Yes, it's that time again.
In my eyes PvP in AO in a very dire state.
Battlestations are way too huge for the amount of people they support, the whole layout is simply bad (teleports in a PvP area, really?) Some matches I meet an enemy player just once or twice.
In the last 2 weeks I had at least 10 battle station matches filled with a multi-boxer. The biggest one I met had 5 chars in the blue team and 3 chars in the red team. Just casually farming VPs (x8) with 4 capping. Automated farming overnight when BS doesn't normally pop should be easy to do with macros.
I have a 150 PvP twink, 40% of the time I'm killing grey/green people, or at least waving at them. Another 40% of the people are afk leveling players just there for the daily.
Don't let me get started on the turret/mech mechanis, might be the worst design I have seen in PvP in any game so far (at least in scenarios involving no more than 5 people on each side).
I wanted to list a couple more things, but I feel that would be too much negativity for one post. Don't get me wrong, I love AO and I believe it has the best character development system to date, it's just the essential parts this game is missing to be as popular as it deserves. Now it's time for some suggestions:
1. Either re-design the whole battlestation area entirely, or try to make PvP more popular so it's just not a cold, dead, gray space. There could even be multiple battlestation maps eventually (selected at random), perhaps with different environments, like an underground battlestation near the planet's core, with lava environmental hazards or whatever.
To make it more popular, it has to be easier accessible and actually competitive.
This is how I would go about making it more popular:
a) Allow players to sign up to Battlestations from anywhere.
It shouldn't be hard to add another button in the GUI (such as the Store button). When the match pops and you accept, it should teleport you into BS from anywhere, then after the match ends it should teleport you back to the place it beamed you from (exceptions might be instanced encounters etc.). This works great in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
b) Introduce player ranking. This is a BIG one. I don't get the current brackets based on just levels. Look at any decent game that does PvP well there are players rankings. Ranking should only be gained in Battlestations.
I'd like to tell you about an example that happened to me just last week. I was in team Red alone (had 4 afk leechers in team). I capped the middle and stood there and the WHOLE team Blue of 5 people couldn't kill me even when teamed up. None of them were twinked, these were likely new people trying to actively play the game. Why they should be punished by being farmed by a single character? Why should I be punished by not having a worthy adversary (and 4 afkers in a team)? I'm sure it wasn't fun for either side.
With rankings, let afk leechers play with afk leechers. Active new players with active new players. And twinked players with twinked players.
c) Don't let players select if they want to join red or blue side. Make the system distribute players according to their ranking into balanced teams.
At first, this might disallow players to team up with friends. But further down the line the system could allow of signing up to battlestation with a whole team, and introduce team ratings. That's RIGHT - COMPETITIVE TEAM PvP in AO, right?
d) Make Tipping the scales work only for 1 BS instead of 3, Introduce a new daily that wants you to WIN 2 matches. This should reduce the insane amount of afkers in battlestations.
e) An end-score table listing how much DMG/Heal/Capturing each player did? Bonus VPs for that, less VP for the afk leechers?
2. Introduce a 1v1 or 2v2 small battlestations, essentially allowing you to queue for duels from anywhere. These don't have to give too much VP, if any at all, just ranking. This way players won't have to spam on player ran bots for duels, also it would make the duel rules clear. Can you use Gauntlet/Xan/Alaapa/DB 2 buffs in Duels? Can an agent have MP pets out? Is pre-draining cheating? Etc.
I returned recently after 7 years break, I played all the new games and I just came back to AO because of the character development depth. I enjoyed creating my twink, I enjoyed gearing my 220. But now I think why do I bother making twinks when PvP looks like this. (Oh, and I have 3x 230~ conductors planted on my lvl 150, sadly they're always destroyed before I can even get a chance to def them, don't even remember how many times I had to replant them ^^). Now a system for Org battles with tower fields rewards... that would be something.
I know this sounds like asking too much. But I feel like most of the necessary parts are already in place (warping, queuing), the biggest stone to lift is obviously creating the ranking system. I mean, come on, redesigning the battlestation to be more engaging shouldn't take a decent level designer more than a week.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Michizure
