firamas

Just a few things on my mind... set aside a few minutes, this might end up being kinda long..

Full implementation of the third (exiled) faction
I've wanted this to be a viable faction for a long time now. Having 3 equally populated factions instead of 2 would dramatically increase the amount of quality PvP available... just ask anyone who exiled recently how much different it is when the reality sets in that everyone you see cons hostile to you.

There is a lot of potential for Nagafen, and EQ2 in general, to succeed enough as a PvP game to merit a population split (or future newly created servers), but there has to be some very basic tweaks to the way the dynamics of PvP currently work. Players need some encouragement in order to naturally gravitate towards the 3rd (exiled) faction though. How do I propose that? Read on...

Writs (Tokens) & Group PvP
The proposed changes to the token system are fantastic. I trust Aeralik and the other devs to take the reigns here and not screw this up. Removing the incentive for scouts to shun groups allows everyone to get back to the core dynamics that this game (both PvE and PvP) was designed around: grouping. The classes have always been balanced around heroic content. When PvP servers opened, people naturally gravitated towards those classes that were successful in 1v1 encounters, and the scout population became heavily overweighted on Nagafen relative to the other archetypes. However, mages, tanks, and healers are all still very powerful when in a full 6 man group... and the relative power of the scout diminishes in that same group. The entire issue of "class balance" and all the bitching and whining that has come with it can be solved by simply leaving your home city in a full, balanced group instead of by yourself. It's so stupidly simple, and so many people are still blind to it. Blinded by greed, for tokens or for fame. Blinded by simple ignorance, of the true intra-group PvP dynamics and power of otherwise "crappy" classes. The recent surge in warlocks is a good example of people waking up to this.

Tank, healer, healer, scout, DPS mage, utility slot. How hard is this recipe to understand? It works for PvE, and it works for PvP.

Removing tokens as body drops and implementing a writ/quest system to obtain them encourages, almost forces, people to group up to PvP. When everyone gains tokens at the same rate, scouts will never want to solo again. They'll go back to doing the job that their archetype was originally intended to do in a PvP environment: track. They'll still have their specific tricks (rogue single target debuffs, ranger burst DPS), but almost everything a scout does is done better by another archetype... most mages sustain DPS better in groups, plate tanks obviously hold PvP aggro better, scout group buffs are basically worthless (except for bards), and on and on.

A few specific writ issues I'd like to see addressed though... exile writs and updates while in a raid. First off, until the issues with raid PvP that I'll address below are fixed and it becomes a viable part of the game, PvP writ updates should not be obtainable when players are part of a raid. Also, to discourage multiple groups of guildmates from staying broken up in 6 man groups but still travelling together, writ update chances should be dramatically reduced if anyone outside your group is also engaged with your targets when they die. The chance for a quest update should still be there, but it should be small. That would allow for the random allied group that's passing by to jump in and help your group rather than leaving you to fend for yourselves, but the chance for tokens (writ updates) would be low enough that it's not exploitable by purposely PvPing in a "pseudo raid".

Now, for exile writs. In support of my first initiative (fully developed 3 faction system), I believe that the PvP writs should require killing an equal number of the other 2 factions. If you're in Freeport, you must kill 30 exiles and 30 qeynosians to complete a certain writ. Not only would this prevent people from quickly "farming" (tearing through) writs to obtain PvP gear at a massively accelerated pace, it would force the playerbase to naturally gravitate towards an equal population across all 3 factions. If one of the factions (say, qeynos for example) becomes greatly underpopulated over the course of time, the other 2 cannot easily complete PvP writs, and people will begin playing (or betray to) their Q toons more often until the populations equalize.

The goal when creating any complex system or model in an MMOG is to have all variables self-regulate; EQ2 PvP cannot do this until 3 factions are implemented to encourage more open area fighting, and incentives are built into the basic ruleset to keep all populations tending towards equal levels.

T8 PvP Itemization
It would of course follow that the rewards (PvP gear) from doing writs should still in no way exceed the quality of fabled gear obtainable by PVE raiding, and should take a commensurate amount of time, effort, and coordination that a raid guild has to bear when clearing Veeshan's Peak, for instance. The T8 PvP stuff is already fantastic for the amount of effort required, and some of the pieces of jewelery have sickenly powerful effects on them. I'd ask the designers to keep this in mind as we close in on GU42 and the implementation of new PvP armor. I don't think it's viable to have people obtain full suits of PvP armor, weapons, and jewelery as quickly as they could in T7. Raid guilds take entire expansions of constant raiding to fully gear up their members, a single PvP group shouldn't be able to do it (with gear that is only very slightly worse) in 1-2 months. With the expected increase in group PvP that these changes will bring, the devs need to be mindful of how fast this gear is going to be entering the game.

