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GvG/PvP Downsides and AOC's Solutions?
ObiWon
Member
Hello, Everyone and welcome to this open discussion. I, ObiWon, your future Tank Extraordinaire have been playing Black Desert Online for the Past 5 years. And, I wanted to open up some discussion about potential downsides and fixes that I am not sure have been addressed or discussed. They may have been talked about already, and there may very well be other discussions about this specific topic with AOC staff giving solutions however, I am not informed about them so I am making this post here.
So, to get started I will be discussing 6 topics particularly, Player/Guild Tracking, Spawn Killing, Negative Chat Dialogue, Guild Domination, Gear Locking, and PvP Skill/Gear Caps. To get started;
Player or even guild tracking can become very disadvantageous, annoying, toxic, problematic, etc. which can deter players from playing. However, tracking a player and their exact location can be useful, fun, and appropriate given the right treatment. Therefore I personally don't believe Guild Tracking at maximum should ever be a feature within this game. Especially since tracking a whole guild doesn't seem viable as it consists of many players who engage in different activities or parts of the map at different times. For example, in BDO you are able to go to a shadowy figure within the tavern in the Town of Velia who for a certain amount of money will unlock the current location of a player on the same server as you. But, if they move from the initial ping it does not follow them. Giving them a chance, however, it does not notify them that they are being tracked.
This allows players to get PK'd during intense grind sessions or lifeskilling when they do not desire to PvP at all. Now We know Ashes has created a system that lets you indicate whether or not you even want to participate in PvP and if you are killed as a PvE player there are penalties for the PvPer. However, some players will make alts or kills regardless of any penalties. And someone may not always be online or have friends to help them. How do we solve those instances? I have heard of a Sheriff system but, no further discussion has been talked about. Can someone getting spawn killed or farmed even type or ask for aid when they are killed? In, BDO, once you die you cannot type or do anything except respawn allowing you to get continuously killed without being able to ask for aid.
Spawn killing in BDO is so prevalent that even players with good gear or skill can overwhelmed because they cannot repsawn at full health unless they have an item called a fairies tear and those can quickly run out. How is this prevented or mitigated to a certain extent?
Negative Chat dialogue is simple and I know that there is already a system in place but, players will find a way to negatively insult someone that goes beyond a profanity filter or racial remarks. Is this being worked on?
Now, I understand that guilds want to be Number 1 and alliances will play a huge role in that. However, in BDO Console the same guilds have been in the Political Power spot since Launch and players have become sick of it and their politics. Even on PC. When one Guild or Alliance rules for too long with too much power and no one can topple them because they recruit all the strongest players it hinders other guilds growth. Now it's up to an individual to join a guild but, when other guilds are unable to surpass or challenge another for control due to all the strongest players being in one guild how can players seek to overcome this? Assuming any and all new strong players automatically go to join the strongest guild only. Hence Guild domination without challenge.
Gear locking is pretty simple. In BDO, gear is enhanced at a chance rate which is terrible and the bane of all BDO players' existence. This is why I love that gear in AOC is found and has rarity not enhancement-based. However, someone is bound to find the gear that becomes meta and players tend to be followers. Is exploration and gear variety really enough to ensure that players don't become gear locked limiting the player base to just one set that everyone wears? Making gear the PVP or PVE standard without change can lead to players seeking one set of gear that becomes too hard to give people a competitive advantage.
And, finally, PvP skill can always change and adapt, however, gear-wise BDO has this problem where one set gear is the standard and once you max it out you are essentially broken. which means even those with higher skill will die regardless of how close their gear may be to max. Full Pen is full Pen and your skill can be mediocre, but you'll win a majority of the time. Will Skill with a character be balanced to the point where someone with worse gear can kill or dominate someone with better gear? Or will someone with better gear always win out? Is PVP going to be gear-based or skill-based? Of course, it's supposed to be both but, hopefully, you see my point.
Let me know what you guys think bad or good and let me know of your concerns about PvP or Guild fights.
