Ideas to improve RvR for everyone...

Svartmetall

Great Unclean One
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(n.b. the observations in this post were largely inspired by observing the state of RvR last night, but have been brewing for a long time)

The RvR part of this game is WAY more broken than any PvE imbalances and issues that exist (and there are a lot of those), purely because any imbalance one way or the other directly impacts on another player. So here are a few things I reckon might make RvR more fun, more fair, and generally better for all (I'm not going to talk about specific classes here, by and large, but what I perceive as general RvR issues).


1: Ever since TOA, the balance in RvR has been swinging towards caster god mode again. NF centring a large proportion of the action around keeps, where ranged damage and CC are absolute rulers of the battlefield, has thrown this imbalance between ranged damage classes and melees into painfully sharp relief. Give heavy tanks a much, much higher innate resistance to magic damage and chance to resist individual spells. Give light tanks the higher chance to resist, but not the innate resists.

2: On a related note, remove /assist from archers and casters, it's utterly ridiculous around keeps these days. Getting hit by 5-7 arrows from different archers and thusly dying within two seconds of stepping outside a tower to rez someone is broken beyond my capacity to express. Getting nuked for ~2,000 damage in two seconds at most by one caster, at range, is equally farcical. Casters go "oh but you can interrupt us!" whilst failing to take into account the fact that nowadays, you're dead so fast to a caster that you can't even see the bugger who's killing you before you're a pair of smoking boots. Ranged damage being that powerful makes keeptakes pure torture for anyone without ranged damage/abilities; the Scout /assistzerg in particular (because of the Scouts' unbalanced extra range) is insanely overpowering in a keeptake situation. Spell damage should decrease as the cast speed increases, just like melee damage decreases as the hit speed increases.

3: Massively nerf all CC effects in RvR, especially ranged and insta ones. Dying after losing a fight where you at least get some licks in is one thing. Dying after standing there helpless while other people farm you completely sucks. Far, far too much RvR is determined by who gets CC off first - once CC lands, forget it. Fight's over, particularly for low RRs and after NF made the useful versions of Purge extremely expensive. Does a mez actually need to last 70+ seconds in RvR...? Of course not, CC is very overpowered across the board, for everyone, and needs some serious fixing.

4: All RR5 "free" RAs to be normalised across all classes - the Sorc RR5 RA is a classic example of a broken, "I WIN" RA, and it needs to go. Compare the Sorc RR5 RA to, say, the Runemaster one or the Armsman one and it makes it very plain that the playing field needs to be levelled. I would suggest giving all classes across the board a choice from two RR5 RAs, one to improve their offence, one to improve their defence. Homogenising the classes across the realms so the RvR part of the game basically becomes Green Team vs. Blue Team vs. Red Team would suck enormously - you'd just have Quake Team Deathmatch (with Red Team having way more players than anyone else); but adding to the existing class-induced imbalances by having uneven RAs doesn't help anyone.

5: Normalise archery range across all 3 realms. There are already enough class-defining differences between the archer classes; no one class should be given more range than anyone else and slower (i.e. harder-hitting) bows than anyone else as well. It's just too much, particularly (again) in keeptakes, where ranged damage is king. The archery playing field needs to be levelled; kind of crappy to have your equivalent class shooting you at a range at which you simply cannot fire back.

6: The vast, yawning gap between low and high RRs is one of the worst things in RvR these days, so get rid of all the damn "I WIN" active RAs (TWF, ST, whatever - you know, the expensive ones that high RRs can afford and low RRs cannot) so fights get decided by skill - not one group member having the uber-instakill-we-win button. RAs should be limited primarily to passive ones like the aug stats (with better return at lower levels than we get now) and stuff like AoM and the Mastery-type RAs (MOPain, MOBlock, Wild Power etc). Purge would be an OK active RA to keep, but at a cost where it's affordable for all. Being rewarded for the time and effort you've put into lots and lots of RvRing? Yes, of course. Making you effectively unkillable by lower RRs? No.

7: Introduce a Mastery Of Melee RA, since casters get Mastery Of Magery but at present there is no equivalent RA for melees. Which is unfair.

8: Introduce an Aug Resist passive RA - 5 points gets +2% to all resists, another 10 points gets +5% to all resists, and another 15 points gets +10% to all resists. This to be available to all classes.

9: Massively increase the RP rewards for...well...everything. Last night we took a Hib tower, and got 1 RP for it. Insulting. Make it 500 RPs at the very least and then you're talking. And a couple of thousand RPs at the very least for taking a keep; taking a keep now is a hell of a lot harder than it was in OF, and the RP reward should reflect that. Since RvR is meant to be just that - Realm vs. Realm, not individual e-peen strokeage - then encouraging people to actually do things beneficial to the realm would definitely be the way forward.

