Phat-DT
01-31-2004, 12:32 PM
Ive played dt for 3.5-4 years now, and below is what i think we need to imbue PvP with the fun and excitement it used to have.
Perfect PvP? What is it?
Well when many people talk of making pvp perfect they speak of making it balanced. I don’t believe perfectly balanced pvp is what perfect pvp is. Perfect PvP is FUN pvp. It needs to be exciting, hard, and thrilling. These are things that are difficult to achieve in a game as old as AC. AC is at the point now where everybody knows the game mechanics, and if there is a new dungeon somewhere it’s posted on 50 different websites, and anybody can find it in a matter of hours. Getting the excitement of not knowing what is coming next is very hard, and even after a patch that has an giant quest involved, most of the time the average darktider doesn’t care about it at all, and the only reason they do would be because they can get an item that is helpful in pvping. I have some ideas on what a very very fun pvp situation would be. First of all a new server would help this along a lot, but it would be very possible to implement on darktide.
We need a varying environment. Currently in AC when dungeons are added they seem to be permanent. Places like AL and VOD make leveling far too easy. XP chains aren’t what ruined leveling; it was places like AL and vod, where the base XP in parts of it is over 20 or 30 mil an hour. Places like those might not be unbalancing if they didn’t stay around for very long, or were truly hard to get to, but as it is they make leveling far to easy.
How should this be done?
AL should be removed as the #1 possibility, or as #2, all dungeons need to be made tieable. Making the dungeons tieable and summonable would encourage people to fight for them, and would allow a guild to own a single dungeon rather than having to own the whole island to really be able to hunt there.
VOD I think should be removed. If not removed it should be on an island with a quest based recall spell rather than in the middle of the direlands where anybody can easily get to it. There are numerous reasons for this but the main one is to make it something guilds will have to fight over, and actively focus on controlling to be able to use it. This encourages the most exciting type of pvp; fighting with purpose.
The best olthoi dungeons should have quests involved in getting into them, or even finding the portal. Something like the old virindi shroud dungeon would be very cool to do with them. They should be tieable to people who have done the quest, but not summonable.
Uber towns need to be put in. We don’t need new towns; just make a few towns really good for PK’s. I would suggest doing the direland towns, because they were traditionally good, and Kara, because it’s remote. These towns should have equal sell and buy rates, and a master mage.
NO SAFE ZONES. This I cannot stress enough. At the very least it should be possible to “kill” the house barriers, but I think it would be better to remove them completely.
Why this is so important?
Safe zones take away from the rough environment on darktide. Part of the fun in darktide is having to be ready at all times to be attacked, or being scared that at any minute you could be attacked.
Runcast. I dislike arguing for this, as turbine removed it because it was an exploit. However as much as I hate arguing for it, it was THE thing that made oldschool pvp so fun. I played a melee back then, and don’t get me wrong, I didn’t get many kills on high level mages. Of course I was level 20 when there were level 80 mages running around, so I didn’t stand much of a chance against them with or without runcast, but I still had a lot of fun. Runcast is what made the old darktide supermen. All mages could fight vs. 10 people, and the good ones could live long enough to kill 1 or 2 people before recalling, but the best could take on whole allegiances, and not die. But even just a moderately good mage could take on a few of these super players, and while he might not stand much of a chance of killing them, he would at least have a very fun fight. Putting runcast back in on darktide might not be viable, as there are already many melee characters, and it probably would ruin them (unless melees were given better sticky, and arrows made to fly faster or something). But on a new server where everybody is starting from scratch it would be amazingly popular. The fights would be awesome, and everything about it would be fun, very fun!
Misc. improvements
Portal tie/recall/summon 2 should be removed, but people should be able to summon last portal.
Portal gems for master mages should cost a lot more, forcing people to use 1 of there ties if they want to use a master mage regularly.
Spell research should be put back in. If it was too easy before with all the programs that were out, fix it please.
