Potential PvMP Updates - U35 & Beyond

[DickDastardly]

So let’s get more pve into pvp . Forget about balance , forget about doing what you said you would do . This is a joke right ? What happened to visiting the classes and levelling up ?

[Maedol]

@Orion Is it possible to make all freeps item equipment tied to the account, and not just to the character? Please.

And one more request, can I make a freep map in GV (Precise Map to Glân Vraig) with a skill from the "Return to" series?

Thanks

[rafael1989]

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Hallo ich würde auf ihre Stelle wieder ViP darft nur in PvP aber von beiden Seiten, und frip und crip, so kriegt ihr Geld und wir weniger lags..

[DSBoomer]

"fixing the lag" Should be the only thing you're addressing. Erase that white board you're always talking about and write "FIX LAG" on it. Til then all these cool changes are garbage. How do you expect new people to come out the way the lag is currently?

As far as the changes, they look cool. But they'll be horrible if you don't fix the lag.

Agreed. Changes look promising but none of it matters if it's unplayable.

[Oldwiley]

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Hallo ich würde auf ihre Stelle wieder ViP darft nur in PvP aber von beiden Seiten, und frip und crip, so kriegt ihr Geld und wir weniger lags..

Any restriction to VIP on creep would probably have an adverse effect, although i was mainly subscribed when I creeped, a significant portion of the creep population were not and the last thing the game needs is to exclude more people from the moors surely. Yeah lag is an issue, but alienating more of the player base is probably a backward step?

[Glandred]

Changes look interesting, we will need to see them implemented before we know if they are good or bad.
Are there any plans for updates to balance? There are a litany of large issues that make it a struggle to play on both sides. I kept it to the biggest couple but there are many more.
1. Burgs doing insane burst from stealth sometimes killing lower creeps before they are even visible.
2. Defilers healing being very high. This alone basically carries creep side.
3. Freep audacity gear costing way too many comms. 115k comms + the essences totals almost 120k coms.
4. Creep maps being 1 hour shared cooldown.
5. Audacity doesn’t reduce the duration of slows.

There are huge differences between a full audacity freep and a low audacity freep. Full geared freeps feel very strong while low audacity freeps have the dps and durability of a greeny blackarrow. The insane cost of full audacity on freep is keeping a lot of freeps unnecessarily down. Combined with the low rewards when the map gets flipped and all we end up with is a bunch of freeps benching their mains to creep and farm points. Remove the tier 1 and tier 2 sets of audacity, take tier 3 and make it purchasable for silver like tier 1 is currently. This would help lowbie freeps immensely.

[Namesse]

The ballista and catapults sound too much like Epic Battles and Skirmishes, and you know how popular those are; they sound more like a distraction than anything else.

If the freeps get LI advancement and LI items as rewards, the creeps should get more than just cosmetics, creeps should also get rewards that will permanently enhance their stats.

[Cadibble]

Tower Changes
Defend!
there would be a "secondary entrance"...

These entrances should only allow one-way travel into the keep, in order to avoid a repeat of the prior backdoor hugging. Also note that loading screens don't always work well during keep fights. Instead, perhaps use a mechanic similar to the curtain to enter GV.

Doors can be upgraded through quests to have more defense and staying power...

Could be interesting, but make sure their stats auto-scale with level cap increases, otherwise their usefulness will be short lived. Same for ballista and catapults. Keep in mind that players will not want to spend time to build/upgrade these items if they are destroyed or shrugged off too easily. Similar to how oil is ignored today.

I'd like to see something to prevent camping in the stairwell mid-floor. Maybe pour boiling oil down it on a timer.

attackers would rather see these targets destroyed...

Sounds morale based, which could have the effect of adding NPCs to the keeps which may be the opposite of what you're trying to accomplish.

On General Questing & Rewards
For the monster side, new rare/long missing skins, and other boons...

Would be nice if you stop teasing us creeps with the unobtainable Emotes Collection. My warg desperately wants firebreath!

On General Questing & Rewards
Bonus events will happen...

The return of chicken session play in the moors!

[LabadalofDorlomin]

-By "upgrading" the towers and keep, will we get better rewards taking them than the actual quest and buff?

We will revise the rewards for both attackers and defenders.

I hope you are thinking of the ways that this can be abused this time?

I would suggest that anything earned in the PVP zone can only be used or displayed in the PVP zone and that includes titles etc.

Otherwise this will just become another way the cheats can manipulate poor design and implementation and are quite possibly rubbing their grubby mitts already.

We have a rather robust event system that allows us to track these sorts of things and when we make this update the intent will be to send an Ettenmoors-wide broadcast that an assault has begin at a location. Once the battle begins it will be up to the defenders and attackers to control the portions of the battle area that they deem are important.

But you don't use said event system to track when folks are abusing holes in the system to cheat and club their way to high ranks?

[T.L.]

Any chance of getting a gear tab for PvMP gear on freeps so that we don't have to constantly change sets between ettenmoors and everywhere else? Something like a cosmetic slot that is used in preference to the normal gear if on the moors and gear in the slots. That could be one way of ensuring the PvMP gear doesn't get used in normal play - it could only be equiped in the PvMP slots.

