BG Plans + Discussion

[Former-GM-Salt]

Hi everyone.

Since a lot of people are wondering about the battlegrounds, here are our complete plans for it:

Code:

1. Modify current BG:
* Modify debug messages to go to log file instead of spamming the server
* Change BG starting and ending announcement to go on main instead of broadcast
* Add a Kafra near BG NPCs
* Give points directly to players instead of having them go talk to an NPC after BG is over
* Probably make the map use woe reductions

2. Testing
* Test the changes from step 1
* Try to figure out what broke when we added script to real server last Tuesday (probably something related to so many persons signing up)
* Possibly another round of fixes and testing if we find something wrong during this testing sesion

3. Trial period for BG on the real server for a couple of weeks (hopefully we'll be at this stage by next week, but no guarantees)
* See how fast people accumulate points to balance reward NPC
* See how it works out on this map, or if we want to change it (or maybe have it on a random map)
* See what skills need to be disabled (possibly ones that allows the players to just avoid others and hide for the entire fight, for example)

4. Add in the NPC giving rewards
* Our plan is to give BG gears from all BG types, with official stats on the gears. This is subject to change however.
* Balance how many points it takes to get the gears based on how many fights people have participate in on average to get them, and how fast people seem to accumulate points
* This will need testing before it can be added

5. Do some changes, test them, get them out on real server
* Implement BG keys (what this is will be announced later)
* Implement skill restrictions, map change, etc. based on what we saw during the trial period

6. Look into adding / add the other two BG types (the ones with crystals, etc.)
* This will take some time since since our current SVN does not have BG, so we have to backport them from a newer SVN, which may take quite a bit of coding and setting things up
* Customize them to tie in with the schedule for BG we already have, either make it randomly pick a bg type or have it do certain types at certain hours
* Customize them to assign people to teams randomly like our current BG
* Customize them to tie them into our BG points system / reward npc we already have (points from all bg types will go into one pool of points)

Also I'd like to address some concerns.

First, the reason we can't just add in official bg is because we do not think it would work as-is on our server. It'd be active for a little while, but after a while it'd end up like the pvp rooms. It won't be used often and players would have a hard time getting enough people together to get one going, especially for newer players, except maybe for players in the biggest guilds who would just farm it endlessly for the gears. And one of the points of BG is to help newer players get geared for WoE faster. We feel the scheduled BGs + team randomization solves this problem, and it gives some control over how fast people can get the BG gears.

For players saying that its not worth signing up since its random if you're picked or not, its only random if more than 14 persons sign up. Of course more than 14 are going to sign up the first few times it happens, but we except things to settle down pretty quickly and that it routinely will not be hard to get into fights except maybe during the most active time of the day. If this doesn't happen we will re-evaluate the 14 player limit.

Nothing here is final, feel free to post some constructive criticism, or just discuss the BG in this thread.

[Vahn_ashwood]

well, salt you talk about some skills being disabled and its pretty obvious that hide will be one of those. I understand its for the best since someone could just sit it out and still get exp and bg gears, but as a sin, this is a bit harsh, since some of us are katar dependent and using grimmtooth would no longer be an option. if this is the case, shouldn't there be a warning to anyone using any hide skill or the like? Other than that, the WOE reductions should also be a godsend for some folk and hopefully make the events a bit smoother.

[Former-GM-Salt]

Hide is not one of the ones we're looking at, since that would severely nerf thief based classes and would remove the ability to hide-dodge.

[Tulwar]

* Probably make the map use woe reductions

Probably? It HAS to be WoE reductions, or it's just going to become an uber eff'd up version of mass pvp that gives you points, not BG. It BETTER be WoE reductions.

* See what skills need to be disabled (possibly ones that allows the players to just avoid others and hide for the entire fight, for example)

* Implement skill restrictions, map change, etc. based on what we saw during the trial period

Since up to now, custom BG is much more similar to KvM, why not just solve this problem easily and make it the small KvM map instead of Flav?

For players saying that its not worth signing up since its random if you're picked or not, its only random if more than 14 persons sign up. Of course more than 14 are going to sign up the first few times it happens, but we except things to settle down pretty quickly and that it routinely will not be hard to get into fights except maybe during the most active time of the day. If this doesn't happen we will re-evaluate the 14 player limit.

Okay, now this is just dumb. Be it so that it eventually dies down as you say. What happens then? This basically adds a bottlecap to the pvp community, you keep it at a standstill instead of leaving room for development and growth, just as it's been. Some people are going to rack up more points just because they get lucky with sign ups, too. Please change this

[Incarn]

yeah, i don't like that it needs to be on main - why? a lot of people have main turned off by default or turn it off when they're farming, etc

imo turn off signing up if it reaches the max-person limit instead of randomizing it, that way people don't waste their precious 50k or five minutes of time waiting.

[Former-GM-Glyph]

It takes the 50k after your warped into the waiting area.

[Namine]

Also, instead of disabling things like hide/cloak etc., could it be possible to just limit the time you can hide? For example, I hide for 45 seconds and then I get unhid. Or add a delay to the skills like Soul Burn has. Not sure if that's possible. :v

I don't think either of those are technically possible. All cooldown excluding guild skills are shared (and all guild skills share 1 cooldown afaik). If you increase hide cooldown/delay, then every thief/sin/stalker skill gets the same increase in cooldown/delay.

I think mapflags can only either allow or entirely disable a skill. As for auto-unhide after a set time, you will have to resort to some pretty complicated scripting =(

It's easier to treat this as KvM that many others have said in the other thread, and what Tulwar said in this one. Use KvM arena as the map, and it's much smaller thus bearable to use sight/ruwach to find a cloaking/hiding character without maya purple. KvM map is at least 4 times smaller than Flavius.

[Vahn_ashwood]

glyph is right when talking about how killing hide would nerf most thief class skills, but there would have to be some way around folks just using hide or cloak to just rack up the points! also, I kinda liked knowing when things are going on, and if announcements are on main, I'ma gonna miss them cause I turn main off when farming.

[demishock]

yeah, i don't like that it needs to be on main - why? a lot of people have main turned off by default or turn it off when they're farming, etc

imo turn off signing up if it reaches the max-person limit instead of randomizing it, that way people don't waste their precious 50k or five minutes of time waiting.

Even with the clarification that the 50k doesn't get spent until you're in the waiting area, I still agree with all of this. Server-wide announcements and turning off sign-ups once it's full. And then implement some sort of system, if possible, where the players who participated can't turn around and immediately jump into the next round, so people can't abuse it.

[Spuznik]

By main can it be just a message that appears in everyones chat box?