shouldnt be

Edited by Nocturnes
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