Fighting arena / duelling / coterie?

[Davairus]

Ok this is born out of the PVP mentality thread and an observation that there is a very large gulf in skill between the elite players of the game and the new ones, much bigger than what I remember

Let me try to define the gulf first.

1) tracking speed / running-away speed
2) knowledge of items? not a big problem w/ sets though
3) common sense i.e. attacking someone who outgears you (especially with a warrior class)
4) terrible execution in pk (i.e. its like they have "the shakes"... they know the mechanics and if not can read helpfiles)


We are looking to remedy this if we can so that we will have a more interesting playerbase. Obviously there is something to be said for experience and just knowing your shit, that will never change, but lets try to help people feel they have a chance against a veteran playerbase.

My personal feeling on this is the more exposure to PK you have, the better you get and the more you enjoy it. For the new players as well, they should be encouraged to learn the fighter classes before the others.



Some ideas off the top of my head that have been floating around :

- pvp events once a week (we wanted to artificially increase the amount of lowbie pk somehow)... some sort of running tournament with a weekly champion? and several level brackets. pk range restrictions relaxed but you have to compete inside your own artificial bracket (15-25, 26-35, 36-42, 43-50 etc)
- less emphasis on duelling in the arena to try to get better at pk. our arena has its place but it isnt half as fun to fight in as say, the gnome village.
- some sort of coterie dedicated to fighting people for sport (sorta like a subset of warlords but without the skills? so you can join with any fighting class and build a record) this would not really be that appealing to vets IMO, what we would have is basically something to encourage noobs to join and ge tpeople fighting them. i think we could have some incentives for pvp if you were in this specific organisation


Throw on anything here that you think may help, or see if you can round out the coterie I suggested better. Not going to just "bring back warlords" but I would probably use the ranks of this coterie as earned titles from pvp

[Insom]

Earlier in the year I posted a thread that suggested an arena that randomly mirrored an existing area in AR. This gave it a non-risk element as far as dueling in an arena goes but it created a totally different element in that you might get an area that you knew nothing about. I think this is on course with what you are looking for here. The coding might be difficult.

[Arishel]

I don't have an idea for the coterie name, but I do have something to add or a tweak if you will. With the artificial bracket you could put emphasis on rewards for winning your battles. Random items given by the Juggernaut/gold given. You could also have bonuses for the match, if you complete the match in under X amount of time you get a bonus of gold. The inductees in each bracket within the coterie could have an arena shop, this could hold a gladiator's set of eq, food, water, and some various weapons. The coterie members could have no powers, but would have the ability to purchase from the shops. Anyone could be a member, but you have to keep fighting in the arena or you lose your stature, unless you become level 50. At that point you become a legend within the arena regardless of your victories or losses and you get to keep your arena membership. Also could be a trainer that gives out quests/tasks for those that cannot fight anyone for the time being. I would think that you should probably make the arena a little larger, and add some stadium seats. One more thing, you could make it to where arena member(s) could fight random creatures. Having a list to pick between 3 different mobs, but could always back out if you didn't want to go through with it. The victory could grant reward(s) and if a mob defeated a player, that player would yield and the creature would disappear. I know it's alot to take in, but I think it would be a neat feature.

[bassball]

I think the arena mimicking a random area from the game is awesome! But like Insom I have absolutely no idea how to code anything so.. Way cool idea though. Cause you don't know if it'll be a city area, or a forest area where a ranger could have that advantage or what. Plus it isn't just a small square area where mages have no chance.

The coterie thing is cool, and giving them custom titles or something for winning is a HUGE reward I think. Custom titles are like the coolest thing ever. The only problem I see is this coterie of fighters might not win very many fights if they're all newbies. But they gotta learn.

As for "the shake" Yeah, I'm totally sure thats one of the biggest problems new players have. Because I STILL have them sometimes. If someone catches me off guard and owns me from a round with no aura, my heart gets pumping so fast you think it was my actual physical self who got DISMEMBER-ed. My hands shake so bad I almost can't type.

[Amdorin]

I really like the idea, especially the random area copy. (Would be even crazier if they appeared to be transparent in whatever area they're in so people actually in that area would freak out if they saw them, but yeah that was more of a visual cue)

But I think having the 43-50 bracket may begin taking away from the cabals. I think this is something that everyone, vets included, would participate in because it's definitely a way to gain respect in the game. (Monster Rancher 2/Gladiator type stuff came to mind) Since this is incentive to get newbs fighting, is it duel to stun or still death. Also, what part can cabals have in this? Because if there's really no exclusion it's just the arena 2.0 with more organization.

Maybe have the brackets in range of 5 up to rank 40. It gives cabal prospects a place to demonstrate their skill with a more "official" feel to it.

