The problems with "pvp"...according to W1lson

[W1lson]

Many of these have been listed here before, and I'm leaving out a lot of things people have issues with, but in the hopes that something actually gets improved, here's why I'm pretty close to abandoning this game all together, and certainly not spending any more money on it. If BB chose to fix a few of these things it might make pvp viable for longer than it takes for people to get to level 15 and realize they don't care enough to push on to 30:

1) Making pvp weapons is very expensive, even with the reductions in cost we saw a few months ago. This is a barrier to entry for anyone without a flourishing economy, for example anyone that isn't high level.

2) Making pvp weapons takes an insane amount of time, even at level 5 armory. This means that those of us who have nothing left in this game to accomplish outside of pvp will now only want to play once every 2 or 3 days instead of every day. This is not great for settlers, in that people who don't play often don't spend money...and eventually just stop logging on.

3) If you do somehow put up with numbers 1 & 2, the resources you gain are not just low, but pretty insulting. Honestly you might as well just have no resources if that's how you want to play it. This applies especially to tier 3 large maps, where the vast majority of available colonies are coal, iron, hardwood lumber and marble.

4) To make things worse, there is an artificial cap on how many resources per 6 hour period we can make. If you somehow manage to take 6 tier 3 huge colonies, you will not be collecting on them all. This is like a knife in the back of the people who make it through all the previous obstacles. Why strive for greatness and go after the hardest expeditions if it is more profitable to go after the second-hardest ones? (better chance at granite and titanium and fewer troop losses).

5) The fact that there is some sort of ranking system now is nice. The fact that I can't search it and see any of my friends or guild mates (unless they are top 10 or within one position of my own) makes this rating system fairly pointless. I also can't see what pvp level my friends are, other than visiting their island, looking at their water castle, and knowing within 2 levels what they are.

6) Which brings us to number 6...if somebody actually sticks it out despite all of these issues, they are rewarded with a slightly nicer decorative item than everyone else. Seriously?

[Remei]

1. PvP was meant to give bored lvl 50s something to do, so thats probably intentional.
2. There is 2nd armory building you get after reaching PvP level 10.
3. Any colonies beside granite and titanium are not profitable, at any tier. But its not too hard to get one of those, on lower tiers at least - and if you optimize your losses, they might become quite profitable.
4. Agreed, but you can always play lower tiers or claim less colonies, if you are after mostly after colony yields.
5. There are people who dont want to be listed or searchable in any kind of rankings - gotta think of those too.
6. See point 1 - bored lvl50s should not be too picky

[Koshko]

3) Most of the maps won't profit you. You basically do them to gain experience.

7) I don't like the fact that I got to Tier 3 with minimal work due to the simple fact that I've been attacked multiple times with no actual fighting. I don't want to be Tier 3 right now. It's not worth being Tier 3 at all for people that don't have a massive troop buildup. I mean right now, I have maybe 2000 total expedition troops and only the resources to build maybe 1000 more. Doing even a small Tier 3 map would potentially wipe out half of those troops. I only built the armory/academy after I heard they were bringing in the leveling system, so I did not have too much of a chance to store weapons. I dislike having to waste 50 gold/sausages and 90 mins of an explorer's time to attack a random map and then immediately retreat to drop back down to Tier 2.

[Perwyn]

Points 1 & 2): It's a completely different mind set than adventuring where you can crank thru adventure after adventure all day long losing cheap troops exclusively. Basically, run an expedition every other day and you're OK. Trying to force more than that out of the game isn't sustainable. It's an alternative and a supplement to adventures, designed to be played slowly by high level players who can afford it, not a replacement.

3): I've put in 2 tickets, one on January 2nd, and one on June 24th. In both tickets I pointed out the fact that repeatedly out of ten searches there was only coal, marble and hardwood showing up. Got the standard reply:

"What you are experiencing is a known issue and is currently being investigated by the development team. I ask for your patience while the development team works to resolve this situation. In the meantime I apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience in this matter on behalf of myself and the developers. If you have any future questions or issues feel free to submit another ticket."

I was pretty disappointed that the problem was still there in the new June release. Rather than take a junk colony, I skip them all and try again later. Yes, it's expensive, yes it's frustrating. Hopefully it's something that will be fixed eventually by the one programmer still working on CEO. I try not to forget how many SotV & SE's I used to get from adventure searches before I stopped them altogether, altho the bad expedition search results are extreme and in a totally different context than adventure searches.

4) What bothers me most about the cap is the fact that it isn't raised if additional slots are purchased. A 2,000 limit on 4 slots = 500 per slot, so for each purchased slot the limit should be raised by 500. Even at that, the limit is too low to start with and needs to be raised. If I can't logon for 12 hours, I shouldn't lose the resources I've earned.

5) Being able to opt into (or out of) the ranking system would address the issues raised. Something similar to comparing friends achievements maybe?

7) Agree. If there's no body count in the attack, it shouldn't count in your strength points.

adding # 8). We need a better way to see and analyze our colony maps. The report we get if a colony is taken is useful but is lacking in some information and is difficult to "read" due to it's size. More or less a much larger version of the existing report along with the resource and time stamp as in the colonies screen or else some other form of identifier. It would be nice to have access to these maps at any time to ponder defense strategies. Actually...... being able to simply visit the island without access to make changes might work well.

adding # 9): The combat armory needs to have totals for each weapon type/things being produced like the barracks and provision houses do. Seems like it would be a quick and easy fix.
Patiently waiting for PvP 3.0

[Pinkleet]

I heard cats are finally coming to "pvp" in 3.0... Wonder how will that be implemented.

[Perwyn]

Probably be Elite Cats to use against the War Dogs!

[Vanessa]

Makes it impossible to select next attacker and when it finally clears, it's too late... dead bodies everywhere.

[Raubhautz]

[...] Makes it impossible to select next attacker and when it finally clears, it's too late... dead bodies everywhere.

Lol - I'll stick to running FT's and SE's... Let Expeditions fade away, and hope to embrace the new expansion set. (If nothing else, we get to use our existing generals!)

[Ceruhe]

...but...but...but! I'm almost level 10 :'(

[Koshko]

I've yet to see that bug. Lvl 10 is great.