So, to get started I will be discussing 6 topics particularly, Player/Guild Tracking, Spawn Killing, Negative Chat Dialogue, Guild Domination, Gear Locking, and PvP Skill/Gear Caps. To get started;
Player or even guild tracking can become very disadvantageous, annoying, toxic, problematic, etc. which can deter players from playing. However, tracking a player and their exact location can be useful, fun, and appropriate given the right treatment. Therefore I personally don't believe Guild Tracking at maximum should ever be a feature within this game. Especially since tracking a whole guild doesn't seem viable as it consists of many players who engage in different activities or parts of the map at different times. For example, in BDO you are able to go to a shadowy figure within the tavern in the Town of Velia who for a certain amount of money will unlock the current location of a player on the same server as you. But, if they move from the initial ping it does not follow them. Giving them a chance, however, it does not notify them that they are being tracked.
This allows players to get PK'd during intense grind sessions or lifeskilling when they do not desire to PvP at all. Now We know Ashes has created a system that lets you indicate whether or not you even want to participate in PvP and if you are killed as a PvE player there are penalties for the PvPer. However, some players will make alts or kills regardless of any penalties. And someone may not always be online or have friends to help them. How do we solve those instances? I have heard of a Sheriff system but, no further discussion has been talked about. Can someone getting spawn killed or farmed even type or ask for aid when they are killed? In, BDO, once you die you cannot type or do anything except respawn allowing you to get continuously killed without being able to ask for aid.
Spawn killing in BDO is so prevalent that even players with good gear or skill can overwhelmed because they cannot repsawn at full health unless they have an item called a fairies tear and those can quickly run out. How is this prevented or mitigated to a certain extent?
Negative Chat dialogue is simple and I know that there is already a system in place but, players will find a way to negatively insult someone that goes beyond a profanity filter or racial remarks. Is this being worked on?
Now, I understand that guilds want to be Number 1 and alliances will play a huge role in that. However, in BDO Console the same guilds have been in the Political Power spot since Launch and players have become sick of it and their politics. Even on PC. When one Guild or Alliance rules for too long with too much power and no one can topple them because they recruit all the strongest players it hinders other guilds growth. Now it's up to an individual to join a guild but, when other guilds are unable to surpass or challenge another for control due to all the strongest players being in one guild how can players seek to overcome this? Assuming any and all new strong players automatically go to join the strongest guild only. Hence Guild domination without challenge.
Gear locking is pretty simple. In BDO, gear is enhanced at a chance rate which is terrible and the bane of all BDO players' existence. This is why I love that gear in AOC is found and has rarity not enhancement-based. However, someone is bound to find the gear that becomes meta and players tend to be followers. Is exploration and gear variety really enough to ensure that players don't become gear locked limiting the player base to just one set that everyone wears? Making gear the PVP or PVE standard without change can lead to players seeking one set of gear that becomes too hard to give people a competitive advantage.
And, finally, PvP skill can always change and adapt, however, gear-wise BDO has this problem where one set gear is the standard and once you max it out you are essentially broken. which means even those with higher skill will die regardless of how close their gear may be to max. Full Pen is full Pen and your skill can be mediocre, but you'll win a majority of the time. Will Skill with a character be balanced to the point where someone with worse gear can kill or dominate someone with better gear? Or will someone with better gear always win out? Is PVP going to be gear-based or skill-based? Of course, it's supposed to be both but, hopefully, you see my point.
Let me know what you guys think bad or good and let me know of your concerns about PvP or Guild fights.
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Comments
Now if you want to prove your skill go play an fps, moba or rts. Or fight people that have the same level of gear with you. Don't try to mess with stronger players, they will crush your delusions of "skill".
The rest of concerns are non-issue as well. You played bdo, a modern mmo. There is no knowledge there to be transferred. Learn about the mmos AoC is based on.
1. Player tracking: I see no issue with what you said. The tracker doesn't follow you around and it is an Open world PvP game. If you didn't know, now you know. You even have a combat flag, corruption mechanics, bounty mechanics and maybe even more as I am not up-to-date with the games development. Complaining about this anymore before the game is even released falls squarely in the snowflake category and is pretty telling that maybe the game isn't for those peeps.
