DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
It’s rarely going to be equal in all aspects because there are too many variables.
So the devs are not really going to balance that in any way that it becomes worth it for players to care about that.
And that’s if we’re just focusing on Swords.
Just as there is no guarantee that a naked Level 40 character never loses to a naked Level 35 character.
You people are nuts. Obviously what OP was trying to say is that having some low level gear shouldn't be able to kill someone with a really high lvl gear. Like a really big gap. U all got stuck on the 35-40 thing and missed the point.
I noticed Lineage2 mentioned here. Well here's the thing: in Lineage2 people created pk characters either from deserted high lvl ones or completely new ones usually. The lvl cap being around 80, they'd equip those pk chars with some lv40 gear and successfully kill ppl of 70+ lvl all geared up. Certain classes had the ability to do so and thus protecting SOME epic bosses and farming spots without any punishment. Why, at that lvl and point of the game u needn't even think about lv40 gear, the basic one at that, cuz it feels like buying consumables at the market.
These classes were the rogues and its specialisations, some of the archer specialisations and most of the mages (particularly nukers). While I'd argue that it could be acceptable for rogues to be able to do so, since their abilities work in a certain way ie targeting vital spots and hense power not having much of value (a vital spot stabbed by a kitchen knife would have the exact same effect as your god slaying legendary golden with diamonds dagger, pain is pain - dead is dead) I do agree that people should not be allowed to get around and exploit pk system in order for big gains without any real punishment. L2 tried to address this ending up in changing the system almost entirely without any real results.
With the above example in mind, I agree with OP. I love PK. I also love the thrill of being chased by hordes of random people while trying to burn pk count. I don't wanna lose my gear. The whole murder and hide thing gets me excited. I'd love a healthy system where I can murder my enemies and suffer (or not) the consequences depending on my actions, not some exploitation.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited October 2023
We didn’t miss the point.
The OP is absurd.
Obviously, the base stats of a Level 40 Sword will be better than the base stats of a Level 35 Sword.
But a Level 40 Sword NEVER losing vs a Level 35 Sword is absurd for a variety of reasons.
And, sure, there will obviously be some gap where it is mostly true that we won’t see something like a Level 15 Sword beating a Level 40 Sword.
Especially because there will actually be other gaps factored in between those opponents besides just base Sword Level.
Again, that goes without saying.
In an RPG, you should expect a gap of 10 in Character Level to trump weapons/gear.
Yes. You should expect a naked Level 80 character to sometimes be able to defeat a Level 70 character who is in using Level 70 gear.
You people are nuts. Obviously what OP was trying to say is that having some low level gear shouldn't be able to kill someone with a really high lvl gear. Like a really big gap. U all got stuck on the 35-40 thing and missed the point.
Except this wasn't the point. Or if it was, then he should've had that as his example and not the smallest possible difference of 5 lvls.
But you're new to the discussion and you seem to have played L2, so tell me. Do you want any player who's simply slightly weaker than their target to never be able to murder them? Because that is what George's example suggests.
Those L2 PKers could kill their victims because the victims DID NOT FIGHT BACK. So I'll say this for the two hundred's time.
Unless gear determines 100% of player power - PKERS WILL ALWAYS BE ABLE TO MURDER PASSIVE VICTIMS IN WHATEVER GEAR THEY WEAR.
George's "35 vs 40" got no damn relevance to his own argument, because there's is no VS there's only "I hit a wall for a spoon until the wall crumbles". That's it. That's the entire damn point of PKing.
And if you do agree that lower powered players should be able to fight upwards, then I guess you're also fine with higher powered players absolutely DEMOLISHING any pve that's just a bit below them. Because that is exactly what the kind of balancing George is talking about implies.
p.s. if you think George somehow meant "lvl 20 player in basic gear should never be able to win against a lvl50 player in amazing gear" - yeah, no fucking shit. We all agree that's a bit too far, except that is not even close to what George said.
You people are nuts. Obviously what OP was trying to say is that having some low level gear shouldn't be able to kill someone with a really high lvl gear. Like a really big gap. U all got stuck on the 35-40 thing and missed the point.
I noticed Lineage2 mentioned here. Well here's the thing: in Lineage2 people created pk characters either from deserted high lvl ones or completely new ones usually. The lvl cap being around 80, they'd equip those pk chars with some lv40 gear and successfully kill ppl of 70+ lvl all geared up. Certain classes had the ability to do so and thus protecting SOME epic bosses and farming spots without any punishment. Why, at that lvl and point of the game u needn't even think about lv40 gear, the basic one at that, cuz it feels like buying consumables at the market.
These classes were the rogues and its specialisations, some of the archer specialisations and most of the mages (particularly nukers). While I'd argue that it could be acceptable for rogues to be able to do so, since their abilities work in a certain way ie targeting vital spots and hense power not having much of value (a vital spot stabbed by a kitchen knife would have the exact same effect as your god slaying legendary golden with diamonds dagger, pain is pain - dead is dead) I do agree that people should not be allowed to get around and exploit pk system in order for big gains without any real punishment. L2 tried to address this ending up in changing the system almost entirely without any real results.
