PVP Skill Augments

Providing some basic info from the wiki for the people that don't know about them:

"Primary skills (class abilities) are based on a player's archetype. Players can personalize their primary skills with augmentation from a secondary archetype (secondary class). Augments to primary skills will fundamentally change the way the ability works. Each skill in the primary tree has a minimum of four augment choices from the secondary tree. There will also be racial augments that change your abilties. There will also be religious augments that change your primary skills. There will also be social organization augments for players in a "Warrior's or Thieves guild aguments".

I would like to add Player versus player specific augments to the list as well. PVP auguments would only work against other players and only activate when engaging in PVP combat.

I would like to see PVP specific augments for a number of reasons. From a RP lore perspective, it makes sense that a character specializing in combat versus other players becomes more proficient or effective at doing that. It is a big difference fighting a boar, dragon or actual player. It is also logical, that a certain PVP specialized technique only works on players and not dragons etc since players and dragons fight differently.

From a balancing perspective it also makes sense. If a class desperatly needs more power in PVP but is more than fine in PVE, it would be way easier to do it in the form of augments specific for PVP combat instead of messing with the class proficiency in PVE as well. An example of this would be a meteor summoed from mage deals good DMG and is great for PVE. But the class is struggling terribly in PVP. An augment for this ability could be that the meteor in PVP combat also stuns for 2 seconds. In this way, the class is now stronger in PVP without affecting it's pve prowess.

It also gives an extra incentive for players to play more PVP. Gear, pets and mount rewards are fine, but actually feeling your character getting more specilized in PVP combat from your abilities is on a whole other level. The abilities with these auguments should obviously also change in appearence as other skills will do which will be a nice touch.

The pros of this system would be:
1. More immersive (A character that works full time slaying dragons would fight very differently than a character who only fights other players).
2. More incentive to play PVP (A pvp skill progression system would give more to work towards for pvp players).
3. The most important reason, Balancing simplification. In this way, you can balance PVP more in a vacuum without screwing up PVE balance. This is a win-win for both PVP and PVE players.
4. Almost no side effects (will explain more soon). This does not affect PVE players at all in any negative way. It only effects PVPers and PVEers in positive ways.

So, what would be the problem in this system? Well this has been done and while it did by far have mostly positive effects, there were some negatives.
1. Harder to get into PVP properly for new characters. Since experienced players will have all their skills augmented for PVP, they will have a massive advantage to players that have not yet or decided not to get PVP augments. This might turn some people away from even getting into PVP.
2. Unfair when PVPers start fighting PVEers. Since the PVE players will be tuned for PVE. They might get utterly stomped when fighting PVP tuned players (But they will probably get stomped anyways)

These problems on the other hand are already there from the beginning in the form of gear and experience. A newly leveled character just getting into PVP should not and would almost always not stand a chance against an experienced and geared PVP player.

The problems can also be mitigated in the form of these augments being fairly small. We are not talking about "Increase summoned minions damage to players by 20%" augments. We are talking about these kind of augments:

"Reduce stun duration on summoned minions by 50% while in PVP combat"
"Frost Meteor now stuns the enemy for 2 seconds when landing a succesful hit in PVP combat"
"Reduce the cooldown of this defensive ability by 30% while in pvp combat"
"Charge is now usable on allied players while in pvp combat"
"Death bolt now has a chance to become instant but deals 50% less damage in pvp combat"

These augments would possibly break the game in PVE but could be essential for a class to stand a chance in PVP. If they are too strong, or weak, the devs can simply tweak these augments. And here is the magic, WITHOUT affecting PVE players in any way. Giving PVE players one less thing to complain about when other classes outperform them.

What do you think about this system? Do you have any similar ideas or tweaks to it? Let me know!

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Comments

unknownsystemerror

I think that if they start making pvp stats vs pve stats they will end up in the same place that every other game that has separate systems does. They have said no difference between the two, let that happen. They will have enough balance issues to deal with containing the augment system as is, no need to pervert it back to what they were trying to avoid in the first place.

Marzzo

unknownsystemerror wrote: »

I think that if they start making pvp stats vs pve stats they will end up in the same place that every other game that has separate systems does. They have said no difference between the two, let that happen. They will have enough balance issues to deal with containing the augment system as is, no need to pervert it back to what they were trying to avoid in the first place.

I am not sure I was talking about PVP vs PVE stats. Just small and few different ability effects that only work in PVP. This has been proven to help with PVP balance in all games it has been tried. It can't do the contrary. It is also less work since the devs don't even have to consider PVE when balancing PVP.

unknownsystemerror

You end up in the same place. People feel that pvp augments are too powerful, ask for nerfs. People feel this augment is not powerful enough when faced vs this other augment, ask for a boost. That beautiful slippery slope that happens gains degrees of elevation, more starts to slide torwards favoring pvp balance in encounters vs pve. Decisions are made with pvp as the focus over pve. So at that point it is decided to bring out tiers of armor sets that function better in a pvp environment than in pve. The pvp crowd complains that they shouldn't have to do pve content to get their shiny new sets. And within a couple years Ashes is a poor knockoff clone of every other failed system that has gone before.

Noaani

marzzo1337 wrote: »

I would like to see PVP specific augments for a number of reasons. From a RP lore perspective, it makes sense that a character specializing in combat versus other players becomes more proficient or effective at doing that.

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The pros of this system would be:
1. More immersive (A character that works full time slaying dragons would fight very differently than a character who only fights other players).

I appreciate you attempting to provide lore/RP based basis for what you want in a game, but this holds absolutely no weight.

In terms of RP/lore, fighting a player is no different to fighting an NPC humanoid.

Now, if you had have been asking for abilities that work on specific races (taking advantage of specific weaknesses in their specific physiology perhaps), I'd be all for this. Thing is, this would have to work on members of that race that are player characters or non-player characters.

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The reason every other game has needed to have PvE and PvP abilities separated is because those games have developed player stats and NPC stats differently. If the stats are the same, then abilities can be the same.

Azathoth

No separate abilities/gear/stats/augments for PvP/PvE is my current understanding. I, personally, would like it to stay that way since IS is building Ashes as a PvX.

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