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To create a healthy PVP community

One thing that many MMOs have done horribly wrong is to ignore the PVP community and not adding new contents to it. This will negativly effect the PVP community and decrease the amount of people playing.
     People usually PVP to test their skills against other players, conquer, and prove that they are better than other players. And also sometimes cause it is fun to smack peoples face in. But, today many want rewards and things that they can display for the rest of the world to show what kind of player they are, and I will give you some ideas on how to give players a true reason to PvP and make it many, many times more fun.

Below is a list of PvP content that is crucial to make a true PvP community and that won't affect the PVE side of the game in any way.

>>>Champions Hall: A place where PvPers can meet up, chat, duel (Really, really need to have a dueling arena) and hang out. Putting out PvP vendors in this location will automaticly attract players to visit this location and make it their favourite place if they are into PvP. This could also be the place to Queue up for arenas, battlegrounds and such. 
     Additionally, there could be a special room for people with a specific rating where you could buy "Elite" gear which would look different or maybe different mount skins. 
     A place like this and many rewards for pvp (Titles, Mounts, gear, armor skins, pets, special items like flags) would skyrocket the PvP community and give pvp content that would dwaf even World of Warcraft. A place like this would undeniably increase the player base by a large amount

>>>Rewards for different kind of PvPers: There are different kind of Pvpers, there are 1v1 duelers, there are arena players (2v2,3v3,5v5) and there are competitive battleground players and lastly, just casual PvPers who just wanna play it. 
     It is important to offer PvP rewards to all kind of pvpers, not only 3v3 players or 10v10 competive players. There should be rewards for the amount of all around kills you get, the amout of arenas you played and maybe even how many players you killed in the open world. Naturally there should be titles, mounts and gear for 3v3 high rated players and such but things like this should also be obtainable by other means than the developers prefered pvp system. Maybe someone who played a shitload of large scale castle wars get a specific set and title etc.

>>>Ranking system: Just like PVErs ger titles and progress by the amount of bosses they killed. PvPers also need a way to track their progress. This could be done by offering a rank up system that gave a new title every rank (1:Recruit 2:Soldier 3:Corporal 7: Commander 10: General). Or different armor skins, tabards, or mount skins depending on your pvp rank. The reason for this is that each PVP battle will feel meaningful by having this sytem, maybe you get your next gear piece in 10 battleground but you will always know that each battleground you are one step closer to a new rank.

>>>A 1v1 arena: Ofcourse there is duelling. But, Terrain, disturbing people, NPCs and building sometimes come in the way. There should be a place that is like the official place to settle a duel between two people. Fair and square, no advantages for any class.

>>>Pvp Currency: This is what will be used to buy the different pvp rewards. The reason for this being important is because recently, reports have been showing massive waves of death threats to blizzard (world of warcraft) for simply removing their famous Honor system (Honor being a currency you get for each kill, bg won/lost). They also made Gear from PVP completly random that spawns in your bag after a win or loss. Do not go down this path, it is proven to be very bad. Have Pvp vendors for everything, and make them purchasable with a currency like Honor, PvP points or valor etc. For the more excluisve stuff, just put a requirement to buy. Like a certain rating to UNLOCK the ability to buy the "legendary Pvpers dragon of doom" or "Weapon skin of murdering low lvls"

>>>King of the hill style arena: There could be a location inside the pvp champion hall where there is a king of the hill style arena. This means, that once one player enters, only one more can join him inside the arena. The one who wins the battle gets to stay. There could be a sign with leaderboards for amount of players defeated as a reward (since 1v1 is not usually balanced in a group game)

>>>Do have requirements for !SOME! rewards: Many people argue that it is unfair that only the top 10 best players of the year get the "Warlord" title just because they were top 10 in the world. This is not true, it is not unfair. People who say this are jealus. 
     Rewards like this should not affect the PVP balance. For example, having the possibility to buy more powerful weapons than other because you play more than someone else is unfair. But, being able to get Cosmetic rewards like titles and skins, mounts, to show your dedication is not unfair.
     These rewards, in reality, will motivate people to play more. Give their PvPing a meaningful reward. These rewards will give people someting to motivate them to actually get better (High rating rewards), or dedicate themself more (dedication rewards).

