Ilum world pvp

[Furiously]

If you liked plains battles in daoc ilum might just be for you. It seems pretty sparsely populated,  but I had real fun today 12 vs 12 or so. Seems like it's steamroller or be steamrollered based on today's experience. I'm not sure if you have to hit an enemy to get points or not.

[Threash]

Lucky you, on my server its a conga line of imps doing circles around the middle point collecting armaments.  Takes about an hour to do the daily.

[Nebu]

On my server it's 50 Republic guys killing two Empire guys and then spam emoting their corpse.

[Fordel]

Illum is going to be retarded for at least another month or two before it reaches a proper critical mass of population. It was the same at the start of WotLK and Wintergrasp, it was the same at the release of DaoC.


The problem is going to be when you have a bunch of servers with population/participation of like 3:1 in favor of one faction.

[disKret]

If you liked plains battles in daoc ilum might just be for you. It seems pretty sparsely populated,  but I had real fun today 12 vs 12 or so. Seems like it's steamroller or be steamrollered based on today's experience. I'm not sure if you have to hit an enemy to get points or not.

It look like your party/ops must be the first to hit and the biggest damage dealer to enemy.

[Falconeer]

I must say, sometimes when you get these two huge armies of 40+ battling each other for terrain you can clearly see how it would be amazing fun.... if it wasn't for the pathetic performances. It's not a computer thing, we have all sorts of ninja PCs in our guild. It's either the engine or the netcode. Basically, when things are finally about to become amazing, FPS start dropping in the 2 - 5 range, slideshow style.

Disheartening. Unless they manage to pull off something really unexpected tech-wise, open PvP is just fucked. What a damn waste.

[Furiously]

There is some sort of pause when someone dies or the area switches. It does seem...odd.

[Zetor]

Illum is going to be retarded for at least another month or two before it reaches a proper critical mass of population. It was the same at the start of WotLK and Wintergrasp, it was the same at the release of DaoC.


The problem is going to be when you have a bunch of servers with population/participation of like 3:1 in favor of one faction.

The problem isn't just population balance... it's the lack of fun for the underpopulated side. In wotlk wintergrasp horde outnumbered us, so I frequently had 2-3 stacks of tenacity. We didn't really have a shot at winning (superior numbers win every time over stronger individuals), but it was fun fending off a 1v3 gank and killing 'em all.

In current Ilum my experience as a tank is... "spam aoe taunts and maybe mortar volley / other long range aoes from a distance, or instantly die to the much larger empire zerg". I often still die before my smaller group gets a kill as Ilum slows my FPS to a crawl and don't really have any ways to kite or escape a zerg unlike stealthers / casters. As soon as I die I stop getting credit for kills. In summary I do a lot of corpse runs and kiting / running away to MAYBE get a kill or two before dying? Eh, I'd rather level an alt.

[Khaldun]

I finally tried this last night. It pretty much blows unless it's close to even sides and there's more than 3-4 on each side. Otherwise it's just one side or the other circling around getting armaments in a totally grindy and dull way that is livened by the occasional fool on the other side volunteering to be chum for the sharks. I know this is generally true for world PvP but this is an especially bad case of it. If they put armaments at all three assault areas, that might complicate and spread out patterns of player movement. When there start being 100-200 +  bored level 50s on servers this is just flat out not going to work.

[Furiously]

No. Half will log in Alts to be farmed in a dark corner.

[Falconeer]

Want the truth? A lot of players on the PvP servers are just rerolling Empire to stop the crap. They don't care about winning easy, as long as they don't lose easy.

So thing are only gonna get worse, never better.

[Nebu]

Ilum needs to be implemented like Wintergrasp.  A battle every 30min with a set population. 

Beyond that, MMO players have shown that they crap in sandboxes and don't deserve them.

[Njal]

If you liked plains battles in daoc ilum might just be for you. It seems pretty sparsely populated,  but I had real fun today 12 vs 12 or so. Seems like it's steamroller or be steamrollered based on today's experience. I'm not sure if you have to hit an enemy to get points or not.

It look like your party/ops must be the first to hit and the biggest damage dealer to enemy.

I don't think so. I've been solo in a bunch of furrballs and gotten points. How much you get for a solo kill I dont know as I haven't gotten one but I've gotten anywhere from 50 -200 valour from a partial. It didn't seem to change much when I was in an ops grp. Sometimes however I didn't get any points when I did hit them but I just put that down to bugs.