With the above example in mind, I agree with OP. I love PK. I also love the thrill of being chased by hordes of random people while trying to burn pk count. I don't wanna lose my gear. The whole murder and hide thing gets me excited. I'd love a healthy system where I can murder my enemies and suffer (or not) the consequences depending on my actions, not some exploitation.
Welcome. Full disclosure Max is my childhood friend.
What I meant, and my understanding of the OP, is that a lvl 45 char with some lvl 25 or 30 or so gear shouldn't be able to kill a properly at least geared lv50 char.
A rogue in L2 could kill most of his targets with the starting dagger. All it'd take was some crit and other vital spot procs. That is a matter of few more seconds. When combined in a force of let's say 10 or 20 people they could do a considerable amount of dmg to enemy forces.
I've seen spots getting defended entirely by pk parties of extremely low equipment high lvl characters for hours. You've played L2. I'm sure u have seen such things as well.
Nikr, you keep spinning the narrative to passive players once again showing that you havent read the post, you skimmed to a point that you could take out of context so that you could have a bit of social time to fill online.
My point has nothing to do with passive players. I went so far as to reveal the practical scenario in which I will be taking advantage of the weak gear input to open world conflicts.
You people remind me of eso forums, in which the point would be completelly missed.
During conversations regarding various issues eg AoE spamming, there would be all sorts of ideas, like player cap, zerg busters and other stuff, completelly missing the point and the ability of orgabized groups to abuse, that logical solutions like high mp cost and low impact would be laughed at as you do now.
Then again, I see people posting about realistic approach and dependancy of player skill. In cases like that everyone knows that someone with more basic equipment will have the actual power to prevail against better equipped opponents. I dunno what the ratio should exactly be, Devs work, but shouldn't it be something like skill vs lvl vs gear ratio? At least in the case of a game NOT being a "game starts at lvl cap" one.
1) The topic isnt your favourite sentance.
2) Equal in all aspects.
The problem is that even you haven't defined this 'equality' in a way that makes sense in Ashes.
This is true from a data perspective.
It is not true from a conversational perspective.
From a conversational perspective (which is not meant to simulate reality, or be parsed for data, or ever happen) the point George wa making can be best summarized as follows;
You have a player, at a computer, with a character holding a level 40 sword.
Clone that setup, replace the level 40 sword with a level 35 sword, and place these two players against each other in isolation. With this, the player with the character with the level 40 sword should win the majority of the time.
I dont know if you try to make a meme, but if the same OP was written without the Lv40-35 sword, the point would still be this:
If characters can outpout enough dmg without the 50% of a proper item, there be will consequences in PKing, especially in organized situations.
Gear needs to affect character output to the extent that players cant use cheap gear. Players should use appropriate gear and be afraid to lose it.
I've seen spots getting defended entirely by pk parties of extremely low equipment high lvl characters for hours. You've played L2. I'm sure u have seen such things as well.
Yes, I've seen this too. Except it only happened when there were no proper parties online who could just go and kill those weakly-geared PKers. Also, are we talking protecting a spot as in "they kill you on the TP spot before you load in" or about "they're just running around a small location and killing anyone who approaches".
Cause I've seen way more of the former, but barely any of the latter. And again, the latter only happened if there was literally no good parties online (which was quite damn rare).
And even then, this was usually done against singular people by a group of PKers. And Ashes will have corruption-based stat dampening to prevent this kind of thing from happening anywhere near frequently.
What I've been trying to tell George is that his supposed "practical scenarios" are not really all that practical. Ashes will have BHs who'll see PKers on the map, so the PKers won't be able to just hide for a bit, as they did in L2. There's stat dampening both during the process of being red (depending on how much corruption you've got) and then after that if you died red. There's no CCs against greens, so it's even harder to catch and kill random victims. And we've yet to get concrete info about party interactions with Red players (maybe they can't be in one and then can't be buffed either, so it's even harder to PK others).
Nikr, you keep spinning the narrative to passive players once again showing that you havent read the post, you skimmed to a point that you could take out of context so that you could have a bit of social time to fill online.
I've gone over your entire post several times during this entire thread's discussion. And I've addressed all of your other PK-related arguments in this thread.
None of them are realistic, or, at the very least, as spooky as you make them out to be.
Parties attacking a single target will always be able to PK them, unless, AGAIN, the gear is 100% of player power and the lvl difference between the attackers and the victim is smth like 20+ lvls.
PKers will always be able to chip away at a passive target.
If the target fights back - that's no longer a PK. If the target fought back at the very last second - that was their choice, because they valued their loot higher than giving their attacker corruption, and attacker's gear won't really matter here.
