PVP Balance idea: Everyone is equal.

[Otansaanpas]

Many of you said no way to this... Yet you want it the professions balanced to pvp each other; think about it?

http://sainpas.dyndns.org/balance.jpg
(sorry for the wiggly lines : )
this is balanced and not equal.

balancing doesnt mean nobody dies ever in 1v1, nor every profession has 50% chances to win if played properly
balancing is to give chance to those classes that just doesnt perform in pvp at all and tune down those who are too good.

more harder to maintain, but in the end more fun for sure!

[Gliese]

balancing is to give ***CHANCE***to those classes that just doesnt perform in pvp at all and tune down those who are too good.

Ah so in my interpretation of what you just said we are a bunch of chickens and Funcom has the chicken feed tossing it one at a time based on a chance one of us might get it!


Damnit, why did you have to use the word chance....

I need to finish my coffee before I can respond to this properly. My brain just fell out the left hand side of my head onto my keyboard.

[Obtena]

Way to derail your thread. I don't think you appreciate the complexity of the interactions between 'unequalness' that makes AO the interesting PVP environment it is. Maybe you didn't intend to use the word 'equal' because there isn't going to be equality between all the different classes and scenarios you get in PVP, no matter what you do. Balance isn't equality in this sense. it's simply a fix to things in AO that have been stupid for a long time. If AO PVP was all equal, it would be reduced to playing online poker. I doubt anyone wants to spend disproportionate amounts of time compared to online poker to get the same gaming experience.

Your whole premise is that there is a class of items special only to PVP that would balance everything out. So, how is that different than what we have now? If FC can't or won't provide a current set of items that balances PVP, what will change that? The power of suggestion? It's not a sensible approach. If the goal is to make it all equal so it encourages people and makes PVP better, segregation of PVP metagame and another grind for PVP gear isn't the way to do it.

[Genie]

Many of you said no way to this... Yet you want it the professions balanced to pvp each other; think about it? Balanced to pvp..... so what is the point of having a profession if its going to be balanced to pvp other professions leveled on the playing field. This is dice roll mechanic now since the professions are now PVP balanced. Meaning this is going to be like watching 2 end game doctors PVP'ing. Boring..... Balanced MP and Enfo = 2 docs PVP - Balanced Agent and Advy = 2 docs pvp - balanced Shade and Engi = 2 docs PVP and so on.

If every profession would be able to beat any other profession at any time, then we would all be equal, like you suggest. This is not possible, and most people know that. However, what is possible is to balance out the huge differences in certain aspects of the game such as defense and offence, healing and damage, etc. It is also possible to give the different professions options through perks and equipments, to be able to beat a certain profession.

This is what I would like to see as the result of the balancing: Each profession should be able to build his character to be able to defeat another profession at the expence of making him vulnerable to other professions. This could be accomplished through perk line and equipment choices. Perk lines designed specifically to counteract the abilities of said profession.

The trick will be to make sure that one such configuration does not become the bane of all other professions, just one. And each configuration needs to have drawbacks. Perkline choices should be all about gain and sacrifice. I believe that this form of balance is doeable, but it will require a lot of work.

[Hardcore]

Whole idea behind twinking is to improve yourself, and the more you push yourself and your toon, the better it becomes.. So what you are suggesting is that you take away all the hardwork and make everyone equal?

Heeeeelll nooo. Twinking is one of the reasons why I even play in the first place. Twinking is what defines people of their work.

[MajorOutage]

DAMNIT YOU GUYS, IT'S SO UNFAIR!

WHY SHOULD PAPER ALWAYS BE ABLE TO BEAT ROCK?


This is what 90% of the posts in this forum sound like to me.

[Marketplace]

Gliese,

There is nothing wrong with your suggestions, however, I would modify it a little bit, and it covers both PvP and PvM balancing. Instead of the AO Developers working their asses of trying to produce a great re-balance of the professions, they should have involved the remaining players of this game in a constructive way with rewards to the players. Expanding on your idea a bit:

This would be implemented for a limited amount of time, until the Balance is finished on test or even live servers.

Instead of creating a bunch of random dailies and high level encounters, focus on involving players to help speed up the development of the re-balance.

For instance:

PvP

• First month, create a separate copy of Battlestation.
• Have everyone wear an average generic gear predetermined by the developers. This is just to set a baseline.
• The gear would be automatically equiped on entry to Battlestation in a special tab(s).
• The gear can be based on top gear or other, and additional generic items. This is simply to get a feel of the changes they are making.
• But most importantly, the gear tab can be varied by the developers. Wouldn't that make an exciting Battlestation?
• Start making changes to the professions, and get feedback from players in a constructive way, if people can't be constructive on a separate forum, just remove them.
• From time to time let people wear their own gear, and disable the special tab.
• Reward people, with participating in the re-balance effort, by getting better daily exp, alien exp, elite exp, any other kind of reward for helping out in the re-balance.

Development cycle: Make a bunch of changes, let people do their dailies there instead or get other kind of rewards, credits, anything, and then give feedback. People get to have their say, and AO developers can make a bunch of changes for the week, and see what people have to say.

PvM

Instead of making high level instances, utilize one of the new high level instances like the Gauntlent PvM DD fest as a balancing act for PvM similar to above with PvP. Get players involved, get them to do feedback on a special forum. Reward them for their efforts. A special tab for gear in the PvM instance, where devs can change the gear from week to week when doing updates to the balance of professions and get feedback. Of course drop rewards will be kept like players like normal.

