The "Feel" of PvP by an experienced WoW nut

Lowenhigh

I felt compelled to write this post, because I've found a game that delivers well beyond and far above your average MMO's PvP experience. The "feeling" that we MMO consumers so desperately chase is often to replicate our best memories from our past games, and as a PvP junkie, I found those experiences from World of Warcraft!

Before you all jump on me and say "ESO isn't supposed to be like WoW," that isn't the point of this post. I love that ESO is different, but there are similarities to every great MMO that they share in common. WoW in its heyday is a great case to examine to help illustrate my points. I will attempt to explain exactly what I loved about WoW's PvP, relate it to what I find awesome about ESO's PvP, and in the end, try to give advice on how ZOS should focus development to keep that "feeling" going strong!

The reason you should read this post is to:

1. Identify what you're trying to re-create with an MMO experience so that you can help ZOS do it.

2. Help me refine my message so that ZOS gets it loud and clear!

The reason I'm writing this is because of the PvP damage changes that are incoming (Total 50% reduction to damage, 50% reduction to shields, no Stam regen while blocking, etc) in order to make fights last longer without lasting forever (Looking at you Ward Sorcs and Permablock DK's) and not see people insta-die due to burst (Looking at you, 100-0 NB gankers). I know they are still tweaking numbers and mechanics slightly, but the obvious need for some changes are there, and I am glad the devs are working to fix the "overly explosive" nature of small combat PvP.

First of all, I really think of 1.6 patch (the patch we're currently on now) as equivalent in a lot of ways to WoW back at lvl 60 Vanilla. There were a lot of amazing things about that time in WoW, which also included some underlying problems that the devs would spend the next 10+ years trying to "fix." This eventually amounted to homogenizing everything - nerfing fun combos of classes by getting them to share DR timers with one another (DR = duration reduction) on their CC abilities and reducing the effect of "OP skills" into very flat and uninteresting versions of their former selves (Looking at you, Mortal Strike)! There are things that needed to change, but my first point is that things NEED TO FEEL OVERPOWERED in many senses! Sure, the spell animations need to look cool, but I need to feel like I just REKT that fool with my OP skillz. This is another way of saying that I need to see diversity in class skills. Nightblades have cloak, double take, and fear that allow them to be played as no other class can be played (as an example). Sorcs have Bolt escape, hardened ward, and insta-cast crystal fragments (as another example) that make their capability to be defensive and then turn around and combo an opponent into oblivion. Each class has a unique playstyle and important skills that give clear advantages in various scenarios. While I don't like infinite bolt escapes or perma-dodge rolling (which need to be toned down a bit and they have been addressed in the next patch), these play styles need to be preserved! We need to always feel like we're overpowered, because we'll keep coming back to play (clearly evidenced by WoW's devs).

What I didn't like about lvl 60 WoW PvP was the bursting from 100-0 was commonplace. Note however, that many people much preferred 100-0 bursting to the never ending fights that became more commonplace as time went on (as evidenced by the clear decline in popularity of PvP and the game in general over the years since the 2nd expansion Wrath of the Lich King). In fact, it eventually became impossible to kill someone unless you 100-0 bursted them due to their attempt to drift away from bursting. Making players more tanky isn't going to work -- Reducing damage by itself isn't going to work. In WoW, I found myself needing to CC a player for a long time to get a kill, wishing for zero resource regen in combat to end the endless fights, or team up with a friend to get that 100-0 kill on a player, because healing and resource regeneration outscaled damage output. Damage output needs to outscale resource regen and healing, but the issue is when you throw too many players into the mix, damage quickly gets out of control when people focus targets.

This leads me to my first change: Don't tone the PvP damage down by another 30% -- A competent ganker needs to be able to kill a competent player in a 1v1 scenario, or at least quickly wear out their resources due to making their opponent play inefficiently and THEN kill them. I believe magicka/stamina costs on certain abilities (I like to call them OH CRAP buttons) are too low, and offer too much utility for their cost in some situations. Healing ward is a prime example... 1 healing ward = 15,000+ hp instantly when you're at 10-20% health... I use this to great effect in ESO currently, and find that I am able to survive in 1vX scenarios easily as a magicka NB just because of the insanely high shield amount at low hp. The up to 300% increased shield amount is clearly causing some fights to go on longer than they should, and this deserves a magicka cost increase or an effective decrease as HP goes down. I'd be in support of an "up to 150%" increase in effectiveness OR a steep increase in mana cost, but 300% increase is a big problem. The overall reduction in effective shields isn't going to help -- this is specific to this ability. There are other abilities that need tweaking, but this is just one good example that everyone has access to.