And if your supposed PKers in weak gear decide to attack a party of people in normal gear and the targets just stand around and do nothing - they're either afk or, for whatever reason, decided to die on the spot.
As I've already said before, putting your suggestion into the game would ruin several other parts of the game, because this kind of balancing influences much more than just your super specific PKing situations. Which is why I said that it's just better to tweak the corruption balancing values and penalties, rather than changing the entire gear balancing (that we don't even have any info on).
If characters can outpout enough dmg without the 50% of a proper item, there be will consequences in PKing, especially in organized situations.
Gear needs to affect character output to the extent that players cant use cheap gear. Players should use appropriate gear and be afraid to lose it.
And I already told you. There will always be cheap gear that can still give enough attack to PKers for them to not care about losing it.
And if there isn't such cheap gear and any lower powered players can do NOTHING in pvp against an even slightly stronger players - the pvp in the game will be absolutely fucked and no one will participate in it, because only the 1% will be able to win.
At which point your entire argument falls apart, because now the 1% can literally PK EVERYONE w/o ever fearing of losing their gear.
A rogue in L2 could kill most of his targets with the starting dagger. All it'd take was some crit and other vital spot procs. That is a matter of few more seconds. When combined in a force of let's say 10 or 20 people they could do a considerable amount of dmg to enemy forces.
I've seen spots getting defended entirely by pk parties of extremely low equipment high lvl characters for hours. You've played L2. I'm sure u have seen such things as well.
The problem is that the rogue in L2 argument isn't an issue of "Gear Character Power %" but a "Class Balance" issue, an issue people who didn't played L2 doesn't properly understand and do not expect to see in Ashes.
A rogue in L2 could kill most of his targets with the starting dagger. All it'd take was some crit and other vital spot procs. That is a matter of few more seconds. When combined in a force of let's say 10 or 20 people they could do a considerable amount of dmg to enemy forces.
I've seen spots getting defended entirely by pk parties of extremely low equipment high lvl characters for hours. You've played L2. I'm sure u have seen such things as well.
The problem is that the rogue in L2 argument isn't an issue of "Gear Character Power %" but a "Class Balance" issue, an issue people who didn't played L2 doesn't properly understand and do not expect to see in Ashes.
We need to take steps to prevent further class imbalances.
If gear giving only 50% of powers gets abused by rogues and perhaps mages and archers, nerfing the classes to address the PK/gear power situation, will be unfair to the classes (and I am no rogue mage or archer).
The same thing happened in ESO.
Class features were nerfed due to OP gear functions.
A rogue in L2 could kill most of his targets with the starting dagger. All it'd take was some crit and other vital spot procs. That is a matter of few more seconds. When combined in a force of let's say 10 or 20 people they could do a considerable amount of dmg to enemy forces.
I've seen spots getting defended entirely by pk parties of extremely low equipment high lvl characters for hours. You've played L2. I'm sure u have seen such things as well.
The problem is that the rogue in L2 argument isn't an issue of "Gear Character Power %" but a "Class Balance" issue, an issue people who didn't played L2 doesn't properly understand and do not expect to see in Ashes.
We need to take steps to prevent further class imbalances.
If gear giving only 50% of powers gets abused by rogues and perhaps mages and archers, nerfing the classes to address the PK/gear power situation, will be unfair to the classes (and I am no rogue mage or archer).
The same thing happened in ESO.
Class features were nerfed due to OP gear functions.
Not necessarely directly nerfing them(Unless literally Class features like Half-Kill vital point mechanics) but buffing the rest of the classes closer to their standards like L2 eventually did by H5 version is more reasonable or as an alternative by buffing gear against those classes(like giving extra Dagger/Bow/Magic Resistance to it.)
As for what happened in ESO(never played it) was it class specific interactions with said gear(making the gear too good for specific classes)?
A rogue in L2 could kill most of his targets with the starting dagger. All it'd take was some crit and other vital spot procs. That is a matter of few more seconds. When combined in a force of let's say 10 or 20 people they could do a considerable amount of dmg to enemy forces.
I've seen spots getting defended entirely by pk parties of extremely low equipment high lvl characters for hours. You've played L2. I'm sure u have seen such things as well.
The problem is that the rogue in L2 argument isn't an issue of "Gear Character Power %" but a "Class Balance" issue, an issue people who didn't played L2 doesn't properly understand and do not expect to see in Ashes.
We need to take steps to prevent further class imbalances.
If gear giving only 50% of powers gets abused by rogues and perhaps mages and archers, nerfing the classes to address the PK/gear power situation, will be unfair to the classes (and I am no rogue mage or archer).
The same thing happened in ESO.
Class features were nerfed due to OP gear functions.
Not necessarely directly nerfing them(Unless literally Class features like Half-Kill vital point mechanics) but buffing the rest of the classes closer to their standards like L2 eventually did by H5 version is more reasonable or as an alternative by buffing gear against those classes(like giving extra Dagger/Bow/Magic Resistance to it.)
