PVP Suggestions.

Open for discussion, cus let's face it...nobody likes to PvP currently! At least me sitting in a que for longer then 15 minutes before I get bored tells me so. I love PvP, regardless of the game I find it more fun and challenging going up against other players. I just wish their was more of it in this game so I've compiled a few idea's and would love to hear more from everyone else on the matter.

Anyways let's start giving the devs and GM's something to think about for future patches!

1.) First off, no one likes healing their ENTIRE army after it got curbstomped into the ground, it's expensive, aggravating, and just plain sucks for newer players when they gotta wait 15+ mins before their guys are useful in combat, a quick fix would be to put the loosing players units at say 30-40% less power then when they started the battle, this would prevent people from abusing the system for a quick unit heal at the cost of loosing in pvp, and it'd be a steep enough drop to still detriment the player without completely obliterating their want to ever pvp again.

2.) Increase the drop rate of all fragments and resources. Simple enough, better/more lewt = players participation. I'd say even possibly make a chance for items to drop in 2v2+ grudge matches.

3.) Create a dropdown bar that allocates division by AP, to the extent that it would also say how many players are in que for "Said" AP count division. This would allow it to be as random as possible so players couldn't pick and choose opponents, just create a quick army from your barracks and play sort of style (advanced would be to add a ruling caste under a selection like "No heavy infantry+"). Granted you'll still have high end players throwing in cav units and such, but the likelihood of them going against other high end players would help stiphon continual overpowering lesser players.

4.) Cut the xp loss for units, if anything going against another individual and winning should reap only rewards, where as loosing should be more against a players pride then setting them back several battles. Maybe make a loss for units that actually fled off the field of battle to prevent players from massing on the edges in an attempt to minimize enemy xp gains/troop losses...that and it'd be a funny thing to strive for in PVP as an ultimate humiliation.

5.) PVP rewards - weekly or even a daily reward for the player who scored the most points for their faction via PVP. If in the idea of the brackets then you could make it a resource gain, or say for high brackets a godlike fragment, weekly could be a random godlike item. This would bring in more players to keep playing, as well as old players to help out their faction and themselves. (When donations of fragments/items to guild are implemented something like this would work in tandem to benefit the guild as well). Ap tiers of 1-250, 251-500, 501-750, 750-1000, 1k-1k+ sort of thing.

6.) Change the ranking bar for PVP, nobody likes to see their own losses when it comes to PVP especially. So for those people who like 100%, you could implement a system that counts your win/loss ratio for say the last 20 games played. It would encourage players worried about their stats on a leaderboard to participate more often. Personally I've never cared one way or another but I know many players are to afraid to even click the PVP button in fear of hurting their leadership board rating from a potential loss.

That's all I got for now, tell me what ya think, add more idea's or even make another take on someone else's.

There is a PVP Lobby coming up, that will take care (hopefully!) of the queue times.
But I do really agree that I'm not encouraged to play PVP with the extreme costs (both gold and exp), somehow low rewards (considering a 50% winrate, half of the time you gain nothing) and having my PVP win rate on the ranking is just annoying.

I COMPLETELY agree with removing the exp cost for unit deaths! At current it takes like... 2-3 wins to recoop 1 loss. Now, due to the nature of PVP you're going to be faced with an overall average of 50% win/loss ratio (2 people go in, 1 winner, 1 loser). So, overall, there's more loss than gain in pvp.

The 40% remaining HP would be good too, reduces the gold loss (there should still be some) and time loss.

Another adjustment could be to change the 'win pvp' into 'participate' in pvp for the quest list. This would give people a hope of getting -SOMETHING- from a match, even if they aren't successful!

Someone solution really needed because pvp battles are very rare and sometimes people need to wait hours until they find an enemy.

Maybe these suggestions are too much together, the rewards are bigger than coop so it is okay, the bigger wounds are rational after a bigger battle so this is fair too, the ranking bar not cause too big problems I think.

The major problem is the xp loss. This is why people dont play pvp battles.
PVP BATTLES NEED TO LOOSE ALL XP INFLUENCE!

Thus people can improve their units in pve or coop battles and the pvp become more attractive challange for fun without xp losses.

Without this change the pvp will be never as popular as coop thought it would be more interesting than play against computer but the irreal xp losses make this fun thing very unpopular.
DOWN WITH THE PVP XP LOSS!

I think this game does not target the Casual PvPer enough.

• There should always be variation in how "hardcore" or competitive any content is. This applies to both PvP and PvE. BattleCon has done a pretty good job of offering that in PvE content. It needs work in PvP.
  
• Even competitive PvPers dont want to be competitive all the time. Sometimes they want to just enjoy casual PvP that doesnt make them feel like they have to play their "A" game all the time or they risk losing something.
  
• Right now, I dont think there are enough of those players who want to play competitively often enough. If there were, PvP would be happening more often.
  

So I would suggest that the devs change the current PvP mode to firstly target casual PvP gameplay.

• For competitive PvP, those game modes should be implemented when there is a population to support the more competitive play. Competitive play should use stats heavily and matchmaking should be skill based - not necessarily AP based. A ladder or ELO system would be good.
  
• A casual PvP game mode still benefits competitive PvP because it increases the total number of PvPers in the system. There will be crossover.
  
• There are always casual PvPers who dabble in competitive PvP, but most of the time they do not want to be so hardcore. Many will crossover when they feel more confident in their PvP skills - which tends to only happen after they practice in more casual PvP modes and/or progress vertically through PvE content.

Almost all the suggestions for PvP support a conversion to a more casual PvP game mode:

• Removal of XP penalties in PvP.
  
