What is currently wrong with the end game

[Kreegan]

During the last few weeks I realized that I no longer have fun with PoW and I'm stuck in some constant struggle with the game. This is new to me - PoW has always had bad an annoying sides but the part which made me keep playing (and even spending some money on the game, which I have never done before on a MMO and will probably never do on another game of this kind) greatly overpowered the flaws. This is no longer the case, it looks like I've reached a point where I'm playing mechanically, following some habit that developed for more than two years with PoW, than to actually enjoy the experience. Many, if not all of the reasons for this are related to the end game and many of them have already been mentioned by other people in other threads. You may agree or disagree with them but either way, that's my stance on the matter:

1. The general hostility of the Blood Gods bracket toward gladiators who are not already there for a long time is a major problem. In all honesty the end game of PoW has never been fair but now this is especially pronounced. A gladiator ascending from Primus doesn't face challenges but nearly impossible fights which become his/her everyday life for months ahead. The Conquests partially rectified the issue with the ridiculously slow gearing speed but didn't resolve it for two main reasons - due to the randomness of the Conquest drops and due to the unavailability of orange weapons in that mode. With daily dungeon runs, your fighter will still need two months on the average to find adequate armour pieces. That is of course much better than the... about an year needed to gather similar equipment before the Conquests but it still renders your fighter a punchbag in the meantime. That's the (much) smaller problem however.

2. The bigger one is with the rating requirements for orange gear from the blacksmith and especially the weapons. I honestly have no reasonable explanation for its existence apart from an ad hoc "motivation" to spend money on trophies to boost your fighter so he/she can reach the rating necessary for some orange piece faster. It's a barrier for all new entrees in Blood Gods and is probably one of the reasons why the vast majority of the gladiators in the bracket belong to one and the same old-schoolers and new managers enter and stay in Blood Gods for more than a month very rarely. And of course - it totally sucks to spend two months in an attempt to reach the necessary rating and ultimately fail for whatever reason. I'm in such situation for the second time with Vaargus at the moment. Last month he needed 50 more rating points to buy an orange weapon. This month he was going well but during the last couple of days he lost 15-16 out of 20 battles for all sorts of reasons and now he has to win enough fights to get more than 300 points for one week, which is very unlikely to happen. So another season wasted. I'm fine with patience, as long as it doesn't become the sole purpose of a game. Patience without fun is not what I'm looking for in a product which is supposed to be entertaining.

3. Then comes the randomness. "X screams as he gets knocked to the ground by the massive shot". "X can't find an opening to stand". I'm really sick of the knockdown criticals and I've mentioned the reasons for this many times in many threads so I'm not going to repeat them. It's not only them though. You don't have much control over the environment in Blood Gods. You fight everyone and everyone fights you so your win rate depends on what types of gladiators are there in the bracket and how many of them can be countered by your build. Even then however the constant stream of knockdowns, injuries, knockouts, random negative events like your gladiator throwing away his weapon and whatnot can make a mockery of your planning and strategy. These would be acceptable if they didn't happen multiple times every single day, sometimes every single fight. The only effective way to partially control them is either to pick a super-fast, hard-hitting build (something Elaar/Dunder something), or to pick a super-defensive build (something Spite/Trug something) so you can either spam the nasty things yourself or negate them as much as possible. Otherwise you find yourself in a situation where you've spend months on some fighter only to find out that you can't make him/her useful in the end game no matter what you do.

4. And of course, the balance. I partially mentioned in the the upper point but it needs its own place. The game DOES have a lot of balance issues with skills, races, builds and whatnot but that becomes a real problem when you reach Blood Gods. Then it turns out that some race/specialty/skill combinations are completely impotent in that bracket and you have to either rebuild them from the ground up, essentially turning them into completely different fighters, or just discard the months that you have spent on them and retire them. I'm not talking about problems that can be caused by your bad decisions - they would be entirely your fault - but about problems caused by design issues. Like picking War Cry, without knowing how useless it is and going further down the War tree, so the retrain becomes painful as hell. Or like picking a race which just doesn't have the "right" bonuses for Blood Gods, like Human for instance. The game really needs more frequent balance passes.

