Funcom, AO is your only game. There are players that pay you monthly who know more about game production, balance and designing than you, players who have been long veterans of other games. Seeing that AO is your first project you must be willing to listen to the players about what needs to be done to compete with the upcoming AC2 and SWG mmorpg games a lot of people are talking about moving to.
You say you want long fights, ask a majority of pvp'ers they will say that they don't. If you notice there's been a history of damage nerfs, and no heal nerfs except for on one profession (trader). Chronologically, damage nerfs:
*Starts at 100%. Carebears whine that they can't raise body dev.
*Moves to 50%. 5k hits still exist.
*Moves to 50%-40% of hp max. Evades get fixed but people don't want to raise them or implant them.
RRFE indirectly makes this 20% damage in pvp. Same case.
*Crit nerf directly makes this 10% damage in pvp when RRFE is present, which is like 100% of the time in pvp...
Yet people are able to heal for thousands of damage and the only time someone can do a highly damaging hit is with specials recharge? You say that pvp was reliant on whoever had the highest critical chance, or shall i say, WORKED to get credits to be able to accomplish this, now it is simply dependant on who gets luckier(critical chance innuendo anyone?) and uses their special first. And has the highest skill in it since that is the deciding factor in the repopping of it. The fight drags on, and depending on who has more healing than the other it drags on and finally people either sit there for 20+ minutes until someone's buffs run out or they decide to stop.
Of course, i did not come here to contend an argument without supportive evidence. Cat's already in the bag:
1. Reportedly a duel between a level 200 and level 180 doctor took 59 minutes and 10 seconds.
2. A duel between a 171 trader and 200 doctor (before patch traders would SLAY doctors) it dragged on for about 30 minutes. Pretty much the doctor went fully defensive and it took forever for the trader to land drains against that nano resist, and by the time the trader landed one he *might* crit (trader had a 14% scope mind you) but by the time he crit enough time went by to use 2 first aid kits until another crit came by. After both drains finally landed on the doctor, he said he was reduced to using a ql 62 heal. did him just fine. the doctor critted the trader once in a blue moon, and it was only when the trader's nanopool ran out did he finally die because he could no longer drain to get healing. And i don't need to tell you how long that took since first aid kits take 40 seconds in between and even that sufficed as healing with this idiotic damage nerf.
3. Yesterday in meetmedere, it was the first sight of a large omni vs. clan group since 14.6. In the course of 3 hours, two people died. Not even 2 alphas were enough to kill some people and they weren't even healers, all they had to do was run to zone while laughing off any fire drawn from the folks behind them. There was maybe 7 omnis and 8 clanners there and people stood behind the line until one person would go in making themselves a target and that whole evening that enforcer didn't die. The only people that died was a 200 soldier and a 180 fixer who had an NT on his tail. Why do you think this is? soldiers do not have any reliable healing when TMS is up at all except for first aid and, again, even that lasted him a ridiculously long time. And nukes did not recieve any alteration since they couldn't crit, hence the death of the fixer.
4. This same 200 soldier i had fought 1 on 1 for 25 minutes straight until we decided to just stop. My hits with this manex catastrophe everyone wants nerfed weren't enough due to its speed and burst recharge, i did try swapping weapons for other specials but the lack of damaging capability invoked by the critical chance nerf allowed the soldier to fully heal, with what many soldiers regard as a (One more hit healing)'gimpy heal,' a majority of the damage.
5. Today in omni ent 4 170ish people attacking 1 178 soldier _without_ his mirror shield up took a little more than 5 minutes due to the lack of damaging capability. He didn't even end up dying...
6. A 200 agent who is supposed to be prone to critical hits was able to kill a 200 adventurer at point blank. And theoretically a 200 agent could kill a 200 MA at point blank...should i even bother to mention, almost any profession can kill an MA at point blank. The same might be able to be said for adventurers since you nerfed their melee dual wielding ability and didn't even bother to mention so in the patch notes...
7. 6 of us on a 174 doctor today which not even all that well-equipped didn't even score a kill. He stayed in there for 10 minutes straight healing off every special shot at him while his buddies, of various professions ranging from adventurers, soldiers, MAs to an NT and a lower level fixer and trader were nibbling away at us, we could've stood there afk and done nothing and still would not have died by the time we came back with HoT on us.. We eventually decided to switch targets after the doctor decided to leave the arena, and the only person who died in that fight was a 100 fixer and a 92 trader which were in a battle that mostly comprised of level 170s-low 190s. (Note zylina this problem of long fights is NOT only taking place among doctors and fixers.)
Beta is over. It's been over for over a year now, and funcom still treats their players like guinea pigs. You'd think we'd be the ones getting paid money for testing this stuff out and giving feedback but its directly the opposite, they don't listen to anyone and any good point made is deleted or locked and they are the ones getting paid. Long fights are not fun when zones are everywhere and you need over 10 people to kill a single person. Also, this amount needed to kill a single person will lag everyone out with the ridiculous 386's funcom is still running their servers on. Funcom, please restore critical chance, please make PvP fun again and give us the ability again to view that our fighting is making some progress against our opponent. Long fights are not fun, no one wants to sit around casting the same nanos, rebuffing their expertise nanos (or in the soldier's case, you just can't forget about those so-called 'useful' 30 minute-lasting nanos) shooting away at a futile attempt to kill someone only to stop later. It may be your idea for anarchy online, but it is not fun for the players. We pay you to play a game that is supposed to chronologically improve and give us enjoyment and fun in. Give us that, and please make our experience in AO not a wasted one.
