[Tekquila]

There's a number of things that could be tweaked with the coliseum to make it generally a more accessible/fun, and less annoying aspect of Imperian gameplay, here's some thoughts in no particular order.

1) Drop the required queue numbers to start an event from 10 to 5, you never get 10 joiners anyway, and if it only required the 5+ people actually interested in playing you'd be far less likely to have mtells that read like this:

Quote

Most recent tells:
1 ) Song: "Seeking to purchase Tokens of the Creator."
2 ) Omny: "Ad 65."
3 ) Ohm: "Seeking cheaper credits."
4 ) Sadie: "Seeking shortsword with banishment."
5 ) Sadie: "Queue. Join it."
6 ) Shukron: "4 more for Queue."
7 ) Shukron: "4 more for Queue."
8 ) Omny: "Ad 65! Cheap Toxins, Bulk Herbs, Health Refills."
9 ) Shukron: "Seeking a Transcendent Tamer, send tells."
10) Omny: "Ad 65!"
11) Sadie: "Join queue koth."
12) Shukron: "Two more for Queue."
13) Shukron: "Join Queue Koth."

2)As Khizan suggested elsewhere, allow a configurable "Don't show arena deaths on deathsight" option, or even a "Don't show Arena messages" option, which would remove the event initiating, starting and ending results from being displayed, as well as deaths therein.

3)Remove the single hill option from KOTH, it's frustratingly geared towards the team with the largest amount of AOE that will break capture attempts (Vibes, Hailstorm, Swing Staff, Strafe etc etc) and is typically painfully unfun.

4)Change capturing in KOTH to not be broken by things like web/paralysis/off bal/stunned etc, increase the time required to capture to still make it difficult and make only the capturer doing something disrupts it; As it stands anyone with a 'drop and forget' skill like gravehands, grove entangle, warding, vibes can keep a hill locked down without even being there.

5)Allow for a TeamBloodbath option.

6)As I requested elsewhere, change team events so that teams are not decided by the order of joining the event. Have people moved into a 'holding room' until the initiating process is done and everyone who wants to join has joined, at which point divide up teams via tier rankings or whatever system you want to use. Then give them 30 seconds - a minute to set themselves up and talk strategy.

7)In conjunction with suggestion 6, allow for a prefered team-mates option, something along the lines of 'join teamffa coliseum with Breav and Sparda' They'd get a 'do you agree?' message, and if they hit agree, all 3 would be moved to the holding room, and if teams can be balanced that would allow them to be on the same team then they would be (but team balance would be prioritized over prefered team-mates).

8)Create a 'queue' system for 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 spars, allowing combat spars as an optional. (Then let me buy pvp gears with my combat rating). If this proved popular, you could use each cities arenas, chosen at random, with the fighters returned to the rooms they were in prior to joining to prevent being guard ganked at the end of the spar.

That's about all I've got for the moment, but I'm sure there's more.

[Cadeyrn_Vaskal]

Increase the numbers of tiers (I think there are four currently?).

I'm in Tier #1, I'm not a Tier 1 combatant.

Either that, or find another mechanic to base the teams from.

[Labil]

Tier shouldn't take into account not really combat related skills like Taming and Engineering. If it is true that trans Concoctions doesn't gives you a sip bonus, that one either. I'm unsure about perception.

[Khizan]

Concoctions gives you a sip bonus if you have Naturalism or Trailblazing, but it is similar to how weaponry and chivalry have the same effect on DSL accuracy. The sip bonus is dependent on the sum of your lessons in the skills, capped at a trans skill worth of lessons.

Perception is SO a combat skill. Trueassess is such a huge advantage for most every class that kills with damage.

[argh]

Could we have a separate Queue Channel - just so that the market channel is actually used for market stuff and all interested in the Coliseum events ask for joining the queue on that channel instead?

Also reducing the number of people to start an event should be considered. As is a lot of times events are cancelled due to lack of participation.

[Labil]

Because some are events like Freezetags. If there are two people in the coliseum in a Bloodbath, it will start. I have seen it, they were the most painful 15 minutes of my life, Eldreth killing me over and over

[Draven]

Create a Queue channel.