The PvP itemization available to exiles (yes, I said it, available to exiles... if it's a viable third faction it has to have at least some incentives) should be balanced against the fact that exiles have a slightly easier time raiding the hardest of the PVE content. There doesn't need to be full sets of PvP armor available to exile, we wouldn't wear most of it over raid gear anyway. The rewards for turning in their tokens could be put to other uses... weapons, jewelery (perhaps even PVE/raid related... hmm?!) or itemized like the "general" PvP merchants have been in the cities... random potions, clickie items, and other interesting effects that would be deemed a worthwhile reward for a L80 exiled PvPer en lieu of the full suits of PvP armor that the cities would get.

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Nothing I have proposed so far in this post is difficult to do from a coding/development standpoint. There is no reason this cannot all be implemented quickly and effectively. However, the next topic...

Raid/Large Scale/Dynamic PvP
The holy grail of most modern PvP games. Whether its an FPS or MMO, the "big team" battles have the largest potential to attract and hold players for the long haul. This also has the biggest chance of failure due to the complexity of implementation.

The first thing that unconditionally needs to be fixed before this can even be considered is the basic coding of combat in EQ2. The game wasn't designed from the ground up for 48 players to take on another 48 players in a grand melee. As it currently stands, when an x4 raid engages another x4 raid (Kraken and Onyx engage in this occasionally, and will increase moreso when contesteds become a hot topic again) the lag created by the combat dynamics makes the game nearly unplayable and almost completely removes player skill from the equation.The hardest thing about raid PvP is getting everyone to use one (or two) main assist, and making sure that the MA knows who to target. That's it. After that it breaks down to a whole lot of everyone frustratingly trying to use their spells/CA's and some res-spamming. Whoever brings the bigger force (x7 vs x5, x8 vs whatever, etc) usually wins due to attrition. Very little skill involved unless you're the MA. If the server lag created by raid vs raid PvP was alleviated and everyone could use their spells/CA/heals with the same response time as they'd get doing heroic/group PVE content, raid PvP would very much become skill based again. Actual tactics could be seriously employed, rather than everyone halfassedly skittering around in a big soupy fog of hellish lag and pretending they were enjoying their playing experience. Recent developer comments in regards to similar issues during instanced raiding suggest that the constant recalcuation of each person's entire spellbook when cast time is temporarily buffed or debuffed was a major faction in contributing to lag on raids. Is something similar happening in PvP?

What comes next? Once the lag is gone, a dynamic(persistent) PvP environment becomes a possibility. Other MMO's have implemented this (Planetside, AO, etc) before, and it'd work in EQ2 as well. We have a game engine that is still graphically modern (thanks to the forward looking design of textures and models back in 2003-04), a PvP ruleset that could be incredible with a bit of honest tweaking and developer attention, and a PvE playerbase that (like in any game) grows weary of straight "blue" PvE content but is unwilling to come to a PvP server until things change for the better.

I'd like to see massive PvP-centric battlegrounds. I'd like to see linearly linked zones with castles, strongholds, and territorial chokepoints that are able to be held down by each faction. I'd like to see the crafters of each faction be able to band together and raid-craft (omfg did he say raid craft??) stronghold-caliber defenses and facilities. Viscious, strategic, inter-faction, siege-level PvP.

I'd like to see all of this actually advertised to the mass gaming market, once it finally goes live. Hear that, SoE? Advertise your shit. If you let companies like Blizzard muscle you around in the media/avertising arena you'll never attract anyone. The surge in new players would be immense. There's already an extremely refined MMO game engine that's been debugged/tested for the last 3 years in place. The players with those "other" games will jump ship when EQ2 offers them something worth coming over for.

I'd like to see this game succeed, flourish, and live on for a decade... like its predecessor did.

Daal

TBH, enabling the exiles to be a real third faction and thus be able to obtain pvp gear is a flawed argument at best. They picked exile to both raid and pvp as if they were on pve servers plain and simple and to reward this faction with almost city like status is comical...where would be the incentive to stay either freeport or q faction if that happened. As usual, people rarely consider the ramifications of some of the posts...

