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Idea for PvE - PvP training
Hokibukisa
Member Posts: 185
So server is dead, can't find any fights cause everyone is asleep. Or its the middle of the day. What do?
What about practice against probably scenarios?
Get a group together, and face other popular and ideal group setups. Only they are NPCs, but not your normal NPCs. Only not your average NPC, these would be as powerful as you, with sophisticated role AI.
Casters will cast and try to stay out of the thick of it. They won't aggro and try to staff you to death. Casters will use intelligent positioning, can tell when enemies are moving toward them, and pre-kite. Casters will coordinate CC and timed stuff, so that they don't waste things.
Complementing classes will complement each other. Debuff casters assisting each other. Melees split pressure among healers when necessary, dps cleave when possible.
Support classes will not act like deer in headlights, will cleanse/cure, interrupt, peel, debuff when they can.
You get the idea, these enemy NPCs wouldn't suck and would be better than the average player. You don't get better by fighting inferior enemies.
This would bring a lot of things to the table for the game.
1) As previously stated give you something to do in off hours.
2) Train bad players to get better. After getting spanked, the game could grade you, and tell you what you sucked at, and how you could do better.
3) Teach the CU developers what classes and abilities aren't useful. If they had an AI developer that monitored performance of the AI groups, they could basically make everything more practical. If it turns out that the AI never uses an ability because its too situational, impractical, gimped, or stupid, the AI and player statistics in here would identify it. If not even your own AI uses your theorycrafted ability, that's embarrassing and demands developer attention. Long way of saying, game gets fine tuned sooner.
4) PvP is intimidating to many. Lots of people say they don't like it because they don't understand it, because they're used to PvE. Lots of games train you for PvE, but not PvP, and they are completely different games. Along with failing to beat a challenge that is much better than what you're prepared for, fighting real life players has the embarrassment factor.
After losing a battle, a real life opponent has a tendency to not leave positive feedback. They'll teabag you, spam /laugh you, and leave encouraging messages for you on teh forums.
There are many that would rather avoid PvP entirely in order to not be embarrassed.
5) PvP training would be a discreet way to learn not only that you fucking suck, but where you did well, where you did poorly, and give suggestions on what to do differently. PvP training would also be a more accessible means to learn. In a real RvR environment the opportunities for rematches can be separated by hours.
Some things worth noting would be to not give persistent rewards for training, no gold, loot, XP. And might actually cost gold to buy a training session.
Comments
Oh also forgot to mention, train you how to do other things, like taking a keep, and teach you the meta-game on how to open access to a taking a relic, or shut down enemy teleports into your realm.
So yeah not just how to fight.
the only way to train PvP is to do PvP.
While playing DAoC, PvE was a borring thing to do to stuff and xp, when i was in RvR, i never be without things to do at prime time. we things calm down there was craft or reroll.
A couple things here. First of all, if "So server is dead, can't find any fights cause everyone is asleep. Or its the middle of the day. What do?", the answer is "shut down the game because its failed".
I think a lot of people with these concerns are missing the point that this game has a much lower population threshold at any given time to appear active. Its all open, and the game is almost entirely focused on player interaction and PvP. A large majority of people online at any given moment is going to be looking to PvP in the open world.
Even on the deadest of dead MMO servers.. even at 4 am EST on those servers.. there are probably at least a hundred people connected (and honestly thats a pretty conservative number there).
You just cant find those people because most of them are actively avoiding being found. They are in instances grinding PvE content, or if some of them they are actually in an open world they are off solo grinding PvE content in some hidden corner where they hope nobody will find them.
Even just 100 players is still reasonably 10 different 8 man's hunting each other... Thats still pretty active, and its setting a really low bar for the numbers of players you need online at any given time to keep things interesting.
Also, no AI can train you to PvP. The creators of the game themselves shouldnt necessarily be able to predict all the player tactics that will evolve, so they wouldnt even be able to attempt to program AI to do so. If they can, that means the mechanics are too restrictive and repetitive.
PvEer exposed.
Just an area where players can try out skills and builds and what have you.
Incorrect statement.
Hrmm that technically isn't training. Training is usually a lot different, and so are the benefits. I pointed them out already, don't want to get too wordy.
Simplest analogy I can think of are professional soldiers vs rebel scrubs. Someone that has gone through expert training under veteran guidance will not be as good as a veteran, but will be far better prepared than a noob without any training or guidance.
And a veteran that went through professional training and guidance of a master will be far better than a noob that learned everything himself. This is true for many self-taught things, where many people learn things the wrong way. Perhaps learning that something works, but not learning how or why it works.
The best way to make sure there are always people to PvP against is to give the players as little as possible to do other than fight each other. No PvE please.
MMORPG
First of all, congratulations on ignoring the 80% of my post that pointed out why your idea is pointless and unnecessary.
Second of all, I'd rather have the team focus on polishing the actual game instead of struggling to keep a training AI constantly updated with the latest evolutions of player strategies in combat and counters to them.
Honestly I'd rather something like that not exist even if they could snap their fingers and make it appear. Its like a cheat sheet. The game is focused on player interaction. You should be learning all that stuff from other players.
It puts the developers in the position of determining what the best tactics actually are. I've seen forum arguments that go on for months or years over what strategy or build in some random game is the best for a given situation. There isnt just one right way to do things in any decently complex game. For every generally accepted strategy, there is some counter strategy thats effective literally only because everyone else is using that generally accepted strategy.
Developers shouldnt be in the position of determining the metagame and keeping everyone aware of its current state. You give players tools and watch what they do with them. The only time the development team needs to get involved is if some of those players stumble across a way to use those tools to build a bazooka.
normally I would like to give players choice in things to do, but I also think we should dump PVE. or more accurately, dump group PVE such as dungeons/raids.
I say this for one simple reason, how many times in RvR games have i found myself standing around watching the guild "pve raid " when I am sitting in an empty RvR zone . like in Guild wars 2
The depths as described my MJ, is hopefully the solution to this, an RvR raid zone.
Anything involving a group should be in an RvR area ... or excuse me, Tri-realm