What is the one thing you would change about PvP Combat in Imperian?

Jeremy Saunders

I know it is hard, but you can only give me one!

- I also just want to test out the Q&A feature in the forums.

Bathan

The buy-in. I realize that's counter intuitive to the business model to a degree, but the fact is that new players don't want to hear 'you need antidotes, focus and probably 2 to 3 guild skills before you can think of getting involved.' That's anywhere from 300 to 600 dollars on a text game just to be able to get stomped by Justus, Galt or Eldreth.

Khizan

Nothing, really. There are some class balance issues, but overall I like how things are currently set up. Any attempt to emphasize 1v1 more are going to be doomed to failure because of the RPS nature of combat, and because of the way artifacts work. There are some people you're just not going to kill 1v1, and gaming the systems to force people to engage in 1v1 isn't going to please anybody aside from the few 'white knights'.

The buy-in is a problem, but it's also at the core of IRE and a lot of us have already bought in, so I don't see much that can be done about it. Honestly, the best idea I have for this is a one-time-only credit package that consists of a decently large amount of bound credits for a reduced rate. Since they come as bound credits(maybe even giving you bonus lessons out of your committing credits pool), it's not a thing that could really be gamed with repeated alts, and getting a trans skill and change for 30-40 bucks or so is basically just giving them the first hit from the crack pipe for free.

Thinking about it, I guess the main think I'd like is a few more 'contained' reasons to fight. Shardfalls are great. You get people going out to fight who ordinarily would not, because the shardfall is a one-and-done PK event. After the shardfall, they can go about life as normal without worrying about getting ganked or hunted. They're also an area wide battle where you can't just hole up and force the other side to come to prepared defenses, since if you do that they win. Shardfalls are the kind of conflict system I wish that the Obelisks were. Fast-paced, interesting, mobile, and after the fight is done I don't have to worry about people like Caelya getting jumped for helping me out in a fight.

EDIT: Another round of classleads wouldn't be bad, either!

Icarius

I was going to say power creep, similar I guess to Bathan's.

Other than that I'd like to see changes to the way combat skills work re: passive and room based skills, and want more active skills with multiple effects.

For example - (To pick a class with a lot of passives) Rather than noctu ents being timer based and passive, have each different entity attack based on what skill the notcusari uses. Hangedman? Sets off the Gremlin for a short period of time. Moon? The crone is set off. Hunger? The worm is set off for a bit. It would make it more involved and interesting.

Similar could be done with other pet, vibe and rite based classes. 

 Not only would this remove a lot of the "enter x room with a bazillion holding skills and die instantly" but it would also mean that once someone is actually on the ropes passives won't rng save the fight for them. Not to mention a lot of active skills could be made more powerful and interesting to compensate.

I guess what I'm asking for is more and better skill synergy, with less of it being stacking on passives.

I have found myself enamored of the way GW2 uses a lot of it's skills, hence this post

Juran

Class design is reasonably well balanced between circles, and while there are small things that need to be nudged up and down or a few classes that are either weak or boring so that people don't play them - the overall mechanics of PvP in the game are decently well polished when given even numbers.

The fundamental problem that I have is one that would be solved by the RP thread and not the classlead thread, because it deals with that last bit. When population shifts happen, we are too locked inside our little glass boxes to make the kind of political negotiations necessary to compete. If Kinsarmar has half of the world's fighters, Antioch and Stavenn should be able to at least seek for a common ground to stop them. Maybe with the gods dead and this 'treaty', those biases can be glossed over in the future. The precedent used to be that we would simply get yelled at and punished by our blessed Divine for transgressing too far outside of our expected roles.

Kanthari

More glitter.

Veratyr

Why were the random arena events cancelled? I liked those things.

Sarrius

More opportunities for 1v1 centric classes to either be remade or made relevant again - I'm talking about Bard, Cleric as is right now, Druid, Knights, Druid, Hunter, Renegade, Assassin, Malignist. Sure, some have applications in team combat (Druid - Mega DPS, Knights - Stun Bots and Tanking, I guess Hunters), but they are relics of an old age where team combat wasn't accounted for. I would like to see them brought back in to relevance. I would prefer we introduce some duel-centric mechanics - Champions may be the place to do that. Remakes to make them group-centric are also acceptable, though.

Jeremy Saunders

I changed this to a normal discussion, because the question format was not going to work. I will address some of these in the morning.

Ohm

Gank fests - maybe remove more than 2/3 people targetting the same person at the same time. Not sure if feasible but putting it out there.

Sarrius

Ohm said:

Gank fests - maybe remove more than 2/3 people targetting the same person at the same time. Not sure if feasible but putting it out there.

