Section 2 - PvP
how is the pvp? can you make reference to any of the games you have played before. Is it a stealth gank fest?
stealth is ALOT harder in AoC.. you need to have a high skill in HIDE, consider the time of day.. the armor you have on.. , obstacles, and shadows to pull off a perfect sneak.
take into account with all that the NPC perception. beasts and wild animals havea higher rate of perception than humanoids.. and scout type npcs' like a Vanir Watchman or archer has a highe skill in perception too,.. rogue archetypes get stealth /hide skill at level 5.. soldiers get it at 18 but it costs alot of stamina to move in stealth if you aren't a rogue archetype. and there's a 10 second cool down before you can hide again once you un stealth
How long do pvp fights last in general?
Is it a quick 10 second thing or do you have time to fight back if you are caught off guard?
Is there a bounty system?
well depends really.. one on one fights ? which can be rare.. sometimes last a minute or more.. it's nevr as fast as 10 seconds.
haven't gotten far enuff in the new build to be qualified for a bounty i think. and I have no patch notes as of yet ! I'll let ya know of course.. !
What's leveling like on a PvP server? Do you see level 80's camping level 20's?
short answer.. yes.
detailed answer,
most zones outside of tortage have multiple re-spawn areas. so it's pretty damned hard to corpse camp you.
the death penalty in PvE does not happen to you if you die from PvP.the zones are large enough and you have always more than one option to go exp'ing in so you can actually have time to level. I've gone thru a whole night without running into a PvP fight if i didn't go out looking for it.
One of the things they are working on implementing in PvP is a short duration invulnerability timer from PvP upon your ressurection to a ress area.
possibly same short duration invulnerability for zoning also. AoC's PvP test server is intentionally FFA PVP to the fullest extent.. except we dont have player looting. yet?
but you can get a group of level 20's and they'll kick the crap outta that level 80 if they know what they're doing.. hehe at teh least make it troublesome enough that the level 80 will get on his horse and move on.
I dunno how well this holds true on the new build so I'll have to come back to re-assess this one.
Barbarian: How are they actualy doing in pvp.
Alot of us were speculating that because they are an aoe melee class they would get devastated in a 1vs1 encounter. Is that so
the way AoE works, is that you'll hit the area within your "cone" teh area of your mellee range. the mob you actually have on target gets the brunt of it. so no.. if you know what you're doing and you know your combos the barbarian DPS is gonna kill you if you stay in his mellee range.
What do you find better for PvP: 2h or dual wielding?
that's a matter of personal taste as the 2h feat tree offers lots of passive abilities and knockbacks and stuns... while the DW feat tree offers a higher DPS rating and alot of debuffers and d.o.t.s
Whats with the bleed efects, do they do worth while damage like a real dot, or would you prefer to just do other attacks?
seeing as all heals and potions are damage over time.. the bleed effects are definitely highly effective dots
PvP in general.
How are the classes balanced realy? 1vs1, rock paper scissors, or some kind of more group like balance?
Do you feel like you have a fair chance of wining in PvP because of your skill, or are there other deciding factors like gear or class (counter class).
there's currently no rock , paper scissors style at all in AoC.. as all the classes have very flexible feat trees and combinations of feats to do various types of builds that really depend on your playstyle. the last build really made it more group balanced.
Has it been a common practice for people +/or guilds to camp resource zones? Have you had problems with griefers or been otherwise frustrated?
i'd be lying if i said no to griefers... no one's really camped resource nodes. but there was one flaw in a dungeon that had only ONE entrance/exit at one point so it created a perfect area for griefing. and there was a situation where in the level 20 area there was some camping on the single ressurection point . that's why they said they were going to introduce a immunity timer at the ressurection points
Not sure if this has been asked before or not, but I was wondering how world pvp works and such. Is it just opposing races that are flagged, or is it pure free for all? pure unrestricted FFA PvP madness.. hehe
Tortage city is safe and the acheronian ruins zone on tortage island, as well as your private night time destiny quests.
only safe zones are the three major cities.
no level restrictions.
there is only ONE temporary rule in beta atm. no players beyong level 20 can enter the zones connected to tortage city.
we're awaiting rulesets.
To what extent will the "zones" and "instances" restrict players from actually finding others to fight within a FFA rule set?
Most dungeons are private instanced for a particular group or raid. Some of them are shared by multiple groups. How this is done, I don't know since I was in a PvP server and most people were not into dungeon crawling there unfortunately.
