The other day my friends started complaining about PvP and how they thought updates never improved PvP. However, what my friends miss, as do a lot of people, is all these complaints about PvP have a single root problem --- lack of accessibility.
To become good in PvP, you have to take a bunch of steps. Get the right cards, design a specialized deck, grind for ages to get the right gear (or pay for crowns gear), spend tons of money and time to get a specialized pet, and the list goes on. If you don't do these things, you'll stink at it, like me.
On top of that, the mechanism by which you get your team and opponents is clearly flawed. Whenever I join a PvP team, I'm always on the losing team, even if we go first. It seems my teams tend to be as bad at PvP as I am. If the selection system was truely fair, this wouldn't happen every single time.
And when I 1v1, I usually lose because I don't waste away for hours doing repetitive tasks while simultaneously defeating the purpose of gaming which is to have fun (also known as farming).
What's worse is, all these "solutions" people propose make the problem worse. For example, lowering critical from x2 to x1.5. Doing this is like not letting players of certain ages access the Commons because that's where all the trolls are. Sure, it may help some, but you haven't done anything about the trolls themselves. And the pink troll in the PvP room is lack of accessibility.
Also, updates like that are more damaging to the low-skill teams. High-skill teams can use some other strategy, but imagine the low-skill teams that got disadvantaged from the critical reduction. What if they didn't deal enough damage with that Storm Lord and it cost them the match against a high-skill team they might have won against if the critical reduction wasn't implemented?
Furthermore, the push to reduce critical in PvP happened because people were losing matches. So, because of the lack of accessibility problem. If PvP was accessible, a lot of the PvP complaints wouldn't exist.
I don't think PvP should be easy. I just think the result of a PvP match shouldn't be predetermined by who spent the most hours doing repetitive tasks, who paid the most, or who got the better team. There should be no barrier to entry in PvP. You should be able to join and instantly have a balanced match where each side has equal chance at victory.
The people who take a bunch of tedious steps shouldn't be the only ones who get to enjoy PvP. Everyone should.
You're so, so, so close to the root problem, Fable! It is a lack of accessibility that makes PVP rather flawed, but it's not rooted in requiring hard work and skill to win. That "farming" thing you don't like to do is unfortunately what sets casual and serious PVPers apart. Why shouldn't serious PVPers be rewarded for spending hours obtaining the right gear set and pet? Everyone can do it and reap the rewards.
The ranking system was originally supposed to serve the purpose of keeping those two worlds separate, so casual players could duel others who weren't so invested. Unfortunately, the ranking system doesn't really work :/
The reason people are fighting for a reduced critical amount (2x to 1.5x) is because that takes the RNG out of the game and allows the match to better represent skill and not luck. That's great for high level players, and not exactly great for low level players. The answer to your question is - you lose. If you storm lord, and the critical doesn't do enough, you lose (High level players run damage calcs to be sure). And you can either choose to keep playing, or do something else. Losing is a part of the game, and you accept whatever luck comes your way as soon as you enter the arena.
KI has had a hard time developing a game with the complexity and nuance to be taken seriously while also being simple enough to be played by a grade schooler, and attaining that balance over everything else can leave optimal PVP or PVE decisions out of the picture. Their #1 priority is not making PVP accessible. It's making Wizard101 accessible.
I ran out of space above, but I also was frustrated by how rough the arena can be. It takes much more time and devotion than I'm willing to put into it. However there are other great ways to PVP and have fun!
I PVP with friends that I've met while questing. That way, there's no arena tickets, nothing like that. Just fun. No ranks. Additionally, we sometimes agree to remove our gear and pets; leave it up to what we can cast for spells. Of course, my storm wizard friends don't exactly love the lowered accuracy, but it makes our individual school attributes and play styles shine through.
Sometimes, we play with specific spells being banned like bad juju or mana burn.
The point is - PVP with friends can be whatever you want it to be. It's 100% accessible. When you're in the arena, you're competing for rank. If you don't like stiff competition, stay away because that's where there's a steep learning curve.
Additionally, people have found ways to manipulate teams in the arena to get specific orders and everything. KI tries to make it fair and random, but there's not much to be done when people are abusing the way the systems work.