As for what happened in ESO(never played it) was it class specific interactions with said gear(making the gear too good for specific classes)?
Eso went to the extreme of making gear 100% of the power output for which I havent advocated (no matter how much people saybI did).
In eso the gear did the combat for you, with classes basically having tools like mobility, survivability and burst dmg.
Instead of addressing the bad gear designs or how gear worked the devs of eso nerfed the classes.
Some were nerfed more unfairly than others. For those who know DK wings were deleted instead of giving them the sorcerer treadment of compounding mp cost for streak.
Other imbalances due to gear were how easily ranged classes could proc effects with normal hits.
Range classes benefiting from normal hits isnt the issue itself.
The issue was bad gear ideas and designs, offering too much advantage for too little effort.
I repeat, if gear provides only 50% of the power, and aggressive classes lose the fear of losing gear due to pk, I see organized groups having parties with the aim of defeating the competition from afar even before the conflict begins. If during the clash, they die while red and drop something they wont care.
Dedicated group of trigger-happy, PK loving, aggressive classes. "Kill before they even get close. We will clean up those that flag. You dropped your bow? You will get a cheap new one, again and again and again."
The point with L2 as an example here is that there were good aspects in the pk system and exploitable ones.
The good ones being the option to dominate certain parts and spots for a small period of time denying access to others from it. This obviously doesn't need to be strictly pk related and it shouldn't, BUT! In the case of a person being killed by me, either through pvp or pk, him coming back and refusing to fight me just continuing to exist in a spot I am trying to prevent him from, is going to end up in a pk situation.
Hence the system needs to be healthy, not too punishing but not exploitable by certain classes or gear or at all if possible. It is obvious I think that this system needs to be in balance with the rest, the likes of gearing as a whole etc.
And while we're not here to discuss L2, see if there is a party online to deal with it or not is none of my concern. People obviously used it when they could. Why should they be able to use it at all?
Besides they needn't be afk or not fighting back. Imagine you are under a heavy pve situation and THAT'S when the pker chose to strike. He can kill 1-2 ppl then run away or die right? If gear used is cheap he will keep coming back. Ppl end up defending against a creep in a sense, rather than doing what they came to do.
I am for: a healthy pk system where I can personally kill and lose something valuable, be it my main gear.
I am not for: a pk system where I switch up to my old gear that I used for struggling in my 20s to kill ppl of around my lvl but properly geared up.
It's not about hiding or strong parties dealing with pkers and BH and whatnot. That's all good. But in an ancient game like L2 mistakes happened. Ppl would pk just for sport using very lower than their lvl gear because they lost a fight earlier or were bored. While others afraid to lose gear wouldn't and would rather get overrun by ppl who didn't wanna pvp but wouldn't leave cuz they knew that they wouldn't get pked over and over. How do you fix that?
I repeat, if gear provides only 50% of the power, and aggressive classes lose the fear of losing gear due to pk, I see organized groups having parties with the aim of defeating the competition from afar even before the conflict begins. If during the clash, they die while red and drop something they wont care.
I feel like you're envisioning a "3 miles away hawkeye in hawkeye stance assist shot form 8 hawkeyes" situation. So as James said, it's about class balance rather than simply gear.
I guess action shots could, in theory, hit people from that far, but an assist attack from an entire party would require quite a bit of skill (or completely immovability of the target). But even then I'd assume that 8 hits shouldn't be killing a person outright, cause we definitely won't have 4hits/s on our chars(if the ttk remains 30s).
And if the victims didn't have the awareness to react to this kind of attack (or ideally be ready for it even beforehand, cause they should've been looking around and seen the archers already) - that's on them.
If this move was made to overtake a farming location - the attackers would be using normal gear, because they need that for mobs. So your fear doesn't apply.
If this was done purely for PKing purposes - it's on other players (or, once again, the victims) to punish the PKers, regardless of their gear.
Losing gear should only be a proper fear once you're high enough on PK count (be it purely from the count or from the amount of corruption you have). And if you're at those lvls of PKing - the system should prevent you from being too effective in pvp either way, so once again your fears don't apply.
People just cant see the implications that one feature can have on another.
People claim that I am not in favour of skill, but they havent played an owpvp mmo in which leveling up and gearing up makes up for the majority of the journey and it requires effort.
Perhaps they are used to arenas, moba style, queuing up match after match from a lobby, parked in the populated city of the mmo.
People say that we shouldnt restrict skill.
I am against manifactured restrictions, an example being /trade and gold, and the dangers or rmt. I prefer a more enjoyable game with a better economy feel rather that bdos system, even if it means that some ppl will abuse it.
People prefer gear to add only 50% of power because of "skill"?
I am showing you the abuse.
Or keep talking about semantics and isolated sentenses.
