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Suggestions for Duel Arena in Military Nodes
sarcanjia
Member
If anyone reading this has ever played Runescape you likely know about the Duel Arena or Staking in General.
As someone who plans on leading a PvX oriented Guild and hopefully becoming a Mayor of Military nodes a few times, I really want PvP to be more than just ganking lower leveled people in the wild. I would love for Military Nodes to have an Arena for Staking. Both players put resources, gold, or items into a chest, as if it were a trade window. Both players agree that both sides have "equivalent" value, and a countdown for the duel commences. Winner gets all.
Without this system in place, players can still follow an Honor code and PvP in the wild holding only the resources they want to risk, or running back to town after and trading any crafted gear that was at stake. However I would like there to be a "High Stakes" function built into the game for a few reasons.
1) Honor. Without a game moderated staking system there will inevitably be people who try to lie and cheat their opponents out of fair wins. And if you get cheated like this, it is ultimately no one's fault but yourself, and few people would want to damage their honor and credibility on the server by doing this, however the fact that it is in-fact possible would deter many people from ever engaging in this High-stakes duels, which I feel is a huge loss for the diversity of PvP.
2) Lore. Let's keep this exclusive to PvP nodes, and add leaderboards for the amount of duels won. The arena can be publicly viewable so anyone can come by and maybe even bid on who will be the winner. I'm thinking Oblivion style arena but in an MMO. We could even have factions built into the Arena, with a reward system for people who climb high enough in their respective team (earning possible Epic gear for the best of the players, or at least earning gear Transmogs/banners/augmentations). This also allows people to PvP "before the Gods" and gain Honor and Glory instead going into the wilderness and earning Negative Karma by killing innocent players, or only attacking Corrupted players if you are trying to Role Play your character.
3) Pre-Election training. This would liven up PvP and give people the chance to study the top contenders for the next Mayoral election (since the Mayor each month is decided by who wins the Tournament). Great PvPers will undoubtedly want to show off and use their skill to net a few extra resources now and then, and streamers of course will use this feature for good content, but this will also allow new players to pick up some tips or people who didn't fair well in past tournaments to study their opponents in closer detail. Anyone participating in these duels will be showing off their builds/skill morphs/rotations/items to people beforehand, which forces anyone participating to constantly be adapting their strategies and always be upping the Ante. This could also lead to Mind-gaming opponents who have studied you using specific augments and weapons, but then during a Tournament you ultimately reveal your Ace in the Hole. Maybe it's an augment you've only used in the wild on enemy guilds. Maybe it's a Legendary item you finally managed to craft after months of accumulating resources from other players. This can be even more valuable than walking into a tournament as an unknown variable, because you are subconsciously prepping your opponent for a specific play-style instead of already being in the mind-set of playing passive and expecting anything.
4) Community involvement. Make these Arenas open to even non-citizens. Say someone from a Scientific Node is interested in livening up his normal routine. He just got done crafting an Epic item for a client. "Say, let's go to the next Metropolis over and stake this item. I win, you pay me for the item in Epic materials instead of gold. I lose, you get it for free". Would allow crafters to take a break from the normal gathering of materials and using crafting as nothing more than a way to make money.
Ultimately it would encourage players who normally try to avoid PvP to have a safe environment to test the waters and maybe even decide to leave their current Metropolis in favor of making new friends in a Node type they didn't realize they would enjoy so much (as I assume most of us have already decided on what Node type we will scout for when MMO launches, and likely stick there for a year or two, or even longer out of familiarity).
I realize that, it being a Military node and all, there is very likely going to be an arena already. My post was more about having an NPC moderator added for the sake of staking items, as well as having Teams added to the arena for cosmetic purposes. From what we've been told already, the main benefits to a Military node are:
1) Reduced negative Karma from killing innocent players, and faster regression on Corruption
2) The ability to take out Mercenary contracts on corrupted players
I'm simply asking we have a system WITHIN the city to also address PvP, since most of the examples given only apply to the Open World.
