The problem(s) with over-equipping and PvP (PvM too!)

[Arinia]

The problem(s) with over-equipping and PvP (PvM too!)

I've read almost every single post, both directly in response to funcom's article about over-equipping, and the other independent posts on this topic.

I apologize in advance for my long-windedness. Read the whole post, though, and you might be glad you did.

I'm not going to offer specific suggestions to fix the problem. That's your job. All in all, you have fixed more problems than you have caused with respect to balance in the game, and you are to be commended for that. Because of this, I trust you to get the job done correctly. Please take these observations to heart when examining the balance problems further.

I also apologize for starting yet another thread on the topic -- however, I believe that my point warrants its own topic, because I am not offering suggestions, or telling you that you don't know what you are doing, like so many others are.

I've made very sure that I don't make specific suggestions to solve the issues in the game related to overequipping. I've simply outlined the issue in a way that I haven't seen before. I hope that it will help you understand the gravity of the situation in-game right now.

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Let's get some definitions out there.

Basically, as I see it, there are many types of over equipped characters.

1) Casual over-equippers.
People who are in the game to play, and role play, not run around to shops looking for equipment. Casual over-equippers are not bad people, they are just not people who enjoy running from shop to shop looking for equipment, they are satisfied with equipment 5-10 levels or so above them, on average. Inevitably, Neutrals fall into this category, not only because they have very few shops to choose from, but because neutrals are generally in the game to role-play. My adventurer, for one, is a casual over-equipper -- he's 52 now and wears an average of probably 58 armor, and has a pair of 68 rider executioners.

2) Optimizing over-equippers.
These people attempt to get decent equipment for their level. They get implants that they can get buffed into, and get outside buffs to equip a decent weapon. A L10 with QL20 implants falls into this category. These people are pretty common -- but it takes time. They sit down with pen and paper, or Nano Nanny and plan out where they want to be. More shopping time for implants, yes, however a few hours hunting around should net you what you need, and a few more hours to get appropriate buffs. It is possible to be an Optimizing over-equipper without twinking -- just blitz return item missions, sell items off, rinse, repeat.

3) Super-Optimizing Over-equippers
These people are hardcore. They spend oodles of time swapping implants in and out, and come up with a chain that allows them to wear implants well above their own level. This is a matter of having a friend who can buff treatment, can assemble implants, can iron circle, etc, etc. Paying for these buffs from a stranger can get really expensive. Something like this CAN be done without twinking, however, it gets really tedious to raise the cash. It also requires a lot of thought and patience

4) Exploit Over-equippers
We all know who these people are. They are the ones who are L10 with more NCU than my L52. They are the L20s with QL75+ implants that they received from the bugged (notice I say BUGGED, not NERFED, as so many people call it) treatment clinics, and anything else that they can equip from these implants.

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Why 4 and 3 to a limited extent destroy PvP:

From my limited experience in PvP with my enforcer, I have had 3 fair fights, and 1 that should have been fair.
1 was a fight right out of the backyard. We had nothing better to do, so went to the arena. I won, barely.
2 was a fight which I barely lost, don't remember who to, though.
3 a trader, one level above me. She admitted that she was a newbie to PvP as well as I, and got me to about half HP. She rooted me twice (I don't have a nano that will break roots yet) and it probably would have been closer if she wouldn't have kept rooting herself :-).
4 was a fight against a MA (after I equipped my QL17 hammer at L6, with the help of a friendly enforcer with headcracker). It was incredibly close, until someone else entered the arena and started shooting me. OF course I died, and got out a "/say Nice gank, man" right before I died. He of course killed the other guy as well. When I got back to the arena, I told him it was rude, and he said he didn't know what was going on and was really sorry. BS.

I decided to fight the ganker after this. Turns out he is a MP, and has 800 HP at level 7 (I find out AFTER I die). Needless to say, I didn't touch him.

I've seen a L6 with a 34 hammer.
I've seen a L7 with 800+ HP.
I've seen a L6 with 2 deep red MP pets and a gun that did serious damage.

