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Vanguard PvP thoughts (long)
corsix
Member Posts: 7
I play on the Tharridon FFA server and i'm really having a good time running around with my Bard and killing people, but i think the pvp system could be so much better if they just changed a few things.
I have a few ideas. Feel free to criticize and add your own thoughts to this thread.
First, I think the towns should be safe zones. Or they should at least have A safe zone, so you could stand around and talk to people without getting ganked. It doesn't bother me that much, but if Sigil wants this server to flourish I think it would be a step in the right direction. Getting repeatedly killed by someone 20 lvls higher than you every time you go to the mailbox is not something many people want to pay for.
Second, they need to make the lvl limitation system work differently. The way it works now has a few flaws that I see. For instance, when a few twinked out lvl 10's get together it is quite easy to kill people who are way higher than you, like lvl 20, especially if they're a mage. This is not right because the lvl 20 has absolutely nothing to gain in this fight, he can only lose. If he kills all the lvl 10's he gains nothing, but if they kill him they get infamy and silver. This makes being a low lvl pker a fairly profitable profession. I'm not sure how to change this....maybe make it so that anyone out of your range (meaning, if you wont gain infamy for killing them) cannot attack you and vice-versa. I don't really like that idea though, because i like the openness of the current pvp.
Before i go any further I should probably tell you all where i'm coming from. My PC gaming addiction began about 8 years ago when I first played the little-known mmorpg called Xenimus. Created and maintained by a single man, it cost 5 bucks a month to play on any of the 4 servers. The game was a fairly simple concept: Kill monsters, Level Up, get new spells and repeat. It had some pretty creative dungeons and it had a shrine for each statistic (attribute) and you would have to fight your way to the end of it and be rewarded with a permanent stat point. The world itself seemed pretty big, but compared to some of these games out now it was small. The community was small, too, but proportionate to the size of the world, so that it rarely felt empty.
The thing that made the game, Xenimus, so fun, to me, was the open pvp. And i do mean OPEN. For the first six or so months that I played the game, when you died, you dropped everything except your gold. There was Life Saving Amulets, though, so when you died you could wait for the monsters to leave and then hit F12 and you'd be alive with a sliver of life. You died without an Amulet and you would lose exp. About the same amount as you do when you die in Vanguard. If another player killed you he could take all your gear and if he was a real meanie he could wait till you stood and then cost you exp, too. Everyone got this spell that would point you int he direction of the person who last killed you, so if you wanted to try for revenge you could. Every town had a "safe square" where no one could deal damage, but all the merchants were off of it. The PVP system was based on alignment. Basically, you kill monsters and you gain alignment, making you good, and you kill players you lose alignment, making you evil. Unless the player you kill was evil, in that case you would GAIN alignment. If you became evil then the town guards would attack you and most of the merchants would not sell to you and the safe square would not protect you and you'd have to go hunt monsters if you wanted to get good again. I thought it was a great system, it kept things in balance and people couldn't run around with the best gear in the game unless they were capable of defending that gear. Most of the time people didn't just randomly pk people and if they did then they would eventually be hunted by the whole community. Occasionally a couple of the powerful groups would feud and everyone would choose sides and the whole server would be at war for days and sometimes weeks. 6 months after i started the game the creator introduced Magic Bags which would hold all your items when you died and only drop the items in your inventory, usually just potions. I guess too many people complained, i wasn't one of them. I guess as the game evolved and people had so much time invested in their gear it just became too much to lose. Luckily, Magic Bags were rare and they got used up when you died, so it was still more than possible to take another persons set of gear if they were not smart about it. Also, you could still catch people with items in their inventory when they were at storage, if you were into that sort of thing. I was so into the game, i spent way too much time playing it and eventually I was the second highest lvl on the server and i had tons of gear and money. I finally got tired of it after about three years and i sold my account for eight hundred dollars to some guy from Norway. The thing that finally ruined it for me was that magic bags became so common and it got changed so that you could wear two at once, so no one ever dropped gear anymore and it made dying not that big of a deal. I didn't get that same rush when i fought people because there wasn't much to be gained or lost either way and it was just fighting for fightings sake, which is ok, but i'd rather play a first person shooter if that's all there is to it.
After I quit Xenimus I tried a few other mmorpg's, like DAoC, but none of them really did it for me, so i just gave up and it's only the last year or two that i've really been trying out some of the modern games. I tried WoW first and it was fun for about a month, but the only challenge was making it through a crowded city without getting lagged to death. I also only lasted about a month in Lineage 2, probably would have liked it more if i'd played at release date, but i joined late and the bot situation was so out of control that it really ruined the game for me. Played GW and had fun, but i thought the pvp was extremely boring. EQ2 was fun. Played for about three months on a pvp server and met some pretty helpful people. The player vs player was fun, but it was team based and it was often hard to find people to fight with or against. Also, it didn't have the reward/consequence that I was looking for. My palms didn't sweat when I was running from a group of gankers because all i'd really lose if i died was a little money and maybe my title.
So far Vanguard FFA is the closest i've came to recapturing that old magic, but it still needs a bit of work in my opinion. I know that the "hardcore" gear-loss pvp is not a commercially viable formula, but it seems that if they were creative they could make it more rewarding when you win and not terribly harsh when you lose. I'm hoping that Infamy points will eventually be worth something. If so, it could be cool to make like a bulletin board with a list of the most infamous people, maybe divided into lvl groups and there could be higher rewards for killing the people on the board. Pretty basic Wanted Poster concept. I mean, it would be sweet to be on the list, but it would mean that you'd be a high priority target....
Risk/Reward is what Vanguard PVP lacks, I think. Also, DoT spells and abilities don't give you rewards when you kill someone with them, they need to fix that.
