Ideas to ease Community Dissonance

Game Discussion
21

Imma tackle this because this is the one point I’ll fight hardest against. For people who are engaged with pvp even at the most basic level, the pvp sting is gonna be less. For people who DESPISE pvp with every fiber of their being and just want to fish, dark sea, farm, whatever, that’s not a sting, that’s a sharp pain. Posted this a bunch but here’s me losing a homie because they were jumped across 5 servers in the span of an hour by rkers whilst trying to farm calvus.

Joever

Joever
Joever604×554 44.4 KB

And it’s not just this anecdotal case of one friend, I have trickled in a lot of my friend group into AO from various periods, from launch to even as recent as dark sea, basically one an update (I only got one left rip). Just about all of them only really care about the pve content, and I’ve lost about three of them so far because of frustrations with world pvp.

Like to you and me, if we get hunted thats more of a ‘well god damn it. Shoot.’ kind of situation. To them that’s “This is actively ruining my experience with the game, I’m just gonna play something else.” kind of situation.

I want to, through this post, do as much as possible to try and reduce that feeling so pve players new and old don’t feel like they gotta check over their shoulder constantly or be generally mistrustful of other people in the game. Even if only a single proposed change gets through, that’s a win for me. (Well, unless it’s like, the clan split one)

Yeah, but this is providing the tools and making sure people know how to apply them before they are thrown into the fire. Another critique about trying to fix the skill floor is that it’s an rpg first. You will almost never have a case where a fresh 125 can fight someone, no matter how excited and earnest they are. If I were to add anything, an in-game guide to help people learn the intracies of the game would be fuckin’ sweet. Just for the average person who isn’t a discord/forum lurker to know about things like high invest rewards on agility, or synergies (Seriously, I’ve got almost 1k hours and I’m still not sure I remember all the synergies). Doing everything through hints can be easily missed.

We can’t force someone to jump, but we can help carry them up to the diving board.

The split clans idea is more so a problem with the fact of making sure both sides can enjoy the feature. Right now, its super pvp leaning, so pve clans are dead in the water. Before, it was super pve leaning, so there was never a need to pvp. I don’t think everyone wants to engage with both PVP & PVE on the regular, I think those of us who do are a minority of the player base. Most people have one type of content in mind primarily. They may dip their toe into the other on ocassion, but generally they’ll find one or the other more fun.

It’s not a perfect solution, and the amount of work that would be needed probably kills the idea in its diapers, but I think it should be on the table at least for a sort of ‘well pve infamy gain kills the point of pvp and vice versa, we might just have to split them up at some point to make sure everyone can have clans.’

22

we can both definitely agree this is somewhat of an outlier - albeit an unfortunate one. I can conversely say I’ve been jumped at a boss once (admittedly, I have been the killer at times) frankly, if I had any real say in development, I’d consider your boss zone changes.

as I said before, you can tell me I need to parry, you can tell me I need to move, you can tell me anything- it won’t matter until I go out and start PvPing of my own volition. I’m fairly sure the game has short popups (this isn’t that sufficient, though) of blocking/parrying/dashing.

Just because you’re aware of mechanics doesn’t grant you proficiency. At the end of the day, you have to get out there and PvP, get your ass handed to you, and stomp the less experienced. It’s just how it is. Folks will just naturally be averse to player combat due to lack of experience. Gotta be willing to just get out there and box someone.

Any new person to a system is just going to be new to the system. You can’t teach experience. I can’t see a realistic way to do this ingame, so I think it’s a very “in-the-clouds” idea.

i mean, a guide for these maybe? can’t see where it’d fit ingame UI-wise, and as an NPC many will miss it. i dislike the need of a wiki to know important things about a game (looking at you, calamity) but sometimes it’s kind of just that way

1 Like
23

On the topic of parrying, not sure if this is due to lag or not, but there’s not much of an indication as to the timing of a parry. I don’t think that’s very good mechanically, and turns parrying into a pure trial-and-error test until you “just know it”.

3 Likes
24

I was actually considering a version of this. mabey the AS could jump you the next time you are on land as a “Anonymous Contractor” hired them (TBH I wish we cold send notoriety squads of AS people to fame players by paying galeons. I WANT TO PAY TO MAKE THEM FEEL THE PAIN OF NOTORIETY RAIDS)

25

not for me (laptop with maximum graphics level of 3 and consistently dropping frames)

26

I hate to be on the pvper side but there’s a point where this isn’t the fault of the game or the way it’s played

1 Like
27

I am still forever and always will be critical of the game as long as it continues to add in superfluous fluff over optimizations and expansions to core mechanics. If this game just ran better, I’m sure at least a few people would have such a much more favorable time in PVP, as well as some vaguely basic QoL additions like:

  • Expanded bounding box to allow players to get a bead on opponents smoothly (You can only aim at the torso of an opponent right now)
  • Specific areas with robust materials to actually PROMOTE people to open PVP and contest them actively. (get them alchemy bags or something)
  • More then two locations to fight in that don’t suck, geometry-wise. Lots of people including myself getting stuck on every little bit of geometry. Dodge Reflexes partially remedy the rampant part break (easy ban™)
28

I genuinely think there should be an option to turn off your renown completely. I would prefer that to gaining the smallest shred of bounty so I’d stop getting hunted by bounty players and then getting rk’d and camped by a fame player. Genuinely infuriating to play this game sometimes.

29

Also, if not this, why not make it so you can reset your bounty or your fame in towns? The AS sponsor is already there, and a navy ship can just be docked at towns (or at just Rubica, for Ravenna.)

30

I think down the line after some feature additions we will see some more optimization to AO. That’s another thing too, some people might feel like they can’t pvp because their potato pcs won’t hold up against a magma mage spamming giant aoe attacks. That’s another topic entirely though!

Haha “They will know our pain!”

31

Completely aside what we last talked about- do you think an idea to reduce server player count caps on the release of new story content has any merit? I’ve been bouncing it around in my head and I don’t know how Nimbus will feel if we have 14 person servers of people all racing to the new story content at once.

32

i see the reasoning behind it, but doesn’t sound like something vetex would do

33

Yeah… Another thing I thought about that’s off topic and more in line with making the early game better: Why does Iris have a 1/7 drop rate for her gear? Literally harder to get her crappy bracelet that doesn’t even scale to release endgame then it is to get Elius gear.

34

Honestly the difference between players who are level 125 and players under that is too great as of now, usually giving the lower level player a disadvantage as a level 125 player would have access to their awakening and dodge reflex. If anything, add a range of levels which you can pvp to prevent such a large gap in power when fighting. Like level 50 - level 80 or 90 and level 115 to currently 125.

35

Dodge reflex should be available earlier too imo, they’re just too important for combat
Maybe after fort talos? Then you’d have them for lady Carina and calvus and they’d be super good, especially for calvus.

36

this was declined gg

1 Like
37

joever

38

Oh it’s so joever for pve players…

39

Now ask for 4,999 cap

40

Not sure if vetex still has this mindset but I’m pretty sure he wants clans to be mostly pvp since he nerfed island claiming and the PvE infamy sources so hard (while adding bounty hunt infamy methods).

Everyone knows he’s really stubborn when it comes to certain topics cough boss arena terrain destruction, but I do hope he compromises some parts of his own stubbornness for a better player experience.