Sunday, March 29, 2009

How 1.5 will handle Keshatta?


Here are few facts:
I have reached my pvp lvl 3 from lvl2 in 3 months by doing minigames. Meanwhile some of my guildmates reached lvl4 and were very close to lvl5 after I have hit the big 3. Keshatta in all of its uglyness is best place to get pvp xp.


What can you do in KESH


Free zerg roam:
Join the zerg (aka +6 players) and just spam kills. The exp is crap, but you don't have to worry about that, you will farm your guildmates for pvp xp later, right? If your zerg gets somewhat killed just go with +2 rule - for every whipe add 2 more players to the zerg until unstoppable.

Hug the guard:
Getting low on HP? Just run to the guard and let them kill your attackers. Keshatta guards have highest suicide rate from active duty Guards because 99% they kill wrong people and they joined the Kesh forces to protect poor noobies opressed by the zerg in a first place.

Pull the guards:
Some naab is hugging your guards? Just have your mate shoot one guard and run while you take care of that naab.

Spawn camp:
In it to win it and no limit is your home? Just get your group on the respawn pad and gank the shit out of everyone who dares to step out. Little tip: keep one of your group mates (preferably soldier) on 30% hp to lure stupid people into attacking him - now CC that naab to death.

Zerg vs Zerg
If you see other zerg clash with them until one of you emerge victorious - the loser zerg will 99% time leave and you will have whole place to yourself.

Stand and deliver
If you pushed everyone on spawnpad and made most of those people leave then stand in Kesh for hours doing nothing because hey, you can farm guildies for pvp xp later, right?

How does Kesh looks like:

Just to be fair I took a video of absolutly random Kesh fight and I can honestly say: this is how Age of Conan's pvp looks like when you reach lvl 80. It always have been like this since combo-preloading, through gem era, to 1.3 combo nerf to 1.4 minigames changes and will progress into 1.5 with just diffrent feats and more powerful items (so people who farmed their guildmates for pvp items will get rewarded for their hard effort - the zerg will just get stronger in 1.5).

PVP that is killing the PVP:
I will go way on the line here and make a bold statement - people do pvp for:
1. Fun that comes from taking down an opponent
2. Items that will make that easier
3. Archievment of being higher level than others that shows your skill

Here is what are they getting:
  1. You can take down "the zerg" no matter how skilled you are and regardless how much they suck. You will get CC, charged, feared and probably fatalited. If you are really unlucky you will get a tell from one of the zerg members saying: you suck, pwned, noob etc.
  2. You won't get items because you are not getting nearly enough experience - can't farm zerg. On the other side it seems like most of zerg's members are out-gearing you in everyway with lvl4 being fairly common nowdays.
  3. You archievment is meaningless: like half of server is already higher lvl than you. Why struggle for that lvl3 when guy that you have seen being lvl78 a weak ago is now doning lvl3 braces and boasting about how close he is to lvl4. Even when you have somehow GRINDED your ass to lvl4 others will assume that you have also cheated your way there - just like everyone else.

The solution?
I don't know. Honestly. While pvp xp is still key issue for people coming to Kesh, it seems like pvp xp is not essential to zerg guilds: in one "farm session" they can get as much as 10 or even 20k. If you are a mature gamer with job and can catch about 2-3h tops of gameplay a day and you can make about 3k pvp xp (you need another player for that, some gear and some luck with meeting groups smaller than 4 players). That means exploiters get in 1h or less as much of XP as dedicated pvp player can make in almost 7 days and that is IF HE GETS LUCKY.

Introducing new pvp mechanics or even boosting minigames won't cut it: the zerg will come to Kesh because they don't need the exp, they want to pray upon people. If guild leave+farm exploit was somehow fixed and the zerg could not farm their xp that way, it would disband and try to pvp in 2-4 people groups because in zerg you get like 1xp all the time.

This needs a serious fix and fast because AT CURRENT RATE when 1.5 hits the live servers every member of the zerg will be already caped at LVL5.

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