Test Proving Grounds Server

[Cryptite]

This thread be used to reflect the current PG Testing information. This is subject to change frequently, but like other update threads, I'll post each time the PG undergoes a change and try to be specific in the changes and what to look out for if TPG is up.

In TPG, anytime you damage a player, you will see a message in your actionbar giving you detailed numbers about your attack. The format and example are as follows:

You hit PlayerName for 28d-4f capped to 24d-3f.
-28d is the original damage value of your attack.
-4f is the final damage value after mitigation (armor).

If the message includes the capped to bit, it is just the post-capped damage and final damage values.

 

[Cryptite]

• Testing Capped Crit Damage
• Any original damage value over 24 will be capped at 24. Original damage of a Strength 2 hit on a player in Prot IV is usually 28-30+ (don't have the values on me at this moment).

 

[S4NTA]

Played it for about an hour, and I have to say my first impressions were positive. I found it was more difficult just going for crits as opposed to switching up styles and trying to strafe around a little bit more. Crits were definitely helping though, and I think it still might be the meta to crit spam at high end pvp, though it's much less essential. I think it will be easier for new players to loka to be familiar with the pvp system without the mandatory critting to be "good", while still having the novelty of the conquest system to draw them in. I can definitely see that more established players who already spent time getting used to crits may be against it, and I can't blame them. However, I also played with my town a bunch, which most of us are also new, and while a lot of us still don't like the 1.9+ click cap, we definitely enjoyed the test PG server. I think most people atleast from the communities I come from and have played in will definitely like it more.

 

[MasonMcBadbat]

I enjoyed it. The no fire was great because I live in the stone age and don't use a low fire pack. The cap made regular swings feel like the better call but that's just because I can't aim a crit chain in the first place. I'd be interested in hearing from the fighters that have a romantic bond with their space bar.

 

[Adzy]

In my opinion, i like how i am able to strafe and deal damage and don't have to rely on critting to kill players or damage them, but it just takes so long and you end up going through 2-3 strength and speed potions before you actually kill them, and then you're still left with almost a full invent of health potions. I know some people prefer the longer fighting and the less damage, but i prefer the fast paced fighting that the normal proving ground has over the damage on the test proving ground.

 

[Cryptite]

People seem to be mixed about liking the new system in terms of lesser crit damage, but not on board with how much longer it seems to take to actually kill a person. Gonna up the cap a bit:

• Upped the cap on maximum damage from 24 to 27.
  • Max damage hits (pre-cap) are around 29.9 damage (doing at most 5.4 damage after mitigation. Damage/2 is "hearts-worth", so 5.4d = 2.7 hearts for a max crit).
  • The Cap of 24 was reducing the final damage from 5.4 to 3.8.
  • TL;DR, Cap of 24 nerfs a 2.7 heart crit down to a 1.9 heart crit.
    
  • So a cap of 27 should reduce 2.7 down to roughly a 2.2h crit.

 

[Cryptite]

Going to take this a step further in order to insure "people still die" but keeping the crit cap so that damage is a little more normalized:

• Increased the Base 33% damage increase up to 40%.
• The Max Damage Cap is still in (it's not a crit cap, insofar as it just means no single attack can hit a player for more than 27 damage).

 

[S4NTA]

I like the effort going into balancing, last server I played had really inactive admins. From the newest test PG, I found crits were basically back to normal, 5 hitting people and generally powerful (probably still worth doing for most your hits) but it was still slightly better than the live version with people being able to try some strafes out because normal hits are more comparable to crits. I still prefer the first test version, but this seems like a middle ground option, with still very lethal crits.

 

[Mrp]

I would still prefer crits to be more effective. As it is now on the PG, 5 crits lands you a kill but so does 6 normal swings, with this being the case why would anyone jump in the air and risk getting hit by a normal swing twice? I like the fact that normal attacks hit harder but i think the cap should be raised back to 4 crits being able to drop someone. This way crits are still viable and normal hits are still very effective as well. Having a one swing difference between the two simply doesn't make sense as most people cannot consistently land 5 crits on someone consecutively in a large tgen fight. This seems to me to be a good middle ground, both sides can have what they are after. Strafers can rest easy knowing they can pump out damage and crits still feel worthwhile to go for.

TLDR: Raise the damage to 40% for strafers with a cap allowing people to be killed in 4 crits like normal.

 

[Coni_s2]

why would anyone jump in the air and risk getting hit by a normal swing twice?

Because it would make a lot more sense to not jump everytime but in specific situations where it actually makes sense doing it. Like normal pvp. Crits have been always a thing, and people just used them when it was more effective. Not every time, or they were not necessary to quick drop a person. That sounds way too op in this server.

And also as I said one day in vc, I think this depends a lot in what it's the server's goal. I think if you are looking for new players to stay, specially pvp oriented players, then we gotta remember the change from 1.7 to >1.8. was already bad for most of the pvp community. So all of these things will definitely hurt player retention because people might not really enjoy the pvp and leave.

I understand that you want to be able to drop people in a conquest fight, but I think everyone would actually have a lot more fun having longer teamfights and not just 1 minute of pvp. The last change seems really reasonable imo.

I appreciate the effort of the admin team, it's great that you all are interested in listening to suggestions and try new things, so thanks for that!

 

[Mrp]

I understand that you want to be able to drop people in a conquest fight, but I think everyone would actually have a lot more fun having longer teamfights and not just 1 minute of pvp. The last change seems really reasonable imo.