These are serious issues. I realize that these people most likely fall into category 2 or 3, however there are inherent problems with this.

The premise of the game was that you didn't have to PvP if you didn't want to. With the 15 second buffer, you have finally achieved this. However, the reverse has now come to be true -- you can't PvP if you want to, unless you spend insane amounts of time optimizing your character. Casual PvP is nonexistant, as I see it. The arena is full of uber twinks who can almost one-swipe me with their hammers, even though I have used number 2) on my character.

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Why PvM suffers

This is obvious. The Mobs now have insane amount of HP. I can solo yellows - lt oranges with my 51 advent, but only because I can heal. These things that are supposed to be my level have 2-3k HP, or something like that. I sure as heck don't have 3k -- more like 1k.

People have to over-equip to survive and make the progress that they think they should be able to make, and you increase the mob difficulty, and people over equip again.... you can see where this is going.

An intersting observation is that low level PvM is considerably easier, and realistically where it should be (IMHO) as far as difficulty level.

The problem here, Funcom, is that you can't kill over equipping totally. What needs to happen is to find some way to allow 1 and 2 to happen, without letting 3 and 4 get out of hand.

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Conclusions

Overequipping in the general sense was something that I thought adds to the dimension of the game greatly. The fact that a doc can buff Iron Circle tells me right out that there's no way that Funcom didn't expect this kind of thing to happen -- I mean realistically, what use does a doc have for str/stam buffs? Think about it.

You can't take away overequipping totally. If that happens, I predict a mass exodus from the game on a biblical scale. It also seems to me that if overequipping is totally removed from the game, all L10 enforcers will be the same, as will other classes.

Even if you DO take out over-equipping somehow, you are left with a large number of people still wearing equipment many QL above them. This leaves us with a problem on a much larger scale than the treatment clinic people (which, contrary to popular belief, there are A LOT out there). If you decide to un-equip everyone's stuff one day? I don't even want to think about the logistics of that -- but right - that's your job.

Realistically, in the most general sense, what needs to be done is the following:

First and foremost, Absolutely, positively, without a doubt, and with extreme prejudice, eliminate people who have exploited number 4). This I WILL offer one suggestion --these people do not level. They also generally play a lot.

select player_name from <database_table> where played_start_time between ((sysdate - 7) and sysdate) and played_duration >= '5 hours' and date_last_leveled <= (sysdate - 30)

foreach player_name {
evaluate;
ban;
}

What I'm not asking for is exploit cops who will start banning tons of characters who have used tiny exploits unknowingly. What I AM looking for is major exploiters to be banned immediately by GMs. Hire more if you need to. Your players will thank you by not cancelling their accounts.


Allow 1) to continue.
Allow 2) to continue.
Find some way of making 3) harder, or impossible. Most people don't want to take the time to do it, but most PvPers DO. This means that if I fall under 1) or 2), I can't PvP. Bad.

If people don't want to spend a little bit of time and some thought optimizing their character, then fine, maybe they DID pick the wrong game. In my opinion the implant swapping techique(3) is so much MORE time consuming that it makes casual or even semi dedicated gamers like myself impossible to compete with the (3) people. You may vehemently disagree with me here, but I think that the following makes what I've said right:

To get to 1) you need to be a casual gamer.
To get from 1) to 2) you need some thought, maybe Nano Nanny, and a bit of time.
To get to 3) you need a bit more thought, a lot of creds, a lot of twinking, and boatloads of time.

This inevitably means that the people who spend 12 hours a day will dominate the game, and the others will permanently be second class citizens. The problem here is that the "second class citizens" are the vast majority of your player base. We are the missioners, the hunters. We don't go to the arena except to watch. We get owned by yellow mobs in missions. We also pay most of your bankroll. The response that most twinkers will say is: "Hey! I spent all this time, I SHOULD be able to kick your butt!" Well, that may be true, but IMHO PvP should be largely about tactics, rather than who spends the most /played time getting good EQUIPMENT. Don't get me wrong, equipment SHOULD matter though! Ideally, 50% equipment and 50% tactics would be great. Right now, it's more like 95%/ 5%.