I repeat, if gear provides only 50% of the power, and aggressive classes lose the fear of losing gear due to pk, I see organized groups having parties with the aim of defeating the competition from afar even before the conflict begins. If during the clash, they die while red and drop something they wont care.
I feel like you're envisioning a "3 miles away hawkeye in hawkeye stance assist shot form 8 hawkeyes" situation. So as James said, it's about class balance rather than simply gear.
I guess action shots could, in theory, hit people from that far, but an assist attack from an entire party would require quite a bit of skill (or completely immovability of the target). But even then I'd assume that 8 hits shouldn't be killing a person outright, cause we definitely won't have 4hits/s on our chars(if the ttk remains 30s).
And if the victims didn't have the awareness to react to this kind of attack (or ideally be ready for it even beforehand, cause they should've been looking around and seen the archers already) - that's on them.
If this move was made to overtake a farming location - the attackers would be using normal gear, because they need that for mobs. So your fear doesn't apply.
If this was done purely for PKing purposes - it's on other players (or, once again, the victims) to punish the PKers, regardless of their gear.
Losing gear should only be a proper fear once you're high enough on PK count (be it purely from the count or from the amount of corruption you have). And if you're at those lvls of PKing - the system should prevent you from being too effective in pvp either way, so once again your fears don't apply.
After every encounter there can be redemption questing. Keep the PK count to a minimum.
If however during the encounter, one such hawkeye gets 4-5 PK and drops the bow, no problem. It was cheap, but due to gear affecting only 50% of the power and due to the FAIR CLASS identity or ranged elimination feature, the remaining 50% of power that achieved the goal was strong enough, the cheap bow will be replaced over and over.
It's not class imbalance.
It's not about hiding or strong parties dealing with pkers and BH and whatnot. That's all good. But in an ancient game like L2 mistakes happened. Ppl would pk just for sport using very lower than their lvl gear because they lost a fight earlier or were bored. While others afraid to lose gear wouldn't and would rather get overrun by ppl who didn't wanna pvp but wouldn't leave cuz they knew that they wouldn't get pked over and over. How do you fix that?
Be better at pve? PKing is the last resort action, because you ran out of all other options, most likely because you were weak. Killing the target with a mob is one of those options as well, so if you can't even do that and HAVE to PK - git gud.
Also, what's your cut off for the "they shouldn't be able to use weaker gear"? Is it 5 steps of power? Is it 2? Because your example of attacking someone when they're fighting mobs is an even easier situation to abuse than what I was talking about previously.
A player that does 1.1dmg/s against a victim that regens 1hp/s will PK that victim if it does nothing. In a pvx situation, that victim will already be getting hit for way more than 1.1d/s so the PKer would be barely adding anything to the kill. If anything he'd have to be unlucky to even get the PK.
But do you think that a player with cheapest lvl50 gear (supposedly tier1) shouldn't be able to even outdps the regen of a player with tier3 lvl50 gear? Because that's what George is asking for. Or, well, what his post imply he's asking for, cause he went from "player on player" interactions to "a whole party of ranged PKers assist-killing another player from a mile away" interactions.
I didnt want to reveal strategies, but for the sake of AoC I did.
You think that I jump around moving the goalposts. Wrong. I literaly had to spell it out for you I was forced, that's how weak your ability to grasp a concept is nikr.
After every encounter there can be redemption questing. Keep the PK count to a minimum.
You're soooo damn close to my entire damn point.
What if that "redemption questing" has a price tied to it? And that price is right around a proper piece of gear of the PKer's lvl? So when you're going to reduce you count you "lose" a good piece of gear, on top of any other gear you lost before (even if cheap) and on top of all the time you'll have to lose to return to your base power lvl (cause death penalties and all that good shit).
So once again I tell you that it's much better to simply balance the corruption system, rather than fucking up the entire pvp design.
This line from you is so damn ironic, given the entire context of this thread.
I didnt want to reveal strategies, but for the sake of AoC I did.
You think that I jump around moving the goalposts. Wrong. I literaly had to spell it out for you I was forced, that's how weak your ability to grasp a concept is nikr.
I don't need it spelt out. I've done these strats over 10 years ago.
Why would you mess with the redeption system, which ever more noble at heart players can benefit from to counter my arguments?
3 posts ago I just said, dont fvck around with designs that can affect other features. There are proper solutions.
I said that about aoe pvp in eso and the economy of bdo.
Why all those mental gymnastics?
You went from class balance to the corruption redemption.
The problem is that 50% of gear contribution leaves room for abuse.
Dont look left dont look right, dont misquote me.
Why would you mess with the redeption system, which ever more noble at heart players can benefit from to counter my arguments?
So you're fine completely fucking up pvp and pve balancing, but are scared that PKers will be fucked a bit too hard? We'll see what Steven and Intrepid decide to go with, given their stance of "if too many people get PKed we'll rebalance the system"
The problem is that 50% of gear contribution leaves room for abuse.
