Preface
Let’s be real, agility is very annoying in PVP but also a stat used to make the game feel less like a grindfest and more like an RPG. Without it navigating all the massive areas in-game and getting a lot of reagents and ingredients is going to be insufferable. In addition to this, removing it as a stat from the game and replacing it with a gem stat will add a strange barrier to the player’s abilities that doesn’t make sense, where for some reason, our incredibly talented character can’t move a little faster without the assistance of jewelry.
Because of this I’m here to bring up some issues I see with Vetex’s solution, propose some solutions of my own that to me sound far less detrimental to the game, and drum up actually productive conversations on this issue instead of it just being people whining.
Issues
I genuinely don’t think giving everybody some form of homing in order to replace agility is an even remotely good idea, nor do I think removing agility is a good idea for the following reasons:
It removes the necessity for and/or cheapens the usefulness of any and all homing spells/rites/techniques/skills, fighting styles, magics, weapons, and spirit weapons in the future.
It removes almost all skill there is to any method of combat that requires accuracy.
Players could potentially bank shots around walls to cheese NPCs and other players in new unfair ways.
It completely invalidates the skills of players that actually got good at long range combat.
It would very likely actively impede the player’s ability to make precise shots at specific targets somewhat close to each other at mid-to-long range.
It could definitely make close ranged combat methods very annoying if your character keeps aiming at the wrong target.
It makes a lot of gameplay repetitive and takes away from the combat experience, removing the need to lead your shots much if at all or use your brain while attacking in general.
Agility makes navigating the game, especially in the Dark Sea tolerable and without it playing the game could take twice as long and you can forget exploring further into the Dark Sea.
Lore-wise it doesn’t make sense that people that are very agile would have exceptional aim, nor does it make sense for nobody to be capable of getting faster without external help.
Any attack that has a ton of projectiles or very precise but very high damage projectiles would immediately become overpowered and have to be individually altered to have their homing scaling reduced or completely removed, which is a nuisance when adding new content or balancing older content.
Fighting one powerful high attack speed NPC with homing such as King Calvus (please god no) or many weaker NPCs that all have homing (haha Fort Castrum raid go brrt) would be the most obnoxious experience in the game. This would be far more profoundly awful feeling to a much larger audience than the players that run into agility abusers in PVP sometimes.
Removing agility and adding a homing stat would almost completely remove the point of dodging in the game all together as your dodges will be shorter and you could still easily get hit even if you dodged in the perfect direction with perfect timing. This punishes players for trying to use a core gameplay mechanic and can make the player feel weaker than an NPC.
In the future if content gets added to improve jewelcrafting only accessible to some players based on what they decide, players will be forced to focus on jewelcrafting if they want to become faster if agility improvements are relegated to a gem stat, which is god awful design and you know it. Wanna be the fastest person alive? Step one, learn to cut pretty gems.
Gotta go fast!
My Solutions
Because of how undeniably problematic at least some of these issues I brought up are, here are some different solutions that I think are actually good alternatives to replacing such a fundamental gear stat to the game:
Reduce the agility scaling of players with high agility when in combat to a moderate degree without removing their instant dodge reflexes if they have them. There would be a cap on just how much this could slow players but it’d be low enough to prevent agility abuse.
Reduce the agility scaling of players with high agility somewhat each time they’re hit with a slight delay before they can be slowed down further that stacks up to be slightly stronger of an effect than the previous idea. This effect would also fade slowly and make attacks like pulsar or javelin exceptional at countering high agility players. There would also be the same cap on the agility reduction for this idea.
Introduce more powerful slowing effects into the game accessible to all build types that are only more effective on targets with excessive agility and give every build access to more powerful chasing/homing/movement controlling attacks at some point that completely hard counter players that insist on running away or doing hit-and-run tactics. These could also be very useful for fast NPCs like tiger sharks in the future.
Summary
To summarize, my opinion on homing being accessible to everyone all the time is that it’s overall very detrimental and there are plenty of ideas way less detrimental than replacing all agility with a homing stat. That being said I’m interested in what other people think on this issue. I hope that this topic will be taken into consideration before Vetex does something super controversial again to his game without considering the consequences enough. Make sure to vote and rate on the topic if you actually care about all of this so more people notice it.
What is your favorite idea for how you think high agility builds should be handled?