[Mazakiel]

I tried this some yesterday, and I won't be going back unless they change something.  Circling around hoping to be lucky enough to grab a crate spawn, and occassionally having 5 seconds of a fight as someone wanders in is just plain not fun.  I'd rather just take even longer to gear up for PvP.  Maybe if you shared credit for crates in an ops group I'd go to get the daily done, but it was just not fun at all. 

[Khaldun]

Sharing credit in an ops group would be such a basic, simple change (maybe plus a faster respawn relative to the number of players in the central area) that would help a lot. It would create an incentive to be grouped up, etc.--the pace now is agonizing and boring and is yet another reason to just hate the whole level 50 experience.

[Furiously]

The whole expertise stat seems pants on head to me. Why give a 20% advantage to someone?

Course I just respec'd my agent into the I win button spec.

[Threash]

The whole pvp stat thing was introduced by WoW in order to separate pvp and pve gear, without it you either have raiders dominating with their gear or having to pvp for upgrades depending on where the superior gear comes from.  That 20%  advantage would be there regardless, expertise just makes it apply to pvp only.

[tmp]

without it you either have raiders dominating with their gear or having to pvp for upgrades depending on where the superior gear comes from.

The way to avoid the source of this particular problem seems beyond obvious.

[Falconeer]

The whole expertise stat seems pants on head to me. Why give a 20% advantage to someone?

It's not pants on head. it's the only way to give awesome items for pvp to pvp players without allowing them into raids and high level pve content, which makes sense. In fact, what I hate is the opposite. Top tier pve items are better (even considering the expertise they don't have) than pvp stuff, and it's questionable but possible that they are all around better than the top tier pvp items in pvp, factually making up for that expertise 20% missing. Which is pants on head.

If you don't want someone to pvp his/her way into top pve results, you shouldn't allow people to pve their way into top pvp results.

[Threash]

Yeah some of the pve set bonuses beat out whatever bonus you lose from expertise, they should just make the set bonuses the same.

[tmp]

It's not pants on head. it's the only way to give awesome items for pvp to pvp players without allowing them into raids and high level pve content, which makes sense.

It's pants on head when you consider that, while NPC foozles don't care when they get facerolled by AWESOME PURPZ, the players strangely enough do. The very concept of "awesome items" plain doesn't make sense in this context, if you buy into PvPer's claims that all they really want is a challenge and a level playing field.

Whether that gear can be then also used for something else is secondary. And even then the whole "someone could pvp his/her way into top pve results and/or vice versa" aspect is ... yeah, what a terrible and game wrecking thought. Does anyone but the poopsockers really care?

[Threash]

Ok, so you don't like the genre, what does expertise have to do with it? might as well be against aim or crit while you are at it.  Everyone cares, getting better gear is basically what MMOs are about, some people want it for pve and some for pvp and it's better to keep the progression separated.  It's not complicated.

[eldaec]

Remind me again how a 20% expertise item is less stupid than a DAoC ToA artifact?

Gear progression works in pve because you progress to harder pve. Gear progression in pvp would only make sense if you weren't still facerolling the brand new level 50s.

[eldaec]

If pvp gear were basically the same as pve gear and had no expertise - so pvp people could raid in it - why is that bad?

And vice versa for pve gear?

[Merusk]

It's not pants on head. it's the only way to give awesome items for pvp to pvp players without allowing them into raids and high level pve content, which makes sense.

It's pants on head when you consider that, while NPC foozles don't care when they get facerolled by AWESOME PURPZ, the players strangely enough do. The very concept of "awesome items" plain doesn't make sense in this context, if you buy into PvPer's claims that all they really want is a challenge and a level playing field.

Whether that gear can be then also used for something else is secondary. And even then the whole "someone could pvp his/her way into top pve results and/or vice versa" aspect is ... yeah, what a terrible and game wrecking thought. Does anyone but the poopsockers really care?

The level playing field is supposed to come in when Raiders PVP in their gear.  The problem is nobody's sat back and reexamined everything and has, instead, blindly followed WOW's lead - which is 1) game-specific and 2) very flawed.  In some cases following the market leader is exactly the WRONG approach, and this is one of them.

The original concept behind PVP gear was to let everyone compete on a level playing field.  Dedicated PVPers were getting curbstomped by PVE raiders in the pre-BC days.  PVP players bitched very loudly - and rightly so - that their experience was getting fucked-over because they didn't want to raid, just PVP.  So Blizzard introduced the Arena & honor system to get PVP gear in the BC era.  Great, right!?  

