(UPDATED with Prizes!) Weekend Cut-throat Event

Yea definately agree, you have to be careful in who you party with and be wary of them at all times!

also interested to hear your guys ideas on an idea I posted in this thread

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/28850/page/16

..about hiding lower levels on the mini-map etc

for me it was not really fun...
chasing after already gone people, everybody fleeing contact. not enough PvP situations excepted for WP ambush and afterward automatic campings from the ambushers...

way too much empty instances, honestly I would have prefered some way to ensure that people automatically enter every first instances with less than 12 peoples inside.
the "first to enter" create the 12 slots instance, everyone entering terraces after him will enter his instance.
after 11 more players are inside, the 13th enterring terraces will create a new 12 slots instance... etc...

Ok it may get some problems with big party wich will seldom cannot all enter the same instance...
it'll be a drawback for big team, but anyway it'll certainly balance the fact that not everybody can have such a big team.
it could even break the big team : a party of 6 try to enter a 3 slots left instance, whenever the three first enter, hence closing the instance, the team is split in two...
it'll be really more fun to have to always have some sort of pvp all along the way.
with something like that you'll have the feeling to always be chasing after somebody together with the feeling to always be hunted!!

ps: sry for my poor english writing skill, I haven't sleep alot though... thanks for reading and trying to understand anyway ^^.

Nah its all good, I can understand where you're coming from.

I always imagined that cut-throat would be that you have this big world and you would go about completing the quests much like the default league, and every now and again you would encounter another player (roughly around your level) and would have to duke it out. Afterwards your gear would be gone and you'd have go out into the wilderness and re-forage(and be given the opportunity to re-forage at least a little)

..not get repeatidly slaughtered straight out the gates

this is a pretty radical idea but what if you were restricted to PvPing other players only in the area of your latest quest. I dunno this probably wouldn't work with the alternate routes you can take in act 2

Some times it was fun, other times not so much.
I hate it how everybody just runs as soon as they see you. No way to catch up, theyll just make a portal, and poooof gone.

Also they should make the notification better. I'm not really paying attention to the chat since there is too much bullshit in there, so i didn't really notice that somebody joins, which can be quite inconvenient so either remove it, or make it a bit better (different color font for example, so you can see it at least easily trough all the white color text). Also some notification when you are checking your skill-tree would be nice
I also didn't like how high level people were camping the start of some instances, after making the mistake of joining an instance without looking who it was, i always had to check to join an empty instance.
And lastly, if you play with a group, why not load simultaneously? I had the problem once that we were going to invade some group, but we loaded 1 by 1 (since some people pc is faster) and there was no way we had chance in a 1v4. Especially since it was after brutus and we couldn't go back into the previous instance. I really hate this. You are playing in a group, so why let us enter 1 by 1? a witch is useless without a tank.

If you disable the chat (what I always do when going in instances), there's no problem to notice the 'enter' and 'leave' messages.

I was the last one (of 2) who has leaved _Z_'s party, around 30 minutes before the end - and here are the reasons:

-the overall situation was more stress then fun to me (cant exactly say from what reasons, but I ended with huge headache..)

-we tried to follow the exp race quest in first position, leading into a nearly "clean run" (without attacks, only one victorious fight at the climb) until cavern of woe. There we fighted again, and lost most of our equip; but managed to proceed to merveil. Before we finished the quest we lost our 3rd member completely; and at the forrest we (2 left) were completelyunder attack from different parties, sucking all my gear up...

This leaves me just barenaked, with a Templar there is a huge disadvantage in a race league: you have no much choices on defense (in the important early game) and the skills you get are mostly bound to specific weapons - so ou would have to have enough "backups" with suiting sockets - I ended up with no weapon and no skill I could use, not enough int for staff or sceptre, no red sockets, and no strong maces available - at the end I fighted monkeys barehanded, then with a low level sword and infernal blow - but with no chance to survive other's attacks.
On the other hand, if you have nothing, even to go for the mud flats to get anything to equip isnt easy - not against the monsters and even less against others...
{I think there is some balancing needed between the classes or maybe just between melee and projectile fighting - at least for such kind of races, could be a different case for "real" level-based pvp}

But, the funniest fact at all this: because of my "poor" char choosing, and even for my overall playtime of only ~150 minutes, I catched the #3 rank of my class! :D
What I noticed as I followed the last 1/2 hour at the forum's ladder list: I dont had lost more then 1 position in this remaining time - even without still participating on the race...