This is getting a very long post already so to conclude it - I think that PoW has a great core gameplay and potential to expand into many areas. It is the best MMO that I've played (not that I've played many) and one of the best games for me in general. But the frustration from playing it exceeds the fun for some time. That said, it will be good to know how many of the issues mentioned above are acknowledged as such and if there are any plans to fix them in the near future. Based on that, I'll either quit or continue playing.

[Nate]

Thanks for your feedback Kreegan. Sorry to hear about your frustrations. The Blood Gods bracket is a very competitive environment, it represents the best of the best. It is not for everyone and it certainly isn't perfect. Pit of War is a living game and changes and grows over time. It is possible some of the things you find frustrating will ease over time and possibly change. When Blood Gods was introduced it was a different format than it is now and in the future it may again be different. There will probably always be various mechanics in PoW (or any game for that matter) that do not please everyone. It is difficult to create something that makes everyone happy.

I too would love the ability to have more resources to be able to offer more frequent updates. A dedicated team for data analysis to ensure the best balance possible would be amazing. A team dedicated to just QA and another only working on new ideas and designs would be beyond awesome. Unfortunately, that simply isn't the case and I apologize for not being able to offer that level of service, I really wish I could. At the end of the day everyone has to make their own decision on what they do for fun and what makes them happy. I certainly do my best to offer a product that hopefully helps provide some entertainment for those interested in it and while losing players is always part of the business of games or any business endeavor it never gets easier over time. Thanks again for your feedback, I appreciate it. If you decide to move on, I thank you for your support over the years in the Great Realm and wish you all the best. If you decide to stay I'll instead wish you good luck in the Pit!


-Nate-

[Narol]

If you want my feedback too, I totally agree with Kreegan on points 1 and 2. My suggestion would be to remove completely the ranking requirements for orange wear to make the endgame less frustrating for outclassed younger gladiators as it would allow anyway their trainers to gear them up in orange items slowly seasons after seasons, even if they don't have the time to grind conquests/gauntlets all day long (which is currently my case) with very random results or the money to pay for tons of extra fights...

I also understand the frustrations caused by points 3 and 4, but struggling to find the best builds is an important part of the game and there will always be some builds that don't work however the game is balanced. Perhaps that could made less painful is rebuilding was cheaper and easier... The 200 training points for glads finishing Seasons with a bad ranking goes in the right direction and already helps a lot, I must say.

My 2 cents.

[Vertigo]

I wouldn't agree with the removal of legendary gear rating requirements, as it would lose it's value and the whole point. Now at least I something to compete and try for. Otherwise in order to get legendary weapon, all you'd had to do is to save all your season points and just buy it 2 months later without even trying.

[Cynaidh]

I fairly much agree with everything Kreegan has posted.

Bloodgods as it currently is to me is just a contest between the "have's" vs the "have not's". By "have's" i mean the people who have full sets of orange gear be this by being in bloodgods for a long period, having done insane numbers of conquest/gauntlet runs to get orange gear, or those glads that were able to spend large amounts of trophies at the start of the bloodgods to get large amounts of orange gear before the ability to spend trophies if you where in the top 10 was removed. Of course you can attempt to run the gauntlet and conquests numerous times to luck into a useful orange piece of gear and eventually become one of the "have's", but this leads to the biggest change in PoW to me that is driving me away from this game.

The PoW that i fell in love with playing was a gladiator combat game that while insanely fun only took 15-30 minutes to play a day. During my years of playing and spending money to support the game it has been my morning ritual to get a drink and sit down before work and play PoW. Unfortunately with having a full time job and a family with 3 kids that is about the total amount of time i can put towards any game at this time. So with the change of this game into one that now requires, at least for the high end play, large amounts of time (to do conquests/gauntlets) to have any chance to progress in the end game has in fact ruined the game for me. My hope that has kept me playing was that you could just accept the losses at the beginning and slowly gear up, but that has proven to be a false hope because of the artificial gating in bloodgods that comes from having to have 30 wins a week and then rating requirements to purchase good gear even if you are able to finally saved up enough points to afford them. This is further compounded by the fact that there are two pools of orange gear, ones that you can purchase with points and then ones that are given out in the gauntlet/conquests/bloodgames. This means that there is gear that you can only get by playing the time sink part of the game, which honestly sucks in my opinion.

