VvV is not fun
Seriously its all about group fights now. It should be Chaos vs Order, at least then theres a default team you're on. Otherwise you are everyone's enemy. If its called Vice vs Virtue, then why can't you join the Vice or Virtue team, and fight against one another? Instead everyone is orange, and you get ganked hard by every single person you come across.
Do any of the devs actually PvP? Just curious if you have the perspective of a player in fel or not @Kyronix
Do any of the devs actually PvP? Just curious if you have the perspective of a player in fel or not @Kyronix
Comments
My guess is that with VvV and each guild/alliance being its own team, the devs thought it would be easier to get into fights with more people without taking murder counts.
I have not seen any post of yours display anything but complaints.
Or just go back to order vs chaos
VvV just made it some everyone participates to get cheap free arties. Factions is dead now and normal pvp just has temp stat loss.
I never understood why it's called Vice Vs Virtue when there is no 2 opposing groups. The name implies a 2 faction system yet when I logged in to try it... everyone's orange !
I think having temporary theme based (good/evil, Minax/CoM/SL/TB) dedicated groups (factions) fighting during town events could pull in more players. Create a sense of purpose for everyone to join a side & fight along w/ others. It fosters a sense of camaraderie & can build friendships between previously unknown players.
Currently, we have a version of guild wars in which no one may participate (successfully) unless already in a decent sized guild.
*** Ultimately, success of this hinges on a level playing field. Most will try VvV only a few times when they see the shenanigans used by some of our self-proclaimed "best" PvPers. LOL ***
And so we went with guilds. They are self moderating. If you don't want someone in your guild, you can kick them out. Every guild is their own team, and guilds can ally with other guilds and form their larger group. The framework of Vice vs Virtue was a added as a fictional construct to give purpose to what is otherwise mindless fighting. UO is a sandbox, and we felt the most sandbox-y approach was to allow the players the ability to define what it meant to be Vice or Virtue on any given shard. Originally there was more emphasis on winning VvV battles by protecting your thief. This made for some interesting cat and mouse experiences early on, but ultimately the outcry those who "just wanted to be able to fight" resulted in a diminished role for the thief/sigil mechanic that it was really no longer viable as it once was.
While I think we fell short in making the results of the battles feel more impactful and providing more tools for players to define what it meant to be Vice or Virtue, VvV solved a number of issues with factions - notably with flagging, a lack of critical mass which made the entire system untenable on the majority of shards, and a time sink that was unappealing to a changing player base who could no longer devote hours to a PvP battle/siege.
We've brainstormed some solutions to these issues and encourage continued meaningful discussion on how we can improve in the future.
I can see how at first when you see dozens of oranges on the screen it can be quite daunting, however rest assured, when there are lots of guilds fighting everyone is as afraid as you.
This way the players have full control over who joins their team.
It should be noted that on shards like Europa, some alliances (w,tuk,few) are so large that I’m sure they see more green than orange.
@kyronix What is the goal of VvV?
I have some comments about the vvv system, I see i originally wrote this 1 year ago, but didnt publish it. Since no new patches to the vvv system i will publish now:
The idea is to choose a side right? Vice or Virtue.
What I am missing, is a reason to chose the vice or virtue path.
When I steal that sigil and give it to the priest NPC in red robe or blue robe, theres no difference, theres no consequences.
The vvv leader boards doesnt show what vice or virtue path the other chars/guilds have chosen.
I think the system can be improved and become much better, interesting and even draw people into UO just for the PVP.
But for this a few changes are needed, also the main problem of 20min fights then nobody cares who won, or who won yesterday, and nobody can check who won 2hours ago, theres 60 vvv towns a day LOL, - needs to be resolved, but ive not touched this here.
