The future of Dragon's Conquest (xTW)

Options
dingo488
dingo488 Posts: 936 Arc User
edited August 2017 in General Discussion
Hey,

with the current xTW coming to an end soon I think it is a good time to open up a conversation regarding the current state of xTW. Overall I'm hearing a lot of feedback from a lot of different factions that they feel like they aren't getting any fights, and it's 90% of the time just a bunch of no-shows, and in general the feedback is quite negative. My personal experience is much of the same, but since I'm European it requires very little effort to be online when xTW actually happens, this is quite different for Americans. I decided to record a video discussing, what I believe are, the issues surrounding xTW right now, and what I think could be done to fix it. Ultimately my hope is that this will spark a conversation that actually bares fruit towards change in a positive direction. I don't expect this video to be watched by any PWE staff but perhaps they will at least follow the converation that comes from it. So I do hope you enjoy the video and please let me know your own personal opinion on the topic.

(I'd also like to request this thread to not be moved to a different section of the forums, purely for exposure purposes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KExAe0-M24k


Timestamps (since I get sidetracked easily):

0:00 Introduction
1:18 Scoring System
6:25 Land Hoarding
8:25 Server Crashes
12:20 Maintenance on the xTW server
13:42 Lack of Transparency
15:24 Solutions


Sneaky Edit: That 7 war thing is no longer relevant and extremely unlikely to happen! Looking at the result of the bidding I can't help but feel the gods themselves came down from the heavens to punish the unholy memelord and not only cheat Crisis out of 1st place, but possibly out of 2nd place too, 3spooky5me.
Post edited by dingo488 on
«13

Comments

  • suggestionman#1119
    suggestionman#1119 Posts: 39 Arc User
    Options
    I'd rather have xNW back.
    No waiting game. 40 max players per map so no lag/fps problem.

    Or at least alternate every 6 months between xTW and xNW.
  • npc15
    npc15 Posts: 229 Arc User
    Options
    I'm still pulling for xtw on sundays so I can actually attend
    WbG9jxx.png
    Thanks Adilynne for the awesome sig :)
    My Youtube Channel

    Tempest <3
  • blazerboy
    blazerboy Posts: 1,673 Arc User
    Options
    I watched the video it cleared up a lot of questions I wondered as to why the factions complained so much
    105/105/105 Seeking ScallyMode
    http://mypers.pw/5/#258958
  • fury85
    fury85 Posts: 277 Arc User
    Options
    Population is low... is the same reason why normal TW is pretty dead.
    I think the only solution to revive that events is to reduce faction size or change xtw matching system.
    Roar_King
    Level 105 Barbarian with Deity Stone
  • keihan007#7641
    keihan007#7641 Posts: 1,190 Arc User
    Options
    I have to agree on most points in this video. I watched it last night while we did dice, was gonna comment after DH but then there was PK and UP and FSP and bed time. So I apologize if I dont remember everything said.

    I think the main issue with xTW is lack of population on our servers, it creates all sorts of problems. As a result, its way too easy to hold lands and this makes lack of "real" battles even worse because factions are split too thin with mass of battles. Which again affects the interest for xTW, making less ppl interested in showing up... Its a vicious cycle. Karma has had 3 50+vs50+ wars this season if I am not mistaken. Comparing that to first or 2nd season where we had "real" fight every other week, yea, its pretty bad.

    You came up with a solution(Halving amount of lands) I been thinking myself and I believe it might or might not be enough. I wouldnt however go with larger reduction on start as I would imagine higher chance for real battles would motivate more ppl to show up, which again makes real battles more likely.

    As for the waiting wars, I dont like them but I dont see them as a problem as there is way to force ppl to play their hand. Still, I know factions have held some squads out of instances 20+ mins after wars have started, which just doesnt feel right. However allocating squads before you have to generally only screws yourself over so its kinda what it is.

    I would also like to touch reward system a bit with this post. I would not boost it further than it is as its already good enough. Maybe add some tiers for 4-10 ranks to motivate factions to do their best on those ranks too cause right now if you arent top3, you can basically do whatever you please and get the same reward as rank4 faction. Assuming your faction has some power in it.

