PvP Improvement Proposal
by trakilaki
Intro
The PvP is broken for a longer time and everyone is aware of it.
Since the Qaizah expansion the PvP is broken on a higher level than ever before.
How to balance the arena is not something simple so it has to be done in careful way by not provoking too much revolt and disagreement among the players.
With the new R213/214 on Test Server, the devs have made changes to PvP by excluding all the farmed gear and leaving only the base stats on items.
I believe that approach is not providing best possible solution. So i am about to explain my proposal on PvP balance, which I made some time ago in DSO EN forum.
So lets get started.
This was not my original proposal, but i had to rework it because the introduction of Tiered gems and Platinum enchantments.
Why is PvP unbalanced?
There are few different reasons why the PvP is unbalanced.
All of them, alone and combined, are contributing to the imbalance and leaving frustration among players.
- Game breaking buffs on items/sets
- Set Bonuses
- Tiers on equipment
- Base Stats on equipment
- Upgrading equipment more than 5 levels (twinking)
Game breaking buffs on items/sets
The buffs on gear are major contributors to imbalance. everyone knows that, even the birds and butterflies know it.
Therefore all buffs AKA Unique Enchantments should be discarded from PvP.
Set Bonuses
Not all set bonuses are bad or causing imbalance in PvP, but for the sake of balance all set bonuses should be discarded from PvP too.
Tiers on Equipment
Tiers on equipment are not needed in PvP.
The simple argument would be: There are no difficulties in the arena so why getting higher base stats on items?
Tiers are breaking the balance because are buffing the stats up. They are unnecessary in PvP since there are no difficulties and only stats on normal difficulty are available and valid.
Tiers also provide inequality between players who can and players who can't farm higher difficulties, but that is not so much important because the previous statement covers it all.
Tiers should be discarded from PvP.
Base stats on Equipment
Base stats on gear are the running engine. Everything else like enchantments, gems, runes are just supplementary parts to propel the engine.
The base stats should be lowered down (to be explained later on, below)
Upgrading equipment more than 5 levels
Upgrading equipment should be available only up to 5 levels on any given level.
Upgrading gear with GoP's beyond 5 levels should be prevented from happening in PvP.
Just like any cap level player can't upgrade the equipment beyond 5 levels lower level players should not be able to upgrade their gear too.
This would represent significant improvement in low and mid level PvP.
So what actually we can achieve by implementing these restrictions?
I will explain it in detail further below ... bear with me.
Solution
The only possible solution to balance PvP is New PvP Gear.
Why new PvP gear? Because it will be designed in such way that all previous points will be covered. Also, it will keep the players motivated to play both PvE and PvP.
This will be very opposite of the current implementation on Test Server, where only base stats are working in PvP.
In my opinion that is not the solution because it kills the motivation and takes the player's investment/hard work away from them.
After all Drakensang Online is RPG game. In MMORPG games players are carrying their equipment in PvP as well.
That is why they were playing the game. If that was not the case they could have played some other specialized true MOBA game instead of this newly implemented Hybrid MOBA PvP.
New PvP Gear
The new PvP Gear would be implemented in specific way similar to PvE gear YET quite different.
PvP Gear Rules and Specifications
Note 1: all numbers presented in this section are not accurate and to be taken for granted. They are just mentioned for the purpose of explaining and making the point more vivid and understandable.
Note 2: The Values mentioned below or slightly different values, were used to calculate and emulate the outcome in more than few scenarios in order to test the accountability.
NOTE 3: The devs would make the accurate calculations and decide what values should be used for the gear.
These would be the new rules regarding the new PvP gear:
- All PvP items would have same base stats for all classes. Exception would be HP where Ranger's items would have x1.1 and the Dragonknight's items would have x1.3 of the base HP on SW/SM items. In other words Base Stats are NOT random, they have fixed values.
- Base stats on PvP gear would be much lower than the regular T0 gear. Some of the base stats on some items would be completely removed:
- Critical Hit on Weapon Adornments
- Critical Hit on Rings
- All Resistance on Shields
- Critical Hit on Weapons
- Critical Hit on Shields
- ETC
- PvP items DON'T have Unique Values (AKA Buffs)
- PvP Items have no Tiers. Their tier can't be upgraded.
- PvP Items are not part of any set, therefore they DON'T have set bonuses.
- Gems and runes can be used with PvP items.
- PvP Jewelry Items including Weapon Adornments will have maximum of 3 Gem Slots.
- The general rules of using gems/runes are valid for PvP gear. Example: all gems and runes can be placed inside any item as specified in the description (as usual).
