Constructive ideas on how to actually (and finally) balance PvP

Feel free to add your own input (or rants) to this.

Here's an idea for a possible system/added coding that I think might benefit the PvP scene.


Disclaimer: THIS IS A SUPER ROUGH DRAFT. Please add input if you can think of ways to improve this. If you have a completely different system in mind, please feel free to share.

I personally feel that what I've drafted up might actually work. If you see major flaws, please point them out.


THE GENERAL CONCEPT:


Damage:

Place a cap on all damaging hits/degens. Assign X number to this cap.

Example of X number: Damage cap: 1000 dmg - i.e. a defending player can only lose a chunk of 1k life (or 1k ES) when they're being hit/are inflicted with a degen.

Immortality/damage immunity:

After you reach X damage dealt, current defending player is granted an immortality buff for a certain amount of second(s). E.g. they can't take any damage from any sources for 2 seconds. All debuffs/degens/curses/ailments are removed when immortality is triggered.


Damage Buffs:

A player that deals X damage is granted a buff to their next damage output. Next hit/series of hit are allowed to inflict 50% increased damage before they trigger a defending player's immunity/immortality. For the sake of continuity, we'll say this X damage would now become 1500 at 1 stack of increased dmg. Maximum stacks of increased damage can be capped to a certain number, so that they don't get too out of hand. Example: maximum increased damage stacks are capped at 3. Meaning the most dmg you can do at 3 stacks before you trigger someone's immortality: 2500.
This buff lasts till the buffed player dies or till a round is over.

In depth explanation of damage system:

Imagine your damage being a pool. There's a 1000 in that pool. Once you dish out that 1000 (regardless of which player you target or dish it out to), the pool hits 0. If the pool hits 0, the person(s) you've hit recently (last 4 seconds) are granted immortality. If you were hitting them with a spell/skill that has aoe/overlaps, the way that 1000 damage is divided depends solely on who was hit first/most frequently. If your spell hits both these players at exactly the same time (think single hit aoe skills like Storm call or Flameblast), they both should take 500 dmg (it's divided evenly) provided they have the exact same resistances/damage mitigators.

Once any defending player is granted immortality due to you dealing damage to them your pool now becomes 1500. In other words, the system is made in a way so that you're rewarded a buff for dishing out damage, but you can't 1 shot people into oblivion because getting that buff triggers people's immortality.

Flasks: All flasks that grant life are disabled in the arena or 1v1s.

Leech: Disabled

Life/ES Regen: Disabled

ES Recharge: Disabled

Solution to skills linked to blood magic support/Blood magic specced players: Players can't damage themselves with skills linked to blood magic.

Revenge system: (for Sarn Arena) the player that killed you most recently takes 200% increased damage from your hits/degens. This buff is separate to the dmg buffs outlined above and stacks with those buffs, making it possible for people with cheaper/not too strong builds to still have a shot at getting revenge on you.

Shrines/King of the Hill: These should be re-worked so that they spawn more frequently and so that they're very useful, yet not game breaking. Example of a shrine effect: you regenerate 20% of your life/ES pool over 8 seconds.


Other mechanics:
Haven't gotten to that yet but I'm still jotting down ideas that I'll add to this thread.

Should move it to pvp-feedback

It's back boys !!!!!!
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1563609

Glad you are thinking about solutions for PvP balance, I often do too, but it's very hard to find one that even half of the people would be happy with.

Before I explain my concerns and input, I should mention the target audience is very important in this game, because it's not a PvP game at the core. It can either be the very few dedicated PvP players who are explicitly looking to PvP in this game as the endgame, or the casual arpg players who just want to hop in and easily have fun without much effort just as in PvE. These two have different needs for their well-being in PvP, the dedicated players invest significant time and currency in PvP to overcome others, while the casuals need an opportunity to opt-in with what they have from PvE. Almost anyone in this PvP community is considered as dedicated in that sense, and when a casual in Tabula is able to compete we obviously look at it as broken, because it negates our investment and efforts, but from a perspective it is healthy for the PvP of this game, because it reduces the still very high amount of whining about legacy and mirrored gear. When designing balance, keep in mind that this game is funded by the casuals, and for that reason the developers target their needs.

Your idea might sound good in some environments, but not sure if it's PoE.
The flaws I noticed:
It's too complex, and too big of a change compared to what we have. The implementation cost would be very high. An overhaul of this size must support the casuals too to be even viable. Even the current system, where in short all damage suffers a penalty is too complicated for the casuals.
It contains too many restrictions on too big game elements, which harshly limit diversity. Even in our current version there are builds not viable solely because they rely on mechanics that can be disabled by the opponent's immunity (leech, bleed, ignite, chaos damage). Your list of disabled defenses would make an even bigger difference between PvE and PvP build, anyone who has invested in those for PvE would have an unexplained disadvantage entering PvP.
This many restrictions limit defense options to a very few, creating an unanimous meta, highest hp pool would be ES, block and dodge would be a must-have.
In your current suggestion blood magic would mean no mana cost for skills.

My suggestion is to design small changes targeted at the most problematic places, not only because that's the best we can get from the developers, but in my opinion - yes an unpopular one - the current balance is not that bad. There are only a few severely problematic mechanics that greatly limit the diversity, and with those fixed, we would have an exponentiatlly healthier PvP. I'm sure most of us can make a list of them, they are so often mentioned.

"

Márkusz wrote:

There are only a few severely problematic mechanics that greatly limit the diversity, and with those fixed, we would have an exponentially healthier PvP.

This is how I have felt for a long ass while as well. The funny thing is we are actually so close to a decent balance but these few stupid things prevent all that from happening.