    Lastly, I have heard some comments regarding server merges but from what I understand xTW wouldnt work any longer if they did that. That being said, easiest solution prolly would be ghost server(s) to get server count to 4 so we could continue xTWs. I do however believe that xTW, in its current state, might as well be scrapped if that offered better in server PvP. So I would honestly go and merge the west coast servers into one - Sure, it would break the balance for xTW as thats quite a bit of ppl on one server compared to Tideswell least.
    BlackList vs Frenzied 3/17

    https://youtu.be/RkkWkigYd3k
  • shopcheese
    shopcheese Posts: 758 Arc User
    Options
    Cutting all the lands in half is a big step to balance it out and become more fun. With a lower population we just need less lands. Didnt they do this for NW for our version at some point as well some years back?
    Whenever it will fix everything is hard to say, and maybe it will need adjustment again in the future, but right now im pretty positive it would have a significant improvement for our current state of xTW.
  • catgirldesu
    catgirldesu Posts: 993 Arc User
    Options
    A reduction on the amount of xTW lands is pretty much what we need and it should solve many problems. We simply don't have the amount of players and factions in PWI to make xTW work as intended. The xTW is my favourite PvP event in this game and it's just sad and disheartening that I can rarely get any decent battles... tiger-12.gif

    Good video. I hope the GMs watch it.

    ​​
  • fury85
    fury85 Posts: 277 Arc User
    Options
    Instead of reducing amount of lands (or together..) what you think about reducing faction size? That can help for normal TW other than xTW.
    Roar_King
    Level 105 Barbarian with Deity Stone
  • keihan007#7641
    keihan007#7641 Posts: 1,190 Arc User
    Options
    fury85 wrote: »
    Instead of reducing amount of lands (or together..) what you think about reducing faction size? That can help for normal TW other than xTW.

    Reducing faction size would be problematic because most large factions are closing to 200 members. So who would you remove when this update goes live? What I mean, the system would have to remove some ppl or we`d have factions with more than 100 members.

    Also, this might hit the playerbase of this game. Ppl play because of community, not because this game is all that amazing. So if you force to split those communities, I am not sure playerbase would take it too kindly. It would also affect TW factions recruiting policy massively. You wouldnt be able to give new ppl chance to prove themselves as easily as you can do now. So if you were to do this, you would have to cut TW and xTW cap to 50 players or so(Half the faction).

    But realistically, thís would require way too much coding for Wanmei to give it to us, even if it was for the best of the game I`m not sure it is. They would have to find reasons to reduce faction sizes on CN, which I doubt they will.

    BlackList vs Frenzied 3/17

    https://youtu.be/RkkWkigYd3k
  • scruncy
    scruncy Posts: 458 Arc User
    Options
    idk what wrong with me, but all I was able to see in that video was a dungeon run...

    But I will give my opinion regarding xtw as well.
    I am a member of a small faction and I dont like xtw at due to its design. My faction is able to bring maybe 20-30 people for xtw at the weekend.
    With this amount of people the whole xtw is just a running game, due to its huge map. Run to this tower, dig, run to next tower, dig, run back to your tower to get it back , run to teleporter, run to side crystals,, run run run. Thats no fun at all.
    So, if you are outnumbered you hardly have any chance due to much running around.
    The problem with xtw and also tw is the discrepancy of numbers factions can bring into tw/xtw.
    If you can bring 30 people how much fun is it when the other side can bring 60 or 80 people?
    Would you join such a tw to just get over run? Most likely not. Thats why also a lot of tw/xtw's are winned.
    Smaller factions just gave up. Everything is made to suit the huge factions, nothing is in favour of the small.

    What we need is a maximum player gap cap for tw/xtw. THis player cap should not be bigger then, lets say 5.
    This way smaller factions would have also a change and most likely more participate in tw/xtw.
    If you know you will loose from the beginning, you will not even try.