I think what is missing from your analysis of our pvp system is having been in meaningful conquest fights. I just looked through all the Jotun fights and almost every fight is a 11-15 v. 3. To really get a good understanding of why the damage is the way it is you would need to be in a fight that is relatively evenly matched. No fights last 1 minute, each inhib has an hour timer with fights averaging around 20-30 minutes when the numbers are comparable, some fights even go the full hour when the skill is matched well. Many people with the PG changes are having to go through multiple speed and str pots in a 1v1 which means in big tgen fights players will be much more durable, which is back tracking in my opinion. Since you all haven't been in an even conquest fight all you have to base your pvp preferences off of is duels or proving grounds, which is not what we balance our pvp damage around.

 

[Walkers]

I think what is missing from your analysis of our pvp system is having been in meaningful conquest fights. I just looked through all the Jotun fights and almost every fight is a 11-15 v. 3. To really get a good understanding of why the damage is the way it is you would need to be in a fight that is relatively evenly matched. No fights last 1 minute, each inhib has an hour timer with fights averaging around 20-30 minutes when the numbers are comparable, some fights even go the full hour when the skill is matched well. Many people with the PG changes are having to go through multiple speed and str pots in a 1v1 which means in big tgen fights players will be much more durable, which is back tracking in my opinion. Since you all haven't been in an even conquest fight all you have to base your pvp preferences off of is duels or proving grounds, which is not what we balance our pvp damage around.

The ability to drop people doesn’t have to change but the strength of crits should. Buff normal hits and nerf crits might be worth testing

 

[Mrp]

The ability to drop people doesn’t have to change but the strength of crits should. Buff normal hits and nerf crits might be worth testing

This is what is being tested currently.

 

[Walkers]

This is what is being tested currently.

OH. Missed Crypt’s updates. Do you like it?

 

[Mrp]

If you scroll up just a bit I gave some of my thoughts on it

 

[Walkers]

If you scroll up just a bit I gave some of my thoughts on it

I forum noob

 

[Mrp]

Haha it's all good!

 

[Coni_s2]

I think what is missing from your analysis of our pvp system is having been in meaningful conquest fights. I just looked through all the Jotun fights and almost every fight is a 11-15 v. 3. To really get a good understanding of why the damage is the way it is you would need to be in a fight that is relatively evenly matched. No fights last 1 minute, each inhib has an hour timer with fights averaging around 20-30 minutes when the numbers are comparable, some fights even go the full hour when the skill is matched well. Many people with the PG changes are having to go through multiple speed and str pots in a 1v1 which means in big tgen fights players will be much more durable, which is back tracking in my opinion. Since you all haven't been in an even conquest fight all you have to base your pvp preferences off of is duels or proving grounds, which is not what we balance our pvp damage around.

Well not really, I don't duel at all, I wouldn't even consider myself a pvper and even I got frustrated while pvping. We were outnumbered the first fights and I can say personally I didn't find it that hard for me to survive. I consider that if I would have known how to grandma pvp I could have even killed people. Then when we outnumbered them they were just fights where we wouldn't even buff bc no reason to. But my view is just pvp as a whole. This can simply apply to a 1v1 situation in conquest. Imo, trying to convince people telling them they need to jump and crit to win will make more people leave than try to get good at it.

"you will like it in the future"

"practice and you will get good"

"I also hated it when I joined"

Are things we have heard since we joined, but tbh those are not arguments that will make people actually stay when they can just go to other servers. People usually hate changes and I personally think in 1.12 those changes are big enough to make them even bigger.

 

[Cryptite]

Are things we have heard since we joined, but tbh those are not arguments that will make people actually stay when they can just go to other servers. People usually hate changes and I personally think in 1.12 those changes are big enough to make them even bigger.

Other servers are not Loka and do not have Conquest warfare like we do. If we just had basic 1.12 PvP we might have left it alone, but for the entire purpose of ensuring fights aren't endless, we decided to make the changes that we did.

It's true, however unfortunate, that a lot of Loka works that way. There's a depth and complexity to the systems we have that have been tweaked and polished over years. There's a big reason everything is the way it is right now. Again, that doesn't mean it's fixed and never subject to change, but the nuance of PvP in the context of Conquest has to be considered over a longer span of time than just a few introductory fights against an outnumbered foe.

 

[Coni_s2]

Other servers are not Loka and do not have Conquest warfare like we do. If we just had basic 1.12 PvP we might have left it alone, but for the entire purpose of ensuring fights aren't endless, we decided to make the changes that we did.

It's true, however unfortunate, that a lot of Loka works that way. There's a depth and complexity to the systems we have that have been tweaked and polished over years. There's a big reason everything is the way it is right now. Again, that doesn't mean it's fixed and never subject to change, but the nuance of PvP in the context of Conquest has to be considered over a longer span of time than just a few introductory fights against an outnumbered foe.

Yes of course you will balance things according to the type of your server. What I mean is people are saying "this is for conquest not duels" where you fight in big numbers, but then they keep saying we only fought outnumbered. We actually fought outnumbered and being outnumbered too. If anything, it will help a lot more so someone that is outnumbered can actually kill people in a proper fight and not quick drop bc 4 guys are critting him out.
And if this doesn't apply for duels, but you keep talking about even fights in conquest, this can just simply apply to a 1 v 1 situation in conquest, where yeah you might go through 2-3 sets of buffs, but what is wrong with that?

That's why I said in my first comment everything depends on what your purposes are. If you want the server to be what you envisioned and whoever don't like it could just leave, that's completely fine. But if you want the server to have better player retention maybe some changes in pvp would help a lot.

Either way being open to suggestions is definitely the correct way no matter the result.