PvP Balance - A Modest Proposal

[healmagePRO.]

If PVP tamers weren't such a pain to deal with, I'd agree that talismans should probably be disabled in PVP (though not only for the aggressor and with some nuance) and that the problem is mainly tied to murderers preying on newbs. Fixing the murderer aspect is more or less simple, but tamers in PVP would also have to be addressed to make things balanced, and there doesn't seem to be a perfect solution. Unlike talismans, meta pets still retain their PVM ability and their boosted attributes (meta HP and 275 spider dexterity being some of the big ones). One obvious change is that slayers should work against meta pets as they do normal pets, but how do we address the other elements so that the nerf would be equitable?

It would ruin them for people like me who got them purely for the PVP aspect. Yes, you can say that they weren't intended for PVP, but the fact is that they've been in their current state for a long time now. We should at least be allowed to sell our talismans if they're made useless to us.

Tamers and meta tamers have already been nerfed like 3 times. Breath reduced to 28, normalized in pvp combat, no stun. How could you still be complaining about them? The only valid argument you have is that they retain powers for PVM. Everything else displays several nerfs to tamers in pvp to "balance" as you say.

 

[jkg8787]

changing how all talismans work because there's a few uber PKs out there in a few select farming spots (basically Destard is what everyone is bitching about) doesn't make sense, uber PKs will always find advantages

I don't think disabling talisman on pvp is as simple as yall think, every flagging scenario would have to be accounted for, unless you want stealth griefers following around PVMers attacking them from hiding just to disable their talisman to be a dick, and other scenarios like that

try the simple fix first!

1) get rid of armslore/spirit speak requirement for PVMers, give us back 100 skill points to defend ourselves from PKs with

2) slightly increase accuracy and speed for archery

3) tone down damage on purple pots slightly or remove alchemy requirement for bonus dmg

I do get your counterargument. But I believe your scenario with a stealth griefer is even more niche and less likely to happen then "a few uber PKs mostly in Destard". I'm pretty sure murder counts are tied into damage, so that might not be countable (although probably should be) but either way that seems like a very specific grief scenario that wouldn't happen that much.

I do think its great that you are thinking about possible repercussions to any changes. Thats the biggest issue with game dev IMO. How do you make changes for a perceived goal without making more issues further down the road.

 

[jkg8787]

The "aggressor loses talisman powers" proposal is not a good one; players should never feel compelled to avoid initiating combat simply because they want their opponent's talisman to lose its effectiveness instead of their own.

That's why the other option is to have all participants lose access no matter who flags first. Or perhaps there is another 3rd option not dreamed up yet.

Like I said I believe a majority of players recognize talismans should not be having these side-effects but still in brain-storming stage. Nothing is concrete and even if we did decide as community ultimately we still dont have power to put it in.

Just trying to get people talking

 

[jkg8787]

3) if purple pots are the way of the game now, and everybody should use them, why bother wasting 100 points on alchemy? yet another boring skill to waste 100 points on just to get some extra damage out of potions. if potions did the same damage no matter who throws them they would be more balanced because it's a more level playing field when potions work the same way for everyone

I think more character diversity leads to more balanced pvp

Kinda straying away from what I wanted to discuss (which is fine) but I wanted to point out that I thought this was interesting idea.

Would the +10 dmg from alchemy be removed entirely? Or would it get changed to +5 damage (from base) regardless of skill. This would still give decent additional damage that is needed in modern UO pvp and free up 100 skill.

Interesting. Never thought about it before. Wasn't the alchemy thing just a UO:G specific thing anyways?

 

[healmagePRO.]

Yes, lumberjacks are really running the show now, aren't they? And yet I'm struggling to think of more than five names of lumberjack characters at all, let alone ones who are noteworthy. Hmm. Your gauge might be broken again, boy.

Let's be clear about one thing: this is not a modest proposal.

We should avoid ideas that screw over players who have invested in the current system wherever possible. Are layered AR robes a problem? Don't delete or unlayer them, simply make only one +3/+5 bonus effective at a time. Are wands an issue because they further the gap between newbs and vets? Don't delete everyone's wands, make it easier for inexperienced players to take advantage of them (e.g., a [ghealwand command similar to [poppouch). If the talismans are truly such a big issue that they need to be changed, come up with a solution that minimizes the damage done to current talisman users.