2. Spawn killing is easily resolved if it ever becomes an issue. I don't know if it is possible or addressed at the moment in the game.
3. Tbh I don't get the need for a negative chat dialogue filter. No technology currently exists that can do this effectively. I mean how do you make a machine understand context? Its very simple to insult someone in a roundabout way than to create a filter for it. Better to know your enemies than getting backstabbed imo and why do you have be so sensitive as to be offended by text? Ignore and move on.
4. Guild/Alliance domination: This will definitely be a thing. I don't care for arguments against it until we can see how the game progresses 4-5 months after it is released. There can be 5 highest tier nodes and an alliance can have maximum 4 guilds each with 300 members maximum, afaik. So its very doable for 4 guilds to rule the entire world of Verra. The only reasonable obstacle I can see is the lack of fast travel which again can easily be worked around by hacking family summons. If you are gonna introduce a cheat, players will use it as a cheat.
5. Gear locking: Well the hundreds of different skill augments should take care of the diversity wrt gear/skill builds. There probably wont be a meta because some augments/gear will not be possible for everyone to get due to one reason or another. AoC is awesome like that.
6. PvP skill: Gear provides 50% of the players stats. So unless there are broken set bonuses, I don't see why a low geared highly skilled player wouldn't be able to overcome a better geared mid skilled players unless they are secretly low skilled as well. FYI, the game isn't balanced for 1v1s but rather group combat.
There's a bounty hunter system but that only comes into play once a PK player turns red. There's nothing stopping characters getting friends and killing people who have tried to kill them though. If the player isn't skilled enough to counter or have a social network or doesn't want to rely on the bounty hunter system then the answer Is the classic suck it up buttercup gitgud or move on.
Corruption will build on players who constantly spawn camp. And eventually the stat dampening or a bounty hunter will lead to their dying if they haven't worked it off.
For chat you can just block the player.
Guilds have limits on alliances that can be made ingame and guild doctrine may not align with your personal objectives in game. (Because of your class, artisan class, seasonal variations, religion, node citizenry etc.) In some cases you may be working against your guild to further your personal goals over the collective ones.
As for the skill vs gear that debate is still raging on in the forums. Feel free to contribute your 2 cents too it.
What kind of dog crap take is this, I mean, its not the first time i've heard it but it gets me more triggered every time I hear this.
No wonder there is stagnation in the genre when gamers insist that games must fit neatly within the imaginary boundaries they made up in their heads.
Your comment is basically saying that there can't ever be any overlap between genres, or even any overlap between mechanics within the same genre, without compromising the integrity of the game, which you yourself would probably admit is rediculous, yet you still make this kind of statement to someone when they make a request.
This reasoning results in new games having less and less, because they can't innovate and combine new mechanics from other games, but also can't copy paste from what they are based on, so they just streamline things and become more and more niche- as opposed to being creative and having more content by combining stuff from other games to create something new and fresh.
It just seems disingenuous to say these things when you are following a game that is supposed to be combining things from lots of games, in a genre that is literally based on a combination of different genres within one.
Some good advice is to "Take what is useful, disregard what is not". If there are similar mechanics/systems then there is pretty much always something to learn regardless of how you define a game in its wholistic state.
How about let the actual devs determine what can or can't work and what is or isn't useful data to learn from, and let the players talk about what they do or don't like to play, instead of shutting them down with these types of brain dead comments.
If you still don't get it, this explains it better than me
Thanks in advance
MMMm watching liger run server to server and hunting him down on every shard was amazing lmao. I highly doubt you are goin to have the mysterious npc in Ashes of creation that pings you where people are two different games. Things in BDO shouldn't be assumed to be in AoC as the base ref is more L2 and Archage not BDO.
You are bringing up another point on BDO since you want to run in circles for hours and not pvp. This is AoC not BDO you can't compare both the levels of pk, AoC has a much more dangerous karma system than BDO. PvP in BDO is about losing time not losing items or being set as red after one kill.
