Rikutatis
DaomeiBut still, the question how to improve PvP gameplay without damaging the rest, seems open to me.
Ok fair enough, this thread has been all over place, let me try to summarize my own thoughts here. Please note I have no coding experience and have no idea how feasible these ideas are given the current state of ryzom's development:
1) Encourage OP wars by making the system more simple and easy for smaller groups. First of all, lower the price for a declare. That way people can declare more often without feeling they wasted all their guild funds for nothing if they loose. Ideally, completely get rid of the second phase of the war and raise the TH of the first phase to something between 9-12. That way a smaller force will have higher chances of winning a war. OPs will change hands more often.
2) Make lower quality OPs matter. This can be as simple as giving ALL OPs a % to pop a q250 mat (the lower the OP lvl, the lower the chance), or as complex as introducing an occupation to exchange lower quality OP mats for higher quality ones.
3) Grant PVP points when killing other players in PVP zones as well (such as Matis arena, Prime Roots, Nexus, etc). That way there's more incentive for PVP in those areas on top of the dispute over resources. Because quite frankly, I can get a lot more sup mats if I go dig solo in the non-pvp regions than fighting over supernodes with my faction. At least getting pvp points there would be an extra incentive.
4) The PVP alignment system needs to change. I understand the original goal might have been to make PVP between civlizations matter, but the truth is, people PVP by faction, not civilization. It's completely silly that I kill a Karavan in tagged PVP now and get zero points out of him because his civ fames are similar to mine. You should get points from anyone who is not a part of your faction by default.
5) This one I'm not sure how it can be achieved, but some way to discourage cheesy farming of pvp points. Maybe if you keep killing the same person(s), the amount of pvp points you get from him keep diminishing until it goes to zero (or very low) for a cooldown period of several hours?
6) Add more items to PVP vendors. The skirts and shields are awesome, so some new exclusive items like those. Maybe even craft patterns for faction gear. I know this one is more difficult to achieve due to staff limitations though.
My thoughts:
1.+1 on making it cheaper to declare
2. I believe lower q ops once in a while pop high q mats, so even a q50 op will pop a q250 mats once in a while, but.... I support Fyrosfreddys idea of making an Occupation to make higher q op mats from lower q op mats. Or... Bitttymacods idea of using MORE lower q op mats to equal one higher mat.
4. no opinion
5.no real opinion
6.+1 can agree