Jorge's suggestions seem like a complete overhaul that would need the rebalancing of everything else. I don't like it. There are other games for that type of action. The amount of restrictions alone would also kill the diversity that now exists in poe.

Great effort with this Jorge, but yeah I think am overhaul is unneeded. Give existing and new skills appropriate t-values (which Chris agrees should be happening already), address status immunity/pathfinder issues, address flask issues, AoE overlap, immortal builds, winter enchant, melee etc...

Them altering mom corruption and gutting GS jewels seem to be a great start, and if they just stay the course and tame the power creep a bit it could be really good.

I don't think any of this would be positive for PvP. Most of it is very much along the lines of how fighting games try to poorly approach balance now a days. Comeback mechanics, partial immunity based on X amount of time/damage is boooooooo. Without life flasks the damage most builds deal even without crit would basically make life builds extinct. Leaving only massive es pool builds. Even 3.0 you'll be able to have a good balance of glass cannon-like damage with 10k++ es, regen/recharge or not that's where everyone would be going. Not to mention you think off screen play is bad now? No one would want to get anywhere near anyone else with the above changes, we'd have people trying harder then ever to make 1 hitter quitter off screen builds.

Ahfack pretty much nailed it when he said we don't need a major overhaul just the proper TLC we're due.

Great input from all of you.


Yeah I'm having seconds thoughts here now. I do think the system I had in mind would probably be too complex and also face major challenges. And yeah, it'd probably not even feel like PoE anymore. :(

I think my ideas were mostly inspired by other PvP games I've been playing lately, namely Battlerite.

"

Márkusz wrote:

Glad you are thinking about solutions for PvP balance, I often do too, but it's very hard to find one that even half of the people would be happy with.
Your idea might sound good in some environments, but not sure if it's PoE.
The flaws I noticed: too many restrictions on too big game elements, which harshly limit diversity.

"

lapiz wrote:

This is how I have felt for a long ass while as well. The funny thing is we are actually so close to a decent balance but these few stupid things prevent all that from happening.

Jorge's suggestions seem like a complete overhaul that would need the rebalancing of everything else. I don't like it. There are other games for that type of action. The amount of restrictions alone would also kill the diversity that now exists in poe.

Yes yes, finally... my two favorite parrots with one stone.

WTF do either of you know about diversity?

Last time I checked, both of you are basically meta babies or poor clones of better meta baby builds.

I mean, when was the last time either of you gate-keepers built anything what wasn't off-screen and entirely item/char dependent?

Can you even spell melee? It's Em, You, El, El, Aye.

His points are not complicated, or difficult to implement. They (can) have nothing to do with the actual "PvP mechanic" ... indeed, within Sarn, there could easily be an entirely different set of rules to PvP - apart from 1v1.

I apologize, my bias/disgust is showing.

In fact, with dynamic rules which don't benefit the most 'OP king of the hill,' but make being 'king of the hill' exceptionally challenging, Sarn could easily become the sort of inclusive gateway to 1v1, and 3v3 CTF that would encourage "diversity."

Sarn could even become a launch pad for team PvP play.

So before you thumb yer collective GGG stained nose, pull it out of that orifice which tries desperately to excise yer normally vendored fecal matter.

"

Zander_King wrote:

Yeah I'm having seconds thoughts here now. I do think the system I had in mind would probably be too complex and also face major challenges. And yeah, it'd probably not even feel like PoE anymore.

Even partial ideas are still ideas, and far better than the cheap revisionist eliticisms provided by the aforementioned mollusks who leave their negative slime trail upon everything in order to snare the rest of us in their adhesive self-loathing.

Or maybe GGG will make Legacy League permanent for those disaffected tadpoles who'd rather wallow in past glory, than help others build a better future for PvP.

1. No 1 shots
2. No insane regen (ES recharge is ok-ish. Minimal amounts of regen are ok-ish.)
3. Limited flask use


Those are the goals that need to be achieved. It lets your damage stick on your opponent without having 1-2 second burst fights of crazy damage.

Take my fireballs for a second. I'm 100% invested in damage. As it is now, it takes 1-3 hits to kill someone. That's too fast. I'd be ok with it taking 15-20 (Or even more especially vs block/dodge) hits so long as the guy I'm hitting doesn't heal to full between each hit all the fucking time.

You'd have longer battles where in order to win, you'd get small difference margins between build decisions AS WELL AS actual player actions.


Hypothetically, if I went 100% damage, it would mean I'm fairly easy to kill. Maybe 4-5 hits. And it takes me 15-25 hits to kill someone (depending on how tanky they are). I'd be forced to also invest in mobility and use good movement to avoid getting hit. I'd be vulnerable to AoE in close quarters as well as ranged attacks.

Or let's say you're extremely invested in defense. Almost 100%. Your skills should only be able to extremely slowly chip away at your opponent. With minimal amounts of regen on your opponent, you'd have to find ways to stick to him in order to apply constant damage and go through that regen. You'd be vulnerable to mid-damage characters with a decent defensive investment, but strong against high damage/low survivability characters (assuming you're mobile enough to reach them). And obviously against another tank, you'd just have a slap fight that lasts forever.


Basically there would be counterplay involved. Decisions you'd need to make. More swap items you'd need to carry for certain situations. We have NONE of that right now. You're either full life or you're dead. You're either spamming flasks or you're probably dead. You're either offscreening or you're dead.

Those 3 simple requirements are what makes PvP interesting in any game. The chance to counterplay, to showcase your mechanical ability or to make the right item decisions and have it have an actual impact.