Since you are saying that PvP players were wearing TSO gear in BG and getting rolled by Underfoot gear I will agree with you Esp since TSO gear was lv 80 and Underfoot gear was lv 90......... Compare same gear lv 90 PvP gear v's lv 90 Raid gear and the result is very different. Thank you oh so much
Those were separate examples, from two separate timeframes, and two separate environments at a time. You can't just mush them together to try to prove me wrong. Never did I say people with TSO gear were losing to people with Underfoot gear. And whether they did or didn't, it doesn't have anything to do with the strength of PVP gear and crit mit versus toughness.
Pve gear was not solely responsible for nagafens demise. Its a moot point of red herringness. Nobody plays on nagafen because there is no instant gratification atm. We are gen x and gen y. We need more credit, less work and more pay for not getting it done on time. BG's are terrible. Comparing anything BG related to PVP makes me a sadpanda. Maer have you always played a pally? Pally survivability in pvp ruleset has been broke for many many moons. It may skew your experiences some. Same with SK. Even my guard is stoopid survivable atm in green gem gear and jewelry from t1 t2 heroic zones.
P.S. it is very commonplace for people who play survivable classes, think pally sk, for them to think that their brokedness equates to skill in pvp. This is not true and it is a tough misconception to break once it has been ingrained. Like the preds and rogues of old.
Removing lower level locking was a major change that drove casual pvpers and even hard core pvpers away from the game. People could just pvp and not have to worry about gear differential against raiders. The lower level zones were packed with people pvping. Remember seeing multiple CL and Antonica zones available. This kept the pvp community active. It made no sense for them to remove level locking on pvp servers.
What truly killed "our server" is us. We were always looking for ways to "imporove" PvP. We wanted Gear seperation so raiders couldnt roll up and kill people. Non raiders wanted to kill raiders in all there shiny gear just to say i killed a fabled out toon. We all look back at KoS/EoF and RoK as the good times of PvP. And they were what was the main thing from back then. We all had access or were in pretty much the same gear. Raid gear was powerful but wasnt the godly stuff it is now. PvP gear was the equivilent to very good instance gear. The seperation from raider to good pvper was very minimal and player skill ushaly trumped Raid gear. This is no longer the case. Now we have massive amounts of dmg going out or stupid amounts of you cant kill me. What skill is there in a wizzy hitting ice comment having it hit for 40% then double cast for another 30% then followed up by the insta AE that hits for more dmg the further they are from you. I never got to show my skill. I just died. Stuff like that drives people away from pvp. Being the "hunter' not puts you at such an advantage its not even funny. People can no longer come back to the game after taking some time away from the game and pick it up. I tood a break from EQ2 from mid SF thru to ToV by missing those 3 xpacs inbetween there is no way any one can pick up the gap that was lost. People arnt going to be peoples farm toons just to maby get a few token tokens. So they afk at the warfronts. Get a set of base pvp and still find out its nowhere good enough to scratch a guy. Actualy what realy killed our server is out self centered attitude that we were better then the other servers. We were not happy with what he had and whined and bi$ched about what we thought we wanted changed. Well we got change. We got a dead server. We have PvP thats so ^&4ked up its not even fun. We Obama'ed our server by wanting change and boy we got it.
To a degree. I don't think a single pvp vet who has played eq2 from the beginning, that enjoys a more difficult gameplay that requires hard work and dedication in order to have a more fulfilling and joyful experience would ever consider to have unimaginably ridiculous ideas such as battlegrounds on a pvp server, gear seperation, dumbed downed stats that strip away the ability to be unique and have a distinct play style, so many instances to hide from pvp in, instant travel to avoid pvp, rally flags to avoid pvp, vet calls to avoid pvp, guild halls to avoid pvp, 1 min immunity timers to avoid pvp, AA slider to avoid questing which avoids pvp, 130% mount speed along with flying, leaping, gliding mounts to avoid pvp, flagging open world zones with city rules to avoid pvp, and unnecessary pvp only stats such as toughness and lethality that only caused more of a headache. I just can't fathom anyone who has a say in the matter, devs or players inside the dev circle would ever allow any of that to be implemented on a pvp server. Servers which need a thriving open world pvp environment to survive. However we are at a point in time, it seems, that instant gratification reigns supreme and regardless if the ideas brought forth by inexperienced new comers (or carebears I guess you could say) are horrid they seem to get implemented simply because it's a change. Yes change is a good thing but only if it's done right and not half ***** or poorly thought out and executed. Honestly, if that list of mistakes could be reverted or rules put into place that disable any of those implementations on Nagafen, I think it could match AB population wise or even surpass it.