Dont look left dont look right, dont misquote me.
Except your problem will still exist even if it's 90%. But you simply refuse to see that.
If a player does 100dmg, 90 of which comes from his weapon - that still means that he can do 10dmg with the first weapon in the game. And 10 dmg will still kill players that don't respond to the murder attempt.
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So the devs are not really going to balance that in any way that it becomes worth it for players to care about that.
And that’s if we’re just focusing on Swords.
Just as there is no guarantee that a naked Level 40 character never loses to a naked Level 35 character.
I noticed Lineage2 mentioned here. Well here's the thing: in Lineage2 people created pk characters either from deserted high lvl ones or completely new ones usually. The lvl cap being around 80, they'd equip those pk chars with some lv40 gear and successfully kill ppl of 70+ lvl all geared up. Certain classes had the ability to do so and thus protecting SOME epic bosses and farming spots without any punishment. Why, at that lvl and point of the game u needn't even think about lv40 gear, the basic one at that, cuz it feels like buying consumables at the market.
These classes were the rogues and its specialisations, some of the archer specialisations and most of the mages (particularly nukers). While I'd argue that it could be acceptable for rogues to be able to do so, since their abilities work in a certain way ie targeting vital spots and hense power not having much of value (a vital spot stabbed by a kitchen knife would have the exact same effect as your god slaying legendary golden with diamonds dagger, pain is pain - dead is dead) I do agree that people should not be allowed to get around and exploit pk system in order for big gains without any real punishment. L2 tried to address this ending up in changing the system almost entirely without any real results.
With the above example in mind, I agree with OP. I love PK. I also love the thrill of being chased by hordes of random people while trying to burn pk count. I don't wanna lose my gear. The whole murder and hide thing gets me excited. I'd love a healthy system where I can murder my enemies and suffer (or not) the consequences depending on my actions, not some exploitation.
The OP is absurd.
Obviously, the base stats of a Level 40 Sword will be better than the base stats of a Level 35 Sword.
But a Level 40 Sword NEVER losing vs a Level 35 Sword is absurd for a variety of reasons.
And, sure, there will obviously be some gap where it is mostly true that we won’t see something like a Level 15 Sword beating a Level 40 Sword.
Especially because there will actually be other gaps factored in between those opponents besides just base Sword Level.
Again, that goes without saying.
In an RPG, you should expect a gap of 10 in Character Level to trump weapons/gear.
Yes. You should expect a naked Level 80 character to sometimes be able to defeat a Level 70 character who is in using Level 70 gear.
But you're new to the discussion and you seem to have played L2, so tell me. Do you want any player who's simply slightly weaker than their target to never be able to murder them? Because that is what George's example suggests.
Those L2 PKers could kill their victims because the victims DID NOT FIGHT BACK. So I'll say this for the two hundred's time.
Unless gear determines 100% of player power - PKERS WILL ALWAYS BE ABLE TO MURDER PASSIVE VICTIMS IN WHATEVER GEAR THEY WEAR.
George's "35 vs 40" got no damn relevance to his own argument, because there's is no VS there's only "I hit a wall for a spoon until the wall crumbles". That's it. That's the entire damn point of PKing.
And if you do agree that lower powered players should be able to fight upwards, then I guess you're also fine with higher powered players absolutely DEMOLISHING any pve that's just a bit below them. Because that is exactly what the kind of balancing George is talking about implies.
p.s. if you think George somehow meant "lvl 20 player in basic gear should never be able to win against a lvl50 player in amazing gear" - yeah, no fucking shit. We all agree that's a bit too far, except that is not even close to what George said.
Welcome. Full disclosure Max is my childhood friend.
A rogue in L2 could kill most of his targets with the starting dagger. All it'd take was some crit and other vital spot procs. That is a matter of few more seconds. When combined in a force of let's say 10 or 20 people they could do a considerable amount of dmg to enemy forces.
I've seen spots getting defended entirely by pk parties of extremely low equipment high lvl characters for hours. You've played L2. I'm sure u have seen such things as well.
My point has nothing to do with passive players. I went so far as to reveal the practical scenario in which I will be taking advantage of the weak gear input to open world conflicts.
You people remind me of eso forums, in which the point would be completelly missed.
During conversations regarding various issues eg AoE spamming, there would be all sorts of ideas, like player cap, zerg busters and other stuff, completelly missing the point and the ability of orgabized groups to abuse, that logical solutions like high mp cost and low impact would be laughed at as you do now.
Completelly missing the point.
This is true from a data perspective.
It is not true from a conversational perspective.
From a conversational perspective (which is not meant to simulate reality, or be parsed for data, or ever happen) the point George wa making can be best summarized as follows;
You have a player, at a computer, with a character holding a level 40 sword.
Clone that setup, replace the level 40 sword with a level 35 sword, and place these two players against each other in isolation. With this, the player with the character with the level 40 sword should win the majority of the time.