It is a modest proposal because the intentions of the talisman were not to be used in pvp and you using them to aid you in pvp could absolutely be considered "abusing" if you are using them against their intentions. If you're argument is "I invested time and money" then where were you when people GM'd taming to play stun tamers in the field and that got nerfed rendering them close to useless? You could say "you still have 100 taming that allows you to control pets" but you will still have the meta talisman and all of your hard earned relics for pvm too so it's the same battle. We cannot base changes on how invested people are. Especially when the amount of people using defensive talismans that invested as much as you claim is such a small number. I'd say less than 20 people on the server. Also, your fighting tamer argument is silly. If you think you should be able to fight 4 tamers with 8 pets you're a fool. That's the glory of tamers. Just like when we fought werkt for hours with all their pets. We know tamers are strong at defending areas and not so strong at chasing and finishing. Everything has its trade off. If you make tamers weaker against dexxors so they cant even defend themselves they would be useless in pvp because they can't stun or stop people from running. Your trade off is dmg on the run and not having to load along with incredibly fast bandages and the best mobility in pvp. Sorry you can't also face tank tamers.

Also, making wands easier to use for new players will never make them as good as the individuals that I play with and MAGA that has mastered wands and can heal outrageously well. That takes months of eating dirt that 99% of people aren't willing to go through. That's why MAGA are the only guild on the entire server that will 3v3 us in the field. It doesn't matter how easy you make equipping wands, it will take several months of dying and dying and dying to get to the level of mastery required to compete with the best. I think longer/more frequent stuns force players to learn how to heal things like ebolts better and allow for a reduced proffeciency of awareness. Also, you can learn to heal ebolt syncs in a day at the pits. Lightnings, especially ones that are dropped on you on the run because you got within 8 tiles of a crew are a much different story.

 

[jkg8787]

Btw the "Modest Proposal" was going to be an OP of satire in homage. Then I decided I didnt want to put effort into that. So after typing up OP i just kept the name because divorced of its original allusion to the famous satire i knew that any thread discussing pvp would surely not be modest and will eventually result in hurt feelings, a thread lock and probably no changes made.

lol

 

[jkg8787]

Wands take a long time to master. Definitely true. It's like cross heals but slightly different. Requires new hotkeys/macros on top of your other 50hotkeys etc etc.

Still to me that isn't the issue. I LIKE WANDS. Would love to use them on any character.

To me the problem with wands is they are essentially 100% mandatory. As soon as one group/character uses them it becomes almost impossible for another group/char to win a fight against them (assuming equal skill theoretically) if they don't also use wands.

The only reason a Factioner wouldn't carry a wand is the drop rates, the cost factor or maybe they're running low on stock and don't want to head out solo and potentially get ganked and lose their wands.

Point is that there really isn't a downside (aside from droprate/price and the fact you could lose it) to taking a wand with you. If you're a factioner there's pretty much no scenario where you don't want them. I don't think that's healthy. Which is why im open to numerous things like 1) removing wands 2)increasing wand drop rates 3)craftable wands.

I guess just doing a bit of self-examination I could say "well the same thing applies to a Valorite Runic hammer". There's pretty much no scenarios where a dexer wouldn't want to not have one. I'm not sure why, but it feels different with wands though. Maybe the rarer things like valorite runics don't have as much impact because of the limited amount. Seems like wands are dropping at rates just enough to make them fairly widely used, but not dropped enough to make the playing field more level and have majority of people running around using wands.

 

[Streets]

Put boots on first

It is buried in here somewhere I corrected myself I went to the test server and confirmed this but inner torso is plate chest so they don't stack. I

 

[jkg8787]

Any UOF veterans have any input on next steps? I'm newish so not sure who's really in charge of PvP, how often sweeping changes are made and if the person or people in charge are even likely to take player input.

I definitely understand that just because a screaming mob wants something doesn't mean a dev should implement it. I reckon that half a dev's job is deciding when and what to ignore from the playerbase. Reminds me of jobs I've had where I need to listen to clients to get information but wouldn't necessarily follow a clients advice.

I've LOVED almost all suggestions in this thread. Even ones I don't particularly like are at least being put forward in a respectable manner usually with some justification.

So it's not like we are going to reach a consensus. It's also not likely that the forums are reaching an accurate cross-section of the average UOF player so bias must be considered.

Should we do polls on individual topics? Should we badger the GMs/Devs? Do we stand any chance at all?

I get that people are griping about "2 years" of asking or suggesting that Devs/GMs dont listen but tbh I probably wouldn't listen to a bunch of rambling/whining either.

Which is why Im grateful that we've made 6 pages with almost no childishness.

 

[TyroneG]

It would ruin them for people like me who got them purely for the PVP aspect. Yes, you can say that they weren't intended for PVP, but the fact is that they've been in their current state for a long time now. We should at least be allowed to sell our talismans if they're made useless to us.

