Gear and AP scaling in PvP

***NOTE*** This is a repost from a reply I made on another thread, but as it's a topic that greatly bothers me, I would like to draw attention to my digression.



I'd like to take this oppurtunity to say that I just ran a PvP, in full uncommons (plus 2 heroes with commons/uncommons) and got raped.


The other guy presumably had no gear...as the situation was: 3v6; 2LI 1Cav vs 4LI 2HI...my 560ap to his 566.


In that particular situation, it seems to me that gear is UNDERPOWERED, as using it gets me in to 2v1 situations...and this is with the lesser gear, at that.


Once again, I must state as I did in another thread...gear seems to have no place in PvP. I understand that the matches need to balance and everyone hates P2W...but I do believe that the AP scaling is off. If taking an army in uncommons halves my numbers, what does this bode for the higher tier gear which would have an even greater impact on the AP?


Using it GREATLY reduces my tactical options; as to match with the players asking in global, I could only take 3 units. (only so many tactics available when you're outnumbered 2-1 and your opponent huddles in a giant mass)


I mentioned in guild my disappointment at the effectiveness of the gear, and they're saying that the word is that it is better to take no gear at all to PvP. This was even more disappointing.


AND yes, small stats make a big difference; but it seems with the flanking/rearing revamps, and the AP scaled so that I get outnumbered 2-1, it seemsto have no point in taking the gear in the first place.


Maybe if there were more options besides 'retreat' for an aggravatingly long amount of time to disengage and reposition, then it would work....however if I engage the mass after luring the heavies away, and am unable to wipe out 2/3 of the enemy army before they get back, i get surrounded, or have to flee and take free casualties.


If I were to use a similar composition to the enemy, and replace my cav with a heavy, I would have been a whole 7 AP down, so that would hardly make the difference.


Perhaps I should run with no heroes AND no gear, so that my tactic can be to sit in an even BIGGER ball than the enemy and maybe read a book while I wait for him to attack me. Power in numbers, right? Not even being sarcastic, when I bother to PvP next, i'm sure it will be naked so that I don't simply lose by sheer numbers and then have to pay gold for the disadvantage to boot (not that the repair on uncommons is pricy, but still...).

Pointless thread, the other is already getting a lot of attention.

Hi Dobraine,
I think that you played pvp with me (my nickname in game is kubasaka), and i completly disagree with you.

In my opinion you lost because your tactics was bad. You have less units and battle took on open space where i can easily flanked you. You use Cavalry to frontal assaut, Cavalry is the support unit not first line. Heavies would be much better for this (and they cost little less ap points). I won but my casualties were about 80% so match was very even. I personaly belive that if ouer armies face each other on frontal attack i would lose. I played pvp with Venatorraptor, He got many items, use terrain to not get flanked easily and he won match, so items are not so useless as you think (i use them very often). You need to fit items and army to your strategy.

Duplicate threads make things messy, but that thread was also hitting a lot of topics.

I agree if he fought out in the open, he gave away the tactical advantage of geared units. Low numbers means you want to find choke points. Force their numbers to mean nothing! For Sparta!

heh.. That said... Dobraine does have a point that I agree with and that is hero items are overvalued AP wise. If all his heroes were geared, and all his units had heroes, he probably had anywhere between 80-120 AP that he could have shed and been matched up against that same army minus 2 units or so. That would have been a much more balanced matchup imo.

Kuba, did you use unit items in that fight btw?

I used my cav to get you to move your heavies out from the clusterball. they took no hits, and your heavies starting moving out at them. I pushed my lights in on the left, and flanked with my cav. you certainly didn't look ready to use your numbers for an assault. I don't feel like sitting around a choke point testing out patience. an assault should be feasable, given the fact players use strategies like turtling.

hence the imbalance. you clearly still had defending as an option. an attack evidently does not work well when 2v1d

Dobraine wrote:

I used my cav to get you to move your heavies out from the clusterball. they took no hits, and your heavies starting moving out at them. I pushed my lights in on the left, and flanked with my cav. you certainly didn't look ready to use your numbers for an assault. I don't feel like sitting around a choke point testing out patience. an assault should be feasable, given the fact players use strategies like turtling.

then go for numbers, I suppose. if used right, there's been tales on this forum of people using tight corridors and spaces to 1v4 and come out on top using nice enough gear. The main issue comes simply down to working with an army comp that's right for you, and if you'd prefer to be the aggressive one with superior numbers, flanking his opponent, more power to you.

Mephy wrote:

Pointless thread, the other is already getting a lot of attention.

I digressed away from the original point. New title. Less disrespect to the original poster, who may feel his point has been lost.

the game should be set up so that I can take gear and heroes with me and still be able to play aggressively. does it make sense to you that you work to get gear which limits your playstyle when you have it? I geared my units to be balanced - some survivability, some attack, focussing D stats in a primary and preferring to spread the attack stats around, so i don't believe it's me gearing wrong.

it simply does not make sense to me that the rewards provided are gear and means to get gear, yet when used, the gear negates the feasability to do anything other that defend a chokepoint? if i wanted to do that, i'd gear my army around heavies....or that would be my line of thought, anyways.