10: Remove stacking RvR res sickness. It was an extremely stupid idea when it was introduced, and it's still an extremely stupid idea now.

...
 

Fana

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Agree with all, and would like to add that more nerfing of Master Level and Artifact abilities are also needed - they should be bonuses, not requisits to partake, in rvr (although they have somewhat less effect in large scale rvr).
 

chretien

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Just a couple of things.
Mostly I agree with what you say, particularly the damage reduction with cast speed just like for melee. As archery apparently uses the same system as spellcasting for hit/damage calculations that would presumably also be an archery nerf.

Some RR5 abilities are better than others I agree. I don't think that many of them are an 'I win' button alone, rather it's a combination of things. The Sorc ability makes him mostly immune to melee for 30 seconds every 15 minutes but doesn't prevent him from being interrupted by successful attacks and doesn't help at all versus spelldamage. I quite like the idea of a unique ability to help define each class but there are some which need to be toned down. The Sorc one could probably use it as does the Warlock one when Catacombs arrives. Mostly the abilities are nice but not uber.

CC has always been one of the most contentious issues in the game. The argument goes like this:

Caster: If a tank gets to me I'm dead and can't use any of my abilities and he'll win without me having a chance to fight back. I need a tool to keep tanks at bay long enough for me to have a good chance at winning a fight.

Tank: If I can't get close to a caster I can't do any damage to him at all and he'll win without me being able to fight back. I need a way to be able to get close to a caster fast enough to give me a good chance at winning a fight.

Mythic: err....
In my opinion if the interrupt system didn't exist, CC in RvR could be taken out. As it is, it's a nightmare balancing the CC pendulum. In the last few patches of OF, casters barely dared step past the TK due to Det5 assist trains, nowadays obviously it's gone the other way. Generally reducing spelldamage or casting speed would be the easiest way to balance the situation without redesigning the whole PvP system. NF tried to redress the balance with free Det for all tanks but it could go further.

Scouts and longbows. Longbows do fire further than recurved bows. Albion is supposed to be the tech realm so we get plate, x-bows and longbows. In return we get generally weaker classes. The prevailing impression I get, from talking to a few high RR Rangers is that Rangers are probably the best archer class due to their all-round utility. Your mileage may vary.
 

Eroda

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At high rr, the game is currently extremely balanced imo between casters and tanks with all sorts of groups being viable. There is no longer a totally dominant setup.

Problems occur when a fully toa'd, high rr group of players meets casual ones. The damage done will be totally stupid and it will seem very extreme. However when this same group meets a similar opted enemy group the silly 700-800 nukes suddenly become a much more reasonable 400-500 (typical damage on highish rr tanks). It makes it very difficult to balance because if u reduce magic damage it may make it better for casual players but it then unbalances things for those that take the game more seriously. Its a no win situation really, always a problem with mmorpgs cos some peeps can simply put in more time than others. There is also a similar issue here with CC, most high rr players will have purge 2 making it often much less of an issue where as lower rr wont thus making them easy pickings if they get mezzed.

Not sure where i stand on /assist, i really do hate being hit by 3-4 archers at once though cos basically its insta death from a range thats silly plus the fact u dont often know they're there until its too late :p

Aug resists are currently in the form of Avoidance of Magic (magic resists) and Physical Defence (melee resists).

Agreed with regards to rr5, some of them are just totally stupid and over-powered where as others are useless beyond belief. Feels like they just chucked in ra's at random without really thinking too much.

I would also like some more long term goals in the game, i dislike rvring for the sake of it so i can go 'yay, ive made 40k tonight'. Would much prefer there to be some other goals in rvr.
 

UndyingAngel

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I also agree... with all of this I hope you sent it into mythic's Freeback thing. :=)
:clap: :clap: :clap:
 

old.Whoodoo

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Svartmetall said:
1: Ever since TOA, the balance in RvR has been swinging towards caster god mode again. NF centring a large proportion of the action around keeps, where ranged damage and CC are absolute rulers of the battlefield, has thrown this imbalance between ranged damage classes and melees into painfully sharp relief. Give heavy tanks a much, much higher innate resistance to magic damage and chance to resist individual spells. Give light tanks the higher chance to resist, but not the innate resists.
Damn well said, ATM its Dark Age of Rangealot, combined with points you raise after this, good call!

