Lets Talk About PVP

[Random 1690]

Quote

Multi-stage war (skirmish, siege/field battles, siege)

Explain what this means. Is this per tile? Or would you want an entire war to be solved quicker? I don't quite get it

[KeiaTypeBeat 3277]

"/show health /status pirate /pvp timer 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 click click click click click ((can I have ur head?" type beat

[JoshBright 3014]

Lag/Grinding are stop 2, its an rp server, not a grinding server, i should not have to work 2 irl hours to get 1 set of gear 

[tasty_cheesecake 2298]

We had planned like three months of warclaims in case Haense decided to go the distance of which we had basically established after warclaim 2 that they were practically speaking unwinnable.

 

However I think we should readd nexus horses still. And power 3 bows. I think that would be awesome, especially if nobody else besides me and the cabal of lectoferrydunafleivers had access to it, while the frostdrop1s of the world had to remain mad bcs bad.

[Ninjay 1184]

Going to be evil and say that I think 1.9 would be a better system for the server due to its higher skill ceiling and the resulting potential for differences in skill to be more visible / prevalent in the outcome of fights.

Would that open the door for things like wins in heavily outnumbered fights, or other advantages that 1.9 offers to those good at it? Yes. And you know what? That is ok. It is ok to reward players for being good at the mechanics in the game we are using as medium for the server. It is ok for some people to clearly and definitively be better than other players, and have advantages because of it.

There is still some skill to 1.8 fighting (though I would say less so in group fights). That said, and maybe I'm mistaken, there is far less skill expression in 1.8 than 1.9, and I personally prefer systems which let skill flourish and be displayed. The more we are willing to move away from such, the more we will instead move towards coinflips where skill is less important and just getting lucky or something is (there is some point I could make here about crp between individuals of irp equal fighting prowess and equipment turning into whoever can win the war of attrition, get away with more in their emotes without it being considered powergaming, and otherwise exhausting their opponent into a win, but I cannot think of a good way to bridge the two).

I wish I could provide suggestions or answers to some of the other issues that would come with 1.9, such as making fights take far too long, but I cannot, so I'll leave that to others who can hopefully do a good job of doing so.

 

Wars are rough; I and evidently many people seem to want to have them changed, based on the poll.  I don't know what the ideal system would look like, but as others have already said, the current system can be very sloggish, uninteresting / unintuitive. Hell, I know one of the big bits of interest in forming the Empire was that it would enable conflicts which the players policed and ruled on (in most cases), rather than adhering to the often crappy rules for conflict that the server has.

 

For issues with PvP, I don't think I need to speak much on TPS and lag in large fights. It is a pretty obvious one. What I will say, which many above me already have, is that costs are way too high for equipment in general. Getting gear sets demands hours of sitting in a mine clicking some blocks every 15 minutes or running routes across the map. I've honestly been meaning to write some long complaint feedback thread about the costs of things like lockpicks and how much time is required to make them. Again, as others have said, making sets requires hours spent mindlessly grinding instead of doing any actual roleplaying. And while you could in theory bring people with you, I imagine most would prefer to be typing their emotes and actually roleplaying in their cities rather than in some dingy mines. Lowering gear costs is a definite positive for everyone and might help more people be willing to PvP with the knowledge that a loss would not in mean the loss of hours (or at least as many hours  as it does currently) of time spent in the creation of their gear.

If everyone can already freely CRP as having armor all the time for the cost of pixels on their skin (aka getting a guard uniform provided, for many), then it ought to be easier to have actual, mechanical armor as well.

 

3 hours ago, PrimnyaQuorum said:

Anything this point would be a good step forward to replacing the function of PvP from a way to avoid lore you dont like to just another alternative method of conflict. 

Primnya please stop using the "people call pvp to avoid lore they don't like!" line, it's getting tiresome. Most people might just not really feel like subjecting themselves to a 4 hour CRP session for pointless soul / life force harvesting spook raid #1281329. If they go out to a lair or something and try and pick a fight then complain, that is a different story from being attacked in a normal city, but still. Also your continuous harping on that point falls apart when you realize that people who go to some places as an antagonistic force and ask for PvP (Kardika and other bandits, in recent memory, for example) are turned down and told they'll need to crp if they want a fight.

It might not be an issue of them avoiding lore they 'don't like'. It might be an issue of them not liking or not wanting to deal with you.

 

3 hours ago, Frostdrop1 said:

-snip-

I won't touch on any of the bits about culture (I think that the way you put it was a bit overblown, but I am also probably friends with plenty of the people your complaints are directed towards, so I could be biased), but I will make a point about the mechanical things you mentioned like the windows.