WoW PvP at level 70 in Burning Crusade Expansion was truly the pinnacle of the game's PvP offering. World + Arena + Battleground PvP was semi-balanced, with many class combos considered the "meta" and "overpowered" while still allowing for much diversity in the types of classes used. People may argue this with me, but we really had a great diversity of success at high levels (I hit gladiator with many different class combos myself).

I'd argue that the forum whining in WoW was never stronger than at The Burning Crusade. People don't like to die, and they are selfish in their recommendations. The n00bs that would rather talk about how good they are instead of showing it in game are often the ones that cry about balance (but don't play enough to realize they can overcome their issues by changing or improving their play). The decline of WoW occurred when people stopped feeling so overpowered on their own class and felt the need to re-roll to the "FOTM" (Flavor of the month) in order to be competitive.

To conclude, PvP should be explosive and reward great play. WoW's first expansion exemplified that, and should be used as a case study for excellence in balance while still maintaining that feeling of being overpowered. It wasn't perfect, but it was close.

Vizier

QFT !

Just unsubbed due to ZoS's continuous over-reaction to the noob and QQ. I do not believe IC will be an improvement and will wait and see. If they actually get back on track to creating a unique and innovative game I'll happily resub.

Lowenhigh

BTW I love the conversation right now on twitch.tv/sypherpk

Brian Wheeler is on and Sypher + his friends are talking about balance in the IC patch. Great convo for people to listen in on!

chevalierknight

Holy wall of text batman!

phermitgb

actually, I read the whole thing - flowed really well at least as far as reading...

sadly, I've never been particularly committed to PVP in any MMO - I've tried it out in many (including WOW and ESO) but I'm very, very uncommitted, and I find that uncommitted pvp and committed pvp DO NOT MIX WELL!...

I find a few of your assertions...questionable. Not wrong, necessarily - but I'm not convinced that PVP *has* to be explosive, I'm not quite sure people *need* to feel overpowered, and while I would of course agree that entertaining game play should be the objective, what one person finds *entertaining* and what another person finds *entertaining* CAN be totally at odds with one another...

If *I* were making the perfect pvp game FOR ME...I would like my overall experience to be one of initial contact - establish superiority - have a chance to switch tactic and comeback - counter-switch - final result.

None of that means much, but let me explain - in *MY* perfect PVP world, players would encounter one another and engage - in most such situations, one person usually has an advantage over the other, either by faster reflexes, more agressive builds, or ambush (surprise).

I do NOT feel that being the first one to strike should equal win - first to strike should equal *advantage*...again, in *my* personal best PVP, after the initial strike, the person with a disadvantage should still have enough time, either with health levels, armor, dodge escapes, shields whatever...to fall back, switch tactic, and attempt to find a weakness to exploit.

For example, maybe getting that initial advantage eats up a lot of power or some other kind of resource - if the target can mange to heal or escape sufficiently quickly, the attacker runs out of power and can't keep up the dps assault, now allowing the defender to respond.

Ideally, there would be several weaknesses and stages of exploit for both attackers and defenders (maybe a one shot pool for the attacker that could reflect damage from a spike attack from the defender, but only if the defender picked a high damage attack instead of a heal or a cc or something)

and so on - in *MY* perfect PVP, *skill* doesn't come from making an unassailable first strike, but from either initially striking and cleverly managing your resources to be able to follow up against a first round defense, or cleverly balancing your ability to survive an over-extended first strike and then finding a way to exploit your over-extended opponent.