If characters can outpout enough dmg without the 50% of a proper item, there be will consequences in PKing, especially in organized situations.
Gear needs to affect character output to the extent that players cant use cheap gear. Players should use appropriate gear and be afraid to lose it.
Stop talking about Lv40 and Lv35 swords.
Cause I've seen way more of the former, but barely any of the latter. And again, the latter only happened if there was literally no good parties online (which was quite damn rare).
And even then, this was usually done against singular people by a group of PKers. And Ashes will have corruption-based stat dampening to prevent this kind of thing from happening anywhere near frequently.
What I've been trying to tell George is that his supposed "practical scenarios" are not really all that practical. Ashes will have BHs who'll see PKers on the map, so the PKers won't be able to just hide for a bit, as they did in L2. There's stat dampening both during the process of being red (depending on how much corruption you've got) and then after that if you died red. There's no CCs against greens, so it's even harder to catch and kill random victims. And we've yet to get concrete info about party interactions with Red players (maybe they can't be in one and then can't be buffed either, so it's even harder to PK others).
I've gone over your entire post several times during this entire thread's discussion. And I've addressed all of your other PK-related arguments in this thread.
None of them are realistic, or, at the very least, as spooky as you make them out to be.
Parties attacking a single target will always be able to PK them, unless, AGAIN, the gear is 100% of player power and the lvl difference between the attackers and the victim is smth like 20+ lvls.
PKers will always be able to chip away at a passive target.
If the target fights back - that's no longer a PK. If the target fought back at the very last second - that was their choice, because they valued their loot higher than giving their attacker corruption, and attacker's gear won't really matter here.
And if your supposed PKers in weak gear decide to attack a party of people in normal gear and the targets just stand around and do nothing - they're either afk or, for whatever reason, decided to die on the spot.
As I've already said before, putting your suggestion into the game would ruin several other parts of the game, because this kind of balancing influences much more than just your super specific PKing situations. Which is why I said that it's just better to tweak the corruption balancing values and penalties, rather than changing the entire gear balancing (that we don't even have any info on).
And if there isn't such cheap gear and any lower powered players can do NOTHING in pvp against an even slightly stronger players - the pvp in the game will be absolutely fucked and no one will participate in it, because only the 1% will be able to win.
At which point your entire argument falls apart, because now the 1% can literally PK EVERYONE w/o ever fearing of losing their gear.
The problem is that the rogue in L2 argument isn't an issue of "Gear Character Power %" but a "Class Balance" issue, an issue people who didn't played L2 doesn't properly understand and do not expect to see in Ashes.
Aren't we all sinners?
We need to take steps to prevent further class imbalances.
If gear giving only 50% of powers gets abused by rogues and perhaps mages and archers, nerfing the classes to address the PK/gear power situation, will be unfair to the classes (and I am no rogue mage or archer).
The same thing happened in ESO.
Class features were nerfed due to OP gear functions.
Not necessarely directly nerfing them(Unless literally Class features like Half-Kill vital point mechanics) but buffing the rest of the classes closer to their standards like L2 eventually did by H5 version is more reasonable or as an alternative by buffing gear against those classes(like giving extra Dagger/Bow/Magic Resistance to it.)
As for what happened in ESO(never played it) was it class specific interactions with said gear(making the gear too good for specific classes)?
Aren't we all sinners?
Eso went to the extreme of making gear 100% of the power output for which I havent advocated (no matter how much people saybI did).
In eso the gear did the combat for you, with classes basically having tools like mobility, survivability and burst dmg.
Instead of addressing the bad gear designs or how gear worked the devs of eso nerfed the classes.
Some were nerfed more unfairly than others. For those who know DK wings were deleted instead of giving them the sorcerer treadment of compounding mp cost for streak.
Other imbalances due to gear were how easily ranged classes could proc effects with normal hits.
Range classes benefiting from normal hits isnt the issue itself.
The issue was bad gear ideas and designs, offering too much advantage for too little effort.
I repeat, if gear provides only 50% of the power, and aggressive classes lose the fear of losing gear due to pk, I see organized groups having parties with the aim of defeating the competition from afar even before the conflict begins. If during the clash, they die while red and drop something they wont care.
I will take advantage of that.
The good ones being the option to dominate certain parts and spots for a small period of time denying access to others from it. This obviously doesn't need to be strictly pk related and it shouldn't, BUT! In the case of a person being killed by me, either through pvp or pk, him coming back and refusing to fight me just continuing to exist in a spot I am trying to prevent him from, is going to end up in a pk situation.
Hence the system needs to be healthy, not too punishing but not exploitable by certain classes or gear or at all if possible. It is obvious I think that this system needs to be in balance with the rest, the likes of gearing as a whole etc.
And while we're not here to discuss L2, see if there is a party online to deal with it or not is none of my concern. People obviously used it when they could. Why should they be able to use it at all?
