How PVP based Tournaments should look like not to be an entire failure.

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Stfu. Also, wtf do you mean they lost half their player base twice?
There's been more people playing the last week, during weekdays, than their records set in OB. The player base has grown greatly and many people have returned from quitting in OB.

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Should we really expect people to play non-stop forever or the game isn't successful? When the trend in games now is put out a major title every year, get big sales right away and let it just fade away when the next installment comes out.

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If there's participation points giving to the PVP season like races then people will play. It's not like someone who isn't good at PVP will suddenly be top of the ladder even with the step you want to include to make it even.

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Unless they are giving me my full 60 pages worth of currency I promise I'm only getting 1-2 good pieces out of it. Someone who hits a 6l in 1 jeweler and 1 fuse, or the guy who got the godly weapon with a single alch will be at a huge advantage. It's no different than merc pvp now except I can use my time to equalize my disadvantage against people's luck.

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In a game that's centered around build diversity this would remove it completely from PVP. "Be as diverse as you'd like, only in PVE though, all competitions are very rigid to make things fair." Booo

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Just say you'll never play end game again. I highly doubt they'll fix it so you're happy.

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For 3 weeks when testing out LLD ideas I was able to get 10-20 matches in daily on EU, my morning time. I don't expect many people in US up for PVP at 7-10am on a weekday so I'd go to EU. Right now, at 11:00pm at night there's someone on my friend's list (firebrand to be exact) putting together 3v3 matches.

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There's way more interest in this than you are giving credit for. But it doesn't really surprise me because you don't have much community interaction so you are just making assumptions based on how you feel.

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Azdrubel wrote:

if I could wager my money on the outcome of such a hypothetical race/tournament, I would place it on the 2handed mace flicker-glacialhammer-tempchains Marauder/Templar with Resolute Technique...

Look, I will take the time to give my opinion on your idea. It sounds fair and competitive on first glance, but once you really think about it you should see the flaws.

First of all, I think your idea is bad - because there would be no real thought-process involved in creating those chars. Simply use some bullshit-mechanics and you win: Stun, Freeze, RT and Temp-Chains.

You basically need Chayula (or Unwavering Stance, but that is just viable for the Duelist who has other problems [was a statement regarding old skilltree - with the new one US wastes too many points]) to counter the stun-mechanic, there is no way around it. As long as this item is not guaranteed in your race there is no point in going for any char but the ones with access to the numerically most and most effective life-nodes. That is Templar and Marauder. Because otherwise you will get permastunned and you will loose. Guaranteed.

You also need either Dream Fragments or Wanderlust, because otherwise you will get permafrozen by Coldcrit- or Glacial Hammer chars. As Cold-crit does not really work well with some random dropped gear, you are left with Glacial Hammer users, the most effective ones being Templar and Marauder (see point 1, because of [Strength,] Lifenodes and Catalyse).

Due to the existence of Resolute Technique there is no real point in using any build revolving around Evasion, because your defence would be completely countered by an RT char. On the other side, IF you are going for RT, you can count any match against an Evasion-based char an automatic win, so no real point in NOT taking RT.

For the lack of Accuracy on some randomly dropped gear, there is also no real point in going for crit, because you would simply miss too often. RT solves this problem too.

Curses are another story. They can only be countered by curse-removal-flasks, and if such are not guaranteed you would have matches where everyone is permanently running around being cursed... And as Tempchains is one of the best, if not THE best curse (plus it synergises very well with the chill-effect from Glacial Hammer [see point 1 and 2 for further reference]) basically everyone would move and fight like a snail.

I won´t mention uniques and how they could completely break this idea of a "balanced" arena. Imagine someone getting a Geofri´s or Wakes...

My point is that your idea would force players to go for the least gear-dependant builds that can stand a chance against other chars. Everyone would make the same char. It would have nothing to do with skill, knowledge or anything. The credo would be: stack as much bullshit on your char as possible. In the end it would not be more balanced - it would be the same shit, but with even more shit and much less fun.