Of course, this is a closed environment 1v1 idealized situation - in a larger scale environment, *I* would expand the encounter to allow survival long enough to run to reinforcements, or a large and complex enough environment to escape and *hide* now forcing the encounter to be one of search and evade...or some such

anyway, all of this is just if I made my own PVP game with rules that were solely designed to create a fun PVP environment *for me* (and, by extension, people who like the same things I like)

my point is, that while you have a fairly well written layout for the things *you* would like to see in PVP, and I'm certain there would be a decent sized community of people that might like your system, there are just as many of us that might prefer a different focus or style - so, the real question becomes, what style of PVP do the designers at ZOS want to foster?

for my own part, I just hope that ZOS picks a clear sense of what PVP they want to see in THEIR game, and then do it - it's all these desperate adjustments to appease too many preferences and viewpoints which is *really* hurting PVP as far as I can tell

trimsic_ESO

@Lowenhigh On the contrary, I think the new damage reduction in PVP is one of the best addition to the game. The time to kill was way too short, leaving almost no chance to the defender to react in many different cases. With a shorter time to kill, people have to be smarter and use more strategy to kill their enemies. It also makes dot skills more efficient and therefore more attractive: they really have a place now in our skill bars. Burst is no more the only way to go: CC and resource management are.

Each time I go to the PTS, I really enjoy this new gameplay, and always have some regrets when I come back to the live servers.

TheBull

Damn good post man.

I too am a little concerned with the feel on pts. Whatever it is I can and will adjust. That being said the pts combat is kinda boring. The 1.6 sense of urgency just isn't there.

I was talking to a friend today about this very thing. I said to him "it doesn't really matter what you do. Nothing really works". You can put people in bad positions, make bad mistakes and not really worry about it.

It kinda feels like I'm not killing the, they are just falling over from exhaustion.... Idk the verict is still out but atm things feel more like a pillow fight than a life and death struggle.

Vizier

phermitgb wrote: »

I find a few of your assertions...questionable. Not wrong, necessarily - but I'm not convinced that PVP *has* to be explosive, I'm not quite sure people *need* to feel overpowered, and while I would of course agree that entertaining game play should be the objective, what one person finds *entertaining* and what another person finds *entertaining* CAN be totally at odds with one another...

I do NOT feel that being the first one to strike should equal win - first to strike should equal *advantage*...again, in *my* personal best PVP, after the initial strike, the person with a disadvantage should still have enough time, either with health levels, armor, dodge escapes, shields whatever...to fall back, switch tactic, and attempt to find a weakness to exploit.

For example, maybe getting that initial advantage eats up a lot of power or some other kind of resource - if the target can mange to heal or escape sufficiently quickly, the attacker runs out of power and can't keep up the dps assault, now allowing the defender to respond.

Ideally, there would be several weaknesses and stages of exploit for both attackers and defenders (maybe a one shot pool for the attacker that could reflect damage from a spike attack from the defender, but only if the defender picked a high damage attack instead of a heal or a cc or something)

and so on - in *MY* perfect PVP, *skill* doesn't come from making an unassailable first strike, but from either initially striking and cleverly managing your resources to be able to follow up against a first round defense, or cleverly balancing your ability to survive an over-extended first strike and then finding a way to exploit your over-extended opponent.

anyway, all of this is just if I made my own PVP game with rules that were solely designed to create a fun PVP environment *for me* (and, by extension, people who like the same things I like)

For me the OP's point is well taken in that I believe what he's trying to say is that every player should feel empowered "situationally." Every class has it's strengths and weaknesses and cross class builds as well. Players that build for a certain style of combat should have advantage when presented with that situation. It's rock - Paper - scissors in some respects. A tank should have advantage over players that don't build enough dps and sustainability. A ganker - glass cannon should have advantage over someone that doesn't prepare for burst damage. If a player invested in no health, runs around in light armor without using magelight and spamming ward should be oneshot from a burst dps build. There are so many counters to a NB stam sniper build but many choose not to be vigilant or use skills that counter them. Magicka DPS should smoke someone with little to no spell resist. If someone invested in all health, damage mitigation and or heals then they should be very difficult to kill but also have a hard time killing others.

The point is at the moment there is at least some distance between classes and builds. Situational viability is still on the table, especially since 1.6. This is notwithstanding some tweaks that still need to be made to a certain class that seems to be able to perform dps, tank and healing roles at the same time, but I digress. This conversation isn't about that.

I believe it a legitimate fear ZoS is moving in a direction of cutting the knees out from under 1/3 of the builds and play styles. ZoS is showing a tendency to move to the center and promoting mediocrity of game play. If there is little to no consequence or advantage based on the choices I make developing my characters and styles the game ceases to be an RPG and so becomes not worth playing as one IMO.

