AOC PvP - changes are coming!

[Slith]

if you want formeted text with all the links go here:
http://aochideout.blogspot.com/2013/...re-coming.html

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Quite honestly I have been doing a lot less AOC as of late because I pretty much do T4/Cloud runs and few minigames here and there.The reasons for that are lack of progression and pretty absurd removal of group pvp option. It affected mine (and others) enjoyment of the game in a major way as I can pin point exactly when it was the last time I had amazing pvp experience - before minigame changes.

Seeing how Nusquam (Joel Bylos) was very active on the forums and how CirithGorgor was making good on his promise of "more dev posts" I have decided to go for it and let both of those gentlemen know what was on my mind in terms of pvp.

Here is my prv msg via forums:

"Hello,

I am contacting you on behalf of AOC pvp community which I am feeling like I can be the voice of.
I am aware that pvp is not your cup of tea, but I would very much like you to take some time and at very least give us FC’s stance on this issue.

Here is the problem: PVP content in Age of Conan doesn’t allow you to play with your friends.

Open World pvp doesn’t have any goals, the progression via it is extremely slow (with dimishing returns on pvp xp) and it happens rarely even on last pvp server there is.

Shrines of Bori doesn’t really counts as pvp content since it is about mining materials and it is rarely used nowadays.

The last thing are minigames. Back few years ago previous GD removed the possibility to sign up with your group and made the teams totally random. This, more often than not, creates scenario when you actually spend time fighting AGAINST your guild mates and friends which is not fun in the long run.

There is a possibility to sign up for tournament mode minigames but it requires a lot of preparation as there is a need for two full teams to sign up at the same time. This just happens NEVER.

Randomness of minigames encourages jack ass behavior, going AFK, killing opponents and ignoring the pvp goals of a minigame (like getting flags). It is a very toxic, unfriendly environment that PVPers put up with when they are leveling up (treating it as necessary evil). Once people hit the pvp lvl 10 they lose chance at progression and without any social aspect of the minigames (aka playing with friends) they lose interest in pvp altogether.
Currently on Fury PVP there is no PVP only guild (pre-change there used to be tones of those).

Here are 3 posts that sum up this issue:
http://aochideout.blogspot.com/2011/...by-design.html
http://aochideout.blogspot.com/2012/...00-served.html
http://aochideout.blogspot.com/2013/...sshattery.html

The pvp community has been begging for an answer about this: do you plan to bring back “group” to “group pvp” in any shape or form?

Please take your time to explore this issue as even simple post on this matter would mean a lot to the pvp community.

All the best,
Slith"
I have send this to both Nusquam and CirithGorgor and the latter was first to respond.

Now, I know you would very much like to read exactly what the devs have written, but alas I cannot post that since I didn't get permission to share those informations, in fact I did't get a reply about my request so I will assume that I can't share it word for word. If I will get Nusquam and CirithGorgor stance on this I will re-post complete letter.

But of course I would be a jack ass to post pretty much "I know something that you don't" so I will give you few hints about the direction that AOC pvp might be going.

First of all for me personally the biggest issue was thinking that the dev team is ignorant of the fact that group pvp option is screwed in AOC. Quite the contrary: Nusquam picked up on the issue while reading the forum (and he really does that) and he even quoted few posts to the rest of the team to show them where the problem is at. Here is a big surprise: the AOC team is not all knowing. Some of the post ROGS changes that were made, while somewhat obvious to the veteran players, are not painfully evident to the team that is currently shared between three Funcom MMOs. Removal of group option (and "replacing" it with tournament-o-fail) was puzzling to the team and they were not entirely sure why did it happen. They figured that it was for balancing reasons and here is a quote that I think I can post:

"Essentially it sounds like it was a balance call (nobody wants to force noobs to play the best PvP players), but the problem is that balance isn't always fun" - Nusquam
Indeed it isn't, assuming of course that current random vs random minis are somewhat balanced.

I have exchanged few back and forth prv msgs and the topics we have covered boil down to:

1/ there is a need for social element to be brought back to the game (teaming up for pvp)
2/ people are ignoring minigame's objectives (why that does happen, and they can be encouraged to do otherwise)
3/ lack of pvp progression after hitting pvp lvl 10
4/ gear gap between T4 and pvp T3
5/ issues with future PVE gear affecting PVP

And here is how our little chat ended:

"In short - the discussion about this has already begun. I'm reluctant to pull the systems guys away from Tradeskills to this yet - I *really* want that out of the door". - Nusquam
Of course who would say "No" to the crafting and it's been on FC plate for so long that it makes total sense for it to be FC #1 priority. But now we know that some of the biggest problems in PVP are getting a look at:

"so I have passed on some suggestions in regards to looking at PvP and hopefully we can add at least something interesting and social for the PvP base after the next major patch (which will be very soon)" - CirithGorgor.
Like I said I cannot share the exacly what the solutions will be, but I can quite honestly say I am wet with anticipation (also urine) for those. Do you trust my judgement?

[Slith]

for that one guy who is saying I am making **** up:

https://twitter.com/Slith_hideout/st.../photo/1/large

you know who you are..

[Bibik]

I like your efforts aiming to represent the pvp crowd, but i noticed there's any wishes and Point of Views about current situation of PvP in AoC as they are Pvpers.

To illustrate, let's talk about the heart of your post : the fact you can't join mini with friends.
How can they fix it ?

- Make this like before (including the cons every one who have played in this era knows)
- Improve Tournament queue. Leav PuG minis alone.
- Improve joining with friend system as it can't result at complete imbalance in minis (hello pom + dt both pvp 10 on vocal)... But how ?