- PvP gear can be upgraded up to 5 levels with GoPs. (up to 5 levels at any level not just at cap level).
- PvP Items ARE HAVING regular enchantments. (to be explained)
- PvP Items ARE available for Pristine and Soul Core crafting. They are not available for Augment Core crafting since they have no Tiers.
- PvP items are having same skin per type and class (this will be covered later on).
These are the general basics about the NEW PvP gear. Aditional option(s) will be mentioned later on, which would only improve the general player's experience (not related to balancing).
Explanation of PvP gear
In general it is not hard to get the point what this proposal is all about.
We simply want to remove the Buffs, Set Bonuses and Tiers from PvP. In same time we want to make the Base Stats' values much lower so we can achieve balance by using Runes, Gems and Enchantments.
Base Stats would be low with fixed non-random values because the Enchantments will provide enough randomness and complementing the base stats.
Removal of some base stats, like Critical hit on Jewelry Items, Weapon Adornments, Weapons or Shields in example, would provide for the better balance.
Gems and Runes will be available to be used in PvP Gear. Jewelry items and Weapon Adornments will be having up to 3 Gem slots. Limiting these items to be having up to 3 gem slots was not the original idea, but I had to remake it all over again since the introduction of Tiers on Gems and NEW Platinum Enchantments.
Unique Values, Bonuses an Tiers would not be present with PvP items, because those are one of the main factors for the imbalance in PvP. Only Exception would be Tiers on Gems.
PvP gear can be upgraded by Glyphs of Power BUT not more than 5 levels on any level. That way lower level players could not upgrade their equipment up to level 60 and dominate the other casual and new players and discourage them of playing PvP.
PvP items would be available for Pristine and Soul Core crafting, but they would have their own default enchantments. This way the players can use them until they get useful item for Pristine Core crafting with PvP gear.
Any regular (improved to legendary item) item can be used for Pristine Core crafting. That way the players could transfer enchantments from ordinary PvE gear.
PvP Items would also be available for Soul Core crafting EXCEPT Cloaks. Cloaks would have their own default enchantments (symbolic). All PvP items can be used in process of Soul core crafting with other PvE Unique Items.
This way the players would be able to transfer their enchantments from their PvE Unique Items.
With the crafting process the players could constantly upgrade their enchantments on PvP gear depending on their luck/efforts in PvE.
Since all PvP Items would have same skin, just to prevent monotony, there would be Skins available in PvP shop. This way the players can improve the looking of their item according their liking. Of course they wouldn't be able to apply 2H weapon skin on 1H or Shield skin on Boots XD.
The other possibility would be PvP Items with already predetermined skins from all possible Items in the game (in categories) available in PvP shop. Of course regardless of the skin the items would be having same Base Stats and default enchantments.
With this proposal we are not trying to enforce rules, the rules and the values would be determined by the dev team, we are trying to point out there are many ways of balancing the arena without taking out the investment and hard work of the players and in same time keeping them motivated to continue playing both PvE and PvP.
The whole concept of this balance is to make everyone balanced. There won't be players with 80% Block Rate, high Damage max Crit Hit, Crit Damage, Block Strength, High Health Points and Resistance /Armor like it is the case ATM. What kind of Balance is it when players can have max armor after Armor Break?
This way everyone would have to decide if they want to get more defense, offense or mixed little bit of everything.
The general idea is to limit the OP-ness. With this approach 2H builds would have high damage but lower critical hit, same goes for 1H builds with shield. Only 1H builds using offensive offhands would be able to get max critical hit and high critical damage but they will have lower damage compared to 2H and much lower defense compared to builds with shields.
Therefore suddenly all possible builds would be in game again, like they used to be.
There will be players using 1H+shield Or 1H+Quiver Or 2H set up ... and everything would be balanced.
The Most Important fact with this suggestion would be ... whatever happens in the arena it will never affect the PvE and PvE players. Whenever re-balance needed (IF needed) it will never touch the PvE players who don't care about PvP.
This PvP gear should be also working flawlessly with the future reworking of the Honor System.
One other option would be returning the old style of Items with No Base Stats at all or low Base Stats (no base stats on Jewelry).
If you have any suggestions leave them in the comments.
Disclaimer!
Trakilaki is not a PvP player nor he is using some of the god-like sets ... even if he has them all with all max golden base stats and most probably best god-like enchantments in the game.
Everyone who knows trakilaki on Grimmag know that he is not changing his crappy Longbow+Quiver PvE set-up in the arena and he is never giving hard time to weaker and new players. :)