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So, about Bounty Hunters + contesting World Bosses + Corruption.
NoCarebears
Member
@StevenSharif
Imagine this:
A group of 20 people (group A) DPSing a World Boss vs another group of 20 people (group b) also DPSing the boss, both parties have the same DPS.
Whoever deals more damage gets the precious loot. Group A got there 30 seconds first... does that mean they get a free boss? Apparently it does. This is because of the Bounty Hunter system and I'll explain why.
Everyone who has played any open World PvP game with a flagging system knows very well when there's Bosses to be contested, people will go red/Corrupted. Why? Because when you're a situation where 2 parties have basically the same DPS, then whoever got there first did more DPS, and thefore keeps the loot. It's that simple. And the only option for group b (cause they got there 30 seconds later) is to PK Group A's healer+tank or they lose the boss. That's what contesting means. "Contesting" isn't a DPS race, it's fighting for it.
So, it is the smart thing to do as a BH, to go near World Bosses. for the reason I just explained. Just makes sense right? You have the chance to catch somebody Corrupted easier and especially if there's more of you.
Problem is: if there's 10 BHs waiting to jump the first person who goes Corrupted, then group b is completely fucked no matter what. They either lose the boss cause they got there 30 seconds later or they go Corrupted and risk getting gangbanged by BOTH the BHs + Group A. Where's the "contesting" here? It doesn't exist.
If you don't see this is a MASSIVE problem, then you've never played a PvP game in your entire life. Intrepid need to think this through. It literally fucks with the whole idea of contesting bosses. Steven should 100% be very aware that PKing is NEEDED when contesting world bosses. So something needs to change regarding Bounty Hunters. Options that come to mind are:
A) Intrepid change World Boss areas into a PvP Zones when there's more than one party. This would mean everybody who wants to fight for the boss is auto-flagged and there's ACTUAL contesting without forcing players to make a choice that will end in getting destroyed by 2 different parties
or
b) Make Bounty Hunters perma flagged when they're near a World Boss. This would give Group B a chance to engage the BHs and if they win, they have a chance to risk PKing Group A and get the boss loot.
Right now, the Corruption system + BHs completely fuck with contesting bosses (so at that point you're basically forcing players to camp World Bosses). Let's just live ingame right on the exact location where a world boss spawns, cause whoever gets there first has a 90% chance of getting the loot unless their DPS is terrible. It's pretty terrible like this.
Clearly there's a problem and I hope people who understand open World PVP dynamics see it. IMO it's very important as if it's not fixed, then nobody will want to ever go Corrupted when contesting Bosses. It just turns the whole thing into a DPS war which sucks, it's boring and there's no actual contesting of anything.
Imagine this:
A group of 20 people (group A) DPSing a World Boss vs another group of 20 people (group b) also DPSing the boss, both parties have the same DPS.
Whoever deals more damage gets the precious loot. Group A got there 30 seconds first... does that mean they get a free boss? Apparently it does. This is because of the Bounty Hunter system and I'll explain why.
Everyone who has played any open World PvP game with a flagging system knows very well when there's Bosses to be contested, people will go red/Corrupted. Why? Because when you're a situation where 2 parties have basically the same DPS, then whoever got there first did more DPS, and thefore keeps the loot. It's that simple. And the only option for group b (cause they got there 30 seconds later) is to PK Group A's healer+tank or they lose the boss. That's what contesting means. "Contesting" isn't a DPS race, it's fighting for it.
So, it is the smart thing to do as a BH, to go near World Bosses. for the reason I just explained. Just makes sense right? You have the chance to catch somebody Corrupted easier and especially if there's more of you.
Problem is: if there's 10 BHs waiting to jump the first person who goes Corrupted, then group b is completely fucked no matter what. They either lose the boss cause they got there 30 seconds later or they go Corrupted and risk getting gangbanged by BOTH the BHs + Group A. Where's the "contesting" here? It doesn't exist.