During TSO T4 Raid gear and PvP gear were almost the same thing on Naggy in PvP. We had guilds clearing the content and fighting in the open world in T4 Raid gear against PvP geared players. The only people that got rolled were those that were under geared be it in PvE or PvP gear they just did not have full sets. Even then a skilled player with little gear could beat a mediocre player in the best gear. Also BG's were released with SF not in with TSO. Any way gear separation due to who ever was crying about it was an issue. The point though is BG's were the start of the fall of red servers. The later gear separation due to /cry about this or that and lack of updates for PvP ( DOV 6+ months ) Fast travel and other things that others have posted in this thread all contributed to the fall of our server.
Honestly insta travel TO and i cant stress TO enough my area to quest/PvP/grind/whatever doesnt bother me. Let me get where i want. But once there travel slows down. keep flying mounts i like it. Restrict the hight on them for pvp servers. keep it in bow range. Make it difficut to leave. Not impossable but difficult. Put immunity areas back in zones. Want to leave the area you gotta go immune. Like waiting for the boats in butcherblock back when. No calls home or CoV. There are ways of slowing down the pace of the game with out ilimiating things we need. Good luck swimming around the islands in AoM. In order for naggy to thrive again it needs a thriving PvE community. PvPers forgot this. You need people raiding/crafting/harvesting/instancing. Seriously make naggy PvE easy mode. Let overland names spawn every 5 min, nodes are at massive rare harvest amounts let instances drop 2 pc of gear and a small amount of pvp tokens. Remove us from the BGs and let naggy stand alone on its own with its own rule set like it use to. Free transfers to naggy no transfers off kinda thing. Find a way for whole guilds all players, hall, the whole shmit to come over. Set some zones as pvp immune something like CL is good from 1-20 for pvp Ant is immune, Butcher block 20-40 EL/Zek immune. Like i said Naggy has to embrace pve more. This idea that its pvp and only pvp is what got it dead.
It's why my suggestion to solve the issue doesn't involve deleting battlegrounds, but rather allowing and incentivizing players to travel to Nagafen, ala a battlegrounds style temporary character transfer. Important, so there is no commitment required. People are scared of commitments. Reroll on a new server is scary, unless it's just a part time thing where you're messing around with a friend or something. That doesn't result in long-term population. Nagafen as a server could have permanent double tokens / permanent double exp. People would flock there to get their grind on, under the one condition that they subject themselves to potential PVP combat. There's no way to eliminate instanced content in EQ2, but you can just disable the bonuses for instanced content on Nagafen, and it will still function as a cross-server grouping hub at a minimum. The only problem is that the technology to make this possible is still being worked on, with the database revamp, and that there needs to be a proper balance between the risk of getting ganked/pvp'd and the reward for subjecting yourself to it. The goal is to provide a proper environment for PVP, and an easy way to access it. PVP will come naturally. And then, if PVP isn't terrible, people will enjoy it, and they will continue to play it. Enjoying it requires fixing most of the list of things wrong with PVP. Do that, and the "need" for battlegrounds disappears. Without "deleting" battlegrounds. Side note: Ajjantis, you of all people should be familiar with the toughness argument in PVP. If my recollection of history is accurate, you had a fun conversation with Olihin about this. https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/index.php?threads/remove-toughness.494325/page-4#post-5502471 Toughness separated PVP and PVE, effectively killing PVP in the long run. Especially in retrospect.
