Game needs to be more society related.

[Bach]

The current game seems to be very much built around the individual.

True that individual is expected to be a participating member of a mass nation. He is also expected to be an equal share of the 24 man port battle team. An equal member of the 6 man teams on the OS and expected to be pulling his weight economically.

This is a good ideal. However, in practice things just don't work out to that ideal.

Many players, be they PVP, RP or PVE follow the same crew of friends from game to game. Many are gaming clubs or even just life long friends that game. When these people can not play with they're friends things are going to become less attractive for them. Many players have quit due too not being able to play the end game with friends.

At first everyone is leveling and you make the groups for that so all friends are together.
You can also PVP on the OS as long as you have x6 friends together.

However, this pattern all falls apart once you get to the RvR game. Unless your circle of friends is very large and dedication too 24 hour play is high, your not going too all get into the PB's and the RvR aspect of the game. Once you hit this wall the excitement of the game starts dropping off as you or some of your friends get "benched" to the side lines for the RvR game in favor of a PUG system.

A simple change to the PB lottery to make the unrest points specific to SOCIETY rather than INDIVIDUAL could possibly change alot of this. If you are not a participating member of a society then you don't get unrest towards PB's. Further, reset the player contention counter every day or two so that it doesn't build up from common grinding but from successful flipping grinding. This will reduce the random grinding player PUG effect on the PB's, which I think few of us are really satisifed with anyway.

So the PB's would become society based competitive events. This would generate rivalry and increase interest in being a competitive society in game. Fun will increase along with team work as players get to attend the RvR aspects of the game with freinds more often.

I'm not exactly sure how this would be implemented. But you get the idea. Just make it so societies that work on the RvR game are rewarded as a society and not as individuals by inclusion into the RvR game.

[Vixentrox]

Riiiight. And then the only way to get in a port battle is to be in an uber society. No thanks.

[Bach]

Originally Posted by Vixentrox

Riiiight. And then the only way to get in a port battle is to be in an uber society. No thanks.

Then the ONLY way to get into the PB would be to be a member of ONE of the societies that put in the time and effort to actually flip the port. NOW if your a one man society, but you also HELPED at the same time the port was flipped you would STILL get in the PB. You could do this wihtout being in an Uber society.

I would much rather have a good friend that helped grind out a port flip sail alongside in the PB. More so than some random guy that had just happened to grind out NPC's in that one spot, on and off, for the last x3 weeks.

This PUG effect is what kills off the RvR game for teams. There is simply no way to keep the team together under the current rules set. The individual is more important in the current game mechanics then the teams. The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. LOL

[Blhurr]

Agreed with the OP. The end game is centered around a unit of 24 players and if you can't get the same 24 players (or close to it) everytime you PB then that fractures your web of relationships, undermines your personal investment, and hinders your ability to work on and improve strategies from one PB to the next. GG.

No offense to the solo players but Port Battles aren't about soloing. Should there be a way for solo players to have an even shot at participating in the end game? Absolutely, but not at the cost of end game itself which is the situation we find ourselves in now.

Solo pvp and arguably 6v6 pvp have very limited impact on RvR and that's a serious issue. PvE has way more impact on RvR as it stands currently and I find that to be a breakdown in the games enjoyment.

[Danicia]

Moved to Community Suggestions

[Kylia D]

I posted an idea a while back similar to the OP, where by we keep the same lottery system with the following changes.

Each society leader/s recive the invites that their members would have gotten with the lottery. So say 10 of your soc members would have under the normal lottery system gotten an invite, then the soc leader gets 10 invites to the PB. He/she then distributes these 10 invites thruout thier soc. This allos for a soc to field a team of thier choice, with a more coherant and functional setup, this also allows for a bit of prebattle planning.

This doesnt effect the chance for a non soc to enter the battle, what it does do is allow socs to better manage the team they will be fielding.

I've yet to find a fault in this system that effects the single player, or the chance for anyone to Port battle, and it adds the benefit of a soc to be more usefull in a PB, since they can better field a group.

In regards to anyone saying, blah blah power to the soc leader blah blah. If you have joined a soc, you should trust your soc leaders, if you dont trust the soc leaders, go join another soc.

comments?

[Jahmus]

I gave up contributing to port battles long ago. No matter who you help, how much you as an individual, a group or as a society in the end you still get denied PB time. Even at level 50 you get rudely asked to decline the port battle because you aren't in a certain ship or you are only level 49 or you aren't in the circle of friends. There are some that were asked to decline PB invites even when they met the criteria because The top echelon of control has buddies that they want in the spaces rather than those that did all the work.

Personally there is no fair system at all in the port battles. Even if you ignore them and accept the PB they boot you from group even if you met all the criteria. Not sure if all nations or servers are this way, but it really takes the fun out of the end game.