>>>Do keep in mind PVP when balancing the game: Do not go down the route world of warcraft went and balance a game around PVE which ultimatly destroyed and screwed up PVP.    
     When thinking about creating a ring that gives you a 10% hp move speed whenever you attack or cast a spell, do think about how this will affect pvp, do remember mechanics like kiting. If this is done from the begining, balance will not be as hard to achive.

I may add stuff to this later, but was in a rush and only had 20 mins to do this. Also, it is 2.30 in the morning so i cant think straight for more than 5 sec. Hope this gives you a bit of inspiration for pvp development.





Comments

  • Wow, those are some nice ideas :D It reminds me a bit about bdo tbh where I loved the red battlefield and the arenas although imo it was handled not perfectly.

    I like the idea of having arenas not totally abandoned, so shops n stuffs like that will be pretty good, even having npc that are looking at the battles will be nice.

    Other ideas that are coming into mind are:
    - Being able to enter the arena and exclude completely other people inside it: to be clear in bdo's arena you get flagged in the moment you enter the place, so every single player inside it can kill you and do damage. It happened quite often that I just wanted to 1v1 a mate in a "proper place" and I couldn't because there was always someone trying to troll the duel. I'd love to see a feature as "create a battlefield with teamA_NameOfPlayer and teamB_NameOfPlayer2" that will prevent others to interfere.

    - Create real events, something like "at midnight there will be a ceremony where all players are invited in the monthly 1v1 tournament; the winner will receive *insert cosmetic item here*". Ambientation too should be addressed: standing torches at the entrance, flags, fireworks ecc.

    Will edit this comment with other ideas if they'll come into mind :)
  • Maybe you should first take some time to learn about what Ashes of Creation already plans to offer hardcore PvPers.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited June 2017
    Dygz said:
    Maybe you should first take some time to learn about what Ashes of Creation already plans to offer hardcore PvPers.

    I am very aware that there are rewards for Pvpers and hardcore Pvpers alike. But, these are just brainstormed ideas that i belive should be put in consideration. Having 3-5 rewards and 3-5 different kinds of contents for pvpers is not enought. It has been every MMOs pvp downfall. But, I do agree with you, there are already some great ideas from AoC
  • nirablade said:
    Wow, those are some nice ideas :D It reminds me a bit about bdo tbh where I loved the red battlefield and the arenas although imo it was handled not perfectly.

    I like the idea of having arenas not totally abandoned, so shops n stuffs like that will be pretty good, even having npc that are looking at the battles will be nice.

    Other ideas that are coming into mind are:
    - Being able to enter the arena and exclude completely other people inside it: to be clear in bdo's arena you get flagged in the moment you enter the place, so every single player inside it can kill you and do damage. It happened quite often that I just wanted to 1v1 a mate in a "proper place" and I couldn't because there was always someone trying to troll the duel. I'd love to see a feature as "create a battlefield with teamA_NameOfPlayer and teamB_NameOfPlayer2" that will prevent others to interfere.

    - Create real events, something like "at midnight there will be a ceremony where all players are invited in the monthly 1v1 tournament; the winner will receive *insert cosmetic item here*". Ambientation too should be addressed: standing torches at the entrance, flags, fireworks ecc.

    Will edit this comment with other ideas if they'll come into mind :)

    The first idea is great! One way to facilitate this would be to add a 1v1 instanced arena, or a place only 2 can be for at a time (with a time limit ofc).

