#UniteThePVPPlayers: Movement - Immunity and Farming

Not much still happening on the AM thread so we'll move on to the next topic

This is the next in a series of focused topics for PVP players to discuss the current state of PVP, what needs improving and where how it needs to grow.

General rules of the road:

1. Stay on topic
2. Do not dwell on past history. Focus your responses on improvement and growth moving forward.
3. If a specific point gets contentious, I'll pull the debaters into PM to resolve and we'll post the conclusion back into the thread
4. Be creative and have fun with your ideas. It's still just a game.

Topic:


The intent of this thread is to get consensus solely on the side effects of player movement, namely immunity and farming. This has the potential to be the most unique topic since it's an effect that the arena environment enables as a direct result of player action. Going back to the original "skill" thread, it's neither direct skill nor composite skill but a bit of both. I've proposed a list of questions below to get us started but please feel free to bring up additional points as long as they're on topic.

1. Is immunity granted in a fair and consistent way? Consider both the 1v1 and the XvX scenarios
2. Is immunity strength and duration appropriate for fostering a competitive PVP system?
3. What are the pros and cons of the different ways immunity is granted? Should some grant methods be removed?
4. Farming - does it belong in PVP or is it a "cheese" tactic?
5. If farming should remain in PVP, are there adjustments to be made that would prohibit abuse, "cheese" or any anti-competitive behavior?

Thanks and good luck!

4 & 5. You can't "farm" immunity unless your opponent continuously gives you the opportunity to counter in the first place. It takes two people performing specific actions for a counter to even happen. With those kinds of restrictions there has never been any ground for it to be called a "cheese" tactic.

Honestly the only real debatable point about immunity at this time is the shielding. Even that can't really be addressed now since at this point it is incredibly weak in comparison to the damage available, but it wouldn't make sense to adjust it till damage is balanced, things like support roles are balanced, seeing if rps comes back or not, then looking at the survivability and damage available to players, and balancing the shielding in relation to that.

Fair enough. The wording of my questions is not intended to express my personal view but a summation of comments I've read in other threads. Trying to capture as many different views as possible at the start of the conversation so we can talk it through.

1. No, putting aside how vastly affected it is by latency, it also creates issues when it comes to "Just" reward, Especially when more than two parties are involved.

2. Not in my opinion, If it had to stay I'de have it be vulnerable to stripping if the rewarded party made a mistake and got countered within the "Immunity" time window - atleast somehow rewarding both sides when its appropriate.

3. Immunity is just another bonus reward for a counter on top of Counter DMG and Knockdown, Pros are obvious - survivability.
Cons are probably set in implementation, It's just too much of a reward, at no point should someone be completely invulnerable to counters - not even after performing a successful counter themselves.

4. Your wording was fine, "Farming" is a real thing - The immunity, aside from giving you a shield, rewards you with time where you can do anything and not get countered, basically forcing your opponent(s) to care more about preventing damage to themselves, than actively interacting with you.
In that time the next decision to make is completely up to them, and the more "windows" open by more opponents the easier the "Farming" gets.
It's not cheese because that's how the Devs wanted the system to work, but then again they wanted all kinds of things and look where we're at..
Getting a counter is always the right choice and how PvP should be, so no one can blame people for "Farming", They're basically showing they know how to PvP - It's just up to us to give feedback on how unfair the reward is for said correct action atm.

5. I don't believe Immunity as is has a place in PvP, but if they somehow implemented some of the old Ideas Buzz had, like:
If A counters B and gets Immunity, B gets up and Counters - A losses its Immunity Immediately, gets Counter damaged but avoids getting knocked down. (In an unfair engagement this would most likely mean the smaller party wont enjoy the "Farming" as much)
-- Some sort of "Mid way" solution to a system that is over-rewarding.

So again, Countering is not Cheese, hence "Farming Immunity" Isn't Cheese either, It's just too much of a reward in its present state.

Oh boy. This is either going to end really fast or go on for a long time.

First and foremost as Abolix has said. There is no such thing as "farming" immunity. It is only plausible to get constant immunity if the enemy is giving them out. Claiming farming immunity is cheese is the same thing as claiming countering is cheese.
I am going concede a bit and say they could remove counter immunity, but currently is one of the only mechanics that is slowing down the ever-growing burn in PvP. It would be beyond levels of stupidity if they were to remove counter immunity without addressing the damage in PvP.
Another thing. If immunity is removed it fundamentally removes the possibility of a 2v1 scenario and coincidentally buffs up Tank Powers [They have access to 2 breakouts]. If immunity were to be removed it would allow a player to breakout and simply lunge the player that countered them.