Zachy_B

I played wow for 5 years and was heavily into pvp. I completely agree with everything you said in this post. Good post.

karpman48

when WSG started in WOW you the Q lasted days sometimes, I mean i would log out sleep go work come home and still be in it!

Oh happy memories

Monkey

danno8

I think they would have done better and broken fewer things to just leave damage/heals as they were and just give everyone 50% more health, as opposed to the flat +5000 you get now.

It would prevent insta burst kills on most builds, except for true glass builds.

TheLaw

This game has been out over a year with the same broken issues you've listed about. So far, they've added more issues than fixed. Feedback is nice, but they don't seem to take the serious issues to heart.

HungryHobo

danno8 wrote: »

I think they would have done better and broken fewer things to just leave damage/heals as they were and just give everyone 50% more health, as opposed to the flat +5000 you get now.

It would prevent insta burst kills on most builds, except for true glass builds.

Is this not the same thing?

Current health = MaxHP + healing done to you + (Shields - Damage done to you)
=> now with the new changes..

Current Health = MaxHP +(0.5)(Healing done to you) + (.5)(Shields - Damage done to you)

Or your way of thinking..

(2)(Current Health) = (2)(Max HP) + healing done to you + (Shields - Damage done to you)


All the same thing.. it is just that you would *see* bigger numbers only.

Kova

TheBull wrote: »

Damn good post man.

I too am a little concerned with the feel on pts. Whatever it is I can and will adjust. That being said the pts combat is kinda boring. The 1.6 sense of urgency just isn't there.

I was talking to a friend today about this very thing. I said to him "it doesn't really matter what you do. Nothing really works". You can put people in bad positions, make bad mistakes and not really worry about it.

It kinda feels like I'm not killing the, they are just falling over from exhaustion.... Idk the verict is still out but atm things feel more like a pillow fight than a life and death struggle.

I have to agree here. I get 1.6 1v1 urgency in PTS 1vX only. 1v1s are just an annoyance against average players and just an ordeal against good ones. Fighting other duelists becomes a 10 minute distraction while some jerk keeps planting arrows in the back of your head trying to get a cheap TV haul. Eventually one of you (hopefully) gets bored and you both decide to get some TV stones together instead.

Small group is even worse. You basically just hurl mud at each other until someone gets stuck fighting NPCs long enough to kill them. And then the rest of the group is still raring to go. The presence of healers have become even more annoying. Getting someone down to critical levels and having them healed fully in 1.6 was a challenge, but it pales in comparison to the five minute dance of resource management, only to have the dude healed from some passerby player.

That being said, I've killed a great amount of small groups but they were very impulsive and never healed themselves. Facing off against experienced groups just ends up with either a retreat or fortuitous mob/boss intervention. It's pretty satisfying dropping a smite on some poor fools who were just hit with a lich's AOE.

It's become an even bigger numbers game and chance is playing a much larger role this time around. Wonder how it will be when it goes live.

Jakeol

The PvP on WoW got stale, from slow boring combat, to homogenization, to "link rank 1 achieve or you can't play with our sub 2k rating group" it was just not fun anymore. Which is why I came back to ESO, its much faster paced, with no focus on some "elite number i achieved" status people just wanna log in a kill stuff. Sure some of the one shot stuff be toned down little, but the fast paced gameplay not knowing what the other persons build is until you fight them needs to remain in place. Especially build diversity.

I hope that they never introduce arenas into the game. That is the number one way to start excluding players from participating because they're some kind of scrub that doesn't have a *high enough number* associated with them. AKA how to slowly kill a community (ever wonder why WoW lost half its subs this year?). Right now in ESO even if you're not in a group there is no way to exclude you from participating in PvP combat in cyrodiil. It needs to stay this way, people can just hop in and play.

teladoy

I believe that the perfect MMO is the one that satisfies hardcore and normal players without stop rewarding the effort spent of each one.

I think the main problem of pvp is always the inequality, something that is logic, from the point of view that is completly reasonable, that if one person spent 500 hours should be better in everything compare to one that only played 100.

But that's ok, but no comes the experience, no hardcore player likes to own, also normal players don't want to own, they want competition.

The utopy is a world were we are all hardcore. That doesn't exists.