I guess we could include the MKO mechanic of 'engaging' a target, but that seemed very clunky and stupid.

Ohm

I don't know - the whole - "summon target into room, 10 people bash on him" is ridiculous.

I am not sure if engage is the answer (but definitely such that more than 'x' attacks per balance don't go through (active or passive)

Jazzster

Bathan said:

The buy-in. I realize that's counter intuitive to the business model to a degree, but the fact is that new players don't want to hear 'you need antidotes, focus and probably 2 to 3 guild skills before you can think of getting involved.' That's anywhere from 300 to 600 dollars on a text game just to be able to get stomped by Justus, Galt or Eldreth.

I agree 100% with this. The biggest thing I had problems with when first starting out was, "Evasion. Trans Sabotage. Antidotes. Only then will you be efficient unless you know a lot about coding and scripting."

Delrayne

*Inserts Aspect credit/lesson idea*

The jist...You reach aspect you get enough lessons or credits to tri-trans guild skills.

Ahkan

To get around the lesson block, new players should be able to purchase one or two lesson packages outside of a sale.

I think PvP is in a sweet spot. Shards really unlocked new levels of ongoing pk and lowering the retribution problem. This could be solved by adding an aura around harvesters...so...Ahkan the mage can't sit on a shard and kill anyone who walks in the room claiming, "They were going to harvest the shard!"


I think my big thing is legacy classes and ongoing class development.

Khizan

Ahkan said:

This could be solved by adding an aura around harvesters...so...Ahkan the mage can't sit on a shard and kill anyone who walks in the room claiming, "They were going to harvest the shard!"

I'm not a particular fan of this because I don't want people in shardfalls going "Well, I wasn't HARVESTING the shard, so I wasn't a legal kill!"

It seems more like a case where it happens once, somebody goes "Ahkan killed me over a shard he's camping on", and then their organization trucks over you and you get no retaliation cause it was a shard fight.

A one-time only starter's lesson pack is a great idea, though. A  trans and a half for 30 bucks or so? I'd have been hooked.

Mkvenner

They could do a 'migration package' or something similar, wherein depending on variables such as how many professions you have, what class related arties and so on, you pay a certain amount to have them directly swapped, but at a reduced rate.

Also, so many people have said it so many times before: Allow character tradeins. Part of me wants this if for nothing more than the fact that I really dislike the name Dermon.

Alarick

Mkvenner said:

Also, so many people have said it so many times before: Allow character tradeins. Part of me wants this if for nothing more than the fact that I really dislike the name Dermon.

Yes. This. I would jump on this in a second, so long as the tradein value was reasonable.

Eldreth

I would echo Khizan's post. He generally summed up my feelings nicely. I would like to see better small-scale (to include 1x1 encounters) viability, especially given the subtle trends on mitigating ranged combat. I also look with envy on the various Achaean imports that have had their 2.0 roll-out while I sit in a prof geared towards Iron Realms circa 2000, but that's what classleads is for I suppose!

 

edit: I tried posting this earlier from my iPhone, but for some odd reason the "post comment" button doesn't actually work on the device. So ninja'd by Khizan's classlead thread.

Jeremy Saunders

Veratyr said:

Why were the random arena events cancelled? I liked those things.

Most of them were cancelled. All the cities have arenas, so I think that will handle it now.

Jeremy Saunders

Sarrius said:

More opportunities for 1v1 centric classes to either be remade or made relevant again - I'm talking about Bard, Cleric as is right now, Druid, Knights, Druid, Hunter, Renegade, Assassin, Malignist. Sure, some have applications in team combat (Druid - Mega DPS, Knights - Stun Bots and Tanking, I guess Hunters), but they are relics of an old age where team combat wasn't accounted for. I would like to see them brought back in to relevance. I would prefer we introduce some duel-centric mechanics - Champions may be the place to do that. Remakes to make them group-centric are also acceptable, though.

It sounds like you are asking for classes to be made better for group combat?

If so, here is my answer. If not, feel free to mock me.

I doubt we will ever seriously try to balance or make classes better for group combat (on purpose). It is hard enough to try to balance 1v1 combat. Balancing team combat is impossible.

Jeremy Saunders

Ohm said:

Gank fests - maybe remove more than 2/3 people targetting the same person at the same time. Not sure if feasible but putting it out there.

Yeah, see my answer above. Balancing team combat is not possible.