    The only result of reducing lands will be, that the few small factions who still do xtw, wont stand any chance at all anymore.
    Reduce the faction size to half might not be a bad idea.

    Reward system should be revamped. At the moment the personnal reward is worthless.
    Only if your are really lucky you might get a mog. But the coins you get in 99% , are not good for anything besides a timed charm.
    The good reward goes to the winning faction's at the end.
    This again is only in favour of the huge factions. In order to get a good reward you need to join there.
    I would remove the season rewards,and increase the personnal rewards. This way factions might look more for fights then look for land points only.
  • dingo488
    dingo488 Posts: 936 Arc User
    edited August 2017
    Options
    scruncy wrote: »
    idk what wrong with me, but all I was able to see in that video was a dungeon run...

    Unmute the video. I just used some random footage of PWI while talking, figured it would be better than to just have a black screen.

  • scruncy
    scruncy Posts: 458 Arc User
    Options
    OHHHHH, talking.... :p
  • kalystconquerer#0876
    kalystconquerer#0876 Posts: 1,421 Perfect World Employee
    Options
    I won't have a chance to watch this until the weekend, since I'm frontloading ALOT of stuff in preparation for the Anniversary next month (EW, IT'S ALREADY AUGUST!).

    I'll touch upon a few points brought up in this thread though and some of my passing thoughts (the following is specifically regarding things in the thread, not the video!):

    - With Cross Server play, it sort of automatically skews into a more favorable EU slot with the limitations of zoning in and not causing issues with stuck characters.
    - I'm not sure what sorts of changes we can implement onto the system, so that's a conversation I need to take up with the devs to see what sorts of things we can do.
    - There's only so much we can do on our end to encourage people to play- it really relies on players actively participating for the system to run at it's highest potential.
    - I am planning on boosting and updating rewards across all the PvP events we have, including (spoiler) introducing the Arigora Season that CN had. These announcements should go out in the future, so please look forward to it!
  • beast21g
    beast21g Posts: 631 Arc User
    Options
    @kalystconquerer#0876
    If we had Arigora Season some classes would be in the bottom line
    Witch pvp events are we talking too?
    TFN? Thats a joke, everybody knows it. Larger factions take over the place and on chest they flip a coin to decide who will dig
  • laylay
    laylay Posts: 27 Arc User
    Options
    I agree with many points you summarized in this video too.

    Another idea would be to reduce the maximum number of player for the Dragons Meet fight to 30.

    On the other hand I am not sure if all this will really help ... just look at the OP's faction itself ... they do not attend the normal TW even tho they would get the most balanced fight possible (at least over an hour) on this server. What would be different in xTW. Additionally, most of the ideas in this thread will at least take a half year if not more to be implemented I guess.
  • blazerboy
    blazerboy Posts: 1,673 Arc User
    Options
    @kalystconquerer#0876 if you do anything with Thursday night fight for goodness sake just make it playable for all. Make it twice a day with limitation for once a day entry ._. On DA anyone not Euro or guild not majority Euro just basically gets blocked from what should be simple rewards like more Primal bloods or ancient emblems ect. On other servers most of the Euro ppl can't get it because it's like 4-5am their the easiest solution since PWI doesn't want server transfer is just duplicate the event and code it for once a day or make it atleast Saturday or Sunday at a later time after xtw or even Earlier maybe depending on server all I'm saying is make it equal opportunity xD. Ik it's a dead beaten horse but never hurts to try.
    105/105/105 Seeking ScallyMode
    http://mypers.pw/5/#258958
  • aensidhe
    aensidhe Posts: 178 Arc User
    Options
    Better apply the same logic to the Thursday Night Fights and Arigora as well, but I guess the OP didn't mention those because they don't affect his guild yet.
  • wettstyle
    wettstyle Posts: 236 Arc User
    Options
    Any possible way to make Tw,xtw's into like 2 bracket's? Certain Guild's in Tw ya know are going to be top dog's no matter what.. this leaves the rest to pretty much be pummeled and discourages certain peep's from really even giving a hoot anymore:(. Would be fantastic to have two different competition's. One bracket for the obvious guild's that have the Manpower and the character's to compete with such other's as themselve's. And the other bracket for smaller less highly powered guild's to compete in a more satsifying, let's avoid getting facerolled situation. Large powerful guild's should envy this situation, unless they love to use smaller guild's as pick's ect... in that case its still killing the fun for many:(. Dev's, Gm's can I believe be able to manage two bracket's,do some poking! and be able to see who belong's in A bracket, and B bracket:D. This is just a general Idea, of course tweek's would be needed.
  • ladyserah22
    ladyserah22 Posts: 3 Arc User
    edited August 2017
    Options
    fury85 wrote: »
    Instead of reducing amount of lands (or together..) what you think about reducing faction size? That can help for normal TW other than xTW.
    New faction rule:
    -Must not offline for more than 24 hours
    -Must participate all faction wars