Wish I could thumbs up that alone o:

If that was true, we would have no 2v1 before the system was implemented.. So that's just not true.
I never understood that claim, anyone who played competitive PvP before Immunity was implemented would tell you it was definitely possible to come up victorious from a bad engagement, me Included - and I'm not that amazing.
Edit: Also, RPS is a must obviously, once debuffs are on the table Tanks arent an issue.

That's a counter window issue, another thing that needs to be addressed. /:

Might have existed but was not possible for a player to take down 2 players with counters. Sure if you were to overwhelm them with damage or they were just flat out bad at playing you could make it out of a 2v1 but without immunity if you go against 2 decent players you are guaranteed a loss

If you go up against two decent players WITH immunities, you're pretty much guaranteed a loss.

Of course it was possible.. I'm telling you it happened, like factually ._.

And I'm not talking about bad players either, these kind of engagements would just naturally end up that way if you knew how to clip well, were good at countering and kiting.

Please understand this game existed for a long time without Immunity, if you think there was no PvP or bad engagements before it existed, you're wrong - if anything there was MORE PvP going on, and at the time the complaints werent even directed at unfair engagements, they were, like always.. at PvE sipping into PvP.

Not really. Care to explain?

I have t agree it was possible without immunity. I've seen it myself. Of course, that was before WM/AM damage

Yeah.. that's why I agreed with him about this:

There is no way they can just remove it without a plan, if they do want to trace back to better times there are a lot of things to revert first.

I would be fine without immunity, though damage has to be counter balanced.
Also, I want RPS back to ensure a tank is in a group.
I want Battle Tanks, Battle Trolls, and Battle Healers to be an actual thing, instead of this DPS fest.
I Dont care if taps are brought back either, just fix the mess we have now

1. Gonna say Yes, and no.
2. For the current damage, and health pool ratio, Yeah the strength is fine.
3. Immunity cons: the other player is destroyed easily
Pros: invulnerability and survivability extensions. Makes finishers more appealing.
4. in a perfect world no. Not at all
5. Yea. It's called FOTM ERMAHGERD DAMAGEZ AND BERN FER DAYZ

Two decent players aren't going to give up back-to-back immunities which would allow the lone player to beat them.

The point is players who know what they're doing will usually triumph over those that don't, regardless of immunities. And like Soul, I've been doing arenas/legends/open world since the first week of release, so I've seen all iterations of PvP. It wasn't the spamfest some claim it to have been back then, but a lot has changed, and the FIRST thing that needs to be done is to rein in damage... imo.

(By "like Soul", I mean I've seen PvP without the extra layers that it now has)

And 2v1 didn't exist in a sense in the old system unless one or both of said players attacking were very poor or there was an incredibly high skill difference. Of course it still existed - 2v1s are possible in most MMOs - but only when facing people who are of very low skill and/or there is a very large skill difference.

For example I'd compare it like this:

In the old system, 2 good players would quite easily kill a great/top level player in a 2v1 situation.

In the current system, 2 good players will still win but will have a much harder time of it, the better single player will have a chance to last for longer and skill has a greater effect on the outcome of the fight.

You have to think of it this way, back when the old system was implemented the game was still reasonably new. The overall level skill of players then was so much lower than it is today. If you were to compare yourself now to how you were then for example, your current self is more than likely much better in every way. I know for sure looking back at the player I was then I have improved in every single facet of the game significantly.

Don't just take my word for it, check some videos of old school top level PvP matches. You can see that everything - from clipping, co-ordination, counter mechanic skills etc. - were far far lower than today. That much is quite obvious despite the game being a lot different today.

I can guarantee that if the old system was implemented today, 2v1s would be far far less common than they were back in the day (possibly even to the point where you just wouldn't see it happen between groups of good to great players). 2v1s are still barely possible now in a similar set of circumstances.

I also do not believe that the reward is "too much" in the current game. Let's look at the pros you gave to counters:

• Knockdown
• Damage
• Counter immunity

Knockdown

This by itself is not really much of a benefit, multiple powers, weapon combos and even tap attacks also provide the same advantage.

If you're referring to maintaining the current hard stun, this also becomes far less useful in a world were counter immunity does not exist. Counter punishment is simply removed from the game as it is no longer a viable form of advantage (in arenas multiple powersets have CC recoveries, or in legends you can simply time your breakout trinket to block someone in the middle of counter punishment.

Damage

This is barely an advantage for counters conisdering how low the damage for counters is. In legends your counter is going to be netting you around 600 damage - this is less than 10% of any of the legends healthpools, even the squishiest of the legends (7863 hp). It's only slightly over 5% for the more durable legends as well (10320 hp).


