Comment on The Future of PvP Article here.

[Ibn]

The Future of PvP (http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=216)

[Seriphyn]

"Our vision for AC’s PvP can be summed up in one sentence: Improve upon the positive and eliminate the negative."

wow, considering the thing that the avergage players views as the most negative are your changes...

"This is perhaps the most long-term issue to resolve. It is clear that the PvP community, Darktide in particular, wants something to fight over. We have just scratched the surface with our town revisions (putting Lifestones in towns) and the PK battle dungeons in the February event. We would like to add more things to fight over, with better and more tangible rewards."

Shoushi saw no increase in fighting... The PK battle dungeon holds no reward that you can't find at say candeth. So basically you added nothing that the players feel was worth fighting over.



If I recall, you said this would be out after the Dev chat. Obviously it's a lil late. The thing that disgusts me the most is you make this lil page talking about the few things that we said we wanted in a post in which you asked what we wanted, and yet we get **** that we don't.

Lures/brittlemail, I'd say 90%+ of Darktide doesn't approve of these changes. We asked for less ways to dispell, not more.

So tell me, please, that this is a joke. I mean tell me that everytime you post this **** that you and the dev team sit back and chuckle at the upcomming responses. Please tell us something that can make us understand, because for now, we're still baffled at these changes and how you can be so far off base and not be upfront and honest with us even though it's your job.

[Immortal_Haze]

"In the end, we want PvP in AC to be fun. If it’s fun, we’ll enjoy designing for it, and we’ll all enjoy playing it. "

Ibn, I can't honestly say I understand the reasoning behind the spellwords change. I always fight mage vs mage at extremely close distances and the only time I get hit is if the guy casts a bolt when I'm playing arc or an arc when I'm playing bolt. I fight melees daily that can dodge 80% of my spells when they *don't* know what's coming...so now we're gonna up that to 95% they dodge while dealing constant powerful damage? You say you want to make PvP more fun but when a good melee can already kill me and you've just given them the tools to utterly destroy me *REGARDLESS of my own skill level*, you've just put the fun factor about a chill 39 below 0.

[Dzipt]

Seriphyn hit the nail square on the head. I'm still sitting here trying to contemplate what was going through your guys' minds when you added this.

What's sad is, I was defending this. Now that I've tested it, I'm utterly disgusted. As it is now, I'm temporarily cancelling my subscription (I have no desire to play) until all this **** gets sorted out. Hopefully it's sooner than later, I loved AC up until March 10th, 2004, and I will surely miss it.

[Ros]

"Other planned changes include the upgrades to “second-class” weapons and adjustments to the damage-over-time of the PvP weapon suites. We are also looking at the possibility of creating PvP-specific imbues for loot weapons. It is our goal that, for example, a melee who wants to take part in PvP combat has options beyond “Weeping Sword or nothing”. To that end, we plan to adjust the Weeping, Hollow, and Phantom weapons.

We are looking at ways to improve the low-end weapons in PvP, as well as improve the Hollow and Phantom weapons, without significantly impacting their balance in PvM play. The goal is for Hollow and Phantom weapons to be viable alternatives to Weeping weapons, and for other melee weapon groups to be viable alternatives to Sword. Sword will still be strongest, but the gap between it and the other weapon groups will be decreased.

It needs to be stated plainly: It may be necessary to decrease the damage of the Weeping Sword. Our current damage-over-time charts, as well as in-game experiences, indicate that it may be slightly stronger than intended. "




thanks Ibn.
Ros

[Seriphyn]

Touch it, just touch it. Get in here and get messy without ignoring us Ibn.

Earn your damn paycheck.

[Ghent]

I think this is best addressed through metaphor.

Turbine is a doctor working on the patient that is AC1 PVP. What is its first imperative?

The answer has existed since time immemorial:

"First, do no harm."

Despite this ancient admonition, Turbine has cracked open the patient's chest without anesthesia, and its patient is going to either bleed to death or die of shock.

And if that happens, all the other cures you have in place are meaningless.

Turbine, you have wrecked PVP in the name of curing it. You are going down the wrong road. Stop, backtrack, and start over.

[Xantcha]

"In the case of Arcs, we want to continue to reward players who recognize the spell words used by their opponents and adjust accordingly."

Do you really think anyone would *not* recognize the spellwords and adjust accordingly? You're not rewarding only observant players, you're making combat that much more boring and difficult for all mages. Players knowing what's coming at them removes much of the skill from mage pvp, as you've been told numerous times. Even if they're not particularly observant, they can always get a plugin that spams *An ARC is being casted on you by XXX* and have no problems not getting hit, ever. Most of the rest of the letter is fine, but don't accidentally take the skill out of the game when making it into your vision.

[Rim]

Please remove the lures and loathers until more of these issues can be ironed out.

[Rim]

Oh, and remember myself, Jojji, Al Neo and a ton of other long term players telling you when you made weeping swords more powerful last fall that they didn't nee it ?

Now you're saying that you think swords are too powerful.

Please listen us.

[Seriphyn]

The thing that gets my goat too on this is when weepings were first introduced they did not hesitate to knock down weeping bow damage even though the vast majority of people consider archers to be the weakest link in pvp.

Yet they did not hesitate to take the damage down, now they think sword hits too hard (even after people have told them so) and they upped weeping damage recently.

I hope they're enjoying these changes, I hope they're getting some sort of comedic value out of it all.

[Rim]

Also :)

Removing jump spin will increase the damage over time for melee weapons.

Increasing the ability to stick will incease the damage over time for melee weapons.

Those are good changes with last months mechanics, but not with lured armor.

[Aztek]

"Aegis-like equipment. Our current design is an item that could be used on any loot missile weapon to add a Magic Absorbing property to it. This property would be similar to the Aegis Shield and would scale based on the wielder’s Magic Defense. The downside is that the missile weapon would lose any melee defense adjustment that it might possess. Also, obviously, one would need to choose between this weapon and one’s Weeping Bow, Crossbow, or Atlatl"

The only weapon an archer has that can hope to do any damage is his weeping bow. If I replace it with a a loot bow that I manage to drop an Imbue on the mage will be laughing at me as I tickle him for 15 a pop. Make this item usable on a piece of armor/jewelry and it will be worth it.

[Janusz]

please remove the option to debuff armor and weeping weapons completely.

that just adds to the annoying factor in pvp.

[Dougie]

Well I honestly think pvp is better since as mentioned in the letter there exists more variety in fights.

Oh sure most of you prefer vuln and some kind of instakill but I for one think these changes are fine.

Though I would agree on lowering melee damage some.

My only plea would be to add more meaningful places in Darktide to fight over and prioritize it over fixing current bugs.

[Seriphyn]

I over looked the wording on that part, but he is absolutely correct.

Also, there's multiple reports coming in from IG right now that you can lure/brittlemail people while they're in portal space.

[Ros]

"Also, there's multiple reports coming in from IG right now that you can lure/brittlemail people while they're in portal space."



ack!!! so NOT cool

[Ainvar]

Yeah this patch kills any char type but melee... You say you want to promote divirsity in pvp...yet the only way to counter someone casting a lure on my bp is to weild a sheild?

I'm confused...

[Kharnish]

I agree, luring armor is a ridiculous counter to loathering weapons... just the same as loathering weapons was a ridiculous counter to overpowered weeping weapons! Seriously, instead of trying to counter an existing problem, try fixing the ACTUAL problem.

IMO, weeping weapons in general sucked right from the get go, and it's just become a waste of time fighting anyone these days. You need to cast more and more spells on someone to even have a fighting chance.. and with everything doing sooo much damage now, the actual fighting is just boring!

[Haus der Liebe]

"As I wrote earlier, the proposals that I’ve listed above are not set in stone. Your feedback will help us prioritize and update these ideas to better match what it is that you want to see in AC." - I truely hope so ..

as for the lures .. what little time i spent IG .. i figured rather quickly to simply hotkey my BP .. no BP is better than a lured BP when in mage mode and casting as a melee ..

as for a mage v melee .. leave your bp off until they pull out there sword ..

if you have multiple attackers/casters .. use gems .. lots of gems :D

and the only real problem i see with lures atm is the ability to cast them on someone while they're in portal space

[Chubasco]

Looks good on paper, but as everyone knows it is the execution that matters.

Thanks for finally taking a stand on Fast & Delay casting! Yet another reaffirmation of cancelling my account being the right thing to do.

[Falconoffury]

Loathered weapons and lures would make sense if they can be dispelled. We have to sit for months with partial fixes that hurt us rather than help us.

Your long term plans make sense. There's a counter to any debuff, and any situation. I just don't like having to wait for months through a partial fix.

[Nya13]

Pathing options. We would like to introduce a new pathing type for missile attacks. War Mages have the ability to choose between Bolts and Arcs for the purposes of targeting, whereas missile users have only one option. Any new option would likely be either through some sort of option in the attack bar, or through a new form of ammunition

Good. I am agree.
Every body do not use Decal and plugins that help them to play.
(all this babys that could not pvp without plugins and hacks)

Armor Debuffs

Sorry for you poor babys!!!
BUT it's probably the best add in the PvP system on AC.

*******

Keep working Turbine.
and IN PARTICULAR ON THIS :
because people don't fight for this battle dungeons (maybe could be used to duel/tourney only).

Lack of Meaningful Fights
This is perhaps the most long-term issue to resolve. It is clear that the PvP community, Darktide in particular, wants something to fight over. We have just scratched the surface with our town revisions (putting Lifestones in towns) and the PK battle dungeons in the February event. We would like to add more things to fight over, with better and more tangible rewards.

However, it is in our best interests to resolve the other issues listed above before we create meaningful combat goals and rewards. So this may be one of the last issues we resolve. As we work on it, we will ask you for your feedback on our ideas and proposals.

Lag
A frequently mentioned issue for the Darktide community is the subject of lag. We receive frequent reports that lag on Darktide is worse than on any other server. We are always working to resolve any server-side lag issues that we find, in addition we are working on adding improved performance monitoring to our servers. When this is completed our ability to diagnose and resolve any server-side issues should be greatly improved.

[hanyuning]

Two suggestions for better PvP.
Keep in mind I don't play DT or PK in any form, but just thinking from a gameplay option what might work.

1. Housing Barriers:
Change them to "good" dispell barriers. So if someone enters your house to kill you, they will get some good spells removed, from item, critter and life. Call it the home-field advantage. "You come in my house to kill me, you're gonna be hurting, but at least I can't hide in my house anymore"

2. New skill:No-words
Mages could take a new skill that would allow them a chance to not have to use the words to cast spells. This would be a skill check sort of like mana conversion, or maybe even be able to jumble the words, Would have to work out a way to make sure third party apps couldn't read this information though. Not sure if they read the words or the spell is in the stream of data, but that would be neat.

Just my suggestion.

Yours in Dereth,
Han Yu-Ning
Proud member of Fist de Yuma

[Dedicatedplayer]

one thing that is despised in dt is inepts, and if you give us more inepts to have to cast for every debuff they cast on us, the fight is gunna suck.
the only thing i agree with is the jump spin issue, because it was awsome back in the day when you could jump on roof tops to get away from peeps.
that was my favorite way to fight, roof hopping, mainly cuz its like the movies and no other rpg game had that type of dynamics. it would also be a reason to jack up jump skill.
turbine plz rethink your "way too short for a few months" plan:(

[DracheDesAngst]

Balance issues. While Mage / Sword balance is very tight, the other melee classes and archers are currently less competitive. There is still a wide gap between the Weeping Weapons and all other weapons and weapon classes in PvP combat

Ibn, is this a joke?

There's nothing close about melees and mages. I'd suggest you get that new testing team to work on the numbers and they'll show you reality. Mages are a dead class on DT at the moment for PVP. Better yet get real players to show you guys how one sided the game has become. I keep saying why is everyone ditching their mage to become swordsmen?

Our armour is like tissue paper to weepings even after blood loathe. Plus everyone is carrying 2-4 weeping on them so blood loathe isn't an answer. Plus a DarkTide melee will see the spell name and put the weapon away and be right back on top of the mage. Oh cast it again.. excuse me.. that's what a melee wants, melee vs. mage is a mana exhaustion game for the melee.

Our war spells are too predictable and long in the windup animation compared to a melee whacking in speed mode.

Why do I have to cast 100 wars to achieve a hit even with streaks? The targetting algorithm was written by someone who has no idea of the effects of lag or physics of movement. How come I can take a level 1 character and have a level 126 mage attack with wars and the lvl 1 can avoid them. Come'on admit the truth this is completely wrong and needs to have a coder (not a manager) with real-time development address the problem.

Additionally, the introduction of the aegis pretty much destroyed mages ability to kill melees. Since lvl 7 spell against a melee will now do approximately 100 - 130 points of damage. I have to make 3 - 4 impossible hits with a war to achieve a kill. Excuse me, but your statement make me believe you have no idea of game dynamics.

Let's not talk about life spells given that drains are virtually useless in PVP combat and only demonstrates someone who has no experience on the DarkTide world. Even in hunting most of the life spells are useless, for example:

Spell Drain Drain
Level Health Mana
7 90 90
6 112 112
5 120 120
4 100 100

The above are the amounts drained by my lvl 160 mage (life skill 430) on caul where I'm draining maximum allowable amounts given the monsters have mana and health over 1000 points. If I use a life spell in PvP its worthless in returning health and a melee will inflict 3 times more damage during the spell animation than I receive back. Even during hunting level 7 drains are worthless given the time, cost of casting the spell (mana drains) and the amount returned.

Note: I didn't include Heart Rend given that is nerfed to the point being a ridiculous spell.

Frankly, I don't believe the development staff has enough playing time or actual experience with how people use your software. I do believe you should have actual players testing the software before you inflict these changes upon us.

Drache
DarkTide Mage (a dead character class)

[SarChasm]

Lack of meaningful fights. By this we mean battles that have consequences, whether that is control of a location or resource, or some sort of recognizable achievement such as placement on a PK ladder. Left with this void, players on Darktide have created their own resources to fight over – macroing locations.???????????? !!!


Could have sworn macros were absolute No no's.

[Ifuritah]

I'm pretending this patch didn't happen and will play in April instead. When PvP get addressed some more - perhaps something might get fixed.

Lack of meaningful fights. By this we mean battles that have consequences, whether that is control of a location or resource, or some sort of recognizable achievement such as placement on a PK ladder. Left with this void, players on Darktide have created their own resources to fight over – macroing locations.???????????? !!!

Eeh...if they banned the DT macroers I think they would only have like 20 players left on that server lol.

[Slpoheklmnuov]

This is some kind of bad joke, right?

You should've left weepings unenchantable, you should've left BPs unenchantable (heh two problems solved right there, no imbalance), You should bother to improve archery pathing, and you should not plan to nerf sword damage at all. The wiggle still works for mages and melees against an archer. it should never work like that.