I hope that you can find some way to balance what I've outlined above, without making too many people angry, or changing the rules drastically midstream. I know you can do it, with enough testing and thought. I like your game, and would like to continue playing it for awhile yet :-).

Comments are welcome. I will do my best to respond intelligently.

[lilnymph]

Firstly I would like to say I am still a newbie at this game, but I agree with the above point about PvM. However I think part of the problem is that people have a very strange idea about PVP. Personally when I brought this game I was thinking PVP was going to be like Monster hunting, only teams of Players battling it out, however for some reason that escapes me everyone just seems to duel. I think this is where the major problem with over equippers comes in. Since people want to duel they first want every class to have an equal chance against the others, and also want people of an equal level to have an equal chance. I don't personally agree with this. I choose to play and agent, and I would like to see it in the game where if I went one on one with, say, and enforcer or soldier I would get my ass kicked big time. HOWEVER, I would also like it to be brought in for me to be a sniper, So I can do large damager at extreme range, where people would have no idea where I am, but once someone finds me, Its a one way trip to a reclaim booth. I think this would make the game more fun, as instead of one on one PVP duels, you would start to get group P'sVP's type squad actions. This would also help to reduce (but not eliminate) the problem of over equippers as tactics would become a much larger part of the battle, rather than just a slug it out match. To Sum up, I'd like to see a move away from balancing all the professions in PVP, but make it so they can support each other, so the whole of a team is greater than the Sum of its parts. I think this will begin to help role-players, as they seem to be the more sociable sorts, and so will be able to put together the more successful teams.

Finally, please don't flame me, I'm a newbie to both AO and MMORPG's, so I may be being horribly naive, or asking for things that it has already been shown don't work. Also, sorry for rambling very off topic.

[_______________Bjond]

I think your idea of what can be achieved legitimately needs to be re-evaluated. The stats on your "obvious exploit" examples don't look obvious to me. They look fairly possible without exploiting.

I do see that some like to build "the perfect pvp twink" and just park them at a low levels. These are the fools standing all day in the arena chanting "wanna duel?" and camping the grid exits. Grid camping has been cut down and dueling is purely voluntary. What's irritating is all the whining about being "ganked" by a twink and how it's unfair. I just don't see it. It takes a lot of effort to plan and gear a twink. Anyone can do the same. Anyone can level another chacter up and then twink a second character. If you want to pit your casual or haphazardly optimized character against a real twink you should not even have a chance of winning and that's the way it should be.

One thing to remember about this kind of twinking is that once you level up, you have to do it all over again sooner or later if you want to stay optimized. What people that want an over-equiping nerf really want is to limit the rewards for hard work. They don't want to do the work themselves, but then they whine when others do. Let 'em whine, it's all they've earned.

BTW, I don't PvP. I'm not interested in it. I honestly don't care if the entire AO PvP game is horribly bugged or just plain vanishes. Judging from EQ statistics, they could toss out PvP and hardly impact their subscriber base at all.

[Arashii]

Kudos, very detailed analysis with a good idea for fixing. You do know that the GMs have logged everything you've done and can check what you have on you. They are capable of checking your character for what he/she is wearing. But, I must confess, I used the Treatment Center Bug at one time, I'm sure we all have at some point. Why? Not because I wanted uber QL200 implants, but because my L50 MA needed those QL70 implants, and I wasn't going to wait another level. Did I need stat buffs? Beyond the general, nope. I ran one stat point short, I recall, and built a QL1 shining implant (;D Nice way to get that 1-3 points you're short on, by the way).