If a particular strategy is bothering you in the arena, you're always free to adopt it yourself and bother others with it. But it won't be fun. You'll win, but it won't be fun. PVP is fun. The arena is for winning, regardless of what that takes.
We'd have to heavily disagree with your view on how PvP should be. Players that pay for the game should have an early advantage compared to those who don't, but that advantage doesn't last as both sides progress. For example, crowns gear gives you a good advantage at levels 1-50 until you get Commander/Warlord gear, then that advantage no longer exists. All crowns does in this case is speed up your progress to Commander. High level PvP is almost unaffected by crowns gear so that isn't much of an issue.
The critical rework was a great change for PvP. Dropping it from x2 to x1.3 was a much needed change and KI did well to reduce how overpowered critical was. The whole idea behind people wanting critical's "swing" in a match to be reduced was because low-skill players would win matches against way better players simply because they got a couple criticals at the right time, and not because of how they played or how good they were. Good players should be able to consistently beat low-skill players, Wizard101 shouldn't reward bad players for being bad by giving them luck-based factors that drag them to a victory.
As for farming, there was a time where I would agree with you. A couple years ago, the Amulet of Divine Influence was the only amulet that boosted stats in the game but it was an insanely rare drop, and only those who were lucky enough to get it dropped had a severe advantage against those who didn't. Now, there are multiple forms of viable gear in PvP, which can be obtained through farming, crafting, or straight up buying. As long as the Amulet of Divine Influence situation never happens again, I'm happy with the game rewarding those who spent time achieving the best gear/pets available.
IMO PvP is a crucial part of Wiz101. If done right, it gives people an enjoyable activity to do in between new updates and when they don't feel like farming. But at the moment it has many weakness that limit how many people play, and many of the solutions to PvP rely on having large numbers of players. You can't get fair and quick matches when hardly anyone is playing.
Apart from what has already been mentioned above, the other weakness is the points system. The whole system relies on warlords getting many more victories than losses. At least 25 but sometimes way more. Obviously to balance out, this system relies on some people taking many more losses than wins - which is no fun if the matches are one-sided. It is also the time taken for someone to reach their appropriate strength level - each time they introduce a new age strong players and weak players all start as privates and it takes many one sided matches for the true strength of players to level out and matches to become fair.
My solutions: 1) all pvp players whether warlords or privates or in between should accept that for PvP matches to be fair ALL players should have ~50% win records. The only difference is the strength of opponents. Warlords are facing tougher opponents for 50% win records, privates face easier opponents but still have 50%. Warlords get bigger rewards and more prestige, but they don't ruin PvP by submitting others to constant losses.
2) Make it that you need at least 20-25 matches to get a PvP rank, but start estimating the rank as soon as you are playing. If you win your first match you face a substantially harder opponent, if you lose substantially easier. Keep stepping up or down as needed. The idea is to estimate each players strength as the level where they win 50% of battles. After 25 battles they are then ranked as to whether this is above or below the typical strength for their level.
3) improve the rewards. Currently the tournament rewards are way better - needs adjustment.
I guess I see this a different way now then most, but originally, I agreed with you 100%. I agree with you in the fact that crowns and time in the game, can give you an advantage, but this has always been the case, almost since day one. I started playing back in early 2010.
This game is not like most out there, it's based heavily on profit, and that is not really a bad thing. If the game doesn't make the Profit it need, it shuts down, like Toontown. So, having a game that is selling crowns to gain an edge, gives the game longevity. Anyone that has put a lot of time and or crowns into the game, wants it to stay online.
I read it as you want a fair and balanced match, even if you don't have crown and if you don't have the time to play hour upon hour. This isn't the game for you, and sadly never will be. That is not how this game is designed, but there are other games that are.
On the issue of the Critical Reduction, it was originally dropped to 1.25, and imo should have stayed there. KI had to revamp the Critical, as at higher levels in pvp, it was so overpowering, it made the game unplayable. Yes, it directly affected the lower level players, but KI had to do something, and this was their decision. I see your point, but it's a Catch 22 for KI, as are many aspects of this game.
I feel your pain, as I had a rough start in PVP until someone gave me a hand. Once I had help, I found that my complaints slowly died, and I found PVP fairly balanced. I will leave it at this, if you don't have crown or a membership, PvP will most likely never be balanced for you.