Leave sword damage how it is and stop mages for hitting for 90 through wards and aegis... oh wait, that doesn't matter anymore, since a melee can just wiggle when they see zojak or *******JOE IS CASTING A BOLT AT YOU******* and run in a circle when they see *******JOE IS CASTING AN ARC AT YOU***** or kedrack. I've played a melee before (pre aegis and ward gsx too) and even though I hardly played one (originally, of course I played more and got better) I still had no problem dodging war magic when they were both zojak. Archers? Heh, when they can get hit for 90 with war too then they'll definitely never die, but then again since you can't fix them too, they'll never kill anyone either.

The BP thing doesn't help much to an archer since they still can't debuff a melee's BP but a melee can debuff theirs. Good archer nerf there. mage mages semi useless this patch and archers even more useless than they already were... it shouldn't make sense, but I forgot, this is Asheron's Call phase 2, where we charge more to screw with your heads.

[Signalerror]

Ibn, if your reading this post please take a second to reflect what you have done.

First off, mages are now usefull for only 2 thing as of the patch.
1. Cannon fodder for archers and melee.
2. Healers.
Thats it ibn.

But I find it kinda ironic that you introduce the lowered buff times, seeing as im having to rebuff more due to a higher rate of deaths. Woo, now i fizzle even faster due to vitea! *sarcasum*

Im sorry ibn but half of the ideas for "Helping" dt are just going to drive it into the dirt even further.

QUOTE :
"Balance issues. While Mage / Sword balance is very tight, the other melee classes and archers are currently less competitive. There is still a wide gap between the Weeping Weapons and all other weapons and weapon classes in PvP combat."

Well you seemed to have balanced it already. Just Brittle/lure then hit the mage with anything, *BOOM* dead. Doesnt matter if its mace, axe, sword, ua, staff, bow, Xbow, just *boom* dead.

QUOTE :
"Lack of meaningful fights. By this we mean battles that have consequences, whether that is control of a location or resource, or some sort of recognizable achievement such as placement on a PK ladder. Left with this void, players on Darktide have created their own resources to fight over – macroing locations."

We created? No ibn thats the nature of the game. We hunt to live by keeping xp and $ flowing. What a better way to harm somone then to stop them from gaining xp and $ by stalking them where they hunt. EVEN IF towns were still "hotspots" we would still see conflict over hunting locations. Sorry ibn but once agian, your in the dark.

QUOTE :
"This last paragraph speaks to a number of recent changes – banes should be able to be countered with an appropriate lure, and Blood Drinker should be able to be countered with Blood Loather. Negative spells should be able to be countered with dispels."

Mana for a Brittlemail 6? - 20-40 a cast. And can be cast multiple times with only the amount of mana pots or pris limiting the amount of cast attempts.
Cost of dispelling said brittlemail?
- Lots of mana + Chorizite potion if you use the dispelling spell.
- Lots of gathering and alchemy work to make chorizite potions. (pretty shure this works on armor)
- Gems take alot of time to gather and lots of packspace to hold any reasonable amount. (Not 100% shure if this works on armor yet)

CLEARLY their is no decent way to counter these debuffs other then to wear a cov bp or a olthoi armor bp. Both can drop on death and both do poor jobs of dealing with any form of damage.
As a side effect, any armor but celdon tops or Koujia tops are now useless for a mage. OH AND FORGET ABOUT ROBES, one cast and your wearing nothing but wet toilet paper.

Thanks to your "insight" and "visions" for DT, combat has boiled down to nothing but melee vs melee with archers and mages playing support.

QUOTE :
Issues to Resolve:

Jump-Spin. More on this below.
“Godmoding” potions and food.
Getting around the PK jumping stamina loss. (The Jump-Spin resolution may make this a non-issue.)
Animation-breaking issues not listed above. This is the catch-all for lesser-used animation-breaking actions or ones not discovered or reported yet.

Lets see, all of those things were the things that let a mage stand toe to toe with a melee.

QUOTE : In the end, we want PvP in AC to be fun. If it’s fun, we’ll enjoy designing for it, and we’ll all enjoy playing it. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and let us know what you think!

If you wanted PvP to be fun you had to do nothing. PvP was already a rush and was worth the lag and trouble of DT.

"and let us know what you think!"

Here is what I think...

For the first time in my life, im sad to see Microsoft leave the picture. Im think that they had the forsight to keep you in check. I can only pray you dont deepsix DT.

[Blau]

There's one minor problem. I think your problem description is dead on. The problem is that the ability for people to have "skill" beyond just the numbers (something you list in the "good" column) is a result of things like fast-casting, spin-casting, and other in-game mechanisms that provide for "skill". If you kill one, you kill the other.

Throw out the bath water, not the baby.

[WheelsTC]

Oh ya... rather than *****ing to you about something being broken I decided to try to help figure out a way to fix jump spinning.

The only solution i could think of at the moment (i'll keep thinking)
Is perhaps a spell like a ring spell that would maybe stop the melees attack for XXX amount of time. Something short; like a lvl VII spell would be 4 seconds or less.

For a melee/archer to break sticky perhaps you could make something like a gem of stillness that when used would do the same ring spell. Put these gems on a timer of course so they can't be used constantly. A timer of 10-15 seconds i think would be sufficient enough.

Anyways i'm just trying to brainstorm here.

[Sabu]

Originally posted by hanyuning
Two suggestions for better PvP.
Keep in mind I don't play DT or PK in any form, but just thinking from a gameplay option what might work.

2. New skill:No-words
Mages could take a new skill that would allow them a chance to not have to use the words to cast spells. This would be a skill check sort of like mana conversion, or maybe even be able to jumble the words, Would have to work out a way to make sure third party apps couldn't read this information though. Not sure if they read the words or the spell is in the stream of data, but that would be neat.

Just my suggestion.

Yours in Dereth,
Han Yu-Ning
Proud member of Fist de Yuma

I was gonna say this would kill melees but after word changes...Im gona try what was suggested earlier... dont wear a Bp til a sword it out.( though it does **** in ganks)

[WheelsTC]

Well once one BP is debuffed replace is with another BP

Theres so many strategies to get around this.

[WheelsTC]

One more thing

To all the people who are whining that mages are useless.

Go check PK hunter for DT

I'm pretty sure everyone in the top ten is a mage. Maybe pk hunter isn't TRUE representation of DT but i think that does say something.

[Ghent]

Originally posted by SarChasm
Lack of meaningful fights. By this we mean battles that have consequences, whether that is control of a location or resource, or some sort of recognizable achievement such as placement on a PK ladder. Left with this void, players on Darktide have created their own resources to fight over – macroing locations.???????????? !!!


Could have sworn macros were absolute No no's.

I'm pretty sure that list is cut and paste from other posts. There was a thread a while back when they asked for feedback on what was good and bad about DT pvp.

In fact, a lot of the language looks verrry familiar to me... :P

[R3bb]

Looks good. I liked what I saw in the article.

[Sabu]

Originally posted by mesc
Nya13


Registered: Feb 2004
Location:
Posts: 69
Pathing options. We would like to introduce a new pathing type for missile attacks. War Mages have the ability to choose between Bolts and Arcs for the purposes of targeting, whereas missile users have only one option. Any new option would likely be either through some sort of option in the attack bar, or through a new form of ammunition

Good. I am agree.
Every body do not use Decal and plugins that help them to play.
(all this babys that could not pvp without plugins and hacks)

Armor Debuffs

Sorry for you poor babys!!!
BUT it's probably the best add in the PvP system on AC.




WTF.
Are you as stupid as you sound?

Amen

[Sabu]

Originally posted by WheelsTC
One more thing

To all the people who are whining that mages are useless.

Go check PK hunter for DT

I'm pretty sure everyone in the top ten is a mage. Maybe pk hunter isn't TRUE representation of DT but i think that does say something.

Pk hunter is not a very good tracker.( Well i s'pose most Dters use it? so there might be an exception on DT)

[Blau]

I have three points to make:

1. Housing barriers serve a purpose, don't mess with them.
2. If you're going to mess with them, don't break them entirely.
3. Whatever changes you make, make them for everyone.

Supporting arguments:

Housing barriers are important:

a. There are times even on darktide when you have to deal with issues other than someone beating you down. Phone call, kid falls out of bed, neighbor comes to the door. Today I can head "home" and buff up using Nerfus Buffus II (thank god) while I deal with these RL issues. Even if I'm not buffing, there's a conversation going on in game that I want to stay in touch with and I don't want to logout. Take down the housing barrier, and suddenly I *have* to logout. I'm less encouraged to log back in.

b. Some characters were never meant to see a battle ground. Trade mules, tinkerers, etc. Not only that, but also the gear they need to carry is valuable stuff (major armor tinkering, major focus, etc). Tinkerers in particular are often loaded down with stuff. They don't have room for Death Items. They're not buffed except to tinker. If you take barriers down, not only will the tinkerers go underground, but this will also discourage social interaction. Right now getting things tinkered is one of the main reasons to hook up with people at the mansion. With the nerfage of XP chains, you need to keep the reasons people congregate together. We all know that the social connections people make in the game keep the game viable.

c. On Darktide we don't have a marketplace. The reason is simple. Your trade bot will get killed. The only place this can happen is at the mansion. Destroy the mansion protection, and you destroy many reasons people go there including to trade with people in your guild.

d. Buff bots can only really happen effectively at a mansion or villa where people in the allegiance can recall to. Take down these barriers, and you'll kill the buff bots. Kill the buff bots, and your stream of new players will be discouraged.

e. Some people like PvP, but they're not hard core. Some people are on DT because their friends are there, not because they enjoy PvP necessarily. The mansion is the one place for them to go to try on their carebear quest item. They're not meant for PvP. They won't provide a challenge to anyone. All that's going to happen is that you'll discourage some folks from playing.

Also very important in this debate is the effectiveness of taking down the barriers. Why do people want the barriers to come down? It's primarily because they want a place to be able to conquer and vanquish their enemies. This used to happen at the lifestones around dereth. Now it happens in macro hunting grounds, but people also want to go to the mansion and kill all the people there.

Unfortunately, taking down the barriers won't solve this problem. Once you take down the barriers, most people that currently use the mansion will stop using it. Sure, you will be able to raid a mansion, but nobody will be there. You've just accomplished absolutely nothing except to annoy people that like the protection of the allegiance hall.

If you're going to do something to the mansion, you need to accommodate for people that don't want to get ganked. They'll just quit. Not only will they quit, but others will quit as well because the allegiance isn't as fun as it used to be and their friends are gone.

Lastly, if you're going to make changes, you need to be fair. You can't take down my barrier and leave someone else's up. Not only is it simply unfair, but also you're just going to drive people to using the cottages (or whatever) where the barriers still exist. Mansions and Villas will be ghost towns and you won't have accomplished anything but to annoy many of your players.

[Sparkitup]

You gys have thoroughly destroyed PvP on Darktide, I have never, ever seen such a display of total incompetence by supposed "professionals" such as this patch and the addition of MORE ways to dispell, WONDERFULL MORE WAYS TO DISPELL



I just got in a fight with a melee, my mage is not psec resist so his lure landed easily on myab base al 452+ impen 7 + so buffed 672 celdon bp, +20 from supreme rainment. I also have major frost ward greeves and the melee crit me for 258 in the chest, ty guys for a wonderful 4 years. Im cancelling my subscription till this problem is removed or fixed. Seriously I have no idea what could have allowed this change to take place. I don;t know if you hired people who don't play or dont test but there was no need for this, absolutely no need, you have destroyed DT in one fell swoop. Unless your point of this patch was to force so many people to cancell their DT acocunt so that you could take the world down people should be fired for such a pathetic product this month

[Rojon]

Originally posted by Ibn
Legitimate Tactics:

Player-controlled casting times – the current “fastcasting” and “delay casting”. However if a new form of fastcasting emerges that would allow players to rapid-fire spells beyond that which is currently seen, it would likely be considered an issue to resolve.
Its fine that you've now legitimized these exploits.

Just be aware that by showing players its acceptable to cheat, you've now encouraged them to try to get away with more.

For what its worth you've also closed Darktide to any of my friends that quit a couple years ago from ever returning.

Ce la vie...

[Verio]

Well, I logged on today with my level 119 archer on DT and about 15 mins into running around Shoushi SE.. I find a melee. Figured I was fully buffed and baned and had enough DI's to see what this luring was all about. Hmm.. I get lured and brittlemailed.. figured *shrug* I got Al 640 armor on chest i should be okay.

Yeah now heres the BS flag.. I got 2 shotted. I have 400 melee D which is pretty sucky for level 119 archer but its only trained and such, but 2 shots on a relatively same level sword char? You have to be kidding me. Frankly ill be leveling completely until the next patch. You have taken the fun levle out of DT for me totally. Im in the military and I only get a few hours of actual play time in, and usually Im PKIng.. and even though sword is WAY overbalanced in comparison, Ive always held my own. Now its impossible.

So yeah, the response is I can lure and such my own right? Well yes I can. But then again sword is so fast and deals so quick I die just as quick. Im not magic D spec'd so when I get resisted once on a lure all the melee had to do was whip out Aegis and make it impossible for me to lure him, Ibn, Turbine, whoever... how is this fair? How come I cant have a "shield" that is resistable" while I attack others? Hmm maybe its supposed to be balanced like this, I guess fights are meant to be ended in 2 shots now.

If this is the future of what PVP is, then I am done. I was willing to try this patch out but this is ridiculous.

[Genji-Glove]

The only change that I think is stupid is the spell word thing. Any (person) can learn the difference between zojak and kazaboom or whatever it is.

Fights were way more fun when you had to be quick to react to a bolt or an arc AFTER it was shot instead of knowing whats coming ahead of time and going for 1 of the 2 dodging techniques that avoids that spell.

Furthermore, you have made it impossible to kill a melee. After a melee is hit once all they have to do is run and dodge with zczc or just full sidestep according to the spell that is cast. Even if you do hit the melee character 2 times by some fluke, he will most likely take the second hit unless you get 2 REALLY high hits like 180+ which doesnt happen much with aegis shields.

[-jz]

since fastcast, delaycast and slidecast are all, officially, features now, please document them.

oh, 2 requests. please install a permanent test server. where we test new props, minus the content of course, one month ahead of time.
not a PK one, just regular. if people want to test pvp they can just go red.

JeTze

[Jet-eye-nite]

maybe you should of just said " want a cookie" and go about what your going to do anyway . "pfft"

[Auroara]

We dont need the Lures Devs, get rid of them please. PvP is all Sword and Shield now.

[Ros]

I like you're "vision" for the mostpart, but we have to get some things straight here.

The Lures would have been great in 99, and even 2003 pre-damage inflation. But your reason for the Damage inflation was banes, first and foremost- trying to bring the damages on-par with War.

As I've been a strong advocate for the ability of Luring an opponents worn armor - I can't fault you on adding the mechanic.

BUT! Some very key things need to be addressed in association with that.