In comparison most tap holds in legends deal a similar amount of damage. If counter punishment didn't exist, you would probably experience a net DPS loss if you attempted to counter people rather than building up and using the most dps efficient combos and clipping them.


In arenas it is certainly much better, where you can net around 4-5 k with a successful counter (numbers are probably slightly off as I haven't really played arenas much in 2-3 months). This is around 15-20% of someone's life total in comparison to the 5-10% of legends. However with damage in the current state it is in, the damage counters do in arenas is still severely lower than most other forms of damage.

Counter immunity

This is most definitely the biggest and main advantage of counters and has been since the introduction of it. It allows far safer attempts at landing counters with far less drawbacks (unless you end up missing a block break part way through immunity) and allows for counter punishment which is an offensive advantage. However it is important to note that you can not do both, you have to choose whether you will be defensive with your immunity or be aggressive, which is usually dependent on the situation.

Despite these huge advantages however, counters are still weaker than AMs and weapon attacks in the current meta. The only reason they're better in legends is because of counter punishment & the majority of the legends only having a trinket to escape (and the comparatively lower weapon damage and lack of AMs).

This is probably the closest thing I can comprehend of how combos work in fighting games outside of KI or games with combo breakers. You're helpless to prevent a combo once a player has landed the initial hit.

TL;DR

Counters currently are not too rewarding due to how broken damage is arenas and to an even more ridiculous degree in open world.
If damage is revamped and counter immunity removed, counters will need to be buffed in other ways. The current damage will not do, in legends particularly. Otherwise counter mechanics become inefficient and unimportant to optimal play.

1. Yes, completely. You get countered when you perform a counterable action at the incorrect time.

2. Of course, especially with current damage. Countering is the most difficult part of the game to master and is often the deciding factor at top levels of play. Anything that rewards counters more increases the skill floor and ceiling, however having an inherently competitive system at this point in the games life cycle may not be the best route.

3. In a perfect world different amount of rewards would be given depending on the counter. For example block breaking is inherently more difficult than lunging and blocking in particular. However that's far too complicated and doubt the devs would ever be able to dedicate the time to fully investigating it.

4. It isn't cheese at all, if an opponent consecutively makes mistakes and continues to gets punished then that's on the other player

5. Probably the stripping of counter immunity after they are countered, but this still comes with downsides (such as providing even bigger bonuses to classes with multiple breakout abilities, or making breakouts in legend even more broken than they are currently).

Yea can't agree with you here knowing the Devs' track record. An abandoned gutter would be cleaner than that.

99% of what you just said Clutch only applies to Legends.

And the lonesome 1% left is dulled out with your mark "Guaranteeing" things based on speculation.
Yes, we all probably progressed this way or another, but there's only so far anyone can go under the limitation of RPS.

I can Guarantee, if we get the old RPS, without Immunity, and DPS is kept under control, you'll see yourself in the same position you would be facing lets say.. Slob and Arquiero in a 2v1 today.

Also you saying Counter DMG is low makes me suspect you just didnt play Arenas back in 2011, Counter DMG spiked several times during that year, and at several points an on point BB would almost one shot aswell.

Immunity was introduced because of how DPS was getting out of control, It wasn't some strike of genius to gameplay mechanics..
If they attended the actual issue instead of presenting us with new "Layers" and "Systems" to balance out the older one - we'd have one simple functioning system.

Edit: Also, you have 3 people right here saying 2v1 existed (In every aspect) just fine, And If necessary I'll get you more /:
Tho I guess our word or anyone else's for that matter will not suffice.

Why reply to me when I specifically addressed the various aspects of Arenas and Legends separately? Go back and re-read my message and you will see that, just like this:

That was in referal to current counter damage, that was the whole topic of my post stating that counter damage would need to be revamped. I EVEN LISTED THE DAMAGE AND HEALTH AMOUNTS AS WELL AS PERCENTAGES BASED ON CURRENT NUMBERS.

Like right here....

Did you actually read my message? It seems like you didn't and you're single handedly going to de-rail this thread because of it....

Why the .. HELL.. would I even bother addressing numbers based on CURRENT Dps, when I'm obviously talking about the game in its state 4 years ago??

4-5k? What?!
You mean 400-500, and those are holds/counters.

I cant be pushing towards a relative change without taking relative DPS into account Clutch, And I obviously am.

The reason it was so short and quick was exactly because I dont want to derail this thread.. trust me I would love picking at the small stuff you're leaving out, and the evidently lacking attempt to try and actually mirror current PvP with how it used to be in the time I'm referring to.

All you had to was read that sentence. The very first sentence after the second quote I made.

If you would have read that, you would realise I was discussing your statement of immunity making rewards for countering "too much" in the current game.

So once again, please read my post next time before getting your panties in a bunch.