this is not a request, nor a suggestion, but merely some babbling on my part about pvp (blah blah), and some questions posed to the playerbase and devs in general about team pvp vs solo pvp in ao; post rebalance.
(if tl;dr, than skip to bottom of post)
Ok. so, from what I've seen in rebalancing efforts so far, there is a gentle push towards teaming in pvp. its not a forceful push that says "you will have to team to be effective" but more of a "you will be less effective soloing than before (with the exception of a couple profs imo)."
I don't claim to be an expert in pvp mechanics, but its obvious that from reading through rebalance discussions for many of the professions, players still talk about pvp in the context of 1 vs 1 pvp, and not about the ramifications of team pvp (at least not enough to be noticable).
So, without really giving it much thought, I can easily say that my only reason for going Hans Solo in pvp is to up my solo pvp score. yes, granted sometimes its also for that little bit of epeen and feel good one gets from taking on 3 players at once without OSBs and ripping them all a new one, but like most people I'm usually running around with a whole wack of OSBs anyhow, so its not much different than being teamed in that regard. knowing I've gotten x number of kills on my own because my solo score says so is where the epeen for some may lie i suppose.
Post rebalance (from what i can see thus far) its a different story to some degree. yes, you can still get OSBs, and they will last longer, but a lot of good ones are either being removed, nerfed or being made less effective in general (again with a few exceptions like icrt having 100 aad, wrangle with its 4hr duration, mop with its 4hr duration etc), or some team buffs are getting a nice improvement (with exceptions).
Getting back to a good reason to go Hans Solo in pvp, and leading up to the questions.
Much to the flames i will likely get from very hardcore title farmers, i have often wondered how pvp would differ in ao, if there was a single pvp score that accounted for both solo kills and team kills. duel scores can be left out, they are fine as is and are meant for 1 on 1 pvp. but for everything else, if the Dev's are really geared to getting players teaming up more for general pvp (not referring to towers or org fights), would it be a good step to take, in merging the team and solo scores together, into one "pvp kill score?" obviously, as pvp is right now you would always be trying to get the 'dream team' together if pvp score was based on 'all pvp kills' regardless if teamed or solo, and in places like BS, if you are one of the 2nd choice draft toons, then you are SOL if you wanna get your kill score up. however, post rebalance this may change (should change at least), and the 2nd choice picks may be again effective in a team role, and the single pvp score concept might have merit.
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Now obviously, I'm just one player, but i pose these questions to anyone reading who has 1 or more solo/team kills on any toon:
Do you think people would team up more in general pvp (bs, city pvp etc..) if there was a single kill score, instead of the 2 (team/solo) that exist now (again excluding duelscore for obvious reasons)?
do you think it would be possible to implement? ie - if implemented, solo and team scores combined together on all players, and new top pvp rank of level 20 (lets say) put in place.
or
Do you think i would be impossible to implement? ie - solo and team scores might get deleted in process, and many players who have 5 or 10 or 20k solo/team kills would quit or /wrists.
do you think this would kill pvp? ie - hardcore title farmers feeling less respected because not all the kills in their score are clearly their own.
again, this isn't a suggestion, as its something ingame that already exists in a working form. and its not really a request because at this point it would be nice to see the arguments for or against before pushing for it myself (again, just one player here, so not alot of weight getting thrown around). also, there are many who would love to see the old pvp title system come back. this isnt really a thread for dicussing that idea in particular, but more to discuss the ramifications of merging all pvp kills (minus Duel kills) into one score.
discuss