The new build is getting really close to a PTS release. We've added a few more things to improve the PvP experience:

1. We've reworked all of the PvP maps. There are now four new maps that are significantly smaller than before. These new maps provide plenty of cover and open kiting space, but they do not have any long cooridors or loops that folks can use to easily run away. This should put a stop to the infuriating running "strategy" that folks love to use.

2. We've changed how group rating is determined. In the current build, your group rating is the average rating of all players in the group. In the new build, your group rating is the maximum rating of all players in the group.

3. We no longer rebalance outnumbered teams in deathmatch sessions.

steve

i was hoping that chill bill will be banned from pvp, but these changes gonna be good too

Before the boards migrated another developer stated clearly that Chill Bill will stay in PvP, however, she also hinted that there will be changes made. I don't remember which changes, and I don't want to speak for the developers, but Bill is at least not going anywhere.

Chill Bill is staying in PvP, but he melts now at the rate of 1% of his total health per second. We've also increased the effects of ice spells that heal him.

This melting makes Bill a bit easier to handle in PvP, and also puts more pressure on you to keep him healed up.

steve

Yeah, well that's just the problem: no one even bothers healing him, he's just basically there to pick up bolts (shadow or otherwise) and screw up mages and rangers.

You can't hack it?

Get 'yo jacket.

Can't do better?

Get 'yo sweater.

Seriously tho--EVERYONE has the ability to get/use Chill Bill, so it's not like it's an 'unfair' advantage--yeah, people use him to absorb damage, but really--isn't THAT the whole purpose of him?

/boggle

....stephen this is getting quite old.
I understand your staff is smaller I get that. I see how things are harder and take longer. But why put the "patch is coming to pts soon!" I heard that bs like 2 weeks ago. Couldn't you post the changes without that little tidbit of soonage. And if it is so soon, can we get a ETA?

Not true. "Twinks" don't have the option of using Bill, unless they level up.

This may be a dumb question, but why not level up if you really want him then? No one is forcing the twinks out there to stay at their low level, right?

In one of the other threads, Stephen said the patch should make it to the PTS some time next week (barring any major problems). We're all anxious for chunk 4 and have been for a while, but it will be here "soon."

Some people, like myself don't like leveling. In my opinion, I'm not saying it's true, but in my opinion, leveling is the weakest/suckiest part of the game. Monsters all look the same, but with a different name or shade of color....boring. Why level up to 100 for PvP? No one who is decent at PvP thinks that PvP power represents PvP skill. Yeah, you get more skills at level 100, but I can easliy beat alot of level 100s with my level 81 I currently have. There is just no reason to level up to 100. What endgame content is there besides PvP? Nothing that you can't do at any other level.

Yeah, it sucks that our ability to turn this build around more quickly isn't in the cards this time. But, think about it... We lost 13 out of 18 of our developers. All of a sudden, we have 5 people to fix the bugs / manage the code and data for a massive build. It's kicking our butts.

We just received a new build of the posse server... this fixes a crasher and odd chat behavior. Once we've gotten it to internal QA, it should be a matter of days. Let's hope we can cook that build tomorrow.

I'll post updates daily.

steve

What Stephen said. Remember that they were 18 people working with this, making the Chunk really huge, and without warning they lost 13 people so they're down to 5 people to do the work of 18 people until the Chunk is up.

On the other hand, in the old days they were only a handful of people too and updates came more often then since there weren't so much bugs to find and fix, due to the updates being smaller. It'll work out, you'll see.

Well, if someone's going to play a twink and try to 'abuse' or circumvent the pvp system, they've got nothing to bitch about.

It only stands to reason that people with more exp or better gear would have somewhat of an advantage in pvp--if it was solely based on skill, everyone would have exactly the same characters with exactly the same gear, spells, hp, resistances, etc... and even then, the pvp'ers would find something else to bitch about...

Stephen, I understand it takes long.
I would just appreciate you maybe just with-hold the *soon* bomb till like 2 days until a SUREFIRE release. I understand its been hard trust me I get that.

I'm confused. I thought the level-grinding and dungeon running was the whole point of this game? And I also thought Bill was available long before level 100?