[squirle]

If it all works out mechanically it sounds great. Hopefully the incentives are spaced and balanced out enough that it could split forces. Some are defending against the attack, others harassing while another group takes the chance to assault a minor keep.

[ScoobySnackz]

Sounds good in your head, but in actuality it will be a lagfest once again, so why bother with all this?

Why would anyone want to mess about with Catapults and Ballistas, its just Big Battles 2.0 in the PvP zone.

[Nadvin]

Hey this looks pretty interesting. Definitely cool to see the prospect of a fresher moors. Just a couple questions and queries:

What is going to happen to the smaller servers out there without much numbers? The recent updates have hit us pretty hard and killed alot of the action. With all the mobs sporting t2/t3 raid health and damage, most freeps don't want to come out in the moors and very few of them can actually combat enemies in the moors without some high ranked pro carrying them through. Fighting other players all seems fine, but it does really seem like the amount of health and damage the Orc and Troll NPCs have is a bit excessive. It can take a 4-6man crew over 1hr of intense fighting to flip TA, and that's only if there isn't any creeps online at all. On the other hand, a defiler and a reaver can duo TA in about 10-15 minutes of face rolling on the keyboard. Since all the mobs got their boost, pvp has really slumped and the learning curve for a freep (after leveling everything in PVE Gundabad) is so steep. They need over 100,000 commendations to get all their gear and essences, and they struggle the whole 2 months it takes to follow a high rank around and earn that many comms. Would there be a possibility of making it a little easier to get to the stage of being able to e.g. solo grothum, for newer players and a way of making it more even for freeps and creeps to do their pve quests/taking keeps? On a server as small as I play on, one player makes all the difference it's that hard. And new players that stick around for the 2 months are few and far between.

Secondly, with the addition of doors and siege weaponry (which i think is cool), How complex is the operation going to be for them? On one hand, it would be a bit of a pain if you were running away from 6 players and had to deal with npc dialogue to get inside the keep. On the other hand, it would be pretty damn op if a defiler or tanking captian could simultaneously outheal 3-4 enemy players while raining fire down on a bunch of other players with a ballistae. Please keep in mind the griefers that would exploit those operations!

Anyway, in summary, cool ideas! But please don't forget about the smaller servers. Without new players coming in often due to the sheer overwhelming grind, we often have to do the battles that Arkenstone has 12 players for, but fight them with 3. And a griefer targeting 12 players has fun, but a griefer targeting 3 players ruins the day.

[snommis]

That Keep fight, will favor long range classes, i see the meeles can fight arround the 2nd entry, but champs can port party members into the fortress and only use range

once the door gets broken we need a short hallway where the defenders use their meeles to defend, epic movie sceens from lotr , the trolls crushing doors,
but this part of the battle will get very messy and laggy,

reward for taking the keep, the team or kin who did the most to take the keep should get a world buff, maybe tax some income, give a rare title ect.
i lkie something really rewarding.

the attackers should be having a quest series where they have the possibilty to sumon an army to help storm the door since the dmg there from the long range classes will be insane,

or it will become a camp fest where attackes and defenders do all the jobs with the catapults and balistas


unique bosses make them like 12 give titel for killing all, make a server world message - xy spawned- xy killed by xy
make it hard, give really nice drops for freeps here, since this will be way harder than any pve contet they ever expirenced.


creep rewards, skins ok, but we need some other things, mounts, pets, maybe housing ? at first kin houses.


keep fight again , is the keep big and you die during the fight how do you get back in? spawn points ?
is it the same as now, then burglers wargs will cut of any reinforsments

and we need currently like two new creep classes to balance all the new freeps

add a goblin and one that can match the bear or brawler, one more something like a lm, maybe lock them behind a grind wall for creeps.


overall love the effort, but keep balance this a sege right now would be a freep fest with all their tanks and advanced range attacks and heals.........

I feel like the answer to making the fight challenging if we are adding doors and defenders is to create a fight timer. after each step in engagement a timer starts when expiring a new npc defender spawns that is a scale above (common to signature to elite to rare elite to nemesis) that spawns when the timer ends if the section hasn't been cleared.

IE: npc outside door is engaged - timer starts. door is not defeated after say 3 minutes, a signature npc spawns to defend the door -timer resets. door is not defeated after another 3 minutes an elite npc spawns to defend the door - timer resets. this could go on at each stage until you are to the master-general. The idea being that the defender npcs wouldn't just sit back and let their attackers come on in, they would send their lieutenants and colonels out to meet the attackers. (the i'll do it myself motif) It could be possible that the group attacking could earn more rewards for a drawn out fight (in case they dont take the keep, they've at least earned something for their effort), at the same time making it harder to take the keep. You could even have npc that spawn with the tiered defender who repair the door. I;m sure there is a mechanic that would detect the number of attackers and adjust the difficulty accordingly.

[Phiolin]

I would like to see Bound to Account armour and jewellery pieces.

It is extremely difficult to keep up with all the grind for the same armour pieces/jewellery for people with multiple characters that want to enjoy fighting in the Moors and enjoy all classes.

