Hey guys,

Long time pvper here, and I'm noticing some really annoying tendencies about Tera pvp and pvp players that I just wanted to vent a moment. Feel free to share your experiences or rebuttals.

1. Safe Zones!

God there's one of these every 50 yards it seems. It's very difficult to jump someone at times without them jumping into invulnerability land and trash talking you.

I only ever PVP people that are within 1-2 levels of me, and yet I get called a ganker and some white knight pvper comes up and 1 shots me for "Griefing". In a pvp server? Really? I play on Jagged Coast, and the White Knights guild is horrible for this.


2. Chickens!

4 people can easily get 8 or more people hiding in town without any reprisal attack. Really? My friends and I would love a nice battle, but instead everyone hides in town and trash talks while they call their friend to 1 shot you from behind. Didn't you roll on a pvp server to fight people your level? Come out from behind the fence! We love a good challenge!

Sadly, sometimes they do come out from behind the fence... and the healers don't. They just heal the others from behind the fence and trash talk you some more. This is clearly an oversight that should be looked at somehow. In the meantime, I'll stick to corralling everyone in the zone behind the fence, and riding off with a snicker.

Of all my gripes, chickens is the worst I think. I can understand not wanting to engage someone if they're higher than you and there's no challenge involved, but an overwhelming majority of players I encounter my own level get extremely hostile when you attempt to attack them in pvp on a pvp server, which just boggles my mind. I imagine these people won't last long as the game progresses though, and that's some small comfort.


3. Level disparity.

In this game, level disparity is insane! Someone 5 levels higher than you can combo you to death before you even register what's going on. I'm looking forward to reaching cap to alleviate this problem entirely. Just have to grit your teeth and bear it in the meantime.


4. Outlaw System

Wow, where to begin? I understand its necessity and how you don't want to attack one another all the time, but there's got to be a way to at least toggle this. Having to flag before I kill someone is pretty bad as it is, but half the time they take off galloping on their mount when they hear the shout and see my name go red. Can we at least lose the animation? It wastes precious time. Failing that, let the flag stay on you for a longer period of time. I hate having to re-flag myself every minute. I'd like to be all pvp all the time, even if it means my party has to be careful to avoid killing me. I group with others who flag all the time too, and we never seem to have a problem.


Anyway, that's about it. So far I'm enjoying myself greatly in Tera. Don't let the griping fool you. I just posted this as some feedback that hopefully makes its way back to the devs as one of many voices. Looking at other threads, I see I'm not alone on many of these points.

I think the biggest problem is that most PvP resides near safe zones like Lumberton bridge. In order to resolve this so that the future of PvP is actually entertaining they need to place PvP tasks/objectives in the open world away from safe areas, like holding a point or capturing a structure. Completing or holding these objectives could yield your guild extra xp bonus or something so that people actually want to compete.

If i could add one to your list it would be PvPing and water. Water is almost the same thing as a safe zone and it basically makes pvping near it pointless. As unrealistic as it is to believe you would be able to perform as well in water as on land, i still think there needs to be pvp/pve in water.

I'm not sure what the problem here is, Mirakk.

If what you want to do is engage in fair-ish fights, you might want to just try duelling. Then, you don't run into problems with people fleeing, and you don't open yourself up to blind retaliation. If you really are doing "fair"ish ganks, for the thrill of the fight, then there's no reason not to just duel instead.

From the perspective of the gankee, the instant you suspect that you're under attack, you have to make an split-second decision about whether to fight or flee. Since your opponent decided to initiate the attack, and you figure they wouldn't have if they thought they might lose, generally the safer money is on flight. Definitely, because of the way things work, there's a "safer" area around safe zones, but it's hardly like there's nowhere where you can effectively gank if you choose to do so.

The one thing that can throw a wrench in a ganker's plans is community support. That's why I always rush in when I see a red/purple fighting a white. Without this complication, is ganking even fun?

Where I play, there are enough reds/purples running around all the time that I don't assume they're all out to get me-- even though I might be safer if I did! It's certainly possible to step just out of sight, declare outlaw, and return, and the invisible declaration is probably much more effective. (When somebody turns red in plain sight, there's no time to figure out who they're after, or even what level they are.)

Yah OP, haven't you heard? If you don't find the constant ganking outnumbered 12 to 1, or the constant ganking by someone 20 levels higher than you...if you find any enjoyment whatsoever in a fight with someone reasonably close to your level...then that is -exactly- the same as dueling and that's the only thing that you clearly want to do.

Makes perfect sense.

If you're on crack.

Welcome to TERA's pvp 'community'.