If you don't see this is a MASSIVE problem, then you've never played a PvP game in your entire life. Intrepid need to think this through. It literally fucks with the whole idea of contesting bosses. Steven should 100% be very aware that PKing is NEEDED when contesting world bosses. So something needs to change regarding Bounty Hunters. Options that come to mind are:
A) Intrepid change World Boss areas into a PvP Zones when there's more than one party. This would mean everybody who wants to fight for the boss is auto-flagged and there's ACTUAL contesting without forcing players to make a choice that will end in getting destroyed by 2 different parties
or
b) Make Bounty Hunters perma flagged when they're near a World Boss. This would give Group B a chance to engage the BHs and if they win, they have a chance to risk PKing Group A and get the boss loot.
Right now, the Corruption system + BHs completely fuck with contesting bosses (so at that point you're basically forcing players to camp World Bosses). Let's just live ingame right on the exact location where a world boss spawns, cause whoever gets there first has a 90% chance of getting the loot unless their DPS is terrible. It's pretty terrible like this.
Clearly there's a problem and I hope people who understand open World PVP dynamics see it. IMO it's very important as if it's not fixed, then nobody will want to ever go Corrupted when contesting Bosses. It just turns the whole thing into a DPS war which sucks, it's boring and there's no actual contesting of anything.
//ignore: Dygz, NiKr
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Comments
Also, if your PKers dying is a problem to you - you're doing it wrong. You simply hire a dude to come and PK your opponent's healer - that's it.
Also, Ashes will have visible hp values. If you know for sure that group A won't flag back up against you - just keep hitting them to keep them at ~half hp and overburden their healers, so that they fail the boss. And if your group can't do that - tough luck, skill issue.
On a separate note, I'm vehemently against pvp zones on bosses. There's guild wars, node wars, enemy of the state feature and ideally mob manipulation - all of which are way better to address the boss contest design. Intrepid should tweak any of those to make it easier to contest bosses, rather than simply dumb it down to the point of "the zerg always wins".
how is this different from a third group, lets say group c, simply getting there and waiting? they don't have to be bounty hunters. so nope, not a massive problem.
you know what group b should do ?wait until the boss is almost dead then pk group a and get the boss. if there are bh nearby, kill them too. make sure everyone in group b has lowered their pk count. you can also have designated pkers with easy to replace gear in case someone drops something.
also, as far as i know, bounty hunters will go purple when attacking a pk, and stat dampening wont be applied to the pk, so you can freely dispatch the bhs...
edit: you played l2, you know how people camped epics before they spawned, and that was fun. part of getting the boss is killing it before the competition arrives. so when you say people need to live next to the boss, etc...so what? the more dedicated players will get the stuff. make your alt cameras ;3
Ahhh, right, "1 crit" can suddenly kill a whole healer, but you need a "better geared dude than you" to PK someone
Skill issue it is, got it.
I also don't believe that DPS races just suck in a game where that DPS is skill related, and I still view it as contesting if it is.
This probably isn't any help since it's just me 'disagreeing with your base concern', but data gotta data.
a third group can do the same thing, even if there arent bounty hunters. a flagged pvp area gives a massive disadvantage to those who camped the boss and arrived first. you are punishing their effort for no reason, just because you got there late. camp the boss like you did with epics :P
You say you played L2 for a decade but you never used this incredibly basic strat? Cause I used archers, rogues, mages - whoeverthelivingfuck in L2 and easily accomplished the goal of sabotaging the opponent's farm.
