Joel Boyles - Advanced PVP Advice

[Lednail]

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that he knows that PVP needs to be addressed, and on an equal playing field as PVE, tells me that he's not a bad guy. I am willing to give him a chance for that reason alone, and I know a lot of my guildies feel the same way in that regard.

So if I said the pvp was bad in this game, would you hand over the contents of your wallet to me? Talk is cheap and anyone can say nice words while having no intention of following them up.

And what exactly did he say about PvP? The community took his game directors letter to mean that Age of Conan is getting arenas soon.

http://www.ageofconan.com/news/game_..._february_2013

But what did he actually say about arenas?

"A core team is always more agile than larger, separate teams and is cross-functional, meaning that anybody should be able to step in and work on anything. Because we work with the Dreamworld Engine, most of our in-house tools are shared between The Secret World and Age of Conan so it is simple to hop from one project to another. Below I will list some of the advantages that this gives us:

Parallel Feature Development - IF we were going to add, FOR EXAMPLE, a ranked arena system to Age of Conan, we would be able to easily port the feature across to The Secret World. With a little GUI work (also shared apart from the art style, thanks to Scaleform) and some new 3D environments, both games would have a working ranked arena system. Because the feature is essentially the same across projects, it would also mean more thorough QA testing as most bugs found would be shared. This can be extended to include almost any new feature that is not setting specific."

Arenas were just used as an example to reassure people that firing everyone on the Age of Conan team was not a disaster, but that having a consolidated team was an advantage and meant that features from The Secret World and Age of Conan could be adapted to both games (yeah right, like how Anarchy Online has its new engine or Age of Conan has single server tech after all those years of promises).

You have to read what Joel says carefully. I've had experience with this guy in The Secret World. HE ALWAYS GIVES HIMSELF AN OUT. He name drops (oh WoW has arenas! buzzword of the day), the community speculates wildly and gets hyped up for nothing.

[Sarcopthes]

imo arenas for aoc would be unplayable due to lack of balance- 2 soldiers on one team would own most of other setups. bs would also be just crazy in 2 vs 2. I think they should focus on existing, working mechanics, there is a lot to do to make 6 vs 6 minigames guild pvp social content.

arenas at this point would be a fail concept, too much resources consuming, but in the future I hope they will introduce it.

[Baasura]

imo arenas for aoc would be unplayable due to lack of balance- 2 soldiers on one team would own most of other setups. bs would also be just crazy in 2 vs 2. I think they should focus on existing, working mechanics, there is a lot to do to make 6 vs 6 minigames guild pvp social content.

arenas at this point would be a fail concept, too much resources consuming, but in the future I hope they will introduce it.

Agree that in arenas there would be lack of balance. bs and conq or 2 conqs would be damn hard to beat. It would still be nice to have them as option but as you said there are some other priorities for pvp.

[Nusquam]

*snip*

Led, while I am not sure why you have a vendetta against me, I think your own post makes it pretty clear the context of my comments about arenas was an example.
I also credit the intelligence of the people reading to be able to tell the difference between a promise and an example which is clearly stated as an example.

More importantly, saying "I always give myself an out" means that "I don't make promises I can't keep" which is true. I don't.
I invite you to discuss your grievances with me via PM, but stop polluting threads with this.

To everyone else, please continue the PvP advice. I am reading.

[barbaricwildcat2]

Led, while I am not sure why you have a vendetta against me, I think your own post makes it pretty clear the context of my comments about arenas was an example.
I also credit the intelligence of the people reading to be able to tell the difference between a promise and an example which is clearly stated as an example.

More importantly, saying "I always give myself an out" means that "I don't make promises I can't keep" which is true. I don't.
I invite you to discuss your grievances with me via PM, but stop polluting threads with this.

To everyone else, please continue the PvP advice. I am reading.

get someone to post threads on the different aspects of pvp in aoc to try to figure out if there is stuff to work on any of those 'aspects'

[Ieronon]

I also credit the intelligence of the people reading to be able to tell the difference between a promise and an example which is clearly stated as an example.

You probably shouldn't.

I'm pretty sure that example has been interpreted as a hint of things to come, if not a promise, by a consequent part of your audience, and will be troll-fodder in a few months.

It's not like this hasn't happened before.

[K4nnyc]

To everyone else, please continue the PvP advice. I am reading.

Come on! You've had 4 years of suggestions for pvp. What are you saying? That you guys never read them in 4 years?

Ok, my suggestions.

1. Split minis into 2 brackets. pvp 0-6 and pvp 7-10. Call them upper and lower brackets. If a player has 1 item of T4 pve gear he gets put in the upper pvp bracket regardless of pvp level. If people complain about population, I dont care! Log a lower bracket char and pvp on that if you cant get an upper bracket fight.