First : Darktide never had a problem targetting the opponents shield. Most of us could do it manually with our Mouse and some preferred to Click an Icon in some decal window - whatever. Weapons were the same. UA was obviously harder to target because of its speed - nevertheless, those of us who practiced at it enough to do it good manually - took genuine pride in our abliity to do just that. It was a skill. That said, I think diverting Lures from Breastplate to shield is a ridiculous idea - and quite frankly, a slap in the face for most Archers. (I've been leveling one lately, too - anticipating a revival.) Archers had similar problems to Melees - not being able to even "phase" a fullbaned mage. Let us target the wielded weapons ourselves to do that - let the "Targetted opponent's Armor" get lured. One solution for both problems.

---sidenote: and that was only HALF of the problems archers dealt with prior to Weeping bows. Shields, in their current form, give FAR too much advantage to a Melee. They should increase Missile Defense used to deflect arrows - they should increase melee defense as used to parry/deflect blows - the should increase Magic defense, based on the "size" of the spell, perhaps in relationship to the shield - to "Block" smaller bolts. In NO WAY is it logical anymore, or feasable to "absorb" damage. There are melee's in the game now without Melee defense, I would say "exploiting" the shield-factoring to take on more skills. Who needs Melee defense when you have a portable wall you can bane? why get Missile defense for the same reason?

Second: The Damage inflation. Do you remember why Swords were previously maxed at 8-16? There was a direct correlation to Warmagic Damage - the only difference in their computation, as I understand it - was that Armor factored in that could reduce the effect of said damage. If we had these lures THEN, it would've been great. We would have whined about it some, no doubt as most of us in that era were barely knee-high to a mite level-wise and didn't have a whole lot of hit points. (figuratively speaking.) But today, we're here in a "Maxed" out end-game scenario where the average Hit points with cantrips, and other implements - winds up around 350-400 hit points for mages, and 280-320 Hit points for typical Melee's (Those who couldn't afford 100 Endurance at the expense of other important skill-supported stats.) While this might be a considered a "reason" for keeping inflated damages - I would have to disagree. People are fond of PK for its "Epic battles". Epic battles are not so epic when people die in one-shot, or 2 - but "Real" fighting occurs before there is a final outcome in which *time* is given to explore tactics, and obstacles. (roof jumping for one.) "Epic" battles happened then, NOT because one person could kill in .2 seconds - but because the "time" provided us ample room to change tactic mid-fight. Time to think wether I was casting the right spell at the right time.

now, that all said - counter-points welcomed, I think we *all* realize that at this point, the inflated damages are going to be the hardest thing to come-off of. It will effect all the other servers, and it will screw up all the work you did towards monster balance.

So I find myself wondering - if there might be a compromise, thats fits the bill- and budget on both sides. One alternative *could* be to tone down the effect of the Lures so that a 23-46 BD7 AR sword behaves more like an 8-16 AR sword under 7 Lures. (which means, essentially, making Lures a tad weaker then their Bane counterparts.) --not sure how the AR thing will pan out with Lures, either - honestly. havent tried yet. maybe its a concern too.

If that won't do - however, and if nerfing weapon-damages across the board is the only way to get us back-on-track, I can only advise you to tread very carefully. (Do not add one part, and not another. For such a sweeping change, the only way the player base could handle it, was if it happened "at once". Patch day came - "We're nerfing all weapons to bring them back in line with the Modern AC system. These excelerated damages were a temporary substitute for our lack of a proper Anti-bane mechanic. We've jumped that hurdle, and we're looking onward. Monsters are toned down to reflect these systems as well. Players hunting should not notice much of a difference in their overall hunting patterns, just that the damages will be lower, and the monsters health significantly lower."

As per the shield-thing... being able to brittle, and lure both Shield and Armor might help the Archer Equation against Melee's - however, I still am of the notion that magic defense mods on shields would go along way in helping melee's Magic def compete on a better than .5 scale. (because low level mages can still tag Melee's with War without great fear of resist.)

Natural resistances, and the Aegis combined make a serious buffer to War. People who were used to an All or None approach to their magics. There is no way to "counter" natural resistance, unless you plan to make it a specific Imbue that ignores them. As much as I despise drains sometimes, I almost wish you would remove natural resistance- especially now that it is more possible for a Melee to actually hurt a mage. As a Mage, the drain resistance was cool to start with - but with lures we're gonna need our Drains to function as best they can. Windup on the higher level drains included (making note of the new Drain ranges)

I've said alot. so I'll jump off my soapbox, and let it stew a bit.

thanks for reading -- sorry so long.
Ros

[Paco_Taco_TD]

War Magic 28 to spec

UA 6 to spec

sad I'm hitting full buffed/baned mages now for 50+ on speed, with 120 crits. full power crits 250+. I guess it makes sense in the dev's mind, after all this will revive ganking

their vision of pk - a mage debuffing the **** out of some poor shmoe's armor while he tries to cast a vuln on the melee whacking him for 100 a swing. Damn he's dead on to the next victim heh. Skill can't compensate for being totally nerfed and bent over by Turbine's wierd idea of balance where a skill that costs 1/4 a mage's does more damage. Don't even get me started on how archers still can't hit anyone
*clap*

[Ghent]

But it has.

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Bottom line is I no longer have any faith in this team. If they actually fix the problems, I may come back. But their promises to fix are -- by themselves -- worthless.

[Heideggar]

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LOL

I know you guys are trying, but I gotta do it. I needa knit pick and [relieve] on your PvP letter.

"The enormous amount of negative feedback regarding the March PvP changes reminded us of exactly what happens when we don’t come to the PvP community before implementing these changes."

Oh, hundreds of people saying what you're doing isn't good "reminds" you? What's that remind you of exactly? Perhaps OTHER times when you put things in the game that people didn't want? I'm glad it reminds you of other similar actions. I'd rather you stop being reminds and just relect on them for a while and not do them in the future. I'm sure that's what you guys wanna do, but you can take apologies and keep them to yourselves. I'd rather see something done than words on a website.

Some monarchs from other servers sent me PM's saying that they haven't received compensation for their mansion chest losses. How long ago was that? Hope this reminds you of that. Oh, I seriously did like the extras you gave me, and I think I'm one of the couple that were compensated. However, 1) I replaced ALL the items before you guys finally got around to it 2) It took forever just for my allegiance's stuff and our was the easiest list to complete 3) the extras you gave you end up nerfing in an upcoming patch. Sooooo, you can guess my heartfelt feelings towards your generosity. I know you don't have to, but it's just insulting when someone says they're gonna do something, act like they're being generous, when they know they aren't.


Lets continue with your letter, shall we?

"The current state of Asheron’s Call PvP is, in our opinion, very good, but nowhere near perfect."

If that's not the most contradictory statement I've heard today. Very good would put AC's PvP into the category of not lagging much due to your equipment (We understand you can't help it if the internet or viruses are going around), nearly all templates are balanced, fun and interesting dynamics and interaction. When you say "nowhere near perfect" that's the current stat of AC's PvP. Putting in small bits and pieces of some unknown bigger picture is like telling someone they have to drive to the other side of the town, but only giving them a major part of their car every month. Most people will take the buss, or get a ride from someone, than to wait around for the car to be built so they can have some fun. It's just not worth it. Maybe the analogy isn't the best, but I hope it gets through.


"Very few safe zones on Darktide. One of the hallmarks of Darktide is the knowledge that nowhere is “safe”. You can be attacked anywhere, at any time. The housing system has thrown a bit of a wrench in this, however."

I've said this for months and months and months. I posted it on ACvault, your old forums, and I'm pretty sure on these forums. I'm glad you're finally understanding PvP environments, especially those that made PvP memorable. The people who put in housing didn't understand this, and I'm actually surprised your PvP "expert" didn't figure this out long long long ago. While this has always hindered the PK scene. I guess eventually is better than never...!?!? I mean... it's a freaking "hallmark" of Darktide! How could you say this here and brush off not knowing about it!? You don't forget hallmarks! You're a developer! lol

"Balance issues. While Mage / Sword balance is very tight, the other melee classes and archers are currently less competitive. There is still a wide gap between the Weeping Weapons and all other weapons and weapon classes in PvP combat."

lol, Mage/Sword balance WAS tight, not very tight. You guys need to remember that there should be tradeoffs due to skill credits spent on things. A weapon may be cheaper to specialize, but you get more credits to spend on magic, and vice versa. It's not the gap between the damage of the weapon itself as much as the benefit of other options people have with these extra skill credits. Some people would love to play a spear person, but do as well in PvP. That's fine, but a spear person doesn't spend as many credits to specialize, and can spend those extra credits on magic skills, or healing, or defenses. Your answers to this are more likely in increasing benefits of other skills than increase the weapon itself.

Ex. Taking spear instead of sword allows the spear user to specialize healing skill. Spec'd healing skill allows a higher skill to heal, but some inate bonus to heal for more, or at a better success. Hey, maybe allow certain health kits to be found/made easily, and only useable by people with spec'd healing. It'd sure allow a spear person to keep attacking at their slightly lower damage. Eh? think about it.

"Animation issues. The same system that makes AC’s combat feel realistic has a number of problems. Jump-spin, “godmoding” potions and other consumables, fastcasting, slidecasting... these are just the top issues. This has been exacerbated by varied Dev Team response and a lack of communication regarding which, if any, of these actions are “acceptable” and which are “exploits”."

These exploits, cheats, hacks, whatever you wanna call them are what allows mages to even compete with high level melees and archers. Even more so now. You're pushing people into using these techniques the more you try balancing things with them still ingame. As long as they're ingame, and you don't do something about them, they'll be used. What's worse, is that they shouldn't be a necessity to compete in PvP. If they're viewed as cheats and exploits, honest people won't use them, putting them at a disadvantage, and thus not want to PK. It's not healthy all around.

Of course, on the other side of things. You could put in the old God-Moding and post an article saying that it's acceptable and tell people how it's done. I think it'd solve the sticky melee and casting-movement problems : )

"Lack of meaningful fights. By this we mean battles that have consequences, whether that is control of a location or resource, or some sort of recognizable achievement such as placement on a PK ladder. Left with this void, players on Darktide have created their own resources to fight over – macroing locations. "

Deal with the housing barriers, and this will start fixing itself. It'd start putting things the way they were meant to be. To improve upon this, would be to put something ingame to fight for. A PK ladder? no. It just sounds lame. We're #3 giggle. No. Sections of territory, towns, dungeons, NPCs, and things like this matter. Not a number on a sign. People used to fight over towns because of their sell rates. These territory battles lasted quite some time. There should be equal benefits for the time and effort MANY people are putting into this. Spend the time and mental effort to put something worth while in. Please don't just slap something ingame and cross your fingers. This issue is a huge issue for DT, and even white servers too. Doing it right the first time, and NOT IN BITS AND PIECES, is the way to go.

"One goal that we strive for is balanced group combat."

Well, seems like you're striving for numbers combat instead of group combat. Simply, if one group has a couple extra people to debuff weapons and armor, they will have a HUGE advantage over a smaller group. Maybe you don't like under-dogs. I dunno. There's a lot of issues with debuffing armor. Numbers speak volumns.

"For example, two melees and a mage should have an edge over three melees of a similar level. This edge should not be overwhelming – the three melees may be skilled enough to defeat their opponents – but we want to encourage diversity."

Here's another statement that is thrown out the window with the recent March '04 patch. 2 melees on a mage, that has armor debuffed... that mage is toast even with weapon debuffs. It's interesting that a melee or archer can run up real close to someone and not have their weapon out for debuffing, and shhhhh! I hear you can get more than one weeping weapon. So spare me your arguments about the current fighting tactics, because you guys don't play the game enough. You may talk, but I bet you can't walk. Live the life of a PK for months day in and day out, and figure something out. k?

"This is what we don’t want in Asheron’s Call. When you are attacked by a mixed group, you should not be able to know ahead of time exactly which tactics they will be using. There should be multiple equally effective tactical options, and each option should have an effective counter. This last paragraph speaks to a number of recent changes – banes should be able to be countered with an appropriate lure, and Blood Drinker should be able to be countered with Blood Loather. Negative spells should be able to be countered with dispels."

This is all fine and dandy, if ALL THESE WERE IN THE GAME! You apparently don't understand balance, because it takes an equal amount on one side to offset the other side so they become equal. Putting only part of that in the game (one side) UNBALANCES things. Good words, now just do something with them. Make post-its, I don't care. Lotta words, little action that counts.

"We are still considering much of the feedback that we’ve received on this topic, such as timers, speed of spellcasting, and stacking the gems."

add cost of mana, time to replenish the mana, and cost of components used to dispell (as in time and effort)

All I need is to finally get done casting that double-pump spell and be at 50 hp (out of 330) because my shiz got lured. Oh, I'll just stam to health quick... oh, 50 hp? wow, that'... dead! *knocks* hello?

[Heideggar]

"It needs to be stated plainly: It may be necessary to decrease the damage of the Weeping Sword. Our current damage-over-time charts, as well as in-game experiences, indicate that it may be slightly stronger than intended."

Didn't you guys increase sword damage a while ago? Anyways, reread my part above about other melee and missle weapon PvP help. There's more to PvP than just the damage dealt per hit. DoT is fine, but the Time in "Damage over Time" can be misleading. If I'm a mage hitting you as a sword person, over and over with 90% success, with war magic, your DoT is gonna be low as hell due to running around, dodging, healing, geming, whatever you can do to stay alive.

Keep in mind there are other ways to help people in PvP than just increasing a weapon's damage. Decreasing the damage done by another player, or increasing the ability to keep health up, are two ways to keep people in fights doing damage. THAT helps people in PvP fights, not just the damage. Mages buff, as do others, to stay in fights longer. More credits from a lower costing, and lower damage, weapon means skill credits put into other skills that could be helped to be more inline to help PvP'ers. Deception, assess person, healing skill, item, creature, etc. etc. be creative, but be smart while you're at it. Think outside the box, you own the company. It's ok to not do what's been done a hundreds times already.

"Safe Zones
This brings us to the topic of housing barriers on Darktide. There is strong feedback to do something about them, but the best solution may not be technically feasible for some time. We are looking at removing them altogether, only removing barriers from villas or mansions, or introducing some form of PK timer on the ability to pass through friendly barriers. One feature which we’ve seen requested – the ability to temporarily destroy a hostile housing barrier – is most likely not something we can add to the game anytime in the near future.

This issue is still in discussion internally, and we value any feedback that you may have."

There are a lot of things that can be done with this. However, the fact is, DT is rough, and it should be that way. I vote for no-barriers on anything. People may have to mule together, or watch each other's backs more, but that's DT life, isn't it?

If I were to give a suggestion for this to compromise, I'd say the barrier should be able to be destroyed temporarily allowing people into even the basement. Or, when people are in the housing barrier, they can only be there so long before they're kicked outside of the mansion barrier to a very predictable spot.