Recall timer while in a fight is horrible. It’s no fun dying to a group of 30 people, why make it impossible to get away?
Perfect PvP? What is it?
Well when many people talk of making pvp perfect they speak of making it balanced. I don’t believe perfectly balanced pvp is what perfect pvp is. Perfect PvP is FUN pvp. It needs to be exciting, hard, and thrilling. These are things that are difficult to achieve in a game as old as AC. AC is at the point now where everybody knows the game mechanics, and if there is a new dungeon somewhere it’s posted on 50 different websites, and anybody can find it in a matter of hours. Getting the excitement of not knowing what is coming next is very hard, and even after a patch that has an giant quest involved, most of the time the average darktider doesn’t care about it at all, and the only reason they do would be because they can get an item that is helpful in pvping. I have some ideas on what a very very fun pvp situation would be. First of all a new server would help this along a lot, but it would be very possible to implement on darktide.
We need a varying environment. Currently in AC when dungeons are added they seem to be permanent. Places like AL and VOD make leveling far too easy. XP chains aren’t what ruined leveling; it was places like AL and vod, where the base XP in parts of it is over 20 or 30 mil an hour. Places like those might not be unbalancing if they didn’t stay around for very long, or were truly hard to get to, but as it is they make leveling far to easy.
How should this be done?
AL should be removed as the #1 possibility, or as #2, all dungeons need to be made tieable. Making the dungeons tieable and summonable would encourage people to fight for them, and would allow a guild to own a single dungeon rather than having to own the whole island to really be able to hunt there.
VOD I think should be removed. If not removed it should be on an island with a quest based recall spell rather than in the middle of the direlands where anybody can easily get to it. There are numerous reasons for this but the main one is to make it something guilds will have to fight over, and actively focus on controlling to be able to use it. This encourages the most exciting type of pvp; fighting with purpose.
The best olthoi dungeons should have quests involved in getting into them, or even finding the portal. Something like the old virindi shroud dungeon would be very cool to do with them. They should be tieable to people who have done the quest, but not summonable.
Uber towns need to be put in. We don’t need new towns; just make a few towns really good for PK’s. I would suggest doing the direland towns, because they were traditionally good, and Kara, because it’s remote. These towns should have equal sell and buy rates, and a master mage.
NO SAFE ZONES. This I cannot stress enough. At the very least it should be possible to “kill” the house barriers, but I think it would be better to remove them completely.
Why this is so important?
Safe zones take away from the rough environment on darktide. Part of the fun in darktide is having to be ready at all times to be attacked, or being scared that at any minute you could be attacked.
Runcast. I dislike arguing for this, as turbine removed it because it was an exploit. However as much as I hate arguing for it, it was THE thing that made oldschool pvp so fun. I played a melee back then, and don’t get me wrong, I didn’t get many kills on high level mages. Of course I was level 20 when there were level 80 mages running around, so I didn’t stand much of a chance against them with or without runcast, but I still had a lot of fun. Runcast is what made the old darktide supermen. All mages could fight vs. 10 people, and the good ones could live long enough to kill 1 or 2 people before recalling, but the best could take on whole allegiances, and not die. But even just a moderately good mage could take on a few of these super players, and while he might not stand much of a chance of killing them, he would at least have a very fun fight. Putting runcast back in on darktide might not be viable, as there are already many melee characters, and it probably would ruin them (unless melees were given better sticky, and arrows made to fly faster or something). But on a new server where everybody is starting from scratch it would be amazingly popular. The fights would be awesome, and everything about it would be fun, very fun!
Misc. improvements
Portal tie/recall/summon 2 should be removed, but people should be able to summon last portal.
Portal gems for master mages should cost a lot more, forcing people to use 1 of there ties if they want to use a master mage regularly.
Spell research should be put back in. If it was too easy before with all the programs that were out, fix it please.
Recall timer while in a fight is horrible. It’s no fun dying to a group of 30 people, why make it impossible to get away?