As much as I like nice builds, unless staff is willing to completely remove the majority of things that make this a Minecraft server, we really cannot get around the fact that there are mechanics and, unless you purposefully want to open yourself up to getting btfo'd, they should be accounted for. 

This is not just  a 'PvPer culture' thing, either. Even if I was the most pro-CRP, anti-PVP person in existence, I am still capable of and going to break into your Minecraft home if it is easy and doable. I cannot really 'imagine' my way into searching someone's house for evidence of darkspawn activity, or robbing them, etc. If we were going fully 'imagination' then gates would be useless since plenty of magics could just blow straight through them. 

For better or worse, as long as we are tying ourselves to this as the means by which we're roleplaying, imagination on its own is insufficient. There is nothing wrong with planning around, using, and otherwise interacting with mechanics. Our efforts would be better put towards thinking up ways to have mechanics which enable people to do things and are fun to interact with, rather than many of the unfun ones we have right now.

I am unsure if I worded things well, but I am hoping I got my point across.

[The Tough Guy 4319]

I largely agree with this post, but there are certain takes that I don't agree with.

 

1 hour ago, Aeus said:

Stats imbalance: On top of the different swords, bows, armors etc., there is also difference in quality, things do different damage, or the effects change depending on the quality of the gear you’re wearing. It gives an edge to grinders who also tend to be the better pvpers, defeating the purpose of going back to 1.8 for the “accessibility” it provides to more players.

The 'Stats imbalance' is extremely small, in an actual fight it doesn't make any noticeable difference for the most common gear set used. Iron armour quality doesn't matter. The increase in damage between a high and average quality longsword is 6.0 to 6.25. That is half the increase sharpness 1 would give you in vanilla minecraft.

Per netherite armour piece it's faster by 1% to the normal netherite set. (70% movespeed to 74% movespeed.) This is also not very noticeable at all.
There are some weapons that scale greatly with quality, notably lances and the extremely niche warhammer. 

Nevertheless, if you restricted every pvper to average gear last map not really anything would have changed.

 

 

1 hour ago, Aeus said:

Outdated system: LOTC went back to 1.8 in an attempt to make pvp more accessible to people, but really all it has done is make fights look different, not necessarily fairer.

In the laggy fights LOTC specializes in, 1.8 definitely makes the fights fairer compared to 1.9. In lag 1.9 is horrific to play for non-pvpers and they contribute absolutely diddly squat to the fight per player. 1.8 levels the playing field tremendously between pvpers and non-pvpers, which is factually true. 

I don't have any concrete stats for this, but in terms of outnumbered fights won on Almaris vs on Aevos, I am nigh certain Almaris had way more outnumbered fights won vs Aevos. This largely comes down to the low barrier of entry 1.8 offers. It is easy to contribute to a fight in a meaningful way in 1.8 vs 1.9. 1.9 gave pvpers alot more breathing room to take risky, fight winning plays because it is easier to survive. 

In terms of 1.8 vs 1.9, 1.8 is largely the objectively better choice for any semi-large to large scale fights.
1.9 is alot more interesting for one-versus-one's, it's more skill expressive.

 

 

1 hour ago, Aeus said:

The best pvpers in 8.0 were the same last map.

This will not change. Pvpers are good at pvp because they are the only ones who practice pvp. Nor is it an issue, players should be rewarded if they practice.

 

1 hour ago, Aeus said:

Non pvpers aren’t suddenly winning more fights than they were before. The difference now is that pvpers don’t need to be as careful, since the meta no longer requires people to kite the whole map to win the fight. 

Non pvpers are definitely performing way better on 1.8. You definitely need to be more careful in 1.8 because the DPS is so much higher, you die faster. 1.9 inherently leaves you more time to react, to run away, to do anything to save yourself. Which is why netherite exists in 1.8.



Overall I don't see how anyone can advocate for 1.9 to be better for non-pvpers or large scale battles, it just isn't objectively.

[spaazmatism 1018]

2 hours ago, Aeus said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Feliz Mes de la Herencia Hispana and Shana Tova

 

 

 

 

One of the reasons made to make the switch to 1.8 was spam clicking will be easier, making pvp more accessible to roleplayers. But that’s not really what the issue with pvp was in 8.0. The best pvpers in 8.0 were the same last map. In the battle of Westmark, the Ferrymen were able to beat the coalition decisively even though another reason for the switch was to attempt to curb Ferryman influence on the server.