I swear I didn't mean for it to be this long. I blame starbucks and their delicious quad shot americanos'.
I have a few ideas. Feel free to criticize and add your own thoughts to this thread.
First, I think the towns should be safe zones. Or they should at least have A safe zone, so you could stand around and talk to people without getting ganked. It doesn't bother me that much, but if Sigil wants this server to flourish I think it would be a step in the right direction. Getting repeatedly killed by someone 20 lvls higher than you every time you go to the mailbox is not something many people want to pay for.
Second, they need to make the lvl limitation system work differently. The way it works now has a few flaws that I see. For instance, when a few twinked out lvl 10's get together it is quite easy to kill people who are way higher than you, like lvl 20, especially if they're a mage. This is not right because the lvl 20 has absolutely nothing to gain in this fight, he can only lose. If he kills all the lvl 10's he gains nothing, but if they kill him they get infamy and silver. This makes being a low lvl pker a fairly profitable profession. I'm not sure how to change this....maybe make it so that anyone out of your range (meaning, if you wont gain infamy for killing them) cannot attack you and vice-versa. I don't really like that idea though, because i like the openness of the current pvp.
Before i go any further I should probably tell you all where i'm coming from. My PC gaming addiction began about 8 years ago when I first played the little-known mmorpg called Xenimus. Created and maintained by a single man, it cost 5 bucks a month to play on any of the 4 servers. The game was a fairly simple concept: Kill monsters, Level Up, get new spells and repeat. It had some pretty creative dungeons and it had a shrine for each statistic (attribute) and you would have to fight your way to the end of it and be rewarded with a permanent stat point. The world itself seemed pretty big, but compared to some of these games out now it was small. The community was small, too, but proportionate to the size of the world, so that it rarely felt empty.
The thing that made the game, Xenimus, so fun, to me, was the open pvp. And i do mean OPEN. For the first six or so months that I played the game, when you died, you dropped everything except your gold. There was Life Saving Amulets, though, so when you died you could wait for the monsters to leave and then hit F12 and you'd be alive with a sliver of life. You died without an Amulet and you would lose exp. About the same amount as you do when you die in Vanguard. If another player killed you he could take all your gear and if he was a real meanie he could wait till you stood and then cost you exp, too. Everyone got this spell that would point you int he direction of the person who last killed you, so if you wanted to try for revenge you could. Every town had a "safe square" where no one could deal damage, but all the merchants were off of it. The PVP system was based on alignment. Basically, you kill monsters and you gain alignment, making you good, and you kill players you lose alignment, making you evil. Unless the player you kill was evil, in that case you would GAIN alignment. If you became evil then the town guards would attack you and most of the merchants would not sell to you and the safe square would not protect you and you'd have to go hunt monsters if you wanted to get good again. I thought it was a great system, it kept things in balance and people couldn't run around with the best gear in the game unless they were capable of defending that gear. Most of the time people didn't just randomly pk people and if they did then they would eventually be hunted by the whole community. Occasionally a couple of the powerful groups would feud and everyone would choose sides and the whole server would be at war for days and sometimes weeks. 6 months after i started the game the creator introduced Magic Bags which would hold all your items when you died and only drop the items in your inventory, usually just potions. I guess too many people complained, i wasn't one of them. I guess as the game evolved and people had so much time invested in their gear it just became too much to lose. Luckily, Magic Bags were rare and they got used up when you died, so it was still more than possible to take another persons set of gear if they were not smart about it. Also, you could still catch people with items in their inventory when they were at storage, if you were into that sort of thing. I was so into the game, i spent way too much time playing it and eventually I was the second highest lvl on the server and i had tons of gear and money. I finally got tired of it after about three years and i sold my account for eight hundred dollars to some guy from Norway. The thing that finally ruined it for me was that magic bags became so common and it got changed so that you could wear two at once, so no one ever dropped gear anymore and it made dying not that big of a deal. I didn't get that same rush when i fought people because there wasn't much to be gained or lost either way and it was just fighting for fightings sake, which is ok, but i'd rather play a first person shooter if that's all there is to it.
After I quit Xenimus I tried a few other mmorpg's, like DAoC, but none of them really did it for me, so i just gave up and it's only the last year or two that i've really been trying out some of the modern games. I tried WoW first and it was fun for about a month, but the only challenge was making it through a crowded city without getting lagged to death. I also only lasted about a month in Lineage 2, probably would have liked it more if i'd played at release date, but i joined late and the bot situation was so out of control that it really ruined the game for me. Played GW and had fun, but i thought the pvp was extremely boring. EQ2 was fun. Played for about three months on a pvp server and met some pretty helpful people. The player vs player was fun, but it was team based and it was often hard to find people to fight with or against. Also, it didn't have the reward/consequence that I was looking for. My palms didn't sweat when I was running from a group of gankers because all i'd really lose if i died was a little money and maybe my title.
So far Vanguard FFA is the closest i've came to recapturing that old magic, but it still needs a bit of work in my opinion. I know that the "hardcore" gear-loss pvp is not a commercially viable formula, but it seems that if they were creative they could make it more rewarding when you win and not terribly harsh when you lose. I'm hoping that Infamy points will eventually be worth something. If so, it could be cool to make like a bulletin board with a list of the most infamous people, maybe divided into lvl groups and there could be higher rewards for killing the people on the board. Pretty basic Wanted Poster concept. I mean, it would be sweet to be on the list, but it would mean that you'd be a high priority target....
Risk/Reward is what Vanguard PVP lacks, I think. Also, DoT spells and abilities don't give you rewards when you kill someone with them, they need to fix that.
I swear I didn't mean for it to be this long. I blame starbucks and their delicious quad shot americanos'.