: On a related note, remove /assist from archers and casters, it's utterly ridiculous around keeps these days. Getting hit by 5-7 arrows from different archers and thusly dying within two seconds of stepping outside a tower to rez someone is broken beyond my capacity to express. Getting nuked for ~2,000 damage in two seconds at most by one caster, at range, is equally farcical. Casters go "oh but you can interrupt us!" whilst failing to take into account the fact that nowadays, you're dead so fast to a caster that you can't even see the bugger who's killing you before you're a pair of smoking boots. Ranged damage being that powerful makes keeptakes pure torture for anyone without ranged damage/abilities; the Scout /assistzerg in particular (because of the Scouts' unbalanced extra range) is insanely overpowering in a keeptake situation. Spell damage should decrease as the cast speed increases, just like melee damage decreases as the hit speed increases.
I say make spells similar to mellee weapons, faster casts = less damage, like higher spd weapon = less damage. Getting nuked every 1.5 seconds by a solo caster for 700+ damage is insane, combined with stun spamming from pets is even more stupid. You wantto cast at 1.5 secs, ok, 1/3rd the damage.

: Massively nerf all CC effects in RvR, especially ranged and insta ones. Dying after losing a fight where you at least get some licks in is one thing. Dying after standing there helpless while other people farm you completely sucks. Far, far too much RvR is determined by who gets CC off first - once CC lands, forget it. Fight's over, particularly for low RRs and after NF made the useful versions of Purge extremely expensive. Does a mez actually need to last 70+ seconds in RvR...? Of course not, CC is very overpowered across the board, for everyone, and needs some serious fixing.
Totally with you here, I think its also borked because while I have capped resists, i very rarely do, and how come my pet comes out of an AE mezz (level 42 hunter pet this is!) before i do?

: All RR5 "free" RAs to be normalised across all classes - the Sorc RR5 RA is a classic example of a broken, "I WIN" RA, and it needs to go. Compare the Sorc RR5 RA to, say, the Runemaster one or the Armsman one and it makes it very plain that the playing field needs to be levelled. I would suggest giving all classes across the board a choice from two RR5 RAs, one to improve their offence, one to improve their defence. Homogenising the classes across the realms so the RvR part of the game basically becomes Green Team vs. Blue Team vs. Red Team would suck enormously - you'd just have Quake Team Deathmatch (with Red Team having way more players than anyone else); but adding to the existing class-induced imbalances by having uneven RAs doesn't help anyone.
Great ideas, i hear sorcs preparing a whine already.

: Normalise archery range across all 3 realms. There are already enough class-defining differences between the archer classes; no one class should be given more range than anyone else and slower (i.e. harder-hitting) bows than anyone else as well. It's just too much, particularly (again) in keeptakes, where ranged damage is king. The archery playing field needs to be levelled; kind of crappy to have your equivalent class shooting you at a range at which you simply cannot fire back.
Best yet, scouts block 70% of everything, and you cant get close enough to fire more than one arrow, major nerf needed. And how come Midgard gets shite speed bows too, Braggarts 4.8 to albs 5.3, whats that all about?

: The vast, yawning gap between low and high RRs is one of the worst things in RvR these days, so get rid of all the damn "I WIN" active RAs (TWF, ST, whatever - you know, the expensive ones that high RRs can afford and low RRs cannot) so fights get decided by skill - not one group member having the uber-instakill-we-win button. RAs should be limited primarily to passive ones like the aug stats (with better return at lower levels than we get now) and stuff like AoM and the Mastery-type RAs (MOPain, MOBlock, Wild Power etc). Purge would be an OK active RA to keep, but at a cost where it's affordable for all. Being rewarded for the time and effort you've put into lots and lots of RvRing? Yes, of course. Making you effectively unkillable by lower RRs? No.
Hard to balance this one, this arguement has been there since RAs came out, and still isnt resolved. No easy answer.

: Introduce a Mastery Of Melee RA, since casters get Mastery Of Magery but at present there is no equivalent RA for melees. Which is unfair.
Agreed, back the rangealot comment.

: Introduce an Aug Resist passive RA - 5 points gets +2% to all resists, another 10 points gets +5% to all resists, and another 15 points gets +10% to all resists. This to be available to all classes.
Nice idea.

: Massively increase the RP rewards for...well...everything. Last night we took a Hib tower, and got 1 RP for it. Insulting. Make it 500 RPs at the very least and then you're talking. And a couple of thousand RPs at the very least for taking a keep; taking a keep now is a hell of a lot harder than it was in OF, and the RP reward should reflect that. Since RvR is meant to be just that - Realm vs. Realm, not individual e-peen strokeage - then encouraging people to actually do things beneficial to the realm would definitely be the way forward.
Agreed, i think also keep lords should be worth a bonus too including XP.

: Remove stacking RvR res sickness. It was an extremely stupid idea when it was introduced, and it's still an extremely stupid idea now.
Amen

This really wants posting on the devs section of VN, well thought through.