Yeah, it's all about the incentive. I miss being out in the open world questing for my aa's (which use to be the quickest way until the AA slider) camping named's for a gear upgrade or a piece with a nice proc, anything that gave me an edge in a pvp fight I was out there looking for it and pvping against others who did the same. I say remove the token currency and bring back faction earning and requirements. You recieve faction from pvp kills and writs. Maybe spice it up with extra faction earnings from having a certain kill streak number or killing someone with a kill streak, getting a revenge kill, etc. Implement writs for each tier that require you to kill a player/s in a certain zone/s, according to your level range. Writs that require you to kill a certain overland named for faction and or loot based, the difficulty of said mob based on number of players participating. (Just a few rough ideas) Completely remove the seperation of gear. I see no problem with earning the same gear by pvping or pveing, you play your way. Just make sure either route takes roughly the same time and effort as the other. Open up instances and implement city invasion tasks of some sort to earn faction and promote pvp.
Copying and pasting this. My idea that I put in another thread. I'm mainly a PvE player but I've had my fun on the PvP server too from time to time and I recently went back to see if I could have some fun with PvP and well that didn't happen. Came here and saw that ALOT of people want change. So here is my idea, what if they just gave everyone on the server a free transfer off Naggy to the server of their choosing (give everyone like 2 weeks to a month to choose). Population on Naggy now equals 0. Now make it a server that everyone from all servers can transfer on to for Open world PvP and WFs (how BGs work). Revamp the server so now it just holds a few zones for open world PvP and WFs. Like the WF zones for example so there can still be a variety of tiers. What this does it allows all servers to take part in Open World PvP and WFs when they got time. Some may say that this is just a temp fix. Well lets take it a step further. Why not add Raid Bosses in that are Contested and offer loot that can only be found on these guys. Make the loot good enough so Raid guilds wont just ignore the Raid Bosses. Don't make the raid bosses extremely hard or strat heavy. Probably just a simple turn and burn with maybe a few curses here and there and a hard hitting AoE to joust. Adding a mix of both PvP and PvE would probably be best since the PvP crowd seems to be dying and SoE is not listening to them as much and if you got some PvE in the mix might get more attention. For example lets say Ant became the new top tier zone where everything goes down instead of KP (probably wont happen due to level of mobs but again just for example). Expand it to include Ant and TS. So Raid Boss spawns only in TS and a raiding guild sees that it spawned and try to go for it. They must go to Ant and run all the way to TS entrance to get to TS. No fast travel. Gives them a chance to kill it without contenders who just want the PvP. Some issues I saw with this. Well if everyone is on same server what about factions? Screw factions and do it like how the exiles have it. Everyone is hostile but you can group up (only issue with this is WF). Another way to do it is how Guild Wars 2 does it. Make it AB vs Unrest vs Cushbone or something along those lines (this way seems like a lot of work for the Devs so probably a no go). Or make it so this person gets put in and is assigned to this faction and pray to god that the game does a decent job at keeping the sides equal in numbers. Reason I think this is a good idea which i already mentioned(and others in here seem to agree) is that there needs to be a balance between the PvP and the PvE. PvP is dying and I don't see it coming back like it used to be. Putting something in there for the PvE players to do will give them a reason to go in there. Yes its going to be hard to kill the raid boss with PvP always around but if the loot is decent enough people will want it. Also another reason is (which many people also agree on) is that PvP has now become something to do when you get bored or got a a hr or 2 to kill before raid starts. When your on naggy right now you can only do 1 thing and that's to PvP. All the raiding guilds have left. So there is nothing else to do. One last thing is that if this happens I say get rid of the "PvP" gear and just make it balanced across the boards. Maybe add some PvP gear with like faction reqs or by your rank but don't make it a day and night difference. Would probably also help balance the economy a bit too since people who want to PvP but not raid would be willing to buy raid gear from raiding guilds. Just my 2 cents and I thought I would throw my idea in. (Typed some of this on my phone so sorry for grammer and if some stuff sounds awkward).
I reckon they could implement pvp in heroic zones. Contested vp was the proof that it could happen. If people couldnt hide in immunity anywhere would be pretty lol but everyone would probably freak out. I find that most pvpers nowadays find pvp to be inconvenient.
Just turn every zone into contested, including raid zones. Then add in PvP-type rewards (+10% pvp damage buff or adorn or/we) to contested questlines.