Label it as strictly OOC.

Enforce it for Queue usage only (no OOC chatter about the Super Bowl, flaming, etc).

Why? Cuz the arena's OOC. I like Team FFAs and KoTH, but people are giving Draven crap about wanting to fight alongside magickers for it.

Get this crap off the market. Thanks.

[Garryn]

Skills like Concoctions or tradeskills do not affect the combat tier.

I am aware that the tier is not the best possible metrics for determining teams, but what is? "Who is a better fighter" is rather difficult to code.

Regarding KOTHs, what would you think about changing them so that capturing a hill is not delayed at all, but instead takes some balance and can only be done if no members of the opposing team(s) are present in the room?

[argh]

Perhaps take a combination score of PK rank and the current tier metric.

[Labil]

PK rank is like the worst possible way to determine who is a better fighter.

[Rork]

argh, on 09 March 2010 - 01:44 PM, said:

Perhaps take a combination score of PK rank and the current tier metric.

Dunno if this is included in what you said, but K/D ratio with those.
ratio taking away mob kills and deaths.

[Cadeyrn_Vaskal]

Garryn, on 09 March 2010 - 06:35 PM, said:

Regarding KOTHs, what would you think about changing them so that capturing a hill is not delayed at all, but instead takes some balance and can only be done if no members of the opposing team(s) are present in the room?

I'd like to see it on a sliding scale. You can capture it if there is 1 member of the opposing team in the room, you can capture it with 2, but it should take quite a while longer. Some KotH battles are simply decided by who gets to the Hill first, rather than who has the best tactics.

[Silken]

That will just hand the win to a team with someone capable of moving enemies out of the room easily. Malignists come to mind, Devotion users with warding, etc.

Right now, if you have AOE, if you are a Druid and can implant staff in the room (looking at you Tek), you win. It probably wouldn't be fair to remove all AOE from the game (KOTH), but the worst ones could be looked at.

I have only played KOTH once, it was a single hill KOTH and it was miserable. Removing those should go a long way too. I don't have a problem with the Market tells, myself, and I think the arena deathsight config would be nice. Queuing could stand to be reduced too.

Letting everyone join first, and then dividing the teams is a better option. You could still do it by tier, but at least it won't be as gameable as it is now.

PS: Cadeyrn, being placed in a lower tier than you feel you are in is not such a bad thing because when the big events with the credit prizes come along, you have an advantage.

[Draven]

Making it capture instantly on the idea that nobody's in the room is a bad idea. Warding/Beckon/Vortex all provide significant advantages in making a battle mobile.

I'd love to see that the hill is randomly moved, however...Mages drop vibes on the hill spot and pretty much just let it sit there for the rest of combat, or Druids with groves, priests with Rites, etc. (when there are three hills, no biggie, but moving the hills during a KoTH would be awesome).

[Tekquila]

Garryn, on 09 March 2010 - 06:35 PM, said:

Regarding KOTHs, what would you think about changing them so that capturing a hill is not delayed at all, but instead takes some balance and can only be done if no members of the opposing team(s) are present in the room?

The arena's too small to really make that feasible, it only takes a few seconds from dying to return to the hill, so if there's only a couple of hills to capture, odds are you'll -always- have someone stood on it.

Someone else may have a better idea, but I think the increasing the time it takes, while removing the hindering things from stopping you (Things like grove entangle) will mean hills tend to change hands more often and neither aoe nor passive room skills will have such a great effect.

Absolutely and utterly remove single hill, like Silken said, AoE is crippling for single hill games, at least when teams have to spread out to go after the 3+ hills, AoE plays a much smaller role, and it comes down more to tactics than hailstorm or grove entangle.

Tiers are always going to be iffy, there's no good way to do it I'm afraid. The system we have in play mostly suffices, it would be kind of an interesting job to come up with a perfect system though, something involving pk level, actual level, combat skills, arena event wins, total artifacts etc etc (Though to be honest it seems like many of these things are involved to an extent, theoretically if you place in tier 1, you should have the necessary abilities to compete).