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Azdrubel wrote:

That leads me to another point - your statement of having no sympathy with players who stomp undergeared players in the arena. Well, you cannot imagine how infinitesimally small my sympathy is for people who come to the lvl 28 arena with like lvl 17 or 18 and their random gear they found on the way, to get their faces wrecked (seriously, who could have expected that?!) only to then whine and complain about how unbalanced shit is. I mean, imagine in real life some overweight couch-potatoe suddenly decides to join an MMA tournament, gets his ass handed to him and then complains (assuming he is still alive and capable of speaking) how unfair it is that those guys trained for like their whole life?! That is basically the same.
Still, I get your point, and you are right. The gear curve (especially in lvl 28 PvP) IS way too steep for beginners to compete against fully geared pvp-chars. But at the same time this gear curve enables a lot of builds which, without access to very rare and specific gear, would otherwise be impossible (summoners, wanders, low-life-EE-casters... just to name a few).
At the moment there is no real way around this pretty unfair situation. [or at least I can think of no implementable way - the perfect solution would be a tournament where everyone has access to EVERY unique and can create an item by simply typing in the required stats and then the gameengine creates said item, but where would be the fun in that?!]

Anyways, by having players build their chars around some randomly dropped gear you would not have a variety of builds but you would pigeonhole them into going for the most simple and uncounterable way. And that is neither creative nor would it be fun.

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Hilbert wrote:

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First of all, I think your idea is bad - because there would be no real thought-process involved in creating those chars. Simply use some bullshit-mechanics and you win: Stun, Freeze, RT and Temp-Chains.

Temp Chains is ok but I don't think it should work with "Curses don't expire" they always should be timed on players

Freeze is a massive problem it only can be countered by flasks and 2 unique items and only 2 items offer certain freeze protection.
I think the only skills that should be allowed to freeze should be unspammable ones such as Cold Snap and freeze should be reduced to max 2 seconds(increasable) or 3 seconds(limit impossible to be frozen longer than 3 seconds)

RT should be disabled for PVP.

Stun would be ok if the Stunduration would be capped or else it will turn out like 1.09 smite duels(first hit won because the second player never got out of the stun knockback lock)


Your idea giving players perfect EQ and all uniques pretty much goes toward the execution of the PVP GN Servers on D2, which were popular because modding allowed to fix huge balance issues.
For example a perfect hammerdin in modded PVPGN 1.10f would do only 50% of the damage it does in 1.10+ on B.net(9.600 damage instead of 18.400)
They also worked because certain items didn't exist such as imported/legacy/ith items or Runewords triviliazing the game such as Enigma got removed(or teleport got removed)
If you wanted to use teleport as a non sorc class you had to use charged items which could could be easily acquired.

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Hilbert wrote:

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I like the idea of people grinding for stuff and crafting a build carefully to do well in PVP.

Really? How many Grind PVPers are there?
It's pure Itembased PVP not skill based.
A crit cold caster will always defeat a player not having Dream Fragments or Wanderlust because of Permafreeze.
So you consider yourself a good PVPer if you beat up some players without certain EQ?
You will certainly have fun fighting the same players over and over again because other players got sick of getting one shot by equipped players.

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ultrahiangle wrote:

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Hilbert wrote:

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I like the idea of people grinding for stuff and crafting a build carefully to do well in PVP.

Really? How many Grind PVPers are there?
It's pure Itembased PVP not skill based.
A crit cold caster will always defeat a player not having Dream Fragments or Wanderlust because of Permafreeze.
So you consider yourself a good PVPer if you beat up some players without certain EQ?
You will certainly have fun fighting the same players over and over again because other players got sick of getting one shot by equipped players.

that is the point of arpg pvp, it is not meant to be 100% skill based. you have the wrong mentallity.

there are much better games out there if you want a balanced pvp environment.


not to mention 6v6 and even 3v3 pvp will be more complicated, as support characters and stuff will come into play.

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Veta321 wrote:

It shouldn't be 100% gear based either. Skill should play some part or there will be no long term interest.