VvV is not fun

crunchnasty

Seriously its all about group fights now. It should be Chaos vs Order, at least then theres a default team you're on. Otherwise you are everyone's enemy. If its called Vice vs Virtue, then why can't you join the Vice or Virtue team, and fight against one another? Instead everyone is orange, and you get ganked hard by every single person you come across.

Do any of the devs actually PvP? Just curious if you have the perspective of a player in fel or not @Kyronix

Margrette

I think one of the complaints about factions was that another guild could join the same faction you were in and then you couldn't really fight them without it costing you (they were "innocents" and killing them was counted as a murder).  If most of your faction guild was blue, then you had a real dilemma if a guild you didn't like also joined your faction and started coming into the base with red characters and clobbering you.  I would imagine the same might have also applied to Chaos vs. Order, but it ended shortly after I started playing.

My guess is that with VvV and each guild/alliance being its own team, the devs thought it would be easier to get into fights with more people without taking murder counts.  

crunchnasty

That makes sense actually. But in that case I would just switch sides also. 

Mervyn

On Europa it works perfectly, everyone hates everyone.

Margrette

crunchnasty said:

That makes sense actually. But in that case I would just switch sides also. 

Yeah, we had to do that a few times.  Normally we were TB but sometimes went to SL or Minax if TB wasn't a good option.  Seemed like no one really went COM very often, maybe because of the bridge being so hard to field.  Although I do have fond memories of starting out in COM on Baja and then later on trying to sneak into it after joining a guild that was in TB. Many memories of removing traps at the steps to that bridge. There was some kind of a bug that some used to stack the traps there.

Syncros

Factions was fun at the time, I cant comment on VvV but if everyone is orange then its not for me me as you might as well just go PK but then you are red and cant bank sit in Luna.... I liked how factions worked other then players "spying" on other factions for one faction.    

Pawain

crunchnasty said:

Seriously its all about group fights now. It should be Chaos vs Order, at least then theres a default team you're on. Otherwise you are everyone's enemy. If its called Vice vs Virtue, then why can't you join the Vice or Virtue team, and fight against one another? Instead everyone is orange, and you get ganked hard by every single person you come across.

Do any of the devs actually PvP? Just curious if you have the perspective of a player in fel or not @ Kyronix

Do you have fun doing anything in UO?

I have not seen any post of yours display anything but complaints.

Davo

some people have fun with vvv, some don't. unless they fix the cheating and make both clients comparable, it wont be fixed. if u solo or are in small group, it maybe hard to compete, depends on shard. the best pvp I had was when there was no vvv, no factions just reds vs blues(no royal pardons). it was the most fair/fun time in pvp for me. since vvv, too many people I know have left the game. pvp is dead to me now lol. have fun

Fat

What Davo said

Or just go back to order vs chaos

UltraViolence

VvV sucks, 4 Factions was so much better!

VvV just made it some everyone participates to get cheap free arties. Factions is dead now and normal pvp just has temp stat loss.

Acid_Rain

I never understood why it's called Vice Vs Virtue when there is no 2 opposing groups. The name implies a 2 faction system yet when I logged in to try it... everyone's orange ! 

I think having temporary theme based (good/evil, Minax/CoM/SL/TB) dedicated groups (factions) fighting during town events could pull in more players. Create a sense of purpose for everyone to join a side & fight along w/ others. It fosters a sense of camaraderie & can build friendships between previously unknown players.

Currently, we have a version of guild wars in which no one may participate (successfully) unless already in a decent sized guild.

*** Ultimately, success of this hinges on a level playing field. Most will try VvV only a few times when they see the shenanigans used by some of our self-proclaimed "best" PvPers. LOL ***

Kyronix

When VvV was in early development, we had intended on "just" reintroducing some version of Chaos vs Order where guilds would pick a side and eternal war would blossom from there.  The concept discussion for this, however, was met with overwhelming outcry from some of the larger PvP guilds across various shards.  Under no circumstances did Guild A want to be on the same side as Guild B.  They didn't like each other, they were never going to like each other, and they definitely did not want to fight with each other.  This lead to discussions how Guild B would join Guild A's side with the sole purpose of trying to grief them.  We thought about ways to moderate this.  Reputation systems to weed out the offenders, or more severe penalties for those who team kill.  Ultimately, however, each of these solutions lead to more edge cases that quickly made the idea of "just" doing Chaos vs Order too complex.  