Agility scaling reduction for high agility players in combat.
Agility scaling ramping reduction for high agility players when hit.
New content for all builds designed to counter faster targets.
Replace it with the accuracy stat like Vetex proposed because I don’t think aim bot is detrimental to games.
I have a better idea than all these! (Specify in Replies)
If swimming speed could get gutted in combat, so can agility. Just gut the speed bonus and remove the instant dodges and high jumps in combat if it’s that big of an issue.
I honestly never ran into an issue with dodges being instant in PVP really. It’s just how quickly people can run away after hitting me that always caused problems. So you can probably keep them instant and just reduce their overall distance and movement speed.
Somewhat on topic but I honestly think of every weapon type bows should get the coolest and strongest homing skills since their projectiles are slow and there are several ancient Greek deities and individuals that never missed their shots with a bow or had incredible accuracy. Apollo and Artemis come to mind immediately.
just make a unescapable homing ability that disables agility for entire combat duration/minute so that its both fair for PvPers and agility maxers yep!
I don’t know if it’s a better idea, but these are the thoughts that I have:
agility being a problem is due to the fact that PvP is reliant on the open-world characteristics of AO, such as guerrilla tactics and running away. To counter this, I think that the solution would be to promote duels as the main mean to gain/exchange reknown. Doing so would easily solve problems like running away, ambushes and ganks.
To the concept of agility, I associate the meaning of speed, while in AO the concept passed is that of distance. I think that it would be more appropriate if, for example, agility reduced the travel time of dashes.
I definitely agree on promoting duels as the most effective means of PVP for sure, especially if you can bounty hunt and do assassination contracts through them. As for your thoughts on agility, I mean it already does decrease the travel time of high jumps at least with instant high jumps.
i mean, i dont think homing is the most interesting stat and would probably be hell to balance, but i agree with the removal of agility. it doesnt seem redeemable, and itd be stupid to have main stats that basically stop working as soon as you get in combat.
if agility needs to be nerfed so badly in combat that it doesnt matter, yet its so fun and basically necessary outside of combat because it massively boosts mobility, then i dont see why it should exist. just buff default mobility in general at this point.
I wasn’t saying it’d be completely removed in any of the suggestions, it’s just the effects of it would be weakened if people overly invest into it or there’d be content that hard counters it. I’m more on the side of doing it when an opponent gets hit though I’m even more in favor of simply adding content that heavily counters high agility builds with built in weakening of agility scaling, homing, or immobilization built in that’s not tied to a gear stat anyone can get with anything and turn the game balance into an absolute trash heap.
As for why I think agility should remain as a gear stat it provides fun build diversity and makes creating builds more interesting with the existence of instant dodges, and lessening the effects of agility specifically when someone has a lot of it would prevent people from increasing it to such a degree it becomes detrimental to PVP while still allowing for it to have some good effect.
I agree that players that abuse high agility builds are irredeemable, which is why these suggestions are geared towards specifically countering them without punishing players that use a reasonable amount of it and aren’t trying to run away constantly like a pain in the A.
TL;DR I still think even just removing agility is fairly detrimental overall to the design of the game and my proposed solutions would remedy the agility abusers situation without radical and controversial changes, and in the case of new content could even excite players.
If agility scaled with level then the speeds players move becomes more standardized and can be prevented more easily from becoming detrimental to PVP. That being said you have to find some way to fill the void for all the armor and accessories hit by such a change and redesign how you handle fighting styles, magic types, and other combat methods where high movement capabilities are a selling point.
0 point in keeping a problematic stat for the few people who use it
this wouldnt even satisfy 90% of the people complaining about it being removed either
At the moment I most like the idea of combining @Ourobor01 's idea of heavily incentivizing using duels in PVP to prevent running, ambushes, and ganks while also adding lots of content that heavily counters people try to abuse high agility too much. So even if people are insanely hard to hit in duels or attacks you in the open world for not much of a good reason and plays annoyingly you have tools at your disposal to deal with them.
Few people? Dude tons of people use it. I use it all the time both in my efficiency builds and in a max agility builds so that I can get out of harms way against some bosses or navigate the world without feeling like a bipedal snail. Also, people always find something to complain about. The best that can be done is to objectively solve the problem at hand without causing new ones. Homing for everyone causes countless new problems. Removing agility in general creates tons of new problems to deal with as well.
