PvP Updates Discussion Thread

Grimbeard

Urge said:

AtomicBetty said:

Longshot, probably.

You should ask the posters that attempt to provide suggestions if they would be interested in joining a Slack group and have more direct discussions to cover feedback. So better communication can be had and if area's of concern are raised, or thoughts on how that would be beneficial are had they can defend their suggestions and maybe put it in a point of view that you haven't thought about?

Spend like a week, a month just talking about everything raised on the forums, internal suggestions and see if actual meaningful change can happen over time.

I fully plan on quitting the game when my subs ends so take my words however you will but i love UO pvp. I spent the better part of 15+ years doing it and would love to hear it become massive again. 

I would highly advise against an insider group. A closed pvp focus group was tried in the past. It ended with a select few having a personal hand in changes with insider information giving them time to have the next ready made FotM temp when those changes were made public. 

It may be cold to say but pvpers know more about how mechanics work together than any dev ever will. We all know how long it takes pvp related changes to happen here. Any change that results in an absurd OP temp being born usually ends with mass people tramming out or quitting entirely before any adjustments are made.

If i was a dev knowing how much better suits and mods have become i'd probably revisit nerfs of the past and adjust accordingly.

Nerfs force people to play what works. You need balance but also diversity where there's options to play other templates that could be equally as effective and also fun to that specific player. From 2003-2012 an average weekday was 100+ person dungeon fights. We all played different templates that we enjoyed playing. 

Nerfs just off the top of my head:
-Stealth archers destroyed (annoying but funny to have an entire guild pop out)
-Ai cap
-Pet damage cap
-Archers and throwers miss more than hit
-Comp bow increased swing speed
-Increased mana for spamming specials
-Tying hiding and stealth to deathstrike damage killed a lot of fun hybrid ninja temps

The list goes on and on.

The only reason I think slack would be good idea is so discussion of third party client could happen until that's addressed anything else irrelevant 

Urge

Grimbeard said:

The only reason I think slack would be good idea is so discussion of third party client could happen until that's addressed anything else irrelevant 

May be true but that's not at all what i was talking about. Completely different animal. 

Any change mechanic/skill related should be 100% transparent with feedback from all or else you'll have the typical 3-4 people trying to swindle the devs into hand making their next OP god temp that'll take months to adjust.

Who knows, if underwater boss Kyronix here is serious in making pvp fun again it may just rekindle my interest in logging in to do something other than sell my shit off. If he'd do some kind of discussion like this for tram too (another area i'm completely bored from) i'd almost crack a smile. 

Covfefe

Kyronix said:

• Do not discuss unapproved 3rd party programs or clients.  This is something on our radar and we aren't going to discuss any action we are taking publicly.  If you want to comment on this topic email uo@ broadsword.com

So we're not going to be able to play 2d anymore unless we use your crappy 13fps client that don't even work?

Jbo

Before any restrictions are considered on a skill increase cap, please remember that every suit build with 100+ skill increase normally make compromises in other mods! Also we already have a simple way to counter high skill Inc. templates <span></span> dont kill the pvp bard.

Covfefe

Not sure if this is true, but someone told me the official 2d client doesn't even have auto-navigate around objects.

I'll pass thanks.

CovenantX

Covfefe said:

Not sure if this is true, but someone told me the official 2d client doesn't even have auto-navigate around objects.

I'll pass thanks.

   Object navigation should be the least of your concerns,  if anything is done about third-party clients/programs.   -Nothing "getting good" wouldn't solve, but i guess there was always a very large group of players that compensate their skill issues with programs that do the timing for them.    

I fully expect pvp to be dead for a few weeks if third-party clients are disabled, but it would be for the best reason, so it'll be well worth it.   It's a shame it has taken (and continues to take) so long for any action to be taken on this front.

  

Lord_Frodo

Covfefe said:

Kyronix said:

• Do not discuss unapproved 3rd party programs or clients.  This is something on our radar and we aren't going to discuss any action we are taking publicly.  If you want to comment on this topic email uo@ broadsword.com

So we're not going to be able to play 2d anymore unless we use your crappy 13fps client that don't even work?

Looks like @Mervyn /  @Yoshi opened up another account

Covfefe

Not sure if this is true also, but someone told me UOAssist has no line of site check, and only range check, so if target goes around corner of building/wall you have to recast the spell.

lolololol if true.

Please tell me they're not seriously expecting anyone to play like that.

Mariah

@Covfefe Please contribute to this discussion in a more constructive manner, your current posting tone is not helpful

Thank you.

Grimbeard

Mariah said:

@ Covfefe Please contribute to this discussion in a more constructive manner, your current posting tone is not helpful

Thank you.

