AO's PvP Problems (And How to Resolve Them)

Game Discussion
1

AO has a serious problem with PvPers. It’s getting to the point where either:

A: You have to have a low reputation, regardless of positive or negative, to stop getting chased by them. However this means no deckhands/no promoting deckhands, as well as having to waste crowns on resetting rep every so often.
B: You have to suffer through getting bounty hunted by (often toxic) players in exchange for higher rep.

I feel like the PvP issue is ruining the game for quite a few people, in a couple of different ways. Especially when you’re trying to enjoy the game and not fight metamancers who want to kill you. As such, I’ve come up with possible methods to resolve this, and even though it’s unlikely, I would at least wish to share my opinions, as getting hunted by players has been so unpleasant for me that I’ve pretty much almost stopped playing unless there’s updates. It’s that bad.

The first issue to address is probably the most important one: Low level players.
Low level players getting killed by 125s is not unheard of, and it’s a negative impact on both newer and returning players. It is annoying and unnecessary, especially considering the power difference of a maxed 125 and some random player in the sky islands.
To resolve this, my first suggestion is to change the PvP level requirements. There are two ways to do this:
First off, the cap could be set higher. Rather than about 50, it could be raised to 105 or so, where the player has already progressed far into the game to understand its mechanics or at least tank a couple more hits from the attacker. It’s still not fair, however, though it’s not even at level 125.
The second way is to make the PvP range limited to a number of levels near the player’s, maybe 10 or 15. That way, a level 70 player for example would be able to fight lv 60 - 80, making it more fair than against a lv 125. This seems harder to make, but definitely more helpful.

The second problem is the cause for all the bounty hunting rking issues. Vetex is incentivizing PvP too much. AO is not a PvP game. PvP should be optional, yet it is very frequent anyways. The reason for this is that Vetex is purposefully making players lean towards PvP. And the biggest factor is reputation. Reputation is practically impossible to get post 100,000 other than from bounty hunting. The only other method is the Agora which only updates every 20 minutes.
While you can hunt both NPCs and players, for higher rep gain, players are almost always better due to increased rep gain from hunting them. To disincentivize PvP, two changes could be made. The first way is to increase the ways to gain rep. By capping methods other than hunting and Agora at 100,000, it essentially forces people to hunt players/NPCs. Removing the cap would open up ways to gain rep, thus making PvP less necessary to compete on the leaderboard. Leaderboard people are especially toxic too for some reason.
The other way is to reduce the rep gain from hunting players, or increase rep gain from hunting your rival. This means players will have more reason to make a rival, hunt them, and also draws attention away from hunting players, which will help ease the PvP situation.

The third issue is a bit more niche and personal, but still worth mentioning. The game actively punishes you for losing PvP battles. Certain features I get: Losing rep, having to respawn likely far away, etc. But the issue I’ll mention here is pretty useless to have as a feature. Losing items upon death.
Before I mention that, I do want to say that the jail time as a negative rep is a pain too. Not only is the GN chasing you, but if a player hunts you, you get jailed too, which is pretty annoying. It should be that only GN players will arrest you, not any player in general.
Back to the items: When you die, you lose Treasure Charts, Sea Charts, and Crowns.
Sea Charts can be used instantly upon obtaining them, so I won’t mention them.
Crowns aren’t as valuable late-game but still annoying to lose, especially if you’re trying to get the right enchants on boss drops without scrolls.
Worst of all though is the Treasure Charts, especially for people trying to get Bronze Sea Explorer.
Charts take a while to solve, and are temporary items. If you get killed while doing or on the way to do a chart, it’s gone. This is a serious problem for small islands like Akursius, Sandfall, Palo, and Elm, which are hard to get charts in at all. Losing them is a serious frustration, and one that does not even need to exist.
There is literally no need to lose money and charts when dying, and while you can be careful against sharks or NPCs and avoid them somewhat easily, you can’t really avoid players unless you’re good at dodging most of their moves.