The zones were big enough so you could run away from somebody and stay hidden but if people know the quests and your level range, they could potentially guess where you'd go next. There were also people roaming the PvP-free towns looking for easy victims. Some people don't go after you unless you're afk/ talking to a quest NPC, what can I say?
as far as rulesets on PvP ?
we're waiting to discover the bounty system, the limited invulnerability upon resurrection at resurrection points and limited invulnerability after zoning.
they did bring up an idea that they would need to be out of combat to actually ZONE out of an area.
I still don't know if or when these proposed rulesets will be. so we'll have to wait and find out.
k, on the topic of PvP... In EVE we have a problem with people ctrl+q`ing so they just leave the game to get out of a fight. In AOC's current form does it have anyway of stopping people from doing this? Do people stay in world for a minute or two after they disconnect or do they just poof?
Your character stays in-game for 2 mins ... and since there is no auto-attack ...if you just pressed Alt + F4 to insta quit.. ? and forcebly close the game ? or pulled the plug ?
last time someone tried this thier character remained in th world for a full 30 seconds still and was promptly killed.. without trouble.. hehe i'm sure that player logged back in and found he had to chose a ressurection spot. Heheh
In a pvp setting, what in your opinion/experience weighs most in determining the outcome of a fight: Gear, skillful use of character, or level difference? For example, in WoW, say a level 50 in pretty decent gear (for your level) is jumped by a level 60 with crappy gear(for his/her level). Unless that level 50 is a rogue (vanish), he/ she is pretty much got a corpse run coming up. I ask this because i'm curious about the chance of survival/escape in a ganking, or if I can at least make the bastard sweat a bit and work for his kill.
from personal experience thankfuly the gear does little diffrence in PvP as it stands now in the beta client.. we don't have full itemization tho so I can'treallt say that's my final call. I will remain to assume tho that since we still have nice placeholder gear in the beta client and the gear didn't really matter to us I like this part of the results.
as far as level diffrence went.
10 levels in diffrence in AoC is not a big deal at all...that won't matter very much.
20 level diffrence, MAYBE will matter. but I can tell you from first hand experience as a soldier archetype, even 20 levels diffrence I'm not easy prey 1v1.
I'll have to test this out again once the servers are back up and I'm out of tortage. because these huge new changes and the totally new build i'm gonna have to re-learn some tactics.
so my answer to your question of whether gear,level diffrence or skill weighs more in a PvP 1v1 battle ?
it's NOT gearit 's not always the levels ( unless of course it's 20 levels or higher )
finally it's knowledge/skill that can make or break you.
with the combo system as the way it is.. if you know what class you're about to fight and you've played them before.. you know what thier KILLER combos are and where that killing blow might land , how long the cooldown is for the combos you use vs. thiers .
there's still the completely unpredictable part of what feats he has which can throw a monkey wrench in eve nthe best thought out strategies.
and personally , I like the suprises that arise from that.
Spells, is there a casting bar that can be interrupted by simple autoattacks, thus giving an advantage to faster weapons when it comes to casters?
Spells: Yes, also a skill in the skill tree (not to be confused with the feats) to interrupt spells via attacks. Casters get that ability, don't know about melee.
YES.. it's interruptable to a degree barring they have a high skill in casting concentration and or feats for it. but I know for example as a guardian I can get a feat that will let me use my shield to silence a caster for a short duration
As a melee class how well does something like a necromancer or the herald stand up to your attacks?
depends on which mellee class really and how he set up his feats.. but i can say there's definitely some serious hurting coming to a caster from mellee class.. one hit too many and it's game over.
Have you tried out any of the pvp minigames, or are the planned rewards enough for them to really diminish or even kill the drive for world pvp on a ffa server like they did for wow?
I've been part of 4 pvp mini-games on tech tests. still haven't seen any rewards past PvP level and exp.. awaiting rewards/loot tables
Have you experienced any large population type things that could mimic the population of a large siege battle? If so how did the client handle it, graphical lag? server lag?
there is a DEV supported raid guild called " Raiders of Asura" they are comprised of mostof the testers who've already at least Once leveled to 80 .. and they do alot of raiding tests.
How is greifing being addressed? Are you seeing it in beta and are noobs going to get pwnd the second they log in on pvp servers?
well i only got to level 7 on my barbarian before teh tech tests started on this new build.. in the PvP server there are only two areas that are PvP enabled in tortage.. but I do know that outside of tortage there are multiple ressurection points you can choose to revive in once you've been killed .. greatly reducing the corpse camping problems. on tortage isnald White sands Isle.. and Underhalls are PvP enabled.
once you leave tortage only the three main cities are the safe zones.
everywhere else is purely FFA PvP .. er.. no looting atm and we only gain pvp Exp and PvP levels for killing other players.
they're still working on giving us the rulesets.