Maybe even have grades of fighters A(highest)-C(lowest) that you can work up to and get a higher reward within those brackets. Maybe perform a quest to get initiated. Depending on how it's set up, it may not be a race to 50 anymore, with people taking their time up the ranks dueling due to the rewards, which would increase pk in a wider range of levels.

My main thoughts with this is that it's really cool, but would take away from the cabal scene if the higher end brackets were established.

[Master]

This sounds like a pretty good idea to me. I'm one of those players that gets "the shakes," so this kind of thing seems like a good idea. I'll leave the experts to work out the finer points, but the overall concept seems sound.

[RebornShadows]

I remember playing Valkrin and trying to set up a little fighting tournament in the arena sadly it never took off.

I say every day we have a pvp tournament for example monday can be lvls 15-20. Tuesday 20-25, wensday 25-30, thursday 30-35 friday 35-40

that way every day we have a different bracket for people to compete in.
Someone who competes and wins in every bracket could get a custom title like Arena Champion or something like that.

[Ceridwel]

Like I mentioned on the other thread, I'm a big fan of an arena where you can't get looted when you die. E.g., when you die you show up in your temple inside Seringale (instead of hometown), fully refreshed and all items still on ya.

[Davairus]

I'm not going to code area instancing because you can just easily walk to the area and duel in it. Neither do I want to promote risk-free pk training. It takes a bunch of dying to learn to pk and its called *paying your dues* when you go through that.

[Ceridwel]

[Davairus]

Although these are ambitious ideas I guess it would be a lot quicker and easier to advise budding pvp'ers to just level up some level 30-35 trash and duke it out there with the rest of the 30-35 trash. People (especially newbies) should forget about trying to make legendary pk records and wanting to win them all. Have an "alt" character which is just for balls out pk'ing and not even caring to get a full suit of perfect gear to try pk'ing with. An evil human warrior/ranger/dk at 36 really only needs a suit of black tear and hell-blade to get the job done. So when you die you dont really "lose" anything. -1 life points and 5 mins of re-eq, then get purples and go back to battle. This is why I was thinking of brackets for tournament... so that people make alts to compete in the other brackets.

[Ashr]

I have a question about the "trash brackets". The idea of having a character that's pretty easy to dress and needs very little appeals to me. On the other hand, "trash" chars seem to be very much frowned upon here. So how would I determine other "trash" chars from the people just trying to level, and how frequent are those characters? The idea ganking levelers isn't particularly interesting to me, but if I end up getting bored enough, I'll probably attack just about anything.

Also, what other brackets are decent (and easily dressed), and what classes are usable at each? I'd be more interested in trying out different classes than using whatever most powerful class happens to exist at each level.

[Davairus]

30+

[Ergorion]

An issue I see with the brackets is that you'll get douche-bags just sitting at the upper limit waiting to wail on some nub elf paladins to pad their records/become champion for the week or month or w/e.

If you want more lowbie pk, you've got to boost the incentives. Right now there isn't much point to pking pre-thirtyish. If you pk people with whom you can rank, you're crippling your ranking progress. Even if you pk opposite aligned chars, they're probably going to disrupt your ranking. And the equipment at those levels isn't worth killing over.

I think the idea of having a pk-ing coterie would be interesting. It should definitely be open to any alignment, any ethos and any hometown. I think one thing to consider with the pk coterie would be a point system so that nubs who join can duel people of similar skill to them and know when they're going up against someone better than they are. Each coterie member could get one point when they kill/stun another coterie member and lose a point when they are killed/stunned by a coterie member.

To attain membership to the coterie, the requirement should just be that you duel another member of the coterie, then you can join by accepting something from the juggernaut, or paying the juggernaut a certain amount of gold.

One thing I just thought of for how things could work within the coterie. You know how the arena makes it so that all pre-level 36 duels end in a stun and then the victor can choose whether to land the final blow or not? I think a similar mechanism should be involved when two coterie members fight each other anywhere in Thera, so that they could fight to the stun in the gnome village. And you could make it so that it's a duel to the stun for all levels, not just pre-36 so that way nubs can rank up to 40 or 50 and get some high level pk action, but not have to die a thousand times to do it. Of course, if you have a coterie dk char and a coterie paladin char duking it out, the dk can choose to kill the paladin or vice versa.

Maybe bring back trophies for the most lethal in the coterie for the week so that you can tell who the biggest badass is because he's wearing some finger earrings.

POST SCRIPTUM (finally a forum where we can edit posts)

I would like to voice my support in favor of the arena randomizing an area. It doesn't have to be all the areas in Thera, I mean, you probably wouldn't want a randomized Winter popping up, but with regards to the mobs in the area, it would definitely just have to be the rooms sans mobs/eq.

The element of surprise is nice, but the arena also has other perks. It's easy to get to for the lowbies who don't have the moves to be trekking to exile just for a duel. If you want to promote lowibe pking, you can't just say: lowbies pk more, you have to do stuff to make it easier and more beneficial. Arena duels are pretty vanilla as it goes. It's a small area and it only improves certain aspects of a person's pking game rather than the whole thing.

