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[Anza]

Exactly, assuming his own opinion to be the right way to play is not good 
And yes time spent on game can be seen as fair ("dedication reward") or unfair ("nolife over skill") depending on your point of view, making grinding healthy or not.

[Count Matthew]

Numbers don't mean too much unless there is an overwhelming difference.

I think some factions learned to deal with a lower player base in their factions and became better as a result.

Overall, I am against anything that detracts from going inside the core.

[naossano]

Numbers don't mean too much unless there is an overwhelming difference.

Indeed, the only complains are about those. Nobody is complaining when it is 2 vs 3 or 7 vs 10.
Anyway, "the dedication reward" and "nolife over skill" can and should be balanced by gaining like 1% more efficiency by spending more time on the server, and feel rewarded, while not having an overwhelming advantage agains't the guy who play one hour a day.

I don't get why there is some insisting on maintaining flaws just because they existed in some other servers. Failing to balance some areas is not a feature.

The game should be fun for everyone, not just the guy who spend 24h a day on it, the one who have a team of 20 people or the one who started the game 6 months ago. It should also be fun for the new guy that register in the brahmin boys HQ tomorow, can only be there once a week and have no knowledge in character planning.

[twat]

^you sound like an american^

[John Porno]

As the world map gives away, we do have an outpost feature planned and while it will not neccesarily make for "fair" pvp (whatever that is, cause it's an arbitrary definition) it will certainly make sure to entice some pvp in the first place.

As of now, arenas would only come in the form of events and not as a standard feature. Last night on reloaded was a good example on how arenas negatively impact open PvP games; the town controllers dont have any enemies to fight cause everyone else is in hinkley, playing the 1hexing simulator. Back in the day, TC was the only way to get any meaningful PvP and with an arena like that, it takes away the motivation of some people to organize for tc when they can just pifipi in arena.

Of course it would be possible to enforce a certain playercount in each team for certain battles, but it just against the nature of open PvP. Having the freedom of going alone with shitgear or with 20 people in top gear is what separates fonline from the usually 5on5 moba or 20on20 wow battleground. It was a design decision to not have that in the game and that's that. It's like asking for axes and bows and magic in battlefield or a skill tree in CoD (unless the series is so shit now, they actually have that).

If players want fair pvp in an open world mmo, they would have to organize it themselves. I've seen it happen on other servers and the only thing that prevents is people actually not giving too much of a fuck about fair pvp in the end. Not knowing what your enemy might bring is also part of this game.

[paragon]

"it takes away the motivation of some people to organise for tc when they can just pifipi in arena."

It means only 1 thing: TC doesn't worth it to organise. In AOP it's because simple inability to fight (e.g. you don't have enough people to be any effective, you don't have enemy willing to answer, you play on significantly lower level (skill, gear))
If ZC takes 30 minutes of organisation to die in 2 mins without shooting a bullet, people would rather not play at all. You'll say, git god, I'll ask: how?
The answer is arena. Which is unrewarded private zone, suitable to pvp: competitive/controllable/training and nothing else.
If open PvP is crippled to the state, that people don't want to participate it, then you know that game have some problems. Banning "arenas" won't help it, instead it'll just push people out of the game completely.

The simple form of arena right now: x people in one mumble created x characters in different factions, creating contested zone and practicing with each other, healing and resurrecting each other when needed. As result: many OP legendaries, "free" caps and reputation, and confusion for other players, joining the zone randomly - they are gonna be attack by alliance of different faction players, could be from players from their faction. The only advantage is that you may try to organise the pvp against them, but overall I find this situation out of what it should be.

[Niamak]

Like in any mmo, arena kills open world pvp. Most people prefer fast food over haute cuisine.

[Count Matthew]

Like in any mmo, arena kills open world pvp. Most people prefer fast food over haute cuisine.

Fantastic post.

[paragon]

Niamak, didn't see you cooking much around. Overwise I would gladly join....

[John Porno]

@paragon

Dont we have a pretty good example in hinkley on 2238? If an arena simulates ZC but is much easier, then there's no need for ZC. If arena is not like ZC, it also wont do much good in the way of training people. Now you can argue about the shape that hinkley came in, but I still think it's a proof of concept.

Another thing is, even if not everybody plays arena then, those few who do might be the ones that are missing in the main team so the rest of them cant ZC and also join arena.

Another funny example was early Dayzmod where people spawned with a makarov instead of being unarmed. It lead to a lot of people just duking it out with pistols in the spawn locations rather than exploring the world. The basic problem is just that AoP is a player driven game, in the current state way more than other servers which gladly have 90% of the server pop do random encs. Every player who stays in the arena all day does also not contribute much to the rest of the game.

The way to go here is not making an arena because ZC is too harsh, but rather make ZC more accessible.

[Anza]

I do like that devs tend to push AoP into. To emphasis on what John said :

- It is an open world pvp, and as such, it comes to players indeed to shape pvp as we want. In DaoC Ys server (open pvp with swarm on one realm > the 2 other realms, + night capping castles), players from all 3 factions managed (after months of debating) somehow to set hours for capping castles. What were the consequences ? People had more fun, and people were actually trying to log at those times, making pvp occur everytime. They even agreed later on letting a zone for 8v8 battles (where other groups/swarm dont add fight in progress). Clearly we are far from that in AoP, but it is possible to achieve as players.

- Instanced arenas will be bad for AoP by removing people from core/zc. As said above, why would I go do ZC (with all the waiting time) while i could fastfood pvp in Hinkley ? About the damage on the server, look at GW2, they had great expectation with having both open-world pvp (not totally ok but close to), and instanced 5v5, they even planned on having e-sport on 5v5. It didn't work well, as you had pve people, rvr people, 5v5 people, and they were not mixing well together, making 5v5 quickly empty.

- About what paragon said on current arena with possible exploits : this is why we players can't do anything good but complain on swarm/night capping etc. Instead of trying to find solutions as players, we exploit to hamster. Having an arena will not help.

[FrankenStone]

make me arena master , i will make sure they pay right taxes to enter the pit ...

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Only form of Arena I support is one for blood-sports and duels where members of all factions come to see someone settle scores, rivalries or simply blood-sport, betting included.

One thing that I think would be much cooler and fairer than Town Outposts Control as a fair form of Zone Control would be something like a Sierra Caves-style dungeon.

I loved going to the Sierra Caves in FOnline2 with my friends, preparing the right amount/type of gear for maximum cost-benefit, getting the right team (lockpickers/trappers are mandatory), going in and fighting monsters, going across dark caves, scooping out loot, being immensely paranoid about other people being in the area, communicating and dealing with said people (which ranged towards anything from friendship and alliance and common agreement of peace, to paranoia shooting, warning fights annd out-right hostility), conservating ammo, carrying all the loot possible, getting lost in the caves (and trying to find another friend there), trying to heal your crippled limbs and avoid traps when you lose the guys in your team who can do that, etc.