Without a doubt, Calypso, there are infinite gradations of exactly how unfair a particular gank can be. Of course, there's no really good way for the gankee to figure that out when they're busy reacting to a gank attempt. In any case, it's never fair: the ganker chooses the fight, and the gankee probably isn't expecting one.

The only time a fight is fair is when both parties are ready for it and both parties agree it's fair. IE, a duel. Some people like to fool themselves about things so they can feel proud about their MMO accomplishments though. That's fine.

What would you like? For the game to figure out exactly how unfair the gank was, and only allow a few people to retaliate? I think you agree that that's not practical.

I'm happy to see unfair combats. It adds excitement to the game. But it strikes me as hypocritical to gank, just to turn around and complain when you get ganked in return (by white knights or reds, it doesn't matter).

All in the game, yo.

Sorry, I guess this is what happens when you outline too many things in one post.

Honestly ganking happens, and I'm fine with that. I laugh when I get one shotted. The only reason I brought it up is for developers to hear my observations as a player. This is the only game I've played where someone with such a small level gap above you can perform a one-shot on another player.

That part was more mechanics oriented. If you look at my topic title, the main thing I was trying to speak to is the community of players Tera has gotten.


White Knights killing me? That's fine, but it's the strange anti-pvp paradox that I was speaking to. How they hate ganking, but they're terrible gankers at the same time.

The reason I stressed the fair fight level thing so much was to show that I'm not just some [filtered] out there killing people without a chance to defeat me, and still people run away or scowl at you for pvping like you're some kind of exploiter. It's like they don't even want the challenge of player vs player content at all, and yet they're here in droves.

I suppose this isn't anything new. I've just never played a game where one faction can talk openly to the other, so I'm seeing some of this for the very first time. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's the main thing I've seeing here. Thanks for helping me to better understand the community as a whole.

Totally-- the actions are one thing, but the way people act is another. Self-righteousness, taunting, etc are all just bad sportsmanship. It's not like gankers are bad people, and people on PVP servers should either have known what they were getting into, or should get out before they waste any more of their time.

But then, people are impolite, and lack empathy for each other, especially on the internet, and especially especially in MMOs. Hopefully you realize that there are a few of us out there who enjoy level-appropriate ambushes and will still treat you with respect, win lose or draw :)

Quote: Snoshue on 05/08/2012, 08:19 PM - view

No, most gankers are very much bad people. That's -why- they taunt, or show a lack of sportsmanship. And your antiquated, trite (and to be perfectly honest, gauche and boring) comparison to a duel is foolish. You can be a 'good' ganker. You can be a sporting pvp player. It doesn't have to be perfectly fair and on perfectly even grounds for a pvp battle to occur.

For example, I just got done rifting in Morheim in Aion. While there, I got into 8 fights. The last one killed me (5 on 1), a couple of 2 on 1's against people in my level range, and several that I stumbled across when they were fighting pve monsters. Of those, 1 was way under my level, so I waited until he finished, waved, and went on my way. The others, I let them finish and heal up, then attacked. None of them were 'agreed to', none of them were 'perfectly fair', and hence none of them would have been a duel. It was simply a matter of -choosing- to be a sporting player and not an ***hat.

It's ALWAYS your choice. That people CHOOSE not to take it says everything there is to know about them.

Calypso, I'm not sure you've understood what I've been saying correctly. Maybe I haven't been phrasing things very clearly. For instance, when I was talking about the bad sports with Mirakk, we weren't talking about gankers-- we were talking about people that run to safe zones and taunt, and white knights that get self-righteous and superior when they're really doing the same things as gankers.

I'm glad that you're having fun pursuing disadvantageous fights. It sounds to me, since you're not attacking underlevel people, and since you're smart enough to win imbalanced fights, that you're also smart enough to figure out how to fight well despite the disadvantages associated with outlaw status for the short time that it lasts-- as well as the other problems that Mirakk was talking about.

BTW, it seems to me that you're being more aggressive than you need to be in the way that you're writing. I hope I haven't offended you-- it hasn't been my intention, and I apologize if I've done so. Maybe I'm over-sensitive to it is all. I've become accustomed to hanging out with people that are more polite than people that post on MMO forums tend to be :)

It is way to easy to get out of combat and mount up in a PvP situation. They need to remove the flagging system on PvP servers. You should never have to flag yourself under any circumstances on a PvP server. I think the flag system is a great idea for a PvE server. But it just is not fitting for any PvP server. It is easy enough to get out of combat as it is. Making you flag yourself is a pain. Not to mention if this gets incorporated, you will have to be even more aware of your surroundings. Which will make you an overall better player considering the combat system in Tera.