• Time (heal time) should be the only limit to playing casual PvP modes. We need more players in the PvP pool.
  
• I like the idea of capping heal times/costs to 50-60% of a unit's HP levels for casual PvP modes. I think that would put the loser's downtime to about 5-7mins. That feels right.
  
• Remove PvP win rates from the leaderboard. Again, those kinds of stats should be for competitive PvP modes only.
  

On the flip side -- Just as most people think the penalties for PvP are too extreme, I also think the rewards need to be toned down.

• It feels like the amazing rewards were balanced to counter the painful penalties (mostly XP).
  
• These extremes of rewards/penalties are more fitting for competitive PvP game modes. Its good to have a combination of fear/excitement in a game, but not for all game modes.
  
• Because the rewards are too good, the Devs may be hesitant to make PvP less costly to players. Reducing the item reward chances would allow them to rebalance PvP penalties.
  
• I would suggest reducing the rarity chances per AP. Perhaps have the rarity chances scale based on K/D ratios and/or MVP valuations.
  

Rokun wrote:

5.) PVP rewards - weekly or even a daily reward for the player who scored the most points for their faction via PVP. If in the idea of the brackets then you could make it a resource gain, or say for high brackets a godlike fragment, weekly could be a random godlike item. This would bring in more players to keep playing, as well as old players to help out their faction and themselves. (When donations of fragments/items to guild are implemented something like this would work in tandem to benefit the guild as well). Ap tiers of 1-250, 251-500, 501-750, 750-1000, 1k-1k+ sort of thing.

I like the concept - except where rewards are based on total points.

That would transform PvP gameplay into a competitive grindfest - especially if the rewards are top notch (like godlike items). That is just not fun for anyone - at all. WoW's original Honor system was like this and it led to all sorts of very unfun player behavior.

Now compare that to WoW's arena system - where regardless of how much you played, it was your ELO rating that determined how much of the best rewards you could acquire. Rewards were purchased using currency that was accrued based on a team's ELO rating system. Everyone who participated had access to mostly the same gear, but the better ranked players were able to purchase it much faster and much more often. Some gear was gated by rating so the top 5/10/20% rated players had access to different exclusive gear.

How could something that possibly translate to BattleCon?

• Right now we have completely random item rewards. Stats are random and often not that appealing.
  
• Weekly/monthly rewards could be items that have fixed stats. They dont always have to be godlikes either. Because of the way AP scales items, even rare items with a good combo of stats is valuable.
  
• Perhaps the top ELO players would have access to purchase Godlike Fixed-Stat Artifact Items.
  
• Players who cannot surpass certain ELO ratings would still have access to Fixed Stat Items, but perhaps only rare weapons and armor.
  
• Other rewards could be items that reset/rerolled hero/unit stats, gems, or even unique heroes / units.

For competitive play - whatever method is used to dole out the best rewards, the idea is to *NOT* reward sheer grinding.

I think your all looking at the wrong way, rather then make pvping a loss by major gain deal, which just makes it easier for the players, we should at the main reason why people don't pvp. The reason is the human players are much tougher the AI which leads to people to prefer PVEing. I mean nearly everyone has a pve win rate in the nineties, but the win rates in pvping are not so good. And playing three or four battles on hard will give more resources then if you play on pvp.

Such I think PVEing should become more difficult( something the devs are already doing) such if people start losing more units and even battles in pve, but with less rewards then pvping would give you, then people might just think would be better to playing against another to see if they can't get said rewards.

or the short answer is make PVE battles more difflicult and you will see more pvp battle too.

Wolfshield wrote:

The reason is the human players are much tougher the AI which leads to people to prefer PVEing.

Better PvE is a good thing, sure. Beyond that I disagree with the premise that people dont PvP because its harder. In fact, I would say that is what makes it appealing to many people - it is a challenge that AIs cannot provide.

Overall, I doubt an AI can compare to fighting other players. Even if the AI is improved to the point that it is better than some human players, a lot of people play PvP to simply compete with other humans for the social reasons.

Hegorn wrote:

Better PvE is a good thing, sure. Beyond that I disagree with the premise that people dont PvP because its harder. In fact, I would say that is what makes it appealing to many people - it is a challenge that AIs cannot provide.

Overall, I doubt an AI can compare to fighting other players. Even if the AI is improved to the point that it is better than some human players, a lot of people play PvP to simply compete with other humans for the social reasons.

Did i say the AI will be as good as a human. But and while some people are probably think it more worthwhile to play against a human rather than a computer, the simple truth your much more likely to lose. what I'm saying is that I'm against the whole point most people are making is that, other then the gold and time for healing, that you shouldn't lose anything, but also have pretty good gains if you win. I think that good gain should reward the player do the take for greater reward.

but right now it far easier to avoid pvp battles altogether and just solo and coop for the most gains, with limited losses, and gains, while not as good as pvp victory, that are quite worthwhile. such most people are going take quite limit risk of pve rather then the major risk of the pvp match. but if increase the difficulty of fighting pve battle the difference in risk will start to close and more people might wish to try go for a more difficult pvp match for greater rewards then.

making pvp non item would be much better, this would make it purely down to tactics.
i don't know igf it can be made so that you don't have top unequip but just that any item's equipped are just null and void and don't count in AP during the battle.

pug wrote:

making pvp non item would be much better, this would make it purely down to tactics.
i don't know igf it can be made so that you don't have top unequip but just that any item's equipped are just null and void and don't count in AP during the battle.

Equipment and itemization seem to be a great part of the "endgame".

Doesn't AP meant to achieve balance when items are involved ? Does a fully geared unit (with godlike, it's like twice or three times the AP cost) be defeated by two or three units of the same kind ?