Once this season is over i am going back to lurking in the shadows on the forums here rather then being an active player. But I will keep hoping that Nate gets to a point where he can do the hardcore server which i am hoping will be more like the original pit of war.

[Adoede]

I have 3 glads in blood gods who are in nearly full orange gear from conquests who will still not hit 1000 rating points this season because their gear, though orange, is not optimized to my build-strategy for them. So they're stuck in limbo because they can't get better orange gear due to low ratings points and the purple gear is inferior to their un-optimized orange gear. Thus, all their BGP's go unused.

I agree with Kreegan, Narol and Cynaidh that some aspects of blood gods could use some tweaking. At the moment, the jump from Primus to Blood Gods is laughable. And as Cynaidh points out, the current BGP/ratings point system for gearing up actually exacerbates the imbalance because the "geared up" glads get better faster than the new glads can improve to catch up.

I'm also with Kreegan in thinking the game gets less fun when its an endless grind to luck into better gear in order for your glads performance to improve. I actually enjoyed the end-game dynamics of primus more than what we currently have in blood gods because of the ability to tailor your build and gear and strategy against others doing the same. I think the blood gods game would be much more fun if the focus was on strategy and experimenting with build designs and boosts instead of on hoping for the right gear pieces to come along. I'd love to be able to try stacking gear with the boosts that I want to experiment with in blood gods to try to come up with a novel build, but the current gearing system makes that near impossible since it is so difficult to complete any particular build idea.

My suggestion - If gearing just went back to what gearing is like in the regular game, then managers could tailor their builds exactly as they want them in a reasonable amount of time. Then the focus of the game shifts back to the strategy element instead of being so "luck" based as it is now. And managers can try something out and if it doesn't work, they can re-gear in a different direction in a reasonable amount of time. Then the game really becomes about which manager has the superior tactical, build, and gear strategy as I imagine was the intended dynamic desired for the blood gods bracket. After all, all of the glads in blood gods are supposedly the top of the class...it should be more competitively balanced than it is at present.

How to implement this - Take out rating point requirements and allow BGP's to carry over from season to season. Then all glads can eventually access the gear they want.

[Pit Lord]

"I will be happy to see the rating gear with + stats removed and replaced with some shining gear (colored) or some nice title."

04-24-2013, 11:15

[Apoca1ypse]

RE Gear: This season, I finally managed to get all the legendary gear needed to kit out Ahhnold, and I finished Bruce last season. That took a hell of a long time, and that's after getting an orange nearly every season. It'd take a long time for new gladiators to come close to being on par, even with the gauntlet. Personally, I'd love for the rating requirements for orange gear to go down. Maybe not disappear, but certainly go down. Those of us sitting at the top have had our fun with our elite shinies, now lets make them really acceptable for the masses.

RE Balance: TBH the fight engine feels the most balanced it's been in a while, for me at least. For that, I'm really grateful.

RE Blood Gods: I agree that blood gods is a real PITA as newer/worse glads get dumped on by top tier glads. It's party why I down sized to 2 gladiators. It's not that Blood Gods is bad, as it IS meant to be all about the "Best of the Best" but when that is the only option open to gladiators/managers, it leads to a disheartening end game.

