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To the Devs : State of the game by players - Part 1: PVP
isssssho
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 105 Arc User
Ok, so I watched the state of the game stream - and honestly I wasn't very thrilled. So I will try to elaborate the current situation and my view on the possible solutions - trying to find balance between the wishes of community, effort needed to implement those, server capabilities and difficulty of coding.
We are all aware that for the past few mods less and less people have been showing interest in PVP aspect of the game. Reasons for it are multiple, and I'll try to address some while avoiding class balance ones as this is touchy topic and I don't think I can say something that is already not known on this topic.
1. Content - Neverwinter PVP has not received decent Pvp update in more than last few mods. Last content update to Pvp was in mod 7 where you introduced stronghold siege - and on paper it was a good idea - 3 lane MOBA style map with lane control and junglers was good idea but it stopped there. Server couldn't handle it and that was the death of it. Lesson learned I hope - no more 40 player maps, therefore lets stay on the verified stuff - good old 5v5. New maps are not as needed as new mods and even though I know it requires a lot of work I believe many players would be happy to see new mods like : - 1 lane 5v5 pvp with towers
- Assault (domination like points that need to be capped but at far slower rate than current domination ones - time limited)
- Escort (not very optimistic about implementation of this due to coding since game doesnt support anything similar so far)
- Control (1 large domination point capped at slower pace where teams fight until one reaches certain time of control and clears out point)
I'm sure everyone understands that this would take enormous amount of effort so it would be nice to have Pvp only dedicated mod or implement it over the time of few mods.
2. Competitiveness - Everyone wants their name seen and acknowledged as one of the best in what they do - current leaderboard is near to useless so I would advice making a ranked leaderboard:
- Every mod is a start of a season:
- When season begins all players start with 5000 points but ones who didn't do single match are not displayed at all until they do their first match.
- Ranked games only affect changes in leaderboard points - losing a game takes away points you had and winning gives you more points. Max amount of points a player can get is 10000. Players with 8000 points or more must do at least a game per day or they lose 20 points on days they did not play at least 1 ranked match. How many points in a single game you win or lose depends on your placement at the end of the match. every player on the winning team gets 10 points + 2 more for every place above the middle of scoreboard placement and -2 for every place below middle of scoreboard.
3. Rewards - one of the reasons for lack of interest in PVP is also a bad rewarding system - Pvp match takes a decent amount of time and things you can buy with glory aside from gear are not very useful or wanted in particular.
I suggest adding new currency (call it currency X for now). Currency X is obtained in 2 ways:
- ranked matches - 0 for loss (taking care of bots), and 3 for win + extra 1 for first 3 places on scoreboard.
- By standing on the first (enter number here) places of ranked leaderboard every day those players get some amount of X-es for holding their position.
Now add another vendor with stuff that can be bought with this gear.
I advice following type of stuff:
- 1 enchanted key ( 50X-es)
- 1 Legendary key ( 25-30X-es)
- Choice of BOA epic companions (700X-es)
- Choice of BOA epic mounts (350-400X-es)
- Legendary BOA Armored Champions Bulette (10000X-es)
- Various refinement, reinforcement kits, companion upgrade tokens, unique transmutes, titles, profession resources etc.
The idea behind the currency and pricing of items is that earning from PVP should stay lower than earning from PVE but still be far better than they are now in terms of rewards. It should be primary played for fun, prestige and glory among other players and profit comes in only second.
4. Matchmaking - nobody likes losing all the time but nobody should win all the time either - and to ahhieve maximum competitiveness among players an efficient matchmaking system must be made.
Players ratings should be distributed from 1000 points (min) to 10000 points (max). Once a player queues for a match the system starts finding players of same rating - as the time passes the rating that is acceptable to enter the game spreads slowly from that player rating to both sides (higher and lower values). Once 10 players are found within certain rating range (withing 6547-6845 for example) they are pulled into match. Now players are distributed to the teams so that the sum of both team ratings is as close to equal as possible. Due to the specific queue system for start I would disable party queueing (only solo queueing) to avoid premades until the proper solution is made for those kind of players.