Second, no locked hooks. If people destroy the barrier, and kill everyone, they should be able to loot housing items. However, you guys should make housing items worth it, especially for mansions, and add more hooks that matter. Getting mansion rent freaking sucks. Try it some time. Try getting 1/10 of the mansion rent, and tell me how long that took ya. Then tell me what you got for all that time spent.

Ex. - Aun Aura Placement Field

50k bu
50k val
Floor Hook
Replenishes any PK's stamina, health, and mana by 20 points every few seconds while in the area. OR, it gives a bonus to certain attributes temporarily, OR, it gives a bonus to certain skills temporarily. OR, <put in something creative and worthwhile>. Hell, the Placement field could change from regaining hp/stam/mana to an increase of 10 to attributes for 20 seconds depending on the time of the ingame day.

It's heavy so if someone's taking your stuff they can't run from you fast enough. They'd have to portal, but there's ways to stop that. At 50k val, it'd almost certainly drop on death. If it didn't, you'd get some tinkered DI's or cragstone armor or something. Could even make the value 200k if it's worth having in your mansion or villa.

Barriers could be strengthened by PK kills, territory holdings (if you put this in), quests completed, "feeding" the barrier power, etc.


"Our current design is an item that could be used on any loot missile weapon to add a Magic Absorbing property to it. This property would be similar to the Aegis Shield and would scale based on the wielder’s Magic Defense. The downside is that the missile weapon would lose any melee defense adjustment that it might possess. Also, obviously, one would need to choose between this weapon and one’s Weeping Bow, Crossbow, or Atlatl."

Shields own plain missle weapons. I've got an al 350 shield, 650 bu, avg or better to all prots, and it's cost is 920 pyreals. nine hundred twenty pyreals. Debuffed all to hell it'd still over a nice chunk of protection against regular weapons. This won't help mages, but it sure will help melee guys kick archer junk. Debuff an archer's armor, their life magic, and now they have no melee D on a loot bow? Probably one less tinker if you make it that way? Why? That's dumb. You talk about group battles, this doesn't help that. Aegis for melees have no drawback. Why? weepings are shield hollow anyways. Think about it. This idea is not good.

"We are also looking at the possibility of creating similar equipment for casting objects, in order to give mages a choice similar to the choice we are giving missile users."

But of course I'd have to use a loot gen orb. Great, another pos I have to carry around with all the other junk my mage carries, so I'll have even less pack space. You guys know about pack space right? You know, you put loot and stuff in them, and if you run out, you can't carry anymore...? Yeah, look into that too.

Try thinking of alternatives, and reasons to persuade someone to use an item. Ok, I cut the damage of magic done to me, but I am doing much less damage.... Oh, didn't you know, Turbine put in a means to counteract aegis magic because it's "balancing". Another possible blunder.

"We are investigating the possibility of adjusting this slider to allow for fastest speed with a smaller penalty – or no penalty – without changing the bonus given at slowest speed."

In PvP, archers will be rail-gunning people that even have missle D. Is that what you want? It takes me as a mage... what... 5-8 seconds to dispell a lvl 6 spell? I'd get about... ummm, 9-12 arrows shot at me!? I could stand still and take that damage, or I could try and use exploits to avoid 1/3 of them. Ok, so I avoid... lets say 1/4 of the arrows. My armor is still debuffed, and I've been hit once in the arm, and one in the chest. That's about 50 damage for the arm and 150 for the chest. So, I'm at 130 from my 330 hp. These are just numbers I've guessed through fighting people myself, and people's feedback from some tests.

I'm all for helping archers in PvP. Railgunning makes DoT huge, and with changes like that, people with missle D will feel what us no-missle characters have fealt for a long time. This change helps PvM more than it does PvP.

It's not that arrows weren't hitting because they weren't coming out fast enough, or missing when they did. Quite the opposite. It's that arrows are easy as hell to dodge. A lvl 1 can dodge arrows that a lvl 200 is firing at fastest speed, and rather well I may add. By just pressing a couple keys. xzcccczczczczczczczcz That's it. Looks tough ha ha ha.

Larger area to hit might help, but that could mess up PvM. If it only applied to PvP and not PvM, then I'd go that route. Make it harder to physically move out of the way of arrows.

"Player-controlled casting times – the current “fastcasting” and “delay casting”. However if a new form of fastcasting emerges that would allow players to rapid-fire spells beyond that which is currently seen, it would likely be considered an issue to resolve."

If you find this a legitimate tactic and use of spell casting. Then tell people how to do it. Obviously, if you think it's legitimate you think it's a viable tactic and part of PvP. Not telling people how to do it just shows that you don't want that advantage to the players. You give every option, item, balancing patch, etc. to even the odds against people who use it. Those people are mainly mages. That means you assume mages, and most players, know how to use this. If that's true, then why not just say how to do it. You've repeated yourself and explained enough stuff in other areas dealing with PvP. Why stop now? I'm just glad I have to resort to animation exploits to compete in your PvP environment. good job. Tell Joe Noob that when he logs in for the first time... I bet you don't.

[Heideggar]

"“Godmoding” potions and food."

This is tough, but without other means to heal quick in a pinch, what are you suppose to do? You've slowly been taking away options to heal quick, and those options that are left, aren't that great. Healing skill looks more and more inviting, but doesn't compare to the effectiveness and reliability of elixers or foods. If you nerf elixers, I'd help out healing skill. People actually spend credits on that. Or give people full god-moding so they can run and cast stam2health 1 over and over and over lol.

Spellword recognition:
It's good to know what your enemy is doing, but a lot of creatures (even isparians) have been able to cast without saying the words. Zharlim and cultists recently. They may be altered, but you guys said they're rogue, not altered. Anyways, from a much earlier piece of lore. There is a gentlman who is MUTE, that's right, freaking mute, who uses a melee weapon and has life magic. He heals his companion (a gharu' staff chick *wink*) after she burnt her hands badly pushing a magma golem off a bridge. He learned how to focus his thoughts into magic words with the components he laid down before him, and was able to cast a spell. It took him a long time to be able to do this. I can't remember the name of the lore, sorry, that's not part of my job description.

Here's an idea, give people the option to not say words at all, but cast at a higher spell difficulty. I mean, that's what that guy did in the Lore, and he's a real person in Dereth's fake history, right? The guy's Isparian, not altered by anyone, went to a magic school that's in dereth. That school was never reported destroyed.... So give me one good reason why this wouldn't fit with lore if implemented?


On Jump-Spinning and escaping from melees:

I should have just as much of a chance to flee from a battle as a melee, OR as much of a chance to have my magic OR missle hump their but for as long as I want not allowing them to escape like they do to others.

"In general we want to decrease the amount of time you spend preparing for a fight, and increase the time you spend actually fighting."

You should read this statement over and over, write it on your arm, make a post-it. spray paint it on your car. something.

Preparing for a fight, or time fighting as you will, is more than just buffing. Yes, I think this is a worthy thing to consider and change if done right. However, preparing for a fight also include getting the gear to go hunting (PK or PvM or Questing). As long as you provide low cash return from kills, and high costs of supplies, you will find more and more people not logging on, not PvP'ing, not questing, not having fun. It's sickening seeing these inconsistencies between what you say and what you do. *puke*

"However, it is in our best interests to resolve the other issues listed above before we create meaningful combat goals and rewards. So this may be one of the last issues we resolve. As we work on it, we will ask you for your feedback on our ideas and proposals."

This is a big task to do, but not something that isn't worth doing and getting out asap. Worthy goals are what drives people and entices them to play your game. Hmmm, jump-spin or people taking over a territory....

I'd make a Top 5 things you want the Devs to work on poll, and give people like 10 options as to what they'd like you guys to put their money and your effort into implementing.

I can almost already tell you what the top 5 would be, but it's something worth doing, and it'd take you like 10-15 min MAX to make the poll.



Lag:

I play on DT and on MT. I was on DT getting 3% to 100% packet loss (usually around 9%), with lag around 1k to 54k ms ping. I figured it was internet or something. I kept getting disconnected, etc. I log onto MT, and didn't get any of this. Ok, so I reconnect to the DT servers, log in, and I got it again.

This was perhaps the worst case I've ever had. Normally, I get stuttery lag that messes up my spell casting, occasional yellow links, and more lag spikes. I don't get the stuttery/rubberband lag on other servers, nor do my spells go dud on me, like they do on DT. It's good to know you're looking into it, but people have been "looking into it" for a very long time. Something needs to be fixed. Equipment upgrades, bandwidth increase, SOMETHING.

As I've said before, what's it matter to have the best game in the world, if lag prevents you from enjoying it?

Oh, everything is balanced? stuff to fight over? New equipment? New tactics? awesome! Now let me know when I can actually play in the environment that offers that.



"Asheron’s Call’s PvP players are some of our most dedicated, passionate, and vocal. Many of you know the guts of this game as well as we do, and we respect that. We want to improve our communication with you so that you can help us make Asheron’s Call’s PvP as great as we all know it can be.

We hope that this article has been helpful in understand the Dev Team’s goals for PvP. As I wrote earlier, the proposals that I’ve listed above are not set in stone. Your feedback will help us prioritize and update these ideas to better match what it is that you want to see in AC.

In the end, we want PvP in AC to be fun. If it’s fun, we’ll enjoy designing for it, and we’ll all enjoy playing it. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and let us know what you think"


1) There are people who know more about your game than you do. Maybe not code-wise, but people have "been there and done that" so often, that they can tell you how things will effect the game, if it will work, how to get passed certain nerfs, etc. etc. It takes you guys a month or two to see if a weapon upgrade will be overwhelming. It takes some people 10-20 min., and most of that is just to buff or get set up. It's true, there are some loud mouths who think they know it all, but are not bright at all. I can name some hehe. Stop holding up mirrors to me please. It's not funny.

2) If you wanna improve communication, then we as players need you to understand what's going on IN YOUR GAME. That means you guys are gonna have to spend more time in our make-believe world to better understand where we're coming from. When we say "this will kill off archers templates in a week", it probably will! lol.

Best way I can suggest is to .cloack yourselves and watch/video real fights. PvP OR PvM. Stormwaltz (old quest developer) thought no one sub 100 could solo aerlinthe, and this was before the downgrades (making it easier) of the quest. I did it at like 75, two lvl 45's did it on another server. Just saying, we can surprise ya sometimes.

3) You've got good goals, but prioritising them better would help you guys a lot. And in doing that, you need some more feedback from the players. Have a flash screen when people log in to come here to your website and vote or something. Some of your ideas to improve things, and your existing improvements, aren't well thought out... I was about to say dumb, but they aren't. It's like riding a bike without a wheel, and a seat, and like half a peddle lol, it sucks. Without all the parts to the bike, it just sucks.

You guys really needa know what to put in gradually and what to put in all at once. You've hurt yourselves big time with this.

4) Fun? As I understand, only one of you guys plays DT, so I'm not sure you guys as a whole understand what "fun" is. If we keep having to tell you, that's gonna suck too, because I'm not getting paid to write 5-10 page papers why your [fluffy] stinks.



5) You said to let you know what I think, so don't get on me about having to read all this, or if I'm not writing nice. I usually write informative unbias near unemotional messages, but your changes are just getting to me.

6) Your letters and patches have still not persuaded me to activate any of my accounts. Actions speak louder than words. I've made an action to yours, and in return I get words, so I'll give you words.

[SteveJobsDT]

return pk to what it was last patch and just focus on your precious white servers ibn.. DT would rather get nothing than get all of these new changes. Why try to fix something that wasn't broken.. gah. Words can't express how disappointed I am with the turbine team this patch. I reallllly wish we knew who turbine's PVP expert was on dt so we could all go gank the heck out of him to take out some of our frustration.

[Pit_HG]

"Legitimate Tactics:
Player-controlled casting times – the current “fastcasting” and “delay casting”. "


You have GOT to be joking. Ok, you know what, I won't mind this change on one condition. I want Ibn, or some other dev., to make a single post bluntly and publicly and boldly saying:

"WE HERE-BY REVERSE OUR PREVIOUS DECISION REGARDING FASTCASTING AND DELAY CASTING."

If you are willing to do that, then I am willing to accept the change...but I'm sorry, to slide this in as one point amongst many and just let it go without acknowledging the magnitude of the statement is ridiculous. Turbine has publically stated for as long as I can remember that a fix for these animation break exploits was coming as they were, well, exploits. Now, with one quick little sentence, to completely reverse this decision is simply poor.


Want to leave the current animation breaks in as legitimate tactics?...Fine, but at least acknowledge what a HUGE departure this is from the past.

[Nya13]

I REPEAT!!!

EVERYBODY DONT USE DECAL AND PLUS THAT HELP THEM IN PVP

STOP! Stop referring to DECAL!

First : Darktide never had a problem targetting the opponents shield. Most of us could do it manually with our Mouse and some preferred to Click an Icon in some decal window - whatever.

Most of us could do it manually with our Mouse!!!
Cool it's "player skill" ability in PVP!

The only change that I think is stupid is the spell word thing. Any idiot can learn the difference between zojak and kazaboom or whatever it is.

Cool it's "player skill" ability in PVP!
And i bet NOT every one could dodge it easely

STOP WHINING!!! Problems do not come from this things!
Armor Debuffs is a great ADD in the pvp system.

The problem ATM is that YOU "mages" don't own everything in game.

first things: Mages > Melees/archers IF you are fighting in a Dungeons, halls, Jump on a Tree/house...

I am agree with you that melee is hard to kill on a In plains and forests.

Maybe Sword damage are a little owerpowered atm.
It's the probably only problem that should be fixed.

[Kilmor]

This last paragraph speaks to a number of recent changes – banes should be able to be countered with an appropriate lure, and Blood Drinker should be able to be countered with Blood Loather. Negative spells should be able to be countered with dispels.

And here is my problem with this vision in a nutshell. I do not want to play a mage, I want to play a melee. I do not want to cast 5 spells before I can partake in combat. Your changes force us to magic. Ever thought about that?

[Signalerror]

Originally posted by Nya13
I REPEAT!!!

"EVERYBODY DONT USE DECAL AND PLUS THAT HELP THEM IN PVP

STOP! Stop referring to DECAL!"
WARNING : INCOMING TREAD HIJACKER!


The problem ATM is that YOU "mages" don't own everything in game.

first things: Mages > Melees/archers IF you are fighting in a Dungeons, halls, Jump on a Tree/house...

I am agree with you that melee is hard to kill on a In plains and forests.

Maybe Sword damage are a little owerpowered atm.
It's the probably only problem that should be fixed.

Before the patch, if i was fully baned I had about a 50% chance of winning agianst a melee. I killed about as many as they killed me.

As for the only problem being sword damage...... wth. I almost got 1 shotted by a full power UA swing. UA, a racial skill is almost 1 shotting people. Thats just wrong.




"each class have weaknesses and powers according to the grounds and the circumstances. learn to dodge with it"

Last patch I would agree with that. But now melee's have all the cards in their favor. Aeigis, multiple weepings, Change in spell words, Bp luring. All of these things have tossed around the balance of power strictly to anyone melee

[Kerlin]

I have a question for Ibn.