Making it bound to account will enable the player to jump straight to the battle and enjoy the game, considering that they have already done the grind of the armour/jewellery pieces for the same base stat toon once (e.g., hunter/burglar/warden).

Thank you.

I don´t know what´s your server. In Evernight, most of us are making 20k Commendations per day ( usually have to go GV and spend cause cap). That means 140k per week ~. Fully gearing 2-3 chars per week, and raising auda for my nab creeps even wich I don´t play them at all.

It is not "extremely difficult"....... more like easy peasy I´d say.

[Elmagor]

The return of chicken session play in the moors!

They want to crash servers again like in 2009?

[ThomasFlora]

From Evernight Community/Server. I know PvMP want more with the Moors. However, SSG needs to use its resources to tackle the lag issue. The game's lag has gotten worse. It's a weird sort of problematic and sporadic issue across many maps, with me experiencing it in solo delving missions a lot (I even experience in my housing instance and I'm alone in it!). Instead of pushing out more content at the moment and changing the Moors, SSG probably needs to conduct an extensive review of the game code/engine and try to determine if lag can be fixed or greatly reduced. Also, I know every time my kin want to do a Hiddenhoard T3 (or greater) run, someone spends a lot of time searching for a "good" server." I don't know "how" or "why" they know or do this, but they do. Well, it is not just my kin runs, I've heard it in other runs. Does this mean servers need to be replaced?

I love the game and, for the most part, the changes that have been made. You can't please everyone all of the time. The Moors should not be a priority. I will say this, lag is even worse in the Moors, PvMP would benefit from a reduction in lag.

[jbach46]

We need to change the introductory quest on the monster play side and on the player side. We should have done this when we made the experience free last year and we are hoping to get these new experiences together as soon as possible in the new year.

For monster players, the flow will take them from their initial greeter to the War-tyrant to the Emissary of Angmar, their clan blessing/corruption, visit the corruptor, visit the trainer and learn March!, visit the vendors, get the map to Gramsfoot, use the Map to Gramsfoot, talk to Uglash, try out a skill or two and then go to War-tyrant to complete the tutorial loop.

For players, they will speak with the initial NPC speak with the Captain-General, if at level cap be directed to the vendors, where they will purchase their Audacity gear for gold, get a map to Glan Vraig, and then return to the Captain-General.

quick question.. on freepside, how would this idea work for people going to the moors at lvl 20 (since its been allowed now) I have been doing it for fun with chars from lvl 20 to lvl 121, they get level scaled, since I cant buy gear there (too low a level). will gear be available?

[jbach46]

Reminds me very much of ESO pvp mechanics. I miss that game.

It all sounds great, as others have said, so I want to make sure I say "thanks!!" to you, Orion, for the transparency and communication efforts.

Like others, my biggest concern is how much of these siege systems will work within the current framework of game systems whose functions heavily hinge on the presence/lack of lag. Ok, I'm done obsessing over the lag.

Now, to feedback: I like all of your ideas at face value, so I don't know how to critique without playtesting them? Anyway, I will say something about access that you didn't specifically bring up.

Are there any plans to reduce/mitigate (at least temporarily) the power differences between a brand-new creep and a veteran freep? Like some sort of mechanic that gives a temporary tiered buff to new creeps (to make them tougher) that wears off, tier by tier, until they reach some milestone, or something? Same sort of idea for freeps, I guess? I like the idea of a lvl 20 freep being auto-scaled to the Ettinmoors and being able to jump in without being immediately slaughtered. The current system presents the new players with a wall of grind to rank up, a discouraging amount of griefing deaths to suffer through, and a lot of quests dependent on full-raid takedowns of certain NPCs. Not saying scrap it, but it definitely needs to be augmented with many more quests/options for helping a creep rank up. You did say you guys are working on consumables and wrapper quests.

Last question: what is your best guess for the timeline on each of these improvements?

having played as a lvl 20 freep on the moors, yes you are level scaled, and your equipment and all is scaled as well... you will still be 1 shot by anything that hits you/ a new creep is more durable than a lvl 20 freep on the moors, not by a lot but still
theres no t1-t3 gear for a level scaled freep, least that I have found anyplace

[Guardiantwo]

I am going to present some of the ideas here and leave the thread open for a couple of days to get some feedback then close it down while we weigh all of the feedback and adjust.

First post: Would really like you to use devel supply to go through game as is rather than creating new content. To keep this short will only ask for review of all ranges on all skills in the moors over last say 2 years. When range attacks increased were all other ranges checked or not included in review. e.g. Healing ranges before extended attack range vs current healing ranges. Class vs class range e.g. RK ranges are 34m yet mini 25m with rez at 20.2m. Defliers 30m range with HOT 20.2m, War leaders heal 15.2 & 25m with rez at 20.2m seems to be not level. Need to review in respect to old range attack vs now and impact of group (raid) movement if Melee attacks now need to go farther to get to range attackers it is a soon dead member since out of range. Will end here lots of others points but one step at a time.

[Kate00]

Can we get some specific class work?

Example: Defilers need a way to dismount horses.

[SSG_Orion]

It's been a great couple of days of feedback.

I'm closing the thread for now.