IMO making everything contested wont solve anything. Short term or long term. Server is already in a bad state. There are no raiding guilds so that wont do anything. And also the population on Naggy is around like 200 max (that are online at one given point and good portion of that number is probably bots) among all the factions and I may be pushing that number. One of two things need to happen IMO. 1) Bring something back to naggy that everyone wants to see or 2) see my previous post. There would have to be some major change to keep PvP barely above the water. One thing is certain that a lot of people mention in here. PvP now has become something do when they got an hour or two to spare but they got to restart on a different server and most people don't want to put the time to level and gear out a character on a new server. So they go to BGs where they go and "PvP" with their main. (back to my previous post) Personally if I had some time to kill I would always be doing the "temp transfer to Naggy to PvP and then go back to my home server to do w/e. SoE just needs to add a PvE element to it then so the PvE players have a reason to go in.
There is no way to freshly populate Nagafen. Period. No amount of changes, no matter how good, are going to get enough people to reroll on that server or attract enough new people to create a healthy PVP environment. The only way is if Nagafen does not become a commitment. Something people can go to if they want to, and make it enjoyable and incentivized enough that they DO, in fact, want to do it. They would have to be able to go back if they don't like it, and to continue raiding/playing with their local friends.. occasionally straying into the crucible that is an cross-server Nagafen PVP hub.
/agree. Its definitely a long shot. An opt in WF for all servers with rewards for completing would be cool. I know we got bgs right but it is really nothing like overland pvp. (a cost saving idea)Expand the WZ to be antonica like in size and give it some sort of pvp task that needs to be accomplished. Contesting the 9 mobs in zone and updating the large pvp writs is not very entertaining. X2s need to be harder and drop the new blues for one. Capturing towers would be fine with me but others would probably have better ideas. I lack any creativity.
As you see I've been the whole time against the separation of gear. Toughness was HORRIBLE. It was an lazy excuse for the devs to save time adjusting CAs and procs for pvp and it really got me back in the day. I remember back in the day when I was farming the hole, I would get jumped by other people during a fight and be an easy kill for them. I so hated that situation. Then I had to put on my pvp gear and hunt exclusively for the players, I couldn't go for nameds in that gear. So I switched back and forth everytime something came up on track gawwwwd. People waited for other players to engage and jumped them, knowing they couldn't swap out their armor during a fight. On top of that people were forced to farm pvp armor to be viable in pvp, thus neglecting PvE way too much. You had to chose a path unless you were unemployed and could actually gear each and every character twice. So yeah, you will find bazillion of posts from me warning exactly about the current situation. On top of that they added battlegrounds which made the current situation just worse. Still we got pvp armor (that is made for pvping) but now you need to leave the server to get it. So the people had yet 1 less reason to go out and do something on Nagafen. So what about the few left doing either open world pve content or open world pvp content? They had instant travel. So yet another way to avoid pvp and if you actually find someone they could just fly away in safety. So if you sum everything up, you could say that SoE did everything in their might to destroy the idea of an open pvp server. All these ideas to save nagafen are really bad imho. Character temporaly copying to nagafen is just awful. Nagafen is a normal server like the others with the different that players can attack each other. I do not want players to be able to come and go at will. People must settle down on a server. I don't want just special zones to be pvp enabled, pvp and the risk it brings should be in any corner of norrath. I don't want any of those fancy things that some people are suggesting. They aren't needed. Get me in charge to save Nagafen and I would, EASILY. I do know the challenge it brings to populate a server, but we are talking about SoE. A multi billion dollar company that has every power needed to save a game. Its their attitude that does not make it happen. Every time an expansion launches, all servers have a temporary influx of old and new players. You would just need to take that chance. Make a new expansion pack including a huge revamp of pvp. Send everyone a mail informing them of what has happened. Do the right changes and gift everyone a free month of full game play on nagafen if they come back and voila: You'll have tons of players coming back. Now if those changes to Nagafen were the right ones, people will sub again and keep playing. If the changes were bad, they will be gone again.
It's not possible, and at a minimum it's too much of a gamble without a backup plan. If you can populate nagafen then you can do so while allowing everyone the chance to play there, regardless of their current server.