Gosh, I have misunderstood so much...

Hehe, he's famous for having a "soon" who means everything from 2 days to 20 days. You'll get used to it.

Who said we wanted to use bill, i don't, i have characters that can use bill and i prefer not to use him, why, well because its a cheap way to play. He takes little to no skill to use, especially against a ranged character(mages and rangers) and two he takes the fun out of things and i can't play the way i really want to. Vs bill user, fine i'll throw in bill to balance things out if i think they might give me any trouble, and thats what irks me, is vs bill, it can be quite difficult countering without using bill my self, to either distract the other bill, or stun the other guy, even while his bill is stunning me. A while back when a certain someone with a lot of wins was still playing, he'd use bill, fully buffed all the time. So when i faced him, i had to use bill, whooped his butt 9 times out of ten.

Even now with the twinks i still win most of the time vs bill users, say 4 out of 5. The times i'm not winning, is either A: stalemate cause i either can get around bill while fighting, or i can get around bill when chasing, because i'm still whooping their tails anyway. And B: I'm fighting a lvl 100 with maxed out bill, usually against another ranged player, mages and their speed make it that much harder, and since some simple laws of phisyics and reality don't play for the person using bill, they can just shoot right threw him, like that makes sense, i don't shoot through my team mates playing halo do I?...

I'm not asking to get bill, i don't think he has any place in pvp at least without more balancing, there is little trade off in using bill, hes extra endurance damage and stunning and knock back without even trying.

Melting 1% per second will hardly make a dent, it only takes 30 seconds for snow globe cool down, while it would take 100 seconds, nearly 2 minutes for the melting to kill bill. Even if you attack bill and kill him, you are still taking damage from someone(usually) so by the time you are done with him, you could be at half health while your opponent is full or near full. And a few things can happen at this point, you escape to heal, and omg they just resummoned and rebuffed bill. Or you stay and attack, but you'll probably still die since you've already lost a good chunk of health, and if they happened to have resummoned and rebuffed bill right after you kill him the first time, you're taking damage, speed buffs, and stuns all over again.

"well use bill" you say? Why should i have to use bill to counter bill, why should i have to go with this DOMINANT STRATEGY, in which devs have claimed that they don't want. Well bill is one hell of a dominant strategy. And of coarse, some of us can't get bill, "level up" you say, why, why should i throw away all the work i put into gear, which undoubtedly be attacked next,"it takes hardly any time to gear a twink" which is true, to an extent, it only takes a week or so to patch together a full set of gear, mismatched and poorly built. If you haven't done it you don't know what its like, period. And if you have done it, just like that, you don't stand with the likes of myself, killerrange, and other top twinks/pvpers.

People think that gear is everything, like having full rbs means something, well it doesn't mean anything if it doesn't go together for a porpose. To go a touch beyond that, proper innate stat allocation is also a huge factor, having full rbs and full str or int stats on a ranger isn't going to get you very far. Yes that is a bit of an extreme, but its to show in contrast my point on the whole thing.

It doesn't take a lot to gear a lvl 100 either, not at all, ask cloneofninja, starting from nearly nothing, he doubled the amount of 100 rbs that i have(which is quite a bit) in only a month or so, before he even made it to 100.

Many of these comments against twinks are made in ignorance. Twinks are inferior to 100s by far, there just aren't a lot of 100s that really truly know how and do use their true superiority to their own advantage.

Twinks are quite disadvantaged in many areas, speed, skills levels, skills available. I'm not asking for anything more, just understanding, instead of people running their mouths and spewing out slandering ignorant comments all over the place.

I, and no one outside of the devs really, have much understanding on this attack rating glitch thats getting fixed. What I do know, is that it really does get more noticeable with lower level twinks(ie 10s or 12s) and when you get to higher levels (20) its almost non existant. People seem to think that they are nerfing twinks, which isn't true, they are fixing a glitch. And i'm fine with it, i don't forsee having any problems in general, except issues with facing bill will most likely become more pronounced.

Lol Cysira the word twink really means "to lazy to level up".

