Lowering the Barriers to Group PvP

Nakari

Mishgul said:

PK is not appealing to people who do not PK because the drawback (losing out on xp against people who are definitely better than you) outweighs any fun you can get from the 10 minutes of involvement. Working for 3 hours in a game for 10 mins of POTENTIAL fun is a huge barrier here. People would be more willing to be involved casually if losing wasn't such a huge deal. 

All my this. This is why I can never bring myself to participate in raids, anymore. It just isn't worth it. None of the other barriers really even matter to me all that much. I'd love nothing more then be able to try and fail and try again, because losing in something like this can be fun too. I've had a lot of fun in, say, the CTF's, even on a losing team, because just trying and participating can be a blast. However, I absolutely detest bashing, and while I've enjoyed my tastes of group pvp on one level, a little bit of enjoyment isn't worth a ton of something you hate. 

I understand that xp loss is probably a good way of creating a feeling of risk, and the argument's been made that it was proven necessary when xp loss was gone within cities. But I feel like there has to be some sort of middle ground that encourages participation without bringing to the point of wanton suicide. I can't have been the first person to suggest it, but what if the game remembered what your highest point of experience gained was, and it was easier to catch back up to that point? I don't know, just altering the numbers for loss, at least in pvp, seems like it would go a long way towards helping.

If dragons don't have to worry much about xp loss, then it can't be a hugely necessary component of group pvp. Just letting other players participate to a similar degree of risk seems like it could only serve to lower the barriers to participation and make things more fun for everyone.

Sena

Nakari said:

I can't have been the first person to suggest it, but what if the game remembered what your highest point of experience gained was, and it was easier to catch back up to that point? I don't know, just altering the numbers for loss, at least in pvp, seems like it would go a long way towards helping.

I've suggested this a couple times before. It would also allow XP loss to be drastically increased (so people would regularly lose multiple levels) and the cap removed (so dragons wouldn't be immune to XP loss), since the loss could be effectively temporary. It keeps the "risk" for dying, but with minimal lost time.

Florentino

Maybe the solution is to devise a system where RP victory leads to further mechanical difficulty. Something like a landmarking system where the only thing you can win is bragging rights and emotes/RP effects.

So for instance, all the cities fight over a village every year, if Ashtan wins the entire area has eldritch clouds and chaotic monsters, if Mhaldor wins it is covered in red fog and demons, if Eleusis wins it is overgrown and has treefolk. You can only participate in the fight over the village and score points for your side if you opt in into whatever this system is called. If you win, everyone who wins on your team also sustains a mechanical disadvantage that year (e.g. 10% more damage from enemy adventurer and denizen attacks) as the mechanical price of victory.

The people who win get to RP winning, but everyone else also has it slightly easier fighting them. Or you can distribute some other prizes to all the losers.

    

Aelios

Don't most modern MMO's do this in terms of Death and XP loss? If I remember right, Everquest and World of Warcraft both had a system where you lost, say, -10% of your levels experience on death, but it gave you a 50% bonus experience boost to recover that lost experience. 

Trey

Aelios said:

Don't most modern MMO's do this in terms of Death and XP loss? If I remember right, Everquest and World of Warcraft both had a system where you lost, say, -10% of your levels experience on death, but it gave you a 50% bonus experience boost to recover that lost experience. 

Dying Light has a system that is very interesting, but overall might be hard to implement in Achaea, and may not be the most appropriate, but it's another option. In the game, if you die, you lose some experience. As you die more in a given time period, the experience loss gets exponentially worse, but while there's no experience boost to compensate, you can never lose a level that you've earned entirely, you just keep getting slammed back to 0% of your current level.

Achimrst

Florentino said:

Maybe the solution is to devise a system where RP victory leads to further mechanical difficulty. Something like a landmarking system where the only thing you can win is bragging rights and emotes/RP effects.

So for instance, all the cities fight over a village every year, if Ashtan wins the entire area has eldritch clouds and chaotic monsters, if Mhaldor wins it is covered in red fog and demons, if Eleusis wins it is overgrown and has treefolk. You can only participate in the fight over the village and score points for your side if you opt in into whatever this system is called. If you win, everyone who wins on your team also sustains a mechanical disadvantage that year (e.g. 10% more damage from enemy adventurer and denizen attacks) as the mechanical price of victory.

The people who win get to RP winning, but everyone else also has it slightly easier fighting them. Or you can distribute some other prizes to all the losers.

    

I actually don't hate this idea, fighting over something like this could be tons of fun. Maybe add some quests for non-comms since it's a freaking village.