    New faction requirement:
    -All gear must be +12
    -Total gear value must be over 50bil

    These will be the new rules and requirements for the top factions.
  • beast21g
    beast21g Posts: 631 Arc User
    Options
    fury85 wrote: »
    Instead of reducing amount of lands (or together..) what you think about reducing faction size? That can help for normal TW other than xTW.
    New faction rule:
    -Must not offline for more than 24 hours
    -Must participate all faction wars

    New faction requirement:
    -All gear must be +12
    -Total gear value must be over 50bil

    These will be the new rules and requirements for the top factions.

    you forgot glyph lvl minimum 7
  • shade13
    shade13 Posts: 633 Arc User
    Options
    beast21g wrote: »
    you forgot glyph lvl minimum 7

    No point, 7 gives same bonus as 5, only makes sense to be sure the recruit takes it seriously monkey-47.gif

    ​​
    Sg4FlzA.png
  • capnk
    capnk Posts: 486 Arc User
    Options
    I don't understand. I watched this video and qontroL said Vindicate would only have 1-2 fights this week. But instead Vindicate had 5 fights! I know qontroL can't be wrong about anything xtw-related. So did PWE change the system to make him wrong?
  • dingo488
    dingo488 Posts: 936 Arc User
    edited August 2017
    Options
    capnk wrote: »
    I don't understand. I watched this video and qontroL said Vindicate would only have 1-2 fights this week. But instead Vindicate had 5 fights! I know qontroL can't be wrong about anything xtw-related. So did PWE change the system to make him wrong?
    I edited my post 2 days ago, can't really edit the video itself now can I? I'm honestly quite surprised what all the higher ranked factions are doing. Infamous is obviously just making sure Crisis doesn't win the season, but as for the other factions I'm a little puzzled.

    5 Fights though! Damn! And no server crash, how unfortunate! Luckily the season is pretty much over so at this point it doesn't matter anymore. Can you imagine what would've happened a few weeks ago though, Tempest Echo and Infamous this week and you only won 1 of them. Last time around Crisis was included too, man that would've been painful, thank god for server crashes, sometimes lucky.
    Post edited by dingo488 on
  • capnk
    capnk Posts: 486 Arc User
    Options
    Ah my bad, didn't see the edit. As for the Crisis situation, we used a little thing called diplomacy to retain first place. It's something Echo might try next season... well if you hadn't already pissed off every faction in the game.
  • dingo488
    dingo488 Posts: 936 Arc User
    Options
    capnk wrote: »
    Ah my bad, didn't see the edit. As for the Crisis situation, we used a little thing called diplomacy to retain first place. It's something Echo might try next season... well if you hadn't already pissed off every faction in the game.

    I'm really hoping next season xTW will look very different from now (serious note), I'm personally more interested in big 60v60s. I think we'll be fine without begging other factions to help us tho, we currently have more lands than any faction has ever had in xTW, and all of that without convenient server crashes. One thing we plan to try next season is actually existing when the season starts, turns out beginning ~6 weeks late isn't ideal.
  • sin20
    sin20 Posts: 237 Arc User
    Options
    I personally think season should be reduced back to 3 months or 4 months max , 6 month season is just exhausting and number of lands needs to be reduced imo , top 6 factions are more or less holding 30+ lands together and thats the insane part.
    We are all aware that this event was made for china's servers and that it works good there but we just dont have amount of faction on servers and ppl that china has , so imo to make this event really competitive with more good fights for our version lands would be needed to reduced by 50%.