Jeremy Saunders

Eldreth said:

I would echo Khizan's post. He generally summed up my feelings nicely. I would like to see better small-scale (to include 1x1 encounters) viability, especially given the subtle trends on mitigating ranged combat. I also look with envy on the various Achaean imports that have had their 2.0 roll-out while I sit in a prof geared towards Iron Realms circa 2000, but that's what classleads is for I suppose!

I do have some ideas that have been tossed at me to help get more 1v1 combat opportunities going. That is on my list, but I have a few other things we have to wrap up first. 

Tomas just started another round of classleads, so enjoy!

Juran

Jeremy said:

I doubt we will ever seriously try to balance or make classes better for group combat (on purpose). It is hard enough to try to balance 1v1 combat. Balancing team combat is impossible.

Garryn and the classlead process has done an amazing job in the past two years ironing out classes for team combat - and with the focus on group oriented activities like shardfalls and city warfare it is absolutely essential that we continue working to balance team combat.

The line 'we can't do it' was used in the past to mean 'it's hard to do it', and that form of thinking can't stand unless you're going to code a way to stop us from fighting in groups.

Juran

There's a difference between balancing classes for combat and stopping the particularities of combat. Alpha damage and volley kills are going to happen, but you simultaneously have more people to soak up those kills. There will be unavoidable attrition deaths as part of a group fight, every side will lose people.

What you're balancing are synergy conditions that are outside the scope of your balance. Things like enfeeble/absolve and afflicting pets in retardation are able to be balanced for directly, because you have obvious cases of things not working out 'fairly'.

Khizan

Jeremy said:

I doubt we will ever seriously try to balance or make classes better for group combat (on purpose). It is hard enough to try to balance 1v1 combat. Balancing team combat is impossible.

  This is demonstrably not true. There are many ways in which balance for team combat has been accomplished, through things like lowering BBT damage while applying limb damage modifiers to boost it in 1v1, making kai enfeeble give a cannot-absolve shield to the target, removing the stun from hailstorm, adding the DR period on stuns, adding the immunity window to AOE skills... I could go on. Balance for team combat is both very possible and absolutely mandatory, simply because this is a social game. Organizations get in conflicts as organizations. They work together to take shardfalls. They work together to take Obelisks. Look at that event you just ran. How did it end? Massive worldwide brawl. How can you run events like that and turn around and say "Oh, we're never going to seriously try to balance group combat"?


And a 1v1 focus is doomed because of the very nature of the game. There's just too many factors at play.

The pay for perks system means that the ability to force a 1v1 matchup adds a lot to the "pay to win" feel where somebody like Galt just grabs somebody in a 1v1 and bludgeons them to death with his Mastercard, or somebody like Kryss easily rolls over mediocre players because they've got an affliction class and the victim doesn't have years of experience healing. 1v1 often ends up as Rock/Paper/Scissors due to class matchups, where two classes throw kill strategies at each other and hope. Group combat introduces more variables, more complexity. Look at the Tournament of Ages. There's a reason why the 4v4 is the event people get hyped over, while the 1v1 is dismissed as "Oh, look, the artifacted FoTM won."

While more 1v1 wouldn't be BAD, ignoring group combat to focus on the idea of the Mythical Age of 1v1 Duels is such a bad idea

Garryn

Yes, we can absolutely balance team combat to some extent - we just can't do this as extensively as we can with 1v1. More importantly, I think we probably don't want to either, as the differences, if not excessive, are one of the things that keep the group combat interesting.

Sanai

The key is that it's not balanced in the sense that you have an equal chance to survive any given encounter, but in the sense that when two teams collide, no side has an unfair advantage.

Bringing more guys isn't 'unfair', it's just how it goes. Getting hit by an alpha at the start of an encounter will make you salty, but it's fair (better: it's intelligent tactics). Getting hit by a cryknight's train isn't unfair (just painful).

Defend circles were patently unfair (even though I miss them). Retardation hailstun traps that killed as many people as you could fit on your enemy list were well beyond unfair. Mass indoors eroding was ridiculous.

Yeah, it requires a judgement call to pick out what's unfair and what isn't, but no more of a judgement call than 1v1 has ever required.

Abigail

Mages need a complete overhaul. If you're a Mage without artifacts, you have three options if you want to score kills: whore out retardation or play another class. Mages have no reliable solo kill method besides "embed retardation and spam staffcast" without being forced to spend 5000 credits on something that should be optional to compete in the game, and even then, their kill method is still "embed retardation and spam staffcast."

Katarsh

Abigail said:

If you're a Mage without artifacts, you have three options if you want to score kills: whore out retardation or play another class.

Where's the third option?

Abigail

Katarsh said:

Where's the third option?

THERE IS NONE