Since the PvP'ers on white servers are probably a statistical non-entity, the only meaningful number of PvP'ers are on Darktide.

1) What percentage of the entire AC player base actively play on Darktide ? (by active I mean a number determined by average # of players logged in - not how many unused characters have been generated there over the years) My personal guess would be 15%.


2) Taking that percentage into account - does PvP eat up more Dev time and resources than that number justifies ?

[Shidoshi]

The problem with PvP on WE


If you want to encourage other players to PvP, which from reading recent articles, and event updates I would say you do. There's only one problem with that, and it's called Hacks/Exploits.

On WE server just head to AB lifestone, and watch the jump/spin, speedhacks, gear, etc etc etc being used. Foul language, and bad attitudes are a must to hang with this crowd, don't believe me just watch the flames if they read this.

Also the class imbalances.


You guys at Turbine seem to be up on all the issues in my opinion, but don't expect the majority of Dereth to participate in a war of who can run the most hacks, and win contest.

[williamohms]

15% 10% 5% 80%

everyone pays to play and wants to be able to play the game as they intend.

Turbine gave PVP a server which means that server has to be dealt with. Resources definitely aren't all going to PVP issues as we are getting half baked conceptial ideals placed onto the server and have to wait 1-5 months for the concept to come to fruitation.

Sorry but I'm tired of hearing this arguement which you have thrown at DT for over 4 years. We might be in the minority but we still pay to play just like you do.

[Moonglum]

Run skill should be a factor in breaking sticky melee. Thanks Turbine, I now one shot anyone in the game with the armor debuff thing regardless of skill..lucky me.

Regards,
Moonglum
The Iron Fist

[WheelsTC]

Listen folks.

If things are TRULY unbalanced then you can expect next patch to bring things in line.

I love all the people cancelling there subscription...(no)

[WheelsTC]

BTW...if the lures are infact too strong i would like to still see them in there.

Like someone else suggested aboved just adjust the lures accordingly so the damage makes sense.

[Madgic]

I am not an experienced PVP player But I will say the only ballence problem i have seen is between mages and melees and then of course Missile users and Shield weilding melees.

Im not sure where the idea has come that a swordie hits that hard i have fought arround ayan and in sub and the only thing that touches me is a mage. Swords do up to 15 danage with me Vulned and other weapon typs admittedly only UA does 1-2 damage if they hit.

Im thinking how about making an imbue for casters adding Hollow properties to there casting items BUT takin away the hollow properties that they already posess.

If I get a piece of fire proof cloth and fire a flame thrower at it the fire doesnt go through (this is a mages war spell)

If i grab a flaming dagger and stab the piece of cloth it does go thorugh (this is a dagger attack)

I understand that there are other properties to take into account but no matter how you look at it there is no true reason why a pure element should not be resisited by an elemental protection while a forced element would.

And please lets not hear that War spells are magical and therefore not understood, a dagger that generates its own fire is just as if not more magical I think you will agree.

I know as always I go on and on and im glad to hear this is being looked at but really untill all classes are able to compete according to their earned skills PVP will always be a mages sport.

BTW my mage at level 117 has NEVER been beaten by any melee or archer of any level using any weapon. and im not good at PvP.



Your never gonna get me to quit no matter how hard you try.



Madgic

[Smoke Drifter]

You guys need to fix stuff quick.

Sword is way overpowered. For the credits it should hit hardest but then should not Bow hit just as hard? Make all weapons somewhat competitive again should be a priority.

Making the Magic Aegis an Imbue is great for mages...to force missle users to use it on a Loot Weapon however is a no no.. Make it work on Jewlery/Clothing/Wands would solve this...and allow melees to use it as well if desired.

New type of Ammo for tracking on Bow is lame, make it toggle fast while playing.

Remove spell words for casting Negative Spells/Wars. Level the playing field...no plugins can warn ya if there are no words and it will add SKILL to playing again.

Make level 7 spells except War/Vulns cast as fast as level 1 spells. This will fix the changes to stam/health etc.

Please TALK TO US BEFORE YOU MAKE SUCH DRASTIC CHANGES.

You really need to get input from the talented players out here...it's plainly obvious that your testers are lacking skills in many aspects of playing this game as a PK..plain to see in the recent unbalancing changes.

Done.

[Blackhawk]

First off, to a poster way back in the thread, you CAN use hotkey items while in spell mode... Try holding "Control" while pressing the hotkey. :)

Also, to Madgic:

"Im not sure where the idea has come that a swordie hits that hard i have fought arround ayan and in sub and the only thing that touches me is a mage. Swords do up to 15 danage with me Vulned and other weapon typs admittedly only UA does 1-2 damage if they hit."

How can you ever be beaten if you aren't ever red? (done)

[Tydun]

Just a thought, not that the devs are really listening but here goes anyways.


Find a group of 10 players from each server to represent the players. Actually listen to what they have to say about the dynamics of the game and base your patches on real feedback, from people who really understand the impact of changes to the game. People who can speak to the collateral damage your patches cause. Don't base patches on things a bunch of cry baby 13 year olds whine about in the dev forums.

It isn't fair to the general population to have our in-game worlds turned upsidedown while you guys try to figure out what you think we want. This nerfing/balancing act month after month is ridiculous. You ruin the game every month for someone different. Those of us who know that Turbine has been at the controls for AC and the patches this entire time need to have Turbine prove to us that the big MS man was crushing your creative spirit. Not merely keeping you from totally fubar'ing the entire game AC2 style.

[Erinyes]

I think the BP lure changes are totally fair considering you can always unequip a piece of armor or blood loather a melees weapon. I play both classes, so I looked at it from both angles. I don’t like the change to the spell words for Arcs this takes all the stratagy out of a mage and is the only thing gimping a mage in my opinion this month. Housing boundaries on DT really need to be taken out, there’s way to many people hiding in the safety of there houses. Last I like the idea of helping archers with different pathing options, but if you made it a change in arrows its going to be obvious what’s coming just like its obvious with War spells now.

[Ros]

from what I can see, Armor rend functions consistent with underbanes.

however, I can't stress enough how important it is that you try and remember why you raised damages across the board in the first place. (banes, and lack of a mechanic to lure opponents armor)

as players, we need time to be able to react to damaging blows - one and two hits doesn't provide that potential. So basically, whoever gets the jump on someone - wins.

we're not all RPK's yaknow ;p

[Paco_Taco_TD]

to all you superidiots saying "well you can just unequip your armor or switch it and you can bloodloather their weapon" I'd like to remind you that a melee (or archer) can carry a ton of weeping weapons (weapons that dont need to be buffed) and can switch them at will if you do manage to bloodloather one. Meanwhile are you gonna carry 4 BPs and buff them all just because some rocket scientist at Turbine thought it was a good balance to BL to be able to lure AND brittlemail your armor?

Oh yah take off your top while you're getting ganked. Got some real smart people playing these days I see

[Ros]

to help make this patch seem "slightly" more tolerable until other problems can be addressed - get a Bug breastplate.

quick math to get a point across -

420 base AL
.5 for AL against Acid
=210AL against an Acid weapon.

thats just an example.

500AL Bug armor BP

all elementals are Above average. (some moreso then others)

1.25 in some == 650 AL
1.5 in some == 750 AL

nothing in the bug armor below 650AL in any element.
Its not debuffable/buffable. requires no specific skill to wield.

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Aztek
The only weapon an archer has that can hope to do any damage is his weeping bow. If I replace it with a a loot bow that I manage to drop an Imbue on the mage will be laughing at me as I tickle him for 15 a pop. Make this item usable on a piece of armor/jewelry and it will be worth it.

I read this yesterday but forgot to reply. I'll defintely suggest this to the team, you make an excellent point.

Sorry, one question -- when shooting at a mage, some of our DoT charts show that an tink'd AR bow does damage almost equivalent to a Weeping. How does that match up with your experience?

[Ros]

It does match the weeping pretty closely against a Mage.

minus the Human Slayer effect of a Maxed bowman when it crits, of course.

-- but then against a Melee w. shield its useless

Weepings even *needing* to be shield hollow - reflect another outstanding issue with shields in general, though.

[Seriphyn]

Yes, a weeping slightly out damages my 166 on a mage.

This is why I never understood you guys so quickly nerfing the weeping bow when it first came out. I'm not sure, so I'd like to see numbers, of damage versus a max tink'd sword and then weeping sword.

The shield hollow makes it completely usefull though, but just think it should be on par with the other counter parts in weeping.

[Silifi Of Death]

If you take down housing barriers, make the MP a no-pk zone. Would allow trade to happen, and gives people a safe place incase they need to go AFK. Would be very nice. DTers need somewhere as a sanctuary, as well as places to fight over.

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Pit_HG
"WE HERE-BY REVERSE OUR PREVIOUS DECISION REGARDING FASTCASTING AND DELAY CASTING."

You're absolutely right, this is a huge departure from previous policies regarding these issues.

That said:

We hereby reverse our previous decision regarding fastcasting and delay casting.

Please note the catch in the letter though -- if folks do find some new exploit that, I don't know, lets you machine-gun bolt 7s for ten minutes straight, we would almost certainly step in to prevent it.

[Norn]

ya a 166 does, not all of us have a 166 ar bow

[Kilmor]

Housing barriers have to stay up. Sorry there is no way around it.
Yes, in "the good old days" we ran to out of the way spots and buffed there in hopes that no one would come by.
Difference: There were no Decal Plugins then that told people 2 radar screens away where you are.

A timer for barrier crossing might be the thing. Remove the barriers and you kill small monarchies.

[Evoker II]

First I want to talk about Weeping weapons and Shadow armor before I go ahead and discuss the topic as posted in the title. I've played this game for over 4 years. I've pk'd with a strong Melee mage for most of that time. I have strong knowledge as far as Mage and Melee in Pk combat with a good amount of knowledge with Archery as I have an xbower.

It is my understanding Turbine included Shadow Armor aswell as Weeping weapons to serve as "Standard issue" player killer equipment. Meaning it can no way be any different from the other players. In theory this is supposed to keep the playing field amongst pk's as even as possible and discount any worries of losing this armor.

Shadow Armor fulfills this standard because it does not show discrimination amongst the players. You know if your wearing GSA/GSC/GSK, Lvl 110 Sword player #1 is gonna hit for the same amount of damage or as close as possible as compared to Level 110 Sword player #2. Ofcourse there will be a small difference between the two players because it will depend on how they've spent their xp with their attributes and cantrips ofcourse. As far as the Wards go, that simply relies on luck. Mages can't tell what shards you've used in your shadow armor. Same time when a player shards their armor their hoping luck will be with them when a player chooses to vuln them for a war spell. They're hoping the ward they've chosen will be the right one. So it's 50/50 as far as the wards go.

So turbine gets a thumbs up for the Shadow armor. It's close to perfect. If they wanted to give the melee's/ archer a lil loving against the mages they could possibly allow each pc of shadow armor to be sharded twice so they can be fully protected at all times. That is just one small tweak that can save 30 or 40 pts on war bolt.

Briefly I wanted to pose this idea for the archers. I do believe archers deserve a TINY bit of loving. PK is the most balanced it has ever been. When you make additional changes they need to be SMALL not BIG. I'm sorry but sometimes when you guys introduce changes you go over board.

So my idea . Create a NO DROP pc of armor, should be Gaunts/Helm/Solls. Allow this pc of armor to have the same properties as the Aegis shield!! This quest would be verrrry easy to incorporate to the game. All ya gotta do is make one more altar in the shield room in the Aegis quest and plop a cool looking helm or whatever on it. IMbue the helm and poof instant Pk archer love. You could tweak the stats on the helm so it wouldn't be too uber. Like lower the Al to 150 or whatever. In addition have it so only Archer's and Xbower's can use it.

With this item they've lowered the damage from Mages. They've received a VERY viable pc of NO DROP armor. We all know how important that is on DT especially. BEST OF ALL you made the archers happier and you didn't **** too many other people off.


NOW let's discuss Weeping Weapons. The small problems with Pk balancing issues come from the WW's. Melee pK's are being discriminated against according to what class that choose to fight!! Plain and Simple. IMO no matter how many credits you've spent in a weapon class you should not be stronger then another player in PvP Level per Level. KEEP IN MIND I'm only talking about PvP not PvM. Separate PvP vs PvM completely!! A Mace toon should be able to hit for the same DoT as a Sword toon. An Axemen should have the same DoT as a Ua'r. You have weapons that are set aside specifically for PK. Have it so if you have two melee players, a Axer and a Macer swinging at a Target drudge at Fast attack for 5 mins. After the 5 mins is up and you total the damage given by each player. They should be close to even as possible. Same thing for Full power, mid power etc etc. I forgot to mention this "balanced damage" should only be placed on Weeping Weapons. I don't see a problem with loot generated weapons keeping their respective damage capability. Anyways it 's not like you can altar the damage on a weapon so it works differently from PvM to PvP. Make WW's all together the Exact same "DoT" wise across the board.

I"m trying not to whine. I'd like to simply discuss the BP lure changes. IMO Pk shouldn't consist too largely of Debuffing along with weak, time consuming,awkward and plain nofun tactics. Tactics i'm talking about is the one being discussed where a players is being told to shut up and carry multiple bp's with them. Discarding their GSA or tinkered amuli suit. You're now forcing players to alter their armor!!!!

That's not the bad part. Bad part is this non sense of switching BP's back and forth during a fight. That is the most ridiculous and embarassing idea i've ever heard of. Skill is avoiding an arrow, dodging a war bolt, having the vision and targetting the right opponent to attack within the battlegrounds, knowing when to be aggressive and when to pull back, knowing how to wear down your opponent etc etc. Skill is not hot keying your BP and flipping it back and forth between a covy and baned pc. I can just picture other developers pointing and laughing at this. Laughing that a developer is forcing their players to resort to a feeble method in order to survive. Especially when there are other simple ways to remedy the situation.

PK was getting there. We were so close. We've now taken a few steps back i'm afraid. If this is purposely being done because of the past talk of mages ruling the world and everyone else stinking and your looking to tip the scales into their favor well you've done that then. It may be a source of justice for some. Speaking from someone who is looking to see the game get better I do not agree. I'm a firm believer of accepting change. You should know that very well by now with that large post I made a month or so back where I tried to back turbine up with the xp changes. This change is not warranted and accepted by most players.

There is only one way I can see a justification for these changes, and that is if you plan on giving mages a way to heal themselves and others FAST. I've posted this already regarding Group healing spells. If you can come up with some type of spell that a mage can cast to counter this type of obscene damage then maybe this can work. I'm still leary because as tests have shown. a lured/ loathered bp hit with a sword has revealed scary numbers. One shot/ Two shot capabilities. That's just not right. A damage that can not be evaded or escaped from.

