I've always been a bit annoyed to see that the most comon complaints concerning PvP have to do with class balance and gear gaps. It could seem like gear and class balance is the only issue to AoC's pvp problems. To be honest, i don't have any fancy T4 gear, i enjoy playing HoX or barb and i don't pay too much attention to conqs. So if they chose to leave it as it is and worked on real PvP content i would be happier than seeing "details" fixed.
Two thoughts:
Despite gear and class balance, PvP always shines through teamplay. When players, with common goals and common play style, gather up and fight it's awesome. This can't be done with PuGs (or too rarely). PvP is fun when you chose with whom you play, and thus how you play. That's what guilds are/were for when it came to pvp. It's time to put guilds back to the center of PvP concerns. I'm sick of Pug PvP.
When I ride through Hyboria i have memories of epic battles who took place. The slaughter's in Tesso, the spontaneous sieges of khopshef's Caravansérail, Common District riots, the fight's to enter vistrix's lair, Cimmerian End battles. Such a pitty to see all these great zones emptied of all PvP for years know.
These would be the two axis around which i would like to see future PvP content revolve.
Guilds and
Open-World. I'm not exactly speaking of new content, like a new zone with new goals and such. I'm more thinking of a revamp of existing and obsolete or underused features such as:
- Renown system.
- Tournament mode minis.
- Shrines of Bori.
- Sieges.
- Guards.
- Criminality system.
Renown system & Guild wars
The bulk of PvP content
The renown system is obsolete and has been for a while (always some would say). There's no use for it, it doesn't trigger competition between guild, it doesn't drive them to fight each other and it only shows the average pvp activity of a guild nothing more. It should represent as much the strength of a guild than it's activity and it should be used to push players to fight each others. The way i see this ranking it would count two things. Passive factors linked to the guilds state that don't move that much and active factors rating the guilds activity and succes in PvP areas:
No code has to be inserted here.
Non-exhaustive list.
The higher you rank, the more powerfull your guild is thus you get better goodies: PvP xp bonus, vanity cloaks and such, cheaper PvP gear, mini-game quests only the top 3 can have... i don't know lots of things could be imagined (some horizontal progression too would be appreciated).
But, the higher your guild is ranked the more intresting it gets to attack you.
To spice things up, through this system you add the possibility to
declare war to other guilds.
A war lasts a week. During that time a window, seable by the whole server would be great, is enabled showing the stats of the ongoing war. Tournament minis won against each other, bori sacrifices made, altars destroyed, sieges won/lost, open world kills, and other fun stats like the guys who killed the most, the guys who were killed the most, etc.
At the end of the week, one guild has won. Rewards scale depending on the size of the fights during the week. If it has been a shy war, with only small inconsistent squirmishs, small rewards. If it has been a bloody war with sieging, massive open-worlds battles, tournament minis fought against each other, bori sacrifices made, altars destroyed, loads of kills, a reward fitting will be delivered.
And of course, the power gap between the two belligerents will be accounted for. Beating a stronger guild than yours will give you better rewards than beating weaker guilds. Winning wars will obviously be counted in the active part of the revamped PvP ranking.
Hopefully, guild wars will give to stronger guilds stubborn opponents instead of docile recruits. Small guilds could wage war against each others while bigger guilds do the same.
Note : I would also strongly suggest rewarding generously the losing guild if they fought bravely and didn't give up. If everyone dodges defeat... no PvP is possible.
Bori Tweaks
Main idea : give hunters something to lose and defend too. Encourage altar competition and alternative XP gain.
- Mats are undestroyable. The only way to get rid of them is to sack them on an altar.
- Increase the worth of looted mats.
- Increase the % of mat drop when there's a lot of people in zone.
- Give kills on players a chance to drop a rare mat.
- XP decrease from sacrifices/altar-destruction that aren't guild only.
- XP increase if an other altar is active.
- Limit ranger tracking to 300m.
- Show on the map when a limb, torso, head is sacrificed on a pyre.
Sièges Tweaks
I might be the only one, but i can't help it to find it lame when i take a look at siege setups and see between 20 and 35 demos on zone... my computer agrees with me too.
- Add a quota of 5/6 per class maximum per double raid.
- Adjust the siege weapons and walls to fit the above change.
- Make walls untargettable with tab.
Open-World Tweaks
- Remove current Guards from the game. And add guards like in MO. When in a hub, if you get attacked by someone(s) with whom you are not at war with, a simple /guard summon's a guard that one shots the agressor(s) through bubbles and everything.
- Grant players talking to quest givers a shield of the risen.
Other stuff
- Guild officier able to issue PvP quests: kill 10 players of guild X
- Territorial conquest
- Alliance system
- Claimable towns like Pin-Pin, Tesso, Dinog.
- Bounty hunting
- ...
* * *
This would be the skeleton of my ideal PvP update. I don't care much about gear gap or class balancing. I want to fight with guildies, kick some asses in open-world, fight against the odds, hunt down my ennemies and spend most of my time enjoying the varaiety of hyboria's landscape during epic and spontaneous encounters instead of being stuck in narrow mini-game maps.
Let a couple of your members be complete asshats and deal with the wars that occur and which makes your guildies time in open-world harsher. Wage war against those who ganked you in open-world, stole your keep, beat you up in duels, called you « a bunch of peasants », threaten biodiversity in CE or just looked you strange.
Rewards through warmongering. That would be something i'd enjoy ! Unchained mini... yeah... meh... PuGs aye ?
P.S: FFA is awesome ! Don't ever switch AoC to a factionized game !