I kinda feel like I forgot something but oh well...
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Escort the payload!The Protector's Speech thing in the SH is one long escort mission and sort of works like what you're looking at.
The Engineer from Merchant Prince's Folly stops when enemies are nearby and is also an escort mission.
The devs could possibly repurpose the code for these instances for a PvP match.
I wish I could say that this was just a problem in this game alone but lets be real, it happens in pretty much every game. I played perfect world for 6 years before switching to this game. When I start perfect world they had 3 pve servers and 3 pvp servers. Well on the pvp servers once you hit level 30 it was open season on you. level 100s camping outside of the city just waiting for anyone regardless of level to come out and BAM, you were dead.
What made it so bad in that game was the fact that you also lost exp and gold which are much harder to gain then in this game. So many people left the pvp server and switched to the pve server and the last time I looked there is now only 1 pvp server as there wasn't enough players on the servers to justify keeping 3 servers open so they combined them all into 1 server.
And of course the irony is always the same, the pvpers on the forums complaining that no one wants to pvp. Well you chose to be bullies and now no one wants to lay with you, whos fault is that?.
The really sad part was when I joined this game pvp was actually fun. I won sometimes, lost other times. But generally the players were cool to the other teams. If you were winning by a large amount you'd let the other team gain some points so it wasn't a total waste of their time. Cant think of the last time I've hard anyone doing that.
Pvp is a major part of a game and IMO should represent around 30-40% of every game, while at the moment its not even 10% of Neverwinter. Some players get tired of PVE and playing 3 same dungeons all day long so they would maybe like to invest some time in Pvp but the state of Pvp is bad at current point in time and very unrewarding.
In mod 5 or 6 (can't remember) there was something called Neverwinter Combat League which was a great step forward for PVP community and it had good concept of how to progress, but for to us unknown reasons it lived one season only and died afterwards - without a single word of explanation from the devs why did that happen.
THC
http://www.theholycrusaders.com/
The 3 most overpowered classes in PVP in personal experience (almost all use the same cookiecutter rotations as each other):
GF: Shield until close enough -> Bull Charge -> 2-3x Griffons wrath, I'm dead. (I actually saw one GF that was a true tank though, that was fun, hint: flank them)
OP: has a few different rotations, but eventually they drop the Divine Judgment, smite, or even their at-will can kill me if they stun me and get me low on stamina. If I manage to get their health down even half way, all they have to do is shield, and they heal themselves, or cleansing touch, and it's just a joke on me. (Was on a team with a healadin, once, very unexpected).
TR: I think everyone knows, smoke bomb, blood bath or courage breaker, stack some SoD, run away, I'm dead and couldn't do HAMSTER about it unless I had a t.elven or something. (These guys are always cancer regardless of the feat path they take, their movability is unparalleled).
Furthermore, all three of these classes, plus a few others, have means to become CC immune on top of the CC nerf recently put in place (not to mention t.elven). So, what do I have left? Do damage and debuff. Ok, but I can't kill these classes w/ one rotation except maybe a TR if they don't use impossible to catch (or are way under-geared compared to me or just suck). However, 9/10 of the players who use these classes can kill me in 1,2, 3.
My opinion on how they can fix PVP is:
1) balance classes on a one by one basis, power by power. No blanket fixes that affect each class differently. If we have CC immunity from environment, do they really need powers to give them that in PVP? The duration of immunity these powers give should be greatly reduced in PVP, much like the duration of CC powers are. Then, there are classes that have powers which do enough damage to kill other players in one rotation, they should not have so much defense that other players can't do the same to them. Perfect example is the CW vs GF, GF is just in a different league all together. Either reduce their defensive capabilities in PVP, or the amount of damage those powers do in PVP, don't just reduce the damage everyone does, that doesn't solve the problem at all, it may actually make it worse. Just look at the leaderboards and compare the Kills/Death ratios of various classes on average. The imbalance between classes is plain to see.