Edit: And so non-comms support you winning it! Of course quests only to the people who win the place.

Sarathai

Trey said:

Aelios said:

Don't most modern MMO's do this in terms of Death and XP loss? If I remember right, Everquest and World of Warcraft both had a system where you lost, say, -10% of your levels experience on death, but it gave you a 50% bonus experience boost to recover that lost experience. 

Dying Light has a system that is very interesting, but overall might be hard to implement in Achaea, and may not be the most appropriate, but it's another option. In the game, if you die, you lose some experience. As you die more in a given time period, the experience loss gets exponentially worse, but while there's no experience boost to compensate, you can never lose a level that you've earned entirely, you just keep getting slammed back to 0% of your current level.

Problem is (well, opinions may be divided on whether it's a problem) that for dragons, there would be absolutely no chance of their losing dragon as a result, since the lowest they could go would be 0% of their current level. You might want to include something limiting the worsening XP loss and 0% limitation to PvP rather than PvE, but as a compensatory factor, death in PvE can make you lose a level if you'd lose enough to drop you below 0%.

Not as if that would bother most dragons anyway, though.

Penwize

I'm just going to chime in that worsening xp loss on death would absolutely drive me away from PvP.  Anything that involves increased XP loss is a terrible idea for anyone of a high level.  The cap exists for a reason, and I'm very glad it does. 

If anything, I'd support removing xp loss from PvP.  Why exactly does PvP have to be a zero-sum game anyway?  Shouldn't you want participation in the game to be a net gain to the game at large?  If so, shouldn't PvP in general provide a net boost in the participants' xp?

Caladbolg

Penwize said:

I'm just going to chime in that worsening xp loss on death would absolutely drive me away from PvP.  Anything that involves increased XP loss is a terrible idea for anyone of a high level.  The cap exists for a reason, and I'm very glad it does. 

If anything, I'd support removing xp loss from PvP.  Why exactly does PvP have to be a zero-sum game anyway?  Shouldn't you want participation in the game to be a net gain to the game at large?  If so, shouldn't PvP in general provide a net boost in the participants' xp?

I think personally as i've seen it over my years playing Achaea, but people would very slyly abuse killing and death if there isn't a personal loss except maybe time, why shouldn't Caladbolg duel people over and over and over again to dragon if dying grants me nothing, and would be 10x faster leveling (at least for me you may have some amazing bashing system that works for you), Honestly at the point im at right now true deathing a dragon will grand me around 30-45 minutes worth of bashing. not counting how many people I randomly cleave in raids with out taking the loss of someone blowing me up while my stuff is paused.

The only other way to counter this is to remove xp from pvp entirely, which honestly removes the reward you get for killing someone. and removes the risk involved as well.

Penwize

Sure, but there are plenty of ways to counter that, that are a lot more interesting than losing heaps of time.  Scaling xp down drastically for repeated kills of the same person in some time frame would help alleviate concerns of abuse, especially considering killing for xp is already strictly forbidden.  And in that case, why shouldn't spending your time duelling people reward you with xp? I would love for time spent duelling to actually be a positive-sum endeavor.  You might actually see NoT be a hotspot again with that sort of thing.  Raids might be encouraged.  Mark vs mark combat might actually be a thing again.

Maybe I'm just misguided in my opinion, but it'd be nice to see a lot of the raw time cost for delving into PvP be removed.

Mathonwy

The problem with XP loss isn't that there shouldn't be consequences for dying in PK. It's that XP loss is a boring consequence.

@Mishgul has nailed the concerns pretty well, I think, and @Florentino has a pretty good point about the allure of RP and bragging rights versus sustained mechanical penalty. We are talking about a game, after all, in which people will spend hundreds of dollars for things like custom dragon descriptions and the ability to build a text-house in places you normally wouldn't.

Though whatever that penalty would be would probably have to be conditional to like, raids and/or being on enemy property. Nobody wants to go through all that trouble to 'win' something stupid like the equivalent of an extra forest enemy status except all the time.

ETA: honours lines are pretty appealing, too.

Exelethril

Trey said:

Aelios said:

Don't most modern MMO's do this in terms of Death and XP loss? If I remember right, Everquest and World of Warcraft both had a system where you lost, say, -10% of your levels experience on death, but it gave you a 50% bonus experience boost to recover that lost experience. 

Dying Light has a system that is very interesting, but overall might be hard to implement in Achaea, and may not be the most appropriate, but it's another option. In the game, if you die, you lose some experience. As you die more in a given time period, the experience loss gets exponentially worse, but while there's no experience boost to compensate, you can never lose a level that you've earned entirely, you just keep getting slammed back to 0% of your current level.

