Why not? And by the way, as long as I agree (and agreed) on the fact that it feels much more fun with your char than with the monster, the factor is not the difference is strength. Maybe it's because I am on an overpopulated server, but we are having some huge battles and wars and basically monsters wins the most of it.
It's not an ambitious PvP the LotRO one. It's just plain fun. It probably has short legs, and that's why I am hoping some a smart dev can see the potential and gives it much much love in the immediate future.
I got a monster up to rank 5 in beta. I basically had to grind my way through hours of mindless and worthless fighting to get to that point.
Here are the various issues (major design problems that a 2 year old should have been able to guess before implementing it) i flagged at the point (from a reaver point of view):
1- If balance is made so that 3 monsters = 1 player, what happens when 20 players come in ? You need suddenly 60 monsters. It works well when there arent a lot of characters at 50, but eventually, everyone is 50 and at that point, the balance of power is going to be seriously on player side. Of course a 20 vs 60 is mostly a slideshow.
2- The balance is made so that humans have more avoidance/mitigation, monsters have more HP. The problem here is that humans have more healing than monsters, which basically mean that your healing is even less in terms of total survivability. If the player can heal for 1200 with a tank that has 2400 hp and 75% damage reduction, the monster would need 12000 hp with his 15% damage reduction to survive just as long. The fact that the monster heals for 1000 means you need to cast the spell 12 times to fill back that amount of hp where as the player needs to cast twice. (not actual numbers, but i hope you get the point. the actual numbers are not necessarily better).
3- In theory, a rank 5 monster is equal to a player. It's absolutely bullshit, for starter, but it also has the issue that to get to rank 5, you need to kill players (that are 3 times stronger than you). So you don't have a choice, but to grind.
4- Monsters AE ability are max 2-3 targets. Human abilities, with traits, are often 6-10. It doesn't scale very well when you start adding more players to the mix because they can hit more of the charging pack at once.
5- Keep taking : monsters have 1 pseudo tank (768 armor, ~10% avoidance) who also happens to be the healer. All you need is 1 hunter in the back assisting the keep lord and your monsters are going to die.
6- Hunter improved trap. 1 fuckin minute root with 25% chance of getting out of it when being hit. Play a reaver or a warg and have fun sitting there looking at your thumb.
7- Loremaster mez/AE snare/AE stun. Lets say you eventually got out of the trap, the loremaster is going to make sure you don't actually have to play your character.
8- Loremaster pet, captain pet. Very easy to send one toward a group of monster and put them all in combat mode. As you can remember, monsters have more hp but take more damage. Add the fact that you're stuck in combat mode all your life and that your few healers have crappy heals compared to your amount of hp. Basically, as a reaver, i was drinking potions every time i could and it was still not enough to keep me alive. I spent my life rooted/stunned/etc at 2000/4400 hp, waiting for the next tick to get 5 more hp
9- Player bragging rights. The rating is calculated based on kills/deaths. Therefore, most players don't want to die. Back in my time, you'd have groups of players on horse running the country for players alone or in duo. They'd CC one, kill the other and teleport back before any danger would appear. The ability to move around was perfect for their guerilla tactics. Since they didn't want to die, they would never fight outside of their keep with all the npcs around. Since you cannot heal as a monster, the npc eventually do most of the job over time and the players just need the killing blow.
10- To gain ranking as a creep, you're better off solo. This leads to crappy communication, warg gank squads and things like this. I played a few nights in a raid, getting 1 infamy pt per kill. The next night, i played as a coward solo and made almost 2 ranks in the process. This doesn't lead to sound tactics when the only way to progress is to play by yourself.
Anyway, there are tons of problems with the pvp.
But the 2 most important ones are:
1- pvp needs to be fair or the player needs to at least think he has a chance to keep on fighting (see most of shadowbane servers for an example of what happens when you have no chance)
2- crowd control, loss of character control has to be very limited. Having diminishing returns would already help, but getting rid of most of it is a better solution for decent pvp. Being rooted for 1 minute or perma stunned is one of the worst pvp mecanic you can get.
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