I still think that my favourite system was the old primus system, before Blood Gods was introduced. Sure, it had it's issues, but your gladiator would eventually find it's "place" on the ladder and you'd be paired up against equally competitive gladiators most of the time. For the most part, if your build improved, then you would move up the ladder, still have a challenge, and eventually, if you were good enough, get to the pointy end. I know I'm not explaining it right, but basically, you'd get paired against equally competitive glads more often, and be left feeling like you had a chance (especially with incomplete gladiators), and work your way up to the superstars, rather than getting dumped on by them every 5-10 fights like you do now. Note: it also meant less easy match ups, so w/l records were rarely over 60%



***Following on from this, I would love the old Primus system to come back, but I want Blood Gods to stick around. Maybe Primus goes back to what it originally was, and Blood Gods becomes a separate competition like Seasons have? In face, Nate, can we have this? Pretty please?

[Prinny]

RE Gear: This season, I finally managed to get all the legendary gear needed to kit out Ahhnold, and I finished Bruce last season. That took a hell of a long time, and that's after getting an orange nearly every season. It'd take a long time for new gladiators to come close to being on par, even with the gauntlet. Personally, I'd love for the rating requirements for orange gear to go down. Maybe not disappear, but certainly go down. Those of us sitting at the top have had our fun with our elite shinies, now lets make them really acceptable for the masses.

RE Balance: TBH the fight engine feels the most balanced it's been in a while, for me at least. For that, I'm really grateful.

RE Blood Gods: I agree that blood gods is a real PITA as newer/worse glads get dumped on by top tier glads. It's party why I down sized to 2 gladiators. It's not that Blood Gods is bad, as it IS meant to be all about the "Best of the Best" but when that is the only option open to gladiators/managers, it leads to a disheartening end game.

I still think that my favourite system was the old primus system, before Blood Gods was introduced. Sure, it had it's issues, but your gladiator would eventually find it's "place" on the ladder and you'd be paired up against equally competitive gladiators most of the time. For the most part, if your build improved, then you would move up the ladder, still have a challenge, and eventually, if you were good enough, get to the pointy end. I know I'm not explaining it right, but basically, you'd get paired against equally competitive glads more often, and be left feeling like you had a chance (especially with incomplete gladiators), and work your way up to the superstars, rather than getting dumped on by them every 5-10 fights like you do now. Note: it also meant less easy match ups, so w/l records were rarely over 60%



***Following on from this, I would love the old Primus system to come back, but I want Blood Gods to stick around. Maybe Primus goes back to what it originally was, and Blood Gods becomes a separate competition like Seasons have? In face, Nate, can we have this? Pretty please?

Instead of typing a long assed text...^^^^That^^^^

[Alba Kebab]

For gear advantage, managers who have completely kitted out glads with orange gear in BG also have average/not so great glads with average gear, as well as new recruits who have to go through the whole process too - just like everyone else. Unless a manager is never going to train new glads again, the comparative gear advantage/disadvantage is eventually the same for everyone. Given how the game balance is always shifting from one 'winning' build to another, I don't think anyone will ever be able to sit on a glad and never train a new one again. So over the long run, no one has any permanent gear advantage just because they are older, most will have both older glads and younger glads, your less-equipped younger glad today will be the better-equipped older glad to my new guy tomorrow, and so it goes on.
The only real advantage early entrants in BG have is prior knowledge of what works/doesn't work, but that early bird knowledge advantage is the same in any game - that in itself is not unfair. And you only need to have one glad to make it into BG to match with everyone and have the same knowledge yourself.

If managers are feeling constrained by time/budget/attention span/whatever but would still like to 'enjoy' the game without being forced to play against the top because you feel that's not somewhere you 'belong' or ever will 'belong' due to your constraints, then I think the 'opt-out from BG(let me stay in the kiddie pool)' option should be a better suggestion than 'make BG easy for everyone'. I suppose this is along similar veins of making Primus more active so those who do not wish to be in BG can still enjoy play in a sandbox. But there probably need to be some clear rules/restrictions governing what happens if you choose not to go to BG when you are able to(for example, no HoL slave and no stable ranking for you...for obvious starters).
If some managers simply wants to 'win easier' and not because they don't want to reach the top(in other words, you still want to sleep with hot girls but want them to come to you instead), then seriously, they need to go play an 'everybody win' game like turnip-farming or something.