The Dark Ages of PvP are upon us

[Ninijutsu]

In legacy haven (world 7 specifically), some PvP characters were alts. Everyone called every dead character an "alt", but in reality, most of those characters took a lot of time and effort to build (or at least, a lot of effort on the part of their bots). Combat was exciting because there was investment. Every moment mattered, because at any moment you could lose a character that you worked hard on, or inflict the same suffering on your enemy.

However, everything changed when the fire nation attacked. In Haven 2, everyone will fight on low stat alts with no investment.

Why is this?
1. The experience point system
All characters have a limited amount of experience. Technically it is unlimited, but even if you only play on one character, you'll often get extended lapses in experience gain. This means there's a limited amount of experience to work with based on how long your character lasts. This doesn't sound like an issue at first, but it compounds with the rest of the list to create an unfortunate situation.

2. Delta scaling
The way delta works right now, if I have FOURTY unarmed and quick dodge up, and an ANT attacks me (ants have like 5 UA), he'll take out more than half of my defense. Which compounds with number 3:

3. Character development is throttled
Characters gain stats at a much slower rate than in legacy haven. It's almost as if haven 2 was designed as though the change and peaceful sliders still existed, and then had them removed. 5 days into the start of world 7, I had over 40 unarmed and a good amount of exploration, and that was a result of studying SHIT curiosities (I'm talking several orders of magnitude below decent endgame LP/hr). In haven 2, it took me at least 50% longer, chain studying the best mass-produceable curios in the WHOLE GAME (offerings, dragonflies, seersbones, feather trinkets) to get similar stats. Late game (assuming nothing changes), I'll still be studying these same fucking curiosities. So instead of getting 1 million LP per day (not a generous number by any means), I'll be getting (and this is a SUPER generous number) 100k~ a day.

This means that it will take significantly longer to build a character that's got a measurable stat edge on casually made alts. On top of this, referring back to point 2, even if someone spends a lot of time and effort making a titan, their stat bonus will do almost nothing to help them against characters on whom 30% or less of the effort was spent.

It gets worse.

4. Haven 2 has REAL permadeath
In legacy haven, you could fight with your high stat main because A: einher/trad would protect him and even make him STRONGER in some cases and B: having higher stats mattered a shitload. In haven 2, your extra effort goes unrewarded AND you'll lose it all when you die. Permadeath is a good thing in principle - I was clamoring for it in legacy and I'm glad we have it now, but in combination with the previous factors, it's going to cause a serious epidemic.

It gets EVEN worse.

5. EXP per LP ratio
There is even more benefit toward making alts. Curiosities with a low EXP cost per LP points are those which take a long time to study. Main characters get extra LP to work with, and thus they'll study curios which are less efficient along this dimension, but this is an important dimension to consider. It will favor those who create alts in batches, with their initial 1000 EXP and another 1000 EXP from minimal play. They'll make a ton of alts focusing on high LP for their 2000 EXP, and they'll make several at the same time, whereas you can only focus on one "main" at a time. This will make the increased LP gain from focusing on a single character even less significant.


The result?
Mid to late game (maybe even right fucking now), PvPers will create large batches of quickly-produced throwaway PvP alts who will be alarmingly effective against "main" characters. Nobody will leave their walls with mains, and combat will no longer carry the same... weight (thank you, I'll be here all week) as it used to.

The solution?
I think accurately changing Delta scaling would solve the problem by itself. What do you think?

[proknah]

2. Delta scaling
The way delta works right now, if I have FOURTY unarmed and quick dodge up, and an ANT attacks me (ants have like 5 UA), he'll take out more than half of my defense. Which compounds with number 3:

This is true.
Especially in PvP, even if you are really developed, you have no chance to win against 2 equally combat experienced but 3 times lower stats characters.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Although I understand where you are coming from, I don't think the delta scaling is an issue. I very much enjoy it to the ridiculousness of titans in Haven 1.

Still, in Haven 2, Big stats = big advantage

This is especially apparent when it comes to running multiple defense maneuvers. You could very well be in a situation where the lower statted individuals need to hit you 5 times to bring down your defenses, and you need only hit them 2. In small fights, this is literally insurmountable if you are good at cycling your defenses, as not only do your defenses get more mileage, they also regenerate quicker because of your agility.

In large fights its still a huge advantage.
Just not insurmountable advantage.

Of course if you look at it only through the lens of how much defense an ant can take away on a single defense bar, without mentioning the agility difference, you can make it sound much worse than it actually is.


Tl;dr

Still very easy to 2v1 in static if your close to maximum delta and with agi bonus.
Potential to fight large odds if you are good at movement kamembert, and they are not quite as good.

It's right about where it should be.

[Jesus_Smith_Nandez]

Please let a nerd like me with no stats have a chance pls

[shubla]

Stat tanking shouldnt be thing.
PVP should be something that you have big risk to get wounded or killed even if your stats are huge.

[proknah]

Stat tanking shouldnt be thing.
PVP should be something that you have big risk to get wounded or killed even if your stats are huge.

Please let a nerd like me with no stats have a chance pls

This is not an issue. The issue is big factions will be using quick replacable alts with full set of equipment and minimal stats to PvP.
They will have more advantage of it than you.

[Jesus_Smith_Nandez]

Stat tanking shouldnt be thing.
PVP should be something that you have big risk to get wounded or killed even if your stats are huge.

Please let a nerd like me with no stats have a chance pls

This is not an issue. The issue is big factions will be using quick replacable alts with full set of equipment and minimal stats to PvP.
They will have more advantage of it than you.

They'll either use replaceable alts or gigantic titans, so...

[TeckXKnight]

Stat tanking shouldnt be thing.
PVP should be something that you have big risk to get wounded or killed even if your stats are huge.

The problem is that it makes 1 uac, 1 mc alts with rage not only capable of killing players with 2,000 uac, but very likely to as they'll be coordinated to work in groups. No risk, no value throw-away alts shouldn't have that much power.

A more elegant solution would need to strip the instant kill power away from fresh alts. In my opinion that'd mean nerfing melee weapons.

[Jesus_Smith_Nandez]

nerfing melee weapons.

Are you fucking crazy? They're weak as fuck to begin with, they nerfed them from legacy when they released the fucking game.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

A more elegant solution would need to strip the instant kill power away from fresh alts. In my opinion that'd mean nerfing melee weapons.

I agree that the elegant solution is to strip instant kill power from characters that are getting max delta'd. I would add the caveat that I would like to see that removed from characters on the other end of the max delta as well.

I refer to your previous general proposition that combat should be a far longer affair (which I think most of us agree with), and that reevaluating how players take damage (especially from *steel* melee weapons) is one necessary component of reaching that end.