2. Make a top 50x pvp ranking chart for each server with class adjustments. So for example: Ranger would be 0.8 points per kill and BS would be 1.2 points per kill. Ranking only possible for upper bracket players pvp level 7-10. Only kills that get XP are counted, this is to reduce griefing, and to ensure you must kill many different upper bracket players to get the 1 slot. An upper bracket player kills a lower bracket player only gets 50% of the points. A upper bracket player kills an upper bracket player he gets full points. Pvp ranking stats available in player inspect tab. Big GOLD Number denoting pvp server rank over your head if you have earned one. This is pvp progression, to get the number 1 spot!

3. Nemesis system. Easy and fun. Kill another player 10 times you get a little floating skull that follows you around, if youre awesome you can collect lots of players skulls. Nemesis skulls can only be gained from players in your pvp bracket or from the bracket above you. You lose your nemesis skull if your victim kills you back. Nemesis stats available in player inspect tab.

4. Revamp sieges, or make some changes on gameplay and performance. Put something in the Bori zone to make make people want to go there for combat, not farming.

5. Consider employing some GM to spectate minis with the aim of banning cheaters. There are many out there and a GM spectating an hour a day in between petitions would be a great help. Consider changing your cheat policy to ban people permanently if they get caught using TPP, the current system where they come back with all gear and pvp levels after a few days is not good.

6. Not really a huge issue but if you are implementing pvp systems you need to fix the consequence system. Open world pvp is just the odd ganking by quest givers or outside instances now. \thats fine but with any new content or pvp systems the griefing would become insane. The current Murderer/Criminal system is largely irrelevant and has been for 4 years. It needs updating.

Thats it from me.

[freneticfangs]

1. Split minis into 2 brackets. pvp 0-6 and pvp 7-10. Call them upper and lower brackets. If a player has 1 item of T4 pve gear he gets put in the upper pvp bracket regardless of pvp level. If people complain about population, I dont care! Log a lower bracket char and pvp on that if you cant get an upper bracket fight.

2. Make a top 50x pvp ranking chart for each server with class adjustments. So for example: Ranger would be 0.8 points per kill and BS would be 1.2 points per kill. Ranking only possible for upper bracket players pvp level 7-10. Only kills that get XP are counted, this is to reduce griefing, and to ensure you must kill many different upper bracket players to get the 1 slot. An upper bracket player kills a lower bracket player only gets 50% of the points. A upper bracket player kills an upper bracket player he gets full points. Pvp ranking stats available in player inspect tab. Big GOLD Number denoting pvp server rank over your head if you have earned one. This is pvp progression, to get the number 1 spot!

3. Nemesis system. Easy and fun. Kill another player 10 times you get a little floating skull that follows you around, if youre awesome you can collect lots of players skulls. Nemesis skulls can only be gained from players in your pvp bracket or from the bracket above you. You lose your nemesis skull if your victim kills you back. Nemesis stats available in player inspect tab.

4. Revamp sieges, or make some changes on gameplay and performance. Put something in the Bori zone to make make people want to go there for combat, not farming.

5. Consider employing some GM to spectate minis with the aim of banning cheaters. There are many out there and a GM spectating an hour a day in between petitions would be a great help. Consider changing your cheat policy to ban people permanently if they get caught using TPP, the current system where they come back with all gear and pvp levels after a few days is not good.

6. Not really a huge issue but if you are implementing pvp systems you need to fix the consequence system. Open world pvp is just the odd ganking by quest givers or outside instances now. \thats fine but with any new content or pvp systems the griefing would become insane. The current Murderer/Criminal system is largely irrelevant and has been for 4 years. It needs updating.

Thats it from me.

1. This does not solve gear issues in world PvP or sieges (which I still blindly hope they fix some day). People are already crying about queues. Making wait time even longer is a disastrous idea.

2. Too easy for big guilds to have friend/account alts to constantly farm. From dual logging and simply trade killing on alts with friends... this would simply turn into the 'logging out and in' grind. Horribly flawed. This does not make pvp happen at all.

3. See #2, except this time we're making the gear/stat system in pvp MORE pronounced. Why? The issue right now is gear/AA getting in the way of pvp (skill).

4. Agreed. Sieges should definitely be fixed. They are FUN. Bori's resource gathering aspect needs to be scrapped. Take it out of the game already - it's not fun.

5. Something really must be done about this. I doubt they are in a position to shift around even one GM, but it would be nice. The cheating is part of the reason I haven't mini-ed in months.

6. 'Griefing' would be fixed by removal of guards from Tyranny. Other than that, roll in Set. If you come to a pvp server, be ready to die unfairly - ALL the time. That's what world pvp is about, regardless of any 'justice' daydreaming anyone might have in their heads. The point is that getting revenge on people who grief you is FUN.

It's high time that Tyranny be merged with Deathwish, keeping the blood n gory system in place while removing the offline level and one character restrictions.

[Ruhenous]

I still say a system similar to Warhammer's system would be amazing in AoC. Make open-world PvP worth doing, even on PvE servers.

[Anubium]

I still think that making an 'entry level' minigame that gives everyone the pvp 5 gear and weapons and negates AAs (leaves feats there though) would give new players a starting point for minis.