For implants, since twinking with them is no longer possible, a suggested fix would be to lower the skill curve requirement on them. It IS rather outrageous, and I don't think anyone out there can argue. I mean, to have the requirements for QL110 implants, without a SINGLE buff, you'd need to be about L110 to have the nessecary treatment. That's... kind of stupid, considering without even needing a single buff OR implant, an L32 Soldier can use a QL56 Nova Flow. Also, my L24 Enforcer is able to use QL48 Riders with ease. No external buffs needed, at all, not even for the QL30 implants. It's all about keeping a rough calculation.

On PvP twinkage: Yes, it is getting out of hand. I saw an L10 trader doing 2k damage a shot. EVERY shot. I know an L49 Agent using a QL200 rifle. By the way, this is AFTER the Treatment Lab bug got fixed. How did they do it? Beats me. It's overboard, but there's really nothing we can do about it, except just plain old avoid them. You know, the biggest twinkage is from 20-110. After L110, the twinkage scale plummets, since from there on out, you're stuck with the SAME QL200 rifle, solemnly getting worse and worse as time passes. Only a brave few have dared to go deep, and only a VERY FEW brave have done it legitimate.

On PvM: It isn't easy for ANY class at high levels. The mob HP is REDICULOUS. Even with my healing, my L87 MA STILL has problems against some yellow (note: SOME yellow, not all). There seems to be something with certain classes of mobs that make them HIGHLY stronger than others. Heck, some to be bugged (Lifebleeders, Wolves, etc.... you know what I mean. They swing ONCE, hit you three times). They seriously need to just tone that curve down on mob HP. I can live with their damage, but their hitpoints must be in the 10000's and beyond at my level.

More on PvM: Now, I don't know about you, but how is it possible that an NT can parry my punches? On my 87 MA, more often than not, my punches are parried, as is my Dimach. What's even weirder is it's by the classes that would NEVER EVER consider putting into this skill! I see NT NPCs PARRY my Dimach. Balance out these mobs a bit. Hell, their evades should be NOTHING since NT evades are all dark blue. I think that's something that could use some fine-tuning.

SOLUTION:
Level OR Title limitations on weapons/armor. Minor ones, maybe your level has to be within 25% of the QL to be equipped, or something. (E.G. L75 people can use UP TO QL100 guns)

That's all I can think of for now, really.

[Arinia]

I think your idea of what can be achieved legitimately needs to be re-evaluated. The stats on your "obvious exploit" examples don't look obvious to me. They look fairly possible without exploiting.

My major qualm with the whole process is that the amount of time that it takes to be even competitive in PvP is sickeningly large. As far as not being exploits, you're right, they are not, in the letter of the law so to speak. They are working the game mechanics in an oh so clever way. It's up to Funcom to decide whether this is reasonable, and if it isn't, to implement a game mechanics fix for it.

As an experiment this weekend, I finished up QL20 implants on my L9 enforcer. All the cash was earned by the character, with no twinking. I have L25-27 armor (mostly 27) and will be putting in other implants soon so that I can use the L14 essence and a L32+ hammer.

I suspect that I still will not be able to compete in PvP. For those of you who don't know, L9 is the first level that you can put in L20 implants with general ability (+12) buffs. Doing this at L6, as I have seen done, requires a heck of a lot more time hopscotching implants in (and I already put in boatloads if time).

I'm not saying that I'm lazy, I guess if this is what I have to do, then I'll do it. I just think that the amount of overequipping that's going on is rediculous. Allow it to continue, but limit it somewhat. Make that limit evaporate slowly as you get to higher levels.

For implants, since twinking with them is no longer possible, a suggested fix would be to lower the skill curve requirement on them.

Absolutely not. This is what I'm complaining about. Take the example you had with the QL1 shining implant you had -- Use treatment and base skill implants between the QL you have with now and the QL you want to go to, and the amount of hopscotching upwards is virtually unlimited. I haven't worked it out, but I suspect that it may be possible to get at least QL30s if not _much_ higher into my level 9. I'd have to write a program in order to figure it out for sure, but that's something I have neither the time nor the motivation to do right now.

If anything, raise the requirements. But then again, you'd have to lower mob HP. But I digress, I wasn't going to offer specific suggestions :-) .