Heres some I would like to see:

1: Make the entire entrance area to POC PVP imune, to stop the entrance camping, or at least give people entering a fighting chance.

2: Make all seige do some decent damage to players, like oil does. Hitting for 100 damage every 15 seconds compared to FOH healing 124 HP per 5 seconds is daft.

3: Make mob and pet CC the same imunity timers as RvR when used as pets, nothing worse than a chain stunning chicken with a sorc behind him.
 

Bahumat

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to make RvR servers better they should close the servers all and port the characters onto camlann

taking keeps etc gets boring after the first few. relic raids or as i like to call them "can we get back before we all ld" raids are not too much fun neither.

Bahumat casts his Pulsing Shield of Flaming
 

chretien

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Svartmetall said:
9: Massively increase the RP rewards for...well...everything. Last night we took a Hib tower, and got 1 RP for it. Insulting. Make it 500 RPs at the very least and then you're talking. And a couple of thousand RPs at the very least for taking a keep; taking a keep now is a hell of a lot harder than it was in OF, and the RP reward should reflect that. Since RvR is meant to be just that - Realm vs. Realm, not individual e-peen strokeage - then encouraging people to actually do things beneficial to the realm would definitely be the way forward.

10: Remove stacking RvR res sickness. It was an extremely stupid idea when it was introduced, and it's still an extremely stupid idea now.

...
I forgot to mention this earlier. You are aware that RPs for taking keeps and towers is dependant on the number of defenders and how bloody the fight was?
Every time RPs are earnt in a keep fight, a percentage of them goes to a pool that is awarded to the defenders for a successful defence or the attackers for a successful capture. Usually taking a defended keep does net you a couple of thousand RPs. Taking an undefended tower though won't get you many at all.
 

Svartmetall

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chretien said:
I forgot to mention this earlier. You are aware that RPs for taking keeps and towers is dependant on the number of defenders and how bloody the fight was?
...Taking an undefended tower though won't get you many at all.

Oh, absolutely. The point I probably didn't make clearly enough was that even taking an undefended one should get you a nice wodge of RPs...taking a defended one should get you more. It's all about incentive.

From your earlier post:
Chretien said:
In the last few patches of OF, casters barely dared step past the TK due to Det5 assist trains, nowadays obviously it's gone the other way.
Very true; but, the thing is, even then it required high RR to get Det 5 - which points again to the imbalance between low and high RRs. Even in the last few patches of OF, casters (especially stun-nuke-nuke Hib ones) could do hideous things to low RRs pretty much with impunity.

...
 

Svartmetall

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old.Whoodoo said:
3: Make mob and pet CC the same imunity timers as RvR when used as pets, nothing worse than a chain stunning chicken with a sorc behind him.
All chain-stun - in fact, all chain-CC of any kind - needs to go. Pure and simple. Being taken out of the fight and having it made impossible for you to do anything is shit. I got chain-Grappled last night, and it was bullshit - Grapple needs to have an immunity timer, or get removed from the game altogether.

...
 

Saggy

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Both TOA and NF increased the cap between casual players and hardcore players - remove MAs from RvR and redo both MA and RA systems to solve this problem.
 

Gear

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Bow range is way too much. Despite having only 35 on bow and no archery bonuses on what I wear, I carry with my some items that give me the +11 bow and +10 archery range. I can shoot people from the top of a keep in clip range without any problems. A few nights ago in Behn, I could kill mids exiting out of the nearby tower. That's utter bollocks...
 

Castus

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All good points Svart and after experiancing most of them it makes you wonder what the creator was thinking of when he thought up those abilities etc:)
I`d like to see a permanent rvr chat channel aswell instead of alliance chat( x1000 blue pms) and BGs.
 

Puppet

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Bahumat said:
to make RvR servers better they should close the servers all and port the characters onto camlann

taking keeps etc gets boring after the first few. relic raids or as i like to call them "can we get back before we all ld" raids are not too much fun neither.

Bahumat casts his Pulsing Shield of Flaming

Problem is alot of people dont like the idea of walking to the trainer in Domnann (or any other equivalent) to get chainganked by idiots/retards.