That's worse than the current exp system in more circumstances.

Lyrin

Idea:

Why not allow each player's level to get a bonus/malus of 2 levels (arbitrarily chosen), based on PVP kills and deaths.

E.g. SomeGuy has just bashed to level 80 and then gets involved in raiding etc.   If he sucks and dies a heap, he can lose XP/levels down to 78.  Any further deaths do nothing.   If he gets a pile of kills, he could raise up to level 82 before hitting the upper cap.  After some period of not participating in PVP, this bonus/malus XP will be lost.

You could then consider changing the XP gained or lost in PVP to be a %age of a full level (say 10% per kill/death).   This would let someone more quickly recover from negative territory or lose the gains they have made.

Trey

Exelethril said:

Trey said:

Aelios said:

Don't most modern MMO's do this in terms of Death and XP loss? If I remember right, Everquest and World of Warcraft both had a system where you lost, say, -10% of your levels experience on death, but it gave you a 50% bonus experience boost to recover that lost experience. 

Dying Light has a system that is very interesting, but overall might be hard to implement in Achaea, and may not be the most appropriate, but it's another option. In the game, if you die, you lose some experience. As you die more in a given time period, the experience loss gets exponentially worse, but while there's no experience boost to compensate, you can never lose a level that you've earned entirely, you just keep getting slammed back to 0% of your current level.

That's worse than the current exp system in more circumstances.

You wouldn't have to adopt the entire system though. Something with normal XP loss (as it stands) with a caveat that you can't go below your current level in experience would soften it some without (at least at first glance) drastically changing the game. Again though, I stated in the beginning that it was probably not the most appropriate, but it was a heretofore unexplored option.

Jacen

Re: @Florentino I think I would rather have mechanical buffs to the losers than mechanical nerfs to the winners. These guys are often already limiting their own numbers, which are self-imposing nerfs. If the losers got a buff, then going to the loser's side could mean the opportunity to derive and employ interesting new tactics, which is attractive to some of the big PKers and would probably do more to balance things than any buff/nerf would.

Rangor

Increased/High xp loss (like we had back when we were all lvl 80) sucked balls when fighting as the underdog and promoted lame ass strategies and the most boring standoffs/fights I've ever seen. It was shit. Much more fast paced action these days when the xp loss is negligible.

Santar

Talking about xp loss is a waste of time.


It barely ever matters. People don't get upset over xp when they die. People get upset because they don't like losing.

Jacen

Santar said:

Talking about xp loss is a waste of time.


It barely ever matters. People Dragons don't get upset over xp when they die. People get upset because they don't like losing.

Jovolo

Quite a lot of non-dragons don't cry when they lose xp. It doesn't bear much correlation

Santar

Saying that people don't get involved in PK because of XP isn't true. That's my point. People avoid getting involved or avoid getting into fights that don't favour them, because they don't like to lose. Dying is loss. 

People care FAR more about their emotions than their xp.

Jacen

Yeah there are some Atalkez's and Caladbolg's out there who could care less about XP, and thats' s perfectly fine. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of us who manage our XP and consider whether a shrine war is in the budget or not.

ETA for Santar: I'm absolutely sure that's true for some people. For me, XP weighs  more than the emotions of losing. You can't really have competition and conflict without people losing, but you can have conflict and competition without people losing XP.

Hellen

Honestly, I find the biggest barrier to group combat tends to be communication and coordination. People who are really skilled at fighting as a group tend to know what to do and communicate well, while those who are more new tend to delay on the action or get overwhelmed by the incoming information.

The second biggest is probably the one guy who really knows combat getting super frustrated and blowing up at the people who didn't listen to them in the first place, even though they -really- should have. For me personally I haven't seen that in a -long- time, but its one of those things that tends to pop up and discourage others.

The third biggest barrier is when a relatively less experienced group comes up against a group who has clearly practiced most of their time on Achaea and have enough artefacts to crush lesser men under their weight and wipes the floor with them.

While artefacts don't provide a -huge- advantage, such players are irritating to fight against when you've got none of that yourself, even when you outnumber them since they can just easily get away when they find they're outmatched. And there's nothing wrong with that as nobody -wants- to die, but its frustrating to know that you had them on the ropes and it wasn't necessarily skill that got them away but something they paid for.

Most of this is a matter of practice making perfect, honestly. The more you get in, the better it tends to go. These are just my own opinions, of course, so I could very easily be wrong.

Jacen

I was a bit disingenuous with my two previous replies. Mobile forums + school stress don't add to much good.