Back to my point.. your so ungreatful lmao, your lucky that there is an automatic rebalancing system or you'd have never even experienced PvP you'd just be some random level 10.

My suggestion though, would be to stop being so lazy get at least level 30-50; then find gear all your level, you'd have much more access to skills not available and that would end all the fuss about the odds are "unfair" against twinks because twinks aren't exactly legit in the first place .

I foresee flames and arguing...

Yes, everyone involved should get their abestos suits ready. Me, I am getting some popcorn for what looks like will be an enjoyable show.

I have nothing against twinks as I know how much work they put in their build, but really, for the love of God, you can't start arguing as soon as someone refuses to acknowledge what you've done...

Like I said my opinion on twinks are half-assed players who expect everything when they've done little to start with; besides spending hours getting level 10 gear.

Cysira, I agree with nearly everything you just said, EXCEPT the part about its hard to get the right gearset? Lets see when I use my alts then get my main I can get around 5 rbs PER HOUR at a low lvl! While Bill is supposably a sacrifice as your giving up 3 skill slots, what people dont see is that alot of people summon buff then remove the skills and put good ones, so there he is, buffed and full and they have their full skill bar...and the cooldowns are short so they just re-equip as soon as bill goes down or debuffs!

As for twinks? Its mainly a nerf for the rangers because they get helped alot. Mage twinks are a bit harder to deal with. Me I haven't been pvping alot but I can say I don't seem to have problems facing twinks unless they are truly skilled. I have decided if they wanna take two hours to put awesome gear together just to get pwned by me so be it (ha ha)
I can't beat some of them but the complaining is kinda useless.

And btw, if the devs are so bent on nerfing pvpers who rely on bill, why not just remove bill from pvp..

Why don't all you PvP gimps who cry about Bill find a way around it.. I mean damn ever think of doing a hit and run on Bill?

Maybe if you would stop doing the same tactic over and over and try something else?

But above all just stop crying about PvP "unfairness" because its tiring to have constant nerfs here and there just for a few gimps who can't figure out a way to win besides.. NERF NERF NERF!

Holy crap Cysira... I'm not trying to attack you personally, but there is no way I'll get through all that text there. Calm down a little?

And to whom exactly is this directed to, might I ask?

I only said Bill was a problem for rangers and mages because he absorbs bolts, and when I said it, I said it from the viewpoint of a WARRIOR. I have never used Bill myself in PvP, but I HAVE witnessed rangers and mages get seriously messed up by Bill blocking their shots, 'specially in that fancy tight-corridor maze at the time.

As for me, I ignore Bill and just attack my opponent. Doesn't do you much good against warriors anyway.

Cysira's points are valid. A lot of text doesn't necessarily mean someone is on tilt. MN is the only one being antagonistic.

I have decided to build a CB pvp toon, which will always use Bill. The people in the pvp community who know my characters know that I'm not bad, but I'm far from the best. I'm willing to bet, though, that once I get a better gear set together, I will be winning much more simply because I have Bill buffed.

Lol the mages and rangers who seriously get messed up, seriously suck.

Ever think they might just be running in head-on; then they see Bill and don't even try then come on forums and complain? Yeah thats pretty much all there is to it.

I"m sure glad I don't PVP and have to go through all that drama.

Hey Talmorr--share the popcorn, willya?!?!?

"BigFatKlingon's head looks like a fanny!"

sure have some, I made plenty

Good. I'll trade you some of that popcorn for a Sam Adams Boston Lager.

Can't watch a fight for entertainment without beer, now can we?

works for me! deal

*opens up a can of Norrlands Guld (lager) and joins in on the show*

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Huh? Oh, I thought this was the Jerry Springer show...

*Gets three cans a budweiser and guitar from room*
Cant have a fight without theme music right?

Nah, I joined a little before PvP came out, and would have quit right away had not PvP come out.

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!.... annnnnd BBQ!!!

I hate to break it to you but, the whole "instant gratification" thing... <loud whisper>Isnt Real!!!</loud whisper>.
You try picking up the pieces after 80% of your dev team gets fired, think about picking up where other people left off, what if they didn't document their work properly?

It's a minor miracle that theres going to be a Chunk 4 at all. Just chill out and give it time, it'll be here soon enough.