P.S: I dont think I participate this again under the same as the actual rules and balancing, this is definitively not my kind of playstyle.

Some basic stats available here:

http://www.templeofexiles.com/ladder-race/Apr-22-2012CutThroat/character

per character only at the moment no graphs. This would be a lot more fun if it showed the kills as well.

I'll try to get data out tomorrow. 54,966 records this time, that's more than ever.

I'm not a Pvper but thought I'd give it a go and I got completely murdered, which wasn't unexpected tbh.

Overall I felt that the PvP as set up for this felt a lot like D2 Pk game play. Arriving late and soloing I was mainly killed while questing, usually by higher lvls and or gangs.

Best fight I had was when my instant was invaded by a similar lvl duelist (I was a witch), neither of use had enough damage so it involved a lot of running around as we tried to get the upper hand on each other, happy with this one even though I lost. Worst was getting gate camped by a group.

I came away feeling that:
.this is somewhat biased towards the abusive players.
.The damage needs nerfing (I was usually 2 shoot, having been stun locked by the shear impact from the first hit)
.That it would probable help if the instant's only said occupied rather that by who and how many (at least hunters would need to take a risk rather than just go for easy meat).

I'll probable have another go anyway next time. Partly to see how it changes and partly to have a go at improving now I've a better idea of what to expect.

Joining late into the league solo gives you a big disadvantage.

But I had a lot of fun :)

Really didnt expect parties! Have never been a fan of PVP but thought the cutthroat sounded interesting and besides hadnt been able to do a race for like 3 weeks, so decided to give it a try. Has no idea how it wouldl work, lol, still not sure. Was a little stumped while waiting and I read the chat that people were forming parties. Whats the point of that, 3-4 people ganging up on solo players, coudnt there be a team only gang war style cut throat league for that.

Anyway, played the game, was just about to hit level 20 when I got ambused by a party of two, a witch to cold snap me and a Maraduar to attack me while frozen, lol, not really fun combat. During the course of the game I got ambused 4 times,everytime by parties lol, never really saw the notice that someone had entered the instance, to focused on normal looting. Excpet for the last ambush I was able to escape the others.

Still not sure how to get into an instance with others, as I played and moved from instance to instance I always seemed to be the only one in the instances.

As it is I dont think I will do another one unless I were to also party, a party with cold snap and phase run is just to much for a solo player.

Oh one personal opinion, the instances arent that huge, I dont think that players should be ablel to see the location of another on the mini map. When a solo person gets attacked by a party it would be nice to be able to try to manuver to attack the party members solo, but witih the mini map they can pretty much always see where you are and gang up.

I only played for 30 minutes since it was late and I rolled a duelist. From my experience the pvp was a bit bah. Not worth it for the first player-levels. I started late and avoided ganks on terraces. In mud flats I was ganked several times by a group of 3 untill I created a new instance. It was kind of trivial to get away from the 3 players since they did not really do much damage and they also didn't have any slow ability. I was then ganked by a lonely marauder using shield charge and frost nova! Shield charge is pretty useless as soon as you keep moving, frost nova is a pain because of the slow effect but barely enough damage to get scary. Fighting a marauder is just a no-go since he has so good damage mitigation (hp/armour). Besides he was a level ahead of me. Anyway another clean instance was created and I got through The passages without a single ganker. I got to The Ledge as level 5 and surprisingly it took some time before I was truely ganked. There was 2-players making a move on me. A ranger and a duelist. I managed to escape, but they did quite some damage with poison arrow especially. The dual strike from the duelist was beyond abysmal.
After that I reset the instance and made it through without any more distractions. I was getting tired and I knew that it would end too late for me so I stopped playing there. I did not feel that it was bad at all. Marauders and rangers were really annoying and probably a bit unbalanced in this pvp-environment, while I laughed at the duelists. I did not see any witches or templars so I cannot judge them. Also weaponscaling abilities like dual strike seemed pretty tame compared to other abilities and frost seemed like the best damage in the game because of the slow.

ps. To create a new instance or joining another players instance in pvp-modes, hold down "ctrl" when clicking the node on the map. You will have all relevant instances shown and at the bottom you can click create new.