by TerraSleet » Thu May 04, 2023 2:53 pm DonVelD wrote:no, look - there's a few "wolves" out there, and LOTS of "prey" or "dinners" as you put it lol, and the only thing stopping them from becoming a "wolf" is their fear. the ratio is like 1 to 100. if they simply went out and attacked someone there's a HUGE chance they'd kill another dinner, there is a very little chance for them to encounter an actual PvPer. but they fear the 1%. and even if they would encounter the 1% - so what, if one wins then there will always be one loser, the game is about dying etc. alas, that's a reasonable enough excuse for people to not fight others.
also the problem with making a guide is that the thread it'd be in would get spammed by people hating pvp or incompetent people and it seems like a huge waste of effort in the end.
I agree that there are orders of magnitude more passive players (prey) than PvPers (wolves) and that the problem is in the 'prey' behavior and not the 'wolves'. I was wrong in saying there were "too many wolves", it's the other way round as you say. What I would like to see is more of a curve between "prey" and "wolf", more players willing to engage in the middleground of fighting neighbors, stealing, raiding and defending.
My main point is that the fear comes from the systems involved in PvP being esoteric and high stakes, so 99% of people just avoid PvP entirely, hoping that everyone they come across is doing the same. Then when they run into the 1% they get frustrated and quit, because they weren't expecting to lose everything. Losing everything to PVP is literally alien to them, a distant concept that they know could happen but "it probably won't happen to me.. right?". It's a fundamental design issue in every 'hardcore PvP' MMO but it's particularly bad here. Two clashing design philosophies: "Persistant world where you (and everyone else) can spend hours upon hours building your character" and "Hardcore full loot PVP where you can lose everything in 20 seconds". And since the devs are adamant on keeping PvP as is, it's up to the community to try to mitigate the design issue by spreading knowledge of how to, well, not lose everything in 20 seconds.
When I look at other games dealing with the same design problem (Albion, EVE etc) one thing that's most notable to me is that it's easy to get started, as low or high stakes as you want it to be, and there's a TON of information online for you to study at your leisure. In Albion it's trivial - and great practice - to gear up in shitty T2 gear, run around and gank the farmers while escaping the roaming groups and fighting 1v1s. You can absolutely do this in H&H, but H&H has none of the things other games have that makes PvP intuitive or simple to learn (Valhalla doesn't really count as it's only good for practicing combat decks and movement). PvPing isn't as simple as buying some gear on the market and running to the right zone, you have to know how to build a claim that isn't vulnerable, know what stats, industries, etc to prioritize, know a bunch of esoteric shit that isn't explained in game (like having multiple characters being basically mandatory, or why [X item/food/curio] is OP and you should be using it, or even the potential ways to die - there are a lot of ways to kill people that aren't immediately obvious to many people, as Snail pointed out with his drowning/alt blocking examples). It's just so much to learn on your own, with so little information online to study, 99% don't bother and pray they don't fall victim to their own ignorance.
Out of curiosity, I decided to search "albion online" in YouTube (incognito mode to avoid algo bias). Many of the top videos are along the lines of "solo beginner guide" or "cheap beginner builds". H&H needs more information along this line IMO, which is why I made the suggestion for a guide along those lines. There are tidbits of knowledge scattered about the forums and discords here and there, but it could use updating and consolidating into threads, videos, infographics, etc.
