09-08-2008, 01:13 AM
I think that we tried no pits on Sphere XUO and it turned out pretty poorly, but it's good to revisit WHY exactly. So, let me give my opinion as a non-PVPer (yet.)
The pits do serve an important purpose as far as meeting up with people, ressurrecting and getting back to your body quickly, etc. However, it causes several problems.
People go AFK in pits and don't explore or PVP anywhere but Occlo. Lots of people stand around the red teleporters waiting for someone to step through to a red town, then they follow and gank the bajeezus out of them. The problem is, sometimes it takes a while for someone you want to kill to go through. I just read a post about someone waiting 2+ hours for someone to step through the gates so that they could kill them. Doesn't sound like fun to me, but hell, knock yourself out.
The problem as I see it is that there's no incentive for reds to go out and gank people. I think that several factors contribute to this:
1) A lack of "hot spots". The staff has done a good job of adding interesting stuff all over the world, but what this also means is that there's no good way to tell where someone is. I'm standing afk in an unguarded place that I know is popular while I write this, but have little worry of having someone come and kill me.
(as an example of a hotspot, think of the Wind courtyard in NOS and Sphere XUO. There were about 20 randomly colored rides walking around there and lots of tamers went there to get rides. Of course, lots of PKs went there to kill those tamers.)
2) Low population means it's less likely to find people in the mentioned hotspots. You might blow through a whole bag of recall regs trying to find someone and not see anyone.
3) Lack of good red vs blue wars. For example, the Brit bridge. Everyone keeps mentioning the brit bridge like it's the epitome of red v blue and will be our savior if people will just go there. The truth of the matter is, reds go to the bridge, blues dump all their gear in the bank and run around hoping to see someone die that they can loot. The ones who do participate will run forward, then run back into the guards hoping that the reds will step just a little too far. That is if any PVP happens at all. What's more likely is the reds will show up, make their presence known, and everyone will just go back to the bank and ignore the whole thing.
4) I'm sure there are more that I'm not thinking of.
An option to fix the problem is to add some sorts of hotspots where lots of people go to and increase the population. Hopefully the video contest will create some good advertisements for the shard. I haven't worked on one yet. >_< Recruiting friends and doing the vote thing will help a bit also.
Hopefully the pits being gone will help the PVPers find a new way to play besides teleporter camping. I don't expect them to be gone forever based on history, but maybe some of the habits that are picked up this week will carry over past the pits being reinstated.
The pits do serve an important purpose as far as meeting up with people, ressurrecting and getting back to your body quickly, etc. However, it causes several problems.
People go AFK in pits and don't explore or PVP anywhere but Occlo. Lots of people stand around the red teleporters waiting for someone to step through to a red town, then they follow and gank the bajeezus out of them. The problem is, sometimes it takes a while for someone you want to kill to go through. I just read a post about someone waiting 2+ hours for someone to step through the gates so that they could kill them. Doesn't sound like fun to me, but hell, knock yourself out.
The problem as I see it is that there's no incentive for reds to go out and gank people. I think that several factors contribute to this:
1) A lack of "hot spots". The staff has done a good job of adding interesting stuff all over the world, but what this also means is that there's no good way to tell where someone is. I'm standing afk in an unguarded place that I know is popular while I write this, but have little worry of having someone come and kill me.
(as an example of a hotspot, think of the Wind courtyard in NOS and Sphere XUO. There were about 20 randomly colored rides walking around there and lots of tamers went there to get rides. Of course, lots of PKs went there to kill those tamers.)
2) Low population means it's less likely to find people in the mentioned hotspots. You might blow through a whole bag of recall regs trying to find someone and not see anyone.
3) Lack of good red vs blue wars. For example, the Brit bridge. Everyone keeps mentioning the brit bridge like it's the epitome of red v blue and will be our savior if people will just go there. The truth of the matter is, reds go to the bridge, blues dump all their gear in the bank and run around hoping to see someone die that they can loot. The ones who do participate will run forward, then run back into the guards hoping that the reds will step just a little too far. That is if any PVP happens at all. What's more likely is the reds will show up, make their presence known, and everyone will just go back to the bank and ignore the whole thing.
4) I'm sure there are more that I'm not thinking of.
An option to fix the problem is to add some sorts of hotspots where lots of people go to and increase the population. Hopefully the video contest will create some good advertisements for the shard. I haven't worked on one yet. >_< Recruiting friends and doing the vote thing will help a bit also.
Hopefully the pits being gone will help the PVPers find a new way to play besides teleporter camping. I don't expect them to be gone forever based on history, but maybe some of the habits that are picked up this week will carry over past the pits being reinstated.