At least we found merv/yoshi 

CovenantX

Covfefe said:

Not sure if this is true also, but someone told me UOAssist has no line of site check, and only range check, so if target goes around corner of building/wall you have to recast the spell.

lolololol if true.

Please tell me they're not seriously expecting anyone to play like that.

   That is true,   So you're telling me third-party programs don't cancel your spells when you don't know how/when to target with them?   ...like i said before, object navigation should be the least of concerns.

 

Mariah

Can we please keep 3rd party programs out of this discussion, as per Kyronix's request?

CovenantX

Mariah said:

Can we please keep 3rd party programs out of this discussion, as per Kyronix's request?

   I'm 100% sure they're going to be popping into nearly all discussions until either one of two things happens.

1) They're unusable

Or

2) Everyone uses them. and nobody cares anymore.     

-UO is borderline unplayable now, because most people are using them.  the ones who don't need to actually be good and often times it's not worth the annoyance of fighting auto-every consumable/pop-box.

Some players, including myself posted one or several changes, some repeats, and there hasn't been any dev response to any of them, no one knows which changes are even going to be considered.

Grimbeard

You can't talk about rain without saying getting wet hence taking this to another venue makes sense...

bulldoglegion

I will add my thoughts. I think they are a very different take to what's been posted so far. 

The first thing is PvP is generated by end game players wanting to fight each other. Expect them to go for good gear that gives marginal gains over what you need to PvM. 

At the moment there is very little objective based content to fight over - champ spawns, harrowers, and towns are the only examples. 

The player base for PvP is spread out amongst the shards with most PvPers being on multiple shards and in several guilds simply to get a limited number of fights. 

There are some templates which are better in 1v1 situations but in larger fights positioning and teamwork via the use of voice coms and map programs become much more important than templates and the use of certain spells and items so if the intent is to make large scale PvP fun then I would stay away from changing any of this. 

To improve PvP I would suggest player funnelling i.e. linking a series of automated daily / weekly / weekend events and a monthly EM event that add points to a leader board. I would have the equivalent of a power hour linked by an offset of the shards maintenance time so that the PvP on that shard goes 'hot' at a certain time and where shards are in the same time zone I would alternate this time. 

So you would for example have a leader board for players and their guilds which could simply be the VvV board repurposed. The rankings could come from controlling a town in the VvV system, completing a particular champ at a particular time, killing opponents on an elo system (kill/assist as in VvV), reintroduce some of the elements of the faction system for example traps in town, give points to guilds holding towns and make VvV facet wide so people can fight across the map and not sit at Luna bank.  

keven2002

Urge said:

I fully plan on quitting the game when my subs ends so take my words however you will but i love UO pvp. I spent the better part of 15+ years doing it and would love to hear it become massive again. 

I would highly advise against an insider group. A closed pvp focus group was tried in the past. It ended with a select few having a personal hand in changes with insider information giving them time to have the next ready made FotM temp when those changes were made public. 

It may be cold to say but pvpers know more about how mechanics work together than any dev ever will. We all know how long it takes pvp related changes to happen here. Any change that results in an absurd OP temp being born usually ends with mass people tramming out or quitting entirely before any adjustments are made.

If i was a dev knowing how much better suits and mods have become i'd probably revisit nerfs of the past and adjust accordingly.

I'm in the same boat as you. The game hasn't provided enough content or updates for me to keep paying to play so once my sub runs out I'll be done as well unless they actually give use something good in October. If not, I'll revisit as an EJ and play if I get the itch. The PvP shipped sailed a while ago when the wall scripting etc started happening because to me it's Player v Player - not Player v Script.

I'm glad the Devs are asking for some feedback on this. Their question of "what is considered good?" comes up and while it's a fair question it does prove, to an extent, that the Dev team doesn't play the game enough collectively to know what is "good" or items players would want. The problem that comes from this is that there are going to be some wildly OP suggestions from players that the Devs will need to sort through along with some suggestions that are solely based around that one players suit/template that probably wouldn't be used by majority of players.

Where I'm going with that is PvP also falls into this category. Without the Devs actually knowing much about PvP (which is an assumption but with as many 3rd party things running rampant without a stance on them, it's hard not to think that) they are going to rely on players. The problem here is that many of the "solutions" presented by people are going to be geared towards them.

I'll leave it at this... take this with a grain of salt because I've only PvP'ed maybe a dozen times over the past 12 months (mainly it was during the Deceit Fel weekend like 10 months ago).

I don't think Bok mages are wildly OP (offensively) by themselves when I was using a char with parry; mainly it was them trying to spam the same combo over and over hoping the nerve strike would hit. I think I might have died once and that was when everything that they threw at me was successful. I think the issue of them being OP comes into play when you factor in they have additional client features that other players don't have; meaning the human element of hitting some macros or adjusting on the fly is removed. I understand that we were asked to refrain from talking about that but the truth of the matter is that when several things are automated or triggered after X without delay or error (every time) that's going to be a massive leg up regardless of the template. 