So my question is do you have something planned to balance the new march melee/archer love changes including healing spells?

Thx Evo

[Norn]

Dumb move adding lures and not adjusting the weapon damages that you your self say are out of wack, and you also state yourself that sword is overpowered yet you didn't fix it.... dumb again. You could have fixed the weapons before making pvp one sided. Concerned about the pvp? Ya right. What about this comment "We are working to ensure that many of the topics listed in the March Letter to the Players Follow-Up, such as higher wield-req weapons, do not negatively impact PvP balance.. "? Are we having meaningful fights. Has pvp been positively impacted? Nope. You made alittle unbalancing into worse game play, and didn't fix thing about pvp really. Your looking into fixing phantoms and hollows? lol what's to look at? Anyone can tell you that they're wothless. How many people you see running around with a hollow bow? You added the lures before you even gave people time to try the casting item bonus, lol I bet you tested that too.

Your team does alot of "we plan to fix this and that" but it's ****. You implement things that are reaching at best and don't fix stuff that we all know are broke, worthless or just plain stupid(hollow UA or bow).

I could careless what you do to the monsters and loot. I bought this game to play pvp , I can run around a kill monsters on thousands of games, I see now that your plans are to screw up more before you fix anything

By the way this thread is a joke, you don't listen to you player base at all. How many people said this wasn't the way to change things. And I admit that things needed to be changed, but you didn't fix anything.

Sorry but I won't be playing this game or paying you fools until things are fixed. I'm not hunting for **** to imbue or salvage that will be worthless once you decide to raise damage, change the loot profile or any other thing that makes my hard work worth ****. I have tons of worthless uas cause of your damage changes and new introduced ****. Judging from that way your team gets things done, things will never be fixed cause you don't even have an idea of what balanced is before start adjusting. "It needs to be stated plainly: It may be necessary to decrease the damage of the Weeping Sword, . Our current damage-over-time charts, as well as in-game experiences, indicate that it may be slightly stronger than intended.". Um duh, did this comment come from your experiences testing lol.

I don't need anymore... " we may, it might be nessessary, we are looking into, should be, "This issue is still in discussion internally", "topics for the future", "We are investigating the possibility of adjusting", "Currently we are designing and testing several other solutions"( I doubt you've tested anything from the work your team puts out), and "We hope".

Go ahead and put out some little letter explaining your incompetence, see if that brings players back and gets ya new ones.

[Rojon]

Originally posted by Ibn
Please note the catch in the letter though -- if folks do find some new exploit that, I don't know, lets you machine-gun bolt 7s for ten minutes straight, we would almost certainly step in to prevent it.
I don't think it matters.

You've just lost any PvP players that were staunchly against cheating and waiting for you to do something about it to return to Darktide.

Now all that's left are the cheaters so it doesn't really matter what you do anymore.

[Evoker II]

I really don't see the fun in debuffing and gemming.

It's a war of Debuffs. Everyone starts to debuff each other. They cast about 5 or 6 then the person gems. Then that person starts to debuff and the other guy gems. Back and Forth for mins on end.

BORRRRRINNNNGGG

I understand Turbine is trying to create multiple ways of engaging a pk or group of pk's. Unfortunately this is now the way to do it. Well not the fun way ofcourse.

Nerfing the gems have lil to zero impact on PK. Most players prefer not to debuff too much. Maybe 3 or 4 spells. One Gem will take care of that anyways with the new setup. This has hurt PvM a Whole lote more then PvP. Next time your in the HIdden caverns or fighting Virindi or Undead and you have literally 50 debuffs on ya. There's no way in hell your gonna be able to dispell all of them now, without going broke from buying gems.

Dispell gems were fine the way they were. MOst pk's in group battle use the same form of attack also. So it's not like your dispelling different types of vulns.

[N-Oo-B]

"what happens when we don’t come to the PvP community before implementing these changes."

WHAT'S THE POINT! YOU DON'T LISTEN!
that's obivous..because despite out screams nothing changes in your proposal.

heck you don't even reply to the questions or propositions put on this board...how can we think you ever even read them.



If you were a government we would riot and have a rebellion to over throw you. Rim is my enemy..but of all the people on these boards he has one of the strongest voice's of reason here... OPEN YOUR EARS!

[Ayatollah]

Player skill matters. While numbers – such as number of levels and number of opponents – are very important, they are not necessarily the deciding factor. A skilled player can defeat a more powerful unskilled player, although it may be difficult.


Doesnt take much skill for a melee to fight a mage anymore. Thanks for changing arc words so its no longer a guessing game.


When designing for PvP combat, the first group that we must always consider is Darktide. Darktide is the home of the majority of our most loyal and experienced PvP players, and any changes we make to PvP combat should be done to improve their gameplay first and foremost.

Saying that now since you made 1/2 of the server quit? You should have did this along time ago, not now. Jesus Christ.


Some of our more controversial recent changes have been towards increasing the number of options available to players in combat. These include the ability to debuff Weeping weapons and player worn armor, the planned changes to dispel gems, and the changes to Arc spell words. We seek to increase the number of choices available to players in combat, and to make multiple viable responses to the choices made by their opponents.


You should ask us 1st. You are making your reputation look bad when it comes to make PK ideas.


We would like to introduce a new pathing type for missile attacks. War Mages have the ability to choose between Bolts and Arcs for the purposes of targeting, whereas missile users have only one option. Any new option would likely be either through some sort of option in the attack bar, or through a new form of ammunition

So you are going to make arrows fly like bolts in the future? Did you guys fail physics? Arrows fly in a curve, not a straight line and keep on going forever.


We are also investigating the relationship of the Run skill to sticky melee. Perhaps a character with a high Run skill should have a chance to break sticky from a slower opponent? These are questions that require research, both into whether we can do this, and whether or not we should.


Most melees have a higher run skill than mages. I doubt this matters anyway sicne you can debuff armor and you would die taking 2 steps.


Asheron’s Call’s PvP players are some of our most dedicated, passionate, and vocal. Many of you know the guts of this game as well as we do, and we respect that. We want to improve our communication with you so that you can help us make Asheron’s Call’s PvP as great as we all know it can be.


How about listening to the people then instead of ignoring us? You guys need to be in politics if you are going to change leaf that quick like nothing went wrong.

[Sigma]

Time for me to jump in! Wahoo!!


Alright, this is from a level 82 mage PK on LC of decent skill, not great, not bad.


The animation and physics system. Projectiles are real objects that can be dodged. You have the ability to maneuver in combat, and your movement choices have real consequences.

You have the ability to maneuver, that doesn't mean you have to. *Reference for later*


Character choices. The skill system, the vast amount of varied equipment in the game, and the ability to prepare for different opponents creates a number of different tactics and strategies for players.

So vast, infact, that everyone seems to pick...the EXACT SAME THINGS! Weeping, Stoned GSC, and either sword or mage. That's a helluva lot of variety to me!


Player skill matters. While numbers – such as number of levels and number of opponents – are very important, they are not necessarily the deciding factor. A skilled player can defeat a more powerful unskilled player, although it may be difficult.

Infact, nigh impossible. Because if you think that your 380 war skill is going to land on his maxed out chained magic defense? Wow, I'm not so sure you're the brightest crayon in the box, there, Skippy!

Otherwise, player skill does matter. For example, you need the skill to obtain an Aegis, Weeping Sword, Stoned GSC, and the ability to cast a vuln.

There, you win! Ding ding!

Speed. One mistake in PvP combat – just one – can cost you your life. Combat can happen at any time.

Yep, infact, it means SO much, that screwing up on a melee may mean you take a maxiumum of a stiffling 100 DAMAGE! *cues dramatic music* through your completely balancing Aegis, GSC and weeping sword that crits for (insert ungodly wished amount of damage--and you can! Because that's what it seems to be anyway!)

Very few safe zones on Darktide. One of the hallmarks of
Darktide is the knowledge that nowhere is “safe”. You can be attacked anywhere, at any time. The housing system has thrown a bit of a wrench in this, however.

Yes, you can be attacked anywhere! You feel safe in your little academy coat in the middle of nowhere, trying to kill that Blood Shreth? Well TOO BAD! Because your favorite buddy just picked you up on his plugin that can tell where you are from ANYWHERE ON THE FACE OF DERETH! And he's coming for you.

And when you have nothing left except your awesome little academy coat, I'm going to say, "Stfu or gb2ff."

Ah, and let's not forget if you find a patron and he tries to help you get through the annoying beginning times! Then, your whole clan kills you, yes YOUR CLAN, because you're not above their level restictions.

And provided that he does take you hunting so you won't be needlessly slaughtered by your own guild, then, someone shows up, kills your patron, kills you, and makes away with all the loot! Wahhooooooooooooooooooo!



So all in all, KUDOS! You've done a spectacular job taking all skill and fun out of PKing, hunting, getting weapons that are anywhere NEAR these damned new Blackmire Swamp weapons...did I forget anything? I'm pretty sure I didn't...


Wow, I really...really....really wish that you knew PK guys...I thought better of you.

[Ros]

well.... I guess we all KNOW what Monarchy Sigma came from ;p

hahahah! priceless.

[Heideggar]

Evoker II, I understand what you're getting at when you say every melee class, or missle class for that matter, should have the same DoT.

The only problem with that is different skills cost more than other skills. 16 credits for sword should be doing more damage than 4 credits to specialize dagger. The benefits of having extra skill credits equates to more magic skill, specialized healing, and other benefits.

I do think that a lot of melee classes aren't as competative as the few that people choose to PK with, and THAT's the problem. Lower damage to an opponent is fine, but lets allow those extra skill credits to be used in a way that will keep those people into fights a bit longer.

If they redid asses person, deception, healing, and a handful of other possibly useful, or even more useful, skills there could be some form of way to allow people with weapons that aren't as deadly to be competetive.

[Sigma]

Originally posted by Ros
well.... I guess we all KNOW what Monarchy Sigma came from ;p

hahahah! priceless.



Actually no, I wasn't in Blood.


I just found that one of those retarded little qwirks.


Hey! Let's kill our own monarchy!!


YEAH! WOOOOOOO YEAH!

[-Kaxak-]

LMFAO , this is a joke right , Ibn ? :D

why should we even bother to comment on PvP , when you don't listen to us, the players !!!




ROFL , Ibn you gotta tell me is this you at work :confused: ?

[Pit_HG]

Originally posted by Ibn
You're absolutely right, this is a huge departure from previous policies regarding these issues.

That said:

We hereby reverse our previous decision regarding fastcasting and delay casting.

Please note the catch in the letter though -- if folks do find some new exploit that, I don't know, lets you machine-gun bolt 7s for ten minutes straight, we would almost certainly step in to prevent it.


While I think it should have it's own thread on the Turbine forums (heh, can never satisfy them, eh?) and a little back up explanation for the change, I'm appreciative for the response.

[Last Man]

Debuffable chest armor was a bad idea, and NO ONE wanted debuffable weepings. Take those steps back and work on the rest especially archer love, and bump up the other melee weapons so sword isn't the only choice.

And for god's sake change the spellwords back, that's the worst move yet, it kills mage v mage combat entirely. You guys forgot the dynamics leading up to the introduction of arcs and them having the same spellwords.

[Trekman]

I do not PK.

Therefore I post in this thread about PvP.

With all due respect to the PK community - and with all due respect to your ideas regardig PvP........PLEASE keep PvM in mind because the fact remains that a majority of players do *not* PK.

Why am I saying this ?

I am still angry about the changes on the Gem of Stillness.
Or the whole Settlement Hub fiasco if the complaints of DT players really were a reason for it.

There always will be legitimate reasons to change things in order to balance or spice up PK. Even I nonPK understand the frustration if in a PK fight someone constantly dispells the opponent's debuffs - or can use some recall gems to flee.

But it is the wrong way to do "either/or" decisions that affect *all* players, regardless whether they are PK or not.

Whether Weeping Weapons are debuffable or not is of no consequence for NPKs (as long as human mobs don't do it :p). So I would not dare to enter a discussion about that.

If the Gems of Stillness would behave the old way for an NPK and the proposed way for a PK, nobody including myself would complain. It is of no consequence to any PK out there if a Gem of Stillness dispells all the debuffs on a white player or not. Yet we Whites apparently have to live with the change that was initiated only by PKs and is only "beneficial" for them.

As I already pointed out in another thread - the more differentiations you implement on common items to behave differently for a PK and an NPK user, the more you help avoiding endless circular discussions and flamewars between PKs and NPKs.

[Ros]

Hey man... with all due respect --

removing the settlement portals was the least of our worries.
determining content? you're crazy if you think we have that control.

Just like you, we're kind-of along for the ride - hoping that it lands us in a better place then we started.

don't pass the blame on us. We're just Turbine's Lab-rats.

[Trekman]

Originally posted by Ros
Hey man... with all due respect --

removing the settlement portals was the least of our worries.
determining content? you're crazy if you think we have that control.

Just like you, we're kind-of along for the ride - hoping that it lands us in a better place then we started.

don't pass the blame on us. We're just Turbine's Lab-rats.

I didn't blame you - I did blame Turbine :D

And for me "content" is not only "new quests and items", it is also "changing available items" - like the famous Gem of Stillness.
And you cannot deny that its change was proposed or even demanded only by PKs. although that change might be legitimate for PK, it has no justification or benefit for NPK, nevertheless we NPKs have to live with it.

That is not the PKers' fault, its Turbine's :rolleyes:

[Sabu]

Originally posted by Nya13
I REPEAT!!!

EVERYBODY DONT USE DECAL AND PLUS THAT HELP THEM IN PVP

STOP! Stop referring to DECAL!

First : Darktide never had a problem targetting the opponents shield. Most of us could do it manually with our Mouse and some preferred to Click an Icon in some decal window - whatever.

Most of us could do it manually with our Mouse!!!
Cool it's "player skill" ability in PVP!

The only change that I think is stupid is the spell word thing. Any idiot can learn the difference between zojak and kazaboom or whatever it is.

Cool it's "player skill" ability in PVP!
And i bet NOT every one could dodge it easely

STOP WHINING!!! Problems do not come from this things!
Armor Debuffs is a great ADD in the pvp system.

The problem ATM is that YOU "mages" don't own everything in game.

first things: Mages > Melees/archers IF you are fighting in a Dungeons, halls, Jump on a Tree/house...

I am agree with you that melee is hard to kill on a In plains and forests.

Maybe Sword damage are a little owerpowered atm.
It's the probably only problem that should be fixed.


Jump on a tree or house... Tree no dodging room from other bolts or arrows. House... you'll be jumping off just as fast.
Armor debuffs without a dispell was a major lapse in thinking. The pvp scene seemed almost balanced prepatch, except for poor archers.

[Signalerror]

Originally posted by -Kaxak-
LMFAO , this is a joke right , Ibn ? :D

why should we even bother to comment on PvP , when you don't listen to us, the players !!!




ROFL , Ibn you gotta tell me is this you at work :confused: ?