    After 3 months we already knew who top 3 factions are gonna be and everyone from 4-9 place coudnt catch up even then so if some factions grow stronger or some grow weaker there is no way for them catch up or fall off in time for others to capitalize on that since rewards for 4-9 place are the same , whats even the point of them attending xtw since cause of 2 many lands the fights will be wined and there is no use fighting for better rewards since u cant catch up to top 3 or if u fall to 9th place your rewards wont change at all , and dont tell me they can show up for good fights cause other than Echo all the other factions this season more or less evaded the fights with excuses of multiple wars xD
    So by reducing the season back to 3 or 4 months it would make the competition a lot closer and more factions would be in fight for top 3 spots.
  • keihan007#7641
    keihan007#7641 Posts: 1,190 Arc User
    Options
    I wouldnt say the season was decided after 3 months but its been pretty clear which factions will land top3 for a month now and I agree, seasons this long get exhausting. I expected Crisis to land 2nd but due how Infamous had absolutely nothing to lose by doing it, they took a **** on Crisis` morning cereals so Crisis will most likely be dropping to 3rd. While this benefited my faction, I believe lower ranking factions should have a reason to compete too so we would avoid these sort of things where "ruining ones day" doesnt cost you anything.

    If Vindi has been going around playing "diplomacy", nobody has contacted me bout it. Sounds absolutely ludicrous way of playing xTW if this has been the case though. Like sure, if it works its amazing for results but not exactly in the spirit of competition.
    BlackList vs Frenzied 3/17

    https://youtu.be/RkkWkigYd3k
  • dingo488
    dingo488 Posts: 936 Arc User
    edited August 2017
    Options
    saxroll wrote: »
    If Vindi has been going around playing "diplomacy", nobody has contacted me bout it. Sounds absolutely ludicrous way of playing xTW if this has been the case though. Like sure, if it works its amazing for results but not exactly in the spirit of competition.

    Vindicate in a nutshell, every TW season ever ended in Hoorah getting ganked by Vindicate, Legendary and Kakumau, the good old days. Ultimately it doesn't really matter though, every faction can play the way they prefer to play. Some factions prefer to earn the win, others are fine sitting back doing nothing. I'm just happy that in xTW there's more factions that actually do want to play in a proper manner, so we could finally escape the garbage competition that is Sanctuary->Twilight Temple, now if they just fixed the damn thing so we can all fight each other and have fun :#


  • perrion
    perrion Posts: 165 Arc User
    Options
    dingo488 wrote: »
    Vindicate in a nutshell, every TW season ever ended in Hoorah getting ganked by Vindicate, Legendary and Kakumau, the good old days. Ultimately it doesn't really matter though, every faction can play the way they prefer to play. Some factions prefer to earn the win, others are fine sitting back doing nothing. I'm just happy that in xTW there's more factions that actually do want to play in a proper manner, so we could finally escape the garbage competition that is Sanctuary->Twilight Temple, now if they just fixed the damn thing so we can all fight each other and have fun :#

    Lol,

    This coming from the faction that orchestrated a 5 way gank on Vindi and managed to lose all five.

    By "play in a proper manner" you mean exploit every possible advantage without a shred of shame or dignity to clock wins and whine and rattle off excuses when you lose, like you guys do?


    Hypocrisy much?

  • nightmare201
    nightmare201 Posts: 50 Arc User
    Options
    Are you folks just unable to stop whining at each other long enough to take a good hard look at what else is wrong with the system, as I believe is the point of this thread, and maybe try to get a good fix going? Every one of these threads that mentions xTW seems to devolve into a pissing contest about who's best or who did it legitimately.