You're so, so, so close to the root problem, Fable! It is a lack of accessibility that makes PVP rather flawed, but it's not rooted in requiring hard work and skill to win. That "farming" thing you don't like to do is unfortunately what sets casual and serious PVPers apart. Why shouldn't serious PVPers be rewarded for spending hours obtaining the right gear set and pet? Everyone can do it and reap the rewards.
The ranking system was originally supposed to serve the purpose of keeping those two worlds separate, so casual players could duel others who weren't so invested. Unfortunately, the ranking system doesn't really work :/
The reason people are fighting for a reduced critical amount (2x to 1.5x) is because that takes the RNG out of the game and allows the match to better represent skill and not luck. That's great for high level players, and not exactly great for low level players. The answer to your question is - you lose. If you storm lord, and the critical doesn't do enough, you lose (High level players run damage calcs to be sure). And you can either choose to keep playing, or do something else. Losing is a part of the game, and you accept whatever luck comes your way as soon as you enter the arena.
KI has had a hard time developing a game with the complexity and nuance to be taken seriously while also being simple enough to be played by a grade schooler, and attaining that balance over everything else can leave optimal PVP or PVE decisions out of the picture. Their #1 priority is not making PVP accessible. It's making Wizard101 accessible.
You ask why shouldn't people be rewarded for spending hours farming because everyone can do it. Well, here's the thing. They should be rewarded, but the method of farming itself needs to change. I come to this game to have fun. This farming thing defeats that point entirely. What is the purpose of a game if you must now treat it like a career? I will discuss a solution to farming in another post.
That's not what reducing critical did at all. They already reduced critical and is PvP more accessible? No. The reason is, the outcome of a PvP match is already predetermined by the behaviors of the competitors. Reducing critical will just tip the outcome even more in favor of the high-skill teams, making PvP less accessible. Also, the critical reduction makes PvP more complex, and thus even less accessible. Who wants to have to dig through updates to find out a bunch of special PvP rules?
The thing is, people would never have complained about the critical if PvP was accessible in the first place. And I generally agree you should be a good sport and accept losses, but this doesn't apply to PvP. Tell me if this scenario helps illustrate my point.
You are playing basketball, and here are the teams.
Team 1: -Has bribed the coach for advantages -The coach has given them all the good players -The coach lets them use performance enhancers
Team 2: -Has not bribed the coach -The coach has given them all the bad players without any enhancers -All the players have injuries
And imagine this happened with every single basketball match ever played. If you were on the unlucky team, would you accept the loss?
They could easily take time out to fix PvP. It wouldn't take that long.
I ran out of space above, but I also was frustrated by how rough the arena can be. It takes much more time and devotion than I'm willing to put into it. However there are other great ways to PVP and have fun!
I PVP with friends that I've met while questing. That way, there's no arena tickets, nothing like that. Just fun. No ranks. Additionally, we sometimes agree to remove our gear and pets; leave it up to what we can cast for spells. Of course, my storm wizard friends don't exactly love the lowered accuracy, but it makes our individual school attributes and play styles shine through.
Sometimes, we play with specific spells being banned like bad juju or mana burn.
The point is - PVP with friends can be whatever you want it to be. It's 100% accessible. When you're in the arena, you're competing for rank. If you don't like stiff competition, stay away because that's where there's a steep learning curve.
Additionally, people have found ways to manipulate teams in the arena to get specific orders and everything. KI tries to make it fair and random, but there's not much to be done when people are abusing the way the systems work.
If a particular strategy is bothering you in the arena, you're always free to adopt it yourself and bother others with it. But it won't be fun. You'll win, but it won't be fun. PVP is fun. The arena is for winning, regardless of what that takes.
That's a good idea you have about PvPing with friends, but you shouldn't have to do that to not have a broken PvP match. The arena should be just as fun and as fair as PvP matches you organize yourself. Why? Well, the main reason is so it reduces the harmful mindset of treating Wizard101 like a career.
Also, here's a tip: if your friends complain about lowered stats, then instead of removing gear, get the exact same gear.
We'd have to heavily disagree with your view on how PvP should be. Players that pay for the game should have an early advantage compared to those who don't, but that advantage doesn't last as both sides progress. For example, crowns gear gives you a good advantage at levels 1-50 until you get Commander/Warlord gear, then that advantage no longer exists. All crowns does in this case is speed up your progress to Commander. High level PvP is almost unaffected by crowns gear so that isn't much of an issue.
