A Genius has passed away

Today a Genius of our time passed away, to a better life? I hope so.

I would like to remember him with one of his most famous quotes, reading and hearing it again today gives it even more depth than it actually had the first time I heard it.

"Do not settle. Stay hungry, stay foolish."

Farewell Steve Jobs.

Player versus Player - Collection of thoughts

It's fundamental to be clear, if I'd have to define myself as a player I would say without any doubt that I'm 75% into PvP and the remaining into PvE, it's a choice I prefere a human versus human competition against a human versus server competition, it gives me much more satisfaction.

Even though I can define me a more or less professional PvPers always looking at improving, experimenting, playing every class I can to have a larger view on the field being able to react fast I'm not the kind of person that is encouraging the "elitaristic war" of PvErs agains PvPers, but I understand why it comes out.

It's undeniable that, when in a MMO PvE and PvP have their source in the very same skillset, feat and whatever there will always be a conflict, any modify applied to a class X at a time Y will affect the PvE side in a way and the PvP side in another, some examples are the Assassins, the Ranger and the Guardians.

Blaming a player in a moment of frustration may happen, what we should keep in mind is that there's a lot of players who remained faithful to their class even when it was not that performing that well, i'm referring to Sins which suffered from a lot of issues in the past, so why should we blame them for being now in a so called OP Status?

True thing is that there's also a lot of re-rollers, but hey, the game allows this, so why should we surprised if one re-rolls on a class that is performing better than his own?

It's the human nature guys, human beings are always aiming to competition, and to compete properly you've got to have the proper tool to do that.
In a MMO it is translated into having a good class, today it's the sin/ranger/guard, tomorrow it will be Necro/Demo/PoM, in a year it will be ToS/Conq or HoX... err no screw the HoX :)

What I mean is, it's a game true, but we all want to be competitive, starting from this then it comes to personal choices, I decided to roll pretty much every class in the game to have a larger overview, to know more also to have more choices, but my focus still remains on the Herald of Xotli, for it is the class I picked at day 1, the class I like(d) and love(d), I'm still willing to put an effort in being a good HoX especially when I realize that with an undergeared pvp 3 barbarian I'm much more performing than on my PvP 6 geared HoX.

It's a matter of pride and honor.

But the PvP is a strange entity.

In Age of Conan what I'd the chance to see is that it is based on Gear Supremacy, Perk Supremacy and Number Supremacy, only far after those 3 comes the Skill Supremacy.

If you are skilled you won't stand a chance against a player less skilled than you but with superior gear, simple as that.
Age of Conan at the very beginning was used to be a skill based (based on what I recall) game, equip was obviously a boost, but you still had a chance if you'd been a good player.

Now that's not the case anymore, so I'm asking myself why?

There could be many reasons to this.

I'm quite confident to say that Shrines of Bori were the first unbalancing factor in this game, came immediately after a revamp of the PvP levels and a new itemization which were not that bad after all.

I say so because I can't understand how mining resources nodes can be defined as a PvP activity, especially because the behaviour about Bori is well known: One guild steamroll the map, occupies it for the whole day and has its member up to PvP level 10 in a "heartbeat" and who the hell cares if those pvp 10 are noobs? with their gear anyone below pvp 5 will not have a single chance against them even if they know perfectly their class, even if they are perfectly aware of strenghts and weakness of their enemy, they simply can't fill the gear gap.

Recently issued polls showed how roughly 92% of the community refused Bori, demanded a change in regular server and begged the Devs to not have it as an option in the upcoming Blood and Glory ruleset, it should mean something, 92% guys, it's a reallly high percentage.

Sieges are another dreadful chapter.

Siege content could be the real engine of the PvP, it SHOULD HAVE BEEN the engine, the soul, the deep reason of pvping.
World conflict to own a Battlekeep, huge efforts to build it in terms of material, huge efforts in terms of sacrifice to maintain it against the enemies storming the walls.

But...

Compared with minigames a siege gives nothing in terms of PvP xp and reward;
Compared with Shrines of Bori it gives even less;

So why should one bother about sieging at all?

For fun you could answer.

True, you got a point. Unfortunately there are a lot of issues which are removing the fun factor from the siege activity, some have been mentioned above, other are purely technical.

It's not possible, not understandable and not acceptable that after 3 years from the release with a top maching and an ADSL connection a player, a customer is not able to perform properly in a siege, at low settings, with everything disabled.

It's not possible, not understandable and not acceptable that after 3 years from release, with a top machine and an ADSL connection a player is not able to cast an instant spell, to perform a combo without having to wait 5 seconds from the moment he casts the spell/combo till the moment he notices the animation on the screen.

Playing a 48vs48 content having the whole raid stuck in huge red lag spikes it's impossible, it's not fun, it prevents you from doing anything it DESTROYES any effort you made to build up the keep, it does not allow you to defend what you got and build with sacrifice.

If you are lucky the siege will crash. The only chance of salvation.

But we can't blame only the SH mistakes.

The Community playes a bigger role in this.

Gankers, leavers, afkers, k/d whores, big-egos, flame wars, QQ, whines, complains, add whatever you want here.

The class X is OP OMG!!!!! NERF NERF NERF!
The class Y is UP! OMFG YA NOOBS WE NEED LOVZOR"

Yes I'm part of this as well and I regret this.

I stopped posting anything openly flame-baiting on the forums since a month or so, I'm much more focused on finding a way to perform despite any possible issue.

This is a plea to you all fellow PvPers, if the game is what it is, the ONLY WAY we have to keep it enjoyable is to focus on the community, to focus on the way we play.

Let's try to be less selfish, let's try to play more for the sake of playing rather then for the dire need of establishing ourselves as the best overall in the whole universe.

We would all have benefits from this.


See you the next time.

Arcalimon

I wanna be....

... like that old fart of Arbanus...

C'mon how can people believe us when we say we are underpowered if a guy like him is around????

Give us a Blood Draw and we will own the world!!!

Craig "Sillirion" Morrison writing about "Community Relations"

So here we are, Sil is discussing on his blog about Community Relations, sounds nice for once to know the point of view of one that's on the other side of the barricade.
At least for me that is, what do they think? How do they react to critics? What's their feelings about the "aggressions" of the community?

Enjoy the read!!!

Talking to your community (from Sillirion's Blog)