FC: some stuff in game is not fun.
AO used to be fun, some things have been adjusted/tweaked/not addressed/not fixed, which has lead to some things that WERE fun, to become NOT fun.
Fun stuff
- Trash mobs in pande/allappa = easy kills
- Being able to complete previously difficult content fairly easily.
- Being able to level/build a new toon relatively easily because of dailies and previous point.
- Being able to acquire items via the FC shop and/or with veteran points
Not Fun stuff
- Class balance imbalance/inadequacies which drives people to roll new toons because the one they chose doesn't get invited to teams/can't fulfil a 'needed' role
- Getting insta killed in PVP because of some players multi-boxing 100% to-hit attacks
- Signing up for Battlestation and it not running/ghosting/whatever.
- Getting VP but then not having anything good to spend it on.
- Feeling like you can't participate in an activity because of some stigma (i.e. players don't want to PVP for some reason)
- wanting to do an activity but not being able to find people who are like-minded.
Stuff that isn't helping the situation
- Battlestation daily 3x repeatable nerfed
- no XP for PVP daily
- FC "claimed Items" is totally broken - you can reclaim every time you log on...
- Being able to buy VP to bypass the obvious mechanism of PVP to acquire veteran points
- Having too many venues for PVP, ALL OF WHICH ARE EMPTY
- Not enough incentive in general to PVP... You must change this so people actually WANT to pvp.
I'm not sure how it happened, but looking at the post Forz just made about tower wars and Tara in 2004, you can see there's some very obvious differences between now and then, and in no way am I saying everything is screwed now, but the obvious, really obvious problem that AO has, is that the PVP aspect of the game is extremely underpopulated.
How did it get like this? Well, it wasn't always this way. And there are many issues that have contributed, but I think the reality is that something has to change to make PVP fun again, or soon it will die out completely which will ultimately lead to even more sub loss than what we've seen recently.
I don't know what the answer is, but I have a feeling that the appropriate response is going to require a hard, objective look at all the problems plaguing PVP in AO, and trying to find an equitable solution that 1. makes it easy to participate, 2. makes PVP fun again 3. eliminates the instant-kills associated with the multibox issue 4. makes the bonuses from PVP actually benefit the faction but doesn't make it so imbalanced that it becomes impossible to recover
While Battlestation is still kind of cool, it only has personal incentive, and those personal incentives are nearly completely botched due to availability of truckloads of VP via FC shop/ exploits which were over-used to produce a proliferation of VP in game. Battlestation needs a re-vamp which some how produces value-add for the faction that wins, and, the value add can't be as far reaching and permanent as the tower field bonuses.
PVP needs to provide Org benefit, personal benefit, faction benefit. Tower wars already do provide this, but this leaves battlestation hanging out to dry. The other problem is that tower war balance is entrenched by poor mechanics - tower wars at low levels are dominated by fast DPSing groups, and very often change hands without PVP. Then PVP has been significantly degraded lately with FC giving the "OK" to multiboxing.
While battlestation actually centres around PVP, tower wars centre around dubious tactics, hacking/worming out clientside contained information to enhance intel on opposition movement. That isn't PVP, that's real life comp lit providing advantage that exceeds the battery limits imposed by the actual EULA and game builders intentions.
To make PVP "fun" again, it needs to be:
balanced
fast and dynamic
easy to get involved
have appropriate incentives
not entrenched with positive feedbacks producing long term trends that are hard to buck (I would suggest that benefits are timed so there's clear limits on when benefits are up for grabs again)
emphasize team coordinated play in opposition to multibox-insta kill advantage
far less griefing than what we see today (modern NW is fraught with griefing efforts including the meep problem)
How to address these is a challenge and I'd love to hear some ideas.