The critical rework was a great change for PvP. Dropping it from x2 to x1.3 was a much needed change and KI did well to reduce how overpowered critical was. The whole idea behind people wanting critical's "swing" in a match to be reduced was because low-skill players would win matches against way better players simply because they got a couple criticals at the right time, and not because of how they played or how good they were. Good players should be able to consistently beat low-skill players, Wizard101 shouldn't reward bad players for being bad by giving them luck-based factors that drag them to a victory.
As for farming, there was a time where I would agree with you. A couple years ago, the Amulet of Divine Influence was the only amulet that boosted stats in the game but it was an insanely rare drop, and only those who were lucky enough to get it dropped had a severe advantage against those who didn't. Now, there are multiple forms of viable gear in PvP, which can be obtained through farming, crafting, or straight up buying. As long as the Amulet of Divine Influence situation never happens again, I'm happy with the game rewarding those who spent time achieving the best gear/pets available.
Why should payers have an advantage? Take the basketball scenario I mentioned above. You wouldn't say "people who bribe coaches should have an advantage", would you? Bribery shouldn't give any advantage, even if it's temporary.
I actually agree critical is overpowered. In my opinion, critical was a terrible idea that degraded the strategy element of Wizard101 and thus should be abolished or overhauled. However, as long as it isn't being overhauled or abolished, the damage modifier should be the same in both PvP and PvE. I will explain.
First, "high-skill" and "low-skill" were misnomers I used when I lacked a better word. It is more like "high-luck" and "low-luck", because PvP matches are not based on skill but instead predetermined by factors I mentioned in the original post. The thing you miss is that: the matches are predetermined, there is no skill involved. There are no good players and no bad ones. There are just players with advantages, and those without.
High-luck teams don't need critical because they can use some other advantage. However, critical might be the only advantage of low-luck teams. Thus, the critical reduction made PvP less accessible. Now low-luck teams have an even harder time against high-luck ones and that's not fair because there's no skill involved. And again, the complaints about critical originated from lack of accessibility, so fix accessibility and that problem goes away.
The Amulet of Divine Influence situation is still ongoing in a different sense. Farming is the only way to get competitive gear. Nobody recommends craftable or buyable gear for PvP, only farmable gear. And you shouldn't have to waste time to be good at PvP.
Why should payers have an advantage? Take the basketball scenario I mentioned above. You wouldn't say "people who bribe coaches should have an advantage", would you? Bribery shouldn't give any advantage, even if it's temporary.
I actually agree critical is overpowered. In my opinion, critical was a terrible idea that degraded the strategy element of Wizard101 and thus should be abolished or overhauled. However, as long as it isn't being overhauled or abolished, the damage modifier should be the same in both PvP and PvE. I will explain.
First, "high-skill" and "low-skill" were misnomers I used when I lacked a better word. It is more like "high-luck" and "low-luck", because PvP matches are not based on skill but instead predetermined by factors I mentioned in the original post. The thing you miss is that: the matches are predetermined, there is no skill involved. There are no good players and no bad ones. There are just players with advantages, and those without.
High-luck teams don't need critical because they can use some other advantage. However, critical might be the only advantage of low-luck teams. Thus, the critical reduction made PvP less accessible. Now low-luck teams have an even harder time against high-luck ones and that's not fair because there's no skill involved. And again, the complaints about critical originated from lack of accessibility, so fix accessibility and that problem goes away.
The Amulet of Divine Influence situation is still ongoing in a different sense. Farming is the only way to get competitive gear. Nobody recommends craftable or buyable gear for PvP, only farmable gear. And you shouldn't have to waste time to be good at PvP.
Fable Finder,
Your example of the Teams in no way reflect the design of the game. The game was designed this way, that will not change. Let me give you a different example, a person (A) works hard for their money and a second person (B) doesn't want to work at all. So person (B) gets mad and says it unfair, and wants person (A) to give them some of their money. You want a balance, but you don't want to work for it. Sorry, it doesn't work that way in the real world, and certainly not in this game.