And so we went with guilds.  They are self moderating.  If you don't want someone in your guild, you can kick them out.  Every guild is their own team, and guilds can ally with other guilds and form their larger group.  The framework of Vice vs Virtue was a added as a fictional construct to give purpose to what is otherwise mindless fighting.  UO is a sandbox, and we felt the most sandbox-y approach was to allow the players the ability to define what it meant to be Vice or Virtue on any given shard.  Originally there was more emphasis on winning VvV battles by protecting your thief.  This made for some interesting cat and mouse experiences early on, but ultimately the outcry those who "just wanted to be able to fight" resulted in a diminished role for the thief/sigil mechanic that it was really no longer viable as it once was.  

While I think we fell short in making the results of the battles feel more impactful and providing more tools for players to define what it meant to be Vice or Virtue, VvV solved a number of issues with factions - notably with flagging, a lack of critical mass which made the entire system untenable on the majority of shards, and a time sink that was unappealing to a changing player base who could no longer devote hours to a PvP battle/siege.  

We've brainstormed some solutions to these issues and encourage continued meaningful discussion on how we can improve in the future.

Mervyn

FYI I was the one who said we would not fight with guild B and visa versa, this has worked absolutely fine so far. 

I can see how at first when you see dozens of oranges on the screen it can be quite daunting, however rest assured, when there are lots of guilds fighting everyone is as afraid as you. 

This way the players have full control over who joins their team. 

It should be noted that on shards like Europa, some alliances (w,tuk,few) are so large that I’m sure they see more green than orange. 

The_Higgs_1

Everything that was done to improve stat loss and flagging could've just been added to factions.  One of the issues factions had was TB base being in a town causing guard whacks, so instead of just moving the base or fixing it, they move all fights into towns. (facepalms).  All that had to be done is add a couple bases and throw in the new stat loss and flagging system to factions instead of replacing it.   I think town fighting is worthless, move the fights back out of towns, give bonuses to dungeon fights for faction/VvV players.  Why is it only town fights track kills and not anywhere else.  So much wrong with VvV when factions was perfectly fine, it just needed updating.

Margrette

crunchnasty said:

Seriously its all about group fights now. It should be Chaos vs Order, at least then theres a default team you're on. Otherwise you are everyone's enemy. If its called Vice vs Virtue, then why can't you join the Vice or Virtue team, and fight against one another? Instead everyone is orange, and you get ganked hard by every single person you come across.

Do any of the devs actually PvP? Just curious if you have the perspective of a player in fel or not @ Kyronix

Rereading your post again today, I'm wondering if one of your concerns is that VvV is too difficult for small groups or solo players that aren't part of an alliance to participate in.  Is that correct?  Have you checked out the arenas?  Any thoughts on how to improve them?

crunchnasty

Well also my concern is that its not fun to be in a group battle if there is nothing we are fighting over really... I mean make the rewards worth it and ppl would embrace VvV much more as a competition instead of just using the system to get a battle steed or whatnot. What could be done to revamp the VvV system so people actually wanted to participate in the group fights on a much larger scale? It just comes down to no incentive to play VvV the way it was designed. Revamp the things people are fighting over so that it is a constant fun battle. Otherwise we just looking for one another to gank all day, but then what? we just res and then try to kill one another for nothing? @Kyronix just a thought I wanna make it super fun for everyone, but if I'm wrong then pls disregard/. And by reward I don't necessarily mean like ridiculous loot or items, but prestige and something else perhaps that can make ppl feel rewarded. I do understand ppl not wanting to to be too big a timesink, but if ppl have time for a champ spawn, or the roof they can do some PvP too.

crunchnasty

I used to check out the arenas, but nobody uses them anymore. I was also thinking I would be fine with everyone being orange if there were something for the guilds to actually rally around and play for, we need a purpose that is meaningful. Choas and Order had at least some kind of moral thing to it, and roleplaying feel. We need Good vs Evil, even if we think evil is good. 

@kyronix What is the goal of VvV?

psycho

I have some comments about the vvv system, I see i originally wrote this 1 year ago, but didnt publish it. Since no new patches to the vvv system i will publish now:

The idea is to choose a side right? Vice or Virtue.
What I am missing, is a reason to chose the vice or virtue path.
When I steal that sigil and give it to the priest NPC in red robe or blue robe, theres no difference, theres no consequences.
The vvv leader boards doesnt show what vice or virtue path the other chars/guilds have chosen.