2) a few more maps and content/match styles would go a long way. What we have now, basically caters to tanky classes, even some of the best CW's I've seen around, build their toons to be as tanky as possible.
Also, I really hate how rooted I get when using my at-wills as a CW, zero movability. I really think I should be able to sidestep a bit while casting ray of frost on someone, kinda like dreadtheft on SW.
Other than getting slaughtered in PVP by these 3 classes, I really do enjoy it, balancing the classes to a point where each class actually required skill to play and maps which required team tactics to win, would go a long way to increasing it's enjoyability, and possibly bring more players to it. Though, possibly the worst part, is some of the players themselves, are just jerks. Again, balance would put them in their place and shut them the HAMSTER up.
I know OP said he was going to ignore balance in his post, but I really think it's that important to the state of PVP in this game.
Santa Claus --GF
Gargamel --CW
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/categories/pvp-discussion-pc
P.S there are no more 5v5 pvp premades only solo Q on Pc
After that, balance the classes for PvE and re-invent PvP.
That means a lot of work, work that can not be put into new (PvE-)content, so I guess it will never happen.
On the off chance that the devs are going to address pvp issues again any time soon, this should probably be merged with macjae's thread.
If I were the Lord Protector of Neverwinter, I'd be firing a bunch of maintenance and repair NPC's since they've had the scaffolding up and working on the same places for nearly 5-years now, without appearing to make any progress on their repair efforts... that's it...
Thanks again for taking the time for this feedback.
Regards,
M.K.
Good to see you respond on here though MK!
Guardian Fighter
TLO
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1221446/the-future-of-the-gf/p1 Existing Problems Still In The Guardian Fighter
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/comment/12984912m
Feat Changes I'd like to see in The Guardian Fighter
+1 @mimicking#6533 said
"but PvP is dear to me" ........... it is my precious : D
PS. Wait until you'll met some good GWF, you will add him fast in your class balance list
PS2. Wonder to know nickname of pvp Dev :P
The common factor for almost all succesful pvp game compared to the non succesful is the gear/power gap.
A larger gap with bis players stomping new players is one of the best way to make sure pvp decline to a standstill.
Unless you do this all changes will be bandaids without adressing the the real issue at hand.
You need a cc system that actually works
You need to cap daily or recovery for some dialy/powers as powercreep has made for a powerabuse never ment.
You need to give all same boons or remove boons when entering pvp
You need to remove mount powers all together in pvp
You need to give all that enter at least full pvp armor at start
You need to adress not pvp function powers such as in first hand piercing damage and invisibility and Gf ability to chain people to death
Many things are adressed above also like better reward etc.
Ther are several quite succeful pvp games out there it is not that hard to look why they are succeful and gear gap is if not the largest it is one of the major factors for a make or break in all pvp games.
Best
the community kind of destroyed itself. it was unable to work against the framework set by developers, or soften it -- at some point it became pointless for solo players to get stomped by guild premades... hihgly unfair, troll mode, very boring ... mostly fire camp sitting by the non premade side before i stopped.
solo queue felt promising, but to be honest it took too long to get implemented. i demoted my pvp chars and do occasional random this or that with them now. no desire/longing to return right now. and i'm not sure what kind of change, new ideas it would need to change that... the last thing i remember that attracted many players (apart from solo queue weeks) was the pvp month (can't remember what it was called) back in ? ...
sad story... and wish you all challenging matches!