Just because something has been broken for a long time doesn't mean it should stay that way. Balance should be the number 1 priority, not keeping a handful of players who are abusing the mechanic happy. I leveled a tamer to 115 taming through lots of time and skillscrolls for the sole purpose of playing a broken stun tamer. I was also one of the loudest critics of stun tamers WHILE playing it exclusively - saying that it needed nerfed and making plenty of posts explaining why. Did the people who leveled bard mages get any sort of compensation? If so sign me up

 

[jkg8787]

Just because something has been broken for a long time doesn't mean it should stay that way. Balance should be the number 1 priority, not keeping a handful of players who are abusing the mechanic happy. I leveled a tamer to 115 taming through lots of time and skillscrolls for the sole purpose of playing a broken stun tamer. I was also one of the loudest critics of stun tamers WHILE playing it exclusively - saying that it needed nerfed and making plenty of posts explaining why. Did the people who leveled bard mages get any sort of compensation? If so sign me up

btw bring back battle-bard. apparently it was nerfed to non-workable essentially? i dont necessarily understand why thing have to swing so wildly. im much more in favor of 100s of little adjustments rather than BIG adjustments that are seemingly random and then end up needing to be re-addressed

(so much for me calling others out for being off-topic lol)

 

[Genocide Pete]

Just because something has been broken for a long time doesn't mean it should stay that way. Balance should be the number 1 priority, not keeping a handful of players who are abusing the mechanic happy. I leveled a tamer to 115 taming through lots of time and skillscrolls for the sole purpose of playing a broken stun tamer. I was also one of the loudest critics of stun tamers WHILE playing it exclusively - saying that it needed nerfed and making plenty of posts explaining why. Did the people who leveled bard mages get any sort of compensation? If so sign me up

Right, now add 45 more full chests of those and you have the value of the relics alone at a low price. Then add the amount of time it takes to level everything. They're not comparable.

 

[Xiulan]

Let's be clear about one thing: this is not a modest proposal. It's not a modest amount of time, gold, or effort to max out a defense talisman and its relics. We should all fully acknowledge this as we're wading into this mess.

Agreed. Some of the people advocating for these changes are being so cavalier I have to wonder if they've actually maxed out a talisman themselves, especially in the past six months (after they cracked down on afk macroing). The grind is brutal, even worse than meta tamer, and you have to sacrifice a lot to get there. To compare this to the 100 points of music on a battle bard is absurd.

For what it's worth I disagreed with that nerf too, and wish we could have gradual adjustments rather than these wild oscillations between extremes. But there really wasn't much of an investment loss with battle bards, or even with stun tamers since you can always sell your pet. Nerfing talis years later is straight fucked and just a slap in the face to everyone that made one. Bad for business.

 

[jkg8787]

Agreed. Some of the people advocating for these changes are being so cavalier I have to wonder if they've actually maxed out a talisman themselves, especially in the past six months (after they cracked down on afk macroing). The grind is brutal, even worse than meta tamer, and you have to sacrifice a lot to get there. To compare this to the 100 points of music on a battle bard is absurd.

For what it's worth I disagreed with that nerf too, and wish we could have gradual adjustments rather than these wild oscillations between extremes. But there really wasn't much of an investment loss with battle bards, or even with stun tamers since you can always sell your pet. Nerfing talis years later is straight fucked and just a slap in the face to everyone that made one. Bad for business.

Can I ask how? Like maybe expand your points more. Not saying I disagree really. I just dont see it.

How is removing PvP benefits from talisman suddenly making talisman worth nothing. People saying they would sell theirs etc.

You can't afk farm talisman. Have to do it manually. So all that gold/items/loot on 10000000000s of monsters went right to your bank/house. The talisman still does the MAJORITY of what it used to do after these hypothetical changes.

Yes it will definitely suck for people who enjoyed the benefits it brought to certain PvP scenarios. But I'm having trouble translating that into an event where suddenly talismans are worthless. Or that you've somehow wasted time and money on them.

 

[jkg8787]

Any UOF veterans have any input on next steps? I'm newish so not sure who's really in charge of PvP, how often sweeping changes are made and if the person or people in charge are even likely to take player input.

I definitely understand that just because a screaming mob wants something doesn't mean a dev should implement it. I reckon that half a dev's job is deciding when and what to ignore from the playerbase. Reminds me of jobs I've had where I need to listen to clients to get information but wouldn't necessarily follow a clients advice.

I've LOVED almost all suggestions in this thread. Even ones I don't particularly like are at least being put forward in a respectable manner usually with some justification.

So it's not like we are going to reach a consensus. It's also not likely that the forums are reaching an accurate cross-section of the average UOF player so bias must be considered.

Should we do polls on individual topics? Should we badger the GMs/Devs? Do we stand any chance at all?

I get that people are griping about "2 years" of asking or suggesting that Devs/GMs dont listen but tbh I probably wouldn't listen to a bunch of rambling/whining either.

Which is why Im grateful that we've made 6 pages with almost no childishness.

Also even certain GMs in chat are saying that thread is too cluttered.