 

theres an easy way to curb their influence btw

[indiana105 5126]

think surge is fine just get rid of item quality since it doesnt even work for half the craftable items and reduce crafting costs 

 

btw as long as crp is just arguing why ur character is cooler for 8 hours conflict will be dominated by pvp sweats. "roll system too game-y" but conflict just defaults to vanilla minecraft pvp beyond 5 ppl lol

[MonteGiant 891]

1 hour ago, Frostdrop1 said:

Frankly, I don't like PVP. PVP is, at current, a big back-patting contest of the same players who loop around and give each other stuff for being great at PVP, then memeing about it. You can see this very same attitude in the Empire, which is more or less the most grand coalition of PVP-centric mindset right now, with their post about naming the badlands after the player with the most kills ( which is not inherently bad it just happens to be another thing on the big list of stuff which piles up); that every shot-caller acts like a teenager when in VC, drunk of having a little control; how the same players loop around their boomsteel weaponry and we're seeing the same sorts of people temp banned over the behaviour and arguing that 10 year old Timmy can totally manage it; how their rallies within the city were pitifully poor emote quality and then instead just had a massive gang of people PVP some folks who were communicating pretty fairly; how their sheer architecture was built with dodging the /break of windows because they're so utterly mechanically 'win' oriented - these things are not isolated. It is, at heart, a culture with the inability to allow your imagination to do all the work, a lack of care towards the every day interactions on the server perhaps stemming from an inability to map empathy onto how they interact(?) which pushes for bigger-scale conflict because not much else is engaging to them and leaving the day-to-day rp to rot in its wake. As a result, this has left Empire RP to suck unless you're part of the 'in' group, and this is how PVP has always been because it's far more focused on OOC relationships and the general mentality of palling about with the lads.

These people sit and congratulate each other and can manage to rp with each other really quite well (the empire, given that its the current state, is really great at rp but ONLY top-down... and guess whose at the top?) while alienating a large group of people who, frankly, feel anxious, worried and upset with the state and inclination for PVP. Nobody should be forced into a system that fosters this kind of in v out grouping because it feels distinctly gross. 

I use the Empire because its super current, but this is not an Empire issue. It's a PVP culture issue which has extended into the Empire due to who's involved. This doesn't mean that I can't point to individuals that I know operate in great faith and have whoever they're interacting with at heart - but they are the exception imo, not the rule. I think the culture of PVP on the server is the single biggest issue as someone so ardently against it because its a social system built around peer pressure, excessive demands, evening gaslighting and insulting, mockery and diminishment of others OOCly which leaks into so much of the server until certain sections just feel icky.

Secondly, the fact that the top PVPers want to genuinely want to engage people with the system is nice because they're relaxed and can have fun with the system for what it is. But people also need to see that this relaxed and chilled state is not a universal truth for lots of people on the server regarding PVP,  which can leave quite the viscal and raw impact for a myriad of reasons over what should fundamentally be nothing difficult (and this is why the 'I would rather get the fight over with' argument isn't exactly working to convince lots of folk). However, this is only a first step and the engagement has to last - and it can't properly be sustained without smashing apart this thorn that makes PVP and its adjacent groups so intolerable and without having the empathy to realise that putting people in states of adrenaline can be a distressing experience, not merely just unfun, that can be very suddenly dropped on you at any point.

In other words, it's just volatile and likely kind of nasty unless its directly between friends. The majority of players are not, in fact, hurrendously nasty but they can start engaging with rather unwelcoming behaviours when they're immersed in the PVP culture side of the server.

I don't really know how one goes about solving this - but I greatly suspect it would be to do with breaking up the gang of top-dogs who routinely big-up each other and pull the same kind of nonsense in regard to PVP. I think to do that the PVP system would quite literally need a complete re-work from the ground up to incorporate things beyond normal minecraft mechanics and encourage it to simply play different to minecraft. To be your character, not your super-sweaty PVP clicker self. To incorporate things like magic - even animii and defense systems, things which are otherwise COMPLETELY discarded by the mechanical systems we're provided at current, which would likely in turn make these things less of a butt-of-the-server joke. I also think we need to take on board a culture that holds the more mean-spirited people fully accountable because the damage they do just isn't worth it.

Although, being real, I don't think the entirely mechanically-focused players would play ball. I think they'd just min-max and continue to do as they're doing now and I'm even more unsure how one could avoid someone just min-maxing.