This icon * :confused: *

Will from this day be forth, called the "Ibn" Icon :D

But to remain on the topic of PvP...

Are you consitering reversing the current changes to PvP?
If so, can we get a ETA?
If not, what do you have planned to bring balance back to PvP?

[LugianWarlord]

I suggest every Dev who plays on DT announces their character names... then see how well they hold out against the outpouring of vengeance.

(Ever wonder why Ken Karl never showed up for that PK thing?)

[Evoker II]

I agree on the whole Skill credits Costs vs's amount of damage a players can dish out , but only regarding PvM. I think PvP every person should be pretty much close DoT wise. Well the racial weapons or really cheap skills like Staff can be a lil weaker, but there shouldn't be a large difference. I"ll use an analogy. Lets take baseball. Every player when they get up to the plate has to use a bat that conforms to the leagues rules. NO corking or other enhancements. This keeps the playing feel even. PvP is our playing field. Keep it even~~~!!!!

To me PK is about players killing other players with their skills and brains not so much what weapon they're using. If they wanna risk using a droppable weapon like an AR Bow or what ever then they should be rewarded for the risk being given. The risk of losing that bow if killed.

To be honest I think WW's should be just a Tiny bit weaker then say a maxed out AR weapon in it's class. Just like Shadow armor is weakerb Al wise then a Tinked Suit. Again Reward those who have the guts to bring their droppable stuff to the arena.

In that case if your gonna keep the loathering, then a few of the weeping melee weapons should be nerfed and their damages lowered, especially sword.

[tigga/manshoon]

Ok I wil do my best to not sound like everyone else but in all honesty I am probably one of the best pvp'ers on the server HG. I've been pvping for 4 years now and this is the worst udpate ive seen so far and let me explain why.

1. stamina to health self 1 recovers 50 hps...down side..if your fighting a 2on1 and you have to cast a full spell to recover any hps your as good as dead..which now just ruined any chance of real skill now its you get hit your dead no matter what pretty much.
2. armor debuffs? melees do plenty of damage as it as and I play mine all the time..right when i started to think melees were gettin a far shot you give them armor debuffs? 2 hits and im dead? how fun
3. this is probably the worst ive seen so far...you changed the words for the ARC/BOLT spells...now melees may like this..why??? because if your not a good pk you can't dodge them because you dont know whats coming..but now every spell that is cast you know EXACTLY what is coming at you..mage or melee its almost hell now to hit anyone...as it was i could dodge about 95% of any spells cast even at point blank range...now you just made me a god...a game you always win at is never fun...

all in all this is the worst update I have seen so far weepings were good to have because of peoples growing hit points...but melee debuffs on items? 2 hits your dead WHERES THE SKILL? you know what spells are coming??? WHERES THE SKILL!?? 50 hit points recovered?? 2 mages 1 hits me..i recover another one hits me im dead because i only recovered 50 hps?? wheres the skill? turbine you say these changes are not locked in stone..to be 100% honest the only reason i play the game is for the PVP..you have just ruined it...it's not like you removed god mode or some glitch but you changed 3 key factors that made PVP somewhat of a challenge...keep doing what Ms did make the game easier and easier and watch your game die like they planned on.

Than again this is just my 2 cents do me a favor ibn I'm sure your a busy guy but do me a favor send me a email and tell me how killing a mage in 2 hits or a melee or archer for that matter balences PVP at all...BTW melees hits are unavoidable so your a sitting duck..no chance

[TRuthSeer]

Well First I would like to respond to evoker since this is right under his post and say I disagree 100% in making melee close to each other. RPG/PVP should be about diversity and not more of the same. Different weps have different costs letting you have more/less other skills and giving you different kinds of attacks. They should be pushed and diversified even more ( ie like giving a damage over time poison damage to daggers is an example or a stun like effect to blunt weps like maces/UA or alot of damage but swing silly slow axe.... etc etc).

Back on topic tho, Don't really need to rephrase what is being said over and over and over about the horrible patch..... spellwords?why oh why? Lure?? Dispell Gem?
Has nothing been learned from the past? Droves of people left when GSX was initially nerfed without telling anyone and allowing those that lucked out to keep theres (at the time it was the longest and hardest to get quest in game and people worked there butt off just to get smacked and some even missed out by minutes). Or how about the great drain life nerf? I agree it was overpowered and something needed to be done. But at the time there was no skill sell back and there was a MASSIVE for and against fight across all AC boards for months and months after....... Had to been one of the most cancel subsciption moments in AC history.....
So my question is again have we learned nothing?
Why have I spent months tinkering over and over? Feel like a hamster in a wheel now.....
Throwing massive game inbalancing and often fatal changes forcefully while destroying what you have gained is:
A. not fun
B. hard to swallow
C. not fun
D. threatens the faith that you know what you are doing
E. not fun
F. promotes people to leave in droves and scares away new players....

Unlike many former changes to the game that have been disruptive, imbalancing and really hard to play around.... This has to be one of the first that has almost no support for :confused:
I, like many who have posted here, really hope there is a bigger picture you are making for us and will try and stick it out till then.

Of course I will be forced to not play my main (born 2NOV99 lifemage now BM due to forced rebalancing to compete). Unless you intend for me to scurry from bush to bush until I can obtain a Othloi BP, all the while praying a melee doesn't pick me up on Decal.
I have 2 Sword chars (1 a flav of month and the 2nd as old as AC) and 2 UA's so am not left out of action (have killed more people with my UA and Sword do to this sillyness then I have all year with my mage LOL). Spec Sword/Magic D 100 Foc/Self 100 Str I don't even have to dodge most mages anymore..... they can't kill my faster then I can kill them.... this is really silly.... and few occasions I do have to dodge it is so simple now it is unrealistic.

What will become of mages and archers? Will anyone be left to find out? We shall see

Good Journey



PS. IBN altho you get some flak (well sometimes ALOT more then that), your still the best customer support we have ever had (if people think otherwise then they havn't been here long) and have been representing well. Thx

[tigga/manshoon]

Fastcasting is a art that most can't master or do..without it pvp is so boring its not even funny. its like a melee not being able to dodge a arc or bolt unless there across the screen...fastcastnig is about the only thing anymore that makes pk fun and challenging...and spells still come out at the same speed you just watch arms and words to much..its 2.76 seconds per spell..fast or not..you just get lost in the animation :)

[Bruiserk]

To add to Truth's post;

After four years of AC1, and over a year for AC2, they don't seem to get it.

AC2 will never have a following due to the bad reputation it has gained. If they want to continue making the same types of mistakes with AC1 that they have made with AC2, it will have an even worse reputation than it has now, and fail to gain any substantial amount of new players.

It truly is puzzling.

Turbine, sometimes you need to concede to the wishes of your customers, even if you may not happen to agree with them.

[williamohms]

Originally posted by Trekman
I didn't blame you - I did blame Turbine :D

And for me "content" is not only "new quests and items", it is also "changing available items" - like the famous Gem of Stillness.
And you cannot deny that its change was proposed or even demanded only by PKs. although that change might be legitimate for PK, it has no justification or benefit for NPK, nevertheless we NPKs have to live with it.

That is not the PKers' fault, its Turbine's :rolleyes:

Actually we can deny requesting them to nerf the GoS for NPK because we only asked that they be placed on a PK Timer. This in effect wouldn't screw over NPK's at all since its the PK timer in effect. However Turbine came out and said it wasn't possible to add a PK Timer so they were going to do what they are doing.

[Xada_SC]

Do you guys actually think complaining here has any impact on the future of this game?

Do you think Ibn has any power to affect the future of AC? Even if he did, do you think he would listen to you?

Like he said awhile back AC isn't a democracy.

That means your IG experience is NOT by the players for the players. Its by the Developer for the Developer.

Do like most people do that are subjects of a Dictatorship...

1) Relinquish your integrity to dispair and hate and resort to In-Game terrorism.

2) better yet, keep your sanity and defect, bail, hit a boat for a more friendly land on the horizon. Find a new game.

But don't forget to delete that CC number on your .NET account before ya go!

Once enough people cancel that CC account, and Turbine can't stay afloat then the game will die, and we won't even have to hear about how sucky AC is through hearsay.

AC will be ancient history in a year.

[KTV]

Hello Ibn:

Spell words Really good addition, they ad skill to the game and make us think before trying to dodge, no more mindless dodging as soon as a war is casted, we now have to adapt. It brings back in the old school pvp when you had to watch precisely what was your opponent casting. Note: Anyone screaming they cant hit anything simply did not played back then when there were no Arc and mages were dominating. Mages were hititng targets with np and everyone was happy, give time to the noobs to learn.

Lure / BL Sure there is multiple ways of not taking lots of damage because of lures, the main one being cov bp. This isnt so imbalancing as long as people decide to move their a$ instead of whining. However debuffs simply arent fun in pvp, removing BL + lure all together would be better.

Sticky mele break I believe the best option is to find a way to allow sticky based on run skill. This is the more logical thing and would give people a reason to pump run. Currently there is no point in raising run higher than around 400, lag is the limit for run speed (I play daily with my friend Noodlez he has the highest run on DT, he isnt faster than me at ALL).
I can hear mages complain about that idea already because meles are usually faster, well mages will have to raise quickness if they want to break or they will have to spec run. I dotn see any imbalance there, meles have to raise focus and willpower a lot as well as 3 magic schools....
Note about mele sticky: the problem with jump spin isnt that it breaks meles it is that it gives at least a half radar range to the guy being chased, that s too much. If jump spin was breaking sticky but wasnt giving so much advance it would not be a problem, meles would have a chance to restick. I never ever die to meles if i dont want to and decide to run, that s as simple as that.

PVP imbue on loot generated weapons I love that idea i posted it a few times in some feedback thread i m really happy you guys decide to give it a look.


Thank you for your hard work and for listening to us, i m sure that you know that behind a minority of people shouting as much as they can a huge majority of your players love that game. Keep up the good work.

K.

[Kharnish]

Could someone explain why you are able to debuff someone's armor while they are in portal space?? That seems like a rather severe oversight IMO... so why wasnt it fixed when you did the hotfix yesterday? I would appreaciate an answer to this question..

[Aztek]

Reply to IBN

"Sorry, one question -- when shooting at a mage, some of our DoT charts show that an tink'd AR bow does damage almost equivalent to a Weeping. How does that match up with your experience?"

Im not sure why but on occasion this does seem to be the case. Its nothing I have been able to pinpoint by looking at what a player has on and saying to myself "ok my AR bow would work better against this guys armor". Its also nothing consistent enough to warrant just using an AR a greater majority of the time.

At this juncture I typically go to my AR bows after my 2 weepings are loathered or when I need to pull out my "save my ass melee mod bow" after being inepted.

I would much rather carry player crafted bows if they could deal the same damage as consistenly as weepings.

[Rast]

I am done with AC. Its a joke now.

My 100 level UA hits for more damage and more often than my 140 mage does. Melees can dodge wars but mages cannot dodge melee attacks even with melee D. They hit harder for less skill credits spent. Given the fact I cant catch a melee off gaurd now with a change up from bolt to arc or vise versa. That Was difficult to do to a good melee before........ now? And poor Archers? pffft. I could go on but you have shown and freely admitted you do not listen, wich leads me to think you care not for the player base.

If this what is considered balance for pvp then you will have to excuse me for not sticking around to see whats next......

Please go into the bathroom and break your crack pipes over the tiolet!

[Hephaestus]

I'm not going to berate you as most everyone else has, but as of right now my level 119 mage is relegated to buff bot status and I'm playing my reroll sword character until everything washes out.

The biggest two issues I see at this point are:

1. It's very difficult for a mage to get away from a melee but it's easy for a melee to get away from a mage.

2. It's easy for melee's to avoid the war spells cast by a mage but a mage can NOT avoid getting hit by the melee.

Sub issues:

Equal the playing field for all pk types IE., bows, axes, ua's etc. I feel that this playing field should be related to how much a skill cost. The more the skill costs to train/spec, the better that skill should be.

I'm against dropping all barriers to housing. If this happened and some juviinile deliquent started camping my house to gratify their sick pleasure, I would stop playing.

That's my input, take it as you will.

Heph

PS. Thanks for trying, I know it's hard and you get a lot of grief from everyone, but keep working at it!

[The Juggalo Dt]

Don't let these guys snide comments offend you.
I personaly think that the article gave me a better understanding where you guys stand. Good job guys... Keep up the good work.

[Jojji]

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Think that says it all about your "vision".

[Seriphyn]

I don't know what's more sad, seeing these people leave or watching Turbine not care.

I'm incredibly dumbfounded by the whole series of events.

[Ayatollah]

Watching Turbine not care is worse but they are making people leave.


Its not like people leaving is making Turbine worse...... :|

[Som|Blood]

Game-Lures - AC was balanced without them. Melees can unequip and if they get hit they all carry 4-5 weepings. Mages can't unequip especially in a group fight and can't carry a ton of 3k bu BP's.

Set-S2H-Once again ac was balanced around s2h 1 healing quickly. Removing it destroys mages, removes any chance of 2v1 vs. mages, and takes away any skill involved in fighting.

Match-Spell words - hard to hit before...impossible to hit now... people were saying people died before arcs. That may be true. That was when godmode was in game. That was when true fastcast was in game and I could cast liked a chaos wisp on cocaine. People didn't have 410 hp then. People didn't have aegis and full wards then. People died in a war and a harm or two wars then. People can realistically take 4 wars without healing now. edit: whats funny is they did this to add skill to the game. Skill is adapting a dodging pattern that was good no matter what was coming at you (crescent dodging). Being able to tell the difference between two words on a screen is a short bus education, not skill.

lets all shake hands and go to the next game. My subs been gone since patch day.

[MtnLion]

While I followed your logic intently in the article, there are a couple points that I believe the ideas are missing the mark by a wide margin:

1. Sword and Mage are supposed to be at or near parity, now we are to expect to be able to cast brittlemail and other armor debuffs on characters who are not wielding shields. Clearly the winner is now sword, not any other class.

2. Missile characters (yes, archers) suffer from a flaw, they have no attack mod on their weapons. (No, Heart Seeker does not help a missile character at all.) It is a software flaw that has been around for a very long time. Most other software flaws have been overcome, like personal storage, trade areas, secure trades, the overcrowding of Arwic (yeah, aren't we wanted back in the towns, now?).

[TRuthSeer]

Once again defenses concepts seems flawed......Can we know why we are being punished?

Archers (which need luv offensively btw) have melee D and can dodge war spells and other archers arrows.

Melee's have melee D plus can dodge arrows and war spells.

Mages can dodge arrows and warspells but have no way to dodge melee's attacks (unless exploiting jump spin).

Both Melee's and Archers can dodge all forms of attacks almost indifferent of equipment.... but mages not only cannot vs melee but now can get 1-3 shotted because of lures?