I'll still have to test it out on this new build to find out more answers.
Haven't really ran into many griefers actually.. during the first week of PvP server it was all out mayhem and pandemonium.. people forgot to even level and just kept going back to fight.. lol
but a couple of the things they plan to introduce are :
-limited invulnerability when ressurecting at a ressurection point.
-limited invulnerability when zoning into an area.
-possibly requiring you to not be engaged in combat to zone out.
If you want to be a mercenary, can you still be in a guild with a friend and be hired as a pair of mercenary's ? and can you build your own village / town because im sure i read an article a while ago where you was able to build your own village/town/city that cannot be attacked by guilds but PVE army's will attack. and do you have to be in a guild to build yourself a camp/village/town ?
City's are guild built and a tier 3 city is required to be able to capture/build a battle keep. City's are in pve territory and will be attacked by ai city's. Battle keeps are open to attack from other guilds but only during nominated times. Being a mercernary is only available to those that prefer not to be part of a guild but still want to be in the huge pvp battles. Might of missed some stuff but that's the gist.
Section 3 - Death, Looting, Etc.
I know the beach part if more of a story type mode but it felt very linear, as in u couldnt really go off the path and explore. How is the rest of the game? Is it explorable or do they keep yo restricted?
as soon as you get out of th jungle and especially once you leave tutorial island ( Tortage ) it's a pretty big world.. takes about 30 minutes to get across a zone even if you tried to keep a straight line from one end to teh other with out the fastest horse in -game.
You mentioned a death penalty. What is it (exp. loss or something else)? Have they given any info about how much harsher they are making it since it was being exploited some?
How does the group dynamic handle what I lovingly refer to as "chaos boys"? People who pay no heed to tanks gaining aggro and just running head long into combat before everyone is ready? Do they just die and thats that or do they bring the whole party down with them? Hope thats not too vague a question.
1)death penalty in the beta client was -200 magic resistance and -2 attack power.. it had a duration of 30 minutes and was stackable up to three times. the only way to remove the death penalty was to either gain enough exp to lose that death penalty or to go find the spot you died at . it will be marked by a TOMBstone. you start getting a death penalty at level 10.
2) kinda hard to give an answer to this question as i've seen the chaos effect .. and it really depended on whether the party was ready to take on the consequences or they weren't. Or how much aggro it gained. or if the "chaos" accidentally pulled more mobs than the group could survive.
Are there dungeon like things you can stumble upon that are clearable as a solo player, or perhaps a duo?
short answer.. YES
Is there a weight limit for your inventory or is it based on bagslots?
no weight limits on inventory. armor types determine your weight tho when factoring in Knockbacks
Do you find you have to carry around many sets of gear in order to participate in everything, grinding set, dungeon set, pvp set, etc etc. Do you know of having to farm for resist gear or other silly timesinks like that?
short answer... I never carried extra gear.it's not that gear dependent.
no one in the beta client so far has had to FARM anything except maybe rare ore for mining resources
How will the item quality be dealt with? For example, in Diablo II you could find 'normal' which ranged in "bad" to "superior" quality, the next grade up was a 'blue' item, which had random magical modifiers. Then there was 'set(green)' and 'rare(yellow)' classed items, then the top dog was 'unique(golden)' items, which generally were named.
There is currently no durability loss of any kind on items.
Items are using a color code of sorts, but I don't know if it has any similarities to other games. There is white and there is blue. I think I've seen purples linked but that's about it.
Nothing spectacular between the various colors. However that may be due to the partial itemisation in the game.
Some things that are not asked but from the top of my head.[color]
- Quest limit is 100 quests. That includes crafting quests as well.
- U key is used for climbing as well.
- You get enough feat points to reach top tiers on two feat trees.
Have you seen any run speed items such as boots?
short answer. NO.
Do any items besides potions have clickable procs, or are all the procs random?
short answer. NO.
Is perception useful in PvE?
not really.. but this new build might have something to say about that
Are there any Illusions in the game?
not really illusions.. but an assasin has a lotus feat that makes a player believe they're seeing an enemy instead of their team mate and will attack them.
necro can transform into a Lich... Hox can transform into an Acheronian demon... but these are actual transformations.. not illusions