The worst thing is that Vetex’s balance changes are just making it harder to avoid PvP. For example, he raised the dashing stamina cost, making it harder to run, harmfully impacting the more passive players like myself. AO is a game about exploration, adventure, and story, not PvP. PvP does not need to play such a major, and problematic, role in the game. It was bad enough in WoM with the infamy system. Now it is nigh unavoidable.

11 Likes
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I’m also a passive player and I’ve gotten harassed by assassin (not AS) players so many times on my main good rep file, and by bounty hunters & GN players to a lesser extent on my bad rep file- in the latter case I had to actually privately message a GN player who kept killing me to tell them to stop after they didn’t listen to me when I was talking in public chat

I definitely agree with all of these points since dealing with PvP-obsessed people and RKers is super annoying, especially when they start attacking people who are in the middle of trying to do quests

1 Like
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I seriously don’t get why people get upset over getting “RKd,” but that’s probably because I’ve played a bunch of games encouraging it, so I’ve gotten numb to it. I also feel like uncapping methods to increase your reputation would invalidate bounty hunting, since bounty hunting is a slower, 1-at-a-time process, compared to other methods like property destruction, thievery, and saving castaways.

Your suggestions for the third “issue” (namely the items) make me scratch my head. It’s not that big of a deal, since treasure charts are like flies. It’s really easy to get them, and while you did mention the smaller islands in particular, I think that could be fixed by slightly upping the chance to get a smaller island on your chart. Losing Galleons is the same deal, but somehow more common than flies. Galleons are everywhere you look, and you can’t convince me that, unless you’re a villain undergoing the Navy Endurance Test, you’ll be short on them constantly. I also think decreasing renown gained from hunting players but increasing Rival renown is stupid, since PvE is generally leagues easier than PvP.

The only point you made that I can agree with is the level range of PvP, particularly having PvP unlocked between 10-20 levels of the player’s own level. If you didn’t mention that, I probably would’ve suggested something more time-consuming like giving each sea their own PvP level cap outside of their arenas.

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Simply put, I want to enjoy my game experience and not get chased around by people wanting to farm you for your rep. It’s annoying when you’re playing on a slow device, as you’re at a disadvantage already. Fighting maxed players is difficult, unnecessary, and ruins the gameplay. I do not want to be forced to fight people I don’t want to. Even disregarding my points, it’s annoying when you’re forced to participate in an aspect you don’t want to. I don’t like PvPing randomly while I’m doing other things, ie an event.

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Alright, I can understand the slow device. However, I’d recommend gaining some spacial awareness in the game to see if anybody’s following you. You won’t get a combat tag unless if they ram, cannon, or use an attack on you. I’d also recommend having Attack Names in Chat turned on in your settings, since it’ll give you a clue on who’s close to you.

Also, if you’re in a clan, you’re basically a walking beacon for bounty hunters because of the logo forced over your head and ship. You could try playing with other people in your clan with the opposite renown to hide a little more, but that probably won’t stop villains or assassins.

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the man with invisible clan sees this

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The only time pvp is fun is when it’s arranged or planned, like when I usually fight @/Bio or @/SpecterTheFox

But yeah I am pretty scared of being jumped for no reason at all, my body doesn’t react well to it

2 Likes
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read allat and I think it’s pretty neat

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Renown is literally supposed to be a pvp feature, though. If you don’t want to pvp, you don’t get high renown, idk what to say.

4 Likes
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PvP is super fucking weird in this game as it’s kind of balanced around it and with people who want it and yet seems to oddly hate itself for being so. Think about it: The meta constantly changes as Vetex has to deal with PvP, multiple mechanics were made under the assumption of PvP (bounty + fame, the limits of certain buffs like power and food, cargo, 90% of balancing), and yet it seems to kind of hate the fact it is (Potions and food once again, the plot, the lack of incentive besides clans, the PvE nature of it all).

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I feel like this game would greatly benefit if it was similar to WoM and bounty and rep were two different things.