Your wrong on High-skill and Low-skill, it's still in the game and still has an effect in PVP. A high skilled player can still outplay a low skilled player, and I've watched it happen over and over.
A low skilled team needs to build Skill, and should never be able to beat a skilled team if gear is the same. This is ignoring the fact of the first turn advantage, as you would need to go to Tourneys to bypass that.
so, I have to disagree with you, I see PvP as balanced as it's going to get, based on the design.
Why should payers have an advantage? Take the basketball scenario I mentioned above. You wouldn't say "people who bribe coaches should have an advantage", would you? Bribery shouldn't give any advantage, even if it's temporary.
I actually agree critical is overpowered. In my opinion, critical was a terrible idea that degraded the strategy element of Wizard101 and thus should be abolished or overhauled. However, as long as it isn't being overhauled or abolished, the damage modifier should be the same in both PvP and PvE. I will explain.
First, "high-skill" and "low-skill" were misnomers I used when I lacked a better word. It is more like "high-luck" and "low-luck", because PvP matches are not based on skill but instead predetermined by factors I mentioned in the original post. The thing you miss is that: the matches are predetermined, there is no skill involved. There are no good players and no bad ones. There are just players with advantages, and those without.
High-luck teams don't need critical because they can use some other advantage. However, critical might be the only advantage of low-luck teams. Thus, the critical reduction made PvP less accessible. Now low-luck teams have an even harder time against high-luck ones and that's not fair because there's no skill involved. And again, the complaints about critical originated from lack of accessibility, so fix accessibility and that problem goes away.
The Amulet of Divine Influence situation is still ongoing in a different sense. Farming is the only way to get competitive gear. Nobody recommends craftable or buyable gear for PvP, only farmable gear. And you shouldn't have to waste time to be good at PvP.
Players that pay for an early advantage should have an early advantage because they paid to have one. That's the simplest answer I can give you. Buying crowns gear isn't like "bribing a coach," it would be more like a sports team buying superstars with the money they made to perform better than other teams. In Wizard101, you're using the money that you (or somebody you know) made and pumping some of it into the game with hopes of doing better in PvP. However, like I said, that advantage doesn't exist for very long as you rank up and get Arena gear. If I bought the Midsummer's Cowl, Jacket of Withstanding, and Watchtower Boots, then I would use those temporarily until I reach Commander and then I'll buy Commander gear. It's not like those items are the end all be all of PvP for low levels, and every single level in the game follows that trend except for wands at levels 50+.
Yes, critical added more luck factors in PvP that made the skill ceiling go down and the skill floor go up to be competitive in the game. But it shouldn't be "abolished," and it's already been overhauled and I'm satisfied with the path that critical is taking.
There is also no such thing as a "high-luck" or "low-luck" player. Sometimes fortune may go your way in a match, sometimes it won't. That fortune won't be a hanging factor.Wizard101 doesn't just sprinkle "good luck" dust on one player and "bad luck" dust on the other , so no, matches aren't predetermined at all. There are still good players and bad players, however the amount of RNG factors and shortage of "mid-game tactical battles" in matches cloaks the difference between a good player and a bad player. The skill ceiling in this game went down significantly since 2014 and the skill floor went up. KI needs to slow down the high-level meta so that actual in-match planning is key to winning rather than spamming Shrike and throwing everything you have if they want to separate good and bad players. To be continued.
Why should payers have an advantage? Take the basketball scenario I mentioned above. You wouldn't say "people who bribe coaches should have an advantage", would you? Bribery shouldn't give any advantage, even if it's temporary.
I actually agree critical is overpowered. In my opinion, critical was a terrible idea that degraded the strategy element of Wizard101 and thus should be abolished or overhauled. However, as long as it isn't being overhauled or abolished, the damage modifier should be the same in both PvP and PvE. I will explain.
First, "high-skill" and "low-skill" were misnomers I used when I lacked a better word. It is more like "high-luck" and "low-luck", because PvP matches are not based on skill but instead predetermined by factors I mentioned in the original post. The thing you miss is that: the matches are predetermined, there is no skill involved. There are no good players and no bad ones. There are just players with advantages, and those without.