    For the second idea, I personally am against 1v1 rewards since MMOs are seldom designed to be balanced for 1v1 (How would a healer be able to win the 1v1 tournement?). But, there could be some fun events like 1v1 tournements where you don't earn anything except like your name on a dashboard!
  • I sense a lot of WoW in this write up. Not a bad thing, just a different landscape. We will have to wait and see before most of these can be discussed. If the concept of open world is realized (as planned), it will be a far cry from what you are hoping for. In an open world, there would be no "queue up" for PVP. 
  • Dygz said:
    Maybe you should first take some time to learn about what Ashes of Creation already plans to offer hardcore PvPers.

    I am very aware that there are rewards for Pvpers and hardcore Pvpers alike. But, these are just brainstormed ideas that i belive should be put in consideration. Having 3-5 rewards and 3-5 different kinds of contents for pvpers is not enought. It has been every MMOs pvp downfall. But, I do agree with you, there are already some great ideas from AoC
    Almost all of those ideas are already part of the design.
    Winning caravans and winning sieges are already rewards that no other MMORPG has.
    But, I can't stop you from posting redundant suggestions.
    I'm just saying...
  • (Technically, there could be a queue in the arenas).
  • Welphgryn said:
    I sense a lot of WoW in this write up. Not a bad thing, just a different landscape. We will have to wait and see before most of these can be discussed. If the concept of open world is realized (as planned), it will be a far cry from what you are hoping for. In an open world, there would be no "queue up" for PVP. 

    I do agree we should wait. But I strongly dissagre with the idea that an open world should not have instanced pvp. The open world is unfair (Player numbers, battle locations, disturbances, spawning, and preperation). A healthy pvp community needs somewhere where PVP is fair. No MMO, no game, has ever had a healthy pvp system without instanced pvp, since world pvp is extremly unfair, and repetitive. A 100vs100 lagfest is only fun a couple times....

    An instanced place to fight will put everyone evenly, (player numbrs, locations, and goals). This is the !Only! way to have balaneced and fair pvp which actually is fun for longer than 2 months (Til the main guild on the server became dicators and **** everyone trying to battle them)

    "Ark: Surviaial evolved" is an example of what will happen if PVP is only open world focused. No life clans, dominating everything and taking monopoly on the whole server.
  • Ashes has instanced PvP combat. 1v1 to 5v5 arenas.
  • Like Dygz said so very nicely as always, lot's of stuff was already confirmed to be months ago. By now we even got the confirmation of the classbased olympiade duelling didn't we?

    I had to giggle about the "dedicated 1v1 arena without any advantages" A good arena offers several things to balance out advantages, a flat surface in itselfe is already an advantage for specific styled classes.

    There is no pvp seperated gear, they want to have one gear for all activities. I'm not sure that it can happen, if there are several statcombinations (as it should be otherwise what's all the fuss about crafting) I'm sure you would want to seek out different statcombinations for pvp. That being said, pvp vendors for equipment just don't make to much sense. Do you get crafting materials for winning that you can use so people can craft you what you want?
    I am curious how they will tackle that.
    I think it should be possible to just pvp and enjoy the game that way, but the way it is built makes some questions pop up and it remains to be seen if they are going to allow it and how they will manage it.

    Championhalls sounds like a nice building a goverment could decide on having or not.

    I do wholeheartedly agree to seperate balancing for pvp and pve, I never understood the lackluster reasoning that it creates to much of a clutter for players having all abilities work differently/ have differently strong effects depending on if it's used in pvp or pve.

  • As said. This is already confirmed mostly. But I will add that there is no PvP gear. There is just gear.
  • Let's keep in mind the satisfaction of 'earning' something after a successful PvP. Most of the points you mentioned are nice and all, but a lot of people, including myself, would prefer to fight over something instead of just fighting. There are games like Overwatch etc. where you could just go and PvP for the sake of it, for the fun of it. But in MMORPGs, people fight for gain. Sometimes to climb up on the rankings ladder, sometimes to steal materials from your rival guilds' caravans. 