But mainly do weekly or fortnightly increments of changes and get feedback immediately from the player base instead of doing it all in one sweep. I am pretty sure that most people are happy to help out testing things on a weekly basis if they get rewards for it like getting all their dailies done or something else.

Of course, everything would be set back to normal once the developers feel they have enough information to make their decisions.

Anyway, just my 2 p.

[whitey]

I played a game like that. It was a game where essentially people could have one of 3 types of weapons (melee offence or defence, and ranged evades). Everyone pretty much used offence for PvP, and you could potentially kill a character with a single hit. You could also instantly heal 90% of your health with no cast time or cooldown, the only limitation being how fast you could spam the button.

It was ridiculously simple, but fairly fun too, very fast paced and pretty much relied on skill. The downside was you could very easily be killed by some noob with pure luck. It made the game extremely frustrating.

I don't feel like that is the right direction for AO. I like that AO has a steep learning curve, I like that there is many different choices of breed, profession, weapon and equip. I like that the character I have spent years creating can't easily be killed by someone who started playing last month.

Leave the mechanics as they are, imo.

[Lazy]

The downside was you could very easily be killed by some noob with pure luck. It made the game extremely frustrating.

kinda like pvp against nt's...

[Dragennd]

I got sick of reading all the posts so I'm just gonna randomly throw in my 2 cents. From what I've figured out any profession can beat any profession. A good mp will keep a soldier stunned long enough to nuke his ass from here to kingdom come and beat him. A good soldier would be able to beat that mp by timing perks properly, ams, omhh, etc. Enforcers might take a lot of damage from FA, I've personally landed 11k FAs on enfos before, but enfos have amazing hp regenerative abilities as well as some even have so much AAD I have difficulty landing FA. Players skill levels combined with how well they take advantage of their profession's toolset make the difference in PVP. I've both whooped up on and been whooped up on by every profession. Soldiers might have horrid defense against NTs, for example, but I've resisted NT nukes before as well as landed FA and Burst to the extent of killing NTs before they kill me, but they have also roasted me alive through massive nano range, far outside my dshark's range. All I know is that PVP should not be made a completely separate entity from the rest of the game. If your gonna modify anything change how damage caps. Instead of making players hit half as hard as in PVM add the fun little thing WoW did, resilience. You don't like WoW? FINE... They have a good idea and it wouldn't be the end of the world to "borrow" it. If I cant land my perks then I need more skills in that area to overcome their defense. There is always a way to beat someone else. Thats what AAD and AAO are for. That can make the difference between a special or perk landing and missing.

[lainbr]

...A good mp will keep a soldier stunned long enough to nuke his ass...

1 - I stopped to read right there.
2 - MPs will have no stun pos rebalance to begin with
3 - How can I nuke a soldier ass while he is stun if the stun nano is 5s effect 10s recharge?
4 - The stun part is valid only if: Soldier isnt AMSed and MP is bow and have a full alpha up.

[Cogline]

Meanwhile I'll be over here, hiding round the corner and letting the bot kill mobs. If I ever see above 175 I'll start thinking about a PvP set up. A whole new strategy means a whole new game as far as I can see. It's the variety that's AO's appeal. I mean have you ever tried Runescape? Talk about a "clone war".

[Shareida]

P

Make everyone equal – scary thought? Don’t curse yet!

Little boxes...

[Arguru]

Everyone is equal?
This is called Counter Strike.

I have played my toon 280 days. You have played ur toon 36 days. My toon is better. Get over it.

(04:16) [Pack of Noobs] Argufix: !logon Gunfytr: I have played my toon 280 days. You have played ur toon 36 days. My toon is better. Get over it.
(04:16) [Pack of Noobs] Packofnoobs: Your logon message has been set.

[intro94]

Create another pvp branch were gear is preset-and level is equalized in branches(150-200, all have 150 stats)- (like in others MMORPGS).Not for tower defenses or stuff, just for medals or some other goddie(not VP). Special arenas , with a small incentive, that wont hurt the game in ANY way or form, give players wanting for raids to start something to do, besides dailies, and let people have fun . Don´t even start with oh that will kill BS even more(they are already dead , because players rather kill lv 1 notum miners than face 210 billionary twinks). And out of BS nobody wants to pvp for the aforementioned reason aside of the scarce, ocassional and worthless Bore dual that says-my twink is 1 point better than yours.

That way ,casual players can at least pvp and win sometimes and have fun without stress.Because AO has one of the smallest PVP communities (compared to smaller MMORPGS), due to teh fact only that balance issues exist and only gear matters in Pvp for the most part.

[Shareida]

Create another pvp branch were gear is preset-and level is equalized in branches(150-200, all have 150 stats)- (like in others MMORPGS).Not for tower defenses or stuff, just for medals or some other goddie(not VP). Special arenas , with a small incentive, that wont hurt the game in ANY way or form, give players wanting for raids to start something to do, besides dailies, and let people have fun . Don´t even start with oh that will kill BS even more(they are already dead , because players rather kill lv 1 notum miners than face 210 billionary twinks). And out of BS nobody wants to pvp for the aforementioned reason aside of the scarce, ocassional and worthless Bore dual that says-my twink is 1 point better than yours.

That way ,casual players can at least pvp and win sometimes and have fun without stress.Because AO has one of the smallest PVP communities (compared to smaller MMORPGS), due to teh fact only that balance issues exist and only gear matters in Pvp for the most part.

You want GW-like PVP-only chars. I agree on that.