If anyone actually wants to get specific changes its apparently advised to make a more specific thread and not so open-ended.

I don't mind the openness of the topic, but not gonna lie I mostly wanted it to be about Talisman

 

[TyroneG]

Right, now add 45 more full chests of those and you have the value of the relics alone at a low price. Then add the amount of time it takes to level everything. They're not comparable.

It shouldn't matter what the value is. Also, like I said I spent millions on making a tamer for the sole purpose of running a stun tamer. Same thing with my layered armored faction robes that were deleted. Balancing (especially in regards to PVP) shouldn't be based on how much something cost, how much time they spent, or how upset people will be when something is nerfed. These items were meant for PVM and shouldn't have any impact on PVP.

I mean no offense, but you aren't really all that capable of being objective in your decision making when it comes to something that you own or that you take advantage of. Your stance on uoforever armor on UOG for instance: Who in their right mind can argue that blessed, NO dexterity loss, stronger than invulnerability platemail armor is balanced and/or not unfair?

 

[baseball dad]

At lv 10 talisman it's only 35% reduction from player pets. Id say 10x more blues are lv 10 than reds. Reds arent crying that "trammy #11 ran into drafons and i couldn't kill him wahhhh".

This is a dumb thread.

Talismans dont kill people. Zergs and players do.

If you dont want to gamble death. Dont chase players into 50 dragons.

Problem solved.

Ffs you're all a bunch of whiny liberal arts students with a gender fluid partner and adopted Cambodian amputee child.

Toughen up snowflakes. Spell closest zergs or 1 button wand newbs are far more toxic, but 90% of the players crying here are 30 ea reg naked tamers with nfi.

I may have been blunt, but someone needs to give the kids a dosage of reality.

 

[girana]

I do get your counterargument. But I believe your scenario with a stealth griefer is even more niche and less likely to happen then "a few uber PKs mostly in Destard". I'm pretty sure murder counts are tied into damage, so that might not be countable (although probably should be) but either way that seems like a very specific grief scenario that wouldn't happen that much.

i would do nothing else till the river of tears would get it change.

 

[jkg8787]

At lv 10 talisman it's only 35% reduction from player pets. Id say 10x more blues are lv 10 than reds. Reds arent crying that "trammy #11 ran into drafons and i couldn't kill him wahhhh".

This is a dumb thread.

Talismans dont kill people. Zergs and players do.

If you dont want to gamble death. Dont chase players into 50 dragons.

Problem solved.

Ffs you're all a bunch of whiny liberal arts students with a gender fluid partner and adopted Cambodian amputee child.

Toughen up snowflakes. Spell closest zergs or 1 button wand newbs are far more toxic, but 90% of the players crying here are 30 ea reg naked tamers with nfi.

I may have been blunt, but someone needs to give the kids a dosage of reality.

lmao gtfo my thread troll

go troll reddit about "beta cuck libtards" or w.e

 

[Xiulan]

Can I ask how? Like maybe expand your points more. Not saying I disagree really. I just dont see it.

How is removing PvP benefits from talisman suddenly making talisman worth nothing. People saying they would sell theirs etc.

You can't afk farm talisman. Have to do it manually. So all that gold/items/loot on 10000000000s of monsters went right to your bank/house. The talisman still does the MAJORITY of what it used to do after these hypothetical changes.

Yes it will definitely suck for people who enjoyed the benefits it brought to certain PvP scenarios. But I'm having trouble translating that into an event where suddenly talismans are worthless. Or that you've somehow wasted time and money on them.

I haven't seen anyone say "worthless."

Have you maxed out a talisman yourself? Not trying to be rude but it seems like there's something fundamental here that you're not grasping. I'll try to spell out what I mean when I say it takes a lot of sacrifice to get these.

All that gold and loot from 10000000000s of monsters went toward buying relics for my talisman and perks to level my talisman and relics. I spent over 16mil on relics alone. Part of that money came from donations, part of it I am now in debt to various players for. I had to beg, borrow and steal to get this stuff (okay maybe not steal, but I did have to beg on a few occasions).

I spent the better part of a year killing the same boring monsters over and over and over and over and over, rather than doing more fun, interesting or lucrative things in this game. I gave myself a repetitive motion injury doing this, and now have to ice down my wrist to play (or to do my irl job, which is costing me). I spent days upon days babysitting boring macros until my eyes were aching from staring at the screen. None of this was particularly fun, but I did it because of the benefits the talisman offered, which I expected to benefit from for years. The investment was worth it to me.

And you think all that is negligible compared to the hypothetical "balance" that would supposedly be achieved between a handle of leet pvpers if talis were nerfed?

You think I would have done all that if having a talisman would turn you into a grief magnet?

All I can say is no. Fuck no.