Sunday, December 18, 2011

PVE vs PVP

Can't get into PVE. And the picture is my character inside fat PVE boss. See what I did there? Cleverness! The issue is a little more serious thou. Recently I have given PVE a fair shake. How fair one? Done few hard modes, tried the district instances in Paikang and even went 3 times for the Toth-Amon tier 3 raid. I really wanted to enjoy those activities and to some extend I did. Hell, I even used my over the time training for the PVE cover of the dusk golden perk. I kinda regret it now.

The problem is that I don't enjoy group PVE all that much. I think I have just missed the social part of my gaming, you know, signing up on vent, talking to people. That experience is pretty alien to PVPers. Yeah, I am slowly becoming a sociopath. There are a couple of things that just don't click with me when it comes to group PVE and here the list:

Time investment - By Crom! PVE is just a time sink. What I love about PvP is that you can just do *click click* join a minigame, pwn or get pwned in 10-20 minutes tops and you are done. Done! I really enjoy that I can cut my playtime into pieces, so to speak, and enjoy the game in such a way that I can make my gaming fit my schedule and not the other way around: setting everything to fit the raiding time etc.The group instances can take quite a big chunk of time and the raiding is just absurd. For the first time in a couple of years I actually got into argument with my significant other over my gaming. "But I CAN'T just turn it off, we are on second boss!" Of course I haven't said that, but what I really like about PvP is the predictability. I can merely check the time and say: "I will be done in 4 minutes". With raiding? I can only check my watch and think "I should have been done like an hour ago".

"Remember, Time is a greedy player Who wins without cheating, every round!"
The Clock - Charles Baudelair

Effort investment - The "looking for MT and healer" stuff is killing me. Seems like a pure waste of time. I know that Age of Conan is pretty ancient with how LFG work, but still you cannot compare experience to what you are getting with minigames: click & join. True, if you get a good group for PVE the experience will be much more pleasurable than trying to handle your random team mates, but I will take my random group of non-existent group because I can't get that damn tank).

Fun factor - It seem like I am just not cut for the group pve. From what I understand PVE is very much about team effort. There is no place for "I" in the word "team". As a person I aim for individual achievements and I am not really a team player. Sure, there is a team effort in group PVP, but it seems like in 6v6 or even 12vs12 I as a player have a significant impact on the outcome. In raiding I am just another "DPS monkey" and in group PVE it very much seems like the success or failure lies in the hands of tank and healer. I also very much enjoy the lore and story in my solo PVE. I literally read every bit of quest text. What I don't like in group PVE that everyone is RUSHING things: clickly clicky the NPC, get quest, rush in, bam bam the quest mobs, and we are done. Also I can get that sweet adrenaline rush whenever I am getting another player down, but I cannot seem to get same feeling when the Boss going down.

So there you have it. There is nothing wrong with Age of Conan  group PVE content, but it seems like I am PVPer at heart. I am glad that I gave PVE a fair shake and will most likely try out new PVE stuff that will be coming out, but my daily gaming can only be PVP and that is the way I like it.

 

2 comments:

Loki Lyesmyth said...

its a bit of bullshit my friend when you say all in hands of tank, becous tank is in hands of dps, It is not wow heal system, when we fight till eternity or outofmana for healer, whichever comes first, heal is all the same, all the time, and the faster you kill, the slighter chance tank die. not to mention all the buffs (which sins lacks, but you get the point :P ) and fact, that tring any HARD instance like bomberman in middle provinc, districst or fort withau a good dps is a pure insanity.

Mhorgrim said...

Slith,
I think it's good you gave PvE a shot. At least your gripes can be based on actual in game experiences rather than just opinion. I kinda miss pvp but overall, it isnt really balanced and open world is borked so I gave up on it. The PvP level system really screwed shit up and Bori? well I wont bother talking on that point.

PvE even I get bored. I pick and choose questlines for immersion but trying to get instances together even with guildmembers can be painful. PvE instances should have never been designed strictly around the holy trinity of tank, healer and dps. They should have scaled it so that it was cghallenging, but you didnt need one thing or another to make it successful.

I gave up on pvp when I saw US Tyranny merge with Cimmeria. I didnt like the general population with the exception of a few specific individuals. The guilds I used to love so much fighting with or against are all gone.

Sooo...what's left? The lore and immersion for me. Even on our pvp server, minis dont pop unless your lv 80. Open world is a joke. Even at 80...the difference between pvp10 and some of the lower levels is so insane it isnt worth trying.

Raiding for me is kinda fun. As a barb I have a few tricks, debuffs etc that help the overall burndown of mob's and bosses. But there are so few raids getting formed these days it's kinda rough. Ehh well...Hyboria still has a lot of fun for me.