High-luck teams don't need critical because they can use some other advantage. However, critical might be the only advantage of low-luck teams. Thus, the critical reduction made PvP less accessible. Now low-luck teams have an even harder time against high-luck ones and that's not fair because there's no skill involved. And again, the complaints about critical originated from lack of accessibility, so fix accessibility and that problem goes away.
The Amulet of Divine Influence situation is still ongoing in a different sense. Farming is the only way to get competitive gear. Nobody recommends craftable or buyable gear for PvP, only farmable gear. And you shouldn't have to waste time to be good at PvP.
So I'll reiterate what I said in my last post. There is no such thing as a high/low luck player or team. The game doesn't have a dice roller that deems you lucky or unlucky before you step foot into the Arena, you just happen to end up being lucky or unlucky in certain scenarios. So you can't say that "high-luck" teams don't need critical "because they can use some other advantage," because there's no such thing.
The critical reduction didn't make PvP less "accessible" at all. The high swing factor that critical had in matches was unattractive to competitive players and many players stopped enjoying PvP because of how controlling critical was and how little you could control it was key to complaints about critical. Reducing critical from x2 to x1.3 really helped solve problems between high-ranked low level players getting destroyed by higher level players with insane critical, and reduced the major swing factor it held in max level matches. The old critical took away fair competition from matches, and the new critical system makes it more fair for both sides.
If you don't think any crafted or buyable gear is useful, then we're not playing the same game. Levels 66-80 widely use crafted gear for PvP. Level 100 uses crafted decks that are better than any you can purchase. Levels 115+ use crafted wands which compete hand in hand with crowns wands. Level 100+ uses purchased or crafted boots. If you don't want to farm Darkmoor, then do Exalted duels to get extremely similar gear very easily. If you don't want to farm Waterworks for whatever reason, then craft the Vestrilund gear sets and use those. Everything else that you farm doesn't take many runs at all to obtain. For levels 1-59, you don't use any farmed gear at all in PvP, everything else will be Arena gear.
The other day my friends started complaining about PvP and how they thought updates never improved PvP. However, what my friends miss, as do a lot of people, is all these complaints about PvP have a single root problem --- lack of accessibility.
To become good in PvP, you have to take a bunch of steps. Get the right cards, design a specialized deck, grind for ages to get the right gear (or pay for crowns gear), spend tons of money and time to get a specialized pet, and the list goes on. If you don't do these things, you'll stink at it, like me.
On top of that, the mechanism by which you get your team and opponents is clearly flawed. Whenever I join a PvP team, I'm always on the losing team, even if we go first. It seems my teams tend to be as bad at PvP as I am. If the selection system was truely fair, this wouldn't happen every single time.
And when I 1v1, I usually lose because I don't waste away for hours doing repetitive tasks while simultaneously defeating the purpose of gaming which is to have fun (also known as farming).
What's worse is, all these "solutions" people propose make the problem worse. For example, lowering critical from x2 to x1.5. Doing this is like not letting players of certain ages access the Commons because that's where all the trolls are. Sure, it may help some, but you haven't done anything about the trolls themselves. And the pink troll in the PvP room is lack of accessibility.
Also, updates like that are more damaging to the low-skill teams. High-skill teams can use some other strategy, but imagine the low-skill teams that got disadvantaged from the critical reduction. What if they didn't deal enough damage with that Storm Lord and it cost them the match against a high-skill team they might have won against if the critical reduction wasn't implemented?
Furthermore, the push to reduce critical in PvP happened because people were losing matches. So, because of the lack of accessibility problem. If PvP was accessible, a lot of the PvP complaints wouldn't exist.
I don't think PvP should be easy. I just think the result of a PvP match shouldn't be predetermined by who spent the most hours doing repetitive tasks, who paid the most, or who got the better team. There should be no barrier to entry in PvP. You should be able to join and instantly have a balanced match where each side has equal chance at victory.
The people who take a bunch of tedious steps shouldn't be the only ones who get to enjoy PvP. Everyone should.
I remember wise advice a Veteran shared with me when I started PvP: 1) Put on your big wizard pants; 2) Find, invest and use the best gear and pets; 3) Be on the better team; and 4) Never stop learning how to improve your strategy. And I haven't looked back since. I appreciate matches aren't predetermined, and I've encountered zero barriers entering PvP. Thankfully, there's always Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders to Fall Back on, if PvP ever gets too intense.
