PvP as it stands now

[Som|Blood]

MELEES DO *NOT* NEED MORE BUFFS LET ALONE SWORD
I've posted this before on various "fix jumpspin!!!1!" and "majes r teh overpowered" threads, but I think it bears repeating as most of the people that were commenting on it either don't play a mage or don't pk (by their own admission). Melees and Mages are two seperate beasts. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. A mage may be able to do (slightly with weeping sword you might actually be able to say that does the most damage in pk) more damage, but most people fail to mention the four second charge time (sword can do two full power swings while I charge for one spell - two crits = me dead...this doesn't seem overpowered until I need to cast a heal and revit) and the fact that war is almost laughably easy to dodge. You guys have been trying to equal melee and mage out in pure 1v1 situations. The problem is THAT TIPS THE SCALE UNFAIRLY IN 90% OF THE FIGHTS . Sure it sounds good on paper until you look at the melees most prominent strength. HE CAN HIT PEOPLE THAT DON'T WANT TO FIGHT. A mage with 2 melees on him = dead no matter how many times he jump spins. A melee with 10 mages on him is laughing at the fact they have no way to kill him. Bottom line is if you make melees strong enough to 1v1 mages you might as well shut down Darktide as in two months everyone will run around with a weeping sword (actually its already headed in that directions). To all those "mages rox.." people that never actually pvp. Maybe you guys should take a look at treestats every couple of weeks and ask yourselves why all the level 210+ mages are rerolling a sword char or changing their mages stats and specing sword...

JUMP SPIN NEEDS TO BE FIXED
I would have agreed before AR weapons. I would have reluctantly agreed after AR weapons. With weepings it would just be far too unbalanced. Jump spin gives a mage a decent chance to get away (Re: nothing even gives a melee a decent shot of dieing when they are trying to escape, except maybe higher level melees). It does seem a bit corny that so much class balance has been based around an exploit, but thats what it IS balanced around and changing it now would just boast melees namely sword melees further above everyone else in terms of power. Without this what are mages to do? Just run until they are dead getting popped for 60 a shot on low speed? Bottom line = without heat seeking war or a run skill that works (you can't stick on someone with higher run) or something along those lines jump spin needs to stay.


SPEAR/UA/DAGGER/STAFF/AXE/BOW/X-BOW NEEDS BUFFED
No they dont. Sword needs to be nerfed. Maybe X-bow and spear could use a little pk love, but other than that you guys have enough stuff to fix without creating more unbalance.


Missle D is overpowered
I actually agree somewhat. I had played a mage with meleed for some amount of time (before skill sellback) and never really evaded anything while pk'ing. Now I've played a mage with it and I'll evade pretty easily when they are chain gunning. This could actually go either way. It would be unfair to allow chars with missle to get chain gunned, but maybe 1/3rd power should be able to hit a little more than it does.

Healing is overpowered
Another one that could go either way. It was never a problem before spec healing, max coord melees. It gets ugly when they can heal for 250+ and you're only hitting them for less than 100 a war with their ward suit (now easily attainable) and aegis. Especially when they are critting you on full power swings for 200+. Mages need more time to recharge now (health and stam) and since you've moved to make mages and melees more equal 1v1 I don't see why melees should still have the decided edge in regen either. Nerf healing at the very high end. Make them heal 2-3 times to get that 300 health back.

PK and the new radar
Harder to tell who are enemies/allies. Harder to see/click on people. Too big. The radar just looks like a checkerboard or red noodles in a big fight. Just an all around general annoyance. Needs to go and from now on...if its not broken....

and PLEASE PLEASE don't post your pk opinion to the devs unless its well informed. I know many of them don't really pk but love to give their 2c anyway. Please don't.

[Ibn]

Regarding Jumpspin: Whatever fix we eventually put in, we want to ensure that mages and archers do have some means of escaping from melees. We're not sure how much of it will be based on player skill and how much of it will be based on character stats.

[TerrorScout]

I don’t PK yet.

Reading all the posts about PvP I don’t think thy can balance it.

And I think I know why to.

*** LAG ***

Unless you have a 0 lag environment it will never work like it does in testing.

On the tests there is no lag. (Or very little)(Or the lag is always the same)

I was hoping for super powerful Shields myself or 2 imbue weapons.

[TerrorScout]

I vote for breaking sticky to be based on Run + Quickness

So I will have a reason to max my Specialized Run skill.