 

Plainly, this is such an L take, or rather a take founded on ignorance of the other side, and it's sad to see. This attitude of seeing PVP as this foul thing that is evil in all respects is something that ferments this in vs out group that you are speaking about right now. I started LOTC as a Roleplayer, and I still am, even if I do PVP. PVP is a mechanic of minecraft and is also a part of LOTC. I would recommend, as I do, accepting it and learning it so you are not at a mechanical disadvantage or RP disadvantage. 

 

Crying about friends who give each other gifts? Let us be so real, I'm not going to even dignify that with a response LOL. However, I understand the sentiment that PVPers can be volatile, and to be perfectly honest, it comes with the territory of competitiveness. Competitive games can always bring out some foul shit in people, but it's largely something of a non-issue that is mainly banter. I can be biased, but I am fairly new to the scene, and I have heard shit, but it's not really all that. It's mainly, as I said, banter. (Im from Norf Jersey, so I have 100% seen, heard, felt, and been through worse shit than whatever anyone can say online lmao). 

 

Now I am going to be so real with you yo, this idea that PVP is a “Social system built around peer pressure, excessive demands, evening gaslighting, insulting, mockery, and the diminishment of others oocly” is so weird I ain't gon hold you. PVP is literally just clicking, bro, that is it. Sure, there are techs and things of that nature, but that is a larger take on it that is not needed. I can understand there are insults, but genuinely, it is not that serious ever. This seems to me like the issue here is a “Skill Issue”. 

 

Whining about the Badlands is really strange to me, honestly. The Badlands are meant to be the PVP area, where you go to fight. I also understand that Empire RP sucks unless you are part of an “in” group; however, this is not something new. Even as I am now about a little over a year on the server, Haense had the same issue of being largely Clique-ish, and so I am not really bothered. Granted, I understand I am not the everyman, but this issue is simply a more server culture of LOTC and NOT a PVP issue.

 

[StingyParrot 1595]

I think mages should get a permanent weakness effect

[Unwillingly 18099]

56 minutes ago, xMuted said:

Non pvpers are definitely performing way better on 1.8. You definitely need to be more careful in 1.8 because the DPS is so much higher, you die faster. 1.9 inherently leaves you more time to react, to run away, to do anything to save yourself. Which is why netherite exists in 1.8.

Overall I don't see how anyone can advocate for 1.9 to be better for non-pvpers or large scale battles, it just isn't objectively.

retweet on everything here tbh I have nothing to add but I can't stress enough how much u guys are just asking for things to be worse for urself if ur a non-pvper who thinks that 1.9 is going to lessen the skill gap or make fights less time consuming

[NotEvilAtAll 10906]

The number one issue with lotc wars is morale. Whenever a side in a war loses a warclaim, their rally size drops afterwards due to people losing hope. Likewise, the winning side either gains rally size or doesn't have any change in rally size. This leads to a snowballing effect and makes comebacks rare outside of PvPers switching sides or major tactical mistakes by the winning side (like Westmark). multiple wars this map have been decided after just 1-2 warclaims by the losing side all mass-surrendering because they lose all of their morale and can no longer rally people.

 

This makes wars less fun because it turns them into steamrolls. Wars usually are determined by the results of the first warclaim and even an evenly matched conflict will eventually turn into a steamroll if one side has a chain of defeats leading to people losing hope and no longer rallying. It is less fun for the winning side because all of the excitement and tension goes away when their victory is essentially guaranteed. It is less fun for the losing side because they have to grind up tons of gear and rally for hours just to get rolled in a few minutes blob fight and lose everything.

 

maybe people would be more willing to stick with the losing side of a conflict if gear was easier to obtain. If gear was easier to obtain, grinding gear for a hopeless battle wouldn't be as tiresome and the losing side of conflicts might be more willing to fight on. Other than that, this is a cultural issue with LOTC with no easy fixes. People just don't like losing and it's hard to keep people engaged after taking a major loss in such a way that wars can be back-and-forth.

 

This is why other people are suggesting that wars should only have like 1-2 battles in them anyways. With how player morale impacts LOTC wars, it's hard to have more than 1-2 battles in a war without it turning into one side getting increasingly steamrolled. If we want our wars to be longer, we have to find a way for people to be more willing to fight on for longer.

[ContestedSnow 1435]

4 hours ago, LobsterLarry said:

In Minecraft, pvp on 1.9 has a much higher skill ceiling and makes it a lot harder to get better at than 1.8 for newer players, so existing pvpers would have an already massive advantage on 1.9 if they've played it before, especially on lotc. If the goal is to curb the ferrymen like stated, then keeping it 1.8 would be better, as its a lot easier to just spam click someone than to be able to precisely time all of your hits, your w taps, and everything else in a fight, and it is not as easy to take a 1v2 (As the 2) in 1.9. 1.8 pvp does not allow for these skill gaps to make a huge difference, and it is very difficult to win a 1v2 (as the 1) in 1.8.