Kyronix

CovenantX said:

Mariah said:

Can we please keep 3rd party programs out of this discussion, as per Kyronix's request?

   I'm 100% sure they're going to be popping into nearly all discussions until either one of two things happens.

1) They're unusable

Or

2) Everyone uses them. and nobody cares anymore.     

-UO is borderline unplayable now, because most people are using them.  the ones who don't need to actually be good and often times it's not worth the annoyance of fighting auto-every consumable/pop-box.

Some players, including myself posted one or several changes, some repeats, and there hasn't been any dev response to any of them, no one knows which changes are even going to be considered.

All of the changes, none of the changes.

This is the listening part of the discussion and we want to hear what everyone has to say.

Cookie

Some off the cuff comments about some things in general, no solutions as such, but some of the problems.

• I feel some of the mage defensive spells take to long to cast - especially Cleansing Winds, and Arch Cure. In group fights, damage is coming in hard and fast, and we have no chance to counter.
• 3 x Lethal Poison Shurikens, is an issue, you have these things flying at you all the time, again, very hard to counter.
• Yes, Bushido swords mages, with their evade, confidence, bokuto nerve strikes/splinters or group dismounts are just way too much. You can even line up double nerve strikes. This sort of damage train, is a stupid way to play.
• The whole reliance on splinter/hit lightning weapons, again, when the game is so over-reliant on 1 thing, you know a specific meta has been reached, and it is overpowered.
• Pure mages need a buff somehow. I'd love to take parry off, but nothing can physically remove parry right now, without instant death. Maybe Wrestle needs a buff to compensate.
• Sampires... Not pvp, but again, completely overpowered - maybe pure healing needs a buff.
• There was a time when the Devs were making some nice amendments to Classic, then they stopped. Please look at the options out there, and use some of the concepts that make pvp fun.
• Better targetting methods - targetting is everything in pvp. Bars should be pulled up for us - and we should be able to mouse wheel scroll up and down the lists to target.
• Bigger screen, to be able to drag the screen to the size we want.
• Faster movement/turning mechanism, so Classic matches Enhanced.
• Options to arrange, and lock icons in Classic.
• Better methods for grabbing the specific bars you want, and arranging them.
• I think mages now have too little mana pool, and too little SDI Cap in pvp. Yes there is an issue, where warriors can basically use everything, all the stats and skills given to them, and mages cannot - for example Dex/Stam is useless to a mage. Mages could do with compensation here for this lack of being able to use the current full loot table out there. Mages without weapons should be able to be competitive - personal opinion.
• Classic Client, needs to handle more than 10 bars. It needs to hold up to 50 bars, and organise them, to cope with the fights we are having. Orange down one side, green down another.
• Classic Client, should give us nice easy colours for friends or enemies, and put health bars above/below so we can easily see friend/enemy status.
• Of course - we need a Nerve Strike Debuff Icon - currently one of the most powerful special abilities out there, and we have no way of knowing we have been hit by it.
• If mages cannot be compensated for not being able to use the whole loot table - we need a way to be able to adjust current armour properties to give us more what we need. I will not specify what this is, as it could be different things, for different players. But for example, I would always drop off +skills/Dex/Stam, for additional survival properties like Damage Eaters, Regenerations, DCI, HCI, EP, etc - others would do the opposite. This probably relates back to Crafting, and some of the improvements that need to be made here.
• Allow more Customisation of spellbooks - either Imbuing, Scribing. Maybe put some Offensive properties on these - as I suggested in my Event Reward request - see how this pans out - could it help strengthen Wrestle?
• Things like the Organiser Agent that UOA had, built into Classic.
• Dress Agent built into Classic.
• Loot/Scavenger options, built into Classic.
• 
  

+ A suggestion I liked - is to give pvpers a scheduled event, with decent rewards. Champs spawns still generate pvp. Harry just works. VvV barely works, and the whole damage train style of pvp is off-putting to most. People say you can have a variety of templates - not really here, they are all very similer in their style. VvV could do with some reward buffs - and maybe a VvV special timed event - where there are some serious rewards - once a week. {Item Bless Deed works for me   }

Covfefe

Cookie said:

• 3 x Lethal Poison Shurikens, is an issue, you have these things flying at you all the time, again, very hard to counter.

You're the second person in this thread to talk about chaining shurikens,

this is not a PvP balancing issue, they already put a cool-down on throwing shurikens, what you're talking about is a bug that people are using to bypass it that numerous people have reported multiple times and never fixed.