I know Cov and Otholoi unenchantable BP is constantly being preached to combat such sillyness (Missle/Melee Req on cov going to go down? and Otholoi BP isn't that great), but it doesn't answer why did you do this to us in first place? Forced to have a certain BP or you insta die? How is that reasonable, fair, sane, fun, worth ticking so many people off?

As you already know, not everyone reads these forums or even comes here. Sometimes it is because they just don't know or they are just casual players. Players not Devs are helping long time players with some work arounds to stop getting 1-3 shotted by melee's (nothing like feeling like a noob again huh?). So everyone uninformed gets insta killed for not having a certain type of BP and will continue to do so until they can get it? How is that fun for them or anyone besides a non-mage? I have even had vassals come to me thinking there was a bug as it doesn't even WARN them what is happening b4 they insta die.
Sure you let us know lure was coming (for those of us that know where to look for the info), but in no way let people know that there fullying 10x tinkered armor would be cheese cloth after a lure. Sure you can tinker armor better around a lure.... Once again taking time and not playing your mage (that you are now paying a recently inflated price for to sit on a shelf) or you can try and learn to play around insta dieing (how many deaths does it take to get to cancel subscription?) while hunting down some unechantable BP's until then or a month from now when luv is supposedly coming... it is coming right?

Always in the past, even if I did not like the changes or agreed with them I understood a reason why this was done and now I cannot fathom why oh why Turbine would do this.....
If you said straight out that melee D and missle D lowered damage with equip like magic D does or that mages where now to be hybrids (you get focus or self not both) and HAVE to take melee D or are designed as 2nd ranked battle fronts in the rear with archers and a new wall of melee's was being designed to hold opponents back..... I would at least know some sort of wacked reasoning behind this... but so far it is beyond me....

[Zarak_MT]

I think PKL sucks my butt now, for 2 reasons i can think of.

1. Being able to debuff your openents armor now i mean come on u might aswell just make a spell to make them take there armor off, Swords hit to hard before u guys put that bull in now they hit 10 times worse, like today for instance i was facing a person that had sword "trained" and started with 35 strength he put brittlemail 6 on my coat and i Blood Loather his weapon because of that, he still hit me for 50+ THATS BULL my friends, u might aswell give us a shield that protects from that.


2. Taking stam to health out, i see no point in taking it out it was perfectly fine till u guys messed with it, it was a mage's best friend i bet 90% of mages + melee's/archers use it that was to stupidest thing ever.


i dont know where u guys come up with these idea's u had half of darktide quit for stupid reason and lose a BUNCH of money, i would like to see these changes be reconsidered.

I know most of these flames are gonna come from the WHINING melee's who thing they need to be balanced, yea maybe dagger and throwing weapons but not sword for sakes, you guys have been getting your sweetness for 6 patches now and we have gotten squat i've been patient for long enough u guys ruined the game for most people by doin that. im finished

[Sabu]

Originally posted by KTV
Hello Ibn:

Lure / BL Sure there is multiple ways of not taking lots of damage because of lures, the main one being cov bp. This isnt so imbalancing as long as people decide to move their a$ instead of whining. However debuffs simply arent fun in pvp, removing BL + lure all together would be better.

K.

And I assume every mage is high enough to able to have melee/missle and enough exp spent on it for it to be useable + the resources to tink it up some.

[knopp]

Our vision for AC’s PvP can be summed up in one sentence: Improve upon the positive and eliminate the negative.


Sadly that would mean that the entire Turbine staff would have to be fired.

[KF_AC]

Dear Turbine,
S2H I was an integral part of the "speed" element in AC, it also allowed mages to take on more than 1 opponent at a time, to be highly competitive in group fights. Basically to survive in highly precarious situations without being overpowering.

You have to either up the cap, bring the spell back as it was or speed up the animation for S2H IV+.

Lures are another matter. If all PKs start wearing olthoi BPs, then lures are negated. You might as well remove them.
I don't think seeing everyone running in olthoi BP, Amuli leggings and Koujia sleeves is what you want to achieve.

If you finally remove lures, then do the logical thing by making Weeping unenchantable once again. That would level the field.

Thanks for listening.

[knopp]

KF, they arent listening... That is how this garbage got put into the game in the first place.

They should just run a poll about this on these boards. Put a link on the login screen, and let it run for a week. When the week is up, they should make changes accordingly.

[Seriphyn]

that I see people giving up because we're flat out being ignored.

[decadoice]

To whom it may concern,

I was pleased to see you acknowledge the imbalance of characters - mage to others, in this text. However I dont believe you articulated the extent of this sufficiently, nor do I believe it is limited to PvP, and so i want to suggest one more change.

1. AC 3 years ago was a different kettle of fish. Mages used things like life vulns to assist non-mages in a fellow. However as you tweaked the game over time the mage restrictions were lifted allowing them to become as powerful on their own as an entire fellowship was designed to be - whilst the other chars only got better at their specific skill sets.

2. If you released a new game today, would you have one char template so dominante over others ? I hope that you would advertise this to the buyer in advance of a sale if that were the case.

3. Here is what I think needs to happen. For every spell mages can cast using a casting device, melee's and archers need to be able to have the ability to cast that same spell using their respective weapons and not changing to a casting device(assuming they have the skill for it of course). So ... eg ... dagger guy casts vuln's with his dagger and immediately starts stabbing, no changing to an orb for the casts. Thats the big thing that is needed in my opinion. Change this and everyone can go toe to toe as equals. (Nor should melee's / archers suffer any more time delay penalty over what a mage currently suffers when going from, say, a life spell to a war spell.)

4. In your PvP text I interpreted your suggested changes as clever well thought out tweaks. The Aegis for archers is great idea. However, on their own I do not think they get even half way to addressing the imbalance. If you make your changes and add this change I am suggesting to it - then I think we are all in business.

5. I note that wrote that you do not intend to make other chars as strong as mages. My feedback. If I bought a new game today and wanted to play, say dagger, but read a warning saying that the mage is the most pwoerful char - then I would choose to play the game as a mage and not dagger..... After three years of playing AC I take exception to you having the intention to make my game play inferior to that of other players who pay the same price as I do. I always thought that the relative power of the mage was accidental and not intentional. I dont think this is right. Warning me at this stage negates three years of game play, so I think that is too late to warn me now.

So after three years of playing, this is my contribution. I dont plan on posting here much more, so I really hope you give this some thought.

Thanks for a game that is enjoyable for the most part. I hope the buy-back works for you.

Dec

[TRuthSeer]

^

???????

Do we have and interpreter in the house?

To me it looks like your a non-mage player, who is posting mage ramblings about something you don't know much about...... but then again its not clear what the posting is about anywho.

If you are talking about that there should be non-mage classes again I agree. It would be nice to see real warriors and archers return (not everyone HAVING to have life/creature/item), but if they can cast same spells as mages... it kinda defeats purpose of being a mage.
Also the whole mage was designed to be your slave in the beginning and to vunl things for you but finally after restrictions were lifted came into there own concept is waaaaaaay out there......

Mage restrictions being lifted? Just a short after retail Harm got nerfed (harm distance greatly reduced); then Sticky melee came out (you could have melees stick to you even if they had 10 run skill and you 400), eventually this got tweaked but melees can still stick to you even if you have higher run; then a movement timer was put in so that any time you get the slightest amount of lag your spells fizzle; Drain 1 got nerfed; Harm gets nerfed with resistances; Banes get caped so mages take more damage for lack of a Shield/Melee/Missle defense; Aegis comes out giving another class once again skill based damage reduction this time to war (where is archer/melee skill based damage reduction?); Stam to Health 1 nerfed. So what restrictions are we talking about? My high lvl melee has to leave lvling areas once a week for supplies.... I have go to every half hour to hour with my mage..... It took 28 points to specialize my damage skill with my mage and 4 to 16 mattering on which of my melee's, so I have TONS more skills with my melee's...... What restrictions again?

[ielchupa]

I don't mind at all the changing back of item debuffs (to armor)
i don't mind any un-changes you might do ecept one!

PLEASE! do not change the spell words back, Because for almost a year now i'v been waiting for this along with all melees. It gives us melees a chance to acutally kill a mage.

Consider a level 100 ua char fighting a level 200 Grief Battle mage.

We bolth know who would win, with the new spell words the melee ua does have a small chance, if he does have some skill.

Im a level 171 melee life ua, and i beg you along with my followers not to change the spell words, i dont need debuffs i dont need any new spells, i dont want any new quests. Just *do not* change the spell words.

Melee's have the worser end of PvP as it is.

We do not shoot 200+ dmg bolts out of us, we do 1-50 dammage, in what little time we have inbetween wars. And we bolth know that isn't much time at all.


So in closing, please give me and the rest of the melees in asheron's call just a tid bit of a break. Thank you.

[Orladin]

Yes, Please please PLEASE, if you leave ANYTHING, let it be the spell words! With them being different, it's no longer a guessing game for dodging war spells.

The debuffing of BPs may be unbalancing, but the spell words simply give it fairness. The mages can see what kind of an attack we're doing, it's only fair that we can see what they're doing!

[Som|Blood]

Originally posted by Orladin
Yes, Please please PLEASE, if you leave ANYTHING, let it be the spell words! With them being different, it's no longer a guessing game for dodging war spells.

The debuffing of BPs may be unbalancing, but the spell words simply give it fairness. The mages can see what kind of an attack we're doing, it's only fair that we can see what they're doing!


Umm melees only have one attack and it can't be dodged...do you paly the game?

[Xenlock]

If you're changing everything back, will you be fixing sth 1 as well?

Stamina to Health 1 was a very important part and key factor to surviving duels. I even used it on my Melee Toon, likewise with the mage.

I'm glad that you've decided to make these changes.

However, PK and PKL was the best it ever was before the March Patch. It will Always be fun, but it's also alot better with sth1.

Melees and mages alike can cast it with ease. It was the best solution to not having healing ;p

[Xenlock]

Good points Truth.

Very much so.

[Ghent]

Resubscribing accounts, and wondering why there isn't a separate thread so the turbies can bask in the praise for their flexibility. :P

[Dark_Stunna]

Ok instead of trying to fix balancing of pvp how about better content for pvp. No, I did not like the March changes and they should be fixed but after this turn your sights else where. Come up with some ideas for pvp and make it more interesting. PvP is the only thing that keeps me coming back to AC. You have to see now that no matter how many balancing changes you make we will never be happy so how about doing something else.
The pk arenas was a good start in the right direction. If ya like I got a few ideas of what I'm talking about. ( you dont have to pay me for these)

1) How about pk "weapons of destruction" that spawn at one place on Dereth. Once you get killed it goes back to that spot for another person to pick it up. If you log off it goes back to that spot. You can even use some ingame content like Ulgrims sword or a wand that cast Martines Giant ring spell. All these things have different spots on the map so even those spots will be camped with fighting pks. All these weapons have a high requirment so low level pks cant pick them up and wipe out 20 high levels. The blip on the map will look different too if you posses one.


2) Ok how about makeing SOME towns possesable by monarchs with over 500 followers. The fruits of this is 100% sell back on everything and "on and off" access option for people not in the monarchy. It changes possesion by destroying a crystal ( or something like that) with 5000 hp or more. The town even gives a certain number of pyreal it makes from sales to the monarchy.
When the crystal is being attacked it announces it in the allegiance chat.

3) how about a bet system the pk can use for duels. Open a window put your items up and both press agree. Once one person is dead the other gets the spoils.

4) Capture the Flag for pkl. Between two towns, both with portals to each other like Qalabar and Heb. The flags are linked so you can set the number of captures for the win. The flags debuff your run so your not as fast as everyone else and they cause the carrier to glow onscreen and on radar. Once the game is started you become a pkl that only the opposite team can kill. Not other pkl players outside of the game.

I know some of these things might take a little coding and programming to do but If you really want AC too survive its gonna take " out of the box " thinking like this to keep it alive. I really think things like this will bring more people to AC too.

[Demonic_Melee]

i do not think swords are overpowered..... i think the other melee's are underpowered thou.....
on my lvl 103 swordie i can kill pretty much anybody under me or have a decent fight with a mage around my lvl.... i also have a 96 mage and i have decent fights with archers and swordies around my level...... i can compete with 126+ mages also..... swords destroy me.... 126+ . like they should. the have 3x the xp i do





but when i play my 103 swordie and destroy a lvl 170 mage hitting for 180 on 3/4 power ....... i know lures need to be taken away....
i also know that i can kill 126+ uas and i can dodge mages all the time...... unless i hit a lag spike......


spell words and lures are the only thing that needs to be taken out..... also...... i dont know that other skills should be raised in power either.....
uas get 10 more credits then swords.... thats enough to spec melee and evade more giving them the upper hand..... why should they be hitting for close to the same damage...



bye bye lures
bye bye spell words....
keep the weeping damage the same... ( look at the skill credit difference)

[Demonic_Melee]

i am also wondering what happened to the system
mage>sword>archer>mage

[Orladin]

Som|Blood - you implying dodging war is bad? Are you insane!?

Besides, mages can Jump Spin, and run around.

And if melees couldn't dodge mage attacks... Well . . They'd be dead pretty fast every fight. :p

It's painful enough with the spellwords being different. All I do is run in circles for like 45 minutes hoping the mage's buffs run out, or he messes up and runs out of mana. Or I get lucky enough to get tons of crits.

[TRuthSeer]

You said mages know what type of attack is coming at U and you should be able to know also..... He replied (of course) mages know, cuz you only have 1 type of attack (melee) and it is undodgable.

Melee and Wars are not the same you can't dodge melee and you can wars. So knowing what type of attack takes all the skill out of fighting a mage. As far as jump/spin exploit it is being looked at by the devs to see what they can do to tweak it. A game shouldn't be balanced over exploits, as it is not a 'skill' (altho some exploits take much skill to pull off effectively ;)) and would punish those that don't exploit.

Also, It is common knowledge that if you seperate the spellwords it is so stinking easy to dodge war spells then that a lvl 1 can dodge a lvl 126 mage all day and not worry about dieing unless he lags.

The game should not be balanced over your lack of dodging skill.

Good Journey

Ps. Thx Xenlock :)

[decadoice]

Truth,

You had problems understanding my post. Be a little more specific and I will see if I can explain it to you in more detail - or a different way.

Your response to my post whilst true, was in my opinion small and insignificant in relation to the point I was getting at.

However I do agree with you totally on one point - if there could be true and effective non mage classes that could kill on a par with mages and not require magic -- that would be ideal. This would be a better solution to the one I proposed. However, I think my proposal is much easier for T to implement in the near term.

Dec

[neuro]

Originally posted by Ibn
I read this yesterday but forgot to reply. I'll defintely suggest this to the team, you make an excellent point.

Sorry, one question -- when shooting at a mage, some of our DoT charts show that an tink'd AR bow does damage almost equivalent to a Weeping. How does that match up with your experience?

weeping's ignore sheilds, which makes a HUGE difference in pvp when fighting melees.

-Neuro.