As someone who plans on leading a PvX oriented Guild and hopefully becoming a Mayor of Military nodes a few times, I really want PvP to be more than just ganking lower leveled people in the wild. I would love for Military Nodes to have an Arena for Staking. Both players put resources, gold, or items into a chest, as if it were a trade window. Both players agree that both sides have "equivalent" value, and a countdown for the duel commences. Winner gets all.
Without this system in place, players can still follow an Honor code and PvP in the wild holding only the resources they want to risk, or running back to town after and trading any crafted gear that was at stake. However I would like there to be a "High Stakes" function built into the game for a few reasons.
1) Honor. Without a game moderated staking system there will inevitably be people who try to lie and cheat their opponents out of fair wins. And if you get cheated like this, it is ultimately no one's fault but yourself, and few people would want to damage their honor and credibility on the server by doing this, however the fact that it is in-fact possible would deter many people from ever engaging in this High-stakes duels, which I feel is a huge loss for the diversity of PvP.
2) Lore. Let's keep this exclusive to PvP nodes, and add leaderboards for the amount of duels won. The arena can be publicly viewable so anyone can come by and maybe even bid on who will be the winner. I'm thinking Oblivion style arena but in an MMO. We could even have factions built into the Arena, with a reward system for people who climb high enough in their respective team (earning possible Epic gear for the best of the players, or at least earning gear Transmogs/banners/augmentations). This also allows people to PvP "before the Gods" and gain Honor and Glory instead going into the wilderness and earning Negative Karma by killing innocent players, or only attacking Corrupted players if you are trying to Role Play your character.
3) Pre-Election training. This would liven up PvP and give people the chance to study the top contenders for the next Mayoral election (since the Mayor each month is decided by who wins the Tournament). Great PvPers will undoubtedly want to show off and use their skill to net a few extra resources now and then, and streamers of course will use this feature for good content, but this will also allow new players to pick up some tips or people who didn't fair well in past tournaments to study their opponents in closer detail. Anyone participating in these duels will be showing off their builds/skill morphs/rotations/items to people beforehand, which forces anyone participating to constantly be adapting their strategies and always be upping the Ante. This could also lead to Mind-gaming opponents who have studied you using specific augments and weapons, but then during a Tournament you ultimately reveal your Ace in the Hole. Maybe it's an augment you've only used in the wild on enemy guilds. Maybe it's a Legendary item you finally managed to craft after months of accumulating resources from other players. This can be even more valuable than walking into a tournament as an unknown variable, because you are subconsciously prepping your opponent for a specific play-style instead of already being in the mind-set of playing passive and expecting anything.
4) Community involvement. Make these Arenas open to even non-citizens. Say someone from a Scientific Node is interested in livening up his normal routine. He just got done crafting an Epic item for a client. "Say, let's go to the next Metropolis over and stake this item. I win, you pay me for the item in Epic materials instead of gold. I lose, you get it for free". Would allow crafters to take a break from the normal gathering of materials and using crafting as nothing more than a way to make money.
Ultimately it would encourage players who normally try to avoid PvP to have a safe environment to test the waters and maybe even decide to leave their current Metropolis in favor of making new friends in a Node type they didn't realize they would enjoy so much (as I assume most of us have already decided on what Node type we will scout for when MMO launches, and likely stick there for a year or two, or even longer out of familiarity).
I realize that, it being a Military node and all, there is very likely going to be an arena already. My post was more about having an NPC moderator added for the sake of staking items, as well as having Teams added to the arena for cosmetic purposes. From what we've been told already, the main benefits to a Military node are:
1) Reduced negative Karma from killing innocent players, and faster regression on Corruption
2) The ability to take out Mercenary contracts on corrupted players
I'm simply asking we have a system WITHIN the city to also address PvP, since most of the examples given only apply to the Open World.
2
Comments
Mayors of Military Nodes are decided by whoever wins the Arena duels for government leadership.
I said that...
Military Nodes already have them.
I should've chosen a different title, I know. It was more of a "clickbait" approach since I know a lot of people will normally ignore reading the thread unless they want to add their 2 cents on how I'm wrong. Guess that's a bit scummy though, so I changed it in hindsight, thank you.