So I would suggest to developers, to find a way to give to hardcores, the progression they need, but somehow to normal players, strong mechanism to be very close to hardcore players.

Is that unfair? yes and no. For one side people that spend plenty of time playing would feel ofended, BUT from the other, HEY!! we have a competitive game!!

Another thing is, the pvp of this game is designed not to shine with your class or yuor skill... is a zerg pvp, with organized groups or not, small scale pvp or not, this game is pure zerging pvp.

You have siege weapons, skills from other trees, a variety of things that makes pvp not funny somethimes, because did you saw "Saving Private Ryan - Omaha Beach Scene"?

Well in ESO that happens and is really frustrating.

Now here I have another tip: Why MOBA games are hitting so hard?

I tell you why, they follow the next rules:

1. Reduced number of players = you feel the power, you did that and you did this, you can see and others can see how powerfull you are.
2. Open and close phase well marked. Like everything in live this gives a new air when a phase is closed, whatevers the result is is.
3. Reward, you like when you win to have the feeling of win, not because you get a piece of chest, is because the enemy lost.
4. The feel of victory if you win or the feel of frustration if you lose, Whatever of both it is, it makes you hunger of more, revenge or continue playing.
5. Every game is a new chance, you don't progretion, all start from the same line.

So this is what gives players fun, so did world of warcraft with the bgs long time ago, there was the spirit, the bgs of wow were very similar to moba games of today.

I went the other day inside ESO pvp, I ride my horse, we assault a castle and suddenly 50 players more than us killed us all. We die all like nothing so easy. And this was only in the first 5 minutes...

If we assault a castle and we won, don't worry 5 minutes later they recover it again... so is like you don't understand why you really are fighting in Cyrodiil... to show your armor? to own? to pvp? to zerging without know who you kill and why u die?

I know, I have to find a pvp guild, small scale pvp... join to a organizated group, etc, etc, etc, stop kidding me! this needs a lot of effort and come on, even doing all this, the feeling of zerging pvp is always there.

So I would suggest to make this game more a moba style pvp, but in mmo version and ir will rock believe me.

Lowenhigh

teladoy wrote: »

So I would suggest to developers, to find a way to give to hardcores, the progression they need, but somehow to normal players, strong mechanism to be very close to hardcore players.

Is that unfair? yes and no. For one side people that spend plenty of time playing would feel ofended, BUT from the other, HEY!! we have a competitive game!!

This is a gem in your post. I actually disagreed with everything else you wrote except for this. But I feel that this needed to be repeated

Jakeol wrote: »

The PvP on WoW got stale, from slow boring combat, to homogenization, to "link rank 1 achieve or you can't play with our sub 2k rating group" it was just not fun anymore. Which is why I came back to ESO, its much faster paced, with no focus on some "elite number i achieved" status people just wanna log in a kill stuff. Sure some of the one shot stuff be toned down little, but the fast paced gameplay not knowing what the other persons build is until you fight them needs to remain in place. Especially build diversity.

I hope that they never introduce arenas into the game. That is the number one way to start excluding players from participating because they're some kind of scrub that doesn't have a *high enough number* associated with them. AKA how to slowly kill a community (ever wonder why WoW lost half its subs this year?). Right now in ESO even if you're not in a group there is no way to exclude you from participating in PvP combat in cyrodiil. It needs to stay this way, people can just hop in and play.

I 100% agree with your first paragraph.

I don't think that there is a problem with arenas in the game unless they provide unique PvP rewards that are more powerful than anywhere else like WoW did (2200 Arena weapons). This really emphasizes the "elite" mindset and forces people to grind in a way that they don't enjoy to earn the gear. I like how ESO currently works -- You can get grandmaster weapons from 4-man dungeons, or you can get it from getting top in PvP. I'd like to see the same rewards given to top arena players in a given "arena season" if you'd like to call it that, but please do NOT give unique arena rewards that are better than others.

I love the direction they are going with emphasizing smaller-scale PvP and non-stop PvP in Imperial City. It'll be a really fun place for small teams to roll around. I am especially excited about the sewers, which I haven't seen at all yet. I think you're in good hands with the current dev team's plans, because they're developing the game in a way that encourages people to hop in and have fun.

Truewavesound

DR = Diminished Returns, kiddo