I play a live-server so I can idle in Ligen :p

And putting people from live-servers on Camlann would give 'us' an incredible advantage. ML10 RR-high people with alot of money (no money-sink as on Camlann) would naturally have a distinct advantage. Bad idea :)
 

Chronictank

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6: The vast, yawning gap between low and high RRs is one of the worst things in RvR these days, so get rid of all the damn "I WIN" active RAs (TWF, ST, whatever - you know, the expensive ones that high RRs can afford and low RRs cannot) so fights get decided by skill - not one group member having the uber-instakill-we-win button. RAs should be limited primarily to passive ones like the aug stats (with better return at lower levels than we get now) and stuff like AoM and the Mastery-type RAs (MOPain, MOBlock, Wild Power etc). Purge would be an OK active RA to keep, but at a cost where it's affordable for all. Being rewarded for the time and effort you've put into lots and lots of RvRing? Yes, of course. Making you effectively unkillable by lower RRs? No.
Disagree completely
People who play more deserve higher rewards, its like saying someone who's pve'd for 5 mins should get lvl 50 just cus he doesnt have the time to lvl.
The main ra's such as purge should be made cheaper so more have access to them, not nerf high rr because they put the effort in to field good grps.

9: Massively increase the RP rewards for...well...everything. Last night we took a Hib tower, and got 1 RP for it. Insulting. Make it 500 RPs at the very least and then you're talking. And a couple of thousand RPs at the very least for taking a keep; taking a keep now is a hell of a lot harder than it was in OF, and the RP reward should reflect that. Since RvR is meant to be just that - Realm vs. Realm, not individual e-peen strokeage - then encouraging people to actually do things beneficial to the realm would definitely be the way forward.
Disagree with this also, you took a keep.. big deal. You should get no rp's for a undefended keep imo, its not hard at all. They should be worth BP's and a bit of cash, higher the keep lvl the more bp's and cash u get.
 

Shike

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agree with quite abit there Svartmetall, good post.

few things though:

On the field tanks and casters are actually quite balanced towards each others, within the archetypes tank, caster, support there are huge imbalances though. Light tanks are good and pretty much balanced but not vs heavy tanks, casters are in no way balanced at all, support likewise imho.

Regarding Sorcerers, do you realize how hopeless it was to play sorc before? To be the one single target that HAVE to die first in every single fight? Ive played sorc and I have never, I repeat NEVER died so much as I did then. Everyone wanted me dead first thing, always. That was a huge reason that Albion lacked playing sorcerers and it hurts a realm very bad if they lack mainCC. Thus Sorcerer got some love and it shows now, Sorcs grows on trees nearly which is a great benefit to Albion ofc, Albs can make more groups thanks to it. Nerf their RR5 and they die asap to tanktrains in 2seconds, nerf their MoCLTs and they die in 2seconds. Explain how Sorcerers are gonna be fun to play when beeing primary target numero uno with the survivability of a water beetle? :) Increase armor is impossible since they are casters, increase HPs are impossible since they are casters, increase resists is not viable (and also unfair aswell), this is a tricky nut to crack tbh and its gone wrong already from the start of the designs of the realms and this is why it looks like it do today. Sure I can agree partially on that rr5+MoClt is OPd in small fights but what other solution is there? Only thing I can come to think of is to increase Sorcerers CCpower, cut down range on AEmez, give them instaMez and instaRoot and also at the same time cut down the Delve on the DD and remove the LTcomponent. Maybe also give a better absbuff in the process or simply a variant of Bainshees ablative to increase the survivalchanse without MoCLT. This would mean they dont die as easy and at the same time nerf their ability to kill a small group alone if they are good. This would make Sorc a better CCer and still not a real threat to small groups which I believe would benefit Albion the most and still shut down the insane whining going on which I find quite unjustified atm since people dont think of the whole picture.

Archers, nerf them to hell so we get rid of the plauge of Archers harassing everyone everywhere. I dont mind assist so much but they do way too much damage and it is beeing "abused" atm, they are pretty much untouchable which is quite wrong. They do crazy damage on range, and rangers for example are also monsters to kill in melee. Fair? Not really. Skip meleesurvival if you want to do massive damage on range and vice versa. Oh and remove stealth from mincers already...

RR5ras in general, well.. yep, some are crazy, some just suck donkeyass. Mythics idea of general balance is whack, as it always have been, they "fixed" some classes with giving them great timed abilitys.. GG! Instead of fixing the class from the foundation instead. I've always wanted RAs to be toned down in general and let classes/skills come more into play instead of Iwinstuff beeing battleturners. Seem I will never get my will through tho :)

TWF, ST, MoC are quite nuts atm (stacking ST is just a joke if used well, hi 30seconds permastun, very fun tbh). MoC since quite many secondeffectspells arent affected by it at all, buffstripping, disease, amnesia, etc.. its just gross what a mess one guy with moc1 can cause within the silly duration of MoC. MoC should shorten down range with same percentage as damages do, If using MoC to disease, radius should be cut down with same percentage.. You get the concept.

CC overall, yes, I agree, its abit funny with the durations. I dont want it back like it was with the OPd determination, but.. what Mythic kinda forgot is that AoM, resistbuffs, doesnt affect CCduration anymore, so it was a double nerf to that RA in a way. Light tanks get by with charge ofc but I feel heavy tanks pain, it cant be fun at all. SoS helps too but not enough imo since it based on a timed RA from another one than oneself if playing heavy tank which kinda sucks.