    PvP should be rewarding. Otherwise you will only have a small little PvP community that keeps fighting eachother for the fun of it and eventually quits since it becomes repetitive. To have a healthy PvP community, you need to give everyone a reason to PvP, not only to the PvP community. Because PvP community knows what they are doing anyway, but there aren't so many of them :)

    Most basic example is that almost all the PvPers would prefer to steal from someone else's caravan instead of making their own (boring?) caravan runs. And when you don't have those casuals to make caravan runs in the server, you will end up having few little PvP communities camping different caravan routes and waiting to steal from someone... Someone who's not coming.
  • AeonAuron said:
    Let's keep in mind the satisfaction of 'earning' something after a successful PvP. Most of the points you mentioned are nice and all, but a lot of people, including myself, would prefer to fight over something instead of just fighting. There are games like Overwatch etc. where you could just go and PvP for the sake of it, for the fun of it. But in MMORPGs, people fight for gain. Sometimes to climb up on the rankings ladder, sometimes to steal materials from your rival guilds' caravans. 

    PvP should be rewarding. Otherwise you will only have a small little PvP community that keeps fighting eachother for the fun of it and eventually quits since it becomes repetitive. To have a healthy PvP community, you need to give everyone a reason to PvP, not only to the PvP community. Because PvP community knows what they are doing anyway, but there aren't so many of them :)

    Most basic example is that almost all the PvPers would prefer to steal from someone else's caravan instead of making their own (boring?) caravan runs. And when you don't have those casuals to make caravan runs in the server, you will end up having few little PvP communities camping different caravan routes and waiting to steal from someone... Someone who's not coming.
    Sign
    Cant agree more to this!
  • AeonAuron said:
    Most basic example is that almost all the PvPers would prefer to steal from someone else's caravan instead of making their own (boring?) caravan runs. And when you don't have those casuals to make caravan runs in the server, you will end up having few little PvP communities camping different caravan routes and waiting to steal from someone... Someone who's not coming.
    It's probably not true that most PvPers would prefer stealing from someone else's caravan instead of making their own.
    PvPers will enjoy both defending caravans as well as attacking caravans.

    But it is true that the caravans provide even those who typically have no interest in PvP combat with a motivation to participate in PvP combat.
    We need caravan runs to be successful in order to grow towns into cities and cities into Metropolises. We will likely need casual PvP adventurers and PvE adventurers to join in for some needed caravan runs to be sufficiently protected.

    It's odd to me that people tend to depict caravan runs as if they will typically just be one player shipping goods individually, rather than an alliance banding together to ship goods.
  • Dygz said:

    ...It's odd to me that people tend to depict caravan runs as if they will typically just be one player shipping goods individually...
    Am I a bad person for hoping this is actually the case?
  • I'd like more info on the caravan thing. I have gotten different impressions about how caravans will work from just watching the KS Twitch shows. Seems like there will be two different types: Player started with 100% player goods and Node Quest opportunities that may or may not allow player goods movement between Node locations.
  • There's Open World PvP, with relatively few safe areas(If I'm right).Also, there's the caravans, node seiges, guild wars(no, not the game) so on so forth. one of their pillars is meaningful conflict. they are essentially placing you on the throne.
  • If a single player would like to risk his goods by transporting them with a caravan and NPC guards only, he could be taken down with just a few players or so... So I don't see why would any solo player do that.

    Since caravans are going to be visible on the map, i think they will be something big, for real. Exclusive (dunno if this is the right word for it) to the organised guilds. If a single player would want to transport his goods then i guess he could do it with a Mule only.
  • My understanding of the caravan system is that player characters will not have enough inventory space/ weight allotment to carry the resources necessary to build a Library or Apartment Building or Scholars Academy back to the town/city/node.

    We will need caravans to carry the necessary resources, in bulk, from the harvesting/mining areas back to the town/city.