I think the system can be improved and become much better, interesting and even draw people into UO just for the PVP.
But for this a few changes are needed, also the main problem of 20min fights then nobody cares who won, or who won yesterday, and nobody can check who won 2hours ago, theres 60 vvv towns a day LOL, - needs to be resolved, but ive not touched this here.

My suggestions to improve vvv system and its bugs:
Update MYUO page on uo.com to see vice vs virtue members and their points, so people can see it even if not ingame. Its a community thing, to create a community for PvP.
like the faction system it should list shards and total points of all shards and guilds, top 10 list and you could even check it at work, even if not access to UO xD

ingame Commands to find out what city is active (having to relog is stupid, but many do this) also there should be a command to check points or kill ratio (points is in the million or billion its hard to keep track if you have 300million or 3.3billion points, punkte/showscore and then 12 digits appear doesnt look good lol )

Some sigils spawn right next to the priest, this makes no sence. Steal a sigil and deliver on same screen four tiles away, why.


The progression bar in the vvv window shouldnt start before 30secs afer the town has started, to give more time for people to enter town and start at same equal score.

Why does the silver trader spawn in trammel towns? VVV is Feluca only so why is there a silver trader in trammel in all towns.

The active vvv city should be more altered to illustrate that it is in a war, other than 3 alters, 3NPCs there are no visible changes to the town.
How about some barricades, orange NPCs to protect their townhall, a stable master for vvv warhorses (instead of silver trader) How about a great townhall to view all the vvv rewards and to view the leaderboards of points.

Make a way to see the battle readiness of a vvv mount as it is now it just disappear. Also give it a possibility to armor it.
Error message "The steed readiness runs dangerously low" when the pet is in stable and havent even been used for days need to be fixed.


The bug where the sigil spawn then disappear in thin air before its detected/stolen, only to respawn again one minute later need to be fixed.

Sometimes the priest of virtue and priest of Vice spawns inside buildings, is this intentional? also sometimes in unreachable locations i.e Trinsic bank ontop.

The message that says "the city is unoccupied" still says unoccupied if people are hidden/stealthing.

Sigils location are not as random as one would think, quite often it respawn 3 or 4 times at same location.

Currently only killings inside active vvv towns count toward the statistic, meaning if you kill someone in a dungeon or they run out of town, it wont show on statistic. is it supposed to be like this?

After a city has ended the scoreboard for town is wrong, it says "total match kill/assist/death" even though there has been no action in town.

The vvv leaderboards list should be extended by 5 people, so that when in 2d client it shows 3x unique pages. As it is now the last two pages overlaps and the 3rd page shows the same 5 people twice.
Also new people in VVV have to play and collect points for DAYS and weeks to just be visible at the top 25scoreboard, they are faaaar beyond.


The vvv leaderboard over guild rankings should be updated with how many cities won each guild/alliance vice/virtue has

Theres a place a few screens west of the silver trader in Trinsic you cant run with sigil or you get the message "you may not remove the sigil from the battle region". This is inside town. Also a few places the vvv town limits need to be extended (i.e yew winery)

Id also like to see the vvv start when atleast 3 or more members are online, this to avoid farming of points. Currently its 2people, funny that an entire city is in war cuz of 2people.

Suggestions to rewards from the VVV NPC:
Remove some of the old rewards its had its time(2-3years).
boomstick - to make no recalling allowed in town. 5000 silver coins
boomstick - to extend the time of war in a vvv town for another 5minuts 8000 silver coins
Reversed forged pardon, that put a character at 5 long term murders and red. (option for blues to go red, the idea to chose a side vice or virtue right?)
Vice/virtue guard - guard to be put out at the healer building to enable safe ressurections - 5000 silver
warcry - allow a message to all vice or virtue members online(like the faction message command) once pr town or once pr day. - 10000 silver
Rune book with runes to all VVV towns premarked, as an alternative to the crystal teleporter item that moves char to bank)
The vice/virtue robe has no propeties, it shoud have atleast one property to actually make people wear it. Also it cant be repaired with repair deeds, it need some benefits.
Special vvv repair deed to repair the vvv items one deed fits all, no need to run around with the right deed in the right shop.
A potion for the vvv mount to make it twice as strong (not to use in fight, but to prevent it getting killed all the time)
A special vvv item (i.e deco) worth 25.000 points to put in house(worth way more than the current max of 10kpoints which is too easy to get)

Can add alot of things here, its a fantasy things, but whats important is that new players can get some gear to join the pvp, a mount and compete on the same level.

Thank you for your efforts to improve the vvv system!