Noooo mastery of melee lol :) I dont want my Mercs damage nerfed. I do fine as is and I guess most light tanks feel the same. Warriors can pack quite a punch aswell as heroes, Armsman.. well anyone play one at all? ^^
 

Kicks

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Puppet said:
Problem is alot of people dont like the idea of walking to the trainer in Domnann (or any other equivalent) to get chainganked by idiots/retards.

tbh if you try to train in Domnann you deserve to get ganked :rolleyes:
 

Dubaxter

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"Archers, nerf them to hell so we get rid of the plauge of Archers harassing everyone everywhere. I dont mind assist so much but they do way too much damage and it is beeing "abused" atm, they are pretty much untouchable which is quite wrong. They do crazy damage on range, and rangers for example are also monsters to kill in melee. Fair? Not really. Skip meleesurvival if you want to do massive damage on range and vice versa. Oh and remove stealth from mincers already... "

Please oh please do not comment unless you have a hunter..... That was way to generalised.

Good piece of work in general Svart, very good ideas.
 

Fana

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Chronictank said:
Disagree completely
People who play more deserve higher rewards, its like saying someone who's pve'd for 5 mins should get lvl 50 just cus he doesnt have the time to lvl.
The main ra's such as purge should be made cheaper so more have access to them, not nerf high rr because they put the effort in to field good grps.

While ive never understood why Reward has to equal IWIN-abilities, you do have a point in your suggestion that much needed RA's should be cheaper, or more effective.

If Purge, Determination, Avoidance of Magic etc were cheaper, and the more pheripheral abilities costed more then the chasm between casuall and hardcore in terms of raw character power would be somewhat bridged. Casualls could get the meat-and-potatoes abilities faster, and the hardcore could get that little extra edge.
 

Gamah

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Thats right nerf people who have worked hard to get high RR, an make all the time invested completly useless.

Other points though I am more inclined to agree.
 

Void959

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Agree strongly with most of it except:

#9 - Adjusting the way RPs are gained so gank groups arent at a huge advantage is one thing, however increasing RPs for everything would be fairly pointless, and even destructive. All it would do is increase the average RR of everybody across the board, and instead of RR being a nice, albeit sometimes overpowered, bonus for those who are willing to put in time - it would become a must-have to compete, just as artis are seen by many people.

#4 - 'Normalise'ing rr5 RAs is certainly a good thing, however this certainly doesn't mean nerf in many or even any cases, as many people have read, even if that wasn't your intention. IMO there are a few that need nerfing but many that need a bit of a boost, yet people will obviously disagree on how strong the rr5 RAs should be. I would say that their utility is not the important thing, rather that they are all put onto the same level.

#2 - At first glance removing /assist seems like a great idea, but I've been thinking about this for a while and cant help imagining that it might turn out for the worse. Why? Because the people who want do this can find easy ways to get around it, and the more organised groups WILL. There's nothing lame about focussing fire in principal, its very simple tactics used in any game, and the team who does it better, other factors aside, will win easily. So whilst removing /assist will prevent random groups of archers forming up and putting half a dozen arrows into you back a second before you run through that tower door, the organised 8 man groups will love it. They already use TS or some other chat client, and they can easily work out general ways of who to attack first in any situation. So the casual, or indeed anything less that dedicated roaming groups, will be put at a huge disadvantage as they don't have a chat client, and they haven't yet worked out ways to deal with every situation. Currently the leader can just decide 'player X is MA' and thats it, with /assist gone, it will be chaos for those less organised groups. So yes, it will be better for tower zergers, but it will only further widen the gap between organised and average/random 8 man roaming groups.
 

knighthood

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 3, 2004
Messages
1,812
Svartmetall said:
(n.b. the observations in this post were largely inspired by observing the state of RvR last night, but have been brewing for a long time)

The RvR part of this game is WAY more broken than any PvE imbalances and issues that exist (and there are a lot of those), purely because any imbalance one way or the other directly impacts on another player. So here are a few things I reckon might make RvR more fun, more fair, and generally better for all (I'm not going to talk about specific classes here, by and large, but what I perceive as general RvR issues).


1: Ever since TOA, the balance in RvR has been swinging towards caster god mode again. NF centring a large proportion of the action around keeps, where ranged damage and CC are absolute rulers of the battlefield, has thrown this imbalance between ranged damage classes and melees into painfully sharp relief. Give heavy tanks a much, much higher innate resistance to magic damage and chance to resist individual spells. Give light tanks the higher chance to resist, but not the innate resists.