Besides they needn't be afk or not fighting back. Imagine you are under a heavy pve situation and THAT'S when the pker chose to strike. He can kill 1-2 ppl then run away or die right? If gear used is cheap he will keep coming back. Ppl end up defending against a creep in a sense, rather than doing what they came to do.
I am for: a healthy pk system where I can personally kill and lose something valuable, be it my main gear.
I am not for: a pk system where I switch up to my old gear that I used for struggling in my 20s to kill ppl of around my lvl but properly geared up.
It's not about hiding or strong parties dealing with pkers and BH and whatnot. That's all good. But in an ancient game like L2 mistakes happened. Ppl would pk just for sport using very lower than their lvl gear because they lost a fight earlier or were bored. While others afraid to lose gear wouldn't and would rather get overrun by ppl who didn't wanna pvp but wouldn't leave cuz they knew that they wouldn't get pked over and over. How do you fix that?
I guess action shots could, in theory, hit people from that far, but an assist attack from an entire party would require quite a bit of skill (or completely immovability of the target). But even then I'd assume that 8 hits shouldn't be killing a person outright, cause we definitely won't have 4hits/s on our chars(if the ttk remains 30s).
And if the victims didn't have the awareness to react to this kind of attack (or ideally be ready for it even beforehand, cause they should've been looking around and seen the archers already) - that's on them.
If this move was made to overtake a farming location - the attackers would be using normal gear, because they need that for mobs. So your fear doesn't apply.
If this was done purely for PKing purposes - it's on other players (or, once again, the victims) to punish the PKers, regardless of their gear.
Losing gear should only be a proper fear once you're high enough on PK count (be it purely from the count or from the amount of corruption you have). And if you're at those lvls of PKing - the system should prevent you from being too effective in pvp either way, so once again your fears don't apply.
People claim that I am not in favour of skill, but they havent played an owpvp mmo in which leveling up and gearing up makes up for the majority of the journey and it requires effort.
Perhaps they are used to arenas, moba style, queuing up match after match from a lobby, parked in the populated city of the mmo.
People say that we shouldnt restrict skill.
I am against manifactured restrictions, an example being /trade and gold, and the dangers or rmt. I prefer a more enjoyable game with a better economy feel rather that bdos system, even if it means that some ppl will abuse it.
People prefer gear to add only 50% of power because of "skill"?
I am showing you the abuse.
Or keep talking about semantics and isolated sentenses.
After every encounter there can be redemption questing. Keep the PK count to a minimum.
If however during the encounter, one such hawkeye gets 4-5 PK and drops the bow, no problem. It was cheap, but due to gear affecting only 50% of the power and due to the FAIR CLASS identity or ranged elimination feature, the remaining 50% of power that achieved the goal was strong enough, the cheap bow will be replaced over and over.
It's not class imbalance.
Again i think people grossly over estimate the amount of pvp once system is live as far as people willing to be corrupted.
Also, what's your cut off for the "they shouldn't be able to use weaker gear"? Is it 5 steps of power? Is it 2? Because your example of attacking someone when they're fighting mobs is an even easier situation to abuse than what I was talking about previously.
A player that does 1.1dmg/s against a victim that regens 1hp/s will PK that victim if it does nothing. In a pvx situation, that victim will already be getting hit for way more than 1.1d/s so the PKer would be barely adding anything to the kill. If anything he'd have to be unlucky to even get the PK.
But do you think that a player with cheapest lvl50 gear (supposedly tier1) shouldn't be able to even outdps the regen of a player with tier3 lvl50 gear? Because that's what George is asking for. Or, well, what his post imply he's asking for, cause he went from "player on player" interactions to "a whole party of ranged PKers assist-killing another player from a mile away" interactions.
You think that I jump around moving the goalposts. Wrong. I literaly had to spell it out for you I was forced, that's how weak your ability to grasp a concept is nikr.
What if that "redemption questing" has a price tied to it? And that price is right around a proper piece of gear of the PKer's lvl? So when you're going to reduce you count you "lose" a good piece of gear, on top of any other gear you lost before (even if cheap) and on top of all the time you'll have to lose to return to your base power lvl (cause death penalties and all that good shit).
So once again I tell you that it's much better to simply balance the corruption system, rather than fucking up the entire pvp design.
This line from you is so damn ironic, given the entire context of this thread.
3 posts ago I just said, dont fvck around with designs that can affect other features. There are proper solutions.
I said that about aoe pvp in eso and the economy of bdo.
Why all those mental gymnastics?
You went from class balance to the corruption redemption.
The problem is that 50% of gear contribution leaves room for abuse.
Dont look left dont look right, dont misquote me.
If a player does 100dmg, 90 of which comes from his weapon - that still means that he can do 10dmg with the first weapon in the game. And 10 dmg will still kill players that don't respond to the murder attempt.