Cookie

Covfefe said:

Cookie said:

• 3 x Lethal Poison Shurikens, is an issue, you have these things flying at you all the time, again, very hard to counter.

You're the second person in this thread to talk about chaining shurikens,

this is not a PvP balancing issue, they already put a cool-down on throwing shurikens, what you're talking about is a bug that people are using to bypass it that numerous people have reported multiple times and never fixed.

I understand what it is exactly, but we were asked not to mention a certain thing, so I've done it, without mentioning a certain thing.
Ultimately, this is unbalancing pvp, so yes, it is a pvp balancing issue, it is messing up pvp.

Covfefe

Also that Kevin guy complaining about wall scripting. That is not a PvP balancing issue, that is just a rubber banding bug that affects the official 2d client only (well does slightly affect the clients with auto-navigate around objects but not as much), pretty sure that also has been reported numerous times by numerous people already and never fixed.

Cookie

Covfefe said:

Also that Kevin guy complaining about wall scripting. That is not a PvP balancing issue, that is just a rubber banding bug that affects the official 2d client only (well does slightly affect the clients with auto-navigate around objects but not as much), pretty sure that also has been reported numerous times by numerous people already and never fixed.

Wall Scripting is the least of my problems

Covfefe

Cookie said:

Some off the cuff comments about some things in general, no solutions as such, but some of the problems.

• Dress Agent built into Classic.

This already exists

Cookie

Covfefe said:

Cookie said:

Some off the cuff comments about some things in general, no solutions as such, but some of the problems.

• Dress Agent built into Classic.

This already exists

Yes... not as tidy as I would like.

I struggled to use it, maybe it is viable, I will be honest, I do not remember completely anymore.

Cookie

Dear @Kyronix

I would like to invite you to pvp with our Guild.

We can hide your identity, I would just like to show you what some of it is like.

You can try various templates, come in Discord with us, and you can get to see my frustration losing, or winning first hand

Cookie

and give us a linked up ingame party/guild Map function please.

also really useful.

CovenantX

Cookie said:

and give us a linked up ingame party/guild Map function please.

also really useful.

  That would be one of the most useful features IMO, i don't have a problem using UOCartography, but an in-game version would be ideal.

  If the devs are serious about getting rid of third-party clients (I hope they are), the people who've been using them for a while should probably make a list of features they'd want to see added within the official client.

I'd like to see Macroes for:

Dismount Pet / Remount Pet.

Trap-box.

a filter for the 'New Target System', so that we don't target reds or greys that are in the same guild/alliance.    -one reason people don't play reds much anymore.

Guardzone to be Fully disabled during an active VvV town, so that Reds don't get guardwhacked by hitting blues/Npcs with field/AoE spells or Hit Area weapons.   -another reason people don't play reds much anymore.

Governor's Town Buffs need to be made available for reds without the use of an exploit.  -The main reason people don't play reds much anymore.

I'd like to see the old faction bases used for something too.  Like a champ spawn that requires 5 players to initiate the spawn, upon initiation a message is broadcast globally on that shard stating which base is being activated in X minutes, allowing time for others to join in or raid the event.

a cooldown for each base, or  a lock-out for each base until the other bases have been completed. so that it's more likely every base is used,  instead of the same base over and over due to it's potential efficiency.

Boss should spawn with 4-8 guardians that need to be defeated before the boss is attack-able (kinda like the Blackthorn dungeon captains), but they should have a massive damage reduction buff when they're close to each other, -adding another element to deal with while potentially being raided by other players.   -edit: Bosses & Guardians should NOT be affected by any 'slayers' or the virtue 'Honor'.

Edit: I appreciate the response from Kyronix or any devs as well.  keep the responses coming if there are any suggestions that standout more so than others, so we, the community can pick apart to see whether or not they're going to cause any additional problems we may be able to find within our capacity as detailed oriented players.

Covfefe

CovenantX said:

I'd like to see Macroes for:

Dismount Pet / Remount Pet.

Trap-box.

Already exists (uoassist)/ Already exists UO

Already exists UO

Covfefe

CovenantX said:

a filter for the 'New Target System', so that we don't target reds or greys that are in the same guild/alliance.    -one reason people don't play reds much anymore.

That is another bug that affects only the official 2d client, and not a PvP balancing issue. pretty sure that has been reported multiple times and nothing ever done about it.

CovenantX

Covfefe said:

CovenantX said:

a filter for the 'New Target System', so that we don't target reds or greys that are in the same guild/alliance.    -one reason people don't play reds much anymore.

That is another bug that affects only the official 2d client, and not a PvP balancing issue. pretty sure that has been reported multiple times and nothing ever done about it.

   All Pvp-related bugs, become balance issues when you're fighting against people using clients that have fixes or work-arounds that legit players do not have.