    Also, during the prep-phase of city/castle defense for a siege, we will need to gather resources to build up the defense nodes around the castle/town/city. Failure to build up those defenses makes it easier for the attackers to successfully win the siege.
    Again, the amount of necessary resources will require successful caravan runs moving those resources from the harvesting/mining areas back to the city/castle.

    Node quest v player started may be a matter of perspective.
    I think technically it's always player started. Players will schedule the caravan runs.
    But, the node will also be informing us what resources we need to expand the town/city/Metropolis... and to build infrastructure, like a fast travel system.
  • I think the nodes will have a list of resources it needs to be maintained.

    Also a list of resources necessary for it to expand.

    Its upto the node population to source those resources from somewhere. Regardless where they come from and who sends them, and who profits from it, they have to happen.

  • I think the nodes will have a list of resources it needs to be maintained.

    Also a list of resources necessary for it to expand.

    Its upto the node population to source those resources from somewhere. Regardless where they come from and who sends them, and who profits from it, they have to happen.

    I agree basicly so you dont have an node that got big in the early game, and then keep being big if players move on.
    Hopefully its gonna be a "hidden list", like some guy asking for something, another for something else etc. Unless its a direct upgrade like a house or a wall ;) 
  • PvP all the way <3
  • Fleelix said:
    PvP all the way <3
    Yes :)

    And don't forget open PvP... my favorite
  • The Key to PVP is not have a wide gap between players who dont have gear and people who do have gear.   Like in ArcheAge a person who has a 500 gear score more always wins.   If you reduce the reliance on gear and put players on a more even footing you will not get the problems you get with PVP. 
  • I like some of these ideas, but I don't like the suggestion that PVP and PVE should be mutually exclusive and have their own little playgrounds. In fact, it defeats the purpose of having a game that focuses heavily on community development. I have never liked the idea of how games, like WoW, separated the gear requirements for PVP and PVE. IMO gear should just be gear, it comes down to the skill level and team composition that makes the PVP and PVE fun. If AoC added things such as PVP exclusive gear, that would mean players who enjoy all aspects of the game, including myself, would have to work twice as hard as someone who wants to "Just do arenas" or "Just do raids", because now I would have to spend x amount of time getting my pvp gear, then spend x amount of time getting my raiding gear... That might have worked when I was a teenage and could stay up till all hours of the night during summer vacation, but not now with adulting hitting hard.

    You also have to factor in the other world systems like Sieges and caravan systems. A player who has the best PVP gear, could potentially take on 1v2 and 1v3 situations because those other players have gear oriented for PVE or just not very good gear at all. If there was a Node that focused heavily on PVP and all those players were geared for it, they could roflstomp any other node.

    As for what I do like, here is the following:

    -Champion Halls: I think it is perfectly fine if these buildings were in game, allowing those PVP exclusive players to gather together and see who has the bigger balls. Competition is healthy, in moderation, and these halls are great to implement that.

    - PVP rewards: Titles, mounts, pets, etc. All of these are perfectly fine! It is a way to distinguish yourself from other players and say "Hey, this is what I did." without shoving it down other player's throats when it comes to world PVP.

    -Specialized arenas: Obviously these would be instanced and cater to players who want to focus on this style of gaming. Do it and have fun! Enjoy your rewards and conquers!

    Ending my comment by saying: I support having specialized items and events for players who just want to do arenas and similar pvp oriented things, but I do not want there to become a separation between PVP and PVE. As Intrepid has been trying to make clear: This is an open world and all aspects of the game are connected and require each of the elements to make or break that world.
  • This game, as Steven has said numerous times, is going to have risks and choices made by the players. One of these choices is weighing the benefits vs risks of going out of the safety of your home because there may be bandits.

    This brings depth to the game, this mix of potential danger and content. Do we really want another bleh game that rewards players for complete isolation and disengaging from the MMO part of MMORPG?
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