2: On a related note, remove /assist from archers and casters, it's utterly ridiculous around keeps these days. Getting hit by 5-7 arrows from different archers and thusly dying within two seconds of stepping outside a tower to rez someone is broken beyond my capacity to express. Getting nuked for ~2,000 damage in two seconds at most by one caster, at range, is equally farcical. Casters go "oh but you can interrupt us!" whilst failing to take into account the fact that nowadays, you're dead so fast to a caster that you can't even see the bugger who's killing you before you're a pair of smoking boots. Ranged damage being that powerful makes keeptakes pure torture for anyone without ranged damage/abilities; the Scout /assistzerg in particular (because of the Scouts' unbalanced extra range) is insanely overpowering in a keeptake situation. Spell damage should decrease as the cast speed increases, just like melee damage decreases as the hit speed increases.

3: Massively nerf all CC effects in RvR, especially ranged and insta ones. Dying after losing a fight where you at least get some licks in is one thing. Dying after standing there helpless while other people farm you completely sucks. Far, far too much RvR is determined by who gets CC off first - once CC lands, forget it. Fight's over, particularly for low RRs and after NF made the useful versions of Purge extremely expensive. Does a mez actually need to last 70+ seconds in RvR...? Of course not, CC is very overpowered across the board, for everyone, and needs some serious fixing.

4: All RR5 "free" RAs to be normalised across all classes - the Sorc RR5 RA is a classic example of a broken, "I WIN" RA, and it needs to go. Compare the Sorc RR5 RA to, say, the Runemaster one or the Armsman one and it makes it very plain that the playing field needs to be levelled. I would suggest giving all classes across the board a choice from two RR5 RAs, one to improve their offence, one to improve their defence. Homogenising the classes across the realms so the RvR part of the game basically becomes Green Team vs. Blue Team vs. Red Team would suck enormously - you'd just have Quake Team Deathmatch (with Red Team having way more players than anyone else); but adding to the existing class-induced imbalances by having uneven RAs doesn't help anyone.

5: Normalise archery range across all 3 realms. There are already enough class-defining differences between the archer classes; no one class should be given more range than anyone else and slower (i.e. harder-hitting) bows than anyone else as well. It's just too much, particularly (again) in keeptakes, where ranged damage is king. The archery playing field needs to be levelled; kind of crappy to have your equivalent class shooting you at a range at which you simply cannot fire back.

6: The vast, yawning gap between low and high RRs is one of the worst things in RvR these days, so get rid of all the damn "I WIN" active RAs (TWF, ST, whatever - you know, the expensive ones that high RRs can afford and low RRs cannot) so fights get decided by skill - not one group member having the uber-instakill-we-win button. RAs should be limited primarily to passive ones like the aug stats (with better return at lower levels than we get now) and stuff like AoM and the Mastery-type RAs (MOPain, MOBlock, Wild Power etc). Purge would be an OK active RA to keep, but at a cost where it's affordable for all. Being rewarded for the time and effort you've put into lots and lots of RvRing? Yes, of course. Making you effectively unkillable by lower RRs? No.

7: Introduce a Mastery Of Melee RA, since casters get Mastery Of Magery but at present there is no equivalent RA for melees. Which is unfair.

8: Introduce an Aug Resist passive RA - 5 points gets +2% to all resists, another 10 points gets +5% to all resists, and another 15 points gets +10% to all resists. This to be available to all classes.

9: Massively increase the RP rewards for...well...everything. Last night we took a Hib tower, and got 1 RP for it. Insulting. Make it 500 RPs at the very least and then you're talking. And a couple of thousand RPs at the very least for taking a keep; taking a keep now is a hell of a lot harder than it was in OF, and the RP reward should reflect that. Since RvR is meant to be just that - Realm vs. Realm, not individual e-peen strokeage - then encouraging people to actually do things beneficial to the realm would definitely be the way forward.

10: Remove stacking RvR res sickness. It was an extremely stupid idea when it was introduced, and it's still an extremely stupid idea now.

...

Can i arrange for u to swap identites with Matt Frior @ Mythic , have to agree with EVERYTHING u just said there, bcoz its true.
 

Crookshanks

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Sep 2, 2004
Messages
257
I think the past few patches have shown what a knife edge character class balance is on. I can't in truth see how the whole caster vs melee can ever been "balanced". As has been pointed out above - if the melee'er can get to the caster - generally its all over for the caster. If the melee'er can't get close quick enough - its all over for the tank. There's no obvious middle ground - its a binary effect - you either get into melee or you don't.