Same troubles with objective-based pvp VS Killboard personnal achievement.
As we can read sometimes here, for a large part of pvpers, objectives are nuts, objectives are slowing the game and other accusations (truth or not, that's not the debate)

The rest likes objectives, play for it, plays for team-action which is hard/rares in PuG mini nowaday but very satisfying and very fun when it happens.

How can PvP changes can satisfy both sides ?

And this division can be applied to all the old issues that are discussed endlessly : PvE gear>PvP gear, Bori, grind for PvP 10, class imabalances, AA imbalance, guards in open world, even water in JS... the list goes on.

IMO, if they have to do something in the very first time of PvP revamp/changes which is a very long-time process (and i doubt they have the ressources to do it, except if they make it small parts by small parts), they have to collect players POV in some sort of poll on which is the priority in PvP and then ask in another poll which is the better way to fix this priority issue... And even with that, i'm not sure it will be okay, remember how the player feedback about class revamps or itemization makes changes worse than good...

[Doomkiller]

1/ there is a need for social element to be brought back to the game (teaming up for pvp)
2/ people are ignoring minigame's objectives (why that does happen, and they can be encouraged to do otherwise)
3/ lack of pvp progression after hitting pvp lvl 10
4/ gear gap between T4 and pvp T3
5/ issues with future PVE gear affecting PVP

1
I can guess it will b real fun for premades to farm pugs
2 high level players can destroy whole team of lowbies (PvP 5)
Tournament mode failed coz Premades wanted to farm PuGs and NOT fight another Premade
The fact that 12 players wont use Tournament mode says a lot

2
Most players Hav T4 gear and are PvP 8-10
I m not going to waste time fighting hard to win
I depend on Sag for my 1 Badge
If i win Sag that is a bonus but i wont try hard there too

3
Do u want PvP 15 gear?
or
Vanity Gear?

4
Do u want T4 gear stats on PvP armor?
Or
Do u want PvE gear nerfed in PvE?

5
Dont worry.
Anything above T4 will make AoC AoDT.

[bruceleroy]

Ive given up. This game will never change. I told you all when the new guy came it wasn't going to change and you all laughed and scolded me to give him a chance. You don't need to give someone a chance after 4 years. They are not going to change. Now here we are 2 years later? and you still think there is a chance for change? Here is the biggest issues for the game IMO:

1. Random changes early in release to classes that no one asked for.
2. Changes that needed immediate attention that took them a year to fix. (Gems, TOS one shot, etc)
3. Bugged loot, dungeons, bosses that they would ban you for if you did. Coppice anyone?
4. Mods and in game GMs that chose sides and favorites and don't seem to think things out or care to listen, just pass judgements.
5. Battlekeeps that were bugged, giving huge advantages (shield stacking, bugged walls, etc.) Don't give advantages to something broken and exploited.
6. Give PVP preference to PVE ****. (current PVE gear)
7. Continued effort on PVE front, with total abandonment of PVP (still waiting for something other than SAG)
8. Ignoring community requests and failed efforts in the advocate program. (I was a part of this, and it was nothing more than a separate forums where advocates would QQ about their class)
9. GMs who think they know more about what players want then the actual players (from launch to today)
10. bad code, although usually quickly addressed, that causes server crashes, mini game queues to fail, failed logins and etc. No, this isn't client side ****, its server side.
11. No direction, just random content
12. New dungeons, with worse gear or items than already in game (NO progression outside of T1-T4)
13. Removal of rare purple drops (this was a nice reason to farm)
14. No reason to explore. At launch you had random chests scattered with very unique items, you removed them once they grew in popularity. Why not add some of this back? AOC should make me want to explore the world, and outside of curiosity, there is no gain for exploring.
15. Half assed implementation of a rollback server. Guards on a true pvp server? Go figure.
16. terrible customer service. Good luck petitioning or emailing customer service for help. Ive emailed and petitioned 10 times in my playing since launch, and NEVER got an answer same day or one that was helpful. Dozens of screen shots with chat logs of GMs support this as well.
17. patching the game during holidays? Why would you take game play time away from the working class?

Like I said, Ive given up. Call it what you want, but I really wanted to see this game grow and be all it could have been.

[Frezard]

Nice to see changes. But I also don't like how this work. Its like, we talk one player about PvP changes, and not the community.

[bruceleroy]

Nice to see changes. But I also don't like how this work. Its like, we talk one player about PvP changes, and not the community.

They don't talk to the community, they talk to the game designer, and he does what he wants. Its never going to change.

[Zatochi]

Good work Slith. keep it up even if most of the forum crowd will whine anyway.

i do know this will take a while and that funcom wont able to release it on the first date they will give us but they will do something. they always did. not as fast as it should be done and not always the right thing (bori) but they always tried.

the only thing they mabye should do less is hearing to the com. there are to many clueless ppl crying louder then anyone else with sense and i think it is impossible for funcom to sort out "good" feedback and "bad" feedback.

thinking that the com knows best is a failure. it don't. i only know a handful ppl who at least try to take a point of view concerning every aspect of classes and even they tend to see the game on the perspective of their favourite class. the rest obviously does only that and this will never lead to balance in pvp. some stuff must be decided by the devs even if some ppl are crying.

[Mokona]

Tournament mode failed coz Premades wanted to farm PuGs and NOT fight another Premade
The fact that 12 players wont use Tournament mode says a lot

This.
/10 chars

[K4nnyc]

[Edited by Drest]

Original post<

Thanks for the effort Slith.

But imo it's too little too late from Funcom. They had their chance and it's clear that they have made a huge list of mistakes when it comes to AOC PVP. I don't think it can be fixed in the next 3 years at their current development speed. PVP is done here imo.