@Jovolo you are correct, some non-dragons do not cry over losing XP. That fact alone doesn't mean XP loss is a good mechanic or shouldn't go.

@Santar Some people really don't get involved because of XP loss. I am one of them. That's the only evidence I can offer on the matter and doesn't amount to much, but I would wager there are others out there like me. Top post of this page included.

XP loss does three things. It discourages you from participating in combat. It is a mark of how well you do at combat. It makes you weaker when you lose.

The first I would argue is true, you would argue is not. Let's throw it out. The second is probably less true than the first: Great combatants can have bad XP pools, non-combatants can have huge XP pools. Its all circumstantial. The third is just a bad mechanic (though it obviously only happens after chunks of XP are lost)

What is the point of XP loss?

Bluef

Hellen said:

Honestly, I find the biggest barrier to group combat tends to be communication and coordination. People who are really skilled at fighting as a group tend to know what to do and communicate well, while those who are more new tend to delay on the action or get overwhelmed by the incoming information.

The second biggest is probably the one guy who really knows combat getting super frustrated and blowing up at the people who didn't listen to them in the first place, even though they -really- should have. For me personally I haven't seen that in a -long- time, but its one of those things that tends to pop up and discourage others.

The third biggest barrier is when a relatively less experienced group comes up against a group who has clearly practiced most of their time on Achaea and have enough artefacts to crush lesser men under their weight and wipes the floor with them.

While artefacts don't provide a -huge- advantage, such players are irritating to fight against when you've got none of that yourself, even when you outnumber them since they can just easily get away when they find they're outmatched. And there's nothing wrong with that as nobody -wants- to die, but its frustrating to know that you had them on the ropes and it wasn't necessarily skill that got them away but something they paid for.

Most of this is a matter of practice making perfect, honestly. The more you get in, the better it tends to go. These are just my own opinions, of course, so I could very easily be wrong.

In response to paragraphs 1-3, that's why a city that doesn't have a strong combat group needs to gather up people interested in combat and train them up. As was previously stated (in this thread or others) instead of holding open arena games, hold them for your city. Let Red/Blue be all Hashani, for example. Then when your group is ready, open it up and do Hashan v. everyone else. Then practice that way some more. As you've said, the better it tends to go the more practice you get in. You''ll be far more prepared to overcome those barriers mentioned at that time.

As for artifacts, they aren't everything. Some of the best combatants in Achaea (@Ayoxele I'm looking at you) can get by with none/minimal arties. I think even he finds a few things helpful these days, but even then, sip rings and whatnot aren't uber expensive. Bashing toward dragon, you can put away the gold needed to buy the credits for these pretty nicely. 

I think, and this is only my opinion, is that one of the major barrier to PvP for certain cities is that some people there just don't want to put the work involved in getting ready to dip their toes in the PK pool. People get frustrated and want to move on to bigger fish, or take losses a bit too hard, when they're just not quite ready to pull out consistent wins yet without facing some devastating losses.

Hellen

Bluef said:

Hellen said:

Honestly, I find the biggest barrier to group combat tends to be communication and coordination. People who are really skilled at fighting as a group tend to know what to do and communicate well, while those who are more new tend to delay on the action or get overwhelmed by the incoming information.

The second biggest is probably the one guy who really knows combat getting super frustrated and blowing up at the people who didn't listen to them in the first place, even though they -really- should have. For me personally I haven't seen that in a -long- time, but its one of those things that tends to pop up and discourage others.

The third biggest barrier is when a relatively less experienced group comes up against a group who has clearly practiced most of their time on Achaea and have enough artefacts to crush lesser men under their weight and wipes the floor with them.

While artefacts don't provide a -huge- advantage, such players are irritating to fight against when you've got none of that yourself, even when you outnumber them since they can just easily get away when they find they're outmatched. And there's nothing wrong with that as nobody -wants- to die, but its frustrating to know that you had them on the ropes and it wasn't necessarily skill that got them away but something they paid for.

Most of this is a matter of practice making perfect, honestly. The more you get in, the better it tends to go. These are just my own opinions, of course, so I could very easily be wrong.

In response to paragraphs 1-3, that's why a city that doesn't have a strong combat group needs to gather up people interested in combat and train them up. As was previously stated (in this thread or others) instead of holding open arena games, hold them for your city. Let Red/Blue be all Hashani, for example. Then when your group is ready, open it up and do Hashan v. everyone else. Then practice that way some more. As you've said, the better it tends to go the more practice you get in. You''ll be far more prepared to overcome those barriers mentioned at that time.