__________________
Never runaway in a pvp match....
...if you do you only die w/o mana!

If you think I care about my pvp title/fame/deaths try me!

firamas

This post was not started because I wanted to jump in the "exiles should get PvP gear" argument. In fact, I don't think we should get PvP armor. I don't want PvP armor. I raid for my armor, and I'm fine with that choice, or I obviously wouldn't have made it under the current ruleset. Making a General PvP vendor with new potions, clickies, and baubles available is not "giving exiles PvP gear", it's a secondary reward to encourage sub-L80 players to exile early and support it as a viable faction. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to exile before 80 right now unless you want to make the game more difficult to level through on purpose (and some people do, and good on them, but the majority will not do this). If exiling at L20 and group PvPing your way up to L80 was viable, it'd add an exciting new element to the game.

The incentives to stay FP or Q were clearly explained in my original post.
1) PvP gear (actual armor, weapons, and jewelery) would still be primarily aimed at the two cities.
2) The PvP Writ (token) system by its nature requires that the factions stay close to eachother in population. If 2 of the factions can't easily complete writs because 1 faction is deserted, no one gets any tokens. People will not all rush to exile. The raiders and the serious PvPers will exile. In fact, it'd likely still be the smallest faction, but it'd be bigger than the three hardcore raiding guilds it is now... there's almost 0 representation under L80 in exile, and that's kinda a shame
3) you still retain immunity from your own faction and are protected by PvP level ranges, unlike exiles. absolute free-for-all PvP is not for everyone.

The post was about an overhaul to the way we think about PvP in EQ2, because a lot of people are unhappy with the dynamics of it right now and are just waiting for another MMO to come out to drag them away. I think it'd be a shame for a game with such potential to fail because a few simple tweaks weren't made. I like the EQ2 engine, I'd rather not see it fade away because the community couldn't articulate its concerns clearly enough for the devs to enact change.

Darkhain

What about a new PvP AA tree for 3 sides? That's would make a new goal to pvp, and give to exiles a reward for pvp.

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EQ2flames was actually a very intelligent place to be until YOU showed up. - Rinion

Dankshasta

How about exiles have so many advantages when rading you just leave it at that, they dont need anything else, period. They will have access to the best gear, and that should be it.

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click me

JimmyKudo

This game sucks and so do the retarded devs, just hold out 3 months for a real game.

Paikis

There are no exiles on Venekor. Your proposed writ change would make it impossible (totally) for anyone on Venekor to EVER get even a single writ completed. Please remember that Nagafen is not the only PvP server, and at certain times, its not even the most populated.

Also, Exile wasn't intended to be a third faction when it was created. They already have huge advantages when it comes to raiding, lets just leave it at that.

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Paikis, Troubador of Venekor
Valindor, Inquisitor of Venekor
Ashk, Guardian of Venekor

firamas

the intention would be to establish a third viable faction (which already has the coding already in place) that just needs the playerbase to support it. the point is to motivate people to want to exile enough so that entire guilds and groups of friends move over and populate the new faction.

and exiles have an advantage when it comes to raiding, but it's not "huge". city factions just traditionally were more PvP based and didn't have the leadership or drive necessary to succeed in endgame raiding.

Beandip

Well, I dont really NEED it, but i really want a rhino mount as an exile

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Ya thats whats up

Paikis

But until that happened, you'd have an entire server completely cut off from ever getting any tokens. If you want this sort of system for Nagafen, go ahead. If you're asking for it for Venekor, or PvP servers in general, then go DIAF instead. There is already plenty of motivation to populate haven... if you want to raid, you go to haven.

And the Exile advantage most certainly is HUGE. Having a brig's debuffs in the same raid as an Illusionists, with a Templar in the MT group is MASSIVE. Let's take a look at *JUST* the bonus of having the extra stoneskins and the increased proc chance, being applied ONLY to the stoneskins buff:

Group: (Freeport - Qeynos)
Guardian - Guardian
Defiler - Mystic
Inquisitor - Templar
Assasin - Swashbuckler
Dirge - Dirge
Coercer - Illusionist

Pretty standard MT group setups, nothing special there.

Now let's take a look at the stoneskin procs. (ignoring set bonuses)
(FP)Dirge: PoS- 12% +20%(LotD) = 14.4%
(FP) Total: 14.4% Stoneskin

(Q) Dirge: PoS- 12% +20%(Lotd) +20%(Blessings) = 16.8%
(Q) Templar: UB- 11% +20% (LotD) +20% (Blessings) = 15.4%
(Q) Total: 32.2% Stoneskin

__________________
Paikis, Troubador of Venekor
Valindor, Inquisitor of Venekor
Ashk, Guardian of Venekor