How to create a compelling PvP experience: Bastions of War

If you want to skip the intro story about Bastions of War, just read below the bold line in the middle of the post.

Let me tell you a story, friends. Ten years ago, Neverwinter Nights was my love and joy. The game allowed for deep and varied character builds, and allowed players to create whatever worlds they could imagine and run them on their own dedicated servers. A family friend spent years designing and curating a server named Carfax Abbey, which is still running today, 13 years later. The server was massive and sprawling with meticulously designed cities, caverns, in depth custom coded crafting mechanics, and endless challenging monsters to test your strength.

I loved Carfax, but after a while, I found myself instead logging on more and more to a PvP server called Bastions of War. New characters were given enough XP to instantly reach a mid level and start building their character. Once they had used up all their free levels, they chose a side: Good or Evil.

They were transported to the base of their respective team, and given enough gold to buy starting equipment. You could buy premade items from vendors, some with unique stats and modifiers useful for specific builds, or you could use vendors to design gear, similar to PoE's master crafting system. For example, you'd tell the vendor you wanted to craft a Scimitar, then ask for Keen, then ask for +5 Attack bonus, etc. The strength of the items you crafted were limited by item level requirements and how much gold you had.

Once geared up, the player would then take a portal to the battlefield. Matches were typically 30 minute long 16vs16 team deathmatches, and players would earn gold and xp by killing enemies and by receiving bonuses at the end of the match. If teams were imbalanced, rewards would be skewed to compensate, i.e. a member of the weaker team would earn double rewards for killing a member of the stronger team, and vice versa. This encouraged players to self regulate and switch to their characters of the opposite team to keep matches fair.

Like PoE, Neverwinter Nights and DnD werent designed with this type of gameplay in mind, so the creators of Bastions of War made extensive changes to various skills, spells, and abilities to achieve a more balanced and fun PvP environment. They made it harder to permanently disable an enemy by constantly knocking them down, nerfed spells and abilities that had instant kill mechanics, and tons of other changes.

They took a game that was not meant to be played as a team pvp arena, and they made a server with a flourishing and dedicated following that lasted for years. I think GGG can do the same with PoE, if they learn a few lessons from Bastions of War.

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1. PvP only characters should be completely separate from PvE. When I made my first PvP only character, I was promptly destroyed by people who had immensely better gear than me which they had gotten from PvE content on other characters. In order for a compelling PvP experience, all players must be on even footing. PvP only characters should not have access to a shared stash. They should start with enough currency to craft starting gear using either existing master crafting mechanics or buy premade gear from vendors. Gaining currency and xp from PvP and subsequently upgrading your gear through crafting and static vendors has to be the only way to strengthen a pvp only character.

2. More effort must be done to rebalance PvP. I know this one is obvious and GGG is already doing it, but still should be discussed. Vanilla Neverwinter Nights was terrible for balanced pvp. High level spells and the Devastating Critical feat gave ways to reliably instantly kill enemies. Monks could be untouchable lightning fast gods. The creators of Bastions of War meticulously tweaked spells an abilties across the board in order to maximize the variety of viable builds and create an even playing field. IMO, PvP might need to be made slower as a whole compared to PvE. At the moment, the average character's dps is *very* high relative to their survivability, which makes for very abrupt fights.

3. Open up development to the community. Bastions of War was made by a very small group of people working for free. To make up for it, most of the maps were made by community members and submitted to the admins. PoE has a passionate community that I'm sure would be more than happy to design maps, pvp specific unique items, and more.

4. Design PvP battles for more players. There's a reason every multiplayer game uses larger teams than 3 vs 3. Larger maps and more players allow for more strategy and tactics in positioning and movement. As mentioned above, PvP might have to be slowed down a bit over all before this happens, since it's already absurdly easy for one player to instantly kill another. Larger battles would be tough at the moment without more rebalancing, and of course, more players.

5. Friendly Fire. Make people think twice before sending loads of AoE damage in a crowded fight, or coordinate with teammates to all drink topaz flasks before flooding an area with sparks.

I think PoE has a lot of potential for a rich PvP experience, and I think Bastions of War is a great place to start to draw inspiration.

Thank you for reading :)

Example of why PvP will never go anywhere in this game.

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MullaXul wrote:

Example of why PvP will never go anywhere in this game.

yes , its true. We got suggestion from DOta , from CS, from some mmorpgs, from Sims and so on. People stop plz , we need only balance of some OP blocks in game and rebuild of arenas a bit, pvp community in poe knows how to play and most have fun more then 2 years of broken game!!!And PLZ stop whine about injustice in ur items, tell u 100 time , go play this beautiful game more ,read more , trade more and ask (some of top pvpers got twich channels and communicate with viewers).

You are 100% right