As for artifacts, they aren't everything. Some of the best combatants in Achaea (@Ayoxele I'm looking at you) can get by with none/minimal arties. I think even he finds a few things helpful these days, but even then, sip rings and whatnot aren't uber expensive. Bashing toward dragon, you can put away the gold needed to buy the credits for these pretty nicely. 

I think, and this is only my opinion, is that one of the major barrier to PvP for certain cities is that some people there just don't want to put the work involved in getting ready to dip their toes in the PK pool. People get frustrated and want to move on to bigger fish, or take losses a bit too hard, when they're just not quite ready to pull out consistent wins yet without facing some devastating losses.

This is all mostly true, and those suggestions are already starting to get kicked into effect in Hashan. Quite frankly, its also true that some people just don't want to work for it.

On the subject of artefacts, its not that the artefacts themselves give an advantage, its that the people who have a lot of them are simply frustrating to fight against. They tend to have veils so if you don't have someone with one on your side, well, GOOD LUCK FINDING THEM, LOL. Wings and earrings are obnoxious because when (if) we actually -do- get the upper hand they just easily get away.

Its not necessarily that the skill of the combatant makes it frustrating, it is the effects of certain artefacts themselves that make them really irritating to fight. Artefacts overall don't add -that- much to a person's combat ability, but there is a -perception- that it does as well to be considered.

Of course, anyone can buy artefacts. But there is a... perception that occurs when a group of people who are primarily composed of less artefacted people going up against a group of people with a lot of artefacts. Doesn't necessarily mean that the artefacted group are skilled, but it -does- suggest that they'll be a difficult, frustrating fight.

Hellen

To be a bit more clear, I know and you know that artefacts aren't really the end-all, be-all of combat, but there is a perception that going up against a group of heavily artefacted people will always end in frustration and be like ramming your head against a brick wall. And in a lot of cases, this is true, just due to the fact that a lot of high-tier combatants will buy artefacts to augment their already considerable skill. This isn't -wrong- necessarily, but going up against such a group is already difficult. Adding artefacts into the equation makes it feel a bit Sisyphean.

Seth

Jacen said:

Yeah there are some Atalkez's and Caladbolg's out there who could care less about XP, and thats' s perfectly fine. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of us who manage our XP and consider whether a shrine war is in the budget or not.

ETA for Santar: I'm absolutely sure that's true for some people. For me, XP weighs  more than the emotions of losing. You can't really have competition and conflict without people losing, but you can have conflict and competition without people losing XP.

I know I'm the dick for pointing this out, but it bothers me when people do this. It should be "Couldn't care less."  That is all.

Caladbolg

Jacen said:

Yeah there are some Atalkez's and Caladbolg's out there who could care less about XP, and thats' s perfectly fine. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of us who manage our XP and consider whether a shrine war is in the budget or not.

ETA for Santar: I'm absolutely sure that's true for some people. For me, XP weighs  more than the emotions of losing. You can't really have competition and conflict without people losing, but you can have conflict and competition without people losing XP.

I care about my exp, I've basically leveled purely off from pvp simply because as I've said a thousand times Bashing may be the most boring thing I've ever even heard of, and i've watched paint dry for fun.

If I drop below 80 then I have to start eatting and sleeping again, that shit sure aint going to keep me wanting to play Achaea.

My stance is different though while I would prefer for Achaea to be like most games now of days and me not lose exp when I die. that requires the game being based on everyone having dragon. Which honestly might not even be a bad thing once multi-class rolls out.


Honestly when the pve changes come out though and bashing isn't as boring (hopefully) I'll likely be a dragon in a month or two

Nakari

Honestly, it seems like Santar, Jovolo, et al.'s arguments just support why it makes sense to change how xp loss is done. I mean, if the best argument for the status quo is that no one cares about experience loss as is, then there should be zero downside to lessening it/altering how it's done.

And given that several of us have claimed that experience loss is a barrier (and for me, at least, it is by far the biggest barrier), it then seems like there should be only a benefit to making experience loss as insubstantial as people already seem to think it is.

Nim

I'll spar the same freaking person who can beat me every time over and over again, so I don't care about losing. On the contrary, I find it utterly addicting in a certain sense - not losing itself, but fighting a losing battle. Anyone who's ever played League of Legends with me can confirm this paragraph as absolute fact.

But great Cthulhu be damned to eternal sleep is it painful losing EXP, given that I'm not good enough to regain it via PvP. Ultimately, I choose between bashing (something I abhor) or just not ever regaining it. I've been doing the second one a lot lately - the last hunting trip I went on was as an excuse to kill people.