[Yew Wan Sum]

Your assertion that anyone who doesnt PK full time shouldn't have a say is rather arrogant and inappropriate considering there are a great number of people who enjoy PvP without restricing themselves to full time PK. I'm sure your viewpoint as a big DT factor makes you want to have ultimate control and say over PvP matters, but the fact is you are not the only voice that counts.

That said, my opinion is almost toally in agreement with yours. My only curiosity is in how you view archers. You dont cover them much except under missle def, and there your assesment is pretty much exactly what I have experienced on both sides of the battle (I play archers and mages). One thing you did not mention is how easily arrows are dodged. I can dodge more arrows with my mage than I can wars with my archer. Have you also experienced this? You say 10 mages cant hit a melee, but 10 archers cant hit a dodging mage OR a dodging melee. I think the combination of manual evasion + missle def is the problem. If missle def were exactly the way it is right now, but arrows were as hard to manually dodge as streaks, then it would work pretty well. What do you think?

Also, I am a fan of a 'circular' balance. *If* Mage owned Melee, Melee owned Archer, and Archer owned Mage (enough to get 75% or more kills vs your 'opposed' class given all other factors being equal) then every single class would have a strength and a weakness. I don't care which class owns which. It could be Archer>Melee>Mage>Archer for all I care, but I think a circular balance is a good system to encourage diversity.

[Televangelist]

Som is on the exact opposite side of the battlefield from me -- I've been at war against his clan in general, and him in particular, for the better part of four years.

However, our assessments of PvP as it currently stands are almost exactly the same.

PvP is relatively balanced. Sword? Maybe a little bit too powerful, but not a huge deal. All in all, though, things work.


A few things Som forgot, though:


Spear, Mace, and Axe need to be buffed somewhat.

Spear is a bit underpowered but stickies decently. Mace and Axe, meanwhile, don't sticky as well as a melee needs to in PvP fighting.

Perhaps a buff to their weeping weapons is the solution -- perhaps it's something else.

And I say this as a level 140 mage, so it's not a conflict of interest.


Som is right, however, in saying that people who don't PvP consistently should probably not offer opinions on balance. He's not saying you can't enjoy your PvP -- you can PvP as much or as little as you want, and enjoy it however you like.

However, a true understanding of the inner workings of PvP, as well as how to possibly balance it, is something that comes through with experience. After literally thousands of battles, a person comes to conclusions about PvP strengths and balance that are based more on facts and less on anecdotal evidence and outside factors (player skill, lag, luck, small number of combats).

[Yew Wan Sum]

Whether or not someone PK's fulltime is not the sole determining factor of a person's knowledge or opinion of PvP. I am not a hardcore PK, yet I have come to 90+% of the same conclusions that you and Blood have. Are my conclusions all wrong because I do not PK 24/7? No. As you can see, I don't say much about the melee point of view, because I do not know it. Likewise, even a person who PK's 24/7 may not know the archer side of things, because they don't play them. The fact that they have 'more time' being PK is meaningless. Its about who actually takes time to analyse the factors and the system, not who can type out the longest /age. There is NO reason that someone cannot contribute to or get involved with a PvP discussion just because they don't meet your qualifications of the moment. If a persons can come here and say "Hey, I started playing last week and I noticed something about aaa, and I think it could be fixed by doing bbb" then more power to them. Initial impressions are important in a game, and as unlikely as it may sound to you, your immersion in PK actually makes you LESS qualified to talk about certain aspects of PK than the newer, fresher people. So how about you drop the 'superior to you' attitude and deal with the facts that there are a bunch of people who have become interested in PvP, they do not all play on DT, they are not all hardcore PK'rs, and their opinions deserve the chance to be heard. Tear apart the opinion, show why it is wrong, debate the issues. Do NOT try to dictate who may have an opinion and who may not.

p.s. You got any input on the archer/missle def issue?

[Televangelist]

There is NO reason that someone cannot contribute to or get involved with a PvP discussion just because they don't meet your qualifications of the moment.

Of course there isn't. However, on average, the longer someone's PvP'ed the better their opinions and ideas tend to be.

People aren't homogenous, so it obviously varies -- but for the most part, people new to PvP tend to make incredibly outlandish suggestions based on innacurate or otherwise flawed perceptions.

The Dev boards on ACVault the week after PK Lite came out are proof enough of that.


Nobody's saying you can't have an opinion.