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I just want Deckhands and Renown to be separate

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that’s great and all but like, just get good? Not our fault u can’t grind for decent gear and have a massive skill issue

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if there was no anti run measures then bounty hunting would be basically useless
in fact itd be even more toxic, as youd be forced to rely on ambushes, panic and afk players

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I’m not reading allat, pvp isn’t this horrible monster that 80% of these pacifist players make it out to be. It is the endgame of AO and will always be. NPCS will literally always be easier to fight than players, you need to except that and start actually trying to get good at it instead of running away every time someone has a bounty or contract. Grow a pair, worst that’ll happen is you lose galleons and renown.

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I’m lucky to have so bad of a connection that I accidentally combat log due to a disconnection, leading to me never having enough renown to notice bounty hunting.(Vetex’s recent updates for optimization has actually helped me significantly, so I might have to actually deal with it soon.)

The pvp level range idea is an interesting idea, no complaints.

The renown being tied to pvp is kinda funny as it locks out deckhands from more casual players/those with so bad computers they can’t combat reliably. But renown from what I know doesn’t seem to do all that much so I don’t really know if it’s that bad of an issue to lack deckhands.

Death in this game is kinda annoying I will admit, but this is also the game that can have lightning strike new players and deter them from playing. Renown loss isn’t that important to me, but money and chart loss is. I don’t disagree on that. At the very least money and charts are always obtainable tho, which somewhat alleviates the issue, but yeah it can be annoying.

I think these are valid points that even come with potential solutions which is cool though.

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I don’t think Vetex would implement anything that will go against the current PvP because… you can easily avoid them by resetting the moment you think they’ll hunt you for fame or you can just avoid people who you think are hunting you, just be aware ORRRR server hop till you find a safe server where everyone’s a good rep or people with little to no player kills/guildless.

With enough preparation and play time you can prepare an all buff tier 4 food and a water breathing potion to ensure you won’t die, at least just once in a while.

Also you can easily avoid or know who a rker is by looking into their player kills and hours ratio, though they’re probably just arena dweller anyway so who knows.

Thing is if AO is supposed to be that game where it sort of revolves around anime-like fight styles where low level people can get killed by high levels because IT IS possible, it’s like a bandit witnessing the power of a protagonist, something like that.

Also the end game is mostly PvP, if you want to grind for badges or boss gears you can just server hop not like there’s any huge consequences in leaving the current server your on or whatever crap you want to do besides PvP.

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Seconding both of these. I’m pretty good at avoiding high renown and the deckhands, as of now are mostly just random weird looking NPCs you see inhabiting towns. Occasionally on boats but that’s super rare due to the steep renown requirements.

1 Like
19

imo the chance of encountering hostile, stronger players makes the gameplay more fun, it adds a layer of unpredictability and encourages you to be careful with your actions. the only times i found it unfun to fight people leveled higher than me was when they went out of their way to prevent me from progressing, such as by spawnkilling me or hounding bosses. outright making pvp between high levels and low levels impossible would remove a lot of difficulty from the game, and lower replayability and immersion.

Gaining reputation isn’t all that big of an encouragement to PvP, and outside of having fun, that’s the only notable one. going up the leaderboard is fairly pointless, and you can already get deckhands (enizor and kenton) without a high rep. Bounty hunting rewards are fairly low, to the point 9 times out of 10 it’s better to just sink ships for sealed chests, unless you’re specifically farming rep. If people are being sweaty over the leaderboard, it’s their issue, the game doesn’t force players to focus on it.

losing items upon death adds an element of risk to the game. now, if all your progress was erased upon dying, i would get it being a source of concern, but the losses from pvp deaths are minimal.

i feel like that would remove a lot of risk from interactions and diminish immersion. When i’m playing negative rep i like the chance of being arrested, the issue imo is the (sometimes) excessively long prison times and possibility of getting stuck on an island because of being unable to talk to shipwrights.

this is probably done for performance reasons, but i agree that treasure charts are kind of boring.

dash-spamming and infinite chases were a big issue, so imo it’s very understandable for something like that to be implemented.

for me, PvP helps provide an extra layer of unpredictably to exploration and adventure, the game would need more content to be exclusively carried by those things, and in my experience PvP was a lot more focal in WoM

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the game having both pvp and pve stuff is pretty good imo