As for the archer assist - all you need is a shield user to guard you and you've pretty much got 100% immunity. As a shield user myself - I have to admit it feels very unfair on the archers when you just stand there and 5 different archers pound arrows into your shield while you stand there in relative immunity. Its a pity there isn't a "mental guard" that casters can use protect a tank.

I guess overcapping resists might be the next thing out the Mythic factory. Hopefully this will slow combat down a touch so it occasionally lasts longer than the 2-4 seconds I currently seem to live for.

Agree a lot with Svartmetall's comments - and he didn't mention pve server once! ;)
 

Helme

Resident Freddy
Joined
Mar 29, 2004
Messages
3,161
Agree with some of it, but what whoodoo suggested that casterdamage should scale downwards with castspeed is wrong and would only work if we got higher hp, higher abs armour and armourfact+maybe a higher chance to not get interupted. You forgot the thing that tanks cant get interupted while casters can. I agree thought that caster damage is overpowered, in certain situations(vs. casuals for example) but in full group RvR its balanced and nerfing the damage would make casters only useful in large scale warfare really as tanks would be a way better option in FGvsFG.

Also I agree with chronics ideas, someone who spent time on RvR should get something for it.
 

Brite

Banned
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
67
you make some valid points and then just make your post complete garbage by saying stuff like remove assist from casters and archers

and then it just seems like a one sided arguement from a noob tank who doesnt know how to play his class and runs in 8 man thane groups

eroda pretty much summed (omg) it up but you chose not to reply to that but reply to others ? seems like you dont want to hear how it is

remember savage / merc assist trains? probabaly was similar posts around then about tanks but i know that doesnt matter anymore but what goes around comes around
 

Fana

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
2,181
I guess the problem is twofold: How to balance the game for elite vs casualls, and how to balance the game for realm vs realm / player vs player.

They are very different issues, and i imagine most elite players will say that the game is pretty ok when it comes to balance, since they can afford to fill the gaps in their characters/groups vulnerabilities, while casualls seldom have that luxury, and suffer both from imbalances in setups and in shortcomings in RA's/ML's/artifacts.
 

Svartmetall

Great Unclean One
Joined
Jan 5, 2004
Messages
2,467
Brite said:
you make some valid points and then just make your post complete garbage by saying stuff like remove assist from casters and archers...
...eroda pretty much summed (omg) it up but you chose not to reply to that but reply to others ? seems like you dont want to hear how it is
What, you mean the part where Eroda said:
Eroda said:
Not sure where i stand on /assist, i really do hate being hit by 3-4 archers at once though cos basically its insta death from a range thats silly plus the fact u dont often know they're there until its too late
...?
Or did you mean the part where Eroda basically agreed with what I pointed about about the too-large gap between low and high RR players in RvR?
Eroda said:
Problems occur when a fully toa'd, high rr group of players meets casual ones. The damage done will be totally stupid...

Or did you mean the part where Eroda basically agreed with what I pointed out about the overpowering nature of CC in RvR?
Eroda said:
There is also a similar issue here with CC, most high rr players will have purge 2 making it often much less of an issue where as lower rr wont thus making them easy pickings if they get mezzed.

So, tell me again how I "don't want to hear how it is" and am somehow ignoring Eroda's posts...
 

Z^^

Can't get enough of FH
Joined
Jan 16, 2004
Messages
1,288
Toa made this game harder in the sence that dmg overall where upped and healing also increased sure but... would equal it out.. but its quite easy to interrupt healer/cleric/druid and abilitys like banelord had made it harder.
And frankly casting speed on fulltoaed and highrr casters where quite insane
with the cast speed of 1 second or 1.3 or what it was and average player response time is 1 sec you basicly forced to use insta heal as the first heal to be able to keep your target alive if its a caster then you where forced to get one of the assisting casters interrupted or die.

Basicly even before that you had savages and pre-nerfla berserkers, pre sc enchanters where... outdamaging alot of other classes and made it extrealy hard to heal vs this if they where assiting.

But imo now daoc can't be saved unless mythic really decide to focus their game either into a warrealm game and for ppl who enjoy 8v8 get somewhere to do that.

Remove alot of towers and keeps and make it like 4keeps per realm or something so they actually meens something and not like its like now,
maybe remove relics all together sence it makes rvr unbalanced.

If they need to do something to its to make people want to play all classes for the reason they can do something in rvr and stop adding classes like warlocks/savages, fix the balance between stealthers realmwise for they who want to fight like.

/wajn and rambling out.
 

Dorimor1

Banned
Joined
Jan 22, 2005
Messages
2,579
Z^^ said:
Remove alot of towers and keeps and make it like 4keeps per realm or something so they actually meens something and not like its like now,

I agree with most of this post, the only thing I'm not too sure about is removing relics, perhaps nerf the bonuses a realm gets when controlling one.
 

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