[Som|Blood]

Originally posted by Yew Wan Sum
.That said, my opinion is almost toally in agreement with yours. My only curiosity is in how you view archers. You dont cover them much except under missle def, and there your assesment is pretty much exactly what I have experienced on both sides of the battle (I play archers and mages). One thing you did not mention is how easily arrows are dodged. I can dodge more arrows with my mage than I can wars with my archer. Have you also experienced this? You say 10 mages cant hit a melee, but 10 archers cant hit a dodging mage OR a dodging melee. I think the combination of manual evasion + missle def is the problem. If missle def were exactly the way it is right now, but arrows were as hard to manually dodge as streaks, then it would work pretty well. What do you think?


Well I kind of left archers out of my rant due to the fact that on darktide they have more or less gone the way of the dodo. With stats that are so close to melees most have opted to go sword on darktide.

The combo of manual evade AND missle d which a lot of people picked up 8 months ago for AR bows have simply put archers out of style. I'm wary to suggest uber buffing them right now though because a lot of people have started dropping missle D as there are so few archers running around ATM and an archer than can chain gun = a lot of damage.

As for it being easier for a mage to dodge an archer than vice versa has nothing to do with how fast or accurately either shoot. The archer animation is about 10x stickier than the mage animation plus the side-strife (the #1 tool to dodge war) is much slower in archery mode than casting mode.

[Som|Blood]

Originally posted by Ibn
Regarding Jumpspin: Whatever fix we eventually put in, we want to ensure that mages and archers do have some means of escaping from melees. We're not sure how much of it will be based on player skill and how much of it will be based on character stats.

If its not broken....

[MomentofClarity]

Lag is the deciding factor in pk now. Whoever gets more lag loses and the one with the better connection wins. There is no more skill in pk with weeping weapons.

[Yew Wan Sum]

Ok, SOM. That is some good insight. I hadn't considered sliding speed being different for archers and mages, but I sure did notice the stickiness.

In either case, why are you wary of giving archers a boost? Or should the only choices be mage or sword? If they have gone the way of the dodo, then does this not indicate that there is balance problem which should be addressed? By addressed I don't mean switch to another weapon, because I believe in fixing the system, not forcing a workaround. I believe in diversity, not 'single optimised templates'.

This is the point where I bow to the experience of those who have played PK more, especially those who PK with archers. What do YOU think would fix it?

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Som|Blood
If its not broken....

Should Mages and Archers have a means of getting away from a Melee? Probably. Should that means be jumping and confusing the heck out of the Melee's client? Probably not. There's probably a better way out there that won't make so many people upset.

[Virindi Clown]

Ibn, what you just said is EXACTLY my problem. I don't care if they drop my sticky because they will die after I just pressed delete once. I do care that they used an exploit to lag me off of them.

And missile defense could be fixed with 75-150% skill on the accuracy bar. I think high level archers should be allowed what they would gain from that on strong monsters anyways, seeing as you can't hit strong stuff without firing on full accuracy. Nothing else would need to be changed with that.

If simply jumping alone broke sticky, that would be exactly the same as intended but wouldn't be lagging them off of you.

However, the TRUE issue at hand with that is that people usually DON'T lose the proper amount of stamina for it to be balanced.

Instead of losing 200, they lose like 10, because they are such uber gods of PvP and have so much skill that they can actually jump and hit ~ right when they go off. Wow that's tough. FIX IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Som|Blood]

Catch him a break...


the only thing I'm concerned about now is that you'll fix the melee break when this whole time you've been "balancing" with the break in game. Sword chars are already overpowered with spin jump ig...take it out...game over...

[AzulDrakkon]

I'm an archer, and no I wouldn't mind a bit of, love...dare I say it.
But chain gun is very rare unless you have the eviroment for it som, and if ya got missile buffs, even some with untrained missile can dodge it...but yeah, as an archer I think its pretty lame, a little more so than delay or spam casting.

[smaweet]

Archers/Mages should be able to run using their environment and getting away from melees should be just like dodging, 99% player-skill, not exp.

Jumping over a bush, getting monsters in the way, classic ways. It is their fault for fighting out in the open, make people use their environment or deal with not having it. And these things can go either way--mages can get melees stuck in their movements, and they can have more opportunities for the melee to "hide"

I like to laugh at people who say "come out into the open" because all they know is the exploits and little tricks, not the game.

Yes, mages and archers still need a way of getting away NOT relying on exp. However, make them use the environment for things like that, not just something that they can always do.

Need to fix jump/spin altogether as other clients handle people jumping. As someone lands we will slide all across the screen and eventually if done right (along with hacks some people unfortunately still get away with using) can end up off the radar before you even know if they landed yet.