My suggestions to improve vvv system and its bugs:
Update MYUO page on uo.com to see vice vs virtue members and their points, so people can see it even if not ingame. Its a community thing, to create a community for PvP.
like the faction system it should list shards and total points of all shards and guilds, top 10 list and you could even check it at work, even if not access to UO xD
ingame Commands to find out what city is active (having to relog is stupid, but many do this) also there should be a command to check points or kill ratio (points is in the million or billion its hard to keep track if you have 300million or 3.3billion points, punkte/showscore and then 12 digits appear doesnt look good lol )
Some sigils spawn right next to the priest, this makes no sence. Steal a sigil and deliver on same screen four tiles away, why.
The progression bar in the vvv window shouldnt start before 30secs afer the town has started, to give more time for people to enter town and start at same equal score.
Why does the silver trader spawn in trammel towns? VVV is Feluca only so why is there a silver trader in trammel in all towns.
The active vvv city should be more altered to illustrate that it is in a war, other than 3 alters, 3NPCs there are no visible changes to the town.
How about some barricades, orange NPCs to protect their townhall, a stable master for vvv warhorses (instead of silver trader) How about a great townhall to view all the vvv rewards and to view the leaderboards of points.
Make a way to see the battle readiness of a vvv mount as it is now it just disappear. Also give it a possibility to armor it.
Error message "The steed readiness runs dangerously low" when the pet is in stable and havent even been used for days need to be fixed.
The bug where the sigil spawn then disappear in thin air before its detected/stolen, only to respawn again one minute later need to be fixed.
Sometimes the priest of virtue and priest of Vice spawns inside buildings, is this intentional? also sometimes in unreachable locations i.e Trinsic bank ontop.
The message that says "the city is unoccupied" still says unoccupied if people are hidden/stealthing.
Sigils location are not as random as one would think, quite often it respawn 3 or 4 times at same location.
Currently only killings inside active vvv towns count toward the statistic, meaning if you kill someone in a dungeon or they run out of town, it wont show on statistic. is it supposed to be like this?
After a city has ended the scoreboard for town is wrong, it says "total match kill/assist/death" even though there has been no action in town.
The vvv leaderboards list should be extended by 5 people, so that when in 2d client it shows 3x unique pages. As it is now the last two pages overlaps and the 3rd page shows the same 5 people twice.
Also new people in VVV have to play and collect points for DAYS and weeks to just be visible at the top 25scoreboard, they are faaaar beyond.
The vvv leaderboard over guild rankings should be updated with how many cities won each guild/alliance vice/virtue has
Theres a place a few screens west of the silver trader in Trinsic you cant run with sigil or you get the message "you may not remove the sigil from the battle region". This is inside town. Also a few places the vvv town limits need to be extended (i.e yew winery)
Id also like to see the vvv start when atleast 3 or more members are online, this to avoid farming of points. Currently its 2people, funny that an entire city is in war cuz of 2people.
Suggestions to rewards from the VVV NPC:
Remove some of the old rewards its had its time(2-3years).
boomstick - to make no recalling allowed in town. 5000 silver coins
boomstick - to extend the time of war in a vvv town for another 5minuts 8000 silver coins
Reversed forged pardon, that put a character at 5 long term murders and red. (option for blues to go red, the idea to chose a side vice or virtue right?)
Vice/virtue guard - guard to be put out at the healer building to enable safe ressurections - 5000 silver
warcry - allow a message to all vice or virtue members online(like the faction message command) once pr town or once pr day. - 10000 silver
Rune book with runes to all VVV towns premarked, as an alternative to the crystal teleporter item that moves char to bank)
The vice/virtue robe has no propeties, it shoud have atleast one property to actually make people wear it. Also it cant be repaired with repair deeds, it need some benefits.
Special vvv repair deed to repair the vvv items one deed fits all, no need to run around with the right deed in the right shop.
A potion for the vvv mount to make it twice as strong (not to use in fight, but to prevent it getting killed all the time)
A special vvv item (i.e deco) worth 25.000 points to put in house(worth way more than the current max of 10kpoints which is too easy to get)
Can add alot of things here, its a fantasy things, but whats important is that new players can get some gear to join the pvp, a mount and compete on the same level.
Thank you for your efforts to improve the vvv system!