AgentAAA wrote:

Dobraine wrote:

I don't feel like sitting around a choke point testing out patience. an assault should be feasable, given the fact players use strategies like turtling.

then go for numbers, I suppose. if used right, there's been tales on this forum of people using tight corridors and spaces to 1v4 and come out on top using nice enough gear. The main issue comes simply down to working with an army comp that's right for you, and if you'd prefer to be the aggressive one with superior numbers, flanking his opponent, more power to you.

I dont need superior numbers, but if my lesser numbers (that are like so because of gear) are unable to launch an attack because the gear is too weak or flanking is too strong or my heroes arent worth the AP to put them in there...then it is unbalanced.

Sure epic D is fun. But not everyone has time to sit around staring while the opponents patience wears down.

I had not unreasonabe amounts of gear - simply uncommons that were giving a general boost to my units, and commons/uncommons on 2 heroes. maybe one of my kinda geared lights can take on 2 of his head on - i wouldnt know, that's not the way it plays out. as soon as im engaged im stuck, and flanking is easy for the opponent.

I think you have a legit grievance against the current balance situation, but again, you are starting to be a little indiscriminately vocal about where you are calling for change.

I completely agree that AP scaling needs targeted refinement. Way off balance overall? I can see arguments specifically for hero gear overall causing AP handicaps like the one you had to deal with. But "low level uncommon gear" like you're suggesting? Thats just not the case. I think its raised more than a few eyebrows as you have seen in the thread.

As I pointed out in the other thread, the devs said they would look into Hero Item AP scaling. They gave that response to a very quick gut-check thread about the issue. There was no need for quantitative analysis or anything like that - they simply acknowledged the need to look into it more. I think that speaks to how self-evident this imbalance is.

That said, I think its disingenuous to call "uncommon" gear as horribly scaled AP-wise. Then to leverage that and paint "gear scaling" with a single broad stroke as the source of the AP imbalances is starting to feel like you are just pushing for overall item buffs. You've tried to reframe the discussion about increasing item power in more than a few threads. This is the most recent one.

Passionate anecdotes are useful as a canaries in the mine. They can be a good early warning sign that something is wrong - but using them in the hopes of starting a bandwagon effect for specific change is a bad way to affect quality design.

About boring/gimmicky gameplay tactics that ruin the fun for 1 side of the battle:

• I agree hard turtling is dumb. Its boring and almost every modern FPS game has game design elements that counter it. In this game, I do not want to see a situation where heavies and arty can just hang back and epic D 5% of the map and control 80% of it. Thats not fun defensive gameplay.
  
• I do not think that high level gear forces players into using 1 tactic like being defensive or using choke points. That was just one example. For instance, 3 units and 1 piece of decently sized LOS is theoretically enough to remove the possibility of flanking entirely (discounting any weird pathfinding and flanking bugs).
  
• I think tactics like hard turtling are much more likely to be effective in low AP matches with few units that are prone to getting counter-comped. I also think they will happen much more often in 1v1 pvp fights.
  
• This is one of the reasons I am a proponent of giving players pretty early access to a full array of counter units so that building a versatile army from key unit archetypes is not something that is only possible after 3months of grinding.
  
• I think some of these problems will be dramatically reduced by a better pvp matchmaking system / lobby and guild warfare.

Hegorn wrote:

I think you have a legit grievance against the current balance situation, but again, you are starting to be a little indiscriminately vocal about where you are calling for change.

I completely agree that AP scaling needs targeted refinement. Way off balance overall? I can see arguments specifically for hero gear overall causing AP handicaps like the one you had to deal with. But "low level uncommon gear" like you're suggesting? Thats just not the case. I think its raised more than a few eyebrows as you have seen in the thread.

As I pointed out in the other thread, the devs said they would look into Hero Item AP scaling. They gave that response to a very quick gut-check thread about the issue. There was no need for quantitative analysis or anything like that - they simply acknowledged the need to look into it more. I think that speaks to how self-evident this imbalance is.

That said, I think its disingenuous to call "uncommon" gear as horribly scaled AP-wise. Then to leverage that and paint "gear scaling" with a single broad stroke as the source of the AP imbalances is starting to feel like you are just pushing for overall item buffs. You've tried to reframe the discussion about increasing item power in more than a few threads. This is the most recent one.

Passionate anecdotes are useful as a canaries in the mine. They can be a good early warning sign that something is wrong - but using them in the hopes of starting a bandwagon effect for specific change is a bad way to affect quality design.

I'm not so concerned about items getting buffed as I am with them being well balanced into the game. I suggested in another post that they reduce stats on all items by 30% to reduce the amount of AP they take up and make it easier to form different comps while using gear and giving that flexibility to use all options available to me to effectively meet my playstyle.

Sorry to keep hitting the drum, but making my opinion heard is the only way to gauge how others feel and to see what the devs think.