No. Now there was an "Easy" way to get raid-level items. Lose 10 arenas a week you still got rewarded with points with which you could buy gear.  Gear that was, in some cases, best in slot.  Meaning raiders "Had" to PVP to get the best items because that does matter to raid success.  

Honor points for lesser gear (BGs) meant you got rewarded for standing around AFK in BGs for enough points to get gear.  This was often a better choice than the Heroic Dungeons that were a nightmare to run for casuals.  Ooops.

Kneejerk response: Resilience!  Now PVP gear was less useful for PVE because chunks of the stat budget were used on a PVE-Usless stat and the lack of a survival stat in PVP meant your ultra-high-end PVE gear would give you SOME advantage in superior DPS but your survivability was in the shitter.  A fucked but acceptable middle ground.

Neither would have been required IF Blizzard had simply rewarded points differently. The way they said they couldn't track but TOR does.  Y'know: Defense points, kill points, goal points, damage-marks, Heal-marks, etc., instead of the "All or nothing"  system for win-loss Blizzard uses.   That way a good player on a shitty team still gets bonus rewards per match in addition to the win/ loss of the match.

However, because BW/EA hasn't stepped-back and examined the whole history and the WHY's they just copied the result.  So; fucked-up dual-loot system.  There's no reason for it, I agree.  A PVP player and a PVE player in TOR should be able to get the same gear via different methods.  Either will take a long time and the medal system means if someone's AFKing their way to loot it's going to be a damn long grind. (And longer still if they'd implement a proper /reportafk system.)

If pvp gear were basically the same as pve gear and had no expertise - so pvp people could raid in it - why is that bad?

And vice versa for pve gear?

It's not: see above for reasons done.

[Threash]

I'm sorry but the idea that tor is somehow different than wow is patently ridiculous.  It is the exact same game and if they tried the same thing wow already did it would fail as miserably here as it did there.  A pvp stat is a necessity.  And if you are against item progression in MMOs then just give it up, you lost the war about a decade ago.

[tmp]

It is the exact same game and if they tried the same thing wow already did it would fail as miserably here as it did there.  A pvp stat is a necessity.

Isn't that operating under presumption that pvp stat isn't just another fail as well, which requires to pretty much ignore the complaints people bring against it?

Just because WoW currently does it this way doesn't mean that's a necessity. Blizzard's ways to tackle the problems aren't perfect nor often even good, as evidenced by the very fact they routinely abandon them for other solutions in hope these work out better.

[Threash]

It is the exact same game and if they tried the same thing wow already did it would fail as miserably here as it did there.  A pvp stat is a necessity.

Isn't that operating under presumption that pvp stat isn't just another fail as well, which requires to pretty much ignore the complaints people bring against it?

Just because WoW currently does it this way doesn't mean that's a necessity. Blizzard's ways to tackle the problems aren't perfect nor often even good, as evidenced by the very fact they routinely abandon them for other solutions in hope these work out better.

What problems exactly? You can't give pvers and pvpers the same exact gear because they are two completely different activities that are impossible to balance against one another, the whole "20% advantage" thing is simply not understand that the advantage would be there regardless of whether there was a pvp stat or not.  The only two things people seem to be suggesting here are a)not having a pvp stat at all which is obviously retarded and doesn't work and b) getting rid of gear progression which is like getting rid guns in an fps.  It's not a perfect system, but anyone who played mmos before a pvp stat and is arguing to go back to that is simply wrong.

[tmp]

The original concept behind PVP gear was to let everyone compete on a level playing field.  Dedicated PVPers were getting curbstomped by PVE raiders in the pre-BC days.  PVP players bitched very loudly - and rightly so - that their experience was getting fucked-over because they didn't want to raid, just PVP.  So Blizzard introduced the Arena & honor system to get PVP gear in the BC era.  Great, right!?  

(..)

Neither would have been required IF Blizzard had simply rewarded points differently. The way they said they couldn't track but TOR does.  Y'know: Defense points, kill points, goal points, damage-marks, Heal-marks, etc., instead of the "All or nothing"  system for win-loss Blizzard uses.   That way a good player on a shitty team still gets bonus rewards per match in addition to the win/ loss of the match.

I'd say the way i see it, neither would have been also required if Blizzard directly tackled the core problem -- and that is people getting curbstomped due to the gear advantage.