I think that there is absolutely no need to cater to the Twink players, I also think that they shouldn't be nurfed. In other words: Shut it and be happy with what you've got twinks.
As said above, if you want to be a twink with a higher spell, just level and be a higher level twink.

It's coming Soon. Soooooon. SoooOooOoOoOooon. SooOoOooOoOoOOoon!!
The SooOOoOon is coming to get YoOoOooOoou!!!!

Just be glad the game still exists.

This is probably why I'm confused. DR doesn't seem like a PvP focused game at all, to the point where I'd say that if someone who wants to do only PvP, I would not recommend them this game at all. It's not what it's made for. Especially not if the PvP portion was added on later as an after-thought. It's never going to be as good, balanced, and thought-out as a game that was built for PvP from the start.

Darth, what are you doing bringing logic and realistic expectations to this discussion? Unprecedented, unheard of, and quite unexpected.

We've already been over this a dozen times. Some people, like those who choose to put their time and work into creating a twink/solid PvP character either see leveling/PvE as the lacking part of the game, that is, boring, no challenge, repetitive etc.

So INSTEAD they go to PvP to fight some real intelligence which offers more challenge than normal AI creeps and they see it as a much more fun aspect of the game.

It's a matter of opinions? Have I cleared it up for you? Good. Bye now.

This is by no means a shot at you but.....to call the pvp portion of this game an after-thought is an insult to Stephen and staff. DR has/had some of the most enjoyable pvp I have ever experienced. I played Ultima Online for 4 years, Diablo2, Dark Ages of Camelot, AOC, etc.

Balance in pvp is more of an ongoing process than a realistic goal in any mmo. Devs tweek, players find ways to use game mechanics to thier benefit.

Balance in mmo pvp is a never ending process. Much like your trips back to the crab leg station at the buffet. Had to throw that in.

No, not really. You did manage to come across as condescendingly looking down on anyone who doesn't enjoy PvP as an idiot, so if that was your goal, you did really well.

With after-thought, I meant that it was not originally built into the game engine. It was added later, most likely because a large number of players wanted it added. If my post was a bit unclear, then sorry about that.

What you meant to say was "Patched in later"

Gee. Thanks for putting words into my mouth and making me look like a chump. So to rephrase my post, it would sound somehing like this, in short.

Some people (actually most of them...) who PvP think PvE is boring and repetitive. End of discussion.

Don't really know where the hell you pulled out that little conclusion that I "look down on people who don't play PvP like idiots". I play both games. They're both okay to me, players on both sides are okay to me.

I was just annoyed at the fact so many people spam the same question: "I don't understand how you can prefer PvP over PvE!!! Zomg!!!!111ONE"

No more stupid assumptions of me disliking or looking down on someone.

Kthxbai

I think it was this part right here...

Since the edit button seems to have vanished, that was actually not my question. My question was to a person who clearly stated that they do only PvP, and who has chosen to do it in a game that was not initially set up for it. And the actual question was, why would you not go to a game where PvP is the main focus of the developers, instead of this one, if PvP is all you want to do?

That was my original question, and that remains unanswered.

I think we already discussed this...

Several reasons I can think of;

1. I have a fully equipped level 100 character and see PvP as the endgame content (in a way) so I will devote time to it, since I have seen everything there is to see in the PvE part of the game

2. I have friends here, the community is much better than in some other PvP based game (like Exteel or something...)

3. The PvP system is pretty decent (to some guy who enjoys PvPing here) and I like both parts of this game (as in, someone who enjoys farming to get good gear and PvPing for pure competition)

I'm sure there are more reasons, but these seem pretty obvious (at least to me).

I didn't say it was a PvP focused game. What I mean, is that the PvE in this game is so unbearably boring, the only thing worthwhile here is PvP.

Thanks. Those are all good reasons. That's all I was curious about

I would probably disagree with most of the reasons, but since there are no rules demanding that we agree on whether PvP is fun and should be done or not, that doesn't really matter. I don't care for it, you enjoy it, so we'll just both do our thing and leave each other alone to enjoy the game in whichever way we prefer.