#1 Players
- PvP has been infected with a cancer of maybe a dozen self-proclaimed “elite” players, who are on a personal mission to stomp other players into the ground, then jump on the dead bodies, camp spawn locations, or not play at all when the team they got queued with is less than desirable/ they don’t like who is on their team. These players don’t care about the competition, they don’t care about the team, they only care about tearing down other players for an ego boost. This turns both new and veteran players away from PvP for greener PvE pastures, or other games entirely. Frankly I don't see a solution to this, it's a problem in all PvP games...
- PMvsPM (pre-made vs pre-made) chat channel hasn’t been moderated in ages (channel owners left the game) and has become the wild west of abusive/ bullying chat that frequently goes into “TOS violation” territory. Right now the only way to moderate the bullying in this channel is to screen shot what is being said then report it. This channel needs to go.
#2 The Game itself
- We haven’t seen a new PvP map since Stronghold siege, which couldn’t handle the volume, and even now can take 2 -3 hours to pop a queue on the weekend unless you create a private match. No new content, reduced interest.
- Queue System… There are a few guilds that seems to have figured out a way to game the current solo queue system, not sure how else to explain how the same 4 -5 players from the same guild always wind up on the same teams against groups of people with under 10k IL’s, nothing like being the only geared player on a team with no TR’s and no tanks against a team with fully geared 2 TR’s, GF’, OP, and a CW from the same guild. Do this 3 matches in a row every day, and see how many days you go before quitting PvP.
- Class balance… 12k TR’s melting 17k OP’s, CW’s jump dodge, GWF jumping sure strike.. lions… yeah plenty said on this.
Guild Leader: Mistaken Identity (formerly Midnight Express)
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"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
In relation to PVE, instead of trying to make it so every class can run the content on their own, just allow more than one companion so you can form your own party and give the companions better AI. If I want to play a healer and just heal my companions while they fight, why not? The object is for the players to have fun and PW to make money.
Some cool points about the system
-As balance is a concern in PvP, the PvP effect causes many skills to be weaker in competitive play than in PvE.
-Arena battles are fast paced. Fights usually end in less than three minutes.
-Dishonorable Combatant System is used to punish players who leave a PvP match prematurely, for leeching experience or faction, or for falsely reporting team members for leeching.
I'm sure these 3 major points will bring back some happy memories
Original Serenity Mostly Retired DC
Tokarek Bearded Dwarven OP Tankadin
JuiceHead Goofy Human GWF
Member of H3llzWarriors and Limitless.
Yes the Build Oars game had me hooked on pvp for about a year and a half, pvping about an hour per day in pug groups 4 v 4.
Now I am not a very competent pvper but the balance must have been pretty good to keep me playing it! Overall I was winning in pvp 4v4 matches about 35% - 40% of the time and that includes playing against pre-made teams of 4, so overall great balance.
- Also as most players have said, mixing pve and pvp with the same player isnt very easy to do. I liked the Build Oars system where you rolled a character for pvp and nearly everyone was on a pretty level playing field. Therefore it took skill, timing, builds and teamwork to win the fights NOT just what itemz you had. There is a lesson to be learned here
It's really the genre that is prone to all those shortcomings listed in this thread. The "roflstomp" issue, the "pve vs pvp" focus debate, ecc..
When someone wants to do pvp in a mmorpg he has to accept this whole package (which includes the bad).
There are games that solve these problems, but they are not rpgs, and sometimes they don't have PvE either. This includes games LoL, DoTa, First Person Shooters, Vehicle Simulators, ecc...
The crucial element is Permanent Progression, this progression, which is what keeps PvE alive and thriving, is a gigantic source of problems for PvP.
Can you imagine a chess game with Kasparov playing with 10 queens vs a first time player with only 1 tower? That's pretty much what happens with PvP in mmorpgs all the time.
The only way to make it balanced and fair would be to qualize all stats on pvp. But this defeats the most prominent aspect of RPGs, progression.
But this would drive insane pretty much every player who spent even a dime (for example, for mounts) to get a sort of advantage in pvp. And, of course, it would cut any future earning for the game from this source (ie. no more players who "pay to win").