It could be as simple as scaling down the range of attributes provided by the gear while in PvP situations -- which is, when you think about it, merely another aspect of what the game already does to the player's stats when it attempts to work around up to 40 levels of difference.

[Merusk]

It's not a perfect system, but anyone who played mmos before a pvp stat and is arguing to go back to that is simply wrong.

That is, once again, ignoring WHY there is a PVP stat.

So long as BW/EA doesn't get a hair up their ass about raiding in the same manner Blizz does, it's not a problem.  "Wah.. my players are skipping my dungeons and PVPing for gear instead."  So? They're still playing the game, that's the most important part, not massaging the egos of your devs.

IF they're skipping one in major favor of the other it's a design problem, not a user problem.  Same as all other instances in life where people circumvent or subvert designer intent.

[Threash]

It's not a perfect system, but anyone who played mmos before a pvp stat and is arguing to go back to that is simply wrong.

That is, once again, ignoring WHY there is a PVP stat.

So long as BW/EA doesn't get a hair up their ass about raiding in the same manner Blizz does, it's not a problem.  "Wah.. my players are skipping my dungeons and PVPing for gear instead."  So? They're still playing the game, that's the most important part, not massaging the egos of your devs.

IF they're skipping one in major favor of the other it's a design problem, not a user problem.  Same as all other instances in life where people circumvent or subvert designer intent.

The design problem IS interchangeable gear.  If players are pvping not because they want too but because they need the gear to raid that is a problem, if they are raiding not because they enjoy it but because they need the gear to not get raped in warzones that is a problem.  Separating the gear lets players focus on what they actually WANT to do rather than what they feel they must.  It has absolutely nothing to do with massaging the egos of your devs or skipping content, it makes total sense to not force players into something they don't want to do in order to compete in their preferred playstyle.

[tmp]

What problems exactly? You can't give pvers and pvpers the same exact gear because they are two completely different activities that are impossible to balance against one another

PvE: players help each other with heals and buffs, and deal damage/cc to the targets they intend to kill.
PvP: completely different.

with this nonsense out of the way -- the gear simply improves character's performance in these areas. Regarding balance, i take it that by "balance" you mean that a damage/heal output/survability bonus given to the item for PvE purpose could be considered too large/whatever when used in PvP situations. That can be true, but note the games already deal with this issue, and the way they do it is through modification of how the same skill works differently when used for PvE and PvP.... instead of giving you two entirely separate sets of skills and expecting you to swap your skillbars every time you intend to switch between these two experiences.

They do it this way because the latter approach would be obviously retarded and cumbersome; yet when it comes to the equipment you're willing to accept it blindly, and claim it's a necessity. But it's not.

the whole "20% advantage" thing is simply not understand that the advantage would be there regardless of whether there was a pvp stat or not.

No, the whole "20% advantage" this is there because some people suggest it's pants on head retarded to give that large advantage gap (especially when it's applied to multiple areas, resulting in the overall gap few times larger) for combat situations where the targets are other players; who don't enjoy being pitted in combat against enemies that can kill them with 100% certainty and without any risk thanks to said gear advantage, that outweights anything else brought to the table.

In other words, where you say "it would be there anyway" the counterpoint is "and that's the stupid part, it shouldnt' be there". Mind you, it is not argument against having "gear progression" at all, but rather against that progression being implemented in a way that negatively affects the experience, to the point where it appears to outweight its positives.

[Threash]

What problems exactly? You can't give pvers and pvpers the same exact gear because they are two completely different activities that are impossible to balance against one another

PvE: players help each other with heals and buffs, and deal damage/cc to the targets they intend to kill.
PvP: completely different.

You are not serious with this idiocy are you? Hai guys RTS and FPS are exactly the same because you press buttons!

[tmp]

The design problem IS interchangeable gear.  If players are pvping not because they want too but because they need the gear to raid that is a problem, if they are raiding not because they enjoy it but because they need the gear to not get raped in warzones that is a problem.

There is no problem of interchangeable gear here. There is instead two underlying, separate problems -- one is people getting raped in warzones as result of gear disadvantage. The other is disparity in difficulty of obtaining the gear between PvE and PvP.

Making separate sets of gear isn't really addressing either of these problems, but is just a kneejerk reaction to the ways player devise on their own when they try to deal with them.

[Threash]

It addresses the problem of players being forced to do something they don't enjoy in order to compete in the thing they do, and it works perfectly at that.