I think gear needs to be more scarce, with mines not pumping out as many resources for gear, or maybe even making gear more expensive, as last map there were individual players who had double chests of gear at their disposal throughout the entire map. Gear should be rarer as to make it a much bigger deal when you do lose it, or gain it. It should cost more by a lot, that way there is an actual risk to taking a fight, so that there will be less inclined to jump you with the sole idea to just click you to death, and be more CRP oriented. PVP Groups in general do both just so they can ego that they win everything, but if you made their gear harder to get, it would be a lot harder for a pvp group to stomp out a nation, as it should be.

i resent the thought of spending even more time in the mines to make 1 kit. a single suit of armour on AEVOS was one hour of real life time, plus the grind times for breeding cows and collecting leather. during veletz war i was forced to spend so much time in the mines gathering ore that i essentially stopped roleplaying altogether to try and keep up with gear demand.

 

i would say that the best choice for pvp is making gear as cheap as possible to make people less scared of losing it; with the amount of time it took to gather gear for roleplayers on 9.0, it actually delivered psychic damage to have to use it in combat and i personally think contributed to making communities reticent of actually USING the gear. the gear costs being nil on this temp map has made me think that maybe costs should ALWAYS have been this low.

 

after all, the mythical unemployed pvper will defeat the unemployed rper in any grinding competition, so why bother forcing people to compete for who can waste the most total amount of hours of their lives in a tile mine

[PrimnyaQuorum 3999]

1 hour ago, Ninjay said:

Primnya please stop using the "people call pvp to avoid lore they don't like!" line, it's getting tiresome. Most people might just not really feel like subjecting themselves to a 4 hour CRP session for pointless soul / life force harvesting spook raid #1281329. If they go out to a lair or something and try and pick a fight then complain, that is a different story from being attacked in a normal city, but still. Also your continuous harping on that point falls apart when you realize that people who go to some places as an antagonistic force and ask for PvP (Kardika and other bandits, in recent memory, for example) are turned down and told they'll need to crp if they want a fight.

It might not be an issue of them avoiding lore they 'don't like'. It might be an issue of them not liking or not wanting to deal with you.

 

I guess the point I'm trying to make is any PvP system is kinda suck until its either 0 barrier to entry or includes lore. Anything else and it becomes just another OOC system to leverage against someone you don't want to deal with [PvPer? Force CRP / CRPer? Force PvP]. Frost put into words much more intelligently what I have been harping on about for a little while and generally speaking I can't find anyone who wouldnt like lore present in mechanics. It is conveniently beneficial to cliques and sects of players that your realms existence/deletion isnt really RP based at the end of the day but PvP based. You can do 10,000 hours of legit Diplomacy RP but if you don't have enough PvP grinders you will always lose to the guy who spent 2 hours doing RP and the rest grinding/clicking /shrug but you can go on and on about how its really some other issue. 

 

I haven't gotten into conflict in the last 2-3 months so nice try with that last point ig /shrug bait used to be believable 🥀.

 

 

Warclaims in general are literally decided by the WC day. The WC system just feels like an excuse to get more clicks on main then otherwise normal outside of a WC and the ruleset for it feels gameified anyway you do it.

To Islamdon's suggestion; Why would destroying someone's capital city somehow crumble their 6 other vassals? Does every army suddenly get thanos'snapped of their ability to fight back because the big saturday event was at some location? I feel like any WC system that doesn't require everyone to log on at a set time on saturday for x weeks until one side quits logging on is going to be more fun to engage in for more people then just the side that starts steamrolling. 

[Javert 9615]

for warclaims, bring back the system on Arcas where you just posted a path to the location you wanted to kill and the defenders had to choose whether or not to fight you there or not. I agree with what was said earlier that if there's a direct path to the capital it should be allowed to be exploited, as I dont think that longer wars are beneficial to the health of the server. Also, let us make up our own wargoals instead of giving us a predefined list, because as it stands right now we can't really march in to overthrow a sitting government unless we want to conquer their entire nation, at which point they'll just flee anyways. Also, give us the ability to pk characters as a wargoal.

 

Keep the spam clicking pvp. Noobs will suffer if we revert back to timed clicking. Also make gear cheaper/less grindy. others have voiced what i wanted to say already so no need for me to ramble on.