How is the lowbie going to feel when he is finally kicking the shit out of some guy because he now knows how combat style works only to lost his prey because he doesn't know where A Mop Room is in the mansion? A randomized arena area generator would help not only newbies, but also some of the more veteran players who might have a general idea of certain areas, but need to brush up on the specifics.

For further support of randomized arena area generators, your duels will not be as likely interrupted as if you were duelling in the actual area. Sure, you might get Jaxt killing the juggernaut once in a while, but the juggernaut keeps out any douchebag who doesn't care that you're at awful from fighting a skilled opponent in a duel and kills you for the hell of it. If I were a noob, I would like the option to fight in a somewhat safe enviornment, yet still get the benefit of fighting in an actual area.

Dav, the random arena suggestion doesn't have any negatives that I can think of at the moment. If it's just too hard to code, say so and I'm sure everyone will understand. It doesn't have to be all the areas in the game either, just some. A good starting point would probably be: mansion, drkshyre, emerald, and a couple others maybe.

Oh. Possibly get a nexus deal where the two challengers have to align some kind of runes where the person who did the challenging aligns one rune, and the person who got challenged aligns another and that's the formula for picking the area. I think you could get some neat emote-type deals with that.

The Juggernaut aligns the left-hand rune to a skull.
The Juggernaut aligns the right-hand rune to a bat.
A stench of the undead fills the air as a dilapidated mansion appears before you.

[bassball]

I like Ergorians ideas. Idk if this coterie is gonna be only noobs tho. If that was ever the point. Because I might join it. Sounds like a ton of fun. Haha

[Nakachi]

I don't have anything to add as far as ideas go, but I do think it's a great idea to do this considering many people still duel(Check the most recent logs for confirmation).

In opposition to you Dav, I think the randomized arena would be much much better than just walking into an area. It adds the element of surprise like bassball said and adds anticipation for it because one person might know the area better and vice versa. As opposed to someone just saying: "Hey, let's go fight in the Gnome Village," because he knows it better than the other dude. And if a newbie has a fight in the randomized arena and learns a thing or two about the area, he is better prepared in case he is randomly attacked there one day, or runs to it because he gets lost, or any of a hundred reasons.

Just my two cents. Definitely want this.

[Davairus]

I like the gnome village because its impossible for someone to just spam around to avoid you there... fights definitely get closure. If you are advancing towards them, they have to run by you to get away again. It doesn't have loops or "field" type places (thinking of the ronus pirate ship deck here, and the ford), that with the reasonable size and the samey rooms/room descs is a pretty decent 1v1 battlefield for every class. Its really all the arena needs. IMO an arena update just needs to take this to heart. Only way I would 100% want to do randomizing areas would be if all the areas conformed to this moddel, and they do not. Some areas were just designed to be ran through. Imagine randomizing the elf valley? Mage wouldnt stand a chance. Mansion is similar with the kitchen spamming around like nuts... emerald forest is a good pk area thats nothing like that.

randomi generating an area is codeable in principle, since its just copying room names and redoing the door links. Its just seeming a bit odd rp-wise and even overboard, but maybe a cool feature. Nothing to brag about on the technical side of things though.

[Viggs]

On creation give an option of "Buddying" up ,, when you create you are linked to another random same raced person ,,, you are their cousin or something ....They are now responsible for you and visaversa ,, It would force more RP and Helping of others when a noob gets paird with a vet and it would be cool when two vets get paired and the RP that could ensue ,, for the hardcore and the non social you could opt out
There I win again ,, why dont you all just come to me first???? sheshh

[Blyden]

Viggs, I foresee a lot of gangbanging going forward with a lot of the chaotics then if you impl;ement something like that. Dav is there a way to do the randomized area for the arena while excluding specific areas like that or the eastern road and such? I have never coded so bitch slap me if I am asking for something rediculous.

I know when I started playing back in high school(2000) I had a ton of chars to learn pk with then. I think coming back after 3 years gone and all the changes I played Strydenad and I got my backside handed to me by everyone. So I used his like 20 deaths to learn from. I would be in for using a level 30-35 mage or something since I personally felt defeated after Xariel. I dominated in that 30-40 pk range then got destroyed at pinnacle All in all I would play a character to just fight in the pk tournaments to see what I could learn and such.

[Gadlo]

perhaps a simple solution would be that the Juggernaut gives both participants a spell that lasts until one has died, yielded, or leaves the area. The buff would be similiar to a ghost effect in that no person or mob could attack them except for the other person of course. the juggernaut would also create a gate to a random area and you could either go through the gate or step into the current arena. you could of course pick which areas to include in the randomization. should ye leave the area, you forfeit the duel, the buff expires, and you are teleported back to the juggernaut