As for having it society based I so disagree with that. Only one society would ever be participating in the battles and always the same people over and over again. You would have to be in the ruling society just to contribute only to watch the leader and his hand picked cronies enjoy all the fun.

Personally I say have an open battle. Battle begins and its an all out war between the two nations any level from 5 - 50 who happen to be ONLINE at the time can swoop into the battle racking mayhem.

Yes there is a limit but form a ring once one ship is defeated another can jump in to take its place. Make the game enjoyable for everyone. Let everyone experience all the different aspects of the game instead of segregating all the fun to only a few select deadbeats that spend their lives sitting in a chair playing all day controlling the battles while the rest of us work, tend to families and do what we can to join a port battle and contribute only to be told to go away.

I agree something should change in how the port battles are run, controlled and who gets to be in them. But as it currently works it just makes me sick.

End game is quite frankly frustrating and worthless. I group, I'm in a society I contribute as much as I can. However when it comes to port battles and port flipping. I stay out of it now and just enjoy the other parts of the game. If we lose the port? So what, wait till the map resets and start selling again. The fun has been taken out of the end game.

[Spinnaker Sam]

Originally Posted by Kylia D

Each society leader/s recive the invites that their members would have gotten with the lottery. comments?

So what happens when the port battle occurs when you have no society leaders online at the time? Or what happens when you have 5 society leaders online who are of equal status? What happens when you have two port battles scheduled during the same period? Remember you only have a very short amount of time to get into the Ready Room, plan your strategy and start the battle. You are wasting precious time for the other players while you decide which of your online players get to join the battle.

The idea also doesn't make any change to the complaint about society members getting invited together. It just give society leaders the power to screw over one player in favor of another. But, then that is a society issue and if someone sticks around in a society that shows favoritism like that it is there own problem.

The devs have/had a plan to create society level port battle scenarios that influence port conquest. Hopefully, they are still working on it.

[Bach]

Lets not get derailed here.

The issue I'm looking to correct is for friends to be able to play with friends in the end game of POTBS.

Now maybe you got some issues with societies that you don't want to be in one for some reason or other. Maybe your high school football team stuffed you into a trash can and your still carrying that emotional scar around for life. But that doesn't fix or erase the fact that friends join POTBS only to eventually discover they are forced out of playing together in the end game PBs. More or less.

My gaming group (12 players) is moving to Age of Conan. Not because we don't like POTBS. Some of us are going kicking and screaming. But the hard truth is that we just can't get into PB's together as a team and we play to be a team. We understand the POTBS end game can not offer this too us under the current PB selection system and so we reluctantly move on.

The current POTBS end game system tends to drive a steel wedge into team play. I don't think this was the intent. But after the same team member who has participated to grind out a port is rejected from his 3rd PB in a row he just isn't interested in grinding another. The rest of us have to feel for him as he gets left behind again and again. This ofcourse happens with more then one team member. They soon losses interest in POTBS period and now you have to make a choice. Ditch your freinds and adopt a more soloish style of play or move on as a team. The choice most players will have to choose is pretty clear and it doesn't promote sticking with POTBS.

[Taralin Snowden]

Originally Posted by Bach

My gaming group (12 players) is moving to Age of Conan. Not because we don't like POTBS. Some of us are going kicking and screaming. But the hard truth is that we just can't get into PB's together as a team and we play to be a team. We understand the POTBS end game can not offer this too us under the current PB selection system and so we reluctantly move on.

this is key. we play every game together. if we can't play this game together, we will find some other game to play together instead.

we had no trouble playing together while leveling, and we had no trouble playing the end-game together on a low-population server like Guadeloupe. but we can't all get into the same port battles on Antigua, so many of us have moved on. and each one that leaves increases the draw on the rest of us so that we may continue to play together.

guilds are the basis of an MMORPG community. even more so when the game mechanics reward (indeed, require) coordinated play among multiple players (e.g. ventrilo and group tactics). when you don't pay attention to the guild experience, you don't just lose a few players here and there, you lose whole groups of them.

today is May 20, the day AoC hits retail. 6 weeks ago I had absolutely no intention to play AoC, because nobody else was really planning to either (we were all busy with PotBS, and the plan was pretty much to stick with it until Warhammer). today, 6 weeks later, many of us are already playing AoC, and very few of us are still playing PotBS. so, in order to stick with the group, I canceled my PotBS subscription today, and will be picking up a copy of AoC on my way home.

word-of-mouth marketing cuts both ways. when you rely on word-of-mouth, you can get whole guilds to play the game where you might otherwise have gotten only a few players. but the flip side is, when things get boring, you stand to lose the whole guild rather than just a few bored players.

-ken