What are you talking about you respawn at full life in BDO....You are using weaker tears to get up on the spot instead of resurrecting at the respawn point. So you are trying to make a point of using a convenience item in the game and complaining the low tier version doesn't full heal you as you rez right where you died.
(this take is getting worse and worse im sensing a bad solo pve grinding BDO player when bdo pve is utter trash).
I don't think i can read much more of this....BDO with guilds are just going to have top players in their guilds so people can do content around that. There is very little reason to group in the game and do pve content together it is a very solo orientated game. No one really builds connections actively like other mmorpgs leaving certain guilds on top that have played for ages and have a huge gear gap on others. Drawing people to join with those guilds as there aren't really social elements. People just want to join the strongest guilds and will eventually leaver weaker guilds to do so. Those members of yours where you ran almost 0 content with wont have connections to want to stay with you. There are other reasons as well but im not going to detail all of them.
BDO is gear > Skill > Class. Like most mmorpgs gear does matter, though in BDO if you are skilled enough you can overcome certain degrees of people with more gear than you to an extent. Maybe more so than in most mmorpgs tbh, but the levels of gear in BDO get so high eventually you are fully gear checked in more so 1 on 1 or small fights. (groups less gear will show a lot more and you die to aoe)
So in all honestly you already have that in BDO but I see you are complaining still but im guessing you don't liek the high levels of gear you can't reach. AoC gear and your level will matter, but I don't expect there to be as big as a difference as BDO if you are of the same level. Though skill will matter less in AoC than BDO so gear will weight more heavily as an advantage.
Its cause BDO gives boomers nightmares lmao.
Not going to risk a ban answering you. Fvck it.
You are very misguided if you think old mmorpgs are perfect, and inspiration or certain elements aren't thought about with new mmorpgs.
If old mmorpgs were so good, they wouldn't be dead. Push back of Throne and liberty with static standing still and tab target combat was go negative disliked they changed things.
Guess you cant teach a dinosaur new tricks though.
OG poster made a bad points i already commented on that on why spawn kill makes 0 sense in his post. My point is you can have good concepts from new and old mmorpgs. BDO has red flags, but also has some good points to it as a game and shouldn't be just dismissed.
Though i see you deleted your comment
With that said, why continue reading past this opening phrase.
I didn't agree or disagree with the main points of the original post for you to even say this- and I agree that the interdependencies can absolutely potentially change specific outcomes such as what you are pointing out.
Ironically, the point you just made about that interconnectivity is exactly the same point in my comment to you, except that you did the exact opposite of your own advice when claiming that you can't learn from BDO and that there is no transferable knowledge. By definition of what you just stated about the different interconnected systems, means that AOC can learn how to alter mechanics to solve problems that BDO has, which goes against your "disregard BDO and ignore its implications" attitude.
It said "hey suckers pay tens of thousands of dollars in order to be able to pvp".
And people played that game seriously and started complaing "Why is PKing going on unpunished?"
And then come here to say "could AoC have bdos problems"?
Wait - you mean people made it past that phrase?
I sure as hell didn't.
Spawn kills: That's easy to mitigate by making respawning player green/non-combatant again. If someone were to spawn kill them, they'd instantly become corrupt.
Guild power: Combat strength is irrelevant in a mayors election unless its a military node. If the policies become too annoying to deal with, people can just end their citizenship and drain the Node of its resources, which will eventually cause it to fall into ruin. It doesn't always take a siege to bring down a tyranny.
Gear & Meta: Meta is not a thing in Ashes at least that is the goal. Since this however is a balancing topic it will only be fully realized during the Beta. With that being said: Ashes will have a rock-paper-scissors system amplified by the augmentation system, which basically can overpower whatever a player thinks is the "meta" in regards to gear. Because ultimately gear is going to account for around 40-50% of a characters combat power. Also no gear is perfect. Steven has been on record saying that he thinks it is stupid to have one gear piece be best-in-slot for all scenarios. So the perfect gear to counter an assassin type class won't help much against a mage.