You know what happened to my PK char afterwards? The group A killed him in seconds, because that's what happens to any PKers. You know what L2 didn't have? BHs. What a surprise, you don't need "10 BHs" to kill a PKer, who just murdered your healer.
they didn't run into an area first. they had alts as cameras. you had guys taking turns not playing their mains and checking for the boss, then when the boss entered a respawn windows, people would stop doing what they were doing and progressing, and just go there. they could have been doing other things, but they arent. they are sacrificing progression while everybody else is progressing. then you also have the organization to have everyone in a party, ready, etc, etc.
your logic is that we shouldn't reward people for getting there early,b ut instead you want to reward people for getting there late. wait what? imagine getting rewarded for being late at work xD anyways, why should the people who got there late should be rewarded instead? logic goes both ways. there isn't a single reason why the group who got there late should be rewarded instead.
anyways, imagine your group gets there late, you kill the first group, you are doing the boss, but guess what? now a third group comes and kills you. your group is already flagged because they are already in the PVP zone. the third group who got there even later than everybody is getting the advantage, and they will probably have to spend less time fighting the boss, since it would be almost dead. they probably wont even need to have what it takes to kill the boss, they can simply take it from you after you did all the work. is it fair?
it only seems to me that you don't wanna make the effort of camping bosses, and just arrive there late and take it from someone else.
BUT CAN'T FUCKING KILL YOU ON THE SPOT?!
yeah everybody will be purple in the solution he is proposing, but somehow group c wont attack his group and wait until he fights group a and heals up and then 1v1 them
OP came up with the most unrealistic situation to try and argue against a good system and is now crying about counterarguments that critique his insanely niche theoretical situation
None of that is even near to being logical
A hobo char easily PKs someone who's fighting a damn boss. That hobo char also easily puts pressure on the healer of the group that's fighting a boss.
But you've obviously never used this incredibly obvious strat, which bring me back to what I said before - skill issue.
Definitely way more unrealistic than just a third group standing around right next to the boss and waiting for someone to become a PKer.
Also, a question about this Would them standing around prevent you from PKing group A, cause you know for sure that this third group would attack you if you did?
Cause if yes then this sure as hell sounds like a thing that I said would happen right at the start of this thread
Oh, and another question. If these phantom BHs are "somewhere far away waiting for PKers" - what's stopping you from simply killing your own PKer right there on the spot and getting his loot, so that it's not lost?
I mean, unless the bosses in Ashes are so fucking dumb-easy that even a toddler can kill them, "for that situation" you only need to kill one healer for the raid to fall apart.
Also, a C grade hawk hits an A grade SS for ~1.8k per crit. Let's say a good bish would have more def and more hp, so hawk would be hitting 700-800 per crit with bish having 10k hp - that's still insanely cheap dmg that's coming out at super fast speeds and is draining the bish of his mana (also redirects his healing from the party onto himself more). This directly leads to the boss becoming way more difficult.
Pvp zones are boring and always lead to zerging.
If you hate the sheer concept of BHs you should've simply said so, instead of tying them to world bosses or some other random situations.
Just say "I dislike being hunted as a PKer". Replies will simply tell you that this game is not for you and we'd be done at that point. But you decided to come up with some weird scenario that has a hundred other resolutions than "10 BHs hunting my PKers".
Also, AoC's corruption cleansing will take way longer than L2's, so you won't have any characters who can just quickly go remove corruption while their guild is farming a boss.
Yes, and in this mess of people YOU are the one who knows that your mate is corrupted. You are the one who can easily target him and kill him and you would know exactly when he'd die, so you'd be the one to pick up his loot as fast as possible.
Though again, even this scenario is fairly rare because usually your PKer will just get assist-killed by the victims in seconds and you won't be able to do shit about it. And that was my experience in L2 from the both sides of the interaction. Even daggers that went into stealth after the kill were easily broken out of it and assist-killed in mere seconds. The only ones who couldn't do this were some rando noobs who didn't know how to play the game well.
I brought extra players into your vacuous situation because that would be the reality of the game, as you yourself said. People counter each others actions. If it's a well-known fact that BHs are hunting PKers during contested bosses - people will address that by either bringing PKing alts or doing something similar, that mitigates the influence of these BHs.
Just say that you don't want to be hunted by BHs because you're too afraid of being unfairly killed by others, while you want to unfairly kill others yourself